Martin Luther: A Christian between Reforms and Modernity (1517-2017) 9783110499025, 9783110501018

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De Gruyter Reference Martin Luther Volume I

Martin Luther

A Christian between Reforms and Modernity (1517–2017) Edited by Alberto Melloni In cooperation with Anne Eusterschulte, Volker Leppin, Peter Opitz, Tarald Rasmussen, Gury Schneider-Ludorff, Silvana Seidel Menchi, Herman Selderhuis, Violet Soen, Kirsi Stjerna, Piotr Wilczek, Zhang Zhigang

Volume I

Editorial Team: Albrecht Döhnert, Alissa Jones Nelson, Aaron Sanborn-Overby, Stefan Selbmann

ISBN 978-3-11-050101-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-049902-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-049823-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Luther and Melanchthon 1543, by Lucas Cranach the Elder © akg-images Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents Volume I Alberto Melloni Luther, the Christian. An Introduction  1

Introductions Paolo Ricca The Reformation and Protestantism. An Inventory of the Issue  23 Wietse de Boer Reformations and Counter-Reformations. The Contested Terms of Reformation History  43 Matteo Al Kalak The Tridentine Age and the Reformation Age  59 Christopher M. Bellitto Ecclesia semper reformanda: Medieval Ideas and Attempts at Church Reform  75 Euan Cameron Religion, Reason, and Superstition from Late Antiquity to Luther’s Reform  91 Wolf-Friedrich Schäufele Luther as Church Father  109 Sergio Rostagno What Is Left of Luther?  123

Luther’s Life Jon Balserak The Medieval Heritage of Martin Luther  141 Volker Leppin Luther’s Mystical Roots  157

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Franz Posset Luther’s Inspirers and Sympathizers. From Johann von Staupitz to the Circles of Nuremberg and Augsburg  173 Patrizio Foresta The Posting of the Theses: The History of a Myth  185 Richard Rex Luther among the Humanists  203 Lothar Vogel Luther’s Bible. Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology, and Translation  221 Silvana Nitti Luther and Political Power  241 Bradley Arthur Peterson Luther and Monasticism  265 Michele Lodone Erasmus and Luther: Free and Bound Will  281 Jonathan D. Trigg Disputes on Baptism and the Eucharist, 1521–1532  295 Christopher W. Close The Diet of Worms and the Holy Roman Empire  313 Ulrich Andreas Wien Luther’s Relations with Peasants and Princes  327 Giampiero Brunelli The Holy Roman Empire and Its Diets, 1521 – 1546  347 Marco Iacovella Luther and the Religious Colloquies  363 Herman Selderhuis Luther’s Death  377

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Reforms and Other Reformators Günter Frank Luther and Melanchthon  389 Herman Selderhuis Luther and Calvin  401 Federico Zuliani Luther and Zwingli  417 Günter Vogler Thomas Müntzer’s Heritage: An Alternative in the Process of Reformation  431 James M. Stayer Luther and the Radical Reformers  451 Guido Mongini The “Third Sects”: Italian Heretics and the Criticism of the Protestant Reformation (1530–1550)  473 Peter Walter Erasmus of Rotterdam and His Environment  491 Lucio Biasiori Before the Inquisitor. A Thousand Ways of Being Lutheran  509 Enrique García Hernán Ignatius: The Anti-Lutheran Reformer  527

Volume II

Luther in Question Violet Soen From the Interim of Augsburg until the Treaty of Augsburg (1548–1555)  549 Luise Schorn-Schütte Luther and Politics  565

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Jörg Seiler Chastity as a Political Issue. Martin Luther and the Teutonic Order  579 Kirsi Stjerna Luther and Women. Considerations of Luther’s Female Associates and the Biblical Evidence  597 Brooks Schramm Luther and the Jews  617 Roni Weinstein Jews and Lutheranism: An Ambiguous Silence  635 Gregory J. Miller Luther and the Turks  649 Helmut Puff Martin Luther, the Sexual Reformation, and Same-Sex Sexuality  663

Heritage of Lutheran Theology Christophe Chalamet Lutheran Scholasticism. A Sketch of Lutheran Orthodox Theologies and Their Reception by Karl Barth  681 Pierre Bühler Theology of the Cross. Its Meaning in Luther and Some Stages of Its Reception History  697 Franco Motta The Capture of the Minotaur. The Luther of Catholic Controversialists  713 Antonio Gerace Justification by Faith. A History of the Debate  741 André Birmelé The Theological Self-Understanding of the Evangelical Lutheran Churches  759

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Oecumenical Relecture Patrizio Foresta The Catholic Damnation and Redemption of Luther  781 Johannes Oeldemann The Legacy of Martin Luther and the Tradition of the Orthodox Church. On the Status of the Modern Orthodox-Lutheran Dialogue  803 Billy Kristanto The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification  827 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Lutheranism in Ecumenical Dialogue  843 Enrico Galavotti From Excommunicated to Common Teacher. Luther and the Ecumenical Movement  861

Philosophical and Historical Influences Giovanni Rota Luther in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Philosophy  883 Fulvio Tessitore The Universalgeschichtlich Role of the Reformation according to Idealism and Historicism within German Culture  911 Gabriella Cotta Luther and the Revolution of the Individual  933 Roland Boer Luther and Marxism  953 Jordan J. Ballor Reformation Protestantism and the “Spirit” of Capitalism  965 Günter Frank Luther in Catholic Historiography and Theology: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries  983

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Heinrich Assel Luther and the Third Reich: Consent and Confession  1001 Thomas Hahn-Bruckart Luther in Protestant Historiography and Theology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries  1019

Communicating Luther Thomas Albert Howard The Past in the Present: Remembering Luther in 1617, 1817, and 1883  1043 Marcin Wisłocki Architecture and Reformation  1063 Maria Lucia Weigel Martin Luther in Portraits  1093 Mauro Casadei Turroni Monti Lutheran Music and the Migrations of Taste  1119 Otfried Czaika Education, Learning, and Instruction during the Reformation  1147 Esther P. Wipfler Luther in Cinema and on Television  1165

Volume III

Geographical Crossroads Johannes Burkhardt From the Wars of Religion to a Post-Westphalian World  1183 Michela Catto At the Source of Every Evil. Images and Interpretations of the Reformation and Luther in Modern Italy  1203

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Pál Ács Biblical Studies and Bible Translations in Hungary in the Age of the Reformation 1540−1640  1219 Girolamo Imbruglia Protestantism and the Enlightenment, 1691 – 1780  1241 Mariano Delgado Patterns in the Reception of Luther in the Hispanic World. From the Sixteenth Century to the Present  1261 Christine Helmer Luther in America  1277 Rady Roldán-Figueroa Martin Luther in Latin America. From the Counter-Reformation Myth of Latin American Catholicism to Luther as Religious Caudillo  1295 Judith Becker Missions in Africa: Lutheran Churches, Enculturation, and Ecumenism  1315 Daniel Jeyaraj Luther in Asia: India  1339 Bibliographies  1355 Patrizio Foresta Chronology of Martin Luther’s Writings  1465

Illustrations Maps  1511 Portraits  1543 Backgrounds  1621 Works / Documents  1645 Representations  1671

Index of Names  1701

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Luther, the Christian An Introduction One of the most important tenets that history has prepared for humanity is: “At that time, no one knew what lay ahead of us.” Haruki Murakami 1Q84. Book 1 & 2, Cologne 2010

1 Introduction Long before Andy Warhol’s Factory, Cranach’s workshop in Wittenberg had already understood something of the significance of a replica. The inner certitude that projects serenely out of the diachronic sequence of this workshop’s portraits of Luther; the care of the coiffure and the professor’s doctoral cap falling gently onto his forehead; the gaze: the legacy of this workshop has accrued over five hundred years, creating an inescapable iconographic stereotype that reveals, sometimes even hides, but by no means diminishes, the expansive wealth and fascination of Doctor Martinus. We are all compelled to measure ourselves against the challenging breadth of his personality. On the side of faith: all those who have felt in his path the irruption of the Gospel into history; all those who have perceived his desire for salvation as piercing through a thick encrustation of abuses; all those who have accused him of destroying a mythical unity of Christianity; and all those who shared or rejected his analysis of the human condition. On the side of the scholarship: all those who rethought the categories of the Lutherforschung; all those who asked theological and historical questions of the sources, which have now become topoi; all those who searched for new questions and, in doing so, accepted the risk of extrinsicism and anachronism. These volumes seek, with the aid of many different perspectives, to preserve the complexity of the figure, whose face Cranach has replicated for us – notwithstanding some unexpected problems that arose during their long preparation. In the myriad of publications that are inundating the celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the conventionally recognized beginning of the Reformation, this collection of historical observations does not aim to offer a unifying interpretation or simply to note the historical and theological questions that remain open. This oeuvre is not a synthesis,

Translation: Hedwig Rosenmöller, Christopher Reid.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-001

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nor does it support a thesis. After many older and newer¹ classical biographies and the monumental biography of Martin Brecht;² after the “Luther” titles of Thomas Kaufmann,³ Volker Leppin,⁴ Heinz Schilling⁵ and Adriano Prosperi;⁶ and after innumerable summaries, study guides, monographs, and pedagogical tricks – after all this, the present work intends to offer the reader a path that extends from the pivotal points of Luther’s life to the philology of his work; from the modelling of his image to the implementation of his theological position; from the creation of his legacy to the ability of his preaching to point theology in a specific direction; from the geography of his success to the incessant elaboration of a “doctrine.” The originality of this feat (whether and to what extent it has been accomplished will be judged by the reader) does not lie in its vastity nor in the cheap results of an encyclopedia. Rather, it lies in the declared intention, within the multifaceted historical function that Luther exercised, to shed light on the significance of the fact that he was and wanted to be a Christian. These tomes are therefore intended to accompany the reader to the flashpoints of history and the research on a man whose name has been associated with innumerable epithets – the Rebel, the Reformer, the Prophet, the Heretic, the Visionary, the Modern Man, the Arch-Devil, the Founder, the Hercules, etc. – which were sometimes developed as synonyms and sometimes competed with one another. Although they draw on these nicknames and utilize them, the historical work of the authors in these volumes is informed by a basic historical postulate: Luther was a Christian, and his Christianity should be given precedence over what he does and not be subordinated to it. Luther was a reformer because he was a Christian and not a Christian because he was a reformer; a rebellious Christian and not a Christian rebel, and so on. He can therefore be studied completely, legitimately, with the hermeneutic instruments and the epistemological postulates of each individual discipline – provided

 James Atkinson, Martin Luther and the Birth of Protestantism (Harmondsworth: Penguin Book, 1968; London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott 19822); Heinrich Bornkamm, Martin Luther in der Mitte seines Lebens (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979); Bernhard Lohse Martin Luther. Eine Einführung in sein Leben und sein Werk (München: Beck, 1981); Walther von Loewenich, Martin Luther. Der Mann und das Werk (München: List, 1982); M. Lienhard, Martin Luther. Un temps, une vie, un message (Paris: Le Centurion 1983); Gerhard Brendler, Martin Luther, Theologie und Revolution: eine marxistische Darstellung (Köln: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1983); Marc Lienhard, Martin Luther: la passion de Dieu (Paris: Le Centurion 1999).  Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 1: Sein Weg zur Reformation, 1483 – 1521; vol. 2: Ordnung und Abgrenzung der Reformation 1521 – 1532; vol. 3: Die Erhaltung der Kirche 1532 – 1546 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1981– 1987).  Thomas Kaufmann, Martin Luther (München: Beck, 2015).  Volker Leppin, Martin Luther (Darmstadt: Primus 2017).  Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther: Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs (München: Beck, 2012; ital. transl. Martin Lutero. Ribelle in un’epoca di cambiamenti radicali. Torino: Claudiana, 2016).  Adriano Prosperi, Lutero. Gli anni della fede e della libertà (Milano: Montadori, 2017).

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that the historian, theologian, believer, sociologist, philosopher or preacher of any denomination recognizes that he is dealing with a Christian. Luther was a Christian and theologian who was guided by the strength of the Biblical narrative, who lived his own existence in faith and grace, who learnt at a high price to reject the ecclesiastical conventions that were an obstacle between him and the Gospel. He was a Christian who passed this experience on, not to imaginary addressees of the 15th-century devotio, but to a real community of faithful ones: men and women from the upper and lower classes; a religious community that has been thinking about his teaching and experience for five hundred years. Luther is a Christian in history: a link and an edge between different ways of understanding the fact of being a Christian and the fact of being in history.

2 Between History and Historiography When speaking here of the Luther as a Christian, the assumption is made that there is just one Luther with just one life and just one faith. However, the research on his character, his life and his faith is now a “thing” in itself, which acts both as access and a barrier to understanding the man himself. There is in fact a Luther of history – the one tied to his achievements, his res gestae. Many of these exploits shine brightly in their vivid certainty, while many others are more complex to decipher, and many remain unknown. But it was precisely these events that gave him the assurance of having been placed at a decisive turning point, where God and the devil fought over his soul, his body, his church. These great deeds echoed far beyond the lifespan of this man, who risked being murdered long before the cold winter of 1546, when he died. Luther’s life has illuminated an opus that is very different in its literary forms, which is part of this life because it always arose from the Gospel out of an evangelical necessity, which demands to be judged only on the basis of itself and by itself. In their facticity, however, the events produced a historia rerum gestarum, a history of the great deeds that related and interpreted these passages. Critical historiography fulfilled many functions: it promoted the Christian life of Luther’s followers, whether or not they had a close temporal proximity; but it also developed increasingly cautious scientific findings and conquered die Sache Luther for a scholarship in which new methodological approaches often found themselves encountering old dilemmas and old answers.⁷ Demanding that the sources say something “true” about this far-away presence, in which the Christian, Luther, uniquely experienced the relationship of mutual care with the Gospel that determined his life, is not only the

 See the mapping created in the 1930s by the Lutherjahrbuch. Organ der internationalen Lutherforschung.

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task of the professional historian. The result of such “excavations” has meanwhile become a fact in itself, which has pushed itself between perceptions and reality. In the same way, the classical distinction between res gestae and historia rerum gestarum, which draws the attention of writers and readers alike to the unbridgeable gap between the prosaic reality of things and their critical understanding, highlights only one of the many possibilities of getting to know Luther. The critical lens of scholars from many disciplines – philosophers and economists; art historians and musicologists; lawyers, psychologists, sociologists; and above all theologians etc. – is directed at the restless Augustinian monk who becomes the reformer par excellence; the professor whose exegetical discovery creates a new freedom; the prophet who fearlessly denounces the impure fragility of the papist Babylon (and who, in this Babylon, out of a unique heterogenesis of purposes, triggers a different but no less epochal reform of his own). Above all, they and their various fields of specialization had to take note that Luther’s call – “Be fond of the Word”⁸ – which echoed down from the preacher’s pulpit and from the scholar’s cathedra, gave rise to an actual life of faith, and afterwards, it could no longer be ignored – neither by those who rejected it, nor by those who embraced it.⁹ Luther and the Causa Lutheri ¹⁰ forced the various theologies to pose pressing questions that everyone needed to ask themselves: to understand him, to understand oneself, to measure the distance or proximity between churches that could not but take a stand toward what had unexpectedly become decisive, even at the cost of disunity and religious violence. The rupture had forced an inverse, but unified agenda that previous Latin Christianity had not known, or only very select elites had known, but who were powerless in the face of the concerns of the Reformation. A nodal point – that of Justification – documents in all clarity how this agenda developed along the lines of history. At one end of this thread was the Council of Trent, which, precisely because the “Protestants” were absent, defined and reformed – or more correctly: reformed and defined – everything that Luther had brought into play and articulated a distinction that would seem to mark an unbridgeable divide for centuries. At the other end was the 1999 Joint Declaration of Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church, in which, after centuries of the sowing contempt and violence and decades of bilateral talks, an “agreement” was reached on the theological heart of the controversy of the first decades of the 16th century. This gave an interim character to an infinite series of disputes and controversies that had played a leading role in the confessional self-image of the two churches, which nobody could have imagined.

 WA 51, 139.  I do not share the widespread view put forward in recent biographies, which confuse Luther’s disinterest in the elaboration of a universalistic ecclesiology with a shortcoming.  See Jean Delumeau, Le cas Luther (Paris: Desclée, 1983) and the collection Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri (1517 – 1521), ed. and annot. Peter Fabisch and Erwin Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988).

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3 The Centenaries as an Observatory The present vast historical-theological (not only) work belongs to the immense library of the Lutherforschung, which now almost constitutes a branch of its own in the history of historiography. It extends through the centuries with its scientific initiatives, editions, monographs and older and more recent journals. It is not my intention (and it lies outside my competence) to describe or summarize the “results” of this research. I only want to draw attention to two things. First, Luther studies have also been driven forward by the general tendency of scientific progress towards an smaller and smaller division of labor. Like historical-critical exegesis (which was ultimately one of the results of the centrality of the Bible imposed by the Wittenberg theologians), the research on Luther and the fate of his preaching is so extensive that the scholar is faced with a dilemma: either to succumb to the fascination of old literary genres such as biography (even though he knows that he only can either force a reading or say little that is new) or to accept that he must concentrate his specialization on very small fragment and very specific segments (although he knows that in this way he gives [back] to the churches the “power of synthesis,” which in a society of information overload is the most strategic of all insights).¹¹ Second, Luther studies were also influenced by the great currents of historiography, the changing trends in public history, and the methodological fashions in the historical discipline in general, and which also affected these areas independently of the intentions and even the quality of the work of the individual Luther researcher. Luther’s centenary celebrations – 1483, 1517, 1521, and 1546 – provide a template for this approach, although the Reformation’s anniversary seems to have greater symbolic appeal. The alleged striking of the alleged nail by the alleged hammer on the actual door of the Wittenberg castle church, which prompted the periodization of Harnack, has produced a very complex series of commemorations, of which we now best understand the four cross-sections that preceded us. Some notable studies have highlighted the intellectual timbre of the different anniversaries.¹² In 1617, the one hundredth anniversary of the Reformation took place on the threshold of the war that would extend over “thirty years.” It expressed the faith of the Protestant churches, which had the definition of “Lutheran” imposed upon them in 1519 (and later accepted) and which proved by their existence that the inten On the discussion of the 1980s, see Andrew Abbott, “History and Sociology. The Lost Synthesis,” Social Science History, 15 (1991), 2, 201– 238.  Dorothea Wendebourg, “Vergangene Reformationsjubiläen. Ein Rückblick auf 400 Jahre im Vorfeld von 2017”, in Der Reformator Martin Luther 2017. Symposion des Historischen Kollegs im November 2013, ed. Heinz Schilling (München 2014), 261– 281; Ibid., “Im Anfang war das Reformationsjubiläum. Eine kurze Geschichte von Reformationsfeiern und Lutherbildern,” Die Politische Meinung. Zeitschrift für Politik, Gesellschaft, Religion und Kultur, October 31, 2016; cf. also Hartmut Lehmann, Luthergedächtnis 1817 bis 2017 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).

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tion to destroy them had not been successful. This was analogous to Luther’s own self-representation, who, in his own threatened but not broken apostolate, had always identified the will of God. Halfway between the anniversary Jubilees of Clemens VIII and Urban VIII, which were chock-full of hated indulgences, the Protestant princes celebrated their “anti-anniversary year” as a sort of revenge and symbol.¹³ The bicentenary of the “Reformation” fell in quite a different climate. In the year of Voltaire’s first detention, and the birth of D’ Alembert, Luther was also extolled as an “enlightener” who revealed Scripture and fought against papist obscurantism. At the same time, the inner certainty of salvation became an expression of a subjective rationality, praised in the run up to the festival in the Hilaria evangelica from the scholar-librarian Ernst Salomon Cyprian.¹⁴ The third centenary of 1817 was celebrated in a political world coming to terms with the wave of Napoleonism and the beginning of the incumbent European Restoration.¹⁵ And while in Vienna, the weight of counter-reformatory legislation was being minimized in order to usher in a new “tolerance” within the borders of the empire,¹⁶ the “hero of Wittenberg”¹⁷ became the theoretical subject in Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of history, in which faith is no longer a negation of reason, but coincides in its original form with reason itself.¹⁸

 In the numismatic microhistory, one notices that John George I (1615 – 1656) minted a coin that shows, on one side, the portrait of Jan Hus as a martyr and, on the other side, that of Doctor Martinus in the Cranachian pose. On the papal anniversaries, cf. Alberto Melloni, Il giubileo. Una storia (RomaBari: Laterza, 2015).  See Ernst Koch and Johannes Wallmann (eds.), Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673 – 1745): zwischen Orthodoxie, Pietismus und Frühaufklärung. Vorträge des Internationalen Kolloquiums vom 14. bis 16. September 1995 in der Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek Gotha, Schloß Friedenstein (Gotha: Forschungsund Landesbibliothek, 1996). Those who want to view a numismatic record can look at the coin that Friedrich August I (1694– 1733) had minted and which bears on one side a decorative portrait – either from Mrs. Luther née von Bora or the classical Hus – and, on the other side, either a candle shining of the writings or children mocking the monk’s hood as a symbol of the faith defeated by the reformer.  Dorothea Wendebourg, “Die Reformationsjubiläen des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 108 (2011), 3, 270 – 335. Scott Berg, “‘The Lord Has Done Great Things for Us’: The 1817 Reformation Celebrations and the End of the Counter-Reformation in the Habsburg Lands,” Central European History, 49 (2016), 1, 69 – 92, on the first anniversary of the Habsburg Empire, which was inspired by an “ecumenical” spirit. It is examined here on the basis of the speeches given in Vienna and Budapest after Joseph II had loosened the edicts of the Counter-Reformation. See also Ralph Hennings, “Die Reformationsjubiläen 1817 und 1917 in Oldenburg,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 26 (2013), 217– 237.  Wolfgang Flügel, “Deutsche Lutheraner? Amerikanische Protestanten? Die Selbstdarstellung deutscher Einwanderer im Reformationsjubiläum 1817,” in Spurenlese. Reformationsvergegenwärtigung als Standortbestimmung (1717 – 1983), ed. Klaus Tanner u. Jörg Ulrich (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012), 71– 99.  In capital letters on the medals from Nuremberg, one reads Drittes Jubeljahr nach der Wiederherstellung des Reinen Evangeliums.  Ulrich Asendorf, Luther und Hegel: Untersuchung zur Grundlegung einer Neuen Systematischen Theologie (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982), 518; Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Philosophical Legacies. Essays on

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In the centenary of 1917, Hercules Germanicus was the bearer of patriotic meanings that were especially prized by Wilhelm II.¹⁹ The following anniversary of 1921 continued the emphasis on Luther’s anti-papism into the post-WW1 time, aiding the propaganda against the pacifism of Benedict XV. In addition, the scandalous anti-Jewish tirades of the Reformer facilitated the collection of arguments for an anti-Semitism that was now ready to break free of the confines of the dispute between Treitschke and Mommsen a few decades earlier and to become the raw material of National Socialist racism.²⁰ With regard to the four previous centenaries, the five-hundredth anniversary of 2017 is not distinguished by less of a tendency to project onto Luther those concerns of the present that are perceived as obligatory vis-à-vis the theologian, who did not view Aristotelian ethics as having the same latitude conferred only in Christ. And it also does not differ in the number of scholarly publications and ceremonial speeches (which replicated the plethora of initiatives marking the anniversary of Luther’s birth in 1983²¹). Instead, the distinction lies in its chance to historically classify the path that was embarked on and to once again go over the genres (Luther’s biography, work, and legacy), as well as the questions (the sola, freedom, the subject). What is more, this is to be undertaken in a world in which history is no longer the common element of the ruling classes and theology is viewed skeptically in a society (which is also the fault of the churches) that is convinced of the equivalence of non-apologetic knowledge and extrinsicism.

4 The Fundamental Question Nonetheless, this does not reduce the scope of the question that is central in every historical study of Luther as a Christian. For it is not the task of history to idly ask

the Thought of Kant, Hegel and their Contemporaries (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 131– 132.  For example, on the back of the medal – where the portrait of Dr. Martinus (who is not wearing the bold smile of Cranach’s iconography, but has been modernized in the severe features of rationalist sculpture) is surrounded by the biblical saying that “God’s Word remains in eternity.” as if surrounded by a halo – are the cities of the Reformation (Eisleben, Worms, Erfurt, Wittenberg, Eisenach, Coburg) that mark out the nation-state. On the extension until 1921, see Dorothea Wendebourg, “Das Reformationsjubiläum von 1921,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 110 (2013), 316 – 361.  Informative references in the dissertation of Martin Kroneberg, Kampf der Schule an der “Heimatfront” im Ersten Weltkrieg: Nagelungen, Hilfsdienste, Sammlungen und Feiern im Deutschen Reich (Hamburg: Disserta, 2014), 223 – 224; an index of writings comparable to the publications of 1883 in Johann Michael Reu, Thirty-five years of Luther Research (Chicago: Wartburg Publishing House, 1917). Cfr. Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984).  Helmar Junghans, “Aus der Ernte des Lutherjubiläums 1983,” Lutherjahrbuch, 53 (1986), 55 – 137; Andreas Zumkeller, “Martin Luther und sein Orden,” Analecta Augustiniana, 25 (1962), 254– 290.

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itself whether Luther was perhaps immune to the cultural conditioning of his time (response: no); nor whether he can be declared an outsider to the persistent conditioning that led to terrible results (response: no). And it does not lead to great results on the historical level, to ask whether there are elements in Luther’s work showing that he discovered things that appeared more central after him than they were to him as a defender of the Gospel (response: yes). After all, it is part of the historian’s profession to associate or distinguish between intentions and results, original motives and “political conditioning,” even if this does not exhaust the task of the historian in relation to the “Luther phenomenon,” which is something quite different. The historian’s task is to precisely determine, in their essence, the reasons why and the way in which the evangelical uprising fascinated this particular person in the phases and contradictions of his actual existence, and from this point onward followed him in its course through all the churches, which proceeded to measure themselves on his example. The task is therefore to precisely and properly determine how the ferment of spiritual renewal that pervaded the churches after 1517 – which was very quickly absorbed by the symmetrically identical institutional sluggishness of the churches, but never completely stifled by them – seized on what was fundamental to Luther. Thus, for those who write and read history, it is not primarily a matter of being content to register questions that, without an appropriate historical classification, would only serve the ends of a laudatory or disparaging rationale.²² Nor can it be enough to simply enlarge this or that piece of the Luther mosaic so that it assumes gigantic proportions, turning him into a monochromatic table. Rather, it is necessary to endeavor to place the sources of and about Luther at the center of a conflict where physical life and physical death and eternal life and eternal death are always are at issue and in reference to which the Christian’s freedom makes possible a choice. For this reason, Luther’s prose has a “militant” tone (whereby the joviality of the interactions with his students permits the combatant to draw new strength, rather than representing the backstage of a theatrical fiction). It also has an “evangelical” tone (whereby the polemic fervor and the tactical cunning serve as tools, rather than as a means of diminishing a truth). This fact also inscribes the same tension in the mindset of Christians who accept the sermons of Doctor Martinus. Driven by a desire for redemption that takes him to places that no one else had dared to reach, and displaced into the position of the encircled human being who cannot do anything else, Luther expresses from the point of view of the fugitive a physical and verbal aggressiveness that should not be sterilized. Luther, who wanted to be called “doctor” and not “brother,” does not negotiate, discuss, make small talk or tolerate. What makes Luther indispensable for a world that might have contented itself with Erasmus is that he sees the whole in

 For the Catholic side, cf. Heinrich Denifle, Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwicklung, 2 vols. (Mainz: Kirchheim, 1904– 1909).

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the name of the immediate and liberating eloquence of the biblical word and the primacy of grace, without which he would not have been who he was. On the other hand, isn’t this the reason why the historical Luther not only remains a key figure for understanding the history of the 16th century, but also became such a key figure for the centuries that separate us from the 16th century? Is this not the reason why the corrosive controversies of Roman Catholicism – which at the beginning of the twentieth century unleashed the scholarly authority of a Grisar or Denifle – even eroded to the point of a papal recognition of a “value” of Lutheran preaching and the interpretation of Luther as a “Church Father”? (It is not entirely clear whether he would have welcomed this…) In my view, the answer will emerge from the present contributions and the questions they raise. I would like to stress how important it is to leave Luther’s “insufferableness” intact, for it is essential to his comprehension of his era, and it is one of the parameters with which we understand the times when faith, polemics, history and theology allowed for his revival. The anachronisms, prayers, and even ethical value of the one to be conceived as a “father” risk presenting a figure who, while certainly different from the “loathsome monk” termed by his political and religious enemies, and far from the chubby hero of confessional oil paintings, is nevertheless simply not Luther. The rigid and distrustful man, who even fears the devil’s cunning in his dear Melanchthon during the religious talks, cannot be made out to be the harmless byproduct of an attenuated concordist doctrine.²³ He is not to be used as some doll like the one produced by Playmobil on the occasion of the commemorative year 2017: With attachable hair and quill, coat and hat, cuffs and Bible, it can be placed (in the style of a miniature flash mob) wherever one likes. Long after such spectacular turning points as the above mentioned agreement on the doctrine of justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, the “I don’t know what we want to call historical intuition”²⁴ demands that we work on preserving the distinctive character of Luther’s experience and his non-reducibility to artificial philosophical, theological, or historical contexts.

5 Reform in the Middle Ages There are two widely divergent and geometrically inconsistent interpretations of how Luther is to be classified between the Middle Ages and modern times. One puts him at the end of the Latin Middle Ages. It is such a well-known thesis that I can express it without having to elaborate very much, though I realize that this presentation of  I use the category, against Wolfhart Pannenberg and Gunther Wenz, of Friederike Nüssel, Allein aus Glauben. Zur Entwicklung der Rechtfertigungslehre in der konkordistischen und frühen nachkonkordistischen Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2000).  The term was used by Delio Cantimori to praise the first work of Guiseppe Alberigo, cf. ibid., I vescovi italiani al Concilio di Trento (1545 – 1547) (Florence: Sansoni, 1959).

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the problem had and still has many divergent historiographical variations. It has objective evidence on its side, for it is the only way Luther could have understood his fate and his Causa as a reformer. Luther was aware of the risk of ending up burning at the stake like Jan Hus a hundred years earlier. But he also understood the danger of those aspects of the world that were familiar to him and which he denied, not to save his life, but in order to be able to live a life as a saved, or redeemed, person. Canon law and scholasticism, the empire and the papacy, the Latin language and monasticism, celibacy and separation: Luther incinerates everything. He denied, he broke free, he rejected everything that shaped him on a “cultural” level in order to entrust himself completely to the biblical word. One who sees in Luther the “errors of Bohemia”²⁵ – such as his peer Francesco Guicciardini – does not want to support the style of Roman heresiology, which tends to regard every condemned doctrine as a reincarnation of older errors and to legitimize the necessity of their extinction with a precedent. Rather, he wants to condemn the papacy’s incurable deafness with regard to the reformatio in capite et in membris, which runs through the 14th and 15th century. And although he understands a good deal about Luther, he does not grasp that Luther’s originality lies precisely in the fact that he accepted and reformulated the hope for reform, which neither his Avignonese captivity nor the Occidental schism or Renaissance culture were able to fulfill or to extinguish. Luther adopts and revises the reformatory prophecy of those who – like Joachim von Fiore or Jan Hus and, to some extent, Girolamo Savonarola²⁶ – resisted a political and religious authority that was strong enough to make their prophecy “come true” by way of trial, condemnation, and execution. At the same time, he adopts and revises the evangelical cause from which the Devotio moderna (modern in self-definition) emerged, which developed a community experience from below. He thus renounced the reform of the ecclesial structure in order to devote himself to the selfreformation of life, song, gender relations, piety, and preaching.

 The year 1520 followed: “While peace continued in Italy for the same reasons it had been preserved in the previous year, during this year teachings began to proliferate which first had been developed against the authority of the Roman Church, and then against the authority of the Christian religion. This pernicious poison had its origin in Germany in the province of Saxony with the sermons of Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk who in general largely awakened the old errors of Bohemia. These errors remained for a long time confined to the borders of Bohemia, after they had been condemned by the General Council of the Church in Constance and burned together with the authority of two main instigators of that heresy, Jan Hus and Hieronymus of Prague,” in Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, a cura di Silvana Seidel Menchi, Introduzione di Felix Gilbert, 3 vols., (Torino: Enaudi, 1971), Book XIII, Chapter 15.  For the episode of the handing over of the portrait of Fra Savonarola, see Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 1, 427; Henri M. de Lubac, La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, 2 vols. (Paris: Éd. Lethielleux, 1979 – 1981, ital. transl. La posterità spirituale di Gioachino da Fiore, vol. I-II. Milano: Jaca, 1981– 1984). Thomas Müntzer refers to the two figures Schilling, Martin Luther, 259.

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This world of communal life, which was destined to disappear in the early modern era or early modernity (whereby the word modernity is defined here by historians) to make way for confessionalism as a system, resonates in the reader of Augustine: Although he comes from this “origin” of the Reformation, Luther could not be imprisoned by it simply because he inscribed such an ancient word like Reformatio into the epoch he introduced.²⁷ But it is precisely the actual and in some respects obvious medieval roots of Luther that enable us to take a new look at the Reformation today: namely, as an extreme and extraordinarily fruitful attempt at modernization (not modernity!) of the humanist papacy.²⁸ It is with the sensibility of a pious person of the 15th century, whose roots lie in remote areas and who then becomes a professor in a city of 2,000 inhabitants, that Luther only saw abuse, corruption, and shamefulness when he looked at the Church. It was an institution that over four centuries had incubated the “dualisms” which, Paolo Prodi notes, shaped the West from the 11th through the 20th centuries. It was with the same sensibility that he looked at a political philosophy that was becoming more acute, especially during the decades examined here, and which was about to elaborate the constituent features of the “modern state,” even before it was defined and anchored in the confessionalization process.²⁹ In this process, Christianity had already passed over to a new subject, specifically personal inwardness. It is the foundation of Luther’s conviction that the word of the Bible should be returned to its lost standing. In this sense, the Erasmus edition of the New Testament was an entirely representational, though unwitting and involuntarily forerunner.³⁰ In this region – where the discussion on an natural law had also surmised a good deal³¹ since Wilhelm von Ockham and which later also enabled the development of a Lutheran doctrine of theosis – Luther became incensed at the way the loathsome Bishop of Mainz financed the debts he had incurred in accumulating his third diocese. He therefore broke with his era in the name of an evangelical radicalism that explored the unexpected.

 Giuseppe Alberigo, La riforma protestante. Origini e cause (Brescia: Queriniana, 19983).  Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis I. Hamilton (ed.), Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems and Approaches (Aldershot-Burlington: Routledge, 2005).  See the trilogy of Paolo Prodi, Una storia della giustizia. Dal pluralismo dei fori al moderno dualismo tra coscienza e diritto (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000); ibid., Il sacramento del potere. Il giuramento politico nella storia dell’Occidente, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992); ibid., Il sovrano pontefice. Un corpo e due anime: la monarchia papale nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982).  See Martin Walraff, Silvana Seidel Menchi and Kaspar von Greyerz (eds.), Basel 1516. Erasmus’ Edition of the New Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).  Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights. Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150 – 1625 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) and his recent contribution “The Idea of Natural Rights-Origins and Persistence,” Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights, 2, (2004), 1, 3 – 12; cf. also Riccardo Saccenti, Debating Medieval Natural Law. A Survey (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016).

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6 Evidence of Modernity Did this caesura bring forth “modernity”? Many – both apologetic and defamatory – publications have affirmed this and made Luther the initiator of modernism (or the moderns?). The historical young “Martin Luder” neither sees nor knows anything that is modern: the decision to become a monk and to devote himself to university life did not transcend the borders of his world.³² A number of studies of social history can be understood as an etiological distortion. They have found everything in the economic physiognomy of his hometown, which was in search of culture, that made it especially ripe for a Luther-like figure: citizenship in search of representation; political sentiments that were hostile to the distant powers; and consumers who were ready for the printed book. Does Luder assume the name Eleutherios, which becomes his new identity in the abbreviation Luther, for this world? One which was not looking for the old Reformatio, but for a new freedom? No, he was not moved by such social needs, even if he used them; he did not embark on philosophical caravels to travel to the continents of the ego. He simply makes a journey through the Gospel, from which emerges a new kind of decision-making, self-responsibility, public life, and politics. Two episodes of the Lutheran – so to speak – Fioretti are particularly powerful as a magnifying lens of the characteristic Lutheran traits – on a theological, philosophical or historical level – which has always existed. That said, such a lens shifts the proportions in relation to a “whole,” which finds fulfillment in the letter to the Galatians or in the letter to the Romans. The first florilegium refers to the year 1517: The “hammering” of the theses is a myth that became an oil painting – culminating in the paintings between the middle of the 18th and the end of the following century portraying Luther in the cowl of the romantic hero in astonishment at the end of an epoch. ³³ It is well known that the reformer did not post the theses, that the academic challenge of preachers’ practices was not unusual and that the appeal to the Pope, who did not know of the abuses committed in his name, was not a tactic. Nevertheless, the epic distortion is not a “counterfeit,” but an Inventio in the narrower sense. It finds an object and assigns a story to it, in this case, the breach of silence that a soul can carry out, which has become responsible³⁴ for its redemption through grace and which precisely for this reason is not bound to the sterile culpability of the medieval penitent.

 On Erfurt Erich Kleineidam, Universitas Studii Erfordensis. Überblick über die Geschichte der Universität Erfurt im Mittelalter 1392 – 1521, vol. II: Spätscholastik, Humanismus und Reformation, 1461 – 1521 (Leipzig: St. Benno, 1969).  Henrike Holsing, Luther – Gottesmann und Nationalheld. Sein Image in der deutschen Historienmalerei des 19. Jahrhunderts (Diss., University of Cologne, 2004).  On the Finnish school and the individual as an “ecstatic being in Christ,” see Risto Saarinen, “Ökumenische Theologie am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts,” Theologische Rundschau, 65 (2000), 222–

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The same applies to the painting of April 18, 1521 in Worms, which depicts the monk at the peak of his 35 years and his knowledge, resisting the twenty-year-old Charles V and his Imperial Diet. Here, too, there is the invention of an effective proposition, the famous “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.” Behind the metric grandeur, it masks the evangelical clear-sightedness with which the Christian, who has been declared a heretic, sees the imminence of a well-known fate. Nonetheless, this Inventio, with its repeated use of pronouns in the first person, evokes a subject who is responsible for himself in a new way compared to homo medievalis and his conception of moral action.³⁵ Does this “disposition” of the self, then, constitute Luther’s freedom or rebellion or “modernity”? This, at least, is what the ideology of Catholic intransigentism thinks. At the beginning of the 19th century, it saw in the Reformer the first mistake in a whole series of evils, which even extend up to modernism and relativistic postmodernity. The latter opposes mythical mediaevalism, where the welfare of society coincides with subjugation to the power and ideology of the common good.³⁶ But Habermas,³⁷ in the footsteps of a theology that did not harbor doubt, thinks so as well.³⁸

7 Luther as European The view of Luther as the father of modernity or as an epigone of the Reformed Middle Ages is thus inscribed in the process of confessionalisiation of faith.³⁹ This had the inexorable, yet not everlasting, consequence defined by Giuseppe Alberigo as the “seizure of Luther by the Lutherans,”⁴⁰ which can only be perceived thanks to

224, where the evangelical-orthodox dialogue is criticized; Sergio Carletto, “Lutero, la divinizzazione e l’ontologia. Temi e della figure, Finnish Luther research,” Annali di Studi Religiosi, 3 (2002), 157– 197.  For a specific stance, see, for example, Riccardo Saccenti, Conservare la retta volontà. L’atto morale nelle dottrine di Filippo il Cancelliere e Ugo di Saint-Cher (1225 – 1235) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013).  Daniele Menozzi, La chiesa cattolica e la secolarizzazione (Torino: Enaudi, 1993); the connection between this series of visions and the Lutheran Pietism of Novalis, which has nothing to do with modernity qua the subject’s autonomy, deserves to be investigated.  Jürgen Habermas, Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne: Zwölf Vorlesungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985).  For example, Matthias Wolfes, Protestantische Theologie und Moderne Welt. Studien zur Geschichte der Liberalen Theologie (Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 1999).  The fundamental position was expressed by Wolfgang Reinhard, “Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung? Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters”, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 10, (1983), 3, 257– 277; a critical examination of part of the debate in Harm Klueting, “‘Zweite Reformation’ – Konfessionsbildung – Konfessionalisierung. Zwanzig Jahre Kontroversen und Ergebnisse nach zwanzig Jahren,” Historische Zeitschrift, 277 (2003), 309 – 341.  Giuseppe Alberigo, “Martin Lutero nella coscienza Cattolica dopo il Vaticano II,” in Martin Luther e il Protestantesimo in Italia. Bilancio storiografico. Atti del convegno internazionale in occasione del quinto centenario della nascita di Lutero (1484 – 1583) (Milan: Istituto propaganda libraria, 1983),

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the ecumenical work. This was not the only seizure to claim the Reformer, and it is not the only problem to which a relatively recent endeavor has responded by exploring trans-historiographical dimensions.⁴¹ If there is one thing we can be sure of, it is that Luther gave himself a “German” dimension: the world of craftsmanship and metals of his family and of his convent expanded and gained as a reference point a Natio that listened to him; there was a linguistic dimension that runs through the monumental Bible translation;⁴² there was a dimension of ethical self-confidence which, in the dispute over indulgences, directed all the outrage at Rome, which also had to affect Albrecht, the indebted briber;⁴³ there was a completely political dimension, which allowed the exiled monk Reformer to perceive the peasant uprising as a diabolical act deserving violence, which the princes did not hesitate to multiply.⁴⁴ This “German” Luther would later be celebrated with propagandistic intent any time the nation achieved political unity.⁴⁵

8 A Dual Obligation There is indeed also a transnational Luther or, if one accepts the lack of precision, a “European” Luther. To the contours of this figure, his two rivals make an essential contribution: The Emperor and the Pope. Charles V and the Imperial Diet in Worms evaluated a seemingly straightforward Causa with an all but certain result: there was a dispute between mendicant monks and university professors reminiscent of a 200-year-old and still existing antagonism;⁴⁶ there was a judgment of the Apostolic See which could only be challenged

210 – 222: “To the extent that Luther has preserved himself in the Christian faith, and with him all those who have followed him up to the present day, this means that evangelical values were expressed in him, which are destined to be fruitful for all churches;” according to the historian from Bologna, “one can say that Luther’s ‘appropriation’ by the Lutherans delayed and hindered the reception of his message as much as the hostility, mistrust and ignorance of Catholics”; a transverse viewpoint in Hans-Christoph Rublack (ed.), Die lutherische Konfessionalisierung. Wissenschaftliches Symposion des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 1988, (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1992).  Kaspar von Greyerz, Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen, Thomas Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Interkonfessionalität – Transkonfessionalität – binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität. Neue Forschungen zur Konfessionalisierungsthese (Gütersloh; Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2003).  Hermann Gelhaus, Der Streit um Luthers Bibelverdeutschung im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989 – 1990).  Friedhelm Jürgensmeier (ed.), Erzbischof Albrecht von Brandenburg 1490 – 1545. Ein Kirchen- und Reichsfürst der Frühen Zeit (Frankfurt am Main 1991).  Peter Blickle, Der Bauernkrieg: Die Revolution des Gemeinen Mannes (München: Beck 20124).  Cf. Johann Baptist Müller (ed.), Die Deutschen und Luther. Texte zur Geschichte und Wirkung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1983); Laurenz Müller, Diktatur und Revolution. Reformation und Bauernkrieg in der Geschichtsschreibung des “Dritten Reiches” und der DDR (Stuttgart: Lucius und Lucius, 2004).  See Andrew G. Traver, “Secular and Mendicant Masters of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris, 1505 – 1523,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 26 (1995), 1, 137– 155; on the origins, cf. in

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before an unlikely seeming Council, but which from a papal point of view constituted a danger to be averted;⁴⁷ there was an agreement of the academic authorities and even Erasmus – the final promontory of a soothing humanistic culture before the infinite vastness of an unknown world⁴⁸ – against the heretic from Wittenberg. If the automatisms that were to turn the Wittenberg professor into a heap of ashes came to a halt, it was not only due to the protection offered to the exiled monk by Frederick the Wise, the prince who did not stand for the leadership of the Empire.⁴⁹ It was also because Charles – precisely because he recognized the sentence – introduced him to the world of major politics. It was his name which the lansquenets carved into the papal frescoes during the plundering of Rome in 1527. If Charles V had to be content with a coronation in Bologna on February 24, 1530, to avoid inciting the resentments of the Eternal City, then this was due to the fact that he gave Luther a dimension that remained after the new Imperial Diet, which deliberated the Reformation, and also after the rebel’s death. The Emperor showed he understood this when, after taking Wittenberg in May 1547, he at least refrained before Luther’s grave in the castle church from committing his mortal remains to the flames.⁵⁰ It was an unfulfilled act of triumphalism that seemed to acknowledge the fait accompli of the European myth Luther, the unarmed herald of the Gospel, who did not bow to the ruler of the endless empire that had allied itself with the papist demon. In the end, Luther received everything he wanted, namely, the possibility of preaching the Gospel to the outermost limits of the earth. The Pope would become no less an important factor for Luther’s development. The moment Rome announced Luther’s conviction for heresy, Luther’s Causa became “universal” – not only on a political, but also on a theological level.⁵¹ The moment Luther burned the Papal Bull and thus refused to become one of the many to-be-rehabilitated victims of a power in which he recognized the traits of the Antichrist,

addition to the famous essays of Yves Congar also Spencer E. Young, Scholarly Community at the Early University of Paris. Theologians, Education and Society 1215 – 1248 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).  See the works of Hans-Jürgen Sieben, Die katholische Konzilsidee des lateinischen Mittelalters (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1984), and ibid., Die katholische Konzilsidee von der Reformation bis zur Aufklärung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1988).  See A.S.Q. Visser, “Reading Augustine through Erasmus’ Eyes. Humanist Scholarship and Paratextual Guidance in the Wake of the Reformation,” Erasmus Studies, 28 (2008), 67– 90.  Manfred Schulze, “Friedrich der Weise. Politik und Reformation”, in Relationen. Studien zum Übergang vom Spätmittelalter zur Reformation, ed. Antina Lexutt and Wolfgang Matz (Münster: Lit, 2000), 335 – 355; cf. Schilling, Martin Luther, 108.  On the painting from Adolf Friedrich Teich, see Schilling, Martin Luther, 523 – 524.  The group of Protestant messengers to Constantinople in the vain attempt to win over the ecumenical patriarch for the Causa of the Reformation and, four centuries later, the Roman conviction of still having more things in common with the Orthodox Orient than with Protestantism express this new dimension of Luther, who became the global cipher of Christian self-confidence on a universal scale.

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Rome had to face the consequences of the Reformation becoming its own cause.⁵² There is no doubt about the chronology of Luther’s abhorrence of the papacy:⁵³ The friar, who arrived in Rome because of the disputes of the Augustinians, had no admiration for the most complex tax policy machinery of the time. And when he made his exegetical and theological discovery, he succeeded in recognizing with ever greater clarity that the papacy was not an obstacle to faith because it was deaf to the cause of reform, but on the contrary: It was deaf to the reform because it was an obstacle to faith. Therefore, one needed to face the papacy openly and challenge it armed with only the power of God. One needed take up the means to fight this battle, which had an almost eschatological aftertaste, everywhere: among the princes, in the cities, throughout the empire. This excessive intransigence forced Rome to enter into a duel that did not have to be, but rather – in the opinion of Leo X – should have ended with a banal execution for heresy on the basis of a “doctrine” that would not have been able to survive within the political constraints of suppression. It also could not,⁵⁴ for that matter, present itself as pure “self-reform,” which the papacy could ignore or accept, as would happen throughout the entire 16th century.⁵⁵ The Prima sedes, a nemine iudicatur,⁵⁶ pronounced a condemnation in which they passed judgment on themselves and forced the condemned to rule on their own spiritual and theological “discovery” and on the meaning of sola fide. What was a theological “symptom” in September 1517 became an existential dividing line with the Bull of June 15, 1520. The same applies to the treatise On the Freedom of a Christian from the fall of the same year, which challenges the papacy with a radical rejection of any authority that subordinates the liberation and freedom of the biblical word. It was only 25 years to the opening of the Council of Trent and 43 years to its conclusion; it was just over a century to the Peace of Westphalia and a third of a millennium to Vaticanum II; and it was slightly less than 500 years to the first participation of a Pope in the Reformation Jubilee. And it is factually indisputable that only Luther’s character and verbal acerbity, which was aggravated more and more by

 Adriano Prosperi, Il Concilio di Trento: una introduzione storica (Torino: Il giornale, 2001).  An attenuated vision in Remigius Bäumer, Martin Luther und der Papst (Münster: Aschendorff, 19823); Paolo Ricca, Lutero e il Papa: la Chiesa, in Lutero nel suo e nel nostro tempo. Studi e conferenze per il 5° centenario della nascita di M. Lutero (Torino 1983).  For the Italian legacy of the teaching of Delio Cantimori, see Massimo Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Un profilo storico (Roma-Bari: Laterza; 2008).  For a critical and bibliographic classification, see, for example, the collection Nelson H. Minnich, The Catholic Reformation: council, churchmen, controversies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1993); Stephen D. Bowd, Reform before the Reformation: Vincenzo Querini and the religious Renaissance in Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Eugenio Massa, Una cristianità nell’alba del Rinascimento: Paolo Giustiniani e il Libellus ad Leonem X (1513) (Genova: Marietti, 2005); John O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).  On the axiom, see Salvatore Vacca, Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur. Genesi e sviluppo storico dell’assioma fino a Graziano (Roma: Pontificia università gregoriana, 1993).

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Rome’s incomprehension, forced the entire Church – including the papacy – to go in a direction where it would have been impossible to go on its own.

9 The Conflict and its Outcome Historical finalism and historical providentialism tried to make a case for the opposite. As veritable twins separated by a question of faith, they were identical in their aspiration for a fair tally – an even distribution of wrong and right, in which the course of events was determined and rational.⁵⁷ So, if there is something that the historical-critical work of developing one’s own discipline can offer to theologies and the life of the churches, it is rigor in the face of the perpetuation of effective violence, visitations throughout the centuries, the scandal of the separation of Christians, the traces left by the religious schism even in the colonial and post-colonial mission, the Reformation processes, and the institutional hardening that occurred both against and around Luther. Luther was not born to create a church and a form of Christian life that would protect preaching from both papal condemnation and the conclusions drawn by the peasants or the Re-baptizers in his name. The reform, whose dawn he recognized in the finally liberated biblical word, was to be a reform of the whole Church. In a certain sense, one could take up Alfred Loisy’s famous saying (“Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom, and what arrived was the Church”) to note that Luther expected the reform and a church arrived. Without this setback, the Protestant cause would not have been able to discover its fruitfulness or to establish contact with the semper reformanda in the sense elaborated by Karl Barth. And without this setback, the Latin Church, which did not accede to its reform, would not have been compelled to carry out such a reform, which it would not have accepted otherwise. The illusion of being able to carry through sheer force the incalculable institutional weight that had developed between the 11th and 15th century had to give way to the idea of a Council, however belated it might have been.⁵⁸ It was the idea of a reform which, while restoring a forma sanctae romanae ecclesiae in terms of doctrine and repression, led the Latin Church into a new era.

 For a theoretical discussion of this point, see Odo Marquard and Alberto Melloni, La storia che giudica la storia che assolve (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2008).  See Hubert Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, vol. I-V (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder; special edition: Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2017; ital. transl. Storia del Concilio di Trento, Brescia: Morcelliana, 1973 – 1983); J.E. Vercruysse, “Ermeneutica del concilio di Trento in prospettiva ecumenica,” in Il Concilio di Trento nella prospettiva del Terzo Millennio. Atti del convegno tenuto a Trento il 25 – 28 settembre 1995, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Igineo Rogger (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1997), 57– 76; cf. also recently Prosperi, Il Concilio di Trento.

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In this new era, all the instruments that Luther chose – the sermon, catechism, participation in the liturgy, sacraments, ministry, confessionalization, courts, political theology, exegesis, marriage, sociability, education, philosophies, dogmatics – were taken up as polarized contents and with an indelible symmetry from which the corresponding “Christian” inferences have never been drawn. To claim a place amid the monumental library of Luther studies, while keeping an eye on Luther as a Christian, does not mean avoiding critical problems and historical questions that, as the readers of these volumes will discover, are dealt with from several angles and in the conviction that each point of view entails sed contra. It means establishing a “unity” postulate that – following Popper – can provide access to insights that could not always be reached by other means. One can and sometimes even must put different emphases on Luther’s life or on his works, on the life of faith that one or the other has generated, on the phases and the theological contents of a moment in his life or his posterity. However, it has to be borne in mind – and these volumes attach importance to this – that this splits apart something that has a deep unity, namely, the Christian dimension. One can create massive editions culminating in a “patristic” of the Reformation and the Reformer.⁵⁹ It should be recognized, however, that his work comes out of the passion and the exigent circumstances of a man whose quill became a seismograph of a general situation which even exceeded his own aspirations and forced him and those close to him to pass on the sense of urgency. All the same, this takes away nothing from his writings, but rather imbues them with their still-perceptible evangelical force. Luther as a Christian continues to call on researchers and the churches. Indeed, if research is carried out with intellectual honesty and scientific rigor, it can pose particularly pointed questions to the churches. An important phase of ecumenism has attempted to give meaning to the tragedy of the division of Christians in a logic of plural charisms: it is not disunity, then, but specificity and idiomata, which limit themselves as a priority to highlighting what is subordinate in the others. The division would therefore only be a matter of different capacities: for Orthodoxy, it would be that of the liturgy; for the Roman Catholic Church, that of the stability of the institution; for the Protestants, that of the love of Scripture. In Catholic ecumenism in particular, the sola scriptura became a point of emphasis of banal pedagogical value. Conversely, in the anti-ecumenical evangelical camp, Scripture became an identity-generating marker that finds its verification in biblical fundamentalism and literal interpretation. The historical-critical resistance to such simplifications was intense and painstaking. It is quite evident that this or any other abridgment cannot be foisted on the “Luther of history” – whether it is ecumenical or anti-ecumenical – and that

 Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri (1517 – 1521).

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he is narrowed without any consideration of the ethical-political value of one or the other option. The problem lies elsewhere, namely, in the historical classification of a dimension that is both public and internal. In fact, whether or not it meant coming into conflict with the theological mainstream, Luther was not interested in setting a trend within a set of theological positions that could be contested or could complement each other. He was interested in drawing all conclusions from the intuition that led him to discover the power of the biblical word in the act of faith. He wanted to be a Christian.

Introductions

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther as an Augustinian Friar. Engraving; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1520 (Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource / Scala Archives, Florence).

Paolo Ricca

The Reformation and Protestantism An Inventory of the Issue

1 The Origin of Protestantism The beginning of Protestantism is usually – and with good reason – identified in the Protestation of the Evangelical princes on April 20, 1529, during the second Diet of Speyer, against the decision taken by the majority to annul the unanimous resolution of the first Diet of Speyer of June 1526, which authorized the political authority of every state within the empire to choose the religion in their own territory. This meant that these authorities had the freedom to either adopt Reformed Christianity, following in the footsteps of Luther and the other Reformers, or to adhere to the traditional version of Christianity, under the guidance of the Roman pontiff. The second Diet of Speyer revoked this freedom of choice. It was against such a revocation that the Evangelical princes – the ones who had introduced in their territories the reforms proposed by Luther, especially the use of the local language in the celebration of the mass – “protested.” In their Protestation, the princes expressed the reasons for their remonstrance, which were fundamentally two. The first one consists in the fact that the decision of the first Diet of Speyer, the one from 1526, had been taken unanimously and, therefore, could only be modified or annulled by a similarly unanimous decision of a later diet. Instead, the decision of the second diet, the one from 1529, had been made by a majority and, therefore, did not have the power to overturn a previous unanimous disposition. The second reason, which was of a religious rather than a juridical nature, was expressed verbatim in the following terms: Moreover, in matters that concern the glory of God, the salvation, and the [eternal] beatitude of our souls, each must answer and be accountable himself before God; in this circumstance, nobody can be excused by referring to negotiations or resolutions of a minority or majority […]. Since [the] third notification¹ of our vociferous remonstrances is not met with any possibility of being accepted by Your Royal Highness and the Sovereign Princes, we hereby protest and testify before God – our only Creator, Preserver, Redeemer and Savior (who, as we have already said, is the only one who can scrutinize the hearts of every one of us, [who] knows them all

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  The first written remonstrance was sent on April 12, the second on April 19, the third on April 20. The latter was directly addressed in writing to King Ferdinand of Hungary and Bohemia, who was chairing the diet instead of his brother, Charles V, who was away at the time. Ferdinand, however, rejected this third notification and did not heed it in the least. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-002

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and will one day judge them) – and also before all men and creatures that we do not consent or accept in any way, either for ourselves or for our subjects, the resolution suggested, or anything that goes against God, his holy word, our good conscience, the salvation of our souls, or the decree of the last Diet of Speyer; on the contrary, on juridical grounds and for other valid reasons, we consider them void and non-binding.²

As already discussed above, the second reason for the “protest” was of religious nature: in issues concerning faith, each person needs to be personally responsible before God; nobody can be “excused” – that is, find excuses – by laying the responsibility for his choice at the feet of an external authority that allegedly imposed it. The deliberations of the second Diet of Speyer – which revoked for the princes, and therefore also for their subjects, the possibility of choosing between “Reformed” and traditional Christianity – were an open negation on the freedom of conscience, which was vindicated by the Evangelical minority of the diet. Protestantism is the fruit of this revendication – of the irrepressible need for freedom and, more precisely, for freedom of conscience in religious matters. However, the question remains: Who were these first “Protestants,” who could never possibly have imagined that their publice protestamur would later come to designate the entire Evangelical movement in all (or almost all) of its many articulations, from the sixteenth century to today? They were six princes – John of Saxony, Philip of Hesse, George of Brandenburg, Wolfgang of Anhalt, and Ernest and Francis of Lüneburg – and the representatives of fourteen cities – Konstanz, Heilbronn, Isny, Kempten, Lindau, Memmingen, Nördlingen, Nuremberg, Reutlingen, Strasbourg, St. Gallen, Ulm, Windshein, and Wiesenburg. What does the word protestamur mean? The verb protestor (protestari) means to testify, to attest, or to declare publicly. The notion of protest that is dominant, for example, in the English verb “to protest” and in the noun and adjective “Protestant” – although not completely lacking – is decidedly in the background in the Latin verb protestor. In the foreground are the notions of testimony, solemn attestation, and public declaration. Thus the Protestation of the Evangelical minority during the second Diet of Speyer is more like a confession of faith than an actual protest.

2 Protestantism and the Reformation The French Protestant historian Emile G. Léonard defines Protestantism as the “emancipated child of the Catholic Church.”³ In a certain way, this is true: Protestantism was born in the Church and not outside of it, for the Church and not against it,

 Emidio Campi, Protestantesimo nei secoli. Fonti e Documenti, vol. 1, Cinquecento e Seicento (Torino: Claudiana, 1991), 77.  Emile G. Léonard, Histoire générale du Protestantisme, vol. 1, La Réformation (Des origines à 1564) (Paris : P.U.F., 1961), 10.

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from the children of the Church and not from outsiders. At the same time, though, this “child” – perhaps precisely because it is “emancipated” – was almost immediately repudiated and not recognized as a son. Historically, Protestantism grew out of Martin Luther’s initiative – beginning in the fall of 1517 with the redaction and publication of the ninety-five theses on penance, enlarged with two important public disputations (in Heidelberg in 1518 and in Leipzig in 1519), and culminating in the publication of the three programmatic works of 1520 (Plea to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian). Rome later judged this movement to be deviant on both the doctrinal and the disciplinary front, and it was finally condemned as heretical with the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem of January 3, 1521, with which Luther was excommunicated. Protestantism is as much the child of the Reformation as it is of this excommunication, and without the Reformation it would not exist. However, the same would be true if Luther had not been excommunicated. Protestantism exists because the Reformation, in spite of Luther’s excommunication, did not give up its project of reforming the Church, but rather carried it out in a multitude of different forms in the many national or regional contexts in which it took hold, with a shared understanding of the Christian message and a largely unitary vision of the nature, function, and role of the Church in the world. Thus it is evident how impossible it would be to understand Protestantism without understanding the Reformation. However, the opposite is also true: it is impossible to understand the Reformation if it is taken, as often is the case, in isolation from its inevitable historical outcome – Protestantism. Protestantism was undoubtedly a plural phenomenon (just as the Reformation itself, since its very beginning, was plural), to the point that some prefer to speak of “Protestantisms” in the plural rather than of a singular “Protestantism.” This is certainly an option, as long as one is careful not to lose sight of the unitary foundation that all “Protestantisms” share. Thus it is possible, if desired, to speak of Protestantisms, although only on the condition of considering and treating them as different branches of the same tree. If it is true – as it is my opinion – that it is not possible to understand Protestantism without understanding the Reformation, it is then fundamental to attempt to answer the following question: What, in reality, was the historical phenomenon that lasted for about sixty years – from the time of the ninety-five theses of 1517 to the (Lutheran) Formula of Concord of 1577 – that we usually call the Protestant Reformation? It is certain that a phenomenon of such proportions – with no parallel either before or after it in the history of Western Christianity, and which was capable of changing the religious order of Europe – cannot but have had multiple causes that, in different measure, all contributed to both its genesis and its development. It will be useful to mention them briefly.⁴

 I am returning to considerations already expressed in my article Che cos’è stata la Riforma?, in Ripensare la riforma protestante: nuove prospettive degli studi italiani, ed. Lucia Felici (Torino: Claudiana, 2015), 347– 52.

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Among the causes of the Reformation, the moral issue certainly had some importance: the Reformation has often been explained, especially in Catholic circles, as an understandable reaction to the widespread moral decadence of the clergy, and of religious life in general. In addition, there were also political factors, which was not inconsequential: these factors included the slow but progressive decay of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation; the growth of urban, regional, and national self-governments (the Reformation initiated, in many countries, national or local churches that were independent from any central religious authorities but were linked to the local political authority); and the importance of the decision made by some princes and urban councils to support the Reformed movement and introduce it in the territories under their authority. The social factor also surely played a certain role, with the crisis of the feudal economy and the slow emergence of a new economy based on labor and trade, which would later become capitalistic and be the beacon of a new class, the bourgeoisie: from this perspective, the Reformation has been interpreted as the religious aspect of the transition from the economy of a feudal society to one of a bourgeois society. Finally, there is also a cultural factor, with the link between the Reformation and humanism being characterized by convergences and tensions: both share the idea of a return to the sources – within the Reformation, this meant the Bible, which was read in its original languages and translated into the languages of the local nations (beyond the Latin cage of the Vulgate). On the other hand, they are also divided by a different vision of the world: humanism pivots fundamentally around humankind, while the Reformation is theocentric. If the Reformation is to be understood, these factors – and several others – cannot be ignored or disregarded. And yet, they are also not sufficient to explain it. For this purpose, it is necessary to refer, as is logical, to the true matrix of the Reformation, which is religious in nature. Just like John the Baptist started his earthly ministry by preaching “a baptism of repentance” (Mark 1:4), because it is precisely repentance that it is necessary for a person to begin to find the path toward God, similarly Luther’s ninety-five theses – which started the long season of the Reformation, albeit unintentionally and involuntarily – had as their main focus, as is well known, the issue of true repentance. And this is exactly what the Reformation was, in the beginning: an invitation to repentance, a call to go back to God. However, this return to God – who was found again, or one might also say “rediscovered,” in his word through Holy Scripture – determined over time a general rethinking of all (or almost all) the aspects of the Christian faith, message, and life. This rethinking took shape as a series of reforms in the doctrine as well as in the piety, the cult, the ethics, the outline, and the function of the Church in society, and it finally culminated in what has been called “Protestant Christianity” or “Protestantism.” However, was what we are accustomed to calling the Protestant Reformation a real reform? Many people – during the sixteenth century and throughout the following centuries, up until today – have denied it. In the past, the main objections were three: one from the Church of Rome, one from Anabaptism, and one from Thomas Müntzer. The Church of Rome denied that the Reformation was a reform not only

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by excommunicating Luther almost immediately, but also and mainly through the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563). The Council of Trent, without ever even mentioning the Reformation, systemically anathematized all of its positions and main statements and did not retain a single one of them. From that time up until the Second Vatican Council (1962– 1965), thus for more than four centuries, Rome has always considered the Reformation to be a substantial deformation of Christianity, a degeneration which, moreover, was also blamed for having unforgivably divided the Western Church. Had it been a real reform, as this argument goes, it would have renewed the Church without dividing it. According to Rome, the division goes to show that it was not a reform, but something else entirely. The second objection came from the opposite front, from the so-called radical wing of the Reformation – Anabaptism. Its criticism of the Reformation – as promoted by all the main Reformers, such as Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, Zwingli, Bullinger, Calvin, and Theodore Beza, a Reformation that the Anabaptists defined as “magisterial” because it was often carried out with the decisive help of the magistrate, the political authorities – can be summarized in the following formula: “Luther freed us from the pope, but not from Constantine.” By this they meant that Luther had emancipated Christian faith from its subjection to the pope, whose authority had been unduly made equal to Christ’s own, but not from the “Constantinian captivity” when it came to two fundamental issues. The first issue was the fact that the Reformation did not break – and indeed preserved – the “Constantinian” intertwining of political power and religious community, which was useful to the first – which was thus widely consolidated – and fatal for the latter, which was protected and, at the same time, also domesticated by politics. The second key issue is the fact that the Reformation began and operated within the so-called corpus christianum, thus perpetuating the misconstruction of a “Christian society,” which – according to the Anabaptists – did not exist at that time, but which the Reformers, who were all in agreement on this point, still strenuously defended. For this purpose, they retained the practice of baptizing children – which the Anabaptists condemned because it was not contemplated in Scripture – and interpreted it, so to speak, as the sacrament of the corpus christianum, in which everything is “baptized” because it is part of the Christian society. Since it did not object to the “Constantinian” statute of the Church, the magisterial Reformation, according to the Anabaptists, was an unfinished or even an aborted reform, and the “Reformed” Church – which is still Constantinian, just like the Roman Church – cannot be considered truly reformed. The third objection to the Reformation came from Thomas Müntzer. Müntzer also belongs to the multifaceted segment of the “left wing” of the Reformation, but his criticism of Luther is even more radical than that which came from Anabaptism. To get a sense of this, we can consider the title of one of Müntzer’s later works, published in December 1524: A Highly-Provoked Vindication and a Refutation of the Unspiritual, Soft-Living Flesh in Wittenberg, whose Robbery and Distortion of Scripture Has so Grievously Polluted Our Wretched Christian Church. The “unspiritual, soft-living flesh in Wittenberg” is, of course, Luther, whose Reformation is not only a defor-

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mation of Christianity, but also its falsification. There are two main reasons for such a negative judgment of Luther and his work. The first is that the Christianity of Luther and his friends and followers, starting from Melanchthon, is an Affenspiel – “a game of monkeys” –, meaning a simulated Christianity, a grotesque apery. Why? Because it is a Christianity without spirit: it is scriptural but not spiritual. The written word of the Bible is there, but the spirit is lacking; the dead letter is available, but not the living Word; there is a mute God, who once spoke but does not speak anymore (Luther’s), and then there is a living God who speaks today (Müntzer’s). These are two visions of Christianity that are not only divergent, but opposed. The second reason for the irremediable divergence between Luther and Müntzer concerns their respective attitudes toward princes. Luther criticized them harshly, but still preached subjection to the established authority – even when such authority was tyrannical – and asked God to intervene with a “revolution from above,” as suggested in Luke 1:52. In contrast, Müntzer believed that God had taken the sword away from the princes and given it to the multitude of the chosen, who were now called to execute in history, with the sword, God’s final judgment on the princes and eradicate them – since, with their enormous and unjust power, they had cast a shadow over God’s rule. To Luther’s “cloying Christ,” who is all-forgiving and all-absolving, Müntzer opposes his “bitter Christ,” who does not absolve the princes, but rather erases them from the face of the earth. Thus, according to Müntzer, the Christianity of Luther, whom he often calls “Doctor Liar,” far from being reformed, is rather a counterfeit Christianity that is Christian only in semblance. In the light of these three objections, the question of whether the Reformation was truly a reform is far from rhetorical. My answer, as fallible as any, is that the Reformation was undoubtedly a reform of the Church in the sense that it provided the Church with new forms and, on many issues, new content. However, the category of “reform” is not really sufficient to express the deep nature of the Reformation. Karl Barth, one of the main Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, wrote at the end of a conference on the Reformation in 1933: The Reformation is a serious matter. It is certainly possible to ask the serious question of whether the Reformers, with their refoundation of the church [Neubegründung der Kirche], maybe dared a feat that they ought not have dared, since European humanity was not able to live up to its boldness, and whether they left us a legacy that we do not know how to use because it represents for us an unbearable demand, as it requires from us a faith that we cannot offer and does not correspond to our wish and purpose.⁵

What is striking in this text is the assertion that the Reformation was a “refoundation of the Church.” How should such an assertion be read? Surely not in the sense that the Reformers refounded the Church as a community of faith in the Trinitarian God

 Karl Barth, La Riforma è una decisione (Torino: Claudiana, 1967), 28; German orig. in Theologische Existenz heute 3 (1933): 22.

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and in Jesus Christ – true God and true man. From this point of view, the Reformation did not refound anything; rather, it fully shared with the Church of Rome all the great confessions of faith of the ancient Church. As far as the Church as an institution is concerned, however, the Reformation really did lay a new foundation that was different from the one that had been affirmed in the West over a thousand years earlier – the “successor of Peter” in whom, according to the Second Vatican Council, Jesus Christ himself “instituted […] a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion.”⁶ According to the Reformation, this “source and foundation” is not the papacy, but rather Holy Scripture. In this sense, the Reformation was a true refoundation of the Church. Scripture, as is known, was always present in the life, cult, and faith of the Church, but it had never before been taken as its foundation. The Reformation did exactly that. A new biblical substantiation of the words of faith and of theological discourse was derived from this refoundation, and its outcome was the beginning of a new model for the Christian Church. It was not a new Church – not in any way. The Reformers would have been horrified if faced with the hypothesis of a new Church – since the Reformation, although excommunicated from the Catholic Church, was and still is an internal event in the one and only Church of Christ. Therefore there was no new Church, but rather a different model of the one and only Church of Christ: this is indeed what the Reformation created. Thus the Church of the Reformation is not simply a Reformed Catholic Church, but rather another model of the Church. Similarly, Protestantism is not simply a Reformed Catholicism, but rather another way of being Christians – a new type of Christianity. It is new compared to how Christianity was shaped in the Early and Late Middle Ages, but it has “an ancient heart” that has been beating forever in the pages of the Bible.

3 Protestantism and Modernity Among the many issues concerning Protestantism, one of the most often debated is undoubtedly its relationship with what is usually called “modernity,” the “modern age,” or the “modern world”. Such a wide and complex matter can be divided into at least three individual issues that correspond to three founding aspects of modernity and are best dealt with individually: secularization, “Western values,” and the advent of capitalism.

 Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, §18, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.

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3.1 Protestantism and Secularization The thesis – supported by most Catholic controversialist historians up until roughly the second half of the twentieth century – according to which the Reformation is allegedly mainly responsible for the secularist drift that has hit modern Europe, which is now largely de-Christianized, is widely known. Europe was once the homeland of Christianity, but today it is the scene of an unprecedented – and possibly even fatal – crisis of Christian civilization itself. According to this hypothesis, Luther’s decision not to deponere conscientiam at the feet of superior authorities – that is, not to retract some of his controversial statements, thus transgressing the joint order of the two supreme powers of his time, the political one (i. e., the emperor) and the religious one (i. e., the pope), precisely in the name of his conscience, which was “a prisoner of the word of God” – started a process of widespread insubordination and a progressive unhinging of a social and religious order that had lasted for over a thousand years. The epilogue of this process could not but be the one before our eyes: the removal of God from the public sphere and his confinement to the private; the claim of his irrelevance, even prior to the declaration of his non-existence; and the criticism of faith as an illusion, a superstition, or – even worse – as a school of fanaticism. In blunt terms, the issue can be summarized as follows: first comes Protestantism, then deism, and finally atheism. Behind this hypothesis is certainly a completely negative assessment of the phenomenon of secularization, which is considered as a loss not only of faith and transcendence, but also of many of the founding values of European civilization. However, it is also possible to interpret the phenomenon of secularization positively rather than negatively.⁷ According to this perspective, “[secularization] has its foundation in the essence of the Christian faith and is its legitimate consequence.”⁸ In which sense? In the sense that the Christian faith – and, before it, the Jewish one, as shown in the Old Testament – played a fundamental role, among others, in desacralizing the world and nature – clearly distinguishing between the creator and creation, affirming that only God is divine (one God who is, moreover, invisible, ineffable, and unrepresentable in any way or form), and that no creature is divine: not the sun, not the stars, not the vital energies of “mother earth,” inexhaustible in its fecundity; not humankind, although they were created “in [his] image, in [his] likeness” (Genesis 1:26), and “a little lower than God” (Psalm 8:5); not earthly powers of any nature, whether political or religious, even and especially when they claim to be divine and become absolute. The secularization of the world – which is its decisive relativization, as compared to God, in order to preserve for God alone the nature and quality of divinity – is a permanent task of

 Friedrich Gogarten, Destino e speranza dell’epoca moderna. La secolarizzazione come problema teologico (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1972 [1953]).  Gogarten, Destino e speranza, 13.

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the Christian faith. The other task is the evangelization of the world, the premise of which is its secularization. Christian faith resists recurring attempts on the part of human beings, who have lost sight of God, to “make themselves divine” – to make themselves, their creations, and their Weltanschuung absolute. As long as it is the legitimate and necessary fruit of the Christian faith, secularization does not in the least exclude God from its horizon; it does not marginalize him, but rather “makes him holy” and thus does not generate the secularism that denies or ignores him. Faith generates secularization; the eclipse of faith generates secularism. Many confuse and conflate secularization and secularism; in reality, they are antithetical and opposed to one another. What then is the role played by Protestantism in the history of the secularization of the West? In slightly loose terms, it is possible to say that, just as the Judeo-Christian faith desacralized the world and nature, in the same way Protestantism desacralized the Church. How? By abolishing the difference in nature – not only in degree and function⁹ – between ordained members of the priesthood and the laity, which had started to take hold in the Church over a thousand years before. As Luther wrote in 1520: Someone came up with calling the pope, the bishops, the priests, and those who live in the monasteries the “ecclesiastical state” and, in contrast, the princes, the lords, the artisans, and the peasants the “secular state.” However, this is nothing but a cunning invention and hypocrisy. Let nobody become timid, for this reason: all Christians belong to the ecclesiastical state, and among them there is no distinction, except in function only. […] We all have the same baptism, the same gospel, the same faith, and we are all Christians of the same kind, because it is only the baptism, the gospel, and the faith that create the priestly and Christian people.¹⁰

By interpreting baptism as the true priestly ordination – since the baptized create, according to the Apostle Peter, “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9) –, Luther removed the theological foundation beneath the Catholic hierarchical structure, which was based on the alleged difference “in essence” between the hierarchical priesthood and the common priesthood of the faithful. According to Luther, such differences do not exist. All Christians are priests “of the same kind,” since they are baptized: the functions are different, but not the priesthood; the priests are laymen, and the laymen are priests. As Karl Marx acutely pointed out: “[Luther] turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests.”¹¹ He declericalized priesthood by so-

 The difference “in essence and not only in degree” between ordained or hierarchical priesthood and the common priesthood of the faithful in the Catholic Church has unfortunately been reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council (Lumen gentium, §10), albeit with a strong emphasis on the connection that links the two different kinds of priesthood.  Lutero, Alla nobiltà cristiana della nazione tedesca a proposito della correzione e del miglioramento della società cristiana (1520), ed. P. Ricca (Torino: Claudiana, 2008), 59 and 61.  Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’, trans. Joseph O’Malley and Annette Jolin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 134.

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cializing it and, in this sense, he certainly “secularized” the Church, distinguishing in it what comes from God (the word and the spirit) and what comes from human beings (the institution, the orders, the laws, the traditions). This is, as can clearly be seen, a secularization sui generis, which – as already pointed out above – not only does not abandon the faith, but rather postulates it and becomes its expression. There is, however, another domain in which Protestantism favored the process of secularization – that is, the collection of issues concerning the “secularity of the state” in today’s Western democracies. In Christianity, this notion has a distant progenitor in Luther’s doctrine of the “two kingdoms” or “two governments” with which God governs the world and history. By removing political power from the protection of ecclesiastical authority, Luther laid an important foundation for its eventual emancipation and autonomy, which later culminated in the choice of laity. Thus it is true that Protestantism contributed, in two different ways, to the secularization of Europe, originating a substantially secular understanding of faith and of God himself. Faith and secularization are connected to one another, but when faith is lacking, secularization degenerates into secularism.

3.2 Protestantism and “Western Values” Freedom in its multiple articulations and implications; the human being and his or her “inviolable” rights; democracy, not only in politics, but also in culture and society; the secularity of public institutions; the protection of religious and ideological pluralism – these are the main values of the West, by now believed to be a component not only of the moral and civil legacy of the nations located there, but also of their legislation.¹² The question often asked is whether Protestantism contributed to the genesis of these values and, more importantly, to their affirmation. If we answer this question in the affirmative, then another question follows: In what measure? From this perspective, it must be pointed out that, even in the light of more recent contributions, Ernst Troeltsch’s thesis has not yet aged or been surpassed. Troeltsch was an eminent exponent of Protestant liberal culture who believed that, on the one hand, Protestantism “[had] an extremely high significance for the arising of the modern world;” however, on the other hand, the importance of this contribution “must not be exaggerated.”¹³ This is, in fact, “a highly complex problem.”¹⁴ At its heart, according to Troeltsch, the Reformation was still too much under the influence of the

 In this paragraph and in the following, I am going back to thoughts, points of view, and statements already illustrated in my contribution entitled “Chiese reformate”, published in Il mondo contemporaneo. Enciclopedia di storia e scienze sociali, ed. Nicola Tranfaglia vol. 2.4, Storia d’Europa (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1981), 1492– 1510.  Ernst Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress: A Historical Study of the Relation of Protestantism to the Modern World, trans. William Montgomery (Whitefish: Kessinger, 2007), 40.  Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 42.

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medieval mindset (to which it nonetheless reacted) to be able to consider the modern world as its direct filiation. Rather, it is necessary to take into account the influence exerted on modernity by so-called sectarian Protestantism – those whom Troeltsch calls “the step-children of the Reformation”:¹⁵ the mystical and spiritualist currents of the sixteenth century that are usually categorized as the left wing of the Reformation and, in the early seventeenth century, included Baptism, Quakerism, Separatism, and the extraordinary melting pot of spiritual, political, and social energies represented by Puritanism. These are the religious forces that, more than others, contributed to shaping the modern Western world when it comes to high-profile issues such as the separation of church and state, religious tolerance, freedom of religion and – though only later – of thought (from which also comes the freedom to not believe), as well as the principle according to which one belongs to a church because of one’s personal choice and not due to social belonging (thus overcoming the notion of “the church of the nation”). These principles, however, were affirmed and progressively made their way into civil legislation not in Europe, but rather on the American continent, which in the seventeenth century became the homeland of religious tolerance because its very founders – who were (not unfairly) called “pilgrim fathers” – were largely victims of the religious intolerance that was still rampant in Europe at that time. The United States of America was established as a secular nation because its “founding fathers” had suffered – as dissidents or “nonconformists” – in the confessional states of Europe and had been expelled from them. The rigorously non-confessional character of this American state (even though presidents still, to this day, swear their oath of loyalty to the Constitution on the Bible) was not pursued by secularizing and anti-religious powers but, on the contrary, by the churches themselves – in order to guarantee the state’s impartiality toward the different religious confessions existing in the country on the one hand, and to ward off any possible interference or meddling by the state in the life of the churches on the other. The separation of church and state – one of the cardinal principles of the US Constitution – was promoted, not suffered, by the churches (which were mostly of Calvinist inspiration). Thus the American rejection of state Christianity did not instigate either the de-Christianization of the country or the marginalization of the churches. On the contrary, the churches went on to play a very important role in American society, albeit in the context of a growing religious pluralism that is also post-Christian today. Therefore, the relationship between Protestantism and “Western values” is very complex: on the one hand, there is no doubt that Protestantism offered – to quote Troeltsch’s conclusive words once again – “an extraordinarily strong religious and metaphysical foundation” for modern civilization, which is characterized “by an extraordinary extension and intensification of the thought of freedom and personali-

 Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 124.

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ty”;¹⁶ on the other hand, however, “sectarian” Protestantism contributed much more meaningfully than the large, “established” churches to the inscription of these distinctive “values” onto the moral and civil conscience of the West, and also onto its constitutions.

3.3 Protestantism and Capitalism Max Weber’s now classic contribution on the connection between Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism¹⁷ is still a mandatory reference for whoever sets out to investigate this complex issue. Weber’s contribution, as is well known, has been quoted more often than read and has been misunderstood many times, even to the point of attributing to Weber precisely the thesis that he excludes as “foolishly doctrinaire” – that is, the idea that the spirit of capitalism could only have emerged “as a result of certain influences of the Reformation,” or even that capitalism as an economic system is “a product of the Reformation.”¹⁸ Nothing of the sort is actually present in Weber’s book. Nonetheless, it incurred some well-founded criticisms in the debate that followed its publication. One of these criticisms is the fact that the Protestant ethics mentioned by Weber are circumscribed to the domain of Puritanism (i. e., Anglo-American Puritanism from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and, moreover, to a late stage of this phenomenon – a point at which it had already experienced other influences, and the impacts directly attributable to the Reformation had been significantly diluted. Thus the topic in focus is a specific type of Protestant ethics and not Protestant ethics tout court. A second criticism consists in the fact that some forms of capitalistic or pre-capitalistic economy are attested in areas and communities belonging to the Catholic confession, even prior to the appearance of Puritanism. It is true that Weber speaks of a “spirit of capitalism” and not of capitalism per se, but it would appear that this spirit also blew in other regions, and not only among Protestants and Puritans. This does not invalidate Weber’s thesis, but it does limit its reach. A third criticism focuses on the role Weber assigns to “good deeds” as the believer’s reassurance of the state of grace, which might even be “indispensable [to him] as sign of election.”¹⁹ As Weber strongly emphasizes, it is true that, generally speaking, Protestants – and especially Puritans – do not believe that good deeds are required to obtain salvation, but rather that they certify the reality of faith in a salvation that has already occurred and, therefore, that they free the believer from anxiety. Thus good deeds are “indispensable” as a sign of faith but not of election, which instead belongs to a different order of things that closely pertain  Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 205.  Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Peter Baher and Gordon C. Wells (London: Penguin, 2002).  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 28.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 79.

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to the mystery of God himself. Therefore, even Weber’s somewhat conclusive statement that “the power of the Puritan philosophy of life […] stood at the cradle of modern ‘economic man’”²⁰ can be accepted only with the awareness that several other powers also contributed to it – a notion that Weber also supported. However – notwithstanding these and other possible criticisms, and thanks to Weber’s contribution – the existence of “elective affinities”²¹ (if not of an actual relationship of cause and effect) between Puritan ethics and the spirit of capitalism can and should be considered as a given. Two factors lie at the foundation of these affinities: the secularization of sanctity, as it is defined; and intraworldly secular ascesis, which is its main social product. The secularization of sanctity has its roots in a new notion of labor derived from Luther: one’s worldly profession (Beruf) is interpreted by Luther as being a religious vocation (Berufung); the lay Christian who does his or her daily job (whatever this might be) as a service to God and to neighbor – that is, as an act of devotion – becomes a sort of new monk or nun who transfers sanctity, his or her own consecration to God, beyond the convent and into the home and the job. The city becomes a sort of large convent without walls. This is the secularization – or laicization – of sanctity. Intraworldly ascesis derives from this secularization, which is carried out by those Protestants (and not only by Puritans) who are aware of the religious roots of their being in the world. Exactly because one’s labor is an act of devotion, one will carry it out with one’s best efforts, putting time to the most responsible use possible. The Christian will produce plenty and consume little because he or she does not produce mainly for him- or herself, but for God and for neighbor. Thus one sees in the richness one produces a social rather than a private good and, therefore, will not dissipate it, but will instead reinvest it to make it even greater. Intraworldly secular ascesis creates, at the same time, indefatigable industriousness and careful frugality, growing profit and strict austerity. This is Weber’s conclusion: “[a] religious value was placed on ceaseless, constant, systematic labor in a secular calling [that] was inevitably the most powerful lever imaginable with which to bring about the spread of that philosophy of life that we have termed the ‘spirit’ of capitalism.”²² Another very complex issue, which is not directly connected to the previous one and can only be mentioned briefly here, is the lack of relationship in the nineteenth century between Protestantism on the one side and the industrial working class and the budding workers’ movement on the other. This lack of convergence was a characteristic not only of Protestantism, but rather of Christianity as a whole. Christianity, in fact, was afraid of a programmatically atheist vision of the world and society and, therefore, of a rejection of religion (which was considered to be alienating) and the Church (a well-known ally of the political establishment and of the existing social

 Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 117.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 36.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 116.

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order and, therefore, an enemy of the communist revolution), but was also – and more importantly – completely unable to see “the prophetic message which is hidden under proletarian secularism.”²³ The reasons for this lack of convergence are obviously multifaceted: the main one is the fact that the leadership of the churches – which was perfectly integrated in bourgeois society and culture and was imbued with its values – was not able to understand the urgency or the seriousness of the social issues connected to the conditions workers experienced in the factories. The churches, both Catholic and Protestant, multiplied and perfected their charity initiatives for the aid and assistance of the victims of the capitalistic organization of labor, but they maintained an openly hostile stance toward socialism and fought it headon. Thus there was a divorce between Christianity – and, within it, Protestantism – and the working-class masses of the industrialized countries. It is true that there were some minority Christian groups that took a different stance. During the first half of the twentieth century, European Protestantism witnessed the beginning of the “religious socialism” movement, which had a dual aim: freeing the Church from its bourgeois captivity and opening it to the socialist program, and also freeing socialism from atheism, in the belief that it would be able to accomplish its project of social and human liberation only if it was animated by strong ethical and religious inspiration. The protagonists of religious socialism were two Reformed Swiss pastors, Hermann Kutter and Leonhard Ragaz, and the Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich. At the same time, the Social Gospel movement was founded in American Protestantism, with Walter Rauschenbusch, a Christian socialist, as its main exponent. However, these minority groups, although meaningful, generally had small followings and did not manage to change the anti-socialist position of the churches. Due to the religious (as opposed to “scientific”) foundation of their political and social discourse, the main leaders of the workers’ movement did not take them seriously; they criticized and belittled them. Therefore, they were a vox clamans in deserto as far as both the churches and the workers’ parties were concerned. Today, after the inglorious end of real socialism and the unavoidable decline of ideologies, in a radically different global political and social situation, it could seem as if the thinking of the “religious socialists” belongs to a remote past that should be consigned to a history museum. However, the reality is quite different. The vision of society that they imagined and supported, together with the paths to achieving this vision, belong mutatis mutandis more to the future of humanity than to its past, even in a world that is completely different today.

 Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era, trans. James L. Adams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 176.

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4 Protestantism, Catholicism, and Ecumenism The Christian history of the second millennium is characterized mainly by two factors, both of great importance. The first is the dual division that took place within the Church: during the eleventh century (the year is usually identified as 1054), Eastern (or Byzantine) and Western (or Latin) Christianity divided; later, during the sixteenth century, there was a further division within Western Christianity between Protestantism and Catholicism (the symbolic date of 1517 – the posting of Luther’s ninetyfive theses – can be identified as the year; but so also can 1521, the time of Luther’s excommunication; or even 1530, which marks the public reading of the Confession of Faith at the Diet of Augsburg by a Protestantism in its infancy). The three main Christian traditions or confessions – Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism – have been joined, starting from the beginning of the twentieth century, by the large movement of Pentecostal Christianity (also called Charismatic Christianity), which, although it originated within Protestantism and shares its fundamental principles, still represents a transversal phenomenon in contemporary Christianity and is rapidly expanding all over the world. The second factor of the second millennium, which is of crucial importance for the (present and future) fate of Christianity, is its expansion on a global level, which began in the sixteenth century for Catholicism and in the seventeenth century for Protestantism. As far as Protestantism is concerned, its extra-European missionary activity was originally undertaken – at the dawn of the seventeenth century – not by the churches, but rather by trading companies (first the British and later the Dutch) created or sponsored by their respective governments as a more or less peripheral feature of their colonial activities.²⁴ This does not mean that the first Protestant mission can be explained away as simply the religious repercussion (or even as the moral alibi) of English or Dutch colonialism. On the contrary, during the seventeenth century there were already several contrasts between the missionaries of the company and their administrators, who asked them not only to bring the indigenous people to knowledge of “the name of Christ,” but also to favor the interests of the company, which were often in conflict with the preaching of Christ. Building on this premise, the history of Protestant missionary activity can be divided into four periods. During the first period, which more or less encompasses the seventeenth century, the mission was carried out by the chaplains of the trading companies, whose service was guaranteed by the government. Within this context, the mission was an emanation of the “Christian nations” – it was coupled with (although not necessarily subject to) economic interests, and it was supported by the certainty of the cultural and religious superiority of Christian Europe. The second period, which covers the whole of the eighteenth century, is characterized by the first  For these observations on Protestant missions, see P. Ricca, Le missioni protestanti, in Storia delle religioni, vol. 2, Ebraismo e Cristianesimo, ed. Giovanni Filoramo (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 1995), 636 ff.

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missionary initiatives that were independent from the colonial enterprise (although the same is not always true as far as the colonial mindset and philosophy are concerned, at least in some of their aspects), promoted by informal groups and often composed of strongly motivated believers who were convinced that their mission was the chief Christian duty. The third period, which includes the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, witnessed the creation, development, and extraordinary activity of several missionary societies that, while acting autonomously, strove – more or less successfully, depending on their contexts – to dissociate the destiny of the Christian mission from the fate of Western colonialism. The fourth period, which began roughly in the second half of the twentieth century and is still ongoing, is characterized by a radical rethinking of the very idea of mission. This matches the profound changes (and, in some cases, the complete reversals) that have taken place – starting at the end of World War II – in the relationships among nations (especially with the process known as decolonization), cultures (which are increasingly in closer contact), and the churches of the countries that were once defined as Christian and those of the countries that were once called missionary lands. Europe, which was once “Christian” and is today largely de-Christianized, is considered now more than ever to be a “missionary land,” while the fulcrum of Christianity is moving increasingly toward the churches of countries that were once superficially referred to as “heathen.” Starting from the second half of the sixteenth century, both Protestantism and Catholicism – the former with its confessions of faith, whether Lutheran (the Augustana dates to 1530) or Reformed (Zwinglian and Calvinist: the Helvetica Posterior dates to 1566), and its catechisms (Luther’s are from 1529; Heidelberg’s is from 1563); the latter with the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563), the Tridentine Professio fidei (1564), and the Roman Catechism (1566) – accomplished within their ranks the systematic task of doctrinal adjustment and made their ecclesial profile very clear in relation to their structures, theology, moral life, liturgy (in its different times and aspects), and personal and communal piety. The confessional fronts became more inflexible, and for centuries the churches were not only divided, but also in a de facto state of “cold war,” even culminating – at different times and in different places, roughly up until the end of the seventeenth century – in actual “wars of religion,” tragically marked by dreadful massacres, such as the massacre of the Waldensians in Calabria in 1561, the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France between August 23 and the end of September 1572, the Valtellina Massacre in 1621, the massacre of the Waldensians from Piedmont in 1655, and many others. The Thirty Years’ War (1618 – 1648) itself, although not exclusively religious in nature, was partly incited and almost always accompanied by interests and conflicts of a religious type; only in the last few years did the conflict become wholly political. Even when there was no armed conflict between the confessions, there was almost always a more or less openly declared hostility, polemics of different types, denigration of the other Church, active competition, and proselytism: each confession, in fact, considered itself to be more or less the exclusive repository of the truth and, therefore,

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the only representative of the Christian faith. Isolated irenic voices were still present, but they were not heeded. From the second half of the sixteenth century up until the second half of the twentieth century, the history of the Christian confessions was fundamentally characterized by reciprocal isolation. As far as Protestantism is concerned, its theological history can be divided into seven main stages, which we can only mention briefly here. The first is the Protestant orthodoxy or Scholasticism (between the end of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century) that welcomed the Cartesian challenge and translated faith into thought, intellectualizing it and building an organic doctrinal system based on Holy Scripture that often melded the divine word with the canonical letter. The second stage is Pietism, which – in reaction to “dead orthodoxy” – interpreted faith as real life, as experience – not as interior feelings and emotions, but rather as a praxis inspired by an ideal of progressive sanctification. The gospel does not interpret human beings, it changes them; it is not knowledge, but rather a process of being regenerated. Many important Protestant social institutions were prompted by Pietism. The third stage is represented by the theology of the Enlightenment, in which critical and scientific thinking penetrates the Christian citadel; thus a critical reading of the Bible and the history of dogma and the Church is inaugurated within Protestantism. Christianity continues to be professed, but within the limits of reason: its value coincides with its morals. The fourth stage is Romantic theology: if orthodoxy had enthroned thinking, Pietism experience, and Enlightenment reason, Romanticism enthrones sentiment and, more specifically, the “sentiment of absolute dependency,” which is carved in the deepest regions of the human soul. Thus religion is a universal and perennial phenomenon: it can be criticized, but it can never be removed. The fifth stage is represented by the several movements of “awakening” that reacted to a largely sociological Christianity – to which one adhered more out of tradition than conviction – and promoted a faith that is a personal appropriation of salvation and an individual reply to the divine calling. As had already happened with Pietism, the awakening mobilized Protestantism toward missionary efforts, both within the churches of an already largely secularized Europe and by creating missionary societies for the evangelization of the world. The sixth stage is liberal theology, in which conscience plays a central role as the place where God speaks and communicates his will: Jesus is primarily a teacher of life more than of doctrine; his exemplary existence represents the salutary event more than his vicarious death. Faith is always declared in terms of religious culture. Finally, as the seventh stage, we can mention the “dialectic theology” (as it has been defined) developed in the first half of the twentieth century, the main exponent of which was Karl Barth. His monumental Church Dogmatics (unfinished despite its formidable bulk) has been accused of being “a monologue in heaven.” In reality, at crucial moments in the difficult political events of the twentieth century, Barth knew how to deliver a Christian word that was clear, free, timely, and often unpopular, and he directed the journey of the Church with lucidity and courage. On a strictly theological level, during a first phase of his thinking, Barth declared the divinity

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of God with great severity – he emphasized God’s radical otherness, both from the heathen god of National Socialism and the domesticated, bourgeois god of the churches. In a later phase, he delved deep into the humanity of God as it manifests itself in Jesus of Nazareth, “the human face of God” in which humankind can find its largely lost humanity. Two other great theologians, both Lutheran, had a deep impact on contemporary Christianity: Paul Tillich and, to an even greater degree, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, after Barth, Protestant theology seems to have given up on great syntheses and focused instead on specific fields, especially the political one – with a new critical understanding of the responsibility of the Christian in this area, also in the light of the ecumenical program Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation – and the sphere of “feminist theology,” which is pushing the churches to recognize how much the undeniably patriarchal context in which the Bible was thought and written and Christianity was conceived and formulated had an impact on the creation of exclusively male ministerial structures, which are still predominant today, as well as on our way of thinking and communicating about God. Starting in about 1850, the ecumenical notion began to make its way into the consciences of a growing number of Christians. This movement, which started within Protestantism, took on a permanent structure beginning in 1910 with the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, involved some Orthodox Churches in 1920, and culminated in the creation of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948. The Catholic Church initially stayed away from the ecumenical movement, expressing a negative judgment of it through Pius XI’s encyclical Mortalium animos in 1928. It was even the case that Catholics were forbidden to take part in ecumenical assemblies or meetings. With the Second Vatican Council, however, a radical change in direction took place. As all the other major Christian churches already had, the Catholic Church also embraced the ecumenical cause and started a series of dialogues with the other major Christian confessions. The mood has completely changed, and Christians from the different churches have started to see themselves as brothers and sisters – less and less separated, although still not united. The category of the “heretic” has disappeared, even from conciliar documents. In the document Unitatis redintegratio, the council even states that the Protestant churches “have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation” and that “the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation” – although later it also points out that this value is not, so to speak, intrinsic, but “[derives] from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church” (§3). Still, these are absolutely unheard-of statements. Undoubtedly, a new era has begun in the relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism. Francis I’s papacy strongly confirms this interpretation. His initiatives in this field are eloquent: his visits to a Pentecostal community in Caserta, to the Waldensian community in the Temple of Turin, and to the Lutheran Church of Sweden in order to attend the inauguration of the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation (1517– 2017) on October 31, 2016, at the cathedral of Lund all demonstrate his complete openness to

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ecumenism, his great freedom in meeting with other churches, and – more importantly – the will to build a network of truly familial relationships that will allow everyone to “walk together,” as he is fond of saying, toward a common future. One almost has the impression that Francis is, so to speak, reinventing the papacy. If this project were to be successful, even the issue of Peter’s ministry, which Paul VI himself acknowledged to be “the main obstacle to Christian unity,” could be rephrased in a new way.

5 The Future of Protestantism Protestantism has existed, as a historical reality and a social body, for five centuries, and two of its elements – the Waldensians and the Unitas Fratrum (Jan Hus’ spiritual children) – for eight and six centuries, respectively. It is certainly not a nine-day wonder, a temporary phenomenon. It is a Christian confession that has spread all over the world, and even though so-called historic Protestantism is showing some signs of age and disengagement, Pentecostal Protestantism – also defined as Charismatic – is demonstrating a surprising freshness and an extraordinary missionary energy. But what can be the future of such a complex reality, which is articulated, is differentiated from within, and lacks a unified structure on a global level? As mentioned above, the Reformation originated a new model of the Church and a different type of Christianity from the one that had progressively taken hold, beginning with the ancient church in the Early and Late Middle Ages – a type of Christianity that could be defined as “modern” but also has, as already emphasized, an “ancient heart” that has been beating since the pages of the Bible were written. Its fundamental principles can be summarized as follows:²⁵ (1) Soli Deo gloria is the principle of God above everything – the first and last truth of love, the supreme instance, superior to any human, religious, or secular authority. (2) God fundamentally manifests himself as the word, which is treasured in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. In Jesus of Nazareth, this Word became flesh – that is, humanity. God is also human, and Jesus is the mirror of his humanity. Thus Christianity is fundamentally the gospel, the good news of Jesus, and therefore it is a message, a plea, a word. (3) The Church announces God by manifesting itself in Jesus, but does not incorporate him; it serves him, but does not own him; it bears witness to him, but does not monopolize him. (4) The Church is an assembly of brothers and sisters who have one Father in heaven. There are no hierarchies, meaning different degrees of power, but rather only different functions or services, based on the universal priesthood of all believers. (5) The Church is, with its word and its action, God’s witness in the world, but it does not impose itself, its norms, or its lifestyle on the society in

 Freely adapted from Paul Tillich, Prinzipien des Protestantismus, in ibid., Der Protestantismus als Kritik und Gestaltung (München/Hamburg: Siebenstern, 1966), 145 – 53.

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which it lives, and it respects the autonomy of the latter; thus the Church is not afraid of and instead encourages the secularity of the state, of its public institutions, and of culture in its different expressions. (6) Hegel defined Protestantism as “the religion of freedom”: it actually was and still is an evangelical plea for freedom. At the same time, Protestantism also declares God’s sovereignty in everything and protests the separation between divine transcendence – which today is a largely lost dimension – and human and historical immanence. (7) Protestantism does not sacralize – that is, it does not consider as definitive – any political, social, cultural, or religious system, beginning with its own. A Christian is not, but rather he or she becomes: the Christian being overlaps with the Christian becoming. The only permanent given is the gospel, the Christian message, with its critical and formative power. These principles, which are fundamental to Protestantism, are shared today by many other Christians because they are – or so it seems – genuinely Christian, and as such, they surely have a place in the future. But how is it possible to shape the future of Protestantism as a Christian confession, different from both Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity? In very broad terms, it is possible to say that the future of Protestantism depends on the future of Christianity: if Christianity is to have a future, so will Protestantism; if Christianity does not have a future, neither will Protestantism. In more specific terms, it is possible to say that the future of Protestantism will continue the two main traits that characterize it today: it will be evangelical, and it will be ecumenical. First, the evangelical future: the Reformation originated in the rediscovery of the gospel of God’s unconditional, undeserved, and free grace. Protestantism, which is the child of the Reformation, has no other reason to exist than putting itself at the service of this gospel, in the hope of creating a Church that is in conformity with it and, therefore, deserves the name given to it by the apostle Paul: the “body of Christ,” the human space in which the word and the spirit of Christ take shape and body. No church today deserves this name. It would be desirable for the Protestantism of the future to make the effort to deserve it. Secondly, the ecumenical future: the Christian Church, although divided, is one. However, its unity has never been uniform. Christianity was born plural: there was the Christianity preached by Paul, the Jerusalem Christianity headed by James, and also the Christianity of John, which was different from the previous two. They were not three different Christianities, but rather one in three different forms. There was no division, but rather unity and diversity at the same time. In the first millennium of the history of the Church, many of these differences were erased. During the second millennium, they reemerged in different forms, but then division took over. Today, the ecumenical movement sets out to express the unity of the Church without giving up diversity and, therefore, understands unity as a reconciled diversity. Protestantism has been involved in this process since the very beginning and intends to contribute, together with the other Christian churches, to its accomplishment.

Wietse de Boer

Reformations and Counter-Reformations The Contested Terms of Reformation History

1 Terminology What’s in a name? This old question remains pertinent for anyone who revisits the figure of Luther, the movement he sparked, its precedents, context, and ramifications. The attempt to connect the individual to his world – and to ours – has inevitably associated him with historical categories and explanatory schemes far transcending his own experience. If this is ultimately true for all humans, it is especially so for someone whose unquestionable influence, recognized from his own day, subsequently became subsumed in theories of world-historical change. Among the terms that came to name this significance – direct and indirect –, the most enduring are no doubt Reformation and Counter-Reformation. They still serve as ready shorthand to designate a good part of the complex transformations of the early modern world. But these concepts, coined and constantly reworked by later partisans and scholars of varying persuasions, are themselves encrusted with the deposits of their own long history. Like ancient paintings touched up by generations of art restorers, they bear the traces of frequent reinterpretation and, thus modified, continue to frame our understanding of their original referents. Here Marc Bloch’s dictum that, “to the great despair of historians, men fail to change their vocabulary every time they change their customs” may be said to apply to historians themselves.¹ The problem is compounded by the fact, of which Bloch was also aware, that the terminology of Reformation emerged out of that history itself, taking on partisan meanings before entering the vocabulary of historical scholarship, where it often remained associated with a priori assumptions.² Today any discussion of the value of this terminology may be served by bearing in mind a distinction invented by the linguist Kenneth Pike, but widely adopted by anthropologists and, increasingly, by historians as well – that between emic (internal) and etic

 Bloch’s remark, in his Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien ([Paris: Armand Colin, 1949, repr. 1974], 40 – 41; English trans. Peter Putnam, The Historian’s Craft [New York: Knopf, 1953], 84), opens a recent essay by Carlo Ginzburg, “Our Words, and Theirs: A Reflection on the Historian’s Craft, Today,” in Historical Knowledge: In Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence, eds. Susanna Fellman and Marjatta Rahikainen (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 97– 119, here 97; I have consulted a reprint in Cromohs 18 (2013), available at: http://www.fupress.net/index.php/cromohs/article/view/ 14122.  Ginzburg, “Our Words, and Theirs,” 98. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-003

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(external) perspectives.³ The emic perspective asks us what significance a term like Reformation (or Counter-Reformation) has historically had in the contexts in which it was employed. The etic perspective compels us to consider whether and how this terminology – or, for that matter, alternatives that have been proposed over time – may still be useful as part of the conceptual toolkit of historians, namely to elucidate the historical phenomena to which it refers. This distinction is especially critical in the light of the viscous continuities of confessional traditions, whose claims to wear the mantle of the authentic Reformation have frequently left their traces in scholarly works that have pronounced general historical validity for their interpretive schemes. A watershed moment is the Hegelian interpretation, which framed the Reformation and the ensuing centuries of confession-building and inter-confessional polemics within a comprehensive view of human progress. In Hegel’s classic formulation, the Reformation constituted the liberation of history’s Weltgeist from a medieval Church in which “the external in a coarse material form [was] enshrined in its inmost being.”⁴ Understood as a unified, essential phenomenon, the Reformation was thus the fork in the road that put European history on divergent trajectories. Hegel’s concept affirmed that the presumed two-way split between Catholic and Protestant worlds was the determinative factor in distinguishing conservative (or even backward) and progressive paths – the latter being identified with modernity. Not only did Hegel’s view offer a grand historical perspective within which to interpret the crisis of the sixteenth century, but it also integrated church history – thus far rooted largely in confessional traditions – into general historiography. That this happened at the time and place in which history was institutionalized as a professional scholarly discipline (Wissenschaft) is part of the explanation for the longevity of the Hegelian understanding of the Reformation. The name of Leopold von Ranke will suffice to make this connection. Even as von Ranke sought to place historical scholarship on a professional footing, Luther remained a personal touchstone and the Lutheran Reformation a pivotal moment in his view of world history.⁵ For this reason, an emic understanding of the religious events of the sixteenth century should be disentangled as much as possible from post-Hegelian concepts

 On the value of the emic-etic distinction and the productive tension between the two approaches, see again Ginzburg, “Our Words, and Theirs,” 104– 05, including further bibliography.  Constantin Fasolt, “Hegel’s Ghost: Europe, the Reformation, and the Middle Ages,” Viator 39 (2008): 345 – 86, here 349n12.  Donald R. Kelley, Fortunes of History: Historical Inquiry from Herder to Huizinga (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 132– 40; J. Pelikan, “Leopold von Ranke as Historian of the Reformation: What Ranke Did for the Reformation—What the Reformation Did for Ranke,” in Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline, eds. George G. Iggers and James M. Powell (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 89 – 98. See further Z. Purvis, “Martin Luther in German Historiography,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (November 2016), available at: http://religion. oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-379?print= pdf.

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of the period, even as we recognize the need for an etic toolkit as indispensable for an interpretation of the period that is serviceable and transcends antiquarianism. If the practice of history requires a constant, synchronic and diachronic “connecting of dots” – producing contextual insights as well as an understanding of developments over time –, historical terms mark the criteria we adopt in doing so and can, if well chosen, serve as useful heuristic tools. Reformation scholarship over the last fifty years shows both the emic and the etic approaches at work. This tension has proved productive in many ways, leading both to redeployments of the terms Reformation and Counter-Reformation and to efforts to find more suitable alternative concepts. Before we survey this landscape, a discussion of the early modern precedents is in order, inasmuch as our field’s basic terminology arose from its own subject matter – the sixteenth-century reform movements and the confessional traditions they spawned.⁶

2 The Use of reformation up to the Nineteenth Century It is well known that by the end of the Middle Ages the term reformation (reformatio) was used in a variety of contexts to designate a return to a preexistent ideal order or a course correction to achieve a new one: hence its application in law, public administration, university governance, and political theory as well as ecclesiastical and religious discourses.⁷ In the latter realm, to which we limit ourselves here, its scope  For introductions to the issues discussed in the following pages, see Philippe Joutard, ed., Historiographie de la Réforme (Paris: Persée, 1977); David M. Whitford, Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008); C. Scott Dixon, Contesting the Reformation (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); Anselm Schubert, “Wie die Reformation zu ihrem Namen kam,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History 107 (2016): 343 – 54; John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.  The following summary account relies on several excellent terminological studies, to which I refer the reader for more detail: Gerald Strauss, “Ideas of Reformatio and Renovatio from the Middle Ages to the Reformation,” in Handbook of European History 1400 – 1600, eds. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, James D. Tracy (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 2:1– 30; Mark U. Edwards, “Reformation,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3:396 – 98; Ulrich Köpf, “Reformation,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, ed. Hans D. Betz, 4th ed. (Tübingen: UTB, 1998 – 2007), 7:145 – 59; Theodor Mahlmann, “Reformgedanke,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 159 – 64; Mahlmann, “Reformation,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter et al. (Basel: Schwabe, 1971– 2007), 8:416 – 27; Mahlmann, “‘Ecclesia semper reformanda’. Eine historische Aufklärung. Neue Bearbeitung,” in Hermeneutica Sacra: Studien zur Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Bengt Hägglund zum 90. Geburtstag, eds. Torbjörn Johansson, Robert Kolb, and Johann A. Steiger (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 381– 442; Eike Wolgast, “Reform/Reformation,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexicon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in

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was equally broad. The famous medieval formula of “reform in head and members” (reformatio tam in capite quam in membris) captured some of this breadth.⁸ Emerging from a hierarchical understanding of church governance, the phrase had come to refer, on the one hand, to institutional reforms of the Church, especially the reform of the papal curia, and, on the other, to the moral correction of the faithful. John of Segovia (d. 1458), a participant at the Council of Basel, spoke of a “correctio morum pro exstirpatione vitiorum.”⁹ By the turn of the sixteenth century, the expectation of wholesale reform had often taken on apocalyptic overtones. Yet regardless of the specific significance attached to the term, it frequently staked out a position of authority and identified an ideological opponent. It is no coincidence that the Council of Constance, in calling for regular church councils, spoke in one breath of their utility to “extirpate the brambles, thorns, and thistles of heresies, errors, and schisms” and to “correct excesses and reform the deformed.”¹⁰ Deformata reformare, an expression that went back to Augustine, was to remain a watchword for the future. Falling victim to the council’s actions, of course, was the heretic Jan Hus, who proposed a competing version of church reform. Well before the Reformation, in other words, the concept of reformatio itself could be contested and contained the seeds of division. For this reason, it was almost inevitable that this connotation of the term reformatio should harden as a result of the religious schism of the early sixteenth century. Luther himself did not use it frequently; when he did, it usually took on a spiritual meaning, referring to doctrinal correction or God’s renewal of the world: the measure of a “legitimate Reformation” was always the “pure gospel.”¹¹ But in his tract To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation he used late-medieval conciliarist language to criticize the papacy’s failure to enact a “reformation and a free Council.” In 1528 he turned this around polemically in the claim that he had himself “brought about a Council and a reformation to make the papists’ ears ring.” By this time, others had already begun to refer to Luther’s work – positively or negatively – as reformation. Thus Luther’s adversary Hieronymus Emser, echoing the language of the Council of Constance, questioned whether To the Christian Nobility advocated “reforma-

Deutschland, eds. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972– 1997), 5:313 – 60.  Karl A. Frech, Reform an Haupt und Gliedern. Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung und Verwendung der Formulierung im Hoch- und Spät-Mittelalter (Frankfurt/New York: Peter Lang, 1992).  As cited in Emidio Campi, “Was the Reformation a German Event?,” in Shifting Patterns of Reformed Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 15 – 34, here 18.  “Concilium Constantiense – 1414– 1418, sessio XXXIX,” in Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo et al. (Bologna: EDB, 1991), 438: “Frequens generalium conciliorum celebratio, agri dominici praecipua cultura est, quae vepres, spinas et tribulos haeresium, errorum et schismatum exstirpat, excessus corrigit, deformata reformat, et vineam Domini ad frugem uberrimae fertilitatis adducit.”  Mahlmann, “Reformation,” 417. More extensively on Luther’s reception over the centuries, see Ernst Walter Zeeden, Martin Luther und die Reformation. Studien zum Selbstverstandnis des lutherischen Protestantismus von Luthers Tode bis zum Beginn der Goethezeit, 2 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1950).

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tion or deformation.”¹² It was a critique that was to resurface in anti-Protestant polemics well into the eighteenth century.¹³ Meanwhile, even as leaders of the peasant revolts of the mid-1520s began to claim the reformation label, major theologians from Zwingli to Calvin took Luther’s lead in resisting it. Yet by the time of the Peace of Augsburg (1555), as reform movements institutionalized into confessions, their original leaders were increasingly recognized as “reformers” and a ius reformandi developed, to be formally recognized at the Peace of Westphalia (1648). Thus, too, the epithet “reformed” became a coveted prize, which could easily become contested, for instance with the development of Calvinism in Upper Hessen and the Electorate of Brandenburg. With the passage of time, these “partisan names” gelled into fixed confessional and historical categories.¹⁴ Already in 1580, in Theodore Beza’s famous Ecclesiastical History of the Reformed Churches in the Kingdom of France, traditional discourses on the needed “reformation of the Church” were juxtaposed with frequent references to “reformed churches” where this had evidently been realized.¹⁵ On the Lutheran side, too, a sense of “mission accomplished” had matured by the time the first centenary of Luther’s protest (1617) occasioned multiple celebratory retrospectives. The Wittenberg theologian, as Johann Gerhard wrote on that occasion, “not only began the work of Reformation, but brought it to a most fruitful completion.”¹⁶ In the same vein, the pious Duke Ernest of Saxe-Gotha (1601– 1675) repeatedly urged his court official and scholar Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff “to write a history of the reformation enacted in the previous century in Germany, or at least in Saxony.” The goal (von Seckendorff recalled later) was to establish, based on archival records, how the “reformation of religion” had developed “from small beginnings to a state […] which posterity can hardly admire enough.”¹⁷ But that project, which was to re-

 For this and preceding references, see Wolgast, “Reform/Reformation,” 326.  Cf. Joachimus Rapperswilanus, Reformatio difformis et deformis, sive demonstratio qua tum theologicis argumentis, tum ex historicis relationibus luculenter ostenditur, praetensam Novatorum Reformationem esse gratis et perperam factam, Pars 1 (Argentorati, 1726); Petro Ekerman, Dissertatio gradualis, impudens mendacium Jesuitarum Reformatio Lutheri, deformatio ecclesiae explosura (Uppsala, 1761).  Mahlmann, “Reformation,” 417– 18; more extensively, see Heinrich Heppe, Ursprung und Geschichte der Bezeichnungen ‘reformirte’ und ‘lutherische’ Kirche (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1859); Willy Richard, Untersuchungen zur Genesis der reformierten Kirchenterminologie der Westschweiz und Frankreichs (Bern: A. Francke, 1959).  Théodore de Bèze, Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France (Antwerp, 1580).  Cited in Wolgast, “Reform/Reformation,” 329; for more detail, see Zeeden, Martin Luther, 1:71– 110.  Veit-Ludwig von Seckendorff, Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de Lutheranismo sive de Reformatione religionis ductu D. Martini Lutheri… (Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1688). From many archival acts, “quorum non exiguam multis locis copiam reperiri posse dicebat [Duke Ernst], eruerem, quo consilio et successu Religionis Reformatio tractata fuerit, utque a levibus initiis in eum statum processerit, quem posteritas vix admirari satis potuit. Dei, ajebat, profecto digitus is fuit; ingrati sumus, qui hunc

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sult in von Seckendorff’s well-known history of the Lutheran Reformation (Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de Lutheranismo sive de Reformatione religionis ductu D. Martini Lutheri), required an external stimulus to come to fruition – namely, the appearance in France of the Jesuit Louis Maimbourg’s Histoire du Luthéranisme (1680). A new edition in 1686 contained a dedication to Louis XIV, in which Maimburg offered strong support for the king’s “recent edicts” – the reference to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1685 is obvious – and held up the fate of Charles V’s empire as a lesson “that heresy is an enemy to be feared more in a great kingdom than the most formidable armies.”¹⁸ Throughout the work, Lutheranism was described as “Luther’s sect,” finding its place alongside other heresies. Von Seckendorff’s contention was thus not only to defend the Lutheran project as a legitimate reformation, but to assert its exclusive claim to authenticity. Catholic polemics notwithstanding, appropriations of the mantle of Reformation by Lutherans, Calvinists, and other non-Catholic denominations left a lasting mark on the Reformation as a Protestant phenomenon. At the same time, a more neutral and limited sense of reformation persisted, as the term could be applied to religious policies – particularly attempts to assert control over ecclesiastical governance – by Protestants and Catholics alike. Even in this sense, though, the term was easily understood as adversarial; and from here, the step to “counter-reformation” was but a short one. Thus evangelical groups in mid-seventeenth century Habsburg lands protested strongly against the harsh “reformation” ordered by the emperor. One contemporary source refers to this forcible policy to return Protestants to the Catholic fold as a “counter-reformation” (Gegen-Reformation).¹⁹ The latter notion was to re-emerge a century later as a historical concept. In 1762 the Lutheran jurist and historian Johann Stephan Pütter, in a history of the Holy Roman Empire, used the term “Catholic reformations” to describe the efforts of Catholic princes to “undertake a reformation to the detriment of their evangelical subjects.”²⁰ Yet in subsequent work, starting with his preface to a new edition of the Augsburg Confession (1776), the same scholar began using the term counter-reformation “to clarify the distinction between the evangelical Reformation and the Catholic counter-reformations.”²¹ The latter – in the plural – referred to princely policies to reduce Protestant areas, churches, or subjects to Catholic obedience. In subsequent works, the term acquired the more comprehensive meaning of a project, the violence of which Pütter underscored. For example, “[h]ere on 17 July 1628 the Pfalzgraf of

non agnoscimus, memoriamque rerum tam illustrium non accuratius conservamus et propagamus” (Praeloquium, fol. [a4]v). For a detailed analysis, see Zeeden, Martin Luther, 1:113 – 28.  Louis Maimbourg, Histoire du Luthéranisme (Paris: S. Mabre-Cramoisy, 1686), “Epistre au Roy.”  Wolgast, “Reform/Reformation,” 330.  Albert Elkan, “Entstehung und Entwicklung des Begriffs ‚Gegenreformation‘,” Historische Zeitschrift 112 no. 3 (1914): 473 – 93, here 475n2. For a brief account of Pütter’s work, see O’Malley, Trent and All That, 20.  Elkan, “Entstehung und Entwicklung”, 175n3.

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Neuburg gave the following orders already in the full spirit of a forcible Counter-Reformation.”²² Elsewhere he spoke of the Counter-Reformation as a scheme not only “to restrain the advances made thus far, but where possible to return entire Länder to the Catholic Church.”²³ Others laid the blame for such a “plan for a Catholic Counter-Reformation” squarely at the feet of the Jesuits, who were said to have effectively peddled it to acquiescent emperors, such as Rudolf II and, especially, Ferdinand II.²⁴ Meanwhile, the concept of Reformation had matured as a historical term. Shortly after the first centenary of the ninety-five theses, the Calvinist Abraham Scultetus, citing the retrospective views of previous authorities, spoke of a “Reformation era” (saeculum reformationis) in his Annales evangelii passim per Europam […] renovati (1618). Another landmark year – that of the Peace of Westphalia – saw the publication by the Swiss theologian and orientalist Johann Heinrich Hottinger of a dissertation on “the history of the ecclesiastical Reformation.”²⁵ Yet it was not until the late eighteenth century that a movement and an era in church history became a full-fledged historical period. This happened when scholars began to see the religious events in connection with the political and other conditions of the time. Gottlieb Planck, in his history of Reformation doctrine, noted the need not only “for a precise knowledge of the entire history of the period, but an equally accurate knowledge of [the reformers’] personal history, their character, their situation, and their local circumstances.”²⁶ This attitude prepared the ground for the fully integrated approach to Reformation history codified by Ranke’s Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation, which began to appear in 1839. It was also the premise for a similar conception of a Counter-Reformation period. Whereas Ranke long spoke of “an era of the counter-reformations” following that of the Reformation, he eventually (1881) turned the plural into a singular. In doing so he followed a usage first adopted, it appears, by his former student Wilhelm Maurenbrecher in 1865. Significantly (and controversially), Maurenbrecher introduced a different term, “Catholic Reformation,” to designate internal Catholic reforms.²⁷ This distinc-

 Johann Stephan Pütter, Historische Entwickelung der heutigen Staatsverfassung des Teutschen Reichs, Zweyter Theil von 1558. bis 1740. (Göttingen, 1788), 236.  Pütter, Historische Entwickelung, Erster Teil bis 1558 (Göttingen, 1798), 447.  Christoph Gottlob Heinrich, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte von der Schöpfung an bis auf gegenwärtige Zeit (Leipzig, 1795), 9:981.  Johann Heinrich Hottinger, Dissertatio continens historiae Reformationis Ecclesiasticae partem I (Tiguri, 1648), cited in Mahlmann, “Reformation,” 418.  Gottlieb Jacob Planck, Geschichte der Entstehung, der Veränderungen und der Bildung unsers protestantischen Lehrbegriffs vom Anfang der Reformation bis zu der Einführung der Concordienformel, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1791– 1800), 1:viii, cited in Wolgast, “Reform/Reformation,” 332– 33 (“nicht nur genaue Kenntnis der ganzen Geschichte des Zeitalters, sondern ebenso genaue Kenntnis ihrer persönlichen Geschichte, ihres Charakters, ihrer Lage, ihrer Lokalumstände”).  See the discussions in Wolgast, “Reform/Reformation,” 334– 35; Hubert Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation? Ein Versuch zur Klärung der Begriffe nebst einer Jubiläumsbetrachtung

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tion, based on the assumption that the Protestant and Catholic Reformations had common origins, was to have important ramifications for twentieth-century debates about terminology. Others proposed yet other terms to capture the nuances and complexities of the early modern period: some spoke of “evangelism” to indicate the early reform movements, others used Catholic “restoration” rather than Counter-Reformation, and yet others spoke comprehensively of the era of Europe’s great schism (Glaubensspaltung). This is not even to mention the plethora of historic group designations, from the general “Protestant” to the particular “Lutheran,” “Erasmian,” “Calvinist,” and “Anabaptist,” many of which terms “started life as a sneer.”²⁸ This did not prevent the Reformation/Counter-Reformation concept from becoming the standard terminology for general historiography by the end of the nineteenth century. It also transcended its place of birth in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire to be adopted by British, French, Italian, and other historiographies. This had the remarkable effect of turning a conceptual framework derived from the inner dynamics of Germany’s confessional struggles into a blueprint of early-modern European history. While we cannot pursue the development of this terminology outside Germany here, it is important to stress the distinctiveness of its adoption by these historiographic traditions. The Netherlands, for example, had a complex Kulturkampf of its own. Following the promulgation of a liberal constitution in 1848 and the reestablishment of the Catholic hierarchy in 1853, efforts at a “conciliatory” national historiography were hampered by lingering disagreements over the assessment of the Reformation and its association with the sixteenth-century revolt that gave birth to the nation.²⁹ In contrast, the concept of Counter-Reformation entered the newly unified Italy in the midst of the protracted Church-state standoff that had followed the annexation of the papal states. There, liberal intellectuals of the caliber of Benedetto Croce adopted the term to frame the impact of the post-Tridentine Church on the long-term development of early modern Italy.³⁰ Regardless of the specific contexts in which the terms were applied, however, the overall outcome was that of normalizing a terminology developed, by and large, by Protestant historians – one that used Reformation as an exclusive designation of the Protestant reform movements and Counter-Reformation to refer to the subsequent developments in the Catholic Church.

über das Trienter Konzil (Luzern: Josef Stocker, 1946), 11– 12 and passim; O’Malley, Trent and All That, 25 – 27.  Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin, 2003), xvii.  Jo Tollebeek, De toga van Fruin. Denken over geschiedenis in Nederland sinds 1860 (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1990), 33 – 44; Albert van der Zeijden, Katholieke identiteit en historisch bewustzijn: W.J.F. Nuyens (1823 – 1894) en zijn ‘nationale’ geschiedschrijving (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002).  Giulio Marzot, L’Italia della Controriforma e la critica di Benedetto Croce (Milan: Malfasi, 1953); Fulvio De Giorgi, La Controriforma come totalitarismo: nota su Croce storico (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2013).

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3 The Debates of the Twentieth Century Over the last fifty years, these entrenched confessional historiographies have been drastically uprooted and overhauled, if not abandoned. Among the religiously affiliated, confessional allegiances slackened amidst ecumenism and dechurching, without disappearing altogether. Among professional historians, the rise of social and cultural history inspired approaches less interested in investigating the genealogies of church traditions than in situating religious phenomena in their social, economic, and political contexts, analyzing them through comparative lenses, and/or adopting longer-term perspectives that did not necessarily coincide with established confessional narratives. These forms of historicizing early modern religion also undercut or modified the traditional terminologies that had shaped the field. The immediate post-war period saw indications that the ground was shifting beneath traditional scholarship. On the Catholic side, Hubert Jedin (1900 – 1980) was particularly influential in his efforts to sort out the confusing conceptual tools used to designate reform initiatives within Catholic orthodoxy. His solution was twofold. On the one hand, he laid claim to the term Reformation (in English, also Reform) as an umbrella covering manifestations of Catholic reform – deriving, that is, from an authentic spirit of renewal – that stretched from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment period; it emerged, in other words, long before Luther stepped onto the scene. On the other hand, Jedin salvaged the term Counter-Reformation to label the shorter-term, post-Reformation actions of legitimate defense against the Protestant threats. For him, the Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation related to each other as soul to body: even the Counter-Reformation was animated by the spirit of Catholic Reform. Underpinning Jedin’s analysis were strong theological presuppositions: the Lutheran movement was and remained a heresy, whose designation as “Reformation” he placed in quotation marks.³¹ Thus, despite the professionalism of Jedin’s remarkable scholarship, a convinced insider perspective continued to animate his views of Europe’s religious crisis, and hence the terminological debate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jedin’s two-pronged proposal spawned extensive research among Catholic historians on the Catholic Reformation – particularly studies of bishops and diocesan reform before and after Trent – rather than on the CounterReformation.

 Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation?, 27 (“So konnte jene andere ‘Reformation’ kommen, deren dogmatische Grundlage eine Häresie war”), 32 (“Aus der katholischen Reform zieht die Kirche die Kraft zur Abwehr der Neuerung. Alles was sie leistet, kommt indirekt der Abwehr zugute, ist aber in sich genommen nicht selbst Abwehr, sondern Entwicklung des eigenen Lebensgesetzes der Kirche. Um den Gegner abzuwehren, schafft sich die Kirche neue Methoden und neue Waffen”), and 35 (“Die Kirche hat diesen brutalen Zwang nicht eigentlich gewünscht, aber auch nicht gehindert; das Odium fiel natürlich in erster Linie auf sie”). See O’Malley’s lucid analysis of Jedin’s text in Trent and All That, 46 – 71, esp. p. 58, on this church historian’s view of history as the unfolding of salvation.

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On the Protestant side, an innovative effort to investigate the connections between late-medieval and Reformation religion directed the work of a prominent scholar a generation behind Jedin – Heiko A. Oberman (1930 – 2001). Rejecting ahistorical assumptions, he sought to leave behind centuries of confessional readings of the Reformation. Thus his theological reassessment of the Reformation (Oberman was a theologian and historian of Christian doctrine by training) came to view sixteenth-century reformers (Protestant as well as Catholic) in the light of late-medieval theological debates and reform projects.³² In this light, he even qualified the traditional use of the term Counter-Reformation: “the Protestant Reformation deserves the title Counter Reformation insofar as the pre-Tridentine Reformation was rejected” by Luther.³³ In his later work, Oberman continued to scramble established categories. In his provocative reading, Luther was not so much the agent of renewal of the Church as a prophet of the last days, who provoked a “counter-reformation” at the hands of the devil. “Hence ‘Reformation’ is not a human achievement at the beginning of the Modern Age but God’s action at the end of time.”³⁴ While this novel terminology did not take root, Oberman’s insistence on placing the reformer squarely in his own physical and mental world did, and so did the notion that sixteenth-century Protestant thought was to be seen as a legacy of medieval intellectual and religious life. In this vein, Steven Ozment, a student of Oberman’s, presented the sixteenthcentury Protestant movements as the outcome of three centuries of reform ideas.³⁵ It thus became quite common to frame the Reformation (as well as the Counter-Reformation) as a late chapter in an ongoing history, an approach akin to Jedin’s proposal on the chronology of Catholic Reform, even if it did not entail adopting his theological perspective. In any case, it indicated a willingness to reassess the historical concept of Reformation, seeing it as less monolithic, more open-ended, and more continuous with past traditions than previously acknowledged. Otherwise both approaches – focused as they were on matters of theology, ecclesiology, and

 Among Oberman’s pathbreaking works, see Heiko A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, MA: Labyrinth, 1963); Oberman, Werden und Wertung der Reformation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1977); Oberman, Luther: Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel (Berlin: Siedler, 1982).  Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation. The Shape of Late Medieval Thought Illustrated by Key Documents (New York/Chicago/San Francisco: James Clarke, 1966), 40.  Thus the analysis of Berndt Hamm, “An Opponent of the Devil and the Modern Age: Heiko Oberman’s View of Luther,” in The Work of Heiko A. Oberman. Papers from the Symposium on His Seventieth Birthday, eds. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Katherine G. Brady, Susan Karant-Nunn, and James D. Tracy (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2003), 31– 49, here 37– 38. See also, in the same volume, Scott Hendrix, “‘More Than a Prophet’: Martin Luther in the Work of Heiko Oberman,” 11– 29.  Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250 – 1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven/London: Yales University Press, 1980). Other such synthetic attempts include Pierre Chaunu, Le temps des Réformes. Histoire réligieuse et système de civilisation. La crise de la chrétienté. L’éclatement (1250 – 1550) (Paris: Persée, 1975).

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church governance – remained largely within the prevailing parameters of church history. It was the opening up of the field, from the 1970s onwards, to new approaches in social, political, and cultural history that dramatically altered the landscape of Reformation studies, with consequences for historical terminology as well. The ever more insistent emphasis on historical contextualization, the application of other disciplinary methods (social history, anthropology, and gender studies, among others), and the advent of comparative approaches resulted in reassessments of the religious transformations of the sixteenth century that went well beyond church history and tended to be less beholden to old confessional categories. To be sure, the terms Reformation and Counter-Reformation continued to be used in conventional parlance (as they still are), but they lost a good deal of their traditional meaning. Thus, for example, the study of cities and of popular religion during the period of the Reformation overturned the notion that the Reformation emanated ready-made from the thoughts and actions of the leading reformers – a notion Robert Scribner dismissed as a “mythological view of history.”³⁶ This led to a proliferation of Reformations – by princes, cities, peasant communities, urban workers, and women – as well as their decentering, beyond and away from Wittenberg, Zurich, and Geneva. Other scholars, meanwhile, questioned the Hegelian underpinnings of the traditional Reformation/Counter-Reformation framework, working toward ways of seeing both phenomena as part of one larger history. In France, Jean Delumeau, in parallel studies of the Reformation and the Catholic Reformation, developed the provocative thesis of their common role in the “christianization” of a continent merely superficially touched by the Christian faith. In Britain, H.O. Evennett and John Bossy subtly challenged a key assumption in established Protestant historiography – the association of the Reformation with the advent of modernity – by proposing a way of seeing the Counter-Reformation as a form of modernization. In a well-known 1977 article, Wolfgang Reinhard developed this idea on sociological grounds, arguing that the papacy’s new methods of governance and the Jesuits’ spiritual methods reflected modern standards of rationality. It was a first step towards the development, by Heinz Schilling and others, of confessionalization and social discipline as new paradigms for the integrated interpretation of Europe’s Reformations.³⁷ This momentous change in analytical approach, and its consequences for historical terminology, are well measured in the work of Paolo Prodi, who quickly followed

 Robert Scribner, The German Reformation (Basingstoke: Humanities Press International, 1986), 2.  For these developments, see O’Malley, Trent and All That, 72– 117; Stefan Ehrenpreis and Ute LotzHeumann, Reformation und konfessionelles Zeitalter (Darmstadt: WBG, 2002); Wietse de Boer, “An Uneasy Reunion: The Catholic World in Reformation Studies,” in Reformationsforschung in Europa und Nordamerika. Eine historiographische Bilanz anlässlich des 100. Bandes des Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, eds. Anne Jacobson Schutte, Susan C. Karant-Nunn, and Heinz Schilling, special issue, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History 100 (2009): 366 – 87 (but the whole issue is worth seeing).

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Reinhard’s lead. In 1980, this student of Jedin’s was still convinced of the helpfulness of the Catholic Reformation/Counter-Reformation concepts to identify contending forces in Italy’s religious politics of the later sixteenth century. But, in a pointed critique of Jedin, he was aware that this approach had to go beyond church history and open up to broader historical analysis. By the end of the decade, as the confessionalization thesis had firmly taken root, Prodi was ready “to question definitively the significance of both terms” (Reformation and Counter-Reformation). He proposed either to do away with them altogether or to accommodate them “within categories better able to encompass the phenomena in their entirety.”³⁸ For Prodi, those categories included christianization, modernization, social discipline, and confessionalization. These new concepts heralded efforts to see the European Reformations as parts of larger historical processes – social, political, institutional – rather than as antagonistic religious movements and ideologies. This led some to dismiss the approach, either because it whitewashed religious conflict and the suppression of minority faiths or because it reductively ignored religious faith itself. But like all good etic concepts, these terms also generated enormous amounts of new scholarship, even as the terms themselves were criticized and qualified. The most successful of them – confessionalization and, to a lesser extent, social discipline – continue to frame research in the area. (Christianization was fairly quickly dismissed as dependent on an arbitrary standard of adoption of the Christian message or identity; modernization failed to gain much traction based on unverifiable teleological assumptions.) The confessionalization paradigm helped illuminate the ways in which Protestant and Catholic reform movements became institutionalized over the course of a century or more, developing recognizable boundaries and identities. The identification of similar disciplinary practices and comparable social concerns – political unity grounded in religious adherence and protected by the sword, the enforcement of social and moral norms, the forging of common confessional identities – produced numerous studies on social discipline and also provided the opportunity for a comparative approach. As the harsh realities of confessionalism were thus confirmed – how could it be otherwise in an age of religious wars and rising absolutism? –, the research inevitably uncovered complexities, exceptions, contradictions, and limitations, making long-term trends much harder to track than anticipated. Religious concerns could be shortchanged against economic, political, or military priorities. Top-down reforms often lost their sharp edges as norms moved from center to periphery, to be negotiated in the give-and-take of daily life. While borderlands could be markers of confessional conflict, they could also persist as sites of negotiation and accommodation.

 Paolo Prodi, “Il binomio jediniano ‘riforma cattolica e controriforma’ e la storiografia italiana,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 6 (1980): 85 – 98. Prodi, “Controriforma e/o Riforma Cattolica: superamento di vecchi dilemmi nei nuovi panorami storiografici,” Römische Historische Mitteilungen 31 (1989): 227– 37, here 233; see also my discussion in Wietse de Boer, “Social Discipline in Italy: Peregrinations of a Historical Paradigm,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History 94 (2003): 294– 307.

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Cities or regions across Europe embarked on complex experiments in bi- or pluriconfessional coexistence. Under the circumstances, individuals were often found adroitly navigating the treacherous confessional landscapes by resorting to nicodemism, dissimulation, or practices of conversion and reconversion. In an increasingly connected world, where interactions also extended to other cultures and religions (Islam, Judaism), this may even have contributed to the rise of relativist or quasi-secular understandings of religion as a set of social conventions.³⁹

4 Reform and Reformation Amidst these debates, the concept of Reformation has lost in precision and significance. Whereas the importance of religious identity was only confirmed, the complexity of traditional labels (Lutheran, Erasmian, Catholic, and so forth) is now better understood. While confessionalization has offered an integrated perspective on the era, the term Reformation itself has faded as a comprehensive designation of the era. Instead, the label is now commonly pluralized to highlight the diversity of reform movements, and Protestant and Catholic Reformations are often ecumenically paired side by side, even if the impulse toward a comparative approach appears to have waned. At times this trend has obscured real differences among denominations, in doctrine as well as institutional organization, in ritual as well as spiritual culture. Not surprisingly, that has led to criticisms of the confessionalization paradigm or simply the continuation of more established scholarly approaches to confessional historiography. Here, the Reformation/Counter-Reformation concept has often retained its currency. A good example is the study of heresy in sixteenth-century Italy, which, founded upon Delio Cantomori’s Eretici Italiani del Cinquecento (1939), thrived throughout the ascendancy of social and cultural history and continues unabated in the era of confessionalization research and renewed interest in the institutional structures of the Catholic Church. That the study of the Reformation should flourish in Italy, where the heretical movements ended in fairly quick, aggressive suppression, may be seen as ironic, but it also indicates how the current fascination with minority groups

 For some recent assessments, see Ute Lotz-Heumann, “Confessionalization,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation, eds. Alexandra Bamji, Geert H. Janssen, and Mary Laven (Farnham/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 33 – 53; and in the same volume, Keith P. Luria, “Religious Coexistence,” 55 – 72; Jansssen, “The Exile Experience,” 73 – 90; Judith Pollmann, “Being a Catholic in Early Modern Europe,” 165 – 82. For a few recent studies highlighting new ways of framing Reformation history, see Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Mercedes García-Arenal, ed., After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016).

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has given new life to an old historiographic category, while an upsurge in studies on the Roman Inquisition has revitalized the concept of Counter-Reformation.⁴⁰ Even beyond Italy, the Reformation/Counter-Reformation binary persists today in textbooks, companions, and collected volumes, an indication that the terms continue to hold meaning as broad organizers of vital developments in religion and society.⁴¹ It has resurfaced, albeit with some significant terminological modification, in recent attempts to place the European Reformations in a global context – a growing trend since the start of the twenty-first century. Sometimes this has meant seeking comparisons with other religious traditions; more commonly the goal has been to trace the expansion of Western Christianity worldwide. This trend initially privileged the Catholic world, where the conversions, missions, dioceses, and other colonial footprints left by the Church became a thriving subject of study.⁴² Currently, the study of Protestantism outside Europe is attracting increasing interest, going beyond well-trodden ground in North America.⁴³

 Delio Cantimori, Eretici Italiani del Cinquecento e altri scritti, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Turin: Einaudi, 1992); cf., besides Prosperi’s introduction to this edition, Jacobson Schutte, “Periodization of Sixteenth-Century Italian History: The Post-Cantimori Paradigm Shift,” Journal of Modern History 61 no. 2 (1989): 269 – 84. Some recent barometers of the vitality of Italian Reformation studies include: Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth Century Italy (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999); Massimo Firpo, The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature, ca. 1750 – 1997, eds. John A. Tedeschi and James M. Lattis (Modena/Ferrara: Panini, 2000); Adriano Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro grande: storia di Giorgio Siculo e della sua seta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2000); Massimo Firpo, Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation (Farnham/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015). A key indicator of the state of Inquisition studies is Adriano Prosperi, Vincenzo Lavenia and John Tedeschi, eds., Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, 4 vols. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010). A recent plea for a return to the term Counter-Reformation, by one of Italy’s foremost Reformation scholars, is in Massimo Firpo, “Rethinking ‘Catholic Reform’ and ‘Counter-Reformation’: What Happened in Early Modern Catholicism – A View from Italy,” Journal of Early Modern History 20 no. 3 (2016): 293 – 312.  See, for example, R. Po-chia Hsia, ed., A Companion to the Reformation World (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2004); The Ashgate Companion to the Counter-Reformation; Peter Marshall, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation (Oxford: Oxford Universtiy Press, 2015); Ulinka Rublack, The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).  A comparative approach can be found in James D. Tracy, Europe’s Reformations, 1450 – 1650 (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006). Studies on Catholic expansion include: R. Po-chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540 – 1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Po-chia Hsia, ed., The Cambridge History of Christianity: Vol. 6, Reform and Expansion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); S. Ditchfield, “Catholic Reformation and Renewal,” The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation, 152– 85.  See Rublack’s introduction to The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations, 15n28; M. Wiesner-Hanks, “Comparisons and Consequences in Global Perspective, 1500 – 1750,” in the same volume, 747– 64. Some further contributions include: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550 – 1700 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Carla Pestana, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

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What relevance do the terms Reformation and Counter-Reformation have in this context, divorced from the European conditions that gave rise to them? Some scholars’ preference for the term “renewal” in the context of Catholic overseas expansion suggests that some of the quandaries of naming early modern Catholicism in Europe translate to overseas contexts as well. The term, which derives from medieval and early modern reform thought (renovatio) and is occasionally used in traditional scholarship on the Catholic Reformation, has the benefit of avoiding the European connotations of the terms (Catholic) Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Yet it also glosses over the manifestations of the European confessional conflicts that were exported to European settlements overseas, including the Inquisition.⁴⁴ More generally, there is no question that the varieties of Western Christianity carried overseas in the wake of Europe’s expansions bore the traces of the intra-European confessional conflicts and their consequences for church organization, religious culture, and sense of identity. This remains true even when we allow that these features were apt to develop very differently in the new contexts of colonial societies. In the end, these legacies of religious conflict have continued to reverberate, however obscurely in the terminological disputes whose history we have briefly sketched here and, more broadly, in the agendas of continued memory construction – confessional, scholarly, or otherwise – prompted by the Reformation.⁴⁵ This will be no different during the current centenary.⁴⁶ Thus, even as Reformation and CounterReformation have become conventional labels, redefinitions or debates about their merits recur on a regular basis, a sign that these terms remain relevant to the question of how we wish to remember Luther’s rebellion, its historical background, and its consequences five hundred years later.

 Francisco Bethencourt, The Inquisition: A Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Giuseppe Marcocci and José Pedro Paiva, História da Inquisição portuguesa (1536 – 1821) (Lisbon: FNAC, 2013); Marcocci, de Boer, Aliocha Maldavksy, and Ilaria Pavan, eds., Space and Conversion in Global Perspective (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014); Michela Catto and Prosperi, eds., Trent and Beyond: The Council, Other Powers, Other Cultures (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017).  Cf. Bruce Gordon, “History and Memory,” in Rublack, Handbook of the Protestant Reformations, 765 – 85.  See, for example, the ecumenical (if opaque) attempt at a common Lutheran-Catholic understanding of the Reformation evident in the Joint Statement on the Occasion of the Joint Catholic-Lutheran Commemoration of the Reformation, co-signed by Pope Francis and Bishop Munib Yunan, president of the Lutheran World Federation, in Lund on October 31, 2016: “While we are profoundly thankful for the spiritual and theological gifts received through the Reformation, we also confess and lament before Christ that Lutherans and Catholics have wounded the visible unity of the Church. Theological differences were accompanied by prejudice and conflicts, and religion was instrumentalized for political ends.” Full text available at: http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bolletti no/pubblico/2016/10/31/0783/01757.html#ita.

Matteo Al Kalak

The Tridentine Age and the Reformation Age

1 What Came First? For many decades, the historiographical debate on sixteenth-century religious events and controversies focused – more or less intensely – on what value to bestow on Luther’s protest in relationship to the reformation demands that had proliferated in Western Christianity since the Middle Ages. The issue, starting with the terminological dilemma initiated by Hubert Jedin in the 1940s (Catholic Reformation or CounterReformation?),¹ focused on defining what came first, i. e., whether the protest started by Luther triggered a reaction from the Church of Rome, or whether, instead, Luther can be understood – albeit in his own individual way – within a historical trajectory that had already witnessed to the Church of Rome initiating and, partly, promoting reformative trends. Even without retracing the long debate that emerged from Jedin’s suggestion,² it still is necessary to recall how complex historical events are and, therefore, how difficult it is to compress them within too rigid a framework. On the one hand, Luther was neither a man detached from his context nor an unprecedentedly “enlightened” individual; on the other hand, it is also impossible to make light of the reach of his innovation, watering it down by association with obscure drives for reformation already active within medieval Christianity. Unrest and tensions leading toward a reformation were well-rooted before Luther’s time, and they certainly contributed to his education and, at least partly, inspired him in his claims,³ but nonetheless the Roman Church and Western Christianity were deeply changed after Luther’s passage.

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  Hubert Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation? Ein Versuch zur Klärung der Begriffe nebst einer Jubiläumsbetrachtung über das Trienter Konzil (Luzern: Stocker, 1946). To better frame Jedin’s work and his position, see the monographic issues dedicated to him in Annali dell’istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 6 (1980): 23 – 367, collecting the records of the Hubert Jedin symposium held in Trent on 7– 8 November 1980; and in Cristianesimo nella storia 22 (2001).  See the essay in this volume by Wietse de Boer, pp. 43 -57.  To quote Lucien Febvre, young Luther “took up and brought to a whirlwind conclusion the abortive work of the great reformative councils;” see Lucien Febvre, Martin Luther: A Destiny, trans. Roberts Tapley (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1929), 15. On the medieval legacy picked up by Luther, apart from the historiographical discussion by Febvre, see the essays by Christopher M. Bellitto, Jon Balserak and Volker Leppin in the present collection. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-004

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The issue of how to interpret the Council of Trent⁴ is inevitably included within this dispute over primogeniture. In fact, many historians take the Council of Trent as terminus a quo when interpreting the identity of the Church in the modern era. There are several definitions in use, which can be summarized in the notions of the “Tridentine Age” or “Tridentine Catholicism.” In this perspective, which limits the impact of Luther and his reformation in order to foreground the regulatory endeavor carried out by the council fathers, post-Lutheran Catholicism should not be interpreted as the religion of the Counter-Reformation (i. e., a religion emerging in primis from an anti-Protestant reaction), but instead as a Catholicism that, drawing from the ancient treasures of the Church, completed a process of self-reformation, which peaked with the Council of Trent. Thus questioning the features, the nature, and the success of Tridentine Catholicism means both testing the soundness of a historiographical category and, at the same time, defining the concrete impact that Luther (or, to be more precise, the movement he represented and started) had on the balances of Christianity in the modern era. To simplify the point, studying the Christianity of the Roman Church in the decades that witnessed the first application of the council decrees allows us to measure the real reach of Luther’s protest and its direct and indirect impact on the configuration of the Church after the council.

2 The Ambiguities of a Word The first point to take into account is the terminological issue. As already mentioned, speaking of Tridentine Catholicism means attributing to the council a regenerative effect on the Church that surpasses or at least encompasses Luther’s criticisms and remedies them on the basis of ancient precedents. Despite the seeming clarity of this definition, it is impossible to ignore how the council itself (and therefore the notion of “Tridentinism” connected to it) is characterized by ambiguities on many levels. The first, “genetic” examples of these ambiguities are a result of the gap between the intentions that sparked the summoning of the assembly and what was substantively achieved at its conclusion. The famous incipit to Istoria del concilio tridentino by Paolo Sarpi⁵ clarifies how obvious these contradictions were using Sarpi’s own recollections as a sharp and biting observer:  On the role assigned to the council within the historiographical debate, see Adriano Prosperi, Il concilio di Trento: una introduzione storica (Torino: Einaudi, 2001), 165 – 85.  The bibliography on Sarpi is vast. See the summary in the recent biography by Jaska Kainulainen, Paolo Sarpi: A Servant of God and State (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014). The following quotation is a translation from Paolo Sarpi, Istoria del Concilio tridentino, a cura di C. Vivanti, vol. I (Torino: Einaudi, 1974) 6 (original quotation: Questo concilio, desiderato e procurato dagli uomini pii per riunire la Chiesa che comminciava a dividersi, ha così stabilito lo schisma et ostinate le parti, che ha fatto le discordie irreconciliabili; e maneggiato da li prencipi per riforma dell’ordine ecclesiastico, ha causato la maggior

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This council, desired and obtained by pious men in order to reunify the Church, which was starting to split, has made the schism so established and the factions so obstinate that the disagreements have been made irreconcilable; moreover, manipulated by the princes in order to reform the ecclesiastical order, it caused the largest deformation that ever happened since the name of Christianity has existed; hoped for by bishops in order to win back episcopal authority, which had passed mostly into the hands of the Roman pontiff, it caused them to lose it entirely, making them even more subservient; on the contrary, feared and shunned by the Roman court as an effective method of limiting its excessive power, which by small principles had reached through several increments an unlimited excess, it established and confirmed this power on the faction that was still its subject [i. e., the Catholics] to such a degree that it was never before as large or as well rooted.

Sarpi’s words, the enticing prose of which should not exempt them from the necessary contextualization,⁶ show how the council had acted as a repository of several demands and had arrived, at the end of its journey, at results that were quite different from the objectives it had set itself. It was clear to Sarpi that the council had been summoned as a reaction to Luther’s schism, in order to overcome and heal it. Therefore it was a response to a “new” fact and new issues and not simply the upswing of an extant need for change that had already been well-rooted for centuries. As Sarpi sees it, the remedy for the schism was a reformation of the ecclesiastical order, i. e., of the state of degradation into which the Church had fallen all over Europe. In order to bring back peace, from both a political and a social point of view, it was necessary to heal the existing breach. For this purpose, a key role was to be played by the bishops, who had arrived at the council expecting to fully gain back – and maybe even widen – their prerogatives of pastoral government. As Sarpi concludes, however, the situation came to a different end, and the papacy, which had greatly opposed and feared the council, was paradoxically strengthened in its power, to the detriment of bishops and local communities. When faced with this scenario, it is appropriate to question the meaning the adjective “Tridentine” should therefore be assigned: Is this the Christianity that, as a reaction to Luther’s condemnations, wished to renovate the Church, starting from the pastoral functions of the bishops, and to reconcile with the Protestants (i. e., the original essence of the council)? Or is it the Christianity that actually emerged from the work of the assembly and the reality of its provisions? Moreover, in order to understand what this adjective means concretely, it is necessary to question a fur-

deformazione che sia mai stata da che vive il nome cristiano, e dalli vescovi sperato per racquistar l’autorità episcopale, passata in gran parte nel solo pontefice romano, l’ha fatta loro perdere tutta intieramente, riducendoli a maggior servitù; nel contrario temuto e sfugito dalla corte di Roma come efficace mezo per moderare l’essorbitante potenza, da piccioli principii pervenuta con varii progressi ad un eccesso illimitato, gliel’ha talmente stabilita e confermata sopra la parte restatagli soggetta, che non fu mai tanta, né così ben radicata.)  On the fascination Sarpi’s analysis exerted on the interpretation of the council in Italian historiography, see Simon Ditchfield, “In Sarpi’s Shadow: Coping with Trent the Italian Way,” in Studi in memoria di Cesare Mozzarelli, vol. 1 (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2008) 585 – 606.

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ther gap – or adaptation – in the council decrees: on the one hand in their application within the different dioceses, and on the other hand in the interpretation offered, and partly imposed, by the Roman papacy. It is not surprising that Sarpi himself focused on this issue: after writing Istoria del concilio, he also explored the vast field of beneficiary matters. On this subject, Sarpi had the chance to ascertain how the prohibition against accumulating benefices in the care of souls – one of the pivots of the Tridentine Reformation that intended to promote the residency of bishops and parish priests, to the advantage of the faithful – was quickly circumvented with a stratagem deriving from canon law, i. e., pensions.⁷ As Sarpi explains: It is much more useful to have a pension than a benefice: firstly, many benefices require ordination and the appropriate age to be eligible for it; for a pension, first tonsure and an age of seven are enough, and pensions are even given to laymen […] When it comes to benefices, even when people had more than one, this was always talked about, and it required a dispensation, which still had a cost, and even so the Doctors questioned whether this had been done with a clear conscience. When it comes to pensions, rather, it is possible to hold any number of them without any scruples, and no two pensions are incompatible with each other […] The main thing is that it is possible to extinguish a pension, which, in other words, means to turn it into cash, while every contract within a benefice is considered to be simoniacal […] A pension is much more useful and convenient, and therefore it was easy to apply what had been established during the council, also because this turned out to be convenient. However, taking away the in commendam benefices from the monasteries, another provision ordered by the council, has not been carried out yet.⁸

Sarpi had no hesitation in interpreting pensions and their use as a circumvention of the council provisions; pensions had been used to avoid all the limitations set by the strict regulation of benefices that had been introduced, as already mentioned, with the objective of achieving pastoral unity. It was easy to apply the council dispositions on benefices because the use of pensions allowed them to be bypassed; however, the same could not be said of the in commendam benefices, which had also been prohib-

 On this subject and stemming specifically from Sarpi’s criticisms, see Mario Rosa, Curia romana e pensioni ecclesiastiche: fiscalità pontificia nel Mezzogiorno (secoli XVI-XVIII), in Id., La Curia romana (Roma: 2013), 57– 99; see also the bibliography.  I am quoting from the following edition: Paolo Sarpi, Trattato delle materie beneficiarie (Mirandola: 1676), 192– 94 (original quotation: Ancora e molto più utile haver pensione che beneficio: prima molti beneficii ricercano l’ordine sacro e l’età di poterlo ricevere; per la pensione basta la prima tonsura & l’età di sette anni, anzi le pensioni danno anco a’ laici […] Delli benefici anco ne’ tempi chi ne teneva più d’uno vi era sempre, che dire, & era necessaria la dispensa che pur faceva spendere, & con tutto ciò li dottori mettevano anco in coscienza delle pensioni se ne può havere senza scrupolo in ogni numero, e non vi è pensione incompatibile […] Quello che sopratutto importa è che la pensione si può estinguere, il che in italiano vuol dire farne pecunia numerata, che ogni contratto fatto nel beneficio si reputa simoniaco […] È molto più utile e commoda la pensione, perciò fu facile eseguir il concilio, perché tornò anco commodo, ma il levare di commenda li monasterii, che parimente il concilio comandò, non s’ha posto in esecutione sino al presente.).

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ited for similar pastoral reasons but were never really abolished due to a lack of “alternative” tools. To recap, apart from this specific issue, Sarpi raised the question of the tangible application of the Tridentine decrees. More light will be shed on these issues in the following pages. It is important at this juncture, however, to highlight the rich historiographical and interpretative consequences of the ambiguities and elusiveness met when attempting to define the nature and features of the council and of the adjective that expresses, or should express, its core contents. In fact, remarkable gaps can be found between the intentions and the pronouncements of the Fathers gathered in Trent. The same is true of the gaps that often existed between the council decrees and their concrete application.

3 Beyond Trent From what has been written up to this point, it will be clear that the expression “Tridentine Catholicism” is in no way undisputed. After all, historiography has come back to this issue many times in the last few decades, which goes to show how its semantics have been only partly defined and are perhaps destined never to be completely delineated. A fundamental stage in this discussion is marked by Paolo Prodi’s considerations on the so-called Tridentine paradigm. In his book devoted to this topic,⁹ Prodi suggests that one must overcome a perspective that considers Trent as the starting point of a journey in order to interpret it instead as the focal point of a historical era and, therefore, necessarily in medio and not in capite. According to Prodi, Luther’s Reformation and the Council of Trent are different – but not in themselves divergent – answers to the same questions and can be grouped within a single historical process. In explicit continuity with Jedin’s intuitions, Prodi develops some of the opinions set forth by the German historian Jedin in Geschichte des Konzils von Trient and takes them to an ideal conclusion: [T]he Reformation and the Council of Trent (which was inaugurated only some 30 years after Luther’s protest) do not mark […] the beginning of the modern era, as many history manuals still purport, but somehow represent the culmination of a long period of crisis: not a starting point, but the culmination, or perhaps even the end point, of a transformation process, both in the new relationship between the individual and God and in the public relationship between the sacred and power, between churches and state.¹⁰

This long Tridentine Age, which is a sub-partition of a wider modern era starting with the Western Schism, does not end with the French Revolution, but instead goes on

 Paolo Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino. Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2010).  Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino, 15.

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until the Second Vatican Council. Only after the latter, in fact, does a truly new era start, an era marked by a different approach on the Church’s side as well as by a different notion and self-understanding of the Church itself. Thus the adjective “Tridentine” no longer refers to the decrees and the reformative measures attributable to a council, but instead to an approach toward modernity (the Council of Trent is, according to Prodi, the council with which the Church addresses the demands of the modern world),¹¹ a framework of behavior that remained solid and functioning for a timespan that extends beyond traditional periodizations. Prodi’s intuition was not previously unheard of and represented a reaction to the recommendations of Anglo-Saxon Catholic historiography: after the revisions to Jedin’s model brought forward by debates on the processes of disciplining and by Michel Foucault’s lessons,¹² many scholars at the beginning of the twenty-first century were at work redefining the categories to be used. Among these it is worth mentioning, particularly in connection with the meaning conferred on the Council of Trent, the Jesuit John O’Malley, author of the volume Trent and All That,¹³ to which Prodi responds in his own book. In his study, O’Malley suggests adopting an extensive terminology capable of hinting toward continuity and change at the same time, without specifying which of the two is prevalent. This category had already been pinpointed in Early Modern Catholicism: taking as a starting point a notion already found in John Bossy and other Anglo-Saxon historians,¹⁴ O’Malley defines a long era that went from the last centuries of the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century and, in some cases, up to the Second Vatican Council. Unlike Prodi, who tries to delineate a clear paradigm (“the foundations of the Church as an institution, as it historically developed after the Council of Trent”¹⁵), O’Malley is looking for a category pliable enough to encompass notions, sometimes used with antithetical meanings, such as Counter-Reformation, Catholic Reforma This idea was developed by Wolfgang Reinhard and Prodi himself at a conference, the records of which are published in Il Concilio di Trento e il modern (Bologna: Societa editrice il Mulino, 1996), and in a German translation as Das Konzil von Trient und die Moderne (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot Verlag, 2001).  On the category of disciplining in connection to Catholicism in the modern era, see the summary by Wietse ee Boer, “Social Discipline in Italy: Peregrinations of a Historical Paradigm,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 94 (2003): 295 – 307; and Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, “Social Discipline and Catholicism in Europe of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Chiesa cattolica e mondo moderno. Scritti in onore di Paolo Prodi, eds. A. Prosperi, P. Schiera, and G. Zarri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), 167– 81. A wider overview on the subject is available in Fernanda Alfieri, L’età della disciplina cristiana. Confronti e comparazioni, in Storia del cristianesimo, vol. 3, L’età moderna (secoli XVI-XVIII), ed. Vincenzo Lavenia (Rome: Carocci, 2015), 321– 49.  John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in Early Modern Era (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2000).  For example, cf. John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400 – 1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).  Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino, 7.

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tion, Tridentine Reformation, and Confessional Age.¹⁶ The Tridentine Age, to which a paragraph of the book is devoted, goes back to and joins with this wide-mesh category. According to O’Malley, in the development of early modern Catholicism, it is fitting to attribute an important role to the council, whose “pervasiveness transcended the immediate influence of any single person or any other happening in the period.” However, O’Malley goes on, if used in an “unreflective” way, the definition of Tridentine Age ends up neglecting three qualifying issues of Catholic identity in the modern era: the dominant function held by the papacy, the missionary projection of Catholicism, and the circumvention of the dispositions on female seclusion embodied by the didactic activism of congregations such as the Ursulines.¹⁷ All of this is to say that the council certainly had its role, but it is necessary to be wary of exaggerating it.¹⁸ Nevertheless, the category of Tridentine Catholicism seems to re-emerge cyclically; as Simon Ditchfield showed, the debate on the Second Vatican Council constantly influences new readings on the Council of Trent in a game of mirrors between events that are far removed in time.¹⁹ However, rather than understanding in the abstract what the expression Tridentine Catholicism means, Ditchfield instead suggests that we try to comprehend what this really was in concrete, historical terms. In particular, it is important to understand the global expansion of Catholicism in the early modern era and to question its interactions with the processes of globalization. The most recent Catholic historiography, a few examples of which have already been referred to in this chapter, has moved from an emphasis on the Council of Trent – which Jedin interpreted as the triumph of the pre-existing Catholic Reformation – to the notion of a “long reformation”²⁰ within which Tridentinism is either de facto included or, as suggested by Prodi, in which the framework is represented by the Tridentine paradigm. This is the reading that – with some distinctions and different perceptions – seems to be dominant in the field today, also thanks to the blessing it received in the prestigious Cambridge History of Christianity, which in its sixth volume (edited by Ronnie Po-chia Hsia²¹) puts “Catholic Renewal” next to the Protestant Reformation and devotes an essay to the necessity of redefining Catholicism by going

 Cf. O’Malley, Trent and All That, 140.  Cf. O’Malley, Trent and All That, 135 – 36.  O’Malley recently came back to the Tridentine “myth” and its meaning, reiterating ideas already expressed in Trent and All That; see O’Malley, What Happened at the Council (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2013), 1– 22.  Simon Ditchfield, “Tridentine Catholicism,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to the CounterReformation, eds. Alexandra Bamji, Geert H. Janssen, and Mary Laven (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 15 – 32.  I am using a felicitous definition by Peter G. Wallace, The Long European Reformation: Religion, Political Conflict, and the Search for Conformity, 1350 – 1750 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004).  The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 4, Reform and Expansion 1500 – 1660, ed. Ronnie Pochia Hsia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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beyond the image of the Council of Trent (“Redefining Catholicism: Trent and Beyond”).²² Finally, although no one rejects the importance of the Council of Trent, the trend is toward understanding its significance in the definition of the profile of the Catholic Church through two “balancing” processes: the extension of the periodization and the expansion of the geographical context (which is tantamount to expanding the stakeholders, the contexts, and, inevitably, the answers given by the religious authorities). This expansion process lowers the specific significance of the council and its decrees and opens up new room for other dynamics that were only partly connected (and sometimes not connected at all) to the Tridentine directives.

4 Rethinking Trent Some historiographers, particularly in Italy, reacted to these attempts to go beyond the category of Tridentine Catholicism by denouncing it as an ill-concealed rehabilitation of the notion of Catholic reformation introduced by Jedin and by recommending a return to the term Counter-Reformation in order to highlight the dominance of disciplinary and repressive elements over truly reformative ones. Within the process of decisional centralization imposed by the papacy, the importance of the council was undermined by the role of the Roman congregations and, particularly, by the growing power of the Inquisition. A recent contribution by Massimo Firpo aptly summarizes the issue: openly criticizing O’Malley’s and Prodi’s hypotheses and their determination to identify a long timespan in order to sideline the importance of the Protestant Reformation as a rift, Firpo revives the validity of the categories of Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation in their antithetical meaning.²³ According to Firpo, in these categories it is important to emphasize “the conflictual dichotomy rather than the forced synthesis suggested previously by Hubert Jedin, which insisted on the absolute centrality of the papal initiative and the Council of Trent in promoting the different demands for renovation active within the body of the Church.”²⁴ Therefore the contribution of the Council of Trent would be unwarrantably overrated, to the detriment of the real protagonist of that moment in history – the Roman Holy Office. This point of view confers centrality on the Inquisition, the real shaper of the features and identity of the Church:

 This is the title of the essay by the Jesuit Robert Bireley in The Cambridge History of Christianity, 4:143 – 61.  Massimo Firpo, La presa di potere dell’Inquisizione romana (1550 – 1553) (Roma: Laterza, 2014), v– xix.  Firpo, La presa di potere, vii.

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[T]he tiller that guided the navicula Petri through the dangerous waves of those years had been governed mostly by the inquisitors, regardless of the Tridentine debates and of the very orientations of the papal policy. In fact, the premises and the objectives of the change the Church had been beckoned to accomplish were not defined, neither in Trent nor in the commissions de reformatione Ecclesiae, which at that time followed one another in Rome, but in the early battle engaged with Gian Pietro Carafa and his loyal Theatines against any form of heretical deviation.²⁵

Thus Firpo rejects the overcoming of Tridentinism suggested by Catholic historiography, both because it would preserve, regardless of its declarations, a substantial centrality for the Council of Trent and because, within the categories periodically suggested, it largely underestimates the importance of the Inquisition. Elena Bonora’s studies follow a similar line of thought. In her summary dedicated to the Counter-Reformation, Bonora reiterates the existence of an “uncompromising policy of defense and assertion of orthodoxy, of ecclesiastical authority and of papal primacy” promoted by the Holy Office, from which derives the “historically structural connection between Counter-Reformation and Roman Inquisition.” Bonora’s interpretation is dynamic – it aims to give value to the process of transformation in which even the Counter-Reformation took part in its constant confrontation – not necessarily conflictual – with society and the ecclesiastical context. In this perspective, however, as could be predicted, there is no room either for categories such as Catholic Reformation or for the hypothetical centrality of the Council of Trent.²⁶ As a further example, Gigliola Fragnito’s studies on censorship, the Counter-Reformation measure par excellence, come to an analogous conclusion, outlining the Roman authorities’ explicit inversion of the council precepts.²⁷ An emblematic example of this is the issue of Bible reading, a focal point of Luther’s demands; after the blunt prohibition during Paul IV’s pontificate, the Tridentine Index of 1564 opened up some opportunities for translating the Bible into vernacular languages. Within a few years, after the election of the summus inquisitor Michele Ghislieri (who became Pius V) as pope, the small openings once glimpsed were closed, and access to the sacred text in translation was once again denied. The last three decades of the sixteenth century marked the end of the “moderate stance that prevailed in Trent” and of the attempt to “give back, against the prohibitions of the Index of 1558, a role to Scripture in the education of laymen.” What prevailed instead was the “inquisitorial route,” which, as Fragnito concludes, represented a “deep alteration of the spirit of the council.”²⁸

 Firpo, La presa di potere, vii.  Elena Bonora, La Controriforma (Roma: Laterza, 2003), vii–viii.  Gigliola Fragnito, Proibito capire. La Chiesa e il volgare nella prima età moderna, Bologna 2005. On the subject, see also Id., La Bibbia al rogo. La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scrittura, 1471 – 1605 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997).  Fragnito, Proibito capire, 25.

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Finally, Michele Mancino and Giovanni Romeo’s study on the behaviors of the clergy in modern Italy is openly critical of the Tridentine myth.²⁹ Their analysis aims to show how the reformation devised in Trent was systematically scuttled by the central structures in the Roman Church, which were concerned with maintaining the honorability of the clergymen rather than denouncing and punishing their abuses. The reformation principles emerging from the council, therefore, would have been voided by the attitude of the Roman authorities, even when bishops who were inclined to fully apply the canons established in Trent came along (Romeo and Mancino define this as an “anti-Tridentine turn” and an “attic council”³⁰). The situation caused by this gap is very different from the traditional image of Italy as a country full of zealous priests and orderly churches, and instead reveals a situation in which a meaningful portion of the clergy would be guilty of very serious crimes. These examples show how, when faced with attempts to go beyond the Tridentine myth promoted by Catholic historiography, many scholars, particularly in Italy, react by recalling the role of the Inquisition and emphasizing the use of the term Counter-Reformation, with its long legacy of meanings, which are also political and philosophical. On the basis of the opinions illustrated above, it is therefore possible to come to the conclusion that the interpretation of the Council of Trent and of its historical reach depends on how the relationship between the council and the Inquisition is understood. This relationship is, in fact, a summary of tensions between a Church founded on the pastoral criteria periodically defined and adopted by bishops residing in different diocesan contexts and an unrelenting Roman centralization.

5 A Church Between Council and Inquisition On the basis of the scenario depicted in the previous paragraphs, perhaps it is now time to attempt a synthesis, starting from the reflection that, when facing critical situations and perspectives that can be interpreted in different ways, the hypotheses illustrated up to this point all have strengths that are important to bear in mind. In the words of Prodi, “the fact that the line of the Roman Counter-Reformation – the line of centralism and Inquisition – prevailed under the urgency and the brutality of the religious struggle […] should not prevent us from seeing different paths, which remained in the minority, when it comes to spirituality and religious life.”³¹ When assuming the era of the Council of Trent, to which this essay is dedicated, as a focal point, it is impossible to deny that it becomes more and more necessary to open up this frame to multiple stakeholders and contexts: the Council of Trent was a mo-

 Michele Mancino and Giovanni Romeo, Clero criminale. L’onore della Chiesa e i delitti degli ecclesiastici nell’Italia della Controriforma (Roma: Laterza, 2013).  Mancino and Romeo, Clero criminale, viii, 39.  Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino, 32.

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ment for the codification and, from many points of view, the resemantization of ancient medieval institutions, and it certainly catalyzed reformation demands that predated the assembly. At the same time, however, it is evident that many factors were involved in the interpretation and subsequent application of the conciliar decrees. These factors often altered the intentions of the Fathers, sometimes twisting and circumventing them or, in the most virtuous cases, adapting them to contexts that the council had not taken into account at all (for example, the missionary lands). Among these “interpreters,” the Holy Office had a prominent role, particularly in Italy. In fact, it pursued a policy focused on centralization and control over the Roman Curia, often distorting or ignoring the conciliar spirit. In 1542, the emergence of the Holy Tribunal changed the balance and dynamics within the ecclesiastical institution and showed how the Protestant Reformation, the logical prerequisite to a cardinal congregation established in order to oppose the diffusion of heresy,³² was not an event without any epochal value, and therefore it was capable of establishing periodizations. On the one hand, Luther’s Reformation was a moment of change that can hardly be watered down in the stream of a generic “long reformation,” and on the other hand, the Tridentine Catholicism that followed found, explicitly or implicitly, a basis of comparison in the demands of Luther and those who developed his ideas. Nevertheless, it is impossible to take on inquisitorial hegemony and Roman centralization as the only interpretive criteria of Catholicism, as if this were a monolithic block. On the contrary, as stated by Firpo himself when describing the rise of the Inquisition and the validity of the category of Counter-Reformation, the latter was not primarily a reaction ad extra against the protest in the German world, but rather a way to address ad intra the demands for Catholic reformism that, for different reasons, did not reconcile with inquisitorial logic. It is this very consideration that demonstrates the contextual complexity facing the Church in the Tridentine Age and the existence within its ranks of reformative options – never completely extinguished, although bitterly contested – side-by-side with options more in line with the diktat of the Holy Tribunal. From the historiographical debate briefly sampled above, it is also possible to gather that the Council of Trent represented a point of no return for the Inquisition, too. Although following a different (if not antithetic) path, the Holy Office and, more generally speaking, the Roman hierarchy were forced to measure themselves against the conciliar provisions and the efforts of the reforming bishops (whenever there were any) and to devise solutions that, at least formally, were not in open conflict with the conciliar prescriptions. Thus, to go back to some of the examples already mentioned, the possibility of reading biblical translations that the Tridentine Index

 As is known, the Roman Inquisition detached itself from this starting point within a few decades, widening its own prerogatives in order to control other social events and categories. Cf. Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Torino: Einaudi, 1996).

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(1564) had allowed – under very specific conditions – could not simply be revoked by the following Clementine Index (1596): in order to accomplish such an inversion – which, to be clear, still happened – a new index was prepared that, from a formal point of view, followed and “updated” (as its title clarified) the previous Tridentine Index.³³ If this does not alter the substance of the change brought forward, it does go to show how, following a habit of theological and doctrinal continuity, the Church was obliged to call itself Tridentine, even when the openings provided by the council were later reconsidered and revoked. The same could be said of the prohibition against accumulating benefices or the duty of residence, which was analyzed by Sarpi in order to glimpse the incongruities of the post-conciliar Church. As Sarpi explained, the institution of pensions had been used to circumvent the prohibition against accumulating benefices and the duty of residence in those cases when the care of souls was required. The in commendam benefices, however, had not been impacted at all. Nonetheless, among the great many bishops and cardinals with in commendam benefices, there were some who tried to enact this very circumvention of the conciliar dispositions in a way that would fall in line with the Tridentine provisions. This is what happened with Carlo Borromeo, who – having received the in commendam benefice of Nonantola, an ancient Benedictine abbey in the Po valley that had been diocesis nullius for centuries – founded a seminary, celebrated a synod, and so on.³⁴ Despite his virtual absence, he tried to carry out his role scrupulously and within the conciliar prescriptions. It is not necessary to point out that there are plenty of cases, probably the majority, in which the opposite is true; however, the complexity of the context sometimes meant that even situations that were evidently in contrast with the Tridentine dispositions underwent a “Tridentinization.” Moreover, going back to the analysis of crimes committed by the clergy, it is worth highlighting how the behavior of the Roman congregations and tribunals, which were busy revoking or voiding the provisions made by the bishops, demonstrates the reforming efforts of the ordinaries, to which the congregations were reacting. While the great number of trials was certainly a symptom of widespread corruption, it was also a sign of the enormous commitment to fighting corruption on the part of the episcopal tribunals.³⁵

 Index librorum prohibitorum, cum regulis confectis per patres a Tridentina synodo delectos, auctoritate Pii IIII primum editus, postea vero a Syxto V auctus, et nunc demum Clementis VIII iussu, recognitus, & publicatus. Instructione adiecta, Romae & Bononiae, apud haered. Io. Rossi, 1596.  Giuseppi Pistoni, “Il sinodo nonantolano di S. Carlo Borromeo del 1565,” Atti e memorie della Accademia nazionale di Scienze, Lettere e Arti di Modena 7 no. 1 (1983 – 84): 165 – 93.  A precise and systematic analysis on this subject has been carried out by Marco Cavarzere, La giustizia del Vescovo. I tribunali ecclesiastici della Liguria orientale (secc. XVI–XVIII) (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2012). As Cavarzere explains, the action of the tribunals influenced the behavior of the clergy very slowly, and the first results became noticeable only in the eighteenth century.

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These arguments aim neither to give to the council, implicite vel explicite, any exemplary value nor to make light of the existence of effective “anti-conciliar” drives. Their objective is rather to illustrate how – on a formal level and, in many cases, also with a certain degree of internalization – the Tridentine provisions and the model of governance they devised represented a fundamental element in the education and work of entire generations of bishops and clergymen as well as in the perception and self-representation of the Church. From this point of view, the Church in the modern era truly was Tridentine, and it found in the council an identity and marked a moment in history that is impossible to overlook going forward. What is really important, however, is the meaning we bestow on the adjective Tridentine: the available studies encourage us not to give this term a fixed or static value (and even less a transcendental one), but to read it instead dynamically, within the framework of a confrontation or clash between different demands and ecclesiologies. Its reach must be assessed in terms of cultural impact on a perceptive, representative, and rhetorical level, while also trying to understand how the council and its teachings became a reference point, with or without mediation, for those who belonged to the Roman Church.

6 From Words to Deeds: An Era of Reformations? As already mentioned, the difficulty in abstractly defining the profile of the Tridentine Church derives from the notion, which may be predictable but is also historically inescapable, that the application of the council in specific contexts and individual situations resulted in many contradictions and a high level of variability. In order to understand whether the Tridentine Age was also an era of reformations, it is necessary to structure the debate on three levels. Firstly, there was a prescriptive element, which included compliance and duties that the diocesan ordinaries were required to fulfill. The provisions promulgated by the council fathers in order to promote their reformation called for the celebration of diocesan and provincial synods, for pastoral visits, and for the establishment of seminaries to educate the clergy. Most of the Catholic dioceses replied relatively keenly to this invitation: even within the first few months after the end of the council, there was a proliferation of local synods aimed at passing the decisions made by the Fathers down to the periphery.³⁶ As an example, in 1564, a few months after the end  For a guide to the vast bibliography on the synodal activity, cf. Jacobus T. Sawicki, Bibliographia synodorum particularium (Vatican City: 1967), including the subsequent appendices; for Italy: Silvino da Nadro, Sinodi diocesani italiani. Catalogo bibliografico degli atti a stampa 1534 – 1878 (Vatican City: 1960), including the subsequent updates. On the synodal institution, see Il sinodo diocesano nella teologia e nella storia: atti del Convegno di studi, Catania, 15 – 16 maggio 1986 (Galatea Ed., 1987), and particularly the essay by A. Longhitano, “La normativa sul sinodo diocesano dal concilio di Trento al Codice di diritto canonico,” 33 – 87.

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of the Tridentine proceedings, synods were celebrated in Milan, Palermo, Venice, and Haarlem; in 1565, the president of the council, Giovanni Morone, held a synod in his diocese (Modena); in Prague, Antonín Brus of Mohelnice, a former imperial delegate in Trent, did the same; the following year, important cities such as Bologna, Augsburg, and Konstanz had their turn, followed by an extensive array of dioceses both large and small. Provincial synods also enjoyed great popularity (for the period immediately following the council, see for example the synods of Cambrai, Granada, Milan, Toledo, and the second Mexican synod, all held in 1565). Pastoral visits were widespread, and bishops embarked on this task somewhat regularly during the whole duration of the modern era.³⁷ A more intricate task, particularly due to its economic implications, was the establishment of seminaries; this did happen in many dioceses, although with several delays due to the need to find incomes and assets with which to endow these seminaries.³⁸ However, if we focus on assessing the extent to which these measures had an impact on situations in daily life, the result is different. Although it is difficult – and for several reasons also wrong – to generalize, it took decades before the results of the Tridentine provisions became visible; perhaps it was only at the beginning of the eighteenth century that it was possible to reap the first fruits of what had been sown in the middle of the sixteenth century. From this perspective, the fate of seminaries, which were key to improving the quality of the clergy, is very eloquent. As already mentioned, many dioceses created a place to educate aspiring clergymen, but their ability to take in students was very limited and visibly out of proportion when compared to the number of priests ordained every year. For example, in Tuscany, seminaries started working satisfactorily only towards the end of the modern era. As Kathleen Comerford has demonstrated, for the first century after their institution (c. 1563 – 1660), Tuscan colleges registered only a limited number of pupils – only a very small minority of parish priests (i. e., those priests responsible for the care of souls) undertook seminarial studies, and their results were mediocre in the end.³⁹

 For pastoral visits, as well as for countless studies on individual diocesan contexts, see Umberto Mazzone and Angelo Turchini, eds., Le visite pastorali. Analisi di una fonte (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990); Cecilia Nubola and Angelo Turchini, eds., Fonti ecclesiastiche per la storia sociale e religiosa d’Europa (XV–XVIII secolo) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999).  For seminaries, as well as for studies on the Italian context, see Maurilio Guasco, “La formazione del clero: i seminari,” and Xenio Toscani, “Il reclutamento del clero (secoli XVI–XIX),” both in R. Romano and C. Vivanti, eds., Storia d’Italia, vol. 9, La Chiesa e il potere politico dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea, eds. G. Chittolini and G. Miccoli, (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), 631– 715 and 573 – 633, respectively. See also Xenio Toscani, “Recenti studi sui seminari in età moderna,” Annali di storia dell’educazione e delle istituzioni scolastiche 7 (2000): 281– 307.  Kathleen M. Comerford, Reforming Priests and Parishes. Tuscan Dioceses in the First Century of Seminary Education (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

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Lastly, as already mentioned, there is a third level of assessment that addresses the need to look at Catholicism without adopting an overly narrow and centralized perspective. When deciding whether it is possible to speak of a “reformism” inspired by the Council of Trent, it is impossible to disregard the different geographical scenarios in which the ecclesiastical structures operated during the modern era. Rather than a Tridentine Church, it would be better to talk of a variety of Tridentine churches, i. e., of the different ways in which the conciliar decrees were applied (or not applied) in national and regional contexts. If, as has already been noted, the Council of Trent arrived in the Americas and in many other places in the world through mediation (thanks to the Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis ⁴⁰), different scenarios apply to the European monarchies, and even more so to the small Italian states. This is not just because of the obvious differences between geopolitical contexts, but is also due to variability within the intra-ecclesiastical geography itself. Thus, while in most of Italy the Roman Inquisition was free to exercise its pressures and its centralizing action, large areas of the world subject to the Iberian monarchies had to deal instead with the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, which were under sovereign control and had different priorities than their counterpart, the pontifical tribunal. Moreover, those prerogatives the bishops were able to keep were not consistent across different contexts, and consequently the effects of their potential reformations were also in conflict. An Italian bishop certainly had a more limited field of action than a French one; to offer another example, a bishop in the Kingdom of Naples would have been able to try heresy cases that would have not been within the reach of a bishop from Northern Italy. With such a slippery and multi-faceted meaning, it is difficult to speak of the Tridentine Age as the age of reformations tout court: what it is possible to say instead is that some changes were undoubtedly triggered in the Church after Trent, firstly on a formal level and much more slowly on a practical level. These changes took the council and, even more importantly, the myth that it embodied as a reference point and were placed within its framework. With this meaning in mind, there was indeed a Tridentine Age, and it did bring forward reformations – it advanced, with however many contradictions and reservations, measures of change with Trent as an ideal objective that could not be overlooked. Within this process, the image of Luther – who was pivotal in the genesis of a council summoned specifically to give a response to his doctrines and, more generally speaking, to the protest that these had brought about – slowly faded. The expan-

 Cf. Simon Ditchfield, “San Carlo Borromeo in the Construction of Roman Catholicism as a World Religion,” Studia Borromaica 25 (2011): 3 – 23. The impact of Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis and, more generally speaking, of the prescriptions by Borromeo is even more clear with regard to the “Tridentinization” of holy places; see for example some of the cases discussed in Andrew Spicer, ed., Parish Churches in the Early Modern World (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), from a comparative and trans-denominational perspective; and Jennifer M. DeSilva, ed., The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015).

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sion of Catholicism to the most remote corners of the world and the inadequate reformed action in the missionary field helped the Church to create a victorious and triumphant image of itself as well as to recover some of the ground it had lost. Luther ended up gliding away, albeit with a place of honor, into the substantial list of enemies besieging the Catholic Church, which was by then projecting itself toward new continents and frontiers.

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Ecclesia semper reformanda: Medieval Ideas and Attempts at Church Reform 1 The Concept: semper reformanda

Reform is one of the few constants in church history. Religious reform is by nature rooted in the essential notion of a spiritual mindset: metanoia is the foundation of the deliberate decision to live an earthly life according to other-worldly values in pursuit of an eternal destination in the next world.¹ The concept of metanoia focuses on the individual soul, but reform has also been a longstanding concept, goal, and action of the institutional church.² For medieval people, the notion of reform was commonplace.³ Tracing the idea of and efforts at reform from their patristic roots through the high medieval period up to the threshold of Martin Luther’s age is the intent of this chapter. This survey is intended as a guide to a vast and ever-growing topic of

 For an interreligious approach to reform, see the contributions in Pier Cesare Bori, Mohamed Haddad, and Albertoni Melloni, eds., Réformes: Comprendre et comparer les religions (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2007).  Two works from the 1950s deserve particular attention because they effectively established reform as its own field of inquiry within church history and historical theology. The first is Yves M.-J. Congar, Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1950, 2nd ed. 1968). Most of the second edition is now available via Paul Philibert, trans., True and False Reform in the Church (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2010). The second is Gerhart B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959; 2nd ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1967). For an evaluation of Ladner’s impact, see the articles by three of his doctoral students – Lester L. Field Jr., Louis B. Pascoe, and Phillip H. Stump – comprising Part I of Christopher M. Bellitto and David Zachariah Flanagin, eds., Reassessing Reform: A Historical Investigation into Church Renewal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 17– 57. For a critique of Ladner’s categories, see Michael Vargas, Administrative Change in the Fourteenth-Century Dominican Order: A Case Study in Partial Reforms and Incomplete Theories, also in Reassessing Reform, 84– 104.  Gerald Strauss, Ideas of Reformatio and Renovatio from the Middle Ages to the Reformation, in Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History 1400 – 1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 2, Visions, Programs and Outcomes (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 3: “To the historian, at least, what matters above all is the place of these ideas in the collective experience of Europeans, and their relevance to some major events and prominent groups and persons whose self-perception and view of the world, and of their roles in it, were substantially shaped by their understanding of reform and renewal as imperatives, norms, and warrants.” For a historical study of the period in the context of the European Union’s discussion of whether its charter should refer to a Christian heritage, see Ovidio Capitani, “Reformatio Ecclesiae: a proposito di unità e identità nella costruzione dell’Europa medievale,” Studi Medievali 47 (June 2006): 1– 27. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-005

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study for church and social historians, theologians, liturgists, and scholars in an expanding number of fields.⁴ We begin by considering two phrases. The first, reflected in this chapter’s title, is ecclesia semper reformanda, typically traced back to the sixteenth century and originating perhaps with John Calvin.⁵ As reform historians and linguists have pointed out, the phrase may be rendered as “the church [will] always be reformed” (future passive sense) or as “the church [is] always reforming” (present active sense). The former indicates that someone else – presumably God – is doing the work (or will in the future), while the latter indicates that a faith’s adherents are taking the lead and doing the work right now. The distinction is important in se, but both translations presume that the church does, in fact, need to be reformed and therefore must, of necessity, be deformed in some way. The fact that Luther and his followers had such a dramatic impact is itself evidence of decades and even centuries during which late medieval papal and episcopal leadership failed to reform even when they did see the need. In modern history, we can contrast the attitudes of two popes toward reform to illustrate the point. Writing in 1832, with Europe and traditional monarchies still reeling from revolution, Pope Gregory XVI stated: “[I]t is obviously absurd and injurious to propose a certain restoration and regeneration for [the church] as though necessary for her safety and growth, as if she could be considered subject to defect or obscuration or other misfortune” (Mirari Vos, no. 10). Over a century later, in an entirely different context during the Second Vatican Council in 1964, Pope Paul VI said: “A vivid and lively self-awareness on the part of the Church inevitably leads to a comparison between the ideal image of the church as Christ envisaged, his holy and spotless bride, and the actual image which the church presents to the world today. But the actual image of the church will never attain to such a degree of perfection, beau Reform scholarship has blossomed in the last half century, although studies typically concern themselves with a specific period, area, person, or reform target. Among the surveys, see Christopher M. Bellitto, Renewing Christianity: A History of Church Reform from Day One to Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), which is concerned primarily with Roman Catholicism, and Craig D. Atwood, Always Reforming: A History of Christianity Since 1300 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001, which looks beyond Catholicism and Europe. Atwood is chronologically complemented by Paul Amargier, Une Église du renouveau: Réformes et réformateurs, de Charlemagne à Jean Hus 750 – 1415 (Paris: Cerf, 1998). A pair of collections of scholarly essays that span the course of church history are Roger Aubert, ed., Progress and Decline in the History of Church Renewal (New York: Paulist Press, 1967); and Derek Baker, ed., Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977). For examples of how reform impacted social and cultural change, as an illustration of just one way the study of reform is expanding, see Martha G. Newman, The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098 – 1180 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); and John Howe, Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Italy: Dominic of Sora and His Patrons (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), and Before the Gregorian Reform: The Latin Church at the Turn of the First Millennium (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016).  Hans Küng, The Council, Reform, and Reunion, trans. Cecily Hastings (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1962), 9.

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ty, holiness, and splendor that it can be said to correspond perfectly with the original conception in the mind of him who fashioned it” (Ecclesiam Suam, no. 10). For Gregory XVI, the very notion that the church could be deformed and consequently in need of reform was impossible. Paul VI, on the other hand, took it for granted that the church will always be deformed, and therefore reform was a permanent process.

2 Reformatio in capite et in membris The second phrase we encounter in the history of reform is reformatio in capite et in membris, which had become common by the sixteenth century. The origins of the phrase likely date back to papal correspondence and legal documents in the High Middle Ages, perhaps early in the thirteenth century. In that context, however, the phrase referred less to reform in parish or lay life than to questions concerning the formal authority and jurisdictions of the pope and the college of cardinals or bishops or – moving down the hierarchy – of an ordinary bishop and the members of his cathedral chapter.⁶ Medieval reformers would have seen reform as a marriage of the head and the members, although given practicalities and the scale of what needed to be reformed, individuals naturally focused on either the head or the members.⁷ Moving to an institutional perspective, the so-called Gregorian Reform is perhaps the best-known reform movement and is typically seen as an attempt in capite. This is true, up to a point: the reformers collectively referred to as Gregorian (though dating to a time before Hildebrand’s 1073 election as Gregory VII) sought to withdraw the papacy from its close and contentious relationship with royal power. The Gregorian popes were trying to restore and build on a prior golden age of the ecclesia primitiva, always careful to link any reforms to normative precedent, following a statement attributed to Stephen I, bishop of Rome, 254– 257: “Let nothing be innovated except that which is part of tradition.” The challenge lay in distinguishing bad new customs from good old customs. For the Gregorian reformers, who effectively instituted a papal revolution by creating a monarchy in imitation of royal curias, lay interference

 Karl Augustin Frech, Reform an Haupt und Gliedern: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung und Verwendung der Formulierung im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992).  For a study that is more focused on the Late Middle Ages and specifically the pursuit of reform in capite et in membris, see Christopher M. Bellitto, “The Reform Context of the Great Western Schism,” in A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378 – 1417), eds. Joëlle Rollo-Koster and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 303 – 31. For examples of the phrase as a standard rhetorical and literary topos, see Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Western Schism, 1378 – 1417 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2006).

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in episcopal and abbatial appointments was a bad new custom that departed from the early church’s norms.⁸ We note, however, that the reform issue of investiture – that is, the handing over of symbols of temporal and spiritual power to an abbot or bishop by a lay lord – touched not only the highest echelons of the papacy and archbishoprics, but played out all down the hierarchical scale to the level of the parish priest appointed by the local lay authority. The Gregorian reformers sought to set a prime example at the top of that scale, which is why the cardinals ultimately received the exclusive right to elect a pope during the Middle Ages, but the reformatory goal of asserting the church’s freedom (libertas ecclesiae) to name her own bishops and abbots engaged every level of church authority in the head and the members. The Gregorian Reform was indeed among the first wholesale, top-down, broad-based institutional attempts at reform, even as it was based on earlier precedents in membris, such as the tradition of monks and nuns electing their abbots and abbesses and cathedral chapters electing their bishops. A major model for the Gregorian reformers was the founding charter of Cluny in 909 that expressly forbade lay interference in the monks’ election of their abbot. The corrupting issues of simony, concubinage, and absenteeism –with its partner, pluralism – were elements of this main problem of freedom throughout the church’s body. The flood of canon law collections during this period, culminating with Gratian’s Decretum in 1040 and the papal supplements that followed, fueled and bolstered reform in both the head and the members.⁹ Lay influence did not simply disappear, of course, and a century after Gregory VII, the struggle between the archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket and England’s King Henry II should be seen not only as a moving story of a friendship gone bad, but more significantly as a case study of the Gregorian revolution. Becket became a martyr for the reformatory goal of libertas ecclesiae; it was his role as a symbol of resistance to royal authority that caused Henry VIII to order Becket’s tomb destroyed in 1538.

3 Reform between Councils and Episcopal Supervision One place where reform in the head and the members came together were the medieval general councils, which were papal events but, at the same time, forums where bishops could compare their problems and solutions on the local and regional levels. The four Lateran councils (1123, 1139, 1179, and 1215) were increasingly centralized under the papacy; in the history of general councils dating back to Nicaea I in

 Ken A. Grant, “He Does Not Say, ‘I Am Custom’: Pope Gregory VII’s Idea of Reform,” in Reassessing Reform, 61– 83.  Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution, vol. 1., The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 47– 269.

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325, these were the first held in Rome. Medieval general councils targeted simony, concubinage, pluralism and absenteeism, and investiture as areas for reform; they mandated episcopal visitations to ensure compliance. Many of these issues were related in one way or another to investiture, which was the main reason Lateran I was called in 1123: to ratify and promulgate the Concordat of Worms of the previous year. In that agreement, the emperor Henry V gave up his right to name church officials, although his delegate could be present at their elections, as well as the right to invest bishops and abbots with the symbols of their spiritual authority. For his part, Pope Callixtus II permitted a lay lord to invest a church leader with the symbols of his temporal authority. The situation was solved on paper, if not in comprehensive practice; Lateran IV, about a century later, reiterated obvious encroachments by barring the laity from taxing the clergy or being involved in the purchase or sale of any church properties. The Lateran councils represented not only the pope’s expanding influence, but the spread of reform ideas from the church’s periphery to its center and back again. Lateran III drew bishops from Italian, Spanish, German, English, and Irish dioceses, but there were also one Hungarian bishop, a Dane, seven bishops from the Holy Land, and a few Greek observers in attendance. General councils were summative experiences, often following dozens of synods at the local level starting in about 1050, some of which were held annually. As a result of these councils, we find many directives for local bishops to exercise their office of reform and correction, particularly when it came to patrolling morality and specifically celibacy (and therefore inheritance issues), and to appoint vicars for these tasks. Bishops, too, were being watched. Lateran IV, for example, stipulated that a priest living with a woman was to be suspended, but so too was his bishop who allowed the transgression to occur. Reform directives at medieval general councils were in the main aimed at reforms at the diocesan level. Lateran III, for example, instructed that money be set aside for training parish priests – at least in cities – without cost on the candidate’s part, although a course of study was not prescribed. Lateran IV, noting that Lateran III’s directive was not being implemented, made more specific provisions for university-level education: money was to be allocated for a master to teach “grammar and other branches of study.” This endowment was to be established “not only in every cathedral church but also in other churches with sufficient resources.” In larger centers, the metropolitan church must pay “a theologian to teach scripture to priests and others and especially to instruct them in matters which are recognized as pertaining to the cure of souls.” Bishops were ordered to prepare, instruct, and examine candidates for ordination “in the divine services and the sacraments of the church,” either personally or through a vicar. Any candidate deemed ignaros et rudes was to be turned away.¹⁰ The need for reform continued, as witnessed by the continuous

 Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London/Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1:220, 240, and 248.

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calls at local, regional, and general councils for clergy to put aside common-law wives and for lay lords to cease interfering in church affairs.

4 Reform and the Laity These conciliar reforms were clearly intended to reform the Church from her highest echelons down to urban and rural parishes. In terms of canonical legislation, it is true that the person in the pew was uninvolved: he or she was not the agent but, in this case, the object of reform – or, rather, the beneficiary of good laws. This fact does not mean, however, that lay Christians were not actors in reform efforts. They were, albeit on the individual level of their personal morality and metanoia that, as was said above, is the very essence of the religious experience. It is that local experience of personal reform, hearkening back to reform’s patristic roots, that brings us to the twelfth-century Renaissance and its evangelical awakening on the individual level in the midst of institutional reform efforts that achieved moderate success.¹¹ This is where top-down reform in capite met bottom-up reform in membris, although not always amicably. Fundamentally, the evangelical awakening was a reform movement in that it sought a reappropriation of Jesus and the Church’s life from her earliest centuries. In essence, it may be seen as a twelfth-century precursor to Protestant criticisms and reformulations of Church structures in the sixteenth century.¹² Historically, the reappropriation could now occur because the vestiges of the Arian controversy, positing Jesus as superhuman but not quite divine, had finally passed. The first-millennium image employed to counter Arianism was Christ the omnipotent final judge – a stern Pantocrator – which could now fall aside in favor of a more approachable Jesus accessed through his humanity, as depicted in the gospel: a man who ate, wept, suffered, spoke with friends, slept, lived in poverty and with humility, and traveled by road and water. This imagery also served to critique and even counter the papal monarchy and local episcopal worldliness that was a byproduct of the Gregorian Reform’s challenges to lay authority. As witness, we hear Bernard of Clairvaux writing to his

 This conception of the period was explored by Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), whose contribution was reevaluated in Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, with Carol D. Lanham, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982, repr. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). See also Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). On the evangelical awakening, see M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, Jerome Taylor, ed., Lester K. Little, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), especially 239 – 69; this volume is an incomplete translation of Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957).  Katherine van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan, eds., Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), especially Euan Cameron, “Primitivism, Patristics, and Polemic in Protestant Visions of Early Christianity,” 27– 51.

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former Cistercian student, now Pope Eugenius III (1145 – 1153), in De consideratione, warning the new pope – who had sought his old abbot’s advice – that ministry and not dominion had been assigned to him by his papal election. “Go out into [the world] not as a lord but as a steward,” Bernard wrote. “This is Peter, who is known never to have gone in procession adorned with either jewels or silks, covered with gold, carried on a white horse, attended by a knight or surrounded by clamoring servants […] In this finery, you are the successor not of Peter, but of Constantine.”¹³ These criticisms turned the phrase libertas ecclesiae upside down to argue that Christians needed to be free from materialism and worldliness in capite in order to freely preach and live the gospel more radically. In the words of Peter the Chanter, a scholastic theologian in Paris who wrote about 50 years after Bernard, some traditions, rules, and customs are so numerous and cumbersome that “they weigh heavily upon those who uphold them and upon those who transgress them; unless such traditions are kept brief and few and have been instituted for the most obvious and useful reasons, they become an obstacle to obeying the divine precepts. They restrict the liberty of the gospel.”¹⁴ Itinerant preachers and their followers, whom we gather broadly under the phrase poor men’s movements (centered especially in Lombardy and Lyons, with the Waldensians as one of the larger and more organized groups), embraced Jesus’ command in Matt 25:42– 45 that whatever anyone did for the least brothers and sisters was being done for Christ himself. This active, apostolic life – biblically speaking, the embrace of Martha’s way over Mary’s¹⁵ – fueled not only social welfare and justice efforts but also mounting criticisms of devotions that were arithmetical, hollow, and had little practical application, which were notably repeated by Erasmus and Luther in the early sixteenth century. These poor little ones of Christ embraced their own poverty even as they sought to improve the lives of those around them. Believing that a gospel-focused life need not entail taking ordination or religious vows (which made them suspect in the eyes of some Church authorities, not least because their own luxurious lifestyles were being derided), these pauperes Christi sought to live as the first followers of Jesus did, especially in the normative passage Acts 4:32– 35, where the communities lived cor unum et anima una by pooling and sharing what few resources they had. The world was to be embraced as a field for evangelization and sanctification, replacing the contemptus mundi of the early medieval monastic approach. We see this personal reform impetus at work in the popular piety of the period, although scholastic humanists in university settings were offering intellectual support to these devotions at the same time, even if the proverbial twain did not meet. We might helpfully look upon this perspective as the humanism of reform.  Bernard of Clairvaux, Five Books on Consideration: Advice to a Pope, John D. Anderson and Elizabeth Keenan, trans. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1976), 60 (2.6.12), and 117 (4.3.6).  Quoted in Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, 256.  Giles Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1– 141.

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The high medieval recovery of the human Jesus recaptured from the patristic age a positive self-image that all men and women are made in the imago Dei, thereby raising the dignitas hominis. As God created the world in the role of Deus faber, so humans created products, families, and crafts, making each individual a homo faber or homo artifex. In fact, humans could strive not only to return to the glorious state of life in the Garden of Eden before the fall, but – because of Christ’s redemptive act – to achieve what Augustine of Hippo and other Western Latin fathers described as a reformatio in melius. This approach was especially suited to the times, with a commercial revolution that prompted guild members not only to regulate commerce and craftsmanship, but in addition to establish confraternities for charity and apostolic service. It flipped the top-down institutional Gregorian Reform and made individual Christians not passive objects of hierarchical reform, but instead agents of their own change on the personal level. Citing the “anthropocentric theology” of the age, grounded in a renewed humanistic interest in patristics, the historian Charles Trinkaus described the optimism of believers who were “alive, actively assertive, cunningly designing, storming the gates of heaven.”¹⁶ Devotions connected to personal reform and imbued with this optimistic sense of humanism encouraged individuals to conform as much as possible to the models of Christ, Mary, and the saints. Mary’s attraction was similar to that of the human Jesus: this was a person who suffered and was a hero, especially for women and mothers. These devotions were not restricted to prayers: the vita apostolica was lived out through a network of guild-based, para-parochial confraternities that sponsored and funded feasts, processions, and charitable activities right out of the early church – caring for widows and orphans, providing food and shelter, and spreading the faith. Moreover, the heights of sainthood were no longer reserved for the first millennium’s martyrs and missionaries. Increasingly in the Middle Ages, saints were named who were ordinary medieval folk, with more women and laity in particular being canonized.¹⁷

5 Reform in the Monasteries Monastic communities of men and women experienced a number of reform efforts as the Middle Ages progressed. Traditional religious orders dating back to the Benedictine Rule of the sixth century were recovering their origins through efforts known as the observantine movement. As one mid-twelfth-century author poetically stated the

 Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought (Chicago: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970), 1:xiv–xxiv, and 2:761– 64. In contrast, R.W. Southern morosely described the early medieval period as one fixated on “a profound sense of the littleness and sinfulness of man;” see Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), 32.  On changing notions of sanctity, see Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000 – 1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).

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phenomenon, monastic communities “are seen to flower again [reflorere] and, after having been almost overwhelmed by the winter frost and desiccated by the constant northern winds, are restored [revertuntur] to their pristine state by the new sun and warmed by the favoring breezes […] In the cloisters, as in trees, a rare fruit grew ripe. A workshop of total sanctity was set alight by the fire sent from above and fanned by violent winds.”¹⁸ There is a certain irony at work here. Tenth-century Cluniac monks and nuns saw themselves as reformed Benedictines trying to recover the purity of the independent lifestyle and governance of their earlier sixth-century forebears, which had been tainted by secular interference. Cluny’s original charter contained a model of freedom from secular interference that had attracted Gregorian attention in Rome, as was briefly noted above. Over time, even that reforming model of independence had devolved into a second wave of frequent political intervention in the appointment of abbots and abbesses. As a result of poor leadership, spiritual life and discipline had diminished dramatically. In particular, the sacralization of manual labor – so key to the original Regula – was lost when it was delegated to lay brothers and sisters (conversi); this undermined the essential democratization of the cloister, with an elite group of choir-nuns or ordained choir-monks exempted from physical work, which was now performed by an underclass of lay sisters and brothers who had not taken religious vows. In reaction to what they saw as a fading and compromising fidelity to Benedict’s Regula, even within Cluniac communities that had themselves first aimed at reform, a second generation of reforming Benedictines arose at the turn of the eleventh century. Called Cistercians based on their first foundation at Cîteaux, they reacted to Cluny with the crucial call of all reform efforts: a return to their sources (reditus ad fontes). In other words, Cistercian Benedictine reformers were reforming Cluniac Benedictine reformers. Cistercians pushed against Cluny’s subsequent clericalization, the loss of the spiritual aspects of manual labor, immersion in the feudal world (a particular irony, given the large size Cistercian granges would attain in the not-too-distant future), and elaborate liturgical rituals, vessels, and vestments. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153) trumpeted the reforming Cistercian return to Benedictine roots using Pauline language of personal reform: “And thus, drawing the integrity of the Rule over the whole tenor of their life – liturgical observance as well as daily living – they followed faithfully in its track, and, having stripped off the old self, they rejoiced to have put on the new.”¹⁹ Notably, Martin Luther was a member of observant Augustinian communities in Erfurt and Wittenberg.

 Quoted in Giles Constable, “Renewal and Reform in Religious Life: Concepts and Realities,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, 43; for a more extensive treatment of new and reforming religious orders, see Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 44– 124.  Pauline Matarasso, ed. and trans., The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century (London: Penguin, 1993), 6. The passage is from Bernard’s Exordium Parvum and refers to Col 3:9 – 10 and Eph 4:22– 24.

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Not long after this, mendicant orders sought a new way of exercising a religious life in urban environments, as the agricultural revolution of the tenth and eleventh centuries gave way to the commercial revolution of the High Middle Ages. The mendicant charism may initially be seen as an innovation instead of a renovation, but the mendicants were seeking to adapt the idea of a consecrated religious life to an apostolic ministry, which tied them in with the evangelical awakening of early church life, now flourishing in the twelfth-century renaissance. Observantine orders of monastics and mendicants continued their reform efforts throughout the medieval period, with a focus on abolishing exemptions and dispensations while concomitantly increasing solitude, poverty, and simplified prayer for cloistered men and women, or apostolic service that included lay affiliations in the case of mendicants. The pattern of revisiting past reforms progressed among mendicants as it had among monastics. Among these observant mendicants, opportunities arose for female reformers in particular to make an impact.²⁰ Fifteenth-century Franciscan reformers included Bernardino of Siena and John of Capistrano, whose followers distanced themselves from Conventuals and eventually operated as Order of Friars Minor Regular Observants. On the Dominican side, observants were led by Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua.

6 Unity of the Church and Reform Late medieval reform – at least as led by the hierarchy – was often represented by decisions deferred, as the papacy spent the fourteenth century in Avignon and then struggled through the Great Western Schism (1378 – 1417), when first two and later three popes, each with his own loyal curia and political support, contended for supremacy. These three papal lines fought not only each other but also the conciliarists, who argued that a general council and not the pope was the highest authority in the Church.²¹ Papal leadership lost what little credibility and effectiveness it had as an agent of reform. With confusion and infighting among papal claimants, it was difficult to come up with a comprehensive plan for reform (especially since the papacy itself was a central target of reform), let alone to set out a pragmatic strategy for implementation, coordination, and appraisal. Late medieval attempts at reform, especially at general councils such as Constance (1414– 1418), largely fell below the issue of unity in terms of priority, although there was a significant debate at Constance – known as the priority struggle – as to whether the council should seek unity or reform first. Nevertheless, some reform proposals were legislated at

 Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages, (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2004). For an example of an abbess leading her foundation’s reform, see Adam S. Cohen, “The Art of Reform in a Bavarian Nunnery around 1000,” Speculum 74 (1999): 992– 2010.  Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contributions of the Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (Leiden: Brill, rev. ed. 1998).

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Constance in the areas of papal provisions and clerical abuses, even if, as it turned out, they were not effectively pursued.²² Certainly the need for reform was not overlooked. For evidence, we turn to Catherine of Siena (1347– 1380), whose letters to Pope Urban VI (1378 – 1389) at the very start of the Great Western Schism demonstrated the understanding that reformatio in capite et in membris intersected. After specifically condemning the personal immorality of the clergy, Catherine called on the pope to find virtuous men to lead reform. But in all truth, most holy father, I cannot see how this can be done properly unless you totally reform the garden of your bride with good and virtuous plants. Take care to choose a company of men in whom you find virtue, holy men and unafraid of death. And do not look to their importance, but [make sure] they are shepherds who will govern their flock with solicitude. Then [choose] a company of good cardinals who will be true pillars for you and, with divine aid, will help you bear the weight of your many labors.

That leadership must aim at reform not only on its own high levels, but throughout the body of the Church. Catherine’s idea is that reform will trickle down once it takes hold in capite, although we should note that parish priests occupied a middle territory. They were clergy and technically part of the hierarchy, albeit on the lowest rung, but their daily lives were more like those of their parishioners in the body of the Church than the life of a bishop, cardinal, or pope at the head. When this happens I have no doubt that the laity will mend their ways: they will do so necessarily when they are constrained by [the clergy’s] holy teaching and honest life. This is not something to sleep on, but something to strive for all you possibly can until death, with forcefulness and neglecting nothing, for the glory and praise of God’s name.²³

7 Devotio moderna Notably, not everyone in the late Middle Ages contended that reform required hierarchical leadership. As had occurred in the high medieval period, reformers at the time of what turned out to be the eve of Luther returned to the idea of libertas ecclesiae, not with the Gregorian notion of freedom from lay interference, but with the

 Phillip H. Stump, The Reforms of the Council of Constance (Leiden: Brill, 1994); on the priority struggle specifically, see 22– 23 and 31– 44 as well as Stump, “The Council of Constance (1414– 18) and the End of the Schism,” in A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378 – 1417), 395 – 442. On late medieval reform efforts at councils, see Johannes Helmrath, “Reform als Thema der Konzilien des Spätmittelalters,” in Christian Unity: The Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438/9 – 1989, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1991), 75 – 152; and Jürgen Miethke and Lorenz Weinrich, eds., Quellen zur Kirchenreform im Zeitalter der Grossen Konzilien des 15. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995).  Quoted in Readings in Western Civilization, ed. Julius Kirshner and Karl F. Morrison, vol. 4, Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 427– 28.

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model of the pauperes Christi seeking to live the gospel free of the shackles of a worldly clergy. Some of these reformers must not be seen as dissenters, however. In northern Europe, for instance, the devotio moderna in lay and quasi-clerical formulations were like observant religious orders seeking to return ad fontes, in their case the gospels, which recalls the twelfth-century evangelical awakening.²⁴ They focused on the early church as a model but at the same time within the context of obedience to the developed power structures of Catholicism. If they criticized the clergy, it was because they were holding priests and bishops to higher standards and were therefore not anti-clerical. As Geert Groote (1340 – 1384), the Dutch spiritual father of the devotio moderna, preached: “I honor and greatly love the priest. I hate and properly abominate the fornicator.” ²⁵ Lay men and women (perhaps disillusioned with the schismatic and squabbling hierarchies occasioned especially by the Great Western Schism) centered on personal reform and interiority, which was a recovery of patristic concepts and early monastic practices aimed at recovering the imago Dei. For devotio moderna adherents, however, theirs was an apostolic effort carried out with collegial encouragement in the context of a career and family life.²⁶ The materialism of the emerging capitalist system, in the case of the Low Countries within the textiles industry, was to be rejected spiritually even as adherents of the devotio moderna lived as parents and guild members. They embraced the gospels through guided meditations in private and group study and prayer. Their imitatio Christi or vita Christi practices grew from high medieval forebears and culminated in the Imitation of Christ, attributed to Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380 – 1471), although this was just one of many meditative manuals reaching all the way back to the monastic practice of meditation in biblical scenes.²⁷ This practice, of course, endures throughout the history of spirituality; one thinks of Ignatius of Loyola’s sixteenth-century Spiritual Exercises, for instance, which invite the retreatant to picture him- or herself in a particular gospel scene and to engage the characters as if they were present.

 John Van Engen, trans., Devotio Moderna. Basic Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), and Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).  John Van Engen, “Late Medieval Anticlericalism: The Case of the New Devout,” in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 19 – 30, at 29.  Nikolaus Staubach, “Memores pristinae perfectionis: The Importance of the Church Fathers for Devotio Moderna,” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, ed. Irena Backus (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 1:405 – 69.  Constable, Three Studies, 143 – 248.

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8 Interpretations of Reform: Wycliffe and Hus Stronger and more programmatic voices of reform were raised by John Wycliffe (c. 1330 – 1384) and Jan Hus (1369 – 1415).²⁸ Like the Waldensians several centuries earlier – their contemporaries in the devotio moderna – and Erasmus, who would come later, Wycliffites and Hussites reacted strongly against arithmetical external piety, which they saw as empty of spiritual authenticity; against the rote recitation of prayers; and against a slavish fascination with the accumulation of indulgences, relics, statues, vigils, fasts, and other devotional practices. Here again we see a desire to return to the early church as the norm, although this was not a blanket assertion, since some reformers allowed for legitimate development in church structures given changes in time and place. For these sharper critics, however, the historical Rubicon was the Donation of Constantine from the early fourth century, which delineated a church that was poor, pure, and persecuted as opposed to one that would have to navigate a slippery slope toward worldliness as the centuries passed.²⁹ Wycliffe and Hus moved from reforming extant practices to calling for their abolition on the grounds that they had not been instituted explicitly by Jesus during his earthly ministry, which is why these two reformers are often seen as precursors or forerunners of Protestant beliefs.³⁰ Wycliffe’s followers, known as Lollards, rejected the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, some or all of the seven sacraments, sacramental validity in the light of clerical immorality (essentially latter-day Donatism), the papacy’s legitimacy as an institutional authority and its ownership of property (calling for “disendowment”), the juxtaposition of canon law (“human law”) with divine law as reflected in Scripture, and the hierarchy’s control of scriptural interpre The literature is vast. As recent entry points, see Ian C. Levy, ed., A Companion to John Wyclif Late Medieval Theologian (Leiden: Brill, 2006); J. Patrick Hornbeck II et al., A Companion to Lollardy (Leiden: Brill, 2016); František Šmahel in cooperation with Ota Pavlíček, eds., A Companion to Hus (Leiden: Brill, 2015); and Thomas A. Fudge, Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia (London: I.B. Taurus, 2010), and Heresy and Hussites in Late Medieval Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014).  Glenn Olsen, “The Idea of the Ecclesia Primitiva in the Writings of the Twelfth-Century Canonists,” Traditio 25 (1969): 61– 86; Louis B. Pascoe, “Jean Gerson: The Ecclesia Primitiva and Reform,” Traditio 30 (1974), 379 – 409, and “Gerson and the Donation of Constantine: Growth and Development within the Church,” Viator 5 (1974): 469 – 85.  On this oft-debated topic, see Heiko A. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981); Heiko A. Oberman. The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), and Heiko A. Oberman, ed., The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986). For an attempt to acknowledge the topic without being bogged down by the debate, see Erika Rummel, “Voices of Reform from Hus to Erasmus,” in Handbook of European History, vol. 2, Visions, Programs and Outcomes, 61: “[W]e may examine prominent voices of reform without losing sight of the fact that the Reformation of the sixteenth century blended the voices of in a manner that ultimately precludes an analysis into separate intellectual genealogies.”

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tation in favor of their own strong emphasis on individual interpretation. Hus’ positions were similar to Wycliffe’s. Christ alone, not the pope, was the true head of the Church. The pope’s role was exclusively spiritual because papal property, possessions, and power had derived not from Christ, but from the infamous Donation of Constantine. A vertical hierarchy was to be replaced with the Church’s original collegiality. It is no surprise that Hus’ memory was further tarnished in Catholic circles but raised in Protestant ones when Luther declared, “We are all Hussites.” We should note, however, that in 1999, Pope John Paul II referred to Hus with admiration as a courageous reformer and expressed regret at his execution at the Council of Constance.³¹

9 Outcomes of Medieval Reform It is clear, then, that as the sixteenth century began, reform had been tried and practiced – although it had occasionally failed – throughout the medieval Church. More success occurred on the periphery than at the center, and at the bottom than at the top, but certainly the need for reform was clear. Christians were not blind to their own problems, even as their leaders resisted criticism of their high place in the hierarchy, which stemmed institutional leadership in reform. Still, there were local synods of bishops and priests advocating reforms, albeit with mixed results, and laity were holding their priests and bishops to rising and not lowered standards – which fueled their frustration with reform’s resisters. We must also take care to recognize that there were many paths to reform at work, not all of which could be pursued with maximum effectiveness due to circumstances, contexts, and sometimes political considerations. Church historians and historical theologians now point out the vibrancy of the reforming spirit instead of the dissipation of the age, especially among lay men and women. As Marie-Dominique Chenu put it, the era was particularly marked by a lively competition between notions of conservation and innovation as well as between tradition and progress. Even though these reform efforts were not unified, they were nevertheless present in large variety. Heiko Oberman refers to the “pregnant plurality” of the medieval period, especially in the later Middle Ages. John Van Engen viewed the century right before Luther in terms of decentralized “multiple options” marked by diversity, especially on the local level, where real advances were made in mystical as well as pragmatic ways; on the personal rather than the institutional level; and above all in apostolic service.³² Reform efforts overlapped and inter Rummel, Voices of Reform from Hus to Erasmus, 63; Pope John Paul II, “Address of the Holy Father to an International Symposium on John Hus,” December 17, 1999.  Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, 310 – 30; Heiko A. Oberman, “Fourteenth-Century Religious Thought: A Premature Profile,” Speculum 53 (1978): 80 – 93; John Van Engen, “Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church,” Church History 77 no. 2 (2008): 257– 84. See also Law-

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twined even as they occasionally also clashed and corrected each other. What emerges is a way of looking at the period of medieval Church reform not as one of decadence or failure (though there are plenty of examples of both), but as a bubbling pot of well-meaning reform ideas and attempts from which Martin Luther drew.³³

rence G. Duggan, “The Unresponsiveness of the Late Medieval Church: A Reconsideration,” Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (1978): 3 – 26. N. Nowakowska, Reform Before Reform? Religious Currents in Central Europe, c. 1500, in A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe, ed. H. Louthan and G. Murdock, Leiden, 2015, 121– 26, 140 – 42.  On Luther’s Catholic context, see most recently Philip D.W. Krey and Peter D.S. Krey, eds., The Catholic Luther: His Early Writings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2016), especially on Luther’s personal devotions and spirituality; and Scott Hendrix, Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).

Euan Cameron

Religion, Reason, and Superstition from Late Antiquity to Luther’s Reform Scholars unaware of medieval theology might be tempted to assume that the antithesis between “religion” and “superstition,” and the use of “reason” to determine the relationship between the two, formed a thought process characteristic only of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the times since then. In fact, the relationship between these three terms, and the shifting meanings assigned to each, reach back into late antiquity and were discussed all through the Christian Middle Ages in the West. The uses of the term religion have evolved over time. In the first century BCE, the Roman philosopher-poet Lucretius used the term religion in a way that Voltaire might have recognized. He used the term to denote a deeply mistaken belief system, which made people anxious about terrors in the natural world that had no specific reason behind them and fearful of the intervention of malign deities who were, he argued, indifferent to human affairs.¹ The “religious” turned to their misguided beliefs when unexplained misfortune threatened or struck. Subsequently, and with the rise of Christian philosophy in late antiquity, the association of “religion” with epithets such as “true” or “orthodox” became the norm. The term “superstition” derives from Latin: its etymology is hopelessly obscure, but it was widely used in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. It translates two Greek words, which each have somewhat specialized meanings. The term deisidaimonia, used for example in Plutarch’s essay Περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας, referred to a morbid and obsessive form of religious practice, which the author considered to be worse than atheism.² The Apostle Paul was aware of the term. In Acts 17:22, Paul observed how the Athenians, with their vast array of altars by the roadside, were “extremely religious […] in every way.”³ Paul’s term δεισιδαιμονεστέρος, sometimes translated as “extremely religious,” could equally well have been rendered as “most superstitious.” Secondly, the Greek term ethelothreskia was also used in Greek antiquity to denote the tendency to worship creatures of one’s own choice or invention. The Pauline corpus also used this exact term when, in Colossians 2:23, the apostle (or more likely one of his followers) referred to detailed ritual regulations as “having an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety [and] humility.”⁴ In Latin, the  See Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius (Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 10; John Colman, “Lucretius on Religion,” Perspectives on Political Science 38 no. 4 (Fall 2009): 228 – 39.  See Hugh Bowden, “Before Superstition and After: Theophrastus and Plutarch on Deisidaimonia,” Past and Present 199, supplement 3 (2008): 56 – 71; Dale B. Martin, Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2004).  Ἄνδρες ᾿Aθηναῖοι, κατὰ πάντα ὡς δεισιδαιμονεστέρους ὑμᾶς θεωρῶ.  Λόγον μὲν ἔχοντα σοφίας ἐν ἐθελοθρησκίᾳ καὶ ταπεινοφροσύνῃ. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-006

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term superstitio assimilated all the associations of the terms deisidaimonia and ethelothreskia to include practices that fell outside the scope of strict Christian orthodoxy, especially those that appeared to lack foundation both in Scripture and in reason. How precisely Christian theologians defined “superstition” will form part of the theme of this chapter. The term reason also calls for a little reflection. Scholars of the post-Enlightenment age sometimes equate “reason” with modernizing skepticism about religion in any aspect. Medievalists perceive matters differently. Especially after the recovery of Aristotelian logic in Western Europe in the twelfh century, theologians valued “reason” very highly indeed as a tool to discern what were and what were not appropriate extrapolations of the faith into theological doctrines. Thomas Aquinas argued that right reason, properly applied, would lead to conclusions about the divine economy which were, at the very least, compatible with revealed truth (especially in the Summa against the Pagans). Later scholastics became more wary of some of Thomas’ sweeping confidence about the rationality of the divine order. Nevertheless, the Latin adverb rationabiliter was applied as a criterion to distinguish permissible from impermissible religious acts – for instance, when the second Dictum of the Paris Faculty of Theology of 1398 decreed, “An observance intended to achieve a certain effect, which may not reasonably be looked for, neither from God working miraculously, nor from natural causes, must among Christians be regarded as superstitious, and suspect of a secret pact with demons, whether implicit or explicit.”⁵ So, when Luther famously said at Worms in 1521 that he would not recant “[u]nless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason,” he was not urging some proto-modern argument for the primacy of rational thought: he was applying the very familiar intellectual self-discipline that he had learned as a theological student.⁶

1 The Inherited Lore “Superstitious” beliefs and practices existed in a complex, multi-layered context of ideas, assumptions, and lore among the peoples of pre-modern Europe. Each language and people had their own reservoir of such lore, which varied from culture to culture but also shared common elements. Only a few general themes can be covered here. First, traditional lore supplied a whole range of explorations for misfortune, illness, and disease. Some illnesses were entirely natural; some might be natural in character but be imposed by sorcery; some might be quite supernatural, and these could be diagnosed (so some argued) by such abnormalities as the presence of unexplained foreign matter appearing in the bodies of patients. The most familiar –  Jean Gerson, Joannis Gersonii Doctoris Theologi & Cancellarii Parisiensis Opera Omnia, ed. Ludovicus Ellies du Pin, 5 vols., 2nd ed. (Hagae Comitum: P. de Hondt, 1728), vol. 1, cols. 210 – 19.  Martin Luther, Luther’s Works: American Edition, eds., J.J. Pelikan, H.C. Oswald, and H.T. Lehmann (Philadelphia/St. Louis: Fortress Press, 1955 – 86), 32:112.

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and most widely discussed – of such phenomena was the so-called “evil eye,” which is attested as far back as antiquity in many parts of the world. Those who looked with ill will at another person, especially a child, were believed to be able to cause them to become sick. Western theologians reported the belief in the evil eye quite widely in the later Middle Ages and took a variety of views on how the transfer of evil intentions functioned and how it could best be protected against.⁷ An important aspect of the lore of pre-modern Europe was the large and exotic range of non-human intelligent beings who were believed to exist in the universe. To the theological mind, this issue was quite simple. God created angels, who were incorporeal, spiritual essences with intelligence and free will. Some fell through rebellion against God in the very early days of creation and were deprived of many (though not all) of their special attributes and abilities. After their fall, the evil angels (who were equivalent to the demons – or daimonia – of classical antiquity) could only wish harm to people. Yet to the beliefs of traditional popular culture, this simple binary seemed far too crude. Traditional lore postulated the existence in the world of a range of invisible or semi-visible spirit beings, endowed with emotions, psychological needs, and the capacity to be offended if maltreated. Such creatures existed in association with a range of different environments. Some were understood to be domestic spirits, semi-visible servants who might occasionally help with the housework (such as the spirit “Hutgin” or “Hudeckin,” who supposedly worked in the kitchen of the bishop of Hildesheim in 1132);⁸ or they might help, or pretend to help, the miners in the mines of Germany.⁹ They might belong in rivers or woods. Most surprising perhaps – or perhaps not – was the considerable lore of stories about romantic or sexual relations between spirit-creatures and human beings. Some of the most famous moral fables built around this theme included the story of Melusine, the water-spirit who married a human husband on the condition that he never observe her in her weekly bath, when the lower part of her body reverted to its fish-like form; or the related but distinct German tale of Peter von Stauffenberg and the water-spirit, referred to in several sixteenth-century sources. A Czech version of the latter story fed into Jaroslav Kvapil’s libretto for Dvorák’s opera Rusalka. ¹⁰

 See, for instance, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia q. 117 a. 3 ad 2; quoted by Martín, of Arles y Andosilla, Tractatus insignis et exquisitissimus de superstitionibus in Tractatus Universi Juris, 11 pt. 2 (Lyons, 1584), fos. 402v-8r, sects. 35 – 6. The ὀφθαλμὁς βάσκανος is mentioned, e. g., by Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, 7.2, where the power to “fascinate” is ascribed to certain barbarian peoples. For some of the classical lore on the subject, see Matthew W. Dickie, “Heliodorus and Plutarch on the Evil Eye,” Classical Philology 86 no. 1 (January 1991), 17– 29.  Johannes Trithemius, Joannis Trithemii [. . .] Annalium Hirsaugiensium (St Gallen, 1690), 1:395 – 97.  Johann Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance, eds. George Mora and Benjamin Kohl, trans. John Shea, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 73 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991; repr. 1998), 72– 74.  On the tales of Mélusine, see Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds., Melusine of Lusignan: Founding Fiction in Late Medieval France (Athens, GA/London: University of Georgia Press, 1996); and Claudia Steinkämper, Melusine – vom Schlangenweib zur “Beauté mit dem Fischschwanz”:

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Deeply embedded in vernacular culture was the belief that signs, symbols, and forms of words – even (or especially) if their meaning was unclear or their language unknown – could have protective effects in the form of amulets or healing properties in the form of charms and spells. These amulets could take a multiplicity of forms. Some were entirely orthodox sources of support and help found within the culture of Catholic Europe, such as the amulet made from consecrated wax known as the Agnus Dei. ¹¹ Similarly orthodox were other consecrated “sacramentals” – such as holy water, salt, wax, and many other substances. There was no clear boundary between the formula of exorcism, intended to drive an evil spirit away from a place or person, and the vernacular rhyme intended to heal a specific illness.¹² At the most exotic end of the market, unorthodox physicians – such as the notorious empiric Thephrastus Paracelsus – would recommend the use of medallions carved with a range of symbols and characters, sometimes in multiple alphabets and sometimes lacking any obvious meaning, to be worn against illness, impotence, or misfortune.¹³ Finally, for the purposes of this brief review, pre-modern culture embraced a whole range of techniques for divining the future. Practitioners of divination claimed to be able to anticipate the outcomes of journeys or marriages and especially to find lost goods and identify the thieves who had supposedly taken them. Divination intersected with other forms of magical lore, insofar as a diviner might diagnose an illness as caused by a combination of spirit- and human activity and recommend a traditional means of curing it. Often the techniques of divination appealed either to the supposed transparency of objects (a bowl of water, a crystal, or a polished mirror) or to the symbolic purity and clarity associated with virginity (through the use of children as diviners, who were asked to look into water or crystal and report what they saw).¹⁴ Like curative magic, divination often worked parasitically on the apparatus of official and approved religion. One of the most obvious means to do this was to use Geschichte einer literarischen Aneignung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007); on Peter von Stauffenberg, see Johann Fischart, ed., Ernewerte Beschreibung der wolgedenckwirdigen Alten und warhafften wunderlichen Geschicht Vom Herren Petern von Stauffenberg, genant Diemringer aus der Ortenaw bey Rhein, Rittern: Was wunders ihme mit einer Meervein oder Meerfähe seye gegegnet. Darzu ein außführlicher Bericht und Vorred … (Magdeburg, 1588); another edition of the same text was printed in Strasbourg in 1588. See the discussion in Euan Cameron, “Angels, Demons, and Everything in Between: Spiritual Beings in Early Modern Europe,” in Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period, eds. Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1– 36, here 8 – 11.  Luther published a well-known rhyme about the Agnus, with a severely critical commentary, in a short pamphlet entitled Von den geweihten Wasser und des Papsts Agnus Dei, published in Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883 – 1948), 50:668 – 73.  For the elision between exorcisms and charms, see Felix Hemmerli, “Tractatus I de exorcismis,” in Malleus Maleficarum, eds. Henricus Institoris et al. (Frankfurt: Nicolaus Bassaeus, 1588), 2:378 – 97; “Tractatus Secundus exorcismorum seu adiurationum,” Malleus Maleficarum, 2:397– 421.  On Paracelsus’ recommendation of amulets, see Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, [Paracelsus], Opera Omnia (Geneva, 1658), 2:695 – 718.  On the use of children as diviners, see Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 378 – 80.

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the days of the ecclesiastical calendar as points to discern future weather or good fortune. This or that saint’s day would be good for a particular activity, or the weather on another saint’s day might foretell the weather for the rest of the season.¹⁵

2 Early Christian Critiques The critique of “superstitious” practices reaches back into early Christian antiquity, to the time when Christianity had to vindicate its right to exist against the beliefs and practices of Greco-Roman religion and the folk-beliefs of the empire. Christian demonology was called into existence in order to classify the gods and demigods of paganism in the Christian worldview and to make a solid argument that continuing to worship them was no longer an option for the Christian believer. However, one should not infer from this fact that the themes of popular belief in the Middle Ages represented “survivals” of ancient paganism in any meaningful way. The arguments that survived into a later period may have been crafted in an ambience of pagan resistance and decline; however, in the medieval context, “superstitions” were thoroughly Christian, imbued and saturated with the culture of the prevailing faith and its apparatus. One of the first – but by no means the only – most important authors to deal with these topics was Augustine of Hippo. In his massive work of pro-Christian and anti-pagan polemic, City of God, Augustine devoted much of books 2 and 3 to demonstrating that the pagan gods were not creatures of the imagination, but evil spirits who had represented themselves as deities to human beings.¹⁶ The legends of the Greco-Roman pantheon provided Augustine with ample ammunition to represent the gods as immoral, unchaste corrupters of humanity: they would even spread legends about wrong actions – which they could have committed but did not – in order to further the reputation of their cults. It followed that such perverters of moral standards were not morally neutral beings, but positively evil. Augustine’s metaphysic of spirits, influenced by his Neoplatonism, was less clear-cut than that of his medieval followers and successors. He considered it possible for demons to have sexual relationships with human beings, which raised the issue of whether they were entirely incorporeal.¹⁷

 On divination in general, see Caspar Peucer, Commentarius de Praecipuis Divinationum Generibus: in quo a` prophetijs diuina autoritate traditis, et physicis praedictionibus, separantur diabolicae fraudes & superstitiosae obseruationes, & explicantur fontes ac causae physicarum praedictionum, diabolicae et superstitiosae confutatae damnantur (Wittenberg: Johannes Crato, 1553; enlarged eds. in 1560 and 1593); Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 134– 50.  For a modern translation, see Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).  Augustine, City of God, 2 (in general), esp. 2:10, 14, 17– 22, 24– 25; Dyson ed. pp. 61, 66 – 67, 69 – 82, 84– 8.

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However, in many respects, Augustine gave a very clear guide to those who would analyze magical beliefs and lore in the centuries up to Luther’s time. Augustine was clear that demons were created beings, fallen angels, demonic spirits who did not possess quasi-divine foreknowledge or the power to subvert the order of nature. Consequently, any apparently marvelous things which demons performed could not be true miracles. At most, they used their superior understanding of the potentialities latent in the natural world to generate surprising but fundamentally natural effects. Similarly, when demons claimed to be able to foretell the future (for instance, through the oracle, which supposedly foretold the demolition of the temple of Serapis at Alexandria), they merely used their natural sagacity, and sometimes their physical speed, to report things that were about to happen, based on observing those things from a distance.¹⁸ Both of these arguments about the “natural” abilities of demonic spirits would be revisited and repeated throughout the medieval analysis of folk beliefs. Moreover, Augustine adumbrated – albeit in a rhetorical rather than a precise way – one of the key arguments that underpinned the medieval rationalist analysis of the effects of superstitious practices. Augustine argued that all superstitions “come from some pestilent association of people and demons, as it were established by a contract of unfaithful and treacherous friendship.”¹⁹ The notion that magical and superstitious activity rested on some kind of agreement, some kind of intentional collaboration between human beings and spiritual creatures, would be articulated and developed as one of the primary arguments against charms and spells in the Christian Middle Ages. What Augustine had possibly intended as a rhetorical flourish, the scholastics would develop as a highly specific and detailed claim: some agreements would be mutually intended and explicit; many – perhaps most – would be implicit and, as it were, accidental. Misguided and foolish humans would perform acts which they thought were morally neutral, but which in reality involved the accidental invocation of evil spirits. There was far more to the late antique and early medieval heritage on these subjects than the writings of Augustine, important as those were. The lives and writings of the saints and bishops of the Church provided abundant material about the struggle against demonic forces. Sulpicius Severus – in his life of Martin of Tours, written not long after the fourth-century Gaulish bishop’s career – described numerous encounters between Martin and the forces of paganism, where the sanctity of the holy man brought victory against dark forces.²⁰ Late antique bishops – such as Caesarius

 Augustine, “De divinatione daemonum liber unus,” in Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, ed. Jacques Paul Migne, vol. 40, cols. 581– 91.  Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, ed. and trans. R. P. H. Green, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1995), ii. xxiii (36): ‘ex quadam pestifera societate hominum et daemonum, quasi pacta infidelis et dolosae amicitiae constituta.’  Sulpicius Severus, Vie de Saint Martin, Tome I: Introduction, Texte et Traduction, ed. Jacques Fontaine, Sources Chrétiennes 133 (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1967), esp. chs. 11– 13; see also Clare Stan-

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of Arles and Martin of Braga – in their sermons and treatises spoke out against, and coincidentally documented, the folk beliefs which were, by that time, largely confined to country areas far from Latin Christian urban centers.²¹ One of the most convincing proofs of the sanctity of a pastoral bishop or an ascetic leader was that such people could see through the illusions of demons. Several of these hagiographic legends persisted in clerical culture to the end of the Middle Ages. Numerous later writers quoted the story, incorporated into the Golden Legend, according to which Germanus of Auxerre, the fourth-century bishop and theologian, saw through the apparition of some demons who appeared at a nocturnal feast in a village in the guise of some of the villagers’ neighbors.²² Similarly, in the Lausiac History, Palladius reported the story of how a young woman was presented to Saint Macarius of Egypt, having apparently been turned into a horse by sorcery. The saint could see through the demonic illusion, but had to persuade the others that in fact the young woman was still perfectly human.²³ Martin Luther would find this idea – that the power of demons rested chiefly in the raising up of illusions to deceive people – irresistibly attractive. He quoted the story of Macarius of Egypt and the young woman multiple times, though unaccountably he reported the young woman as having been turned into a cow rather than a horse.²⁴ A final genre of writing where the evidence of superstitious beliefs came to be recorded was the early collections of texts that would become the corpus of canon law. Besides Augustine (many of whose dicta would end up in the corpus), the encyclopedic writings of Isidore of Seville contributed to this heritage, especially in the area of divination. Regino of Prüm, Burchard of Worms, and Ivo of Chartres played a role in collecting texts, which impacted the Church’s response to superstition:

cliffe, St. Martin and his Hagiographer: History and Miracle in Sulpicius Severus (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).  William E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th series, 22 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chs. 7– 8, esp. 210 – 26; Martin of Braga, Martin von Bracaras Schrift De Correctione Rusticorum, zum ersten Male vollständig und in verbessertem Text herausgegeben, ed. Carl Paul Caspari (Christiania: Mallingschen Buchdruckerei, 1883). On these texts, see also Dieter Harmening, Superstitio: Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1979).  [Jacobus de Voragine] The Golden Legend; or, Lives of the saints, as Englished by William Caxton, 7 vols. (London: J.M. Dent and Co., 1900), 3:205 – 6; see Bernadette Filotas, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005), 63.  Palladius of Aspuna, The Lausiac History, trans, John Wortley (Athens, OH: Cistercian Publications; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015), ch. 17.6. The story is also found in Rufinus, Vitae Patrum, ch. 28, in Migne (ed.) Patrologia, Series Latina, 21:451. William Harmless (Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism [Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2004], 297) notes that there were two different versions of the story, one where the transformation was illusory and another where it was real.  LW 24:75n46; also vol. 26, where Luther expounds on Galatians 3:2.

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many of their writings found their way into Gratian’s Decretum in the mid-twelfth century. Canon law contributed to the field chiefly by classifying and organizing the phenomena, especially different kinds of sortilegium (which originally referred to the casting of lots, but became the ultimate source of the word “sorcery”) and different types of illicit divination of the future. In one area, canon law shaped belief and judicial practice for centuries. The corpus included a decree misattributed to the Council of Ancyra (Ankhara) of 314, which directed bishops to dissuade women from the belief that they could experience out-of-body rides in the company of pagan goddesses. It insisted that all such things happened only in the imagination. Appropriate penance should be administered.²⁵ Only in the mid-fifteenth century would the authority of this canon be challenged by those who claimed that witches could really fly.

3 The Scholastic Analysis of Superstition Consideration of canon law collections brings us to the beginning of the scholastic analysis of religion and superstition, as it developed from the twelfth century onward and was still widely discussed on the very eve of the Reformation. Scholastic theology took its form and many of its debates from the first great systematic treatise of the period, Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences. The Sentences offered something more like an agenda for debate and a series of suggested approaches rather than a fully articulated theological program. In that aspect lay its genius: the work could be interpreted, commented on, debated, and pushed in a great variety of ways. Consequently, nearly every major theologian of the later Middle Ages wrote a commentary on it, and every theological student of the period studied it. The book’s title defined roles in the medieval theological academy: a Sententiarius was a graduate of the second intermediate degree in the theology faculty and could serve as the faculty member charged with lecturing on the Sentences. ²⁶ The structure of Lombard’s work limited his impact on the question of superstition to one large area and one critically important but very small subsection of his book. First, in book 2, he discussed the origin and nature of angels in a way that foreshadowed the sophistication of later medieval angelology. He articulated what became the standard view: demonic spirits were fallen angels who had been created good but fell through rebellion, because of pride, in the very early stages of creation.

 Gratian, Decretum, in Corpus Juris Canonici, ed. Aemilius Ludouicus Richter and Aemilius Friedberg (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1959), 1, cols. 1030 – 1.  See John Marenbon, Later Medieval Philosophy (1150 – 1350): An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1987/1991), 22. The text of the Sentences is edited in [Peter Lombard], Sententiarum libri quatuor, per Joannem Aleaume . . . pristino suo nitori vere’ restituti, 4 vols. (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1853); and in an electronic edition in the series CLCLT–2: CETEDOC library of Christian Latin texts (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994).

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Evil spirits were, after their fall, irretrievably and incurably bent on doing evil and causing harm. In one short chapter of distinction 7, Lombard insisted that the magic arts derived their efficacy from the power and knowledge of the demon: their powers were given them by God to deceive the bad and to warn or test the good.²⁷ In another, quite remote section of the fourth book of the Sentences, Lombard discussed the sacrament of marriage. Here he raised the issue of those who were unable to have sexual intercourse because they were impeded by sorcery.²⁸ The context was to consider what kinds of impediments might invalidate a marriage, but Lombard had unwittingly created a space for innumerable subsequent discussions of sorcery and the legitimate means to resist or repel it. Thomas Aquinas explored many of the same themes in a series of both major and minor works. Aquinas was clearly fascinated by angelology and by the theory, if not always the practical details, of magic and superstition.²⁹ Besides his Summa Theologica and Summa contra Gentiles, which addressed angels and demons as part of a larger systematic treatment, Aquinas also wrote two shorter treatises which focused specifically on these problems – the Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis (Disputed Question on Spiritual Creatures) and the Quaestiones disputatae de malo (Disputed Questions on Evil), both composed toward the end of his life.³⁰ Given that many of the pastoral theologians who addressed the issue of superstition in the later Middle Ages were Dominicans, it is not surprising that the Dominican Aquinas exercised considerable influence over the literature as a whole. Aquinas aspired to stabilize his discipline by demonstrating the convergence of reason – used properly and within its proper sphere – and revelation in establishing the principles of theology. In the case of angels, that meant defining with ever greater precision their attributes, abilities, and limitations. Angels were all creatures of God – incorporeal, physically incorruptible, and immortal. However, their creaturely status imposed certain limitations. They could not truly know the future, nor introspect the secrets of the human heart. They could not perform true miracles: all these feats belonged to God alone. However, angels – and this applied to fallen angels especially – had the power to generate illusions, either by manipulating and moving around rarefied matter (so that something genuinely appeared to the senses that was not what it seemed) or by interfering with the humors of human perception (such that the mind saw something that was not really there at all).³¹ In the Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas added an intriguing reverse argument about the charms and spells

 Lombard, Sentences, bk. 2, dist. 7, ch. 6 (sometimes also listed as ch. 38).  Lombard, Sentences, bk. 4, dist. 34, ch. 3 (sometimes also listed as ch. 200).  Thomas, Aquinas, Opera Omnia, available at http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html: Corpus Thomisticum, subsidia studii ab Enrique Alarco´n, collecta et edita (Pampilonae: Ad Universitatis Studiorum Navarrensis aedes, Fundación Tomás de Aquino, 2000 – 2009).  Accessible texts of these shorter works are available at: http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/qds. html and http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/qdm01.html.  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia q. 50, a. 57.

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used in magic. He argued that the rites used in magical practices must express an appeal to an intelligent substance. Since magical rituals were often used to procure sinful or indecent things, and since they involved irrational, illusory, or deceptive claims, these could not be appeals to good spirits – that is, blessed angels. Therefore, they must constitute appeals to spirits who must have fallen from the grace of God through disobedience. From the existence of magic spells, Aquinas deduced the fall of angels.³² In book 2, part 2 of the Summa Theologica, Aquinas dealt in the abstract with religion and its opposites, unbelief and superstition. In what became a classic phrase, he defined superstition as “religion defective by excess,” in the sense that worship was offered to an inappropriate object or with an unlawful range of activities. Aquinas subdivided “superstition” into three categories: idolatry, divination, and what he called “superstitious observances.” The latter Thomas defined as rituals and signs which had no reasonable connection to their supposed object. They were therefore supervacua signa – signs that, in and of themselves, signified nothing.³³ Thomas’ treatment of a potentially exotic subject, while fairly definitive in terms of metaphysics, appeared extremely spare and lacking in terms of actual examples or observed practices. One exception, which would prove extremely influential, concerned the area of amulets.³⁴ Amulets – physical objects carried or worn on the person to ward off misfortune or to obtain spiritual protection – posed something of a problem for theologians. On the one hand, many amulets were in common use which enjoyed either tacit approval or explicit support from the Church. The wax Agnus Dei was intentionally marketed by the highest Church authorities. The first chapter of St. John’s Gospel was widely believed to possess supreme protective powers by the very fact of its powerful proclamation of the incarnation.³⁵ On the other hand, amulets provided a ready opportunity for those who wished to compose spurious or “dangerous” charms and spells, or to compose shapes and patterns which claimed to contain magical potency but had no clear meaning. Such supervacua signa raised, in the theological mind, the constant fear that they would serve as signals to demons. Amulets, according to Thomas, were in principle acceptable only as long as they contained no unknown signs or names, no falsehoods, and no meaningless symbols, but only contained or represented the approved prayers and symbols of the Church. This passage would not only be quoted very frequently in more circumstantial treatises on superstition, it would – in some instances – be treated as a template for the regulation of all potentially superstitious activities in general.³⁶

 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3:105 – 9.  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa–IIae q. 96 a. 1.  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa –IIae q. 96 a. 4.  See, for instance, Silvestro Mazzolini Prierias, De Strigimagarum Demonumque Mirandis Libri iii (Rome: Antonius Bladis, 1521), sig. ff iir  Johannes Nider, Preceptorium Divine Legis (Basle: Berthold Ruppel, c. 1470), prec. 1, ch. 11, sect. 26; Martín, of Arles y Andosilla, Tractatus insignis et exquisitissimus de superstitionibus, sect. 40.

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4 Late Medieval Pastoral Applications From around 1350, there began to appear a range of much more specialized treatises on superstitions – often with that precise title. These applied the scholastic analysis to real circumstances, at least as their authors claimed to have encountered them. The works on superstitions belonged to a variety of genres. Sometimes vernacular beliefs and practices were explored as part of a catechetical exposition of the Ten Commandments – as in works by Nikolaus of Dinkelsbühl, the anonymous author of the Middle English tract Dives and Pauper; and Martin Luther.³⁷ Like Luther’s, some of these pastoral treatises took the form of cycles of sermons for popular consumption.³⁸ Some texts offered a fairly encyclopedic coverage of different forms of superstition and magic, with pastoral exhortations to avoid them – as in the closely contemporary Spanish works of Martín of Arles y Andosilla, Martín de Castanega, and Pedro Ciruelo.³⁹ Some comprised fairly short “cases of conscience” in which a theologian addressed a very particular dubious practice and gave an opinion on each. Sometimes they did so with considerable subtlety, as in the early fifteenth-century texts by Henrik of Gorcum and Jean Gerson. Some tracts – such as the rambling, anecdotal composition produced by the gossipy Dominican friar Johannes Nider, with the title Formicarius – defy categorization.⁴⁰ Nevertheless, all of these works shared certain common assumptions grounded in the scholastic analysis from which they derived. They also differed from each other in certain key aspects. The most important common piece of explanatory argument found in these works concerned the way that magical or superstitious charms and spells must be supposed to work. First, theologians insisted that the charms and spells used in superstitious practice could not by a purely natural means achieve the results that they were supposed to. As several pointed out, written charms

 Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl’s work is edited in Karin Baumann, Aberglaube für Laien: zur Programmatik und Überlieferung spätmittelalterlicher Superstitionenkritik, 2 vols. (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1989); Dives and Pauper, ed. Priscilla Heath Barnum, 3 vols., Early English Text Society 275, 280, and 323 (London: Oxford University Press, 1976 – 2004); Martin Luther, Decem Praecepta wittenbergensi predicata populo. Per P. Martinum Luther Augustinianum (Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1518).  Johannes Geiler, von Kaisersberg, Die Emeis, dis ist das büch von der Omeissen (Strasbourg: Johannes Grieninger, 1517).  Martín, of Arles y Andosilla, Tractatus insignis et exquisitissimus de superstitionibus; Martín de Castañega, Tratado de las supersticiones y hechizerias y de la possibilidad y remedio dellas, 1529 (Madrid: Sociedad de Bibliofilos Espanoles, Segunda Epoca, 17, 1946); Ciruelo, Pedro, Reprouacion delas supersticiones y hechizerias: Libro muy utile y necessario a todos los buenos christianos, etc. (Salamanca: P. de Castro, a costa del honrrado varon G. de Milis, 1539).  Heinrich von Gorkum, Tractatus de supersticiosis quibusdam casibus (Esslingen: Conrad Fyner, 1473); an early modern edition of Formicarius is Johannes Nider, De visionibus ac revelationibus: opus rarissimum historiis Germaniæ refertissimum, anno 1517, Argentinæ editum (Helmstedt: Paulus Zeisingius, Salomon Schnorrius, 1692).

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were just ink and parchment or paper, spoken words just vibrating air: there was no rational cause why such material should heal or harm, certainly not if the ink was distributed in one pattern rather than another.⁴¹ This point seems to us self-evident: however, medical and other writers of this period did not necessarily espouse such rigid rationalism. In some quarters, it was argued that the shapes and patterns used in amulets, or the words used in charms, might in some way resonate with natural cosmic forces and thus have effects in the real world. Pastoral theologians stood out against this kind of thinking. Consequently, the vast majority of theological commentators on superstition developed, with some sophistication, the arguments already adumbrated by Augustine and Aquinas. They argued that someone who used a spell or charm “knew, or ought to know” that such charms were per se ineffective.⁴² Therefore, the only function of a charm could be to send a message to another intelligent being. There were only two categories of intelligent creatures: human beings and angelic spirits. Since charms usually related to physical desires and needs, which were not the business of good angels, they could (by elimination) only be addressed to evil spirits or demons. By deploying a charm, the superstitious person was implicitly, tacitly asking demonic forces to intervene on his or her behalf. Such behavior constituted an “implicit pact,” which – while not as reprehensible as the explicit pact of the demon-conjuring Faustian sorcerer or the witch – was nevertheless a serious religious crime. It made no difference that the charmer might intend only beneficial effects for himor herself or for others, nor that there was no explicit intention to involve evil spirits. By the very fact of using a charm, the spell-caster was involving and, as it were, invoking demons. The demons would often respond by making the charm appear to be effective, with the intention of drawing the superstitious person deeper and deeper into demonic magic. As the post-Reformation Catholic author Friedrich Förner, suffragan bishop of Bamberg, remarked in a sermon published in 1626, superstition was the “learning of the first alphabet in demonolatry: people who learn and accept one diabolical technique will then progress to something more involved; superstition is the ‘devil’s novitiate.’”⁴³ It was extremely difficult, one supposes, to persuade ordinary people that their protective charms and healing spells, intended to achieve good effects, were in any

 Martin Plantsch, Opusculum de sagis maleficis (Pforzheim: Thomas Anshelm, 1507), sigs. b viv– viiv; Pedro Ciruelo’s A Treatise Reproving all Superstitions and Forms of Witchcraft: Very Necessary and Useful for all Good Christians Zealous for their Salvation, trans. E. A. Maio and D. W. Pearson (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1977), 205.  Jacobus van Hoogstraten (c. 1460 – 1527), Tractus magistralis declarans quam graviter peccent querentes auxilium a maleficis; Contra petentes remedia a maleficis (Cologne: Martinus de Werdena, 1510), ch. 1.  Friedrich Förner, Panoplia armaturae Dei, adversus omnem superstitionum, divinationum, excantationum, demonolatriam, et universas magorum, veneficorum, et sagarum, et ipsiusmet Sathanae insidias, praestigias et infestationes (Ingolstadt: Gregorius Haenlinius, 1626), 62.

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sense part of the dark forces. The problem was made worse by the fact that medieval magic persistently included many forms of words, elements, and materials borrowed from traditional religious practice. If one had viewed late medieval religious culture with the eyes of a sociologist, one would have observed, in all probability, a seamless spectrum of religious practice – from entirely orthodox rituals through what have been called “folklorized” rituals⁴⁴ and local variants of worship practices, to exotic and unofficial forms of exorcism, to clearly magical spells that sought to deploy the supposed names of God (often taken from barely understood Hebrew words) for the manipulation of cosmic power. As Eamon Duffy observed years ago, one finds charms inscribed into otherwise orthodox books of hours and primers.⁴⁵ Pastoral theologians showed awareness of this challenge. People, they reported, would ask, “How could something which included the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary or the sign of the Cross be harmful?” The austere but rational response of the theologians was to say that such misuse of sacred words or consecrated objects merely added the offense of sacrilege to that of superstition. In fact, such para-religious rites could be regarded as the “devil’s sacraments,” false consecrations, or “execrations.”⁴⁶ Pastoral theology, in multiple respects, seemed determined to try to convince the less-educated that things which they believed were possible in the realm of magic were really not so, or occurred only in illusion and deception. Two examples will illustrate this phenomenon. First, popular lore, as well as poetic imaginations in classical literature, made a great deal of the possibility of human beings being transformed into animals or other creatures. Theology categorically insisted that to transform one thing into another required a divine miracle, and no inferior spirit could perform it. Therefore, all supposed transformations – of women into cats or horses, or men into wolves or swine – only appeared as illusions afflicting the senses both of the person transformed and of those who observed the supposed transformation. Stories of zoomorphic transformations abounded in the European imagination of the period; theological texts insisted that they were all deceptions. This argument involved theologians in reasoning away not only vernacular tales, but also classical fables such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Perhaps surprisingly, this repertoire of classical legends seems to have been treated as though it were fact rather than decorative fiction. Secondly, all the literary and imaginative references to romantic and sexual liaisons between human beings and spirits – with the accompanying jealousy and possessiveness on both sides – were vigorously reinterpreted. Demons, as incorporeal creatures, could not feel bodily passions such as lust or jealousy. The only emotions

 See, for instance, R. W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: A&C Black, 1987), 17– 18.  Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1992; rev. ed. 2005), 266 – 300.  Plantsch, Opusculum de sagis maleficis, sigs. b viiv-c ir; Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 98 – 99.

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of which they were capable were pride and malice. Moreover, the abundant lore of human-demonic hybrids, of children supposedly born to such encounters, was spurious. As Aquinas argued and nearly everyone else followed, the only way in which demonic sex could be fertile would be if the same demon appeared in female form to a male, then stole semen from the male and appeared in male form to a woman whom the demon then impregnated with the stolen material. In such circumstances, the child born would be fully and completely human, even if the process of generation was out of the ordinary.⁴⁷ This argument, shared with the public in (for instance) the sermons of Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg at Strasbourg, forced the conclusion that one of the staples of European lore, the “changeling child” supposedly produced by demonic intervention in human sexuality, was either a myth or an entirely illusory being. That did not stop many religious writers, from William of Auvergne up to and including Martin Luther, describing the phenomenon.⁴⁸ Finally, theological writers expended much time and energy in a probably futile attempt to persuade ordinary people not to use counter-magic to repel or remedy the consequences of hostile sorcery. It was relatively common, at least according to the surviving testimonies, for people to blame their misfortunes – especially supposedly abnormal illnesses in children, dryness in cows, unexpected storms damaging the crops, or even impotence in men – on hostile magical practices. Folk-healers would diagnose problems as caused by “bad” magic and offer “good” magic to remedy its consequences. Some of the most circumstantial writing by Dominican theologians addressed this question. For example, the treatise entitled How gravely those people sin who seek help from sorcerers, published by the Cologne theologian Jacob van Hoogstraten (c. 1460 – 1527) in 1510, sought to convince people not to use counter-magic.⁴⁹ Instead, as (for example) Silvestro Mazzolini of Priero argued, people should use the entirely acceptable resources and techniques offered by the Church. Some preachers and pastoral writers enumerated these techniques in meticulous detail. Martin Plantsch’s list – comprising penitence, exorcisms, holy water, salt, candles, palms, herbs, and relics or other holy things associated with the saints – was copied nearly verbatim by Geiler von Kaysersberg in his cycle of Strasbourg

 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Iª q. 51 a. 3 ad 6. For detailed discussion of this theme, see Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 61 ff.  Geiler von Kaisersberg, Die Emeis, sermon 34; William of Auvergne, De Universo, pt. 2 sect. 3 ch. 25, in Guilelmi Alverni … Opera Omnia, 2 vols. (Aureliae: F. Hotot; London: Robertus Scott, 1674), 1:1072– 3; for a detailed history of the changeling, emphasizing the aspect of literary and theological transmission, see C. F. Goodey and Tim Stainton, “Intellectual Disability and the Myth of the Changeling Myth,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 37 no. 3 (2001): 223 – 40; Luther, Decem Praecepta, sig. Cir.  Jacobus van Hoogstraten, Tractus magistralis declarans quam graviter peccent querentes auxilium a maleficis; Contra petentes remedia a maleficis, as above, footnote 42.

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sermons.⁵⁰ Nevertheless, these incurably rationalist late scholastics could not forbear to warn people that the effects of these ecclesiastical counter-measures were not guaranteed, and that those who used them should expect the outcome to depend on the grace of God – who might have all kinds of good reasons for allowing misfortune to afflict otherwise good people. ⁵¹

5 Instabilities in the Scholastic Response Given the scholastic practice of debating, disputing, and challenging almost everything, it was inevitable that a pastoral response to superstition – conditioned by the techniques of learned, speculative theology – would entail differences and disagreements. Not all of those disagreements are equally important: theologians argued about whether divine power was actually located in sacramental words, or over the precise limits of divine providence and “permission” to demons. The cumulative effect of diversities in the learned response may have made the Church’s message on superstitions unnecessarily cloudy and uncertain, further reducing its already limited prospects of achieving real differences in the behavior of most ordinary people. Very public disagreement broke out over the very issue last discussed – namely, over where to draw the boundary between those “counter-measures” which were acceptable to the Church and those which were not. Certain Franciscan theologians, including Duns Scotus and Peter Aureole, were suspected of giving permission to people to use methods which might be thought close to counter-magic. Scotus’ recommendation that someone who found a magical token to cause impotence – say, a bent pin hidden in his bed – might lawfully destroy the token, generally found acceptance. Peter Aureole ventured into more dangerous territory when he allegedly suggested that someone might use the willingness of a sorcerer to practice counter-magic to their own benefit, given that the sorcerer willingly intended to use magic anyway, and one was not causing any further sin by taking advantage of that intent.⁵² That position strayed too far; but many other writers, Dominicans included, took surprisingly indulgent attitudes towards a range of other protective customs, which might – as Mazzolini suggested – resist “one vain thing with another vain thing.”⁵³ Similarly, theologians influenced by Johannes

 Plantsch, Opusculum de sagis maleficis, sigs. f ir- g iiiv ; Geiler von Kaisersberg, Die Emeis, sermons 30 – 2.  Plantsch, Opusculum de sagis maleficis, sigs. c vv – e iiiiv.  Peter Aureoli, in Aureolus, Petrus, c. 1280 – 1322, Commentariorvm in primvm [‐quartum] librvm Sententiarvm, 2 vols. (Rome: Zannetti, 1596– 1605), on Sentences bk. 4, dist. 34, qq. 2– 3; and Angelus [Carletti] de Clavasio, Summa Angelica, in the article “Maleficium”: that it is lawful to seek of a sorcerer who is prepared to do this, to lift the sorcery with sorcery. These texts are reviewed in Martinus Delrio SJ, Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex, 3 vols. (Louvain: Gerardus Rivius, 1599 – 1600), 3:193 ff.  Silvestro Mazzolini Prierias, De Strigimagarum Demonumque Mirandis, sig. ff iiiv.

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Nider argued over whether or not the venerations of saints through particular special devotions, some of them recently devised, were absolutely guaranteed to achieve the spiritual – or indeed material – benefits ascribed to them. Some, like Gerson, tended to be skeptical about such cults; Nider found excuses to justify them.⁵⁴ Given this disarray in learned advice, it is easy to assume that even the well-informed and devout laity must have been tempted to choose the path that suited their convenience best. They could always find a priest to approve of what they did.

6 Luther, Religion, and Superstition before the Reformation: Expounding the First Commandment Martin Luther was raised in two overlapping cultural worlds. On one hand, he grew up in the small towns of Saxony, where a rural economy was being transformed by the rise of the mining industries. Luther’s own father made, and then lost, a fortune as a contractor in the very complex financial structures that supported the mining business.⁵⁵ We know from other sources that the mines of northern Germany nurtured their own folk beliefs. The idea of mines being occupied by spirit-beings – the dwarves of legend and fairy tale – dates back to the sixteenth century, if not much earlier.⁵⁶ On the other hand, Luther drank from the fountain of late scholasticism. He learned the theology of the Middle Ages before he denounced so much of it in the name of his understanding of the gospel. He never entirely forsook the lessons learned from William of Ockham about a disciplined approach to logic. It is therefore deeply significant that Luther himself wrote and delivered a sermon-cycle on the Ten Commandments, which included, in its extended discussion of the first commandment, his own distinctive version of a superstition treatise. This cycle of sermons on the Decalogue is believed to have been delivered beginning on June 29, 1516, though the text was probably elaborated for publication. It appeared as a Latin pamphlet, published by Johannes Rhau-Grunenberg and dated July 20, 1518.⁵⁷ The sermon-cycle antedates the public debates of the Reformation and may therefore be discussed as part of the “background” to the Reformation, even though Luther was already wrestling with many of the issues that would bear fruit in his writings after 1517. He cited various established authorities on the subject, including the earlier sermon-cycle by Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg. He showed a possibly second-hand awareness of some of the stories reported in the Malleus Maleficarum.  Nider, Formicarius, bk. 4 ch. 2, in De visionibus ac revelationibus, 415 – 24.  See Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (London: The Bodley Head, 2016), ch. 1, 17– 34.  Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 72– 4.  The text of the sermons appears (with some modifications) in WA 1:398 – 521; the original pamphlet edition was published as Decem Praecepta wittenbergensi predicata populo. Per P. Martinum Luther Augustinianum (Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1518).

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However, Luther stressed one theme most passionately. He believed that most of what demons did to harm people was to delude them. Night-flight was a delusion; many of the diseases supposedly inflicted by demonic malice were also delusions. The claim to divine the future or find hidden knowledge in crystals was a delusion. Even the spirit-creatures whom householders believed brought good luck to the home were “illusions of demons.” Because Luther focused so much on the illusory powers of demons, he was able to establish a link between these relatively gross, crass forms of delusion of “the fleshly senses and imagination, the basest parts of a person”⁵⁸ and the larger delusions, which diverted people from true religion and true faith. So, in the later part of his exposition of the first commandment, Luther embarked on a more devastating critique of the cult of saints and of erroneous beliefs regarding human merit.⁵⁹ The devil deluded most effectively when he filled people’s heads with erroneous theology.

7 Conclusion: How the Arguments over Superstition Were Transformed in the Reformation “Reason,” clearly, could be used to many different effects depending on the assumptions of the user, in this area as in others. The subtlety of the scholastic response to popular belief provided the learned with an explanation for the phenomena of vernacular culture. This explanation, based on a “rational” demonology, saved appearances for metaphysics, but at the cost of “demonizing” the beliefs and practices of ordinary people in a way that was extremely hard to preach. In the Reformation, the demonological arguments used against medieval superstitions would be aimed at new targets. Protestant theologians discovered that the cultic apparatus of the old Church was, no less than the beliefs of the sorcerers and folk-healers, a delusion and a perversion of Satan. Claims to consecrate holy water, salt, wax, and other materials for human benefit actually derived from the same source as the evils they claimed to cure. The devils encouraged the Church and its devotees in all kinds of wrong practices, up to and including the claim to transform the essence of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Lutheran theses on magic argued that Catholic religious practices were magical in precisely the same way as the magic of the folk-healers.⁶⁰ Or, as the eccentric English pamphleteer Reginald Scot put it: “I see no difference, between these and popish conjurations; for they agree in order, words, and matter, differing in no circumstance, but

 Luther, Decem Praecepta, sig. C ir-v.  Luther, Decem Praecepta, sigs. Civr – E ivv.  See, for instance, [Jacobus Heerbrandus], De Magia Disputatio ex cap. 7. Exo.,. . . praeside reverendo et clarissimo viro Jacobo Heerbrando. . . Nicolaus Falco Salueldensis . . . respondere conabitur (Tübingen: [Ulrich Morhart], 1570), 13 – 16

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that the Papists doe it without shame openly, the other doe it in hugger mugger secretly.”⁶¹ The tragedy of this approach for relations between the churches was that, whereas the medieval Church had “demonized” those who were less educated and socially privileged, now the rival confessions of the early modern period demonized each other. It has taken a long time for the churches to escape from the consequences of this rhetorical move.

 Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft: wherein the lewde dealing of witches and witchmongers is notablie detected (London: William Brome, 1584), bk 15, ch. 22. Compare ch. 29 in the same volume.

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Luther as Church Father

Can one describe Luther as a father of the Protestant churches, or maybe even as a father of the universal Christian church? As much as the reformer’s adherents may have exalted him and elevated him to superhuman stature over the course of the past centuries, the title “church father” is one that Protestantism has never explicitly given to him. On the contrary, it has been Roman Catholic theologians, over the last couple of decades, who have discovered in Luther a “father of the faith.” In fact, the manner in which both Catholics and Protestants have appraised Luther, and the respective attributes they have projected onto him, have evolved significantly over the course of history. These appraisals and descriptions usually say more about their own times than about the reformer himself. It is therefore worth an effort to take a careful look – from a historical perspective – at the different answers given to the question, “Who was Luther?”

1 Luther’s Self-Understanding Something akin to a self-understanding of Luther¹ as shaped by the Reformation became discernible for the first time on October 31, 1517, in connection with Luther’s ninety-five theses on indulgences, when he signed his famous letter to Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz with the new name Luther (instead of the previously used Luder). The new spelling was evocative of the Greek Eleutherius, “the free one,” and would be used again by Luther shortly afterwards when signing a letter to Georg Spalatin.² In this way, Luther laid symbolic claim to the evangelical freedom that stood at the center of his theological reorientation.³ An addendum Luther made to his signature in the letter to Albrecht of Mainz is illuminating: he describes himself there as Doctor S. Theologie vocatus (“called Doctor of Sacred Theology”).⁴ This brings us to the very heart of Luther’s self-understanding. Being a doctor and a professor of theology was what gave him legitimacy in his efforts to defend and reform the Church. The doctoral oath he had been required to swear upon the conferral of his degree in 1512 played a special role for

Translation from German: Stephen Buckwalter.  On the following, see J. Schilling, “Geschichtsbild und Selbstverständnis,” in Luther Handbuch, ed. Albrecht Beutel (Tübingen: UTB, 2005), 97– 106.  WA.B 1:118, 16.  Bernd Moeller and Karl Stackmann, Luder, Luther, Eleutherius. Erwägungen zu Luthers Namen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981).  WA.B 1:112, 70 – 71 = LW 48:49; see also n23. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-007

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him in this regard. As he understood it, this oath committed him to proclaim Holy Scripture in unadulterated form, and it was this obligation toward Scripture that had brought him into conflict with the pope.⁵ What made Luther a reformer was his self-understanding as a “sworn Doctor of Holy Scripture,”⁶ as he liked to phrase it himself. Later, Lutheran polemical theology of the seventeenth century strongly emphasized this notion of Luther’s vocatio (calling) against his Roman Catholic critics: Luther had not only received an extraordinary calling from the Holy Spirit to reform the Church, but he had also received a regular calling as an ordained priest and as a professor.⁷ Closely connected with this self-understanding as a teacher and preacher of Holy Scripture was Luther’s view of himself – invoked just as frequently – as an “evangelist,” a proclaimer of the gospel of Christ. He understood the success of his theses on indulgence as a revelation of the gospel: God’s word itself had prevailed without there having been any need for Luther to help.⁸ In the famous letter he wrote to Elector Frederick of Saxony from Wartburg Castle on March 5, 1522, using words reminiscent of the Apostle Paul (Gal 1:10 – 11), he explicitly claimed that he had not received his gospel from men, but solely from heaven through Jesus Christ, and this was precisely what made him an evangelist.⁹ Later that year, he wrote in the same vein that Christ himself had named him his evangelist – for Luther’s proclamation was not something he had thought up himself, but was rather the gospel of Christ.¹⁰ Yet Luther emphatically repudiated any other forms of glorification of his person during his lifetime. In his speech before the Diet of Worms in 1521, he asserted that he had no intentions of setting himself up as a saint,¹¹ and in 1531 he rejected the designation “prophet of the Germans” as presumptuous.¹² He saw himself as being nothing and having nothing. He could only boast of being a Christian.¹³ Luther was not happy with the fact that his colleagues began publishing his collected works in 1539. In the preface to the first volume of the German writings in the Wittenberg edition of his works, he stated that he would have preferred that his books had never been written or had been lost, in order that they not distract from the study of Holy Scripture, as had been the case with the books of the church fathers or the compilations of con-

 WA 30.3:386, 14– 17.  WA 6:405, 1 = LW 44:124; WA 7:162, 8.  This point is made by the systematic theologians Johann Gerhard and Johann Andreas Quenstedt. Cf. K. H. zur Mühlen, “Wirkung und Rezeption I.-IV.,” in Luther Handbuch, 462– 88, here 472.  WA.T 2:567, 13 f.  WA.B 2:455, 39 – 43 = LW 48:390.  WA 10.2:105,19 – 106,5.  “Neque enim me sanctum aliquem facio, neque de vita me, sed de doctrina Christi disputo;” WA 7:834, 6 – 7 = LW 32:111.  WA 30.3:290, 28 f.  “Ego vero nihil habeo et sum, nisi quod Christianum esse me prope glorier;” WA 18:786, 25 – 26 = LW 33:294.

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ciliar decisions.¹⁴ The notion that his followers should be named after him – be called “Martinians” or later “Lutherans” – was one Luther found absolutely unbearable: “I ask that people make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. What is Luther? After all, that teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone […]. How then should I – poor, stinking maggot-fodder than I am – come to have men call the children of Christ by my wretched name?”¹⁵

2 Luther as Understood by Lutheranism: An Apocalyptic Figure and a Teacher of the Church Nevertheless, Luther was soon deemed a prophet by his supporters; his writings were collected and reprinted, and “Lutheran” became a self-assigned badge borne with pride. Underlying this was the widely held conviction that the Wittenberg reformer had been assigned a special role in salvation history, having been sent by God as an emissary of the end times in order to prepare the way for Christ’s return. These judgments did have some basis in Luther’s own thought. Ever since 1519, Luther had been convinced that the institution of the papacy was the seat of the antichrist himself, Christ’s eschatological enemy, whose unmasking would signal the last major conflagration before the end of the world.¹⁶ From that moment on, Luther understood his own times as apocalyptic end times – and the Reformation, which had led to the unmasking of the papal antichrist, as an event in the history of salvation. Soon many of his contemporaries came to share this point of view and perceived Luther accordingly as a figure in salvation history, sent by God himself.¹⁷ At a very early stage, he was seen particularly as a prophet. This was the case in humanist circles in southern Germany and in Switzerland already by the end of 1519. No less important a figure than the Zurich reformer Huldrych Zwingli, who only a few years later would be entangled in an acrimonious controversy with Luther, described the Wittenberg reformer as a new Elijah – the last prophet mentioned in Mal 4:5 as the forerunner of the returning Christ and the one who would announce the word of

 WA 60:657, 2– 11.  LW 45:70 = WA 8:685, 4– 10.  Volker Leppin, “Antichrist,” in Das Luther-Lexikon, eds. Volker Leppin and Gury Schneider-Ludorff (Regensburg: Bückle & Böhm, 2014), 62 f.  On the following, see Robert Kolb, Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero: Images of the Reformer, 1520 – 1620 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1999); Kolb, “Luther’s Function in an Age of Confessionalization,” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, ed. Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 209 – 26; Volkmar Joestel and Jutta Strehle, Luthers Bild und Lutherbilder. Ein Rundgang durch die Wirkungsgeschichte (Wittenberg: Stiftung Luthergedenkstätten, 2003).

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God in the end times.¹⁸ Philip Melanchthon also drew on the Elijah narrative of the Old Testament when he received news of Luther’s death while lecturing in his Wittenberg auditorium. Melanchthon held a brief oration for his students, in which he quoted 2 Kgs 2:12 and expanded the verse eschatologically: “Dead is the horseman and chariot of Israel who has led the Church in this last age of the world.”¹⁹ Until well into the seventeenth century, Luther was understood and revered as the returned Elija or as the “third Elijah” – if one counted John the Baptist as the second Elijah (cf. Matt 11:13 – 14). In fact, Luther was also identified with the apocalyptically significant prophet Daniel, or simply be labeled a prophet in a general sense.²⁰ The fact that Luther understood himself as an evangelist prompted some to put him on equal footing with other prominent proclaimers of the gospel from biblical times, especially the authors of the New Testament gospels and the Apostle Paul. But this dimension could be given an apocalyptic twist as well, and it is in this form that it had its most significant impact. It was Luther’s fellow Augustinian from southern Germany – Michael Stifel (ca. 1487– 1567), who later would attain fame as a mathematician – who, in a pamphlet printed in 1522, emphatically identified Luther with the angel of the eternal gospel mentioned in the Revelation of John (Rev 14:6).²¹ It was thus – as an eschatological angel of the eternal gospel – that Luther was preferentially understood until the seventeenth century.²² Altogether it could be said that the most popular interpretations of Luther’s person either equated him with figures from the Bible or interpreted him as a protagonist of the closing drama of salvation history. These highly apocalyptic interpretations hit a nerve in Luther’s and his supporters’ times, which explains their widespread popularity. Yet there was also another, less prominent line of interpretation that contemplated the figure of Luther against the backdrop of the church’s earthly history. The classical pattern that would best lend itself to this kind of interpretation is that of the saint, and for a brief time Luther was in fact portrayed as one, in woodcuts in the context of the 1521 Diet of Worms – he was depicted as a monk in a monastic habit with a halo above his head and the dove of the Holy Spirit hovering over

 Zwingli’s letter to Oswald Myconius on January 4, 1520, in Huldreich Zwingli, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 7, Zwinglis Briefwechsel (Leipzig, 1911), 250 – 52, no. 113, here 250. See also the earlier letter from Ulrich Zasius to Zwingli on November 13, 1519, in the same volume, 218 – 22, no. 100, here 222.  “Ach, obiit auriga et currus Israel, qui rexit Ecclesiam in hac ultima senecta mundi;” Philipp Melanchthon, Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneider (Halle, 1839), 6:59.  Joestel and Strehle, Luthers Bild und Lutherbilder, 9.  M. Stifel, Von der Christfermigen, rechtgegründten leer Doctoris Martini Luthers, ain überauß schön kunstlich Lied sampt seyner neben außlegung. In bruder Veyten Thon, [Augsburg 1522], A2r – A3v and passim.  Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte. Mit ausgewählten Texten von Lessing bis zur Gegenwart (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1955), 12; Joestel and Strehle, Luthers Bild und Lutherbilder, 15.

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him.²³ This pattern of interpretation did not last, however, because it was incompatible with the new understanding of sainthood introduced by the Reformation. Another interpretation – which can essentially be traced back to Melanchthon, and which better falls in line with Luther’s own self-understanding – took hold in its stead: Luther as the teacher of his Church, sent by God. As early as 1539, in his small work De ecclesia et de autoritate verbi Dei, Melanchthon developed the notion that the Church goes through alternating periods of flourishing and decay, but is renewed and restored again and again by means of teachers (doctores) who are inspired by God. Besides biblical figures, Melanchthon also explicitly mentioned Ambrose, Basil, Cyprian, and Augustine as examples of such saints.²⁴ In the following years, Melanchthon would elaborate further on this notion of the series doctorum, the succession of teachers of the Church. When giving his funeral oration for Luther in the Wittenberg Castle Church on February 22, 1546, Melanchthon ranked his deceased friend among the great teachers of the Church – mentioning him along with the patriarchs of the Old Covenant, the apostles, and men such as Polycarp of Smyrna, Irenaeus of Lyon, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Basil of Caesarea, Augustine, Prosper of Aquitaine, Maximus the Confessor, Hugh of Saint Victor, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Johannes Tauler, he counted Luther among “that magnificent throng of splendid men, […] sent by God to collect and build the church.”²⁵ In fact, on various occasions, Luther himself invoked personages of church history whom he recognized as forerunners of his cause. From the Leipzig Disputation of 1519 onwards, he especially perceived the Bohemian Church reformer Jan Hus, who had been burned at the stake in 1415, as one such predecessor.²⁶ In 1520, he wrote in a letter: “All of us are Hussites without knowing it,”²⁷ and at the latest in 1531, he applied to himself the legend according to which Hus, whose name means “goose” in Czech, had prophesied that 100 years later a swan would come, which no one would succeed in “roasting” – that is, burning.²⁸ Luther also saw the late medieval reform theologians John Wyclif, Wessel Gansfort, Johann Pupper von Goch, and Girolamo Savonarola as precursors of his own

 Kolb, “Luther’s Function,” 211.  Melanchthon, Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneider (Brauschweig, 1855), 23:595 – 642.  Melanchthon, Oratio in funere reverendi viri D. Martini Lutheri, in Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneider (Halle, 1843), 11:726 – 34, here 728. German translation in Michael Beyer, Stefan Rhein, and Günther Wartenberg, eds., Melanchthon deutsch, vol. 2, Theologie und Kirchenpolitik (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1997), 156 – 68, here 159.  Cf. Thomas Kaufmann, “Jan Hus und die frühe Reformation,” in Biblische Theologie und historisches Denken. Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien, eds. Martin Kessler and Martin Wallraff (Basel: Schwabe Basel, 2008), 62– 109; also in Kaufmann, Der Anfang der Reformation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 30 – 67.  “sumus omnes Hussitae ignorantes;” WA.B 2:42, 24.  WA 30.3:378, 6 – 10. Cf. Gerhard Seib, ed., Luther mit dem Schwan. Tod und Verklärung eines großen Mannes (Berlin, 1996).

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ministry. When confronting the theologians of the universities of Louvain and Cologne, who had pronounced themselves against him in a formal statement after the Leipzig Disputation, Luther aligned himself with great minds such as William of Ockham, Pico della Mirandola, Lorenzo Valla, and Johannes Reuchlin, who – in his opinion – had also been unjustly condemned.²⁹ Unlike Melanchthon’s view of him, Luther did not rank himself so much among the accepted church fathers and teachers of the Church as among men who had come into conflict with the teaching office of the Church. The interpretational middle ground is represented by the Catalogus testium veritatis, a voluminous scholarly collection of testimonies of supposed precursors of Luther that Matthias Flacius (1520 – 1575), a student of Luther and Melanchthon, published in 1556. This catalogue gave a record of “witnesses to truth” who, despite papal tyranny, had clung to evangelical truth from the time of the apostles to the restoration of the gospel by Luther.³⁰ It included the ancient church fathers and teachers of the Church highly esteemed by Melanchthon, but also the medieval oppositionists that Luther had mentioned. Flacius revered Luther too much to classify him as merely one more in this sequence of “witnesses” – in fact, Luther is not featured at all in the Catalogus. By contrast, the Strasbourg theologian Ludwig Rabus (1524– 1592) explicitly includes the reformer among the “chosen witnesses and confessors,”³¹ additionally calling him “our dear father and prophet of the German nation.”³² Lutheran theology in the post-Reformation period³³ – so-called “Lutheran Orthodoxy” –drawing on Luther’s own self-understanding as well as on Melanchthon’s notion of the doctores of the Church, interpreted Luther particularly as the God-sent teacher of the gospel and restorer of pure doctrine. Luther’s person and his life completely disappeared behind his writings. By way of contrast, the pietist theologians also laid claim to Luther in support of their understanding of a vibrant Christian piety and focused more intensely on his character – which did not mean that they were incapable of criticizing some individual features of it. They often made a point of invoking the “young Luther,” to the detriment of the “older” one. With the advent of the Enlightenment, Luther’s religious concerns and his theology also disappeared from the view of the theologians. Luther was now mainly seen  WA 6:183,3 – 184,1.  M. Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis, qui ante nostram aetatem reclamarunt Papae (Basel, 1556). A second, expanded edition appeared in 1562. Cf. Wolf-Friedrich Schäufele, “Matthias Flacius Illyricus und die Konzeption der Zeugenschaft im Catalogus testium veritatis,” in Matthias Flacius Illyricus – Biographische Kontexte, theologische Wirkungen, historische Rezeption, eds. Irene Dingel and Luka Ilic (Göttingen, 2016).  L. Rabus, Historien der Heyligen Außerwölten Gottes Zeügen / Bekennern vnd Martyrern, 8 vols. (Strasbourg, 1552– 1558).  Kolb, “Luther’s Function,” 213.  On the following, see Ernst Walter Zeeden, Luther und die Reformation im Urteil des deutschen Luthertums, 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Herder, 1950 – 1952); Mühlen, “Wirkung und Rezeption.”

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as a courageous pioneer championing liberty of conscience and tolerance, a forerunner of modernity, and a proponent of civic values. Eventually, the era of nationalism would make of him the prototypical German and the warrior for Germany’s freedom. Not until the twentieth century would Luther’s theology be rediscovered and subjected to more thorough research, resulting decades later in an image of Luther that transcended confessional boundaries and surmounted ideological constraints.

3 Luther as a Protestant Church Father Luther has been stylized and heroized to a degree which modern sensitivities find grotesquely exaggerated. Yet for all the praise heaped upon Luther, one attribute has almost never been assigned to him: that of “church father.” Even Rabus’ designation of Luther as a “father” constitutes an exception. Nevertheless, one can – with a certain degree of justification – speak of Luther as being something akin to a Protestant church father. This holds especially true for churches belonging to the Lutheran confessional family. The factional name of “Lutheran” is itself an indication of the crucial significance given to the Wittenberg reformer by this branch of the Reformation tradition.³⁴ To be sure, Luther himself was strictly against allowing his followers to name themselves after him, and the name Lutherani was in fact initially used by papal loyalists to brand Luther’s following as a sect or a heretical group. Luther’s prominent opponent Johannes Eck used it from 1520 onwards. Supporters of Luther who were labelled in this way preferred calling themselves “Evangelicals.” It was not until the 1560s that they deliberately appropriated as a self-designation what had once been a pejorative sect name. A combination of factors was conducive to this development: their mounting veneration of Luther, their increasingly sharp dissociation from the Catholic Church, and their growing alienation from churches belonging to the Reformed tradition. As far as the impact of history upon Lutheranism is concerned, one can only agree with the assessment of the Catholic Luther scholar Otto Hermann Pesch, who observed that “no Christian church has been shaped to such a degree and with such lasting effects in its fundamental theological convictions and in its piety by a single theologian as much as the Lutheran church.”³⁵ In his lifetime, Luther – in association with his Wittenberg colleagues – became a central authority for the resolution of controversial theological and pastoral issues as well as of questions relating to church law. By issuing written legal opinions, they

 On the following, see A. Schubert, “Luthertum/Lutheraner I. Konfessionskundlich: lutherische Kirchen in der Geschichte,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Dieter Betz et al., 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 608 – 613, here 608.  Otto H. Pesch, “Was hat Luther den Katholiken (noch) zu sagen? Ein Art Nachruf,” in Martin Luther – Vorbild im Glauben. Die Bedeutung des Reformators im ökumenischen Gespräch, eds. Udo Hahn and Marlies Mügge (Neukirchen/Vluyn: Neukirchner, 1996), 122 – 44, here 124.

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assumed the place previously occupied by the pope, the bishops, and the councils in the Roman Church.³⁶ In the decades following his death, Luther’s role as the central teaching authority in Lutheranism became even more firmly established. Both the Gnesio-Lutherans, who claimed to uphold Luther’s undiminished theological legacy, as well as their opponents, the adherents of Philip Melanchthon, also known as Philippists, cited Luther for their purposes, thus imbuing his utterances with an almost canonical authority.³⁷ These inner-Lutheran controversies were not settled until the drafting of the Formula of Concord in 1577, although admittedly not all Lutheran territories endorsed it. This settlement cemented the status of Luther’s teaching as the indisputable and authoritative interpretation of Holy Scripture. In 1580, the Formula of Concord was joined with the three most important early Christian confessions of faith and six further confessional documents from the Reformation, thus forming the Book of Concord as the normative confessional foundation of Lutheranism. Among these documents were Luther’s Large and Small Catechisms as well as the pungently anti-Roman Smalcald Articles, which Luther had originally only intended as a private confession. In the so-called Solida Declaratio of the Formula of Concord, the writings contained in the Book of Concord were explicitly described as “the sum and model of the doctrine which Dr. Luther of blessed memory has admirably deduced from God’s Word and firmly established against the Papacy and other sects, and to his full explanations in his doctrinal and polemical writings we wish to appeal.”³⁸ Almost the entirety of Luther’s surviving oeuvre was thus elevated to the rank of a canonical confessional foundation – while subject, of course, to the explicit condition that it agree with Holy Scripture as the supreme rule of faith. For all practical purposes, Luther became a Lutheran church father from 1580 onwards.³⁹ His de facto status as a church father also manifested itself in the iconographic program of Lutheran churches. From the seventeenth century onwards, large-sized effigies of Luther based on the portraits by Lukas Cranach, often depicting him with the Bible as his iconographic attribute, became part of the regular inventory of such programs.⁴⁰ Churches issuing from the Reformed tradition, which was shaped by Zwingli and Calvin, did not follow this example of revering Luther with an almost canonical authority. Instead, the prevailing view among these churches was that Luther had failed to be consistent and had not gone far enough in his fight for the gospel and against human traditions, making it necessary to continue and complete the Reformation he had begun – indeed, to carry out nothing less than a “second Reformation.” Consequently, Reformed theologians – such as Zacharias Ursinus and Daniel Tossanus–

 Kolb, “Luther’s Function,” 212.  Kolb, “Luther’s Function,” 217.  Irene Dingel, ed., Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 1:1312,35 – 1314,4; Engl. trans. www.bookofconcord.org.  Zeeden, Luther und die Reformation, 1:70.  Joestel and Strehle, Luthers Bild und Lutherbilder, 21.

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disputed his authority as a teacher of the church.⁴¹ But there were also others, like Calvin, who gratefully acknowledged the inspiration provided by Luther. It might be somewhat exaggerated to describe Calvin as “Luther’s greatest disciple,” as Hanns Rückert (1901– 1974) has done, but that does not make the claim false.⁴² After all, it was under Calvin’s influence that Luther was eventually recognized by the German Reformed churches as the pioneer and initiator of the renewal of Christianity known as the Reformation, and therefore – to a certain extent – as a father of the Reformed churches as well.⁴³ In fact, the initiative for the first Germany-wide celebration of the Reformation anniversary in 1617, unambiguously conceived as a Luther jubilee in its emphasis on the posting of the ninety-five theses, can be traced back to the Reformed Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate.⁴⁴ And in 1817, on the occasion of the three-hundredth anniversary of Luther’s posting of his theses, it was once again a Reformed figure, King Frederick William III of Prussia, who used this symbolic date as an opportunity to call on Lutherans and Reformed to join in forming a common, united Protestant Church.⁴⁵ Even though Lutheranism quite clearly – and the Reformed tradition in a broader sense – assigned Luther the role of a Protestant church father, none of his adherents ever explicitly endowed him with such a title. This should hardly come as a surprise, for during this period the appeal to the church fathers – especially those of antiquity, but also to the theologians of the Middle Ages – was an important strategy of Roman Catholic controversial theologians arguing from the standpoint of tradition.⁴⁶ Especially in the wake of the Council of Trent, ecclesiastical tradition and the church fathers became established as binding authorities next to Holy Scripture. In view of this fact, it was out of the question for Protestant theologians to emphasize church fathers explicitly in the same way. Luther may have been a Protestant church father, but one could not call him one. A second factor also played a role: whereas Roman Catholic ecclesiology equated the church on earth with the visible institution of the hierarchically structured Roman Church, Protestant ecclesiology abided by the Augustinian dialectic of the visible and invisible Church. According to this principle, the Church was, in a proper

 Kolb, “Luther’s Function,” 215.  Hanns Rückert, “Calvin” (1937), in Vorträge und Aufsätze zur historischen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1972), 165 – 73, here 167. Actually, this assessment appears to have been uttered already by Karl Holl; cf. Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien, vol. 3, Begriffsuntersuchungen –Textinterpretationen – Wirkungsgeschichtliches (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985), 534n470.  Bornkamm, Luther im Spiegel, 12n1; Mühlen, “Wirkung und Rezeption,” 472.  H.-J. Schönstädt, “Das Reformationsjubiläum 1617. Geschichtliche Herkunft und geistige Prägung,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 93 (1982): 5 – 57.  Walter Elliger, ed., Die evangelische Kirche der Union. Ihre Vorgeschichte und Geschichte (Witten: Luther Verlag, 1967), 30 – 65.  On the use of the terms “father” and “church father” in general, see Berthold Altaner, Patrologie (Freiburg: Herder, 1958), 2– 5.

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sense, the fellowship of believers, known only to God and capable of living in a variety of external ecclesiastical organizations and confessions. It is understandable that such a conception of the Church was not conducive to speaking of “church fathers.” Even though attributing the title of “church father of the nineteenth century” to Friedrich Schleiermacher has gained currency in recent times,⁴⁷ Luther was never called a “church father” in the same way. The only exception is recent art-historical research, which – in the footsteps of Johannes Ficker – describes one of seven types of Luther portraits issuing from Lucas Cranach’s workshop with the term “Luther as church father.”⁴⁸ While Luther may not have been described as a “church father” in Protestantism, he certainly was spoken of as a “father” in a variety of contexts. In the nineteenth century, he was popularized as a paterfamilias and a loving father to his children, becoming the object of sentimental and pedagogical reflections aimed at a mass audience.⁴⁹ The sentimental (and fictional) Christmas scene showing Luther in his living room playing the lute in front of a Christmas tree, which Carl August Schwerdgeburth portrayed for the first time in 1843, was disseminated widely and has influenced the image of Luther in some circles down to the present day.⁵⁰ Furthermore, Luther has been ascribed the title of father in a figurative sense, recognized since the nineteenth century in particular as the “father of the Protestant hymn.”⁵¹ He has even been labelled the “father of compulsory schooling for all children.”⁵² For centuries, Protestantism has instrumentalized Luther’s person ideologically for varying purposes and revered him for the most part uncritically. Today, it has learned to view Luther in a historically grounded and more nuanced way, not only

 C. Lülmann, Schleiermacher, der Kirchenvater des 19. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr, 1907), 1. Cf. Horst Jesse, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher. Der Kirchenvater des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Frieling Verlag, 2002).  This is the case for portraits from the years 1532– 1537 and 1543, which show Luther in his fifties, wearing a scholar’s cap and gown, often in combination with a portrait of Melanchthon in so-called friendship portraits. Cf. J. Ficker, “Die Bildnisse Luthers aus der Zeit seines Lebens,” Lutherjahrbuch 16 (1934): 103 – 61, here 134– 40; Günter Schuchardt, ed., Cranach, Luther und die Bildnisse (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2015), 25, 42– 45, and 51.  See, for example, F. G. Hofmann, Katharina von Bora oder Dr. Martin Luther als Gatte und Vater. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Priesterehe so wie des ehelichen und häuslichen Lebens des großen Reformators (Leipzig, Klinkhardt, 1845); Martin Willkomm, Luther als Vater seiner Kinder (Zwickau: Johannes Herrmann, 1917).  Joestel and Strehle, Luthers Bild und Lutherbilder, 49.  Z. B. Heinrich Adolf Köstlin, Luther als der Vater des evangelischen Kirchengesanges (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1881); Georg Schleusner, Luther als Dichter insonderheit als Vater des deutschen evangelischen Kirchenliedes (Wittenberg: Wunschmann, 1883); Paul Althaus, Luther als der Vater des evangelischen Kirchenliedes (Leipzig: Deichert, 1917).  Emil Zeißig, Luther, der treue Diener seines Volkes – als erster Prediger der Glaubensfreiheit, als Schöpfer der neuhochdeutschen Schriftsprache und als Vater allgemeiner Schulgedanken (Langensalza: Beyer, 1917).

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underscoring his merits, but also paying attention to his personal shortcomings and to problems in his theology, thus seeing the controversies of the Reformation era in a new light. Modern Protestantism and modern Lutheranism have also come to espouse theological views which, for the most part, differ from those championed by the reformer. Consequently, modern-day Protestants are less inclined than ever to celebrate Luther as a “church father.”

4 Luther as a Common Church Father? It seems remarkable that voices acknowledging Luther as a teacher of the Church or as a church father emanate today from Catholic theologians. To be sure, their own tradition has made them more familiar with the category of the church teacher or church father. Yet the image of Luther prevalent for centuries in Catholicism stood in diametrical opposition to any positive appraisal of Luther. The earliest Catholic perceptions of Luther were shaped decisively by Johannes Cochlaeus (1479 – 1552) in particular.⁵³ In his frequently reprinted Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri of 1549, this humanistic canon depicted Luther as an arch-heretic and destroyer of the Church, through whom not the Holy Spirit, but rather Satan had spoken. As late as the beginning of the twentieth century, the Dominican Heinrich Denifle (1844– 1905) and the Jesuit Hartmann Grisar (1845 – 1932) made the claim that Luther was merely compensating for his personal failure as a monk and his immoral lifestyle when championing the cause of the Reformation and developing his theology.⁵⁴ The Würzburg church historian Sebastian Merkle (1862– 1945) eventually advocated a more objective assessment of Luther, but it was Joseph Lortz (1887– 1975) who would become the real trailblazer of a new Catholic perception of Luther. In his two-volume presentation of Reformation history,⁵⁵ he openly conceded shortcomings in and wrongs done by the late medieval Church and recognized Luther’s good intentions – although the reformer, in his view, had lacked an accurate understanding of true Catholic doctrine. In the preliminary stages of the Second Vatican Council and in its aftermath, the new Catholic Luther scholarship inaugurated by Lortz unleashed impulses that led to a rediscovery and renewed appreciation of Luther’s person and his oeuvre in certain Catholic circles, especially in Germany. This new image of Luther received almost-official ecclesiastical approval in an address given by Cardinal Johannes Willebrands (1909 – 2006), the president of the papal Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, on the occasion of

 Adolf Herte, Das katholische Lutherbild im Bann der Lutherkommentare des Cochläus, 3 vols. (Münster: Aschendorff, 1943).  Heinrich Denifle, Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwicklung quellenmäßig dargestellt, 2 vols. (Mainz: Kirchheim, 1904– 1909); Hartmann Grisar, Luther, 3 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1911– 1912).  Joseph Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland, 2 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1939/40); Engl. trans. The Reformation in Germany, 2 vols. (London/New York: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1968).

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the fifth assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Evian in 1970, in which he acknowledged Luther as “our common teacher.”⁵⁶ In 1983, the year of a Luther anniversary, the Roman Catholic/Lutheran Joint Commission presented a statement which, already in its title ,describes Luther as a “Witness to Christ.”⁵⁷ But post-conciliar Catholicism was not only capable of acknowledging Luther as a “teacher” or “witness,” but also as a “father.” Among Joseph Lortz’s disciples and assistants at the Institute of European History in Mainz, it became common to speak appreciatively of “Father Luther.”⁵⁸ From 1980 onwards, Peter Manns (1923 – 1991), a disciple and successor of Lortz at the Mainz Institute, openly advocated recognizing Luther as a “father in the faith” for all of Christendom.⁵⁹ To be sure, he did not deny the justification for the Church’s official condemnation of Luther at that time. But in his view, it was necessary that Luther become a heretic for the sake of truth.⁶⁰ When calling Luther a “father in the faith,” Manns emphasizes that this attribute must be understood strictly from the perspective of 1 Cor 4:14– 15. In his view, by no means are we to understand Luther “as ‘one’ beside or among ‘many fathers’” or reduce him to one among other church or confessional fathers. As a “father in the faith,” in the biblical sense of the word, he is only comparable with Abraham and Paul, Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux.⁶¹ In the run-up to the 2017 Reformation jubilee, these new Catholic perceptions of Luther lead to a number of concrete proposals with consequences for church policy. The Catholic professor of dogmatic theology Otto Hermann Pesch (1931– 2014) demanded as early as 2008 that Luther’s excommunication be repealed – a demand which has since been made by other Catholics as well.⁶² The Tübingen dogmatics

 Sent Into the World. The Proceedings of the Fifth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971), 62– 63. Admittedly, this precise formulation appears only in the German version of his address: “Er mag uns darin gemeinsamer Lehrer sein, daß Gott stets Herr bleiben muß und dass unsere wichtigste menschliche Antwort aboslutes Vertrauen und die Anbetung Gottes zu bleiben hat.” The official English version reads: “In this we could all learn from him that God must always remain the Lord, and that our most important human answer must always remain absolute confidence in God and our adoration of him” (italics added).  “Martin Luther – Witness to Christ,” in Facing Unity. Models, Forms and Phases of Catholic-Lutheran Church Fellowship (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1985), 72– 80.  Peter Manns, “Was macht Martin Luther zum ‚Vater im Glauben‘ für die eine Christenheit?,” in Martin Luther “Reformator und Vater im Glauben”. Referate aus der Vortragsreihe des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz (Stuttgart: Zabern, 1985), 1– 24; also in Manns, Vater im Glauben. Studien zur Theologie Martin Luthers (Stuttgart: Zabern, 1999), 400 – 23, here 400.  Manns, Martin Luther, Ketzer oder Vater im Glauben? (Hannover: Lutherhaus Verlag, 1980).  Manns, Martin Luther, 19.  Manns, “Was macht Martin Luther zum Vater im Glauben,” 401– 05.  M. Schuck, “Luther rehabilitieren? Ein katholischer Theologieprofessor will den Reformator vom Bann befreien,” Sonntagsblatt. Evangelische Wochenzeitung für Bayern 28 (2008). Cf. Pesch, “Was hat Luther den Katholiken (noch) zu sagen?”, 130 – 31; cf. W. Michaelis, “Die Kontroversen um die Bannaufhebung,” Concilium 12 (1976): 525 – 32.

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professor Bernd Jochen Hilberath (born in 1948) went even further, suggesting in 2011 that the pope formally name Luther a “teacher of the church.”⁶³ Are we therefore justified in calling Luther a father of the universal Christian Church today? We probably cannot go quite so far. People continue to differ sharply in their opinions about the Wittenberg reformer. Yet instead of opposing each other bitterly, the confessions are now joining in a shared inquiry into the truth of faith. A word of the apostle is also proving its worth with regard to Luther: “Test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thes 5:21).

 G. Facius, “Warum Luther nicht rehabilitiert werden wird,” Die Welt, November 17, 2011.

Sergio Rostagno

What Is Left of Luther? 1 The Question If asked point-blank about the reasons for division still existing in Christian churches today, it would first be necessary to ask in return whether even in the sixteenth century the theological controversies – however strong and legitimate – were enough to necessarily create identities in conflict with one another. Today, after centuries of arguments and irenics, of unyielding positions and tolerance, these issues can hardly be reabsorbed and erased in one stroke. Are these a mere heritage from the past, now completely worn out? Who still understands their essence? Who could express them with the same sharpness that then, together with other historical factors, brought forth clashes about ideas and supremacy? Asking these questions, also in an interreligious context, is the role of the churches. From a formative point of view, we have yet to assess whether these disparities are still of interest, whether there are lessons in the divergences discussed back then that can still be revitalized – not because of their persistence, but rather as incentives and prompts for a new era. The controversy that began in 1517 is linked to the ideas that Luther developed in his lessons from 1512 onwards. The dispute is a consequence of the theological positions that Luther brought to light and supported. In his lessons, Luther defined a starting point for humankind. This starting point is very highly placed, at the very peak and outside of every temporal consideration. The human being is born almost in eternity itself. He or she is not born out of him- or herself, however, but as the listener to a joyous announcement, a founding and liberating message, and therefore the human being is truly grounded as preliminarily free, outside of his or her own inclinations or the activities in which he or she has a direct say. In order to be free, a human being needs to be grounded on another foundation, which must have the characteristic of being independent and liberating. Luther calls this external factor Verbum (word), a term that he derives from the biblical tradition and tirelessly transfers into his vision. The secret of the Verbum is the fact that it is both free and freeing. The application of these theses to the life of the Church were to bring about unforeseen consequences. The dispute became inflamed when Luther – rephrasing what, according to him, was the core of the issue – maintained that “Peter does not absolve before Christ”¹ (meaning that Christ comes before Peter): the explanatory

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  Luther, Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute (1518), thesis 7 = WA 1:542. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-008

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and truthful kernel of the message of the gospel in its freeing capacity comes directly from God and precedes any human authority, however legitimate it may be. This is, in itself, an irreproachably Catholic thesis. However, the objection was raised that, with this position, Luther would challenge the authority of the pope. Luther maintained his position; as far as he was concerned, the pope should just focus on doing his job well. Luther’s opponents resisted with their arguments against his theses, which were perceived to be inadmissible and bizarre. Nonetheless, these theses endured as long as there were people who considered them not only admissible, but also advisable. However, the anti-authoritarian conclusion, which in the controversy takes on an increasingly predominant role, is not the most important factor for Luther. The notion that he strikes time and time again on his anvil focuses instead on the foundation of the human being in the encounter with the freeing message. Luther attributes to the Latin word homo, by which we mean the philosophical man, the sense of a You that the Verbum calls by name, which is no less of a subject than the Verbum itself: a being that, by existing always near the Verbum, is also always confronted with the creating word of the Verbum. From this encounter, the human being is born as an independent and free subject. Luther goes as far as to declare the likeness of the person with the Verbum: similis forma est in verbo et in credente (“an identical form is in the word [ of God] and in the believer”).² This correspondence, obtained through the “similar form,” makes the person a subject, so to speak, though a believing subject. The adjective that qualifies the relationship of the human being with the event of his or her freedom is “believing,” because this freedom is an original given that cannot be specified otherwise. Wanting more means profaning the mystery of this freedom and introducing an undue obligation into it. Instead, it could be said that the human being incessantly departs from becoming, and this becoming is always recognizable only in two elements that do not overlap: as a free origin and as an enactment of a subsequent mobilization. All of this, however, comes with a prerequisite: the Verbum cannot contain any maxim, any law, or any injunction. It must be pure and free to be able to give purity and freedom. The truth of the gospel as mediated by the Church remains transcendental. The Church and its agents are not the custodians of this truth, but its minis-

 Autograph for the lecture on Romans (1515 – 1516) = WA 56:227, 6 – 7. The “form” should not be interpreted as an element common to the word and the believer; it is, instead, the being of the man in the man, marked by the Verbum. “Form” is not an attribute of the subject, but rather “the” subject. The difference is important. In the second lecture on the Psalms, we read “eodem verbo deus facit et non sumus, quod ipse est, ut in ipso simus, et suum esse nostrum esse sit” (“with the same word God creates and we are, so that we are in him, and his being is our being”); Operationes in Psalmos (1519 – 1521) = WA 5.21– 22:144.

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ters: “Where God is, there is no need for a vicar, ministers are enough”³ – that is, ministers of the freeing announcement exclusively. The objection necessarily arose that, on the contrary, the Verbum contains a commandment and that, by adapting to its imperative, the human being is encouraged to express his or her participation in salvation and, therefore, a progressive return to finding the self again, like the prodigal son who comes back to the house of the father after a long exile.⁴ Thus, the Church can take the lead in this return journey. The core of the issue was in this alternative.

2 The Target of the Lutheran Controversy The target of the Lutheran controversy is more the religious person than the ecclesiastic authority in itself. It is the person who wants his or her own Christianity realized in the self, in one’s own virtue. This subject, even after being immersed in the waters of baptism (which means death and resurrection), thinks that this purpose will never be achieved unless one shows one’s own worth. Therefore, people will impose on themselves useless laws, and, even more, they will want to state pretentious practical objectives, full of new demands and therefore of dangerous delusions. Oh, how much this person enjoys the imperative, the optative! He or she – unlike the “believer” – is in search of the “demonstration” and therefore outlines a narrow community of people who will reach it, their efforts always going against the lost world, in order to grieve forever again because of their own imperfection. Luther then states that this “imperative” will never become an “indicative.” A Christian life based on duty is a bad move, which leads to the claim of having to accomplish a divine law or, instead, to the opposite feeling of disillusionment in not having done so. Thus, Luther criticizes this approach as dangerous. We can immediately realize this by observing how Luther explains an obscure verse within a complex argumentation. Paul addressed to the churches of Galatia (a region now included in Turkey): “But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not!”⁵

 “Ubi enim deus praesens est, Vicario non est opus, sed dumtaxat ministris;” Ad librum eximii Magistri Nostri Magistri Ambrosii Catharini defensoris Silvestris Prieratis acerrimi, responsio (1521) = WA 7:742.  See Luke 15.  Gal 2:17. See Luther’s comment in In epistolam Pauli ad Galatas commentarius (1519): adding legal norms in order to give more substance to the believer “makes us become sinners again and in need of justice, which is absurd and tantamount to abolishing Christ altogether, almost as if he had used the law in order to erase our sin. This would mean making the justice of the deeds better than the justice of Christ;” WA 2:493 – 94.

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We ourselves cannot become the actors or executors of the justice of Christ, that very justice thanks to which we are saved. In doing so, we would end up in a vicious circle between Christ and us, a dust cloud in which it would become impossible to distinguish between him and us and between our actions and his saving action toward us. What does it save us from? From our previous nulla, rather than from our imperfection in subscribing to duty. The announcement of the Verbum is not a second opportunity offered to Adam so that he can rise again by means of his own good intentions, but rather contains Adam’s full and whole redemption. Luther then analyzes two main points: on the one hand, especially in the teachings of 1512– 1521, he studies the free foundation of the subject in the manifestation of the message of the gospel (we can define it as the meta-moral foundation of the subject); in the following decades, in the controversy with his opponents and the dialogue with those surrounding him, Luther devotes his efforts to clarifying the relationship between the freedom of the human subject and his or her behavior, indeed developing that very ethics that he had at first excluded categorically from the constitutive moment of the person (traditionally, “man”). From this pair, to which Luther continually comes back without ever joining it into a specific unity (since, by doing so, it would be voided), originate all the following answers, both those of Luther himself and those suggested by his entourage of friends, collaborators, and reformers from other European cities, as well as those defined by the Council of Trent. Different attempts at improvement within Protestantism itself are made one after the other, with the establishment of several theologies and “churches,” as well (in the sense of different ecclesiastical organizations on a regional level, or autonomous Christian groups). We will not deal with this issue here. What is instead interesting is to observe the contemporary discourse within the philosophical domain. The very purity and almost loneliness of the word, which is a guarantee of the freedom of the subject (man), is transferred into the search, in philosophy, for a starting point that is similarly “pure.” This search comes up with more or less satisfying outcomes, all however connected with the typically modern idea of emancipation. Of course, this was mostly beyond Luther.

3 The Outline of Humanism The idea of a logical absolute in which the pure subject has its origin extends into philosophy. The search for a final foundation in history, on the one hand, and the search for the real foundation of the human being, on the other, in the face of any political and religious absolutism from which emancipation is necessary in order to be free, make it so that history and philosophy take the place of religion or relegate it to a minor role. However, the new upswing of this theme in the philosophical domain brings with it the question: How is it possible to be certain and, at the same time, free? Logic will have to guarantee the correctness of the language, but it is doubtful whether it will be able to give access to a truth so important as to also

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be a source of ethics. While discussing the primary principles, the issue still focuses on finding a synthesis between the founding cause and the norm that comes from it. All the modern world debates this point. If the starting point is meta-moral, how is it still possible to express an obligation – a law? Over the course of five centuries, Western thinking came up with several possible solutions. In this regard, as well, we should question what is left. Let us quickly move on to today’s outcomes. Having been unable to find an infinite hook for truth within the reach of reasonable belief, even in the fields of physics, mathematics, and law – since absolutist political attempts are as aberrant in facts as they are deceiving in words –, and having eliminated religion and its theological debates, to what can we resort? What will be the outcomes of the modern reduction of theological themes to political matters, of the secularization of the religious, of humankind taking the central seat that was formerly reserved for the Lord of creation? The result seems to have originated in what is today a widespread and consistent mistrust in the political and, at least for many, a return to the religious, provided that this is religion outside Christian dogmas. Today, the drive toward a “new world” (an expression that, five centuries ago, was used to refer to America!) is in the hands of scientific research, which – without any scruples as to the sense of research itself (or else research is impossible) – every day declares that it can make its theories believable and make it advisable for humanity to rely on its promises. Jurists, philosophers, and theologians ought to try to keep up, if they can. This, however, does not solve the unsettling juridical and political issues of a new era. Where will the reassuring demonstration of that freedom be found so that political life, spiritual need, juridical principle, and also scientific responsibility may be hooked onto it? On the other hand, it is also true that the modern era is not only characterized by the search for a solid and firm cause, with the consequent slipping of reason or feeling into the place of dogma and God’s commandments. The modern era is, in fact, also characterized by a strong drive toward the idea of emancipation. Great literature is permeated with this idea; the elites perceive its breathing down their necks, and the masses feel its need; musicians exalt it, and conservatives set up hurdles that will later be removed one by one, with women always on the front line. Let us put on one side of the scale the secure foundation of the human subject and on the other its emancipation, and let us look at the link between these two needs, which are partly contrasting, even as they search for the right intersection with each other. Where is Luther? Goethe had already asked this very question as the celebrations for the fourth centennial of the Reformation in 1817 were nearing, as he was developing a project with the intention of writing an essay on Christianity. He talks about this issue in a letter of November 14, 1816, to the musician Carl Friedrich Zelter, who – for his part – intended to compose a piece for the occasion. Goethe acknowledges that Luther conceived a solid framework that now allows for the reworking of its central notion in a way that is poetic and musical. Which notion, though? “Now this basis rests on the decided contrast between the Law and the Gospel, and second, upon the accommo-

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dation of such extremes.” Goethe now feels entitled to add other fundamental oppositions: “‘necessity’ and ‘freedom,’ with their synonyms, their remoteness and proximity.” “You see clearly,” Goethe continues, that “in this circle is contained everything that can interest mankind.”⁶ Karl Löwith was the first to emphasize this text by Goethe.⁷ Löwith also adds another consideration: according to him, all this search for absolutes – typical of both the political right and left wings and inherited, or derivable, from German philosophy of the nineteenth century – produced bad outcomes. What is left is therefore an inclination for a philosophy, and consequently a political model, that shifts among real possibilities. Goethe himself sees in Luther a formulation according to which the permanent relationship among opposites is such that, while never able to be resolved into a synthesis, it still requires concrete efforts in the direction of an honest and sympathetic humanism.

4 Verbum, Subject, Authenticity The modern era as a whole is looking for the a priori, the truthful verdict, unverifiable because absolute, the certain foundation in the “it is so” linked to reason or will. Luther finds it, as we have already seen, in the paradox of a Verbum that, despite comprehending both the law and the gospel, still grounds humankind “outside the law.” The principle ensuring human freedom is exactly the independence of the Verbum. However, if this is so, does not the Verbum remain indistinct? Does it not perhaps expose itself to the risk of being abducted by every truth, by every absolute that introduces itself with plausible credentials? Protestantism has not managed to reply convincingly to this objection, not even to its own followers, who instead have taken shelter in the intimacy of the “conscience” and are full of doubts – those very “doubts” that are sometimes flaunted as a form of “freedom.”⁸ In Protestantism, both highbrow and popular, two lines developed that characterize it to this day: the subjective personality and the intuitive practice. They both mirror more of a primitive Ockhamist take than Luther’s actual teaching. What is left of the whole foundation of the subject in the Verbum is the imperativeness of the conscience, the absolute self-awareness of the person. The European bourgeoisie, aware of the self, lives a life of its own. “The just lives by faith” is equivalent to “nobody can judge him.” A second thought is typical of those who establish a valid correspondence between faith and deeds in the fact that the choices are absolutely in-

 Karl R. Mandelkow, ed., Goethes Briefe (Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1965), 3:379 ff; Eng. trans. Lorraine Byrne Bodley, trans. and ed., Goethe and Zelter: Musical Dialogues (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 221 ff.  Löwith, Da Hegel a Nietzsche (Torino: Einaudi, 1959 [Zürich/Wein: Meiner, 1949]), 322.  Here there is a confusion between doubt and the permanence of the interrogation as the context for the affirmation.

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tuitive. Here, the absoluteness is interpreted in the sense of a full spontaneity, a pure generosity, an inbuilt, intuitive capacity of the “believer,” without any other justification or reason. The believer’s lack of a characteristic (as illustrated above) is immediately interpreted and translated into the unquestionability of his or her decisions and actions. The believer is self-sufficient and only answers to him- or herself and to God. The subject has miraculously become able to execute everything that he or she deems to be just. In these two visions, there is very little left of Luther – or nothing at all. As the norm cannot be derived from the law, it comes instead from the improvisation, the intuition, or the good inclination of the subject. Thus the framework of Lutheran thinking – which looks for the norm, as we will see, in the chapters Caritas and Spes – is overcome. For centuries, these two visions represented the alternative to Roman Catholicism, considered to be the stronghold of authoritarianism and immobility. Now, all this appears to us – and is – completely obsolete and outdated. On the other hand, political or religious absolutisms take hold of the Verbum when it is left “on its own.” However, the solution cannot be for the Church to seize the Verbum or for it to be seized by the individual or collective conscience. The solution is for the Verbum to stay such for everyone. In a certain way, it is possible to use the word “mystery” here. At most, the Church can guard this mystery. An arena that is potentially authentically “ecumenical” can be found here. Early on, Luther highlights the freedom of the Verbum as the safe foundation of humankind, to the point of making the human being tout court a “believer.” However, the late Luther, despite all the efforts he put into safeguarding the freedom of the Verbum and of the believer, will have to admit that the Verbum contains a law, a commandment. However, this is not a “new law.” As soon as the idea that the Verbum may contain in itself a command – a need, impossible to conceive in its freedom and to include in the liberty that it guarantees to the “believer,” and therefore as soon as a voice inclining toward the commandment is perceived, a voice which could be enacted with obedience – it will be necessary to fight the idea that the Verbum represents a “new law,” a law even subtler and more demanding than the one that a person somehow knows through reason. Absolutely not! In the face of a human being’s reason there is not a higher law, but the “joyous announcement” itself. Luther spoke of a mysterious event capable of giving the person-subject an élan vital, while the modern era, in many – if not all – of its philosophies, looked for a fixed point above humankind (or inside the person, but in this case in his or her heights and depths), a point from which everything else is assumed to derive. This is, frankly, a risk for humankind. Would it be possible, once it has been conquered and domesticated, to derive the commandment, the discipline, the “law” from it? What legitimacy could there be for a procedure that uses an absolute as a starting

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point to unfailingly derive a relative from it? What law emerges from the infinite? In the infinite, it is also possible to founder.⁹ Religion is not created in order to seize the truth, but to remind human beings that it is possible to serve the truth without necessarily identifying it with one’s own intentions. Religious and social institutions, and even philosophies, are exposed to this incautious and dangerous identification. Thus, human words slip into the place of God’s word. This does not mean that it is necessary to oppose every human institution, but rather to prevent the overlapping of finite and infinite. Learning to serve the truth, without any illusion of representing it, is a grave task that requires perseverance and self-control. It is here that Luther can still boast of his theory, albeit with all the limits that it cannot help but have. In the early Luther, obscurity prevails – a guarantee of the authenticity of the human subject. As a consequence, negation prevails here, a sort of denunciation of what each person pretends to be. Fides, of which Luther would very soon become the champion, retains in itself this protective obscurity, this punctuality without dimensions, which Luther is quick to explain through the characteristics of the Christian faith. The latter, however, is interpreted as a dramatic and substantial confirmation of this obscurity and is valid indeed because in it, it is possible to speak authentically about humankind. Once the pretenses of the speculative intelligence and the velleities of its designs concerning the virtuous action are silenced, it is possible to listen for the Verbum that speaks, resuscitates, and starts the journey. Does it command, too? Luther suspects that whoever thinks of hearing a “command” apart from the pure good news of the Verbum – and believes that that command ought now to be fulfilled, as a testament to the fact of having heard the Verbum – is not being sincere with him- or herself. It is even worse if the person then wants to impose that command on others: this is exactly when a person’s authority falters! The idea of the birth of humankind not in historical truth, but in the obscurity of the paradox, has certainly still not been lost completely, but it is also not very well preserved in the modern era or in the consequences that we have experienced (and are still experiencing). In Luther’s idiom, paradox, obscurity, and freedom are all synonyms. Putting the human being in the shelter of the obscurity of an autonomous beginning means safeguarding human freedom. The modern conscience therefore asks: What will the next step be, if the first step must necessarily be obscure in order to be defined as healthy?

 “And foundering is sweet in such a sea,” as Giacomo Leopardi put it in L’infinito, 1819; Eng. trans. in Giacomo Leopardi, Canti, trans. Jonathan Galassi (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2010), 107.

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5 A Theory of Man Having suppressed, for a start, every reference to an obligation, Luther must replace it with another reference, called Verbum or gospel. This reference is declared at the very beginning as devoid of any attributes. Its only purpose is to assure freedom to the human being. The human being is its only result. The capacities of the human being him- or herself, as subject, are not activated during the first launch of the subject itself. This launch happens automatically as an effect of the Verbum. This primary action of the Verbum, in its effect within the human being, takes the name of fides and inherits freedom as the only characteristic of the Verbum. Any other following event of which the subject (the human being) will be capable takes the name of caritas. Fides is devoid of any characteristic, while caritas has many. Upon his or her birth, the subject is devoid of any attributions but can inherit capacities and natural gifts, as long as she/he reserves these strictly for the scope of caritas and leaves them outside the scope of fides. This is Luther’s solutio – a solution that conquered many. A solution that not everyone likes. The Lutheran notion of Christian humanism starts from nothingness or silence and carries on firstly in the dimension of freedom that is closely linked to it. This freedom is attacked from all sides – as is said in one of the joyous hymns written by Luther –, but we will pull it off. Nobody will be able to win the position (this one!) that we have taken on, even if they oppress us in every possible way.¹⁰ Luther interprets the message of the gospel as fundamentally leading to the freedom of the self, the same freedom that is indeed unhoped-for (Psalm 81:6). The word, exactly because it is the word, needs to remain abstract. From here, a whole series of objections or accusations are possible, since any absolute could be put in the place of the Verbum. The objections remain; they are possible, and yet they do not void the positions. If Verbum, fides, and believer belong together, it is in the light of caritas that the self will also be allowed to hear, recognize, and satisfy the need. This way, the finite and the infinite meet again, one in the other, in an insurmountable and unavoidable way. The finite and the infinite certainly meet again in each other, but perception is the sola fide. The finite and the infinite meet again in each other, contrary to any factual evidence, in a reciprocity that is inviting and strict at the same time – provided it is consistent and discontinuous at the same time. And if it is consistent, then it is not a consistency that only throws some gleams of light every so often, letting a flare shine through. It is instead an intimate co-belonging between the finite and the infinite, provided that the distance between the two is safeguarded. Here rests what is left of Luther. Subtracted from the religious world, the association between the finite and the infinite is – for Luther – a given that brings itself in  I am hinting at the Lied: “Nun freut euch lieben Christen g’mein” (“Now rejoice together, dear Christians”); Luther, 1523/1524; yet more in “A Mighty Fortress” (c. 1529).

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its eternal becoming. This given does not come into human responsibilities, and even less so into human possibilities. It is a self-sufficient and independent given. In its own reality, it is unchangeable. It brings with itself its own dynamic. It is a reality that happens to take place by itself and to which, on humankind’s part, only an undoubtable element such as fides can be matched. A reality which, precisely in its being “for itself,” also includes the being “for us.” The human being moves in this association – does not complete it, does not perfect it – exactly as the association does not perfect the human being. The association between finite and infinite is completely the opposite of any ideal taken as a model for the human being. It is real without making it necessary to fulfill it again and even better. How do we react, then, to human space, to history? In human space, this pure association is charity; in human time, it is hope. If the finite and the infinite are now really linked (although this link is concealed) in their difference and reciprocity, what else can happen? We ask ourselves: What can still concretely come out into this world from this co-belonging, if the latter must stay concealed? The answer is not “blowing in the wind” (pace Bob Dylan, unless he is referring to John 3:8). The human being needs continuity. What ethics can be joined to fides? According to Luther, the becoming unravels under the two notions of charity and hope, with charity being wide in space and hope deep in time. Luther would insist on explaining that all of these notions come from Augustine and are authentically Christian. The gospel is never the norm, but the norm can derive from it as caritas. In caritas, the self is deeply involved in a reciprocity with others. It cannot take the lead. The non-evidence (obscurity) of faith is the safeguard of human freedom. On the other hand, faith itself does not stay “idle.” The important thing is not to be deluded about the notion that one’s moral behavior may be justified with reference to God. The thread linking freedom in the Verbum with the practice that follows (and which cannot but follow from it) is in the specific dimension of caritas. All activity is focused on caritas itself. This opens up opportunities to concretely follow up its instances in an immense task that is always open to new needs. This task can never be presented with Christian pride, as the enactment of a divine law, but is certainly supported by a principle of general freedom and the universality of the good of all human beings in their mutual acknowledgement of being exactly such. Because such is, in substance, the authentic “divine law.” Luther criticizes those who want to find in their actions the evidence of their own Christianity. The authentication of their own Christianity is exclusively in what Jesus Christ represents and makes concrete in his person and in his work. This work has been accomplished: it is desirable and necessary for it to be followed by the actions of the disciple, but these actions are not its completion. Medieval theology perceives human actions as a form of participation in salvation or as its practical effect. Here, grace opens up an alternative path from Adam and Eve’s: this is a path of penitence and deeds that illustrate and demonstrate the fact of having been saved. Luther rejects the inclusion of our own actions in

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the notion of salvation (as an effect of it, or as participation in it). Otherwise, the notion of salvation itself is weakened and its effect is emptied, making it uncertain. Luther lowers Christian reality into the heart of history and secularizes it completely, while at the same time highlighting its pure transcendence. Pure transcendence cannot be a state or an environment of sanctity promised to the efforts of the human being. Neither can it be one of a person’s infinite dimensions, still to be discovered or in need of being reactivated after having been momentarily lost. Why should a person labor toward assimilation and submission in order to access it or try to have a part in it? Who would prescribe to a person the tasks to be completed in order to access it? The human being is completely sovereign and does not need any completion. A person’s actions do not need to complete their faith. The human being is now completely in possession of the self, and of his or her efforts belong to his or her own person. The gospel cannot be treated as a target to reach, as a duty, or, even less so, as an exam to pass (as unfortunately we are often told by many preachers). It will be a rigorously pure event, to which only human existence in its entirety can correspond. Luther fights against the analogical transfer of the invisible into the sensible, but this does not mean that he weakens the visible to the point of exchanging it for a sensible of another kind, whether contingent or supernatural. Instead, Lutheran doctrine safeguards the characteristics of both elements. Their link remains invisible, but it is “believable.” And, in faith, this link is manageable in the specific concreteness of the facts, without pretending for this reason that it is fides that translates itself into facts and thus loses its specificity. In this sense, a good natural concreteness is always better than a misleading bad faithfulness to abstract symbolisms. In other words, a good Thomas Aquinas is always better than a bad William of Ockham! But only “in this sense.”

6 Caritas and Hope in the World The indicative cannot contain any imperative without risking the loss of its own nature. This is the early Luther. He mocks the discourses in which the imperative is triumphant and asks when the indicative will appear on the horizon. We are waiting for it, but it has not shown up yet. Therefore, it is necessary to turn the argument upside down and put the indicative at the foundation of discourse. It is so. However, can we derive an imperative from the indicative? This will come from the late Luther. From here begins a new path of freedom, and not of obedience. The important question is: What ethics follows from faith alone? This question, however, had already been asked by Luther at the time of his lecture on the Letter to the Romans, where he asked about the relationship of the “law” to the “gospel,” of the brook to the spring

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– a rural image of an original gushing out and a link with ensuing continuity.¹¹ The answer is in another “mystery”: without any knowledge of the word “made flesh,” there is no knowledge of the Verbum “in itself.” Luther condemns, in no uncertain terms, the isolated knowledge of the Verbum “in itself.” The Verbum itself does not remain abstract. If it were abstract, it would not be able to resist those who want to take its place. By making itself flesh, it conceals and, at the same time, manifests itself. In this point, too, there is certainly an element of “ecumenical” reflection. In conclusion, fides does not remain inert and devoid of any vitality toward the outside. The word caritas is associated with the word fides. First of all, the difference between the two notions is important. Caritas never absorbs the basic and primary function of fides. The norm is never gospel – particularly if it is flaunted as “evangelical.” Charity, instead, can contain the norm. In this case, the norm can be said to be “evangelical,” but in the sense of a norm necessary for human coexistence. I cannot translate freedom into autonomy, the gospel into the law. I cannot grant myself the capacity to do so. If I went down this path, I would expose the Verbum to the risk of not being the Verbum any more. This assertion originated the great controversy that would later develop between the different Christian positions. Charity as a principal notion includes several developments. The “believer” does not remain inert or lonely. Charity is the struggle for the creation of a finite world that is human-friendly, not the adaptation of the finite to the infinite. A religion that wants to be the sum of the finite and the infinite substitutes itself for the infinite that it wishes to worship and ends up taking its place. Charity needs to be interpreted in a spatial and social sense, a space in which all human beings are equal and, therefore, all men and women must receive equal treatment – as modern constitutions state, proud of finally accomplishing a human dream almost as ancient as humanity itself. This perspective is not one of a fenced pen, to which the “lost sheep” possibly return. Human society in its entirety is, if anything, the space where vital relationships are intertwined and, possibly, inevitable hostilities are resolved. Caritas is not an expression of the superiority of the subject in comparison to other subjects. It is the interpersonal relationship itself; humanity as such ties individuals together on the basis of a premise that is common to everyone because it is universal, and not because it is determined by their own individual vision. “Charity” is the notion that, unlike fides, can reflect the ethical indication that the Verbum possibly contains. Caritas can satisfy the norm. Indeed, it is invoked exactly for this specific purpose. This is so, however, provided that the norm is defined by the necessity of the neighbor and is therefore guided by the acknowledgement of the neighbor and his or her need.¹² (Luther uses for this purpose the terms “neces “Et iterum notandum Quomodo Apostolus fontem cum riuo copulet;” Autograph for the lecture on Romans (1515 – 1516) = WA 56:308, 25 – 26.  The notion of necessitas conscientiae is explicitly substituted with the notion of necessitas alterius; see WA 2:562, 35.

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sity” and “useful,” and not yet the word “right,” which will emerge only later.) Ethics can contain a command, if such a command is entrusted to the person who, in biblical language, is “the neighbor” – a typically evangelical expression still easily intelligible today. If the command were to be entrusted to the hands of the “believer,” this would diminish the power of the gospel by ignoring the fact that this “believer” is, first of all, the inanimate object that the word calls to life. In the hands of the neighbor, the command becomes concrete. It is the neighbor who makes the law contained in the Verbum understood. The grand Christian idea according to which God remains invisible, and the only accessible manifestation of the divine – in the evident and cognitive sense – is the state of necessity of the neighbor, is also the source of Luther’s thinking. Luther points his finger at that invisibility and reserves for caritas the boundless scope of social relation. Calvin follows along the same line, also transforming service into a freedom of equal people who offer their own services to one another. In his argumentation, the notion of “mutuality” stands out.¹³ The juridical norm derives from charity (reciprocity), and not, properly speaking, from faith. Just as caritas comes from fides, similarly from both fides and caritas comes the idea of general support for the struggle against injustice. The Theses Utrum opera faciant ad iustificationem (1520)¹⁴ begins by stating that faith makes a person just without even the smallest of deeds (sine ullis etiam minimis operibus). Justice is not a consequence of fides; it is, instead, its premise, and fides is unfailingly equivalent to it in humankind. The following Thesis notes that it is impossible for faith not to be accompanied by assiduous, copious, and grand deeds (Impossibile est fidem esse sine assiduis, multis et magnis operibus). However, in Thesis 16, this line of thought is carried on with a significant inversion: “Our iniquity exalts God’s justice, but still the just fights against iniquity” (Iniquitas nostra iustitiam Dei commendat, et tamen iustus est vindex iniquitatis).¹⁵ In the positioning of these theses, it is possible to see how the idea of discontinuity is radically asserted only to be sutured immediately afterwards, and how from this starting point derives a notion of the struggle for justice, also on the human level. Discontinuity is the background of “iniquity.” Precisely because justice is fiduciary and not legal, the order belongs to hope, of which charity is the polar star. Finally, hope. In the sense of time. In the sense of a fight against the absurd and against grief. The world of hope is the world of the struggle against evil, injustice, and pain. The redemption discussed here postulates captivity; salvation postulates a total threat. It is impossible to forget the unsettling side of evil in human reality. A different reality, however, does exist – not as a transaction, but as the presence of God.   WA 

From chapter 12 of the Letter to the Romans and the Letter to the Philippians. Luther, Utrum opera faciant ad iustificationem (Whether deeds contribute to justification) (1520) = 7:231– 32. WA 7:231 ff; cf. Rom 3:5.

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Hope is struggle. The human being – in his or her manifestations – is not only imperfect, but also indeed evil. Hope pushes us to perceive the reach of the denunciation of injustice and to look beyond. What can we now say of politics? If it is true that Luther introduces the idea of discontinuity in theology, and if – as it appears – he uses this idea to ground simultaneously the freedom and the self-criticism of both the single subject and the Church, we cannot but notice that his discourse on civil authorities is not always as critical. The modern idea of emancipation is still far beyond him. The critical assumption is there, but the facts lack coherence. Whoever thinks that freedom can be translated into revolutionary civil relationships is called a “fanatic.” According to Luther, we are all “naked” before God in baptism (and, therefore, we are free), while in our everyday life God “clothes” us, giving different tasks to each one of us. Therefore, we are all equal but in different clothes. The authority governs, and the subject obeys. As far as this point is concerned – just as with many other very objectionable points – Luther does not go beyond the limits of his time.

7 Adam and Jesus Christ It is the whole of the discourse that counts, the doctrina. Christology is the core of this funambulatory discourse. What the Protestant Reformation highlights is mostly the fact that the grace of God is not a second opportunity offered to Adam, with the perspective of heaven – an opportunity that can be realized by following a correct norm or set of norms defined by the men of the Church. According to the Reformation, the law, if it is God’s law and not the law of humankind, is fulfilled by itself – or, if someone indeed fulfills it or is able to fulfill it, this is the Son, Jesus Christ. Once he fulfills it, it is not necessary for anyone else to fulfill it again. This is the sense of the solus Christus. The gospel is not an alternative path offered to Adam, as opposed to Adam the sinner. Grace is not an alternative to sin. Instead, it is Adam himself who is torn away from sin. The distance is present and amplified in the figure of Jesus Christ, and in him it is reconciled. In this sense, using theological language is not irrelevant or avoidable. Sin is defeated, but it is not yet extinct. The struggle against sin goes on, but “in order to tear man away from sin, rather than to tear sin away from man.”¹⁶ God keeps sin at

 “The language of the Apostle and the metaphysical language are contrasting. The Apostle speaks making believe [in the marginalia: making us perceive] that man is taken away whilst the sin stays [in the marginalia: the sin is left where it is] and that man is extracted from sin [in the marginalia: rather than the opposite]. The current sense is instead: to extract the sin leaving the man where he is and may rather the man be purified;” WA 56:334, 14– 18. Further down, Luther will also add that the believer “is not summoned to idleness, but rather to work against the passions;” WA 56:350, 5 – 17.

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bay, because it is still looming as a threat to freedom. The cross is not expiation, but rather a victory over the forces of evil.¹⁷ Luther wanted to isolate himself, even at the cost of scandalizing others with his paradoxes. In the end, he achieved what he wanted: a new burst of initiative, a decisive step in a new direction. He achieved this objective through contrasts taken to the point of rift and then left to the care of others, who would put them right with cautious moderation, provided this was consistent with the rift he had caused. In the paradox resides the strength of the rigorous contraposition that, by always remaining open, even in its openness is predisposed to mitigation. Luther does not want to create a “good” human subject, if using the adjective “good” means giving to the subject a characteristic (attribute) belonging to the subject itself in order to highlight it. Luther’s problem is the subject as such, the “man” of theological and philosophical tradition. The foundation of the subject is his theme. The human being is only grounded on the announcement of the gospel and is recognizable only from the starting point of this announcement – from the Verbum, not from any evangelical work that the person assigns to him- or herself or from any other personal characteristic. All religions ask human beings to do something. Luther asks the person to do nothing, rather to lean on the Verbum that brought him or her into being. The human being has nothing to add to the creativity of the Verbum (and in this resides the foundation of human freedom). The Verbum already carries in itself its own result: it is the person, the “I am,” the “ego” of the philosophers. The certainty of this being is fundamental and unconditional. It does not depend, in turn, on human notions or actions, but rather humankind depends – vertically, so to speak – on it. However, this is a surprising fact in Luther’s theological research. The Verbum is the word of God, but the word of God “made itself flesh.” The infinite has made itself finite. Luther links his position to ancient, classical Christology. The link between humankind and God exists only in Christ. In faith, this link is as real as it is in Christ, but then only in faith it is observable as human reality. This line of thought, however, does not end here by circling back on itself – although it has, so to speak, already reached its conclusion. In fact, what is conclusive, on the one hand, opens up a new perspective on the other: the Verbum is incarnatum. This fact introduces, one might say, a new direction and opens the person to that interpersonal relationship that Luther defines with the Latin term caritas. Luther’s algorithm is convincing in some concrete circumstances, while at other times it is less so, or not convincing at all. The paradoxes – the violent oppositions that lead from thought to reflection – are still here.  In Luther, the idea of expiation is lacking. What is there, is the idea of substitution: Jesus Christ endures the punishment instead of man and wins against sin, a victory that he transmits to the sinner. The exchange of roles between Christ and the sinner is one of Luther’s usual doctrinal and rhetorical themes. The Christological themes are highlighted individually but not “thought out” in their links (however, the themes seem to be disconnected in the original sources, too).

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Goethe mentioned the words “necessity and freedom, their remoteness and proximity.” Here it is possible to resume the discourse introduced by Löwith. In the history of the churches, there is a search for a bearable balance between freedom and order, with solutions that – little by little – lead to our democracies. The battle against injustice was rarely analyzed in the past, or was faced with confusions and delays. The churches, however, contributed to keeping it alive, and their minorities, with their own characteristics, took part in the demand for emancipation and solidarity between peoples in the vast context of the eras and movements known as the Enlightenment, modernity, Romanticism, capitalism, and socialism. It is useless to focus only on seeing their contradictions and delays. In short, it was a continuous renewal of the double needs of freedom and self-discipline, criticism and realism. The churches did not lack people who were vindex iniquitatis. This is a struggle that is still ongoing and will never stop. However, this fact must not push us toward a hypocritical and accommodating melding of faith and charity. And yet, the human being receives the Verbum of God. The human being finds his or her foundation outside of the self, in relationship to the Verbum, the creating word of God, which is accessible only because it is real and present in the person of Jesus Christ. The word of God alone can guarantee its own authenticity. This is the only fact worthy of being the foundation of the human being. The Church is a minister, not a vicar. It is not possible to turn to anything higher than the Verbum itself. And Luther plays with the words to the point of articulating the “similar form” of humankind and the Verbum – the word of God. Thus, at the same time, he keeps open the debate on Christianity and on humankind. He puts the Christian before himself and finds one of his critical points; he puts the Church at fault against itself, not in the name of a visible purity, but rather in the name of its own constitutive element. At the same time, he points out a critical moment at the core of the human being and thus calls for humanism to rethink its own foundations. Human beings let themselves be carried away by their own emptiness. They want to fill it with their own initiatives and capacities. Luther suggests a different path, which at first highlights precisely the emptiness of mysticism and then reaches external action. Thus, in true Augustinian fashion, he offers two fundamental resources to ponder. In the first element, the human being accesses existence through the starting point of the good news and focuses perfectly on it, in an absoluteness as deep as a freedom without dimensions. Immediately afterwards (but strictly together) begins the relationship with the neighbor, from which all the criteria of ethics can be deduced. Here, the dimensions are countless, and the problems are plentiful. But the path is safe.

Luther’s Life

Signature of Martin Luther. 1530 (Falkenstein Heinz-Dieter / Alamy Stock Photo).

Jon Balserak

The Medieval Heritage of Martin Luther Martin Luther’s relationship to the Middle Ages could be depicted through the image of a troubled marriage, in which the couple have a genuine love for one another, yet one of them is continually trying to leave the other. The aim below will be to attempt briefly to examine this troubled marriage; that is, to explore Luther’s relationship with the Middle Ages. Luther has, not infrequently, been discussed by scholars in terms of being the last medieval or the first modern individual. The treatment he received by the psychoanalyst Eric Erickson in his work Young Man Luther, and more recently by Lyndal Roper in Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, has in many ways assumed and suggested Luther’s modernity, as if he, unlike numerous other historical figures, were a man whom we could treat as a contemporary, scrutinizing his inner mindset the way therapists do someone living today. Other scholars have proceeded in their research on Luther with similar assumptions concerning Luther’s modernity. So, for instance, Gerhard Ritter, writing in 1925 in his Luther: Gestalt und Symbol, conceived of Luther as a prophet of national revival and as “the Eternal German.”¹ Others, such as Heinrich Bornkamm and Paul Althaus, felt similarly about Luther during the Luther Renaissance of the 1920s; indeed, Bornkamm quoted Ritter to assert Luther’s role as the symbol of the National Socialist order² – which further suggests a modern conceptualization of Luther and his significance. This approach to Luther changed, however, around the middle of the twentieth century. Various factors could be pointed to as significant for instigating this change, but one of the more pivotal factors was the re-orientation in thinking on the relationship between the medieval and Reformation periods introduced by the work of scholars such as Heiko Oberman. Oberman, who completed his doctorate at Utrecht in 1957, produced a series of studies in which he sought to re-orient scholarly thinking on both the relationship between the medieval and early modern eras and, specifically, between the Middle Ages and Luther. Here part of his battle was against a prevailing conception of the Middle Ages espoused by men like Etienne Gilson, who found the pinnacle of the medieval period in the thought of Thomas Aquinas (and his harmonizing of reason and faith) and believed that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed a decline into the mired confusion of William of Ockham and the rise of nominalism. Reassessing the question of continuity and discontinuity between these two eras, Oberman argued for a much stronger continuity between them. This moved him to alter the established narrative, reassessing the relationship  Gerhard Ritter, Luther: Gestalt und Symbol (Munich: Bruckmann, 1925), 151.  Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther und der deutsche Geist, Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge und Schriften aus dem Gebiet der Theologie und Religionsgeschichte 170 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr Siebeck, 1934), 20. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-009

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between the late medieval era and the Reformation. Corresponding to this, Oberman found much more continuity between Luther and his late medieval context. Luther had, after all, declared that Ockham was his teacher; he read extensively in medieval theology and exegesis (with the latter nicely illustrated through his engagement with Nicholas of Lyra in his Genesis commentary). These views combined with other developments in scholarship – such as, for instance, an increased awareness of the role the apocalyptic played in medieval and especially late medieval culture – and led to Oberman (and some of his students, such as David Steinmetz) seeing Luther as much more profoundly shaped by the era in which he lived. Luther was not, these scholars explained, a reformer who dropped down to earth from outer space. He was, rather, a late medieval theologian, who imbibed and worked with the systems of thought in existence during his life. He did, to be sure, make changes to the doctrines he had received, but he did so as a late medieval theologian. “For Luther,” Oberman opined, “reformation was the beginning not of modern times but of the Last Days”³ – words which were, more recently, reiterated by Scott Hendrix in his Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer: “For him, the reformation was not the beginning of a modern era that kept time with numbers, but a harbinger of the world’s end when time no longer mattered.”⁴ While the modernity (interpreted in various ways) of Luther is arguably still an open question, his utter saturation in the Late Middle Ages is not. It has been well established. For without question, the tools and equipment (intellectual, cultural, spiritual, etc.) with which Luther labored during his adult life as a monk, academic, writer, and reformer were quintessentially medieval. Yet rarely was it the case that he simply took what was bequeathed to him by his forbears and used it unmodified. Rather, he altered it, questioned it, molded it to conform more closely with how he understood the Scriptures, sometimes transforming it until it was virtually beyond recognition – which is why the study of his relationship to the Middle Ages is so complex.

1 Life Martin Luder was born on November 10, 1483 in Eiseleben to Hans and Margarethe Luder. He died in Eiseleben in 1546. His father worked in the mining industry, and he was sufficiently business-savvy to manage to be a mine owner. The young Luder grew up in the towns where his father moved the family as a result of the mining work in which he was involved. Scholars as recently as 2016 (see the work of Roper) have argued that this upbringing profoundly shaped him, providing him in particular with

 Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 266.  Scott Hendrix, Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 4.

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important tools with which he would later live, work, and fight. He was accustomed to hardship, employed scatological language, and rarely, if ever, backed away from an altercation. He generally took the initiative, exhibited extraordinary courage, and pushed his way bull-headed (as he was regarded by many, especially his opponents) through obstacles that would have sidelined many others. All of these traits seem legitimately attributed to the medieval world – and particularly the towns and villages, pre-industrial-era labor, etc. – in which he was raised and matured. Martin “Luder” changed his name to “Luther” in the autumn of 1517, and even for a brief time to “Eleutherius,” which is from the Greek eleutheros, meaning free.⁵ His expression of freedom was, he indicated, a liberty from the bondage of scholastic theology. This exhibited itself in his Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam and, of course, in the Ninety-five Theses.

2 Schooling, University, and Awakening Around 1497, Luther was sent off to school in Mansfeld and, a year later, in Magdeburg. The training he would have received in these institutions was formed by medieval educational thought on the trivium, which involved instruction in grammar, rhetoric, and logic and was utterly fundamental to medieval conceptions of learning. Upon entering the University of Erfurt in 1501, Luther moved to a town where he would stay for a decade – four years in the university and six in the monastery. Here Luther was beginning at a time of radical change for universities and for education generally. Two major movements are worth mentioning. The European Renaissance, begun in quattrocento Italy by individuals such as Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Lorenzo Valla and carried north by Desiderius Erasmus and Rudolph Agricola, focused very much on educational reform. Consequently, universities throughout Europe were changing their curricula in response to its concerns, a process which continued for centuries. Some of these changes were opposed by another movement – scholasticism. Renaissance humanism and scholasticism arose at approximately the same time, as scholars such as A.J. Minnis have shown (in contrast to previous scholarship, which tended to conceive of scholasticism as thoroughly established as the method of training before the Renaissance arose to fight against its entrenched methods). These two movements competed for burgeoning young hearts and minds, including Luther’s. Luther’s experience of each movement would initially have been determined to a large degree by the specific university he attended and the course of study he pursued. He had gone to university to study law at the insistence of his father. Luther’s father had planned for his son to study law as a means to a more financially secure

 Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology; Its Historical and Systematic Development (Edinburgh: Fortress Press, 1999), 101.

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and lucrative existence than the one he had experienced working in mining. Yet all this would change in 1505. In July of that year, Luther was caught in a terrible thunderstorm, in response to which he swore to Saint Anna (who, incidentally, was the patron saint of miners) that he would become a monk if only she would rescue him. Surviving the event, he dutifully kept his vow, entering the Order of Augustinian Hermits in July 1505. From that point onwards, his focus was on theology, which he studied in a university faculty strongly influenced by scholasticism and the scholastic method. We can say a bit more about Luther’s university at this point – the University of Erfurt, where he matriculated in the faculty of arts in 1501 and began his Master of Arts in 1505. It was quite an old German institution, having been established in 1392. By the time Luther arrived, it had a number of significant humanists among the faculty, such as Eobanus Hessus and Conrad Mutian. By this time, the university was also saturated with scholars who aligned themselves with the via moderna and embraced nominalism. By contrast, other universities – such as the University of Cologne, established in 1388 – were strongholds of the via antiqua. These different philosophical schools were aligned with approaches to a host of fundamental questions about the nature of knowledge, which had been developed and argued over for centuries. The via antiqua was associated with Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Key to it was the conviction that human knowledge of individual things is based on the idea that they are particular instances of a universal. This realist conception might, depending on who was espousing it, insist on the notion that these universals had extra-mental existence in a perfect world of forms, as Platonism teaches. Nominalism, which has a complex pedigree and is sometimes equated by scholars with Ockhamism, took a contrary position. The nominalist believed that human knowledge of individual things was not based on prior knowledge of universals, but rather on a direct human encounter with the individual things themselves. Universals were, in that sense, simply labels. Some universities allowed adherence to both the via antiqua and via moderna, but others were much more insistent upon exclusive adherence to one or the other. But increasingly both “viae” were inscribed into the statutes. In Basel five years after its founding (1460) the via antiqua receives equal status with the earlier via moderna, and in Tübingen (1477) both viae are acknowledged from the very beginning. How little the designation “moderna” or “antiqua” has here to do with categories of time may appear from the fact that in Heidelberg (1386) the “via moderna” is known as the via Marsiliana (after Marsilius of Inghen, †1396) and that in the Wittenberg statutes of 1508 even three viae are admitted, named for school leaders: the Via Thomae, the Via Scoti, and the Via Gregorii, thus called after Gregory of Rimini (t1358).⁶

 Heiko Oberman, “Via Antiqua and Via Moderna: Late Medieval Prolegomena to Early Reformation Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 48 no. 1 (January–March 1987): 23 – 40, esp. 24.

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While Luther does not seem to have been especially preoccupied with the squabbles over the technical and specialized details related to one or the other, he acknowledged his indebtedness to the via moderna and specifically to Ockham, as already mentioned. The impact it seems to have had on him was more methodological. Of course, with Luther’s turn to the monastery and to the study of theology, his engagement while in university would have been with great theological texts such as Peter Lombard’s Libri Quattuor Sententiarum, generally referred to as the Sentences. The method of teaching employed with these young doctoral candidates was to have them lecture through Lombard’s Sentences. Often these lectures were then circulated as commentaries. Accordingly, Luther studied the commentary of Gabriel Biel, the fifteenth-century theologian who taught at the University of Tübingen. This left its mark on Luther, given Biel’s identification with nominalism. Studying at an established stronghold of the via moderna, as the University of Erfurt was, meant that Luther adopted a number of their emphases. Those emphases included the belief that Christian doctrine and faith rest more upon divine revelation than on reason and natural knowledge. They distinguished clearly between philosophy and theology, but did not disparage the former. In addition to texts such as Lombard’s Sentences and Biel’s commentaries, Luther would have studied Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, and he also would have lectured on them. Aristotle’s presence in the academy was ubiquitous, not only in Erfurt but throughout much of Europe (Aristotle’s association with the Dominicans – and particularly Thomas Aquinas, who had become one of the early champions of Aristotelian philosophy – should not blind us to that fact). Artistotle’s authority would, however, come to be something against which Luther rebelled. It has been argued by Sachiko Kusukawa that the Aristotelianism Luther would rebel against so vigorously was, in fact, a particular medieval strain of it, which had been honed and shaped by Islamic philosophers – such as Avicenna and Averroes – and by the specific debates in which they were involved with Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, and others.⁷ Kusukawa’s convictions on this point were developed through her studies of the work of Luther’s protégé, Philip Melanchthon, who, despite his adoration for Luther, actually increased the usage of Aristotle’s texts in the University of Wittenberg as he labored to build and strengthen the university. One additional aspect of nominalism’s (and particularly Ockham’s) influence on Luther that can be mentioned concerns the distinction between philosophy and theology and, specifically, the (so-called) dialectic between God’s potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata. This distinction was programmatic for William of Ockham and helped to accentuate the idea that one can only learn truth about God if God chooses to reveal it. The distinction between God’s power considered absolutely and God’s power contemplated through what he has ordained has the effect, as scholars

 Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy; The Case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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such as Philotheus Boehner and others have argued, of throwing one entirely upon divine revelation, because this distinction underlines the impossibility of reasoning one’s way via the use of human ratiocination and consideration of the natural world (i. e., what God has ordained) back into the mind of God. Such attempts, scholars have rightly argued, are essentially lost once one realizes that the entire created order could have been different – that God could have de potentia absoluta established an utterly different world and, especially, a profoundly different means of saving humankind.⁸ This, it is argued, helped to push Luther back upon the Bible for all of his knowledge of God, encouraging him to eschew human reason, and especially medieval Aristotelianism, in the process. This influence on the young Luther bore fruit in several ways. One of those ways can be discussed at this juncture, for another aspect of the via moderna that initially influenced Luther, but which he would eventually come to rebel violently against, was its soteriological stance. Those who embraced the via moderna, such as Gabriel Biel in particular, adhered to a soteriology that Luther came to believe was not only Semi-Pelagian but in fact “worse than the Pelagians.”⁹ The terms Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian have been discussed variously in the scholarly literature and are extremely difficult to pin down precisely. They seem, in some cases, to have been used as slurs cast at an opponent without necessarily carefully identifying in a clear and coherent manner a specific collection of soteriological dogmas. Nonetheless, in the case of Luther, the Semi-Pelagianism he encountered in the theologies of men like Biel did contain components that were easily identifiable. One of the more problematic, as far as the young Luther was concerned, was its (in Luther’s judgment, sinful) belief in, and reliance upon, human ability. Debates over what humankind can do ex puris naturalibus – that is, through natural ability alone, without the assistance of divine grace – were common throughout the Middle Ages, especially in the Late Middle Ages. This all came in the wake of Augustine’s distinction between prevenient grace and cooperating grace. In fact, the entire Middle Ages serves as an extended commentary on Augustine and in quite a number of ways on that distinction, with the via moderna serving by and large to accentuate the idea of human cooperation. The problem with this in the eyes of some medieval thinkers – here Luther praises Gregory of Rimini, the Italian member of the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, Luther’s own order, in particular – was that it was an affront to God for human beings to think they could cooperate with God or that their salvation, in some manner, was not the sole work of God from start to finish and did not depend on anything in human beings for its accomplishment. With such concerns in mind, the Oxford don Thomas Bradwardine wrote his well-known De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum, and in a similar manner Luther re-

 See, for instance, Heiko Oberman, “Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism: With Attention to Its Relation to the Renaissance,” Harvard Theological Review 53 no. 1 (1960): 47– 76.  D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. K. Drescher et al. (Weimar, 1883), 2:394.

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volted on behalf of the cause of God against the prevailing medieval sentiment that humankind can make right and godly choices without, or simply with the assistance of, divine grace. Though scholars disagree on the precise date, it is thought that by approximately 1510 Luther came to eschew entirely any idea that human beings are anything but utterly helpless sinners. Luther’s opposition to human ability took aim at the medieval idea of doing one’s best (facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam), and of course he also wrote De Arbitrio Servo (The Enslaved Will) against Erasmus in 1525, which tackled the same concern. An additional theological distinction found in the Late Middle Ages that also influenced Luther is that between condign (de condigno) and congruent (de congruo) merit – that is, between merit that is truly meritorious, such that it would be immoral not to reward it, and contractual merit, the latter being granted a reward simply for having fulfilled the terms of the contract, irrespective of whether the behavior was intrinsically meritorious or not. One can find this distinction discussed constantly in medieval literature, especially in late medieval writings. Denis the Carthusian, for instance, often takes it up in his biblical commentaries. And as scholars such as Tony Lane have argued, the existence of the distinction was very important for Luther. It helped pave the way for the notion of a reward (i. e., eternal life) being given to someone who did not merit it – that is, someone who did not merit it with condign merit. This line of thought may be adapted without too much cajoling into Luther’s notion of a Christian being simul justus et peccator, “simultaneously righteous and a sinner.” Thus he came to realize that a Christian’s justifying righteousness is an alien one – a gift of God to the sinner.

3 The Monastery and Late Medieval Piety Much of Luther’s theology would have been developed and lived within a monastic context. He was not only a member of the Augustinian Hermits in Erfurt and Wittenberg, but also progressed through the ranks within that community. The lifestyle established over centuries of development within medieval monasticism – coupled with the rise of movements during the Late Middle Ages that aimed to reform these different movements, ordinarily by becoming stricter and more regimented – took its toll on the young Luther, as he himself attested. Adding to the ordinary difficulties associated with the monastery, Luther sought to inflict upon himself and endure especially harsh ascetic forms of piety as a young monk, as a means of teaching himself humility, subordination, and self-control. He thus imbibed the reforming spirit of late medieval monasticism during his young adulthood in the monastery. Within this arena of thoughts and ideas, we must consider the character of medieval piety. The importance of the mass and, in particular, of the Eucharist had increased following the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), and this undoubtedly pressed itself upon Luther’s religious consciousness, as evidenced by the extreme reaction he had to his first celebration of the mass as a priest on May 2, 1507. To be sure,

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the terror he apparently experienced, which nearly moved him to withdraw from the mass without finishing the celebration, can be interpreted in different ways, with some seeing it as a kind of stage freight and others interpreting it as Luther being awed by the majesty of God. But whatever the case may be, we find in this event a mix of that which is particularly medieval and that which seems so peculiar to Luther himself. We also see this strain of austerity in the prolonged and detailed confessions Luther made to his confessor, Johannes van Staupitz – the exhausting hours he spent confessing his sins, doubts, and worries about whether he had been sufficiently contrite exhibits quite plainly the impact this strain of late medieval piety had on him. It is, then, intriguing to see how he adapted these expressions of piety as he transitioned from being a dutiful Roman Catholic monk to being a reformer. Important in this transition was his trip to Rome in 1510, during which Luther came face-to-face with the medieval city in all its corruption. The shock to Luther’s system – that the Eternal City could be such a den of iniquity – is plain to anyone familiar with his remarks about the experience. Although our modern disposition towards this occurrence in Luther’s life may be to think him somewhat naïve, such facile interpretations are neither helpful nor, it seems to me, particularly accurate. Other events significant to this transition would include the Reuchlin affair and Luther’s reaction to it, as well as his response to Tetzel’s selling of indulgences. Some of Luther’s ability to adapt medieval piety to his newfound understanding of righteousness may well have been fueled by the late medieval movement known as the Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life. Luther completed some of his schooling in one of their houses in Magdeburg. Scholars used to interpret this fact to mean that he had been deeply imbued with the reforming ideals associated with the movement and the Devotio Moderna, but this is now believed to be unlikely. The school Luther attended was not actually run by the Common Life; rather, they provided lodgings for students away from home and supervised their studies while the students were living there. Nonetheless, scholars still generally regard their influence upon the young Luther to have been discernible. The Devotio Moderna’s development of a more internally focused form of piety, as splendidly exhibited in Thomas à Kempis’ De Imitatione Christi, appears in Luther’s developed understanding of the Christian life, which bears some similarities to what one finds in Erasmus’ Enchridion militis Christiani, published in 1503. It was, of course, Erasmus who caused such anger with his statement “monachatus non est pietas,” which is found in the Enchiridion. ¹⁰ Luther’s views on piety eventually approached and indeed moved beyond this laconic but striking sentiment of Erasmus. That is to say, Luther came to believe that the life of a monk, and for that matter of all Christians, is not necessarily a pious life. In fact, even relatively early in his life as a monk, Luther came to regard the externality of the monastic

 Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera Omnia, ed. J. Leclerc (Leiden, 1703 – 1706), 5:65c.

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forms of piety – such as silence at meals – as useless, at best. He came to believe that piety must be internal and heartfelt. It could not simply be the case that merely occupying the position of a monk or a nun would make one pious. In such things, it is not impossible to imagine that Luther – and Erasmus as well, since he was also schooled by the Brethren of the Common Life – was influenced by their guidance. In many ways, this crafting, reshaping, and internalizing of the forms of piety Luther had learned as a young man can be seen in full bloom, as it were, in his marrying Katharina von Bora on June 13, 1525. As an act, it was one Luther went through with despite the horrendous mockery he suffered at the hands of Roman Catholics, such as Johannes Eck and others (indeed, Johann Hansenberg wrote a mocking dialogue about their marriage, and Johannes Cochlaeus wrote a play that likewise sought to shame the former monk and nun for getting married). It was also done despite the monastic vow he took, a decision he wrestled with, even writing a letter (in Latin) to his father, in which he discussed the whole thing as if to justify it to his father, and perhaps also to himself (since his father could not read Latin).¹¹ And as an act, it was the logical conclusion of the stage at which he had arrived in his views, both on the sacraments (since he came to believe that holy orders were not a sacrament, as articulated in De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae Praeludium in 1520) and on the monasteries and monastic forms of piety he had practiced so diligently while a young monk in Erfurt and Wittenberg. Thus, on many levels, Luther’s marrying “my Käthe” represented his careful rethinking and reshaping of his deeply held monastic commitments.

4 Patristic Influences and Christian Tradition Luther’s adaptation of medieval conceptions of piety – particularly in relation to marriage, sexuality, and human relations – appears more clearly if we compare and contrast the influence of the greatest of the church fathers, Augustine the North African theologian and bishop, on the Middle Ages and on Luther. Anyone who peruses something like the material found in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica II-II.151– 154 – which covers chastity, lust, and virginity – will find a superb setting forth of medieval Augustinianism as regards important aspects of the Christian life (especially the life of a monk or nun) vis-à-vis the flesh and its temptations. While Aquinas did not state in this Summa that all sexual activity is sinful (that is, he allowed that sexual intercourse within marriage is not a sin), he did say that the purer form of life for any Christian is the celibate life. Moreover, he also reminded his readers that when Jerome censured Jovian, he did so on the grounds that Jovian’s error

 The details in this paragraph come from Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (London: Random House, 2016), 278 – 85.

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consisted “in holding that virginity should not be preferred to marriage.”¹² In this same article, Aquinas cited Augustine’s De Virginitate (On Holy Virginity) to the effect that marriage is neither equal to celibacy nor even to widowhood – it is inferior to both. But Luther – while profoundly indebted to Augustine for his views on the human person, on the nature and effects of sin, and on numerous other theological topics – came to delight in getting married, perceiving it as a gift from God. Of course, Augustine also wrote De Bono Coniugali (On the Good of Marriage), so he was not opposed to marriage. Yet Augustine’s insistence on the believer living separately from the world and, in particular, his concern over the dangers of concupiscence filtered through the Middle Ages, being picked up, adapted, and handed down by thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. But in comparison with what one finds in medieval conceptualizations of these issues, Luther appeared remarkably positive regarding the benefits of marriage and, indeed, of sexual intercourse within marriage. He and Katharina had sex well after the age when she would have been able to become pregnant. One could conclude that Luther simply stopped being Augustinian, at least as regards sex and marriage, but such a reading of the situation seems extreme and unwarranted. With regard to other aspects of Augustinianism, Luther could certainly be said to have happily embraced its emphasis upon the spiritual world, particularly the presence and activity of the devil within the world. Whether this is exhibited in his curious habit of cursing at the devil and employing scatological language to mock him or in warning his friends and those who heard him preach about the real danger of Satan, it surely cannot be doubted. The common trope of the godly being afflicted by the devil (one thinks of Saint Antony) found vivid expression in Luther’s life. Of course, Augustine wrote (in works such as De Divinatione Daemonium) on the character of temptation and addressed questions of whether the devil can read a person’s mind or whether he is reliant upon the spoken word of the person – details about which Luther cared deeply. The considerations discussed in the last few paragraphs are energized in part by the fact that Luther was a member of the Augustinian Hermits, implying that the great church father and Bishop of Hippo’s influence on him cannot be a surprise. As mentioned above, Augustine cast an enormous shadow over the age into which Luther was born, raising the questions that were to be addressed for centuries and providing the Middle Ages and Luther with the answers to most of them. Luther’s theology would develop strong Augustinian tones as he learned to emphasize the greatness and inscrutability of God and the sinfulness of humankind. These issues raise the question of the relationship between tradition (namely Augustine and other uninspired, post-apostolic writers) and Scripture. A complex and conflicting legacy was passed from the Middle Ages to those, like Luther, who inhab-

 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae (Romae, 1886), II.152a4.

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ited the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It goes without saying, despite the continued existence of opinions to the contrary, that Luther and other reformers – such as Huldrych Zwingli, Johannes Oecolampadius, John Calvin, and Heinrich Bullinger – had profound regard for church tradition. Luther was of a different opinion entirely from the derisively named Anabaptists, many of whom eschewed any writings produced after 325 (they viewed the Council of Nicea in 325 as a watershed moment when Satan entered the church). Therefore, when Luther and others spoke of the primacy of the Bible, they were not jettisoning the writings of the tradition, but were rather giving pride of place to the word of God, while also holding the tradition in high regard. This is discernibly different from the position of Roman Catholics, however, whose assessment of the relationship between Scripture and tradition would eventually find expression in the partim-partim language of the Council of Trent, though this would take place after Luther’s death in 1546. Luther bore testimony to his deep appreciation for the tradition on so many occasions that one feels uncomfortable drawing attention to just one or two. Two other influences on the German reformer were born in closer proximity, both chronologically and geographically – Bernard of Clairvaux and Nicholas of Lyra. The latter produced his justly famous Postillae super Biblia, with which Luther interacts continually in his In Primum Librum Mose Enarrationes. The former was considered, by Luther and many of the Reformers, a gem born late and the last of the church fathers (Bernard died in 1153).

5 Biblical Exegesis The mention of Nicholas of Lyra raises the issue of biblical exegesis. This topic was also tersely alluded to in our brief discussion of Renaissance humanism above. The Middle Ages bequeathed to Martin Luther and his associates the fourfold sense of the biblical text. As an idea, the quadriga was not really set in stone until centuries after the death of the last apostle. The Apostle Paul, of course, refers to an allegorical sense of the biblical text in chapter two of his Letter to the Galatians, when discussing Sarah and Hagar. Other early post-apostolic writers wrote openly and thoughtfully about the words of Scripture having three senses, which corresponded to the three parts of humankind: the body, soul, and spirit. Isidore of Seville refers to many more than three senses, as do other medieval authors. Nonetheless, well before the birth of Nicholas of Lyra in 1270, the idea that the sacred Scriptures possess four senses had been codified. He cites a well-known verse in one of his two introductions to his Postillae super Biblia: Littera gesta docet, Quid credas allegoria,

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Moralis quid agas, Quo tendas anagogia.¹³

Nicholas goes on to explain something of the rationale behind this doctrine, which relates insightfully to the nature of God. Because God is so great, he explains, it only stands to reason that his word would reflect his greatness. And it reflects this by having a plethora of meanings that speak to the human individual abundantly. It is not merely the word of the human authors alone that one is reading when one reads the Bible. It is God’s word. Accordingly, the Bible possesses as many as four different meanings, which serve the purposes this stanza indicated. Interestingly, even as Nicholas was writing these sentiments, he was challenging the standard reading ascribed to them. Ever since Aquinas had discussed in his Summa Theologica the need to stick closely to the literal sense when developing allegories and such interpretations, medieval exegesis began to turn away from the cavalier use of the spiritual senses. Aquinas crafted his comments on the matter against the backdrop of a medieval tradition that had, as he and others believed, fallen into the habit of meandering all over the place when concocting various aspects of the spiritual sense. Aquinas’ concerns, as scholars from as long ago as the 1940s (Beryl Smalley) have argued, were part of the impact of the rediscovery of Aristotle in the thirteenth century, an event with which the church grappled and which posited inter alia a closer connection between the human body and the soul – a connection which also ended up influencing, so it is argued, conceptions of the connection between the sensus literalis and the sensus spiritualis. ¹⁴ In this new understanding they are fundamentally linked and must not be separated and pulled apart, as they had been within a medieval milieu dominated by Platonic conceptions of body and soul, which saw them as profoundly distinct and separate entities. From essentially the late thirteenth century onward, there was a reaction against this conceptualization and its impact on biblical exegesis. Luther picked up this emphasis; indeed, he could not ignore it. Added to this were the concerns of Renaissance humanists, such as his friend Philip Melanchthon, who nurtured philological and literary interests that they applied to the interpretation of texts, engaging in careful analysis of the meaning of words and their context within the biblical book, paragraph, stanza, and sentence, not to mention chronological and redemptive-historical contexts and the intentions of the human author. Since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, biblical exegetes – following in the wake of individuals such as Nicholas of Lyra, Faber Stapulensis, and others – had sought the germanus literalis sensus (true literal sense), which became increasingly aligned with the human author’s intentions. This was what Luther sought, develop Nicholas of Lyra, Lyra Biblia Latina: Biblia Latina cum postillis Nicolai de Lyra et expositionibus […] replicisque Matthiae Doering (Nuremberg, 1483), n.p.  Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), 292– 308.

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ing a style of biblical exegesis of historical books which, while still occasionally identifying the sensus allegoris in a straightforward manner, tended, especially in his later exegetical work, to produce smooth expositions that moved quite seamlessly between the historical exposition and a moral (i. e., tropological) meaning found in the text. Luther’s exegetical legacy is monumental and is in many ways an enormous testimony to the various medieval interests that influenced him. Luther also worked with the biblical languages, studying Hebrew and Greek until he became skilled in both. Luther’s respect for humanists’ achievements cannot be doubted and may be demonstrated if we recall his response to Lorenzo Valla’s De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio (On the Donation of Constantine). His work with the Hebrew text went hand-in-hand with his love of the Old Testament books. Given this, Luther’s stance vis-à-vis the Reuchlin affair is not surprising. But although Luther opposed Johannes Pfefferkorn’s efforts at the time, his attitude toward the Jews and their books would change substantially over time. Indeed, his hardening attitude towards the Jewish people is well known and represents another influence of the Middle Ages upon him. It is a fact that when one reads Luther’s Von den Jueden und jren Luegen within the context of its day, his recommendations to raze their synagogues, burn their Talmud, etc., do not appear especially provocative. This is because they were not. Europe’s attitude toward the Jews had been made crystal clear through events such as Spain’s expulsion of the Jews in 1492. The Jews had been expelled from Wittenberg in 1304. Indeed, if anything, what distinguishes Luther from his medieval context is the gentle approach he initially took to the Jews in his early works, such as Jesus Christus ein geborner Jude sei (That Jesus was Born a Jew), in which he scolds the church for being so harsh and unapproachable toward the Jews. Whether the adoption of the cruel, unyielding stance one finds in his later works is due to a kind of return to his medieval roots, his angst about the coming apocalypse, or some other reason is debatable. None of this has stopped scholars from adopting a plethora of different opinions regarding Luther on this topic.

6 Theologia crucis, the Hiddenness of God, and Luther’s Prophetic Vocation Nicholas of Cusa’s De Deo Abscondito (On the Hiddenness of God) appeared in 1444. The topic had also been discussed by Moses Maimonides, St. John of the Cross, and numerous others. And it appears in the work of the maturing Luther – the hiddenness and otherness of God being fundamental to Luther’s approach to God. As Luther became more and more disenchanted with scholasticism and its methods of doing theology, he began to develop a distinction between theologia gloriae

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and theologia crucis. ¹⁵ The former, which (he contended) characterized scholasticism’s playing at theology, was an affront to the inscrutable and almighty God. It pretended that humankind could study God as a scientist studies something; his or her subject of study is handled, pushed, pulled, and controlled; the scientist asks her questions and is in complete control of her subject. In Luther’s judgment, this is what God is to the scholastic, who researches God to satisfy their own pleasure and curiosity. Luther’s theologia crucis, by contrast, understands that the only appropriate disposition for a man or woman to have before God is one of utter awe, fear, and reverence. Living this out in everyday life, the Christian was taught by God how to better to understand him, which at times meant confronting a God who was hidden and who revealed himself in suffering and the cross. In a devastating providence, said Luther, the Christian learned to see God’s love and wisdom. God was not toying with humankind, as was sometimes said in the common talk about Deus ludens. Rather, God was humbling the Christian individual, nation, or community. All of this exhibits a variety of influences on Luther, from Augustine to John Chrysostom and other church fathers, from Bernard to Ockham. These ideas of the cross and divine hiddenness also exhibit the influence of medieval mysticism, the work of thinkers such as Johannes Tauler, Meister Eckhart, and the Theologia deutsch, a vernacular theological text that Luther claimed influenced him profoundly. He made this claim in the preface to his 1516 republication of the work. The real impact of mysticism on the mature Luther is debated by scholars, and we suspect it is less significant than scholars used to think it was. The same may well be true of the influence of Luther’s confessor, Johannes von Staupitz. While undoubtedly of genuine importance to Luther, the debt reflected in his relationship with Staupitz seems to be more one of appreciation than of deep, thoroughgoing dependence. One must look further afield for influences on Luther’s prophetic self-identity. Though specific influences are difficult, if not impossible, to unearth, a general idea of medieval influence can be set forth fairly easily. The medieval prophet – whose calling was not specifically to produce new (previously unknown) revelation to be added to the scriptural canon, but rather to produce instruction and moral guidance – was an extremely common personage in the Middle Ages, especially the Late Middle Ages. As Thomas Aquinas, for instance, argued in his expositio on the Gospel of Matthew: “It ought to be said that the prophets were sent for two reasons: to establish faith and to correct behavior: Prov. 29:18: ‘When prophecy fails, the people are scattered (dissipabitur).’ To establish the faith, as is said in 1 Peter 1:10: ‘Concerning that salvation, the prophets […]’.” In this sentiment, Aquinas explained that prophecy had initially served two purposes. He went on to clarify that now that

 Study of this in the modern period originated with Walther von Loewenich in his Luthers Theologia Crucis (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1929).

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“the faith is established (iam fides fundata est), since the promises have been fulfilled in Christ,” one of those purposes is fulfilled. Yet “prophecy that aims to correct behavior (mores) […] has not ceased, nor will it ever cease.”¹⁶ In addition to Aquinas, Denis the Carthusian said essentially the same thing: “Prophecy also contains those things which have to do with the instruction of human behavior, such as ‘break your bread with the hungry […]’ and Micah says ‘he has shown you, man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you.’”¹⁷ We see something similar in earlier works by Carolingian commentators such as Haymo of Auxerre, Rabanus Maurus, and Herveus Burgidolensis. On top of this treatment of what might be called ordinary aspects of prophecy, the medieval church was also full of prophets who focused on the apocalyptic, spreading dreaded warnings of wrath and destruction. Hildegard of Bingen, Joachim of Fiore, Francis of Assisi, Birgitta of Vadstena, Savanarola, Jan Hus, and others arose. Their character varied considerably, though they often proclaimed terrifying visions to the rulers and the people. In some ways, Luther learned from and felt he had received the callings of both types of prophet. His address to the ecclesiastical leaders of his day was not merely moral, but also doctrinal and (in its own way) profoundly apocalyptic. He confronted the Pope as the antichrist who was ushering in the end of days. More generally, he spoke with the authority of a prophet called by God to preach. His bravery in the face of kings, popes, and emperors was the stuff of legend.

 Thomas Aquinas, S. Thomae Aquinatis […] super Evangelium S. Matthaei Lectura, ed. P. Raphaelis Cai (Romae: Taurini, 1951), 145.  Denis the Carthusian, D. Dionysii Carthusiani insigne opus commentariorum in Psalmos omnes Davidicos (Cologne: apud Haeredes J. Quentelii & G. Calenium, 1558), 2.

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Luther’s Mystical Roots Martin Luther’s theology is indebted to medieval mystical theology to a significant degree: Luther was influenced by mysticism as he developed the foundations of his theology, and the further development of Reformation theology also came into being as a transformation of previous mystical theology. This has become clearly perceivable again only during the past decade or so, which is due to the complicated state of research in which theological and contemporary historical circumstances converge.

1 On the Current State of Research The term mysticism is a modern concept that has been in use since the eighteenth century. Factually, the term refers to all those forms of theology that revolve around an immediate encounter with God. In this way, mysticism can be traced back to the Apostle Paul himself.¹ The pinnacles of Christian mysticism are the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in antiquity, Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century, and Meister Eckhart in the fourteenth century. Lutheranism is unquestionably deeply influenced by mystical pietism: Johann Arndt’s Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (Four Books on True Christianity) were influenced in large part by Johannes Tauler, a student of Eckhart’s. ² Philipp Jacob Spener, in his Reformation text Pia desideria, recommended the study of Johannes Tauler in addition to the study of the Bible and Luther’s works. Spener justifies this recommendation by pointing to Tauler – in addition to the Bible – as an important influence on Luther. (Indeed, he asserts that Luther became what he was because of Tauler: “nechst der Schrifft / unser theure Lutherus worden / was er gewesen ist.”³) Studying mysticism became even more popular when Meister Eckhart himself became known; due to Eckhart’s conviction as a heretic in 1329, he was overshadowed for quite some time by his student Tauler. Hegel probably came to know and appreciate Meister Eckhart’s thinking via the Catholic philosopher of religion

Translation from German: Frauke Uhlenbruch.  See Hans-Christoph Meier, Mystik bei Paulus. Zur Phänomenologie religiöser Erfahrungen im Neuen Testament (Tübingen: Francke, 1998); also Albert Schweitzer, Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1954).  Athina Lexutt, “Lutherisches Bekenntnis und Praxis pietatis: Untersuchung zum theologischen Profil Johann Arndts” (Habil., Universität Bonn, 2000).  Die Werke Philipp Jakob Speners, Studienausgabe (Gießen: Brunnen Verlag, 1996), 1.1:236, 8 f. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-010

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Franz von Baader. ⁴ Thereafter, mystical thought became prominent in those branches of Protestant theology that were influenced by Hegel and repeatedly connected to the Reformation. For instance, in Die Geschichte der Mystik, Wilhelm Preger declared, “Thus a spirit of evangelical freedom passes through Eckhart’s moral doctrine” (So geht ein Geist evangelischer Freiheit durch Eckhart’s Sittenlehre),⁵ and the head of the Protestant Hegelian school, Ferdinand Christian Baur of Tübingen, juxtaposed Meister Eckhart in a similar way with scholasticism, making him a Reformation authority.⁶ This very favorable reception of mysticism in Protestantism and the accompanying idea of Luther’s theological rootedness in mysticism ended, however, when Albrecht Ritschl’s theology arose. In the course of his dispute with pietism, Ritschl vilified mysticism as un-Protestant; mysticism, he wrote, was “only the pronounced stage of Catholic piety” (nur die prononcirte Stufe der katholischen Frömmigkeit).⁷ It should come as no surprise that Adolf von Harnack agreed.⁸ Karl Barth’s agreement with this assessment – based on different theological premises – turned out to be momentous: measured against his theology of the word of God, Barth did not hold mysticism in high esteem and denigrated it with harsh judgments.⁹ This rejection intensified, for understandable reasons, when Third Reich theologians of the German-Christian persuasion – Erich Seeberg, Erich Vogelsang, and others – developed an interpretation of Luther that put his works into close relationship with Meister Eckhart. The basis of this interpretation was not so much solid historical research as an attempt by Protestant theology to pander to a pseudo-mystical religiosity, as outlined by Alfred Rosenberg. However, this meant that post-World War II research on the thematic intersection of Luther and mysticism was largely taboo. The topic was only gradually brought back into focus by Catholic (in the case of Erwin Iserloh) as well as international Protestant research (in the cases of Heiko Oberman and Steven Ozment). Over the past decade and a half, a new discussion of the question of Luther’s roots in mysticism has emerged. Ecumenical theology and the discovery of the shared interdenominational roots of the modern church in medieval times constitute the hermeneutic horizon at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

 G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 1974 [1925]), 1:257; cf. Ingeborg Degenhardt, Studien zum Wandel des Eckhartbildes, Studien zur Problemgeschichte der antiken und mittelalterlichen Philosophie 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 116.  Wilhelm Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1874), 1:452.  Ferdinand Christian Baur, Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. 2. Teil. Das Dogma des Mittelalters (Tübingen, 1842), 885.  Albrecht Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus. Erster Band: Der Pietismus in der reformierten Kirche (Bonn, 1880; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1966), 28.  Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 3, Die Entwicklung des kirchlichen Dogmas (Tübingen: Mohr, 1909), 377.  Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik 2.1 (Zollikon: Evangelischer Verlag, 1946), 460 (§ 30) and 531 (§ 31).

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2 Dionysius the Areopagite and Mystical Boundary Experience In Luther’s notes on the commentary of the Sentences, he mentioned the work De caelesti hierarchia by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite multiple times;¹⁰ this work was available in several Latin translations in Luther’s time. It was part of the Corpus Dionysiacum, which was held in extraordinary high esteem in the medieval period. Current research dates the tractates De caelesti hierarchia (On the celestial hierarchy), De ecclesiastica hierarchia (On the ecclesiastical hierarchy), De divinis nominibus (On the divine names), and De mystica theologia (On mystical theology) to around 1500, but due to their fictional proximity to Paul, in the Middle Ages they were considered to be the works of Dionysius – who, according to Acts 17:34, had heard Paul’s Areopagus sermon and subsequently converted. In addition, the author was identified as a martyred Parisian bishop of the third century – hardly a believable identification in historically grounded thinking – and hence possessed an authority that could well be compared to that of Augustine. His authority was further strengthened by the fact that the church of St. Denis – the royal burial ground of French kings – carried the name of this hybrid saint. All this was probably not known to Luther when he studied Pseudo-Dionysius. In any case, Luther cites the notion that “there are three orders of angels […] For there are three superior ones, three inferior, and three in the middle” (tres ordines angelorum esse […] Sunt enim tres superiores, tres inferiores, tres medij).¹¹ The thought that heaven is structured hierarchically is indeed one of Pseudo-Dionysius’ convictions, one which carried not only an abstract meaning in Luther’s view, but also a highly existential one: in his exegesis of Isaiah from 1543/44, he reminisced: “Nam fui et ego in ista schola, ubi putavi me esse inter choros Angelorum, cumtamen inter Diabolos potius sim versatus.”¹² The negativity of this evaluation is likely the result of retrospection. However, the historical remembrance contained in this statement indicates that Luther did have an ecstatic experience in the vein of a Dionysian concept of heaven when he was young – as he stated some years earlier, in 1523, looking back at his monastic life: “Multos vidi monachos et clericos, qui incerti sunt, et ego semel raptus fui in 3um celum.”¹³ The concept of the mystical raptus was not exclusively linked to Pseudo-Dionysius, as can be seen particularly in the passage on the third heaven, but was rather linked to Paul himself, who spoke about a human being who “was caught up to the third heaven” in 2 Cor 12:2; even though this statement appears in the third person, it is clearly meant autobiographically.

   

AWA 9:425, 10; 428, 17; and 430, 10. AWA 9:425, 10 f. WA 40.3:657, 35 f. WA 40.3.657, 35 f; WA 11:117, 35 f.

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Luther reflected upon the same thought in his scriptural exegesis. In his first exegesis of Psalms in connection to Ps 65 (64 Vg), he spoke of his experience “in rapture and ecstaty” (in raptu et extasi), which he equated with calm and silence.¹⁴ In this context, too, he referred to Pseudo-Dionysius explicitly; according to Luther, by using the preposition “hyper,” Pseudo-Dionysius made it plain that God far transcended comprehension.¹⁵ Another central topic for Luther was a theologia negativa, which was also associated with Dionysius. Luther understood this as culminating in the perfect path of divine movement within mystical experience, as he practiced it himself. He contrasted theologia negativa with the empty disputational character of nostri theologi and its affirmative theology.¹⁶ One may assume, then, a theologically as well as a practically oriented Dionysian-mystical phase in Luther’s early years. This phase, however, did not last long. Even as he was expounding Rom 5:2 in his lecture on Romans, he declared: “Hinc etiam tanguntur ii, Qui secundum mysticam theologiam in tenebras interiores nituntur omissis imaginibus passonis Christi.”¹⁷ So Luther set up a rather christologically mediated mysticism of the passion – which he might have encountered through his confessor, Staupitz, as well as by reading Johannes von Paltz and Bernard of Clairvaux – against the speculative-ecstatic mysticism of a Dionysian character that he had practiced previously. Luther’s criticism of Pseudo-Dionysius grew even stronger in his second lecture on the Psalms, Operationes in psalmos. Here, Luther accused Dionysian mysticism of misdirection: “ne quis se Theologcum mysticum credat, si haec legerit, intellexerit, docuerit seu potius intelligere et docere sibi visus fuerit. Vivendo, immo moriendo et damnando fit theologus, non intelligendo, legendo aut speculando.”¹⁸ Luther’s radical turnaround is remarkable: whereas he had praised Dionysian theology as “facit verum theologum”¹⁹ in his first lecture on the Psalms, by the time of his second lecture he regarded it, alongside scholastic theology, as human self-empowerment and consequently as a false form of theology. It would, however, be premature to conclude that this means that Luther rejected mystical theology entirely. In fact, the opposite is the case: he now relied on other mystical authorities, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux and Johannes Tauler.

3 Monastic Traditions As a member of the Augustinian order, Luther was confronted with many traditions of monastic spirituality. In the autumn of 1509, he likely read Pseudo-Bonaventuran

     

WA WA WA WA WA WA

55.2:344, 18 f. 55.2:344, 1– 3. 55.2:344, 14 f. 56:299.27– 300.1. 5:163, 27– 29, 55.2:344, 19.

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works from a monastic context and saw therein a reinforcement of his decision to live as a mendicant friar. In this text, he underlined passages that praised poverty²⁰ and a reference to the mendicants as a status perfectior compared to others. ²¹ Luther’s reading also shows his interest in christological immersion. He marked the sentence “quotidie pro nobis christus mystice immolatur.”²² The mystical offering did not have to compete with the sacramental offering – quite the opposite. This sentence is found in a tractate on the preparation of the mass, which Luther may have read specifically for this purpose. The sentence still shows, however, that in Luther’s view the spiritual dimension of a life focused on Christ should not be limited to the sacraments. Pseudo-Bonaventura was important to Luther not only because of these individual statements, but especially because reading his works pointed the young monk toward another mystic who was to remain meaningful to Luther throughout his life: Luther wrote a variety of citations from Bernard of Clairvaux on the title page and the inside front cover of Opuscula Anselmi. These citations are found predominantly in Pseudo-Bonaventura’s corpus. ²³ The Franciscan general – or, rather, the tradition associated with his name – led to the great Cistercian abbot. Theo Bell has demonstrated the extent to which Luther drew on Bernard again and again²⁴ – certainly not always in a specifically mystical context, but still in a way that shows that this mystic had a profound impact on Luther’s spirituality. Franz Posset was able to demonstrate that this interest in Bernard was part of a widespread Bernard renaissance in the Late Middle Ages,²⁵ which shows all the more that Luther’s strong connection to mystical pietism should not be viewed in isolation from the general theology of pietism of his time. In this respect, there is a distinctive report by Melanchthon in the preface to the second volume of Luther’s works in Latin, published in 1546. It makes quite clear that local memory in Wittenberg shortly after Luther’s death held that the beginnings of Reformation theology were intimately connected with Bernard. According to Melanchthon’s report, an old man at the monastery consoled Luther by pointing him to a saying attributed to Bernard, which in turn reminded Luther of Paul and justification by faith, as can be seen in Rom 3:28.²⁶ Luther’s intensive reception of Bernard began, as already stated, in Erfurt, and can be traced back to the Dictata super Psalterium. Here Bernard took on special meaning for Luther as the teacher of his soul, one who writes about challenges

 AWA 9:100, 21 f.  AWA 9:103, 3 f.  AWA 9:108, 29.  AWA 9:8n7; 9:11n11 f.  Theo Bell, Divus Bernhardus: Bernhard von Clairvaux in Martin Luthers Schriften, VIEG 148 (Mainz: Zabern, 1993).  Franz Posset, The Real Luther: A Friar at Erfurt & Wittenberg (Saint Louis: Concordia, 2011), 85 – 128.  CR 6:158.

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that a human may encounter that in turn reflect the temptation of Christ.²⁷ Luther emphatically connects this christological focus with Bernard: “Quia secundum Bernardum, Anima non habet requiem nisi in Vulneribus Christi.”²⁸ This passage emphasizes just how deeply ingrained Bernard’s reception was in Wittenberg in the early sixteenth century; Luther – in some dinner speeches – connects precisely this reference to Christ’s wounds to Johann von Staupitz, particulary to Staupitz’s famous advice on predestination: “Praedestinatio. Ego semel conquerebar de sublimitate praedestinationis Staupitio meo. Respondit mihi: In vulneribus Christi intelligitur praedestinatio et invenitur, non alibi, quia scriptum est: Hunc audite.”²⁹ Isolating mystical piety from the young Luther’s spiritual environment would not be prudent; both of these factors converge and gain a christological focus in the years 1512– 1516, which is then juxtaposed with Dionysian heritage, as already pointed out above. Seen positively, this means that the reformatory solus Christus takes shape during the time in which Luther’s pastoral guidance came from Staupitz and from reading Bernard. Luther’s reading of Bernard also impacted his study of Romans. The scholion on Rom 8:16 contains the most extensive Bernard citation in Luther’s work; it is a detailed elucidation of the effect of the Holy Spirit from Bernard’s Sermo in festo annuntiationis. ³⁰ Interestingly, this is also where a reference to Rom 3:28 appears, Bernard’s interpretation of which (so Melanchthon) made a lasting impression on Luther. Bernard even intensified this reference to a theology of grace. He adds the word gratis, which Luther himself does not incorporate in his citation of Paul: “Sic enim arbitratur Apostolus iustificari hominem gratis per fidem.” At the same time, Luther strengthens the moment of pure grace even more than Bernard by interweaving a short excursus into the citation in which he stresses the vanity before God of even those humans who do righteous deeds; thus, he includes and develops mysticism’s basic premise within a theology of grace. During this phase, Luther did not see a contrast between mysticism and Pauline theology – quite the opposite: each intensified and strengthened the other. This shows how misguided it would be to narrow Luther’s early study of mysticism into strict categories of “continuity” and “discontinuity.” Luther’s analysis of mystical theology shaped his Reformation theology quite significantly and actually found its fulfillment within the latter. The term humilitas was shaped in a similar way. The term appears in both Bernard’s and Luther’s works in abundance. Luther is very conscious of this, as his remarks on Ps 21:22 in Operationes in psalmos show: Luther refers back to Bernard

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WA 55.2:712.410 – 713.419. WA 55.1:585,3 f. WA.Tr 2, no. 1490. WA 56:369 f.

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when he differentiates between humilitas and humiliatio in order to show God’s work clearly.³¹ Bernard’s impact on Luther extends to his Heidelberg Disputation. To be sure, Luther does not cite Bernard explicitly in theses 19 and 20 on the foundation of the theology of the cross: “19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened. 20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.” (19. Non ille digne Theologus dicitur, qui invisibilia Dei per ea, quea facta sunt, intellecta conspicit, 20. Sed qui visibilia et posteriora Dei per passiones et crucem conspecta intelligit.).³² Nevertheless, it is apparent that one of Bernard’s figures of thought is employed in Luther’s juxtaposition of someone who would only recognize God by inferring upon God from the mundane with someone who recognizes God via God’s passion. Bernard gave God’s wish to become visible to humans as the reason for the invisible God’s decision to become incarnate and thus, according to Bernard, to initiate the presence of suffering.³³ From Bernard and Staupitz, Luther learned to focus on Christ’s suffering – that is, his wounds. This focus takes on an epistemological dimension, which, again, can be traced back to Bernard. It is the starting point for the important distinction between the theologian of glory (theologus gloriae) and the theologian of the cross (theologus crucis; see thesis 21),³⁴ which would become important in subsequent Reformation thought. The most obvious example of Bernard’s influence on Luther is found in his On the Freedom of a Christian of 1520. This treatise is generally regarded as a clear expression of Luther’s Reformation theology: “Not only that faith gives so much that the soul unites with the divine word, full of all grace, free and blessed; it also unites the soul with Christ, like a bride with her bridegroom” (Nit allein gibt der glaub ßovil, das die seel dem gottlichen wort gleych wirt aller gnaden voll, frey und selig, sondernn voreynigt auch die seele mit Christo, als eyne brawt mit yhrem breudgam).³⁵ It is not sufficient to interpret this sentence merely as a doctrine on justification – in the Augustinian-Pauline sense – that happens to be phrased in slightly mystical terms but is otherwise not impacted by mysticism; the pronounced mentioning of a unio (voreynigt) clearly shows that mystical thought is developed actively and directly. The image Luther uses to elaborate on this unio is based primarily on Bernard’s interpretation of the Song of Songs. Even early on, both Judaism and Christianity had some difficulty interpreting the dramatic love poetry collected in the Song of Songs as part of the canonical text. Origen paved the way for further exegesis of the Song of Songs

 WA 5:656, 28 – 30.  WA 1:354, 17– 20  Bernhard von Clairvaux, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Berhard B. Winkler (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1994), 5:118, 21– 26.  WA 1:354, 21 f.  WA 7:25, 26 – 28

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by applying the allegorical method; he alluded to an idea which Bernard expanded comprehensively: the loving bride stands for the soul of the believer, and the groom stands for Christ. This imagery inclined very naturally toward a mystical interpretation, according to which everything pointed toward a unity between the believer’s self and Christ; Bernard developed his interpretation in exactly this way. Despite Bernard’s significance in the history of interpretation, it is still possible that Luther was influenced by his immediate environment rather than by Bernard when he picked up the imagery of the bride: Staupitz had used the imagery of the spiritual wedding shortly before Luther’s treatise on freedom in his Libellus de praedestinatione c. 9, so Luther was probably familiar with it. Whatever the particular situation may have been, it is clear that even in 1520 Luther was still influenced by mystical thought and theologumena – separating his reformatory thinking from mystical influences would mean disregarding this very clear evidence.

4 Mystical Repentance Piety as an Impulse toward Theological Reorientation Mysticism’s continued relevance can be seen a little later in Luther’s Wartburg-Postille, a handbook for ministers he composed while he was forced to stay at Wartburg Castle following the Edict of Worms. In the sermon on the finding of Jesus in the temple, Luther states: But the evangelist gave us a sign when he did not mention the names Joseph and Mary, but called them father and mother, which directs us to the spiritual meaning. But who are Christ’s spiritual father and mother? He himself calls his mother “Marci.” (4 Luke 8): Whoever follows the will of my father, is my brother, my sister, and my mother. St. Paul calls himself a father (1 Cor 4): Even if you have ten thousand schoolmasters in Christ, you won’t have many fathers; because I gave birth to you or have fathered you in Christ through the gospel. Now it becomes clear that the Christian church, which consists of all faithful people, is Christ’s spiritual mother; and all apostles and teachers among the people, as long as they preach the gospel, are his spiritual father. And whenever people turn to faith, Christ is reborn through them. (Da hatt der Euangelist aber eyn maltzeychen gesteckt, das er hie schweygt der namen Joseph und Maria, nennet sie vatter und mutter, uns ursach tzu geben an die geystliche bedeuttung. Wer ist nu Christus geystlicher vatter unnd mutter? Er selb nennet seyne geystliche mutter Marci. 4. Lu. 8: Wer da thut den willen meyniß vattern, der ist meyn bruder, meyn schwester und meyn mutter. S. Paulus nennet sich selb eynen vatter .1. Cor. 4: Wenn yhr gleych zehen tausent schulmeyster habet yn Christo, ßo habt yhr doch nit viel vetter; denn ich hab euch yn Christo durchs Euangelium geporn oder getzeuget. So ists nu klar, das die Christliche kirche, das ist: alle glewbige menschen sind Christus geystliche mutter, und alle Apostel und lerer ym volck, ßo sie das Euangelium predigen, sind seyn geystlicher vatter. Und ßo offt eyn mensch von new glawbig wirt, ßo offt wirt Christus geporn von yhnen.)³⁶

 WA 10.1.1:387, 3 – 14.

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Luther’s unfettered use of allegorical scriptural interpretation is striking. The cited passage also describes Christ’s birth as being reiterated in each Christian individual’s faith, which is even more significant: this is evidently a reference to the divine birth within the soul (Gottesgeburt in der Seele) – a thought found at the beginning of a collection of sermons by Johannes Tauler, printed in Augsburg in 1508, which Luther studied intensively in the years 1515 – 1516. The volume not only opened with a sermon for Christmas Day by Tauler himself, which dealt with the three figures of divine birth – before all time in the trinity, within time in Bethlehem, and finally in a believer’s soul –, but it also continued with a cycle of sermons dedicated to this idea. Current philological research allows us to attribute these sermons to Meister Eckhart. Following the verdict against Eckhart in 1329, some of his sermons had been anonymized or pseudonymized and quite often attributed to Johannes Tauler. Luther encountered them in this guise; the basic principle of divine birth made a lasting impression on him, so that he included it – in a faith-theological way – in his handbook on sermons, which would shape Lutheran sermons for generations to come as part of the Church-Postille. Martin Luther’s veneration of Johannes Tauler can be seen early on in his work; indeed, he was able to phrase the initiation of the Reformation movement – the publication of the theses on indulgences – as a consequence of Tauler’s theology; on March 31, 1518, he wrote to Staupitz: “Ego sane secutus theologiam Tauleri et eius libelli, quem tu nuper dedisti imprimendum Aurifabro nostro Christianno.”³⁷ The little book mentioned here is Theologia Deutsch, which also stems from the fourteenth century and which was quite similar to Tauler’s theology, in Luther’s opinion. Luther was not the only one in Wittenberg with an interest in Tauler (which was probably encouraged by Staupitz himself): Wittenberg was a veritable hub of Tauler reception at the beginning of the sixteenth century.³⁸ In addition to Luther, Amsdorff and Karlstadt also turned to the work of this fourteenth-century mystic. Luther probably got to know his sermons in early 1515, at the time of his lecture on Romans, and was soon taken by them. On December 14, 1516, he recommended Tauler’s sermons to Spalatin, using almost sacramental words: “Gusta ergo et vide, quam suavis est dominus, ubi prius gustaris et videris, quam amarus est, quicquid nos sumus.”³⁹ Luther’s reading can be reconstructed through notes he wrote in the margins of his Tauler volume. It seems as though he was particularly interested in a passage in which Tauler speaks about the repeated relapse of sinners: Even if you fall seventy times a day, every time you should return and come back to God. And merge again with God, so that your sin will be omitted. When you go to confession with it, you do not know how to say it. This should not scare you. You have not noticed that it [i. e., your deed]

 WA.B 1:160, 8 f.  Heinrik Otto, Vor- und frühreformatorische Tauler-Rezeption: Annotationen in Drucken des späten 15. und frühen 16. Jahrhunderts, QFRG 75 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2003).  WA.B 1:79, 58 – 64

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could damage you, just confess your nothingness. And respond to your own disdain with calmness, not with melancholy. […] St. Paul says: Everyone who loves God will be successful. In the gloss it says that this also refers to the sinner. So, sinner, be silent and take refuge in God, and contemplate your nothingness. And keep it inside; do not run to the confessor with it. (ob du des tags zu sibentzig mal fallest als offt soltu wiederkeren vnd kommen wider zu got. vnd dring dich wider in got also schwindiglichen dz dir dein sunde zu mal entpfallen. so du da mit zu der beicht kommest. das du jt nitt wissest zu sagen. Dis sol dich nit entsetzen. es ist dir nit aufgefallen zu schaden. sunder zu ainer bekentnuß deines nichtes. vnd zu ainer verschmehunge dein selber mitt ayner gelassenhayt. nicht mitt ainer schwärmutikait […] Sant paulus spricht. Alle die got lieben den kommpt alle ding zu gut. Nu di gloß spricht. Auch dy sünd. Sunder schweig vnd fleühe zu got vnd sihe auf dein nicht. Vnd bleib innen. nit lauf zu hant da mit zu dem beichtiger.)⁴⁰

Luther’s comment in the margin reads: “Hoc nota tibi.”⁴¹ Luther was especially fascinated by those of Tauler’s remarks that relativized sacramental repentance in the face of deep, heart-felt remorse, brought before God again and again. The mystic thus became Luther’s teacher on the subject of repentance and left a lasting impression on him: a distant echo of words cited from Tauler is found in Luther’s first two theses against indulgences: 1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. 2. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administerd by the clergy. (1. Dominus et magister noster Iesus Christus dicendo ‘Penitentiam agite etc.’ omnem vitam fidelium penitentiam esse voluit. 2. Quod verbum de penitentia sacramentali (id est confessionis et satisfactionis, que sacerdotum ministerio celebratur) non potest intelligi).⁴²

Considering this clear correspondence, it is not surprising that Luther would write those lines to Staupitz half a year later, declaring that he only followed Tauler and Theologia deutsch. Other passages also show how Luther developed certain thoughts while reading Tauler that would become fundamentally important to his theology. Taking into account the fact that the passivity of humans, as opposed to the activity of God, was crucial to Luther (as seen later when he stresses iustitia passivat⁴³), it is remarkable that Luther read and commented on a corresponding sentence by Tauler, which read: “When two shall become one / then one of the two must remain in the lead / the other in the effect” (wann wenn zway sollnn ains warden / so muß sich dz ain haltnn leidend / daz ander wirckent).⁴⁴ Luther’s comment on this was: “Nota, quod divina pati magis quam agere oportet, immo et sensus et intellectus est naturaliter  Sermones: des hoch| geleerten in gnaden erleüchten do|ctoris Johannis Thaulerii sannt | dominici ordens die da weißend | auff den nächesten waren weg im | gaist zu wanderen durch überswe| bendenn syn. Von latein in teütsch | gewendt manchem menschenn z | sliger fruchtbarkaitt (Augsburg: Hans Otmar 1508), fol. 192v.  WA 9:104, 11.  WA 1:233, 10 – 13.  WA 54:186, 6 f.  Tauler, Sermones, cit. fol, 2r.

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etiam virtus passiva.”⁴⁵ In a longer explanatory passage, he comments, “Igitur tota salus est resignatio voluntatis in omnibus ut hic docet sive in spiritualibus sive temporalibus. Et nuda fides in deum,”⁴⁶ which is particularly interesting in view of the later importance of sola fide in the event of justification. The teaching of justification by faith alone is not yet as central here as it would later become for Luther. In which way Luther’s mentioning of pure faith here corresponds to his later concept of fides could be a subject for further discussion. Luther’s use of terminology makes it quite clear yet again that in his intellectual development, mysticism did not appear to be opposed to Paul and Augustine, but rather everything contributed to a comprehensive mindset, which Luther continued to develop while reading Theologia deutsch. Luther probably received an incomplete manuscript of this text from an Augustinian monastery in Cologne, which he published in Wittenberg in 1516⁴⁷ – it was his first publication, apart from Bible texts that had been printed as foundations for his lectures. Even the heading on the title page, which Luther added to the unnamed book, shows that Luther understood the mystical text as an expression of the same ideas of salvation which could also be found in Paul: “A noble little spiritual book with proper differentiation and reasoning about [the question] of what the old and the new human being is; what Adam’s and what God’s child is; and how Adam shall die in us and Christ shall arise in us” (Eyn geystlich edles Buchleynn von rechter vnderscheyd vnd vorstand, was der alt vnd new mensch sey, Was Adams vnd was gottis kind sey vnd wie Adam ynn vns sterben vnnd Christus ersteen sall). Against this background, chapters 15 and 16 of the complete text become particular focal points. In these chapters, the anonymous author discusses the renunciation of sin under the leitmotif of repentance: in Luther’s eyes, Theologia deutsch confirmed what he had learned from Tauler – thus, the text foreshadows certain theologumena that would become important to Luther later, especially the differentiation between the “inner” and the “outer” human, which became Luther’s leitmotif in his treatise On the Freedom of a Christian in 1520.⁴⁸ Both these literary references and Luther’s explicit appreciation demonstrate the relevance of this text for Luther. He states that, “next to the Bible and St. Augustine” (nehst der Biblien und S. Augustino), he had not encountered any book from which he had learned more than from Theologia deutsch. ⁴⁹

 WA 9:97, 12– 14.  WA 9:102, 34– 36.  Eyn geystlich edles Buchleynn. | von rechter vnderscheyd | vnd vorstand. was der | alt vnd new mensch sey. Was Adams | vnd was gottis kind sey. vnd wie Adam | ynn vns sterben vnnd Christus | ersteen sall (Wittenberg: Grundenberg 1516).  Eyn geystlich edles Buchleynn, fol. A 2r.  WA 1:378, 21– 23.

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5 Transformations of Mysticism Luther’s reception of mysticism as outlined here was not without consequences, as hinted at above. In fact, it is possible to explain essential aspects of Luther’s Reformation theology as transformations of mystical convictions. This can be demonstrated with the help of three examples: the doctrine of the law and the gospel, the doctrine of justification, and the doctrine of universal priesthood. For the first example, the dialectic of Gesetz und Evangelium ⁵⁰ is a crucial point in Luther’s thought, as is well known. In the Church-Postille of 1522, Luther offers a clear verbalization of the theological use of the law and its relationship to the gospel, describing the law as a sort of guidance toward Jesus Christ: On the other hand, the law makes the human being realize how wrong and unjust his heart is, how far away he still is from God, how even nature is nothing, that he despises his moral life and acknowledges that he is nothing against what the fulfillment of the law would require. He therefore will be humiliated, crawl to the cross, crave Christ and long for his grace, even give up hope in himself, and put all his consolation in Christ. (Das ander, das der mensch sich alßo durchs gesetz erkenne, wie falsch und unrecht seyn hertz sey, wie fern er noch von gott sey, wie gar die natur nichts sey, das er seyn erber leben vorachte und erkenne, wie es nichts sey gegen dem, das tzu des gesetzes erfullunge gehoret. Und alßo gedemuettigt werde, tzum creutz krieche, Christum erfeufftze und sich nach syner gnaden sehne, an yhm selbs gar vortzage, alle seynen trost auff Christum setze.)⁵¹

The futility of human actions is addressed with striking prominence: the futility of one’s own self – the realization of one’s own complete inadequacy before God – is the goal of the legislative message, as Luther had already expressed in Operationes in psalmos: “deus humiles solum respiciat.”⁵² Here, Luther has already established a foundational structure upon which he would later elaborate, in the context of his theology of the word of God, when discussing the dialectic of the law and the gospel. This is an overt parallel to Johannes Tauler’s theology: as a first step toward selfrecognition, the mystic requires cleansing, which goes along with an abdication of all that constitutes a human being’s identity. Thus Tauler explains in his sermon on John 5:1 ff: The third gate is one of true repentance of sin. This means a true renunciation of everything that is not completely in God, or that is not a true matter of God, and that the human being would wholeheartedly turn to God with everything. That he is then internal and external. (Die drite porte ist ain war wesenliche rew der sünde. Das ist ein wars abkeren von allem dem das nichtt war lautr got ist. oder des got nitt ain war sach ist, vnnd daz der mensch ainn waren gantzen kere zu got tu mit allem dem. Das er ist jnn wendig vnnd uß wendig.)⁵³

   

See WA 7:502, 34 f; 36:9, 224– 31; 39.1:361, 1– 6; 40.1:207, 3 – 5. WA 10.1.1:455, 5 – 11. AWA 2:197, 25. Tauler, Sermones, cit., fol. 29r.

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The passage cited above – which touches on the possible prioritization of deeply felt remorse over confession – demonstrates that Luther knew about the structure in Tauler. Likewise, he was probably aware that in mystical literature the destruction of an individual’s identity was followed by a positive elevation. As Tauler’s sermon on John 5:1 ff continues, “the core and the center of true repentance” means “with all trust drowning in the pure good, which is God himself” (der kerne. vnnd das marck des waren rewens […] mit ainr gantzen getrawung verdincken in das lauter gutt. Das got selber ist).⁵⁴ Rebuilding follows destruction – Luther followed this basic structure when he dialectically opposed the law’s destruction of all human willfulness with the gospel, which nevertheless promises human salvation. Obviously, Luther did not uphold mystical piety consistently: the crucial change is that he embedded the dialectic of destruction and rebuilding within a framework of the theology of the word of God. This is the peculiarity of the process of transformation: continuity is preserved in change. The same is true, in a certain sense, for the doctrine of justification (Rechtfertigungslehre), which brings us to our second example. There is no doubt that Luther’s formulation is in large part due to his study of Augustine and Paul. However, Luther’s references to the passivity of human beings, as mentioned above, should already make it clear that he developed his doctrine of justification in a context in which an opposition between Augustine and Paul on the one hand, and mysticism on the other hand, would not have been conceivable: reading mystical literature confirmed notions also found in Augustine and Paul. This could be quite explicit; in a sermon on John 6, Tauler explained, referring explicitly to Augustine: “Worthiness never comes from human deeds or merits. It only comes from pure grace and the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it particularly flows from God to us” (Wann die wirdigkayt kummpt nymmer von menschlichen wercken noch verdienen. Sunder von lauter gnad vnnd verdienen vnsers herren jesu christi. Vnd fleßt zumal von got an vns).⁵⁵ Once again, it is evident that the young Luther was presented with an Augustinian-mystical comprehensive mindset, which he then developed, and within which his reading of mystical literature contributed to his perception of the uniqueness of grace in the event of salvation – the core of his doctrine of justification. Accordingly, Luther’s first attempts at formulating the doctrine of justification are strongly influenced by mystical terminology and imagination. In Operationes in Psalmos, he writes: Vocatur autem iustitia dei et nostra, quod illius gratia nobis donata sit, sicut opus dei, quod in nobis operatur, sicut verbum dei, quod in nobis loquitur, sicut virtutes dei, quas in nobis operatur, et multa alia […] ut eadem iustitia deus et nos iusti simus, sicut eodem verbo deus facit et nos sumus, quod ipse est, ut in ipso simus et suum esse nostrum esse sit.⁵⁶

 Tauler, Sermones, cit., fol. 29r.  Tauler, Sermones, cit., fol. 85v.  AWA 2:259.1– 3 – 12– 14.

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If one were to continue along this line, it should not come as a surprise that the above-mentioned mystical passages from On the Freedom of a Christian served a single purpose: to explain God’s acts of grace through Christ by giving a human example – in other words, that which is phrased differently in the explicit doctrine of justification. The third example relates to the significance of mystical theology for the development of the doctrine of universal priesthood, which is equally remarkable. The doctrine distinctly challenges and corrects the idea of ordained priesthood, which elevated clerics above the general population in terms of legislation and theology. The breaking up of this social and organizational dividing line is already found, at least metaphorically, in Johannes Tauler’s interpretation of the Zacharias pericope in Luke 1, in which he radically spiritualized the understanding of priesthood. He interpreted Zacharias’ name etymologically as “thinking of God” or “God’s commemoration” (an gott gedencken oder gottes gedechtnuß) and then concluded: “So this divine human being should be a priest and should enter the sancta sanctorm [the holy of holies], and the people should stay outside” (Dieser gotlich mensch der sol ain priester sein vnnd sol eingeen in sancta sanctorm vnnd das volck alles darfauß bleiben).⁵⁷ What may at first seem like a simple etymologizing of this particular priest actually turns out to be a general statement on devotion to God. In this sense, according to Tauler, every human – emphatically also a “frawen person” (i. e., a woman) – could be a priest, spiritually speaking, and could spiritually offer the sacrifice: “that is that she should go with her entire mind into herself, and leave all sensual things outside, and sacrifice the offering to the heavenly father” (das ist das sy mit ainem gesameten gemte sol in sich selber geen. Vnnd alle synnliche ding da außen lassen. Vnnd das opfer opffern dem himlischen vatter).⁵⁸ Luther radicalized this specific spiritualization by relating universal priesthood not so much to a specific practice of piety, but rather to baptism as the fundamental Christian ordinance: Because secular authorities were baptized just like us, have the same faith and the same gospel, we have to let them be priest and bishop, and see their office as an office that belongs to Christianity and is useful for the Christian community. Because what emerges from baptism may regard itself as already being ordained as a priest, a bishop, or a pope, even though not yet equipped with the usual craft to exercise the office. (Die weyl dan nu die weltlich gewalt ist gleych mit uns getaufft, hat den selben glauben unnd Evangely, mussen wir sie lassen priester und Bischoff sein, und yr ampt zelen als ein ampt, das da gehore und nutzlich sey der Christenlichen gemeyne. Dan was ausz der tauff krochen ist, das mag sich rumen, das es schon priester, Bischoff und Bapst geweyhet sey, ob wol nit einem yglichen zympt, solch ampt zu uben.)⁵⁹

 Tauler, Sermones, fol. 173v.  Tauler, Sermones, fol. 173v.  WA 6:408, 8 – 13.

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So wrote Luther in To the Christian Nobility in 1520. The citation marks its context: universal priesthood awards members of the secular class the right to reform the church, independently of – or even in opposition to – the clergy. Thus priesthood became the decisive hinge through which Luther’s theological deliberations, which were rooted in mysticism, turned into ecclesio-political action. But again, this impulse does not simply continue along mystical lines: relating priesthood to baptism rather than to specific pious practice is a considerable radicalization. But the impulse does originate in liberating mystical thought – and it led directly to the design of the Reformation. Without mysticism, the Reformation would not have occurred.

Franz Posset

Luther’s Inspirers and Sympathizers From Johann von Staupitz to the Circles of Nuremberg and Augsburg

There were no clear-cut confessional delineations during the early years of the Reformation in Germany, prior to the Augsburg Confession of 1530, and even beyond. Luther had sympathizers who had died before it became apparent that Luther’s movement was heading toward a split in the Church and, therefore, had remained for all intents and purposes within the Church of Rom. As part of an ecumenical search for the “historical Luther,” one must pay attention to the early recognition of Luther by church men who remained Catholic. One also must keep in mind that Luther himself admonished his followers in 1522 not to call themselves “Lutherans.”¹ He preferred the expression “Evangelical” for his movement, which he used in 1519 during the Leipzig Disputation.² Based on this suggestion, the following contribution aims to investigate some of the characters who, although they never broke away from Rome, still looked to Luther with hope and respect. The starting point will be Luther’s superior, Johann von Staupitz, and later the discussion will move to other figures who, in the variety of their own personal journeys, found in Luther instances that did not necessarily clash – or, at least, did not yet clash – with their devotion to the Roman Church.

1 Staupitz: The Forerunner of Luther? The epitaph on the grave of Johann von Staupitz (ca. 1468 – 1524) commemorates him as a student of the Bible.³ Staupitz had always made the Bible the center of his life and work and had become an eminent biblical theologian and famous preacher, whom Martin Luther looked up to. Young Luther’s journey to Rome is often characterized as a pilgrimage. Much more convincing, however, is the view that Luther was sent to Rome to accompany a leading friar of his order on behalf of their superior, Johann von Staupitz. For about 100 years now, Heinrich Boehmer’s (1869 – 1927) view in his Luther’s Romfahrt, dating this journey to 1510 – 1511, was the common

 WA 8:685, 4– 6.  Stephen E. Buckwalter and Bernd Moeller, eds., Die frühe Reformation in Deutschland als Umbruch (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998), 481.  At St. Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg. The year of his death is not 1534, as Das Luther-Lexikon (eds. Volker Leppin and Gury Schneider-Ludorff, with Ingo Klitzsch [Regensburg: Bückle & Böhm, 2014] 659) would have it. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-011

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opinion.⁴ With regard to the new dating of the journey to 1511– 1512, one has to take the immediate context into close consideration. Staupitz had summoned a “synod” of friars to Wittenberg on September 16, 1511, where the decision was made to send a delegation to Rome in order to present their interests. Staupitz chose Friar Johann von Mecheln (Johannes de Ratheim) for this delicate task. He was the chief negotiator. Young Luther was his assistant and travel companion. Friars always had to travel in twos. Luther was only in his late twenties, and therefore could not really have functioned as the chief negotiator with the authorities in Rome. In this view of Luther’s journey to Rome, Luther emerges from the beginning as a Staupitzian, and not as a representative of Staupitz’s opponents. After his return from Rome, Luther was awarded his doctoral degree on October 18, 1512, and became Staupitz’s successor as Professor of Biblical Theology in Wittenberg. In addition, Staupitz appointed Luther as preacher in the friary in 1511 or 1512. Without Staupitz’s impact on Luther, the Lutheran Reformation as it has gone down in history probably would not have happened. Staupitz’s significance hardly can be overestimated. Protestant researchers tend to underscore Luther’s theological originality and, in doing so, make Staupitz appear merely as a “forerunner” of the Reformation – at best, as a “Reformer in the wings”⁵ who had some initial influence on Luther, who received Staupitz’s pastoral care. Going beyond such a view, without denying the essential pastoral component of the relationship between Staupitz and Luther,⁶ one may indeed ask: Is Staupitz the Reformation?⁷ The answer is yes, because Staupitz represents a form of reformatio at a time – up to the 1520s – when there was no formal distinction between the Catholic Reformation and the Protestant Reformation. In terms of ecclesiastical-organizational reforms, and with respect to the issue of ecclesiastical authority (the papacy), Staupitz retained his critical loyalty to the universal Church until his death.⁸ He died as the (controversial) Benedictine abbot of St.

 See Boehmer, Luthers Romfahrt (Leipzig: Deichert, 1914). Hans Schneider and Franz Posset depart from Boehmer’s position; see Hans Schneider, “Martin Luthers Reise nach Rom – neu datiert und neu gedeutet,” in Studien zur Wissenschafts- und zur Religionsgeschichte, ed. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 1– 157; Franz Posset, “Luther’s Journey to Rome in 1511– 1512. In Commemoration of its 500th Anniversary and in Search of the Historical Luther – A Sequel to The Real Luther,” supplement, Luther Digest: An Annual Abridgment of Luther Studies 20 (2012), 9 – 24.  David C. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971).  Markus Wriedt, “Johann von Staupitz,” in Geschichte der Seelsorge in Einzelportraits, ed. Christian Möller (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994– 1996), 2:45 – 64.  Richard Wetzel, “Staupitz und Luther,” in Martin Luther: Probleme seiner Zeit, eds. Volker Press and Dieter Stievermann (Stuttgart: Kletta-Cotta, 1986), 75 – 87; Berndt Hamm, “Johann von Staupitz (ca. 1468 – 1524) – spätmittelalterlicher Reformer und ‘Vater’ der Reformation,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 92 (2001): 6 – 42.  WA.B 3:264, no. 726; Heiko A. Oberman, “Captivitas Baylonica: Die Kirchenkritik des Johann von Staupitz,” in Reformatio et reformationes. Festschrift für Lothar Graf zu Dohna zum 65. Geburtstag,

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Peter’s Archabbey in Salzburg. For this reason, and primarily with respect to his specific theology-for-piety, he is called “the front-runner of the Catholic Reformation.”⁹ For those who see the Reformation in Germany primarily in terms of institutional reforms, Staupitz would not qualify as a reformator. Nevertheless, he was an “Evangelical Catholic Reformer”¹⁰ among the “Masters of the Reformation”.¹¹

2 Points of Convergence: The Doctrine of Indulgences According to Staupitz and Luther A meaningful example of the important influence Staupitz had on Luther – and, on the other hand, of the respect the teacher had for his pupil – can be found in an episode from 1516. Staupitz and his disciple Luther, in cooperation with the confrere Wenceslaus Linck (1483 – 1547), took turns (beginning in the spring of 1516) speaking up publicly regarding the proper understanding of indulgences and the criticism of their abuse. Most likely in April 1516, this like-minded trio of Augustinian friars (Staupitz, Linck, and Luther) worked on a statement against the vulgar concept of indulgences. It is an anonymous text called the Treatise on Indulgences, and its title only indicates that Luther “edited” (editus) the text. The criticism of indulgences arose long before Luther’s ninety-five propositions (“theses”).¹² Staupitz voiced his criticism of indulgences in an advent sermon in Nuremberg in 1516 and in another sermon in early 1517. Under Staupitz’s influence, Luther had already criticized indulgences in a sermon on 31 October/1 November 1516.¹³ Early in 1517, Staupitz delivered a sermon in Nuremberg, which was recorded by Lazarus Spengler, titled “On the True and Right Contrition.” Staupitz declared: “The sound of the gulden which falls into the money chest will not free the sinner from sins.” “Without all those indulgences,” but with true contrition instead, one would receive forgiveness of sins. Staupitz set the record straight with respect to the correct theological understanding of penance, contrition, and indulgence in developing his strictly Christ-centered concept of “contrition” (Reue).¹⁴ The papal view of indulgen-

eds. Andreas Mehl und Wolfgang Christian Schneider (Darmstadt: Technische Universität Darmstadt, 1989), 97– 106.  Franz Posset, The Front-Runner of the Catholic Reformation: The Life and Works of Johann von Staupitz (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).  Oberman, “Preface,” Johann von Staupitz: Sämtliche Schriften, vol. 2, Lateinische Schriften II. Libellus, ed. Lothar zu Dohna et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979), ix.  Oberman, Masters of the Reformation. The Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate in Europe (Cambridge/London: Cambridge University Press, 1981).  Posset, The Real Luther: A Friar at Erfurt and Wittenberg. Exploring Luther’s Life with Melanchthon as Guide (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011), 81– 83.  WA 1:94– 99 = WA 4:670 – 74.  The Front-Runner, 213 – 14.

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ces amounted to “Roman Pestilence,” as Staupitz wrote to Spalatin in 1518.¹⁵ On August 6, 1517, Staupitz and Luther discussed the issue of indulgences at the friary of Himmelpforten.¹⁶ Further criticism then surfaced in Luther’s sermons, such as on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 15, 1517.¹⁷ The sermons of both Staupitz and Luther prior to October 1517 proclaim the same opposition to a false understanding of indulgences. Although we do not know whether Staupitz himself actually read Luther’s ninety-five theses, the two men nevertheless formed a united front, to the degree that they defended each other on various occasions.¹⁸ This solidarity also derived, at least partly, from the shared interest that the two Augustinians had in the works of Bernard of Clairvaux: urged on by Staupitz – who shared Bernard’s devotion to the cross and taught that “it is necessary to keep one’s eyes fixed on the man called Christ” – Luther would later develop a theology of the cross that had clear similarities with some of Bernard’s works, such as Fasciculus Myrrhae, and that evidently also forced a revision of the doctrine and practice of indulgences.¹⁹

3 Luther: The Disciple of Staupitz In a letter written on March 31, 1518, shortly before the order met in Heidelberg on April 26, 1518, Luther made Staupitz fully aware that he had become an enemy of the scholastics. He assured Staupitz that he was working along Staupitz’s line of thought and theology, and also along the lines of Johann Tauler (ca. 1300 – 1361): “In following Tauler’s theology, I teach that people should not trust in anything other than in Jesus Christ alone, not in prayer nor merits nor works.”²⁰ For some time, it was assumed that the order’s prior general in Rome, Gabriel della Volta (ca. 1468 – 1537) had already sent orders to Staupitz on February 3, 1518 – which were supposedly prompted by a breve by Pope Leo X – that he should make sure that Luther appeared at the next chapter meeting in order to give an account of himself. The papal letter insisted that the Augustinian Order must do some-

 Alfred Jeremias, Johannes Staupitz. Luthers Vater und Schüler. Sein Leben, sein Verhältnis zu Luther und eine Auswahl aus seinen Schriften (Sannerz/Leipzig: Hochweg, 1926), 44.  WA.B 1:101– 02, no. 43.  WA 4:645 – 50.  For example, Luther sent a plea in favor of Staupitz to Frederick the Wise when the latter summoned the superior of the Augustinians to answer for the criticisms expressed against indulgences that were to be granted to those who visited the sovereign’s collection of relics; cf. WA.B 1:119 – 20; Posset, The Front-Runner, 220.  On the issue, see Posset, Pater Bernhardus. Martin Luther and Bernard of Clairvaux (Kalamazoo, MI/Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 2000), 252– 53.  WA.B 1:160, no. 66.

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thing to placate Luther, who preached “new dogmas to our peoples” with his innovations. This papal breve, however, is a forgery.²¹ Surely, Staupitz must have had a certain foreboding about such controversies, and he invited Luther to Heidelberg, where the latter de facto avoided touching on the subject. Upon his return from Heidelberg, F. Martinus Luther discipulus wrote to Staupitz concerning his resolutions on indulgences.²² He asked Staupitz to forward his resolutions to the pope. Evidently, Luther proceeded in close cooperation with his superior. As a faithful disciple, Luther thanked him for resolving the issue of “penance” for him. He wrote that penance appeared “sweet” to him and that Christ was his “most sweet Savior”: “The commandments of God become sweet when they are read not only in books, but also in the wounds of the sweetest Savior.” This letter is a concise retrospective of Staupitz’s impact on him. With these spiritual and theological insights, as they originated from Staupitz, Luther felt strengthened – in facing “the new war trumpets of indulgences” – to pronounce the teachings of the preachers of indulgences “as open to doubt.”²³ For Luther, Staupitz was the discoverer of the true theology of penance.²⁴ In a letter written to Spalatin at the Saxon court on September 7, Staupitz confirmed that he and Luther were of one heart and soul against the “Roman pestilence.” Staupitz feared for the fate of his disciple. A week after he had written to the Saxon court, he bluntly wrote to Luther, on the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross on September 14, 1518: “As far as I can see, you have only the cross to expect, that is martyrdom. Leave Wittenberg, therefore, while there is still time, and come to me so that we may live together and die together.”²⁵ Luther’s flight from Wittenberg to Salzburg would be agreeable to the prince of Salzburg, Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach (d. May 1519), who was Staupitz’s good friend.²⁶

4 Staupitz alongside Luther Since Staupitz had persuaded Frederick the Wise not to deliver Luther to the Roman authorities, Frederick insisted that Luther be interrogated by the papal legate Cardinal Cajetan (d. 1534) at the upcoming Imperial Diet in Augsburg. Staupitz wanted  Hans Schneider, “Die Echtheitsfrage des Breve Leos X. vom 3. Februar 1518 an Gabriele della Volta. Ein Beitrag zum Lutherprozeß,” Archiv für Diplomatik 43 (1997): 455 – 88; Schneider, “Gabriele della Volta,” in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon 36 (2015), 445 – 50.  WA 1:525, 1– 3.  WA 1:525 – 27.  Posset, The Front-Runner, 233.  WA.B 1:267, 9 – 14, no. 119.  Johann Sallaberger, “Die Einladung Martin Luthers nach Salzburg im Herbst 1518,” in Uni Trinoque Domino: Karl Berg. Bischof im Dienste der Einheit. Eine Festgabe Erzbischof Karl Berg zum 80. Geburtstag, eds. Hans Paarhammer and Franz-Martin Schmölz (Thaur/Tyrolia: Österreichischer Kulturverlag, 1989), 445 – 67.

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Frederick to talk the cardinal into listening to Luther.²⁷ Right away, on the 13th, the spiritual father accompanied his spiritual son to the encounter with the cardinal. The third friar of the trio, Linck, also stood at Luther’s side. The interrogation was for naught. Cajetan then asked Staupitz to procure Luther’s retraction,²⁸ but the cunning Staupitz resisted and declared that he had tried to do so many times before. He suggested that the cardinal should give it a try himself and convince Luther with biblical arguments (which, of course, did not exist). The encounter took a turn for the worse, as Cajetan threatened to throw both Staupitz and Luther in jail.²⁹ The threat was serious enough to cause Staupitz to make preparations for both of them to flee town. Staupitz arranged to obtain Friar Martin Glaser’s horse (and money) for Luther’s escape to the Augustinian friary in Paris, which Luther declined. Thus Staupitz twice attempted to get Luther to safety – first to Salzburg, then to Paris.³⁰ The cardinal complained to Frederick the Wise that Luther and Staupitz had secretly escaped.³¹ Luther let Staupitz know that even the cardinal had noticed their united front, making terrible accusations against them and other “associates.”³² There is a letter to Staupitz, written from Wittenberg on January 14, 1521, with respect to the incident in Augsburg with Cajetan: Luther reminded Staupitz that he had started everything in the name of Jesus.³³ In his Informatio of 1521, Prior General Egidio da Viterbo (1469 – 1532) wrote that Luther had procured release from obedience to his superiors,³⁴ without any mention of Staupitz’s name. How accurate his entry is, is difficult to tell. Luther, however, never felt “excommunicated” by Staupitz in the legal sense. Staupitz’s releasing Luther from obedience to him did not mean that he dismissed Luther from the order or that he would thus no longer be “Martin Luther, Augustinian,” as is occasionally opined.³⁵ After 1518, Luther continued to sign his letters as “Martin Luther, Augustinian.”³⁶ Over the course of the following years, the relationship between the two faded, but regardless of their differences of opinion, Staupitz never denied his closeness to his pupil. In his last letter, written on April 1, 1524, the former superior admonished his disciple not to confuse essential and non-essential issues – such as monastic

 Luther, in retrospect; WA 51:543, 29 – 544, 1 (1541).  WA.B 1:217, 60, no. 100.  Acta Augustana, WA 2:17, 34.  Posset, The Front-Runner, 238 – 39.  Posset, The Front-Runner, 238.  WA.B 1:256, 8 – 20, no. 114.  WA.B 2:245, 1– 8, no. 366; WA.B 2:245, 2– 6, no. 366.  Hermann Tüchle, “Des Papstes und seiner Jünger Bücher,” in Lutherprozess und Lutherbann: Vorgeschichte, Ergebnis, Nachwirkung, eds. Remigius Bäumer, Erwin Iserloh, and Hermann Tüchle (Münster: Aschendorff, 1972), 52n12; Posset, The Front-Runner, 239.  See Richard D. Balge, “Martin Luther, Augustinian,” in Luther Lives: Essays in Commemoration of the 500th Anniversary of Martin Luther’s Birth, eds. Edward C. Fredrich, Siegbert W. Becker, and David P. Kuske (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1983), 15.  See letter nos. 245, 286, 431, 478, and 478.

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vows, which Staupitz considered non-essential, whereas Luther had vilified them as works-righteousness. This disagreement could not separate them. Luther was still Staupitz’s “best friend and Christ’s servant,” whom Staupitz loved more than a woman could love, quoting words from 2 Sam 1:26. Staupitz went so far as to say the he was Luther’s “brother and disciple”: One must not throw out something only because it was incidentally misused […]. But against matters that are in conflict with the faith, scream and do not stop. We owe a great deal to you, Martin; you have guided us back from the sows’ troughs to the pasture of life, to the words of salvation […]. To you we owe a debt of gratitude because you have planted and watered, given glory to God, to whom we attribute the power of making us God’s children […]. I have written enough; may it be granted that I could confer with you just one single hour and open the secrets of [my] heart. […]. In previous times I have been an advance guard [praecursor, front-runner] of the holy Evangelical teaching and have hated the Babylonian captivity, as I still do today.³⁷

Luther was so happy about Staupitz’s letter that he wanted to share it with Spalatin, to whom he forwarded it right away.³⁸ With this final correspondence between Staupitz and Luther in mind, there is no reason to conclude that they had parted ways, or that Staupitz – as an abbot – had separated himself from Luther. It was Luther who distanced himself from Staupitz and his more relaxed position with respect to monastic vows.

5 Some of Luther’s Supporters: The Nuremberg Elite As already mentioned above, Luther not only had Staupitz’s enduring consent, but also the support of many other figures, who appreciated him but did not abandon their loyalty to the Church of Rome on these grounds. The following sections will provide some examples of this, with a special focus on the areas of Nuremberg and Augsburg. As far as Nuremberg is concerned, it is worth briefly outlining the biographies of three figures who only later distanced themselves from Luther, just as Staupitz had been partly forced to do: among these were the city councilor Christoph Scheurl (1481– 1542), the imperial councilor Willibald Pirckheimer (1470 – 1530), and the artist Albrecht Dürer (1471– 1528). They all were older than Luther. The lawyer and humanist Dr. Scheurl was an admirer of Staupitz. He wrote to Luther on January 2, 1517, that Staupitz was celebrated in Nuremberg for his biblical

 It is quite possible that Staupitz hinted here at Luther’s 1520 text On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.  WA.B 3:280, 10 – 13, no. 735.

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preaching as the “tongue of the Apostle Paul,” the “herald of the gospel,” and a “true theologian.”³⁹ Scheurl was the first person in Nuremberg to receive Luther’s 95 Satzung (sentences, statements, talking points; only later known as the “ninety-five theses”). He was the organizer of the Staupitz Sodality (Sodalitas staupitziana) and supported the initial reform efforts.⁴⁰ Scheurl’s friendly relations with Luther faded in the 1520s. His last letter to Luther was dated August 3, 1519. He became friends with Georg Witzel (1501– 1573), who also began to distance himself from Luther.⁴¹ After 1530, Scheurl actually opposed the Reformation. The trajectory of Willibald Pirckheimer – one of Luther’s first sympathizers in Nuremberg, who considered himself to be a well-known friend of Luther’s – was also similar.⁴² The (in)famous theology professor in nearby Ingolstadt, Dr. Johann Eck (1486 – 1543), Luther’s fierce adversary, along with the papal nuncio Jerome Aleander (1480 – 1542), had been granted the power to add names (of Luther’s friends) to the papal bull Exsurge Domine (“Arise O Lord”). The bull threatened Luther with excommunication. On June 15, 1520, Eck had no qualms about including Pirckheimer’s name, and also the names of five other reform-minded men.⁴³ When Pirckheimer became aware of the content of the bull in October 1520, he went to great lengths to secure absolution. In time, Pirckheimer began to distance himself from both Luther and Eck, famously stating: “I am neither a Lutheran nor an Eckian, but a Christian.”⁴⁴ Finally, another important member of the Nuremberg elite who sympathized with Luther was the artist Albrecht Dürer.⁴⁵ He was also linked to the Staupitz Sodality, and during every evening session of the sodality, he gave Staupitz a picture dedicated to him. One can see affinities between Dürer’s religious art and Staupitz’s

 Christoph Scheurls Briefbuch, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Reformation und ihrer Zeit. Erster Band: Briefe von 1505 – 1516, vol. 2, Briefe von 1517 – 1540, eds. Franz von Soden and Joachim Karl Friedrich Knaake (Potsdam, 1867 & 1872; repr. Aalen, 1962), 2:1– 2, no. 114; Posset, The Front-Runner, 164– 65.  Rolf Decot, “Scheurl, Christoph,” in LTK 9 (2000), 133.  Karl Hartfelder, Philipp Melanchthon als Praeceptor Germaniae, Monumenta Germaniae paedagogica 7 (Berlin, 1889), 138.  Letter to Hutten from November 1521: “Luther’s friendship has not damaged me as much as Reuchlin’s, whose enemies attack me especially;” see Willibald Pirckheimers Briefwechsel, ed. Helga Scheible (München: C.H. Beck, 1997), 4:513 – 15, no. 759.  Namely, Andreas Bodenstein (1486 – 1541) from Karlstadt, Johann Dölsch (ca. 1485 – 1524) from Feldkirch, the Zwickau preacher Sylvius Egranus (d. 1535), Lazarus Spengler (1479 – 1534) from Nuremberg, and Canon Bernhard Adelmann (ca. 1458 – 1523) from Augsburg. See Peter Fabisch, “Johannes Eck und die Publikationen der Bullen ‘Exsurge Domine’ und ‘Decet Romanum Pontificem’,” in Johannes Eck (1486 – 1543) im Streit der Jahrhunderte. Internationales Symposion der Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus Catholicorum aus Anlaß des 500. Geburtstages des Johannes Eck vom 13. bis 16. November 1986 in Ingolstadt und Eichstätt, ed. Erwin Iserloh, Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte 127 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988), 74– 106, here 96 – 97.  See Eckius dedolatus, 1520; Franz Machilek, “Pirckheimer, Willibald,” in LTK 8 (1999), 311.  B. Möller, “Dürer, Albrecht,” in Das Luther-Lexikon, 177– 78.

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Christ-centered and cross-centered sermons and publications.⁴⁶ One can assume that the artist’s attitude was similar to Pirckheimer’s, as they were good friends.⁴⁷ However, it appears that Luther did not take much notice of this famous artist while in Wittenberg. After Luther’s disappearance on his way home from the famous Diet of Worms in 1521, Dürer feared that Luther had been killed: “O God, if Luther is dead, who shall henceforth so clearly expound to us the Holy Gospels?”⁴⁸ There is hardly any other similarly emotional reaction to Luther recorded in the early years of the Reformation. It is uncertain, however, whether Dürer remained a “Lutheran” later in life.

6 Prominent Personalities in Favor of Luther in Augsburg Among Luther’s supporters in the area of Augsburg, it is possible to list many exponents among the clergy, some of whom will be mentioned below. During the first years of the Reformation, Luther’s Catholic sympathizers had often only read about his ideas and had not necessarily met him or heard him preach in person. Among them was Veit Bild (1481– 1529),⁴⁹ a typical Renaissance monk, who lived in the Benedictine abbey in Augsburg. Like many humanists of his time, he also pursued the ideal of the trilingual man (with expertise in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew). He was very interested in Luther’s work. At the time when the Imperial Diet was in session at Augsburg in the summer of 1518, Bild corresponded with Georg Spalatin (1484– 1545) – who, as the secretary of Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, was present at the diet – primarily about Luther’s works, which he wanted to obtain. He informed Spalatin that he was already in possession of the papal theologian Silvester Prierias’ (1456 – 1527) booklet “against our Luther,” but he would only want comment on it in a private conversation. Spalatin sent Bild Luther’s unpublished Asterisci, which he liked. Bild decided to compose a letter of introduction to Luther, which Spalatin should forward, in the hope that Luther would deign to send him a little note in return, thus beginning their correspondence. Luther did not re-

 Rudolf K. Markwald, A Mystic’s Passion: The Spirituality of Johannes von Staupitz in his 1520 Lenten Sermons. Translation and Commentary (New York/Bern/Frankfurt/Paris: Peter Lang, 1990), 16 – 17.  Thomas Noll, “Albrecht Dürer und Willibald Pirckheimer. Facetten einer Freundschaft in Briefen und Bildnissen,” Pirckheimer-Jahrbuch für Renaissance- und Humanismusforschung 28 (2014): 9 – 56.  Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, 2 vols., with a new intro. by Jeffrey Chipps Smith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 [1943]), 198, available at: http://monoskop.org/ images/d/d0/Panofsky_Erwin_The_Life_and_Art_of_Albrecht_Duerer_1955.pdf; Deutsche Geschichte in Quellen und Darstellung, vol. 3, Reformationszeit 1495 – 1555, ed. Ulrich Köpf (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001), 186.  Franz Posset, Unser Martin: Martin Luther aus der Sicht katholischer Sympathisanten (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015), 107– 34, esp. fig. 11, p. 120.

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spond to Bild’s advances. Spalatin, however, kept informing Bild about what was going on in Wittenberg and what Luther was doing. Bild tried again to connect with Luther on April 16, 1520, via Johannes Frosch (ca. 1480 – 1533), the prior of the Carmelites in Augsburg, as well as via Spalatin. A response from Luther would be a precious sign of friendship.⁵⁰ Luther finally responded to him on May 15, 1520, but the letter – which had been attached to the one to Spalatin – is lost.⁵¹ In August 1522, Bild expressed his gratitude for Luther’s teachings in a letter to Spalatin as follows: “The gospel in which God teaches me through Martin, the most faithful servant of his vineyard, is so firmly rooted in my heart that everything with which I previously spent my days with is now disgusting to me.”⁵² Another character worth mentioning was also in contact with Bild – that is, Bernhard Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden (1459 – 1523), the leading cathedral canon at Eichstätt and Augsburg. Adelmann concurred with Luther’s criticism of indulgences, as he wrote to Pirckheimer in January 1518. Early on, he had been impressed by Luther’s sermons, which appeared in print in Augsburg and elsewhere. One of them may very well have been Luther’s “Sermon on Indulgence and Grace,” which Adelmann and Bild exchanged, and which they both liked very much.⁵³ It was Adelmann who sent Luther the fateful handwritten notes by Johann Eck on Luther’s ninety-five propositions (theses), known as the Obelisci. Luther reacted with his Asterisci in May 1518 (the text was not meant for publication), and he let Eck know that he had not expected such comments from a friend. Eck hoped that their differences would come to an end soon. In a letter written on March 8, 1519, Adelmann warned Luther about Eck. When Eck learned of Adelmann’s sympathies for Luther, he was so enraged that he added Adelmann’s name to the papal bull Exsurge Domine of June 15, 1520. Specifically, Eck presumed that Adelmann was the author of the pamphlet against him, titled Canonici indocti Lutherani. Public opinion in Augsburg understood Eck’s action against Adelmann as an act of private revenge. In the end, Adelmann managed to get his name taken off the list through the intervention of Duke William IV of Bavaria (1508 – 1550). Another clergyman who can be counted among Luther’s supporters was the Augustinian Kaspar Amman (died 1524).⁵⁴ He was the superior of the Augustinian monastery in Lauingen on the Danube, in the diocese of Augsburg. To him, Luther was “Our Apostle,” as demonstrated by his famed library, in which – apart from many Hebrew texts – there were also many contemporary pamphlets, especially Luther’s. In total, he owned about 30 texts written by Luther in the period 1519 – 1524, although     

WA.B 2:84– 85, no. 279. WA.B 2:98, 4, no. 284. Posset, Unser Martin, 134. Posset, Unser Martin, 25 – 49; WP.B 3:276, 22, no. 515. Posset, Unser Martin, 51– 105.

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two of the so-called principal texts of 1520 are conspicuously absent: An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation and De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae Praeludium. Most of the Luther texts in Amman’s possession were written in the vernacular, primarily Luther’s German sermons on baptism, penance, marriage, good works, and the ban, but also That Jesus Was Born a Jew. Amman felt that he should get Luther involved in a discussion on the interpretation of Matt 16:18 (“You are Peter…”). The latter, however, appeared not to be interested. One may assume that Luther was not informed of Amman’s sympathies for him or of the fact that Amman was incarcerated in November 1523, for about six months, for his refusal to proclaim the papal bull against Luther.⁵⁵ Yet Amman remained faithful to his vows in his religious order. His name was always kept on the list of members of the order. Finally, among Luther’s supporters who never departed from their obedience to the Church of Rome, the preacher Kaspar Haslach is also worth mentioning. According to him, Luther was an “apostolic man who preached very true sermons.” He is “the most sincere herald of the evangelical truth.”⁵⁶ Haslach held a very important preaching position at Dillingen, the city of residence of the bishops of Augsburg. In a note on the last page of a book on the Bohemian heretic Jan Hus (1369 – 1415), Haslach wrote: “I thank God, my Father, and his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Consoler, that I experience these times when the evangelical truth has started to blossom again. In our time it is the entry of her herald, Martin Luther, the most excellent man, whose soul may be kept by the one who has redeemed humanity by his blood. Amen.”⁵⁷ He apparently had made no secret of his sympathies for spiritual reforms and ended up being denounced and summoned before the bishop Christoph von Stadion (1478 – 1543).⁵⁸ Haslach was able to talk himself out of this predicament and move to a different parish in the south of the diocese, close to the Swiss border. These biographical sketches of Luther’s friends who remained Catholic demonstrate that it was not without risk that they stood by their herald of the gospel, their apostle, or simply, their Martin. Some of them actually suffered for sympathizing with Luther; others managed to go unnoticed and never suffered any consequences.

 Note 1 for the edition of Amman’s letter to Luther, WA.B 2:609, no. 543.  Posset, Unser Martin, 135– 58.  Haslach’s copy of the book De causa boemica is kept in the library of Saint Nicholas Church in Isny, Germany; Immanuel Kammerer and Ulrich Weible, Bibliothek der Nikolaikirche Isny (Munich/ Zurich: Schnell & Steiner, 1976), 9.  A. Schröder, “Untersuchung gegen Mag. Kaspar Haslach, Prediger in Dillingen, wegen Verdachtes der Häresie (1522),” Jahresbericht des Historischen Vereins Dillingen 8 (1895): 11– 25.

Patrizio Foresta

The Posting of the Theses: The History of a Myth 1 Introduction Between 1962 and 1968, Erwin Iserloh published his two famous contributions on the historical accuracy of the posting of the theses, to which he denied any foundation, first asking whether it should be considered a historical fact or rather a legend, and then coming to the steadfast conclusion that it never happened.¹ During the same years, his provocation, which however had not been meant to be such, prompted a very intense and animated academic debate that, according to Marc Lienhard’s assessment, tallied more than 300 contributions on the subject, a testimony to “German thoroughness in scientific debates, but also the complexity of the research on Luther.”² The finality of Iserloh’s conclusion may appear excessive and maybe even naive, but it needs to be read within the perspective of the historical value that Iserloh attributed to Luther. Beyond a certain “ill-concealed joy” in having listed a series of objections that were – and still are – difficult to dismiss, given their quality and quantity,³ Iserloh’s purpose, in his works on both the posting and on the ecumenical meaning of Luther and the Reformation, was to conquer Luther, although with all due caution, in the renewed conciliar and post-conciliar ecumenical mood: if the posting never happened, then Luther was not the main factor responsible for the rift in Latin Christianity and the emergence of the different European confessional families. If the posting had taken on a symbolic value that split Christians, then the same value, although in the opposite direction, would arise from its confutation.

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri  Erwin Iserloh, Luthers Thesenanschlag. Tatsache oder Legende? (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1962; repr., Iserloh, Kirche – Ereignis und Institution. Aufsätze und Vorträge, vol. 2, Geschichte und Theologie der Reformation [Münster: Aschendorff, 1985], 48 – 69); Iserloh, Luther zwischen Reform und Reformation. Der Thesenanschlag fand nicht statt (Münster: Arschendorff, 1968). An edition of both works is now available in Uwe Wolff, Iserloh. Der Thesenanschlag fand nicht statt (Freiburg: Reinhardt, 2013), 169 – 238. Interestingly, the third and final edition of Iserloh’s work does not mention the apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum doctrina by Paul VI, dated January 1, 1967, whereas Heinrich Bornkamm (Thesen und Thesenanschlag Luthers [Berlin: Töpelmann, 1967]) makes it the starting point of his study.  Marc Lienhard, Martin Luther. Un temps, une vie, un message, 3rd rev. ed. (Genève : Labor et fides, 1991), 395 – 402, esp. 396.  Volker Leppin, Martin Luther (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2006), 125. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-012

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Iserloh had transformed a detail, an evenemential curiosity, into a fundamental issue on the nature of the Reformation, overturning an accusation that the historicalecclesiastical research of Catholic inspiration had traditionally imputed to Luther because of that alleged original act of public rebellion. In Iserloh’s Gregorian and Tridentine perspective, which came to him from his two teachers, Joseph Lortz and Hubert Jedin, Luther became a reformer who, unlike Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzmán, had not been heeded by the Roman Curia and the Catholic hierarchy of the time, which were both deaf in the face of the urgent demand for reformatio: it was also and primarily to these institutions, which Iserloh judged according to similarly Gregorian and Tridentine criteria, that one should impute the main responsibility for the rift that transformed the desirable “reform” of the Church into the “Reformation,” and not to Luther, who was still hanging in the balance between the former and the latter.⁴ Iserloh’s main point was precisely the clear difference between the two. This is a difference that in today’s historiographical context is underestimated in favor of interpretations that are more nuanced and less focused on confessional individualities, although it still retains its hermeneutic value in theological-systematic research on ecumenism.⁵ The controversy that ensued after Iserloh’s contributions confirms what Volker Leppin wrote on the “legend of the posting of the theses”: the authenticity of the fact in itself, which has been and still is being debated heavily, may be considered as a marginal issue; what is historically worth examining is rather the relationship between the “historical consideration” and the “symbolic attribution of sense” connected to the posting itself.⁶ The posting has become a cultural and identity-making myth so enduring that, whenever called into question, it is surprising to realize its

 Cf., among others, the following works published in 1965 – 1969: Iserloh, Der Gestaltwandel der Kirche. Vom Konzil von Trient bis zum Vaticanum II, in Kirche, vol. 1, Kirchengeschichte als Theologie, 388 – 404, esp. 404; Iserloh, Reform – Reformation, in Kirche, vol. 2, Geschichte und Theologie, 1– 13, esp. 6; Iserloh, Luthers Thesenanschlag, 33. Cf. also Iserloh, Luther zwischen Reform und Reformation, 82; Iserloh, Geschichte und Theologie, 64; Wolff, Iserloh, 149.  On this subject, cf. Mario Bendiscioli, Nuovi indirizzi della storiografia tedesca della Riforma: E. Iserloh, in Iserloh, Lutero tra riforma cattolica e protestante (Brescia: Queriniana 1970), 11– 23, esp. 18. It is enough to mention the distance, even just in the choice of the historiographical concepts at the foundation of their analyses, between the approaches in Hubert Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation? Ein Versuch zur Klärung der Begriffe nebst einer Jubiläumsbetrachtung über das Trienter Konzil (Luzern: Josef Stocker, 1946), and in Thomas A. Brady, Jr., German Histories in the Age of the Reformations, 1400 – 1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). On the subject of “reform” and “Reformation” from a theological perspective, cf. G. Thomas, “Reform und Reformation. Systematisch-theologische Perspektiven auf ein theologisches Ereignis,” in Gottes Wort in der Geschichte. Reformation und Reform in der Kirche, eds. Wilhelm Damberg, Ute Gause, Isolde Karle, and Thomas Söding (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2015), 280 – 97.  Volker Leppin, “‘Nicht seine Person, sondern die Wahrheit zu verteidigen.’ Die Legende vom Thesenanschlag in lutherischer Historiographie und Memoria,” in Der Reformator Martin Luther 2017. Eine wissenschaftliche und gedenkpolitische Bestandsaufnahme, ed. Heinz Schilling (Berlin/München/Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), 85 – 107, esp. 85 – 86.

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resistance to demythologization, especially when comparing the apparent historical and theological insignificance of the event in itself – if it even occurred – with the infinitely greater importance attributed to the historical phenomenon, indeed undeniable, originating from the theses themselves. In reality, this very resistance confirms that the posting is “especially rooted in the awareness of the people, or rather is recognized as the Reformation itself.”⁷ In this case, too, it is possible to apply what Friedrich Wilhelm Graf wrote about the biblical tale of the Decalogue: the exegetes’ historiographical subtleties have very little power against the “wishful fictions” of the faithful, as these fictions are “historical forces as hard as diamonds.”⁸ If the comparison between the posting of the theses and the Decalogue could seem forced from a historical and exegetic point of view, it is not so when examining the history of the effects, as the emotions elicited among the faithful by the demythologization of the posting have been compared to those prompted by Bultmann’s exegetical proposal.⁹ Using these general considerations as a starting point, and dwelling only on some circumstances of particular importance, this study traces the formation of the myth of the posting and its historical-philosophical implications, starting from its onset in the 1540s and arriving at the latest scientific and publicistic debates that emerged from 2007 onwards, after Martin Treu’s discovery of a note by Georg Rörer, Luther’s secretary and collaborator, allegedly confirming the authenticity of the posting. However, this study does not have the ambition, destined to remain frustrated, of perusing the complete bibliography on the subject or, even more so, of settling the still unresolvable issue of whether or not the posting actually happened.

2 Guilty or Not Guilty? A Legal Reading of the Posting of the Theses The historical memory of Lutheranism has its apex in the anniversary “of the original event of the Reformation,” i. e., the writing of the 95 theses on indulgences on October 31, 1517, which Luther himself always considered as the beginning of his public activity. However, it is also true that – apart from a sober toast by Luther in Wittenberg in 1527 to celebrate “having trampled on the indulgences” ten years before, and regardless of the fact that the memory of 1517 was alive in German Protestantism  Kurt Aland, Die 95 Thesen Martin Luthers und die Anfänge der Reformation (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, 1983), 7.  Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Moses Vermächtnis. Über göttliche und menschliche Gesetze (München: C.H. Beck, 2006), 38 – 40.  Franz Lau, “Die gegenwärtige Diskussion um Luthers Thesenanschlag,” Lutherjahrbuch 34 (1967): 11– 59, esp. 14; Wolff, Iserloh, 226; Vinzenz Pfnür, “Die Bestreitung des Thesenanschlags durch Erwin Iserloh. Theologiegeschichtlicher Kontext – Auswirkung auf den katholisch-lutherischen Dialog,” in Luthers Thesenanschlag – Faktum oder Fiktion, eds. Joachim Ott and Martin Treu (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2008), 111– 26, esp. 112.

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through the dedicatory letter written by Melanchthon and prefacing the second volume of Luther’s works in Latin – the first jubilee celebrating the beginning of the Reformation was organized only in 1617, on the initiative of the Reformed Frederick V of the Palatinate, in order to overcome the confessional conflict within the Protestant area institutionalized by the exclusion of Calvinism from the religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555 – through the creation of a historical memory shared both by Lutheran and German Reformed churches, thus joining the different spirits of the Evangelical Union at a point in time at which war against the emperor and the Catholic Imperial States seemed like an unavoidable and imminent outcome.¹⁰ Thus it is not surprising that the accounts written during Luther’s time do not especially mention the posting, since, in its academic normality, no special value was attached to it. Similarly unsurprising is the fact that early Lutheran historiography interprets the posting in the same way.¹¹ It was the nineteenth century, the century of the second confessional age and the ascent of Protestant Prussia with Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation and the creation of the Kaiserreich, that invented Luther’s heroic, nationalist, and manly image, which became familiar from then onward but was also very far both from the image of the father of the (Lutheran) church of the previous centuries and from historical accuracy. It is particularly interesting that, up until the jubilee of 1817, it was not Luther who posted the theses, but rather a humble custodian at the university of Wittenberg.¹²

 Volker Leppin, “‘… das der Römische Antichrist offenbaret und das helle Liecht des Heiligen Evangelii wiederumb angezündet.’ Memoria und Aggression im Reformationsjubiläum 1617,” in Konfessioneller Fundamentalismus. Religion als politischer Faktor im europäischen Mächtesystem um 1600, ed. Heinz Schilling (München: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2007), 115 – 31, esp. 115 – 16; on the jubilee of 1617, see Hans J. Schönstädt, Antichrist, Weltheilsgeschehen und Gottes Werkzeug. Römische Kirche, Reformation und Luther im Spiegel des Reformationsjubiläums 1617 (Wiesbaden: Verlag Phillip von Zabern, 1978), 10 – 15. Cf. WA.B 4.1164:275, 25 – 27: “Wittenbergae, die Omnium Sanctorum anno decimo Indulgentiarum conculcatarum, quarum memoria hac hora bibimus utrinque consolati, 1527.”  Hans Volz, Martin Luthers Thesenanschlag und dessen Vorgeschichte (Weimar: Böhlau, 1959), 28, 92– 94; Johannes Sleidanus (Warhaffte, eigentliche und kurtze Beschreibung [Franckfurt am Mayn, 1581], p. 1) mentions the episode of the posting but gives much more space to Luther’s letters and theses, as does the Strasbourg edition (1557), whilst the Basel edition of 1557 does not even mention it; also very brief are the chronicles by Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de lutheranismo sive de reformatione religionis [Francofurti-Lipsiae, 1692], 24) and by Gottfrid Arnold (Unparteyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie: von Anfang des Neuen Testaments biß auff das Jahr Christi 1688, [Franckfurt am Mayn, 1699], 2:43) that mention the episode of the posting, but only in order to introduce the public debate on the indulgences and, in particular, the theses; Friedrich Myconius (Historia Reformationis vom Jahr Christi 1517 bis 1542 [Leipzig, 1718], 16 – 23, esp. 22– 23) mentions the theses as well, but not the posting.  Henrike Holsing, “Luthers Thesenanschlag im Bild”, in Luthers Thesenanschlag, 141– 72. On the second confessional age of the nineteenth century, cf. Olaf Blaschke, “Das 19. Jahrhundert: Ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter?,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2000): 38 – 75; Blaschke, ed., Konfessionen im Konflikt. Deutschland zwischen 1800 und 1970: ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002).

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Once the origin of its myth is clarified, the issue of the posting becomes insoluble from a merely evenemential point of view, because it is antilogous: both theories – for and against – may be supported and denied with equally valid evidence, also due the fact that the academic debate on October 31, 1517, has always been characterized by the utmost scientific quality. Therefore, given the erudition of those who partook in it, the choice of which path to take when facing the aporia of the posting has always been an issue that involves not only or even mainly the verification of the facts – which can be read according to two opposing interpretations, both legitimate – but rather the historical, theological, and philosophical meaning attributed to them. The incursion of the Reformation into the seemingly slow and almost motionless ripple of the Christian Middle Ages, this shock of epochal magnitude in the movements of the tectonics of history, has been traced back to the events of 1517 by many of those who – denying or asserting the authenticity of the posting of the theses and considering it the trigger of both the Reformation and modernity, which would be begun by it – worked within a philosophy of history of Hegelian inspiration, in which world-historical individuals make their appearance on stage and embody the spirit of and in the times to such a degree as to change the course of universal history with a dramatic and decisive action at the service of the cunning of reason. As history, from Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and Giambattista Vico to the French encyclopedists, has become more and more magistra vitae, historians have been entrusted not only with the task of teaching but, above all, of issuing verdicts on history, not unlike a judge who has examined the witnesses and assessed their thruthfulness. This is why world-historical individuals like Luther can be found guilty or not guilty of having or not having committed the crime imputed to them by the tribunal of history, i. e., by the tribunal of the world or the final judgment, the origin of which is to be found in the prophets and the Old Testament, but which was secularized by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in universal history.¹³

 Carlo Ginzburg, Il giudice e lo storico. Considerazioni a margine del processo Sofri (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2006), 17, 84, 92n10. The reference is to a famous verse by Friedrich Schiller (“die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht”) in the poem “Resignation” from 1784 that Hegel borrows in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, in the third volume of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences and in Elements of the Philosophy of Right; see Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 45 – 46, 49, 559; Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse 1830, vol. 3, Die Philosophie des Geistes. Mit den mü ndlichen Zusätzen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 347; Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse, Mit Hegels eigenhändigen Notizen und den mü ndlichen Zusätzen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 503. Cf. Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995), 56 – 57; Karl Löwith, Significato e fine della storia. I presupposti teologici della filosofia della storia (Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2010), 33. This debate is partly summarized in Igor Melani, Il tribunale della storia. Leggere la “Methodus” di Jean Bodin (Firenze: Olschki, 2006), 29 – 33. A theological interpretation of Schiller’s verse can be found in Eberhard Jüngel, “‘Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht’ aus theo-

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This change in the epistemological statute of historiography took hold at the end of the eighteenth century, when, especially thanks to Edward Gibbon’s work, “it became evident […] that erudition and philosophy were not incompatible. The combination of philosophic history with the antiquarian’s method of research became the aim which many of the best historians of the nineteenth century proposed to themselves”:¹⁴ the historians scrutinize the sources and interpret them, moving between antiquarian erudition and philosophy of history. Luther was charged with having split the common European house and, as a consequence, having launched the modern world. This is why Luther has been placed in the dock at the trial of modernity and, from time to time, has been found guilty or not guilty before the tribunal of history.¹⁵ Typical of this new vision of historiography is the interpretation offered by the Romantic Leopold von Ranke in the Lutherfragment, penned in 1816 – 17: in the “repenting chest” of friar Luther was sparked “the idea of forgiveness through grace” that made him rebel against the trade in indulgences and prompted him to post the 95 theses on the castle church in Wittenberg; he is “a rock by the sea” who allows “the restless, roaring waves that wanted to swallow him” to “crash into himself.”¹⁶ However, even more characteristic – in the sense of nineteenth-century history suspended between the philology of “wie es eigentlich gewesen” and the Hegelian philosophy of history – is the description of Luther and the posting by Ranke in Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation: already in 1515 – 16, Luther was infused by the doctrine of justification by faith; surely, he was still uncertain on several points and at times fell foul of contradictions, but from all of his writing emanated “a powerful mind, a youthful courage, still restrained within the bounds of modesty and reverence for authority, though ready to overlap them; a genius intent on essentials, tearing asunder the bonds of system, and pressing forward in the new path it has discovered.” In 1517, at the apex of Leo X’s “secular ambitions” and “spiritual omnipotence,” there was, however, a man who dared to stand his ground with the papal commissioners: Luther posted the theses, which showed what a “daring, magnanimous, and constant spirit” dwelt in him; his ideas gushed “like sparks from the iron under the stroke of the hammer,” and his endeavor was a “shock which awak-

logischer Perspektive”, in Ganz werden. Theologische Erörterungen V, ed. Eberhard Jüngel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 323 – 44.  Armaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” in Studies in Historiography, ed. Armaldo Momigliano (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), 1– 39, esp. 25; and Momigliano, “Il contributo di Gibbon al metodo storico,” in Studies in Historiography, 294– 367, esp. 296 – 302.  Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation. Europe’s House Divided, 1490 – 1700 (London: Allen Lane, 2003). On the so-called tribunalization of history starting from the second half of the eighteenth century, and on theodicy as the cypher of modernity, see Odo Marquard and Alberto Melloni, La storia che giudica, la storia che assolve (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2008).  Leopold von Ranke, Lutero e l’idea di storia universale, eds. Francesco Donadio and Fulvio Tessitore (Napoli: Guida Editori, 1986),91.

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ened Germany.”¹⁷ Gerhard Ritter carries Ranke’s interpretation into the following century, using even more dramatic language: without knowing the reach his action would have, Luther was suddenly driven to the center of the clashes of the time by the theses that he had posted on the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg. At the beginning, what he had dared to do had only seemed like a “thin and barely visible” crack in a “tall and strong dam;” however, “the waters struck it with force and opened a rift that nobody in the world was able to close again.”¹⁸ The post-Hegelian and post-Rankian paradigm has now been called into question, at least in the most recent and critically conscious contributions, by a much better articulated interpretation of the events on a historical-religious, political, and institutional level. Nevertheless, historians’ attitudes are still split on the issue of the authenticity of the posting and therefore, in the perspective suggested here, on the matter of Luther’s innocence or guilt. According to Bernd Moeller, the idea that Luther posted the theses on the door of the castle of Wittenberg seems to be based on a mistake. Reviewing 28 of the most recent biographies on Luther, Moeller noted that they all deal with the posting of the theses and the historiographical controversy connected to it without expressing, in the great majority of instances, a clear opinion in favor or against. Rather, they seem to use a “concealing” and ambiguous term that appears to shed light on the issue, but that actually only confuses matters further: “publication,” in fact, could refer both to the fact that the theses were sent and that they were publicly posted, although, on closer inspection, an actual publication – in the sense of making the theses public – would only occur in the second instance. However, after Iserloh, historians are not too keen to commit to this interpretation. As this suggestion is only an “apparent solution,” the issue is destined to remain unresolved, even though Moeller himself is definitely inclined towards the authenticity of the posting precisely on October 31, 1517, since Luther could not have chosen a “more perfect date.” In fact, it is possible to conjecture that the two main protagonists of the theological debate at the university of Wittenberg, Luther and Karlstadt, almost following “a strategy,” had planned two debates on the issue – neither of which ever took place – so as to coincide with the display of the relics in Wittenberg for the Festival of the Divine Mercy in April and with All Saints’ Day in November 1517.¹⁹ The ambiguity pointed out by Moeller is hard to overcome; it can be found, for example, on two well-known websites among those dedicated to the jubilee of 2017 (and many others could be mentioned). The Refo500 website didn’t hesitate to iden-

 Leopold von Ranke, The History of the Reformation in Germany, trans. Sarah Taylor Austin (London, 1845 – 47; repr. 2016), 100, 102, 104.  Gerhard Ritter, Die Neugestaltung Europas im 16. Jahrhundert. Die kirchlichen und staatlichen Wandlungen im Zeitalter der Reformation und der Glaubenskämpfe (Berlin: Verlag des Druckhauses Tempelhof, 1950), 77.  Bernd Moeller, Deutschland im Zeitalter der Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), 55; Moeller, “Thesenanschläge,” in Luthers Thesenanschlag, 9 – 31, esp. 10, 12, 30 – 31.

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tify the posting of the theses with the “beginning of the Reformation,” even adding an English translation, without referring to the controversy at all; moreover, the introductory brochure for the platform mentioned that in 1517 Luther “publicly announced his 95 theses” in Wittenberg.²⁰ Similarly, the Lutherdekade website is also caught in this lexical ambiguity when it speaks of the “publication of the 95 theses that Martin Luther, according to the tradition, posted on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.”²¹ Heinz Schilling’s position tries to save the facts by deconstructing the myth: “a revolutionary posting of the theses” – as posterity imagined it at the latest after the jubilee of 1617 and, even more so, in a century obsessed with revolution, as the nineteenth century was – never happened. When Luther started to develop his theses against the sermons of the Dominican Johannes Tetzel on indulgences in the late summer of 1517, it never crossed his mind that in doing so he would be attacking the authority of the pope, as the theses were only meant to shed light on a truth that was the topic of a mainly academic and theological discussion and to clarify his personal opinions on the subject. If the theses were actually posted, the context was therefore quite different from the one described by Lutheran rhetoric, which imagined a monk wielding a hammer, almost an echo of a Germanic deity; rather, according to Schilling, the event was an act of academic information and communication, quite common in European universities – i. e., notice of an academic debate and an invitation to discuss the theses with their author. At any rate, it was not Luther who posted the theses, this being the task of the custodian of the university. The posting surely seemed to Luther such an ordinary action that it did not require any further attention.²² According to Martin Brecht, Luther’s great biographer, the point is not when or whether the theses were posted, which is after all only a secondary issue; the theses themselves – in their historical and theological development – and their diffusion through different channels and means of communication are the main events of that tumultuous fall.²³ Brecht’s point of view is shared by many other scholars – such as Heiko Oberman, Berndt Hamm, Bernd Moeller, Dorothea Wendebourg, and Luise Schorn-Schütte – according to whom, in view of the highly divergent positions expressed by its infinite ramifications, the core of the Reformation is the bestowal of a theological sense to which all the effects of human actions deriving from

 See, respectively: www.refo500.nl/calendars/63/1940/beginning-of-the-reformation; www.refo500.nl/pages/132/martin-luther-s-95-theses.html; www.refo500.nl/content/files/Files/Overige/General_Flyer_Refo500_Juli_2013_EN.pdf, accessed November 18, 2016.  See www.luther2017.de/de/2017/reformationsjubilaeum, accessed November 18, 2016.  Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther. Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs (München: C.H. Beck, 2014), 164– 65.  Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 1, Sein Weg zur Reformation 1483 – 1521 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1981), 173 – 230.

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it must return and which makes it impossible to write the history of the Reformation without the reformers, i. e., without their ideas and doctrines.²⁴ In contrast, Thomas Kaufmann overturns Ranke’s classic interpretation, which has become canonical: the Reformation did not start or end with a given event on a given day – neither on October 31, 1517, when Luther sent and “possibly had his theses posted on the doors of the churches of Wittenberg to announce a debate that never took place,” nor on September 25, 1555, when some form of confessional tolerance was granted to those who had adhered to the Confessio augustana of 1530 in the imperial states and cities. The Reformation represented, instead, a “process of theological questioning, publicistic struggle and change aiming at transforming the traditional ecclesiastical institutions.” During his trial, between the summer of 1518 and the winter of 1520 – 1521, Luther took on the role of both the victim and the culprit. What marked the beginning of the Reformation in Germany is not so much the disputed posting of 1517, but rather the failure on an imperial scale of the Edict of Worms of May 8, 1521, and the lack of a solution to the religious issue: had the edict been applied, it would have meant the end of the whole Reformation movement. The authenticity of the posting of the theses, however, is the hypothesis that, according to Kaufmann, presents a “relatively greater” plausibility and warrants its historical significance: Luther had Johann Gruneberg, a printer whose workshop was close to the Augustinian monastery of Wittenberg, prepare the printing of a manifesto with his 95 theses for October 31, 1517, and also had the theses published by posting them on the doors of the Church of All Saints, and perhaps also of other churches in the city. Melanchthon and Georg Rörer, the first ones to mention the posting, therefore relied in their accounts on a previous oral tradition. Moreover, Luther’s letters to the archbishop of Mainz and commissioner for indulgences, Albert of Brandenburg, and to his ordinary, the bishop of Brandenburg Hieronymus Schulz (or Scultetus), also suggest that there was an exemplar princeps of the theses printed in Wittenberg and later lost. Besides, it may be supposed that Luther did not wait for the reply of the two prelates in order to print the theses, but rather that the printing happened at the same time as the letters. This would be so also because the publishing of theses that were to be the subject of academic debate was a common occurrence at the University of Wittenberg. Finally, it is more likely that Luther would want to follow the statutes of the university – calling for the publication of the theses to be debated through their posting on the doors of the churches of Wittenberg – rather than doing the opposite, particularly on a very special occasion in the liturgical calendar: on the eve of and throughout All Saints’ Day, all those who went to the collegiate church of Wittenberg in a disposition of meditation would receive a plena Heiko Oberman, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nach Genf (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986); Berndt Hamm, Bernd Moeller, and Dorothea Wendebourg, eds., Reformationstheorien. Ein kirchenhistorischer Disput über Einheit und Vielfalt der Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995); Luise Schorn-Schütte, Die Reformation. Vorgeschichte – Verlauf – Wirkung (München: C.H. Beck, 2000).

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ry indulgence, just as those who went to the Porziuncola would be granted a pardon.²⁵ On the contrary, according to Guido Dall’Olio, it is true that Luther was driven to take on a strong public position by the scandal of the indulgences; however, this was anything but a sudden event: it will be enough to mention the Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam from September 1517, in which many pivotal themes of Luther’s later theology are foreshadowed. Therefore, the posting of the theses – in itself a plausible event, of which, however, there is no certain evidence – is a “suggestive legend”²⁶ that would be useful in explaining the extraordinary diffusion of the theses, even against what were Luther’s likely intentions. Finally, according to Volker Leppin, the real event of the fall of 1517 was not the posting of the theses, so deeply embedded in Lutheran collective memory, but rather the spiritual liberation of Luther from the rules of scholastic theology and from the doctrinal system of taught in theology schools, with the purpose of bringing everything back to the “immediate closeness of Christ,” which, for its part, makes the Christian free. The Reformation, therefore, would not begin – loudly and impulsively – with the boom of the hammer, but in an extremely cautious way, with the development of a new theology free from the bonds of theological tradition. No more “Luder,” but rather “Luther” and “Eleutherius,” the liberated and the liberator.²⁷ For this reason – even assuming that a debate actually took place, as announced by the posting required by the statutes of the university – the image of Luther can no longer be that of a reformer wielding a hammer in front of a crowd crammed at the door of the church of Wittenberg, announcing the beginning of a new era.²⁸ Obviously Leppin’s iconoclastic choice must also be read from another point of view: what is important is that the identity and collective memory of Lutheranism have their foundations on the rock of the theses and not on the sand of their posting – the first being a stronghold, easily able to ward off any charge brought forward by the champions of the enemy army; the latter being an action that, if we are magnanimous, was at most a banal episode of university life. Therefore, it is in order to strengthen the memory of the Reformation, not to erase it, that it is necessary to file the posting under the domain of wishful fictions; demythologizing the posting means, therefore, putting the 95 theses back in the foreground.

 Thomas Kaufmann, Geschichte der Reformation (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 2009), 21– 22, 182– 84, 226 – 99, esp. 226 – 28, 298 – 99.  Guido Dall’Olio, Martin Lutero (Roma: Carocci, 2013), 61– 69, esp. 67.  Bernd Moeller and Karl Stackmann, Luder – Luther – Eleutherius. Erwägungen zu Luthers Namen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981).  Leppin, Martin Luther, 124– 26.

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3 Iserloh’s Luther: Acquitted for Not Having Committed the Crime From the 1930s onward, Joseph Lortz’s work inscribed a decisive change in Catholic awareness when it comes to Luther and the Reformation. According to Lortz, Luther, the accused, is not guilty; Luther did not mean to cause that rift in Western Christianity that was so typical of the modern era. On the contrary, if the Roman reaction had been appropriate to the depth of the questions asked, Luther would have been the next great reformer of (and in) the Church. The importance of Lortz’s contribution only increases when we take into account that, despite the fact that he is often an unwelcome scholarly reference point due to his initial subscription to national socialism, his positions on common blame and the confessional division have been taken up in the third chapter of the conciliar decree on ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio. ²⁹ Iserloh’s reflection undoubtedly represents the development of the position of Lortz, his teacher, expressed in Die Reformation in Deutschland and many other shorter works: if Rome had reacted appropriately, as was necessary and urgent, there would not have been a rift in the Church. Therefore Luther cannot have posted the theses, since, at the time, he was very far from even thinking about a separation from Rome. Instead, his actions reveal that he still perceived himself as a faithful son of the Church, to the point that he sent the theses to the commissioner for indulgences and to his diocesan ordinary. This is not all, however: Luther’s most urgent aim was to make Albert of Brandenburg recall his Instructio summaria on the indulgences, since this had caused Tetzel’s theological abuse. In the theses, Luther proposed confuting Tetzel’s doctrine and showing that the whole issue was in need of a dogmatic clarification by the Church, to which Luther was ready to subordinate his judgment, against the arbitrariness of the theological positions of his Dominican enemies.³⁰

 Joseph Lortz, Die Reformation als religiöses Anliegen heute. Vier Vorträge im Dienste der Una Sancta (Trier: Paulinus, 1948), 104; and Iserloh, Die Entwicklung der ökumenischen Bemühungen in Deutschland bis zum Vaticanum II, in Kirche, 2:489 – 505, esp. 499 – 500. Cf. Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Generaliumque Decreta, vol. 3, The Oecumenical Councils of the Roman Catholic Church. From Trent to Vatican II (1545 – 1965) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 362, lines 79 – 82. On this subject, see also Massimo Marcocchi, Prefazione all’edizione italiana, in Joseph Lortz, La Riforma in Germania (Milano: Jaca Book, 1971), 1:xxviii–xxx; Boris Ulianich, “In memoriam Joseph Lortz,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 11 (1975): 508 – 11; Martino Patti, Chiesa cattolica tedesca e Terzo Reich (1933 – 1934). Il caso di M. Schmaus, J. Lortz, F. Taeschner, J. Pieper, F. von Papen (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008), 195 – 218.  Wilhelm Borth, Die Luthersache (Causa Lutheri). 1517 – 1524. Die Anfänge der Reformation als Frage von Politik und Recht (Lübeck/Hamburg: Matthiesen Verlag, 1970), 20 – 24.

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Due to an odd heterogeneity of ends, Iserloh ended up in the eye of the storm of the academic and public debate – not by his own initiative, but by Hans Volz’s. Volz was one of the editors of the Weimarer Ausgabe, and he proposed in 1957 in the Deutsches Pfarrerblatt, the magazine of German Evangelical pastors, the unexpected hypothesis that the posting did not take place on October 31, but rather on November 1, 1517.³¹ The famous exegete Kurt Aland quickly replied to Volz, defending the traditional date of October 31 in the Deutsches Pfarrerblatt of the following year.³² Iserloh was involved in the debate, much against his will, by his friend Konrad Repgen, who happened to read Volz’s volume. Repgen wondered whether, apart from the date, it might also be necessary to call into question the very act of posting – since, after close inspection, it is only affirmed by two paltry traces in the sources; he shared his idea with Iserloh, who scrutinized it with great thoroughness and then held his famous lecture in the Auditorium Maximum of the University of Mainz on November 8, 1961. In this lecture, he seriously questioned the historical accuracy of the posting of the theses for the first time.³³ The famous, sarcastic article published in the first issue of Der Spiegel in 1966, for its part, engaged in some not entirely good-natured mocking of this discussion among “the three sages” (Volz, Aland, and Iserloh), describing it as a tempest in an academic teapot, at least up to the point when the German history teachers’ journal had published articles on the subject by these “three sages”, together with contributions by Heinrich Steitz and Irmgard Höss, in its 1965 issue. According to Der Spiegel, they had demonstrated how the “moment of glory of evangelical humanity” was ruled by absolute disagreement: the only points on which the five scholars were indeed in agreement were the “prehistory of the announcement of the theses” and the fact that “both the date and the posting in itself are completely devoid of any importance.”³⁴ However, given “the historical and theological futility” of the question of whether or not Luther actually posted the theses (i. e., its reduction to the mere act of posting), how is it possible to explain the “emotionalism” with which this problem has been and still is discussed? Perhaps the explanation can be found, at least partly, in the article from Der Spiegel: if the “reformer does not have a hammer,” then his heroic image – so clear in Lutheran historical memory, particularly since the nineteenth century – and the symbolic framework of his “monumentalization” are irreparably shaken at their very foundations. In this sense, the posting is not the cause of this “monumentalization,” but rather its effect: this myth could only be born in a context where it was necessary to “canonize the memory of Luther” by using an etiologic

 The article later became a short but substantial volume: Volz, Martin Luthers Thesenanschlag, esp. 28 – 37.  Volz’s argumentations were later picked up and expanded by Aland in Die 95 Thesen, 113 – 35.  Konrad Repgen, “Ein profangeschichtlicher Rückblick auf die Iserloh-Debatte,” in Luthers Thesenanschlag, 99 – 110, esp. 100 – 01.  Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 16 (1965): 661– 99. The article in Der Spiegel is available at: www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-46265199.html, accessed November 18, 2016.

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myth to “keep safe” his charismatic legacy in the institutions that originated in his reforming action.³⁵ When considered from this perspective, the issue of the alleged posting ceases to be a simple evenemential curiosity. By downgrading “Luther wielding the hammer” to a “piece of [Protestant] folklore,” Iserloh undercut the solidity of Luther’s alleged act of rebellion against the Church and cleared what was perceived to be a stumbling block on the ecumenical path, which, unlike the other “questions to Luther” (firstly, on the nature of the Church and its “living magisterium” in the interpretation of scripture, and secondly, on ultimate authority in matters of faith, an issue closely connected to the first one), was for Iserloh absolutely void of any importance. Iserloh here follows the line of the first criticisms of the ninety-five theses expressed in the Dialogus de potestate papae by Silvestro Mazzolini: for Iserloh too, the “questions to Luther” are not so much about the indulgences in themselves, or the doctrine of justification, but instead about ecclesiology.³⁶ Mazzolini’s intuition was productive: “the relationship between the Word of God and church doctrine, as well as ecclesiology, ecclesial authority,” are still among the issues that, in chapter 43 of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification from October 31, 1999, “need further clarification.”³⁷ Thus Iserloh’s Luther goes back to being a good Christian, an unheeded reformer burning with love for the Church, whom Catholics could take back after the Lutheran “confiscation.”³⁸ Therefore the posting bursts into the history of ecumenism with all its symbolic strength, covers in a mythopoetic veil the theses, which are the main event of that eve of All Saints’ Day, and becomes the last bastion against what is partly perceived as the pillaging by the Catholics – and particularly by the German Catholics – of a founding myth of Lutheran identity, the meaning of which went and still goes beyond its historical reality.³⁹ Thus it is also easier to understand the Protestant reactions to its demythologization, aimed at reaffirming Luther’s exclusive belonging to the world of the Reformation against any attempt to introduce him into the pantheon of an ecumenism more feared than embraced.

 Volker Leppin, “Die Monumentalisierung Luthers. Warum vom Thesenanschlag erzählt wurde – und was davon zu erzählen ist,” in Luthers Thesenanschlag, 69 – 92, esp. 69 – 72.  Wolff, Iserloh, 150; Iserloh, Martin Luther. Fragen an uns – Fragen an ihn, in Kirche, 2:138 – 44, esp. 140 – 44; Iserloh, “Luther in katholischer Sicht gestern und heute”, in Kirche, 2:233 – 47, esp. 247. Iserloh edited Mazzolini’s work together with Peter Fabisch in Fabisch and Iserloh, Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri (1517 – 1521), vol. 1, Das Gutachten des Prierias und weitere Schriften gegen Luthers Ablaßthesen (1517 – 1518) (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988), 33 – 201.  See http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html, accessed November 18, 2016.  Giuseppe Alberigo, Martin Lutero nella coscienza cattolica dopo il Vaticano II, in Martin Luther e il Protestantesimo in Italia. Bilancio storiografico. Atti del Convegno Internazionale in occasione del quinto centenario della nascita di Lutero, 1483 – 1983, ed. Attilio Agnoletto (Milano: Istituto propaganda libraris, 1983), 210 – 22, esp. 222.  Wolff, Iserloh, 100 – 02.

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4 The Myth Never Dies: The Discovery of 2007 On February 19, 2007, Martin Treu – a researcher at the Stiftung Luthergedenkstätten in Sachsen-Anhalt, the foundation in charge of the places commemorating Luther’s life in Saxony-Anhalt – presented to the public gathered in the lecture room of the Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek in Jena a seemingly sensational discovery: a note by Georg Rörer, Luther’s secretary and very close collaborator, that seemed to corroborate what Melanchthon would write only two years later and with less precision: on October 31, 1517, Luther allegedly posted on the doors of the churches of Wittenberg the famous propositiones de indulgentiis. Volker Leppin, who was then professor of history of the Church at the Friedrich Schiller Universität in Jena, took part to the debate with a quite skeptical contribution on the reliability of the content of Rörer’s note.⁴⁰ It is worth following Treu and Leppin’s sharp and attentive argumentations, as they reveal two basic attitudes found in many of the stances on the Thesenanschlag, to the point that they almost look like the closing statements of two attorneys upholding their positions in front of a judge, although only in a circumstantial trial.⁴¹ Treu found Rörer’s note, which likely dates back to the late fall of 1544, toward the end of 2006 in the colophon of the copy of Luther’s German translation of the New Testament kept in the university library of Jena. Thus, the note becomes the first documentary evidence of the posting of the theses. It predates by at least two years Melanchthon’s very famous reference in his dedicatory letter from June 1, 1546, prefacing the second volume of Luther’s works in Latin, also published in 1546. Rörer and Melanchthon’s notes, although very similar, contain two important differences in details: while the first mentions the doors of the “churches” of Wittenberg, the second only refers to the doors of the church next to the castle. Moreover, according to Rörer, Luther “published” the theses, perhaps having them posted by a custodian, while according to Melanchthon, Luther “posted” the theses himself.⁴²

 See Martin Treu, “Der Thesenanschlag fand wirklich statt. Ein neuer Beleg aus der Universitätsbibliothek Jena,” Luther 78 (2007): 140 – 44, and the reply by Volker Leppin, “Geburtswehen und Geburt einer Legende. Zu Rörers Notiz vom Thesenanschlag,” Luther 78 (2007): 145 – 50. A more synthetic version of these contributions, without critical apparatus but with a series of photographic reproductions, among which is Rörer’s autograph note, can be accessed on the website of the Sammlung Georg Rörer project of the Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, sponsored by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, at: http://projekte.thulb.uni-jena.de/roerer/georg-roerer/thesenanschlag.html, accessed November 18, 2016.  Moeller, Thesenanschläge, 14.  Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena, Ms. App. 25. The copy mentioned is Martin Luther, Das Newe Testament D. Mart. Luth., Wittenberg 1540 (VD 16 B 4429), and can be accessed at: archive.thulb.uni-jena.de/hisbest/receive/HisBest_cbu_00010595, accessed November 18, 2016. Cf. Treu, “Der Thesenanschlag fand wirklich statt”, 141: “Anno Domini 1517 in profesto omnium sanctorum Witemberge in valuis templorum propositae sunt propositiones de Indulgentiis a Doctore Martino

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Melanchthon referred to the story of the posting again eleven years later, in a Sunday lecture from 1557 on Matt 5:17 about the value of the law, in which he commemorated the 40th anniversary of “the correction of the evangelical doctrine on the eve of All Saints’ Day” and exhorted his audience to honor the event and reflect on what happened afterwards: on that day, as Melanchthon writes, Doctor Luther’s theses on indulgences were made public, and 1557 represents the 40th anniversary of the posting at the local church of All Saints and the publication of the theses that, although stemming from a “trivial matter,” created much discord on the basis of which many important issues were later discussed.⁴³ Melanchthon seems to be highlighting the theses and their publication more than the posting itself – that is, the event to be commemorated is not the concrete act but the historical beginning, certain and clear, of the “amended” evangelical doctrine and the important doctrinal issues that it raised. In reality, Rörer’s note had already been published in 1972 in the Weimarer Ausgabe, although without sparking a debate of any consequence. It is instead worth pointing out that the editor of the volume, the very same Hans Volz who played a main role in the debate with Aland and Iserloh, speculated erroneously that Rörer was basing his account on the information in Melanchthon’s introduction, which, according to him, therefore retained primogeniture among all other records.⁴⁴ However, whether Rörer was Melanchthon’s source or vice versa, neither of the two writings can be considered conclusive proof that the posting happened in that specific time and place, as neither of them was in Wittenberg in 1517 (Melanchthon arrived in 1518 and Rörer in 1522). The only real eyewitness to the event, Luther himself, is on the contrary quite reticent and does not offer any indication confirming or challenging the posting.

5 Conclusions The contradiction between the importance of the theses and the irrelevance of their posting is placed at an important juncture in the historical memory of the Reforma-

Luther.” CR VI, nr. 3478, cc. 155 – 70, esp. 161– 62, and MBW XV, nr. 4277:296 – 311, esp. 304, 186 – 89: “[Lutherus,] studio pietatis ardens, edidit Propositiones de Indulgentiis…, et Has publice Templo, quod arci Witebergensi contiguum est, affixit pridie die festi omnium Sanctorum anno 1517.”  CR XXV, c. 777: “Ultimus autem dies Octobris, id est, profestum omnium sanctorum, est dies ille, quo primum propositae sunt propositiones D. Lutheri de indulgentiis, quae fuerunt initium emendationis doctrinae. Et hoc anno 1557, erunt anni completi 41… ab initio isto affixarum propositionum, et editionum illarum. Fuerunt affixae templo Arcis ad vespertinam concionem. Eius templi appellatio fuit Omnium Sanctorum; […] et tamen ex illa futili questione indulgentiarum, est orta tanta dissentio, in quo postea magnae res agitatae sunt, et adhuc agitantur. Mementote ergo hunc diem, et simul cogitate de rebus ipsis.”  WA 48, Revisionsnachtrag, 116n3.

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tion: the authenticity of the revolutionary act (or lack thereof) seems to carry within itself – according to the principle of extensionality by which the value of the truth of composed statements entirely depends on the value of the truth of the statements that compose them – the authenticity of the phenomenon that it sparked. Therefore, if the (evenemential) premise is false, the (historical-universal) conclusion must be false as well. After all, this was precisely the criticism that Henri-Irénée Marrou levelled against Hegel’s philosophy of history: if the journey of the spirit in the world proceeds along a path of facts/events, yet it is impossible to say whether or not these events ever happened, then the path itself is called into question. From this notion derives the close link – from Gibbon onward, as highlighted by Arnaldo Momigliano – between philology and philosophy in modern historiography; Marrou’s frustration with Hegel’s lack of interest in historical methodology derives from this notion as well.⁴⁵ If debating the historical accuracy of the posting seems like an exercise in positivist persnicketiness, it will be enough to think back to the consequences of the method on a general level: Marrou’s criticism of Hegel’s history of the spirit – in which the singular events do not go in the direction indicated by reason, which is cunning in displaying a grand fresco that, nevertheless, does not withstand the test of an empirical historical examination – can also be addressed, to quote an example that recently stirred a broad academic and publicistic debate, to Martin Heidegger’s onto-historical anti-Semitism: how is it possible to take seriously the journey of the being if its individual steps, from a brutally evenemential point of view, did not follow the path imagined by the philosopher? Heidegger’s anti-Semitism is therefore not only a problem that affects philosophy, theology, and their stories; it is also, and perhaps even more importantly, a problem of history and historiographical method.⁴⁶ The posting, originally only one episode among others in the oral hagiography on Luther (from the Turmerlebnis to the Diet of Worms, from the burning of the Exsurge Domine to the translation of the New Testament at the Wartburg), is also the conclusion to a wishful etiologic paralogism in which the descriptive and the prescriptive levels are mixed up: Luther wrote the ninety-five theses (a certain premise), but he was a professor in Wittenberg, and the statutes of that specific university required the posting of the quaestiones disputandae on the doors of the churches of the city. Therefore Luther must have posted the theses – or had them posted – on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, and perhaps even on the doors of the other churches. At the same time, the posting has, so to speak, taken possession of the theses in the collective memory; it has imbued them with a revolutionary meaning that they could not have held at the time and has later relegated them to  Henri-Irénée Marrou, La conoscenza storica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1962), 15 – 16.  Donatella Di Cesare, Heidegger e gli ebrei. I “Quaderni neri” (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2014; new exp. ed. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2016); Peter Trawny, Heidegger e il mito della cospirazione ebraica (Milano: Bompiani, 2015).

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the background, thus making them into one of the “most famous boundary markers in universal history” and impressing “the stamp of exceptionality and uniqueness” on an act that, “against any forecast,” had consequences on a global scale.⁴⁷ Using Hegel’s terminology, the posting has taken on the traits of the καιρός of the Reformation – the fatal and supreme moment in which the spirit of each people develops its reality, following its own specific principle, and becomes history, later resolving itself in the spirit of the world.⁴⁸ After all, if the Sonderweg – Germany’s peculiar destiny, which has much in common with the Jewish Exodus, the chosen political and religious myth fundamental for Western culture, and especially for nineteenth-century nationalism – starts with the image of Luther posting his theses in front of the faithful who had come to Wittenberg for the indulgences of All Saints’ Day in 1517, then in Lutheran memory, the event may easily have taken on the biblical traits of an alliance between Israel and Yahweh on Mount Sinai, which was sealed by the tablets of the law.⁴⁹ In this vivid image, Luther appears almost as an “alterMoses,” i. e., the liberator of the true Church from the captivity of the Pharaoh, and the nomothete of a renewed religious and political community.⁵⁰ His story is not read as a unique event but as a “figure of memory,” the truth of which is revealed in the act of recollection in the present and, as such, is withdrawn from historiographical enquiry and belongs to the myth “in the full sense of the word.”⁵¹ Certainly, some believe that it was exactly this Sonderweg – the fruit of the “three colossi” of the German spirit (Luther, Goethe, and Bismarck) – that would inevitably drive Germany to the Holocaust.⁵² According to others, the Reformation, both the cause and the effect of the Sonderweg, is instead the crossroads where the paths fork – separating Latin peoples from German ones, breaking medieval unity and universalism, and generating the different European nations.⁵³ The boom of the hammer on the

 Bornkamm, Thesen und Thesenanschlag, 1; Volz, Martin Luthers Thesenanschlag, 28. Cf. also Giuseppe Alberigo, La Riforma protestante. Origini e cause (Brescia: Queriniana, 1988), 17.  Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 559.  Jan Assmann, Exodus. Die Revolution der Alten Welt (München: C.H. Beck 2015), 397– 99; Marzia Ponso, Una storia particolare. “Sonderweg” tedesco e identità europea (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011), 65 – 102. On the relationship between biblical election and German nationalism, see Hartmut Lehmann, “The Germans as Chosen People: Old Testament Themes in German Nationalism,” German Studies Review 14 (1991): 261– 74.  Schönstädt, Antichrist, 206 – 08, 261– 65. Cf. also Schönstädt, “Das Reformationsjubiläum 1617. Geschichtliche Herkunft und geistige Prägung,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 93 (1982): 5 – 57, esp. 45 – 46, and Schönstädt, “Das Reformationsjubiläum 1717. Beiträge zur Geschichte seiner Entstehung im Spiegel landesherrlicher Verordnungen”, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 93 (1982): 58 – 118.  Assmann, Exodus, 105.  Thomas Mann, “I tre colossi”, in Nobiltà dello spirito e altri saggi (Milano: Mondadori, 2015), 375 – 85; Zygmunt Bauman, Modernità e olocausto (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992); a complete reconstruction of the historical debate in Ponso, Una storia particolare, 313 – 57.  See, merely as an example, Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 497– 501, esp. 499 – 501; Leopold von Ranke, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1885), v–vii; Gustav Droysen, Geschichte der Gegenreformation

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door of the church in Wittenberg would therefore be the cause of Weber’s confessional divide, the sociological fruit of the German way toward modernity, although, as Weber himself points out, the religious idea echoing in the notion of Beruf does not derive from some ethnic or linguistic peculiarity in the people that embraced the Reformation; it is not the expression of a “Germanic spirit,” and it does not originate from the spirit of the biblical original, but rather from the “spirit of the translator” – i. e., from Luther himself.⁵⁴ As Philip Roth wrote in his letter to Nathan Zuckerman, his literary nemesis, it is possible to “[undermine] experience, [embellish] experience, [rearrange] and [enlarge] experience into a series of mythology […] facts are never just coming at you […] Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.”⁵⁵ For centuries, Protestant identity found its origin in Luther’s act of making public his theological positions on indulgences, which has become an important moment in the “socialization of generations of Protestants” and in Lutheran confessional culture.⁵⁶ Thus an enormous movement that changed the story of global Christianity has become tangible, concrete, and accessible to the hands and eyes of the faithful through the incisive act, regardless of whether it is real or imagined, of a monk searching for a way to reach eternal salvation.

(Berlin, 1893), 6 – 7; Gerhard Ritter, “Die Ausprägung deutscher und westeuropäischer Geistesart im konfessionellen Zeitalter,” Historische Zeitschrift 149 (1934): 240 – 52, esp. 241; Ritter, Die Neugestaltung Europas, 88.  Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, vol. 1, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1920), 17– 206, esp. 63 – 65, engl. transl. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London/New York: Routlegde, 2001), pp. 39 – 40.  Philip Roth, The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography (Toronto: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1988), 7– 8.  Schorn-Schütte, Die Reformation, 28, 32; Thomas Kaufmann, “Lutherische Konfessionskultur in Deutschland – eine historiographische Standortbestimmung,” in Konfession und Kultur. Lutherischer Protestantismus in der zweiten Hälfte des Reformationsjahrhunderts, ed. Thomas Kaufmann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 3 – 26.

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Luther among the Humanists The old debate about whether Luther was a “humanist” rather misses the point.¹ It is reminiscent of the sort of “tick-box” historiography that Lucien Febvre deprecated so many years ago.² The various answers offered by historians have depended too heavily on generally undefined presuppositions about the nature of “humanism” (usually and unhelpfully reified for the purposes of such arguments), as well as on confessional loyalties or cultural preferences. Thus William Bouwsma’s sense that the Protestant Reformation was essentially the fulfillment of the inherent tendencies of the Renaissance, with Luther as the culminating moment in this process, says more about his own idiosyncratic conceptions of Renaissance and Reformation than about anything especially apparent in the historical record.³ Lewis Spitz, who himself conducted a thorough examination of Luther’s knowledge of the classics and his exposure to humanism, notes that this debate is of long standing. Back in the nineteenth century, Jacob Burckhardt and Ernst Troeltsch drew a contrast between Renaissance and Reformation, while Wilhelm Dilthey drew a parallel.⁴ Whatever perspective is adopted on the general question of humanism and the Reformation, it is certainly not helpful to attach the label “humanist” to Luther in the sense in which that word is applied, for example, to Erasmus, Budé, Pirckheimer, Poliziano, Valla, or Vives. The humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – “Renaissance humanists” – were Christian scholars who looked back to the literature of classical Greece and Rome, and to the Hellenistic culture in which the Christian Church had taken shape, for inspiration and guidance in education, government, and social and religious life. They were especially preoccupied with recovering and interpreting ancient texts. Like most Christian intellectuals, including the medieval scholastics whom they frequently denigrated (who looked back more specifically to Aristotelian philosophy for guidance), Renaissance humanists believed that faith and reason, reason and revelation were in fundamental harmony. They felt

 For an excellent discussion of this question, see Franco Buzzi, “L’Umanesimo a Wittenberg,” in Rapporti e scambi tra umanesimo italiano ed umanesimo europeo, ed. Luisa Rotondi Secchi Tarugi (Milano: Nuovi orizzonti, 2001), 23 – 37, esp. 30.  L. Febvre, “Aux origines de la Réforme française: une question mal posée,” Revue historique 161 (1929): 1– 73, at 71.  W. J. Bouwsma, “Renaissance and Reformation: An Essay in Their Affinities and Connections,” in Luther and the Dawn of the Modern Era: Papers for the Fourth International Congress for Luther Research, ed. H.A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 127– 49, esp. 129 and 149. Bouwsma was immediately countered by B. Hägglund, “Renaissance and Reformation,” in the same volume, pp. 150 – 57.  L. W. Spitz, “Humanism and the Protestant Reformation,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, ed. Albert Rabil (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 3:380 – 411, at 380. This is reprinted in L. Spitz’s collection of essays, Luther and German Humanism (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996). His essay “Luther and Humanism” is found in the same volume, pp. 69 – 94. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-013

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no dissonance between their Christian ideals and their classical ideas.⁵ Luther’s aspirations and endeavors were of a different kind. He looked only to the Christian scriptures for inspiration and guidance. He was not concerned, as the humanists were, with philological scholarship or establishing reliable editions of texts. Although he had a highly distinctive prose style, rhetoric and style were not his priorities. He commented on texts, as they did, but in his case almost exclusively on scriptural texts. And while philological and critical issues might feature in his commentaries and expositions, his work in this vein is not of a humanist cast. While he was hardly “anti-intellectual,” he most certainly did not see faith and reason in fundamental harmony, but felt the tension between them most acutely. Luther was not in that sense a humanist; he was a theologian. This is not to say, however, that Luther was either hostile or immune to humanism. On the contrary, his student years at Erfurt were spent in a milieu already marked by humanist trends, and Wittenberg itself was likewise influenced by the movement.⁶ In his theological work he availed himself of exact scholarship in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, and he was committed to the “trilingual” ideal of the leading humanists of his generation – witness his determined efforts to modernize the curriculum at the new university of Wittenberg, where he spent his academic career.⁷ The general consensus among historians, therefore, is that Luther was familiar with the intellectual currents of humanism without swimming in its mainstream.⁸ It was not quite true in 1520, as it would be by 1550, that “we are all humanists now,” but it was heading that way. The rise of Renaissance humanism was an irresistible cultural movement, and Luther made no attempt to impede it, even if his own intellectual priorities were of a different order. More worthwhile than wrangling over the reality or extent of Luther’s humanism is an investigation of the subtle and complicated question of his relationship with his humanist contemporaries. One can agree with Bernd Moeller’s observation – “Without humanism, no Reformation” – without subscribing to any simplistic notion that

 This point is brilliantly encapsulated in G. K. Chesterton’s pithy comment on the artists of the Italian Renaissance: “They paraded before the world a wild hypothetical pageant of what old Greece and Rome would have been if they had not been pagan.” G. K. Chesterton, “The Truth of Medieval Times,” originally published 18 Jan 1930. See G. K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, ed. L. J. Clipper, The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton 27– 37 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986 – 2012), 9:238 – 43, at 240.  Maria Grossmann, Humanism in Wittenberg, 1485 – 1517 (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1975).  Max Steinmetz, “Die Universität Wittenberg und der Humanismus,” in 450 Jahre Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, ed. K. Aland et al. (Halle: MLU HW, 1952), 1:103 – 39.  See e. g. James Atkinson, Martin Luther and the Birth of Protestantism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 88 – 89; Marc Lienhard, Martin Luther: un temps, une vie, un message (Paris: Centurion, 1983), 22; or Walther von Loewenich, Martin Luther: The Man and His Work, trans. L.W. Denef (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), 29 – 34.

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the former led inevitably to the latter.⁹ It would be safer to say that the first people to accept Luther were humanists, which delicately shifts the center of gravity of the claim. Many humanists were quick to welcome Luther’s message, and probably most were willing to give it and him a hearing. Indeed, it was not just those humanists who would become Lutherans or Reformers who read Luther with interest and sympathy – it was also those humanists who would later become his keenest opponents. Humanist reactions to Luther changed over time, but the reception and diffusion of Luther’s understanding of the “gospel” was conditioned in many ways by the often contentious and always lively intellectual climate shaped by Erasmus and countless others in the early sixteenth century.

1 Luther and the Humanist Controversies The reception of Luther’s ideas was conditioned in particular by two public controversies that preoccupied much of Christendom in the 1510s. The first, which broke out at the start of the decade, was between the German humanist Johannes Reuchlin (1455 – 1522) and the Christian convert from Judaism, Johannes Pfefferkorn (1469 – 1523). Pfefferkorn, having become a Christian, loudly advocated the prohibition and destruction of Jewish books, such as the Talmud, whose texts included passages denigrating Jesus. Reuchlin led the opposition to this proposal and, as a result, was accused of heresy in a campaign led by Dominican friars, the intellectual heirs of the greatest of the scholastics, Thomas Aquinas. This caused the controversy to be framed as a straight fight between humanists and scholastics, and most of the leading humanists therefore supported Reuchlin. It is the involvement of humanists in the Reuchlin controversy, rather than the issues at stake in it, that makes it helpful to label it a “humanist” controversy. This period was one of the great eras of satire, and one of the sharpest of its satires, the Letters of Obscure Men, brilliantly parodied and relentlessly ridiculed Reuchlin’s scholastic foes.¹⁰ The second controversy, which broke out in 1520, concerned the publication of the Greek New Testament by the greatest humanist of the age, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 – 1536). Concern over Erasmus’ application of textual criticism to the old Latin or Vulgate translation of the New Testament had been bubbling up, mostly in sermons and chatter, since the first edition of his Novum Instrumentum appeared in 1516. It was only with the second edition, published in 1519, that this concern resulted in considered printed criticism of both the conception and execution of the Erasmian scriptural project. The standard-bearer among Erasmus’ oppo Bernd Moeller, “Die deutschen Humanisten und die Anfänge der Reformation,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 4th ser., 8 (1959): 46 – 62, at 59. Moeller offers a well-balanced analysis of the relationship between German humanism and the Reformation.  There is a considerable literature on the Reuchlin controversy. A good starting point is Erika Rummel, The Case against Johann Reuchlin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).

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nents and critics was a minor English scholar named Edward Lee (1482– 1544), who had spent some time assisting Erasmus in his editorial task before turning against him – probably because of the rejection of some of his more inept suggestions!¹¹ Ironically enough, Lee was a humanist rather than a scholastic by intellectual formation, but his petulant and nit-picking critique, the Annotations on Erasmus, made his name mud over most of Europe and was an immediate embarrassment to other English humanists, who had been basking in the warm reception accorded across Europe to Thomas More’s Utopia. Although Lee’s English patrons managed to shut him up within a year or so, the damage was done, and Lee was figuring as the butt of numerous humanist squibs and pasquils, such as those of Eobanus Hessus (1488 – 1540).¹² Both of these controversies appeared to most humanists to be simple cases of humanist “goodies” against scholastic or at least obscurantist “baddies.” The controversy over Reuchlin was at its height when Luther burst onto the scene early in 1518, and he was quick to present himself and his cause in the light of that long-running saga. In his Resolutions on Indulgences (his defence of the Ninety-Five Theses), written early in the year but not published until July, he likened his own situation to that of such figures as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Lorenzo Valla, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, and above all Reuchlin, all victims of a “tyranny of boys and effeminates,” which he thought characterized the contemporary church. (It is worth noting that, in 1518, Luther did not include Erasmus in his list of such victims. The big attack on Erasmus was yet to come.)¹³ He made a similar point in his reply to the first challenge he faced in print, which came from Silvestro Mazzolini (known as Prierias, who, as “Master of the Sacred Palace,” was the pope’s official theologian). His Response to Prierias made the connection with Reuchlin because Prierias (1456 – 1527) was a high-ranking member of the Order of Preachers – the Dominicans, the same religious order that was leading the charge against Reuchlin.¹⁴ Pointing out the background of his early opponents offered Luther a highway to the hearts of  For the controversy between Lee and Erasmus, see Cecilia Asso, La teologia e la grammatica: la controversia tra Erasmo ed Edward Lee (Florence: Olschki, 1993).  See the many contributions of Eobanus Hessus to In Eduardum Leeum … Epigrammata (Erfurt: J. Knapp, 1520; USTC 668987). Roger Ascham (1514– 68), one of the most eminent of England’s midTudor humanists, enjoyed Lee’s patronage and knew his learning first-hand. Although Ascham’s slightly evangelical religious tendencies were not fully in sympathy with Lee’s conservatism, when he found out in the 1540s how Lee had been treated twenty years earlier, he toyed with the notion of publishing a work of Lee’s on the Pentateuch in order to vindicate his scholarly reputation. See Ascham’s letter to an unnamed friend, no date (but shortly after Lee’s death on September 13, 1544), in The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, ed. J. A. Giles (London: J. R. Smith, 1865), 1.24:57– 60, at 59 – 60  Martin Luther, Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute [1518], D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883 – 2009) 1:522– 628, at 574 (henceforth cited as WA). For further discussion of the time at which Erasmus’ scriptural endeavors became controversial, see Richard Rex, “Humanist Bible Controversies,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. Euan Cameron, vol. 3, From 1450 to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 61– 81, esp. 73 – 74.  Luther, Ad Dialogum Silvestri Prieratis de Potestate Papae Responsio [1518], WA 1:647– 86, at 682.

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the humanists. When the rising young humanist Philip Melanchthon came to Wittenberg in August 1518, he encouraged Luther to make a written overture to Reuchlin, whose was his (Melanchthon’s) uncle.¹⁵ Luther repeatedly played up the parallel between himself and Reuchlin over the next few years. In a similar fashion, Luther wrote to Erasmus early in 1519, paying fulsome intellectual homage and fishing (in vain) for the great man’s endorsement.¹⁶ His first published commentary on the Psalms made pointed use of Greek and Hebrew, and Melanchthon’s address to its readers (dated March 1519) set its author in the company of Erasmus, Reuchlin, and other humanists.¹⁷ An even more overt bid for humanist support was made in Luther’s first commentary on Galatians, which was published in September 1519. Starting on the first page of the actual text, with his comment on Galatians 1:1, Luther made frequent and favourable references to “ERASMUS” (invariably printed in block capitals), whose Annotations on the New Testament, he added, were now in everyone’s hands. He had already observed in the preface that rather than issue his own commentary, he would have preferred to read one by Erasmus.¹⁸ His strategy was sound and his appeal fell on receptive ears. His original critique of indulgences had fitted into a wider genre of humanist critique of empty ritual performance, which was evident in earlier writers, such as Jakob Wimpfeling (1450 – 1528), and which reached its apogee in Erasmus, most notably in the Praise of Folly. Early in 1518, the Ninety-Five Theses had spread rapidly in the humanist networks of Nuremberg, Augsburg, Basel, and other German cities. The correspondence of Christoph Scheurl, for example, shows what a stir they made in Nuremberg in January 1518.¹⁹

2 Humanist Readings of Luther Humanist readers were quick to locate Luther in an Erasmian context, as is evident from the ample correspondence of Beatus Rhenanus (1485 – 1547) of Sélestat, a humanist scholar who dedicated himself to editing ancient and medieval texts for the Basel printshop of Johannes Froben. The first reference to Luther in his surviving correspondence is in a letter from Martin Bucer (1491– 1551), then a young novice in  Luther to Reuchlin, December 14, 1518, WA Briefwechsel 1.120:268 – 69.  Luther to Erasmus, March 28, 1519, in Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. & H. M. Allen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906 – 58), 3.933:516 – 19. This was first printed in Erasmus’ Farrago nova epistolarum (Basel: Froben, 1519), 135 – 36. Evidently Luther was already enough of a celebrity for Erasmus to see the benefit of including his unsolicited and not especially welcome approach in this edition of his letters, along with his own cautious reply (May 30, 1519, 136 – 37).  Luther, Operationes in Psalmos [1519 – 1521], WA 5:24.  In Epistolam Pauli ad Galatas F. Martini Lutheri Augustiniani, Commentarius (Leipzig: [Lotther], 1519), sig. A5v and fol. 1r. The block capitals are not reproduced in WA.  Christoph Scheurl, Briefbuch, eds. F. F. von Soden and J. K. F. Knaake (Potsdam: Gropius, 1867– 72), 1.156 – 58:40 – 42, and 160:42– 43 (January 8, 1518).

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the Dominican friars, studying theology at Heidelberg. Bucer had just witnessed Luther’s first public exposition of his new theology, at a provincial chapter of the Austin Friars held at Heidelberg in April 1518. Obviously star-struck, he reported excitedly and at length on what he had heard, introducing Luther as “that lampooner of indulgences, in which, indeed, we have hitherto indulged too much.” Clearly both he and Rhenanus already knew the Ninety-Five Theses. His enthusiastic claim that Luther was “at one with Erasmus in everything, except perhaps in this single respect, that what Erasmus only hints, Luther proclaims frankly and openly” can stand as typical of many early humanist responses to the emergence of Luther.²⁰ It also suggests that, at this early stage, Erasmus was the lodestar, the point of reference by which scholars plotted Luther’s trajectory. Rhenanus’ own first reference to Luther came almost six months later, in a letter to Ulrich Zwingli (1484– 1531), who was clearly seeking the latest news on Luther’s appearance before the papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan, at Augsburg in October 1518. The laconic reply – “At present I have no certain news about him” – does not suggest that Rhenanus was consumed with interest in his fate, though he makes the inevitable mental connection in saying how much he had laughed at Zwingli’s story of a hapless indulgence peddler. “How frivolous such things are, and unworthy of papal legates!,” he remarked, before launching not into a discussion of Luther or indulgences, but into an Erasmian lament at the way ordinary Christians were being led astray by silly ceremonies and stupid clergymen.²¹ It was easy to place Luther’s critique in the Erasmian context of the Praise of Folly as a humanist attack on the superstition and moral hazard to which indulgences could give rise. And this characterized Rhenanus’ initial attitude to Luther. It was Erasmus who set the tone for the later 1510s with his concept of philosophia christiana (Christian philosophy), which he was beginning to popularize just as Luther burst onto the scene.²² Philosophia christiana was a slogan which perfectly encapsulated the spirit of Christian humanism, on the one hand warning against any kind of anti-intellectualism or mere fideism in religious life – philosophia –, while on the other emphasizing that a Christian philosophy must be genuinely Christian – christiana, levelling an implicit criticism at the scholastics, as so-called Christian philosophers who prized Aristotle above the Bible.²³ In particular, as Erasmus explained in his Paraclesis, a text found among the preliminaries of his Novum Instrumentum, this philosophia christiana was grounded in acquaintance with the written

 From Bucer, May 1, 1518, in Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, eds. A. Horawitz & K. Hartfelder (Leipzig: Teubner, 1886), 75:106 – 15, at 107.  To Zwingli, December 6, 1518, in Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, 81:123 – 24, at 123.  For Erasmus’ philosophia christiana, see J. K. McConica, Erasmus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) and Marcel Bataillon, Érasme et l’Espagne: recherches sur l’histoire spirituelle du 16ème siècle (Paris: Droz, 1937), 77– 82  Brendan Bradshaw, “The Christian Humanism of Erasmus,” Journal of Theological Studies 33 (1982): 411– 47.

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sources of the Christian faith – the Bible, especially the epistles and the gospels. There may also be a case for connecting the concept of philosophia christiana with another concept that came into fashion at that time, the respublica christiana – the Christian republic or commonwealth, or perhaps simply Christendom. Both the philosophia and the respublica christiana have overtones of universalism about them, pointing in a very different direction from the increasingly nationalistic assertion of identity seen in many parts of Europe in the early sixteenth century. Rhenanus’ letter to Zwingli continues with a profoundly Erasmian version of the Christian message, presenting Christ as a role model, emphasizing the importance of peace and harmony, and recommending the sharing of worldly goods, which he likens to that adumbrated in the Republic of Plato, whom, again in an Erasmian vein, he numbers among the “great prophets.” Rhenanus doubtless had in mind another of the great texts of Erasmian Christian humanism, the Utopia of Thomas More (1478 – 1535), which he had just seen through Froben’s press in the fine second edition of March 1518. That edition was a sort of celebration of international Christian humanism, and it was obviously fresh in Rhenanus’ mind when he wrote to Zwingli, summing up his vision in his praise for those who preach “the purest philosophy of Christ from the sources themselves, not distorted by Scotist or Gabrielist interpretations, but as properly and sincerely expounded by Augustine, Ambrose, Cyprian, and Jerome.”²⁴ Over the next couple of years, Rhenanus repeatedly announced his affiliation with the Christian humanism of Erasmus, noting how close Platonic wisdom was to Christianity, and informing Zwingli that he was editing the Paraclesis as a preface to a new edition of Erasmus’ Compendium of True Theology (1519) “as a kind of exhortation to the philosophy of Christ.”²⁵ The yoking together of Erasmus and Luther was a common theme in humanist circles in the years around 1520. Thus, in the spring of 1519, Bucer wrote eagerly from Heidelberg, pleading for fresh news of Luther and Erasmus.²⁶ Bernhard Adelmann (1459 – 1523) believed in March 1519 that “Erasmus had sent to Wittenberg a letter full of praise for Martin,” and he added his own praise for the Compendium of True Theology, which he had just read.²⁷ A year later he was still completely sure that one could be both an Erasmian and a Lutheran.²⁸ The prominent humanist jurist, Ulrich Zasius (1461– 1536), was another who started out by bracketing Erasmus with Luther, praising them as the best interpreters of St. Paul for 600 years (an idea

 To Zwingli, December 6, 1518, in Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, 81:123 – 24.  To Jean Grolier, January 12, 1519, in Briefwechsel des Rhenanus (the dedication of Maximi Tyrii Philosophi Platonici Sermones, Basel, 1519), 86:133 – 35, at 134; and to Zwingli, February 13, 1519, 88:136. The Paraclesis (Basel: Froben, 1520; USTC 689844) was published separately from the Ratio seu methodus (Basel: Froben, 1520; USTC 689843).  From Bucer, March 10, 1519, in Briefwechsel des Rhenanus, 95:142– 43, at 143.  Adelmann to Pirckheimer, March 8, 1519, in Willibald Pirckheimers Briefwechsel (München: Beck, 1940 – 2009), 4.592:31– 32.  Adelmann to Pirckheimer, Augsburg, June 11, 1520, in Pirckheimers Briefwechsel 4.697:258.

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he might have derived from Luther’s 1519 commentary on Galatians) and compounding his confusion by praising Erasmus as the harbinger of a “better philosophy.”²⁹ Zwingli reported in one and the same sentence that Luther had won the approval of all the learned folk in Zurich and that Erasmus’ Compendium was the most rewarding little book he had ever come across.³⁰ By the middle of 1519, Beatus Rhenanus’ enthusiasm for Luther was at its height, and from his privileged position in the Basel book trade he was virtually Luther’s literary agent, sending news and samples of new works and reprints to his own wide circle of friends. But Erasmus remained at the center of Rhenanus’ intellectual world. Towards the end of the year, he listed Erasmus first in a triumvirate with Luther and Melanchthon as leaders in the struggle to reform the respublica christiana. Philip Melanchthon (1497– 1560) was a rising scholar who was probably in Rhenanus’ mind because of the reissue of the first recension of his Rhetoric, produced by Froben at Basel (following the Wittenberg first edition earlier that year). Melanchthon’s dedication in that book had itself highlighted a similar triumvirate of scholars, approved by the truly learned but envied by the mob of sophists: Erasmus, Reuchlin, and Luther.³¹ Another of Rhenanus’ correspondents, Otto Brunfels (1488 – 1534), a Carthusian brother from the Strasbourg region, spread the net wider. He vehemently denounced the “sophists” – the term of art commonly reserved by humanist scholars for those whom they saw as their scholastic enemies –, defining them as those who “despise Erasmus, Melanchthon, Dorp, Luther, and Reuchlin.”³² The inclusion of Martin Dorp (1485 – 1525) was doubtless occasioned by his recent defense of the cause of bonae literae (e. g., humanism), which signalled publicly that he had withdrawn from the critical position he had earlier taken towards Erasmus’ Praise of Folly in 1515. Soon afterwards, Bucer thanked Rhenanus for sending him a copy of Dorp’s oration along with Luther’s commentary on Galatians (itself, as we have seen, an avowedly or at least putatively Erasmian text), and he added for good measure that there was no further news on the progress of the Reuchlin case.³³ Rhenanus and his circle looked on what Luther was doing as just one ingredient in an effervescent cocktail of humanist reform agitation. This location of Luther in the humanist context was to have a long legacy or cast a long shadow. More than a generation later, an English Protestant preacher solemnly informed his

 From Zasius, June 5, 1520, in Briefwechsel des Rhenanus, 168:229 – 31, at 230. This letter originally appeared in the Epistolae aliquot eruditorum virorum (Basel: Froben, 1520), issued against Edward Lee. Since Erasmus did characterize his enterprise as philosophy (Christian philosophy), while Luther contrasted theology with philosophy, Zasius was not quite getting the point.  From Zwingli, February 22, 1519, in Briefwechsel des Rhenanus, 90:137– 38, at 138: “Caeterum Luther doctis omnibus Tyguri probatur et Erasmi Compendium, hoc vero mihi, ita ut non meminerim tam parvo libello tantam alicubi frugem invenisse.”  Philip Melanchthon, De rhetorica libri tres (Basel: Froben, 1519), 4. The dedication, to Bernard Maur, was dated January 1519. Froben’s edition has a colophon dated May 1519.  From Brunfels, March 18, 1520, in Briefwechsel des Rhenanus, 158:213 – 14, at 214.  From Bucer, March 19, 1520, in Briefwechsel des Rhenanus, 160:216 – 17, at 217.

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audience that all the major scholars of the early sixteenth century were “ours” – that is, Protestants rather than “papists”: I tell them the great […] scholars of all Christendom are ours, and on our side. Pico [della] Mirandola of a miraculous wit and abundant learning, was ours; Erasmus, the worship of the world, and Melanchthon the Phoenix of Germany, John Reuchlin, the Hebrew father, and William Budé, the Greek father, were ours.³⁴

It was perhaps the merest detail that, of the five examples he offered, four died as Catholics and only one as a Protestant. The conflation of philosophia christiana with Luther’s more divisive and ultimately strongly anti-philosophical message was endemic in those first few years. When the professor of rhetoric at Leipzig, Petrus Mosellanus (1493 – 1524), delivered the opening address at the Leipzig Disputation, he made his own loyalties clear by referring more than once to the “philosophy of Christ” and urging the participants not to trade Aristotelian technicalities.³⁵ Looking back on the event six months later, he offered character sketches of the speakers. Johannes Eck (1486 – 1543), a towering and thick-set figure, built like a butcher, obviously struck him as something of a braggart and something of a bully. Luther, on the other hand, who came to Leipzig as the underdog, he found likeable in company, even though he thought his polemical style unbefitting a theologian and reckoned him somewhat deficient in judgment and reasoning. Luther’s motivation evidently seemed to Mosellanus to be the pursuit of truth, while Eck’s was the pursuit of glory.³⁶ Perhaps he got one of them right. His own Erasmian values clearly predisposed him toward Luther, but he remained a professor at Leipzig until his death in 1524 and seems to have aligned himself with the religious commitments of his patron, Duke George of Saxony, who was an outright opponent of Luther from the Leipzig Disputation onwards.

 Thomas Drant, Two Sermons (London, n.d. [c. 1570]; STC 7171), sig. D.ii.r-v (modernized spelling). Drant was an educated man – an MA of the University of Cambridge and a former fellow of St John’s College.  Petrus Mosellanus, De ratione disputandi (Leipzig: Lotther, 1519; USTC 631252), B1r-v, B2v and B3r against scholastic sophistry; A4r and B3v for “Christi philosophia.”  Mosellanus to Julius Pflug, December 6, 1519. The best text, taken from the now-lost Latin autograph, is found in Johann Schilter, De Libertate Ecclesiarum Germaniae (Jena: Bielck, 1683), 840 – 52. For Luther, see pp. 847– 48, and for Eck, 848 – 49. This account is customarily cited by Luther’s biographers from an eighteenth-century German translation found in Dr. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Schriften, ed. J. G. Walch (St. Louis: Concordia, 1880 – 1910), 15.1194– 1204, at 1200. But the translation derives from an inferior textual tradition and tones down Mosellanus’ polite criticisms of Luther. Thus that tradition omits Mosellanus’ tart observation, “Judicium fortasse & utendi rationem in eo desideres.”

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3 Humanist Reassessments of Luther After the Leipzig Disputation, more than one humanist began to have second thoughts about Luther. Among them was Hieronymus Emser (1477– 1527), who had been based at Leipzig for several years as secretary and councillor to Duke George of Saxony. Emser was to become one of Luther’s most committed opponents, and thanks to Luther’s rollicking contempt, he appears as little more than a figure of fun in most accounts of the Reformation. If he is mentioned at all – and usually he is not – it is as “Emser the Goat”, the epithet with which Luther mocked him for emblazoning the title pages of his books with his coat of arms, which featured a goat’s head. A faint air of obscurantism and small-mindedness is left to hang around him, yet he was a respectable minor humanist, whose lectures on Reuchlin’s Latin comedy, Sergius, Luther himself had probably attended at Erfurt in 1504. Skilled in Latin and Greek, Emser had published a didactic collection, the Opuscula (1516), aimed at helping grammar school boys with their studies – a typical piece of everyday humanism. And in 1515 he published an edition of Erasmus’ manual of humanist piety, the Handbook of the Christian Soldier, which he embellished with Latin verses and a florid dedication.³⁷ Thanks to the frequent reprinting of these works, he had made a name for himself by the time Luther came on the scene. Like almost everyone else, Emser had some initial sympathy with Luther’s critique of indulgences, so when their paths first crossed, at a sermon Luther preached at Dresden on July 25, 1518, he invited him to dinner. But Luther cut loose over the meal and got into a row over Thomas Aquinas with another of the guests. Emser found the whole scene deeply embarrassing and began to worry that Luther’s violent tone and utter lack of restraint might lead ordinary Christians astray.³⁸ His suspicions were deepened by Luther’s performance at the Leipzig Disputation in June 1519. Emser, urging moderation on him, was shocked by the vituperation which that modest request brought down upon him. He was even more shocked, like many of those present, when Luther allowed Eck to lure him into voicing sympathy for the Hussite heretics of neighboring Bohemia, who had been condemned by the pope and the general council a century before. This incautious move of Luther’s led some early sympathisers, like Emser, to turn decisively against him. In the wake of the Leipzig Disputation, Emser started to publish against Luther, first in Latin and then increasingly in German, becoming one of his most prolific opponents. An exchange of letters between a couple of typical printshop humanists sums up how an Erasmian philosophia christiana could transmute into a Lutheran libertas

 Erasmus, Enchiridion Erasmi Roterodami Germani de milite Christiano, ed. H. Emser (Leipzig: Schumann, 1515; USTC 650287), title page and sig. A1v–A2r.  For Emser’s background and early interactions with Luther, see the introduction to H. Emser, De Disputatione Lipsicensi, quantum ad Boemos obiter deflexa est [1519], ed. F. X. Thurnhofer, Corpus Catholicorum 4 (Münster in Westfalen: Aschendorff, 1921), 9 – 13.

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christiana. Hieronymus Artolphus wrote to his friend Ulrich Hugwald (1496 – 1571) wondering if Luther was not a touch intemperate in his criticisms of the Church’s rules, rituals, and sacraments, but wishing to hear his friend’s views.³⁹ Hugwald’s reply, dated September 1520, was strong stuff. He told his friend that he had decided to put Christ above everything, even family and friendship, and he offered a robust defence of Luther, who had merely exposed fraud and imposture. The Church needed to be purged and reborn, and “they” worshipped an idol at Rome. Hugwald had thoroughly assimilated the early Lutheran rhetoric of “human traditions” and “Christian liberty.” Yet he showed where he had come from by appealing to “the study of Christian philosophy,” to which he and his friend obviously shared a commitment. Hugwald was describing that trajectory from Erasmian Christian humanist to evangelical or Lutheran that so many of his contemporaries followed.⁴⁰ By 1521 he had moved still further. When Adam Petri reissued Luther’s Operationes in Psalmos at Basel early that year, Hugwald provided a grandiloquent dedication, addressed portentously to “the German Nation.” His former epistolary greeting, the classical salutem, was now replaced by the more evangelical pacem et salutem in Christo, which Luther himself adopted from that year, and which was imitated by so many of the early reformers.⁴¹ When Edward Lee’s underpowered critique of Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament was published early in 1520, the world still seemed to many scholars a simple place, with the humanist good guys – Reuchlin, Erasmus, and Luther – lined up against their obscurantist opponents. The background of controversy over humanism or involving humanists did a great deal to shape impressions of what the Luther controversy was about. The decades leading up to the emergence of Luther were punctuated by academic controversies great and small, sparked by humanist scholarly initiatives. These controversies were not always straight contests between humanists and scholastics. Thus in 1516 – 17 Erasmus and the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples disagreed noisily over Erasmus’ translation of the Epistle to the Hebrews.⁴² Yet by this time, the tensions between Luther and Erasmus, and between Protestantism and humanism, were also becoming apparent. The first to realize this, of course, were Luther and Erasmus themselves – in that order. Even before he was famous, Luther had misgivings about the approach to scripture shown by Erasmus in the first edition of the Novum Instrumentum, judging that his preference for Jerome over Augustine had a distinctly unfortunate impact on his understanding. In Luther’s

 See Hugwald’s reply to Artolphus, dated September 1520, in Tres eruditae Udalrichi Hugualdi epistolae (no place, no date), sig. A2r–A4r.  Some substantial consideration of Hugwald can be found in Thomas Kaufmann, Der Anfang der Reformation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 238 – 59.  Luther, Operationes F. Martini Lutheri in Psalmos (Basel: Petri, 1521), sig. a2r–a4v.  For this controversy, see Erasmus, Apologia Erasmi Roterodami ad eximium virum Iacobum Fabrum (Louvain: Martens, [1517]).

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eyes, Erasmus did not appreciate the nature and role of original sin in Paul’s teaching. But in early 1518 he had anxiously asked Spalatin not to divulge these reservations of his about Erasmus, and in 1519, when the second edition of the Novum Instrumentum was published, it was definitely unwise to present oneself as an opponent or critic of the great man.⁴³ None of this, however, stopped Luther from seeking at first to cling to the great man’s coattails, or at least to shelter in his shadow. As we have seen, in those early years Luther assiduously encouraged the idea that he and Erasmus were pulling together. Erasmus’ discursive intellectual approach predisposed him not toward Luther’s ideas as such, but toward allowing him a fair hearing. But he regretted Luther’s intellectual aggression and rhetorical extremism from the start. Erasmus was always a moderate, one thing of which Luther was never going to be accused. It may have been the whiff of extremism that made Erasmus dubious about Luther’s approaches, sensing not only the danger to his own reputation and interests from association with such a firebrand, but also noting from an early stage – as he was to point out in detail during their controversy over free will – that Luther’s intellectual style was much more that of the scholastics than of the humanists: assertive and argumentative, dogmatic and divisive, aiming more at conquest than at consensus.⁴⁴ But there is no need to labor these points. The best analysis of the guarded relationship between the two men was offered back in the 1920s by that prince among historians, Lucien Febvre, in one of his lesser-known books, Martin Luther: A Destiny – itself one of the best things on Luther ever written.⁴⁵

4 Humanist Divisions over Luther If Erasmus was quick to be wary of Luther, he was much slower than many other humanists – such as Aleander, Cochlaeus, Emser, and More – to appreciate the fundamental incompatibility of Luther’s teachings with those of the late medieval Catholic Church. If Luther was right, then the Roman Catholic Church was indeed, as he insisted, Babylon, and the pope was the antichrist. If the Catholic Church was right, Luther was indeed a heretic, building his idiosyncratic and counter-intuitive interpretation of the New Testament into a new religion. They could both have been wrong.

 Luther to Spalatin, October 16, 1516, and January 18, 1518, in WA Briefwechsel 1.27:70 – 71, and 57:133 – 34. See also his letter to Johannes Lang, March 1, 1517, 35:90.  See Erasmus, Controversies: De Libero Arbitrio Διατριβη sive Collatio; Hyperaspistes I, ed. C. Trinkaus, Collected Works of Erasmus 76 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999). He hints at Luther’s excessively dogmatic temperament in De Libero Arbitrio (e. g., pp. 7, 19 – 20, and 85), and conveys the same message more pointedly in Hyperaspistes I (e. g., pp. 128, 183, and 193), while also alerting readers to what he views as Luther’s use of sophistical arguments in pursuit of victory (e. g., pp. 120, 123, and 134) as well as his intemperate language (generally, but especially p. 295).  Lucien Febvre, Martin Luther: A Destiny (London: E.P. Dutton, 1930), ch. 6.

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But they could not both be right. Luther saw this clearly from the start, and many others, on both sides, were quick on the uptake. Erasmus probably did not want to see it, for the laudable reason of his own basic human decency. By the time he came to admit it to himself, his prolonged hesitation had shaken to nothing the moral authority he might have used a few years before to devastating effect. As late as 1521, a clear stand by Erasmus might have been intellectually decisive in discrediting Luther. By 1524 Erasmus was not in a position to lay a glove on him. With the publication of Luther’s three great reformational pamphlets in 1520, more humanists began to reconsider their early sympathy or support. Johannes Cochlaeus (1479 – 1552), for example, had been prepared to see some good in Luther’s criticisms of abuses. A companion of Ulrich von Hutten (1488 – 1523) when the latter was studying at Bologna in 1516, Cochlaeus, whose adopted classicizing surname stands surety for his humanist credentials, was among the many humanists who did not want to see a rush to judgment against Luther. It is instructive to compare the reactions to Luther of Cochlaeus and two men with whom he collaborated in a small way in the publication of the Passio Christi (Nuremberg, 1511): Albrecht Durer (1471– 1528) and Willibald Pirckheimer (1470 – 1530). The Passio Christi was a splendid Renaissance exercise in medieval passion piety. Durer provided the woodcuts to illustrate humanist Latin verses by Friar Benedictus Chelidonius, while Cochlaeus and Pirckheimer supplied occasional verses to fill in some white space between the last woodcut (the last judgment) and the colophon. Durer was an early supporter of Luther’s, whose writings and paintings of the 1520s show a continuing alignment with the evangelical movement. Pirckheimer initially saw the Luther controversy as just one among the several humanist controversies that were flaring up toward 1520 around the persons of Erasmus, Reuchlin, Lefèvre, and Ulrich von Hutten.⁴⁶ He was highly sympathetic to Luther early on, so notoriously so that Eck included him in the scope of the papal excommunication of Luther that he was implementing in the Holy Roman Empire as a papal legate, compelling him to beg for absolution. But throughout the 1520s, Pirckheimer gradually drew back from the Reformation as it fragmented and radicalized.⁴⁷ Cochlaeus was as open as most humanists to Luther’s message in the years before 1520 and was still sympathetic as late as the summer of 1520. He was impressed by Luther’s reply to the condemnations from the universities of Cologne and Louvain. And he told Pirckheimer of a three-day disputation he had had with some Dominican friars, in which no mention was made of Luther or his affairs (they were probably discussing the Reuchlin case), assuring him that he would have spoken up for Luther had the subject been raised.⁴⁸ But the at-

 Pirckheimer to Erasmus, April 30, 1520, in Pirckheimers Briefwechsel 4.687:229 – 40, at 233.  For a brief account of Pirckheimer, see Jeanne Peiffer, “Willibald Pirckheimer,” in Centuriae Latinae II. Cent une figures humanistes de la Renaissance aux Lumières, ed. C. Nativel et al., Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 484 (Genève: Droz, 2006), 677– 84. See pp. 681– 82 for his reactions to the Reformation.  Cochlaeus to Pirckheimer, Frankfurt, June 12, 1520, in Pirckheimers Briefwechsel 4.698:261.

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tack on the seven sacraments in the Babylonian Captivity astonished him, and Luther’s scornful dismissal of his offer at Worms to have a public disputation on the subject completed his alienation. He entered the fray forthwith and became, along with Eck, perhaps Luther’s busiest early foe. Ulrich Zasius backed off just as quickly. By the end of 1520, Rhenanus was reporting to Boniface Amerbach: You know how favorable Zasius has been to Luther hitherto. Well, now he has somewhat changed his tune, because Luther has suggested that priests ought to take wives rather than take up with whores.⁴⁹

From that time on, Zasius became a steadfast foe of the emergent Reformation cause. Another elder statesman among the humanists, Jakob Wimpfeling, had likewise been initially sympathetic to Luther, seeing in him a well-meaning if outspoken critic of abuses and a powerful voice for the gospel and urging the German bishops to advise the pope to handle him gently.⁵⁰ However, in the wake of Luther’s appearance at Worms, he was writing that he held no brief for Luther, from whose religious order he had himself come under attack some years before.⁵¹ By 1523 he had concluded that Luther, like the Wycliffites before him, was not reforming the church but tearing it apart.⁵² Pirckheimer viewed with dismay the incipient disintegration of the circle of scholarly friends that he was struggling to hold together. When he published his translation of Lucian’s Orator (in about January 1520), he had dedicated it to Emser. In an effort to heal the breach that had opened between Leipzig and Wittenberg following the Leipzig Disputation of 1519, he praised both Elector Frederick and Duke George as patrons of “good letters,” picking out Wittenberg for special commendation on account of the work of its theologians in taking bad philosophy out of good theology. By the end of the summer, he had heard that Luther had not taken this move well.⁵³ Perhaps Luther resented the careful way Pirckheimer refrained from mentioning him by name while praising the Wittenberg theologians in general. Or perhaps he was sensitive about the dedication to Emser simply because the latter had dared to confront him in print. As far as Luther was concerned, if you were not for him, you were against him.

 To Amerbach, November 8, 1520, in Briefwechsel des Rhenanus, 181:250 – 51, at 251.  Jakob Wimpfeling, Briefwechsel, ed. O. Herding and D. Mertens (München: Fink, 1990), 2.345: 846 – 48, Wimpfeling to Christoph von Utenheim (bishop of Basel), September 1, 1520. This letter was itself the dedication in a little edition of Erasmus’ letters about Martin Luther to the archbishop of Mainz.  Wimpfeling to Jakob Spiegel, May 18, 1521, in Briefwechsel 2.348:857– 59, at 858.  Wimpfeling to Wolfgang Capito, c. September–October 1524, in Briefwechsel 2.354:873 – 74, at 874.  Luciani Rhetor a Bilibaldo Pirckaimero in latinum versus (Hagenau: Anshelm, 1520), sig. A1v–A4r, at A3r–v. Reprinted in Pirckheimers Briefwechsel 4.645:141– 45. Pirckheimer to Heinrich Stromer, c. September 1520, in Pirckheimers Briefwechsel 4.708:286.

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As Luther gathered support and standing in his own right, he could afford to acknowledge or even broadcast his misgivings about Erasmus. Beatus Rhenanus’ friend and former servant, Albert Burer, went to study at Wittenberg in 1520 in the grip of an early humanist enthusiasm for Luther. But he was evidently peddling Wittenberg gossip when he told his former master in the summer of 1521 that, however fashionable Erasmus’ theology might be elsewhere, it was rapidly losing credit there. Erasmus was being decried as a flatterer, largely, in Burer’s view, because he was so much less forthright than Luther. In particular, his work on Paul was coming in for criticism, as was his translation of Paul from the Greek, while the open Christian Platonism of the Handbook of the Christian Soldier was said to make him more a Platonist than a Christian, and even an outright Pelagian. Burer himself, though, remained loyal to his master’s Erasmianism, reckoning that these critics were well outside their comfort zone and that they attributed far too much to Augustine and far too little to Origen and Jerome.⁵⁴ This was a shrewd critique of the great reformer, very much in Erasmus’ own vein. Erasmus openly avowed his preference for Jerome and the contentious figure of Origen over the dour and divisive certainties of the North African bishop of Hippo, and Burer was evidently alluding to that. Ulrich von Hutten, that mercurial figure, can serve as a one-man microcosm of a common humanist response to Luther. Originally intended for the cloister, von Hutten rebelled against this destiny as a teenager, which gives us some indication of his strength of will. Instead he carved out a career for himself by giving the aggressive and occasionally chivalric traits of his caste (he was from a family of Imperial Knights) free rein in the emerging world of the almost professional author, becoming a brilliant and quixotic, if kaleidoscopically unstable, satirist. By 1517 von Hutten, a disciple on a lifelong quest for a master, had fixed his sights on Erasmus, writing naively and at great length to proffer his services and adoration.⁵⁵ However, within a couple of years the pull of Luther had begun to turn his compass, and in the early 1520s it was his dream to bring his two heroes together in a campaign for the greatness and glory of Germany, a theme which he had picked up from another idol, Franz von Sickingen, whom he got to know in 1519. Yet while he ended up a vociferous cheerleader for Luther, von Hutten had neither rushed early to his standard nor properly understood his message. In the mid-1510s, he had found himself in the service of the youthful archbishop of Mainz, Albrecht von Hohenzollern (1490 – 1545), himself a generous patron of humanist scholars. But it was Archbishop Albrecht who felt the lash of Luther’s invective as the controversy over indulgences waxed ever hotter. Von Hutten seems hardly to have noticed the early stages of the indulgence controversy, and his sturdy anticlericalism would probably have led him to view it as a typically  From Burer, June 30, 1521, in Briefwechsel des Rhenanus, 206:280 – 81, at 281.  This interpretation of von Hutten’s relations with Erasmus and Luther is based chiefly on the excellent analysis offered by Monique Samuel-Scheyder in the magisterial introduction to her edition of Ulrich von Hutten, Expostulatio (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 9 – 133. For his early relations with Erasmus, see pp. 22– 23, 27, and 31– 33.

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sterile quarrel among friars.⁵⁶ He was at Augsburg in the autumn of 1518 when Luther had his notorious interviews with Cardinal Cajetan, but he made no attempt to meet him and seems to have remained entirely oblivious to him. It was only in the wake of the Leipzig Disputation in the summer of 1519 that Luther finally attracted his attention, and it was Luther’s increasingly incendiary antipapal rhetoric that appealed to him. The sharp contrast between German virtue and Roman or Italian vice was a staple of German moralists. So when Luther’s enemies, like those of Reuchlin, were pursuing his formal condemnation at Rome in 1520, von Hutten interpreted the conflict in terms of the quasi-nationalist assertion of German identity that had gained a new lease on life since the humanist rediscovery of Tacitus’ Germania in the fifteenth century.⁵⁷ Froben’s timely reissue of this text in 1519, with a little commentary dedicated to Ulrich Zwingli, helped seal the bond between anti-Roman and pro-Lutheran sentiment that marked the next few years.⁵⁸ Thus, for example, discussion of the causes of Reuchlin, Erasmus, and Luther led Pirckheimer, by way of a denunciation of Eck, into a paean to German anti-Romanism in a letter he wrote to Petrus Mosellanus in the autumn of 1520.⁵⁹ For von Hutten, it was axiomatic that Erasmus, as another leader of German thought, ought to make common cause with Luther against the encroachments and corruptions of Rome. Erasmus, however, was not so easily rallied to other men’s flags, and responded, famously, with his pen portrait of Thomas More, whom he dangled before Hutten as yet another possible role model.⁶⁰ His counter entirely missed its mark, although it is amusing to speculate on what might have happened had the restless and footloose von Hutten made his way to England to sit for a while at the feet of the charming and charismatic More. His impressionable nature could not have been unaffected by the experience. However, by the end of 1520 von Hutten was becoming disenchanted with Erasmus’ failure to live up to his (von Hutten’s) expectations. When the papal condemnation of Luther, the bull Exsurge Domine (“Rise up, O Lord”) was published that winter, he produced a caustically critical edition of the text, liberally bedecked with critical annotations and intemperate denunciations. What is fascinating about his engagement with Luther’s

 Von Hutten, Expostulatio, 50.  For von Hutten’s turn towards Luther in 1519 – 20, see von Hutten, Expostulatio, 57 and 61.  Tacitus, De moribus & populis Germaniae (Basel: Froben, 1519; USTC 682145). For Froben’s dedication, conceived entirely in terms of Swiss German humanism, see pp. 43 – 44. It is presumably of much the same date as the colophon (p. 98): May 1519. See also von Hutten, Expostulatio, 31– 35. For more on von Hutten and national sentiment, see Martin Treu, “Hutten, Melanchthon und der nationale Humanismus,” in Humanismus und Wittenberger Reformation: Festgabe anlässlich des 500. Geburtstages des Praeceptor Germaniae Philipp Melanchthon am 16. Februar 1997, eds. M. Beyer and G. Wartenberg, with H.-P. Hasse (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1996), 353 – 66, esp. 364– 65.  Pirckheimer to Mosellanus, October 31, 1520, in Pirckheimers Briefwechsel 4.720:325 – 336, at 328 – 30  Erasmus to Hutten, July 23, 1519, in Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, 4.999:12– 23. See also Hutten, Expostulatio, 54.

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theology, as somewhat sketchily represented in that bull, is its narrow focus. Of the 41 theses excerpted for official condemnation, von Hutten engaged with only a handful – those concerned with the papacy and indulgences.⁶¹ The wider ramifications of Luther’s theology in the domains of faith, the sacraments, and free will – the subjects on which so many of Luther’s humanist readers broke with him – seem to have meant nothing to von Hutten. For him, Luther was about power and corruption, about Germany versus Italy. It was von Hutten’s humanist Germanitas with which Luther’s ideas resonated. According to Girolamo Aleander (1480 – 1542), when von Hutten was interviewed at Ebernburg by Jean Glapion (Charles V’s confessor), it became rapidly apparent that his understanding of Luther’s theology was indeed distinctly limited.⁶² Erasmus, however, was playing a careful game in the early 1520s, desperately trying to keep the religious peace, refusing on the one hand to condemn Luther outright and on the other to endorse him, notwithstanding the pressures from both sides to come off the fence. For many Lutherans or evangelicals, it was still the case, as Bucer had put it in 1518, that Erasmus had simply failed to find the courage to announce his essential support for Luther. So von Hutten’s hopes for a rapprochement blazed on. They were not finally extinguished until Erasmus rather shiftily refused the chance of a personal meeting with him at Basel in 1522.⁶³ This led to von Hutten’s philippic against him, the Expostulation (April 1523), which in turn provoked from the ever-sensitive Erasmus an acidly polite riposte entitled The Sponge (July 1523), with which he metaphorically wiped the spittle of von Hutten’s rhetoric from his face. The Sponge was an elaborate and delicate exercise in self-defense that sought to put as much distance as possible between the author and the evangelical movement without aligning him with the “obscure men” who were still, in the eyes of many, the leading lights among Luther’s foes. Von Hutten died that autumn, before he could produce a reply, but another disenchanted Erasmian, Otto Brunfels, took up the cudgels on his behalf, to Erasmus’ intense annoyance.⁶⁴ But by this stage even Erasmus had been forced to declare himself on the great issue of the day, which he did in the Diatribe on Free Will. His Catholic patrons (Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, among others) were too important to him to allow him to shirk the issue any longer. But the complex way in which Erasmus and von Hutten interacted both with each other and with Lu See Bulla Leonis Decimi, contra errores Martini Lutheri, ed. U. Hutten (Strasbourg: Schott, 1520). Von Hutten annotates Leo’s preamble heavily and caustically (sigs. a2r–b2r), but comments only lightly on the condemned propositions (b2v–b4v) before once more engaging with Leo’s prose thereafter. Rhenanus had read it by early November. See the letter to Amerbach, November 8, 1520, in Briefwechsel des Rhenanus, 181:250 – 51, at 251. Aleander knew of it by January. See Aleander to Giulio de Medici (two years later to be elected Pope Clement VII), c. January 14, 1521, Monumenta Reformationis Lutheranae, ed. P. Balan (Regensburg, 1884), 27– 34, at 33.  Aleander to Giulio de Medici, Worms, April 13, 1521, in Monumenta Reformationis Lutheranae, 159 – 66, at 159 – 60.  Von Hutten, Expostulatio, 83 – 86 and 96 – 99.  Von Hutten, Expostulatio, 113 – 14 and 128 – 29.

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ther forestalls any attempts to construct simple models of the relationship between Luther and humanism. The Christian humanist context of early sixteenth-century Europe was crucial to the emergence and early success of Martin Luther. This is not to belittle the intrinsic importance and impact of his teachings. But in a less favourable context, the teachings alone might have fallen on deaf ears. John Wycliffe (c. 1320 – 1384) had proposed a radical critique of medieval Catholicism, and even though its philosophical basis (an idiosyncratic blend of garbled Platonism and Aristotelianism) was recherché, to say the least, while his more populist vernacular writings tended to dissolve into obsessive and unremitting polemic against the friars, there was a phase, in the years around 1400, where his teachings might have taken off in England. Jan Hus (c. 1369 – 1415) then offered a sort of watered-down Wycliffism, which was more positive in its presentation of an alternative account of Christianity and managed to gain traction within Bohemia, though not beyond it. Yet neither Wycliffe nor Hus had the impact of a Luther. Around 1520, however, the Christian humanist context (itself intimately bound up with the new technology of the printing press) shaped networks and mentalités that enabled Luther’s teachings to find a wider, more influential, and more sympathetic audience than had been available to the so-called forerunners of the Reformation. Luther was by no means untouched by humanism and was a keen advocate of the study of the scriptural languages. However, his critics were right to argue that his movement had no intrinsic connection with humanism, and his followers were mistaken in believing the contrary. This misapprehension was entirely understandable and was purposefully fostered by Luther himself. It played a vital role in helping Luther to break the medieval Church before the medieval Church could break him.

Lothar Vogel

Luther’s Bible Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology, and Translation

1 Introduction To this day, the idea of a “rediscovery” of the Bible thanks to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation represents an integral part of the general notion of religious history of the sixteenth century.¹ It is true that Luther himself viewed his work this way,² but such a perspective is faithful to the historical reality only when one defines with due precision the object of this “rediscovery.” At the dawn of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the Bible was still omnipresent in Western culture. In the churches, but also outside of them, the contents of the Holy Scriptures were conveyed through iconic, liturgical, literary, and existential representations that were extremely multifaceted.³ In fact, even the very first books printed in 1454– 1456 were Bibles (first the Latin Vulgate and, shortly afterward, also a version in German); moreover, the fact that these Bibles were produced in large print runs and continuously reprinted shows their success on the market.⁴ The authority of the Scriptures was also recognized by the academic theology of the time – that is, scholasticism –, although with some distinctions when it came to the relationship between the biblical text itself and the normative interpretation offered by the Church. Around 1500, renewed attention to the letter of the Bible, which had already started to take hold

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  See, for example, the contribution from 2013 by Irmgard Schwaetzer, “Praeses of the synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD),” available at: http://www.luther2017.de/en/news/praesesschwaetzer-wir-feiern-2017-die-wiederentdeckung-von-bibel-und-wort; and the online entry in the Enciclopedia Italiana, “Riforma protestante” (http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/riforma-protestante/), which mentions the “rediscovery of the gospel.”  Cf. a Table Talk from 1538: WA 3:598 – 99, no. 3767: “ante 30 annos nullus legit bibliam, eratque omnibus incognita”; shortly afterward, Luther defines the years from 1517 until his condemnation as “initio Evangelii.”  Cf. Gerhard Ebeling, “Wiederentdeckung der Bibel in der Reformation – Verlust der Bibel heute?” in Das Neue Testament heute: Zur Frage der Revidierbarkeit von Luthers Übersetzung, ed. Ernst Jüngel (Tübingen: Mohr, 1981), 1– 2.  Cf. Uwe Neddermeyer, Von der Handschrift zum gedruckten Buch. Schriftlichkeit und Leseinteresse im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit. Quantitative und qualitative Aspekte (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), 1:454 and 461. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-014

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during the fourteenth century, was strengthened further by the development of humanistic philology.⁵ On the other hand, however, the Bible was also considered dangerous. When Luther studied at the University of Erfurt (1507– 1511) under the theologian Usingen, he took from his teacher the maxim that Scripture creates “an opportunity for all kinds of insurrection.”⁶ This statement was influenced by the proximity of tge region, where Luther lived, to Bohemia: John Wycliffe had claimed that the Bible was “sufficient” to govern the Church, downgrading all canonical law⁷ to the level of human legislation and making it – as such – relative. The reception of this notion by Jan Hus and his followers had inspired the “Hussite Revolution” – an upheaval of the ecclesiastical and social order. Moreover, whilst reacting to the anti-Hussite crusades, the revolutionary troops had invaded the surrounding areas, including Saxony. During the second half of the fifteenth century, the situation had reached the point at which a new religious community – the Unitas Fratrum – had been established in Bohemia. This community was completely detached from any hierarchical institution and had at its core the idea of a return to the original apostolic life.⁸ Censorship and bans on the circulation of editions of the Bible in the local languages⁹ can be explained in the light of the concern that the Bible might be used against the existing order. Therefore, the time and place in which Luther pursued his education meant that his devotion to the Bible and his intense spirituality, by which he aspired to the promised salvation, came to be associated with a sense of risk. My contribution will be divided in two parts. In the first part, I will describe the importance – from the perspective of content – that the Bible took on for Luther, beginning in the early years of his teaching in Wittenberg. In the second part, I will offer a general overview of his work as a translator and editor of the Bible.

 Cf. Heiko A. Oberman, Spätscholastik und Reformation, vol. 1, Der Herbst der mittelalterlichen Theologie (Zürich: Mohr Siebeck, 1965), 335 – 82; L. Smith, “Nicolaus of Lyra and Old Testament Interpretation,” in Hebrew Bible. Old Testament. The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 49 – 63; A. Vanderjagt, “The Early Humanist Concern for the Hebraica veritas,” in Hebrew Bible. Old Testament, 2:154– 89; E. Rummel, “The Textual and Hermeneutic Work of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam,” in Hebrew Bible. Old Testament, 2:215 – 30.  WA.TR 2:6, no. 1240: “omnium seditionum occasio.”  Cf. Takahashi Shogimen, “Wyclif’s Ecclesiastical and Political Thought,” in A Companion to John Wyclif: Late Medieval Theologian, ed. Ian C. Levy (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006), 211– 12.  Cf. František Šmahel, Husitská revoluce, vols. 1– 4 (Praha: Kosmas, 1993 – 1996).  Cf. H. Wansbrough, “History and Impact of English Bible Translations,” in Hebrew Bible. Old Testament, 2:536 – 52, here 541 (the ban from 1407 in England); M. Seckler, “Bibelverbote,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 1:1515 – 16.

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2 An Issue of Truth: The Importance of the Bible for Luther In his Table Talks, Luther repeats several times a pattern of autobiographical recollection in which he tells how his first encounter with the Bible took place in the library, during his studies in Erfurt. For him, the impact of this experience was twofold: on the one hand, he discovered the story of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel (1 Sam 1); on the other, he also noticed the mismatch between the Bible and the lectionary for the Sunday mass.¹⁰ Thus his discovery is also linked to the greater circulation of Bibles due to the invention of printing, a technique that Luther himself eschatologically called a gift of God.¹¹ According to the autobiographical pattern of the Table Talks, Luther had the opportunity to study the Bible in its entirety only after he had joined the monastery of the Hermits of St. Augustine. He soon became a “good localis biblicus” – someone capable of intuitively finding a biblical passage on the right page. However, his joining the monastery does not appear to have been mainly motivated by his desire to read Scripture. Although he says that when he joined the order he disposed of almost all of his books and devoted himself to Scripture, Luther establishes a chronological rather than a causal link between his joining the order and the study of the Bible.¹²

2.1 The Revision of Theological Terminology in the Lectures from 1513 to 1516 During his courses on the individual books of the Bible – especially those on Psalms and the Epistle to the Romans – held in Wittenberg between 1513 and 1516, Luther developed the fundamental terminology of his theology within a school of thought that was connected to the Congregation of the Observant Augustinian Hermits, guided by his predecessor and mentor, Johann von Staupitz. Apart from the reception of German mysticism in a reformistic spirit,¹³ the approach of this school was mainly

 WA.TR 1:44– 45, no. 116; WA.TR 3:598 – 99, no. 3767 (where the “technical” aspect is underlined); WA.TR 5:75 – 76, no. 5346.  WA.TR 1:523, no. 1038.  No. 116 in Table Talks, WA.TR 5. Referring to no. 5346, according to Thomas Kaufmann (Bibeltheologie: Vorreformatorische Laienbibel und reformatorisches Evangelium, in Der Anfang der Reformation. Studien zur Kontextualität der Theologie, Publizistik und Inszenierung Luthers und der reformatorischen Bewegung, ed. T. Kaufmann [Tübingen: 2012], 87), Luther asks for a Bible out of a “desperation,” which he recounted immediately before the passage quoted. Syntactically, however, this expression cannot be referred to the request for a Bible, but should rather be read in reference to the surrender of everything he owned at the time of his joining the convent.  Cf. Lothar Vogel, “Realistische und illusorische Theologie bei Martin Luther (bis 1518),” Lateranum 83, no. 1 (2017): 42– 46.

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orientated toward the anti-Pelagian Augustine – especially his treatise De spiritu et littera, in which he developed a dialectic between the “letter” of the Bible and its inspired and enlightened interpretation. The latter, unachievable by human means, leads to faith in Christ and, therefore, to justification (cf. Romans 3:28).¹⁴ Apart from the two classical “routes” – the via antiqua (which was Thomist) and the via moderna (which was Occamist) –, there was also a via Gregorii at the faculty of arts at Wittenberg. This approach was inspired by the fourteenth-century anti-Pelagian Gregory of Rimini, who had rejected the maxim – very widespread at the time – according to which God does not deny his grace to whomever does “what he can” (quod in se est).¹⁵ Precisely on this point, Staupitz started a controversy in 1516 – 1517 with his colleague Johann Eck from the Bavarian University of Ingolstadt – who would later become the most prominent anti-Lutheran polemicist of the first generation – and developed his position as a biblical theology that completely renounced any explicit reference to medieval theologians.¹⁶ In this sense, the theology of Wittenberg proved to be in line with its time, if one considers that Erasmus of Rotterdam had also contrasted the “philosophy of Christ,” which was derived from the apostolic writings, with scholastic theology.¹⁷ Within the Wittenberg school, Luther’s theology distinguished itself for its innovative philological approach. In his lectures on the Psalter from 1513 to 1515, he had already used the very recent Psalterium quincuplex by the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and had taken from him the notion of one literal sense of the Scriptures, which was identical to the intention of its true author, the Holy Spirit. Thus there is a pneumatic, literal sense, which is different from a purely physical one. As in Augustine’s De spiritu et littera, the very letter of Scripture – which is “dead” in itself – becomes a testimony of the Spirit whenever the Spirit allows it to do so,¹⁸ and the pneumatological foundation of the literal sense justifies the integration of philology in theological discourse. The second tool Luther used in this same course was the Latin translation of the seven penitential psalms according to the Hebrew text, published by Johann Reu-

 Cf. Markus Wriedt, Gnade und Erwählung. Eine Untersuchung zu Johann von Staupitz und Martin Luther (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1991); in a letter written in May 1517 to his colleague Johann Lange, Luther speaks of “[t]heologia nostra et S. Augustinus”; see WA.B 1:99, no. 41.  Cf. U. Köpf, “Martin Luthers theologischer Lehrstuhl,” in Die Theologische Fakultät Wittenberg 1502 bis 1602. Beiträge zur 500. Wiederkehr des Gründungsjahres der Leucorea, eds. Irene Dingel and Günther Wartenberg (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002), 71– 86.  Johann von Staupitz, Libellus de exsecutione aeternae praedestinationis, eds. Lothar zu Dohna and Richard Wetzel (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1979).  Cf. Erasmus’ letter to Paul Volz, published as the preface to Enchiridion militis christiani in the edition from 1518; Erasmus von Rotterdam, Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Werner Welzig (Darmstadt: WBG, 1968), 1:8 – 10. According to Luther, Staupitz knew that he was in complete agreement with his colleague Konrad Summenhart from Tübingen when it came to contrasting biblical theology with scholasticism; see WA.TR 5:99, no. 5374.  WA 55.1:6– 11.

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chlin in 1512. This translation inspired a revision of theological terminology that would later become crucial for Luther’s theology. While explaining Psalm 32:1 (“Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered”), Luther – following Reuchlin’s example – translates the first part of the verse as “fiens levatus crimine” (“blessed is the one who is absolved of the crime”), and the second as “fiens opertus peccato” (“who is covered from sin”). The meaning of this translation, according to Luther’s theology, is to be found in two aspects. Firstly, the word fiens, which translates two passive participles in the Hebrew text, means that beatitude is reached “merely passively,” as Luther had already pointed out in the same lecture. Moreover – quoting Psalm 51:7, where the two Hebrew terms translated by Reuchlin as crimen and peccatum are applied to the same notion –, Luther challenges the conventional interpretation of the verse, according to which the first part deals with sins prior to baptism, which are completely erased, and the second with sins that follow it, for which it would be necessary to serve, after their remission, the poena – the rightful punishment. At the same time, Luther did not interpret the two parts of the verse univocally, but rather highlighted the distinction between the “crime,” from which the one who is blessed is absolved, and the “sin,” which is “covered” – that is, the sin is not materially eradicated. Thus the reference to the Hebrew text justifies the notion of a continuity of sin even in the state following pardon. In the first part, the reference to absolution and – even more so – the term iniquitas (“non-equity”) used in the Vulgate already evoke the idea of a righteousness that can be applied to the person him- or herself, although the person nevertheless remains a sinner. Yet the word righteousness is not explicitly mentioned in the biblical text.¹⁹ Therefore, it is the philology of the Hebrew text that gave Luther the tools to suggest a notion of righteousness that is “charged” to the believer, who is simul iustus et peccator. The righteousness declared by God and the persistence of sin still refer to the human being in his entirety and are not confined only to some partial aspect: the “blessed” person is completely absolved and, at the same time, his or her sin is only “covered.”²⁰ Therefore the relationship between righteousness and sin is not substantial, but rather a matter of perspective: a person is righteous in the eyes of God and a sinner in his or her own eyes. It is worth noting that, during the period we are discussing, Luther presented this very line of thought as an apology for Catholicism against what he considered to be the hypocrisy of the Unitas Fratrum.²¹ From the same perspective, Luther also highlighted the way in which the Hebrew Bible spoke of a “strange” and “alien” work (cf. Is 28:21) with which God accomplished his “proper” task – the redemption of humanity, which had fallen into sin. Following this idea, Luther exegetically supported the notion of a revelation sub contraria

 WA 55.2:177.  Thus in the course given by Luther on the Epistle to the Romans in 1515 – 1516; see WA 56:271.  Cf. Vogel, “Realistische und illusorische Theologie”, 49 – 52.

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specie – a salvific act of God that manifests itself not in tangible demonstrations of his power, but rather in the “temptation” of the forced separation from material possessions or religious convictions, in suffering and the experience of the absence of God (which Jesus paradigmatically faced on the cross), to the point of recognizing oneself as a sinner so as to accept one’s own annihilation as justified.²² The testimony of the Scriptures is thus compared dialectically to a religiosity that is perceived as illusory, focused on the expectation of the intervention of divine power in the human sphere. Following this same idea – first in the lectures on the Psalms, and later on the Epistle to the Romans –, Luther revised the notion of the “righteousness of God” (Rom 1:17). According to him – and it is difficult to disagree with the broad lines of his argument –, scholastic theology had a tendency to interpret the term righteousness as the virtue of equity, in line with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, just as a modern reader would also spontaneously interpret this term. From this perspective, the “righteousness of God” would be the virtue exercised by God at the time of judgment, as dialectically opposed to his “mercy.” In the light of a final judgment carried out according to this notion of divine “righteousness,” the soteriological process is interpreted as a voluntary infusion (cf. Rom 5:5) of a virtuous habitus that in line with Aristotle’s teaching would have to be acquired with practice; afterward, however, the believer must adopt this habitus in order to be considered righteous.²³ On the other hand, Luther – interpreting the passage in Romans 1:17 (in Christ “the righteousness of God is revealed – from faith to faith”) – referred to the definition of the “righteousness of God” offered by Augustine in De spiritu et littera: righteousness “is used in the sense of our being made righteous by [God’s] gift, just as ‘the salvation of the Lord’ is that we are saved by him.”²⁴ This definition is confirmed, as usual, by a philological argument: the key is in the reference to Habakkuk 2:4 (“the righteous person will live by his faithfulness”), a verse that is read in the light of Romans 3:28, in which Paul presents faith – as opposed to deeds – as the only means of justification for humankind. According to Paul, justification happens passively and not as an actuation of a virtuous premise. As a consequence, the notion of righteousness offered in the Epistle to the Romans is substantially different from Aristotle’s. Specifically, the term righteousness of God does not express a virtue, but rather a relational aspect: “[i]n the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, who is and who becomes righteous in the eyes of God, and how this happens: [one becomes righteous] only because of the faith with which one believes in the word of

 Vogel, “Realistische und illusorische Theologie”, 42– 46.  Cf. V. Grossi and B. Sesboüé, “Grazia e giustificazione: dalla testimonianza della Scrittura alla fine del Medioevo,” in Storia dei Dogmi, vol. 2, L’uomo e la sua salvezza, ed. B. Sesboüé (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1997), pp. 281– 84.  De spiritu et littera 11.18, in Migne Patrologia Latina, vol. 44, c. 211; translated into English as A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter, in Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, ed. Whitney Oates, trans. P. Holmes (New York: Random House, 1948), 1:54.

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God.”²⁵ Thus, according to Luther, when Paul evokes the manifestation of the righteousness of God in the gospel of Christ, he is referring to the manifestation of his salvific power and not to a renewed – or maybe even intensified – judicial criterion. Even from a human point of view, this righteousness is not a virtue to be interpreted as the criterion of one’s action, but is instead “alien” (as Luther would later say).²⁶ This exteriority is theologically motivated by reference to Christ, who is the righteousness of the sinner on the cross. Thus the philological and theological methods and liberation from a concept of righteousness as something the believer needs to achieve before God (which some of Luther’s contemporaries, who had stayed faithful to the Roman Church, also considered oppressive)²⁷ go hand in hand.

2.2 The Biblical Criteria in the Debate on Indulgences Among the ecclesiastical practices that Luther judged severely, the most prominent – even prior to 1517 – were the indulgences. Indulgences are construed as substitutions for the sanctions imposed during penance, together with the sacramental remission of sins.²⁸ In the light of a theology that interpreted God as operating through “temptation” and suffering, this practice and the entire administration of penance must have appeared seriously superficial. In the ninety-five theses, which Luther sent to the archbishop Albert of Brandenburg on October 31, 1517, the criticism of indulgences is developed as an exegesis of the invitation to penance expressed by Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry (Matt 3:2). The first thesis clarifies that this penance must apply to “the entire life of the believer.” The impact of this statement – which is only seemingly conventional – is to be understood in the light of the three following theses, which contrast two types of penance that, according to Luther, are incompatible with this definition. Firstly, the penance recommended by Jesus does not overlap with the sacramental administration of penance – a notion that was a real challenge to the very soteriological core of the ecclesiastical system of the time. In the Resolutiones – the “solutions” and motivations for the 95 theses, published in 1518 –, Luther clarifies his statement, saying that it is impossible to spend one’s entire life in the confessional. The second type of penance, which is also insufficient, is the one that, at first glance, might represent an alternative to the sacramental act – a contin-

 WA 56:171– 72.  Cf. the testimony from 1545 on the “discovery” of the sense of the “righteousness of God”; WA 54:186.  Cf. Hubert Jedin, “Un’‘esperienza della torre’ del giovane Contarini,” in Chiesa della fede, chiesa della storia. Saggi scelti, ed. H. Jedin (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1972), 606 – 23; Ignatius de Loyola, Le récit du pèlerin ou Autobiographie (Namur: Éditions Fidélité, 2006), 45n22 and 51n29 – 30.  On Luther’s criticism of indulgences up to 1517, cf. Vogel, “Zwischen Universität und Seelsorge. Martin Luthers Beweggründe im Ablassstreit,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 118, no. 2 (2007): 194– 96.

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uous inner sense of penance that is not accompanied by those tasks of “mortification of the flesh” that are meant to demonstrate one’s acceptance of the just punishments received from God. Instead, the notion of penance that Luther supports is one in which the permanent dimension (“until the arrival of the kingdom of heaven”) and exterior practice converge.²⁹ Once again, analysis of the lexicon of the Bible offers Luther the hermeneutic key he needs to elaborate on his proposal. In the Resolutiones, he focuses on the sense of the imperative metanoeíte with which Jesus invites his followers to penance, and he translates it into Latin as transmentamini – “let your mind be turned upside down.”³⁰ The Gospels consider metánoia as an instant change (conversion) followed by a consequent change in behavior. The latter, however, is not contemplated in the term itself. Instead, Luther’s argument is based on his entire (post‐)Augustinian reflection – especially mysticism’s considerations of sin – in order to translate the active imperative of the biblical Greek with a passive, and to consider penance as an enduring state. Just as with any other exegesis, Luther’s interpretation is not “objective” but moves in a hermeneutic circle between pre-comprehension and interpretation. However, this does not mean that his confutation of an Aristotelian interpretation of the biblical terminology has not been vastly influential on modern exegesis across confessions.³¹ To summarize, Luther’s position in the debate on indulgences can be interpreted as a consequence of his exegetical approach. Several factors external to the theological debate granted Luther the support of both the prince-elector of Saxony and public opinion.³² Luther himself – who, reflecting back on his life in 1545, remembered the “discovery” of the sense of the “righteousness of God” as his moment of access to salvation³³ – was bound in his interpretation of the Scriptures by the imperatives of conscience. Even when threatened by the ban that followed his condemnation by the ecclesiastical authorities, during the Diet of Worms in 1521, he refused to recant unless his positions were contradicted by the “clear” testimony of Scripture or the indisputable motivations of reason.³⁴ The last point is worthy of attention because it shows a notion of rationality that is not contraposed to biblical truth, which “is revealed” through the action of the Holy Spirit. In Luther’s exegesis, arguments based on rationality – especially the philological kind – are critically valuable. From this perspective, his interpretation of Romans 4:7 – in which Psalms 32:1– 2 is quoted – is exemplary. Here, Luther took the opportunity to polemicize with the fifteenth-century theologian Gabriel Biel, who had written the

 WA 1:233 (the first theses) and 530 – 34 (Resolutiones).  WA 1:530.  An assessment from the exegetical point of view can be found in Michael Wolter, Der Brief an die Römer, Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 6.1 (Neukirchen/Vluyn/Ostfildern: Patmos Verlag, 2014), 1:119 – 25.  A brief summary is available in Vogel, “Zwischen Universität und Seelsorge”, 188 – 89.  See note 26.  WA 7:838.

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manual from which Luther had studied theology. Biel had suggested reading the maxim quod in se est as an exhortation to observe divine law in terms of material obedience to its precepts, while being aware that this obedience dit not satisfy the intention of the divine legislator, as revealed in the Sermon on the Mount, in which even the existence of an interior impulse to disobey the commandments is characterized as a violation of the law (Matt 5 – 7). In Luther’s eyes, Biel’s reasoning implied that the “grace” of the gospel had determined a further tightening of the law, which alone would make the intervention of grace necessary for salvation.³⁵ Thirty years later, in 1545, the same argument about an apparent contradiction in the gospel – which should be “good news” but seemingly makes the criteria of divine righteousness stricter – is repeated in Luther’s above-mentioned autobiographical testimony. Together with his spiritual suffering, his “discovery” also unravels a sense of theological incoherence and illogicality and must be interpreted as the moment in which exegetical knowledge and illumination are one and the same, which methodologically corresponds precisely to the notion of the pneumatic literal sense introduced by Lefèvre d’Étaples. The rational dimension of Luther’s exegesis is confirmed in a passage of his autobiographical recollection in which he says that he has verified his reading of Romans 1:17 against the whole of Scripture – which is perhaps an allusion to the collection of biblical passages on “sin” and “righteousness” that he had included in his course on the Epistle to the Romans, particularly when he deals with Romans 4:7.³⁶ Therefore, the “scriptural principle” of the Reformation, as expressed in Luther’s reflection, is not the same thing as an identification with Scripture: the Reformation and its assertion of the centrality of Scripture start from the criticism of spontaneous readings and underline the otherness of the biblical text, which requires an informed and well-founded exegetical approach. These characteristics of exegesis had also ecclesiological repercussions, since Luther assigned to the community of the believers the task of “judging” the teaching of their preachers³⁷ – a duty that could only be carried out on the basis of well-considered criteria. At the same time, Luther recognized the utility of discourses and terminologies derived from outside of the Bible (including Aristotle’s categorizations) for all the areas of life that lie outside of the relationship between conscience and God, as established by faith. His interest in the Bible clearly had a soteriological and christological focus, and the relevance of the various scriptural texts depended on “whether they treat Christ” (ob sie Christum treyben).³⁸ In line with this framework, according to Luther, the sense of the Bible was thus split between the law that calls the human being a sinner, summoning him to pen WA 56:274– 75.  On the autobiographical testimony, see note 26; for the lecture on Romans, see WA 56:287– 88.  Alla nobiltà cristiana (1520); WA 6:412; Sulla libertà delle comunità di chiamare e giudicare i predicatori (1523); WA 7:409.  WA.DB 7:384 ff. (preface to the Epistle of James).

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ance, and the gospel that declares a person’s absolution in Christ. Luther defined the due distinction between these two dimensions of the divine word several times as the most taxing task a theologian ever has to face.³⁹ On the one hand, Luther underlined the need to utter the promissio of the gospel aloud, which applied also and especially to the words of institution during the mass; on the other hand, he opposed any attempt to relativize the need to preach the law as a constant summoning to penance and, in this sense, also as the direction for a life of faith.⁴⁰

2.3 The Conclusion of Luther’s Biblical Hermeneutics during the 1520s and 1530s In the diatribe with Erasmus of Rotterdam on free will from 1524 to 1525, Luther decided that some clarifications of his scriptural hermeneutics were required. From the many biblical exhortations to convert to God, Erasmus had deduced a “pious skepticism” that was characterized by the effort to reply in the affirmative to the invitation without, however, denying that Scripture also reveals humankind’s deficiency in this purpose. Following in the footsteps of Augustinian hermeneutics, he supported his interpretation by saying that the traits of the Bible that are incomprehensible or non-univocal were part of the very inaccessibility of God.⁴¹ In his reply to Erasmus in De servo arbitrio, Luther appears in his role as a philologist when he declares that, as a book, the Bible is a creatural and linguistic product, the incomprehensibility of which is only due to the limits of the philological knowledge of its interpreters. The salvific message of Scripture – the incarnation and passion of the Son – still emerges very clearly from the holy text. Precisely with reference to this clarity, however, Luther introduces a distinction: there is an incontrovertible “exterior clarity” of the evangelical message, but in itself, this exterior announcement cannot create in the listener the “internal clarity” that depends on the illumination of the Spirit and is disclosed in faith – the trust in the evangelical message, in the light of which any hypothesis of self-absolution appears to be an unacceptable limitation of God’s omnipotence.⁴² God’s hiding sub contraria specie applies, therefore, to the Bible as well: although it is a fully creatural product, it is the exclusive tool through which the word of God comes to humankind “from the outside.” This was the reason behind Luther’s controversy with the “spiritualists,” whom he thought had danger-

 The locus classicus is WA 40.1:207 (commentary on Galatians, 1531– 1535).  Cf. the disputes against the “antinomians”; WA 39.1:334– 584.  Erasmus von Rotterdam, De libero arbitrio ΔIATΡIBΗ sive collatio, in Ausgewählte Schriften, 4:10 – 16.  WA 18:606 – 09.

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ously undervalued the “exterior word” that is written and preached, the announcement of which is the task of the Church as an institution.⁴³ The christological emphasis of Luther’s hermeneutics, which came to him from Lefèvre d’Étaples, also brought him into conflict with Hebraists, such as Sebastian Münster – who had developed a more neutral interpretation of the Hebrew Bible –, and even more explicitly with the Jews.⁴⁴ The importance – but also the limits – of Luther’s philological method can already be seen in his preface to the Pentateuch, published in 1523. With reference to the Jews, Luther said: “[it is impossible] to trust their glosses and interpretations (as I tried to do), and I think that, if the Bible is to emerge, it is us Christians who need to carry out this task, since we have the understanding of Christ, without whom the knowledge of the language amounts to nothing at all.”⁴⁵ In conclusion, for Luther, Christology becomes the criterion for understanding Hebrew grammar as well.

3 Luther as Translator of the Bible 3.1 The Editions of the Bible in German Luther’s first translation of the Bible, apart from single passages included in his works in German between 1517 and 1520, was the New Testament translation published in September 1522, which was the fruit of an endeavor begun during Luther’s stay at Wartburg Castle (1521– 1522) and completed – as a joint task, together with Philip Melanchthon, Johann Lange, and others – after his return to Wittenberg. Luther’s promotion of this group effort was a methodological choice: according to him, a translation should not be carried out in solitude, because “one person alone cannot always come up with good and suitable words.”⁴⁶ The choice to begin the translation with the New Testament was due to the greater accessibility of the text and the need to offer access to the letters of the Apostle Paul, which were considered crucial for the theology he was attempting to support and spread. Several features of the September Testament – the name for the translation published, as mentioned above, in 1522 – demonstrate a break with previous German versions. The translation is based on the Greek text and references the second edition of the Instrumentum – the Greek New Testament edited by Erasmus and published in 1519. However, Luther’s translation is also undeniably influenced by the Vulgate, by Erasmus’s new Latin translation,

 Cf. Vogel, “Schwärmer,” in Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit (Stuttgart/Weimar: WBG, 2010), vol. 11, cc. 968 – 70.  See Thomas Kaufmann, Luthers “Judenschriften”. Ein Beitrag zu ihrer historischen Kontextualisierung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); D. Garrone, “Lutero, la Riforma e gli ebrei: alcuni cenni,” Protestantesimo 70, no. 1 (2015): 5 – 33.  WA.DB 8:30; cf. also WA 44:510 (lecture on Genesis).  WA.TR 1:486, no. 961.

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and by previous German versions. Jerome’s usual prefaces to each biblical book are substituted with new prefaces – just as Erasmus himself had done in his Instrumentum. ⁴⁷ Even the canon of the books of the New Testament presents some differentiations: the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James (which Luther described as an “epistle of straw” because of its lack of christological content),⁴⁸ the Epistle of Jude, and Revelation are collected in an appendix of sorts, without being numbered in the index like the other books are. The translation did not mention the editor or the year of publication and was published under the title Das Newe Testament Deutzsch. In order to make the theological nature of the work immediately clear, however, the city (i. e., Wittenberg) was mentioned.⁴⁹ Despite its high sale price, the September Testament, which came with xylographs (see below) and was printed in folio, was an immediate commercial success. However, this success also translated into a frustrating consequence for Melchior Lotter, the Wittenberg printer: in fact, several unauthorized reprints were produced in Basel, Augsburg, Leipzig, and Grimma, always outside of the borders of the Saxon electorate. In an attempt to react to these plagiarized editions, Luther quickly published a revised version with hundreds of corrections in December of the same year (known as the December Testament).⁵⁰ Although the unauthorized reprints contributed in their own way to the circulation of his teachings, in the prefaces to each edition, Luther repeatedly addressed those who dared to make a profit from other people’s work with harsh insults.⁵¹ Despite the swiftness with which he tackled the New Testament, it took Luther over a decade to translate the Old Testament. From the very beginning, and also for commercial reasons, he planned to publish his work in installments,⁵² as can be inferred from the publication of the Pentateuch in 1523. In the case of the Pentateuch, Luther’s name is explicitly mentioned on the title page. In the preface, Luther credited the new translation with the added values of a greater comprehensibility of the biblical text and a guaranteed accessibility of the text in German: “I will dare to say that in many passages this German Bible is clearer and more certain than the Latin one.”⁵³ The historical and poetic books were published in the following year, all monogrammed “ML” as a mark of authenticity, and in 1534 the prophets and the “apocryphal” books from the Vulgate (those books for which there is no Hebrew original) were published. As in the case of the New Testament, this phase of the

 WA.DB 6; Erasmus, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 3.  WA.DB 6:10.  WA.DB 6:12.  Hans Volz, “Die mittelalterlichen deutschen Bibelübersetzungen,” in Martin Luther, Die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch. Wittenberg 1545. Letzte zu Luthers Lebzeiten erschienene Ausgabe, ed. H. Volz (München: Rogner & Bernhard, 1972), 1:58 – 61.  Volz, “Die mittelalterlichen deutschen Bibelübersetzungen,” 69; cf. WA.DB 6:1– 2.  WA.B 2:614, no. 546.  WA.DB 8:30 – 32.

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translation of the Bible in Wittenberg cannot be described as a singlehanded effort. It was the work of a team, to which belonged – together with Luther and Melanchthon – Caspar Creuziger, Justus Jonas, and others. At the same time, two revisions of the translations already published were also released, specifically the New Testament and the Psalms.⁵⁴ In the meantime, however, complete Bibles in German had already been produced elsewhere: a version that combined Luther’s translations with the translations of the prophets originally published by the spiritualists Ludwig Hetzer and Hans Denck and the translation of the apocrypha by the preacher Leo Jud from Zürich was published in Mainz in 1529. Also in 1529, another complete Bible that combined more or less the same materials was published in Strasbourg, and two years later, the first Zürich Bible was also printed. In this version, one can see – together with references to existing versions – an original exegetical effort that is a reflection of the work carried out by the theological school established by Zwingli (the Prophezey). This Bible became the archetype of the second great series of German translations and continues to be developed – together with the Lutherbibel – to this very day.⁵⁵ In 1534, it was finally possible to print a complete Bible in German in Wittenberg – one entirely based on the versions created by the team gathered around Luther. As with all the other versions published before, this translation also used a High German that could be understood by everyone and steered clear of the use of geographically limited vernacular expressions. In fact, Luther said that he had used the language of the Saxon chancellery, which he considered to be understandable throughout the whole of Germany.⁵⁶ Despite this, only a few months after the publication of the first complete Bible in High German, a version in Low German – the language of Northern Germany – was published in Lübeck. This version was edited by Bugenhagen, one of Luther’s university colleagues who was from Pomerania.⁵⁷ The success of the 1534 Bible is evident not only in the Wittenberg reprints of 1535, 1536, and 1539 – 1540 – which were clearly produced in a haste and contained several errors (it was still not possible to keep the old layouts) –, but also in the appearance of other unauthorized reprints. At the same time, a further revision of the whole translation was carried out by a commission that included Luther and his collaborators. Even the minutes compiled by this commission are available to us

 Volz, “Die mittelalterlichen deutschen Bibelübersetzungen,” 64– 92.  Volz, “Die mittelalterlichen deutschen Bibelübersetzungen,” 76; Traudel Himmighöfer, Die Zürcher Bibel bis zum Tode Zwinglis (1531). Darstellung und Bibliographie (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1995); cf. Zwingli, Vorrede zur Prophetenbibel. 1. März 1529, in Sämtliche Werke (Zürich: Berichthaus, 1968), 6.2:289 – 312.  WA.TR 1:524– 25, no. 1040.  On Luther’s Bible in Low German, cf. Heimo Reinitzer, Biblia deutsch. Luthers Bibelübersetzung und ihre Tradition (Wolfenbüttel: Friedrich Wittig Verlag, 1983), 166 – 68 and 184.

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today.⁵⁸ The Median Bible of 1541 was based on the revised text and was accompanied by a new twin in Low German, which was produced in Wittenberg in this case. From the very beginning, the Wittenberg Bibles came with xylographs and were of substantial size, thus demonstrating a certain prestige aimed at a more affluent clientele, rather than being popular editions that could have been sold at a lower price. The Median Bible was published in an even larger size and was even more sumptuously decorated: the reprints of 1545 and 1546 demonstrate the success this Bible enjoyed on the market.⁵⁹ At the same time, a few translations were also produced within the Germanspeaking Catholic sphere. These Bibles included the New Testament edited by Jerome Emser, published for the first time in 1527. A second edition was already published in 1528, and a year later, Johann Dietenberger edited a revised version. Emser was accused of plagiarism because his translation was very similar to Luther’s, although from a linguistic point of view, it was written in a more southern High German; moreover, sometimes the translator’s choices were closely aligned with the Vulgate. In 1534, Dietenberger also published a complete Bible that was very similar to the Zürich edition; additionally, Eck published a translation in 1537, but this edition did not enjoy much success, as the language was too close to the Bavarian dialect. Thus it was Dietenberger’s version that prevailed in the Catholic areas, and the 1571 revision continued to be reprinted until the eighteenth century.⁶⁰ Thus Luther’s translations and the Zürich Bible had a significant – although indirect – impact on the Catholic world as well. According to a recent estimate, in the whole of Central Europe (including a population of about fifteen million people) up until 1569,⁶¹ there were 800,000 Bibles in German; this number included those printed in the Catholic regions, where the production was nevertheless much more limited and decreased even further beginning in 1540, evidently due to the theological choices that inaugurated the era of confessionalization.⁶²

3.2 Some Features of Luther’s Bible Among the most prominent traits of Luther’s Bible, one of the first characteristics that needs to be discussed is his prefaces. The preface to the Epistle to the Romans, in which he defines the epistle as “the true main piece of the New Testament,” is al-

 Volz, “Die mittelalterlichen deutschen Bibelübersetzungen,” 103 – 06; cf. WA.DB, 3 – 4 and 1911– 23.  Volz, “Die mittelalterlichen deutschen Bibelübersetzungen,” 104– 18.  S. Sonderegger, “Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Bibelübersetzungen in Grundzügen,” in Sprachgeschichte. Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung, eds. Werner Besch et al. (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1998), 1:231– 35.  Cf. J. Ehmer, “Bevölkerung,” in Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, vol. 2, c. 104.  Neddermeyer, Von der Handschrift, 533 ff.

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most a summary of the soteriological terminology that he had devised (law, sin, grace, faith, righteousness, flesh, and spirit).⁶³ As far as the translation of Romans is concerned, Luther’s choice to strengthen the antithesis between deeds and faith that exists in Romans 3:28 has been widely discussed. Luther’s translation asserts that justification happens “alleyn durch den glawben” (“by faith alone”), although only has no linguistic counterpart in the Greek text.⁶⁴ This trait, which Luther defended in his An Open Letter on Translating in 1530,⁶⁵ has been preserved in the Lutherbibel up until the most recent versions. The same translation of Romans 3:28 is also available in the first version of the Zürich Bible, printed in 1531.⁶⁶ The current version of the Zürich Bible, however, does not have the word only. Another influence of Luther’s exegetical work is the introduction of the word gottlos (“godless”) – which at the time was a rare word – in order to convey the dimension of sinfulness, whereas previous German translations had used words such as Sünder (“sinner”) or Böser (“wicked”).⁶⁷ Thus Luther managed to convey not only the moral, but also the relational sense of evil expressed in the biblical terminology. The christological interpretation of the Old Testament illustrated in the paragraphs above can be seen clearly in Luther’s translation of Genesis 4:1, where Eve comments on the birth of Cain, saying, “I acquired a man through the Lord” (the Vulgate renders it as: “possedi hominem per Deum”; here, through adequately translates the Hebrew preposition ‫)את‬. Instead, Luther translated this phrase as: “I have the man of the Lord” (“Ich habe den Man des Herrn”), putting in the margin a reference to the classic “protoevangelium” in Genesis 3:15 (the punishment of the serpent with the announcement that the descendant of the first human couple “will crush your head”).⁶⁸ Thus, through the forced interpretation of a preposition, Eve’s expression of gratitude for her newborn son is transformed into a confession of faith in Christ. This detail is an indication of how the christological criterion could prevail on the grammatical structure of the original language. In more recent versions, Luther’s translation has been corrected in line with the philological evidence. The xylographs that accompanied Luther’s Bibles are also worthy of further attention. Generally, the number of xylographs is small when compared to previous German Bibles. However, it is noteworthy that the book of Revelation, which Luther had almost relegated to the margins, is accompanied by a sumptuous cycle of 21 illustrations, produced in Lucas Cranach’s workshop and all devoted to the various vi-

 Neddermeyer, Von der Handschrift, 2– 27 (versions from 1522 and 1546).  Neddermeyer, Von der Handschrift, 38.  WA 30:627– 46.  See http://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/pageview/1930441.  Cf. M. Müller, “Die Gottlosen bei Thomas Müntzer – mit einem Vergleich zu Martin Luther,” Lutherjahrbuch 46 (1979): 97– 119.  WA.DB 8:46 ff. Luther defended his translation in the lectures on Genesis; see WA 42:179 ff. I would like to thank my colleague Daniele Garrone for bringing this passage to my attention.

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Fig. 1

sions recounted in the book.⁶⁹ Among these illustrations, the one representing the “prostitute of Babylon” (Rev 17– 18) is particularly interesting: in the September Testament of 1522, she wore a crown made of three diadems – a strongly polemical allusion to the papal tiara (fig. 1) supported by the traditional identification of Rome with “Babylon,” which is mentioned as the place where the First Epistle of Peter (5:13) was written. In the December Testament, printed a few months later, the same xylograph was reproduced, but – with more of an artisanal than an artistic touch – two of the three diadems had been removed, obviously in order to soften

 Volz, “Die mittelalterlichen deutschen Bibelübersetzungen,” 52– 59; Ph. Schmidt, Die Illustrationen der Lutherbibel. 1522 – 1700. Ein Stück abendländische Kultur- und Kirchengeschichte (Basel: Verlag Friedrich Reinhardt, 1962).

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Fig. 2

Fig. 3

its polemical impact (fig. 2). Finally, the tiara appeared again – and in an even more emphatic fashion – in the complete Bible of 1534 (fig. 3).⁷⁰ In the same way, the crown of the “beast” (Revelation 11) is also different in each edition, although it is difficult to gauge how much Luther might have influenced these editorial choices. Another interesting element, from a technical point of view, is the illustration of Noah’s Ark, which is usually represented as a sort of vessel (fig. 4). In contrast,

 Volz, “Die mittelalterlichen deutschen Bibelübersetzungen,” 92– 101.

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Fig. 4

Fig. 5

the xylograph in Luther’s Bible takes on board the observation that the biblical text refers to the ark as a box (Genesis 6:14) and represents it as such (fig. 5), thus underlining once again the aspects of a powerful divine grace that intervenes to save those within it.

4 Conclusions The Reformation of the sixteenth century caused a circulation of printed editions of the Bible with a reach that was unthinkable up to that point, due to the technical knowledge available at the time. Thanks to these favorable conditions, Luther accomplished a qualitative improvement in terms of the accessibility of the Bible – not only in numbers, but also in terms of a renewed appreciation of Scripture as a resource of faith and the key to interpreting human experience. Bringing the Bible to fruition in such a way, however, required a willingness to assess one’s own religious preconcep-

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tions on the basis of the scriptural text – to accept its otherness, in contrast to any initial convictions, and as a consequence, to welcome the reforming drive that derived from it. In this sense, it is possible to speak of a “rediscovery” of the Bible at the time of the Reformation. Moreover, Luther’s translations of the Bible became the key reference point in the German-speaking sphere, also beyond the confessional divisions. Nonetheless, the Bible did not become a “popular book”: Bibles were a precious product, and owning one continued to be a privilege for the elite – a phenomenon consolidated by the typographers’ propensity to embellish the editions with sumptuous details. Only during the eighteenth century did more widespread literacy and further technological progress in typography allow the production of Bibles at prices that made printed editions of Scripture accessible to the entire population.⁷¹

 Cf. M. Brecht, “Die Bedeutung der Bibel im deutschen Pietismus,” in Geschichte des Pietismus, ed. Hartmut Lehmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 4:102– 20.

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Luther and Political Power 1 A Method Based on Contradiction “A Christian is a twofold person.”¹ This is a statement that can be found often in Luther’s texts, also expressed with different terminological nuances (for example, “[t]he Christian man is considered in a twofold way”²) or, more frequently, through the development of a point – as is the case in the famous incipit On the Freedom of a Christian, the entire content of which can be summarized in opposing images: “[s]o that we can fully understand what a Christian man is, […] I will define the two following propositions: a Christian is a free lord over everything and is not subject to anyone. A Christian is a zealous servant in every aspect and subjected to everyone.”³ The notions of “twofoldness” and ambivalence (which obviously do not mean duplicity or ambiguity) are fundamental in Lutheran theology. They have their roots in the contraria species under which God himself hides his action and manifests the deep traits of his intentions and, in essence, of his nature – that is, a God who makes himself a man to be close to his creatures, an omnipotent being who lets himself be killed to save them. Since God chose this way of revealing himself (by concealing himself under a cloak that suggests the contrary), this complication affects all of reality in Luther’s reflections. The paths to interpreting not only God and his action, but also the history of humankind in which he intervened, cannot be compared to a highway with fixed lanes, guardrails, and clearly defined entry and exit points; rather, they are more like trails, where one can walk in the middle or on the sides, and from which one can chose to step onto parallel paths or shortcuts, meeting or overtaking other people. Carrying this image of the oath further, according to Luther, the only essential element for reaching the final destination is good legs – that is, Scripture. One cannot do without it, if one wants to understand what God said and how one should attempt to follow him. However, upon closer inspection, for Luther the reading and interpretation of the Bible was also a tool subject to wear and tear and to innovations introduced over time. In an anomalous exegesis of the parable of the workers (Matt 20:1– 15),⁴ Luther wrote that, just as every time of the day corresponds to a different task, so every epoch has different tools available, also in terms of the scientific instruments with

Translation from Italian: Benedikt Jetter.    

WA.TR 4:237, 11. WA.TR 1:356, 13. WA 7:21, 1– 4. WA 17.2:135– 41.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-015

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which the biblical text is interpreted. Therefore, even the only authority that applies in the Church – that is, Scripture – is subject to fluctuations and complications; it is not a compact, one-dimensional authority, but rather its consistency is found in knowing how to pivot around its focus (Jesus Christ) and how to understand the many testimonies and the potential ways of receiving them. For Luther, this twofoldness of the real was so fundamental that it became a true forma mentis and, finally, a form of communication. Luther’s language (even in its exterior appearance, in its being almost always a mix of German and Latin), his rhetoric, his use of images, and his way of formulating ideas are greatly affected by what is not vagueness and uncertainty, but rather an attempt to reproduce the elusiveness of the fullness of God. Thus it is possible to explain the use of paradox and oxymoron (as in the excerpt from On the Freedom of a Christian quoted above) and of expressions that require further, complex explanations in order not to exhaust, but to present at least part of the possible implications. Such expressions have nevertheless become, in their succinctness, something of a slogan; examples of these include the inaptly defined “three sola” – of which there are at least three (sola gratia, sola Scriptura, sola fide) or rather, more correctly, four (solus Christus) – and also simul iustus et peccator or pecca fortiter, not to mention the notion of universal priesthood – which is not Luther’s formulation, although he would have liked it immensely, precisely because it expresses a contradiction in terms. In fact, being a priest actually means possessing knowledge that not everyone else shares and, therefore, is a condition that separates one group from the rest. If this condition belongs to everyone, then there is no longer a priesthood. Although Luther did not devise the formulation, he came up with the idea. The formulation perfectly matched the contradiction, which is assumed to be such, turned upside down and then picked up once again: after Christ’s priesthood, no one is a priest, but indeed, because of Christ’s priesthood, everybody is a priest, at the service of others. This characteristic of Luther’s reflections originates from the shape taken by revelation (by what humankind can “see” in God), which in turn mirrors God’s will for humankind – the justification of a creature who does not deserve it. However, it also reverberates in other themes of his teachings, including those on political power.

2 A Misunderstanding The starting point of this contribution – the formula “a Christian is a twofold person” – was used by Luther to describe the relationship between the Christian and politics: “that is to say, as a believer and as a politician. As a believer, he bears everything, he does not eat, he does not drink, he does not procreate. But as a politician, he is subject to the laws and the right and is forced to defend himself and preserve peace.”⁵

 WA.TR 4:237, 11– 14.

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The last part of this quotation can be explained by the fact that the issue at hand was the question of whether it would be legitimate for the Protestant princes to resist (also violently) the foreseeable attack by Charles V, who – having been unsuccessful in untangling the situation otherwise – might have attempted to use military force to resolve the religious split that had taken hold in some of the Imperial States of the Holy Roman Empire. It is possible that Luther’s insistence on twofoldness is the source of a misunderstanding – or, at least, of a misleading simplification – that has enjoyed a certain success in the interpretation of Luther’s thinking on politics. A partial justification of this misunderstanding can be seen in the fact that Luther more than once described this twofoldness as duality. One example of many is the following: “[w]e have to split all men into two parts: the first belongs to the kingdom of God, the other to the kingdom of this world.”⁶ However, it is possible to explain the use of similar terms and formulas through their context, or through the purpose of the text, and thus to demonstrate that the “doctrine of the two kingdoms” was not a doctrine, nor was it intended to divide the world into two kingdoms (as it is commonly understood). It is not by chance that this definition dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century and that Luther allegedly never used it. Moreover, the term “doctrine” was not really agreeable to him. It should not be forgotten, in fact, that Luther never worked with a systematic intent. His books, his sermons, and especially the statements collected in his table talks were always meant to be answers to explicit questions or spiritual needs he perceived in his interlocutors. When it came to systematization – as in the redaction of confessions of faith, for example the one presented to the Diet of Augsburg – Melanchthon always undertook the task, with Luther’s substantial (albeit not total) consent to the result. Below I will demonstrate how Luther dealt with the issue of political power, when he thought it would be useful to add his own Bekenntnis to the end of a polemical text against the Swiss theology of the sacrament. Moreover, as far as context goes, On Secular Authority – the source on which the interpretation of the “doctrine” of the two kingdoms is largely based – is indeed a useful example to explain in a different way what Luther meant by the expression “two kingdoms.” The book was written for John of Saxony, the landgrave of Thuringia, brother of the elector Frederick, who became an elector himself upon his brother’s death in 1525. The complete title On Secular Authority: How Far Does the Obedience Owed to it Extend? illustrates John’s doubts, while the conclusion of the dedication demonstrates Luther’s intentions: “I hope that I will be able to educate princes and secular authorities so that they can remain Christians and Christ can be their only lord.” However, what was the issue at hand? For centuries, people had been searching for a way to reconcile a few scriptural passages that seemed incompatible with one another. On the one hand, there were

 WA 11:249, 24– 25.

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all the passages in the Old Testament that consider the punishment of the wicked to be just (“[b]ut if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death” [Exod 21:14]) or even attempt to establish the law of retaliation (“life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise” [Exod 21:23 – 25]); but there were also those from the New Testament, which explicitly refer to the Old Testament (“Jesus said to him, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” [Matt 26:52]), and moreover, those that establish the powers of political authorities (“[l] et everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves” [Rom 13:1– 2]; “[s]ubmit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right” [1 Pet 2:13 – 14]). On the other hand, there are also all the passages in the New Testament that preach love, some of them in the very same books: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44); “[d]o not repay evil with evil or insult with insult” (1 Pet 3:9); “[d]o not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Rom 12:19). Therefore, this was the crux of the problem: How is it possible to obey teachings that appear to be so distant one from another? And does the prince (and, in general, political authority) hold the sword – the symbol of government, but also of the force necessary to exercise it – legitimately? In 1523, Luther offered his most complete answer. However, he had already intervened on the subject before that date.

3 The Theological Foundation The root of everything that Luther might have thought about political power is in the key thesis at the foundation of his Plea to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation from 1520. In this text – starting from the premise that all of those who are baptized have the same ius in the Church, even if they have different roles – he exhorted civilian authorities to intervene in favor of a reform, since the ecclesiastical authorities had proven unable or unwilling to help: “I have collected some proposals on how to correct and improve Christian society, which are to be presented to the Christian nobility of the German nation in case God decides after all to help his Church through laymen, since the clergymen, whose task it should be, have become utterly negligent.”⁷

 WA 6:404, 12– 16.

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A first premise in the reconstruction of Luther’s thinking on this point is, therefore, the following: the responsibilities connected with power, whether political or ecclesiastical, are to a certain extent interchangeable. These responsibilities certainly cannot be shifted from one sphere of activity to the other: it is hardly likely that a prince would have studied theology (although some had), and therefore, it is not really conceivable that he might be called on to preach. On the other hand, Luther himself asked for forgiveness for daring to address, despite being only a “wretched man who has abandoned the world, authorities so powerful and elevated in rank apropos of issues so serious and important, as if there was no one else in the world, apart from Luther, concerned with the Christian condition and able to advise such wise people.”⁸ Indeed, he could have been accused of undue interference in matters that did not concern him, since among the suggested proposals – apart from those dealing more closely with ecclesiastical and theological issues – there were also some bordering on the civil sphere: for example, the reform of schools or the elimination of penury. In reality, these limits were not perceived as such. When Luther speaks of the “Christian condition” that should be improved, he was thinking of nothing other than the everyday life of all the subjects in Electoral Saxony (and the rest of Germany). Religious experience, the life of and in the Church, work, social relationships, and everything else was perceived as a sole reality – the visible reality of history, in which a certain generation happens to live. In this specific case, however, the request for the intervention of secular authorities in issues that were more specifically ecclesiastical was also motivated by a theological consideration: “They have come up with the idea that the pope, the bishops, the priests, the monks are called the ‘ecclesiastical state’ and the princes, the lords, the artisans, and the peasants the ‘secular state’; which is pure invention, cunning and hypocritical; let no one be intimidated by it for this reason: Christians all belong to the ecclesiastical state and, among them, there is no difference if not purely in their function.”⁹ The “invention” that had split the Christian people in two was the soil in which lay the roots of all the abuses of the Church of Rome. It had allowed the possibility of limiting the administration of grace through the management of the sacraments to the clergy – with all the negative, even disastrous implications for spiritual life that such thievery had caused. This was Luther’s conviction. Instead, “all those who have gone through baptism can boast of having already been consecrated as priests, bishops, and popes, although it is not for everyone to exercise these offices.”¹⁰ The real distinction, therefore, is in the officium – which is different for everyone – and not in the ius, which is common to everyone. A short work from 1523, On How

 WA 6:404, 17– 21.  WA 6:407, 10 – 15.  WA 12:189, 21– 26.

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the Ministers of the Church Should Be Instituted, aimed at answering to a group of Christians from Prague who had asked Luther how to legitimately find pastors even though they had split from Rome and, therefore, considered themselves to be lacking the apostolic succession of bishops. In this case, the problem was fully internal to the ecclesiastical organization. Luther argued that the assembly of laymen could chose and ordain its own pastor: “[t]he fact that that right is common (communio iuris) urges the election and welcoming of one, or however many the community chooses, to publicly carry out those functions (officia) in the place and in the name of all who have the same right (idem iuris)”; if this process – which avoids “a shameful confusion in the people of God” – is not feasible, an emergency arises, and “in case of need, whoever wants to can exercise this right (iure).”¹¹ Later, Luther specified that, in case of need, the authority can – and must – intervene as an “emergency bishop” (Notbischof), once again on the basis of the ius commune cristianorum. In 1520, following the same principle, civilian authorities were encouraged to implement the reform that the clergymen were unwilling to pursue; they could exercise their ius commune, which belonged to them since they had been baptized. In this case, the issue was to resist to the “Romanist” demand to limit the functions of governing the Church to the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

4 Commanded, Recommended, Permitted Two years later, a different obstacle had to be overcome. Luther was hiding in the fortress of Wartburg and was being kept away from Wittenberg by order of his prince, Frederick the Wise, who did not intend to surrender him to the forces of imperial justice, since there was a ban and an arrest warrant applied to him following his condemnation for heresy in the papal bull Exsurge Domine. From Wartburg, Luther frequently exchanged letters with his friends. On July 13, 1521, he wrote a letter to Melanchthon in which, among other things, he replied to the latter’s question about civil authority.¹² Clearly, in a previous letter, Melanchthon had expressed a concern: he had not found in Scripture an explicit divine command that established political authority. From what Luther says, it seems that Melanchthon’s question had been posed in exegetic terms (the search for a biblical foundation) but had also aroused his ethical scruples. The question was probably something along the following lines: If political power is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible as being commanded by God, what is a Christian to do? Melanchthon did not question the duty of obedience (which can be found in several passages), but rather whether it was legitimate for a Christian to personally make use of a power

 WA 12:189, 21 ff.  WA.B 2:356– 59.

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that, indeed, is not certified as divinely established. This question is already one step closer to the issue addressed in On Secular Authority. Luther opens the letter in a tone that seems a bit annoyed: “[m]y opinion on the right of political authority is the same as before.” Obviously, they had already discussed the topic. However, what he writes next is very interesting. Luther digresses into a complex classification of some aspects of human life, according to three qualifications. The first category encompasses all the aspects that are “commanded” (praecepta) – that is, those that concern faith. Better still, they are fundamentally faith itself, “lex voluntariorum et liberiorum.” Here, the “free and willing” hints at soldiers who served without having been conscripted and at free citizens. The gospel is their law, which means that it does not bind or force them, but it is still the only aspect in the Bible that is defined as praeceptum et consultum – commanded and decreed. The idea is that all that is to be found in Scripture, and especially in the New Testament, constitutes the gospel, which cannot be imposed but is nevertheless all that matters. One can have a relationship with the gospel only through faith, which, although it is also impossible to impose, is nevertheless commanded – instituted by God. Political authority does not belong to this category, and therefore, as Luther wrote, “[in the Scripture] there is no right [of civil authority], neither as prescription nor as norm (neque praeceptum neque consultum).” However, there are also aspects that are not commanded, but rather “recommended”: “[h]owever, the same right of the civil authority is not forbidden either. On the contrary, it is confirmed and recommended.” The terms used here have many layers of meaning: confirmatum is what is judged to be valid, certified, and therefore confirmed in its existence; commendatum is what is presented as useful, what is entrusted, given in custody, and therefore recommended – “as also is the right of marriage,” Luther added. In other words, the great human institutions are indeed human, and that is why their institution cannot be found in Scripture, which was written for the purpose of teaching (praecipere) the gospel. However, the fact that authority (or marriage or economy) are permitted, and actually recommended, is demonstrated by the absence of prohibitions and, even more so, by the fact that they are often mentioned as aspects necessary and useful to the conservation of creation. Moreover, the importance of these systems – how important God considers them to be for humankind, albeit that they are of a different nature from the gospel – is demonstrated by the fact that they can be distinguished from a third category – that is, those aspects that are “neither confirmed nor recommended,” but instead are left to the free choice of each, “of which only the spirit decides in its own freedom.” These are “fasts and exterior ceremonies,” those adiaphora that Luther was very eager to deliver from the bonds imposed by the Church in order to “take consciences prisoners,” as he loved to say, with useless obligations or prohibitions. All of this is permitted, but not commanded or even recommended: “[i]n Romans 13 and in the First Epistle of Peter, God’s words resonate powerfully: ‘whoever rebels

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against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted.’ You will not find the same sentiment expressed about something that is only permitted.” This somewhat patchwork letter, which is nevertheless very important in understanding how Luther conceptualized the world and its relationships with the absolute, already fully confirms the importance of political authority – or rather, its inevitability: “[o]nce we erase the power of the sword, since it is unavoidable that many evils will arise, how long will the Church resist in history? Nobody will be able to dispose of their life and possessions in the face of the impudence of the crimes.”¹³ The tasks of this authority and the foundation of its power were the issues on which Luther based his complex analysis in On Secular Authority less than two years later.

5 Secular Authority Thus the questions behind the text from 1523 (although its redaction actually took place in the last few weeks of 1522) were the following: Is political power legitimate? Where is the foundation of its legitimacy? What are the limits within which it can be exercised? What are the aims it must pursue? In the background, one can still perceive the perplexity caused by the biblical passages quoted above, which apparently contradict one other. It is a long-standing doubt, to which tradition had given a tentative answer by limiting the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount (where it is said, for example, “do not resist an evil person” [Matt 5:39]) to a restricted number of “perfect people,” and ascribing to all others the banality of unavoidable, everyday violence. However, Luther’s preaching had abolished these distinctions: all Christians are sinners, justified by grace, and they are all in the same condition before God. Therefore, and with good reason, the princes could inquire as to their duty in the face of the disorder that had started to spread throughout Germany. The protests of the peasants, which would later culminate in a revolt, had already begun to gather on the horizon; Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen, the very knights who had offered protection to Luther, had attempted an uprising; the outcome of the difficult relationship with the emperor was still unknown. Even in his preaching, Luther attempted to define the characteristics of political power several times. Apropos of the outcome of these reflections, he wrote: “I could almost boast that, since the times of the apostles, never have the sword and secular authority been described as clearly and praised as splendidly (herrlich gepreiset).”¹⁴ Perhaps there was a touch of self-irony in this consideration, but Luther surely believed in the conclusions he had reached. He had also preached many times on this topic, and indeed, it was because of two such sermons – given on October 24 and 25, 1522, in the church

 WA.B 2:357, 44– 46.  WA 19:625, 15 – 16.

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of Weimar Castle – that Landgrave John had developed a desire for a more exhaustive text. Thus Luther wrote On Secular Authority. Since Luther speaks of “two kingdoms” in this text, this expression has become for many the formula that summarizes his vision of the world, a world which is thus split precisely in two – religion and politics, church and state, papacy and empire. In contrast, Luther’s actual purpose has already been clarified above. In other words, Luther was not interested in distinguishing spheres of influence or in establishing their proper balance, but rather his exclusive desire was to analyze in depth the origin and tasks of an institution that exists together with others. Secular authority is one of the many orders stipulated by God for the preservation of creation – in this case, to punish the wicked and protect the just – just as the Church is meant to pass on the news of the gospel, and the family is meant to look after the succession of generations and material possessions. Thus a first answer was immediately offered: Christians should not shy away from exercising secular power because of their fear of the repressive function entrusted to it. This point clearly demonstrates a trait of Luther’s work already highlighted above – that is, his intervention with regard to a specific issue arising in a given moment. In this case, apart from the need to address the prince’s concerns, there was also the necessity to oppose a movement that, within the ranks of the reform, was once again promoting the ancient choice of secession from the world. Luther’s thought, from which any beliefs in a special path of life that would guarantee salvation had been banned, put Christians back into the animated life of society. Not only must they not withhold themselves from civil engagements, but they should also step forward any time such a need arises. The exercise of power is better when entrusted to a good Christian than to anyone else, because he can use it with moderation and impartiality. Even in the case of the executioner, it is better for him to be a Christian than a godless man! However, this also applies to those who administer justice or keep the public order – all the functions in which the authority needs to exercise coercion: “[i]f you see that there is a lack of executioners, jailers, judges, lords or princes and you feel that you would suit the role, you should offer yourself for the task. […] In that case, you would not act with the intention of avenging yourself or returning evil for evil but rather for the good of your neighbor and for the support, protection, and peace of the others.”¹⁵ The world cannot be sustained merely through the hope of governing it “with Christianity and the Gospel,” because “the world and the masses of humanity are and remain non-Christian.” This would be like keeping the wolves in the same enclosure with the sheep: the sheep would obey the commandment to live in peace, “but they would not live long.”¹⁶ Instead, secular authority must exercise its legitimate power (the “sword”) “to prevent crime,” or at least to prevent crime from being committed “without fear or in

 WA 11:255, 1 ff.  WA 11:252, 1.

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peace or successfully.”¹⁷ Luther described a world in which “Christians live far away one from the other, as the saying goes”¹⁸ – that is, they are rare compared to the multitude of the unjust. “Therefore, God has established two kingdoms, the spiritual one, which through the Holy Ghost inspires Christians and good men under the sign of Christ; and the secular one, which is meant to keep at bay the non-Christians and the wicked so that they have to outwardly maintain peace and be quiet even against their will.”¹⁹ However, in this description, something does not seem to match up with what Luther had said and done up to that point. He speaks of a world in which Christians “have no need for a secular sword or laws.”²⁰ They are different from anyone else, to the point that it is possible to “divide the sons of Adam and all other men in two: the first [belong] to the kingdom of God and the others to the kingdom of this world.”²¹ It is even possible to formulate per absurdum the hypothesis that “if everyone in the world were a true Christian, i. e., a real believer, it would not be necessary or useful to have any prince, king, or lord, any sword, any law. […] They have in their heart the Holy Ghost to guide them and make sure that they harm no one, love everyone, and willingly suffer injustice and even death from anyone. […] In that world, there are no judicial contentions and there is no need for tribunals or punishments or laws or sword.”²² This hypothesis is presented as non-viable only because there are too few Christians. The absurdum, then, is in the fact that it is impossible to imagine a world consisting only of “true Christians” and not in the impossibility of actually becoming a “true” Christian. Once the issue is put in these terms, the reasoning clearly contradicts the doctrine of simul iustus et peccator. Yet it is well known how attached Luther was to this doctrine: although it is impossible to exhaust the point with a mere repetition of the formula, still it could not be suddenly rejected, also because of its complexity and nuances. Therefore, another explanation is needed. The key to the interpretation of the whole text is in the correct understanding of what Luther means by the expression “two kingdoms.” It has already been pointed out that it was not meant to signify the state and the church. Instead, it refers to a “kingdom of the world” and a “kingdom of God.” It is easy to understand how all people, Christians included, exist in “this world.” The world is indeed the place where they live together with everyone else, and they do not exist elsewhere – certainly not in a separate, sheltered pen. In contrast, the kingdom “of God” is God’s. It is the space in which God summons and creates humankind as his children and considers them to be just, regardless of their sins, by

     

WA WA WA WA WA WA

11:251, 7. 11:251, 37. 11:251, 15 ff. 11:249, 36 11:249, 24. 11:249,37– 250,1 ff.

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attributing his own justice to them. This space is not visible or fixed once and for all in the lifetime of any Christian: “[p]erfection and imperfection do not exist in deeds, nor produce a special exterior state among Christians, but rather are in the heart, in faith and in love. […] Faith and love do not create sects or exterior differences.”²³ Therefore, the kingdom of God is a matter of interiority – not in the sense of an interiority of man (it does not consist of human affectus, even though a Christian knows it in “his heart”), but rather as a reality that is not external or visible and that is not governable by him. Instead, the aspects in which the Christian can intervene are those in the “kingdom of this world.” In fact, Christians can accomplish “by themselves much more than right and doctrine in their entirety can demand.”²⁴ They can; however, Luther knew well that they do not always do so. They are simul peccatores not only because they are unable to be just before God, but also because – predictably – their sinful condition precipitates them back, endlessly and de facto, into error. In fact, “no man is by nature Christian or just, but all are instead sinners and wicked,”²⁵ and human nature resists and interferes to influence even the Christian until the moment of death. This clarification is fundamental; otherwise, one risks attributing to Luther the idea that, per absurdum, a world that is completely “Christianized” could instead be governed directly by divine law. Thus Luther would become a fundamentalist – one of those who, during these very years, were among his most formidable enemies within his own movement. Instead, the kingdom of the world, which is described as the place of the punishment of the wicked and the exercise of authority, is the only place where Christians (indeed those who – per absurdum, but only per absurdum – would not have needed it) can attempt to live as justified Christians, to the point that they must also make themselves available to exercise that very authority “to the benefit of others, to protect them and to prevent the wicked from becoming even worse.”²⁶ Therefore, it is possible to think with good approximation that the scheme Luther uses here – of a very small group of “true” Christians dispersed throughout the great mass of the “wicked” – is the fruit of his recurring use of paradox, employed here for the rhetorical purpose of clarifying as much as possible the nature of political power. One should not forget that the objective of his work was, in this case, “to give, in the first place, a solid foundation to secular right and the sword so that nobody can doubt that they exist in the world by God’s will and disposition.”²⁷ It was not, as already mentioned, a way to give support or justification to the existence of the Church or its relationship to political authority. Neither was it a way to explore in depth the “kingdom of God” – that internal, invisible place in     

WA WA WA WA WA

11:249, 18 ff. 11:250, 7. 11:250, 26. 11:254, 1. 11:247, 21 ff.

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which the human being stands before God, that is, justification by faith: “[i]t is necessary to clearly distinguish between these two kingdoms and let both exist: one makes us just, the other creates external peace and prevents wicked deeds.”²⁸ The emphasis in italics is added to highlight what Luther meant by “kingdom of God”: not the church, as opposed to the state, but rather justification by grace. Therefore, on the one hand, there is the “kingdom of the Spirit,” and on the other, the “kingdom of the world.” However, since with Christ the kingdom of the Spirit has entered the kingdom of the world to redeem it, the two kingdoms live next to each other in human life, and it is impossible to concretely – as opposed to conceptually – delineate their precise limits: “[n]one of the two kingdoms is sufficient without the other, in the world.”²⁹ Each Christian is the bearer, in his or her person, of both justification and its concretization in life and society – of both the “commanded” and the “recommended”: “[y]ou must consider the sword or power like the conjugal state or the toil in the fields or any other task that was instituted by God. […] Do not be so daring as to want to affirm that a Christian cannot exercise what is truly a work, an order, and a creation of God.”³⁰ Indeed, because of this, a Christian must be “considered in a twofold way: 1) interior, in the faith; here there is no man or woman, no lord or servant; 2) exterior and temporal; and thus he is a husband, an artisan, a lord, a servant. It is legitimate for him to make use of judicial laws, to claim what is due to him, because he does not live in himself [sibi] but with his neighbor and, therefore, is subject to the emperor and to common right [iuri gentium]. Thus, he must help the emperor to strengthen his right and not weaken it.”³¹ The same intertwining (and distinction) can also be found in the letter to Melanchthon. The absence in Scripture of a divine institution of civil authority has already been explained: “[i]t would not have been right, absolutely not, since the Gospel is the law of free volunteers, who have nothing in common with the sword and the right of the sword.”³² This explanation is not at all – as one might think at first glance – in contradiction with the invitation to Christians to take part to public affairs. Instead, it is a reference to the other “kingdom,” the gospel, and to what belongs within the scope of salvation. What belongs to this sphere – and only that – is “instituted” in the New Testament: “[s]ince Christ in the Gospel had to institute divine and celestial things, what is strange in the fact that he did not institute the power of the sword, which can be easily organized by men?” Here again the emphasis is added to highlight this clear statement of the historical and non-divine nature of power. Luther went on: “[h]owever, [Christ] treats it in such a way that, had it depended on his intention and had it not been of a different nature from the Gospel,     

WA 11:252, 12– 14. WA 11:252, 14. WA 11:258, 3 – 5 and 257, 19 – 21. WA.TR 1:356, 13 – 18. WA.B 2:357, 33 ff.

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he would have instituted it too since he recommends and confirms its institution, and moreover he explicitly affirms that it is disposed by the will of God.”³³ Therefore, on the one hand, political authority is confirmed as being of a different nature from that which belongs to “the kingdom of God”; on the other hand, it is a disposition, an order desired by God, divinitus ordinatum (where ordinatum means “disposed” or “put in order,” and not “commanded,” which is rather praeceptum). Here again Luther observes that political organization must be considered analogous to other human institutions, such as family and economy – as a necessary and beneficial reality, albeit human: “I find that the authority of this world is confirmed in many ways, recommended, to be honored, to be entrusted to God with payers. However, it is not commanded nor decided by the Gospel, just like marriage, family, the discipline of the household or of the city, or any other administration and care of everything that is corporal.”³⁴

6 Three Holy Orders The last quotation is taken from the letter Luther wrote to Melanchthon in 1521. In 1528, at the end of an important treatise on the Lord’s Supper, Luther returned to the equivalence between the “authority of this world” and the “administration and care of everything that is corporal.” The fact that he added the Church to this list as well is most extraordinary: “[t]hese are the holy orders and true foundations instituted by God: ecclesiastical ministry, the conjugal state, and temporal authority.”³⁵ It is not possible here to examine in depth what Luther meant by the term Church in general. He used this word with very different meanings, which were only distinguishable by the context. For example, in the commentary on Genesis (1535), he defined “Church” as the relationship between God and man immediately after his creation, established around the promise of life in verse 2:16, “[y]ou are free to eat”: “[t]his is the institution of the Church, even before there was any economy and government. […] In fact, here the Lord speaks to Adam and gives him speech.”³⁶ Clearly, the articulation of three “holy orders” is expressed once again. Before the fall, the Church is a “very naked, very pure, and very simple word, cult, and religion, with nothing ornate or sumptuous.”³⁷ In Luther’s time, however, “we speak of these assets as if they were a lost treasure,”³⁸ to which humankind no longer has access on their own. Only God’s initiative can reestablish, if not the same “very pure” relationship – since humankind is still simul justified and sinful – at least the promise of

     

WA.B 2:358, 88 ff. WA.B 2:359, 100 – 04. WA 26:504, 30 – 31. WA 42:79, 3 ff. WA 42:80, 41. WA 42:80, 35.

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redemption, in which humankind lives. This is the “kingdom of God,” the one of which Luther had spoken in 1523, together with the “kingdom of the world.” This notion confirms the idea that these two “kingdoms” do not overlap with the state and the church; they are not two entities that share different attributes in parallel and in balance, like the two halves of an apple. Instead, they are two wholes, placed on different levels but still in contact with one another, in the intertwining of the existence of faith and of life in society, to which any Christian is subjected. This, at least, is what we find in the treatise On Secular Authority. Instead, the Church that is – together with political government and economy – a “holy order” is not the kingdom of God. In the distinction he made in 1523, Luther did not place the Church in the two kingdoms, but rather he defined it often – as we have already seen, although more quotations could also be added – as one of the three orders, describing it as “pastoral ministry, or the service of the word, such as: preaching, administering the sacraments, managing the common coffers, the sacristan, the messenger or those who help these people.” In other words, it is the visible Church, the one in which one can find the word preached to the justified (and in which, therefore, the promise of life that is essential to the kingdom of God is renewed), but also the human organization, the shapes of which are subject to the times and to context, although they still maintain consistency with the purposes for which they were established. The above explanation of the Church is presented merely to highlight – by analogy – the characteristics of politia, of the civil government, which is also an institution stipulated by God (albeit non-divine!), but which is entirely contained on the level of history. “All of these things are considered good and holy; however, none of these orders represents a path to salvation. […] Being holy and being saved are two completely different things. We have been saved exclusively through Christ; holy, instead, we become both through our faith in him and through these institutions and orders of God.”³⁹ Holiness is, in Luther’s language and using biblical terms, the action of the person who has been “set apart,” “preserved” to follow God’s will. It is the ethics of those who received salvation gratuitously. The visible Church, the family (the reproduction and production of possessions, and therefore economy), and the civil government represent the articulation of the world in which the Christian exercises his or her holiness.

7 State and Church The comparison of the three orders brings to the forefront, a latere, the issue of their relationships, and especially of the relationship between ecclesiastical and political organization – between church and state. According to Luther, there was no doubt

 WA 26:505, 15 ff.

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about the fact that these separate competences needed to remain clearly distinct. Apropos of the article Melanchthon was preparing for the Confessio Augustana on the figure of the prince-bishop (and, therefore, once again driven by a concrete need), Luther wrote to him: “[l]et it be understood that these two administrations, the ecclesiastical and the political, are distinct and different; Satan, through papacy, confuses them and mixes them up in an astonishing way; we need to be very alert about this and not gather them together so that they are confused once again nor let anyone confuse them.”⁴⁰ In the figure of the prince-bishop were united two of the possible abuses that must be avoided –spiritual oppression of the assembly of believers by the hierarchy: “[a]s bishop, he does not have the power to impose on his Church a tradition or a ceremony without its implicit or explicit consent. The Church, in fact, is free and sovereign and bishops must not dominate the faith of the Churches nor must they oppress them and impose on them burdens against their will.” As the holder of a political role, moreover, “he is even less allowed to impose something on the Church because this would indeed mean blending the two powers.” And again: “I speak of the Church as Church, as clearly distinct from political citizenry.” The prince-bishop, in contrast, can legislate on civil matters. However, because of his role as a prince, “[i]n this case […] the obey not as Church but as citizens.”⁴¹ The Confessio Augustana is from 1530. Several years before – when there had been a few cases of civil or military officers who, in the course of fulfilling their functions, had spread Zwinglian doctrines – Luther had advised the elector (who was concerned and had asked him for advice) to forbid this, not because of the necessity of defending Lutheran orthodoxy, but rather for a reason connected exclusively to the distinction between roles: “[i]f he has not been assigned the public ministry, the prince should order him to be quiet and abstain from saying anything on the subject, publicly or during banquets or at the tavern or in any other gathering, because this is not part of his function; on his own and in his house, instead, he can believe whatever he wants. And he must not arrogate for himself the function of teaching, which instead belongs to the Church (officium divinum).” Even more clearly, and once again referring to the threefold distinction, he admonished that “it is necessary to properly distinguish between ecclesiastic, civil, and domestic functions.”⁴² If those who hold a public office should not express themselves publicly on theological issues, then for his part, the theologian should not give his opinion on civil laws. At a time when the Evangelical authorities were debating whether it was legitimate to prepare and then put in place a resistance, due to the threat of the emperor intervening militarily against them, Luther was consulted several times. “We asked if

 WA.B 5:492, 10 – 14.  WA.B 5:492– 93, throughout.  WA.TR 1:425 – 26, throughout.

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it was not his task to give an opinion on those laws,” wrote one of his guests in the transcription of the conversations he had with him. Luther replied: No. The theologian only teaches to believe in Christ; then, he generally exhorts each to fulfill their role with honesty: the shoemaker to make shoes, etc. To say in what way shoes must be made and how they must be sold is not my task. […] Thus, even when the theologian teaches about civil laws, he only offers generic teachings; he says: do not steal, but then it is the jurist who decides what is theft. […] Similarly, I teach generally, on this issue of the emperor, that we must conform to the laws; what those laws are, I do not know and I do not want to know, because that is not my task.⁴³

8 Obedience and Disobedience The looming threat of a military intervention against the Protestant princes in order to bring them forcefully back to obedience to Rome, and the subsequent decision to organize a resistance, offers a good example, hinting at the widespread opinion that attributes to Luther the idea that political authority would allegedly hold such unlimited power (since it is commanded by God) that it cannot accept any disobedience. For the sake of brevity, let us only mention the use of this forced interpretation in order to locate the first roots of the totalitarian state in the German Reformation. It is not possible here to follow the developments of this interpretation in their entirety, both in time and in the cultural space of different countries; therefore, the argument will be limited to the short essay with which an authoritative Italian historian, Luigi Firpo, introduced a volume of Luther’s works, entitled Political Works, around the middle of the twentieth century. On the one hand, it is necessary to remember that, for decades, this volume (published by UTET) was de facto (together with the subsequent Religious Works) the only collection of Lutheran sources available to Italian readers. Nonetheless, it was a worthy collection. Yet, and for the same reason, the interpretation of the “Lutheran political doctrine” offered in the introduction contributed to shaping among Italian readers a completely erroneous understanding of this important issue, both as far as the reading of the Lutheran sources was concerned, and in terms of understanding the origins (as well as the reasons and functions) and the later developments of the German Evangelical churches. This is why it is referenced here, sixty years later, as an example of the misunderstanding that spread within Italian culture and is still hard to erase. Luigi Firpo wrote: The insistence on the interior character of the religious experience created a quietistic attitude, a passive conformism to the will of authority; in the compliant submission and lukewarm mysticism of the Lutheran churches, Germany expressed its own political faults, its typical subjection of the individual, its irresponsibility in subordination, its insensitivity to the democratic and lib-

 WA.TR 1:40, 23 ff.

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eral ideals that were about to bloom in the European conscience. Thus was forged a people so supinely compact, so lacking in strong individual contrasts, and bound from time to time to rekindle violent enthusiasms and an insane pride in hearing from other lips the nationalistic pleas cast by Luther, the fist crier of the Messianism of race and of the providential mission of the great German empire.⁴⁴

It is important to mention that this text was published in 1949, shortly after the end of Second World War and the collapse of Nazism. It would be hard not to allow the author to indulge in some excesses, which can be explained by the pressure of the historical vicissitudes Europe had just experienced. It is evident, in fact, that Firpo had in mind those very vicissitudes when he mentions “other lips” that had cast “nationalistic pleas” or the “Messianism of race” and the “providential mission of the great German empire.” However, the almost direct connection to Luther’s alleged nationalism is completely out of place – Luther’s care for his “dear Germans” and his attention to their autonomy was surely “national” (in the sense of the nations included in the Holy Roman Empire), but it had nothing nationalistic in it (in the sense that emerged during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which is impossible to backdate four centuries earlier). The mention of race is also out of place, since race was inconceivable – in the form in which it was later used for anti-Semitic purposes – before the advent of positivist scientism during the late nineteenth century. Nonetheless, this idea of Luther as the forefather of Nazism circulated widely and still has a certain impact, especially in countries (such as Italy) where there is little or no familiarity with the history of the Reformation. However, this circulation can also be partly – albeit only partly! – explained by the instrumental distortion of some Lutheran texts, as carried out by Nazism. Yet Firpo himself recognized that, with his idea of the freedom of the individual conscience, Luther had created a limit to political authority: “[w]hat is left to the believer – intact, but exclusively interior – is the freedom of faith.” This formula, however, appears to be incorrect more than reductive, if one considers at least some of the passages in which Luther explains how to exercise this freedom of conscience. In fact, Luther not only wrote that “[t]he soul has been subtracted from the hands of all men and put only under the power of God,”⁴⁵ but also that “[i]f a prince was wrong, are his people forced to follow him? The answer is no. No one should act against justice and, instead, it is necessary to obey God (who wants justice) rather than men.”⁴⁶ This statement is hardly conducive to “a passive conformism to the will of the authority.” As already mentioned above, the circumstances that brought into being a league of German princes against the emperor showcase Luther’s position well – a position

 Luigi Firpo, Introduzione a Scritti politici di Martin Lutero, ed. G. Panzieri Saija (Torino: UTET, 1949), 9 – 22. All of the subsequent quotations refer to these pages.  WA 11:263, 14– 15.  WA 11:277, 28 – 31.

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which was also complex and subject to evolution. In fact, Luther was presented with a new issue in the context of the necessity – which was for him incontrovertible – of hierarchical obedience on the part of the inferior to the superior. From some jurists, who had also been asked to offer their opinions, he had learned that the authority of the emperor over the prince-electors did not simply consist of a hierarchical supremacy. Rather, the latter had their own political authority. Thus, in a certain way, the issue was resolved at the source. However, in that context, he also expressed important observations – for example, in the opening of this contribution: “[i]t is therefore necessary to make a stipulation, i. e., that the Christian is a twofold person, that is to say a believer and a politician. As a believer, he bears everything, he does not eat, he does not drink, he does not procreate. But as a politician, he is subject to the laws and the right,” and not only in the sense of mere obedience to them, as one could expect, but also actively, to make sure that they are respected: “he is forced to defend himself and preserve peace.” At this point in the argument, Luther still had in mind someone who holds political authority, since he has some power to “preserve peace.” However, the discussion immediately shifts to the common man: “[t]hus, if under my eyes someone wanted to rape a bride and some virgins, in that case I would want to postpone the Christian and make use of the political person; strangle him on the spot or call for help.”⁴⁷ Here, Luther seems to describe the personal responsibility of someone who, in witnessing a crime, must intervene to prevent it. However, it is also necessary to intertwine this text with the one in which he demands not obedience, but rather disobedience of a prince “who is wrong.” In conclusion, it is very difficult to trace back to Luther the “typical subjection of the individual” or his “irresponsibility in subordination.” However, what is especially interesting in this text for the purposes of this contribution is the short passage: “I would want to postpone the Christian and make use of the political person.” How better to express the dialectic intrinsic in the historical figure of the believer? It is not by chance that this is one of the few sentences of this Tischrede – which is long and entirely devoted to public issues – in which German is mixed to Latin. Who knows which is the language of the Christian and which the language of the “political person”? I would like to make another observation on the limits of obedience. According to Firpo, “power, even if ill-employed, keeps its entire legality and demands from the subject, in any case, total submission, active and fervent, in the specific practical sphere which it superintends. What is left to the believer – intact, but exclusively interior – is the freedom of faith.” However, as already mentioned, nowhere in Luther’s reflection is it possible to find this kind of division between internal and external (it exists as a distinction, but with another meaning). These two Christians who live side by side in each Christian make the Christian – as already pointed out – twofold but

 WA.TR 4:235, 32 ff, throughout.

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not double, ambivalent but not ambiguous. The reason is the fact that they both exist – fundamentally – in the same one and only conscience, which cannot be violated by any worldly authority. To say that, according to Luther, the conscience of the Christian must not necessarily obey the authority means allowing him a lot of room for maneuver – and not only of the interior kind. What is contained in the conscience is very broad: However, if – as often is the case – the civil authority wants to force a subject to do anything against the commandments of God or to prevent their fulfillment, the duty of obedience is lifted. Here it is necessary to mention how Saint Peter said to the leaders of the Jews: “[w]e must obey God rather than human beings”! He does not say that we should not obey human beings, because that would be false, but that we should obey God rather than human beings. Thus, if a prince wants to start a war for a clearly unjust cause, we should not follow nor support him […]. And the same applies if he ordered us to perjure, steal, lie, or do anything of the sort. In these cases, we must rather lose possessions, honor, body, and life and remain faithful to the commandment of God.⁴⁸

It is clear that the issue is not keeping faith intact in one’s soul in the face of abuse, but deciding day by day which behaviors are to be adopted in one’s life in society, in full personal responsibility, and – if necessary – also against an unjust authority.

9 A Sovereign Free From Any Norm? “In this doctrine, Erasmus’ human recommendation to the princes – i. e., that they should devote themselves to the good of the people – is resolved in a tendentious apology of absolutism and ends with freeing secular power from any tie: the sovereign is free from any norm, deaf to any advice, unaware of any right.” Let us go back to Firpo’s introduction as a template to clarify – by going back to the sources, albeit only briefly, for the sake of concision – some of Luther’s statements that appear to be clearly in contrast with this opinion, which is still widespread. In this case, moreover, it is an opinion that not only involves a judgment of Luther, but also generally of the power of the modern state, interpreted as unbound by any tie and, therefore, merely repressive. It is possible to start from the comparison with Erasmus, which is used here apropos the literary genre of the education of the princes, but is also applicable to many topics: reason, liberty, universalism, reformism, and so on. Never has the comparison been so unfounded as in this case, however: the third part of On Secular Authority is precisely a sort of manual for the Christian prince, divided into specific points (he must be considerate of his subjects; he must be wise in his choice of advisers; he must pay attention to how to deal with wrongdoers; he must submit to God; and so on), from which it is clear that Luther’s idea was indeed that the princes  WA 6:265, 15 ff.

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had to devote themselves to the good of the people. In Luther’s thought, this is what the politicians in charge share with all other Christians, even more so since every possible aspect of the behavior of the authority has its background in the religious vocation of life in the world. “Secular authority has become a member of the Christian body and, although it has a worldly task [leyplich, corporal], it still belongs to the spiritual state.”⁴⁹ The political power evoked by Luther is anything but lacking in limits. It is the opposite of absolute authority and of command outwith any control. In contrast, according to Firpo, “Luther’s political doctrine ends in hopeless squalor: the order in force is frozen in a stagnation that negates any progress, the elementary rights of human beings are unacknowledged, the prince is perpetually justified, if not as a wise governor, then as God’s punishment; the world is reduced to a horde of perverted, damned souls, harshly forced into exterior constrictions.” However, as already illustrated above, a first, fundamental limit to political power can be found in respect for the inner freedom of conscience. Political power cannot enter that freedom, meaning that power finds before itself a singularity worthy of respect, a singularity that renders it dialectic and changes it. Therefore, this limit contributes to its evolution. Another limit, so to speak, works in the same way: the duty of the authority to defend the life of the subjects by preventing crime and guaranteeing the life and possessions of those who are honest creates a tendential development in the functions of authority itself toward the improvement of society. Let us not forget that the complete title of the work in which Luther asked for the intervention of the secular princes in the reform of the Church was Plea to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation for the Improvement [Besserung] of the Christian Condition. For Luther, it was entirely possible that political will accompanied by righteous reason could improve not only the Church, but also the conditions of the lives of its subjects, as in the abolition of penury and the reform of education. In On Secular Authority, he wrote: “[a] prince must [say]: I want to help my subjects, fulfilling my office, I want to protect them, I want to listen to them, defend them and govern them to the only purpose that they, and not I, receive advantage and benefit.”⁵⁰ The last quotation, which refers in general to all the tasks of political authority, seems particularly suitable in describing what Luther saw as the appropriate relationship between power (of the princes or of governments in general) and the Church. One of the negative judgments that it often passed on Luther’s Reformation, usually by comparing it to the Swiss one, is that it started a new form of such relationships – the Church “of state.” This is a widely used argument, but once again, for the sake of simplicity, let us take Firpo’s example into consideration: “Once the Catholic hierarchies fell, the concentration of the two powers, which Luther had con-

 WA 6:410, 3.  WA 11:273, 18 – 20.

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demned with very harsh words in the clergymen, is reconstructed inversely; the delegation of priesthood paves the path to the conferring of religious authority on secular princes, who then aspired to an absolutism that was even more taxing since it was freed from any contrast with an independent religious authority.” Once again, the word absolutism is used, linked in this case with a weakening of ecclesiastical institutions. The explanation for this is found in Luther’s “opportunistic concerns” and in the “necessity to find an authoritative support for the by-now-rampant movement of the Reformation.” It is certainly true that Luther, regardless of his own vehemence, was able to assess the importance of the assistance authority could render (or, on the contrary, of the damage it could do) to his reformatory movement in the territories in which it was developing. The problem is in the necessity of distinguishing between such assistance – including the following interventions – and a confusion between or even fusion of the two spheres. The task of defending the Church had always been entrusted to political power – during the same years, this also applied also to Heinrich Bullinger’s Zurich and to Calvin’s Geneva. However, this does not at all mean that the issue was entirely focused, as Firpo wrote, on the “codification of the intervention of the princes in religious matters.” Instead, it concentrated on the application of the law and, in the case of the Lutheran territories, on the management and administration of finances. After ecclesiastical possessions were confiscated by secular authority, the Evangelical Church had nothing more on which to count for its sustenance. How could the Church support pastors? How could it erect and maintain its buildings? How could it found new schools? Luther repeatedly recommended that assets for these purposes should be found in the revenues of such possessions. He also tried to convince believers to contribute to the support of pastors, but he was repeatedly disappointed. It was also due to this lack of interest that, a few months before his death, he even considered leaving Wittenberg. Fundamentally, the pastors and the bishops – but also the sacristans and the teachers – whose salary was paid through public funds, became akin to state officers. In this sense, the prince appointed them, just like an employee who is entered on an entrepreneur’s payroll. It was the Church, however, that nominated them – if not in the democratic ways that Luther had envisioned in 1523 (with the assembly of the local church that, once gathered in prayer, decided who to summon to preach the word), certainly on the basis of the decisions of pastors, bishops, and theologians. When it comes to theology, it is even less possible to speak of an “authority in religious matters” conferred on the princes. The Church “of state” of the Lutheran reform suffered less influence, both in the contents of faith and on ethical matters, than is usually reciprocally experienced by similar institutions in regimes that are formally separatist.

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10 Dialectic Versus Community According to Luther, power moves through right, and the law and its exercise is a continuous mediation with the latter: “[a] prince must firmly hold both right and the sword.” Moreover, everything must be conducted under the command of reason, which for Luther was the “righteous reason” invoked in Worms, when he had asked to be confuted with it, and which applied to the reading of the biblical text – a responsible and faithful reason. The sentence in On Secular Authority continues as follows: “and [a prince must] distinguish with his own reason [vernunnft] when and where the law must be rigidly applied or mitigated, so that reason always reigns on right in its entirety and is always the supreme law and the lord of all right.”⁵¹ Power and right are born together. Therefore, it is not an authority outside of any control, since it is the very reason of right that limits the sovereign’s will. Right and sword together represent the start of the mediation from which the first embryos of modern civilization were conceived and which questions once again the organic character of medieval communities. It is certainly correct to speak of a concentration of power, when compared to the articulations of medieval Christianity: the intermediate and corporative barriers collapsed (at least in the theoretical model, while in practice they only began to undergo transformations that would eventually bring them to collapse) – that is, the barriers within which the communal accumulations of medieval societies were organized and enclosed. What was under discussion, then, was indeed the organic character of the corpus christianum: power and the individual must face one another. The latter, however, is not part of the “horde of perverted, damned souls” evoked by Firpo. According to Luther, the sinner is not damned, but rather justified by grace, which makes him or her free and responsible. It is with these singular freedoms and responsibilities that political power enters into a relationship directly, almost mirroring the end of the mediation that, since the very beginning, Luther had proclaimed to be useless and, in reality, harmful for the relationship between humankind and God. Indeed, the singular convergence of the complex passage from medieval society to the modern one of a secular historian such as Firpo and, many years later, of a Catholic jurist such as Paolo Grossi is very impressive. The medieval world – which is “incredibly articulated and multifaceted, certainly alluvial due to the incessant generation, integration, stratification of the most diverse communal dimensions, where the individual is an abstraction since the singular is only conceivable within the firm network of relationships offered by those dimensions” – ends, and “the old overlapping and integration of sources – laws, customs, doctrinal opinions, sentences, praxis – gives way to the singular source represented by the will of the Prince.”⁵² In conclusion, the modern era is a dissolution of the organic societies  WA 11:272, 13 ff.  Paolo Grossi, Mitologie giuridiche della modernità (Milan: Giuffrè, 2007), 21 and 33.

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that guaranteed a limit to power. However, this nostalgia for the balanced complexity of the past does not seem to reckon with the fact that confessional pluralism is born within the European conscience with the Reformation and the modern age, and that in it all the dynamics of future civil society take root and multiply. As a result of Luther’s preaching, the individual and the authority are placed in front of one another, indeed, because Luther had previously placed the individual coram Deo – alone, without mediators – and from that condition, the individual had known their sin and their salvation, and therefore themself and their vocation in the world. However, putting individuals before power does not simply mean crushing them, but also placing the two poles in a dialectic exchange: power is indeed power over life, but it is also such because it must preserve life. Similarly, God judges, but also raises up again. It is from this tension, and certainly not from the “alluvial” stratification of medieval communities, that modern society is born. New articulations would replace Luther’s over time: representativeness, participation, and finally constitutionalization and beyond. In the meantime, however, five hundred years earlier, when all was yet to happen, Luther taught his listeners to respect authority but not to fear power. It can hardly be denied that this approach is already forward-looking: it is surely a difficult period of transition, but it is also a moment loaded with new potential. In an essay that starts from a completely different perspective from the two quoted above, Gabriella Cotta suggests a comparison with Hobbes’ model: she identifies theological pessimism in Luther and anthropological pessimism in Hobbes, but both with an interest in the defense of human life. This connection with the model that would later inaugurate the modern age seems to be more firmly founded in the Lutheran sources: “The metaphysics of will, such as is outlined by Luther and founded on the unbridgeable and oppositive gap existing between divine and human will, foretells and explains what will later be gathered and fulfilled by Hobbes […] It is precisely this point that represents the pivot that allows [us] to assess the influence of Luther on the perspectives of ‘modern’ politics.”⁵³

 Gabriella Cotta, La nascita dell’individualismo politico. Lutero e la politica della modernità (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 60.

Bradley Arthur Peterson

Luther and Monasticism Martin Luther’s position on monasticism, like much of his theology, was a response to a practical matter. Though he first critiqued monasticism generally in his treatises of 1520, he only undertook a thorough examination of monastic vows in 1521, after his university colleagues at Wittenberg, Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt and Philipp Melanchthon, had responded with their own solutions to a particular case of vows being broken. The product was Luther’s De votis monasticis (Of Monastic Vows).¹ Luther’s critique, like those of Carlstadt and Melanchthon, was different from earlier critiques. Though the Wittenberg reformers noted abuses in the practice of monasticism as earlier critics had, they focused specifically on the question of whether perpetual, binding vows were valid theologically. However, unlike Carlstadt and Melanchthon, Luther maintained the validity of vows, but identified when they could not – and therefore should not – be observed. Despite express sympathy for religious life, Luther mistrusted monasticism’s appearance of superior holiness and rejected perpetual, binding vows.

1 Luther in 1520 In 1520, Luther elaborated his call for reform of the church in three major treatises, two of which directly address monasticism. Though an analysis of monasticism and its vows was not his project, we can draw a picture of Luther’s first public – if not systematically examined – position on monasticism.

1.1 An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation In An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation,² Luther lists abuses of church practice and the reforms necessary to correct them. There are hints at the rejection of good works for justification, but overtly he only critiques practice. Among his wide-ranging critiques, he makes three complaints about monastic life as it was then lived: the mendicants’ wandering and begging, the restriction of choice of confessor for convent members, and the multiplication of what he sees as insincere intercessory and votive masses. According to Luther, the mendicant orders were by definition con-

 WA 8:573 – 669. For the English translations given, I quote LW 44:251– 400. All other translations are my own.  WA 6:404– 69. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-016

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trary to the good order of both the local church and the local town. The mendicants’ pastoral work conflicted with that of the secular parish, and their begging, like that of a pilgrim, diverted alms from a town’s own poor. Mendicancy was both divisive and burdensome for the local community, and was thus to be eliminated. Monastics – like anyone else – were to earn their own livelihood, whether by physical or pastoral work. Similarly, those not observing poverty but entitled to a benefice were to content themselves with only one. However, Luther also disparaged excessive burdens on the members of convents. He decried as tyrannical monastic superiors’ reservation of absolution to themselves for certain sins. Though his reasoning and recommended solution are not nuanced, they indicate Luther’s concern for limits to the obedience a superior can exact from convent members. Luther’s greatest complaint is the excessive number of intercessory and votive masses that funded so many convents. His principal critique is that they are insincere, rapidly recited simply for the income, and that they are falsely held to benefit those for whom they are celebrated. This latter critique is theological but not expressly based on a rejection of justification by good works. Rather, it is based only on a rejection of third-party benefit of the sacrament. Luther’s recommendation is the consolidation of such masses into a single sincere commemoration: It would be preferable to me, surely more pleasing to God and much better, that a chapter, church, or monastery would combine all their yearly masses and vigils in one and hold a correct vigil and mass with heartfelt sincerity, devotion, and faith on one day for all of their benefactors, than that they hold their thousands and thousands of vigils every year, for each benefactor a special vigil, without any such devotion and faith. O dear Christians, God is not interested in the quantity, but rather the quality of prayer.³

In addition to these critiques and recommended corrections, Luther also – though briefly – identifies one good purpose that convents can serve. While critiquing masses said for income, he explicitly says he is not referring to endowments created for the maintenance of nobles’ children: However, I speak here not of the old chapters and collegiate churches, which were, without doubt, founded for the purpose that, whereas according to the custom of the German folk, not every child of noble inheritance can hold a territory and govern, they should be cared for in these same chapters, and there should freely serve God, study, and become and prepare learned people. I speak of the new chapters, which have been founded only for prayer and

 “Es were mir lieber, ja got angenehmer und viel besser, das ein stifft, kirche odder kloster alle yhre jerliche meß und vigilien auff einen hauffen nehmen, und hielten einen tag ein rechte Vigilien und Messe mit hertzlichem ernst, andacht unnd glauben fur alle yhre wolthater, dan das sie yhr tausent und tausent alle Jar einem yglichenn eine beßondere hielten on solch andacht und glauben. O lieben Christen, es ligt got nicht an viel, ßondern an wol betten;” WA 6:444– 45.

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the holding of mass, through which example also the old chapters become burdened with the same prayer and masses, so that these same are also of no use or of very little.⁴

Note that the emphasis here is on the benefit to a specific social rank, not on the cause of Christian formation or education, as elsewhere in the treatise. Interestingly, this is possibly the only mention of monasticism as a program useful to the nobility among the writings of the Reformers. In this same work, Luther turns his attention to vows, specifically the vow of chastity.⁵ Though he is primarily concerned with the secular clergy, he turns briefly to monastic chastity, making his famous distinction between secular priests and vowed monastics. Luther says that, since the vow of chastity is of human rather than divine origin, the church ought not to require it for the priesthood – the divinely instituted ministry of word and sacraments. Chastity has been exacted from priests quite incidentally to their vocation to ministry. Monks and nuns, by contrast, have intentionally opted for chastity as a particular way of life, though one not instituted by God. But, because their vow is purely voluntary, they should continue its observance. However, Luther expressly recommends against making perpetual monastic vows, even if voluntary. Rather, convents should return to what Luther claims to be their origin. This is the second good purpose for a convent: schools for Christian formation and education, where members are free to enter the convent and observe its way of life for a period of time and just as free to leave again when called to another vocation, especially that of church leadership and preaching – and all without constraint. Interestingly, directly after mentioning church leadership and preaching, Luther holds up the imperial chapter of noble canonesses at Quedlinburg as a good example of a convent as such a school (rather than as an example of a residence for nobles), though its members, being women, were not eligible for the ministry: “Then what were chapters and monasteries other than Christian schools wherein one taught scripture and morality according to Christian knowledge, and raised up people to govern and preach? As we read that Saint Agnes went to school, and as we still see in some women’s convents, such as Quedlinburg and the like.”⁶

 “Ich rede aber hie mit nicht von den alten stifftenn unnd thumen, wilch on zweyffel darauff sein gestifft, das, die weyl nit ein yeglich kind vom Adel Erbs besitzer und regierer sein sol nach deutscher nation sitten, in den selben stifften mocht vorsorgt werden, und al da got frey dienen, studirn, und geleret leut werden unnd machen. Ich rede von den newen stifften, die nur auff gepet und meßhalten gestifft sein, durch wilcher exempel auch die alten mit gleychem gepet und Messen beschweeret werden, das die selben kein nutz sein odder gar wenig;” WA 6:452.  Luther uses the terms “keusch” and “keuschheit.”  “Dan was sein stifft und kloster anders geweßen, den Christliche schulenn, darynnen man leret schrifft unnd zucht nach Christlicher weyße, unnd leut auff ertzog, zu regieren unnd predigen? wie wir leßen, das sanct Agnes in die schule gieng, und noch sehen in etlichenn frawen klostern, als zu Quedlingborg unnd der gleychen;” WA 6:439 – 40.

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I do not suggest that Luther is speaking as some sort of “feminist ahead of his time” here. But the proximity of the two sentences in his flow of thought does strike the modern reader as unexpected. Certainly, it speaks highly of the way of life of the canonesses at Quedlinburg, whose prince-abbesses did govern church structures and, one might say, “preached” in their writings, governance, and example of life. Luther tellingly grieves the overemphasis on vows in monasticism, which, he says, have imprisoned convent members and become more esteemed than baptismal vows. He further claims that vows are not kept in any case, notably the vow of chastity. Finally, Luther observes, chastity is not scriptural: Christ did not command it, and Christ and Paul both said the gift of celibacy was given only to a few. Though Luther is harshest to the mendicant orders – he would like to see them consolidated and the number of their houses radically reduced, if not dissolved altogether –, his critiques apply to convent life generally.

1.2 De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae In De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae,⁷ Luther concerns himself with the sacraments. He brings up the question of monastic vows only as part of his discussion of baptism. Here Luther identifies, first, the divine promise of salvation and, second, faith in that promise as the necessary elements for effective baptism. Further, for the goal of salvation, baptism washes away sin, incorporates the baptized into death and resurrection, and also sets them free from any requirement or law in order to devote themselves to baptism alone – that is to say, to death and resurrection.⁸ This liberation from any other requirement is Luther’s springboard for his discussion of vows. At first, Luther does not apparently address monastic vows, but declares that vows of any sort should be abolished or ignored because they detract from baptism and deny its value. Vows are law, obligation, and therefore contradict and supplant faith’s rightful place. Luther calls vows repugnant to Christian life and says they are “a sort of ceremonial law and human tradition or presumption, from which the church has been freed through baptism.”⁹ Next, however, Luther does imply a discussion of monastic vows when he asserts that their contents are not scriptural; he particularly names perpetual chastity, obedience, and poverty, the three gospel counsels that constituted traditional monastic vows. (Notably, he does not here further explain the status of these counsels or comment on the traditional distinction between them and commandments, which apply to everyone.) He makes a concession for the freedom to make vows: “For particular works are brought about by the Spirit in a few, which works should by no means be proclaimed as a general ex WA 6:497– 573.  “id est, morti et resurrection;” WA 6:535.  “lex quaedam ceremonialis et humana traditio seu presumptio, a qua Ecclesia per baptismum liberata est;” WA 6:540.

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ample or mode of life.”¹⁰ Private vows might be made, as contrasted with publicly established and instituted vows. In the event, however, he urges all “who want to be more certain of being saved to hold themselves back from all vows, especially from great or permanent vows,”¹¹ as such vows are not found in Scripture, and only works done in faith please God. Luther closes his passage on baptism by saying: “Truly, for the meantime, this is enough about baptism and its freedom. At the right time, vows shall be more fully treated, as, truth be told, they are exceedingly in need of treatment.”¹² In his publications of 1520, we see that Luther’s public position on monasticism is already a negative one: monasticism is not based in Scripture; it is prone to become a form of self-justification and to debase the value of baptism; it is so poorly practiced that in most cases it should be eliminated. However, he explicitly allows that it might be reformed, and even praises the canonesses of Quedlinburg (who, as canonesses, made no perpetual vows) as a positive example.

2 Carlstadt, Melanchthon, and Luther in 1521 In 1520, a controversy brought the issue of vows to the attention of both Melanchthon and Carlstadt. Three priests in nearby dioceses had married, and their bishops sought to take them into custody for breaking their ordination vows. One of them, Bartholomaeus Bernhardi, a former student of Luther’s, lived within the political jurisdiction of Elector Frederick of Ernestine Saxony, Luther’s protector. Carlstadt undertook a defense of his actions. In June 1521, he published a set of seven theses for disputation on celibacy and then expanded it to a larger work, titled Super coelibatu monachatu et viduitate axiomata perpensa vvittenbergae (Assessments of Celibacy, Monasticism, and Widowhood Considered at Wittenberg); he argued that all priests should be married and, citing Scripture, that no one under sixty should be permitted to take up monastic life, nor should monks and nuns under sixty be prohibited from marrying. He did not invalidate vows of celibacy,¹³ whether clerical or monastic, in any way. Rather, he proposed a hierarchy of sin: it remained a sin to transgress one’s vow by marrying, but doing so avoided the greater sin of sexual misconduct.¹⁴

 “Opera enim quaedam spiritus in paucis operatur, quae in exemplum aut vivendi modum nequaquam sunt vocanda;” WA 6:540.  “qui volunt securius salvi fieri, ut sibi ab omnibus votis, praesertim magnis et perpetuis, temperent;” WA 6:540.  “Verum haec interim de Baptismo et libertate eius satis. Suo forte venient tempore vota latius tractanda, ut sunt revera tractatu vehementer necessaria;” WA 6:543.  Carlstadt opts for the term “coelibatus,” not “castitas.”  E.J. Furcha, ed. and trans., The Essential Carlstadt: Fifteen Tracts (Waterloo: Herald, 1995), 51.

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Instead of turning Bernhardi over to the bishop, Elector Frederick convened a commission to review the case. Melanchthon addressed a brief to the commission defending the priest, which also appeared in June.¹⁵ Although this defense – as well as his later German version, published in 1522, Das die preester eeweyber nemen mögen und sollen (That Priests May and Should Take Wives) – addressed only clerical and not monastic vows, his reasoning could apply to both: Melanchthon took the position that Bernhardi was unable to keep his vow because of human weakness, and that even canon law made exceptions for such cases where a vow could not be kept.¹⁶ Thus both reformers defended the priests’ decisions to marry, though on different grounds.¹⁷ Both of these documents were intended for specific audiences and uses, but later that same year both reformers published works intentionally written for wider publication: Melanchthon had published the first of several editions of his Loci communes (Common Topics)¹⁸ in April, and Carlstadt would publish Von gelubden unterrichtung (Instruction on Vows)¹⁹ in November. However, in letters written in August and September 1521,²⁰ Luther tells Melanchthon that he has not been satisfied with either Carlstadt’s or Melanchthon’s reasoning and is himself not sure how monastic vows might be voided, though this is his goal: “For I, too, would want to help the monks and nuns more than anything else, so

 CR 1:421– 22.  James Atkinson’s introduction to Luther’s De votis monasticis, LW 44:245. See also 44:245 – 49 and Manschreck in Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: Loci communes 1555, ed. and trans. Clyde L. Manschreck (New York, 1965), 70 – 81. I have not had access to a published version of Super coelibatu monachatu et viduitate axiomata perpensa vvittembergae, though Freys and Barge identify four manuscripts in German archives (Verzeichnis der gedruckten Schriften des Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, ed. E. Freys and H. Barge [Nieuwkoop, 1965], 32– 35), nor of Melanchthon’s Das die preester eeweyber nemen mögen und sollen, though Melanchthon’s Latin documents surrounding the controversy – including a later Latin translation of Das die preester…– are found in CR 1:418 – 42.  Interestingly, both reformers also operated on the same presumption that the men they defended were not able to choose to abide by their vows. Both presumed that sexual drive would compel the priests, if they were not allowed to marry, to break their vows by means of some unacceptable sexual conduct. For acceptance of either breaking a vow as a lesser sin (Carlstadt) or eliminating a vow by blanket dispensation (Melanchthon), in order to avoid sexual misconduct, presumes that a person’s sexual drive (or at least that of the men in question) is not in itself sinful, is normal, and is not a matter of conscious choice or control. Whether this presumption indicates a cultural change in the understanding of human nature in the early 1500s – or an issue of life-stage development in the reformers’ lives (Melanchthon would himself marry in November) – need not be addressed here.  CR 21:81– 227.  The complete title is Von gelubden unterrichtung Andres B: von Carolstadt Doctor Auslegung des XXX. capitel Numeri, wilches von gelubden redet. Furcha translates this as Instruction by Dr. Andreas Bodenstein from Karlstadt: Exposition of Numbers 30 which Speaks of Vows. I quote from this English translation; see Furcha, The Essential Carlstadt, 52– 99.  Two letters to Melanchthon: WA.B 2:370 – 72; 373 – 78; and 382– 86.

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greatly do I pity these wretched men, boys, and girls vexed by pollutions and desires.”²¹ In October 1521, Luther published 280 theses on monastic vows²² By the end of the year, he had completed De votis monasticis, a rigorous examination of monastic vows that was published in Latin in January or February 1522, with a second, improved edition appearing in June and a German translation following no later than July.²³ As in Carlstadt’s and Melanchthon’s public works, the practical agenda of eliminating the bonds of monastic vows is the goal from the beginning. However, in Luther’s work, there is some sense that he is willing to go where his reasoning may lead him.

2.1 Carlstadt: Von gelubden unterrichtung Carlstadt’s Von gelubden unterrichtung ²⁴ represents his most complete thought on monastic vows – certainly, it was his final statement on the topic before leaving Wittenberg in 1523. However, Carlstadt rather haphazardly mixes statements that vows remain valid with other statements that imply a shift toward declaring them invalid, with an endorsement of marriage, and with a critique of monastic prayer practice. Further, though he tells the reader what vows should be, he is more occupied with what they should not be. His beginning seems logical, and he offers a positive description of vows. He says that correct vows are made only to God – not to other gods or creatures, and especially not to saints, for making vows to saints runs the risk of idolatry – and they should be scriptural. Without illustrative positive examples, however, these descriptions remain elusive and vague. Carlstadt more clearly recommends marriage. As in his earlier theses on the topic, Carlstadt asserts that the vow of celibacy must be broken if doing so avoids a greater sin, but that the vow remains valid. Breaking the vow of chastity in order to channel one’s sexual drive into married life is a small wrong compared to leading impure lives. Further, if one learns after making a vow that what one vowed is wrong, the vow is still valid, but one may no longer carry out the vow, once it is found to be evil. Thus Carlstadt not only reprises his hierarchy of sins, he also prescribes the corrective action – in this case, marriage – and the penalty, remorse and offering of alms. But Carlstadt does not require the breaking of the vow because the vow is contrary to God’s will and thus displeasing to God – which we might assume, since Carl-

 “Vellem enim et ego monachis et monialibus succurrere, ut nihil aliud aeque. Adeo me miseret miserabilium hominum, pollutionibus et uredinibus vexatorum iuvenum et puellarum;” WA.B 2:371.  Luther’s Themata de votis, WA 8.323 – 35.  See the editors’ introduction, WA 8.565 – 66.  See footnote 19 above.

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stadt has declared chastity is a divine gift, not something one is able to choose²⁵– nor because it is contrary to the divine origin of marriage and the command to propagate offspring, though these are reasons to enjoin people not to make new vows of celibacy. Rather, it is the avoidance of the greater sin that demands the lesser. Similarly, Carlstadt critiques any vow the fulfillment of which would harm or neglect one’s neighbor. Again, the avoidance of the greater sin demands the lesser – that is, the breaking of the vow. However, here Carlstadt expressly adds that, in this case, God does not consent to the vow. But if God does not consent to the vow, is it valid? Von gelubden unterrichtung seems to reflect an evolving position on vows for Carlstadt. As in his earlier theses, he explicitly asserts that vows are valid, but he begins to move away from a position of absolute validity. During the course of his discussion of vows of celibacy, Carlstadt identifies certain formal requirements for the validity of vows. He is apparently attempting to expand the definition of invalid vows. Carlstadt even says he would like to assume that all vows are defective, unless a wise pastor or bishop would find that they were sincerely made. But he asserts there are no such wise clergy. Finally, he suggests that no vow cannot be revoked, though revocation might require some cost. He defends the possibility of redeeming one’s self or one’s children (minors) from monastic vows. He cites the redemption of first-born males and the redeeming of one’s own soul from a vow, as described in Scripture.

2.2 Melancthon: Loci Communes In 1520, Melanchthon’s students published notes from his lectures on Scripture. Known as the Lucubratiuncula,²⁶ the work shows that Melanchthon was already considering the question of the distinction between counsels and commandments. He asserts that Christ’s words in Matthew 5 are indeed commandments – and thus required of all – and are not optional counsels for some who wish to strive for greater perfection, as earlier theologies had designated them. Melanchthon identifies one exception. He grants that the endorsement of virginity²⁷ in Matt 19:12 and 1 Cor 7:25 is not a commandment, is only for those called to it, and does not in any way constitute a more perfect life. Thus he grants virginity status as a counsel, but he has also redefined “counsel.”

 Furcha, The Essential Carlstadt, 67. Here the presumption about sexual drive in his earlier work is made explicit.  CR 21:11– 48. I have not found any comment on why this name came to be used. The best translation I would offer is Lamplight Studies – perhaps referring to the time of day when the students assembled the topics.  The student reconstruction uses the term “virginitas.”

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The next year, Melanchthon published the first edition of his systematic treatment of theology, the Loci communes. ²⁸ The work includes two sections, titled De consiliis (Of Counsels) and De monachorum votis (Of Monks’ Vows). As in the Lucubratiuncula, Melanchthon rejects a category of optional counsels, but reserves the term “counsel” for the single exception of chastity,²⁹ arguing that both Jesus and Paul expressly teach that only some are called to chastity and that Paul counsels marriage as much as he does chastity – though he stops short of calling marriage a “counsel.” Melanchthon now adds the practical claim that it is easier to avoid the sin of adultery – for the urge is as much a sin as the act – by being married than by being single and chaste. The implication is that in marriage, sexual drive can be focused on one’s marriage partner. Melanchthon also addresses the making of monastic vows. He reasons as follows: first, God only approves of what God has ordered: the commandments. Thus anything pleasing to God is already required, and to make a vow of it would be redundant. Second, Scripture neither requires nor recommends vows; though Mosaic law permits them, it does not require them. The gospel ignores them in its freedom of the spirit – Melanchthon even says that making vows contradicts freedom more than it contradicts faith. Thus, at best, vows are redundant; at worst, they injure freedom.³⁰ In the later Latin editions of 1535³¹ and 1543,³² Melanchthon reorganizes his text and revises his thoughts on chastity. He now rejects any distinction between commandments and counsels; even chastity is now a commandment. Earlier, Melanchthon had classified chastity as the only remaining “counsel,” appropriate only for those to whom the gift for it had been given. Now he redefines it. In 1535 he says, “However, chastity describes not only virgins, but also spouses.”³³ And in 1543, he makes it even clearer: “However, chastity is either marital intimacy or the purity of the celibate life among those who are fit for celibacy because of immature age, or in those who are endowed with an exceptional gift.”³⁴ Since, by this definition, chastity now applies to all – either as celibacy in the single state or as sexual exclusivity in marriage –, it ranks as a commandment. This revision systematically reclassifies all “counsels” as commandments for Mel-

 CR 21:81– 227.  Melancthon usually uses the term “castitas” in Loci communes.  Melanchthon includes a section laying out his multivalent theology of Christian freedom only in later editions. For my present purposes, elucidating the distinctions between Melanchthon’s and Luther’s constructions of Christian freedom is not necessary.  CR 21:333 – 558  CR 21:601– 1106. This edition is interesting, as Melanchthon departs from his previous practice of drawing citations exclusively from Scripture and argues also from classical myths, history, and philosophy; see especially the section De castitate, CR 21:729.  “Est autem castitas non solum virginum, sed etiam coniugum;” CR 21:411.  “Castitas autem est aut consuetudo coniugalis aut puritas vitae coelibis in his, qui sunt idonei ad coelibatum, ut in aetate immatura, aut in iis, qui singulari dono praediti sunt;” CR 21:729.

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anchthon. (The German version of 1555 follows the arguments of 1543 without further development.)

2.3 Luther: De votis monasticis Shortly after the beginning of September 1521, Luther hit upon a simple solution, which he had hoped for, to the predicament of monks and nuns unsuited to their vows.³⁵ His solution avoided Carlstadt’s presumption that all vows were valid, Melanchthon’s conclusion that all vows were invalid (or, at least, voidable), and even his own earlier position that monastic vows were valid – in contrast to clerical vows – because they were voluntary. Rather, Luther now asked which vows – that is, what kind of vows – were valid and which were not: “In dispute is not whether a vow is to be kept, but which vows are real vows.”³⁶ Luther begins by conceding that the making and observing of vows is scripturally warranted. He then proceeds to examine the making and observance of the monastic vows of his time – their attributes (binding, perpetual) as well as their traditional contents (poverty, obedience, and chastity). He examines them in the light of Scripture, the doctrines of justification and freedom, the commandments, and reason. His critiques across these particular categories can be summarized in two parts. First, if vows are understood as earning justification, they are contrary to both justifying faith and the ensuing freedom of a Christian. Second, as then understood and practiced, their contents would also be also contrary to the will of God. On these two counts, monastic vows – in contrast to other vows – were undeniably invalid.

2.3.1 Intent Contrary to Faith and Freedom Luther begins with his Evangelical axioms that justification comes from faith in Christ’s work and promises alone, and that thereby the faithful are liberated from bondage to the letter of the law for free service in the spirit of the law. Necessarily, these two doctrines invalidate and prohibit any vow made and observed to earn or merit justification – for doing so would be contrary to faith – and also any vow that is absolutely binding or lifelong – for such would be contrary to freedom. Though Luther unfolds this thinking quite extensively over two sections – and in numerous iterations and reprises in the rest of the document –, his theological critique of monastic vows may be summarized in two quotations:  Luther expresses his dissatisfaction with Carlstadt’s and Melanchthon’s approaches to monastic vows and the beginnings of his own position on the validity of vows in letters dated August 1, 3, 6, and September 9, 1521. See WA.B 2.370 – 78, 382– 86..  “Non disputari, sitne prestandum votum, sed quae vota vere vota sint;” WA 8:577.

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Those therefore who make vows in this belief – that through this way of life they may become pious and saved, erase sins, and grow rich in good works – is it not obvious that they are impious, are Jews, stray from the faith, indeed blaspheme and deny the faith? So they attribute to law and to their works, that which rightly belongs to faith alone.³⁷

And although Luther finds this first argument adequate on its own to void and repudiate most vows, he continues: “Therefore let us at last finish this disputation by concluding that poverty, obedience, chastity can be observed for life, but cannot be vowed, taught, or exacted. For Gospel freedom remains intact in observing these things, but in teaching, vowing or exacting them it is lost.”³⁸ Further, Luther tells us, the making and observing of vows for justifying merit is not only contrary to the gospel, but also to the commandments. In the section Vota adversari praeceptis dei (That Vows are Contrary to God’s Commandment), Luther asserts that trusting one’s own vows, observance, and merit for justification replaces Christ as savior and thereby constitutes idolatry. All of these arguments mean not only that such vows may be abandoned, but that they must be abandoned – even if the contents of the vow are good. For, in as much as they deny the true efficacy of faith, oppose freedom, and constitute idolatry, they are dangerous to the souls of those who made them. Thus most monks and nuns are living in a heretical state, even though Luther grants that sometimes vows are made, not on the basis of a desire for merit, but freely and in justifying faith: “Sometimes [vows] are made by Christ within us in the spirit of freedom, so they are vowed and observed freely, and not that they might make satisfaction for sins, nor that they might strive for either righteousness or salvation.”³⁹ While elaborating this theological critique, Luther also criticizes the error of transfer of merit. He complains about outright sales of merit: “For they sell and trade their good works, merits and brotherhoods to others, as if they were such persons, who not only traveled by a better path, but who also could – out of their abundance – save others along with themselves.”⁴⁰ Luther also complains that even monastic effects have become would-be talismans of salvation:

 “Qui ergo ea opinione vovent, ut per hoc vitae genus boni et salvi fiant, peccata deleant et operibus bonis ditescant, nonne manifestum est, impios et Iudaeos esse, a fide apostatare, im[m]o fidem blasphemare et abnegare? dum hoc tribuunt legibus et operibus suis, quod proprie solius fidei est;” WA 8:595.  “Finiamus ergo tandem hanc disputationem concludendo, quod paupertas, obedientia, castitas perpetuo servari potest, voveri, doceri, exigi non potest. Quia in servando manet libertas Euangelica, in docendo, vovendo, exigendo non manet;” WA 8:616.  “Aliquando fiunt per Christum in nobis spiritu libertatis, dum voventur et servantur gratis, ut nec peccati per ea satisfiat, nec iustitia nec salus quaeratur;” WA 8:609.  “Vendunt enim et communicant sua bona opera, merita et fraternitates aliis, quasi ii sint, qui non solum meliore via incedant, sed et ex abundantia sua alios quoque secum salvos facer possint;” WA 8:598.

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Most lately they have come to the extreme of insanity in promising entrance into heaven to the dying, if they would put on the cowl. What is an abomination, if not this? You will see therefore, indeed you will perceive, not only that they have turned from the faith, but that even the whole world has been seduced by their abominable lies. For one’s own faith is the essential and the sufficient requisite for the remission of sins and for salvation.⁴¹

2.3.2 Contents Contrary to God’s Will Luther’s approach to the contents of the three traditional monastic vows – poverty, obedience, and chastity – is in effect the same as his critique in his treatises of 1520. This critique is found principally in the first section, Vota non niti verbo dei, immo adversari verbo dei (That Vows Do Not Rest on the Word of God, but Rather Oppose the Word of God), and the last two, Vota adversari praeceptis dei (That Vows are Contrary to the Commandments of God) and Adversari rationi monasticen (That Monasticism is Contrary to Reason). He again declares that poverty and obedience are actually commandments – incumbent upon all – and not optional “counsels.” Furthermore, the manner in which monastics observe poverty and obedience is actually contrary to what God has commanded in Scripture, and therefore these forms should be repudiated and replaced by Evangelical forms. However, Luther makes two interesting moves in De votis monasticis. First, he seems to reclassify chastity as a commandment (as Melanchthon had done explicitly in his 1535 edition of the Loci communes). Second, Luther embraces the criticism he had earlier posed of Melancthon’s position in the Loci communes of 1521, namely that the commandments could be rejected in the same way as vows. When Luther first refers to chastity in De votis monasticis, he explicitly says that it is only a “counsel,” not a commandment. By chastity he apparently means sexual abstinence, for he identifies the underlying commandment as the imperative non concupiscendum esse (not to lust). Luther also assures us that the counsel of chastity can be a useful choice for personal piety or ministry to others, by reducing the number of competing demands, and thus equates it with an unmarried state. Later, however, he seems to place chastity among the commandments, but now with multiple options for its observance: “If one cannot abstain […] let him take a wife, and the law of chastity will be easy for him.”⁴² Luther even calls marriage “the humbler chastity,”⁴³ so here he seems to have eliminated the category of counsel altogether, assuming a consistent approach to the three traditional vows. This move, however minor,

 “Denique nuper ad finem insaniae venerunt, promittentes hominibus introitum coeli, qui morituri cucullum induerint. Quid est abominatio, si haec non est abominatio? Vides ergo, im[m]o palpas hic, non modo discessisse eos a fide, sed mendaciis illorum abominandis seductum quoque et orbem. Sua enim cuiusque fides et necessaria et satis est ad remissionem peccatorum et ad salute;” WA 8:598 – 99.  “[S]i continere non potest […] ducat uxorem, et facilis erit ei lex castitatis;” WA 8:632.  “inferior castitas coniugii;” WA 8:654.

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strengthens Luther’s critique of claims for the superiority of monastic life over lay life as well as of the disruption of the church it engenders. The more interesting move, however, is Luther’s adaptation of what he previously had seen as a shortcoming in Melanchthon’s work. According to Luther, Melanchthon’s reasoning that a vow was invalid if one was unable to carry it out would lead to the invalidation of the commandments as well. And in a letter to Melanchthon, Luther calls his solution into question.⁴⁴ However, in De votis monasticis, he embraces the possible invalidation of both vows and commandments, but with a solution that safeguards the commandments’ status. For Luther, vows are a kind of law, of equal status with commandments, and he affirms that the commandments of God are immutable. However, Luther says, one is not always condemned for not executing a commandment. In his several examples, he shows how there is no sin of omission if one is impeded from executing a commandment – whether by external or internal forces. God does not demand what is impossible. Thus vows and even commandments are always conditional. He says “that vows always admit the impossibility, as does the outward execution of God’s commandments.”⁴⁵ Thus Luther is able to treat vows and commandments similarly. He avoids Melanchthon’s predicament of having rejected vows absolutely by allowing that commandments, like vows, are valid, but may not apply in all circumstances.

2.3.3 Rejection of Vows? In De votis monasticis Luther declares vows made in theological error invalid (even harmful!): “Monastic vows made and observed outside of faith are sins, and therefore are pointless, damnable, to be revoked and abolished or are to be vowed over again and observed in some other way.”⁴⁶ However, must all vows be revoked? No. The implication of declaring wrongly motivated vows invalid is, of course, the validity of rightly motivated vows. If a vow is made freely, with no doubt about justification by faith alone, then the vow is valid and should be kept. Luther offers an example in accordance with Evangelical doctrine: “I vow to you this kind of life, which in its nature neither is necessary nor can become necessary for justification.”⁴⁷ Further, gospel freedom prohibits a vow that binds perpetually or is irrevocable. No commandment, much less a freely made vow, can bind one who is justified by faith. Luther illustrates this point with another vow: “I vow to you to observe obedi-

 WA.B 2:383.  “vota semper excipere impossibilitatem, sicut et externa opera mandatorum dei;” WA 8:630.  “Vota monastica extra fidem facta et servata sunt peccata, per hoc et irrita, damnabilia, revocanda et omittenda, aut aliter denuo vovenda et servanda;” WA 8:593.  “Voveo tibi hoc vitae genus, quod natura sua non est necessarium nec fieri potest necessarium ad iustitiam;” WA 8:606.

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ence, chastity, poverty with the whole rule of St. Augustine until death in freedom, that is, I may change my mind, when it seems appropriate.”⁴⁸ By comparison, the content of vows is not so great an issue. Luther repeats his corrected interpretation of poverty, obedience, and chastity and adds a blanket dispensation from impossible vows and a hermeutic of love for conflicts between vows and commandments: “So if you should vow religious life, to live with others in common ways, with a conscience certain that you seek nothing from it advantageous or otherwise with God, but because either the situation has led to embracing this kind of life or to live thus seemed fit to you, and not that you are any better in your choice than one who has married or takes up farming – then you neither vow wrongly, nor live wrongly, as far as the question of a vow pertains. But if love were to compel you to leave, you will not persist in the vow without sin.”⁴⁹

Luther is particularly clear about the necessity for celibacy to be observed voluntarily and not by compulsion. He twice formulates vows with caveats (though confusingly using the term “castitas”): “I vow chastity for as long as it is possible; if, however, I am unable to keep it, then shall I be permitted to marry.”⁵⁰ And again: “I vow chastity as long as it is possible to do so without danger to body or soul.”⁵¹ He even defends the value of vows for a time – especially if convents are to be Christian schools.⁵² Again he suggests a formula for a vow: “I vow the rule for a time, at the discretion of the superior.”⁵³ As commandments are conditional, so vows are necessarily also conditional.

3 Sympathy for Religious Life In spite of Luther’s theological rejection of vows wrongly made and any notion of merit in vows, Luther defended convents and their members who were (at least ac-

 “Voveo tibi obedientiam, castitatem, paupertatem servandam cum tota regula S. Augustini usque ad mortem libere, hoc est, ut mutare possim, quando visum fuerit;” WA 8:614.  “Ita si voveas religionem, ut cum hominibus eiusmodi vivas, ea conscientia, ut nihil hinc commodi vel incommodi petas apud deum, sed quod vel casus hoc vitae genus obtulerit amplectendum, vel ita visum tibi sit vivere, nihilo te meliorem hinc arbitratus eo, qui vel uxorem duxerit, vel agriculturam apprehenderit, neque male voves neque male vivis, quantum ad voti rationem attinent. Nam quo casu charitas exigat cedere votum, non sine peccato in voto pertinax fueris;” WA 8:610.  “Voveo castitatem, quam diu possibilis fuerit, si autem servare nequiero, ut liceat nubere;” WA 8:633.  “Voveo castitatem, quantum fieri potest absque periculo corporis et animae;” WA 8:663.  Luther again states his belief that convents historically originated as schools for Christian formation and education, as he did in 1520. See WA 8:614– 15, 641.  “Voveo regulam temporaliter ad arbitrium praesidentis;” WA 8:641.

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cording to Luther) practicing an Evangelical faith in religious community.⁵⁴ He had already specifically endorsed the canonesses of Quedlinburg in An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation. In a letter of 1524, he recommended to three nuns who had sought his advice that they leave their convent; however, he also said that, if someday convents were reconceived in Evangelical freedom, those who had the grace and the desire for convent life could enter them.⁵⁵ In 1528, he assured the elderly Heino Gottschalk, the abbot of the Benedictine men at Oldenstadt near Uelzen, who had reformed his convent in accord with Evangelical doctrine, that the abbot should continue in the life of the convent.⁵⁶ And in the early 1530s, Luther reviewed and approved the customary⁵⁷ of the Brothers of the Common Life at Herford and defended them from forcible dissolution by the reforming pastors and city council at Herford. The correspondence includes numerous letters, including Luther’s own letters defending the brothers to the city council as well as letters to the prince-abbess of the imperial house of canonesses of Herford, to whom the Brothers of the Common Life were temporally subject.⁵⁸

4 Conclusion Luther’s position of 1521 is not one of complete rejection of vows or of monasticism, but neither is it one of easy approval. Vows, like commandments, are scriptural and therefore may be made, but they are neither binding in all circumstances nor binding in perpetuity. He remains convinced that monastic life, even if cautiously chosen and lived, can too easily lead one away from Evangelical faith and freedom. Luther considered the position he took in De votis monasticis as his definitive statement on monasticism and referred people to the document later in his life.

 For a more complete inventory of Luther’s convent-friendly incidental writings after 1521, see Johannes Halkenhäuser, Kirche und Kommunität. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zum Auftrag der kommunitären Bewegung in den Kirchen der Reformation, 2nd ed. (Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1978), 60 – 73; and Heinz-Meinolf Stamm, Luthers Stellung zum Ordensleben (Wiesbaden: Steiner Franz Verlag, 1980), 58 – 94.  WA.B 3:328.  WA.B 4:390_91.  The customary (consuetudines) of the Brothers of the Common Life was their counterpart to a monastic house’s rule of life.  The letters between Luther and the Brothers of the Common Life at Herford stretch from 1523 to 1534; see WA.B 3 – 7. For Luther’s letters to the city council and the prince-abbess, see WA.B 6:254– 55 and 300, and WA.B 7:113 – 14. For a detailed analysis of Luther’s relationship with the Brothers of the Common Life at Herford, see also Robert Stupperich, “Luther und das Fraterhaus in Herford,” in Geist und Geschichte der Reformation: Festgabe Hanns Rückert zum 65. Geburtstag dargebracht von Freunden, Kollegen und Schülern, eds. H. Liebing and K. Scholder (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1966), 221– 38.

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5 Literature on Luther and Monasticism Luther’s position on monasticism, unlike much of his thought, has not been widely examined, though it is often mentioned. Worth noting, however, are two books, one by Bernhard Lohse and one by Heinz-Meinolf Stamm, and one article by Heiko Oberman. Lohse attempts to trace a historical development of Western monasticism from its roots to Luther’s 1521 position, as well as an incremental process of development in Luther’s thinking from 1515 to 1521. Stamm focuses on Luther’s developing position alone, but goes beyond Lohse by including those personal and pastoral letters that display Luther’s continuing friendliness toward monastic life after 1521.⁵⁹ Stamm’s quite overt agenda is to show how Luther’s position correlates with present-day Catholic monasticism, though he comes to the arguable conclusion that Luther did not reject perpetual vows, but rather a particular understanding of them. Oberman’s article claims that Luther’s position on monasticism continued to develop, arriving at a complete rejection of monastic life in 1528. He cites Luther’s hesitance in laying aside own his monastic habit, which he did only in 1524, and his publication of Das clauster leben vnchristlich vnd schedlich sey [That Convent Life is Unchristian and Harmful] in 1528. However, this work is no more forceful in its rejection of monasticism than the sustained suspicion already present in De votis monasticis; it appears in the same year as Luther’s sympathetic letter to Abbot Gottschalk, and it predates his defense of the Herford Brothers of the Common Life, as well as his own referrals to De votis monasticis as his definitive position.

 Stamm provides an excellent survey of works on Luther’s position on monasticism; see Stamm, Luthers Stellung zum Ordensleben, 1– 9.

Michele Lodone

Erasmus and Luther: Free and Bound Will

Much has already been written on Erasmus and Luther’s debate about the freedom or bondage of human will, often projecting onto the issue interpretive frameworks that risk preventing the understanding of the historical facts in their specificity and complexity. Although it is true that the authority of the two participants in the debate and the reach of the issues addressed were such that the conflict would soon take on a strong paradigmatic value, this does not wholly justify the recurring temptation on the part of the historiography to interpret the clash between the two as the symbol of the rift between Humanism and the Reformation, as if both were not much more complex phenomena, irreducible to just two characters, however prestigious. The importance of the issues raised and of their implications, on the other hand, cannot hide the complexity of the conflict itself, which, on closer inspection, was played out on a plurality of levels. Certainly, the theological level was pivotal, as the conflict was centered on two different notions of God and Christ – signum contradictionis for Luther, signum conciliationis for Erasmus.¹ However, beyond this bone of contention, the conflict also concerned the very criteria that should guide theological debate. It is to this wider cultural level that the misunderstanding between Erasmus’ philologically motivated skepticism and Luther’s fideistically rooted assertiveness pertains.² Finally, it is also impossible to miss the political motivations and premises of this theological and cultural conflict: on the one hand, the universalistic ideals, the continuity with tradition, and the consent to ecclesiastic authority privileged by Erasmus; on the other hand, the national ideal, the rift, and the dissent of Luther.³ The fact that the two protagonists of the debate shared a series of intellectual and moral premises – in particular, the reference to the primacy of the sacred text against the obscurities of scholasticism and the corruption of the Church – makes the issue even more complex. In the following study, I will attempt to shed light on this point, following, to begin with, the evolution of the relationship between

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  On the theological nature and reach of the conflict between Erasmus and Luther, see the studies collected in F. De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero (Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2001).  See M. OʼRourke Boyle, Rhetoric and Reform: Erasmusʼ Civil Dispute with Luther (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); E. Pasini, “Dubbio e scetticismo in Erasmo da Rotterdam,” in Erasmo da Rotterdam e la cultura europea. Erasmus of Rotterdam and European Culture, eds. E. Pasini and P.B. Rossi (Firenze: Sismel, 2008), 199 – 250, esp. 202– 08.  See C. Asso, “La stoltezza e la follia. Erasmo ‘catholicus’ e altri equivoci,” in Religione e politica in Erasmo da Rotterdam, eds. A.E. Baldini and M. Firpo (Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2012), 111– 28, esp. 114– 15. More generally, some useful notions on this perspective can be found in J.W. O’Malley, “Erasmus and Luther, Continuity and Discontinuity as Key to Their Conflict,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 5 no. 2 (1974): 47– 65. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-017

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Erasmus and Luther and the way in which their contemporaries interpreted it. Once the context of the origin of the conflict has been defined, the central part of this chapter will be devoted to the analysis of the treatises De libero arbitrio and De servo arbitrio, while the last paragraph and the conclusion will be focused on some of the main implications and consequences of the clash and also briefly on a few episodes of its reception.

1 Erasmus and Luther: Agreements and Disagreements Erasmus and Luther never had the chance to meet in person. Even though it is likely that Luther had read Erasmus’ works, which were by then already renowned, the first mention of a reciprocal familiarity between the two dates back to 1516. On October 19, 1516, Luther wrote to Giorgio Spalatino expressing his appreciation of Erasmus’ scholarly and philological work and saying that he often referred to the latter’s Greek-Latin edition of the New Testament, published as Novum instrumentum the previous February. However, in the same letter, he also conveyed some important theological reservations. These are the first, already clear signs of a disagreement that, with a much stronger polemical ardor, would emerge again later during the discussion on free will. Luther’s criticisms focus on Erasmus’ interpretation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans: an interpretation that, according to Luther, overestimates the importance of deeds over faith in the justification of the Christian.⁴ The same criticism, together with the awareness of his own predilection for Augustine as opposed to Erasmus’ preference for Jerome,⁵ would be reiterated again later in Luther’s letters, along with the idea (on which more will be said later in this chapter) that Erasmus placed human affairs before God’s.⁶ However, Luther carefully avoided publicly attacking Erasmus, in whom he still saw an ally in the pursuit of the intellectual and moral reform of the Church. The renewal of ecclesiastical cul Cf. WA.B 1.27:70. For a thorough analysis of the text, see C. Asso, “Erasmo e il battesimo: materiali di lavoro e spunti di riflessione,” in Salvezza delle anime e disciplina dei corpi. Un seminario sulla storia del battesimo, ed. A. Prosperi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006), 255 – 311, esp. 257– 66. On Erasmus’ edition of the New Testament, with special emphasis on Paul’s letters, see G. Pani, Paolo, Agostino, Lutero: alle origini del mondo modern (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2005), 38 – 44; and, more extensively, the recent studies collected in M.A. Pena Gonza´lez and I. Delgado Jara, eds., Revolucio´ n en el Humanismo cristiano. La edicio´n de Erasmo del Nuevo Testamento (1516) (Salamanca: Iulce, 2016).  Apart from the letter already mentioned above, see the letter to Spalatino from January 18, 1518 (WA.B 1.57:133).  “I am afraid that he does not sufficiently highlight Christ and the grace of God,” Luther wrote to Johann Lang about Erasmus on March 1, 1517, because “in him human affairs prevail on God’s” (WA.B 1.35:90: “timeo ne Christum et gratiam Dei non satis promoveat […]; humana praevalent in eo plus quam divina;” cf. also footnote 28).

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ture and habits, after all, was a point of convergence between the two, of which Erasmus was also aware. The policy of tolerance and dialogue with Luther, which Erasmus supported at the beginning of 1519, can indeed be explained in this light.⁷ However, Erasmus was cautious with his correspondents, claiming that he was not acquainted with Luther and had just browsed through some of his work. This was not just a case of tactical prudence – a desire not to expose himself; Erasmus also had his own reservations about Luther and the other Reformers, as he would have rather preferred a different kind of renewal, animated by a theological debate that would be civil and balanced in its approach, rather than disobedience and a rift with Rome. When, in the spring of 1519, Luther wrote Erasmus a mostly cordial letter asking for his support, Erasmus replied in the same benevolent tone. However, he did not hide his intention of remaining neutral and his desire to stay away from dogmatic clashes in the hope of preserving some space for a theological debate based on the validity of the arguments brought forward.⁸ The bull Exsurge Domine, with which Leo X officially condemned Luther in June 1520, could not but confirm Erasmus’ fears. The conflict was by now open and unavoidable. Moreover, the similarity of some of the issues, the manipulation of others, and the confusion between alliances drove many contemporaries to associate Erasmus with the reformed front. “Luther and Erasmus agree on everything,” Martin Bucer wrote on May 1, 1518, “save for the fact that Luther teaches openly and freely what Erasmus insinuates.”⁹ The following year, Melanchthon linked Erasmus, Luther, and Reuchlin in the common (and unjust) persecution inflicted by the scholastic theologians.¹⁰ Even among the Reformed, it is only in the early 1520s (and especially after the clash on free and bound will) that the positions became better defined, and both Bucer and Melanchthon changed their minds regarding the convergences between Erasmus and Luther. Even more dangerous for Erasmus, however, was the persistent association with Luther suggested by his Catholic opponents, with their tendentious penchant for immediately memorable aphorisms: “either Erasmus Lutherizes or Luther Erasmusizes,”¹¹ or Erasmus laid the egg and Luther hatched it. Erasmus tried time and time

 See De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero, 42– 43.  Luther’s letter is dated March 28, 1519 (WA.B 1.163:361– 63); Erasmus replied on May 30 (Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami [Oxford, 1913], 3.980:605 – 07).  Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, eds. A. Horawitz and K. Hartfelder (Hildesheim, 1886), 107, “Cum Erasmo illi conveniunt omnia, quin uno hoc praestare videtur, quod quae ille duntaxat insinuat, hic aperte docet et libere.”  See E. Rummel, The Confessionalization of Humanism in Reformation Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 22– 29. Especially important is the entire first chapter: “Humanists and Reformers as Allies: A Constructive Misunderstanding?”  See J.L. Stunica (Diego Lopez De Zúñiga), Libellus trium illorum voluminum praecursor quibus erasmicas impietates ac blasphemias redarguit (Romae, 1522), f. Gvr, “aut Erasmus luterizat, aut Luterius erasmizat;” quoted in S. Cavallotto, Santi nella Riforma. Da Erasmo a Lutero (Roma: Viella Liberia

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again to defend himself from similar accusations, explaining that, if indeed he had laid an egg, Luther had hatched a completely different chicken.¹² However, as pointed out by Jacobus Latomus, one of Erasmus’ Catholic opponents, “on the Lutheran issue there is no room for neutrality.”¹³ Luther himself later highlighted the counterproductive effect of Erasmus’ neutral choice, of his decision to skillfully sail between Scylla and Charybdis without ever siding with the Roman Church or the Reformation.¹⁴ Neutrality was by now impossible. As demonstrated by Erika Rummel in the German context,¹⁵ beginning in the early 1520s, Erasmus and his fellow humanists were made to take sides, in different ways and with different outcomes, either with one front of divided Christianity or with the other. The last letters exchanged between Luther and Erasmus in the spring of 1524, on the eve of the debate that publicly pitted them against one another, show a very tense – even compromised – atmosphere. Some disagreements between the two had already emerged between 1521 and 1523, in a few clandestine editions of Erasmus’ and Luther’s letters, which had been printed unbeknownst to the authors.¹⁶ In April 1524, Luther sent Erasmus a rather harsh letter in which he placed Erasmus on a religiously and morally inferior level, asking him to stay neutral, not to join his papist enemies, and, mainly, not to write against Luther himself.¹⁷ Erasmus’ reply was partly oblique: without acquiescing to the idea of Luther’s purer faith, the letter hinted at the possibility – or rather the advisability – of a public discussion, which Erasmus thought would be helpful to better understand the issues at stake. However, things went differently than Erasmus wished.

Editrice, 2009), 95. On these controversies, see the broad study by E. Rummel, Erasmus and His Catholic Critics, 1515 – 1536 (Nieuwkoop: Brill, 1989), esp. 2:1– 28, 116 – 21; and also see the index.  Cf. Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, eds. P.S. Allen, H.M. Allen, H.W. Garrod et al. (Oxford, 1924), 5.1528:609, to Johannes Caesarius, December 16, 1524: “Ego posui ovum gallinaceum, Lutherus exclusit pullum longe dissimillimum;” quoted in De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero, 39–40.  J. Latomus, Adversus Erasmi librum de sarcienda Ecclesiae concordia opus inabsolutum, in Opera adversus horum temporum haereses (Lovanii, 1550), f. 172v, “non igitur in hac re locus est neutralitati.”  Erasmus used the image of Scylla and Charybdis in his reply to Hutten from September 1523 (cf. M. Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 2, Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521 – 1532 [1986], trans. J.L. Schaaf [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990, 2nd ed. 1994], 217– 18); Luther mentioned it polemically in De servo arbitrio (WA 18:600 – 787, here 612).  Rummel, The Confessionalization of Humanism.  See De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero, 48.  WA.B 3.729:270 (datable to April 1524, perhaps the 15th).

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2 Erasmus’ Contribution: De libero arbitrio Erasmus had De libero arbitrio diatribé sive collatio printed in Basel by his friend Johann Froben between the end of August and the beginning of September 1524.¹⁸ Between September 2nd and 6th, he sent the pamphlet to several illustrious Roman, English, and German correspondents, clarifying that he had written it due to authoritative pressures, that he had intervened – with moderation and refraining from too violent a controversy – in a field that was not his own, and that he had not dedicated the work to anyone in order not to seem subjugated to a specific cause other than the cause of truth. Apart from the specious accusations of being complicit with the reformed front, what drove Erasmus to take a position against Luther was, as a matter of fact, the solicitations of powerful interlocutors – above all his countryman Adrian VI, Henry VIII of England, and later the newly elected Clement VII. Erasmus, however, was solely responsible for the choice of theme. This theme – apart from the forms taken on by the Lutheran protest, which Erasmus judged to be too harsh and violent – touched the core of Luther’s reforming initiative: that is, the most direct consequence of the doctrine of justification by faith alone – the importance of human will for the purpose of salvation. Luther himself acknowledged that Erasmus had understood the heart of the issue, an issue which, indicentally, Luther still had not dealt with systematically up to that point. By choosing the genre of the diatribé (dispute) or collatio (comparison of texts), Erasmus meant to address a theological issue using a humanist method that had its immediate models in classical rhetoric and philosophy – from Cicero’s Tusculanae disputationes to the Diatribae by Epictetus, whom Erasmus considered to be a forerunner of the philosophia Christi – and its reference points in temperate manners, pedagogical intent, and moral interest – that is, in asking what is the best conduct in life without getting too entangled in doctrinal subtleties and abstruseness.¹⁹ The collatio – the comparison of passages from the Bible – marked a common ground that Luther would not find hard to accept. However, the common acknowledgment of the primacy of Scripture was accompanied by very different exegetical and theological principles in Luther’s work than in Erasmus’. The literary genre chosen by Erasmus was also an attempt to divert Luther from the steadfastness of his assertions, his pervicacia asserendi, in favor of an open debate, which Erasmus at the very beginning placed under the sign of an explicit profession of skepticism:

 The most thorough and documented reconstructions of the different stages of the debate can be found in Brecht, Martin Luther, 2:213 – 38; and in De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero, 51– 76.  See OʼRourke Boyle, Rhetoric and Reform, 6 ff.; J.F. Tinkler, “Erasmus’ Conversation with Luther,” Archiv fü r Reformationsgeschichte 82 (1991): 59 – 81.

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[i]n addition, so great is my dislike of assertions that I prefer the views of the sceptics wherever the inviolable authority of the Scripture and the decision of the Church permit – a Church to which at all times I willingly submit my own views, whether I attain what she prescribes or not.²⁰

Starting from Luther’s harsh reply and up until Richard Popkin’s classic The History of Scepticism, Erasmus’ skepticism has always been considered conservative, a position meant to render the entire ecclesiastical tradition more or less surreptitiously acceptable over against the Reformation. On closer inspection, however, Erasmus’ skepticism was instead a precautionary suspension of any judgments believed to be unnecessary and, at the same time, dangerous. In other words, Erasmus considered some theological issues, among which he included the freedom of the will, impossible to define in an indisputable way and, therefore, unfit to be divulged to the masses due to their sensitivity and complexity. Thus he reserved these issues, at most, for a dialogue among scholars, to be conducted with sobriety and moderation.²¹ This is why Erasmus skeptically prefers – on issues judged to be insoluble, such as free will – to trust the authority of the Church and the consent of tradition. This is also the reason behind Erasmus’ theological disengagement when he introduces himself as a mere philologist, intent on clarifying the sense and not the value of Scripture.²² In fact, the interpretive key of the Scriptures, for Erasmus, is in the imitation of the habits of Christ, and therefore in morality. However, as there is no morality without individual responsibility, it follows that there must be a certain degree of freedom in human will. As far as the structure of the text is concerned, De libero arbitrio is divided into four parts: After the introduction, the two central sections are devoted to the analysis of the biblical passages that support and contradict free will, which is defined as a “power of the human will whereby man can apply to or turn away from that which leads unto eternal salvation.”²³ Finally, the conclusion underlines the cooperation between divine grace and human will for the purposes of salvation. In this cooperation, the former is the main cause and the latter is the lesser one. In order to clarify his conclusion, Erasmus uses a familiar and calming image, comparing God to a loving father:

 “Et adeo non delector assertionibus, ut facile in Scepticorum sententiam pedibus discessurus sim, ubicumque per divinarum scripturarum inviolabilem auctoritatem et ecclesiae decreta liceat, quibus meum sensum ubique libens submitto, sive assequor quod praescribit sive non assequor;” Erasmus of Rotterdam, De libero arbitrio diatribé sive collatio (1524), ed. J. von Walter (Leipzig: Deichert, 1910); trans. as Discourse on Free Will, trans. and ed. Ernst F. Winter (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961, repr. 2013), 12.  See G. Remer, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1996), 90 – 97; Pasini, Dubbio e scetticismo in Erasmo, 207– 09.  Rummel, The Confessionalization of Humanism, 54– 58.  “vim humanae voluntatis, qua se possit homo applicare ad ea, quae perducunt ad aeternam salutem, aut ab iisdem avertere;” Erasmus of Rotterdam, De libero arbitrio diatribé sive collatio, 19 = Discourse on Free Will, 5.

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A father raises his child, which is yet unable to walk, which has fallen and which exerts himself, and shows him an apple placed in front of him. The boy likes to go and get it, but due to his weak bones would soon have fallen again, if the father had not supported him by his hand and guided his steps. Thus the child comes, led by the father, to the apple which the father placed willingly into his hand, like a reward for his walking. The child could have not raised itself without the father’s help; would not have seen the apple without the father’s showing; would not have stepped forward without the father’s helping his weak little steps; would not have reached the apple without the father’s placing it into his hand. What can the child claim for himself? Yet, he did do something, but he must not glory his own strength, since he owes everything to the father.²⁴

The comparison is meaningful in the human (and humanizing) framework in which Erasmus inserts his own theological thinking, the guiding ideal of which is represented by a philosophia Christi that attributes an absolute primacy to the moral dimension of the evangelical message (the evident truths of which, moreover, are indeed and only those concerning “the precepts for a morally good life”).²⁵ Given these premises, the central role of Scripture could no longer represent a sufficient point of convergence between Erasmus and Luther. The latter’s reply, in fact, is on a radically different level than Erasmus’ suggestion.

3 Luther’s Reply: De servo arbitrio Between the end of 1524 and the first months of 1525, Luther went through what was possibly the most difficult period of his experience as a reformer: the Peasants’ Revolt and his controversies with Karlstadt (and, shortly thereafter, with Zwingli) on the real presence of Christ during the celebration of the mass; his exegetical effort on the books of the prophets; and his marriage, in June 1525, to Katharina von Bora.²⁶ Given the public and private events of those months, it is not surprising that his reply to Erasmus was postponed for over a year.

 “Pater infantem nondum ingredi potentem collapsum erigit utcumque adnitentem et pomum ex adverso positum ostendit; gestit puer accurrere, sed ob imbecillitatem membrorum mox denuo collapsurus esset, ni pater manu porrecta fulciret regeretque gressum illius. Itaque patre duce pervenit ad pomum, quod pater volens dat illi in manum veluti cursus praemium. Erigere se non poterat infans, nisi pater sustulisset, non vidisset pomum, nisi pater ostendisset, non poterat progredi, nisi pater invalides gradus perpetuo adiuvisset, non poterat attingere pomum, nisi pater dedisset in manum. Quid hic sibi vindicabit infans? Et tamen egit nonnihil, nec habet tamen quod de suis viribus glorietur, cum se totum debeat patri;” Erasmus of Rotterdam, De libero arbitrio diatribé sive collatio, 83 – 84 = Discourse on Free Will, 91– 92.  “Quaedam voluit nobis esse notissima, quod genus sunt bene vivendi praecepta;” Erasmus of Rotterdam, De libero arbitrio diatribé sive collatio, 7 = Discourse on Free Will, 15.  See Scott H. Hendrix, Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 161– 68.

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Written in one go, starting in September 1525, De servo arbitrio was published the following December in Wittenberg by the publisher Hans Lufft. It was a much wider work than the diatribé by Erasmus, whose argumentations Luther followed accurately and systematically but with an overabundance of clarifications. The title implicitly refers to Augustine, who, in Contra Iulianum (2.8.23), had used the expression “servum arbitrium.” Moreover, it was the radical option of an Augustinian vision of the role of grace in the salvation of the Christian that drove Luther to define Erasmus as a modern Pelagian or worse – despite the latter’s cautious defense of Pelagius in the light of Scotus’ greater voluntaristic extremism as a dissimulation strategy to avoid precisely such an accusation.²⁷ As has already been mentioned, Luther had long been convinced that Erasmus “thought of God in too a human way,” as he repeated in De servo arbitrio,²⁸ and consequently was incapable of understanding the incommensurability of divine justice and human justice: “we are not talking of nature, but of grace,” explained Luther; “we are not trying to understand how we are on earth, but how we are in heaven before God.”²⁹ Therefore, as expressed later on in the text, as God is singular and true, and therefore completely incomprehensible and inaccessible to human reason, it is right, or rather it is necessary, for his justice too to be incomprehensible, as is expressed by Paul as well when he states: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom 11:33).³⁰

With much greater polemical harshness, Luther matched Erasmus’ composed argumentations with a theology of the absolute power of God: before this power, human freedom could not but disappear, apart from being then returned by virtue of the gratuitous gift represented by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Erasmus’ moderate philosophia Christi was brushed away by Luther’s theology of the cross. This theology carried the paradox of the sacrifice of Christ – the value of which it would be blasphemous to diminish by giving any importance to human will – to its extreme conclusion.³¹ This was, according to Luther, the meaning of the Scrip-

 See R. Torzini, I labirinti del libero arbitrio. La discussione tra Erasmo e Lutero (Firenze: Olschki, 2000), 50 – 59, “Volere e fare. Una strategia antiagostiniana,” in L’efficacia della volontà nel XVI e XVII secolo, eds. F. Adorno and L. Foisneau (Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2002), 27– 55, esp. 44– 47.  “Nimis enim humana cogitas de Deo;” WA 18:622. See also footnote 6 above.  “Nos non de natura, sed de gratia disputamus, nec quales simus super terram, sed in coelo coram Deo, querimus;” WA 18:781.  “At cum sit Deus verus et unus, deinde totus incomprehensibilis et inaccessibilis humana ratione, par est, imo neccessarium est, ut et iustitia sua sit incomprehensibilis, sicut Paulus quoque exclamat, dicens: ‘O altitudo divitiarum sapientiae et scientiae Dei; quam incomprehensibilia sunt iudicia eius et investigabiles viae eius’;” WA 18:784.  See B. Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development [1995], trans. and ed. R.A. Harrisville (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 162– 68; M. Wriedt, “Luther’s Theology,”

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tures: unlike Erasmus, in Scripture Luther saw not only a text, with passages that could be more or less clear, but the very word of God, which is obscure only to sinners. The premise of the claritas Scripturae had an obvious anti-skeptic aspect, even more so as Erasmus’ skepticism, in Luther’s view, did nothing but justify the ecclesiastic monopoly on the interpretation of the Bible, while Scripture was in fact clear and comprehensible to every authentically Christian conscience. Thus every Christian could base their own indisputable assertions on the correct interpretation of Scripture. These very theological assertiones (assertions) were, according to Luther, the central core of Christianity, which he reclaimed in the face of Erasmus’ skepticism: allow us to make assertions, to hold them dear and to rejoice in them; by all means, you go on supporting your skeptics and academics until Christ will call you, too. The Holy Ghost is not a skeptic, nor did he write in our hearts doubts or mere opinions, but assertions more certain and firmer than life itself or any other experience.³²

Given these premises, dialogue was essentially impossible. Finally, to the human image of God put forward by Erasmus, Luther contrasted another image – much more disquieting – of man himself, an image that contradicted the very definition of free will offered by Erasmus as the capacity of choosing autonomously between two opposites: The will of man has been put in the middle as a beast of burden. If God rides it, it wants and goes where God wants […] If instead Satan rides it, it wants and goes where Satan wants, and it is not its faculty to choose or look for one of the two riders, but rather it is the riders who fight each other to conquer and own it.³³

However, it is also necessary to bear in mind that Luther’s contribution was eminently theological. The ineptitude and the insignificance of human will, in fact, do not concern civil life and the responsibilities connected to it.³⁴ Human will, in Luther’s view, was bound only before God and not before men and their “lesser affairs.” This is why Luther’s point of view cannot be considered incompatible with a human-

in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, ed. D. McKinn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 86 – 114, here 110 – 11.  “Sine nos esse assertores et assertionibus studere et delectari, tu Scepticis tuis et Academicis fave, donec te Christus quoque vocaverit. Spiritus sanctus non est Scepticus, nec dubia aut opiniones in cordibus nostris scripsit, sed assertiones ipsa vita et omni experientia certiores et firmiores;” (WA 18:605).  “Sic humana voluntas in medio posita est, ceu iumentum: si insederit Deus, vult et vadit quo vult Deus […]. Si insederit Satan, vult et vadit quo vult Satan, nec est in eius arbitrio ad utrum sessorem currere aut eum quaerere, sed ipsi sessores certant ob ipsum obtinendum et possidendum;” WA 18:635, punctuation slightly amended.  See R. Saarinen, Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 128 – 33.

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ist perspective tout court. ³⁵ Nonetheless, this does not mean that the rift with Erasmus was any less deep.

4 Reception and Interpretations Erasmus had waited anxiously for Luther’s reply, fearing his harshness. De servo arbitrio confirmed his fears. Erasmus quickly wrote a much wider and decisively harsher rejoinder entitled Hyperaspistes (Super-shield), the first book of which was published by Froben in February 1526 (less than three months after the publication of De servo arbitrio); the second book was published, again by Froben, in September 1527. In this work, which is quite verbose in places, Erasmus clarified some of his positions, took a stand on others that he had willingly omitted in De libero arbitrio, and openly attacked the most extreme consequences of the Lutheran theology.³⁶ Luther did not reply. The debate had come to an end, and the relationship between the two, who in 1534 again publicly voiced their hostility, was definitely compromised.³⁷ Of course, the debate had ended only as far as Erasmus and Luther were concerned. When compared with the enormous bibliography on the clash between Erasmus and Luther, the studies on its reception and impact are relatively small in number. However, it is still possible to outline some reference points. The debate, as has already been mentioned, made it clear to the many Reformed who had thought Erasmus was on their side that he was instead decidedly far from their positions. If, however, on the one hand, the ambiguity in De libero arbitrio irked Luther and his supporters, on the other hand, Erasmus’ excessive caution did not please the Catholics, either. Thus Erasmus was accused of being a hypocrite by the Protestants (as is well evidenced by the popular xylograph from 1524, in which Erasmus is depicted stroking a fox tail crowned with the papal tiara)³⁸ and a heretic by the Catholics. Well before being listed in the Index librorum prohibitorum, in fact, Erasmus had often been attacked by his Catholic opponents – from Noël Béda to Sepúlveda to Alberto Pio of Carpi –, who had not been convinced by his anti-Lutheran stance and

 As aptly pointed out by G. Dall’Olio, Martin Lutero (Roma: Carocci, 2013), 122.  “Hyperaspistes diatribae adversus servum arbitrium Martini Lutheri I-II,” in Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera omnia emendatiora et auctiora (Lugduni Batavorum, 1703 – 1706), 10:1249 – 1336 and 1336 – 1536 (an English translation can be found in Erasmus and Luther, The Battle Over Free Will, ed. C.H. Miller and P. Macardle (Cambridge, IN: Hackett, 2012), 127– 216 and 217– 346). On this work, see Brecht, Martin Luther, 2:236 – 38; Torzini, Volere e fare, 30 ff.  See De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero, 42– 43.  See R R.W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge: Clarendon, 1981). This opinion was effectively expressed in Celio Secondo Curione’s Pasquillus ecstaticus, in which Erasmus is depicted hanging from a rope tied to two posts, with deer antlers on his head and a bag full of scudi tied to his feet, while going around like a weathercock “as any winde blew;” cf. Pasquillus ecstaticus (Genevae: Ioan. Girardum, 1544), 170 – 71; Pasquine in a Traunce, trans. W.P. Seene (London, 1566), 75, from which the previous quote is taken.

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were ready to reiterate the association between Erasmus and Luther.³⁹ “Erasmus was the teacher and Luther showed himself to be not unworthy of such a tutor,” as was written in 1525, after Erasmus had already spoken against Luther; “what Erasmus has long been sowing, Luther has reaped. […] Luther systematically preaches what Erasmus taught.”⁴⁰ Erasmus tried to reply that he had “as much in common with Luther as the cuckoo with the nightingale,” but to no avail.⁴¹ His teachings would later be judged as even more dangerous than those of the Protestants, precisely because of his submission to the papacy, which the Catholics deemed to be feigned. As far as the circulation of De libero arbitrio is concerned, the issues raised in the pamphlet had a somewhat wider diffusion thanks to a sermon written by Erasmus himself a few months before the diatribé, entitled De immensa Dei misericordia, which was translated and reprinted many times in Italy and Switzerland.⁴² Luther’s contribution probably enjoyed an even smaller circulation, although it was immediately translated into German, and Luther himself later considered it to be – together with the Catechism – his most important work.⁴³ The verbosity and complexity of the Latin language and the theological discussion itself were such that De servo arbitrio would hardly be a bestseller. Nonetheless, the impact of this text still needs to be fully investigated – starting with La tragedia del libero arbitrio, written by the exile from Bassano, Francesco Negri;⁴⁴ continuing through The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast and the Cabal of the Horse Pegasus by Giordano Bruno (who was very critical of Luther, although from a point of view that does not overlap with Erasmus’, as the issue of salvation and the structural principle at the core of Luther’s and Erasmus’ thinking were of secondary importance when compared to Bruno’s own pre-

 See Rummel, Erasmus and his Catholic Critics, vol. 2, see the index; F. Forner, “L’eretica ironia,” in Religione e politica in Erasmo, 171– 86, esp. 181– 82. On the listing of Erasmus in the Index, see S. Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, 1520 – 1580 (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1987), 310 ff., “Sette modi di censurare Erasmo,” in La censura libraria nell’Europa del secolo XVI, ed. U. Rozzo (Udine: Forum, 1997), 177– 206.  Godefridus Ruysius Taxander, Apologia in eum librum quem ab anno Erasmus Roterodamus de confessione edidit. Eiusdem libellus quo taxatur delectus ciborum, sive liber de carnium esu ante biennium per Erasmum Roterodamum enixus (Antwerp, 1525), respectively Aii and Appendix, f. Gviii r-v.  Supputatio errorum in censuris Beddae, in Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera, 9:519 – 20: “sic mihi convenit cum Luthero, quemadmodum convenit coccyci cum luscinia.”  Cf. the introduction to Erasmus of Rotterdam, La misericordia di Dio, ed. P. Terracciano (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2016), 19 – 21; L. Felici, “L’immensa bontà di Dio. Diffusione e adattamenti dell’idea erasmiana in Italia e in Svizzera,” in Religione e politica in Erasmo, 129 – 58.  The translation by Justus Jonas, Vom unfreien Willen, was printed in Wittemberg in January 1526; this is now available in K. Aland, ed., Luther Deutsch. Die Werke des Reformators in neuer Auswahl für die Gegenwart (Stuttgart/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), 3:151– 334. “None of my books […] I consider just but maybe De servo arbitrio and the Catechism,” Luther would later write to Capito on July 9, 1537 (WA.B 7.3162:99: “Nullum enim agnosco meum iustum librum, nisi forte de Servo arbitrio et Catechismum.”  F. Negri da Bassano, Tragedia intitolata Libero arbitrio. 1546/1550, ed. C. Casalini and L. Salvarani (Roma: Anicia, 2014).

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dominant ethical interest);⁴⁵ and including the virtual repression of the work in Lutheran theological research in the era marked by Pietism and the culture of the Enlightenment (which were incompatible with a theology founded on the infathomability of the omnipotence of God and the paradox of the cross) and in the age of socalled liberal theology, which – between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries – set out to integrate Protestantism with modern civilization.⁴⁶ De servo arbitrio was somehow “rediscovered” in Germany after World War I, thanks to those theologians who demanded a field distinct from the humanities and thanks to studies such as Walter von Loewenich’s on the theology of the cross in Luther.⁴⁷ The preconditions for such a long sojourn in oblivion, after all, had already been laid by Melanchthon, who, starting from the Confessio Augustana of 1530 and continuing with the following editions of the Loci theologici (from 1535 to 1559), had redefined the notion of free will, reintegrating it into the systematization of Lutheran dogmatics to which he had devoted himself.⁴⁸

5 Conclusions In conclusion, it is easy to perceive the substantial lack of comprehension that existed between Erasmus and Luther. Understanding the motivations behind it, however, is not so easy. It has been written that Erasmus was interested in the moral implications of theological assertions, while Luther considered the soteriological implications – those concerning eternal salvation – to be fundamental.⁴⁹ There has also been an attempt to explain this impasse in the light of Erasmus’ preference for deliberative rhetoric, while Luther privileged a more judiciary rhetoric; or again, less convincingly, as a contraposition between Erasmus’ skepticism and Luther’s alleged stoicism.⁵⁰ Undoubtedly, all of these explanations grasp at least part of the truth. Notwithstanding the complexity and the importance of the issues at stake for both Luther and Erasmus, it may however be pointed out that this confrontation has probably been overestimated by historiography – if not in its value, at least in its significance. Despite the theological importance of this clash, in fact, it had a rel-

 De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero, 259 – 71.  De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero, 276 – 78.  W. von Loewenich, Luthers Theologia crucis (München: Luther Verlag, 1929); trans. as Luther’s Theology of the Cross, trans. Herbert J. A. Bouman (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976).  See R. Ramberti, “Il dibattito sul libero arbitrio nel pensiero filosofico e teologico tra Rinascimento e Riforma,” in Libero arbitrio. Storia di una controversia filosofica, eds. M. De Caro, M. Mori, and E. Spinelli (Roma: Carocci, 2014), 223 – 60, esp. 251– 53 (and see 253 – 56 for an outline of the issue in Calvin, whose notions of vocation and predestination cannot be accounted for in this study).  See, for example, from very different perspectives, R. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Plume, 1950); and E. De Negri, La teologia di Lutero. Rivelazione e dialettica (Firenze: La nuova Italia, 1967), 77– 82.  See M. OʼRourke Boyle, Rhetoric and Reform.

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atively limited impact on both Erasmus’ and Luther’s lives and also on the latter’s reformatory initiative.⁵¹ Luther did not need De servo arbitrio to consolidate his authority within the reformed movement. And, as far as Erasmus was concerned, neither De libero arbitrio nor Hyperaspistes stopped his Catholic enemies from considering him complicit in the Lutheran heresy.

 See Hendrix, Martin Luther, 171.

Jonathan D. Trigg

Disputes on Baptism and the Eucharist, 1521 – 1532 1 Introduction The principal assertions at the center of Luther’s teaching on the Eucharist in this period are clear. There are two main strands. The first comes in reaction to Rome: the mass is not a sacrifice, but a sacrament, through which God’s grace and mercy are conveyed to us, in which the testament of Christ, the promise of God, is foundational. The withholding of the cup from the laity is an offense against the God-given freedom of the Christian, but this may be born in good conscience by those on whom it is imposed. What must not be tolerated, however, is the muffling of the divine word of promise and the obliteration of the gospel in the context of the mass performed as priestly sacrifice. The second theme is present from the early 1520s but gathers strength as Luther engages in sustained and sometimes vitriolic debate with the opposing views of others, especially the Swiss reformers Zwingli and Oecolampadius: Christ’s body and blood are truly present in the bread and the wine, which, however, also remain bread and wine. It is rather more difficult to delineate the main themes in Luther’s baptismal theology consistently through these years; there is less material to work with, especially before 1527. Nor is there an equivalent of the sustained series of polemical tracts on the Lord’s Supper directed against the Swiss, or of the face-to-face debate represented by the Colloquy of Marburg. Yet sharp disputation leaves its mark here, too: Luther faces those who teach and practice rebaptism,¹ those who refuse baptism to children,² those who cannot rightly understand the relationship between sacrament and faith,³ and those whose offense seems to him to be at the root of all the others – they who simply despise mere water by ignoring the word of promise joined to it.⁴

2 Word and Sign The relationship between word and sacrament is more complex with Luther than might appear from his ready embrace of the Augustinian definition, Accedat verbum

   

WA 26:144– 74 = LW 40:229 – 62. BC 442– 44. BC 440 – 41. BC 438.

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ad elementum et fit sacramentum. ⁵ Nevertheless, not only does this principle inform the structure of his sacramental theology, it illuminates a cluster of associated motifs in his thought.

2.1 Do Not Despise the External, the Ordinary Because the water of baptism is joined to the divine word, it is not to be despised as a mere external, of as little account as the water a cow drinks. Luther refuses to countenance those who denigrate the water, either simply because of its physicality, or because it is ordinary and unimpressive. The same goes for the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.⁶ The ordinariness of the elements is by no means the only instance of God hiding his glory under inglorious coverings; the ultimate expression of this pattern is the cross. The ordinariness of water, bread, and wine is an expression of Luther’s theologia crucis; ⁷ it also correlates with the unimpressive figure cut by the true Church, which lacks the outward glory of the false, whose showy worship and impressive observances Luther would liken to the Tower of Babel.⁸ To despise or denigrate the water of baptism or the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper is to refuse God’s appointed means of grace. Thus Luther’s response to Karlstadt in Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments (1525): His insolence leads him to set up a contrary order and, as we have said, seeks to subordinate God’s outward order to an inner spiritual one. Casting this order to the wind with ridicule and scorn, he wants to get to the Spirit first. Will a handful of water, he says, make me clean from sin? The Spirit, the Spirit, the Spirit, must do this inwardly. Can bread and wine profit me? Will breathing over the bread bring Christ in the sacrament? No, no, one must eat the flesh of Christ spiritually. The Wittenbergers are ignorant of this. They make faith depend on the letter. Whoever does not know the devil might be misled by these many splendid words to think that five holy spirits were in the possession of Karlstadt and his followers […] With all his mouthing of the words, “Spirit, Spirit, Spirit,” he tears down the bridge, the path, the way, the ladder, and all the means by which the Spirit might come to you. Instead of the outward order of God in the material sign of baptism and the oral proclamation of the word of God he wants to teach you, not how the Spirit comes to you but how you come to the Spirit.⁹

 BC 438.  The significance of this ordinariness may also have come to underlie Luther’s continuing insistence that the bread and wine remain bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper (WA 11:441 = LW 36:287). However, that this does not appear to have been the origin of this insistence on his part is apparent from the argument in the Babylonian Captivity, WA 6:508 – 512 = LW 36:28 – 35.  Jonathan D. Trigg, Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther (Leiden: Brill, 1994/2001), 28.  WA 42:411 = LW 2:12 f.  WA 18:137 = LW 40:147. Note the parallel here with Luther’s attacks on the mass offered as a sacrifice; both the papists and Karlstadt reverse the direction of movement and make God the object rather than the subject of the action.

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The despising of the outward takes a different form in Oecolampadius’ repeated recourse to John 6:63 (“it is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail”); although the context is the dispute over Luther’s assertion of the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, Luther claims that his opponents think that nothing spiritual can be present where there is anything material and physical, and assert that flesh is of no avail. Actually the opposite is true. The Spirit cannot be with us except in material and physical things such as the word, water, and Christ’s body and in his saints on earth.¹⁰

Although here the opponents are taking offense at the physicality of body and blood rather than at that of the bread and wine, to both Luther’s response is the same: God works by physical means. To despise the element is to ignore or to refuse the divine word joined to it.

2.2 The Word Joined to the Sign Here the potential slipperiness of “word” reveals itself. For Luther, the word of God joined to the water of baptism is specific: “the one who believes and is baptised will be saved,” which he sees as amounting to the dominical institution of the sacrament.¹¹ The word joined to the elements in the Lord’s Supper is also the dominical institution: “This is my body … this is my blood.” But in other contexts, “word” can be the preached word or the written word of the Scriptures, and as such it is to be ranked alongside baptism and the Lord’s Supper as one of the means of grace. Yet another sense, to be distinguished from both of these and ranked above them, is in effect the gospel, the definitive word of God. In 1528, when lecturing on 1 Tim 2:6, again confronted with Carlstadt’s assertion of salvation without means, Luther responds: They say that neither water nor bread saves us, but Christ crucified. But it profits nothing unless we receive in the Word that which in Baptism, in the Sacrament of the Altar, and in the Gospel brings this Christ to me. And wherever the Word of the Gospel is, there is the remission of sins. Therefore, Christ redeemed us once with a single work, but He did not pass out redemption with a single means. He gave it out through the medium of washing in Baptism, through the medium of eating in the Sacrament of the Altar, through the media of comforting the brethren, of reading in the Book, that the fruit of His passion might be spread everywhere.¹²

 WA 23:193 = LW 37:95.  Mark 16:16.  WA 26:40 – 41 = LW 28:269

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Here we have the written word, the spoken word, the sacraments, and indeed other less sharply defined means of grace (comforting the brethren),¹³ all understood as the means by which the word of the gospel, the forgiveness of sins, is conveyed. Although Luther sees the very specific words of dominical authority and promise as the word joined to the water and the bread and wine, it is clear that what is conveyed is the redeeming word of the gospel itself. Where there is no such word, Luther is unwilling to accord the nature of a sacrament.¹⁴

2.3 Keeping Word and Sign Together On one flank Luther faced those who denigrated the signs for their mere physicality, thus viewing them as if ignorant of the word joined to them. Yet on the other side there is the apparently diametrically opposite danger of exalting the sign in itself and for itself. This can be seen in Luther’s 1523 treatise on The Adoration of the Sacrament, addressed to the Bohemian Brethren. There are indeed those, he says, “who would like to compel people not to adore the sacrament, as if Christ were not there at all,” but there are others who “emphasize the sacrament and neglect the words. The sacrament then becomes a mere work and faith perishes.”¹⁵ Luther’s prohibition of monstrances, Corpus Christi processions, etc. is not absolute, but in the absence of those who will hear and attend to the word joined to the sign their use must be suspended; it amounts to idolatry. In this treatise Luther commends the unselfconscious freedom in these matters which appears in those who give faithful attention to the word. The seemingly opposite errors of ignoring the sign on the one hand or the word on the other both arise from a refusal to seek God where he wills to be found, and from a failure to listen, in faith, to the word he has joined to the sign.

3 Faith and Sacrament For the Luther of the mid 1520s onward, the double-sidedness of the relationship of faith and sacrament is increasingly apparent. It is only faith that understands and receives the sacrament rightly; yet faith does not create the sacrament. The equilibri-

 There are other “signs” connected to divine words of promise or command; see for instance WA 31.2:350 = LW 17:113 where Luther brackets baptism and the Lord’s Supper with the honor due to parents. Luther’s language about the means of grace has a degree of inclusivity and imprecision about it, which reflects his emphasis on God’s use of externals. However, it remains clear that the word (written and preached), baptism, and the Lord’s Supper are unequivocally those which convey the gospel, the definitive redeeming word of God.  WA 11:454 = LW 36:302.  WA 11:448 = LW 36:295.

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um of the relationship between the two is parallel to the errors which arise when word and sign are separated.

3.1 Nothing Received without Faith Only by attending to the word joined to the water of baptism – by hearing it in faith – is the new birth received. Merely to parade one’s baptismal status as such is an empty boast; the older Luther would compare such presumption to Esau’s despising of his birthright.¹⁶ Likewise Luther asserts that the one who approaches the Eucharist and does not believe has nothing, for he lets this gracious blessing be offered to him in vain and refuses to enjoy it. The treasure is opened and placed at everyone’s door, yes, upon everyone’s table, but it is also your responsibility to take it and confidently believe that it is just as the words tell you.¹⁷

The nature of the word joined to the sign as promise or testament determines the way in which the sacrament must be received: in faith. If at an earlier stage Luther might emphasize resort to the corporate faith of the church, the communion of saints, as the necessary counterpart to the humble and penitent approach of the individual, from around 1520 onwards the admonition comes to each person: So in this matter, you must above all else take heed to your heart, that you believe the words of Christ, and admit their truth, when he says to you and to all, “This is my blood, a new testament, by which I bequeath you forgiveness of all sins and eternal life.”¹⁸

Already in Babylonian Captivity of the Church the apparent isolation of the individual in the context of baptism and the Lord’s Supper seems almost complete: Therefore, let this irrefutable truth stand fast: Where there is a divine promise, there every one must stand on his own feet; his own personal faith is demanded, he will give an account for himself and bear his own load [Gal 6:5]; as it is said in the last chapter of Mark [16:16]: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” Even so each one can derive personal benefit from the mass only by his own personal faith.¹⁹

 Trigg, Baptism, 58.  BC 450.  WA 6:360 = LW 35:88.  WA 6:521 = LW 36:49. See Thomas J. Davis, This is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 20 – 31, for a useful account of the development of Luther’s thought in this direction in the years 1518 – 21, which links his understanding of the Lord’s Supper as testament with the increasingly sharp focus on individual faith. One caveat should be entered, however: Davis tends to regard the element or sign as clearly secondary to the word, in a man-

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The Luther of later years would not consistently adhere to this radical emphasis. Once he found himself needing to defend the baptism of infants, although he did not shy away from positing faith on the infants’ part, he was also happy to contemplate them coming to the sacrament “in the faith of others.”²⁰ Although the sense of the radical aloneness of the individual before God would continue in the older Luther, his increasing emphasis upon the primacy of the divine command and promise irrevocably joined to the sign would tend to blur not the indispensability of faith, but the question of the quality and indeed the location of that faith.²¹

3.2 Baptism and the Lord’s Supper Dependent on Faith for Use, Not for Validity But Luther will not allow the validity of baptism or the reality of the Lord’s Supper to be compromised by the absence of faith. Faith does not create the sacrament; it receives it. To believe otherwise not only impugns the word and work of God; it overturns the nature of faith. When in 1528 Luther confronts the arguments of those who require a second baptism for those who have come to faith since they were baptised as infants, he insists that they are in effect making God’s word dependent on faith: Assume that the first baptism is without faith. Tell me which is the greater and the more important in the second baptism, the Word of God or faith? Is it not true that the Word of God is greater and more important than faith, since faith builds and is founded on the Word of God rather than God’s Word on faith? Furthermore faith may waver and change, but God’s Word remains forever [Isa 40:6 – 9; 1 Pet 1:24]. Then too, tell me, if one of these two should be otherwise, which should it rather be: the immutable Word or the changeable faith? Would it not more reasonably be the faith that should be subject to change rather than the Word of God? It is fairer to assume that the Word of God would change faith, if a right one were lacking, than that faith would change the Word of God. So they must confess that in the first baptism it was not the Word of God that was defective, but faith, and that what is needed is another faith and not another Word. Why then do they not concern themselves rather with a change of faith and let the Word remain unaltered?²²

Likewise with the Lord’s Supper: Luther insists that “Christ’s flesh is not only of no avail but actually is poison and death if it is eaten without faith and the word.”²³ The absence of faith cannot compromise the word of God, even though its presence is essential for the eating to be salutary and useful.

ner which the older Luther, at least, would not countenance. In other words, he tends to underestimate the tightness of the bond with which God has joined word and sign.  WA 30.1:219, 15; BC 443.  Trigg, Baptism, 85 ff.  WA 26:173 = LW 40:260 f.  WA 26:354 = LW 37:238, Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, 1528.

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3.3 Faith Subverted If It Becomes Foundational The problems with grounding the sacraments on faith are more obvious in the case of baptism, where the questioning of validity may exclude people from the Church. Although the arguments from the 1520s onwards about infant baptism constitute much of the material, as infant baptism may appear to be the most striking instance of baptism without faith, the issues apply more widely. A useful source on the relationship between baptism and faith is the 1528 letter to two pastors Concerning Rebaptism. ²⁴ The Anabaptists insist that faith is required for baptism and should indeed be present beforehand; part of Luther’s response is his assertion that no one can prove that infants do not have faith, and indeed there has been every reason from the moment John leapt in his mother’s womb to believe that they can and they do.²⁵ Luther continues with a series of other arguments of varying degrees of persuasiveness, most of them based on the simple fact of the continuation of the Church: had infant baptism been a heresy, God would not have permitted it to continue so long; the outpouring of the Spirit on so many thus baptised as children; the intolerable consequence that there would have been no baptism in the Church for centuries if infant baptism were not true baptism. He is also prepared to reason from the Pope, who as Antichrist must sit in the temple of God, and from the mere existence of Christendom – which can only be Christendom if people are validly baptised. Finally he brings together the covenant of circumcision, which did not exclude children, and the new covenant and the command to baptise, which excludes nobody.²⁶ But such arguments must be tangential for Luther; the bedrock of his approach is that the presence or absence of faith (both in the baptiser and the baptised) is never certain; thus to build the validity of the sacrament on it is futile. The doubting conscience will attack again, even after a second baptism, but the worst consequence is a failure to acknowledge the primacy of the word of God: True, one should add faith to baptism. But we are not to base baptism on faith. There is quite a difference between having faith, on the one hand, and depending on one’s faith and making baptism depend on faith, on the other. Whoever allows himself to be baptized on the strength of his faith, is not only uncertain, but also an idolater who denies Christ. For he trusts in and builds on something of his own, namely, on a gift which he has from God, and not on God’s Word alone. So another may build on and trust in his strength, wealth, power, wisdom, holiness, which also are gifts given him by God. But a baptism on the Word and command of God even when faith is not present is still a correct and certain baptism if it takes place as God commanded. Granted, it is not of benefit to the baptized one who is without faith, because of his lack of faith, but the baptism is not thereby incorrect, uncertain, or of no meaning. If we were to con-

 WA 26:144– 174 = LW 40:227– 262.  WA 26:156 = LW 40:242.  WA 26:466 – 469 = LW 40:254– 258.

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sider everything wrong or ineffectual which is of no value to the unbeliever, then nothing would be right or remain good.²⁷

For Luther, to build on one’s own possession of faith can only lead back to the Galatian heresy, back to a self-directed and self-reliant spirituality of works, albeit in a new shape, and away from the righteousness of God.²⁸ Faith is not self-directed or self-aware; it is not to be measured or assessed. All the attention is fixed on the word of promise; faith is simply “a constant gaze that looks at nothing except Christ.”²⁹

4 Grace: What the Sacraments Do The gravest injury to the Church so far as the Lord’s Supper was concerned is the transformation of the gift and bequest of Christ into an offering to God, thus reversing the direction of the sacramental action. Luther receives the mass as itself the new testament: Christ is the testator; we Christians the legatees; the dominical words constitute the testament; the seal is the bread and wine under which are his living body and blood; the legacy itself is the remission of sins and eternal life; and finally there is the fitting memorial of gratitude, love, and blessing.³⁰ To convert the gift of God’s love into an offering made to him is an offence, and it is associated with the concealment, suppression, or mumbling of the words of institution, the word of promise.³¹ There are other injuries; the withholding of the cup from the laity is the most obvious, but this is by far the most grievous: where God’s promise is absent, so is his grace, and works (and trust in works) will quickly take its place. By contrast, for Luther the injury done to baptism in the contemporary practice of the Church of Rome is not perversion, but suppression or supersession. Here, at least among adults, the word of promise is overlaid by the “second plank” of penance and by all the other self-chosen works of man-made religion, and the enduring promise of God to be heard in baptism is overlaid and silenced. In the 1520s and beyond, Luther increasingly comes to interpret the gospel and the freedom of a Christian in baptismal terms.³²

     

WA 26:464 f. = LW 40:252 f. WA 26:462 = LW 40:249. WA 40.1:545 = LW 26:356. WA 6:359 f. = LW 35:86 f., Treatise on the New Testament, that is, the Holy Mass, 1520. WA 8:508 = LW 36:164, The Misuse of the Mass, 1521. Trigg, Baptism, 144 f.

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5 “This is my Body” … “This is my Blood” From 1526 onwards his assertion “that Christ’s body and blood are truly present in the bread and wine”³³ dominates Luther’s polemic so far as sacramental theology is concerned. However, the broad outline of his argument on this issue appears somewhat earlier, in his treatise on The Adoration of the Sacrament addressed to the Bohemian Brethren in spring 1523: They have taught nothing more than that the bread signifies the body and the wine signifies the blood of Christ, just as if one were to take a figure from the Old Testament and say: the bread from heaven which the Jews ate in the wilderness signifies the body of Christ or the gospel, but the bread from heaven is not the gospel or the body of Christ. It is as if I should say of baptism: baptism is a washing of the soul; that is, baptism does not actually wash the soul but merely signifies the washing whereby the soul is washed with the Word of God in faith. Those who teach this view have accorded similar honour to the sacrament by saying: the body of Christ is not there; it merely signifies the body like a symbol. Now beware of such a view. Let go of reason and intellect; for they strive in vain to understand how flesh and blood can be present, and because they do not grasp it they refuse to believe it. Lay hold on the word which Christ speaks: “Take, this is my body, this is my blood.” One must not do such violence to the words of God as to give to any word a meaning other than its natural one.³⁴

Thus at least part of the reason for his subsequent vehemence is already laid bare: Luther cannot allow the sacraments to be bare signs of God’s gracious work in the human soul, which in fact proceeds independently of them. The comparison he draws with baptism is instructive: in both cases Luther is concerned to assert the effect of the word of God joined to the sign. If at least this significant component of his motivation is revealed here, so also is the central line of argument that he would deploy in the subsequent debate with the Swiss, with Oecolampadius and Bucer, but above all with Zwingli.

5.1 The Plain Meaning of the Word In this debate Luther would be forced to deploy several lines of argument in defense of his assertion of the real presence, but the basic ground on which he chooses to stand is abundantly clear: the words of institution are crucial to him, and in particular he will allow no deviation whatsoever from the natural meaning of “is,” whether in terms of “signifies” (Zwingli) or, in effect, “represents” (Oecolampadius). He will not enter into speculation about the “how” of this presence of body and blood, for instance by using the language of “substance” and “accident;” it is a simple matter

 The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ – Against the Fanatics, WA 19:482 = LW 36:335.  WA 11:434 = LW 36:279

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of accepting the scriptural “that”: “The bread we see with our eyes, but we hear with our ears that Christ’s body is present.”³⁵ The insistence on the plain meaning of “is” remains central to his position throughout, but there are other lines of argument that need to be carefully distinguished.

5.2 Christology First, Luther knows that he has to defend his thesis against those who insist that Christ’s body is in heaven at the right hand of God and therefore cannot also be in the bread of the Lord’s Supper. For Zwingli, the bodily humanity of Christ must be in a certain place in heaven; Luther responds that the right hand of God is everywhere, which means nothing else than that even as a man he is over all things, has all things under him, and rules over all. Therefore he must also be near at hand, in and about all things, and have all things in his hands. For nothing is delivered to him or put under his feet according to his divinity, since he himself made all things at the beginning and preserves them. But to sit at God’s right hand is the same as to rule and have power over all things. If he is to have power and rule, surely he must also be present there in his essence through the right hand of God which is everywhere.³⁶

Thus the assertion of Christ’s presence in the bread and wine cannot be excluded on the basis of his place at God’s right hand. It might be possible to present the debate between Luther and Zwingli on the real presence as essentially christological in origin and nature.³⁷ Luther binds humanity and divinity so tightly together in one person that whatever the Scriptures predicate of the one may be ascribed to the other; by contrast, Zwingli’s emphasis is on the Chalcedonian insistence that the two natures coexist in Christ without confusion, and that the true humanity of Christ disallows the ubiquity of his body.³⁸ Although both men acknowledge the bounds of credal orthodoxy, their approaches and em-

 WA 23:86 = LW 37:29, That These Words of Christ, “This is my Body,” etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics.  WA 23:144 = LW 37:64.  See, for instance, Hermann Sasse, This is My Body: Luther’s Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing,1959; Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2001). 148 – 55. See also Bruce A. Ware, “The Meaning of the Lord’s Supper in the Theology of Ulrich Zwingli,” in The Lord’s Supper: Remembering and Proclaiming Christ until He Comes, eds. Thomas R. Schreiner and Matthew R. Crawford (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2011), 234, for an account of Zwingli’s horror at the way Luther’s assertion of the ubiquity of Christ robs him of his full humanity.  For instance at Marburg, LW 38:47: “If in every way his body is like ours and he has also assumed our nature, and we cannot be in various places, then neither can he, since his existence is truly like ours.”

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phases in interpreting orthodox Christology are radically different. Nor is there any doubt that a great deal links Luther’s sacramental theology and his Christology: his understanding of God hidden in or under what is his opposite, whether in the obscurity of a stable, in the shame of the cross, under the plain water of baptism, or in bread and wine. Nevertheless, as it appears in Luther’s series of responses to Zwingli and others from 1526, the christological issue has the aspect of an arena Luther is obliged to enter at this point by the arguments of his opponents, rather than that of a starting principle in his assertion of the real presence.³⁹

5.3 Flesh and Spirit Luther finds himself having to respond to a second line of argument, against Oecolampadius as well as Zwingli, when they reason from the opposition between flesh and spirit and arrive at a spiritual eating in the Communion that leaves no room for the physical. The Swiss typically used John 6:63 as their proof text: “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail.” At Marburg, both Zwingli and Oecolampadius are recorded as having applied this directly to the Lord’s Supper and as requiring spiritual feeding upon Christ to be separated from any physical eating;⁴⁰ this was by no means an argument new to Luther.⁴¹ He uses a variety of arguments in reply: insisting that his opponents make a false move when they imply that the text should read “my flesh is of no avail;”⁴² repeatedly returning to John 6:55, where by contrast the extra word is certainly present: “my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed;”⁴³ and claiming that Zwingli and Oecolampadius are playing with grammar, with pronouns and articles.⁴⁴ But these skirmishes on ground chosen by his opponents, which Luther is obliged to enter in defense of his position, do not fully express what is at stake in these arguments about “flesh.” The difficulty arises because of the double way the word may be used: “flesh” may indeed rightly be opposed to “spirit,” and Luther acknowledges this in reference to Paul’s usage in Romans 8 and Galatians 5. But to denigrate the flesh or the body and to oppose it to the spirit because of its sheer bodiliness or its physicality is something he will not allow. His opponents think that “nothing spiritual can be present where there is anything material and physical,

 So also Davis, This Is My Body, 42. Based on an analysis of Luther’s sermons in the 1520s, Davis concludes that the ubiquity of the body of Christ, far from being the cornerstone of Luther’s eucharistic thought, “is part of the way Luther explained his eucharistic teaching, but […] not an integral part of the structure itself.”  See for instance Collin’s record at LW 38:53 and 38:55.  WA 23:157 = LW 37:71 f.  WA 23:170 = LW 37:81.  E. g., WA 26:376 – 77 = LW 37:251.  E. g., WA 26:360 – 62 = LW 37:242.

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and assert that flesh is of no avail. Actually the opposite is true. The Spirit cannot be with us except in material and physical things such as the word, water, and Christ’s body and in his saints on earth.”⁴⁵ This leads back to Luther’s insistence that the sign in its ordinary physicality is by no means to be despised; it has the promise of God indissolubly joined to it. But there is another implication of such denigration of the flesh, which amounts to a form of theologia gloriae, the theology of glory. For instance, Luther accuses Oecolampadius of recoiling from the implications of the real presence for Christ’s dignity, “saying that it must be truly a fine King of glory who would permit his body to be tossed to and fro upon the altar even by ungodly knaves;” in his answer, Luther is led straight to the theology of the cross: According to Oecolampadius’s wisdom, it is true, Christ has no other glory than to sit at the right hand of God on a velvet cushion and let the angels sing and fiddle and ring bells and play before him, and to be unconcerned with the problem of the Supper. But according to the faith of us poor sinners and fools, his glory is manifold, when his body and blood are present in the Supper: first, in that he makes fools of the learned and clever fanatics and permits them to become offended and hardened over his words and works, which he so foolishly speaks and performs that they cannot bring themselves to believe, as St. Paul says in I Corinthians 1[:23], “We preach Christ, a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,” and again [1:25], “The foolishness of God is wiser than men.”⁴⁶

5.4 Is the Real Presence Essential for Luther? Luther’s uncompromising insistence on the real presence is clear and persistent. But precisely what energizes his vehemence? The chief basis of his argument is his general unwillingness to allow any distortion of the plain meaning of the language of Scripture, which is clearly heightened in specific contexts, such as the dominical words of institution, or a key baptismal text such as Mark 16:16. But is his motive, as opposed to his argument, essentially rooted in his approach to Scripture? There is an intense concentration on just a few words of Scripture: on the words of promise attached to the signs. This is where Luther can allow no compromise. Behind the scriptural basis of his argument is, as we have seen, his anxiety to preserve the sacraments as means of grace and their direction of movement from God to humankind. Is he justified in fearing that his opponents are reversing this direction and reconstructing the Lord’s Supper as an expression of human piety? And, if so, how far is it the case that it is precisely their denial or their radical reinterpretation of the presence of Christ which underlies this reversal? To take the example of Zwingli, it seems clear that human activity, specifically the act of commemoration, is central to the sacrament:  WA 23:193 = LW 37:94 f.  WA 23:154 = LW 37:70 f.

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[I]n the Holy Eucharist, i. e., the supper of thanksgiving, the true body of Christ is present by the contemplation of faith. This means that they who thank the Lord for the benefits bestowed on us in His Son acknowledge that he assumed true flesh, in it truly suffered, truly washed away our sins by His blood; and thus everything done by Christ becomes as it were present to them by the contemplation of faith.⁴⁷

Christ’s presence is asserted, but faith appears as the active principle on which it depends. The physical eating and drinking in themselves are of no benefit; it is the associated contemplation of the death of Christ which makes the right use of the elements and leads to “a contemplative faith that remembers, cherishes, and trusts in the fullness of the accomplished work of Christ.”⁴⁸ The Eucharist is also an act through which the Church discerns itself as the body of Christ and an act of proclamation, to believers and unbelievers alike – a proclamation of the cross.⁴⁹ Human action begins and continues the sacrament and its benefits. In the case of Zwingli’s approach to baptism, the same effective priority accorded to human action is evident. He makes a firm distinction between the inward baptism of the Spirit (which is essential for salvation) and the outward rite of baptism in water (which is not).⁵⁰ If the Lord’s Supper for Zwingli is an act of remembering and contemplating, baptism can appear as a public demonstration of loyalty – on occasion, this soldier-theologian compares it to the badge or insignia worn in the military as a token of allegiance.⁵¹ Luther might well have applied the same strictures to him as he did to the Anabaptists, whom he accused of insisting that “we bring everything to baptism beforehand, so that it is nothing but an unnecessary symbol by which one is supposed to be able to recognise such pious folk.”⁵² Thus the principles at stake are the same: in both baptism and the Eucharist, Zwingli distinguishes word and sign, sacrament and saving effect; Luther binds them tightly together. But there is a notable difference in the sign; in the one case Luther frequently emphasizes the ordinariness of water, but in the other he makes the bodily presence of Christ central to his understanding. The unimpressive outward appearance of the elements does indeed figure in Luther’s approach, as witnessed by

 Ulrich Zwingli, “An Account of the Faith of Zwingli,” in The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2, On Providence and Other Essays, ed. William John Hinke for Samuel McCauley Jackson (Philadelphia: Heidelberg, 1922), 49 (SW 6.2:806).  Ware, “The Meaning of the Lord’s Supper,” 230.  Davis, This Is My Body, 158, 163.  Zwingli 4:224 f.  W.P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 185. Luther detected this assumption in the context of the Lord’s Supper also: “They say that it is only a sign, by which one may recognize Christians and judge them, so that we have nothing more of it than the mere shell. So they come together, and eat and drink, in order that they may commemorate his death. All the power is said to be in this commemoration, the bread and wine are no more than a sign and a colour by which one may recognize that we are Christians.” WA 19:503 = LW 36:348.  See Luther’s commentary on Ps 117, 1530: WA 31.1:257, 10 – 18 = LW 14:39.

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his denial of transubstantiation in his insistence that bread and wine remain in the sacrament.⁵³ The bread and wine, like the water of baptism, are the veils or masks under which God hides himself; common things and easily despised, but they conceal the presence of God. Luther saw his opponents’ denial of the real presence as implying a view of the Lord’s Supper that made it a human act, constituted in terms of human remembering, contemplation, and believing, which effectively played that same cruel trick as had the Church of Rome with the mass understood as sacrifice – it destroyed the sacrament as a means of grace, as it replaced divine action with human. Was he correct? Could there not have been a compromise that preserved the objectivity of the sacrament – Christ’s giving of himself – without his dogmatic and divisive insistence upon his interpretation of the words of institution? There were occasional hints of moderation in his tone, as for example in his 1523 treatise on the Adoration of the Sacrament addressed to the Bohemian Brethren, although it contains much the same arguments as those he would later use against the Swiss. Luther is also moderate with regard to dogmatic attempts to explain or theorize about the how of the real presence – it is enough for us simply to accept that Christ is present in bread and wine.⁵⁴ But given the nature of the arguments deployed by his Swiss opponents, it is hard to see what common ground Luther could have found with them; their understanding of the sacraments as effectively an exercise of human piety left him little incentive for restraint. The plain meaning of the words of institution is so close to the heart of the gospel that Luther has no room for maneuver.⁵⁵

6 The Impasse At first sight, the extent of the agreement represented by the Marburg Articles on all matters save one – the bodily presence of Christ’s true body and blood – is impressive. But from that tantalizing point of apparent closeness, the divergence between the Lutheran and Reformed confessions widened and deepened. Luther himself, in his intransigent refusal to offer the hand of friendship to his opponents, is easily cast as the villain. Herman Sasse is his vigorous defender: “For more than four centuries, the clever diplomacy of Philip of Hesse, and the wishful thinking of all friends of a Protestant union, were able to deceive Christendom as to the real outcome of the days of Marburg.”⁵⁶ Sasse is of the view that at Marburg the readiness to agree with the Swiss side concealed a radically different estimation of the place and importance of sacramen WA 11:441 = LW 36:288.  Sasse, This Is My Body, 100 – 08.  “To destroy or extenuate these words was for Luther a violation of the Gospel itself” (Sasse, This Is My Body, 109).  Sasse, This Is My Body, 275 f.

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tal theology, and indeed of the sacraments themselves. For Zwingli, “the Sacrament, and the doctrine on the Sacrament, did not belong to those essentials of the Christian faith concerning which there must be unity within the church.”⁵⁷ His very willingness to compromise and negotiate implied a deep chasm between him and Luther, who saw the gospel and the sacrament as inseparable, and whose obduracy reflected that. Their very different approach to sacramental doctrine also determined the response of the Reformers to their disagreement. Luther had at one point appeared to desire continuing fellowship: “Even if we cannot come to a complete agreement, we may at the end of this colloquy discuss the question of whether or not we are still able to regard one another as brethren.”⁵⁸ But his refusal to respond to Zwingli’s emotional plea at the conclusion of the colloquy is consistent with the view that here, in this division between “the church of the pure sacrament and the churches that had lost, together with the Real Presence, the sacrament of Christ,” was not a mere difference between theological schools of thought, as it was to Zwingli and his friends, “which might [therefore] be tolerated within one and the same church,” but rather “the difference between church and heresy.”⁵⁹ Philip of Hesse’s plea for mutual recognition in the absence of agreement on the Lord’s Supper was an impossible request for Luther to concede. The fault line revealed at Marburg has remained a powerfully divisive factor in the churches of the Reformation. The fracture runs deep and in complex patterns: some Lutheran church bodies are open to full ecumenical relations, including mutual admission to Holy Communion, with a number of other bodies, including some with roots in the Reformed tradition; others are not. Luther’s refusal to compromise on the real presence has left a difficult legacy. But that it was a matter bound up with his understanding of the gospel and how it is to be heard and received, as well as with his resounding denial of anything that replaces the precious word of God’s grace with an exercise or display of human piety, is evident throughout the disputes of this period. The logic of his position required him to deny the presence of the means of grace in the Swiss churches, at least as far as the Lord’s Supper was concerned.⁶⁰

 Sasse, This Is My Body, 282.  Sasse, This Is My Body, 239. See WA 30.III:188 – 89 = LW 38:21.  Sasse, This Is My Body, 290.  That Sasse sees this in terms of the people of God being robbed of the means of grace is clear from his vivid imagining of the very last (and well-attended) mass offered at the Minster in Zurich before the new service was inaugurated on the Maundy Thursday of 1525: “An unconscious feeling of this profound change must have been in the souls of the people of Zurich, for, before they took part in the new celebration, they crowded the Great Minster on Wednesday of that memorable Holy Week, April 12, 1525, when mass was said for the last time – as if they wanted to take leave of him whose blessed presence in the Sacrament of the Altar had accompanied their lives and those of their fathers throughout the centuries. Henceforth they would never again receive the true body and blood of their Saviour. This great loss was not their fault, but the fault of those who, by

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7 Intention: Seeking Certainty? Luther is a theologian of the means of grace: no room for doubt about them, or that a saving God is truly to be encountered in them, can be allowed. People should direct their steps “to the place where the Word resounds and the sacraments are administered, and [be fully assured that there they find] THE GATE OF GOD.”⁶¹ Anxiety about the sanctity of the ministering priest or the waxing and waning of the faith in which the word is heard or the sacrament is received cannot be allowed to compromise this certainty. So much of Luther’s effort is directed towards debarring the doubts that arise when any human factors are placed above the divine word of promise. But does his position, if held consistently, readmit anxiety and uncertainty in another way, focused in one way or another on intention? To what extent does the validity of a sacrament as a means of God’s grace depend (one might say, how much does the bodily presence of Christ in bread and wine depend) on the doctrine of the minister, on the precise wording of the liturgy, and/or the formal confession of the church body? Or does it depend simply on the intention of Christ himself? Another way of framing the question would be to ask how far Luther and his successors were able to acknowledge the existence of the true Church, and therefore the means of grace which call the Church into being, amongst those with whom he had been in dispute. In Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, Luther repeats his belief that “even if the priests who distribute them or those who receive them do not believe or otherwise misuse the sacrament,” the true body and blood of Christ are eaten and drunk in the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper. But he is unwilling to allow the same when the sacrament is celebrated by ministers who “change God’s Word and ordinance and misinterpret them;” they indeed have only bread and wine.⁶² They do not act according to the intention of the Church, that is the word, and “the intention of Christ himself in heaven.”⁶³ Later he would come close to advising the congregation to assess the private intention of their minister: If anyone knows that his pastor teaches the Zwinglian way publicly, he ought to avoid him. He should rather abstain from the Sacrament all his life than to receive it from him, and even die and suffer all things. If, however, his pastor should be an equivocator who pretends that in the Sacrament Christ’s body and blood are truly present, and must yet be suspected […] of meaning something different from what the words imply, he should unhesitatingly go or send word to him asking for a clear statement of what he gives you with his hands and what you receive orally.⁶⁴

making the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ a human sacrifice and a beautiful spectacle, had already destroyed the Sacrament as the gift of God’s sola gratia.”  WA 43:59 = LW 5:247 (Luther on Jacob’s ladder).  WA 26:506 = LW 37:367.  WA 38:216 = LW 38:171  Open letter to those in Frankfurt on Main, 1533, WA 30.3:558 – 71, trans. Jon D. Vieker (Fort Wayne, IN: Concordia Theological Seminary Press, 1991).

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The more the private intention of the priest or pastor is at issue, the greater the danger that no celebration of the Lord’s Supper can ever be certain, because the soundness or otherwise of its foundation is hidden. (In the same way, the greater the emphasis on the qualifying words “pure” and “right,” as applied to the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments as clear marks of the presence of the Church, the more compromised may be the clarity and assurance Luther seeks for the sinner.) That Luther was forced to confront the question of intention, specifically the intention of the church, is clear from his 1533 treatise, The Private Mass and the Consecration of Priests. ⁶⁵ Despite all the possible causes of doubt and uncertainty, however, Luther insists that the ordinance of Christ is clear, as is whether or not it is kept, so that God’s word and work cannot be questioned or hindered, to Luther’s own consolation and to the comfort of his brothers and sisters in Christ.⁶⁶

 WA 38:195 – 226 = LW 38:147– 215. See especially WA 38:202 f. = LW 38:155: Luther, who had himself conducted many private masses, reconstructs the arguments he could have used (and, perhaps we are meant to understand, did use) to defend this practice in dispute with his prosecuting counsel, the devil. He allows the devil the best of the argument. Luther distinguishes three “intentions”: that of the priest, that of the Church, and that of Christ. His own personal intention may have been mistaken or deficient, yet he had the excellent defence that he was acting in accordance with the intent of the Church. But the devil’s reply, namely that in this respect the church’s intention was not Christ’s, is the knock-out blow. Defective intention is something specifically public, and thus Luther can consistently argue that “conversion” is not effected by the Zwinglians, as it may not be by the mass priests, as they are not acting in accordance with the Dominical institution of the sacrament.  WA 38:265 = LW 38:224 f.

Christopher W. Close

The Diet of Worms and the Holy Roman Empire 1 Introduction On April 17, 1521, an Augustinian monk and theology professor from the University of Wittenberg in Saxony named Martin Luther stepped before the Holy Roman emperor and an assemblage of delegates to answer questions about the orthodoxy of his religious writings. Over the last five hundred years, Luther’s appearance at the Imperial Diet of Worms has become the stuff of legend, a defining moment in the evolution of Protestant self-identity that has taken on almost mythic proportions. Some have seen it as a quintessential act of religious defiance that could inspire their congregations to remain true to their faith in the face of persecution.¹ Others – such as Ernst Rietschel, the nineteenth-century designer of a Luther memorial in Worms – have lionized Luther’s appearance at the diet as “the beginning of the Reformation.”² Professional historians also often depict Worms as a watershed moment in Western Christianity. As one modern scholar has put it, “with [Luther’s] words [at Worms], Protestantism was born.”³ In 1521, however, the meaning and importance of events in the Rhenish city of Worms were less clear. Because of the drama of the Luther Affair, or the Causa Lutheri as it was known at the time, the Diet of Worms is one of the most-studied and perhaps best-known of all sixteenth-century imperial diets. The amount of scholarship on the diet and its place in the popular imagination often obscure the fact that the Luther Affair was but one of many issues confronting the members of the Holy Roman Empire as they assembled in Worms from January–May 1521. Indeed, Luther did not even appear at the diet until it had been meeting for almost three months. Matters of imperial taxation, controversy over the activity of merchant monopolies, and negotiations over the reorganization of imperial governance all occupied large segments of the diet’s deliberations. For many contemporaries at the diet, the Causa Lutheri formed part of a larger struggle over how much influence the empire’s member territories, known as the Imperial Estates, would exert on the governing and operation of the empire. One must view the diet’s engagement with the Luther Affair

 Stan Landry, Ecumenism, Memory, and German Nationalism, 1817 – 1917 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014), 38.  Quoted in W. Weber, “Das Luther-Denkmal in Worms,” in Der Reichstag zu Worms von 1521, ed. Fritz Reuter (Worms: Stadtarchiv, 1971), 493.  Mark Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 154. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-019

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through this lens. It helps to explain why the confrontation at the diet played out as it did, as well as why the Edict of Worms condemning Luther proved so impotent in many parts of the empire. Situating the Luther Affair within the complex, overlapping negotiations at Worms illuminates how calls for imperial and religious reform intersected to provide the political backdrop for the early Reformation.

2 The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation The Luther Affair unfolded in close dialogue with the political dynamics of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The empire comprised hundreds of semi-autonomous territories bound together by oaths of loyalty to the empire’s chief, the Holy Roman emperor. An elected position, the emperor was selected by the seven electors, who were the most powerful princes in the empire. To win election as emperor, aspiring princes often had to pay large sums of money to the electors to secure their support. This was the case in 1519, when Emperor Maximilian I died and his grandson, Charles V, won election as the new emperor. Only nineteen years old at the time, Charles spent extravagantly to gain the votes of the electors. His strategy succeeded in attaining the imperial throne, but it also indebted him heavily to the urban bankers in southern Germany who funded his election campaign. Moreover, Charles’ youth meant he needed to maintain the support of the electors in order to govern effectively in the years after his election, a situation the electors sought to exploit by establishing new limits on the emperor’s power.⁴ Both of these factors influenced deliberations during the 1521 Diet of Worms and shaped how the young emperor addressed the various political and religious crises facing his realm. The empire’s individual member territories, the Imperial Estates, ranged in size from small, self-governing cities to the grandiose electors to all kinds of polities inbetween. Each estate exercised a good deal of autonomy within its territorial borders and guarded against outside interference in its local affairs. The emphasis these estates placed on local independence and princely prerogative became known as “German liberty.”⁵ This value shaped the evolution of the Reformation in numerous ways and constrained the emperor’s ability to combat Luther’s ideas, since individual princes could and did claim that imperial decrees against Luther and his writings violated their territorial rights and liberties. For example, such concerns shaped the actions of Luther’s direct overlord in the early 1520s, Elector Frederick the Wise of

 Joachim Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. Volume 1: Maximilian to the Peace of Westphalia 1493 – 1648 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 158 – 61.  On the idea of German liberty, see G. Schmidt, “‘Teutsche Libertät’ oder ‘Hispanische Servitut’: Deutungsstrategien im Kampf um den evangelischen Glauben und die Reichsverfassung (1546 – 1552),” in Das Interim 1548/50, ed. Luise Schorn-Schütte (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005), 166 – 91.

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Saxony, who served as the monk’s most important protector in the wake of the Diet of Worms.⁶ Nevertheless, despite the fact that the estates exercised substantial autonomy within their territorial boundaries, they were not independent states. Rather, each local ruler swore an oath of loyalty to the emperor that bound all estates together into a common political system, the Holy Roman Empire.⁷ At the imperial level, several organs of government created forums where estates acted out their allegiance to the empire, formulated common policies, and sought legal redress for harms done to them by other estates. Some of these institutions, such as the Imperial Chamber Court, were judicial bodies that mediated conflicts between estates in the hopes of preventing their escalation into full-scale war. Others, such as the Imperial Diet, were legislative bodies that worked to enact policies that were nominally binding on all estates. Comprised of representatives from all the empire’s different estates, the Imperial Diet met irregularly during the sixteenth century in different locations. It was not a standing body. Instead, the emperor had to summon the diet to meet in a specific place and time, which is why each diet became known by the name of the city in which it assembled. The diet’s procedures had evolved during the late Middle Ages and took concrete form at a 1495 diet, also held in Worms. In the first several decades of the sixteenth century, the diet became an essential venue for political decision making in the empire. When assembled, the Imperial Diet served as the empire’s highest political stage. It was, as Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger has argued, where the empire became visible and its different members acted out their symbolic roles as limbs of one imperial body.⁸ When in session, the diet met in three different houses or curia: one for the seven electors, one for the empire’s other noblemen and independent ecclesiastical rulers, and one for the imperial cities, which were self-governing city-states that owed allegiance to no territorial lord except the emperor. Throughout the sixteenth century, the empire’s princes contested the right of the cities to a full vote within the diet, a confrontation rooted in wider tensions within the diet deriving from the diversity of its membership. Deliberations normally occurred separately within each curia, with the diet assembling in a plenary session to consider proposals that came out of the individual houses or from the work of joint committees. By 1521, the diet made frequent use of such intercurial committees, which drew members from all three houses in an effort to draft policy that could gain broad support within the general diet.⁹ In the week after Luther’s formal appearance before the diet

 On Frederick, see Ingetraut Ludolphy, Friedrich der Weise. Kurfürst von Sachsen 1463 – 1525 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984).  For an excellent overview of the empire in the early modern period, see Whaley, Germany.  Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Des Kaisers alte Kleider (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2008).  On the diet’s procedures, see Helmut Neuhaus, Reichsständische Repräsentationsformen im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1982); W. Schulze, “Majority Decision in the Imperial Diets of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” The Journal of Modern History 58 (December 1986): 46 – 63.

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on April 17– 18, 1521, just such a committee sought to reconcile the Wittenberg monk with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Decision making within the diet occurred by majority vote, and each house voted on matters individually. This arrangement put the cities in a difficult situation, since the legitimacy of their vote was not fully recognized, and the princes could always close ranks and outvote them anyway.¹⁰ Tensions between urban and princely leaders shaped many negotiations at Worms, especially when the diet considered legislation aimed at regulating the empire’s large banking houses, which were located in cities. This struggle over so-called merchant monopolies continued at almost every imperial diet held during the 1520s. It fed off the same frustration that led many officials to sympathize with Luther’s attack on the wealth and corruption of the clerical hierarchy.¹¹ The diet’s engagement with religious matters often intersected with the wider sphere of imperial politics, and the attitudes many estates displayed toward Luther and his ideas overlapped with their positions on other policies, especially in the early years of Luther’s career.

3 The Diet of Worms and the Imperial Governing Council The 1521 Diet of Worms marked the first Imperial Diet held during the reign of the young Emperor Charles V.¹² A member of the house of Habsburg, Charles was only nineteen at the time of his election, but he was already one of the most powerful rulers in all of Europe. In 1516 he had ascended to the throne of a united Spain and all of its overseas territories. Charles also held the title of Duke of Burgundy, which gave him lordship over the rich Low Countries, where he had been born and raised. As Holy Roman emperor, Charles ruled over more lands than any other European monarch. Nevertheless, he remained an unknown commodity to the vast majority of estates in the empire, and he spoke little German. Combined with his youth, this situation made the strength of his authority within the empire uncertain. When Charles called the Diet of Worms, therefore, one of his goals was to establish a showcase for his imperial power and to receive oaths of fealty in person from all the empire’s estates.¹³ His personal presence at the diet made it a huge event. It ensured that many of the empire’s territorial rulers attended in person rather than sending a rep Schulze, Majority Decision.  Thomas Brady, Turning Swiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 119 – 50; Bernd Mertens, Im Kampf gegen die Monopole (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996).  For an introduction to Charles, see Alfred Kohler, Karl V. 1500 – 1558. Eine Biographie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2000); James Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).  Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther. Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012), 202– 04; Whaley, Germany, 156 – 61.

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resentative to act in their stead, which allowed them to get a first-hand look at Charles as well as the renegade monk from Wittenberg. One of the main issues confronting the Diet of Worms was the founding of a new Reichsregiment, or Imperial Governing Council, that could carry out the emperor’s duties during his absences from the empire. Given the fact that Charles V ruled Spain and would therefore spend a good portion of his reign in Spanish territories or fighting wars in other parts of Europe, creating a new Governing Council had become an essential goal for many estates. At his election in 1519, Charles had promised to establish a Governing Council, but he and the Imperial Estates differed over the form it should take. Charles wanted to appoint council members and desired the council to be active only when the emperor was outside the empire. The estates at Worms, however, proposed a council that would operate continuously, even when the emperor was present within the empire’s borders. Moreover, their version of the council drew its members almost exclusively from the empire’s electors, princes, prelates, and imperial cities, with only a few seats allotted to imperial appointments.¹⁴ These divergent ideas of what the council should look like and how it should operate reflected the differing agendas of the estates and the emperor. Charles desired strong central rule controlled by the emperor, while many estates sought to create a system that placed more power in the hands of individual princes and tied the emperor more closely to the will of the estates. These competing visions for the empire’s future influenced how the diet addressed the Luther Affair, which many authorities saw as part and parcel of the struggle over the Imperial Estates’ influence on imperial governance. The different approaches of the estates and the emperor were especially significant for the diet’s aftermath and the failure of the Edict of Worms to gain support in many territories. Negotiations over the Imperial Governing Council stretched throughout the diet. They reached their height in the second half of April, at exactly the moment Luther appeared in Worms.¹⁵ On the same day that Charles V presented his personal rejection of Luther’s position to the diet, the emperor also rejected the estates’ proposal for the Governing Council as unworkable, since, among other things, it would lead “to the emperor’s diminution in the eyes of other foreign nations.”¹⁶ The simultaneity of the Luther Affair and the Governing Council debate shows the complexity of political negotiations at an Imperial Diet. Representatives at the assembly had to juggle multiple debates at the same time, and for many individuals the Causa Lutheri was not the main issue of importance. The intertwining of the Luther Affair with other matters confronting the diet became characteristic of how the Imperial Diet addressed issues of religious reform throughout the 1520s, leading up to the 1530 Diet of Augsburg.

 R. Wohlfeil, “Der Wormser Reichstag von 1521,” in Der Reichstag zu Worms, 124– 26.  Wohlfeil, “Wormser Reichstag,” 125 – 28.  A. Wrede, ed., RTA (Gotha, 1896), 2:203.

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After months of discussion, the emperor and the estates finally came to terms on an ordinance for the Governing Council on May 21, right before the diet’s conclusion. While the council’s membership tilted toward the Imperial Estates, Charles and his aides ensured that the council only wielded real power when the emperor was absent from the empire. Both sides gained something in the negotiations, therefore, and the ordinance proclaiming the Governing Council bore all the hallmarks of a compromise solution.¹⁷ This result might help explain why the council failed to gain much traction and ceased to exist after only a few years, but it was characteristic of how the Imperial Diet operated. The large number of representatives present at any diet, along with the use of subcommittees to build bridges between estates from the three houses, meant that many policies enacted by the diet emerged from a lengthy process of compromise that enabled them to gain majority support. Sometimes this process produced policies that fizzled out fairly quickly, and sometimes it produced results with amazing staying power. In contrast to the short life of the Governing Council, for example, a new imperial tax list created at Worms in 1521 lasted for centuries. Drawn up in an effort to better fund the Governing Council and other imperial organs of government, the imperial tax list (Reichsmatrikel) laid out the financial responsibility that each estate owed to the empire. By establishing which estates belonged to the empire and how much they owed in imperial taxation, the 1521 tax list put in writing the names of those authorities allowed to participate in the Imperial Diet.¹⁸ It became the basis for diet membership for the next three hundred years and carried symbolic importance until the empire’s end at the start of the nineteenth century. When they served the prerogatives of a large majority of estates, the diet’s pronouncements could prove long-lasting indeed.

4 The Diet of Worms and the Causa Lutheri The negotiations over the Governing Council and imperial tax list formed much of the immediate context for how the estates at Worms dealt with Luther. When the diet opened in late January, the official papal bull excommunicating Luther had just begun to circulate throughout the empire. The onus to enforce the pope’s declaration fell on Emperor Charles V. Charles initially proved reluctant to call Luther to Worms, as he feared it might provide a platform for the Wittenberg monk to defend his ideas and recruit more followers. The papal nuncio at the diet, Girolamo Aleander, had convinced Charles of this danger. Aleander argued that the pope had already passed judgment on Luther, and the diet now needed to carry out that decree.¹⁹ In mid-February 1521, Charles and his aides therefore sought to move an edict through

 Wohlfeil, “Wormser Reichstag,” 129 – 30.  Wohlfeil, “Wormser Reichstag,” 134– 35.  RTA 2:505 – 06.

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the diet condemning Luther as a heretic and ordering the Imperial Estates to enforce the papal decision against him.²⁰ While Aleander wished the emperor to issue the decree without involving the estates, the imperial camp realized that the empire’s various territorial rulers were not likely to enforce a mandate on which they had given no input.²¹ The edict’s sternness and the sense that it violated Luther’s right to a fair hearing made it an incendiary document. A fight almost broke out in the diet committee debating it, as Luther’s patron, Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, had to be separated physically from his counterpart, Elector Joachim of Brandenburg.²² Ultimately, the committee refused to approve the proposed edict on the grounds that a summary condemnation of Luther could cause a revolt of the common people. Instead, it asked that the emperor summon Luther to the diet and allow him to be judged by “a group of learned men who are knowledgeable about the matter.”²³ A little over a month into the diet’s proceedings, therefore, it became clear that the estates would not move against Luther unless he received a formal hearing. Many officials cited the fear of popular revolt to justify this position. For months, Frederick the Wise had counseled the emperor to hold a hearing for Luther, arguing that only in this way could the situation be calmed and a large-scale popular revolt avoided.²⁴ Other rulers echoed this concern as they deliberated on the proposed imperial mandate.²⁵ The fact that many estates at the diet sympathized with Luther’s anti-Roman message complicated matters further. Since the mid-fifteenth century, numerous individuals had called for a general church council to meet on German soil to alleviate the woes of the Church. Spurred on by northern humanist attacks on papal corruption that contrasted supposed Italian decadence with German virtue, anti-Roman opinion peaked right as Luther began to publish his critique of papal authority in the late 1510s.²⁶ Aleander summed up the mood in the empire when he wrote to Rome in February 1521: “I am convinced that thousands of people in this land have waited only for a fool to lead the attack against Rome.”²⁷ For Aleander, an imperial mandate that reinforced the pope’s condemnation of Luther was the only way to quiet Luther’s supporters. Since “the Germans have lost all respect and even laugh at excommunication,” the emperor needed to intervene to enforce the papal decision.²⁸ The problem of the heretical German monk needed some kind of German solution, the nuncio argued, albeit one whose parameters remained dictated by Rome.

 RTA 2:509 – 13.  Armin Kohnle, Reichstag und Reformation (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2001), 90 – 92.  P. Kalkoff, ed., Die Depeschen des Nuntius Aleander vom Wormser Reichstage 1521 (Halle, 1886), 65.  RTA 2:515 – 16.  Scott Hendrix, Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 100.  RTA 2:515 – 16.  Thomas Brady, German Histories in the Age of Reformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 136 – 39.  Depeschen, 69.  Depeschen, 44.

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Matters looked different to the empire’s estates, many of whom resented Roman interference in German affairs. Within the Imperial Diet, the movement against Roman corruption found expression in a list of grievances known by the Latin term Gravamina. The Gravamina attacked the fiscal practices of the papacy and called for an end to papal interference in German ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Many German authorities were particularly upset at the amount of wealth that flowed to Rome in the form of church taxes.²⁹ At Worms in 1521, the Imperial Estates submitted 102 articles of grievance to Charles V, many of which complained about papal financial abuses and greed.³⁰ According to Aleander, the situation had become so bad that “nine-tenths raise the war cry ‘Luther,’ while the watchword of the other tenth who are indifferent to Luther is ‘Death to the Roman Curia.’”³¹ While Aleander likely exaggerated these numbers to serve his own purposes, Luther’s criticism of the pope found fertile soil in Worms among many estates, who sensed a potential kindred spirit in their fight against Roman influence. Few estates were willing to support a summary condemnation of Luther, since a confrontation between him and his accusers had the potential to advance the cause of the Gravamina.³² In its February 19 response to the emperor asking him to give Luther a hearing, the diet committee even emphasized “the grievances and abuses that currently burden the Holy Empire, which stem in large part from the [papal] See in Rome.”³³ As one church official from the diocese of Passau remarked, “some are on Luther’s side, others are not; but all are unified in the idea that one should negotiate with his papal holiness in a way that does not burden our province.”³⁴ With the majority of estates therefore unwilling to support the emperor’s February edict and intent on gaining redress against the papacy, Charles decided on a compromise course of action. In early March, he agreed to call Luther to Worms and to provide him with imperial safe conduct. However, Luther’s appearance before the diet would not take the form of a debate. Rather, it would occur as a confrontation with a notorious heretic. This meant Luther would not be given an opportunity to explain or justify his beliefs in depth. Rather, he would be presented with the papal condemnation of his writings and asked whether he recanted his heretical ideas.³⁵ In late March, the imperial herald Kaspar Sturm arrived in Wittenberg to summon Luther to the diet. Mindful of the fate that the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus had suffered under similar circumstances a little more than a century earlier at the Council of Con-

 A. Grundmann and R. Aulinger, eds., RTA (Berlin, 2015), 21:42– 44.  RTA 2:670 – 704; RTA 21:46 – 47. See also Heinz Scheible, “Die Gravamina, Luther und der Wormser Reichstag 1521,” in Melanchthon und die Reformation. Forschungsbeiträge, eds. Gerhard May and Rolf Decot (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1996), 393 – 409.  Quoted in Andrew Pettegree, Brand Luther (New York: Penguin Press, 2015), 135.  Wohlfeil, “Wormser Reichstag,” 89 – 90, 104– 05.  RTA 2:517.  RTA 21:65.  Kohnle, Reichstag, 92– 94.

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stance, some of Luther’s friends counseled him not to attend, but ultimately he decided to go. If he stayed away, he reasoned, he would be condemned in absentia and derided for his weak-heartedness.³⁶ Only by attending could he hope to show the correctness of his ideas and perform his duty before God. Luther’s journey to Worms produced large crowds at almost every stop he made. People thronged to catch a glimpse of the “Wittenberg nightingale,” as the Nuremberg poet Hans Sachs dubbed him a few months later. In Erfurt, where Luther had previously lived, a host of onlookers clamored to watch his procession into the city. With his typical wry sense of humor, Luther referred to the moment as “my Palm Sunday.”³⁷ When he delivered a sermon that Sunday in Erfurt’s Augustinian cloister church, hundreds of people packed the building to hear him speak. As the trip progressed, Luther fell ill from the stress of travel, although he had largely recovered by the time he neared Worms.³⁸ His arrival in the city on Tuesday, April 16 was greeted by the blaring of trumpets from the city walls.³⁹ According to contemporary estimates, approximately two thousand people gathered to watch Luther enter Worms and escort him to his quarters.⁴⁰ Dozens of individuals, among them some of the empire’s most powerful princes, lined up to meet with Luther in private before his appearance in front of the emperor and the diet.⁴¹ The morning of his first formal hearing on April 17, Luther even heard the confession of and administered communion to an ailing nobleman who had specifically requested Luther’s ministry.⁴² Despite the demands placed on him, Luther appeared “to be in a good mood,” according to the Augsburg city secretary Konrad Peutinger.⁴³ The theology professor from a provincial university town had become the major celebrity at the Imperial Diet. He had come to the symbolic and ritualistic heart of the empire, where many people encountered Luther’s passion, obstinacy, and intellect for the first time.

5 Luther before the Diet Luther had two formal audiences before the emperor and other officials entrusted with procuring his recantation.⁴⁴ His interrogator was Johann von der Ecken, an official from the diocese of Trier who had publically burned Luther’s writings a few  Hendrix, Luther, 101; Schilling, Luther, 206 – 11.  Quoted in Hendrix, Luther, 102.  Martin Brecht, Martin Luther. Sein Weg zur Reformation 1483 – 1521 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1981), 427– 29; Hendrix, Luther, 102– 03; Schilling, Luther, 213.  RTA 2:863.  RTA 2:850 – 51.  Brecht, Luther, 429 – 31; Hendrix, Luther, 103 – 04; Wohlfeil, “Wormser Reichstag,” 112.  RTA 2:859.  RTA 2:862.  For descriptions of Luther’s appearance before the diet, see, among others, Brecht, Luther, 431– 42; Hendrix, Luther, 104– 07; Schilling, Luther, 219 – 23; Wohlfeil, “Wormser Reichstag,” 112– 19.

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months earlier. On the afternoon of April 17, around four in the afternoon, Luther appeared before the assembled dignitaries in the temporary imperial quarters that had been set up in the local bishop’s palace. Von der Ecken pointed to a table holding twenty-two books with Luther’s name on them, which ranged in length from large treatises to short pamphlets. By presenting a diversity of tracts, Aleander and von der Ecken hoped to create a representative display of Luther’s writings. None of the books they assembled were on the official list of Luther’s works condemned by the papal bull a year earlier, which marked a strategy on their part to show the escalation of Luther’s heretical thought and his unwillingness to stop writing in the face of papal condemnation.⁴⁵ Once Luther had been led into the hall, von der Ecken asked the monk two questions: Does Luther acknowledge his authorship of the offending texts? What from those offending texts does he now wish to recant? Luther’s lawyer, an advisor of Elector Frederick the Wise, asked von der Ecken to read the names of the books aloud. Von der Ecken obliged. Apparently expecting some kind of disputation, Luther seems to have been caught off-guard by von der Ecken’s demands for a quick, definitive answer.⁴⁶ Accordingly, Luther stated, in a quiet tone that made it hard for all to hear, that he had indeed written the books in question but needed additional time to consider whether he wished to recant them. The emperor granted him twenty-four hours. The session adjourned, and Luther returned to his quarters.⁴⁷ When Luther reappeared the next day, the number of people attending the session had grown, which necessitated shifting the meeting to a larger hall. Von der Ecken once again asked Luther what he wished to recant. Luther responded with a ten-minute prepared statement from memory, which he delivered first in German and then in Latin. Luther placed his writings into three categories. First were those books that addressed “religious faith and morals simply and evangelically.” Not even the pope had a problem with these works. Second were his tracts attacking the papacy and the corruption of the Roman curia “that have laid waste the Christian world.” Third were treatises written against his critics and those individuals who defended the papacy. While Luther admitted that he had been overly harsh in some of his polemical writings, he did not disavow any of the ideas contained in these three groupings of works. Instead, he expressed satisfaction “to see excitement and dissension arise because of the Word of God.”⁴⁸ Von der Ecken then pressed Luther to give a definitive yes or no answer on his willingness to recant, highlighting for all present

 B. Moeller, “Luthers Bücher auf dem Wormser Reichstag von 1521,” in Luther-Rezeption. Kirchenhistorische Aufsätze zur Reformationsgeschichte, ed. Johannes Schilling (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 123 – 32.  Brecht, Luther, 433.  RTA 2:863 – 64.  RTA 2:577– 80. Translation taken from George Forell, ed., LW (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1958), 32:109 – 11.

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Luther’s persistence in accusing church councils and the papacy of doctrinal error. Luther famously replied: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.⁴⁹

Luther’s pronouncement dramatized one of the central conflicts of the early Reformation: personal conviction versus received authority and tradition. Leading up to the confrontation at Worms, almost everyone had seen the Luther Affair as an internal Catholic debate that could be resolved within the existing boundaries of the Church. The terms that Luther established in his speech at Worms, however, put forward the possibility that his movement might break entirely with the Church. Von der Ecken realized the nature of Luther’s claims, and he sought to tie the Wittenberg monk to a slew of past heretical groups, most notably the fifteenth-century Hussites. He attacked Luther for claiming to be “the one and only man who has knowledge of the Bible” and admonished Luther “not [to] place your judgment ahead of that of so many distinguished men.”⁵⁰ Thus the insight of one individual ran up against the accepted teachings of generations of theologians. Such were the parameters of debate that emerged from the confrontation between Luther and von der Ecken. Unrepentant, Luther stood by his statement, and the diet recessed for the day. Withdrawing to his chambers, Luther exclaimed in relief, “I made it through! I made it through!”⁵¹ Convinced that the devil had been tempting him to lose faith at Worms, Luther felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.⁵² Nevertheless, his immediate future remained anything but certain. Here the structure of the Imperial Diet militated against a quick public condemnation of Luther. Some princes, such as Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, saw Luther as a heretic and threw their support behind an imperial declaration along the lines of the proposed February mandate.⁵³ Others were impressed by Luther’s appearance and cautioned against swift action.⁵⁴ Frederick the Wise found Luther’s performance admirable, although he feared that his university professor might have spoken

 RTA 2:581– 82. Translation taken from LW 32:112– 13. The additional line “Here I stand, I can do no other” was inserted into Luther’s speech later on and was not uttered during the confrontation at Worms in 1521. Hendrix, Luther, 300n25.  LW 32:129.  RTA 2:853.  Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, trans. E. Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 197– 99.  RTA 2:596 – 98.  Kohnle, Reichstag, 95 – 96.

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“much too daringly.”⁵⁵ Georg Vogler, an official from Brandenburg-Ansbach, struck a more strident tone, decrying what he saw as an attempt by “Caiaphas and Annas […] to crucify the pious Luther.”⁵⁶ For his part, Charles V sought to overcome division among the estates by asserting his prerogative as emperor. On April 19, the day after Luther refused to recant, Charles announced to the diet, in a speech written in his own hand, that he felt bound to follow “these holy Catholic observances” that his ancestors had protected and handed down through the generations. Church history showed “it is certain that a single friar errs in his opinion which is against all of Christendom and according to which all of Christianity will be and will always have been in error both in the past thousand years and even more in the present.” Charles would allow Luther to depart under the promised imperial safe conduct, but thereafter the emperor intended “to proceed against him as a notorious heretic.”⁵⁷ Similar to Luther’s statement from the previous day, Charles V’s declaration addressed the central tension raised by Luther’s assault on the Roman Church. If Luther were correct, reasoned the emperor, countless generations of Christians had followed a false faith and were therefore damned to hell. Such a situation was an impossibility, however, since God had ordained the Church’s role in the world and entrusted Charles’ forefathers with defending it. Accordingly, logic dictated that Luther was the one who erred, since he stood against the received authority and tradition of the Church and its doctrines. In so reasoning, Charles highlighted for “the noble and renowned German nation” what he saw as Luther’s arrogance and emphasized the emperor’s role as protector of “the sacred rituals, decrees, ordinances, and holy customs” of the Church.⁵⁸ As forceful as it was, however, Charles’ pronouncement did not end the wrangling over how the diet should deal with Luther. Many estates continued to fear that if the emperor proceeded too harshly and quickly, it would cause an uprising of “the common man, who follows Luther.”⁵⁹ The diet therefore put together an ad hoc committee to negotiate with Luther in the hopes of reaching some kind of compromise. On April 24 and 25, Luther met with members of the diet’s committee in the quarters of the archbishop of Trier, who encouraged Luther to withdraw his attack on papal authority in the interests of reaching an agreement with Church officials. If some kind of reconciliation between Luther and the pope could be achieved, as those in favor of negotiation hoped, then the affair might yet prove useful as a way to realize the Gravamina. Luther refused to give in and reiterated his stance

 RTA 2:550n1.  RTA 2:853n1.  LW 32:114– 15n9. The original French version appears at RTA 2:594– 96. For a detailed analysis of Charles’ speech, see H. Wolter, “Das Bekenntnis des Kaisers,” in Der Reichstag zu Worms von 1521, 222– 36.  LW 32:114n9.  RTA 2:869.

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from April 18. No agreement or compromise would be forthcoming. With the discussions deadlocked, Luther left Worms for Wittenberg on April 26, still under the protection of the imperial herald Kaspar Sturm.⁶⁰

6 The Edict of Worms The diet continued to deliberate for several more weeks. Luther’s refusal to compromise in the subcommittee negotiations disposed the majority of estates at the diet toward accepting an imperial mandate against the monk. By May 8, the imperial camp had put together a formal edict declaring Luther an outlaw, with the papal nuncio Aleander as primary author. In order to ensure as widespread support as possible, Charles V waited to issue the Edict of Worms until May 25, when he had its contents read aloud before an assembly of princes. The edict placed Luther outside the protection of imperial law and ordered a halt to the printing and selling of his works. Inhabitants of the empire were forbidden to give aid to Luther or spread his ideas. Finally, the edict called for Luther’s arrest and delivery into the hands of the emperor for punishment.⁶¹ While named after the diet where Charles issued it, the edict was not a statement of the diet. Rather than a decision promulgated by the assembled estates as a legislative body, the edict took the form of an imperial decree presented to the estates for their implementation. This status gave the edict the weight of law but made it difficult to enforce. Those authorities who wished to avoid enacting the edict’s provisions could portray them as an imperial attempt to intervene in local affairs and disregard them as a violation of German liberty. Charles himself undercut the edict’s effectiveness by exempting certain principalities from its jurisdiction. The most important of these exceptions was Saxony, Luther’s home territory. Elector Frederick the Wise requested and received exemption of his territories from the edict, a move that contradicted the edict’s basic purpose but derived from Charles’ need to maintain good political relations with the powerful elector.⁶² The edict therefore failed to halt the spread of Luther’s ideas, although it did limit Luther’s movement and confined him to territories that refused to enforce the edict. These restrictions remained in place for the rest of Luther’s life. The challenges of enforcing the Edict of Worms became clear in the diet’s immediate aftermath. Utilizing his exemption, Frederick hid Luther away in Wartburg and never published the edict within his territories.⁶³ Some authorities moved against publishers of Luther’s writings, and the edict became the rallying point for a group of anti-Luther princes. Others, however, simply acted as if the edict did not    

LW 32:115 – 23. See also Brecht, Luther, 442– 47; Kohnle, Reichstag, 96 – 99. For the edict’s text, see RTA 2:640 – 59. Kohnle, Reichstag, 99 – 103. Ludolphy, Friedrich, 437– 38.

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exist. Emperor Charles V’s decision to leave the empire for Spain shortly after the diet’s conclusion exacerbated the situation. Charles’ absence, which lasted until 1530, meant that the edict’s issuer could not personally oversee its implementation, and it left the execution of the edict to the discretion of individual estates.⁶⁴ These circumstances opened space for estates to pursue their own policies and work around the edict’s stipulations. This haphazard approach to instituting the Edict of Worms insured that rather than fade away as a matter of imperial politics, the Causa Lutheri remained central to the deliberations of the Imperial Diet for years to come.

7 Conclusion Taken as a whole, the 1521 Diet of Worms set the agenda for the Imperial Diet’s deliberations throughout the 1520s. The diet assembled no fewer than seven times from 1521– 1530, one of the most active decades in its entire history. The issues the estates considered at each meeting reflected the concerns initially debated in Worms. Merchant monopolies, the dynamics of imperial governance, taxation and funding for imperial wars, and, most famously, the status of religious reform all dominated the diet’s proceedings in the years after Worms, culminating in the epochal 1530 Diet of Augsburg. In many ways, the ongoing negotiations over all of these matters occurred within the framework established at Worms. The interplay between ideas of German liberty, anti-Roman sentiment, and the religio-political implications of Luther’s ideas remained at the heart of the diet’s activity long after the meeting in Worms had adjourned. Seen in this wider context, the legacy of the Diet of Worms rests more on the conundrums and complications it introduced into imperial politics than on any potential solutions to those problems.

 M. Brecht, “Das Wormser Edikt in Süddeutschland,” in Der Reichstag zu Worms von 1521, 475 – 89.

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Luther’s Relations with Peasants and Princes 1 Luther’s Earlier Views and the Plight of the Peasants Prior to the Peasants’ War 1.1 The State of Research Prior to the nineteenth century, peasants received hardly, if any, historiographical attention. This was due not least to historians’ lack of interest, but also in part to the sheer absence of written sources. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was only quite rarely that theologians and Luther biographers addressed the topic. The Peasants’ War finally began receiving historiographical attention in the course of the twentieth century, especially as a result of the research and documentation carried out by Günther Franz and Peter Blickle, which met with wide recognition. The interpretation of early sixteenth-century peasant revolts remained a topic of controversy until 1989, reinforced by the rivalry between competing political systems: were these events to be understood as an “early bourgeois revolution” or “popular Reformation” – on the basis of the views of Friedrich Engels and M.M. Smirin – or alternatively as the “revolution of the common man”? In the wake of Karl Holl’s studies in the 1920s, church historians assumed a more nuanced attitude and began giving peasants and peasantry research the attention they deserved. It was especially the work of Peter Blickle and his students that helped put this field of study on new footing several decades ago. Initially, the term and concept of “communalism,” which has pre-Reformation roots, found a broad echo, but it appears to have been pushed to the sidelines of research in the last twenty years. In this regard, the forthcoming edition of the village sermons preached by of the Transylvanian Saxon pastor Damasus Dürr promises the shed new light on a whole range of fundamental issues.¹

Translation from German: Stephen Buckwalter.  Ulrich A. Wien, “Reformation in Siebenbürgen. Aktuelle Forschungen und Desiderate am Beispiel der Predigten Damasus Dürrs und der Synodalprotokolle der evangelischen Superintendentur Birthälm,” in Jahrbuch des Bundesinstituts für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa 22 (2014): 37– 66. Ibid., Siebenbürgen – Pionierregion der Religionsfreiheit. Luther, Honterus und die Wirkungen der Reformation (Bonn, Hermannstadt/Sibiu: Schiller-Verlag, 2017). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-020

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1.2 The Common Man People excluded from structures of authority and administration and belonging neither to the nobility nor to the clergy were designated by the term gemeiner Mann (i. e., the “common man,” commoners, ordinary people, the lower classes) in the early sixteenth century.² This included social classes not qualified to be represented in the city council, which historians have assigned either to the urban type (subject to the sovereignty of the territorial lord, i. e., landsässig; or subject directly to the emperor, i. e., Reichsstadt) or to the rural type (rural communities, villages): these vast majority of people in these classes were peasants, whose legal status differed greatly from region to region, who lived predominantly in the countryside, and who subsisted on farming. Most peasants were subject to a landlord, to whom they owed tributes and labor services; the range of their personal dependence varied enormously and could go as far as servitude. Free peasants were the exception in the Holy Roman Empire. On the whole, their economic situation was difficult: erratic crop yields entirely dependent upon the whims of weather and an increasing tax burden allowed little room for economic and social betterment, even in prosperous times. The setting of their daily lives was the community (Gemeinde), which was characterized by cooperative elements and in which social relationships and communal concerns were imbued with values and norms that were binding for everybody. The village community and the parish community were often more or less coterminous, depending on regional and local circumstances. As mentioned above, Peter Blickle’s “communalism” thesis had a stimulating effect and found a positive echo in research handbooks. In accordance with late medieval developments, and as corroborated by individual studies, church conditions in the countryside became increasingly communalized, since “meeting the religious needs of the community became just as important as lessening the financial burden of the Church on the parishioners and restoring the tithe to its original function, because all these demands were enshrined in the gospel and thus in ‘divine law.’”³ This set of arguments cropped up particularly among peasants’ demands in the German southwest and its neighboring regions in the years 1524 to 1525, during the uprising or “revolution of the common man,” also known as the Peasants’ War. Until that time, the collective mentality of the common man could only be gauged on the basis of his actions, for the commoner was – on the whole – “speechless” and unable to make himself understood by writing.⁴ Amid the flood of anonymous printed

 Eike Wolgast, “L’homme du commun entre 1525 et 1555,” in Luther et la Réforme 1525 – 1555, Le temps de la consolidation religieuse et politique, eds. Jean-Paul Cahn and Gérard Schneilin (Paris : Temps, 2001), 151– 61, here 151.  Frank Konersmann, “Die Kirche im Dorf,” in Grundzüge der Agrargeschichte, vol. 1, Vom Spätmittelalter bis zum 30-jährigen Krieg (1350 – 1650), eds. Rolf Kießling, Frank Konersmann, and Werner Troßbach (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2016), 228 – 42, here 233.  Wolgast, “L’homme du commun,” 151.

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pamphlets that arose in the early 1520s, two genres of Reformation dialogues are worth pointing out: on the one hand, fictitious dialogues purportedly authored by peasants, such as the Neue Karsthans (1521), and on the other hand, dialogues between laymen and clergymen of the old faith, which were intended to win followers from among the illiterate; an example of the latter is a Speyer Reformation dialogue,⁵ which portrays the peasant – who had traditionally been scorned as uneducated, crude, and foolish – in a positive light. Both of these genres reveal that the educated and privileged estates had changed their attitudes with regard to the “common man,” who was now also perceived as an addressee of Reformation ideas; however, they do not document an actual improvement in the educational level of peasants. This resonates with the fact that peasants and ordinary people, while openly endorsing the program of grievances in 1525, for the most part had not drafted these demands themselves. Nevertheless, it has been proven convincingly that Reformation ideas were absorbed in individual communities against the backdrop of widespread anticlericalism (especially against affluent monasteries and collegiate churches) and within the context of the communalization of religion and the Church. The conclusion can be drawn that reform ideas, which initially had a clearly religious and eschatological profile, became concrete social and ethical goals when translated into a communal context. The community became an increasingly important echo chamber for linking the salvation of one’s soul with the “Christianization” of everyday life, a concern that was also a high priority in the milieus of Frömmigkeitstheologie (theology made accessible for pious practice), if with stronger monastic accents: The peasants, who had heard that the word of God requires that one love one’s neighbor, behave morally, and provide Christian care to members of the community, had come to the conclusion that living in and cooperating with the village community was the way to please God and attain salvation. Worldly and otherworldly goals no longer stood in opposition to one another. The same expectations were placed on him as a citizen of the world and as a Christian. The new doctrine of salvation as perceived by the peasants meant a recognition of their intimate involvement as Christians in earthly reality. Their everyday life was now connected to their relationship to God.⁶

Even if this understanding of Reformation principles corresponded only marginally with the ideas of Zwingli or Luther, “its criterion was putting love of neighbor into practice in everyday life, which in turn gave honor to God.”⁷

 Wien, “Mündiges Christsein am Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts. Aspekte der anonymen Flugschrift “EIn vast schoner Dialogus oder gesprech Büchlein” zwischen einem Bauern zu Dudenhofen und einem Glöckner zu Speyer (1522),” in Kaiserslauterer Jahrbuch für pfälzische Geschichte und Volkskunde 16 (2016): 79 – 96.  Franziska Conrad, Reformation in der bäuerlichen Gesellschaft. Zur Rezeption reformatorischer Theologie im Elsass (Stuttgart: Steiner Franz Verlag, 1984), 105 – 06.  Konersmann, “Die Kirche im Dorf,” 233 – 34.

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1.3 The Reception of Reformation Ideas among Imperial Knightly Noblemen Thomas Kaufmann makes a point of “insisting on the priority of the imperial knightly Reformation as a distinct type,”⁸ as opposed to typological conceptions of the Reformation that begin with an urban Reformation, continue with a peasant Reformation, and conclude with a princely Reformation of territorial lords, which had particularly lasting effects. Kaufmann concludes: In the pamphlet literature, the objectives of Sickingen and of the imperial knights supporting him became indissolubly blended with “Luther’s cause” and the cause of the gospel. This conflation of the imperial knights’ political and religious objectives constitutes an idiosyncratic feature of the so-called knightly Reformation. In the early stages of the Reformation, no social group took up the cause of the Wittenberg Reformer so vigorously, endorsed his demands so vehemently and comprehensively, and interpreted them so idiosyncratically as did the imperial knightly noblemen.⁹

In Kaufmann’s view, Sickingen’s 1522 feud with the elector of Trier, Richard von Greiffenclau, and “its outcome can be seen as the first translation into political action of the priesthood all believers – a process essentially inspired by Hutten.”¹⁰ Thus, for a brief time, the Castle of Ebernburg was probably the “most active publication center in Upper Germany,”¹¹ although this first “Reformation of the noblemen” must ultimately be seen as a failure. “This covenant between Karsthans and Sickingen, imagined in literary form, introduced fantasies of violence into the public dialogue at the time of the Reformation, creating antecedents for the Peasants’ War which were by no means insignificant.” The Hutten-Sickingen circle was, after all, the first to introduce the notion that one could change Church structures by means of violence: A common thread connecting Sickingen’s Reformation of the nobility with the later Peasants’ War is a restorative trend in spite of all “revolutionary” aspects. Both sought to recreate a better, older order that had been torn asunder by the crises of modernization, to restore “ancient law,” to reestablish a “glorious past.” Luther and the early Reformation movement thus had, on the whole, a catalyzing effect upon the Reformations of the nobility and of the peasants: they exacerbated conflicts and accelerated developments whose roots reached into the past. The failure of these Reformations resulted in reinforcing and confirming the dominant modernization tendencies of early modern statehood and the early capitalist economy, which the peasants and knights had tried in vain to resist. Yet far away from the big battlefields, there were specific instances in which the peasant and the knight managed to succeed on a small scale.¹²

 Thomas Kaufmann, “Sickingen, Hutten, der Ebernburg-Kreis und die reformatorische Bewegung,” in Blätter für pfälzische Kirchengeschichte und religiöse Volkskunde 82 (2015): 235 – 90, here 242.  Kaufmann, “Sickingen, Hutten,” 242.  Kaufmann, “Sickingen, Hutten,” 254; with a reference to Hajo Holborn, Hutten, 117.  Kaufmann, “Sickingen, Hutten,” 290 and the following citations.  Kaufmann, “Sickingen, Hutten,” 290.

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Nevertheless, because of the Church hierarchy’s refusal to cooperate, Luther addressed his calls for reform primarily to the leading social class – the secular representatives of the nobility. Hutten’s criticism of Rome, echoes of this criticism in Luther’s appeal to the German nobility, and again the reception of Luther’s ideas by Hutten, Sickingen, and other members of the imperial knightly nobility show the extent to which different milieus of the early Reformation could interact explosively, unleashing harsh criticism of hierarchies and of the Church.

1.4 Luther’s Image of the Peasants in the Context of the Priesthood of all Believers It can be assumed that Luther’s theology of the priesthood of all believers gave the common man a higher theological standing. Inspired by anticlericalism, the publications of the early Reformation constructed the image of the plain, upright, and pious peasant as opposed to the worldly clergyman, who deserved nothing but scorn for his immoral conduct and his lack of education. This resulted in a certain manifestation of respect towards the peasants in Luther’s early writings.¹³ This image, however, is far from unequivocal and is not just appreciative, for Luther is also capable of making comments in his early writings that are disparaging and derogatory toward supposedly crude, deceitful, and coarse peasants.¹⁴ The high esteem in which Luther held the community was complemented by his confidence in its ability to develop its faith responsibly on its own and to judge doctrine, with the help of the Bible in its own language and evangelical preaching. It was significant that he gave expression to this competence of the community in the title of his work which appeared in 1523: That a Christian Assembly or Congregation has the Right and Power to Judge All Teach-

 See WA 7:315, 4– 7; 635, 2– 3; 684,32– 685,2. WA 7:315, 4– 7 = LW 32:10: “Thus Jeremiah says [Jer 5:4– 5] that he has found less understanding and justice among the leaders than among the laity and the common folk. Likewese today, poor peasants and children understand Christ better than the pope, bishops, and doctors. Everything is topsy-turvy;” quoting Grund unnd ursach aller Artickel D. Marti. Luther, szo durch Romische Bulle unrechtlich vordampt seyn / Defense and Explanation of all the Articles, WA 7:309 – 457 = LW 32:3 – 99. WA 7:635, 2– 3 = LW 39:159: “What peasant or child does not see and grasp this?” quoting Auff das ubirchristlich, ubirgeystlich und ubirkunstlich Buch Bocks Emszers zu Leypczick Antwortt D.M.L. Darynn auch Murnarrs sinß geselln gedacht wird / Answer to the Hyperchristian, Hyperspiritual, and Hyperlearned book by Goat Emser in Leipzig – Including Some Thoughts for his Companion, the Fool Murner, WA 7:621– 688 = LW 39:137– 224. WA 7:684,32– 685,2 = LW 39:220: “Is this not clear enough, dear Murner and Emser? Let us see what you can say against that? Are not children and peasants here more learned than the pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, and monks? Where are you, you squires who dare to interpret Scripture, to explain faith, and to proclaim with certainty that the common man does not understand any of it? The case is different: it is the pope and his bishops, with their followers, who do not know as much by far as the crude peasants and children;” quoting Auf das überchristlich / Answer to the Hyperchristian.  WA 1:502, 27– 28.

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ing and to Call, Appoint, and Dismiss Teachers, Established and Proven by Scripture. ¹⁵ In this work, Luther makes the point that, as a consequence of the priesthood of all believers, the congregation is authorized to appoint qualified and capable persons to the highest office of Christendom: that of preaching and teaching. Being called by the congregation is an absolute requirement for exercising this office. Luther concludes his work by judiciously justifying and explaining that the sheep of Christ (the congregation created by the preaching of the gospel) are authorized and obligated to judge teaching and, in fact, even false prophecy. Since bishops and abbots had hitherto thwarted the proclamation of the word of God, it was time for the congregations themselves to elect and appoint preachers of the gospel. This publication was widely received. The wish and demand that ministers, in accordance with the communal principle, be elected freely and that they preach the pure and unadulterated gospel elicited an enthusiastic response, “so that one can read the strength of the Reformation movement as developing from below.”¹⁶ This demand eventually found its way into the demands of the peasants in 1525, often being placed prominently in first place.

1.5 Luther’s Consistent Stance on Rebellion The events of the year 1521 – such as the militancy of students raiding religious property and harassing clergymen in Erfurt (Erfurter Pfaffenstürmen) as well as the emergence of the “Wittenberg movement” – induced Luther to adopt an increasingly unambiguous and clear stance with regard to violent conflicts. He articulated his position in a work published at the beginning of 1522: A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion. ¹⁷ Ever since the Diet of Worms, Luther had been prepared for the possibility of an uprising, yet he believed it was necessary to keep still, for he was certain that God himself would take action for the just. As a Christian, he emphatically respected the institution of the civil magistrate, believing that even Church reforms needed to be carried out in consensus with government. “The God of peace was not stirring up a bloody and destructive revolt, but a peaceful one.”¹⁸ A revolution against the established Church was out of the question for Luther. It was the office of the civil magistrate to punish wrongdoers, and therefore only it was authorized to intervene.¹⁹ Since in-

 WA 11:401– 16 = LW 39:305 – 14.  Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation 1521 – 1532, trans. James L. Schaaf (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 70.  WA 8:676 – 87 = LW 45:51– 74.  Brecht, Martin Luther, 31. See also WA 8:50, 10 – 30, 216 – 217; WA 10.1.1:59, 23 – 25.  WA 8:676 – 87 = LW 45:51– 74: “But we must calm the mind of the common man, and tell him to abstain from the words and even the passions which lead to insurrection, and to do nothing in the matter apart from a command of his superiors or an action of the authorities. […] For this reason gov-

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surrection was forbidden by God, any rebellion could only be the inspiration of the devil for the purpose of discrediting the Reformation. It was therefore necessary to inform the common man of the perils of an uprising and to keep him from rebellion, since it would only jeopardize the salvation of his soul and bring no improvement. Existing wrongs and grievances, which could also be interpreted as divine punishment, could only be dealt with by praying to God. One could also appeal to better arguments, but violence was not an option.

1.6 Luther’s Image of the Peasants Luther unashamedly invokes his peasant origins (in the village of Möhra, near Eisenach), particularly in his table talks,²⁰ depicting the peasantry in stylized, conventional terms. However, it is also quite clear that he distances himself from the peasants and adopts an ambivalent attitude toward them. Furthermore, his statements reveal a certain “admiration for upward mobility.”²¹ In his writings and in his table talks, Luthers refers to the peasants using the following terms: Agricola, Rusticus, Bauer, Pöbel (“rabble”), or gemeiner Mann (“common man”).²² He goes along with the linguistic conventions of his times, suggesting that peasants are uneducated, unsophisticated, and of low standing. In most cases, he endows them with the attribute of being grob (“crude” or “coarse”).²³ In his writings prior to 1525, Luther constrasted peasants with the Roman Church’s representatives, its clergy, and its theologians, using arguments broadly analogous to those of

erning authority and the sword have been established to punish the wicked and protect the upright, that insurrection may be prevented, as St. Paul says in Romans 13[:1– 4] and as we read in I Peter 2 [:13 – 14]. But when Sir Mob breaks loose he cannot tell the wicked from the upright, or keep them apart; he lays about him at random, and great and horrible injustice is inevitable. Therefore, keep your eye on the authorities!” LW 45:62– 63.  TR 1:421, 3 – 8 [855; 1:418 – 421]: “I’ve often spoken with Philip about this and given him an orderly account of my entire life, recounting events in the order in which they happened and in which I did things. I am the son of a peasant. My father, grandfather, ancestor, were true peasants. Upon this he said: I became a warden, mayor (Schultheiß), leader of the community (Heimbürger), my father moved to Mansfeld and became a miner. That’s where I’m from (Daher bin ich).” TR 4:624, 27 [5035; 4:600,24,22– 625,5]: “… et ego rusticus loco natus interdum intersum maximus consiliis.” TR 5:255, 8 – 11 [5573; 5:254,17– 255,13] = LW 54:458: “The contrary is true. I am the son of a peasant, and peasants have become kings and emperors.” TR 5:558, 11– 17 [6250; 5:557,31– 558,22]: “Ego sum rusticus filius; proavus, avus meus, pater were true peasants … That’s where I’m from (Daher bin ich).”  Siegfried Bräuer, “Luthers Beziehungen zu den Bauern,” in Leben und Werk Martin Luthers von 1526 – 1546, ed. Helmar Junghans, 2 vols. (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 457– 72, 875 – 82, here 461.  See the following index entries: Bauer: WA 69:259 – 62; Gemeiner Mann: WA 70:394; agricola: WA 64:84; paganus: WA 67:130; rusticus: WA 67:747– 49.  Bräuer, “Luthers Beziehungen zu den Bauern,” 461.

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other pamphlet authors. He juxtaposed the peasants, together with other groups of low standing, with high-ranking classes, especially with upper Church hierarchies: in Luther’s view, it was not the latter who were sensible and learned, but rather the peasants and the children, for they understood the gospel better than the prelates. It was precisely the common people whom Luther juxtaposed with the clergy when propagating the priesthood of all believers. Luther rarely depicts peasants negatively in his writings from this period. His sermons from these years correspond with the rest of his written statements, with one exception in 1516 – 1517.²⁴ To a considerable extent, Luther’s statements on peasants draw upon traditional depictions of peasants as found in late medieval literature.²⁵ It was not until after the violent uprising of the common man (the Peasants’ War) in 1525 that he abruptly changed his language and emphasized the negative, traumatic experience. Nevertheless, it is not correct to speak of a “outright rupture in Luther’s relationship to the peasants.”²⁶ Luther’s table talks constitute the richest pool of statements by the Reformer on peasants after 1526. A number of references can also be found in his correspondence. Luther’s most frequent references to peasants are found in his sermons. Luther’s controversial statements against the peasants were probably eliminated from his published biblical commentaries for the most part:²⁷ “Besides harsh words against the peasants (accusing them especially of ingratitude towards the gospel), one also encounters sympathetic remarks somewhat more often than in other genres.”²⁸ Peasants are mentioned relatively rarely in Luther’s other printed publications, his devotional works, or his theological treatises. In his polemical writings, the peasant is presented as an example; in the minor genre of the anticlerical pasquil, one can discern “certain similarities with the depiction of peasants in early polemical pamphlets.”²⁹

1.7 Luther’s Stance on the Peasants’ War Most contemporary observers described the Peasants’ War as the “uprising of the common man.” The Twelve Articles of the peasants of Upper Swabia³⁰ – which were drafted in March 1525 and were disseminated widely, with 28 reprints in the  WA 1:502, 27– 29 (printed in 1518).  Bräuer, “Luthers Beziehungen zu den Bauern,” 470.  Bräuer, “Luthers Beziehungen zu den Bauern,” 471.  Bräuer, “Luthers Beziehungen zu den Bauern,” 460.  On this subject, see Luther’s comment summarizing his experience during the visitation – that all peasants from one village, with the exception of one or two pious ones, deserved to be hanged from the gallows; WA 31.2:732; WA 40.1:460, 2– 3; Bräuer, “Luthers Beziehungen zu den Bauern,” 460.  Bräuer, “Luthers Beziehungen zu den Bauern,” 460.  “Die gründlichen und rechten Hauptartikel aller Bauernschaft und Hintersassen der geistlichen und weltlichen Obrigkeiten, von welchen sie sich beschwert vermeinen,” in Flugschriften der Bauernkriegszeit, eds. Adolf Laube and Hans Werner Seiffert (Berlin: Akademieverlag, 1975), 26 – 31.

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space of two months – drew social consequences on the basis of Reformation preaching. Geographically, the uprising encompassed vast regions of the Holy Roman Empire, all the way from Trentino to Thuringia, from Salzburg and Tyrol to Alsace and the Palatinate. In the course of the rebellion, the peasants captured noblemen’s castles and occupied many monasteries, setting fire to a number of them. The peasants ended up being defeated by the princes in four regional battles. It is these events that gave the Peasants’ War its name. The articles approved by the peasants claimed legitimacy by invoking passages from the Bible, which “indicates how closely intertwined these [articles] were with the Reformation movement.”³¹ The so-called Memmingen Federal Ordinance drafted in Upper Swabia encompassed all those who were active in several regional peasant armies (Haufen), lumping them together into a “Christian Union.” Unions of this kind, founded on communal and covenantal models, emerged in Swabia, Franconia, and Alsace. Since the “gospel” or “the pure gospel” had in a sense been “the code word of the Reformation movement,”³² it gave the peasants the conviction that the “word of God” in the Old and New Testaments provided the social and ethical basis for a divinely ordained and just order corresponding with “divine law.” A “list of judges” was published, comprising the names of the Reformers Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, and Zell, who were thus summoned to be arbitrators and charged with examining the program of peasant demands; the authors of these articles had, after all, declared their readiness to be corrected on the basis of the gospel. In case the gospel justified further claims, they reserved the right to expand their list of demands. A prominent initial place was occupied by the demand that the preaching of the pure gospel be enabled, which corresponded with the scriptural principle of the Reformation. In accordance with Luther’s suggestions of 1523, they invoked their capacity to judge teaching as right or wrong, thus making use of their right as a responsible and self-determined congregation to appoint or depose their own pastors according to this norm. They added a social dimension to Luther’s dialectically based On the Freedom of a Christian, extending it beyond its originally religious implications to include freedom from domination by others – they demanded that the consequences of serfdom be attenuated, indeed, that it be abolished altogether. In addition, they demanded the right to dispense the tithe and to do away with feudal burdens that seemed incompatible with the Bible. Some clauses aimed to strengthen the institutions of communal autonomy. More radical peasant programs called for the comprehensive Christianization of society, to be achieved primarily on the basis of the postulate that all people are equal.³³ Lastly, Thomas Müntzer became the theological and intellectual leader of the rebels in Thuringia, who rallied under the symbol of the rainbow. He was able to establish a theoretical and practical  P. Blickle, “Bauernkrieg,” in Das Luther-Lexikon, eds. Volker Leppin and Gury Schneider-Ludorff (Regensburg: Bückle & Böhm, 2014), 100 – 04, here 100.  Blickle, “Bauernkrieg,” 101.  Wolgast, “L’homme du commun,” 152.

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connection between the peasant uprising, on the one hand, and his theology – which bore distinct mystical and apocalyptic marks, as well as a social crystallization in the form of a “League of the Elect” – on the other.³⁴ Müntzer thus identified the common man as the people of God and endowed the flock of the elect (in whose vicinity he placed the poor peasants) with a revolutionary legitimation.³⁵ It was his assumption that the latter would, in accordance with the prophecy in Daniel 7:27, exterminate the godless (i. e., the princes) and then seize power in the world³⁶ – it was in this form that his ideas were often absorbed. Luther commented repeatedly in his writings on the grievances and events of the Peasants’ War. He was not able to follow and assess the developments in southwest Germany in a precise way, since the geographical distance made it impossible to experience events directly and delayed the flow of information considerably. All of Luther’s statements arrived too late and exerted no influence on the course of the conflict. However, they ended up being consequential in a number of ways after the victory of the princes over the peasants. To begin with, Luther took a stand on the Twelve Articles in his work Admonition to Peace, A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia ³⁷ in late April 1525. Luther criticized both sides in this conflict, because each was acting against God’s commandment.³⁸ He deliberately addressed the princes and lords first, blaming them in part for the uprising, for they had oppressed the gospel and mistreated the common man. In Luther’s view, the peasants were partly justified in their demands. In fact, God was using them to punish the lords, who were guilty of despotic rule (tyranny) and of the squandering of wealth, as Luther pointed out to them in forceful terms. However, Luther’s main emphasis was on the issue of the legitimacy of the peasants’ demands and of their violent rebellion. Since Luther always believed he was representing God’s cause, he “had little appreciation for the deliberate articulation of the interestes of an estate. However, that did not lead him to reject demands made in one’s own interest as substantially illegitimate.”³⁹ Yet at no time did Luther ever consider instrumentalizing the peasants’ uprising for the benefit of the Reformation. On the contrary, he rejected the rebellion as a matter of principle and for theological reasons, since in his view the

 Blickle, “Bauernkrieg,” 101.  Blickle, “Bauernkrieg,” 101.  Wolgast, “L’homme du commun,” 152; Siegfried Bräuer and Günter Vogler, Thomas Münzer, Neu Ordnung machen in der Welt. Eine Biographie (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2016), 338 – 45 and 356– 69.  WA 18:291– 334 = LW 46:3 – 43.  WA 18:329, 18 – 25, 29 = LW 46:40 – 41: “Now, dear sirs, there is nothing Christian on either side […]; both lords and peasants are discussing questions of justice and injustice in heathen, or worldly, terms. Furthermore, both parties are acting against God and are under his wrath, as you have heard. For God’s sake, then, take my advice! Take a hold of these matters properly, with justice and not with force or violence and do not start endless bloodshed in Germany […]. Both Scripture and history are against you lords.”  Volker Leppin, Martin Luther (Darmstadt: Primus, 2006), 230.

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peasants had misunderstood Christian freedom,⁴⁰ abusing it for their selfish worldly objectives,⁴¹ thus adulterating the message of the gospel and damaging the Evangelical movement.⁴² He concluded by appealing on both sides to put an end to violence and to come to a peaceful settlement through negotiations.⁴³ From late April to the beginning of May 1525, Luther was on the move in the territory of Mansfeld and through parts of Thuringia. Here he gained a personal impression of the revolutionary mood, tried in vain to cool tempers by speaking directly to the people, and was disturbed not only by news of violent, military action in which several peasant armies (Haufen) were involved, but also by the despondent attitude of Prince Elector Frederick, who was lying on his deathbed, and that of his brother, Duke John. At the beginning of May, Luther complemented his first statement with an appendix entitled Against the Storming Peasants (Wider die stürmenden Bauern). This was also published separately under the title Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants (Wider die räuberischen und mörderischen Rotten der Bauern).⁴⁴ The fact that they had used violence seemed, in Luther’s view, to prove the insincerity of the peasants’ goals, since it flew in the face of their original offer to allow themselves to be corrected with arguments taken from Holy Scripture. He accused the peasants of rebelling against their legitimate lords, of robbing and plundering as public bandits and murderers, and even of justifying this with the gospel. In the face of this situation, everyone, not just the authorities, had a duty to oppose insur-

 WA 18:301, 32– 35 = LW 46:24: “In the first place, dear brethren, you bear the name of God and call yourselves a ‘Christian association’ or union, and you allege that you want to live and act according to divine law. Now you know that the name, word, and titles of God are not be assumed idly or in vain […];” WA 18:314, 30 – 35 = LW 46:31– 32: “However, leave the name Christian out of it. Leave the name Christian out, I say, and do not use it to cover up your impatient, disorderly, un-Christian undertaking;” WA 18:324, 35 – 36 = LW46:37: “What kind of Christians are these, who, for the gospel’s sake, become robbers, thieves, and scoundrels, and then say afterward that they are evangelicals?”  WA 18:303, 19 – 22, 30, 32, 34; 304, 19 = LW 46:25: “How can you get around these passages and laws of God when you boast that you are acting according to divine law, and yet take the sword in your own hands, and revolt against the governing authorities that are instituted by God? […] The fact that the rulers are wicked and unjust does not excuse disorder and rebellion, for the punishing of wickedness is not the responsibility of everyone, but of the worldly rulers who bear the sword […]. Then, too, there is the natural law of all the world, which says that no one may sit as judge in his own case or take his own revenge […]. Now you cannot deny that your rebellion actually involves you in such a way that you make yourselves your own judges and avenge yourselves. You are quite unwilling to suffer any wrong. That is contrary not only to Christian law and the gospel, but also to natural law and all equity.”  WA 18:313, 32– 34 = LW 46:31: “Now you interfere with what I am doing. You want to help the gospel and yet you do not see that what you are doing hinders and suppresses it most effectively.”  WA 18:332, 30 – 35 = LW 46:42: “Beware, dear sirs, and be wise! Both of you are equally involved! What good will it do you intentionally to damn yourselves for all eternity and, in addition, bequeath a desolate, devastated, and bloody land to your descendants, when you still have time to find a better solution by repenting before God, by concluding a friendly agreement, or even by voluntarily suffering for the sake of humanity?”  WA 18:357– 61 = LW 46:45 – 55.

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rection. “Therefore let everyone who can smite, slay, and stab, secretely or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you.”⁴⁵ In Luther’s opinion, insurgency went against the will of God and contradicted divine order. Because of this, the insurgents were putting the salvation of their souls in danger – in fact, they were forfeiting it. Baptism, after all, did not give one outward freedom; it only meant freedom of the soul. If a prince – someone whom God had invested with the responsibility of maintaining order – hesitated now to penalize the peasants, he was shirking his duty (office).⁴⁶ Luther sharpened his tone when he heard of peasant hordes – armed, marauding groups of rebels – not just recruiting volunteers, but also forcing reluctant men to join their insurrection. Since the peasants were endangering the salvation of such men’s souls as well, the civil magistrate had to intervene and could do so with a good conscience. The mundane authorities had to save these followers, even if it meant risking their own lives – if necessary, as martyrs: Therefore, dear lords, here is a place where you can release, rescue, help. Have mercy on these poor people! Let whoever can stab, smite, slay. If you die in doing it, good for you! A more blessed death can never be yours, for you die while obeying the divine word and commandment in Romans 13, and in loving service of your neighbor, whom you are rescuing from the bonds of hell and of the devil. And so I beg everyone who can to flee from the peasants as from the devil himself […]. If anyone thinks this is too harsh, let him remember that rebellion is intolerable and that the destruction of the world is to be expected every hour.⁴⁷

 WA 18:358, 14– 18 = LW 46:50. The quote is framed by the following passages: “In the second place, they are starting a rebellion, and are violently robbing and plundering monasteries and castles which are not theirs; by this they have doubly deserved death in body and soul as highwaymen and murderers. […] For rebellion is not just simple murder; it is like a great fire, which attacks and devastates a whole land. Thus rebellion brings with it a land filled with murder and bloodshed; it makes widows and orphans, and turns everything upside down, like the worst disaster. Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretely or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous , hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you. In the third place, they cloak this terrible and horrible sin with the gospel, call themselves ‘Christian brethren,’ take oaths and submit to them, and compel people to go along with them in these abominations. Thus they become the worst blasphemers of God and slanderers of his holy name. Under the outward appearance of the gospel, they honor and serve the devil;” WA 18:358, 2– 6, 10 – 23 = LW 46:50 – 51.  WA 18:360, 1– 5, 12– 13 = LW 46:52– 53: “For in this case a prince and lord must remember that according to Romans 13 he is God’s minister and the servant of his wrath and that the sword has been given him to use against such people. If he does not fulfil the duties of his office by punishing some and protecting others, he commits as great a sin before God as when someone who has not been given the sword commits murder. […] The rulers, then, should press on and take action in this matter with a good conscience.”  WA 18:361, 24– 29, 33 – 35 = LW 46:54– 55. See also the passage immediately preceding: “Finally, there is another thing that ought to motivate the rulers. The peasants are not content with belonging to the devil themselves; they force and compel many good people to join their devilish league against their wills, and so make them partakers of all of their own wickedness and damnation. […] Now the

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One would not do justice to this dramatic conclusion by interpreting it as proof of Luther’s subservience to the princes. It is rather to be explained against the background of Luther’s “underlying apocalyptic feeling.”⁴⁸ Luther issued a printed version of the Weingarten Treaty of April 22, 1525, adding a preface and concluding admonition.⁴⁹ Wallmann has good reasons for dating this reprint to the period immediately after Luther had drafted his Against the Hordes of Peasants. No less than the peasants, Luther failed to see through the ruse behind this deal and argued the case for also finding a peaceful solution in Thuringia, in analogy to the Württemberg settlement. Lastly, he commented the outcome of the Battle of Frankenhausen (May 15, 1525): he interpreted the defeat of the peasant followers of Müntzer as divine judgment. He identified Thomas Müntzer as a false prophet and urged the peasants to strive for peace and obedience. At the same time, he addressed the princes and called on them to show mercy toward the peasants who had surrendered and not to take advantage of their military victory.⁵⁰ Luther’s stance on the uprising of the common man may have been consistent with his notions of the need for government to maintain order, yet the ruthlessness and cruelty of his statements dismayed and disturbed his contemporaries, even though they firmly believed in the division of society into estates and agreed in principle with Luther’s theological understanding of temporal authority. Johann Rühel, a counsel of the county of Mansfeld, summed up the mood with the following words: “many of those who favor you find it odd that you allow the tyrants to strangle without mercy, permitting them even to become martyrs in the process, so that in Leipzig people are openly saying that ever since the Prince Elector died, you fear for your life.”⁵¹ Luther was thus accused, especially by supporters of the old faith, of being partly to blame in causing the uprising – indeed, of having duplicitously incited the peasants at first, and then of opportunistically changing sides in the face of their foreseeable and actual defeat, ingratiating himself with the princes (he was denounced as a Fürstenknecht, a “servant of the princes”).⁵² Neither of these accusations corresponded with reality. Yet Lu-

rulers ought to have mercy on these prisoners of the peasants […];” WA 18:361, 7– 11, 16 – 17 = LW 46:54.  Martin Greschat, “Luthers Haltung im Bauernkrieg,” in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 56 (1965): 31– 47, here 33.  WA 18:336 – 43: Vertrag zwischen dem löblichen Bund zu Schwaben und den zwei Haufen der Bauern vom Bodensee und Allgäu; Johannes Wallmann, “Ein Friedensappell – Luthers letztes Wort im Bauernkrieg,” in Der Wirklichkeitsanspruch von Theologie und Religion. Die sozialethische Herausforderung, ed. Dieter Henke et al. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1976), 57– 75.  WA 18:367– 74: Eine schreckliche Geschichte und ein Gericht Gottes über Thomas Müntzer.  WA.B 3:515, 64– 68; Leppin, Martin Luther, 235.  In the controversy between supporters of the old faith and adherents of the Reformation, Cochläus and Sylvius, for example (Antwort zu Luthers Buch wider die stürmenden Bauern, in Flugschriften gegen die Reformation [1525 – 1530], ed. Adolf Laube [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000], 1:454– 63), accused their opponent Luther of inconsistency and incitement to sedition (pp. 454– 455): “Martin Luther has published three booklets on the peasants recently. The first of them contradicts the

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ther subsequently defended his stance in the summer of 1525 with his Sendbrief von dem harten Büchlein wieder die Bauern (An Open Letter on the Harsh Booklet Against the Peasants).⁵³ Luther underscored the coherence of his doctrine of secular authority and recapitulated his position, calling attention to the fact that the sword rules rigorously in the kingdom of the world. When the magistrate defends the innocent against violence, severity is a manifestation of mercy. Furthermore, Luther had taken pains to make distinctions. He had called on the princes to differentiate between obstinate peasants and those who had surrendered. The punishment meted out had to be appropriate: the princes were to display clemency to the latter and not abuse their power. “What well-intentioned friends of Luther had perhaps expect-

other two in many places, as I demonstrated when attacking the second booklet. But in order that the common man also realize how fallaciously he changed his tune according to the shifting winds, after the peasants were defeated, I will recount many of his words which he wrote in his first book before the peasants were defeated. […] Luther wrote these and many other similar words in his first booklet; but out of his own works you can notice very well the way in which he raged against poor peasant folk afterwards in two booklets, and how he simulated in front of the princes, while at the same time spreading poison against them behind their backs” [Peter Sylvius is referring to the compilation of quotes regarding Luther’s understanding of the civil magistrate to be found in Hieronymus Emser, Auf Luthers Gräuel wieder die heilige Stillmeß]; Sylvius continues on p. 458: “How, where, and with which words Luther diminishes and slanders, disparages and repudiates to the highest degree the spiritual and secular authorities along with their laws, commandments, regiment, and obedience; and admonishes, incites, encourages in writing and pushes the common people to contumacy, insurrection, violence, and rebellion.” The Eisenache Reformer Jakob Strauß took a clear stance against this in his “Christliche und wohlgegründete Antwort und herzliche Ermahnung auf das ungütige Schmachbüchlein Dr. Johannes Cochläus‘ von Wendelstein über den Aufruhr” (in Flugschriften gegen die Reformation (1526 – 1535), ed. Adolf Laube [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992], 1:380 – 404, here 389): “And they say forever and ever that new evangelical preaching is one of the causes of unrest and upheaval; things would look quite differently if God would implant in the powerful ruling lords a will to earnestly attack selfishness, which is the most damaging enemy. For if every pious prince would see to it that justice is done without pernicious delay both to the poor and to the rich, and protect his poor obedient subjects with a strong and powerful hand, so that nobody oppresses them with temerity and against equity, and casts off all usury and disgraceful speculation, and immediately begins punishing all those who are impudent and selfish (without distinction of person), how would it be possible for peace and happiness to not be embedded permanently in such a praiseworthy principality, even if the devil himself preached against it?” He continues on p. 400: “After the poor miserable people reviled the word of God with impatience and every nonsense in their rebellion, and many false preachers encouraged and supported them under the pretext of evangelical teaching, it is for this reason that God’s unmeasurable kindness, in order to preserve his word without any pretense of evil, allowed the peasants to be misled and to perish quickly. So now the agitators have won (in their opinion) and whoever thinks about the gospel is a rebel and is hanged, drowned, or strangled for no other reason without a lawful trial; all preachers who do not laud and praise the old errors are seen as rebels. As D. Wendelstyn’s booklet demands, ‘cut them down with the sword right away, don’t interrogate them or allow them to answer.’”  WA 18:384– 401 = LW 46:57– 85.

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ed of him did not come about: no retraction, no relenting, only stubborn insistence on his position.”⁵⁴ Luther’s statements have been assessed in a great variety of ways – both by his sixteenth-centurty contemporaries and by modern-day researchers. Kohnle regrets Luther’s stance, but remains moderate in his wording: “Not even now was he ready to show sympathy for the hardships of the peasants, but wasted this opportunity to pronounce a clear word of reconciliation.”⁵⁵ Blickle, on the other hand, draws on Ernst Troeltsch to issue a harsh verdict on the lack of stringency displayed by Luther in his statements between 1520 and 1525, and on his one-sided emphasis and focus on the reception of Romans 13: “Luther’s tractate [i.e, his admonition in reply to the Twelve Articles] is marked not by theological rigor and consistency, but by an understanding of authority (Romans 13:1) that forbids any resistance against this order, viewed as necessary for containing the original fallenness (natura corrupta) of man.”⁵⁶ Leppin expands these judgments with a psychological interpretation: “It would seem that particularly his recent confrontation with Thomas Müntzer and the realization of insurgent violence – which had always been expected by the latter anyhow – caused Luther to lose every measure of this-worldly control and self-control.”⁵⁷

2 Luther’s Later Views and the Situation of the Peasants after the Peasants’ War 2.1 Luther’s Stance on the Peasants after the Peasants’ War Luther recognized that a combination of anti-Evangelical and economic repressive measures had been fundamental in bringing on the rebellion of the common man. What he did not realize was that Evangelical preaching had at least indirectly strengthened the yearning of the underprivileged social classes to achieve freedom. Luther’s relations with peasants continued to be distant after their defeat in 1525, and his image of peasants after this event tended to be rather negative. As we observed above, the experience of the Peasants’ War and his image of peasants played a greater role in his utterances following 1525. Siegfried Breuer had carried out a systematic evaluation, particularly of Luther’s table talks and of his sermons.⁵⁸ Luther shared in the traditional and – at the time – widespread notion that “peasants” were unedu-

 Leppin, Martin Luther, 235.  Armin Kohle, “Luther und die Bauern,” in Luther Handbuch, ed. Albrecht Beutel (Tübingen: UTB, 2005), 134– 39, here 137.  Blickle, “Bauernkrieg,” 102.  Leppin, Martin Luther, 235.  Bräuer, “Luthers Beziehungen zu den Bauern,” 462– 72.

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cated, of low standing, and simple. As members of the third estate, they occupied a clear-cut space in the divine order and had a special function to fulfill. Luther criticized them for demanding usurious prices for foodstuffs and being reluctant to remunerate pastors adequately, which he interpreted as disdain for God’s word.⁵⁹ His image of the peasants was “largely marked by disappointment and the lack of illusions.”⁶⁰ In his judgment, the selfishly motivated peasants’ uprising was particularly damaging for the Reformation, because it strengthened the comeback of the old faith. Luther and his supporters vehemently repudiated accusations of a close amalgamation between the Reformation movement and social protest, and they sought to free Reformation preaching from any association with this controversial context. Luther experienced the Peasants’ War as a temptation (Anfechtung) and a crisis, but looking back at this event, he remained convinced of the way he had acted and the position he had taken, as shown by the example of his sermon on the second Sunday in Advent (5 December) in 1528, in which he criticizes the common man for taking the law into his own hands: God would rather allow temporal authority to commit wrong than for the rabble to be in the right. For the following reason: if “Sir Mob” [Herr Omnes] bears the sword and wages war under the title and pretence of doing right, then things will turn bad. […] If you want to be lord and someone else wants to be lord, heads will roll, and virgins and women will get raped. In order to prevent such things, Christ tells Peter that he’s wrong, although he has the best semblance of being right, and on the other hand, that Pilate and the godless Pharisees are right in their evil, unjust undertaking, as far as the sword and force are concerned. For that reason, we should rather endure force and injustice than resort to the sword without having been commanded or fight against a bad authority. It was all just appearances which the peasants had on their side during their rebellion four years ago. For they said: “Well, who should have to endure this? The princes are not ruling rightly, we must defend ourselves indeed.” But they did not think this through to the end and did not ask themselves: “Have we been commanded to punish the princes for their wrongdoing?” […] For even if a peasant would do something wrong in his own house, he would not tolerate it if a servant came along and took it upon himself to defend the peasant’s wife and child against him, regardless of how unjust he was. Anybody can see that the servant has not been commanded to punish his lord in his home. But when it concerns someone else, then everybody thinks that they are entitled to grab the sword so that they don’t have to suffer. What fine fellows we are! If we do it to others, then it’s right. But if others apply the same rules to us, we consider it to be wrong.⁶¹

The tumultus rusticorum would continue to haunt both Evangelical theologians and Evangelical authorities for decades. Unfortunately, after 1525, Luther laid to rest his original conception of entrusting the local congregation with a high degree of competence in church development and leadership. After the experience of the Peasants’ War, he mistrusted the uncontrollable “Sir Mob” (Herr Omnes), which is why he  WA 28:627,10 – 628,8; WA.B 5:55, 16 – 19.  Kohnle, Luther und die Bauern, 138.  WA 28:245 – 54, Version P2 (Andreas Poach), citation at 250 – 52, Sermon on John 18:7– 11 on the second Sunday in Advent (December 5, 1528).

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turned to and supported the secular rulers of the imperial cities and territories in his endeavor to have Protestant Church structures established. The magistrate or the prince was to exercise “state sovereignty over the church” (landesherrliches Kirchenregiment), assuming the function of an “emergency bishop” (Notbischof): mature, responsible laypeople and congregations were replaced by the institution of the “territorial church” (Landeskirche), initiated and monitored through visitations and governed by its respective territorial lord or temporal authority.

2.2 The Effect of the Peasants’ War on the Stance of the Princes A significant factor influencing the decisions made by territorial lords during the early princely Reformation of the 1520s was the extent to which the Reformation movement had already gained a foothold in their dominions. A further decisive factor – of no little importance – was the specific personality of the territorial princes or princesses, in the cases in which they were able, as committed lay theologians, to justify their essentially contingent decisions in an independent way – inasmuch as imperial politics allowed them to exercise the right of reformation (ius reformandi) they were claiming. Albert of Brandenburg (for the duchy of Prussia), John of Saxony (for the electorate of Saxony) and Landgrave Philip (for Hesse) were the first to introduce the Reformation in their entire territory, being permitted to do so under the condition that any measure they took was assumed to be a temporary solution until the convening of a council. Other territories did not introduce the Reformation until after the conclusion of a process that took many years. In contrast to the complex and specific negotiations that lead to most communal and city reformations, “the dominating element in princely reformations was the official octroi.”⁶² Against the background of the collapse of the remuneration of pastors and teachers, Luther emphatically urged his territorial lord to intervene by way of the visitation, “because it is requested and demanded by us, by necessity itself, and therefore quite certainly by God.”⁶³ As a result of visitations, some territories – such as Electoral Saxony, Ansbach-Kulmbach, and Braunschweig-Lüneburg – established normative regulations in the form of church ordinances, seeking to impose order and uniformity upon the pluriformity of manifestations of the Reformation. Finally, both Luther and Melanchthon assigned to worldly authorities (De officio principum, quod mandatum Dei praecipiat eis tollere abusus Ecclesiasticos in 1539) the jurisdiction and competence for both tables of the Decalogue (utriusque tabulae) – not just the punishment of offenses and crimes in the area of social ethics, but also the responsibility for the external regulations of the Church. In this way, territorial princes became the most important factors and guarantors for the introduction and stabilization of the Reformation in the

 Thoma Kaufmann, Geschichte der Reformation (Frankfurt/Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 2011 [2009]), 506.  As in WA.B 3:595, 48 – 49. no. 937, Luther’s letter to Prince Elector John on October 31, 1525.

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territories of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation – even if this was originally intended only as a temporary measure. Even though the princes and lords defeated the peasants in 1525, they would never be able to shake off a feeling of permanent insecurity. The political and social system remained unstable. In spite of the fact that the peasants had been defeated, temporal authorities were aware that they could not rely exclusively on repression. The Imperial Diet of Speyer in 1526 tried to stabilize the situation by means of a double strategy: organizing common solidarity on the one hand, and taking account of their subjects’ concerns on the other. There was no majority for a nuanced and flexible approach, so the imperial recess could only be formulated in general terms: the authorities were to treat their subjects in such a way that they could reconcile with their consciences, with divine and natural law, and with equity. The grievances of the common man were thus pushed aside permanently, whereas the Imperial Diets that followed merely continued to repeat the same warnings against insurgency and the same repressive threats. On the religious question, the Imperial Diet made a decision that was just as indeterminate as was its relationship to the common man when it introduced the responsibility formula (“every estate should conduct itself as it deems responsible before God, Imperial Majesty, and the Empire”). If one interpreted this in the sense of the Edict of Worms, the Reformation had to be suppressed; if one interpreted it from the perspective of freedom of conscience, it permitted the consolidation or introduction of the Reformation. Lazarus Spengler stated his position on this issue from the latter perspective,⁶⁴ and the following princely reformations also appealed to it, obtaining legitimacy from the Reformers.

2.3 The Situation of the Peasants after Their Defeat at the Hands of the Princes For many years, researchers assumed that the long-term consequences of the Peasants’ War had been catastrophic. However, in the 1980s, a much more nuanced analysis began to be conducted. It is estimated that the death toll reached somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000; it certainly constituted a trauma for the affected families and communities, and it represented an equal number of tragedies. In some cases, the peasants involved were brought to ruin with punitive payments, or their houses and farms were laid waste. However, most of the lords tried to be reasonable when imposing financial penalties, if only in their own interest, so as not to harm the economic productivity of their subjects. In some locations, the treaties that had been made with the peasants were respected. While the peasants by and large failed to

 Lazarus Spengler, “Ein christlicher Ratschlag und Unterrichtung, wie sich alle Christen, Obere und Untertanen, verhalten sollen,” in Flugschriften vom Bauernkrieg zum Täuferreich (1526 – 1535), 1:412– 32, here 412– 13.

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achieve their goal of greater communal autonomy, the prevailing legal situation – such as it existed on the eve of the uprising – was for the most part preserved unaltered. Wherever peasants had a constitutional right to be represented as an estate in their own right in the territorial diet, as in Tyrol and Further Austria or in the bishoprics of Salzburg and Basel, their status remained unchanged. Even in cities in which the common man had revolted, the status of guilds and unguilded craftsmen underwent only slight changes. “The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation did not experience any fundamental changes in its political structure as a result of the Peasants’ War.”⁶⁵

2.4 The Image of the Peasants in Luther’s Sermons and Their Repercussions in Reformation-era Village Sermons Luther often emphasized the burden and great responsibility borne by the imperial authorities and, by way of contrast, utterly idealized peasant life – he was capable of discovering carefree and paradisiacal conditions in it.⁶⁶ On occasion, he even perceived the peasant as an allegory of faith.⁶⁷ Admittedly, at the same time, he could make references to the alleged stupidity and narrowmindedness of peasants. Luther’s diverging perceptions, which varied depending on the situation, and his ambivalent attitude are reflected in the specific critical remarks he uttered on different occasions. His attitude found its way – in modified forms, varying from one region to another – into the sermons preached at the village level.⁶⁸ Luther’s and his Wittenberg colleagues’ relations with the common man were difficult and ambivalent. We can only guess as to whether the peasants were just as disappointed with Luther

 Wolgast, “L’homme commun,” 154.  WA 28:517,5 – 518,17: “Tell me, who can live a better, quieter, and more peaceful life than a townsman (Bürger) or a peasant?” WA 28:518, 12– 13: “Why? The townsman and the peasant sit safely at home, near the stove, next to their field, house, and farm; what they own is preserved in good peace;” WA 46:505, 19 – 20: “The peasants have laborem, qui est nothing but pure pleasure and paradisiacus labor.”  WA 36:125, 10 – 13; 36:162,32– 163,8.  ZAEKR 209–DA 175: Volume of manuscript sermons by Damasus Dürr (Sermon on Epiphany of 1573), 284– 85: “The peasants in the villages learn from the people who dwell in cities. They slave away at their hard work, have a heavy housekeeping burden to bear, with the plow, with fields and with lakes, so that a housefather barely can earn his livelihood (generung) without help. They don’t let many children get trained in the liberal arts, who could later serve in schools and churches. For you must admit this yourself: rarely does one find a single man in an entire community who has a scholar or a priest as a son, whom you could keep with his own kin, but instead you have to appoint strangers who become their schoolmasters, church workers and pastors. Such things are the result of the fact that your livelihood is more important to you than the salvation of your souls. That is: a peasant who helps you earn your livelihood and multiply your goods is more noble to you than a scholar who serves the Lord and points the way by which everyone can be saved. Because of this, one can lump all village housefathers together.”

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as he was with them. In any case, these relations did not result in an enduring or fundamental rejection of the Reformation. Accordingly, when temporal authorities – such as city governments and princes – introduced the Reformation in the following years, they ultimately accommodated the expectations of the wider population. Only rarely was there noteworthy distance, resistance, or emphatic opposition.

Giampiero Brunelli

The Holy Roman Empire and Its Diets, 1521 – 1546 The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had a peculiar institutional entity charged with discussing all major themes involving the community of the 394 Imperial States. This entity, called the Reichstag, was well trained in addressing wearying negotiations, always in the pursuit of a compromise. From the very beginning, as demonstrated by Christopher Close’s contribution,¹ the Lutheran Reformation had to come to terms with this institution. It could have not been otherwise. In his radical protest, Luther surely swept over Christian theology and ecclesiology in toto. However, he spoke from electoral Saxony, one of the main states of the empire, and other princes and cities promptly welcomed the innovations of his teaching: thus, the religious homogeneity and overall order of the Heiligen Römischen Reich had been deeply compromised. This is the main reason why the institution of the diet (this is, in fact, the translation of the word Reichstag) dealt with issues of faith, frequently interfering with purely doctrinal issues. On the other hand, in the attempt to reach a solution to this confessional rift, other protagonists – Emperor Charles V; his deputy and later king of the Romans, Ferdinand of Habsburg; the Roman pontiffs – all ended up having to deal with the assembly of the Imperial States. Thus, prior to the beginning of the war against the Reformed princes in 1546, twenty-one diets were summoned – to which need to be added the assemblies of the electoral college of princes, one of the three sections of the diet (together with the princes and the cities); and the meetings of the Imperial Circles (Reichskreise), the administrative sections into which the empire was divided. These numbers should be enough to highlight that the management of the Luther Affair in Germany, from the 1520s to the 1540s, was a plural matter of high attention.

1 The First Diets after Worms (1521 – 1526): An Institutional Barrier against Luther’s Condemnation The progress of the diet inaugurated in Worms on January 27, 1521, made it clear that the Roman calculations – according to which the excommunication by the pope and

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  Cf. Christopher W. Close, “The Diet of Worms and the Holy Roman Empire,”in this volume, pp. 313 – 326. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-021

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a firm executive ordinance by the emperor would put an end to the Lutheran Reformation – were not only wrong, but also demonstrated a complete lack of awareness of the political-institutional dynamics of the empire. Like all representative assemblies of medieval and proto-modern Europe, in fact, the diet – as soon as it was allowed to speak – expressed an opinion that was neither predictable nor subservient. First, it presented to the emperor a long text of Gravamina Nationis Germanicae, in which it denounced Rome’s mismanagement of ecclesiastical taxes in the German territories; then, it managed to ensure that Luther would be led to Worms under safe conduct, so that he could be heard; finally, after Luther’s refusal to repudiate his works, it tried to mediate arranging for him to speak before a commission created ad hoc. It is important to emphasize that, even when Luther was eventually condemned on May 25, 1521, the order was issued by the emperor, and the diet did not take part at all in its redaction; it was signed only by Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, in Charles V’s private rooms, “consensu et nomine omnium,”² on May 26, when the assembly of the states had already been dismissed. Therefore, some questions could be raised, from the point of view of the law of the diet, even about the very legality of the Edict of Worms. On the other hand, any speculation about Luther’s execution lost credibility almost immediately. After Charles V left Germany, the Council of Regensburg – established on May 26, 1521, under the chairmanship of Ferdinand of Habsburg –, in an order issued on January 20, 1522, condemned the violations of the religious practices supported by the Reformed, without referring at all to the sentence already issued, instead suggesting that future councils or assemblies of the Imperial States might declare acceptable the changes that were now being challenged. In this context, the expectation of a solution resulting from the diet summoned on February 12, 1522, in Nuremberg became even greater. The latter, however, proved to be a missed opportunity: the assembly, inaugurated on March 26, lacked adequate participation, and the religious issue was not raised during the proceedings. Thus, at the end of April, the meeting of the states was adjourned until September 1. No explicit mention of the religious issue was made in the new summons, either. What was more pressing were the financial subsidies needed to cope with the Ottoman threat (Belgrade, in fact, had fallen during the summer of 1521). In the last three months of 1522, however, a committee of the Imperial Regency Council started working on this matter. The committee included, among others, the archbishop of Salzburg, Matthäus Lang, and the bishop of Trent, Bernardo Clesio. This institution intended to write a proposal for an ordinance to be presented at a future diet. In this proposal, Luther, following the pope’s and the emperor’s decisions, was accused of heresy. The assembly of the states was eventually inaugurated on November 17,

 Quoted in Armin Kohnle, Reichstag und Reformation. Kaiserliche und ständische Religionspolitik von den Anfängen der Causa Lutheri bis zum Nürnberger Religionsfrieden (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2001), 100.

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1522, in Nuremberg, with a satisfying turnout. After the discussions of the war against the Turks, the papal nuncio Francesco Chiericati doggedly raised the religious issue in his on from December 10, 1522, and January 3, 1523: he clearly asked for the implementation of the Edict of Worms and also publicly read the instruction he had received from Adrian VI, in which the pope admitted the errors of the clergy, recognizing implicitly that the Reformation had indeed had some foundation. The discussions over the reply to give to Chiericati became tense, both in the Council of Regensburg and in the diet. Thus a select committee was nominated within the diet to carry out this task. The result was a document, dated January 15, 1523, that later represented the basis of all the decisions made during those early years. The states declared their intention to obey the pope and the emperor. At the same time, they defended themselves from the accusation of not having already taken action against Luther by saying that the abuses of the Roman curia and of the clergymen in Germany were undeniable. However, they still offered a solution: a free Christian council, to be inaugurated within a year (and in which laymen would also take part) and the promulgation of rules for the transitional period. Three rules seemed to be particularly apt: Luther and his followers would stop teaching the most controversial doctrines; the ministers of the Church, for their part, would pledge not to cause any scandals among the faithful; and, finally, all printed materials would be subjected to censorship. The official reply of the diet to Chiericati, on February 5, largely referred to these themes: the lack of implementation of the papal and imperial condemnations was justified by the fear of a popular revolt, and a resolute reform of the Roman curia, the elimination of the gravamina, and the convocation of a council were demanded. The nuncio strongly rejected this option. The final document (called a “recess”), from March 6, 1523, however, used precisely these documents of the committees as its starting point: specifically, apart from asking for reforms of the curia and an adequate response to the gravamina, it contained the steadfast intention to organize a free council of the German nation within a year, in either Mainz, Cologne, Konstanz, or Metz. As far as the ad interim provisions were concerned, the recess ordered that nothing should be printed without due approval and that preaching ought to be limited to the gospel, within interpretation offered by those works approved and adopted by the Church. Moreover, the elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, should make sure that Luther and his followers would not circulate anything else until the council and all the states were able to admonish their clergymen not to promote disputes that would cause scandal. Surveillance was entrusted to bishops, who would make sure to administer reprimands and – in the most serious cases, such as priests getting married and monks leaving the monasteries – punishments. The Council of Regensburg fell into line: with an order issued on the same day, it sent the princes and the other states a detailed summary of what had been arranged. With these significant orders – the efficacy of which, however, proved not to be immediate – the diet was simply declaring that the Luther issue was far from closed,

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regardless of what had been decided in Worms. However, too many issues of other kinds were left in a state of uncertainty – such as subsidies for the fight against the Turkish threat, the reform of penal law, and minting money. A new assembly of the states was summoned to meet in Nuremberg on July 13, 1523. However, by mid-August, only a few ambassadors and one prince (Duke George of Saxony) had arrived in the city. The Council of Regensburg repeated the convocation on September 5. At the time, they discussed whether to include the religious question in the issues to be addressed. The decision was against it, to the satisfaction of the Lutheran sympathizers, who were satisfied with the way the conflict was settled for the time being. There were tensions, instead, with those who had stayed faithful to the Roman Church. The Austrian clergy, in fact, had been summoned to contribute to a new tax to support the fight against the Turks (Türkenterz), while in Bavaria, dukes William and Louis were subjecting clergymen to secular penal jurisdiction. As a reaction, in November 1523, a meeting sponsored by Archbishop Lang was inaugurated in Salzburg. It was in this venue that a demand for a national council emerged. This council would uproot the new doctrines and reform the Church. It was an important step: even on the Catholic side, in fact, the option of a synod confined to the German territory was by now beginning to be taken into consideration. The third Diet of Nuremberg, which was supposed to be inaugurated in mid-July 1523, eventually convened on January 14, 1524. The religious issue was, once again, initially not contemplated in the agenda. However, on February 4, the subject was brought to the attention of the states during the reading of the sovereign’s address (known as the Proposition). In fact, Charles V – although engaged in conflicts on a European scale that forced him to face, on the one hand, the king of France, Francis I, and, on the other hand, Sultan Suleiman I – had come back to the issue, demanding the execution of the edict from 1521. However, not even the Catholic dukes William and Louis of Bavaria, or Duke Albert of Prussia, or even the emperor’s brother, Ferdinand, supported this option any more. Thus the diet, after a failed attempt to entrust mediation to the elector of Saxony, reached a deadlock and, in February, only dealt with issues relating to the domestic policy of the empire. In mid-March, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggi, Clement VII’s legatus a latere, arrived at the diet. In his first speech to the assembly, on March 17, 1524, although he avoided harsh tones, he too demanded the execution of the condemnation already issued. The reaction of the cities was very hostile, and the reply from the states was very clear. The demand for a general council was the next step. The discussion now focused on the timeline, on the participation (or lack thereof) of papal representatives, and on the required provisional dispositions. Duke Louis of Bavaria and his counselors even went a step further: referring to the position which had come to light in Salzburg the previous fall, they asked for the convocation of a specifically German council. As a consequence, a heated debate ensued. It was only due to the action of a committee created ad hoc at the end of March 1524, and especially thanks to the discussions held in the college of princes, that on April 5 the assembly was able to offer a

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shared resolution to the legate: after some general guarantees concerning the respect due to the Edict of Worms, a general or national council was requested once again. In the face of Campeggi’s obvious rejection, the diet stuck to its point: in the recess of April 18, 1524, which was approved by the majority, it declared that the states were willing to obey the provisions of the Edict of Worms only “as much as possible” (sovil inen muglich)³. The pope, however, should summon a general council in Germany, with the consent of the emperor; moreover, a general assembly of the German nation was already scheduled to meet in Speyer on November 11 to discuss the gravamina and, according to Ferdinand’s intentions, even the dogmas opposed by Luther. In the meantime, as specified in another decree of the assembly from April 18, preaching would be grounded in the gospel and in those interpretations approved by the Church. This intense issuing of provisions by the diet actually foreshadowed three scenarios that were incompatible with each other: a limited execution of the Edict of Worms, a new national assembly of Speyer (called Versammlung rather than Reichstag), and the general council. The position of the Holy See became more rigid: even before going back to Italy (in June 1524), the legate agreed to meet in Regensburg, together with Archduke Ferdinand and the Imperial States that, during the previous diet, had seemed to be closer to his positions: the dukes of Bavaria, the archbishop of Salzburg, the bishop of Trent, and the representatives of the bishops of Speyer, Augsburg, and Strasbourg, among others. The result of this meeting, on July 6, was an alliance against the Reformed, one that was committed to having the Edict of Worms honored. Thus began heavy repression in the states of the Catholic princes. At the end of July of the same year, the emperor also took sides against the results of the third Diet of Nuremberg, completely rejecting the convocation of the national assembly of Speyer, which he defined as a conciliabulum. ⁴ However, he also promised – for the first time – to mediate with Clement VII to promote a general council. The Reformed front also took on a more defined outline. In electoral Saxony, the undecided Frederick the Wise was succeeded in May 1525 by his brother Johann, who immediately inaugurated a policy openly sympathizing with the Reformation and took the side of Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who was very engaged in this matter. Albert of Prussia also started to draw closer to Luther’s doctrine. At the same time, Germany was shaken by the Peasants’ Revolt. Those who took part in the war each tried to exploit it to their own advantage. The Imperial Diet kept silent on the subject, but not for long: the assembly scheduled in Speyer for November 11, 1524, was not held, as ordered by Charles V. However, the following March, the emperor himself summoned the Reichstag to meet in Augsburg on September 29, 1525. The Council of Regensburg extended the

 Quoted in Kohnle, Reichstag und Reformation, 218.  Quoted in Kohnle, Reichstag und Reformation, 226.

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term to November 11. Since only a few princes and representatives had arrived in the city by that date, the assembly was not formally inaugurated, and the proceedings went on irregularly. Later, the recess of January 9, 1526, ordered the diet to be adjourned once again and to meet in Speyer on May 1. In the meantime, as a rule for preaching, the formulation of the third Diet of Nuremberg was to be followed. Charles V would be formally invited to promote a council; this was the only path to peace. The new diet was inaugurated on June 26, 1526, with the reading of the imperial Proposition. This time, the religious issue was at the top of the agenda. The states were invited to suggest how to preserve the consolidated order of the Church until the next council and to propose punishments for those who transgressed previous imperial orders. There was no mention of the abuses – the gravamina. Charles V – who, from Seville on March 23, had addressed an admonishment to the princes and lords of the empire, urging them to remain loyal to Catholicism – returned to the position of 1521, at the same time encouraging new discussions. On June 30, the prince-electors formalized their position, agreeing that their priorities were to prevent innovations and to keep the traditional forms of Catholic rituals and good practices. Only the abuses were to be eradicated, so far as possible. Moreover, for those who had strayed from the Catholic faith, rather than harsh punishment, they envisioned persuasion to return to obedience of the hierarchy. From this perspective, the issue of the execution of the Edict of Worms slipped into the background. The college of princes, within which the ecclesiastical hierarchy was very active, could not allow this. By mid-July, the cities had also raised their objections: How were “good” religious habits to be interpreted? Certainly they could not be such if they went against Scripture. Just as surely, according to the cities, the Edict of Worms was now completely inapplicable. It was a deadlock. The diet split into commissions and once again examined the abuses that had caused the Reformation. From their proceedings, concrete and sometimes radical suggestions emerged – such as, for example, the joint use of Latin and German in the liturgy. Thus, during the same month of July 1526, an intercollegiate committee was created. The committee included a reasonable number of Reformed princes (such as Landgrave Philip of Hesse). It did not have much opportunity to act; in fact, on August 1, Archduke Ferdinand received instructions from Charles V, which insisted on prohibiting any religious innovation and on the need to apply the Edict of Worms. At this point, the princes were split between those who wanted to interrupt the discussions and those who wished to discuss the imperial institutions within the intercollegiate committee. The solution – which was provisional, but very meaningful – came from the council of the electors. The council, while searching for a compromise, suggested that every time a religious issue was encountered during the proceedings of the committee, every state would act so as to be able to answer to God, the emperor, and the empire. This was the so-called “formulation of responsibility” (Verantwortungsformel). Once again, a new path was opened. Therefore, while the other issues on the agenda – such as support for the campaign

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against the Turks, the preservation of peace in the empire, and the constitutional order of the empire itself – were not dealt with, the diet kept lingering on its most urgent theme. A message to the emperor, who was still away from Germany, seemed to be the most suitable means of ensuring an agreement, also on the matter of a general – or at least national – council. Writing the relevant instructions, however, proved to be a difficult task. Finally, on August 17, Archduke Ferdinand asked the diet to quickly wrap up its proceedings. Within ten days, the states dealt with all the other issues; some, such as support for the campaign against the Turks, were vital, as Suleiman I had invaded Hungary. On August 27, 1526, the text of the recess was read. This recess took the previous compromise as its starting point: the diet decided that, as far as religious issues were concerned, the states had to act so as to be able to answer to God, the emperor, and the empire. The necessity of summoning a council, whether general or national, within one or two years at most was stated once again. Unlike the recesses from the second and third diets of Nuremberg, however, it was now Charles V who was asked to take these steps. The opinion of the diet on the Peasants’ Revolt looped back once again to the most heated issues: the root causes of the recent disruptions were interpreted as lying precisely within the religious conflict, which had certainly not been resolved by the Edict of 1521. Thus, just five years after the Diet of Worms, the public law of the empire admitted that obedience on the part of the new believers was connected to a subjective assessment of what their lords were willing to take responsibility for. Moreover, the relationships between religious and political power – in this normative outlook – could certainly not be reduced to the evangelical precept of giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God (Matt 22:15 – 21). A third beneficiary of such responsible obedience emerged, which was the empire – all the states sitting in the Reichstag alongside their high monarch, heir of Roman sovereignty.

2 From the 1520s to the 1530s: Return to Worms, Protest, and Compromise The rules of the Recess of Speyer were meant to stay in place until the next council, whether this would turn out to be universal or just German, which should have been inaugurated no later than a year and a half from the date of the recess. The Turkish victory in Mohács on August 29, 1526, changed this plan. In mid-December, the Council of Regensburg met in Esslingen and summoned a new diet in Regensburg to meet the following April in order to approve the concession of subsidies for the war against Suleiman I. The meeting, however, was sparsely attended, and the assembly was dismissed early, on May 18, 1527, having achieved no concrete results. No deci-

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sion was made regarding the mission, established by the previous Diet of Speyer, that was to be sent from the states to Charles V. This hypothesis was soon abandoned. A new assembly was summoned to meet on March 2, 1528, but it never got beyond the preparation phase. This is not surprising. The emperor was engaged in a new war against France. Luther’s followers considered themselves satisfied with what had been achieved in Speyer and only risked losing some of the terrain they had gained if a new meeting were to take place. The scenario envisioned by the Catholics – using the diets to rebalance their position – was, for the time being, completely unrealistic. Thus, 1528 was spent trying to implement the Recess of Speyer. In the meantime, the rumors of a military conflict between the two confessions became persistent. On November 10, Charles V again summoned a new diet to Speyer, scheduling the inauguration date for February 2, 1529. The proceedings started on March 15. The emperor and his brother Ferdinand came to this meeting with two different, essentially opposite visions. The imperial deputy asked for strict measures to be taken against the Reformed. Charles V, who was engaged in a war against the Turks and the French, adopted a softer position and would have preferred to either ignore the religious issue during the diet or to use it for a theological debate that would be the prelude to a reconciliation. However, his Proposition arrived too late to be read. The proceedings were organized around Ferdinand’s agenda. An intercollegiate committee was immediately created, with a clear Catholic majority, and presented a proposal that was tantamount to a restoration: immediate execution of the Edict of Worms in the states that had already accepted it, no religious innovation in any other states, and the convocation of a council – whether general or German – by the emperor. The only mitigation was a clause according to which innovations should be avoided “as much as humanly possible” (sovil muglich und mentschlich).⁵ The reforms that were still censored included the abolition of the sacrament of the Eucharist, the prohibition against participating in the mass, and, of course, the Anabaptist doctrine, which was abhorred by all. The Evangelical states criticized the resurfacing of the Edict of Worms, which, in their opinion, had been definitively eclipsed by the previous Recess of Speyer – at least until a future council. Both in the plenum of the diet and in the college of princes, they protested the suppression of the articles of 1526. There was some attempt at mediation, but before mid-April the fracture was complete. On April 19, Ferdinand and the representatives of the emperor attending the diet, once they had rejected the changes suggested by the Evangelicals, asked the states to move on to the writing of the recess. The majority, prevalently Catholic, welcomed the proposal of the intercollegiate committee. The minority replied with an act of formal dissent: on April 19, Johann of Saxony, Margrave George of Brandenburg, Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg,

 Quoted in Eike Wolgast, “Die Religionsfrage auf den Reichstagen von 1521 bis 1550/51,” in ibid., Aufsätze zur Reformations- und Reichsgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 49 – 72, here 59.

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Landgrave Philip of Hesse, and Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt signed the Protestation that would later become the name of the Lutheran movement. In it, the validity of the new deliberations was denied, not only because they rejected the principle of responsibility before God of those who held public power, as proclaimed only three years earlier, but also because these decisions had been made by the majority and consequently suffocated the expectations of the minority on issues for which unanimous consent was considered to be – according to consolidated “constitutional” practice – an unavoidable condition. Thus, the document was read to the diet. Over the next few days, there were still some contacts between the two fronts, but these were inconsequential for the final version of the recess, dated April 22, 1529. On the same day, Johann of Saxony, Philip of Hesse, and the cities of Nuremberg, Strasbourg, and Ulm reached an agreement on the first draft of a military alliance for the defense of the word of God – that is, of the Reformed doctrine. However, since the deputy Ferdinand and the Catholic states had committed not to use force regarding matters of faith until the next council, implicitly admitting that what had been decided would once again not be put into effect, this strong opposition still did not cause a definitive break. On January 21, 1530, Charles V summoned a diet to meet the following April 8 in Augsburg. After a long phase of military and political engagements outside of Germany, this time he would preside over the diet himself. With the convocation act, the emperor meant to “put aside the reasons for discord, entrust past errors to our Savior and listen, understand, and ponder everyone’s opinion with good nature and love, while living with all in a fraternal commonality and unity in the Church.”⁶ The tones were conciliatory. The Reformed replied to the appeal and wrote the final documents of their respective professions of faith: the Confessio Augustana by the theologians from Wittenberg, the Tetrapolitana from Strasbourg and three other German cities (Konstanz, Lindau, and Memmingen), and the Fidei Ratio by Huldrych Zwingli. The official inauguration was held on June 20. In his Proposition, the emperor illustrated the three points on the agenda: the religious issues, support for the campaign against the Turks – who, during the previous year, had gotten as far as besieging Vienna –, and, finally, the order of the empire. Between June 25 and July 9, the first two of the above-mentioned documents were read. Zwingli’s, however, was not read or taken into account at all. Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s close collaborator, worked hard to achieve a reconciliation, even to the point of directly negotiating with the papal legate Lorenzo Campeggi, who had been sent precisely for this purpose. The atmosphere of openness, however, was destined to be spoiled very quickly: the discussions that sought to find points of agreement – even through select committees of princes, jurists, and theologians – yielded no results. On August 3, the Confutatio of the Confessio Augustana were presented to the assembly. For the emperor,

 Quoted in Karl Brandi, Carlo V, intro. Federico Chabod, with Wolfgang Reinhard (Torino: Einaudi, 2008), 296.

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this meant the end of the episode. However, the debate continued in sterner and sterner tones. Toward the end of summer – when the Protestants refused to recognize the authority of the future council or to obey the imperial order of September 7, which asked them to conform to Catholicism up until the time of the council –, the Catholic position became more rigid. The majority of states, in fact, was then composed mostly of Catholics. The consequences became clear on September 22, when the assembly began reading the article of the recess concerning religion: the Confessio Augustana was declared erroneous, and the Protestants were given until April 15, 1531, to return to obedience to the Church of Rome. At this point, the elector of Saxony left the diet. Landgrave Philip of Hesse had already left immediately after the confutation of the Confessio Augustana. The Reformed states that were still participating to the assembly – mostly cities, such as Strasbourg, Ulm, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, and Augsburg itself – were pressured to approve the proposal of the recess. However, on October 13, they once again expressed their dissent. The text was approved on November 19 by the Catholics alone. The Edict of Worms was back in the foreground: whoever contravened it would be outside of the constitutional legality of the empire by violation of its peace pacts (Landfrieden). The objections, appeals, and decisions of other recesses were all declared void. The Reformed had until the above-mentioned deadline (April 15, 1531) to subject themselves to the orders of the recess. After that date, the Imperial Cameral Court (Reichskammergericht) would be able to take them to trial. This situation seemed like a prelude to war. The Protestants defended themselves by creating the Schmalkaldic League, an agreement signed on February 27, 1531, by the elector of Saxony, the landgrave of Hesse, the princes of Anhalt, Grubenhagen, and Lünenburg, the counts of Mansfeld, and the representatives of several cities (including Bremen, Magdeburg, and Strasbourg). Once again, however, the emperor’s political and financial needs soon urged him to go in the opposite direction. Charles V needed the states to support him in the war against the Turks and especially in the election of his brother Ferdinand as king of the Romans – i. e., as his successor. Thus he summoned a new diet in Speyer to meet on September 14, which was later postponed to January 6, 1532, and finally moved to Regensburg. The inauguration eventually took place on April 17. The religious issue, however, was not addressed in this venue, but rather during the parallel colloquies of Schweinfurt and Nuremberg. Here, the elector of Mainz, Albert of Brandenburg, and the elector of the Palatinate, Louis V of Wittelsbach, acting as mediators, meet the princes and the representatives of the Protestant cities to attempt to reach a confessional truce. Because of these negotiations, which went on from March to July 1532, the leading role of the diet in the management of the religious issue was, for the first time, somewhat diminished. Although starting from quite uncompromising positions, on July 24, 1532, a pact of religious peace was signed. This pact is known as the “compromise” of Nuremberg (Nürnberger Anstand or Nürnberger Religionsfrieden). The juridical status of this agreement was especially weak: the Catholic states did not acknowledge it, and

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the arrangements were only bilateral – between Charles V and individual Reformed states. The compromise was not even mentioned in the Recess of Regensburg of July 27, 1532. The final document of the diet, on the other hand, again asked for a council to be summoned within a year and a half and to be inaugurated no later than twelve months following its convocation. Otherwise, the emperor would have to summon a new diet that would take on the role of a German national council. At any rate, despite its insufficient formality, the Compromise of Nuremberg and the imperial order of November 6, 1532 – which suspended all trials initiated on the grounds of religion in the Imperial Cameral Court – de facto legalized the existence of Reformed ecclesiastical institutions. A new phase could now begin.

3 The Diets of the 1540s: A Stage for the Last Colloquies; a Cover for an Imminent War After Nuremberg, there followed almost a decade without diets or councils. The emperor was busy with the wars against the Turks and the French, and Ferdinand, who had been elected king of the Romans on January 5, 1531, needed to consolidate his position against the persistent opposition of some imperial states, even Catholic ones (such as Bavaria). The compromise, achieved as the result of so much effort, still held: as the papal legate Aleandro wrote some time later,⁷ it was probably feared that, by summoning a diet, the validity of the compromise would automatically lapse. Thus, only three brief meeting of the states, at the level of the Imperial Circles (Reichskreise), were held – in April, July, and November 1535 – where religion was discussed only in so far as it concerned the common fight against the Anabaptists. In the course of the 1530s, it had become progressively clear that the council hoped for by Rome was certainly not of the same kind envisioned by the recesses of the imperial diets. Was the pope a credible mediator? Where were the hoped-for arbitratores pii et aequi? ⁸ At any rate, the council had still not been inaugurated, restrained as it was by Paul III Farnese’s tortuous policy. A military confrontation between the Catholic and the Reformed princes seemed even closer after the establishment of the Catholic League (June 10, 1538), led by Louis of Bavaria and Henry of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. However, nobody really wanted a war, which would have been expensive and lacked any clear goals. Ferdinand, in particular, still needed the financial support of all the states in his fight against the Turks. This was the situation at the end of February 1539, when the time arrived for the Frankfurt conference with the archbishop of Lund, Johann von Weeze, who was the imperial repre Girolamo Aleandro’s letter to Alessandro Farnese, Linz, September 9, 1538, in Walter von Friedensburg, ed., Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland, vol. 3.1, Legation Aleanders 1538 – 1539 (Gotha, 1893), 154.  Quoted in Wolgast, “Die Religionsfrage auf den Reichstagen,” 63.

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sentative, and the main exponents of the Schmalkaldic League, Philip of Hesse and John Frederick of Saxony. After wearying negotiations, mediated by prince-electors Joachim of Brandenburg and Louis of Palatinate, an agreement was reached on April 19. The pact, known as the Frankfurter Anstand, arranged for peace to be kept within the borders of the empire and for trials at the Imperial Cameral Court to be suspended for six months (a term that could be extended to fifteen). The confirmation of the agreements from 1532, extended to an even wider list of subjects, was undoubtedly a positive result, but it was one that had been achieved without going through a formal assembly of the states. The dukes of Bavaria and BraunschweigWolfenbüttel protested, as did the Roman curia. Charles V, for his part, never formally assented to the agreement but allowed it to be substantially valid for the stipulated six months. This was the beginning of the period of greatest effort in the attempt to resolve the religious conflict. At the beginning of 1539, in Leipzig, on Duke George of Saxony’s initiative, two theologians from the two fronts (Martin Bucer and Georg Witzel) agreed on shared formulations of fundamental issues in the conflict (i. e., the issues of faith, works, and the Lord’s Supper). Even during the colloquies of Frankfurt, three laymen and three theologians for each of the confessional parties had been summoned to meet in Nuremberg on August 1, 1539. A revision by Charles V postponed the inauguration, and then the invitation was renewed for June 6, 1540, in Speyer. Due to an epidemic, the Protestants and Catholics actually met in Haguenau. The discussions started at the end of June. However, from the very beginning, there was a lack of agreement on how to proceed. This was not a secondary matter: in fact, this issue was closely linked to the definition of the value that the agreements the parties reached would later have. Within a few weeks, the initiative failed. Ferdinand of Habsburg, who had chaired the assembly, adjourned it to Worms, where it was inaugurated on November 25 by Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle. The presence of the influential imperial minister and of two papal nuncios, Giovanni Morone and Tommaso Campeggi, suggested a change of pace. The expectation was that the assembly would submit proposals for an agreement that the future diet, already summoned by the emperor and due to meet on September 14, would accept and implement. The theological discussions, although rather apathetic, actually achieved important results – the first drafts of an agreement on several issues. A new meeting of the states, which Charles V himself would chair, was scheduled for January 6 in Regensburg. However, due to the tardiness of princes and other representatives, the first official session took place on April 5, 1541. Regensburg was the apex of the involvement of the diet as an institution in the issues raised by the Reformation. In his Proposition, the emperor mentioned the risks posed by the Ottoman push into Hungary and recommended unity and harmony. For this purpose, the confessional conflict ought to be overcome; there was a great need to succeed where previous diets had failed. It was the theologians’ responsibility to meet in order to prepare a clear proposal that would later be presented to the Imperial States. Thus, with an act of appointment by Charles V himself, dated April 21, Jo-

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hann Eck, Johann Gropper, and Julius von Pflug were chosen to represent the Catholics, and Martin Bucer, Philip Melanchthon, and Johannes Pistorius would represent the Protestants. Granvelle’s chairmanship, which was a co-chairmanship with Count Palatine Frederick II of Wittelsbach, would guarantee the required correctness; moreover, the presence of a papal legate, Gasparo Contarini, who was not insensitive to the opinions of the Protestants, ensured that the Holy See supported the current attempt. The starting point was the so-called Book of Regensburg, a text including twentythree articles of agreed doctrine that was largely the fruit of Bucer and Gropper’s efforts during the previous meeting in Worms. Beginning on April 27, the discussions went on at a pressing pace. An agreement was quickly reached on the first four articles of the Book. These included important issues, such as the innocence of humankind before sin, free will, original sin, and the causes of sin. The article De iustificatione hominis, on the attributes of the action of God toward the human being for salvation, took slightly longer and was approved by the commission on May 3. More points of contact were found, especially on the subject of the doctrine of the sacraments. However, the situation changed radically as soon as the discussion moved to the subjects of the Eucharist, Church order, the mass, and the cult of the saints. The positions became irrecoverably unyielding. Both the emperor and the papal legate pushed for postponing discussion of the most heated subjects, hoping that some result might be achieved even from a limited agreement. They could not have been more wrong. It was now the states’ turn to speak. The electors of Brandenburg, Palatinate, and Cologne were in favor of ratifying the articles agreed between April and May; the electors of Mainz and Trier and the dukes of Bavaria were against it. On June 8, 1541, the Book of Regensburg, with edits from the previous interconfessional colloquies, was presented to the diet. After about four weeks of debate, the possibility of an agreement was rejected. Thus, late July was spent in debates between the Reformed and the Catholics: the former wanted the confirmation of the Nürnberger Anstand from 1532, the latter the reiteration of the Recess of Augsburg from 1530. The emperor – having lost any hope of a reconciliation – focused on the effort to close the proceedings: he was by now more interested in bilateral agreements with the Protestant princes in order to protect himself against internal disorder and the possibility of their alliance with the king of France. From this point of view, the treaty of June 13 with Landgrave Philip of Hesse is exemplary. Finally, after new discussions and preparatory proceedings, it was time for the recess of July 29. Having restated their necessary union against the Turkish threat, the text acknowledged the failure of the colloquies and went back to the options already envisioned in the 1520s: a council or a general assembly of the states. Charles V, in particular, promised to summon a council in German territory, if a general council was not convened; otherwise, after a year and a half a new diet would be inaugurated. As far as the resolutions of the Recess of Augsburg from 1530 were concerned, these still applied, although not the article on religion. Any mention of the Edict of

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Worms also disappeared. Moreover, the Protestants were favored with an ancillary (and secret) imperial declaration, dated July 28, which acknowledged the previous secularization of ecclesiastical assets, protected the presence of Protestants in Catholic states, and reformed the composition of the Imperial Cameral Court. At any rate, the cases tried by this court would be suspended until the next council or the future assembly or diet. A similar, more generic declaration to the Catholic princes, protecting their causes, did little to help. In 1541, the scale of institutional solutions, which surpassed the limits of legality (in fact, they had only partially been voted on by a diet), tipped clearly in favor of the Protestants. In the years that followed, up until 1546, another six diets were held. The link between the two main issues of focus for the government of the empire – the Turkish threat and the confessional conflict – was once again very clear. A new assembly of the states was summoned in Speyer by Ferdinand of Habsburg on October 16, 1541, and was inaugurated on February 9, 1542. In exchange for support against the Turks, who had conquered Buda on August 29, 1541, the Protestants asked for the declaration of Regensburg of July 28, 1541, to be included in the final recess and for a decade-long truce to be stipulated. This was too much. They received only the promise of a new declaration (dated June 10, 1542) that would extend the validity of the Declaration of Regensburg from July 28, 1541, which in the meantime had been made public. The general framework was by now focused on individual agreements with the confessional parties. Other agreements were also reached with the Catholics, a testimony to the ambiguous contradictions of the Habsburg policy. The following Diet of Nuremberg (from July 21 to August 26, 1542) mainly dealt with support for the fight against the Turks. The Protestant party refused to even participate in the discussions without having first received assurances concerning a lasting peace. The king of the Romans, Ferdinand, in order to overcome this constant opposition, referred to the emperor’s imminent return to Germany. However, the same thing happened again at the new assembly of the states held in Nuremberg between January 30 and April 23, 1543. Here, the Reformed party refused to assent to the tax to finance the war against the Turks (Türkensteuer) without first having their request for legal protection of the results of the Reformation accepted. Ferdinand and the Catholic states would not allow this and were left alone to approve the text of the recess on April 23, 1543. As had already happened in 1529, the Evangelicals resorted to the tool of the “protest.” At this point, the king of the Romans and Granvelle urged the emperor to go to war. However, at that time, Charles V was busy trying to put a stop to the usurpation of Guelders (in the Netherlands) by the seigniory of Duke William of Jülich-ClevesBerge, a Protestant and an ally of the French. In mid-August 1543, the imperial army achieved spectacular successes. Once the imperial army had conquered Düren and Jülich and begun the invasion of Guelders, Duke William was forced to accept the Treaty of Venlo (September 7, 1543): he agreed to return to Catholicism and to surrender the disputed country, together with the county of Zutphen, to the Hapsburgs. This was not a minor success. For the first time, Charles V imposed his

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will on a prince of the empire with weapons. Could the confessional conflict be solved in this way, too? The emperor had taken this option into consideration many times before, ever since the 1520s. However, he still needed the support of the Protestants, particularly their financial support. The Diet of Speyer, summoned on May 27 to meet on November 30, 1543, was inaugurated after a great delay on February 20, 1544. The imperial Proposition included requests of support against the Turks and the French. Charles V received it; the diet financed the recruitment and six-month service of an army of 24,000 footmen and 4,000 mounted soldiers. The support received from the Evangelical states, however, needed to be reciprocated; thus the contents of the secret declaration from July 28, 1541, were included in the text of the recess of June 10, 1544. The concessions granted then were preserved until the following council. At the same time, however, since the council was still delayed, the plan was to summon the diet to meet again on October 1; its purpose would be to promote a reform that was simply – but rather meaningfully – defined as Christian. The Catholic states did not vote for such a provision; they accepted it only as a direct enactment of imperial power. The latter, however, when taking into account the developments that quickly followed, revealed itself to be less inclined toward the Reformed states than it might have appeared. This was proven by what emerged from the next Diet of Worms. After the formal inauguration on December 15, 1544, the diet proceeded under the chairmanship first of the king of the Romans, Ferdinand, and later of Charles V himself, between March 25 and August 4, 1545. The relationship of the Holy Roman Empire with the French court, after the signature of the Peace of Crépy (September 18, 1544), was so good that the latter also agreed to the necessary council. The council was actually summoned by Paul III to meet on March 15, 1545, in Trent, the seat of the ecclesiastical principality of the same name, which was part of the Imperial Diet. Once the papal court moved back into the foreground, room for an autonomous German solution to the religious problem – as suggested in Speyer – began to diminish. Charles V had received financial support from the pope in order to start a war against the Protestants, but the time had not yet come. Leveraging his full power, in the Recess of August 4, 1545, the emperor included the convocation of a new religious colloquy in Regensburg as a preliminary meeting for the diet that would be inaugurated on January 6, 1546, once again in Regensburg. The meeting between Protestants and Catholics was inaugurated on January 27, 1546, and chaired by the bishop of Eichstätt, Moritz von Hutten, and Count Frederick von Fürstenberg. The Confessio Augustana was the starting point for the discussion. On February 5, the discussion of the theological issue of justification began, but no progress was made. On the contrary, when Charles V arrived in Regensburg on April 10, 1546, the colloquy had already been suspended for a month. The diet summoned in the same city at the beginning of the following June, therefore, had no topics to discuss. On the other hand, the emperor – who, at that time, was actually perfecting his arrangements for a war against the Schmalkaldic League – concealed his intentions and used the diet to buy time and strengthen his position. Thus, the Proposi-

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tion’s section regarding religious matters did not mention his bellicose intentions. The Catholic states appealed to the council, inaugurated in Trent in the first half of 1545, while the Protestants repeated their point of view in a reply dated June 13, 1546. In it, the negotiations on religion and the truces (Friedstände) that had followed one another since 1523 were summarized in order to show how long the Imperial States had worked autonomously to face and resolve the religious issue. The Council of Trent, in contrast, was not a viable option because it was considered to be “papist.” In particular, the Protestants requested a return to the provisions of the Recess of Speyer from 1544, hoping to preserve peace within the empire. These were only words, though. Given the growing military threat, by now made clear by the arrangements put in place, the ambassadors of almost all the Evangelical states left Regensburg. The recess of July 24, 1546, postponed the diet to February 1547. By then, however, the first attacks by the Protestants had already taken place in Swabia. This marked the beginning of the Schmalkaldic War.

Marco Iacovella

Luther and the Religious Colloquies 1 Introduction Religious colloquies – the theological debates with which, during the modern era, an attempt was made to mediate the conflict between the supporters of Evangelical doctrines and the representatives of Roman Catholicism – are often described as the last bid to heal, by means of dialogue, the confessional rift Luther caused.¹ Over time, however, this interpretation has been corrected, thanks both to an analysis of the different formats taken by these debates (which were called both at a local level and at the level of the imperial diet, inside and outside Germany) and to a better understanding of the motivations and purposes according to which the participants in these assemblies agreed to discuss their beliefs on matters of faith.² In particular, research has brought to light the concomitant strategies put in place by the protagonists of two of the most famous religious colloquies of the sixteenth century – those that met in Worms and in Regensburg between 1540 and 1541. Depending on whether the debate was considered a danger to orthodoxy, an opportunity for peace, or a mere political game, these meetings were observed from Rome, from the imperial court, and from Wittenberg – the list could go on – with very different eyes. On the basis of these developments, this study focuses on the reconstruction of one of the points of view from which these events were interpreted – Martin Luther’s. In order to outline the main cultural, historical, and biographical elements that contributed to defining Luther’s opinion of the colloquies, it is necessary to bear in mind different domains, from the progressive evolution of Luther’s doctrinal opinions to the historical development of the Protestant movement and, finally, the political context in which Luther tried to achieve his religious reform. Although he contributed toward their establishment, Luther did not harbor any expectations with regard to the possible outcomes of these assemblies. In his eyes, a dialogue with the papacy could help spread the Evangelical message, touching the souls of those Catholics who were more sensitive to the call of the true word of God, and could perhaps also achieve better political conditions for the survival of the Reformation; however, Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  On this subject, see the key opinion expressed by Robert Stupperich, Der Humanismus und die Wiedervereinigung der Konfessionen (Leipzig: M. Heinsius Nachfolger, 1936), 126 – 31; cf. infra.  For a general overview, cf. I. Dingel, “Reformationsgespräche. IV: Altgläubig-protestantisch und innerprotestantisch,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, eds. Horst R. Balz, Gerhard Kraus, and Gerhard Müller (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1997), 28:654– 68, at 655 – 56. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-022

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no assembly could ever be the appropriate place for the discussion of matters of faith.

2 From the 1520s to the Colloquies of the 1540s Luther’s convocation at the Diet of Worms in 1521 marked a decisive turning point for the historical definition of the Reformation, and not just because of the famous words he spoke before Charles V. The Holy See had already officially proclaimed Luther’s excommunication a few months earlier, with the bull Decet romanum pontificem, but the elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, had insisted that Luther be allowed to express his motivations in Worms, submitting them to the judgment of the emperor. Charles V’s decision to endorse this initiative was the first sign of his willingness to personally manage the Lutheran issue, even at the cost of intruding upon the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome. In this sense, the diet of 1521 first took on the traits of the religious colloquies that would later pepper the era of the Reformation – including the definition of certain theses to be debated among the representatives of several religious orientations, the presence of a secular authority as arbiter of the debate, and a strong contingent of laymen, both among the disputants and in the audience.³ Unlike medieval disputations, the debates of the sixteenth century abandoned the tools of scholastic culture and canonist tradition, and every issue was examined in the light of the biblical text. Although it had been Luther himself who had made his own contribution to the establishment of this specific mode of doctrinal confrontation, he later repeatedly demonstrated his impatience with it. Rather than being the result of the bad memory of what had happened in Worms,⁴ this was due to the intrinsically political nature of the religious colloquies – a feature that freed them from papal control while at the same time allowing for complex theological decisions to be made by juries that were strongly influenced by secular powers. During the 1520s, while reflecting on the authoritative value of the tradition of the Church, Luther came to the conclusion that the decrees produced by the councils, even the celebrated councils of the apostolic age, were not binding in the definition of doctri-

 Cf. Otto Scheib, Die innerchristlichen Religionsgespräche im Abendland. Regionale Verbreitung, institutionelle Gestalt, theologische Themen, kirchenpolitische Funktion. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des konfessionellen Zeitalters (1517 – 1689) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 1:21– 22, 77– 78, which, apart from Worms, also contains the examination to which Zwingli was subjected in 1523 before the city council of Zurich, an event that served as a model for the following years. The author remarks that Erasmus’ Inquisitio de fide (1524) was also a possible model for the colloquies between Catholics and Lutherans, cf. p. 86.  Cf. V. Pfnür, “Die Einigung bei den Religionsgesprächen von Worms und Regensburg 1540/41: eine Täuschung?” in Die Religionsgespräche der Reformationszeit, ed. Gerhard Müller (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1980), 55 – 88, at 70.

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nal truths. Thus he rejected the notion that the key points of faith had to be subjected to a human ratification expressed through a majority vote (Mehrheitsprinzip): according to Luther, the only parameter should be sola scriptura, not consent expressed by an assembly, and all religious synods should be limited to issues regarding the liturgy or the organization of the community life of the faithful, without touching the core of the Christian confession.⁵ Moreover, it is also worth mentioning that, although it was immediately clear after the Reformation that Christianity had lost its theological unity, it still took a long time for the confessional rift to materialize in institutions that were independent of the Roman Church.⁶ According to Luther, this meant that the Catholics, although destined for damnation because of their idolatry, were part of the same Church as the Reformed. Luther’s reservations, therefore, were not about the idea of a political or even an ecclesial reconciliation with Roman Catholicism (an option he did not dismiss out of hand), but rather about the possibility of accepting compromises on the ecclesiology that was the foundation of his religious thinking. In other words, it was not his alleged rigidity⁷ that pushed him away from an anachronistic ecumenical vision of the Christian faith.⁸ His skepticism regarding a dialogue with the Catholics was instead a product of the vast distance that separated the guiding criterion of his own theological beliefs (the constant reference to the text of the Holy Scripture) and the Roman notion of the Church as the only and final authority in charge of the definition of the doctrinal content of revelation. Thus Luther’s position increasingly diverged from the line pursued by the German princes, who nevertheless still offered fundamental support for his religious reform. The princes had made their petition to the council – to which Luther himself had turned to defend himself from the bull Exsurge Domine, promulgated against him by Leo X – as the key point of their political agenda, referring to a “free and Christian” council, i. e., free from papal control and based solely on the authority of the biblical text. After Germany was shaken by the violence of the Peasants’ War, during the Diet of Speyer (1526), the Reformers managed to obtain from Charles

 Cf. Christopher Spehr, Luther und das Konzil. Zur Entwicklung eines zentralen Themas in der Reformationszeit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 323, 353, 391, and 453.  Cf. Hubert Jedin, “An welchen Gegensätzen sind die vortridentinischen Religionsgespräche zwischen Katholiken und Protestanten gescheitert?” in Kirche des Glaubens, Kirche der Geschichte. Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Vortrage, ed. Hubert Jedin (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 1966), 1:361– 66, at 363.  On the subject, cf. Hubert Jedin, Il Concilio di Trento, Brescia: Morcelliana, 1949, 3rd ed. 2009), 1:341, 390, and 402. A call to go beyond this framework can be found in H. Scheible, “Melanchthon und Luther während des Augsburger Reichstags 1530,” in Melanchthon und die Reformation, eds. Gerhard May and Rolf Decot (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1996), 198 – 220, at 198 – 99.  On the limits of this point of view, cf. Paul Manns, “Zum Vorhaben einer “katholischen Anerkennung der Confessio Augustana”. Ökumene auf Kosten Martin Luthers?” Ökumenische Rundschau 26 (1977): 426 – 50.

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V a promise to deal with the issue in a future “national council or assembly.”⁹ It seemed like the right time had arrived four years later, when the victory against France and the inferior position of Clement VII, who was already scarred by the terrible experience of the Sack of Rome, allowed the emperor to go back to Germany to find a solution for the religious schism. Since the imperial ban forced Luther to remain in Coburg, the closest city to the diet taking place in Augsburg, Melanchthon delivered to Charles V,¹⁰ on behalf of the German Evangelicals, the Confessio Augustana, a document that attempted to present the Lutheran doctrine in terms that could be acceptable to Catholics as well. The Catholics, on their side, tried everything to sabotage Melanchthon’s efforts. This attempt voiced the concern – shared by intellectuals all over Europe, under the guidance of Erasmus of Rotterdam – that closing any chance of dialogue might instead initiate a terrible military conflict.¹¹ Erasmus himself was supposed to take part in the assembly, but he preferred not to expose himself so openly, since he had not been explicitly invited by the emperor.¹² For his part, Luther tried to caution Melanchthon and advised him to ask only for political peace and tolerance for the Reformed, without getting into the intricacies of the attempt to find a theological mediation.¹³ Although Melanchthon highlighted the similarities rather than the doctrinal rifts between the Catholics and the Reformed, keeping a low profile on the issue of papal authority and suggesting the retention of episcopal jurisdiction, he did not manage to prevent the failure of the negotiations. Accused by the Protestant side of having conceded too much to their opponents and unable to maintain a unified reformed front (his Confessio was accompanied by an autonomous declaration by the cities of Strasbourg, Konstanz, Memmingen, and Lindau, which all followed Zwingli’s lead), Melanchthon could not but witness to the Catholic confutation

 On the relationship between the terms “national council” and “national diet/assembly,” cf. Jedin, Il Concilio di Trento, 1:245, 360, and 363; and Ernst Laubach, “‘Nationalversammlung’ im 16. Jahrhundert. Zu Inhalt und Funktion eines politischen Begriffes,” Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 38 (1985): 1– 48, at 11– 13, 18.  Cf. Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 2, Ordnung und Abgrenzung der Reformation 1521 – 1532 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1986), 357– 62.  Cf. Herbert Immenkötter, “Reichstag und Konzil. Zur Deutung der Religionsgespräche des Augsburger Reichstags 1530,” in Die Religionsgespräche der Reformationszeit, 7– 19, at 14, 16, and 18; and Wibke Janssen, ‘Wir sind zum wechselseitigen Gespräch geboren’. Philipp Melanchthon und die Reichsreligionsgespräche von 1540/41 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 23, 32– 33.  Cf. B. Lohse, “Erasmus und die Verhandlungen auf dem Reichstag zu Augsburg 1530,” in Im Schatten der Confessio Augustana. Die Religionsverhandlungen des Augsburger Reichstages 1530 im historischen Kontext, eds. Herbert Immenkötter and Gunther Wenz (Münster: Aschendorff, 1997), 71– 83, at 73.  Cf. Luther’s letter to Melanchthon, July 13, 1530, WA.B 5.1642:469 – 70, at 470: “Tamen quando sic ludunt promissione Concilii fallaces isti diaboli, luderem et ipse simul cum eis, appellans a minis eorum ad illud nihili et nunquam futurum Concilium, ut interim pacem haberemus. Nihil adhuc metuo de vi aut manu eorum violentia.”

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of his theses, while Charles V referred the issue to a future council, confirming once again the situation defined during the Diet of Worms in 1521. The drafting of the Confessio Augustana and the lack of acknowledgement by the emperor became the foundations of a progressive confessionalization of German politics and provided the Reformed group with a synthetic and coherent doctrinal system. Fearing repercussions from the Catholics, in 1531 the Protestant princes entered into a pact of mutual assistance, creating the Schmalkaldic League and breaking the German landscape into two opposing fronts divided by religious identities. Although Luther quickly declared that he was not really satisfied with this policy, since it risked moving the conflict with Rome from the realm of theology onto the battlefield, the creation of this pressure group forced the hand of the emperor, who desperately needed the military support of the German aristocracy due to the Turkish advance in Eastern Europe, and immediately brought tangible benefits to the Reformation. Within a year, in fact, a political and religious peace was proclaimed in Nuremberg until the convocation of a future council. Thus – while in his De sarcienda Ecclesiae concordia (1533) Erasmus hoped for the debate between Evangelicals and Catholics to be referred to a council of scholars, whose task would be to distinguish between a small core of truths of the faith and a wide set of secondary elements, which the religious could freely debate – in Roman circles too the need for a conciliar assembly that would put an end to the Lutheran schism was growing stronger and stronger. The election of Paul III in October 1534 appeared to many to be a first step in that direction, but Luther did not see it that way. As made clear in the ironic comments with which he glossed the Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia, a reformation program requested by the pontiff in 1536, Luther refused to believe that the pope’s words represented a sincere determination to heal the abuses of the Church.¹⁴ The repeated claims from Rome were accompanied by an ever-gloomier interpretation on Luther’s part, as he became increasingly inclined to read what was happening around him through an apocalyptic lens. Against all expectations, the convocation of a general council in the city of Mantua was publicly announced in 1535. This event pushed the princes of the Schmalkaldic League to ask Luther to clarify which were the non-negotiable doctrinal contents of the Protestant faith. The list of the so-called “Schmalkald Articles” showed that in the main issues of faith, such as the Eucharist and justification, the split with Catholic theology was already complete. Although Melanchthon added the appendix De auctoritate papae to the document, in which he expressed some openness regarding the acknowledgement of papal primacy iure humano, the Reformed front had already achieved its own autonomous doctrinal identity, which in Germany had been consolidated through almost twenty years of Evangelical religious practice. Yet another deferment of the conciliar assembly forced Charles V and his brother Ferdinand, king of the Romans, to contemplate other solutions. A key figure in this

 Cf. Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 3, Die Erhaltung der Kirche 1532 – 1542, 192.

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development was prince Joachim II of Brandenburg, who was able to introduce in his territories an ecclesiastical reform that responded to the spiritual needs of the faithful without reaching a breaking point with Rome; Luther himself approved of this new ecclesiastical order, in which traditional Catholic structures were preserved, but which also introduced explicit doctrinal corrections, especially regarding justification by faith alone.¹⁵ Following Joachim II’s advice, religious colloquies were attempted. These were formally announced during the Diet of Frankfurt (1539) and would begin the following year. Just as with Augsburg, Luther could not and did not want to take part in the general assemblies; however, from the very beginning, he showed interest in the potential political benefits that might result from the colloquies and declared himself willing to recognize the episcopal system, on the condition that the bishops were to be chosen from among pious and righteous people who would formally stand against the papal doctrines.¹⁶ Thus – after a first diet held in Haguenau, where the debate focused on the ways in which the actual negotiations would take place – the first of the two main religious colloquies, the one in Worms, began in November 1540.

3 Worms and Regensburg: The Imperial Toleranzprojekt Up until the very eve of the assembly, Luther questioned whether the purposes of and the religious maneuvers promoted by the House of Habsburg were actually well meaning, an uncertainty that, in this case, was shared by Melanchthon as well. Melanchthon, scarred by the experiences of the previous years, had little trust in the emperor and – as he had been advised a decade before – simply hoped that the advisor Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle, who had been appointed to follow the events of the diet, “would commit to political peace, if it really was impossible to achieve religious unity.”¹⁷ Although it was by this time obvious that Charles V was a “follower of the Roman idol,”¹⁸ in Wittenberg Luther and Melanchthon tried to discern the possible advantages that could come out of the imperial diets: I am surprised that Charles would summon so quickly such a large assembly: I am starting to think that this initiative could go beyond our forecasts and will end up being similar to that time when, in my presence, there was an attempt to summon a council in Worms in 1521, al-

 Cf. Luther’s letter to Joachim II of Brandenburg, December 4– 5, 1539, WA.B 8.3420:620 – 24.  Cf. Brecht, Martin Luther, 3:204.  Melanchthon’s letter to Luther, November 14, 1540, WA.B 9.3552: 269 – 70, at 269: “sperant daturum operam, ut, etiam si concordia constitui non poterit, tamen de pace agatur.”  Luther’s letter to Melanchthon, November 18, 1540, WA.B 9.3553:270 – 71: “Nos scimus Caesarem, idolatram idoli Romani, perdidisse omnem suam fortunam in aeternum, postquam osculatus est non manum, sed pedem quoque monstri novissimi, sicut testatur dies haec, et postera magis declarabit.”

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though without calling it a “council” or asking for the pope’s permission. And now, what if Caesar – again avoiding the use of the word “council,” which is hateful to the Romans both in substance and in sound – has summoned, acting on our demands, a national council, although without calling it thus and without submitting to papal control? If God starts to touch his heart, we need to begin praying that he will soon push him in the right direction. […] On the other hand, if they appear to be willing to offer some concessions, or, vice versa, if you offer them something, you already know what to say, with due humility and modesty: “In order to achieve peace, we are willing to give – not only to Caesar, but to whoever asks for it – that which belongs to us and is in our power. However, if our enemies, having no right to do so, demand from us concessions about what pertains only to God and is not even within the power of the universal Church (which is the highest authority after God and the judgment of the angels), we have to acknowledge that this is impossible for us and for the angels as well, and that, if we were to give such concessions, they would be illicit and against the will of God.”¹⁹

Even when faced with the best possible scenario – with Charles V ready to act with full autonomy, independent of the papal directive, and to demonstrate openness to the demands of the Protestants – Luther was resolute in his beliefs and would not acknowledge that an assembly, particularly an assembly that was clearly politically inspired, could speak to the content of the Christian faith. The distinction between the level of the imperial negotiations, which could have secured some concessions for the Evangelicals, and the level of the theological debate, which was immediately dismissed by Luther, started to break down very quickly. While the German publishing market continued to produce pamphlets that exacerbated the tensions between the two fronts, news came that the emperor had just renewed an anti-Protestant repression decree in Flanders. Between November and December 1540, the Reformed front was swept by indignation toward a sovereign whose hands were now soiled with “innocent blood”²⁰ due to the publication of that “most heinous edict”²¹ and

 Luther’s letter to Melanchthon, November 21, 1540, WA.B 9.3554:271– 73, at 271– 72: “Mirum, quid sit, quod Carolus tam numerosum repente faciat conventum istum. Et suspicari quidem incipio, rem fore praeter spem nostram et talem, qualis fuit, me agente Wormatiae, anno XXI, ubi concilium fuit sine nomine concilii, et sine Papae auctoritate illuc vocatus tentabar. Quid, si iterum Caesar omittens odiosum Romanis nomen concilii et re ipsa tamen et suo nomine, tandem nostris clamoribus motus, indixerit nationale concilium, sine nomine concilii et sine auctoritate Papae? Si coepit Dominus cor eius movere, orandum est serio, ut permoveat. […] Porro, si inciderit ratio, ut illi vobis aliqua concedenda offerant, ut vicissim concedenda offeratis, havetis iterum exemplum, ut omni genere humilitatis et modestiae respondeatis: “Ea, quae nostra sunt et in nostra potestate, non modo Caesari, sed cuicunque petenti propter pacem cedere parati sumus, quae vero in potestate solius Dei, nec universalis Ecclesiae quidem sunt, cuius est summa post Deum potestas et iudicium etiam Angelorum, possible est, ab illis inique postulari, ut concedamus, sed nobis, imo Angelis coelestibus et re ipsa impossibile, et, si concedamus, irritum est, et Deo irascente concederentur.”  Luther’s letter to Melanchthon, November 24, 1540, WA.B 9.3557: 277– 79, at 278: “Ego neque de Caesare neque de Ferdinando quicquam boni spero, quia sanguis innocens, quo sunt illorum manus maculatae, clamat, et simulant fortasse aliquid aliud, quam re ipsa agunt, quodque etiam palam machinarentur.” Cf. WA.B 9:258n10 and 282.

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who had shattered the little faith the Protestants had in the venture of religious colloquies. In order to avoid the nefarious political repercussions of a complete fracture between the Reformation and the imperial ministers, Luther tried to calm the waters by claiming that the decree was merely a maneuver to make the diet fail and to blame his fellow believers for it.²² It was in this context of suspicions and tensions that the work of the assembly was inaugurated in Worms. By then unwilling to negotiate the foundations of the Reformed beliefs, Melanchthon offered to the assembly a variata version of his Confessio Augustana, asking for this to be used as the starting point for all sibsequent theological debates.²³ Granvelle’s plans, however, were quite different. While the debates among the representatives continued and managed to arrive at an agreement on the doctrine of original sin, Granvelle was working on a strategy that ran parallel to these open negotiations. In December 1540, he promoted some colloquia privata between those representatives of the two fronts that had shown more willingness to compromise – the Alsatian reformer Martin Bucer and the canon of the Cologne Cathedral, Johann Gropper, who had authored the irenic Enchiridion christianae religionis in 1538. The result of these negotiations was the expansion of the “Book of Worms” (Wormser Buch), a text composed of several articles of compromise that, with a few changes, would soon serve as the theological platform for the debates of the following diet in Regensburg. In the past, the leading role of Erasmian humanist culture in the attempts at religious reconciliation promoted in Worms and Regensburg has often been highlighted precisely because of Gropper’s and Bucer’s efforts. Apart from a general irenic trend, there have been attempts to find a red thread – represented by Gropper and his Enchiridion – between Erasmus’ theological mindset and the perspective that emerged from the Wormser Buch, with special attention to the doctrine of the duplex iustitia, which granted equal dignity to faith and deeds in the process of justification of the Christian. According to this interpretation, the main characters of this interconfessional rapprochement – and to a certain extent also Melanchthon – were therefore able to go beyond the religious controversy thanks to their humanistic sensitivity; unlike Luther, they promoted a theology built not on dogmas, but on ethical practice. Luther had no faith in a possible unity between the opposing fronts. His only interest was to obtain some form of tolerance for the Reformation and ask for political peace […] The colloquies of Regensburg in 1541 were the last attempt at religious reconciliation promoted by humanists.

 Melanchthon’s letter to Luther, December 2, 1540, WA.B 9.3559:281– 85, at 283: “In Belgico editum est edictum atrocissimum […] Interim nostri Heroes putant, autores talium edictorum nobis multa largituros esse.”  Cf. Luther’s letter to J. Jonas, December 9 – 10, 1540, WA.B 9.3562:290 – 91; and Georg Kuhaupt, Veröffentlichte Kirchenpolitik. Kirche im publizistischen Streit zur Zeit der Religionsgespräche (1538 – 1541) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 234– 38.  Janssen, Wir sind zum wechselseitigen Gespräch geboren, 108, 118 – 19, 205, 290 – 91.

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During the colloquies, it became obvious that it was impossible to achieve confessional union through theological confrontation alone.²⁴

The historiographical interpretation of Regensburg as a great “missed opportunity” was immediately met with a series of detailed criticisms attempting, on the one hand, to reduce the importance of justification in the debates held during the colloquies and, on the other, to deconstruct the unlikely genealogy going from Erasmus to Gropper to the duplex iustitia. ²⁵ Thus, an attempt was made to free the protagonists of the negotiations from an excessive dependence on Erasmus, tracing the irenic tendencies not back to humanist culture, but to a so-called European “Evangelism.”²⁶ Although an Erasmian influence was evident among some of the participants,²⁷ it has already been noted that it is often difficult to distinguish between “a religious policy or an irenicism inspired to Erasmus” and a “pragmatism founded only on political bases, devoid of any confessional dimension.”²⁸ This is particularly true for Bucer, although he is the one who tried the hardest to obtain compromises and agreements with the Catholics. As is clear from more recent studies, it was not the search for a Christian truth beyond the confessional rifts that drove his actions, but rather an attempt to secure a public legitimation of Protestant doctrine in order to attract the greatest number of Catholics.²⁹ This is a fact that distinguishes Bucer from Luther in strategy rather than in essence. Rather than shedding light on a period of theological experimentalism, the results of research on the documents laid out during the religious colloquies and on the individual characters who took part in them has demonstrated the absolute priority of the political interests that, with the confessional conflict increasingly worsening, suggested to the imperial initiative a feasible solution in order to offer an interlude of serenity to Germany. The very confidence with which Granvelle ignored the strong resistance coming from the Catholic side and bent the conciliatory formula Stupperich, Der Humanismus, 131.  Cf. C. Augustijn, De godsdienstgesprekken tussen rooms-katholieken en protestanten van 1538 tot 1541 (Haarlem: Bohn, 1967), 3, 102– 03; and Reinhard Braunisch, Die Theologie der Rechtfertigung im “Enchiridion” (1538) des Johannes Gropper. Sein kritischer Dialog mit Philipp Melanchthon (Münster: Aschendorff, 1974), 419 – 21, 428 – 31.  C. Augustijn, Die Religionsgespräche der vierziger Jahre, in Die Religionsgespräche der Reformationszeit, ed. Müller, 43 – 53, at 49 – 50.  It will be enough to mention Julius von Pflug, bishop of Naumburg, to whom in 1533 Erasmus dedicated his De sarcienda Ecclesiae concordia and who in Regensburg was one of the three representatives of the Catholic front.  Cf. Albrecht P. Luttenberger, Glaubenseinheit und Reichsfriede. Konzeptionen und Wege konfessionsneutraler Reichspolitik 1530 – 1552 (Kurpfalz, Jülich, Kurbrandenburg) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 116.  Cf. Luttenberger, Glaubenseinheit und Reichsfriede. 84– 85; and Volkmar Ortmann, Reformation und Einheit der Kirche. Martin Bucers Einigungsbemühungen bei den Religionsgesprächen in Leipzig, Hagenau, Worms und Regensburg 1539 – 1541 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2001), 88 – 89, 146, 165, 226 – 27.

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tions by Bucer and Gropper to his purposes showed that the perspective from which he looked at the religious issue was essentially political. Thus the Reformation of the Church was seen as a potential tool to achieve public peace and once again create widespread agreement within the empire.³⁰ From this perspective, the tolerance plan (Toleranzprojekt) devised by Granvelle aimed – by getting both sides to approve the Book of Worms – to create an institutional framework that would enable the mending of the confessional tear German society had experienced, trusting in the fact that time would normalize legislation that was formally intended to be ad interim. After the failure in Augsburg, it was clear to Granvelle that it was no longer possible to “attempt to bring the Evangelicals back to Catholicism through a series of concessions,” but it was necessary instead to create “one German church that would share doctrines and ceremonies.”³¹ In order to achieve his purpose, Granvelle tried everything to enlist all the main characters of the religious colloquies in his project, taking advantage of the openness shown by Bucer (whom he judged to be a crypto-Catholic)³² and exerting every form of political pressure in order to secure Melanchthon’s and Luther’s support. Imperial diplomacy seemed to score one success after another, isolating the most active opponents of compromise within the Catholic ranks and obtaining from Rome the appointment of cardinal Gasparo Contarini as legate to the diet of Regensburg; Contarini was a highly esteemed figure at court who, with his doctrine and his conciliatory attitude toward the Reformation, elicited great hopes for a good outcome to Charles V’s initiative.³³ With the compilation of the Book of Worms, the negotiations were suspended and referred to the following assembly, in which the emperor himself would take part. On Granvelle and Prince Philip of Hesse’s instruction, Bucer sent the articles of mediation to Joachim II of Brandenburg, who then forwarded them to Luther to  Cf. Luttenberger, Glaubenseinheit und Reichsfriede, 233 – 35.  Augustijn, Die Religionsgespräche der vierziger Jahre, 45 – 47.  Cf. Jedin, Il Concilio di Trento, 1:428.  Cf. the poem “Al cardinal Contarino, eletto legato in la Magna,” in P. Massolo, Sonetti morali (Bologna, 1557), n. 255: “Va’ Contarino a questa santa impresa / che ‘l Spirto Santo a te sia scorta et duce, / et col suo lume, che al cor dentro luce / andrai sicuro et lieto et senza offesa; / va’, che ‘l bel nome de la santa Chiesa, / che solo salva et solo al ciel conduce, / per te fia sparso quanto il sol riluce / la piaga australe, et quella in pace resa; / va’, che la pace, ch’hor da quella è spenta / spenta la guerra col tuo gran sapere / rendendo a quella la rendrai contenta; / va’, che in quel spero che ‘l tutto ha in potere, / che vedrai d’esta impresa un fin giocondo / et vivrai sempre chiar per fama al mondo” (English prose translation: “Go, Contarino, to your holy feat and may the Holy Ghost be your escort and guide, and with its light, which shines inside the heart, you will go safely and gladly and unharmed. Go and may the pleasant name of the holy Church, which is the only salvation and the only way to heaven, be spread through you wherever the sun shines in Germany, and may Germany finally be at peace. Go and return to Germany the peace extinguished from it, once you have extinguished the war with your great knowledge, and make it cheerful again. Go and I will put my hope in the Omnipotent that you will see a happy ending to your feat and that your fame will shine forever bright in the whole world”).

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read “with paternal trust and affection” in an attempt to earn his approval.³⁴ In February 1541, the prince-elector presented the Wormser Buch to Luther, describing it as the work of some scholars who still sided with the Catholics but were not indifferent to the issues raised by the Reformation and hinting at the states of Cologne, Palatinate, and Jülich that, at the time, were playing the role of mediators between the two confessional fronts. Moreover, Joachim II tried to reassure Luther on the subject of the edict issued by the emperor in Flanders.³⁵ Luther immediately said he was not interested in the latter and instead announced that he had just finished writing a violent pamphlet against the Catholic Church, entitled Wider Hans Worst. ³⁶ On the subject of the text of unity, Luther only underlined the fact that, despite the good will of the author, the articles represented an “unachievable proposals” and many of them were not – nor could they ever be – part of Evangelical doctrine.³⁷ After the attempt to bring Luther closer to the imperial project failed, Luther himself was convinced of the utter futility of sending Melanchthon and Johann Cruciger to Regensburg as representatives of Lutheranism, but he was later forced to let them go after being explicitly asked to do so by Prince John Frederick of Saxony.³⁸ At the inauguration of the diet in April 1541, Charles V’s choice to organize the colloquies as a confrontation between restricted groups of Protestant and Catholic theologians was announced. For the Protestants, he apppointed Melanchthon, Bucer, and Johannes Pistorius, and for the Catholics, Julius von Pflug, Gropper, and Johannes Eck. Despite the pessimism on the Reformed side – Cruciger wrote, “after all, as it seems, the confrontation between the chosen representatives will hardly last three days, just as already happened in Worms”³⁹ – the diplomatic negotiations led by Granvelle were successful, although this success would later prove to be ephemeral. Contarini accepted the articles of unity prepared by Bucer and Gropper, although he added approximately twenty brief but decisive notes: convinced that the Protestants could not distance themselves from the decisions made during previous councils, Contarini added – among other things – an explicit reference to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, one of the doctrines to which the Protestants were most opposed.⁴⁰ For this reason, when it became known that the “Book of Regensburg” (i. e., the

 Martin Bucer’s letter to Joachim II of Brandenburg, January 10, 1541, in Briefwechsel Landgraf Philipp’s des Grossmüthigen von Hessen mit Bucer, ed. Max Lenz (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1880), 1:529 – 38, at 536: “vetterlich und getrewlich.” Cf. Stupperich, Der Humanismus, 95, 103; and W. Delius, “Die Kirchenpolitik des Kurfürsten Joachim II. von Brandenburg in den Jahren 1535 – 1541,” Jahrbuch für BerlinBrandenburgische Kirchengeschichte 40 (1965): 86 – 123, at 113 – 14.  Joachim II of Brandenburg’s letter to Luther, February 4, 1541, WA.B 9.3573:322– 27, at 325.  Cf. Luther’s letter to Joachim II of Brandenburg, February 13, 1541, WA.B 9.3576:329 – 30.  Luther’s letter to Joachim II of Brandenburg, February 21, 1541, WA.B 9.3578:332– 34, at 333: “unmugliche furschlege.”  Cf. John Frederick of Saxony’s letter to Luther, March 13, 1541, WA.B 9, nr. 3581, pp. 337– 338.  J. Cruciger’s letter to Luther and Melanchthon, April 22, 1541, WA.B 9.3603:377– 79, at 378: “apparet futurum, ut […] ipsa collactio inter delectos vix triduo, ut Vormatiae, duratura.”  Cf. Jedin, An welchen Gegensätzen, 365.

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Wormser Buch, edited according to Contarini’s instructions) and not the Confessio Augustana would be used as the starting point for the debates, Melanchthon’s first impression was very negative, and he conveyed this feeling to Luther. Luther, recognizing in the text the articles that Prince-elector Joachim II of Brandenburg had sent him, defined it as a work “in which all the doctrines that have been taught up until now by the papists are turned upside down in order to give them a false meaning and make them appear tolerable [… I]t is clear that this maneuver of theirs is intended to mask their idolatry and keep it in effect.”⁴¹ Taking advantage of the opportunity presented by Eck’s ill health, the colloquies were further restricted to only two theologians per side – Melanchthon, Bucer, Gropper, and von Pflug, who were the most open supporters of a peaceful reconciliation between the two sides. Through mediations and compromises in the first days of May, the imperial representatives managed to obtain an agreement on justification through the formulation of the duplex iustitia. This was a result to which none of the participants in the assembly granted greater importance than it actually had, since it was a temporary compromise, the extent of which would later be clarified through the further definition of theological issues of deeper ecclesiological importance, such as the articles on the Eucharist and on the hierarchy of the Church. In Italy, however, this news generated vehement reactions – from the first Roman criticisms of Contarini, who was deemed to be too open to the demands of the Reformed, to the sincere tears of emotion with which cardinal Pietro Bembo welcomed a “unity begun so happily.”⁴² In fact, the approval of the article on justification was the apex of what Granvelle’s diplomatic subtlety would be able to achieve. In reality, it became increasingly difficult to mediate between the demands of the two sides, and the debates on decisive theological issues demonstrated that understanding – even in the form of a compromise – was impossible. Melanchthon expresses a widespread intolerance when he writes that it was not possible to keep bearing “the ambiguous formulations and the false and misleading articles with which the truth is put to one side and the Church, instead of being healed, is destroyed.”⁴³ Granvelle’s final moves were of little help: he tried to isolate Melanchthon from the debate, accusing him of working toward the failure of the negotiations at Luther’s instigation or, even worse, on instruc-

 Luther’s letter to Melanchthon, May 12, 1541, WA.B 9.3617:410 – 11: “librum illum […] in quo omnia ante a Papistis docta a falso sensu trahuntur et ornantur tolerabili. […] manifestum est, totam actionem eorum institutam esse ad fucanda omnia idola sua et retinenda.”  A. Priuli’s letter to L. Beccadelli, May 20, 1541, in C. Dionisotti, “Monumenti Beccadelli,” in Scritti di storia della letteratura italiana, ed. Tania Basile, Vincenzo Fera, and Susanna Villari, vol. 1, 1935 – 1962 (Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2008), 183 – 99, at 196.  Melanchthon’s letter to Albert of Prussia, May 24, 1541, CR 4.2246, coll. 330 – 33, at 330 – 31: “Multa enim sunt, et vetera et recentia exempla, quae admonent in talibus conciliationibus plerumque decurri ad ambiguos flexiloquos, fucosos et fallaces articulos, quibus veritas obruitur, et non sanantur Ecclesiae, sed magis dissipantur.”

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tions from the French crown.⁴⁴ Then there was an attempt to earn Luther’s approval for the diet, an idea that was met with benevolence by Contarini himself:⁴⁵ Granvelle reported to Contarini that Melanchthon had confided to him that “Luther longed for unity and that it would be better to negotiate with him than with many of these other theologians.”⁴⁶ In early June, a new missive arrived in Wittenberg, presenting to Luther four new articles upon which an agreement had been achieved and ten that were still being debated.⁴⁷ In this case, too, Luther expressed a strong rejection of these maneuvers of theological compromise: not only was he unsatisfied with the text concerning justification, he also had no trust in the alleged tolerance granted on issues that still had not been jointly approved by both sides.⁴⁸ Apart from expressing his final verdict, he also tried to assure Melanchthon of his support by telling him how he hoped that the diet would soon be over; unfortunately, Melanchthon had merely wasted his time trying to engage in a dialogue with “those damned men.”⁴⁹ The end result of the experience of the religious colloquies was a complete failure: [A]s I have said since the very beginning and still keep saying, the very experience confirms that confrontation, when applied to religious matters, is a devilry of worldly and papist make. It is impossible to confront Christ with snakes, and nothing can be achieved from it. It is only for our dishonor, as I was able to ascertain very well, that our doctrine is disputed, filtered, clarified, exactly as happened in Augsburg in 1530.⁵⁰

 Cf. Melanchthon’s letter to Luther, May 19, 1541, WA.B 9.3619:413 – 15, at 414; and Melanchthon’s letter to Charles V, May 20 – 21, 1541, CR4.2240, cc. 318 – 21, at 319.  Albrecht P. Luttenberger, “Kaiser, Kurie und Reichstag: Kardinallegat Contarini in Regensburg 1541,” in Reichstage und Kirche, ed. Erich Meuthen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 89 – 136, at 122.  G. Contarini’s letter to cardinal A. Farnese, May 23, 1541, in L. Pastor, “Die Correspondenz des Cardinals Contarini während seiner deutschen Legation (1541), aus dem päpstlichen Geheim-Archiv. Teil II.,” Historisches Jahrbuch 1 (1880): 473 – 501, at 473; cf. Ortmann, Reformation und Einheit der Kirche, 257– 58.  Cf. Luther’s letter to John Frederick of Saxony, June 6, 1541, WA.B 9.3628:433 – 36; and H. Nestler, “Vermittlungspolitik und Kirchenspaltung auf dem Regensburger Reichstag von 1541,” Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 6 (1933): 389 – 414, at 400 – 01.  Cf. Luther’s letter to the princes John and George of Anhalt, June 11– 12, 1541, WA.B 9.3629:436 – 45, at 441.  Luther’s letter to Melanchthon, June 12, 1541, WA.B 9.3630:445 – 49, at 446: “Spero vos redituros brevi. Nam frustra ibi fuistis et fecistis omnia cum istis perditis.”  Luther and J. Bugenhagen’s letter to John Frederick of Saxony, June 22, 1541, WA.B 9.3637:459 – 63, at 460: “Wie ich im anfang gesaget, und noch sage, die erfarung auch gibt, Das die vergleichung in der Religion fürgenomen ein lauter Mentzische und papistische Teuscherey ist, Denn es ist unmüglich Christum zuvergleichen mit der schlangen, und ist nichts drinn gesucht, denn unser unglimpff, on Das ichs gern gesehen, das unser lehr nur wol disputirt, geleutert und erkandt würde, wie zu Augspurg geschehen.”

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4 Conclusion: From Regensburg (1541) to Regensburg (1546) The end of the diet, where no decision was made, left Luther with many concerns for the future. Not only did Luther think that the sequence of events in Germany was advancing toward war (although the emperor had renewed the religious peace of Nuremberg and had once again referred to the council that was soon to be inaugurated in Trent),⁵¹ but he was also assuming an increasingly gloomy apocalyptic perspective and felt certain that the political powers were plotting together with the antichrist to annihilate his reform. Luther’s life, burdened with ailments, was nearing its end as a new diet was taking place in Regensburg in 1546, attempting to bring the confessions of the empire closer together. In fact, Charles V had summoned the assembly not with the purpose of achieving any result on the diplomatic level, but only in order to buy some time to prepare for the Schmalkaldic War, a conflict that none of the religious colloquies of the previous years had been able to prevent. Luckily for him, Luther – who had spent his whole life trying to stop the outbreak of a military conflict on German soil – had time to catch a glimpse of the first skirmishes.

 Cf. Brecht, Martin Luther, 3:227, 361.

Herman Selderhuis

Luther′s Death 1 Sicknesses Considering Luther′s health situation and the many times he was near death, it is more than remarkable that he reached the age of 62, which is even above the average male life expectancy of his time. Luther’s ailments could easily fill a medical textbook. Between his trip to Augsburg in 1518, when he first mentioned serious stomach problems, and his death in 1546, Luther endlessly remarked about all his health issues. He had problems with his stomach and his intestines. He suffered heart problems, kidney stones, a leg wound that did not heal properly, dizzy spells, rheumatic issues, endless ringing in his ears together with deafness (Menière’s disease), hemorrhoids, headaches, vertigo and chronic stress, insomnia and constant fatigue. During those 30 years, he was almost always ill, and his wife worried. In 1527, when Luther was close to death, Katharina sat by his bed. She said: My dear doctor, if it is God’s will, then I would rather that you would be with our Lord God than with me. But it’s not only about me and my child, but about the many Christian people who still need you. You don’t have to be concerned about me. I commit you to God’s will – God will save you.¹

Luther reported in detail about his ailments, even his stomach problems. A little remark such as “I had to go to the toilet fifteen times in two days”² says enough. In addition to these problems, he suffered the nasty effects of the then unknown Menières disease. It starts when my head is filled with the sounds of a clock, indeed, like thunder, and if I had not immediately stopped working, I would have fainted. I could not see a single letter anymore […] That is why I am lying here, shaking with cold. With the help of medicines and other appropriate aids, gradually the tumult in my head abates.³

Several times Luther reported these attacks, as well as other physical complaints that had an increasingly negative impact on his mood. Luther’s physical suffering made him even more headstrong and implacable and even sharper in speaking and writing than he normally was. Melanchthon was often the victim, mentioning even after Luther’s death that he had suffered much because of him. Both Martin Bucer and John

 WA TR 3.2922b.  WA.B 7:172, 239 and 245.  WA.B 6:309, 12 May 1532 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-023

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Calvin first sent their letters to Melanchthon, so the latter could judge whether Luther was in the mood to read such a letter. Despite the constant medical issues, Luther was able to accomplish much work. In 1521, he was sick for seven months but still published thirty treatises, wrote a hundred letters, and preached seventy times. In 1530, he was sick for ten months but produced thirty treatises, one hundred and seventy letters, and sixty sermons. In 1536, he was ill for eight months and produced ten treatises, ninety letters, and fifty sermons. In 1545, again sick for ten months, he nevertheless produced thirteen treatises, eighty letters, and thirty-five sermons. His fits of depression and insomnia led him to bouts of drinking. Luther was confident that God, having forgiven him many greater sins, would also have compassion for this problem: “Since the Lord God tortured and crucified me for twenty years with the celebration of the mass, He will also give me credit that in honor of Him I occasionally have a stiff drink.”⁴ Luther’s beer consumption, however, was not excessive for a time in which beer and wine were often purer than the water supply. Emperor Charles V, for example, who was known for his sparse drinking, drank three bottles of wine at his midday meals. Katharina, who had her own brewery, had to provide sixty to eighty liters of beer (15 to 20 gallons) for a household of thirty to forty people. That is approximately two liters of beer per person per day, which included the children. Luther warned expressly against excessive drinking and opined that young people used too much alcohol, damaging their youth and health,⁵ adding that parents often provided a poor example.⁶ He called Germany a country “that was plagued by the devil of boozing.”⁷ That Luther himself sometimes drank excessively was well-known and, according to him, necessary. When he was in Torgau in 1532, he credited his seven-hour sleep to the local beer. The fact that he remarked in a letter to Käthe that he was just as sober as he would be in Wittenberg is telling.⁸ The combination of beer and prayer was salubrious: “For days I felt sick, and since Sunday until last night I haven’t been able to pee a drop. I could not rest, not sleep, and everything I ate or drank came out again.” He thought he would die and would never see his wife again. “Here, the people prayed to God so earnestly on my behalf that many people had to cry. And now God opened my bladder and within two hours I’ve peed at least three liters. I feel like I have been reborn.”⁹ Just about the time (1545) that things were going better, Luther received an Italian pamphlet which reported of his death. It alleged that he had given orders for his body to be venerated, but that people refused. Around his grave there was so much noise that they wanted to exhume him, but when they did that, it appeared

     

WA TR 1.139. WA.TR 1.139. WA 47:760 – 61. WA 47:761. WA.TR 1.144; WA.B 6.270; WA 40.2:115 – 16. Letter to Katharina, 27 February 1537; WA.B 8:51.

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that his grave was empty because the devil had stolen his corpse. Luther reacted with a pamphlet in which he clarified that if a living Luther had already been a plague for the pope, a dead Luther would mean the pope’s death.¹⁰ In June 1545, he was again stricken with a kidney stone attack. In January 1546, he described himself as a “graybeard, decrepit, slow, exhausted, bald, and oneeyed.”¹¹ A month later he would die.

2 Death in Luther′s Life Death was for Luther – just as for everyone else in his days – a constant threat, daily present in diseases, wars, robberies, and a high infant mortality rate. In their own family, Luther and his wife experienced the loss of children and were very much grieved by it. At his daughter Margarethe’s sickbed in 1545, he spoke of his own desire to die: Together with her brothers she was ill, but though the others had long recovered, a stubborn and terrible fever gripped her for ten weeks, and she fights for her life and health. I will not take it ill of the Lord if He takes her out of this demonic time and world, and together with my family I would also like to be taken. Because I yearn for that day, and for the end of the raging of Satan and his cohorts.¹²

The event that had terrified him since childhood was close now, and death had been close all his life. He had written much on death, because he knew that death was the greatest problem for humans – not necessarily dying, but facing what comes after. How can a sinful person appear before the holy God? In May 1519, he published a sermon on how someone could prepare for death.¹³ The sermon belonged to what was called ars moriendi in the Middle Ages. Literally, the title means the art of dying, and such sermons focused on how a person could appear before God at his or her best and give in as little as possible to the devil, who tried to rob humans of faith at the last moment. The deathbed became the last meritorious effort. In Luther’s sermon, however, the deathbed became a place of trust and surrender. Dying was not a matter of putting one’s best foot forward, but rather of trust in Christ. Luther had preached the peace that comes from knowing one is righteous before God to others, but he himself had struggled to grasp it. Death remained very ominous. From his perspective, Luther said, “Our God is the greatest adulterer in existence.”¹⁴ Through death, God breaks up every marriage, though Luther believed

    

WA 54:188 – 94. WA.B 11:199.263. Letter to Jacob Praepositus, c. 17 April 1544; WA.B 10:554. Ein Sermon von der Vorbereitung zum Sterben; WA 2:685 – 97. WA.TR 4.4787, 4709.

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there would be a reunion of married couples after they died.¹⁵ Shortly before his death, someone asked him whether humans would recognize each other in heaven and on the new earth. Luther responded that those who are in Christ will recognize each other better than Adam and Eve in paradise.¹⁶ Death did not have a place in the church, and the dead did not belong there either. Luther wanted to end the tradition of burying the deceased in or around the church. According to him, cemeteries should be located outside of the cities, not to keep death out of the picture altogether, but to keep the smell of death away and to give the dead rest. This rest should also be extended to the living, since a graveyard should be a place for rest, peaceful prayer, and silent memory. This is why Luther decided to bury his beloved daughter Elizabeth just outside the city. Such was the practice in biblical times, and Luther felt they should now reclaim that practice. Many cities followed Luther’s example and moved their cemeteries outside of the city gates. Luther’s own death was approaching at the same time, and he knew it. “I am so slow, tired, cold, that is to say, an old, useless man. I have completed my race (2 Tim 4:7). The waiting is only until the Lord gathers me to my fathers (1 Kgs 19:4) and commits me to decomposition so that also the worms will receive their portion.”¹⁷

3 Place of Death: Eisleben In early October 1545, Luther set out for Eisleben with Melanchthon. The purpose of the trip to his birthplace was to reconcile the relationship between the counts of Mansfeld, the brothers Gebhard and Albrecht. They had quarreled about how to resolve their financial problems. Developments in mining required new techniques, and because the cost of the investments were higher than the returns, Gebhard ended up indebted. The brothers disagreed on how to handle it, especially after Albrecht had taken advantage of his brother’s indebtedness by gradually taking over his property and his rights. Luther’s desire to restore this relationship had much to do with his family in Mansfeld, as they suffered under the constraint caused by these debt problems. The trip ended up being a waste of time, because when they arrived, they found both counts engaged in a military campaign with the Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. Luther and Melanchthon returned home to Wittenberg to celebrate Luther’s 62nd birthday, which would be his last. On December 6, Luther and Melanchthon again traveled to Eisleben. The counts were home but were not interested in reconciliation. The negotiations did not progress well, and Melanchthon became ill. Luther was already unwell, and after Christmas they returned home. At the beginning of the new year, Luther was home.

 WA.B 10:226 – 28.  WA.B 6.212.300 – 02.  Letter to Jacob Praepositus, c. 17 April 1544; WA.B 10:554.

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Luther was approaching the end. On January 17, he sent a letter to his friend Jacob Praepositus in Bremen informing him that he was “old, spent, tired, cold, and now also partially blind.” That same day, he preached for the last time in Wittenberg, and on January 23 he again set out, for the third time, toward Eisleben to – as he said himself – clean up that “rotten” chore. His sons Johannes (19), Martin (15), and Paul (13) accompanied him so that they would have the opportunity to visit the family in Mansfeld again. Melanchthon was still sick and stayed in Wittenberg. Additionally, Ambrosius Rudtfeld, the boys’ tutor and caregiver, and his assistant, Johannes Aurifaber, joined them on the trip. The winter weather was poor, so that initially they could not get any farther than Halle. The Saale River had flooded, and ice prevented them from crossing. Returning to Wittenberg was not an option either, because the Mulde River, which they would have to cross, was also flooding its banks. In a letter to Käthe, Luther compared the Saale River to an Anabaptist. As far as he was concerned, he preferred to quench his thirst with beer from the Torgau or wine from the Rhine.¹⁸ Luther wrote that they were still stuck in Halle, and that he had utilized the time to preach in the city church, appealing once again to the people to remain faithful to the word and not to occupy themselves with the veneration of saints and relics. On January 27, the travelers were able to cross, but the weather was so poor that it took them almost two days to cover the forty kilometers (25 miles) between Halle and Eisleben. The counts even sent an escort of sixty horsemen, who met them on the opposite side of the Saale, which did nothing to speed up their travels. In keeping with his former custom as a monk, Luther did not ride on horseback. He became more and more ill and even had a heart attack, as he reported to Melanchthon after his arrival: Along the way, I fainted and had heart issues. I was walking, but it was heavy going for me, so that I began to sweat. Afterwards, when I was sitting in the wagon, and my shirt was soaked with sweat, I was chilled to the bone and had problems with a muscle in my left arm. Therefore, I felt such a constriction in my heart that I could hardly breathe. I blame my foolishness for going afoot. Now it’s going somewhat better, but how long that will last is hard to say because you really cannot trust the situation when you are older; even when you are younger matters are not sure.¹⁹

It was already late when the travelers reached Eisleben on January 28. Luther’s three sons, who had been terribly bored while waiting in Halle, were immediately sent to family in Mansfeld. Luther stayed with the city secretary, Johann Albrecht, who lived by the market square, not far from the counts’ castle. Though he did not feel well, he wanted to get to work to reconcile the two quarreling brothers. Life was good “eating and boozing,” and the Naumburger beer was a relief for Luther’s digestive system:

 WA.B 11:268 – 70.274.  Letter to Melanchthon, 3 February 1546; WA.B 11:278.

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“This morning, within three hours, I’ve already been to the toilet three times.”²⁰ On January 31 and again on February 2, 7, and 14, he preached in the St. Andreas Church in Eisleben and twice participated in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. His last sermon was shorter, because Luther was physically unable to carry on, but he did appeal to the people one more time “to remain faithful to Christ’s words, and to come to Him.”²¹ In table talks recorded before that time, Luther constantly expressed his conviction that the word of God would not be lost due to persecution. He was equally convinced that he would die soon. “When I have returned to Wittenberg, I will lie down in the grave, and I will give the maggots a nice fat doctor to eat.”²² The negotiations with the counts did not flourish and, according to Luther, hell must have been empty and all the devils assembled in Eisleben.²³ Nevertheless, after two weeks of discussion, they finally had a breakthrough. Luther was relieved and wanted to go home: We hope – if God wills – to come home this week. God showed His great grace here, because both gentlemen, with help of their counselors, have come to agreement, with the exception of two or three points. That also counts for the fact that Count Gebhard and Count Albrecht have again become brothers in the Lord. Today I have to confirm that. I want to invite them to my table so that they also speak with each other again, because thus far they have said nothing to each other, but only embittered each other by means of letters. In the meantime, the young counts are quite jolly among themselves, and in sleighs with little bells they make trips through the snow, they have dress-up parties, and are in good spirits with each other, also the son of Count Gebhard. And therefore, we should seize with both hands that God hears prayers.²⁴

The brothers were prepared reconcile, and on February 16, the agreements were established. Luther’s last preserved writing, found on a table after he had died, also dates from that day. It is only a little scrap of paper with a few sentences: You cannot understand Virgil’s Bucolics [The Eclogues] or his Georgics if you have not first been a shepherd or a farmer for five years. I believe no one can understand the letters of Cicero unless he has worked for forty years in a well-run state government. Do not let anyone think they have tasted the Holy Scriptures sufficiently, if they have not, together with the prophets, led the congregation for a hundred years.

Therefore, it is such a miracle in the first place with John the Baptist, in the second place with Christ, and in the third place with the apostles. You should not attempt to understand this divine Aeneas, but you should simply venerate the track they left behind.

    

Letter to Katharina, 1 January 1546; WA.B 11:276. WA 51:194. WA TR 6.6975; WA 48:182. WA.B 11:286. Letter to Katharina, 14 February 1546; WA.B 11:300.

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We are beggars. That is the truth.²⁵

In conclusion, these discussions concerned the Bible, the word which opened the gates of paradise for him, but which people do not understand completely. Listen therefore, Luther said; knock until you hear it, again and again. “We are beggars, that is true.” When we approach God, we can only hold up empty hands; he provides, but we never get it in hand.²⁶

4 The End Justus Jonas and Michael Coelius (1492– 1559), court chaplain to the counts, wrote a detailed account of Luther’s end on the night of February 17/18. They were both in attendance during the night.²⁷ On February 17, the negotiations were to be concluded. Luther did not feel well and was not involved. Around ten o’clock at night, he went to bed and prayed Psalm 31:6, a familiar deathbed text. In that prayer, he did not forget to briefly include a petition against the pope and the Council of Trent. That night at one o’clock, he was awakened by another heart attack. Though his room had been heated during the night, he still requested his servant to stoke up the fire in his room, as he was suffering from chills related to the heart attack. Massages with warm cloths and heated pillows did not help. Luther suddenly began to sweat, and the people around him (among others, the two counts, their wives, and Luther’s sons, Martin and Paul) thought that this was a sign of improvement. Luther knew better and saw this as an omen that he would die. “It is the cold sweat of death. I will give up the spirit because my illness is getting worse.” With the words of Simeon (Luke 2:29), he spoke to the people standing around his bed: “I will go in peace and joy. Amen.” Three more times he repeated the words of Psalm 31:6, and then he was silent. Countess Anna anointed him with healing oils, but Luther did not recover. When he was asked if he could die in faith in Jesus Christ and whether he remained in the doctrine that he had professed in Christ’s name, he whispered his affirmation. A little later, around a quarter to three, he breathed his last and died, only a few hundred meters from the place where he had been born. In the morning, Justus Jonas immediately sent a messenger to the elector Johann Frederick, and the latter informed Melanchthon, Bugenhagen and Cruciger. Melanchthon was lecturing on the letter to the Romans when the messenger entered the lecture hall and gave him the message of Luther’s death. Melanchton replied with the words of 2 Kgs 2:12: “He who sits on Israel’s chariot, he who has led the church in the world in these last days has died.” Afterwards, together with Bugenhagen and Cruciger,  WA TR 5:318, 5677.  WA 48:241; WA.B 12:363.  The account is found in Joachim Bauer, Martin Luther. Seine letzte Reise (Rudolstadt: Gerhard Seichter, 1996), 54– 111.

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they went to inform Katharina that her husband had passed away. She was virtually the very last one to hear the news that Luther had died.

5 Buried In Eisleben, Luther was laid in a coffin made of tinplate, and a death mask was made of his face. The painter Lucas Furtenagel, Luther’s friend from Halle, quickly travelled to the city to make a portrait of the reformer. The next day, Justus Jonas led a memorial service in the St. Andreas Church. On that day, out of respect, all the children in Eisleben were dressed in white. From February 19 to 20, ten citizens kept awake in the church, and this wake was followed by another sermon. The people of Eisleben wanted Luther to be buried there, but the elector wanted Luther to rest in Wittenberg. Consequently, Luther went on his last trip on February 20. Outside the city, the children of Eisleben sang while kneeling as the cortege of forty-five riders accompanied the reformer to Wittenberg. On the coffin they had draped a black silken cloth with a large white cross, which would be saved by posterity until the eighteenth century. On February 21, the cortege was met in Bitterfeld by a delegation of representatives from the city council and from the elector. In every village the cortege passed, the bells pealed. Reports of the trip were silent about the continued bitter cold, but they do mention the multitude of tears shed by everyone as Luther passed. When they finally arrived at the Elster Gate on the morning of February 22, an honor guard of professors, students, administrators, and citizens awaited them, along with Katharina and her daughter Margaretha’s wagon. In procession, the cortege passed by Luther’s house and across the Collegienstrasse to the castle church. The tinplate coffin was placed in a wooden coffin, and during the memorial sermons led by Bugenhagen and Melanchthon, the coffin stood beside the pulpit. By the graveside, Melanchthon did not observe the maxim “Speak no ill of the dead.” He stated that Luther had been an instrument of God and emphasized what he had meant for the renewal of the church, but also stated emphatically that Luther had had a difficult character and temperament. After the service, they lowered the coffin into the grave in the church. Luther had been in favor of burial outside the city for the sake of tranquility, and indeed, such tranquility was not to be: his grave in the church became a pilgrimage site. One advantage, at least, was that Luther continued to draw people into the church. One of the visitors to Luther’s grave was Emperor Charles V, who visited in 1547, after his armies had occupied Wittenberg. The man who had said to him, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise,” now lay at his feet. Nevertheless, out of respect, the emperor did not touch Luther’s grave. The picture of a living emperor standing by the dead Luther was symbolic, because after Luther’s death, Rome’s position in the empire was much better than that of the followers of the Reformation. While a struggle ensued among Lutherans as to who should be the true successor to Luther and Protestant theologians continued to be divided, Rome managed to create inter-

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nal unity through the Council of Trent. The emperor was at the apex of his power, and after he defeated the Protestant rulers, he managed to reintroduce the mass in many cities and regions.

6 Last Will and Testament After Luther′s death, it became clear that his distrust of lawyers would have negative results for his widow. In early February 1546, when Luther sensed that his end had come, he informed Katharina that she did not need to be concerned, because God is able “to provide ten Doctor Martins if the one should die.” He wrote her: To my dear wife, Katharina Luther, doctor’s wife and hog dealer in Wittenberg. My highly esteemed wife, my hands and feet. Do not be concerned about me. I have someone who is able to provide better than you and all the angels put together. He lies in a manger, and lies at the breast of the Virgin Mary, but also sits at the right hand of God the Almighty Father. Do not be concerned. Amen.²⁸

That sounded wonderful, but afterwards it was evident that Luther should have been more concerned about providing for Käthe. After his death, there were no ten Martins – not even one new Martin Luther. There was no inheritance; the will was invalid. Katharina had no money. After Luther had gone to Eisleben, shortly before his death, she even had to borrow money from Melanchthon to buy groceries. Luther had not trusted lawyers, and so he had written his own last will and testament, which turned out to have no legal weight. The elector wanted to help, and so he declared the document to be legal, but he could not help more because he had little available cash on account of the religious wars in which he was involved. The fact that the last will and testament was declared legal did not help much either. Though Luther’s printers had earned a lot of money thanks to him, he could only write in his will: I bear witness that there is no ready cash, except for the beakers and valuables listed above in the endowment. Indeed, such a reckoning can be manifest to everyone, since people know how much income I have had from my most gracious lord, and beyond that, I have not received as income one heller or kernel from anyone, except what was a gift, which is to be found cited above under the valuables, and which in part is still tied up with the debt. And yet, with this income and with donations, I have built and bought so much, and I ran such a big and burdensome household, that among other things I must acknowledge it as an extraordinary, remarkable blessing that I have been able to manage. The miracle is not that there is not ready money, but that there is not a greater debt. I ask this for this reason: that the devil, since he can come no

 WA.B 11:286 – 92.

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closer to me, shall no doubt persecute my Käthe in all sorts of ways for this reason alone: that she was, and (God be praised!) still is, the espoused housewife of the man Dr. Martin.²⁹

The king of Denmark sent fifty ducats every year, but that was all. Thus, from a financial perspective, Katharina could say, “We are beggars.” The end was sad. Due to the threat of plague and the emperor’s troops, she had to leave Wittenberg. During the trip, the horses pulling her wagon were spooked and reared up. Katharina fell from the wagon and ended up in a brook. Tired, poor, and afflicted with pneumonia, she arrived in Torgau, the city where she had arrived thirty years earlier as an abducted nun. She died there on December 20, 1552, and was buried in St. Mary’s Church. The only words on her gravestone read: “Blissfully asleep in God.”

 For the text of the testament, see Tibor Fabiny, Martin Luthers letzter Wille. Das Testament des Reformators und Seine Geschichte (Bielefeld: Luther Verlag, 1983).

Reforms and Other Reformators

John Garrett, Group of reformers. Heinrich Bullinger, Girolamo Zanchi, John Knox, Ulrich Zwingli, Peter Vermigli, Martin Bucer, Jacob von Mies, William Perkins, Jan Hus, Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Wycliff; engraving; London, National Portrait Gallery, 17th cen. (National Portrait Gallery, London / Scala Archives, Florence).

Günter Frank

Luther and Melanchthon 1 The Early Period Luther and Melanchthon – these were the two most important, congenial colleagues who, with their different professional talents and characters, significantly contributed to the success of the Wittenberg Reformation. In his biography of Luther, Heinz Schilling gives an apt description of their relationship as a “life-long work symbiosis and personal affinity […] that brought forth a joint work of world-historical significance.”¹ In the beginning, however, things looked quite different. When Melanchthon was appointed as Professor of Greek at the recently founded University of Wittenberg in 1518 at the age of 21, Luther did not know him. But when Melanchthon gave his inaugural lecture on August 28, 1518, on De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis (On the need to reform the curriculum for the youth),² it took only a few sentences to turn Luther’s initial disregard into admiration. The lecture sketched an educational program based on a reform of the ancient artes liberales, in particular the linguistic trivium (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric), including knowledge of the Greek language. Melanchthon regarded this knowledge as a means to overcome the alleged lack of scholastic education and to promote true piety. Three days later, Luther wrote to Georg Spalatin: “He gave a solid, learned lecture, stylistically very well polished.”³ This marked the beginning of their collaboration. Melanchthon studied theology with Luther, and on September 9, 1519, he passed the exam for the degree of Baccalaureus biblicus. His Baccalaureus theses clearly reveal the extent to which Melanchthon was already imbued with Luther’s theological ideas after only a few months – especially with the idea of the absolute priority of the authority of Scripture.⁴ Hence in theses 16 and 17, Melanchthon noted: “For a Christian it is not necessary to believe more than what is witnessed in Scripture. The authority of the councils is to be regarded as lower than the authority of Scripture.” Luther, in turn, improved his knowledge of Greek through his collaboration with his new young colleague. His opinion about the “little Greek” (graeculus) at this time was highly enthusiastic. On December 14, 1518, Luther wrote to Johannes Reuchlin, who had helped in hiring Melanchthon in Wittenberg: “Our Philipp Melanchthon

Translation from German: Alissa Jones Nelson.  Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther: Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012), 137.  Printed in Michael Beyer, Stefan Rhein, and Günther Wartenberg, eds., Melanchthon deutsch (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1997), 1:41– 63.  WA.B 1:192.  This thesis is printed in Beyer et al., Melanchthon deutsch, 2:9 – 11. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-024

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[is] a wonderful person, everything is superhuman in him; and yet, he is close to me and [is] a good friend.”⁵ And to the Erfurt humanist and reformer Johannes Lang, he wrote a year later: “This little Greek surpasses me even in theology.”⁶ Melanchthon, for his part, had the following to say about his teacher and colleague: “I would rather die than be separated from this man.”⁷ In the first year Melanchthon devoted to the study of theology under Luther’s guidance, he was caught up in the beginning of the theological conflicts between the reformatory movement and the Roman Church. The Saxon elector allowed him to participate in the famous Leipzig Disputation. There, from June 27 until July 16, the Ingolstadt humanist and controversial theologian Johannes Eck had a debate with Karlstadt and Luther. Although Eck succeeded in eliciting a few allegedly heretical sentences from Luther – for instance, that Jan Huss was condemned unjustly by the Council of Constance, which also meant that councils could be wrong –, Luther was the winner of this debate according to the verdict of public opinion. A major reason for this was the fact that Melanchthon had already sent a report on the debate to his friend Johannes Oekolampad on July 21, and Oekolampad immediately had it printed.⁸ This report depicted Eck as a representative of the scholasticism that the Reformers opposed, while Luther was described as unswervingly holding on to the truth. During the debate, Melanchthon had given notes to Luther outlining further arguments, until Eck protested against the interventions of the “grammarian.” This was the first time that Melanchthon publicly assisted Luther.

2 Melanchthon as the Founder of Evangelical Dogmatics Soon after the Leipzig Disputation, Melanchthon put these basic theological insights, which became increasingly visible over the course of these years, into their first systematic form. At the end of December 1521, Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu Hypotyposes theologiae (Common places in theology or fundamental doctrinal themes) was published, a text that Melanchthon significantly extended and reformulated in 1535 and again in 1543. In his argumentation, Melanchthon made use of an alternative form of knowledge that Aristotle had developed and that – through the reception of Cicero and Boethius – had shaped the medieval understanding of theology as science.⁹ Melanchthon had learned this subject, which the humanists called dialectic,

 WA.B 1:269.  WA.B 1:597.  MBW 84.12.  MSA 1:3 – 11.  See the detailed discussion in Günter Frank, Topik als Methode der Dogmatik. Antike – Mittelalter – Frühe Neuzeit (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017); on Melanchthon, see 172– 77.

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from Rudolf Agricola. In theology, dialectic had a broad semantic range, stretching across analytics, encyclopedic methods, and argumentative heuristics. On the basis of the strict presupposition of the authority of Scripture, for Melanchthon, the theological loci communes categorically assimilated and analytically condensed the basic concepts of the sacred Scriptures relating to salvation history. These concepts were then unpacked in diverse theological loci. In the first edition of 1521, Melanchthon described 23 loci, from the loco de deo (“place of God”) to the locus de beatitudine (“place of beauty”). In the last edition of 1543, Melanchthon described 32 loci, ending with the locus de libertate christiana (“place of the liberty of Christianity”). Yet, the principle for finding such loci theologiae (“places of theology”) was always the same: loci could be found through a semantic-analytical procedure, which identifies basic concepts – especially those relevant for human salvation – in Holy Scripture and subsequently condenses them into categories. Melanchthon’s intention with this theological text was to provide access to the Bible, particularly for young people. This theology was enthusiastically received during his lifetime. His method was highly influential – not only in the Wittenberg movement, but also among other Reformed scholars.

3 Translation of the Bible Melanchthon’s knowledge of languages was very useful for Luther’s translation of the Bible, as well. In his biographical appraisal, written soon after Luther’s death in 1546, Melanchthon mentioned Luther’s writings and noted: Regarding their usefulness and effort, the translation of the Old and the New Testaments equals these writings; it is of such clarity that the German version can serve as a commentary. What is more, it not only provides the text, but also highly learned annotations and tables of contents to all single books, which reveal the meaning of the divine doctrine and also inform the reader about the literary form. This means that smart people can gain reliable witnesses to doctrine from the sources themselves.¹⁰

This translation was a joint endeavor, in which Melanchthon played a special role. Luther acknowledged this in his Sendbrief zum Dolmetschen (Ein Sendbrieff von Dolmetschen und Fürbitte der Heiligen) (Epistle on Translation and the Intercession of the Saints), written during his stay in Coburg in 1530: “It often happened that, for a fortnight, for three or four weeks, we were searching and asking for a single word and sometimes still could not find it. On Job we worked like that, Magister Philips, Aurogallus, and myself, and sometimes we finished barely more than three lines in four days.”¹¹

 MBW 4277.25.  Ein Sendbrieff von Dolmetschen und Fürbitte der Heiligen. D. Mart. Luther, Wittemberg 1530, Bii.

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In fact, it was Melanchthon who encouraged Luther to start his translation of the Bible at Wartburg Castle. Luther himself noted this in one of his table talks: “Philippus Melanchthon coegit me ad novi testamenti versionen” (“Philipp Melanchthon forced me to translate the New Testament”).¹² Luther finished the first draft of his translation in just ten weeks. He then worked with Melanchthon, who was the best Greek philologist in Wittenberg, on every single word in the draft. Melanchthon paid particular attention to the accurate reproduction of factual connections. Other external experts were consulted, as well. The first edition appeared in a folio volume in September 1522, with a print run of 3,000 copies, and it sold out immediately. Some details were improved in the subsequent editions of 1522, 1526, and 1527, and Luther and Melanchthon also worked on a systematically revised version, which was published in 1530. After the translation of the New Testament was completed, Luther began his translation of the Old Testament. Again, it turned out to be helpful to involve Melanchthon, who had acquired an excellent command of Hebrew from his relative, Johannes Reuchlin. Luther also consulted Professor Matthäus Aurogallus, whom he also mentioned in his Epistle on Translation. In the meantime, Luther translated the books of the prophets and those of the apocryphal writings that had been transmitted only in Greek. From 1531 onward, the Psalms were completely reworked. Among the members of the working group responsible for this task, Luther consulted additional collaborators besides Melanchthon and Aurogallus. Georg Rörer, a cleric from the Church of Wittenberg, who later became Luther’s personal assistant, documented all the discussions relating to the work of translation. Based on these minutes, we can reconstruct Melanchthon’s influence on the translation: he ensured the precise factual correctness of the translation, while Luther was responsible for the linguistic style.

4 First Irritations: Luther’s Marriage We see the first tensions in the relationship between Melanchthon and Luther on the occasion of Luther’s marriage. On June 13, 1525, Luther married Katharina von Bora, the last of the nuns who had fled from Nimbschen Cistercian monastery on April 4, 1523. The church ceremony took place on June 27. We know from Joachim Camerarius, Melanchthon’s best friend and first biographer, that Melanchthon was shocked and deeply distressed by Luther’s marriage: “Philipp Melanchthon was very sad about this [i. e., the marriage], but not because he disapproved of the marriage; rather, because he saw very well that this would give Luther’s enemies and malevolent adversaries – and there were many of them, often in influential positions – the opportunity

 WA.Tr 1:487 no. 961.

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to harry him and insult him even with even less restraint.”¹³ According to more recent research on the transmission of this note, Camerarius may have exaggerated the matter.¹⁴ In fact, Melanchthon defended marriage as a relation granted by nature. But the timing of this step irritated him nevertheless: the marriage took place in the midst of the Peasants’ Revolt, which had stirred an insurgency in electoral Saxony, too.

5 Between Two Fronts: The Controversy over Free Will There can be no doubt that Erasmus of Rotterdam was the towering figure among humanists in Europe at this time.¹⁵ Erasmus had drawn attention to himself not only with his calls to reform education and piety, which were already widespread in the fifteenth century; he had also set new standards in biblical exegesis with his new philological edition of the New Testament, which Luther also used.¹⁶ In the beginning, Erasmus and the Wittenberg Reformers were quite sympathetic to each other. But then the theological controversies in the Wittenberg movement took a course that Erasmus could no longer approve. This was particularly true for the implications of the reception of Augustine’s doctrine of grace and the anthropology that came with it, a topic Luther had advanced in his discussion of the interpretation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, beginning in the first semester of 1515/1516.¹⁷ Their basic differences in theological and anthropological assumptions finally erupted into a dispute about free will. Beginning in March 1521, Erasmus had distanced himself from Luther, and especially from the radical Lutherans. Although Erasmus remained quite sympathetic to the young humanist Melanchthon, there was no correspondence between them for four years. In 1523, Melanchthon published an Elogion de Luthero et Erasmo (Eulogy of Luther and Erasmus),¹⁸ which annoyed the “pope of the humanists” for quite some time. Despite the appraisal the title suggests, the text denies Erasmus any theological significance and includes him among the pagan philosophers, even though it ranks him at the top. In his first edition of the Loci in 1521, Melanchthon had already addressed human free will.¹⁹ While still under the early influence of Luther’s reformatory

 Joachim Camerarius, Das Leben Philipp Melanchthons; trans. Volker Werner (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2010), 98.  Scheible, Melanchthon, 182– 83.  Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus von Rotterdam. Leben – Werk – Wirkung (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1986).  The Bible Translator 67, no. 1 (2016).  See the detailed discussion in Jairzinho Lopez Pereira, Augustine of Hippo and Martin Luther on Original Sin and Justification of the Sinner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013).  CR 20:699 – 700.  CR 21:86 – 97.

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ideas, Melanchthon constructed an opposition between the Christian doctrine on the one hand, and philosophy and human reason on the other. He even rejected the terms liberum arbitrium (“free will”) and ratio (“reason”) as descriptions of the human being. Although he did not deny a certain human freedom in external matters, divine predestination would make free will impossible. At the core of this discussion was the question of the interaction between the event of divine justification and possibility of human collaboration in this event. Hence, Erasmus’ defense of human free will was not only addressed to Luther, but also to Melanchthon – as indicated in a letter to Melanchthon on September 6, 1524.²⁰ Luther himself saw this clearly. In his preface to De servo arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will),²¹ he noted that it would be superfluous to address Erasmus’ arguments, because Melanchthon had refuted them already in his theological Loci – which Luther thought were worthy not only of immortality, but also of the approbation of the Church. Melanchthon could not prevent the literary feud between Luther and Erasmus, but he stood – at least theologically, although not necessarily in terms of style – on Luther’s side. Erasmus did not send his De libero arbitrio directly to Luther, but to Melanchthon, along with an accompanying letter, dated September 6, 1524,²² in which he acknowledged Melanchthon’s first publication of the Loci, but also described their limitations. Melanchthon wrote his response to Erasmus from Basel on September 31, 1524.²³ He assured the humanist that both Luther and Melanchthon himself would distance themselves from the radicals and that Luther would respond to him moderately. In December 1525, Luther’s large anti-Pelagian work De servo arbitrio was published, which also argued against Erasmus. During this time, Melanchthon also developed his own – in many regards modified – theological-philosophical position on the question of free will. He expressed this position in his commentary on the Letter to the Colossians in 1527²⁴ and in his Visitation Articles. ²⁵ Here, Melanchthon emphasized how much he disapproved of the attacks against Erasmus and how much he appreciated his writings. More importantly, however, he moved away from his earlier deprecation of free will and his emphasis on predestination. According to Melanchthon, it is not the freedom to choose in external matters that is at stake in the dispute about free will, but the justification and sanctification of the human being. Holy Scripture made it clear that the human being did not have the freedom to obtain spiritual or Christian justice. But Melanchthon did not stop at this refutation of all forms of Pelagianism. He argued

 MBW 341.  WA 18:600 – 787.  MBW 341.  MBW 344.  MSA 4:209 – 303.  See the detailed discussion in Timothy J. Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philipp Melanchthon’s Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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that human free will could also be related to civil justice, as written in the second table of the Decalogue. Hence, in an external sense, humans can fulfill the law without the Holy Spirit, but this freedom is always threatened by original sin and by the devil. In his preface, Melanchthon explained that his interpretation was intended to contribute to the peace of the Church. This is why he urged Luther not to respond to the second part of Erasmus’ Hyperaspistes – his refutation of Luther’s writings –, published in September 1526. Melanchthon’s position on the doctrine of free will found official expression in the Augsburg Confession in 1530. Article 18 states: “Of free will it is taught that the human being is free to live an outwardly honorable life and to make choices among the things that reason comprehends; but without the grace, help, and effect of the Holy Spirit, the human being cannot please God.”

6 The Augsburg Diet On January 21, 1530, from his residence in Bologna, Emperor Charles V sent out invitations to the Augsburg Diet. The diet began on April 8, with the goal – as noted in the announcement – of “reuniting the Holy Empire of the German Nation.”²⁶ Melanchthon had the highest expectations at this time. On May 2, the elector and his theological advisors (Melanchthon among them) reached the free city of Augsburg. On the way to Augsburg, Luther was left behind at the Fortress of Coburg, because he was banned from the free city (Reichsacht). In the run-up to the meeting, Johannes Eck had published his 404 Articles, in which he refuted the Wittenberg theology. Since that time, Melanchthon had been trying to formulate the confessional writings of the Wittenberg movement, which Luther approved on May 15.²⁷ That same day, Luther wrote to the elector that he was very pleased with the almost-completed Confessio Augustana and that he would not know what to change in the text. Making changes would also “not be appropriate,” Luther wrote, “because I am not good in acting softly and quietly.”²⁸ On May 22, Melanchthon wrote a letter to Luther in Coburg, reporting on the progress of his work.²⁹ In the days that followed, there was no communication between Augsburg and Coburg. In a letter to Luther on June 13, Melanchthon apologized for his silence, explaining that he had been desperately waiting for Philipp of Hessen to come over to their side, but Philipp kept waver-

 Karl Eduard Förstemann, Urkundenbuch zu der Geschichte des Reichstages zu Augsburg im Jahr 1530. Nach den Originalen und nach gleichzeitigen Handschriften. vol. 1, Von dem Ausgange des kaiserlichen Ausschreibens bis zu der Uebergabe der Augsburgischen Konfession (Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlungen des Waisenhauses, 1833. Reprint 1966).  MBW 908.  WA.B 1568.  MBW 915.

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ing between the Zwinglians and Electoral Saxony.³⁰ Luther, for his part, broke the silence on June 27, writing a letter full of emotional allegations and verbal insults. “I deeply hate your miserable worries that eat you up, as you say. That they so much dominate you in your heart is not because of the magnitude of the matter, but because of the magnitude of our lack of faith.”³¹ Lurking in the background was also the question that Melanchthon expressed in his letters on June 26 and 27:³² How could there be any leeway in the pending negotiations with the Roman side if Rome rejected the Augsburg confessional text, which was read aloud on June 25? And indeed, this is exactly what happened in the Confutatio on August 3. Melanchthon asked for Luther’s advice, particularly with regard to the questions of the lay communion chalice, the marriage of priests, and the private mass. On June 30, Luther wrote another letter of consolation to Melanchthon and was once again unsparing in his critique³³ – Melanchthon should cast his sorrows unto Christ the Lord. However, full of resignation, Luther noted that he could not overcome Melanchthon’s philosophy. Melanchthon insisted on approaching the matter according to reason, but that just meant “being rationally insane” (cum ratione insanire). Melanchthon never mentioned these critical letters from Luther. He knew that there were copies of these letters circulating, which lead to malice on the part of his critics. Nevertheless, their falling out in June 1530 had no further consequences for the relationship between Luther and Melanchthon. On June 3, Luther wrote to Melanchthon: “Yesterday I once more read your apology [i. e., the Confessio Augustana] carefully and completely, and I am enthusiastic about it.”³⁴ At the same time, Luther had no hope for an agreement on a joint doctrine. Melanchthon, for his part, had concluded the first part of the Confessio Augustana – the 21 articles addressing dogmatic doctrines – with the words: “Since this doctrine is clearly justified by Holy Scripture, and since it does not contradict the general Christian Church, including indeed the Roman Church – as far as this can be deduced from the writings of the church fathers –, we think that our enemies cannot disagree with us on the articles mentioned above.” It was much more difficult, or so it seemed to Melanchthon and the Wittenberg theologians, to reach an agreement on the changes to customs and ceremonies, as these were laid out in articles 21– 28. And indeed, the Augsburg Diet failed to reach an accord primarily on the basis of articles that predominantly dealt with customs and ceremonies, which are listed in the draft of the final statement of the diet as follows: “the Holy Communion in both kinds, the marriage of clerics, the restitution

    

MBW 927. MBW 944. MBM 940, 942. MBW 950. MBW 951.

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of clerical properties, and matters relating to the Holy Mass.”³⁵ Luther basically agreed with Melanchthon’s position in these negotiations. They disagreed when it came to the chance of reaching a settlement. Luther was quite pessimistic, while Melanchthon explored all the options in these matters.

7 Melanchthon in Internal Protestant Controversies Time and again, the relationship between Melanchthon and Luther showed friction. But these tensions originated from the character of the two Wittenberg colleagues rather than from theological disputes. Melanchthon himself stressed this in a letter to Veit Dietrich, a preacher in Nuremberg, on June 22, 1537: As you know, I used to formulate many things less bluntly: on predestination, the will’s agreement with grace, the need for obedience after justification, or mortal sin. I know that Luther in fact agrees with me on all of these matters. But the uneducated love his blunt formulations too much because they do not see the context to which they belong. I do not want to interfere with them. May they enjoy their judgment. But they should allow me, being an Aristotelian who prefers the moderate center, to talk less stoically at times.³⁶

Not all of his Protestant compatriots understood the subtle and balanced way in which Melanchthon tried to negotiate the theological disputes of his time. Since the early 1520s, this had resulted in allegations by fellow Protestants of his showing too much gentleness, of a lack of theological depth on his part, of his closeness to the papacy, of his compliance in doctrinal disputes, and of his estrangement from Luther’s positions – allegations that have almost developed into stereotypes in the history of Melanchthon’s reputation.³⁷ Nikolaus von Amsdorff,³⁸ for instance, polemicized after the close of the Wittenberg Concord on May 26, 1536 – the goal of which was an agreement on Holy Communion between the Wittenberg, the Swiss, and the Upper-German theologians, which he strongly rejected – against Melanchthon’s allegedly contradictory doctrinal positions. Von Amsdorff asserted that, at the university, Melanchthon had claimed that works are necessary for eternal life, while simultaneously Luther had preached that human resurrection would be a purely passive event.³⁹ This denunciation referred to an event that had happened a few weeks be-

 Eugène Honée, Der Libell des Hieronymus Vehus zum Reichstag 1530 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988), 349, 26 – 29.  MBW 1914.  Detailed discussion in Beate Kobler, Die Entstehung des negativen Melanchthonbildes. Protestantische Melanchthonkritik bis 1560 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).  Joachim Rogge, “Amsdorff, Nikolaus von,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), 2:487– 97.  WA.B 7:539 – 40 (September 14, 1536).

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fore. On June 24, 1536, Conrad Cordatus,⁴⁰ who was a pastor in nearby Niemegk, visited a lecture by Caspar Cruciger,⁴¹ a close friend of Luther and Melanchthon. There he heard that Christ alone was the origin of justification, but that repentance and faith were necessary elements, too. The text of the lecture was actually written by Melanchthon. Cordatus also complained about Melanchthon’s reformulations of the doctrine of the necessity of works and the doctrine of free will, as published in the new edition of the Loci communes in 1535.⁴² Given all of these attacks on Melanchthon, it is noteworthy that Luther himself never articulated a critique of his Wittenberg colleague. His approval of Melanchthon’s way of teaching remained unchanged throughout his life. In the preface Luther wrote for the German edition of Melanchthon’s commentary on the Letter to the Colossians (1529), we already find the statement, which is often quoted: I like […] the books of Magister Philipp more than my own books, and I also prefer them both in Latin and in German to my own ones. […] I am born to fight and go to war against the gangs and the devils, that is why many of my books are aggressive and combative. I have to eradicate logs and trunks, exterminate thorns and hedges, fill up the puddles, and I am the rude forester who has to break the ground and prepare it. Magister Philipps, however, comes cleanly and quietly, builds and plants, sows and waters with pleasure, according to the manifold gifts that God has given him.⁴³

Furthermore, Luther also recommended Melanchthon’s Loci to his students: “You won’t find another book under the sun that has the entire theology so nicely organized as the Loci communes. […] Except for Holy Scripture, there is no better book than his Loci.”⁴⁴ There was one question, though, on which the two Wittenberg Reformers seemed to disagree – the issue of Holy Communion.⁴⁵ Luther had remained uncompromising on this question in the negotiations with the Swiss and the Upper-German theologians, arguing for a real presence of Christ in the elements of bread and wine (in pane). Since October 1531, Martin Bucer had become the main spokesperson of the Southern German Evangelicals, who rejected this assumption of Christ’s real presence in the bread and the wine. For Bucer, just as for Melanchthon, the unity of the Evangelical movement was at stake in these discussions about Holy Communion.

 Heinz Scheible, “Cordatus, Conrad,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Dieter Betz et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 2:459.  Martin H. Jung, “Cruciger, Caspar,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2:501.  CR 21:274– 282.  WA 30.2:68 – 69.  WA.Tr 5:204 no. 5511; WA.Tr 2:163 no. 1649.  Eick Sternhagen, “Melanchthons Abendmahlsverständnis unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Confessio Augustana variata von 1540 und dessen Bedeutung für den Erhalt des Protestantismus,” in Fragmenta Melanchthoniana, vol. 1, Zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Günter Frank (Heidelberg: Regionalkultur, 2003): 121– 34.

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In the religious conversations in Konstanz (1534), Bucer had already reintroduced the formulation cum pane to the discussion of Christ’s presence in Holy Communion, indicating that Jesus’ body was given with the bread, and hence was present symbolically, while the bread itself did not literally transform into Christ’s body. In the Wittenberg Concord of 1536, Melanchthon found a formulation that was seen as a compromise: “Hence they think and teach that Christ’s body and blood are truly and substantially present with the bread and the wine, that they are proffered and received” (Itaque sentiunt et docent, cum pane et vino vere et substantialiter adesse, exhiberi et sumi corpus Christi et sanguinem).⁴⁶ Luther and Melanchthon had no conversations about their slightly different opinions regarding the question of Holy Communion. Recent research stresses, however, that their different positions did not impair their collaboration. When Luther published his Kurzes Bekenntnis vom heiligen Sakrament wider die Schwärmer (Brief Confession Concerning the Holy Sacrament, against the Enthusiasts) at the end of 1543, he attacked neither Melanchthon nor Bucer, but only the Swiss theologians, who had not endorsed the concord on Holy Communion.

8 Melanchthon after Luther’s Death Notice of Luther’s death reached Melanchthon on the morning of February 19, 1546, before he went to give his lecture. He addressed his students with the following words: “As you know, we started with a grammatical explanation of the Letter to the Romans, which contains the true doctrine of the Son of God. God disclosed this doctrine in our time as a unique blessing through our honorable father and teacher, Doctor Martin Luther.”⁴⁷ Melanchthon continued: After [Luther] had prayed several times in this way, God called him to the eternal school and the eternal delights, where he enjoys communion with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and with all the prophets and the apostles. Alas, he is gone, the “chariot and horseman of Israel,” who directed the Church in this final era of the world! Because it is not through human wisdom that we understand the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins and of trust in the Son of God, but by God through this man, who clearly was called by God. Let us therefore love the memory of this man and the doctrine that he commissioned. Let us be humble and think of the great difficulties and revolutions that will succeed this misfortune. I ask you, Son of God, crucified for us and risen, Emanuel, to guide your Church, to safeguard and protect it. Amen.⁴⁸

These words of Elisha at his ascension (2 Kings 2:12, quoted in the passage above) were a common theme of the early Reformation, and thus Melanchthon depicted himself as a follower of the reformatory prophet Luther.

 BSLK 65.  CR 6:58.  CR 6:59.

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Luther was buried in the Wittenberg castle church on February 22, 1546. Melanchthon gave the Latin funeral oration (Oratio in funere Reverendi viri D. Martini Lutheri).⁴⁹ In his eulogy, Melanchthon placed Luther in the line of teachers sent by God, at the end of which the light of the gospel was made to glow brighter again. Similarly, several prefaces to the edition of the collected works of Luther, published from 1539 onward, clearly reflect Melanchthon’s appreciation of his Wittenberg colleague, from whom he said to have “learned the gospel.” His famous biography (Historia Lutheri) of 1546 is not only an important source on Luther’s life, but also another appraisal of Luther’s activities, written with humanistic sophistication. However, a sentence from a letter to Christoph von Carlowitz became even more famous than the many commendations of Luther written by Melanchthon: “I also endured an almost humiliating servitude, as Luther often followed his temperament, which had a good amount of φιλονεικία [i. e., quarrelsomeness], rather than caring for his reputation or the common good.”⁵⁰ Although everyone knew of Luther’s vehemence, this sentence was held against Melanchthon more than anything else. It comes as no surprise that this characterization of Luther inspired malice on the part of his opponents. But we should not forget that without Melanchthon’s tireless commitment in the school, the university, and the Church, without his extensive humanistic network across Europe, and without his diplomatic talent at diets and religious conversations, the Wittenberg Reformation would never have become what it was – in short: There is no Reformation without Melanchthon.

 See also the German translation in Beyer et al., Melanchthon deutsch, 2:156 – 68.  MBW 3993.

Herman Selderhuis

Luther and Calvin 1 Luther’s Only Student The connection between Calvin and Luther is more intense than the centuries-long and often fierce confessional discussions between Lutherans and Calvinists might suggest. Although from the Lutheran side came the statement that Calvinists were even more dangerous than Muslims¹ and Lutherans often saw Calvinists as synonymous with spiritualists,² the fact that no other Protestant theologian so fundamentally absorbed Luther′s thinking as did the Genevan reformer is evident in all of his works. Peter Meinhold stated the conviction of many researchers when he said that Calvin was probably the greatest and maybe even the only pupil Luther ever had. According to him, Calvin was the only theologian who understood Luther’s theology well and developed it further in such a way that he kept standing on Luther’s shoulders. ³ The point that Calvinists are in fact Lutherans in the true sense was already made in the sixteenth century,⁴ but this standpoint was never accepted – at least not by the majority of Lutherans or by many in the Reformed tradition. The relationship between these two reformers includes more than just the theological relationship between Calvin and Luther; it also involves Calvin’s relations with Luther’s colleagues, such as Melanchthon and Bugenhagen. Furthermore, Calvin had contact with others theologians who were connected to Luther but lived outside of Wittenberg, so that here, too, Calvin’s relation with the Lutherans comes up for discussion. One can distinguish the personal from the theological aspects of these contacts, though to Calvin these aspects were in fact always connected to each other. This chapter restricts itself to the aforementioned relations during Calvin’s lifetime. It is most plausible to approach the topic of Luther and Calvin from Calvin’s perspective, as there is no reception of Calvin in Luther’s work, but there is certainly a reception of Luther’s theology in Calvin’s work.

 See H. Zschoch, “Das Bild des Calvinisten, Zur polemischen Publizistik im konfessionellen Zeitalter,” in Reformierter Protestantismus vor den Herausforderungen der Neuzeit, eds. Thomas K. Kuhn and Hans-Georg Ulrichs (Wuppertal: Foedus, 2008), 19 – 46.  In 1618, a disputation was held in Wittenberg under the title “De communione nostri cum Christo, opposita tum Calvinianorum tum Fanaticorum quorundam erroribus.”  “Calvin ist der größte und wohl auch einzige ‚Schüler‘, den Luther wirklich gehabt hat, d. h. der ihn zutiefst verstanden, und von ihm ausgehend, das Werk der Reformation mit einer eigenen Durchdringung der Botschaft des Evangeliums fortgesetzt und zu einer eigenen kirchlichen Gestalt gebracht hat;” Peter Meinhold, “Calvin und Luther,” Lutherische Monatshefte 3 (1964): 67– 96.  Herman J. Selderhuis, “Luther totus noster est. The Reception of Luther′s Thought at the Heidelberg Theological Faculty 1583 – 1622,” in Reformation und Mönchtum, eds. Athina Lexutt, Volker Mantey, and Volkmar Ortmann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 173 – 88. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-025

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However much Calvin may have wanted to do so,⁵ he never met Luther personally. Geographically and politically, they lived in completely different worlds. More importantly, Calvin was a man of the second generation, born 26 years later than Luther. When Calvin came onto the theological stage in 1536, with the first edition of his Institutio, Luther only had ten years to live, had already written his most essential works, and had been through his most essential discussions with Erasmus, Zwingli, Rome, and the Täufer. And as traveling from Geneva to Wittenberg takes quite some time and requires several stopovers even today, in those days it certainly would have cost two months to go back and forth. Added to this is the weak physical condition both reformers were constantly in, which also might have prevented a long journey to facilitate a meeting. The literature often refers to language as another possible reason why they did not meet or communicate, as Luther was not able to speak, read, or write French, and the same conditions applied to Calvin when it came to the German language. However, as both were fluent in Latin, they could have talked and discussed as much as they would have wanted. However, the only occasion for contact that could have occurred between Calvin and Luther was prevented by Phillip Melanchthon, because he did not dare to forward the letter Calvin had written to Luther in January 1545. “I have not shown your letter to Pericles [that is, Luther], for he is inclined to be suspicious, and does not want his replies on such questions as you raise to be passed around.”⁶ One could surmise that there had hardly been a connection between the two, since Luther and Calvin mention each other’s names only a few times in their correspondence. However, those few mentions have sufficient content to give us an idea of the appreciation each had for the other, while clarifying the influence Luther had on Calvin’s theology. If one were to look only for Luther’s name in Calvin’s work, the conclusion could be that his influence was minimal, but anyone familiar with the content of Luther’s works will encounter him on almost every page of Calvin’s books, sermons, and commentaries, not infrequently even in word-forword quotations.

2 Luther on Calvin As far as we know, Luther expressed his opinion of Calvin seven times. On October 14, 1539, Luther sent his greetings to Calvin through Martin Bucer because it was with much pleasure that he had read two of Calvin′s works – namely his Institutio, which had recently been published in a second and extended edition, and his letter to Cardinal Sadoletus.⁷ “Farewell. And will you pay my respects to John Sturm and John Cavin. I have read their little books with singular enjoyment.”⁸ Calvin was thus im   

CO 12:7. CO 12:61. Herminjard 6:73. WA.B 8:569; CO 10.2:432.

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pressed when he received this personal greeting from Luther, and, hearing the message that Luther had read his books with pleasure, Calvin thought it worth mentioning in the foreword to his commentary on Romans that he had written something Luther approved of.⁹ In this same period, Melanchthon reported that someone had tried to get Luther to start an argument against Calvin because Calvin had uttered some criticism of Luther. The reaction, however, was quite the opposite, and Luther had expressed his hope that Calvin would also have good thoughts about him. He even said that it was just to admit that a man with such intelligence was right.¹⁰ Calvin was rather impressed by Luther’s words, and it seems that it aroused him from this moment on to speak amicably and mildly about the Wittenberg reformer. In 1545, Calvin was informed that Luther had read his address to Emperor Charles V (Supplex exhortatio ad Caesarem, 1543) with much pleasure.¹¹ And in 1545, Calvin was reminded once again how much appreciative notice Luther had taken of Calvin′s letter to Sadoletus.¹² All of these reports increased Calvin’s sympathy for Luther and encouraged him to defend Luther when others criticized him. When he heard about Luther′s positive evaluation of his own publication, he wrote to Farel: “We must be completely made of stone if this immense temperance would not break us.”¹³ These words indicate that there was tension between Swiss and German theologians, but they also indicate that Geneva was, in a way, a bridge between Zurich and Wittenberg. Luther was quite open to Calvin’s approach and demonstrated a certain generosity towards his young colleague in Geneva, and this resulted in an attitude of friendliness from Calvin’s side.¹⁴ Luther had taken notice of Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper; it is most likely that he read this in a Latin version of Calvin’s “Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper,” as such a translation was published in 1545, a year before Luther’s death. On that occasion, Luther said that if Zwingli and Oecolampadius had spoken in the same way as Calvin, there would not have been such a long dispute over the Lord’s Supper.¹⁵  Herminjard 6:130, letter from Calvin to Farel, November 20, 1539.  “Spero quidem ipsum olim de nobis melino sensurum. Sed aequum est a bono ingenio nos aliquid ferre;” Herminjard 6:130, letter from CaIvin to Farel, November 20, 1539.  CO 12:127.  “Profectio reverendo patri Luthero tua epistola qua Sadoleto respondes ita modis omnibus perplacet ac praedicatur ut nihil supra;” CO 12:40, letter from Crodelius to Calvin, March 6, 1545.  Herminjard 6:131.  Mention must be made of two remarks in Luther’s table talks (Tischreden), WA.TR 5:461, 6050 and WA.TR 5:51, 5303, in which Luther expresses a certain distrust towards Calvin. There is also a remark from the theologian Christoph Pezel (1559 – 1604), in which he refers to a remark of Melanchthon on the relation between Luther and Calvin, but the tradition on this is quite uncertain. See Erwin Mühlhaupt, “Luther und Calvin,” in Luther im 20. Jahrhundert. Aufsätze (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 175 – 89.  Mühlhaupt, “Luther und Calvin,” 176; see also: Brian A. Gerrish, “John Calvin on Luther,” in Interpreters of Luther. Essays in honor of Wilhelm Pauck, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968); Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New. Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982), 27– 48.

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2.1 Luther’s Person The significance Luther had for Calvin can best be reflected in an utterance Calvin made in 1556, during the controversy with the Lutherans regarding the Lord’s Supper. He says that, in the period in which he began “to free himself from the darkness of the papacy,” he was so influenced by Luther that he turned away from the writings of Oecolampadius and Zwingli.¹⁶ These words express Calvin’s independence as well as his position of being closer to Luther than to Zwingli. Calvin did not want to compare Luther with Elijah, as if no other prophets could have emerged after Luther, but he did suggest that “the Gospel went out from Wittenberg.”¹⁷ Luther was the person who caused the papacy to falter.¹⁸ In the letter to Luther withheld by Melanchthon, Calvin addresses him as “very learned father in the one Lord.” He writes that he would like to fly to Luther in order to spend a few hours with him and discuss some issues with him, but if that should not be possible on earth, Calvin hopes that it will be possible soon in God’s heavenly kingdom, expecting that they could discuss and communicate there.¹⁹ However, Calvin also sometimes expressed his difficulty with Luther’s ideas. In Calvin’s letter to Bullinger of November 25, 1544, he calls Luther “immoderately passionate and audacious in character.”²⁰ Luther should have controlled his tempestuous temperament better and tried harder to see his own shortcomings. Calvin writes to Melanchthon that Luther lacks self-control and allows himself to be aroused to anger much too easily. He is thereby a danger to the Church, and apparently there is no one who dares to resist his behavior.²¹ Still, the appreciation for Luther remained, and – according to Calvin himself – if Luther should call Calvin a devil, even then Calvin would honor him by describing him as a very special servant of God. Calvin’s judgment of Luther did not change, not even during the intense and troublesome discussions on the Lord′s Supper. Although it seemed possible that, after Zwingli’s death, the position of Bullinger could create some openness in relations with Luther, the whole situation exploded again in the 1540s. Calvin tried to admonish Bullinger to appeasement, although he did so in a humble and friendly way. It is in the letter Calvin sent to Bullinger in November 1544 that Calvin′s view of Luther is best described: I hear that Luther has at length broken forth in fierce invective, not so much against you as against the whole of us. On the present occasion, I dare venture to ask you to keep silence, because it is neither just that innocent persons should thus be harassed, nor that they should be denied the opportunity of clearing themselves; neither, on the other hand, is it easy to determine

     

CO 9:51. Herminjard 9.223, letter from Calvin to the ministers of Montbéliard, May 8, 1544. CO 14:31, letter from Calvin to Edward VI, February 5, 1551. CO 12:7 ff. Herminjard 9:313. CO 12:99.

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whether it would be prudent for them to do so. But of this I do earnestly desire to put you in mind, in the first place, that you would consider how eminent a man Luther is, and the excellent endowments wherewith he is gifted, with what strength of mind and resolute constancy, with how great skill, with what efficiency and power of doctrinal statement, he had hitherto devoted his whole energy to overthrow the reign of Antichrist, and at the same time to diffuse far and near the doctrine of salvation. Often have I been wont to declare, that even although he were to call me a devil, I should still not the less hold him in such honour that I must acknowledge him to be an illustrious servant of God. But while he is endued with rare and excellent virtues, he labours at the same time under serious faults. Would that he had rather studied to curb this restless, uneasy temperament which is so apt to boil over in every direction. I wish, moreover, that he had always bestowed the fruits of that vehemence of natural temperament upon the enemies of the truth, and that he had not flash his lightning sometimes also upon the servants of the Lord. Would that he had been more observant and careful in the acknowledgement of his own vices. Flatterers have done him much mischief, since he is naturally too prone to be over-indulgent to himself. It is our part, however, so to reprove whatsoever evil qualities may beset him, as that we may make some allowance for him at the same time on the score of these remarkable endowments with which he has been gifted. This, therefore, I would beseech you to consider first of all, along with your colleagues, that you have to do with a most distinguished servant of Christ, to whom we are all of us largely indebted.²²

Calvin was open to believe that what many say about Luther is true – namely, that the reformer’s steadfastness is mixed with stubbornness.²³ And Calvin was also honest enough to complain openly that Luther’s pride had no limits.²⁴ Even though he owed much to him, he would not shut his eyes against Luther’s mistakes, such as his uncontrolled anger, his fierceness in discussions, and his unwillingness to give in. Calvin also pointed to the fact that not all of this was due to Luther, and he blamed the negative influence some of Luther’s friends had on him, mentioning particularly Nicolaus von Amsdorf as “a fool without brains.”²⁵ Over against the Swiss, who accused him in 1554 of writing too mildly about Luther, Calvin defended Luther’s forcefulness by observing that that was just a part of his character and that, in addition, the man was being incited by malevolent persons.²⁶ In his treatise against Albertus Pighius on the bondage and liberation of the human will (Defensio sanae et orthodoxae doctrinae de servitute et liberatione humani arbitrii, adversus calumnias Alberti Pighii Campensis, 1543), Calvin defended Luther’s position on the issue without qualification.²⁷ He pointed to the difficult situation in which Luther  Translation taken from Tracts and Letters of John Calvin (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2009), 4:432 ff = Herminjard 9:374; CO 11:774.  “esse ejus constantiae nonnihil pertinaciae admixtum;” Herminjard, 342.  “quis tamen non eam excuset prae insolenti, quam narrant, Martini ferocitate?” Herminjard, 343.  CO 11:774.  CO 15:305, letter from Calvin to the clergy of Zürich.  L.F. Schulze, Calvin’s Reply to Pighius (Potchefstroom: Pro Rege, 1971); G. Melles, Albertus Phigius en zijn strijd met Calvijn over het liberum arbitrium (Kampen: Kok, 1973). The treatise is in CO 6:225 – 404. For a recent translation, see John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will. A Defence of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice against Pighius, ed. A.N.S. Lane, trans. G.I. Davies (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996).

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had to act and compared it to the circumstances under which the apostles had to work, adding that for Luther it was even harder. Every political authority had declared war on Luther and his fellow reformers.²⁸ Calvin defended Luther when Pighius accused him of being influenced by the devil and said that the devil made use of Luther’s manifold spiritual afflictions. According to Calvin, quite the opposite is true, and he characterized Luther’s afflictions as a sign of his being elected by God and of his holiness. Calvin also contradicted the complaint Pighius made against Luther, that the reformer did not really appreciate the value of good works. Without hesitation, Calvin agreed with Luther’s statement that the free will of humankind after the fall into sin was just an empty label, since human beings can do nothing other than sin.²⁹ Calvin placed Luther’s views on sin and grace in line with those of the Apostle Paul and the church father Augustine.³⁰ At this point, Calvin also defended Luther’s fierce manner of discussing this issue. Indeed, Calvin admitted, Luther made use of harsh words and outspoken theses, but he simply spoke the truth.³¹ Luther had no choice, and it was his opponents who not only triggered his anger, but also made him wiser and gave him more insights through their opposition.³² In sum, Calvin defended Luther both in his views and in the way he presented them. He wanted no one to have any doubts about this, as he stated: “Concerning Luther there is no reason for him [that is, Pighius] to be in any doubt when now also, as we have done previously, we openly bear witness that we consider him a distinguished apostle of Christ whose labor and ministry have done most in these times to bring back the purity of the gospel.”³³ Pighius had attacked both Luther and Calvin, which means he had a good overview of things, as both were in line when it comes to the heart of the gospel. Calvin’s self-defense was identical to his defense of Luther. He was convinced that God himself had called Luther to rediscover the road to salvation. For that reason, Luther held up the torch.³⁴ “Through his service our churches have been founded and put in order.” With these words – in his treatise on the unity of the Church – directed at Emperor Charles V, Calvin confessed that he was heartily convinced of the unity of Protestantism, although there was indeed an internal diversity.

 CO 6:239.  CO 6:248 f. Thesis 13 in Luther’s disputation at Heidelberg reads: “Liberum arbitrium post peccatum res est de solo titulo, et dum facit quod in se est peccat mortaliter;” WA 1:354. On the judgment of the University of Paris on this thesis, see F.T. Bos, Luther in het oordeel van de Sorbonne (Amsterdam: VU Amsterdam, 1974), 96 ff and 223 ff.  CO 6:264.  CO 6:249.  CO 6:241.  CO 6:250. Translation by Lane, Bondage and Liberation, 28.  “We maintain, then, that at the commencement, when God raised up Luther and others, who held forth a torch to light us into the way of salvation, and who, by their ministry, founded and reared our churches, those heads of doctrine in which the truth of our religion, those in which the pure and legitimate sonship of God, and those in which the salvation of men are comprehended, were in a great measure obsolete;” CO 6:459; cf. CO 6:473.

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For Calvin, Luther remained an excellent servant of Christ, to whom all were indebted; according to Calvin, it was everyone’s duty to rebuke Luther for what was wrong in him in such a way that there was plenty of room left to appreciate his brilliant gifts.³⁵ And concerning Luther’s rough language, Calvin was convinced that “if Luther were alive today, he would certainly have revised some of his harsh expressions.”³⁶

2.2 Luther’s Theology Of greater interest than their mutual judgments of each other are Calvin’s view of Luther’s ideas and especially the influence of Luther on Calvin. This influence is undisputed and is also treated in many essays, yet an extensive study of Luther’s impact on Calvin’s theology has so far not been published. Luther’s influence can be traced back to the very beginning of Calvin’s work. Already in the Concio academica, the inaugural address of Nicolas Cop as rector of the University of Paris, which was written by Calvin – as proven by recent scholarship – and held on November 1, 1533, it is evident that Calvin made use of a sermon published by Luther.³⁷ The speech presents the main topics of the Reformation, such as justification by faith alone and certainty of that justification on the basis of God’s promise. The speech also refers to the importance of the assurance of faith amidst spiritual afflictions; Calvin took over all of these standpoints from Luther. This means that Luther’s direct influence on Calvin can be traced back to Calvin’s early twenties. Calvin himself claims that, in regard to Luther, he steadfastly retained his freedom (me semper fuisse leberum).³⁸ He was therefore not hesitant to make critical marginal observations on Luther’s hermeneutics, because the work of every exegete would be superfluous and nonsensical if taking issue with Luther was not permitted.³⁹ About a sermon Luther preached in 1522, Calvin opines in 1562 that Luther at that time was not yet thoroughly at home in the Bible.⁴⁰ Calvin also found that Luther’s exegesis of Isaiah neglected the historical context too much.⁴¹ When it comes to the Lord’s Supper, Calvin as a reformer was able to survey the various points of view; thus he noted that there were shortcomings on both sides. Calvin thought that the man from Wittenberg had gone too far in his formulations and his pronouncements on others. According to Calvin, Luther was too harsh, was insufficiently nuanced in his judgments, and had used formulations that were

      

Herminjard 9:313. CO 9:442; cf. CO 15:501 and CO 11:705. Concio academica nomine rectoris universitatis Parisiensis scripta; CO 10b.30 – 36). CO 13:165, letter from Calvin to Bullinger, January 21, 1549. CO 15:454, letter from Calvin to Burckhard, July 10, 1554. CO 19:368, letter from Calvin to Desprez, March 29, 1562. Herminjard 6, letter from Calvin to Viret, May 19, 1540.

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too difficult and unsuitable.⁴² At the same time, Calvin said that these mistakes had also been made on the Swiss side. Calvin had great appreciation for the fact that Luther had warned sternly against a Catholic view of the presence of Christ.⁴³ After his initial hesitation regarding the Wittenberg Concordance (1536), Calvin began to think more positively about the document, especially as a result of becoming acquainted with the Lutherans during the Reichstag in Worms (1539). Precisely because the Concordance professes “that in the Lord’s Supper not only Christ’s body and blood were represented but that in the course of the worship service they were truly offered and presented before all as present,” Calvin declared that not only had he wanted this Concordance, he had also tried to strengthen it.⁴⁴ Hence it comes as no surprise that Calvin, who in 1538 had signed the Confessio Augustana invariata in Strasbourg, signed the Confessio Augustana variata during the religious dialogues in Regensburg. In a letter of January 12, 1538, to Bucer, Calvin mentions Luther for the first time. He writes that he is convinced of his piety but is not sure what to think of him further.⁴⁵ Calvin thinks that Luther clings so tightly to his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper that he thereby hinders a reformational unity. It becomes obvious here that Calvin had more trouble with Luther’s character than with his ideas. That Calvin saw his own teaching on the Lord’s Supper as substantially in agreement with that of Luther is clear. Some around Luther tried to incite him to criticize Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, as he had verbalized in his letter to Sadoleto. However, when Luther read the relevant passages, he praised Calvin instead.⁴⁶ Mild – but essential – was Calvin’s critique of Luther’s exegetical approach. In a letter to Pierre Viret, Calvin gave a description of the way Luther explained Scripture and compared it with the exegesis of Zwingli, which he also criticized: “Zwingli, although he is not wanting in a fit and ready exposition, yet, because he takes too much liberty, often wanders far from the meaning of the prophet. Luther is not so particular as to propriety of expression or historical accuracy; he is satisfied when he can draw from it some fruitful doctrine.”⁴⁷ According to Calvin, Luther made too much use of a speculative way of explaining biblical texts.⁴⁸ Too often, he just guessed as to the meaning of a word,⁴⁹ and this resulted in reflections on a passage that sometimes lacked any foundation.⁵⁰ Calvin does not make the step from the text to the doctrine too quickly, and he pays more attention to the Hebrew and Greek meanings of the words, and to the historical context.

        

CO 5:458. CO 5:458. Herminjard 4:338. Herminjard 4:338. CO 10.2:432, letter from Melanchthon to Bucer, October 14, 1539. CO 11:36. CO 23:113. CO 23:170. CO 23:193.

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2.2.1. Luther in Calvin’s Institutio Although Calvin was fundamentally influenced by Luther’s writings years before the first edition of the Institutio was published, Luther’s name does not appear in any of the editions of this most important of Calvin’s works. If one would focus only on his name, the conclusion could even be that Calvin had no knowledge of Luther at all.⁵¹ The situation, however, is completely different, and one who is familiar with Luther’s works will easily discern how Luther shows up constantly in Calvin. Already in the first edition of 1536, Luther is present even in unnoted quotations, phrases, and terms, and this presence is only expanded in later editions. Calvin’s Institutes demonstrate the continuity between Luther and Calvin, as the Genevan did not repeat, but rather developed Luther′s thoughts.⁵² Calvin did not simply pass on Luther’s heritage, but shaped it into a form that could be applied in various contexts and also made it applicable to church, culture, society, politics, and education. Calvin’s Institutes demonstrate on every page that they are written by a student of Luther.⁵³ More concretely, it is Luther’s Small Catechism that was fundamental to Calvin′s first edition of the Institutio. ⁵⁴ This catechism served him for the structure of his work, which he also initially intended as a catechetical tool. Next to this Small Catechism, there are also other of Luther’s publications that Calvin used as source material, such as: De Libertate Christiana (1520); De Captivitate Babylonica (1520); Ein Sermon von den Sakrament des Leibs und Blutes Christi wider die Schwärmgeister, which was translated into Latin in 1527; the Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heyligen wahren Leichnames Christi (1519), translated in 1524; and also the Latin edition of Luther’s Postilla, published in 1521. From the Small Catechism, for example, Calvin copied the order in which he treated the various items of the

 “The casual reader of the Institutes, who is not skilled in identifying unacknowledged debts or anonymous opponents, could certainly be pardoned for concluding that Calvin had never heard of Luther;” Gerrish, “John Calvin on Luther,” 67. For Luther′s influence on Calvin′s Institutio, see W. van ′t Spijker, “The Influence of Luther on Calvin according to the Institutes,” in John Calvin′s Institutes. His Opus Magnum. Proceedings of the Second South African Congress for Calvin Research, ed. B.J. van der Walt (Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 1986), 83 – 105.  Van ′t Spijker, “The Influence of Luther on Calvin,” 86.  Cf. A. Lang: “Ja, man darf sagen, er hat die Kernlehre Luthers von der Glaubensgerechtigkeit und der Wiedergeburt aus dem Glauben treurer bewahrt und theologischer schärfer zum Ausdruck gebracht als irgendein Dogmatiker der Reformation;” Zwingli und Calvin (Bielefeld/Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing, 1913). See also Lang, Johannes Calvin, Ein Lebensbild zu seinem 400. Geburtstag (Leipzig: Rudolf Haupt, 1909), 70 f.  Alexandre Ganoczy, Le jeune Calvin. Genèse et évolution de sa vocation reformatrice (Wiesbaden: Steiner Franz Verlag, 1966), 139 – 50; J. Köstlin, “Calvins Institutio nach Form und Inhalt in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken (1868): 7– 62, 410 – 486; Lang, “Die Quellen der Institutio von 1536,” Evangelische Theologie 3 (1936): 100 – 12; Wilhelm Niesel, Calvins Lehre vom Abendmahl (München: Kaiser, 1935), 21– 28; Francois Wendel, Calvin. Ursprung und Entwicklung seiner Theologie (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsvereins, 1968), 109 – 13.

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Christian faith. Luther’s catechism dealt with these in the following order: the law as the Ten Commandments, faith as laid down in the Apostle’s Creed, prayer as explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, and finally the sacraments.⁵⁵ Calvin’s order in 1536 was completely identical: De lege, De fide, De oratione, De sacramentis. He did add two chapters – namely, one on the five “false” sacraments; and one on Christian liberty, the authority of the Church, and political power. It is understandable that August Lang wrote that in the 1536 Institution, Calvin shows up as a Lutheran from southwestern Germany.⁵⁶ In the introduction to the Institutio, in which Calvin connects Cognitio Dei et hominis, the direct link to Luther also becomes evident. On the doctrine of predestination, Calvin was just as much a student of Luther, although he came to know Luther’s opinion on this matter mainly through Martin Bucer.⁵⁷ Calvin did not define predestination so explicitly as Luther did in his De Servo Arbitrio, but in essence, there is no difference. Other topics in which Luther′s influence can be seen include Calvin’s use of the terms foedus and testamentum, which are clearly derived from Luther’s De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium (1520). The way Calvin wrote about the correlation between promissio and fides in this respect reflects Luther in every way.⁵⁸

2.3. Melanchthon Calvin’s relation to Luther’s colleague Philipp Melanchthon is an essential part of that between Calvin and Luther. The rather intense contacts between Melanchthon and Calvin are personal as well as theological. After he had met Melanchthon a few times, Calvin wrote that he was sorry that they were now kept at such a great distance from one another. Therefore, Calvin added that he and Melanchthon could find comfort in the anticipation that someday – in heaven – they would be able to enjoy their mutual love and friendship, where they would live together forever.⁵⁹ Melanchthon’s withholding of Calvin’s letter to Luther is indicative of the relation between Calvin and Melanchthon, for the latter tried to prevent conflicts between the two reformers. When Calvin let him know that the Lutherans – in their adherence to certain liturgical customs – were almost Jewish, Melanchthon responded by saying that Luther had a high respect for the liturgical sobriety in Geneva. When Luther stat-

 The text of the Smaller Catechismus can be found in Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, rev. ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 852– 910.  “Zumal in der ersten Ausgabe der Institutie erscheint er daher fast wie ein oberdeutscher Lutheraner; “ Lang, Zwingli und Calvin, 106.  Van ’t Spijker, “Prädestination bei Bucer und Calvin,” in Calvinus Theologus, ed. Wilhelm H. Neuser (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsvereins, 1976), 85 – 111.  Niesel, Calvins Lehre, 23.  Letter from Calvin to Melanchthon, February 16, 1539.

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ed vehemently that the leaders in Zürich were leading their parishoners to hell and that they had no fellowship with God’s Church,⁶⁰ Calvin urged Melanchthon to calm Luther down and thus bring about a spirit of reconciliation.⁶¹ Calvin himself always had great admiration for Melanchthon, despite the fact that there were points on which they differed. Calvin would have liked Melanchthon to be more resolute.⁶² It troubled him that Melanchthon was too timid to involve himself in the controversy regarding the Lord’s Supper, which emerged after Luther’s death, and to clearly show his colors there. It would be better to extricate Melanchthon from his all-too-Lutheran surroundings.⁶³ Should Melanchthon live nearer, Calvin would be able to consult him more often, for “in a conversation of three hours I would get further than in a hundred letters.”⁶⁴ According to Calvin, Melanchthon was among the best exegetes of Scripture.⁶⁵ Likewise, there was appreciation for Calvin from Melanchthon’s side, as was apparent in his efforts to keep Calvin in Worms when he wanted to leave because he no longer expected anything from the religious dialogues.⁶⁶ According to Beza, from that time onward, Melanchthon would speak of “the theologian” when he meant Calvin.⁶⁷ Calvin also differed with Melanchthon on the so-called adiaphora. After Melanchthon had accepted the Leipzig Interim (December 21, 1548), in which the ceremonies were regarded as adiaphora, Calvin indicated his difference with him and his greater agreement with Magdeburg – where Falcius Illyricus vigorously resisted this Interim – than with Wittenberg.⁶⁸ There was also disagreement on the subject of free will and predestination. Calvin dedicated his writing about this material – directed against Pighius – to Melanchthon, who appreciated the gesture very much. Melanchthon accordingly was quite positive about this work, but he rejected Calvin’s determinism.⁶⁹ Calvin, from his side, cited the cause of his difference with Melanchthon as the man from Wittenberg accommodating himself too much to human understanding and therefore speaking about these things more as a philosopher than as a theologian. However, according to Calvin, it was a mistake to place them in opposition to each other on account of this difference. Their friendship was sincere, and this also had to do with the fact that they were both humanists. Along with their great mutual appreciation, this provided room for airing their differences publicly,⁷⁰ but Calvin nevertheless saw himself as           

WA.B 10:387. Herminjard 9:201, letter from Calvin to Melanchthon, April 1544. CO 12:99, letter from Calvin to Melanchthon, June 28, 1545. CO 15:388, letter from Calvin to Vermigli, January 18, 1555. CO 15:321, letter from Calvin to Farel, November 27, 1554. Herminjard 6:414, letter from Calvin to Farel, December 1540. Herminjard 7:8, letter from Calvin to Farel, January 31, 1541. CO 21:62. CO 13:593 – 96, letter from Calvin to Melanchthon, June 1550. Herminjard 8:451, letter from Melanchthon to Calvin, July 12, 1543. CO 12:381, letter from Calvin to the Council of Geneva, October 6, 1552.

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standing right next to Melanchthon,⁷¹ as he makes clear in a salutation in one of his letters to his colleague in Wittenberg: “Greetings, therefore, O man of most eminent accomplishments, and ever to be remembered by me and honored in the Lord! May the Lord long preserve you in safety to the glory of his name and the edification of the Church.”⁷²

2.4. Lutherans Calvin had some correspondence with various Lutheran theologians, such as Jacob Andreae, Veit Dietrich, Johann Marbach, and Johann Brenz. Characteristic of Calvin’s attitude toward the Lutherans is that he saw himself in line with Luther, while he accused the Lutherans of having distanced themselves from Luther. The Lutherans refused unity because they kept discussing the how of Christ’s presence, while Luther himself, according to Calvin, had in fact regarded this question as secondary. For that reason, he called those who argued in Luther’s name “fanatics.”⁷³ In the summer of 1554, Calvin dedicated his commentary on Genesis to the three sons of the elector of Saxony, Johann Friedrich, who had died in March of that year. However, the dedication was rejected because Calvin had allegedly deviated from Luther’s doctrine on the Lord’s Supper and repeatedly insulted Luther’s exegesis of Genesis.⁷⁴ In 1555, Calvin sighed, “Oh, if only Luther was still alive. He was vehement, to be sure, but he never went as far as his followers, who should not be called disciples but merely mimics, indeed monkeys.”⁷⁵ It was Calvin’s opinion that Luther, had he lived, would not have chosen the side of the Lutherans. Calvin’s most intensive discussion was with Joachim Westphal (1510/11– 1574), a preacher in Hamburg. When the Swiss rejected the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper in their Consensus Tigurinus, Calvin hoped in vain that the Lutherans would be more prepared for unity. In 1552, Westphal reacted strongly to the publication of the Consensus Tigurinus – in 1551, despite Cavlin’s urging, more than a year and a half after its completion in 1549 – with his Farrago confuseanarum et inter se dissidentium opinionum de Coena Domini ex Sacramentarium libris congesta per M. Joachimum Westphalum pastorem Hamburgensem. In this work, he introduces for the first time the concept of “Calvinism” in order to stamp Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper negatively as a human invention. When Westphal published Recta fides – a similar work – a year later, Calvin wrote in 1555 – at Bullinger’s insistence – his Defensio sanae et orthodoxae doctrinae de sacramentis. ⁷⁶ He reminded Westphal that it was Luther who

     

CO CO CO CO CO CO

6:250. 11:516. 15:141, letter from Calvin to Farel, May 25, 1554. 15:260. 15:502, letter from Calvin to Seidemann, March 14, 1555. 9:15 – 36.

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had first helped Calvin to a better understanding of the Lord′s Supper,⁷⁷ and he also reported to Westphal what Luther had thought about him: “It would not be hard for me to prove through reliable witnesses what judgment Luther made about me, after he had seen into my writings. But I think Philipp Melanchthon is for me sufficient, as representing the many others.”⁷⁸ After a Defensio on the part of Westphal, Calvin wrote a Secunda Defensio,⁷⁹ in which he once again complained that the so-called Lutherans do not follow in Luther’s steps: “Ah, Luther! How few imitators of your excellence have you left behind you and how many apes of your belligerence.”⁸⁰ For the pastor in Hamburg, this work was an occasion to direct a number of writings against Calvin. Other Lutheran theologians entered this discussion as well, directing their attack especially against the Swiss. Calvin reacted in 1557 with Ultima admonitio ad Ioachimum Westphalum,⁸¹ indeed the last separate piece in the polemics with Westphal, whose later writings Calvin responded to only in the final edition of the Institutes. ⁸² Westphal was also responsible for Calvin coming into contact with the Lutherans in Frankfurt am Main, for it was there in 1555 that Westphal incited the Lutheran clergy against the Dutch-speaking, Reformed refugee congregation that had existed there for a few years and been allowed to use their own church building. In the introduction to his commentary on Acts, Calvin praiseed the Council of Frankfurt for helping the refugees.⁸³ He told the Lutheran clergy that he wondered how Westphal’s book could appear in Frankfurt and cause so much discord, while the Reformed and the Lutherans were in so much agreement.⁸⁴ When the situation worsened through quarrels within the refugee congregation, Calvin himself traveled to Frankfurt in September 1556. The trip was in fact for naught, for the discord persisted and the Lutheran ministers refused to talk with Calvin. In 1561, the authorities decided to close the church to the refugee congregation because they did not agree with the liturgy and doctrine of the Lutherans. The question then arose whether these Reformed people should let their children be baptized by a Lutheran minister and whether they should celebrate communion with the Lutherans. Calvin’s answer was that the administration of the sacraments did not depend on who administered them and that, though the Lutheran ceremonies were not unimportant, neither are they essential. As long as one was not forced to  CO 9:51.  “Quin etiam Lutherus ipse, quum scripta mea inspexisset, quale de me judicium fecerit, mihi per testes idoneos probare non difficile erit. Sed mihi unus pro multis erit Philippus Melanchthon;” CO 9:52. Calvin also defends himself against Westphal by reminding him that Luther sent greetings to Calvin, which makes it clear enough that Luther did not see Calvin as an enemy (see CO 9:92).  CO 9:41– 120.  CO 9:105.  CO 9:137– 252.  4.17.20 – 34.  CO 15:710 ff.  CO 16:53 ff.

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profess the Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper, one should feel free to participate, according to the judgment of the clergy in Geneva.⁸⁵ Here Calvin gave essentially the same advice that he had given to the refugee congregation in Wesel, which in 1553 was forced by the city council to conform to the Lutheran confession. Accommodation and preservation of church unity – in this case unity with the Lutherans – was better than the departure of the Reformed congregation. In 1563, however, when the remaining Reformed people were forced to sign the Lutheran confession, Calvin proposed that in that case a number of corrections regarding baptism and the Lord’s Supper must be effected first.⁸⁶ The notion that Calvin’s interaction with Lutherans was limited to such discussions is one-sided. The contacts were, to be sure, strongly dominated by the controversies over the Lord’s Supper, but Calvin also had many friendly contacts with Lutherans.⁸⁷ There was contact, for example, with Justus Jonas (1493 – 1555), who offered to translate Calvin’s second treatise against Westphal,⁸⁸ an offer Calvin accepted.⁸⁹

2.5. Luther’s Influence on Calvinist Countries The result of the argument that Calvin took up the core of Luther’s theology and developed it further is that, in areas in which Calvinism became the dominant confessional position, Luther is present as well. One example is the Netherlands, a nation characterized by the overall presence of Calvinism.

3. Conclusion In 1540, Calvin wrote that he had no greater wish or greater concern than to proclaim the gospel of Christ together with all German churches and to preserve in any way possible the utmost harmony.⁹⁰ He maintained this attitude during Luther’s lifetime as well as after Luther’s death. And it is this stance that also indicates that Calvin’s polemic with Luther’s successors was not broken off by him, as it was Calvin who wanted to safeguard Luther’s theology. He was convinced of the need to build on the foundation Luther had laid down, not to imitate Luther or simply to repeat what he had said, but to further develop Luther′s theology without changing it.

 CO 15:78 ff.  CO 19:619 ff., letter from Calvin to the Walloon congregation in Wesel, January 11, 1563.  Willem Nijenhuis, Calvinus Oecumenicus. Calvijn en de eenheid der kerk in het licht van zijn briefwisseling (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1959), 160 f.  CO 16:137, letter from Jonas to Calvin, May 8, 1556.  CO 16:283, letter from Calvin to Jonas, September 17, 1556.  Herminjard 6:132, letter from Calvin to Farel, February 27, 1540.

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The influence of Luther on Calvin means that the Nachwirkung of Luther can be found in a much wider tradition than just the Lutheran tradition. It is also due to international Calvinism that Luther can be found worldwide, as his spirituality, his liturgical insights, his views on preaching and teaching, and much more of his work has shaped endless numbers of Calvinists all over the world and through the ages, up until today.

Federico Zuliani

Luther and Zwingli 1 Introduction Today, nobody would consider Huldrych Zwingli, the reformer from Zurich,¹ as a figure in the background of European Protestantism. However, for quite some time, he had been mostly mentioned only in reference to Switzerland and Zurich; his work and his vicissitudes began to be scientifically investigated only in the late nineteenth century.² Eventually, he managed to achieve a reputation as the “third man” of the Reformation, after Luther and Calvin.³ While the latter in many ways stole Zwingli’s spotlight (at least within the Reformed tradition), during his lifetime Zwingli only pitted himself against Luther, for purely biographical reasons.⁴ Luther and Zwingli never had much sympathy for each other, and while referring to them as enemies would probably be excessive, they were definitely adversaries. Although they were basically the same age,⁵ much divided them, even well before they became aware of one another: Luther was a regular clergyman with a monastic education and was the subject of an imperial prince; Zwingli was a secular priest with a mostly humanistic education who lived in a free city of the Swiss Confederacy.⁶ Even the dialect they spoke was vastly different, and when they finally met, they could hardly understand one another.⁷ Although they agreed on the need to reform

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  On the Reformation in Zurich, see Alfred Schindler and Hans Stickelberger, eds., Die Zürcher Reformation: Ausstrahlungen und Rückwirkungen. Wissenschaftliche Tagung zum hundertjährigen Bestehen des Zwinglivereins (Zurich, 29. Oktober bis 2. November 1997) (Bern/Berlin/Bruxelles/Frankfurt/ New York/Oxford/Wien: Peter Lang, 2001); and the extensive summary by Emidio Campi, “The Reformation in Zurich,” in A Companion to the Swiss Reformation, ed. Amy Nelson Burnett and Emidio Campi (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016), 59 – 125.  Cf. B. Moeller, “Der Zwingliverein und die reformationsgeschichtliche Forschung,” Zwingliana 25 (1998): 5 – 20. However, on the reception of Zwingli, see also Kurt von Guggisberg, Das Zwinglibild des Protestantismus im Wandel der Zeiten (Leipzig: M. Heinsius Nachfolger, 1934); Fritz Büsser, Das katholische Zwinglibild. Von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (Zurich/Stuttgart: Zwingli Verlag, 1968).  Jean Rilliet, Zwingli. Third Man of the Reformation (London: Westminster Press, 1964).  On Zwingli and Calvin, see as well F. Blanke, “Calvins Urteile über Zwingli,” Zwingliana 11 (1959): 66 – 92.  But cf. R. Staats, “Ist Zwingli älter als Luther?” Zwingliana 16 (1985): 470 – 76.  On Zwingli and the humanistic tradition, see R. Stauffer, “Einfluss und Kritik des Humanismus in Zwinglis ‘Commentarius de vera et falsa religione’,” Zwingliana 16 (1983): 97– 110.  Cf., for example, Luther, Von dem Geist der Widerteuffer (1544); WA 54:118 – 19, esp. 118: “[i]n our era, God has arranged for the devil not able to speak good German; this is how Karlstadt and Zwingli had to speak and, therefore, it was a great effort for me to understand what they were saying” (Denn https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-026

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the Church, they promoted theological ideas that only partly overlapped.⁸ Even the focus on Scripture, which they both shared, was expressed in very different ways.⁹ However, the issue on which they agreed the least was the sacramental doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.¹⁰ This controversy quickly became fierce, and among the many issues that afflicted Protestantism during the first few decades of the sixteenth century, this was the one that carried the most serious consequences. Despite other reformers’ attempts at mediation – particularly the efforts of Bucer¹¹ –, the rift was never repaired, and the trajectory undertaken by Zwingli (which was cut short by his tragic death on the battlefield) was completed a few years later by John Calvin. Luther and Zwingli only met in person once, in 1529.¹² In spite of this, the study of their relationship is not simple, but rather gives rise to several issues. The meeting was not fortuitous, and their exchanges certainly did not take on the characteristics of a correspondence between secluded humanists or proud exponents of a shared res publica literarum. The investigation of their relationship, which must be conducted firstly on the personal and theological level, must also consider several other issues. In fact, Luther and Zwingli were public figures engaged in a reform that, although still local when they met, soon had the ambition of spreading far beyond the borders of their own cities. Moreover, their activity was greatly supported by their personal relationships (with friends, collaborators, intermediaries, and other reformers) and their networks. Finally, it is also necessary to keep in mind the complex role played by the political authorities in influencing, mitigating, intensifying, and sometimes even directing the work of both Luther and Zwingli, although in decidedly different ways. Upon closer inspection, not even the chronological limits of our investigation

Gott schickts zu unser zeit also, das der Teuffel mus nicht gut Deudsch reden, wie Carlstad und Zwingel musten reden, das mirs grosse erbeit war, jre rede zuverstehen). However, see also Samuel Simpson, Life of Ulrich Zwingli. The Swiss Patriot and Reformer (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1902), 190 – 91.  For an introduction to Zwingli’s theological notions, see W.P. Stephens, Zwingli. An Introduction to His Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).  Fulvio Ferrario, La “Sacra Ancora”. Il principio scritturale nella Riforma zwingliana (1522 – 1525) (Torino: Claudiana, 1993); P. Opitz, “The Authority of Scripture in the Early Zurich Reformation (1522−1540),” Journal of Reformed Theology 5 (2011): 296 – 309.  On the subject, a key contribution continues to be the one by Walther Köhler, Zwingli und Luther. Ihr Streit über das Abendmahl nach seinen politischen und religiösen Beziehungen, vols. 1– 2 (Leipzig/ Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1924– 1953), which tends to underline the similarities rather than the differences between Luther’s and Zwingli’s thinking. However, this should be read alongside Thomas Kaufmann, Die Abendmahlstheologie der Straßburger Reformatoren bis 1528 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), who, instead, finds the difference between the two Reformers unbridgeable.  See the contributions, which do not agree in their interpretation, by Thomas Kaufmann, “Streittheologie und Friedensdiplomatie. Die Rolle Martin Bucers im frühen Abendmahlsstreit,” and R. Friedrich, “Martin Bucer – Ökumene im 16. Jahrhundert,” both in Martin Bucer and Sixteenth Century Europe: Actes du colloque de Strasbourg (28 – 31 août 1991), eds. Christian Krieger and Marc Lienhard (Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill, 1993), 1:239 – 56 and 257– 68, respectively.  Cf. Z 6.2:529 – 31; J. Staedtke, “Eine neue Version des sogenannten Utinger-Berichtes vom Marburger Religionsgespräch 1529,” Zwingliana 10 (1955): 210 – 16.

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are easy to circumscribe. The research cannot end with 1531, the year of Zwingli’s death, or even with February 18, 1546, when Luther passed away in Eisleben, since – over the subsequent decades – the memory of their conflict was kept alive by those who identified with the teachings of one or the other.¹³ Thus, studying the relationship between Luther and Zwingli also means investigating the reception of their ideas by their respective followers (or, at the very least, being aware of this issue). In this contribution, I will try to offer a representation of the relationship between the two reformers. I will briefly illustrate Zwingli’s life (and some characteristics of the Swiss Confederacy where he was active), and I will then focus on Zwingli and Luther, later turning the perspective upside down in order to deal with Luther and Zwingli. In fact, these two perspectives overlap only marginally.

2 Huldrych Zwingli Huldrych Zwingli was born on January 1, 1484, in Wildhaus (in the Toggenburg valley, which at the time was under the control of the abbey of St. Gallen).¹⁴ He was the son of a well-to-do peasant who, at one point, was also the Ammann (bailiff). Zwingli completed his elementary studies in Basel and Bern and his secondary education at the universities of Vienna and Basel (where he studied under Thomas Wyttenbach).¹⁵ He was ordained in Konstanz in 1506 and, shortly afterward, summoned to Glarus.¹⁶ During those years, he continued his personal studies and was in contact with some exponents of Swiss humanism, especially Vadian and Heinrich Glarean. In 1516, he even traveled to Basel to meet Erasmus in person.¹⁷ In his role as a military chaplain,

 For example, see B. Gordon, “Holy and Problematic Deaths. Heinrich Bullinger on Zwingli and Luther,” in Tod und Jenseits in der Schriftkultur der Frühen Neuzeit, eds. Marion Kobelt-Groch and Cornelia Niekus Moore (Wolfenbüttel: Harrassowitz, 2008), 53 and 56.  The key study on Zwingli is still the one by G.R. Potter, Zwingli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). See also Martin Haas, Huldrych Zwingli und seine Zeit. Leben und Werk des Zürcher Reformators (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 1982 [1969]); Ulrich Gäbler, Huldrych Zwingli. Eine Einführung in sein Leben und sein Werk (Münich: C.H. Beck, 2004 [1983]); and Peter Opitz, Ulrich Zwingli: Prophet, Ketzer, Pionier des Protestantismus (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 2015). The most interesting and complete summary is probably the one offered by C. Moser, “Huldrych Zwingli,” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (Basel: Schwabe, 2014), 13:911– 13.  H. Türler, “Dr. Thomas Wyttenbach 1472– 1526,” Bieler Jahrbuch (1927): 107– 29; I. Backus, “Auf den Spuren des Denkers und Theologen Wyttenbach,” in Pro deo. Das Bistum Basel vom 4. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Jean-Claude Rebetez (Pruntrut: Editions D&P, 2006), 293 – 94.  Hans Schneider, “Zwinglis Anfänge als Priester,” in Schweizer Kirchengeschichte neu reflektiert: Festschrift für Rudolf Dellsperger zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Ulrich Gäbler, Martin Sallmann, and Hans Schneider (Bern/New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 37– 62.  On Zwingli and Erasmus, see C. Christ, “Das Schriftverständnis von Zwingli und Erasmus im Jahre 1522,” Zwingliana 16 (1983): 111– 23. Particularly on the meeting, see Wilhelm H. Neuser, Die reformatorische Wende bei Zwingli (Neukirchen/Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1977), 57.

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he followed the troops from Glarus to Italy at least twice, and thus he was present at the battles of Novara (1513) and Marignano (1515). In 1516, he became a secular priest in the convent of Einsiedeln (in Schwyz), where he preached against the abuse of indulgences and the use of mercenary service. In 1518, he was summoned to Zurich, and the following year, he started preaching in the Grossmünster from a lectio continua of the Scriptures (from the Gospel of Matthew to the Acts of the Apostles, moving later to the Epistles, and finally to the Old Testament).¹⁸ Apart from criticizing the monks, Zwingli also attacked – among others – the practice of tithing and the veneration of the saints.¹⁹ The crucial year for Zwingli was 1522.²⁰ Apart from publishing a criticism of mercenary service (A Solemn Exhortation to the People of Schwyz),²¹ he also published his first work of a reformatory nature, Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen (Choice and Liberty Regarding Food).²² The latter was a defense of a group of Zurich residents who had broken the precept of fasting in 1522 and, in doing so, had explicitly referred to Zwingli’s preaching. During the same year, he also sent a petition to the bishop of Konstanz for the abolition of ecclesiastical celibacy Supplicatio ad Hugonem episcopum Constantiensem (Petition to Hugo, Bishop of Konstanz).²³ The controversies that took place in Zurich drove the city authorities to summon a theological disputation, in preparation for which Zwingli wrote 67 articles (which he later expanded in the Exposition and Foundations of the Theses) in January 1523.²⁴ This first dispute resulted in the city authorities’ official acknowledgment of the doctrine Zwingli preached. During October of the same year, the veneration of holy images (the removal of which was ordered) and the abolition of the mass were also discussed.²⁵ Later, it was decided to close the monasteries and establish an institute of advanced studies, the Hohe Schule. Moreover, and once again with Zwingli’s collaboration, the publication of the Bible in Alemannic – the so-called Zürcher Bibel – was undertaken.²⁶ Opposition to  On Zwingli as an exegete, see at least G. Hobbs, “Zwingli and the Study of the Old Testament,” in Huldrych Zwingli (1484 – 1531). Legacy of a Radical Reform, ed. E.J. Furcha (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1985), 144– 78; Traudel Himmighöfer, Die Zürcher Bibel bis zum Tode Zwinglis (1531). Darstellung and Bibliographie (Mainz: Phillip von Zabern, 1995).  Cf. P. Biel, “Personal Conviction and Pastoral Care: Zwingli and the Cult of Saints 1522– 1530,” Zwingliana 16 (1985): 442– 69.  On the evolution of Zwingli’s theological thinking, an excellent introduction can still be found in G.W. Locher, “The Shape of Zwingli’s Theology: A Comparison with Luther and Calvin,” Pittsburgh Perspective 8, no. 2 (1967): 5 – 26.  Eine göttliche Vermahnung an die Eidgenossen zu Schwyz; Z 1:165 – 88.  Z 1:88 – 136.  Z 1:197– 209. But see also the Apologeticus Archeteles from August of the same year; Z 1:256 – 327.  Auslegen und Gründe der Schlußreden; Z 2:14– 457. Another key work by Zwingli, also from 1523, is the treatise Von göttlicher und menschlicher Gerechtigkeit (Divine and Human Righteousness); Z 2:471– 525.  M. Körner, “Bilder als ‚Zeichen Gottes‘: Bilderverehrung und Bildersturm in der Reformation,” Zwingliana 19 (1992): 223 – 32.  Cf. Himmighöfer, Die Zürcher Bibel.

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the reforms supported by Zwingli was expressed in two very different ways: the first, of Catholic inspiration, was soon accompanied by a second, the traits of which were instead radical. Some citizens – such as, for example, Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock – opposed the reformatory approach supported by Zwingli and the city council, which was considered to be too gradualistic. Zwingli’s criticism of this group, which had by then converged on Anabaptism, was voiced in works such as the Answer to Balthasar Hubmaier’s Baptism Booklet in 1525 and the Confutation of the Cavils of the Anabaptists in 1527.²⁷ In 1525, Zwingli published his most famous work, the Commentary on True and False Religion. ²⁸ This is a systematic work, tellingly written in Latin – an exception of sorts in an oeuvre mostly written in the vernacular and usually originating in circumstantial motivations. Over the course of the following years, Zwingli’s activity was focused on four main directives: strengthening the reform in Zurich; circulating the Zwinglian reform throughout the rest of the Confederacy²⁹ (and securing its acceptance on a European level);³⁰ attacking the pension system and mercenary service;³¹ and finally, engaging in an intense dialogue from afar with Luther on the issue of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Starting in 1526, when a dispute was held in Baden, Zwingli supported Zurich’s aggressive policy toward the cantons (especially the original cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Nidwalden, as well as Lucerne and Zug) that were hostile to the reform and to the free preaching of Evangelical ideas. The tensions within the Confederacy (and the complex system of alliances that swirled around it) caused a first armed conflict in 1528 and a second one in 1531.³² In that year, in a surprise maneuver, the troops of the five Catholic cantons marched on Zurich. Zwingli, together with several other ministers, joined the army. He died on the battlefield on October 11, during a night skirmish near Kappel.

 Antwort über Balthasar Hubmaiers Taufbüchlein; Z 4:585 – 647; In catabaptistarum strophas elenchus; Z 6.1:21– 196. On Zwingli and early Anabaptism, see H. Wayne Pipkin, “‘They went out from us, for they were not of us’: Zwingli’s Judgment of the Early Anabaptists,” Zwingliana 19 (1992): 279 – 92.  De vera et falsa religione commentarius; Z 3:628 – 912.  Just as, for example, in the case of the Bern dispute of 1528; M. Sallmann, “The Reformation in Bern,” A Companion to the Swiss Reformation, 143 – 46.  For example, with the Fidei ratio in 1530, addressed to Charles V, or with the Fidei expositio, addressed to Francis I the following year; Z 6.2:790 – 817; Z 6.5:50 – 163.  On the subject, see Christian Moser and Hans R. Fuhrer, Der lange Schatten Zwinglis: Zurich, das französische Soldbündnis und eidgenössische Bündnispolitik, 1500 – 1650 (Zurich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2009).  On the wars of Kappel, see Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 122 – 40.

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3 Wittenberg as Seen from Zurich As already mentioned above, Zwingli was the reformer of Zurich, and his activity must be read in the context in which he operated. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the city had become – together with Bern – the dominant power in the Confederacy. When Zwingli arrived on the banks of Lake Zurich, the complex apparatus of states was going through a difficult time. In fact, in 1515, the dreaded – and, up to that point, undefeated – Swiss troops had been defeated in the battle of Marignano, an event that had thwarted Swiss expansion south of the Alps.³³ However, two years prior to this, in 1513, the other confederates had welcomed a thirteenth canton, Appenzell (after that, no new members joined the Confederacy until the Napoleonic wars). The wish to preserve the status quo was mostly due to the religious rift.³⁴ In any case, the power of attraction of the confederate model persisted, and over the following decades, several free cities from southern Germany endeavored to be admitted (first among them was Konstanz).³⁵ If Saxony was still on the periphery of Europe in 1516, Switzerland was at its heart. Firstly, it was the fulcrum of the exchanges (of people, goods, and ideas) between north and south (it is not by chance that Luther stopped in Zurich on his way back from his pilgrimage to Rome).³⁶ Moreover, if the wars of the fifteenth century – especially the Burgundian wars – had brought Switzerland into the limelight as one of the deciding powers in European politics, the councils of Basel and Konstanz (which was pro-Switzerland) strengthened its reputation and importance even in fields that were not strictly military (for example, when Poggio Bracciolini was in Konstanz for the council, he discovered in St. Gallen – among several other manuscripts – a complete Quintilian and Cicero’s Pro Sexto). The revolution of printing and the opening of several editorial centers (not to mention Erasmus’ relocation to Basel, which was connected to these two phenomena) definitively confirmed the importance of this area, also in the cultural field, and turned it into a pole of attraction where all the most important novelties of Europe quickly converged. Among others, thanks to its printing houses and the complex network of trade routes that started there and reached every corner of the continent, the Confederacy was also a sounding board for the most recent ideas. Thus the fact that Switzerland received news about Luther very early on is not a coincidence, nor is the fact that, precisely in a confederate city such as Basel, Lu Walter Schaufelberger, Marignano. Strukturelle Grenzen eidgenössischer Militärmacht zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Frauenfeld: Edition ASMZ, 1993).  On the Reformation in Switzerland, apart from the recent summary by Nelson Burnett and Campi in A Companion to the Swiss Reformation, see also Gordon, The Swiss Reformation; and, for a different perspective, Oskar Vasella, Reform und Reformation in der Schweiz (Münster: Aschendorff, 1958).  Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Turning Swiss. Cities and Empire, 1450 – 1550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).  Cf. WA.TR 2:484.

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ther’s works were already being circulated and printed in 1518. From that date until Zwingli’s death, over one hundred of Luther’s works were published there.³⁷

4 Zwingli and Luther The first mention of Luther in Zwingli’s letters dates to December 1518 and is due to Beatus Rhenanus.³⁸ Writing from Basel, Rhenanus informed his correspondent that there was no news of Luther.³⁹ Beginning with Rhenanus’ following letter, however, Zwingli was swamped in a deluge of Lutheran quotes and texts. These came mostly from Basel, and also from some cities in southern Germany.⁴⁰ The flow held steady over the following years, in line with the above-mentioned intense printing activity in Basel, and also thanks to works and news that came directly from the imperial territories. As far as Luther is concerned, in March 1519, Zwingli mentioned that he was looking forward to reading one of Luther’s texts, which Rhenanus had sent him.⁴¹ The following month, he said that he was even interested – in case he were to find it convincing – in buying several copies of Luther’s Theologia (which, however, he still had not seen). Upon closer inspection, however, Zwingli’s tone in this letter appears to be slightly aloof, and more importantly, his interest in Luther seems to be instrumental to the writing of his own theological works⁴² (especially as far as ven In general, see P.G. Bietenholz, “Édition et réforme à Bâle, 1517– 1565,” in La réforme et le livre. L’Europe de l’imprimé (1517–v. 1570), ed. Jean-François Gilmont (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1990), 239 – 68. In contrast, for a specific case, compare Sven Grosse, “Die Emergenz lutherischer Theologie in Basel: Capitos Lutherausgabe von 1518,” in Basel als Zentrum des geistigen Austauschs in der frühen Reformationszeit, eds. Christine Christ-von Wedel, Sven Grosse, and Berndt Hamm (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 149 – 77. In Konrad Pellikan’s Chronicon, there is valuable information both on the circulation of Luther’s works in Basel in 1518 and on the reactions elicited by them; see Bernhard Riggenbach, ed., Das Chronikon des Konrad Pellikan (Basel: Kessinger, 1877), 74– 76, 85 – 86, and 98.  Beatus Rhenanus’s letter to Zwingli, December 6, 1518, Z 7:114– 16, no. 49.  Z 7:114, no. 49: “However, as far as Luther is concerned, we still know nothing” (De Lutherio nihildum comperti habemus).  See the letters by Beatus Rhenanus (Basel, December 26, 1518; March 19, May 24, July 2, 1529; Z 7:123, no. 53; 7:151, no. 66; 7:175 – 76, no. 79; 7:193, no. 88); Simon Stumpf (Basel, July 2, 1519; Z 7:195, no. 89); Jacobus Nepos (Basel, September 22, 1519; Z 7:205, no. 94); Oswald Myconius (Lucerne, December 28, 1519; Z 7:241, no. 109); Ulrich Zasius (Fribourg, November 13, 1519; Z 7:218 – 20, no. 100); Johann Faber (Konstanz, December 17, 1519; Z 7:240, no. 108).  Zwingli’s letter to Beatus Rhenanus, Zurich, March 21, 1519; Z 7:152, no. 67.  Zwingli’s letter to Beatus Rhenanus, Zurich, June 7, 1519; Z 7:181, no. 82: “I am not afraid that we could be displeased by Luther’s treaty on the Lord’s Prayer or by the Theologia in vernacular that, as you tell me, will soon be published and divulged; we will buy plenty of copies, especially if the treaty deals at least a little with the adoration of the saints in the Lord’s Prayer” (Orationis dominicae enarrationem Lutheri haud vereor nobis displicituram, sed nec vulgarem Theologiam, quam in diem absolvi vulgarique promittis; coememus magnum modum, praecipue si de adorandis divis oratione dominica non nihil tractet).

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eration of the saints was concerned).⁴³ Despite his awareness of Luther’s production and activity,⁴⁴ in June 1520, Zwingli still confessed to Myconius that he had actually read very little of Luther – although based on what he had read, it seemed to him that Luther “was not wrong.”⁴⁵ Luther’s name begins to appear in Zwingli’s works in 1522, when the latter began the task of open reform in Zurich. This fact should not be surprising, even though these mentions are little more than generic references, which were in many ways due to the exploitation of the extant controversy, according to which any supporters of a reformation of the Church were also considered Luther’s followers tout court ⁴⁶ (a pattern that mirrors the approach preserved in the records of the Italian Inquisition, in which all Protestants are called Lutherans). The comparison of Luther with Hus, in a work from 1522,⁴⁷ also seems to move precisely in the same direction, connecting what was being attempted in Zurich to what had already happened elsewhere in Europe. On the other hand, mentioning Hus – who had been burned alive at the stake in the nearby city of Konstanz, the seat of the diocese to which Zurich also belonged – also seems to water down and deflate Luther’s revolutionary scope somewhat.⁴⁸  On this subject, see Biel, Personal Conviction and Pastoral Care.  Cf. Zwingli’s letters to Beatus Rhenanus, Zurich, February 22, March 25, June 25, July 2, 1519; Z 7:138 – 39, no. 60; 7:157– 58, no. 70; 7:189 – 90, no. 86; 7:191– 92, no. 87; and to Oswald Myconius, Zurich, December 31, 1519; Z 7:243 – 46, no. 110. Eventually, Zwingli’s library included 25 works by Luther; see J.V. Pollet, Huldrych Zwingli et le zwinglianisme. Essai de synthèse historique et théologique mis à jour d’après les recherches récentes (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1988), 19.  Zwingli’s letter to Oswald Myconius, Zurich, September 24, 1520; Z 7:341– 45, no. 151, here p. 344: “[t]o this day, we have read almost nothing by Luther; and what we have seen up to this point does not seem to us to be wrong as far as the evangelical doctrine is concerned” (Lutheri nunc ferme nulla legimus; at quae vidimus hactenus, in doctrina evangelica non putamus errare). On this subject, see also Pollet, Huldrych Zwingli, 16 – 18; and M. Brecht, “Zwingli als Schüler Luthers zu seiner theologischen Entwicklung 1518 – 1522,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 96 (1985): 308.  See Zwingli, Suggestio deliberandi super propositione Hadriani Nerobergae facta (1522); Z 1:434– 41; Handlung der Versammlung in der Stadt Zurich auf den 29. Januar 1523; Z 1:479 – 569. Cf. more generally Brecht, Zwingli als Schüler.  Zwingli, Eine freundliche Bitte und Ermahnung an die Eidgenossen (1522); Z 1:214– 48, esp. 224: “‘We must obey God rather than human beings!’ [Acts 5:29]. In fact, we see how some princes and esteemed lords, bishops, and prelates, despite making a show of being defenders of the Gospel, are actually against its preaching and make it suspicious by calling ‘Lutherans’ or ‘Hussites’ or heretics those who spread it. However, there are so many learned men everywhere intent on administering to us the heavenly doctrine, drawn from the true source, that we have no need for any Hus or Luther!” (Man muoß got me gehorsam sin denn den menschen. Wir sehend, das etlich grosse fürsten und herren, bischoff und prelaten, wiewol sy dem euangelio, als sy wellend xehen werden, nit widerstandind, machend sy doch die sach widerwertig und verdacht, so sy allen, so das euangelium predigend, hässig namen zuolegen, sy syind Lutherisch oder Hußisch oder kätzer, so doch der geleerten allenthalb so vil ist, die uß den waren brunnen schöpffende uns die himelischen leer harfür tragend, das man gheiner Hussen oder Luteren darff).  It is important, however, to keep in mind that in 1521, in Worms, the nuncio Girolamo Aleandro had challenged Luther to take a stance on Hus’ doctrines, which had been condemned by the council. Luther had accepted them as correct.

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Much has been said about the importance of Luther’s influence on Zwingli. Zwingli himself asserted that, in reality, there had been none.⁴⁹ According to what he wrote in 1523, he had already come to the conclusion that a Christian is saved sola gratia (by faith alone) in 1516.⁵⁰ This allegedly happened while he was reading Holy Scripture and St. Augustine (and was also under Erasmus’ influence).⁵¹ On the same occasion, he also indignantly stated, “I have not learned my doctrine from Luther, but from God’s word itself.”⁵² Due to the scarcity of sources (and to the fact that these have always been compiled a posteriori), it is almost impossible to solve the issue of “precedence.” Emidio Campi, summarizing a long tradition of studies, recently stated that “[i]t is plausible, however, to describe Zwingli’s reformatory development as independent from the Wittenberg reformer and to emphasize his own authorship.”⁵³ On the other hand, Bruce Gordon, in the introduction to a volume entirely focused on Zwingli’s influence, underlines instead that “[Zwingli’s] later claim that he came to these convictions apart from Wittenberg is of little consequence and most likely had its origins in the bitter polemic [with Luther] over the Lord’s Supper.”⁵⁴ Whether they are true or not, Zwingli’s claims mark out a clear distance between himself and Luther. However, this distance had already become evident – and this must be emphasized – well before the emergence of the unbridgeable theological rift that would later poison their relationship from 1525 until Zwingli’s death. Nonetheless, Zwingli’s polemic against Luther was not blind. On the contrary, he was ready to give due credit to Luther, distinguishing the theologian – whose thinking he did not share and toward whom he did not feel indebted, as far as the development of his ideas was concerned – from the first person (after Hus) who had had the courage to defy Rome in order to reform the Church. For example, in 1527, right in the middle of the controversy on the Lord’s Supper – and in a work such as Amica Exegesis, which was also violent in places (and was tellingly written in Latin, a fact that widened Zwingli’s audience far beyond the German sphere) –, Zwingli did not shy away from praising Luther, calling him “the Hercules […] who killed the

 Cf. Arthur Rich, Die Anfänge der Theologie Huldrych Zwinglis (Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1949); Neuser, Die reformatorische Wende; Gunter Zimmermann, “Der Durchbruch zur Reformation nach dem Zeugnis Ulrich Zwinglis vom Jahre 1523,” Zwingliana 17 (1986): 97– 120; and Ralf Hoburg, Seligkeit und Heilsgewissheit. Hermeneutik und Schriftauslegung bei Huldrych Zwingli bis 1522 (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1994), 275 – 80.  Z 2:144– 50.  Z 2:186, 211, 217– 18, 314, and 370 – 71. However, see also Z 5:712– 13 and 721.  Z 2:149: “denn ich die leer Christi nit vom Luter gelernt hab, sunder uß dem selbswort gottes.”  Campi, The Reformation in Zurich, 69.  Bruce Gordon, Luca Baschera, and Christian Moser, “Emulating the Past and Creating the Present: Reformation and the Use of Historical and Theological Models in Zurich in the Sixteenth Century,” in Following Zwingli. Applying the Past in Reformation Zurich, eds. Luca Baschera, Bruce Gordon, and Christian Moser (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 22.

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Roman boar.”⁵⁵ The same approach is also evident when one examines at another kind of source – the Zurich editions of Luther’s translations of the Bible, the first of which was published in 1524 under the title Das gantz Nüw Testament recht grüntlich vertütscht (The Entire New Testament Thoroughly Translated into German). In these editions, Luther’s translations in High German were rendered in Alemannic. The Zurich prints, published under Zwingli’s supervision, eliminated the prefaces, the marginalia, and the summaries of the originals and truly “eroded” Luther’s impact in Zurich and in the territories under its influence.⁵⁶ Luther’s work, although appreciated, was repurposed without any subservience in a slow but constant process of distancing (and unspoken correction).

5 Luther and Zwingli A few months after Zwingli’s death, Luther wrote to Albert of Prussia, rejoicing over Zwingli’s demise on the battlefield and interpreting it as a clear sign of God’s righteous judgment. He was also sorry that the papists had not exterminated Zwingli’s heresy in its entirety.⁵⁷ Upon closer inspection, the tone of these comments is neither rare nor exceptional in Luther’s work. The Tischreden, for example, are riddled with them. These comments – apart from the problems presented by the work itself, which are also of a linguistic nature⁵⁸ – demonstrate very well the sentiments that even the mention of Zwingli’s name elicited in circles closer to Luther. During the first days of November 1531, immediately after receiving the news of Zwingli’s death in Kappel, Luther reflected that “if [his] error had prevailed, we would have perished, and our Church with us.”⁵⁹ On the other hand, a few months later, he said that “Zwingli

 Zwingli, Amica Exegesis, id est: expositio eucharistiae negocii ad Martinum Lutherum (1527); Z 5:562– 758, here 722 (but also 708): “Tu unus fuisti Hercules, qui ubiubi discriminis aliquid esset, occurreres; aprum Romanum occidisti.”  Gordon, Emulating the Past, 23; Adolf Fluri, “Luthers Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments und ihre Nachdrucke in Basel und Zurich 1522– 1531,” Schweizerisches Evangelisches Schulblatt 57 (1922): 273 – 76, 282– 85, 292– 94, 301– 02, 313 – 16, 324– 26, 331– 34, and 339 – 41; and Hans Rudolf Lavater-Briner, “Die Froschauer-Bibel 1531,” in Die Zürcher Bibel von 1531. Entstehung, Verbreitung und Wirkung, ed. Christoph Sigrist (Zurich: TVZ, 2011), 64– 170.  Martin Luther’s letter to Albert of Prussia, April 1532; WA 30.3:547– 53, esp. 550 – 53. More generally, on the reactions to Zwingli’s death, see J. Courvoisier, “Zwinglis Tod im Urteil der Zeitgenossen,” Zwingliana 15 (1982): 607– 20.  Cf., for example, Birgit Stolt, Die Sprachmischung in Luthers Tischreden. Studien zum Problem der Zweisprachigkeit (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1964).  WA.TR 1:35, no. 94: “Haec exempla adversariorum me Coburgi docuerunt, quid sit illud in decalogo: Ego sum Deus zelotes. Non est tam crudele in illos supplicium quam necessaria pro nobis defensio. Sic Zinglium nunc periisse dicunt, cuius error si praevaluisset, periissemus nos cum nostra ecclesia. Est iudicium Dei. Ist all weg ein stoltz vold gewesen. Die andern, die papisten, wird unser Herr Gott auch vol finden.” See also WA.TR 1:3, no. 2; 1:38, no. 100; 1:75, no. 157; 1:61, no. 140; 1:121, no. 291; 1:133, no. 322; 1:200, no. 461; WA.TR 2:103, no. 1451.

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died like a murderer” (presumably alluding to the torment to which his body was subjected more than to his death in itself).⁶⁰ Luther’s judgment, however, although very unfair to the man, was mainly intended to stigmatize his religious convictions. In fact, he soon became convinced that Zwingli was a non-Nicaean heretic (especially as far as his Christology was concerned). Thus, over time, Zwingli was most often accused of being a neo-Nestorian.⁶¹ Luther even went so far as to accuse Zwingli of not being a true Christian (for example, he called him unchristen).⁶² The theological accusations were soon accompanied by the allegation that he was a sectarian, a Schwärmer, and the bearer of unbridgeable divisions within the Church.⁶³ Thus it is especially meaningful that Zwingli is often juxtaposed – and not only in the Tischreden – with Andreas Karlstadt, probably the most hated of Luther’s adversaries,⁶⁴ and also with the rebel Thomas Müntzer.⁶⁵ Finally, another factor that certainly contributed to Luther’s embitterment was his conviction that Zwingli owed most of his reform to Luther himself – or at least the few positive elements that Luther could see in it⁶⁶ (as already mentioned above, this notion was harshly denied by Zwingli). It remains to be understood exactly how certain Luther was that the reform of the Church taking shape in the territories of the Swiss Confederacy was, by that point, following paths that no longer converged with the one he was promoting. At any rate, the controversy was inaugurated in 1525, with the publication of Zwingli’s Com-

 WA.TR 2:216, no. 1793: “Zwinglius ist gestorben wie ein morder” (the same image is also used in WA.TR 3:295, no. 3372b). See also WA.TR 2:3, no. 1232; 2:390, no. 2660a; WA.TR 3:24, no. 2845; and WA.TR 4:97, no. 4043. On Zwingli’s death, see Gordon, Holy and Problematic Deaths, 49 – 51.  Gordon, Emulating the Past, 5. For more details, see also J.A. Maxfield, “Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin on the Significance of Christ’s Death,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 75 (2011): 91– 110; and Thomas Kaufmann, “Luther und Zwingli,” Luther Handbuch, ed. Albrecht Beutel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 152– 61. On the christological differences (and their consequences, also as far as Bullinger is concerned), see Stephen Strehle, “Fides aut Foedus. Wittenberg and Zurich in Conflict over the Gospel,” Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992): 3 – 20.  Luther, Vom Abendmahl Christi Bekenntnis (1528); WA 26:261– 509, here 342: “I confess that I do not deem Zwingli to be a Christian, since there is not even one aspect of the Christian faith that he understands and teaches correctly” (Jch bekenne fur mich, das ich den Zwingel fur einen unchristen halte mit aller seiner lere, denn er helt und leretkein stueck des Christlichen glaubens recht).  See Wilhelm Maurer, “Luther und die Schwärmer,” Schriften des Theologischen Konvents Augsburgischen Bekenntnisses 6 (1952): 7– 37; Alois M. Haas, Der Kampf um den Heiligen Geist – Luther und die Schwärmer (Freiburg. Universitätsverlag Freiburg/Schweiz, 1997); and (also for further bibliographical references), Amy Nelson Burnett, “Luther and the Schwärmer,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther, eds. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and Lubomir Batka (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 511– 24. Cf. also Zwingli, Früntlich verglimpfung über die predig Luthers wider die Schwermer (1527); Z 5:771– 94.  Amy Nelson Burnett, Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy. A Study in the Circulation of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).  For example, see the sermons on Psalm 2 from 1532, also preached a few months after Zwingli’s death; WA 30.2:209 and 210.  Strehle, Fides aut Foedus, 7. On Luther’s interpretation of Zwingli, cf. also Mark U. Edwards, Luther and the False Brethren (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 82– 111 and 185 – 96.

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mentary on True and False Religion. From that moment onward, up until 1528, a proper “pamphlet war” raged between Zurich and Wittenberg.⁶⁷ The main cause of disagreement was the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. In fact, Luther – as far as the presence of Christ after the consecration was concerned – had come to believe in consubstantiation (or, more correctly, in sacramental union); according to Luther, in the sacrament, the bread and wine become also (and not, as in the Catholic interpretation, exclusively) the substance of the body and blood of Christ – despite still preserving, at the same time, their physical nature.⁶⁸ On the contrary, Zwingli had come to a symbolic interpretation; according to him, during the Lord’s Supper (interpreted as thanksgiving and commemoration), Christ is really present in the sacrament, although not naturally (i. e., physically) in it.⁶⁹ Once again, Zwingli “no longer interpreted the words of institution in a literal sense, ‘This is my body,’ but instead as a metonymy, a figure of speech, ‘This signifies my body.’ He drew a very sharp distinction between the sign and what it signifies, and accordingly rejected the notion of the bodily presence of Christ, the old doctrine of transubstantiation as well as the Lutheran teaching of consubstantiation.”⁷⁰ As far as this controversy is concerned – limiting our investigation to Luther’s and Zwingli’s writings –, it is worth mentioning Zwingli’s important Amica Exegesis (1527),⁷¹ the Lutheran Vom Abendmahl Christi Bekenntnis (Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, 1528),⁷² and also, in the same year, Zwingli’s (and Oecolampadius’) reply in Über D. Martin Luthers Buch, Bekenntnis genannt (On Dr. Martin Luther’s Book, Called “Confession”).⁷³ The controversy reached the point of no return in 1529. Between October 1 and 4 of that same year, the landgrave Philip of Hesse organized a series of religious colloquies in Marburg.⁷⁴ The colloquies were attended by the exponents of the two main theological schools active at that time in German-speaking countries. The importance of the meeting was such that both Luther and Zwingli went to Marburg (accompanied, among others, by Philip Melanchthon, Johannes Brenz, Stephan Agricola, Andreas Osiander, Johannes Oecolampadius, Martin Bucer, Wolfgang Capito, Caspar Hedio, Jacob Sturm, and Justus Jonas). The aim was to find a convergence between Luther’s and Zwingli’s positions. Such an agree-

 Campi, The Reformation in Zurich, 87.  For an introduction to Luther’s positions, also with regard to their historical evolution, see Volker Leppin, “Martin Luther”, in A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation, ed. L. Palmer Wandel (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014), 39 – 56.  A useful summary of Zwingli’s ideas can be found in Carrie Euler, “Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger,” in A Companion to the Eucharist, 57– 74.  Campi, The Reformation in Zurich, 88.  Z 5:562– 758.  WA 26:261– 509.  Z 6.2:22– 248.  Walther Köhler, Das Marburger Religionsgespräch 1529. Versuch einer Rekonstruktion (Leipzig: M. Heinsius, Eger & Sievers, 1929); and Wolf-Friedrich Schäufele, ed., Die Marburger Artikel als Zeugnis der Einheit (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012).

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ment was to be the preliminary step in the creation of a political and military alliance between German and Swiss Protestants.⁷⁵ Of the 15 theological points presented and discussed, only on the last one – which focused on the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper – did they fail to reach an accord.⁷⁶ This substantial failure, although it took place in an atmosphere that was not openly hostile, resulted in – among other consequences – Switzerland’s lack of participation in the Schmalkaldic League, which was about to be established.⁷⁷ Luther, who already had little sympathy for Zwingli, was strengthened in his persuasion after the meetings in Marburg, at which the former became convinced that the failure to come to an agreement was to be imputed to the obstinacy of Zwingli – who was by then a full-blown heretic – in refusing to acknowledge his error (despite some attempts made by Zwingli himself, from 1529 onward, to soften his ideas in order to come closer to Luther’s and Bucer’s positions).⁷⁸ It was precisely this persuasion that constituted the soil in which germinated the insulting words already mentioned above. Therefore, it is somewhat ironic that the one factor that forced Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s follower in Zurich, to keep his distance from Luther was precisely Luther’s constant abuse of Zwingli, which was later continued by Luther’s supporters, even though “the theological commonalities between the two were stronger than their disagreements.”⁷⁹ When one does not focus exclusively on the relationship between Luther and Zwingli, the Marburg meetings had even more serious consequences. These repercussions became evident both a few years later and many decades after the colloquies. The first consequence occurred not long after 1529 and caused the more moderate Zwinglian front, led by Bucer, to take a stand. In 1530, during the Diet of Augsburg, the representatives from Strasbourg, Jacob Sturm and Mathis Pfarrer, refused to accept the Eucharistic formulation included in the Lutheran Confessio Augustana. The theologians from Strasbourg, Bucer and Capito, wrote a confession that would be later come to be known as Tetrapolitana (Of the Four Cities) – since, in July of the same year, it was also signed by Memmingen, Konstanz, and Lindau (all of which were located in southern Germany, although Konstanz and Lindau bordered the Swiss Confederacy).⁸⁰ Although the Tetrapolitana is an “ephemeral” text (due to its short application) and the product of a mediation, at the same time, it also represents the declaration of an open refusal of Luther’s positions, precisely from the moderate party. On the other hand, twenty years after the meetings in Marburg,

 Campi, The Reformation in Zurich, 89.  WA 30.3:160 – 71.  Campi, The Reformation in Zurich, 89 and 106 – 07.  Campi, The Reformation in Zurich, 88n78. On Zwingli and Bucer, see F. Büsser, “Bucer und Zwingli,” in Martin Bucer, 395 – 402.  Campi, The Reformation in Zurich, 108. For further details, see Peter Opitz, “Heinrich Bullinger und Martin Luther. Gemeinsamkeiten und Differenzen,” Evangelische Theologie 64 (2004): 105 – 16.  Marc Lienhard, “Bucer et la Tétrapolitaine,” Un temps, une ville, une réforme (Hampshire: Routledge, 1990), 269 – 85.

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the “orthodox” Zwinglian party would reach an agreement – once again about the Eucharist – with Calvin (the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549). This was the beginning of the slow, complex, and certainly not easy – but eventually successful – convergence of Zwinglianism and Calvinism and, therefore, the creation of the Reformed tradition.⁸¹ When one broadens one’s perspective even more, it is also possible to see how the fracture between Zwinglianism and Lutheranism also had important geographical consequences. For example, it is likely that the Wittenberg Reformation’s “loss” of Zwinglian and pro-Zwinglian Switzerland⁸² complicated its reception and circulation beyond the Alps. The heterogeneous and doctrinally fluid character of the Italian Reformation would later avoid the creation of the same instances of open tension already seen in southern and western Germany. However, it is precisely the circulation of Zwingli’s ideas in Italy (which was made easier first by the proximity of Zurich,⁸³ and later also by the spread of Zwinglianism in the Italian-speaking areas of Raetia)⁸⁴ that helps to explain both the wealth of radical groups in Italy (and the scarcity of Lutherans proper) and the facility with which Calvinism (which was by then one and the same with Zwinglianism) took hold there.⁸⁵

 Emidio Campi and Ruedi Reich, eds., Consensus Tigurinus. Die Einigung zwischen Heinrich Bullinger und Johannes Calvin über das Abendmahl. Werden – Wertung – Bedeutung (Zurich: TVZ, 2009). The rift between Lutheran and Reformed traditions would only be healed in Germany by the Unionien of the nineteenth century – albeit not without difficulties, divisions, and schisms.  Basel was the exception; see H.R. Guggisberg, “Das lutheranisierende Basel: Ein Diskussionsbeitrag,” in Die Lutherische Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland, ed. Hans-Christoph Rublack (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1992), 199 – 201. Instead, the existence of a Lutheran component in Bern (due to C.B. Hundeshagen, Die Conflicte des Zwinglianismus, Luthertums und Calvinismus in der Bernischen Landeskirche von 1532 – 1558 [Bern, 1842]) has recently been disproved by Amy Nelson Burnett, “The Myth of the Swiss Lutherans Martin Bucer and the Eucharistic Controversy in Bern,” Zwingliana 32 (2005): 45 – 70.  On this subject, one should keep in mind how, in 1525 and 1526, a friar (and, even more importantly, an Augustinian) wrote to Zwingli from Como to let him know that he and all his confrères had converted after reading Zwingli’s works. See Federico Chabod, Lo stato e la vita religiosa a Milano nell’epoca di Carlo V (Torino: Einaudi, 1971), 307 and 357– 59.  Mark Taplin, The Italian Reformers and the Zurich Church, c. 1540 – 1620 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).  S.F. Romano, “Riflessi zwingliani nella divulgazione della riforma protestante radicale nell’Italia settentrionale del Cinquecento,” Memorie storiche forogiuliesi 64 (1984): 69 – 105.

Günter Vogler

Thomas Müntzer’s Heritage: An Alternative in the Process of Reformation When Martin Luther published his Brief an die Fürsten zu Sachsen von dem aufrührerischen Geist (Letter to the Rulers of Saxony on the Rebellious Spirit) in July 1524, he intended to warn the rulers of Saxony against Thomas Müntzer. According to Luther, Müntzer was a tool of the devil, of whom he had heard that he “would not stick to words in this matter but was planning to strike with the fist and violently resist the authorities, which would lead to a physical riot soon.”¹ Müntzer, however, asked why the man from Wittenberg reacted so strongly against his doctrine. In his Hochverursachte Schutzrede wider das geistlose und sanft lebende Fleisch zu Wittenberg (Highly Provoked Defense against the Stupid and Lazy Meat of Wittenberg) he turned the accusation of being a tool of the devil back onto Luther himself. In his view, Luther was not only a “scribe” who defended the dead letter against the inner word, but also a “persecutor of truth,” “the devil’s arch-chancellor,” and the “godless Wittenberg flesh.”² When subjects in Thuringia rose up against the authorities, Luther traveled to Eisleben at the end of April 1525 and preached against the riots in several cities. After returning to Wittenberg, he added a new text to the third edition of his Ermahnung zum Frieden auf die zwölf Artikel der Bauernschaft in Schwaben (Admonition to Peace Based on the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia). In this text, entitled Auch wider die räuberischen und mörderischen Rotten der anderen Bauern (Also against the Predatory and Murderous Other Gangs of Peasants), he accused the rebels of stealing and killing like mad dogs. “In short, they are pursuing the conceited work of the devil, and it is particularly that arch-devil who reigns at Mühlhausen who perpetrates nothing but robbery, murder, and bloodshed.”³ Although the demonization of one’s enemies was not unusual in those days, Luther was the first to discredit Müntzer as a tool of the devil. What prompted the reformer to accuse his opponent of being “Satan” or the “arch-devil”? And why did Müntzer use similar epithets to describe the man from Wittenberg? The answer can be found in their different opinions about what was necessary in the process of reformation. In those conflictual years, when the reform of both Church and society was at stake, Müntzer caused a stir as a preacher because he supported a radical reforma-

Translation from German: Alissa Jones Nelson.  StA 3:92.  MSB, 323, 326, 327, 329, 331, 332, 334, 336, 337, 342.  StA 3:142. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-027

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tion, which he advertised both from the pulpit and in his writings. But – in contrast to Martin Luther or Philipp Melanchthon, who operated from Wittenberg – Müntzer repeatedly had to look for locations of activity. He accepted this fate as God’s will and saw himself as “God’s servant” whom God had chosen to reap the harvest. Put metaphorically, the living God would now be sharpening his scythe to cut the red roses and the little blue flowers.⁴ Müntzer wanted to convey this message to the people as “God’s willing messenger.”⁵

1 Müntzer’s Early Years Thomas Müntzer was born in 1489 in the small electoral city of Stolberg in the southern Harz.⁶ Coming from a family of craftsmen, he probably went to a Latin school in Quedlinburg, after which he enrolled in Leipzig for the 1506 winter semester, worked as an assistant teacher in Aschersleben and Halle, and enrolled for the winter semester of 1512 in Frankfurt on the Oder. Since he paid the necessary fees for his matriculation, which indicates a stable material situation, he was allowed to take academic exams. How long he was enrolled at the two universities and which academic grades he earned is unknown. In a fragment of a letter dating from spring 1521, he refers to himself as artium magister et sancte scripture baccalaureus ⁷. Both of these titles are also confirmed by several of his correspondents. At these two universities Müntzer gained a solid education, which he later deepened with a thorough study of the Bible as well as of ancient, patristic, mystical, humanist, and reformatory writings. After all, the Histori Thome Muntzers, published after his execution and attributed to Philipp Melanchthon, attests that he was “well versed” in the holy scriptures.⁸ Müntzer’s education paved his way into the academy or into Church service. After his priestly ordination in the diocese of Halberstadt, he received modest preband from Michaeliskirche in Brunswick. From there, he developed relationships with well-known long-distance traders and craftsmen who were looking for a deeper spiritual certainty. After 1515, he served for some time as prefect at the canoness convent of Frose near Aschersleben, and then as confessor at the Cistercian nunnery in

 ThMA 2:156, nr. 55.  ThMA 2:157.  On Müntzer’s biography, see Siegfried Bräuer and Günter Vogler, Thomas Müntzer. Neu Ordnung machen in der Welt. Eine Biographie (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2016); on Münther’s writings, see Marion Dammaschke and Günter Vogler, Thomas-Müntzer-Bibliographie (1519 – 2012) (Baden-Baden and Bouxwiller: Koerner, Valentin, 2013), 29 – 92.  ThMa 2:82, nr. 33.  Ludwig Fischer, ed., Die lutherischen Pamphlete gegen Thomas Müntzer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976), 28.

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Beuditz near Weißenfels. He also spent some time in Wittenberg, where he met Luther and other representatives of the early reform movement. During the Easter holidays of 1519, Müntzer replaced the preacher at Jüterbog, but he got into an argument with the Franciscans, which prompted Father Bernhard Dappen to accuse to the responsible bishop of Brandenburg. Since the Ingolstadt theologian Johann Eck printed this report, the title Articuli […] contra Luteranos can most likely be attributed to Eck. But it is questionable whether Müntzer can indeed be called a “Lutheran,” as his message was not just anticlerical. He also criticized scholastic theology and made a plea for a return to biblical writings. The gospel should be the only guiding principle. Here we already see the first contours of his own position. On Luther’s recommendation, in May 1520 Müntzer replaced the humanistically trained preacher Johannes Egran at the Marienkirche in Zwickau and then, after Egran’s return, changed to the Katharinenkirche. For the first time, he had access to the pulpits of a large trade and business city. Although influential citizens supported him, and although he attracted the attention of laypeople who were interested in the gospel, disputes with the Franciscans, arguments with Egran, and eventually the charge of inciting riots led to his dismissal in April 1521. It is evidence of his sense of mission that he then more often referred to himself as the “servant of God’s chosen ones.” What is more, his interpretation of the times took on an apocalyptic connotation for the first time.

2 God’s Messenger In Zwickau Müntzer had already looked toward Bohemia because he was convinced that the “new apostolic Church” would emerge there and spread all over the world. In Prague, “the city of the valued and holy fighter Jan Hus,” ⁹ he preached in various churches in 1521 and drafted a circular that revealed his radical understanding of the Reformation. We know of a Latin version, shorter and longer German versions, as well as an incomplete translation into Czech,¹⁰ but none of these texts were printed during his lifetime. Against the background of a centuries-old decay of the Church, Müntzer claimed a renewal of Christianity, a life as a follower of Christ, and the restoration of the order that God had created in the beginning. But in November, he had to leave Prague due to developing reprisals against him. His mission had failed, but he was decided to pursue his work. After his return from Bohemia, Müntzer lived in various places and was looking for a new location of activity. Neither at the Peterskloster in Erfurt, nor in the free city

 MSB, 495.  MSB, 491– 511.

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of Nordhausen, or at any other place, however, did he succeed in landing a permanent position. It seems that the defamations circulating about him – against which he defended himself in a letter to an unknown critic on July 14, 1522¹¹ – made an impact. At the end of 1522, Müntzer was at last appointed as chaplain of the nunnery St. Georgen in Glaucha, just outside of the city of Halle on the Saale. He also maintained relationships with citizens in the nearby community. The impact of his sermons can be seen in a letter from a citizen of Halle thanking Müntzer for having shown him the way to the true faith,¹² as he states in the letter, his faith did not have strong roots before, but now he understood “that the human being has to be completely empty of all things, […] as if he would not exist.”¹³ Müntzer lost the position in Glaucha in the second half of March 1523 for unknown reasons. By then, the strong differences between him and the Wittenberg theologians had become increasingly apparent. In a letter to Philipp Melanchthon on March 29, 1522, Müntzer accuses them of praying to a dumb God, whereas it is the “talking God” who plants true faith in the hearts of human beings.¹⁴ Furthermore, he did not understand why Luther deemed it important to take care of those who were still weak in their faith. Against the expectation of an immediate eschatological judgment, he wanted to convince the Wittenberg theologians to support the work of the Reformation without delay. Up to this point, Müntzer’s life had been restless. As a preacher and a pastor, he gained experience at several different locations, but wherever he appeared he was a polarizing force, and he was exposed to hostility. Nevertheless, these defeats did not discourage him because he was guided by the conviction that God had elected him to be the reaper of the harvest.

3 Müntzer’s Work in Allstedt Shortly before Easter 1523, Müntzer was employed on probation as a preacher at the Johanneskirche in the electoral Saxon city of Allstedt. For the first time, he had the chance to put his ideas into practice. For his reform of the liturgy, he made use of the tradition and the suggestions of Luther, but for the Sunday and weekday services, based on Gregorian chant, he created a work of his own (Deutsches Kirchenamt, 1523; Deutsch-Evangelische Messe, 1524¹⁵). Müntzer translated all of the Latin texts into German because he deemed it unacceptable to attribute power to the Latin

    

ThMA 2:139 – 140, nr. 48. ThMA 2:157– 60, nr. 56. ThMA 2:159. ThMA 2:127– 39, nr. 47. MSB, 25 – 155, 157– 206.

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words “as the sorcerers do.” ¹⁶ In the short treatise Ordnung und Rechenschaft des deutschen Amts zu Allstedt (Order and Accountability of the German Office at Allstedt, 1523),¹⁷ he rejected any criticism of his reform: all peoples should hear the mass in their own language, because if people are to understand what they believe, the gospel will have to be brought to them in an accessible way. It was in Allstedt that Müntzer also broke with celibacy, a commandment imposed on priests, monks, and nuns. In the spring of 1523, he married Ottilie von Gersen, a nun who most likely ran away from the Wiederstedt nunnery in the county of Mansfeld. By Easter of the following year, she had given birth to a son. Müntzer’s services and liturgy were positively received, by believers from the area and from farther away. But the city and the district seat were surrounded by territories ruled by catholic rulers. In particular, Count Ernst von Mansfeld and Duke Georg von Sachsen did their best to keep their subjects away from Müntzer’s services, which necessarily led to conflicts. Despite his critical attitude toward the Wittenberg theologians, Müntzer maintained contact with them. In a letter to Martin Luther on July 9, 1523, he defended without polemical bitterness his opinion that God would not convey his message through the dead word, but that he would write it in the hearts of the people.¹⁸ He saw Luther and himself as confronting the same challenges, but thought that the former had chosen the wrong way to deal with them. Luther probably knew that Müntzer’s services attracted many visitors. That is why, in early August 1523, he asked the Allstedt bailiff Hans Zeiß to invite Müntzer to “have a conversation with us about his doctrine.”¹⁹ The theme of a dialogue of faiths was raised, and it has remained relevant ever since. Because Count Ernst of Mansfeld forbid his subjects to walk to the services at Allstedt, Müntzer requested that the count and the ordinaries of the diocese come to Allstedt and prove that his doctrines were heretical.²⁰ Subsequently, on September 22, the count demanded that the bailiff and the city council arrest Müntzer, but they declined because the case was about the word of God – that is, it was a spiritual matter.²¹ The conflict escalated when Müntzer threatened to embarrass Count Ernst before Jews, Turks, and pagans because he was hindering people from finding the true faith.²² The count called in the Saxon elector Friedrich the Wise, and in a letter to the sovereign on October 4, Müntzer agreed that his doctrine could be assessed.²³

 MSB, 162.  MSB, 207– 15.  ThMA 2:160 – 172, nr. 57.  WAB 3:120.  ThMA 2:203 – 04, nr. 64.  Karl Eduard Foerstemann, ed., Neues Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der evangelischen Kirchen-Reformation (Hamburg, 1842), 1:228 – 29.  ThMA 2:194– 99, nr. 63.  ThMA 2:199 – 206, nr. 64.

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However, he wrote, if Count Ernst used human laws to prevent the spread of the gospel, the people would be led astray. If the rulers continued in this way, the sword would be taken from them and given to the people, seized by true faith, in order to stop this godless action.²⁴ With reference to Dan 7:27 (“The empire and power and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High”), Müntzer for the first time commented on the role of authority. He distinguished between “Christian rulers” and “godless tyrants.” The latter he accused of neglect of the gospel, infringement on worldly rights, and breach of the peace. If they violated the “common peace,” they would lose the legitimation of their office and forfeit their rule.

4 Müntzer’s Defense of his Doctrine The conversation with the electoral Saxon representatives took place in Allstedt Castle, most likely in November 1523 and February 1524. For this occasion, Müntzer may have drafted the two publications that describe his doctrine of faith (Protestation oder Erbietung Thomas Müntzers, […] seine Lehre betreffend [Protest or Offer of Thomas Müntzer, […] with Regard to his Doctrine], 1524²⁵; Von dem gedichteten Glauben [On the Fictitious Faith], 1524²⁶). In these texts, he not only criticized the teachers of the old Church, but also the Wittenberg theologians. For him faith was not a gift of God; rather, it had to be earned on the bitter path, following the succession of Christ. With the printing of these two publications, that which Müntzer was ready to defend before the whole of Christianity became known far beyond the audiences of his sermons. On March 24, 1524, the Marienkapelle in Mallerbach, close to Allstedt, burned down. When after long hesitation the council of Allstedt, as part of its duty to find the perpetrators, attempted to arrest a few people around the middle of June, the alarm bells in the city were rung “to resist unjust violence.”²⁷ This was probably also the occasion that led to the secret foundation of the alliance to defend the gospel. The report of the bailiff for June 26, which documents the incident, also complains that the hearing of Müntzer was still pending. If this were to be further delayed, Müntzer and his doctrine, “which is so powerful, will achieve such a support [among the common people] that it will mean a lot of pain and work” to resist them.²⁸

 ThMA 2:205.  ThMA 2:225 – 40.  MSB, 217– 24.  Karl Eduard Foerstemann, ed., “Zur Geschichte des Bauernkriegs im Thüringischen und Mansfeldischen,” Neue Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiet historisch-antiquarischer Forschungen 12 (1869): 159.  Foerstemann, “Zur Geschichte des Bauernkriegs,” 166.

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On July 13, 1524, Müntzer had the opportunity to preach to the Saxon Duke Johann and his entourage at Allstedt Castle. The text from the prophet Daniel about the decline of the world empires enabled him to present his opinion about the essence of the Reformation from an apocalyptic and global-historical perspective. He asked the rulers to act like Christians and to support his work. If they refused to do their duty, power would be taken from them and given to the people. The sermon was published immediately (Auslegung des anderen Unterschieds Daniels des Propheten [Interpretation of the Other Difference of the Prophet Daniel], 1524²⁹). We do not know how the rulers reacted, but the bailiff, Hans Zeiß, informed Müntzer on July 22 that the change of the world, as announced in Deut 2, was imminent. In a sermon on July 24, wherein Müntzer asked his audience to follow the example of the Old Testament and renew the covenant between the king and the people (2 Kgs 23:3), several hundred visitors at the service went to the city hall and registered for the list of the alliance. This was the moment that the formerly secret alliance went public. Müntzer let the bailiff know that because the “godless sovereigns” persecuted the faithful because of their desire for the gospel, an alliance for the protection of the gospel was necessary, one that would be open to everybody who was ready to fight against the machinations of tyrannical authorities. Luther had the impression that Müntzer was willing to turn words into violent action. Therefore, in his Brief an die Fürsten zu Sachsen von dem aufrührerischen Geist (Letter to the Rulers of Saxony from the Rebellious Spirit), he asked the rulers to expel “ghosts” such as Müntzer and other “enthusiasts” from their territories.³⁰ But Hans Zeiß was insistent and asked him to accept Müntzer’s offer to assess his doctrine. It was perhaps for this occasion that the preacher drafted the Gezeugnis des ersten Kapitels des Evangeliums Lucae (Testimony of the First Chapter of the Gospel of Luke), which was immediately communicated to the court at Weimar.³¹ On August 1, the testimonies of Müntzer, the bailiff, the mayor, and two members of the city council were heard regarding the foundation of the alliance and the belated punishment of the instigators of the burning of the chapel. The Allstedt representatives were ordered to prosecute the perpetrators of Mallerbach, to liquidate the alliance, and to fire Müntzer’s printer. Informed about this decision on August 3, Müntzer complained that now his hands were tied, and he could not publicly respond to Luther’s letter to the rulers. He wrote to the elector the same day that he was preaching a different Christian faith than Luther, and if he would be heard, this hearing had to happen before the faithful of all nations. These were the only people he would accept as judges.³²

   

MSB, 241– 63. StA 3:88 – 104. MSB, 267– 319. ThMA 2:330 – 335, nr. 97.

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5 Conflicts in Mühlhausen Müntzer preempted expulsion from Saxony by secretly leaving Allstedt on the night between August 7 and 8, 1524. In mid-August he sought protection in the free city of Mühlhausen, where the former Benedictine monk Matthäus Hisolidus and the former Cistercian monk Heinrich Pfeiffer had worked as reformatory preachers since 1522 and February 1523, respectively. On July 3, 1523, the oppositional movement forced the city council to sign a settlement in which it accepted a number of reformatory claims as well as the participation of the civil opposition in the city government. Luther, however, warned the council and the community of Mühlhausen on August 21, 1524, to stay away from Müntzer’s doctrine because Müntzer wanted to stir up a riot.³³ Müntzer was nevertheless given a friendly welcome, but the situation was tense, as it was unclear whether the council would adhere to the agreements of the settlement. An incident during a wedding ceremony on September 19 eventually caused a riot that led to the flight of both mayors. In collaboration with Pfeiffer and Müntzer, “Eleven Articles” were compiled that claimed to install “an eternal council,” to do justice according to the gospel, to prevent greed and ruthless exploitation, and to serve the common good. Using many quotations from the Bible, it was claimed that these articles were in accordance with “divine law.”³⁴ But with the support of peasants from the area, the council succeeded in pushing the rebels temporarily out of the city. In response, the rebels set up “God’s eternal alliance” as a military coalition, but the attempt to install a new council failed because the majority of citizens and the peasants in the surrounding area were not convinced. Müntzer and Pfeiffer were expelled and left the city by early October. Despite these events, the Eleven Articles had brought a new order based on the gospel into focus.

6 Müntzer Pays Luther Back After his expulsion, Müntzer visited the bookseller Hans Hut in Bibra in southern Thuringian and handed him the revised manuscript of the Gezeugnis (Testimony) which Hut then had brought to print in Nuremberg as Ausgedrückte Entblößung des falschen Glaubens (Explicit Exposure of the Wrong Faith, 1524).³⁵ A few weeks later, also in Nuremberg, a “foreign traveler” (fremder Landfahrer) organized the printing of Müntzer’s response to Luther’s Brief an die Fürsten zu Sachsen as Hoch-

 Fischer, Die lutherischen Pamphlete, 14– 15.  ThMA 2:371– 383, nr. 105.  MSB, 267– 319.

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verursachte Schutzrede (1524).³⁶ Most of the copies, however, were confiscated by the city council. Müntzer himself spent just a short time in the free city and remained unmolested because he avoided any public appearances. Both of these publications once more affirmed Müntzer’s point of view. In his plan to restore God’s order, which humankind had abandoned, and given the resistant position of the rulers, he regarded the “poor people” as the chosen ones to whom ultimate power was given. His understanding of the Reformation was radical because he wanted to tackle the evil at its roots and to trust “God’s living word” rather than the dead letter of scripture. He wanted to achieve pure faith by following “the bitter path” of the example of Christ and resisting the “godless tyrants.” According to his apocalyptic interpretation of time, he wanted to achieve the immediate renewal of Christianity and the transformation of the world. Thus radicalism had two faces. The conflict with the monks and priests led to an irreparable break with the old Church and the formation of a reformatory identity. The conflicts within the reformatory movements, however, led to an alternative position in which people had to let go of everything that tied them to “creatureliness,” if the Church and society were to be renewed. A return to reformatory consensus was unthinkable for Müntzer. In his Hochverursachte Schutzrede, Müntzer invited Luther to “pull his rulers’ nose” because otherwise “the peasant may want to interfere.”³⁷ This was remarkable, because until then Müntzer’s work and experience had mainly been connected to the cities. Now he was confronted with peasants who were beginning to rise up against their sovereigns in the southwestern parts of the empire. He moved from Nuremberg to Basel, where he met the theologian Johannes Oekolampad and the humanist Ulrich Hugwald. The latter probably put Müntzer in contact with the rebels in Hegau and Klettgau. For a while he stayed in the municipality of Grießen, preached in various locations, and – according to a testimony during Müntzer’s interrogation – wrote “several articles about how one should rule according to the gospel.”³⁸

7 The Beginning of the Riots in Thuringia Müntzer returned to Mühlhausen in February 1525 and was appointed as a preacher at the Marienkirche. In the intervening period, the situation had changed drastically. The city council was basically powerless, and on March 16 the majority of the community gathered in the Marienkirche decided that the old council should be dismissed. The following day an “Eternal Council” was installed, exactly as the Eleven Articles had prescribed it.

 MSB, 321– 43.  MSB, 337.  MSB, 544.

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As a symbol for “God’s Eternal Alliance,” Müntzer ordered a little white flag with a rainbow to be made, on which was printed the motto: “Verbum domini maneat in etternum” (“The word of the Lord endures forever”). Everyone who wanted to join the alliance was asked to stand under this flag. Seeing this, the bailiff Sittich von Berlepsch from nearby Langensalza warned that if nobody put an end to what happened in Mühlhausen, the entire population from the Thuringian Forest to the Harz would soon join the movement. In this region the standard agricultural products were grown, and wine and the dye known as woad were also produced. Sheep farming was common as well.³⁹ Trade networks fostered the introduction of capital in the village communities, which meant that many peasants were in debt. The region was also very politically divided. Surrounding the territory of Wettin in Saxony there were many counties and Church properties. The complaints and claims that resulted from this situation were a hallmark of the riots in April and May 1525. From mid-April on, peasants formed a number of crowds, and many people from the cities joined them. The contingent from Mühlhausen entered the stage for the first time when a riot began in Langensalza on April 25, and Mühlhausen was asked for help. On April 26, however, when the contingent appeared before the gates of the city with their rainbow flag, they were not admitted because Langensalza wanted to solve the problem on its own. In the meantime, Müntzer, who did not join the contingent, tried to collect the chosen ones, in view of God’s imminent judgment. Convinced that a general rebellion would start immediately, he urged his supporters to lay down their human fear and fight “the Lord’s battle.”⁴⁰ When the rebels from Frankenhausen also asked Mühlhausen for support, Müntzer responded positively on April 29, also because this gave him the opportunity to punish Count Ernst in Heldrungen. But the rebels from the Eichsfeld region also expected help because – as they argued – before they even returned from Heldrungen, they would all be destroyed. After a controversial debate, a decision in favor of the Eichsfeld campaign was made on May 1, and the campaign lasted until May 5.

8 The Defeat at Frankenhausen On April 29 the people from Frankenhausen revolted, and within a short time a large camp was formed. The catholic Duke of Saxony and the evangelical Landgrave Philipp of Hessen were vehemently trying to mobilize their troops. Müntzer, for his part, tried to comply with his promise to help Frankenhausen, but he met with resistance. Only on May 10 did he move to Frankenhausen, with 300 rebels and eight cannons

 Günter Vogler, ed., Bauernkrieg zwischen Harz und Thüringer Wald (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2008).  ThMA 2:403 – 415, nr. 114.

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on carts. Count Albrecht of Mansfeld requested that the rebels present their complaints to him, if they had any. The rebel leaders suggested negotiations for the next day, but Albrecht delayed the meeting. Müntzer must have received notice of this after his arrival at the camp, and he argued strongly against Albrecht’s Lutheran understanding of authority in a letter on May 12, asking whether he thought that God would be more interested in his people than in a tyrant and whether he knew that God had given power to the community (Deut 7).⁴¹ He suggested that Albrecht should come to the camp to justify his faith. If he succeeded in defending himself, he would be accepted as “common brother,” but if not, they would fight him as if he were the arch-enemy of the Christian faith. On the same day, Müntzer requested Albrecht’s cousin Count Ernst to prove before the people that he would give up his tyrannical rage and behave as a Christian.⁴² If he refused to do so, he would stand accused before the whole world, because God had demanded to bring his power down. Neither of the counts reacted to this letter. In the meantime, the princely enemies were coming closer. On the morning of May 14, a group of the troops from Hessen organized their first attack against Frankenhausen, which was unsuccessful. But the rebels left the protective walls of the city and erected a circle of wagons on the nearby hill Hausberg, bringing together almost 7,000 fighters. In a sermon, Müntzer told them that God wanted to cleanse the world and that he had taken power from the authorities to give it to his people. He would stand by them because their flag carried the rainbow, the symbol of the covenant with God. On the morning of May 15, Philipp united his troops with those of Georg and brought the cannons into position so that the troops could fire at the circle of wagons and cut off the rebels’ retreat. In the meantime, truce negotiations were taking place. The rulers let the rebels know that if they delivered the “false prophet” Müntzer along with his entourage and surrendered, they would be treated mildly. But the majority of the rebels refused to surrender. When a ring in the colors of the rainbow formed around the sun, Müntzer preached that this was a sign that God was standing on their side. Hence, the rebels – who had apparently gathered around Müntzer – were taken by surprise by the gunfire, and horsemen managed to enter the camp. In the chaos that followed, resistance was futile. Most of those who tried to flee to Frankenhausen were slain on their way to safety. Müntzer was discovered in a house and brought before the princes. When they questioned him, he defended his intention “to punish the princes because they were against the gospel.”⁴³ According to the tradition of the mercenaries, Müntzer was given to Ernst von Mansfeld as a “share of the booty” (Beutepfennig) and brought to Heldrungen. His

 ThMA 2:464– 65, nr. 144.  ThMA 2:469 – 73, nr. 145.  Fischer, Die lutherischen Pamphlete, 40.

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interrogation started on May 16. After being tortured, he confessed that he had started the riot because Christianity must be equal, and the rulers and sovereigns who would not support the gospel would have to be expelled and killed. For Müntzer, equality meant striving for justice in the sense of Christian brotherly love, but also levelling the hierarchy of the estates, because all people should “stand on the same earth.” This was only possible if the power structures changed as well. Thus Müntzer was convinced that God would give power to the “common people.” The defeat put an end to these plans. In a letter to the people in Mühlhausen on May 17, he expressed his last will and testament. The people had not understood him, he wrote. Therefore “it was entirely fine” with him “that God had ordained it as such.”⁴⁴ They should act to avoid a similar loss, “because there is no doubt that this came about because everyone was working for their own benefit, rather than for the justification of Christianity.”⁴⁵ In Müntzer’s view, the defeat revealed God’s judgment of the people, who clung only to their own selfishness. On May 25, the keys to the city were handed over to the counts whose troops were already encamped outside Mühlhausen, and the conditions of surrender were agreed. On May 27, Müntzer and Pfeiffer were beheaded in the field camp near Görmar without a court proceeding. Their heads were mounted on pikes and presented to the public as a warning to anyone who was still planning an uprising.

9 Thomas Müntzer’s Doctrine Although the number of works Müntzer wrote and had printed is limited, it is possible to derive his doctrine from them, in combination with his letters and fragments of sermons.⁴⁶ He was concerned with the same questions as Luther, but his answers were different. His theology “carries the stamp of the reformatory awakening: challenging and open for dialogue, critical and communicative – all this within the horizon of experience and thought of the late Middle Ages.”⁴⁷ His review of the past and present of the Christian Church nourished his doubts about the traditional doctrine. This is already evident in Müntzer’s first sermons in Jüterbog and the Prager Sendbrief (The Prague Circular, 1521). After a thorough study of the Bible, and based on his personal experiences, Müntzer worked out an independent reformatory theology. Apocalyptic traditions increasingly influenced his understanding of time. He described the individual process of gaining faith in the terminology of mystical piety, and

 ThMA 2:497, nr. 152.  ThMA 2:498.  Siegfried Bräuer and Helmar Junghans, eds., Der Theologe Thomas Müntzer. Untersuchungen zu seiner Entwicklung und Lehre (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1989).  Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Thomas Müntzer. Revolutionär am Ende der Zeiten (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2015), 281.

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the first apostles served as his model for the formation of a community of chosen people. The Prager Sendbrief already provides the contours of the main themes of his theology, which he elaborated in more detail in his later writings. Revisions of his doctrine were mainly based on his practical experiences. His writings and letters are a vivid example of the intensity of his theological work. Müntzer asked how the decline of the Church – which, in his view, was caused by false shepherds – could be stopped, and what kind of help was needed save “disintegrating Christianity.” He was convinced that a radical reformation was necessary, because the order that God had given to all creatures had been “reversed.” To restore that order, it would therefore be necessary to change the entire world. He felt a strong obligation to prepare Christianity for this change, a difficult task indeed. Müntzer regarded the spread of the wrong faith as a visible sign that the spirit of Christ was dead. A serious Christian, however, had to choose the “narrow path,” just like Christ had. That is why Müntzer hammered home to his readers and listeners again and again that those who did not accept the “bitter Christ” would suffocate from eating “sweet honey” but would never find true faith. Müntzer’s admonishment and urging results from his apocalyptic understanding of time and his expectation of the immediate coming of God’s last judgment. In the light of this situation, the “chosen ones” needed to be separated from the “godless” and to form an alliance. For Müntzer, the “godless” were all of those who denied or mocked the gospel and blocked people’s path to the true faith. To the “chosen ones,” however, God revealed his will. Müntzer’s conviction that true faith can only be gained via the “narrow path” refers to the socio-political dimension of his doctrine. He regards “the world” as corrupt because Christians have surrendered to “human fear,” indulged in selfishness, cared only for temporal goods, and striven for honor, wealth, and power. In order to guide people back to “God’s order,” it would first be necessary for them to leave behind all “creatureliness.” Personal experience laid the foundation for Müntzer’s relations with various social levels and their political representatives. Since the early Reformation was mainly an urban movement, he built up relationships in his bases of operation that reached as high as the cities’ upper classes. He approached princes and other rulers to win them over to his cause, but he came to learn that most of them acted “tyrannically.” Consequently, he saw himself and his followers as justified in fighting the godless authorities who had betrayed their obligations. If these authorities did not improve, he concluded, the power of the sword would fall to the community of chosen ones. This turned “God’s people” into a socially determined factor: these were the people who were occupied with the burden of earning their living. Müntzer expected that the peasants, who had a hard working life “filling the mouths of the arch-godless ty-

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rants,”⁴⁸ would recognize God’s order. His general goal of changing the world was concretized in the renewal of the clerical, social, and political order as a precondition for “God’s governing.” Müntzer based his doctrine on the gospel rather than on social norms and values, even though experiences from his context were integrated into his doctrine. In constructive contrast to the theologians at Wittenberg, he cherished the idea of forming a community of brotherliness.⁴⁹ “God’s governing” aimed to give the “chosen ones” the power to enforce the norms of the gospel in society. In an apocalyptic perspective, this was a universal process that was not limited to one place or one country. But in practice, it had to start regionally.

10 An Alternative to the Lutheran Reformation At the beginning of the reformatory process, everything was still open. Numerous actors confronted the public with their respective ideas for overcoming the critical situation, which “provoked a phenomenal variety of competing theologies.”⁵⁰ Luther and his companions, however, were determined that Müntzer and other “enthusiasts” should not be given any public space. In his Protestation oder Erbietung, Müntzer announced that he wanted to direct the evangelical preachers “toward a better being” (in ein besseres Wesen führen).⁵¹ He thus claimed a reformation that would go beyond the intentions of the Wittenberg theologians. In his Auslegung des andern Unterschieds Danielis des Propheten, he then argued that the spirit of God would reveal to many chosen people that an insurmountable future reformation needed to be carried out, since God clearly spoke of a change in the world that would happen in the last days.⁵² For Müntzer, this meant that a change in the world was necessary to repair the damage Christianity had suffered. This would happen not sometime in the future, but now. The fierce polemics between Luther and Müntzer resulted from their different positions on central themes. For one, Luther and Müntzer were divided in their understanding of scripture. The Wittenberg theologian regarded the revealed word of scripture as the only legitimate source (sola scriptura), because with Christ and his death all revelations had come to an end. Müntzer, however, was convinced that God would write his will continuously in the hearts of the people. He did not discard the word of scripture (as was often insinuated), but he criticized the fact that only the “dead letter” was brought to the believers.

 MSB, 294.  Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 237.  Thomas Kaufmann, Geschichte der Reformation (Frankfurt am Main/Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 2009), 146.  MSB, 240.  MSB, 255.

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Both Luther and Müntzer regarded the question of faith as a central theme. While Luther assumed that God had redeemed sinful humankind by grace alone (sola gratia), Müntzer thought that if believers wanted to be sure of God’s grace, they would have to follow the “bitter Christ.” Therefore he believed Luther was following the wrong path. Luther and Müntzer also had a different understanding of authority. Luther thought that all authority was deployed and legitimized by God to carry out worldly rule. Those who resisted it would be acting against the order created by God. Müntzer, for his part, respected the authorities as long as they attended to their duty to protect their subjects. But given his experience of the tyranny of many rulers, who persecuted their subjects because of their faith and neglected the gospel, he also argued for a right of resistance. They also had different opinions about violence. While Luther – with reference to Rom 13:1– 2 – justified the authorities’ monopoly on the use of force, Müntzer referred to Romans 13:3 – 4 and declared the necessity of using the sword to annihilate the godless. To go about this the right way, however, the judgment should be executed by those rulers “who profess Christ with us.” Otherwise the sword would be taken from them, as Deut 7 prophesied.⁵³ This meant that resistance was legitimate only if God ordained it accordingly.⁵⁴ Luther and Müntzer also came to different conclusions with respect to Christian freedom. Luther referred to the apostle Paul (1 Cor 9:19) and distinguished the spiritual from the physical nature of the human being, concluding that the Christian was free internally but not in external matters. When Müntzer, however, argued that the restoration of the fear of God necessitated the overcoming of human fear, this implied a liberation in worldly matters as well. His catchy slogan was: “Almost all opinions in scripture testify that the creatures have to be free if the pure word of God is to come to fruition” (Es bezeugen fast alle Urteile in der Schrift, dass die Kreaturen frei werden müssen, wenn das reine Wort Gottes aufgehen soll).⁵⁵

11 Müntzer’s Opportunities and Limits Müntzer received inspiration from Luther, but from early on he followed his own path. He saw deficits in the theology of Luther and his companions: the one-sided fixation on scripture, the underestimation of the hard path to true faith, the neglect of the distress of the “common man,” and the too-willing collaboration with authorities. In this situation, Müntzer’s theology and its implications presented a possible alternative.

 MSB, 261.  MSB, 22, 335.  ThMA 2:479, nr. 147.

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To put his ideas into practice, in Allstedt – and probably also in Mühlhausen – Müntzer immediately started to reform the Church service and to justify this in a number of writings. This reform was an integral part of his program because, until then, the faithful had been disenfranchised, with the mass entirely focused on the person of the priest.⁵⁶ This reformed liturgy was practiced for some time in several regions after Müntzer’s death. Moreover, Müntzer interfered directly with the internal affairs of the city of Mühlhausen in order to assert the norms of the gospel: in September 1524, when he supported the oppositional movement against the city council and helped draw up the Eleven Articles, and in March 1525, when a new council was installed. In April and May 1525 he joined the rebellious peasants and citizens in Thuringia. He did not instigate these events, but his involvement certainly impacted them. Whoever wanted to achieve their goals at this time had to win over the public.⁵⁷ Müntzer used sermons and the printing press to familiarize listeners and readers with his doctrine. The number of people who were drawn to his sermons confirms his success in this regard. But the time allotted to him was probably too short to convince a majority and to safeguard the innovations institutionally. The spread and impact of his writings was limited, too. The Prager Sendbrief was never printed, and only in 1523/1524 was he able to send some of his writings to print. But then most copies of those two pamphlets that left the presses in Nuremberg fell victim to censorship. In this way, his publishing influence never reached the level of other reformers. As a professor at the Leucorea, Luther had an academic institution on his side, and many of his colleagues and students further transmitted his doctrine. Müntzer did not have such a forum. Although he offered to have what he taught and wrote publicly assessed, his doctrine was rejected without the substantial debate that would have justified such a step. Luther was supported by preachers and scholars as well as by city councils and rulers. In contrast, Müntzer’s supporters were mainly recruited from the rural areas surrounding Allstedt and Mühlhausen. What is more, only a small number of influential people publicly subscribed to his doctrine – a few preachers, former monks, and craftsmen, whose publishing activities were highly limited. Institutionally and legally safeguarding reformatory innovations worked best when authorities accepted them and turned them into law. Müntzer could count on the support of city councils temporarily, but he failed to make this support sustainable. When he asked the rulers of Saxony in his sermon on Deut 2 to support his reformatory program, he did not receive any response. Hence, Müntzer was  Wolfgang Ullmann, “Die sprachgeschichtliche Bedeutung von Müntzers Liturgieübersetzungen,” in Ordo rerum. Die Thomas Müntzer-Studien, ed. Jakob Ullmann (Berlin: Kontext Verlag, 2006), 131.  Kaufmann, Geschichte der Reformation, 171– 74, 178 – 81; Rainer Wohlfeil, “Reformatorische Öffentlichkeit,” in Literatur und Laienbildung im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit, eds. Ludger Grenzmann and Karl Stackmann (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1984), 41– 52.

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forced to follow a different path. First, he founded the Allstedt Alliance (Allstedter Bund) and then the Eternal Alliance of God for the Protection of the Gospel (Ewiger Bund Gottes zum Schutz des Evangeliums) in Mühlhausen. Even though their members did not come exclusively from those places, these alliances had only a regional impact. Moreover, catholic and evangelical rulers soon organized their troops to suppress the revolts and to fight Müntzer and his followers. This was the most important reason why his alternative was destroyed. It is doubtful whether Müntzer’s intention to radically renew the whole of Christianity (as announced first in the Prager Sendbrief) was at all realistic. He could only accomplish partial innovations in Allstedt and Mühlhausen. He also did not found a church that would preserve, spread, and defend his doctrine. But until the end, he kept working toward his goal of reforming Christianity and creating a community of brotherliness. Müntzer’s identification with the role of the reaper, elected by God in the time of harvest, may have had an inflammatory impact. But it also ran the risk of disappointing his followers, had his prophecies not been fulfilled. He also asked too much of the people when he expected that in a short time they would overcome their creaturely fear in following the example of Christ. Müntzer was aware of that when he wrote in his letter to the citizens of Mühlhausen, dated May 17, 1525, that the people did not understand him and rather pursued their own benefit.⁵⁸ This letter impressively documents his tragedy.

12 Thomas Müntzer’s Heritage Müntzer’s heritage was his theology. But nobody – except for a few individuals of the early Baptist movement – wanted to accept it, because after his death the winners were dictating the opinions. For his enemies, he was and remained the “false prophet,” a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and a “rebellious ghost.” For centuries, condemnation of this radical reformer dominated his image.⁵⁹ From a Protestant perspective, he was a rebel who instigated the Peasants’ Revolt in Thuringia and other regions. For Catholic authors, he was the fruit of Luther’s Reformation. Both sides conjured up a heretic who despised the word of the Bible and believed that God would constantly reveal his will anew. But most of the authors who condemned Müntzer transmitted his doctrine, at their own discretion and interpretation. They usually based their opinions on unconfirmed sources of information, such as the Histori Thome Muntzers. When Johannes Sleidan published De Statu et Reipublicae, Carolo Quinto, Caesare Commentarii

 ThMA 2:497– 98.  Max Steinmetz, Das Müntzerbild von Martin Luther bis Friedrich Engels (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1971.

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(Strasburg, 1555), which was soon translated into German and other languages, he took over the arguments from the Histori Thome Muntzers and thus spread them widely. Numerous polemical publications transmitted a mix of half- and untruths. To be sure, the demonized preacher and pastor was not forgotten, but he was mainly used to warn against false doctrines. Luther was influential in this regard as well. When the Altenburg superintendent Georg Spalatin informed him of an attack that was planned for New Year’s Day in Erfurt in 1528, Luther apparently saw followers of Müntzer behind this plot, and he responded on January 24: “Müntzer is dead, but his spirit is not wiped out yet.”⁶⁰ This warning was later quoted widely, whenever authors felt the need to polemicize against people of a different opinion. Against the overwhelming domination of the tradition that disapproved of this “rebel,” only a very few authors dared to sketch a different picture of Müntzer. Therefore those few who – even if implicitly – publicly presented divergent opinions, which often exposed them to hostility, deserve respect. Sebastian Franck was the first to provide a detailed account of Müntzer’s doctrine. In his Chronica, Zeytbuch und Geschichtbibel (Strasburg, 1531), he noted: “These are his weird judgments and heretical opinions, which I can neither laud nor condemn.”⁶¹ He left that to the reader’s own discretion. In 1584, the Zschopau parish pastor Valentin Weigel wrote in his Dialogus de Christianismo (published posthumously in 1614) that all preaching would be in vain without the inner word. Müntzer strongly advocated this and “would accept no scripture […] if he not experienced it in his heart.”⁶² The pietistic movement – with its critique of an externalized faith, its focus on the inner word, and its insight that the Reformation still needed to be completed – later opened paths to a partial correction of Müntzer’s image, as can be seen in Gottfried Arnold’s Unparteyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie (Frankfurt/ Main, 1699/1700). Under the influence of the French Revolution and the liberal, democratic, and socialist movements of the nineteenth century, a slow rethinking took place, which led to a more objective picture of Müntzer. For some time, however, his theology was interpreted rationalistically, and the conflict between Luther and Müntzer remained the cornerstone of historical imagination. For Friedrich Engels, for instance, Luther was “the representative of the bourgeois reform,” while Müntzer represented “the revolution of the peasants and plebeians.”⁶³ It was the philosopher Ernst Bloch who, in his Thomas Münzer als Theologe der Revolution (Munich, 1921), brought a different perspective into the discussion for the first time. In Bloch’s philosophy, the “not-yet being” (Noch-Nicht-Sein) was a category  WAB 4:355.  Sebastian Franck, Chronica, Zeytbuch und Geschichtbibel (Strasburg, 1531), fol. 441.  Valentin Weigel, Dialogus de Christianismo (Halle, 1614), 31.  Friedrich Engels, “Der deutsche Bauernkrieg,” in Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1960), 7:350.

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that Müntzer exemplified as something that was thought but was not yet real. This challenged many theologians, who, in their turn, defended Luther but accepted Müntzer as an original thinker alongside him. After World War II, more source-oriented research not only explored Müntzer’s biography in more detail, but also looked more closely at his theological work and its impact. This was the result of a process in which theologians and historians, despite their different ideologies, entered into a dialogue that was soon joined by philologists, historians of philosophy, and scholars from various countries. Nevertheless, the positioning of Müntzer in the historical process remained controversial. Some scholars lamented the “uncontrolled growth [Wildwuchs] of the Reformation;”⁶⁴ others called Müntzer the “outsider of the Reformation.”⁶⁵ Was his path an aberration? No. In critical engagement with the Wittenberg theologians, he presented an alternative. But his goals were not fulfilled. Looking at the direction of churches and societies during the centuries after Müntzer’s death, we have to conclude that his critique still deserves attention. With the institutional consolidation of the reformatory doctrines, life in these communities was forced into denominational structures and submitted to institutions, and rituals gained the upper hand. This can only partly be called a church that brought the spirit of the gospels into society fore. But in a world devastated by crises and wars, people find hope and new perspectives in visionary thinking. In this regard, Müntzer’s heritage is still relevant today.

 Franz Lau, “Melanchthon und die Ordnung der Kirche,” in Philipp Melanchthon. Forschungsbeiträge zur vierhundertsten Wiederkehr seines Todestages, ed. Walter Elliger (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), 107– 08.  Walter Elliger, Außenseiter der Reformation: Thomas Müntzer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975).

James M. Stayer

Luther and the Radical Reformers 1 Introduction

The “radical Reformers,” like much else in the Reformation, were a creation of Martin Luther (or perhaps it is more precise to say that Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon created the “Radical Reformation,” just as they created the doctrine of the Evangelical Church). When Luther returned to Wittenberg in March 1522 from his exile in Wartburg Castle, he struck an independent course in ecclesiastical polity and theology. Other members of the Reformation movement had three choices: to defer to Luther’s authority completely (as did Philipp Melanchthon), to follow their own courses but to avoid rupture with Luther (as did Martin Bucer), or to differ from Luther openly. The last group, who were not internally united on either polity or doctrine, were given the appearance of being a single entity by the polemical writings of Luther and Melanchthon. Only in this derived sense were the “Radical Reformers” a historical reality. Before 1522, Wittenberg was not a Lutheran University. That development happened over a period of years, as a result of the controversy created by the reception of the ninety-five theses against indulgences of October 31, 1517. As a new university, founded by Elector Frederick of Saxony in 1502, Wittenberg underwent a humanist reform of its curriculum in the period between 1516 and 1518. Not himself a humanist, Luther favored humanist reform because he believed that Aristotelian scholasticism had contributed to the corruption of the theology of Latin Christendom. The appointment of Philipp Melanchthon in 1518 to fill the chair in Greek made Wittenberg a trilingual university comparable to Louvain and Alcalá.¹ The currents of Reformation radicalism first began to appear more or less coincidently with Luther’s Wartburg exile, following the Diet of Worms, in April 1521. At the time of his famous appearance before Emperor Charles V, Luther did not think of himself as a doctrinal opponent of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Thomas Müntzer, or Caspar von Schwenckfeld; nor did they consider themselves anything but champions of Luther’s Reformation.

 Charles G. Nauert, Jr., Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 133 – 36. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-028

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2 Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (Carlstadt), although three years younger than Luther, preceded him at Wittenberg University. He had been educated in traditional Thomist scholasticism at Cologne University. In 1511 he became chancellor of Wittenberg University, and in this capacity he conferred the degree of doctor of theology upon Luther. In 1515 – 1516, he went to Rome and secured the degree of doctor of civil and canon law. At first, he was skeptical of Luther’s position in the controversy over indulgences, but a close study of the writings of Augustine won him over to Luther’s position. In 1519, he began the disputation against Johannes Eck in Leipzig and was later joined by Luther in one of the incidents which foreshadowed the rupture between German Reformers and the Roman Church. In 1520, he was named – together with Luther – in Exurge Domine, Leo X’s bull of excommunication. When Luther took refuge at Wartburg Castle in May 1521, Karlstadt, together with Melanchthon, became a natural leader of the Reformation movement.² The Wittenberg Movement of 1521– 1522 was intended to be an implementation of Luther’s Reformation. Karlstadt held to justification by faith, but he thought it natural that “faith without works is dead” (Jas 2:17). In other words, he thought of sanctification as a natural complement of justification. Luther and his associates agreed that the claim of Catholic priests to perform a sacrifice in the mass was an error. Under pressure from the townspeople, Karlstadt conducted a Lord’s Supper at Christmas in 1521, in which the laity received both bread and wine. Partly to curb incidents of iconoclasm, but also out of conviction, he urged the Wittenberg Council to remove crucifixes and religious statues from the churches. He agreed with Luther that all Christian believers were priests and that they should pray to God directly, without the unnecessary intercession of saints depicted in religious art. Influenced by what he read in Augustine, he stressed the spiritual res over against the material signum. Elector Frederick, under pressure from the imperial government, resisted external changes in religious practice. On January 24, 1522, the Wittenberg Council – under conflicting pressures from its population, which wanted immediate change, and the Elector, who wanted no change at all – issued the Wittenberg Ordinance, written partly by Karlstadt in accordance with his principles. Luther had made a secret visit to Wittenberg in early December and reported that he was pleased by the prospective changes. Philipp Melanchthon had been an early enthusiast for a reformed Lord’s Supper. However, he was more disposed than Karlstadt to be compliant with the wishes of the Electoral Court. Karlstadt thought that religious practice was not the territorial government’s business; it should be decided from congregation to congregation, from community to community. Also, on December 27, 1521, Nikolaus Storch and Mar Ulrich Bubenheimer, Consonantia Theologiae et Jurisprudentiae. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt als Theologe und Jurist zwischen Scholastik und Reformation (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1977).

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kus Stübner – parishoners of Thomas Müntzer in Zwickau – came to Wittenberg, hunted up Melanchthon, and claimed to have received direct revelations and challenged the practice of infant baptism. Melanchthon found the Wittenberg situation disturbing and urged the elector to summon Luther back from Wartburg Castle.³ On March 6, 1522, Luther returned to Wittenberg. In a week of sermons, he set the stage for undoing the changes initiated by the Wittenberg movement.⁴ Knowing that Elector Frederick had saved his life after the Diet of Worms, Luther’s decision to move the Reformation in a conservative direction is understandable. The externals of worship – with statues, crucifixes, and altars – were preserved. As for Karlstadt, in the month before Luther’s return, Melanchthon and his associates had already begun scapegoating him for the “excesses” of the Wittenberg movement, restricting his preaching, and censoring his attempts to answer Luther’s new emphasis on “tarrying for the weak in faith.” In the spring of 1523, he stopped teaching at Wittenberg University, moved into the countryside, and adopted the role of a simple peasant, “Brother Andreas.” Then, in the late summer of 1523, he moved to Orlamünde on the Saale and performed priestly duties in a parish attached to his archdeaconate in Wittenberg. As a priest in Orlamünde, Karlstadt suspended infant baptism, although he did not initiate adult baptism. In August 1524, amid the disturbances foreshadowing the Peasants’ War, Luther undertook visits in the region and was rebuffed at Orlamünde, where the population decisively supported Karlstadt. After a confrontation at the Black Bear Inn in Jena, Luther and Karlstadt began to write against each other. However, the censorship of Wittenberg University prevented Karlstadt from publishing in Saxony. In September 1524, he and his wife were exiled from Saxony.⁵

3 Thomas Müntzer Another young man in Wittenberg in the exciting years of 1517– 1518, with their mix of religious controversy and humanist curriculum reform, was Thomas Müntzer, previously the holder of a minor benefice in Braunschweig. His personal contacts seem to have been with Karlstadt, Melanchthon, and the visiting humanist professor Johannes Rhagius Aesticampianus, rather than with Luther. The best estimate of his age would make him three years younger than Karlstadt and six years younger than Luther. Even before coming to Wittenberg, he had begun a transition from scholasticism to humanism. At this time, he would have considered himself a “biblical humanist,” as indicated by his statements that the Church had been in decline for

 James S. Preus, Carlstadt’s Ordinaciones and Luther’s Liberty: A Study of the Wittenberg Movement, 1521 – 22 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 13 – 50.  Preus, Carlstadt’s Ordinaciones, 60 – 74.  Preus, Carlstadt’s Ordinaciones, 73 – 77; Hans-Jürgen Goertz, “The Reformation of the Commoners,” in A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521 – 1700, eds. John D. Roth and James M. Stayer (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), 8 – 9.

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three hundred years – since patristic theology was replaced by scholastic theology. Müntzer was certainly aware of Luther in his years in Wittenberg and shortly afterward, when he probably attended the disputation between Karlstadt, Luther, and Eck in Leipzig in 1519. The fourteenth-century Dominican mystic Johannes Tauler was very topical in Wittenberg on the eve of the Reformation. Luther drew on him in his lectures on Romans between 1515 and 1517, and in 1516 he edited another fourteenth-century mystical treatise, Theologia Deutsch, which he mistakenly attributed to Tauler. Müntzer probably deepened his earlier knowledge of Tauler in his discussions with Karlstadt in early 1519 – the soteriologies of Karlstadt and Müntzer made use of Tauler in similar ways.⁶ It is highly probable that the stress on personal mortification in the salvation process was something Müntzer learned from Karlstadt. When the charge of St. Mary’s Church in Zwickau became vacant in May 1520 – due to the temporary absence of its biblical humanist pastor, Johannes Sylvius Egranus, Luther recommended Müntzer for the post. When Egranus returned in the autumn, Müntzer was reassigned to St. Catherine’s Church. There he came into contact with Nikolaus Storch, a weaver who was prominent in a Corpus Christi confraternity. Müntzer’s distinctive, mature theology was the product of his controversy with Egranus in 1520 – 1521 over the nature of biblical humanism. Egranus had taken Erasmus’ ideas to an extreme; he asserted the nearly total superiority of the New Testament over the Old and insisted that biblical inspiration by the Holy Spirit had ceased with the time of the apostles, so that the application of biblical authority amounted to a textual study of the New Testament. For Müntzer, this amounted to an endorsement of the heresy of Marcion, which held that God revealed himself only in the New Testament. Müntzer responded that the revelation of the Holy Spirit was continuous – as he said a little later in his Prague Epistle (1521): “Thomas Müntzer wants to pray to a speaking God, not a mute one.” All parts of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, had to be respected in their integrity through “collatio locorum” (the comparison of texts). God reveals himself in the “abyss of the soul” through human suffering, a suffering revealed to the literate by the Bible and to the illiterate by the suffering of animals in nature at the hands of human beings. God’s will fulfills itself in the course of history through the building of an imminent kingdom of Christ, foreshadowed by the proclamations of the Hussites and of Luther, and by perfecting the prior revelation imparted through the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles of the Old and New Testaments.⁷

 Goertz, “Reformation of the Commoners,” 21; Goertz, Thomas Müntzer. Revolutionär am Ende der Zeiten – eine Biographie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2015), 32 and 221– 25.  Ulrich Bubenheimer, Thomas Müntzer. Herkunft und Bildung (Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill, 1989), 216 – 29; James M. Stayer, “Prophet, Apokalyptiker, Mystiker: Thomas Müntzer und die ‘Kirche’ der Patriarchen, Propheten und Apostel,” in Endzeiterwartung bei Thomas Müntzer und im frühen Luthertum, ed. James M. Stayer and Hartmut Kühne (Mühlhausen: Thomas-Müntzer Gesellschaft, 2011), 5 – 25.

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The Zwickau Council, perturbed by the quarrel between Müntzer and Egranus, discharged Müntzer in April 1521, just as Luther was appearing at the Diet of Worms. Over the following two years, Müntzer lived a wandering life, marked by stays in Prague, Erfurt, and Nordhausen. In Prague, he hoped that the Utraquist heirs of Jan Hus would play a central role in establishing the kingdom of Christ, but he discovered that they were another group intent on the study of the Bible and did not open themselves to the voice of the Spirit. In brief sojourns in Erfurt and Nordhausen, he encountered Luther’s close friends Johannes Lang and Laurence Süsse, with whom he engaged in personal or theological quarrels which certainly worsened Luther’s impression of him.⁸ Meanwhile, the visits of Müntzer’s Zwickau parishioners Storch and Stübner to Wittenberg – where they met not only Melanchthon, but also Luther after his return from Wartburg Castle – gave rise in 1522 to Luther’s polemical writings against the “Zwickau Prophets,” a term that Luther invented. It should be stressed that the “Zwickau Prophets” did not exist – they were a figment of the imagination, first of sixteenth-century polemics, and then of twentieth-century historiography. Siegfried Hoyer’s research demonstrated this in 1986,⁹ and – more recently and emphatically – Thomas Kaufmann reiterated this point in 2010. Kaufmann describes the “Zwickau Prophets” as a “relatively short-lived heresiological construction,” employed by Luther between January and May 1522: “Enduring historical effects could not have been produced by the persons identified as ‘Zwickau Prophets,’ if only because they had no identifiable organizational structure, because the coherence of their religious and ideological convictions is doubtful, and the intensity of their activities and interactions, so far as we know, did not extend beyond very sporadic encounters with outsiders or discussions among themselves.”¹⁰ Nevertheless, Storch and Stübner surely irritated Luther and Melanchthon, and the irritation redounded upon Thomas Müntzer. In March 1523, Müntzer was installed in St. John’s Church in Allstedt by the town council, acting on its own authority, although the post was formally in the gift of Allstedt’s sovereign lord, the elector of Saxony. Allstedt was a territorial enclave surrounded by Catholic lands, most importantly those of Duke George of Saxony. Müntzer established cordial relations with Simon Haferitz, Allstedt’s other pastor, as well as Hans Zeiß, the administrative representative of the Saxon elector in the enclave. Before the end of 1523, he instituted a German Evangelical Mass as well as German liturgies for the great festivals of the church year. While the institution of these services was in itself a conservative approach to reformation (later on, Luther introduced his own German mass), Müntzer’s scriptural translations in the litur-

 Goertz, Müntzer, 77– 109.  S. Hoyer, “Die Zwickauer Storchianer – Vorläufer der Täufer?” Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte 13 (1984): 60 – 78.  Thomas Kaufmann, “Zwickauer Propheten” und “sächsische Radikale”. Ein quellen- und traditionskritischer Rekonstruktionsversuch zu einer komplexen Konstellation (Mühlhausen: Thomas-Müntzer Gesellschaft, 2010), 90.

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gies reflected his particular doctrinal standpoint on the arrival of faith through spiritual struggle. In small pamphlets published in 1523, Müntzer expressed the view that the introduction of infant baptism in the early centuries had been a mistake, but he did not consider the matter important enough to abolish infant baptism, as Karlstadt had done. Müntzer tried to establish amicable relations with Luther and Melanchthon, despite the awareness of doctrinal differences on both sides. Luther did not reject the Old Testament in the manner of Egranus, but his theology had a stronger New Testament emphasis than Müntzer’s. More importantly, perhaps, Luther thought that Christian teaching should be based on study and exposition, and he rejected the idea of the continuing revelation of the Holy Spirit. Luther did not absolutely deny the possibility of direct inspiration by the Holy Spirit, but he insisted that direct inspiration had to be authenticated by the power to work miracles. Luther received no direct inspiration himself, and his position on this subject was so extreme that he insisted that all the Old Testament prophets had received their insights not directly, but through the study of Moses. Luther seems to have been convinced that individuals like Mὕntzer – who insisted on worshipping a “speaking God” – were mistaken about being inspired by the Holy Spirit. Luther seems to have believed that it was the devil, not the Spirit, who inspired them. Luther’s eschatological beliefs were more conventional than Mὕntzer’s, with no expectation of the creation of a kingdom of Christ on earth in the scope of human history. The theologians from Wittenberg pressured Müntzer to participate in doctrinal discussions in Wittenberg, but he evaded the pressure. Allstedt came under threat when villagers from the surrounding Catholic regions flocked there to attend Müntzer’s services, which their rulers forbade them to do, and for which these subjects were punished. Müntzer denounced one of the neighboring rulers, Count Ernst von Mansfeld, from his pulpit. Eventually the Allstedt residents formed a “covenant” to defend themselves and their neighbors from persecution for the sake of the gospel.¹¹ When the parish of Orlamünde was urged to adhere to the Allstedt covenant, Karlstadt and his flock refused to consider defending the gospel with force.¹² The public break between Luther and Müntzer began when Luther published his Open Letter against the Rebellious Spirit in Allstedt in July 1524, addressed to the princes of Electoral Saxony, in which he took umbrage with Müntzer for having “made a nest for himself in Allstedt, and think[ing] he can fight against me under my peace, shield, and protection.” Virtually at the same time – on July 13, 1524, in Allstedt Castle, Müntzer delivered a sermon to two bemused Electoral Saxon princes on Daniel 2, in which he asked them to protect the Reformation in Allstedt against its Catholic enemies, further threatening that, should his princes desert him, their power would be taken from them and handed over to the common people. Over the next  Goertz, Müntzer, 111– 38.  S. Bräuer, “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt und Thomas Müntzer,” Querdenker der Reformation. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt und seine frühe Wirkung, eds. Ulrich Bubenheimer and Stefan Oehmig (Würzburg: Religion-und-Kultur-Verlag, 2001), 187– 210.

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few weeks, events unfolded rapidly. The Electoral Saxon authorities dissolved the Allstedt covenant, deprived Müntzer of access to a printing press, and assured themselves of the loyalty of Hans Zeiß and the Allstedt Council. Deprived of effective support, Müntzer fled Allstedt on the night of August 7– 8, 1524.¹³ Müntzer fled to the free, imperial city of Mühlhausen in Thuringia, where a process of reformation was underway under the leadership of the radical monk Heinrich Pfeiffer. At the same time, he secured the publication in Nuremberg of his two most important works: Manifest Exposé of False Faith and A Highly Provoked Vindication, and a Refutation of the Unspiritual, Soft-living Flesh in Wittenberg. The first was the more substantial exposition of his theology, and the second a bitter polemic against Luther.¹⁴ The course of the Reformation did not run smoothly in Mühlhausen. In late September, Müntzer and Pfeiffer were expelled. By December Pfeiffer was back, and in February 1525, Müntzer – after wandering in southern Germany – became the pastor of St. Mary’s Church. According to Heinrich Bullinger, Müntzer spent eight weeks between November 1524 and January 1525 at Grießen in the Klettgau, where he witnessed some of the preliminary events of the German Peasants’ War. If Müntzer was indeed in Grießen, he almost certainly encountered Balthasar Hubmaier, a pastor in nearby Waldshut, and Conrad Grebel, who had written to him in September 1524 about his objections to infant baptism.¹⁵ Mühlhausen did not provide a safe haven for Müntzer upon his return there in February 1525. The imperial city had three princely protectors: Margrave Philip of Hesse (Lutheran), Elector Frederick of Saxony (Lutheran), and Duke George of Saxony (Catholic) – all were invested in supressing Müntzer’s version of the Reformation. Naturally Müntzer regarded it as providential when the Peasants’ War spread to Thuringia in April 1525. Mühlhausen sent a small contingent of three hundred men under Müntzer’s leadership to join the Thuringian peasant army of seven thousand at Frankenhausen. Müntzer became a sort of chaplain-strategist for the peasant army, which was destroyed by the combined forces of Hesse and Ducal Saxony on May 15, 1525. Müntzer was captured while fleeing the battlefield and, following interrogation and torture, was executed on May 27, 1525.¹⁶ Ever afterward, even in his writings against the Turks, Luther regarded Müntzer as the epitome of rebelliousness.

 Stayer, “Prophet,” 13 – 18.  Stayer, “Prophet,” 18 – 22.  Stayer, “Sächsischer Radikalismus und Schweizer Täufertum: Die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten,” in Wegscheiden der Reformation. Alternatives Denken vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Günter Vogler (Weimar: Böhlau, 1994), 174.  Goertz, Müntzer, 181– 217.

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4 Discussion of Sacraments and Luther’s term “Schwärmer” Karlstadt was exiled from Saxony in September 1524, about the same time that Müntzer was exiled from Mühlhausen. Both found themselves immersed in the chaos of the beginnings of the Peasants’ War. Karlstadt went to Strasbourg, Basel, and Zurich; he found temporary shelter in 1525 in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, an imperial city that allied itself with the Tauber peasant army and supplied it with heavy weapons. Karlstadt later energetically denied any complicity with the rebellion.¹⁷ In any case, he did not become a rebel leader in the manner of Müntzer. His main concern was to publish writings against Luther, aided by his brother-in-law, the Cologne patrician Gerhard Westerburg. In October and November 1524, he had 5,300 copies of seven anti-Lutheran works printed by Johannes Bebel and Thomas Wolf in Basel. These works were purchased by the bookseller Andreas Castelberger and his friend Felix Mantz, both members of the radical Reformed group in Zurich in which the first baptisms of adult believers began on January 21, 1525.¹⁸ Ulrich Zwingli, the leading pro-Reformation pastor in Zurich, remarked on the wide distribution of Karlstadt pamphlets in late 1524. Five of these pamphlets set out Karlstadt’s spiritual interpretation of the Lord’s Supper. The fact that they were approved by the censors in Basel led Luther to conclude that Zwingli and Oecolampadius had sided with his enemy, Karlstadt.¹⁹ In the years following his return to Wittenberg, Luther had become increasingly insistent on his particular doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. For him, this was a return to original Christian doctrine, which had been corrupted by the Aristotelian and papist notion of transubstantiation. Karlstadt had originally expounded a doctrine of the Lord’s Supper similar to Luther’s, but in the wake of his break with Luther, he abandoned ideas of real presence in favor of a spiritual/symbolic conception of the sacrament of the altar; this was part of a spiritualist turn in his understanding of both baptism and the Lord’s Supper.²⁰ In January 1525, Luther published Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments. Luther’s point was that Karlstadt’s spirit, due to his alleged support of iconoclasm, “is not good and is bent on murder and

 Goertz, “Reformation of Commoners,” 10 – 11 and 16.  Calvin A. Pater, Karlstadt as the Father of the Anabaptist Movement: The Emergence of Lay Protestantism (Toronto/London: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 159 – 62 and 290 – 94; for corrections on some points of detail, cf. Alejandro Zorzin, Karlstadt als Flugschriftenautor (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990).  Ulrich Gäbler, Huldrych Zwingli. His Life and Work (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 131– 32.  Amy Nelson Burnett, Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy: A Study in the Circulation of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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rebellion.”²¹ This established the pattern according to which Luther classed Karlstadt and everyone whom he associated with Karlstadt as “heavenly prophets,” enthusiasts, fanatics, Schwarmgeister, or – his favorite term – Schwärmer. For Luther, the Schwärmer included not only Karlstadt, but also Mὕntzer, Schwenckfeld, Oecolampadius, Zwingli, and anyone who agreed with them. The term is less of a figment of the imagination than “Zwickau Prophets,” but only because Luther used it so often from 1525 onward. Whatever Luther may have thought, Andreas Karlstadt did not assemble a great band of followers. Karlstadt found himself in great danger following the defeat of a peasant army at Königshofen in June 1525. He returned to Saxony and threw himself on Luther’s mercy. Luther did indeed protect Karlstadt and his family, but only in response to the promise that Karlstadt would accept Luther’s teaching on the Lord’s Supper. Karlstadt was allowed to settle near Wittenberg, but he was essentially defrocked, put under surveillance, and reduced to trying to earn a living as a merchant and farmer. Reneging on his promised recantation and fearing imprisonment, he fled Saxony in 1529. In Holstein in 1529, he championed the future Anabaptist leader Melchior Hoffman in contesting the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. In the last ten years of his life, Karlstadt received a renewed measure of dignity from the Swiss Reformed. In 1530, Zwingli secured him the post of deacon in the Gross Münster in Zurich. In 1534, he moved to Basel as the pastor of St. Peter’s and a professor of Old Testament. In his last years, prior to his death from the plague in 1541, Karlstadt was once more a respected academic in Basel, as he had once been in Wittenberg.²² When he was working with the Basel printers in late 1524, Karlstadt tried to publish an attack on Luther’s theological defense of infant baptism but was prevented by Oecolampadius and the Basel censors.²³ Felix Mantz and Andreas Castelberger left Basel, taking with them Karlstadt’s unpublished pamphlet. It is reasonable to assume that Karlstadt was more important than Müntzer to the Zurich radicals, who quarreled with Zwingli about the merits of infant or adult baptism. Conrad Grebel and Andreas Castelberger wrote to Karlstadt, who replied at least once and visited the group briefly in October 1524.²⁴ In their September 1524 letter to Müntzer, Grebel and his friends expressed the hope that Karlstadt and Müntzer were of one mind. In fact, Müntzer assured Oecolampadius at that time that he was continuing the practice of infant baptism, probably because he considered such ceremonial matters of secondary importance.²⁵ The group that began believers’ baptism in Zurich on Janu-

 Ronald J. Sider, ed., Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther: Documents in a Liberal-Radical Debate (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 103.  Goertz, “Reformation of Commoners,” 11.  Goertz, “Reformation of Commoners,” 10.  C.A. Snyder, “Swiss Anabaptism: the Beginnings, 1523 – 1525,” in Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 59 – 60; Pater, Karlstadt, 141.  Stayer, “Sächsischer Radikalismus,” 262.

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ary 21, 1525, was more concerned with the literal restoration of the New Testament practice of baptism and the Lord’s Supper than were either Müntzer or Karlstadt.

5 The Anabaptists The Anabaptists of southern and central Germany were much closer to the controversies of Luther, Karlstadt, and Müntzer than were the followers of Grebel and Mantz in Zurich. They accepted and spread adult baptism in the aftermath of the German Peasants’ War in 1525. They shared Müntzer’s emphasis on the continuing work of the Holy Spirit, and to that extent, they were less New Testament biblicists than the Swiss Anabaptists. Several of them had important biographical connections to Müntzer’s dramatic last days at Mühlhausen and Frankenhausen. Hans Denck emerges in Reformation history first as a university-trained, biblical humanist proofreader in Basel’s printing scene, a protégé of Oecolampadius. On Oecolampadius’ recommendation, he was appointed in 1523 as rector of St. Sebald’s Parish School in Nuremberg, a post he held until January 1525, when he was exiled for doctrinal deviations from the Lutheranism established in the city. At that time, he had mixed his humanism with mystical ideas reflecting Tauler and the Theologia Deutsch. Denck rejected Luther’s anti-Erasmian doctrine of predestination and insisted on an element of personal responsibility in the salvation process. For him, there was “something” – an inner spark of divine origin – which made it possible to fulfill the law of love in the Gospels. Salvation came through Christ, but it could only be appropriated by following Christ’s commands. Moreover, he insisted on the continuing activity of the Holy Spirit in human history, which was necessary to understanding the Bible. Strictly speaking, salvation did not require the reading or hearing of Scripture.²⁶ After his exile from Nuremberg, Denck probably became a schoolmaster in Mühlhausen in Thuringia during the Peasants’ War, but he escaped prior to the city’s capitulation in May 1525. He was imprisoned briefly in Schwyz for statements opposing infant baptism, then reappeared in Anabaptist circles in St. Gall in September 1525, after which he moved to Augsburg, where he stayed until October 1526.²⁷ There is no clear evidence of who baptized Denck, or even whether he thought that he needed a new, adult baptism. His first striking association with Anabaptism was his baptism of Hans Hut in Augsburg on Pentecost in 1526.²⁸ It can be argued that he regarded adult baptism as an apt expression of Reformation radicalism after the

 Geoffrey Dipple, “The Spiritualist Anabaptists,” in Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 260 – 64; Werner O. Packull, Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement, 1525 – 1531 (Scottdale, PA: Wipf & Stock, 1977), 35 – 61.  G. Baring, “Hans Denck und Thomas Müntzer in Nürnberg 1524,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 50 (1959): 178 – 79.  Packull, “Denck’s Alleged Baptism by Hubmaier: Its Significance for the Origin of South GermanAustrian Anabaptism,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 47 (1973): 327– 38.

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Augsburg pastors adopted a theology of the Lord’s Supper similar to those propagated in Strasbourg and Zurich and acceptable to the city’s elite.²⁹ Denck moved from Augsburg to Strasbourg – which, at that time, harbored all kinds of dissenters from the official churches of the Reformation. After a disputation with Martin Bucer, Strasbourg’s leading pastor, Denck was expelled in December 1526. He was singled out from among other Anabaptists as expounding especially dangerous doctrines. In early 1527, he moved down the Rhine to Worms, where he established contact with the pastor Jakob Kautz and the itinerate scholar Ludwig Hätzer. Bucer asserted that Denck and Kautz were trying to set up an Anabaptist congregation in Worms, similar to that earlier established by Balthasar Hubmaier in Waldshut. Geoffrey Dipple argues, however, that “the group around Denck [in Worms] looks more like a humanist sodality with common theological interests than an Anabaptist conventicle.” Its most important product was the joint translation of the prophetic books of the Old Testament by Denck and Hätzer. Luther suggested that Jews were involved in this translation, which is very plausible, since Worms had a significant Jewish community and the translation was free of tendentious Christological readings of the prophets. There is no evidence that Denck pursued his heterodoxy into anti-Trinitarianism, but this was the case with Hätzer before his execution in Constance in 1529. Denck left Worms in July 1527 and reappeared in Augsburg in August, in a gathering of some sixty Anabaptists, which was referred to as the “Martyrs’ Synod.” By that time, it seems that Denck was becoming troubled by his efforts to combine his beliefs with the biblicist and separatist Anabaptist beliefs coming from Switzerland into southern Germany. Thus he went to Basel, seeking refuge with his original patron, Oecolampadius. Denck arrived in Basel in October 1527 and died of the plague in November. In January 1528, a posthumous treatise, Protestation and Confession: Recantation, was published under Denck’s name. There has been much discussion about whether Oecolampadius subjected this posthumous work to tendentious editing. Geoffrey Dipple notes the basic harmony between Denck’s January 1525 statement in Nuremberg and the Protestation and Confession published three years later. He concludes that the problem in interpreting Denck comes from the overzealous effort to make his thought coherent with the early Anabaptism emanating from Switzerland. In other words, Bucer was correct to assert that there was a great religious difference between Denck and Michael Sattler.³⁰ Michael Sattler is best known for his Schleitheim Confession, seven articles of faith – named for a village in Schaffhausen, Switzerland – which were published in February 1527 in an attempt to create doctrinal unity in Swiss Anabaptism. This statement is plausibly interpreted as the beginning of the “Swiss Brethren,” with two caveats – the seven articles were not uniformly observed after February 1527

 Joel van Amberg, A Real Presence. Religious and Social Dynamics of the Eucharistic Conflicts in Early Modern Augsburg, 1520 – 1530 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).  Dipple, “Spiritualist Anabaptists,” 264– 71, esp. 268.

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by everyone who could sensibly be regarded as Swiss Brethren, and “denominational” distinctions were not made in Anabaptism until March 1528, when a group left the Anabaptist church in Nikolsburg, Moravia, and established themselves in Austerlitz. Prior to that (and for many more years outside of Moravia), differences in doctrine and practice – such as we have observed among Anabaptists in Strasbourg and Augsburg – were characteristic of “Anabaptists.” One of the most distinctive early Anabaptists was Hans Hut. He was interpreted by Gottfried Seebaß, the scholar who studied him most thoroughly, as “Müntzer’s heir.”³¹ Hut was a travelling book peddler, who sold the works of Luther but who also had close contacts with Müntzer. In September 1524, one “Hans from Bibra” was a signatory of the “eternal covenant” set up by Müntzer and Pfeiffer in Mühlhausen. In the following month, he secured the publication of Müntzer’s Manifest Exposé in Nuremberg. He was present in a noncombatant role at the battle of Frankenhausen in May 1525 and escaped in the aftermath of the defeat. At home in Bibra, he championed the continuance of the peasant resistance. Baptized by Denck in May 1526, he won converts near his Franconian home among veterans of the Peasants’ War. They expected a Turkish invasion as punishment for the ungodly victors in the 1525 conflict. Hut had established an apocalyptic timetable, according to which the defeat of the rebels in the Peasants’ War had cosmic significance. The kingdom of Christ that Müntzer had foretold would indeed come to pass, but only by supernatural intervention, forty-two months after his death, as prophesied in Revelation 11:1– 3 and 13:5 – 7. Hut seems to have seen his baptizing mission as a sealing of the 144,000 end-time elect mentioned in Revelation 7 and 14. With this kind of mindset, Hut moved quickly through southern and central Germany, Austria, and Moravia, recruiting effective lieutenants who also conducted mass baptisms. He seems to have accommodated his message to the societal temper of the regions he visited, so that not all of his converts were potential rebels against governmental authority. By the time of the Martyrs’ Synod in Augsburg in August 1527, enough opposition to Hut’s message had arisen in Anabaptist ranks that he agreed to keep quiet about his apocalyptic proclamation and to hold it as an esoteric truth, to be shared only with a select few. In September 1527, Hut was arrested by the Augsburg authorities. Under interrogation, he explicitly denounced the “regulation in Switzerland,” in which Anabaptists renounced the bearing of arms and the swearing of oaths. In December, he died in a fire that he appears to have set in an effort to break out of prison. The next year, 1528, was – according to Hut’s followers – to have brought about the end of days. Hans Römer’s aborted attempt to overthrow the city government of Erfurt on New Year’s Day, 1528, seems to have been connected with Hut’s timetable, and it was certainly based on retrospective reverence for Thomas Müntzer.³² The dis-

 Gottfried Seebaß, Müntzers Erbe. Werk, Leben und Theologie des Hans Hut (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2002); Packull, Mysticism, 62– 117.  Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1972), 190 – 93.

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appointment of apocalyptic hope substantially diminished the Saxon, spiritualist element in southern German and Moravian Anabaptism and fostered the rise of a substantial amalgamation with the New Testament biblicism that was the dominant tone in Swiss Anabaptism. After Hut’s imprisonment, Augustin Bader took over the leadership of the Anabaptist congregation in Augsburg, still hoping for the fulfillment of Hut’s expectations. By August 1528, the Augsburg Anabaptist congregation dissolved itself ³³ – one of the few instances in which failed apocalyptic prophecies were not somehow rationalized. Over the course of the following years, until 1535, the dominant ideal in Swiss-southern German Anabaptism was the community of goods, based on a reconstruction of the original New Testament church of Acts 2 and 4. Of course, this ideal was sufficiently vague to lend itself to numerous internal schisms – particularly in Moravia, where competing brotherhoods gave a denominational heterogeneity to Anabaptism.³⁴ However, the Hut-Müntzer spiritualizing of the Bible lived on among the Austerlitzers and the Hutterites. They developed a sermonizing tradition supposedly based on the Spirit’s inspiration of lay preachers, allegedly far superior to the dead letter of the Bible that educated clergy expounded in government-supported Lutheran and Reformed churches.³⁵

6 Caspar von Schwenckfeld, Strasbourg, and Melchior Hoffman Another figure who found himself in the catalogue of false theologians, condemned by Luther as a Schwärmer, was the Silesian nobleman Caspar von Schwenckfeld. In 1518, he became a prominent adviser to Friedrich II, Duke of Liegnitz, whom he encouraged to support the emerging Lutheran Reformation. However, in 1524 he wrote a treatise critical of Lutheran theology. He argued that Luther’s predestinarianism, his condemnation of “works’ righteousness,” and his subordination of the law to the gospel were morally pernicious. In 1525, he entered the controversy about the Lord’s Supper. Christ’s words of institution, Schwenckfeld held, were to be understood as follows: “My body is this, namely, food.” The food of which the Christian partook in the Lord’s Supper was spiritual food, the glorified body of Christ. In 1526, he proposed that the controversies over the Lord’s Supper should be avoided by a suspension (Stillstand) of sacramental observance until God should reveal the

 Anselm Schubert, Täufertum und Kabbalah. Augustin Bader und die Grenzen der Radikalen Reformation (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008).  Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Kingston/Montreal: McGill-Queens Press, 1991).  M. Rothkegel, “The Living Word: Uses of the Holy Scriptures among Sixteenth-Century Anabaptists in Moravia,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 89 (2015): 357– 404.

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truth. Luther wrote fiercely against Schwenckfeld, who went into voluntary exile in 1529 to avoid embarrassing his ruler.³⁶ In October 1531, one of Luther’s Schwärmer, Ulrich Zwingli, died in battle at Kappel. Even the Strasbourg clergy, who largely shared his understanding of the Lord’s Supper, agreed that this was a case of God’s judgment against a clergyman taking up arms. In fact, Zwingli had earlier that year broken off personal relations with Bucer, irritated by Bucer’s continuing efforts to negotiate some sort of compromise with Luther.³⁷ Just as in the case of Luther’s rupture with the Wittenberg movement in 1522, it is impossible to deny the political aspect of Bucer’s behavior in the 1530s. In 1529, Strasbourg had joined the Reformation by suppressing the Catholic mass. But the mayor of Strasbourg, Jacob Sturm, at first resisted allowing the pastors to impose a new religious uniformity in the city. This made Strasbourg a magnet for religious dissidents of all sorts. In 1531, Strasbourg joined the Schmalkaldic League, the anti-Catholic defensive alliance created by Hesse and Electoral Saxony. The price of admission was to adhere to Philipp Melanchthon’s Augsburg Confession (1530), the new measure of Lutheran orthodoxy. Bucer secured adherence to this formal Lutheranism not only from his own Strasbourg government, but also – with much effort – from that of like-minded southern German imperial cities. The Swiss went their own way, maintaining the difference between their Reformed Church and Lutheranism. With the disturbance created by Anabaptist Münster in 1534, Strasbourg ended its broad tolerance of the religiously heterodox. Finally, in May 1536, Bucer travelled to Wittenberg to paper over his differences with Luther on the Lord’s Supper.³⁸ The younger John Calvin, exiled from Geneva to Strasbourg in 1538 – 1541, learned from Bucer (and Melanchthon) how to extend to Luther the deference he demanded without entirely agreeing with him. Melchior Hoffman and Caspar von Schwenckfeld met in Strasbourg in 1529 and 1530. They respected and learned from each other. In the 1520s, Hoffman, a furrier by trade, was a missionary for the Reformation in the Baltic region. After some difficulties with Lutheran pastors, he travelled to Wittenberg in 1526, where Luther made a statement vouching for his orthodoxy. As early as 1526, however, Hoffman was foretelling the end of the world in 1533, a position he maintained despite other doctrinal changes. The disorder, riots, and iconoclasm that accompanied Hoffman’s lay apostolate got him into trouble with university-educated Lutheran clergymen as the Lutheran Reformation became increasingly established in the Baltic lands. Hoffman’s rivalry with the pastors inclined him increasingly toward non-Lutheran doctrinal positions. The most disputed Lutheran doctrine was the belief about the real presence in the Lord’s Supper. In the Flensburg Disputation in Holstein in 1529, Hoffman  P. C. Erb, “Schwenckfeld, Caspar von,” Mennonite Encyclopedia (Scottdale, PA/Waterloo: Herald Press, 1990), 5:801.  Gäbler, Zwingli, 147– 48, 150 – 51, and 162.  Martin Greschat, Martin Bucer. Ein Reformator und seine Zeit, 1491 – 1551 (München: Aschendorff, 1990), 59 – 152.

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found himself on the side of Karlstadt, who had just been expelled from Saxony for the last time, attacking Lutheran orthodoxy on this issue. As a result, Hoffman was expelled from Scandinavia and the Baltic lands but was welcomed in Strasbourg, where the pastors taught the same Eucharistic doctrine as he. Here, however, Hoffman encountered not only Bucer and Capito, but also Schwenckfeld and Anabaptists of various outlooks.³⁹ Schwenckfeld and the Anabaptists, of course, discussed baptism in Strasbourg. Schwenckfeld agreed with the Anabaptists that adult baptism was most in accord with the New Testament. Infant baptism, although unscriptural, was nevertheless permissible (a position seemingly close to that of Thomas Müntzer). Through inner cleansing alone is the believer connected with the body of Christ. Even more distinctive – and of immense importance for Hoffman, Anabaptist Münster, and the early Mennonites – was Schwenckfeld’s Christology. “Schwenckfeld insisted that Jesus’ humanity was not that of a creature but, rather, of heavenly origin, a celestial flesh in which a progressive deification took place, the divine nature more and more divinizing it […] Implanted in the believer, faith develops parallel to the way the divine progressed in Christ’s celestial flesh, leading one through suffering into glory.”⁴⁰ Although he always insisted on the originality and superiority of his Christology, the only way in which Hoffman differed from Schweckfeld was to simplify the point that Christ’s flesh came down from heaven and was implanted in his mother, Mary.⁴¹ In both cases, the human nature of Christ – the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon – would seem to be severely attenuated. Throughout the sixteenth century and into the early seventeenth century, this remained the Christology of the Dutch Mennonites. Hoffman’s Strasbourg theology next emphasized a two-way covenant between God and the individual human being. People were intrinsically sinful, and only through the grace of the sinless Christ could they be redeemed, but this grace was extended to everyone, and the redeemed person was fully able to respond to God’s grace through a regenerate life. Moreover, anyone who abandoned the covenant knowingly and wantonly (with something more than a mere stumble or slip) was irretrievably lost – the characteristic Melchiorite doctrine of the unforgivable sin. The baptism of the mature believer was the seal of the covenant knowingly and responsibly entered into; it was a symbol of the covenant, the ring Christ gave his human bride. However, Hoffman did not stress baptism as much as typical Anabaptist leaders did; as with Hans Denck, we know nothing about his own baptism. Hoffman’s self-understanding, following Revelation 11, as one of the two witnesses of the last days was always important for him; tradition associated these two witnesses with the biblical figures of Elijah and Enoch, the two men caught up into heaven  Klaus Deppermann, Melchior Hoffman. Soziale Unruhen und apokalyptische Visionen im Zeitalter der Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 36 – 138.  Erb, “Schwenckfeld,” 5:802.  Deppermann, Hoffman, 186 – 91.

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alive. Hoffman’s following of Strasbourg prophets convinced him that he was the apocalyptic Elijah. Just exactly what would happen in the last days was murky; it had overtones of righteous violence. The prophet’s immediate following would eschew all violence, but they would support godly rulers – like the government of Strasbourg – who would withstand the attack of the imperial dragon in the final tribulations.⁴² Melchior Hoffman, like Hans Hut before him, combined a baptizing mission with an apocalyptic message. He began baptizing believers in the city of Emden in 1530, while on a trip from Strasbourg to East Frisia. East Frisia was an independent principality bordering the Habsburg Netherlands, which at that time had its capital in Brussels. East Frisia was open to various kinds of Protestantism because of the friendly attitude of its ruler and the aristocracy. The Netherlands government was trying to enforce Catholic orthodoxy, but its efforts were not very effective, due to the stubborn local independence of its provinces and cities. The whole country was permeated with broad sympathy for the Reformation, among both the laity and the clergy. When Hoffman began baptizing in the Netherlands, only a minority – gripped by his apocalyptic message – risked baptism. Some of his prominent followers were executed in the Hague in 1531; as a result, Hoffman was shocked into declaring a twoyear Stillstand – suspending baptism until 1533, when he expected the end of the world. Thus the apocalyptic message spread underground in the Netherlands and surrounding territories.⁴³ In 1533, Hoffman was imprisoned in Strasbourg, which had now become less tolerant. His orphaned movement in the Netherlands fell into the hands of Jan Matthijs, a baker from Haarlem, who fancied himself the apocalyptic Enoch.⁴⁴

7 The Münster Uprising, David Joris, Menno Simons, and Pilgram Marpeck In 1533, the apocalyptic Anabaptism that Hoffman began became connected with a radicalizing urban reformation in nearby Münster in Westphalia. Münster was a semi-independent city, ruled by a council and an assembly of guild masters, under the authority of a prince-bishop. Its reformation was headed by Bernhard Rothmann, a local cleric with strong support in the guilds and the less privileged citizenry. Impatient with the Lutheranism that pervaded pro-Reformation territories in Germany, Rothmann and his fellow pastors opted for a symbolic view of the Lord’s Supper and for theoretical support of adult baptism, without actually putting it into practice. The presentation of the Münster pastors’ Confession of the Two Sacraments to a group of

 Deppermann, Hoffman, 176 – 86 and 191– 235.  Deppermann, Hoffman, 271– 88.  Deppermann, Hoffman, 288 – 93.

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Anabaptists in Amsterdam in December 1533 provided Jan Matthijs with the occasion to proclaim the resumption of adult baptism and to prophesy the end of the world on Easter Sunday, 1534.⁴⁵ In January 1534, two of Jan Matthijs’ emissaries baptized Rothmann and his fellow pastors in Münster. Over the course of the next two months, an internal struggle led to the flight of Catholics and Lutherans from the city and the entry of Anabaptist refugees from the surrounding lands. In late February, Anabaptists and Anabaptist sympathizers won the regular elections of the city council. The bishop of Münster responded by besieging the city. Melchior Hoffman had not taught the Swiss Anabaptist principle that true Christians should avoid government office; the Münster Anabaptists seem to have resisted the besiegers in a spirit of communal self-defense. The prophet Jan Matthijs was killed in a sally on April 5, 1534, on Easter Sunday – the day he had predicted would herald the end of the world.⁴⁶ At that point, his lieutenant, Jan Beukels of Leiden, took over the leadership and organized a theocratic regime – first a Council of Twelve Elders, and then, in September 1534, a kingship that proclaimed itself the world’s only legitimate government. The Anabaptists repulsed two assaults and maintained an effective resistance until they were blockaded and no longer able to supply the city. Rothmann became the publicist for the regime, defending its version of the community of goods and the organization of the female majority of the besieged population into polygamous families. He claimed that King Jan van Leiden was a new David, fulfilling the prophecies of Scripture, and summoned the Anabaptists of surrounding lands to take up the sword of vengeance on behalf of Anabaptist Münster.⁴⁷ The spectacle of Anabaptist Münster provided material for contemporary pamphlet literature, the Neue Zeitungen. These Anabaptists were the ultimate Schwärmgeister – the fruit to be expected from their bad theological seed. Before the fall of Anabaptist Münster on June 25, 1535, Rothmann’s writings had begun to anticipate the final collapse and to prophesy the end of the world in another forty-two months – the same way that Hut responded to Müntzer’s end.⁴⁸ In the surrounding Westphalian lands over the next few years, in fact, many Anabaptists cherished such hopes for the end of 1538.⁴⁹ David Joris of Delft, the spiritualist leader of the Melchiorite remnant in the Netherlands, did present himself as the promised David, and may have also had apocalyptic expectations for 1538. In 1539, Joris took refuge with his supporters in Antwerp; then in 1544, he moved to Basel under an assumed name. He increasingly became a secretive cult leader, conducting an exten-

 William de Bakker, Michael D. Driedger, and James M. Stayer, Bernhard Rothmann and the Reformation in Münster, 1530 – 35 (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2009), 89 – 142.  de Bakker, Driedger, and Stayer, Bernhard Rothmann and the Reformation, 142– 69.  de Bakker, Driedger, and Stayer, Bernhard Rothmann and the Reformation, 169 – 201.  de Bakker, Driedger, and Stayer, Bernhard Rothmann and the Reformation, 201– 05.  K.-H. Kirchhoff, “Die Täufer im Münsterland: Verbreitung und Verfolgung des Täufertums im Stift Münster, 1533 – 1550,” Westfälische Zeitschrift 113 (1963): 1– 109.

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sive correspondence.⁵⁰ From 1539, Menno Simons – a former priest – became the leader of the Melchiorite remnant. In the first edition of his classic Foundation Book (1539/1540), Menno acknowledged that at least some of his followers had fought for Münster: “I do not doubt but that our dear brethren who have formerly transgressed a little against the Lord, when they intended to defend their faith with arms, have a merciful God.”⁵¹ For another two decades, baptizing Mennonites became the visible Protestant minority in the Habsburg Netherlands, subjected to extreme persecution. The heterogeneity of Anabaptist doctrine is nowhere better illustrated than by the work of Pilgram Marpeck, the doctrinal spokesman for the Austerlitz Brethren in Moravia. Rothmann’s Confession of 1533 provided the basis for Marperck’s Admonition of 1542, but in writing against Anabaptist spiritualizers, Marpeck also reworked material from Luther’s Against the Heavenly Prophets. He presented an entirely orthodox Chalcedonian Christology, with full emphasis on the humanity of Christ, and a view of the sacraments as co-witnesses that comes close to Luther’s view of the sacraments as expressions of the word of God. Marpeck and his associate, Leupold Scharnschlager, articulated a biblicism in which the Old Testament was the “shadow” pointing to the “promise” of the New Testament. Some of Marpeck’s ideas were probably absorbed by the Swiss Brethren in the latter part of the sixteenth century.⁵²

8 The Anabaptists in Central Germany and Martin Luther In a hearing in Mühlhausen in 1537, an Anabaptist woman declared that her religious beliefs were based on the teachings of Müntzer and Pfeiffer.⁵³ It is safe to assume that she had never heard of Conrad Grebel or Michael Sattler. Of course, at the same time, the Mühlhausen Council insisted that in 1524 and 1525 – when Thomas Müntzer was a pastor in the city – no one had ever heard of Anabaptism. The history of Anabaptism in Luther’s, Karlstadt’s, and Müntzer’s Saxon and Thuringian homeland is currently receiving increased attention. Unlike in Moravia, where Anabaptism developed in small denominations beginning in 1528, here rebaptized adherents travelled from

 Gary K. Waite, David Joris and Dutch Anabaptism, 1524 – 1543 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990).  Menno Simons, Dat Fundament des Christelycken Leers, opnieuw uitgegeven en van een engelse inleiding voorzien, ed. H. W. Meihuizen (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967).  Walter Klaassen, Marpeck: A Life of Dissent and Conformity (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2008); Rothkegel, “Anabaptism in Moravia and Silesia,” in Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 163 – 215; Snyder, “The (Not-so) ‘Simple Confession’ of the Later Swiss Brethren,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 73 (1999): 677– 722; 74 (2000): 87– 122.  Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, 189 – 90.

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village to village without forming factions loyal to particular itinerant baptizers. The biggest geographical centers of Anabaptism in these regions were the areas around Mühlhausen and Frankenhausen, a fact which points to the connections between Saxon-Thuringian Anabaptism and memories of Müntzer and the Peasants’ War. As one of the leaders, Jakob Storger, declared in 1537: “Müntzer’s teaching was right […] as he grasped the inner word so well, and the proof of that is that he wielded the outer sword with the inner word.”⁵⁴ The complications of central German Anabaptist origins are nowhere better illustrated than in the career of Thuringia’s most prominent Anabaptist leader, Melchior Rinck. A university graduate, Rinck was a Reformation supporter who held the pastorate of Echardtshausen in Hesse and sided with Müntzer against Luther in 1524. He participated in the battle of Frankenhausen, escaped, and, like Hut, declared that he would continue Müntzer’s work. For a time, he left the dangerous area of central Germany, and in 1527 he reappeared at Worms, associated with the spiritualist Anabaptism of Hans Denck and Jacob Kautz. By the next year, he had returned to the West Thuringian border lands between Hesse and Electoral Saxony, where his long Anabaptist career continued until his death after 1550. In 1531, he was imprisoned by Philip of Hesse, who rejected Electoral Saxon demands for his execution; for the next twenty years, Rinck lived as an example of perseverance, continually rejecting opportunities to recant, which would have secured his release from prison. His rejection of Lutheranism was based upon the widespread popular view that the new preachers had not produced moral fruits. He believed that baptism was appropriate only when a young person had reached the age of moral accountability.⁵⁵ One of the last major efforts to secure Rinck’s recantation was made by Peter Tasch. In a colloquy given in Marburg in late 1538, Tasch and a group of Melchiorites in Hesse were persuaded by Bucer – demonstrating his characteristic flexibility – to renounce Anabaptism in return for a promise by the established Hessian Protestant Church to stress confirmation, which would inculcate young people with the significance of their baptism as infants, and to institute church discipline.⁵⁶ Such a compromise should have appealed to Rinck, but his bitter experience led him to insist that a genuinely Christian Church and Christian government would permit religious freedom. As John S. Oyer summarizes the matter: “Rinck struck a blow against the widespread use of the term Schwärmer […] for all persons not in agreement with the Lutheran princes and theologians.”⁵⁷ Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon were among the Saxon luminaries who attempted to persuade Philip of Hesse of the need to execute Melchior Rinck. In Lu-

 Kat Hill, Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief in Reformation Germany: Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525 – 1585 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 33 – 97, esp. 95, and 204– 08.  John S. Oyer, Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists. Luther, Melanchthon and Menius and the Anabaptists of Central Germany (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 52– 66 and 75 – 113.  Greschat, Bucer, 163 – 66.  Oyer, Lutheran Reformers, 64.

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ther’s major tract against Anabaptists, On Rebaptism to Two Pastors – written early in 1528, at the high point of the execution of Anabaptists, primarily by Catholic rulers –, he insisted that faith was a matter of personal conscience and that it was abominable for rulers to execute people for heresy. He said that he did not know much about Anabaptists because they had not spread to Electoral Saxony, but nevertheless, anyone who rejected infant baptism was a Schwärmer. Melanchthon had early doubts about infant baptism, going back to Markus Stübner’s visit to Wittenberg in 1521.⁵⁸ Luther’s basic position was that, other things being equal, the traditional practices of the Catholic Church were valid. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper – like Scripture and the incarnate Christ – were material vehicles of the word of God; to deny this was, in principle, Schwärmerei. Melanchthon soon persuaded Luther that, although Catholic execution of heretics was wicked, in regions where the gospel was proclaimed purely, something had to be done to check sedition. In Rinck’s case, he had come back to the borderlands between Hesse and Electoral Saxony despite being exiled. This was obvious disobedience of authority. In any case, spreading false doctrines was blasphemous, and – as Rinck’s past amply demonstrated – one thing led to another; his peaceful message was latent with the violence of Müntzer and Münster.⁵⁹ In fact, the general practice of Lutheran jurisdictions throughout the empire was to resist the Reichstag decree of 1529 that mandated the death penalty for Anabaptism. From 1531 onward, the Schmalkaldic League protected the princes and imperial cities that refused to execute Anabaptists. The places where Protestant authorities were dangerous for Anabaptists were Reformed Switzerland and Electoral Saxony. Still, as Claus-Peter Clasen’s quantifying study of Anabaptism indicates, we know of only twenty-one Anabaptist executions in Electoral Saxony out of the total of more than two thousand Anabaptist martyrs in the Reformation era. In the early years of the Reformation, Luther’s bombast to the contrary notwithstanding, Catholic rulers killed radical Reformers; Lutheran and Reformed leaders generally protected them, or at least spared their lives. Moreover, the hotspot of continuing Protestant brutality toward Anabaptists was Swiss Berne, not Lutheran Saxony.⁶⁰ Martin Luther’s remarkable achievement was the maintenance of his personal authority over the German part of the Reformation until his death in 1546, on the eve of the Schmalkaldic War of 1546 – 1547. Despite Luther’s own insistence – and that of later generations, extending through Lutheran orthodoxy (Gottes Wort und Luthers Lehr, Wird vergehen nimmermehr) and the twentieth-century Luther Renaissance, this authority was not based on consistent, unwavering doctrine. Luther’s

 Oyer, Lutheran Reformers, 116 – 24.  Oyer, Lutheran Reformers, 140 – 78.  Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism. A Social History, 1525 – 1618: Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1972), 358 – 422; Stayer, “Numbers in Anabaptist Research,” in Commoners and Community. Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull, ed. C.A. Snyder (Scottdale, PA/Waterloo: Herald Press, 2002), 58 – 60.

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writings were not systematic, and De servo arbitrio (1525) was not a pronouncement from which he never moved. Still, as long as he lived, the Schwärmer were who he said they were – Reformation supporters who did not defer to him. They were people who thought they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, but who were in fact possessed by the devil. When the Schwärmer category was revived in the twentieth century by people who presented themselves as serious scholars – first Karl Holl, and then John Howard Yoder, its use was not dissimilar to Luther’s. Even if the devil was not explicitly behind the Schwärmer according to the perspectives of Holl and Yoder, nevertheless – for them, as for Luther – the Schwärmer were people who did not live up to the standard of true religion.⁶¹

 Karl Holl, “Luther und die Schwärmer,” idem, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 1, Luther (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1923), 420 – 67; Heinold Fast, ed., Der linke Flügel der Reformation. Glaubenszeugnisse der Täufer, Spiritualisten, Schwärmer und Antitrinitarier (Bremen: Carl Schünemann Verlag, 1962).

Guido Mongini

The “Third Sects”: Italian Heretics and the Criticism of the Protestant Reformation (1530 – 1550) 1 The Failure of the Reformation in Italy: An Overview In his famous work of 1552 against the practice of “religious simulation” (about which more will be said below), entitled Exhortation to Martyrdom, the former Augustinian friar Giulio Della Rovere (also known as Giulio da Milano) – who had been exiled religionis causa to the Grisons in 1543 and was a Calvinist pastor of the church in Vicosoprano in 1546 and in Poschiavo beginning in 1547, where he lived until his death in 1581 – denounced the way some Italian heretics “had mixed papism with Anabaptism” and had thus “started to create a third sect.”¹ In this specific circumstance, Giulio da Milano was mainly directing his attack against Anabaptism and the doctrines of the “satanic Giorgio from Sicily” – the Benedictine monk Giorgio Rioli (of whom more will be said below), who was at the head of the “Giorgian sect.” Yet his plea had a much wider reach. Della Rovere – who, although unable to go beyond his intransigent Calvinist positions, still took an interest in subversive religious doctrines – understood very lucidly the threat that the latter posed to the new orthodoxy of the Calvinist Church, since, at the very least, they allowed their followers to evade any clear-cut choice between the antichrist in Rome and Calvin’s new, surly Jerusalem in Geneva and thus represented a great obstacle in the path of the triumphant affirmation of the latter as the only “true Church.”² Putting aside Della Rovere’s controversy with Nicodemism for the moment, it should be briefly mentioned that in Italy, the affirmation of the Reformation coming from the other side of the Alps was substantially contained and defeated by 1580 – despite the wide circulation of Luther’s doctrines in Italy in the 1520s (increasing after the sack of Rome in 1527), the rapid spread of religious dissent during the

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  Cf. Giulio da Milano (Giulio Della Rovere), Esortatione al martirio (s.l. 1552), 145; Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento, 2nd ed. (Torino: Einaudi, 1992), 72. Cf. Massimo Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Un profilo storico (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 1993), 17– 18, 74– 75, 157 and see also the index; Firpo, Juan de Valdés e la Riforma nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2016), see the index; Adriano Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro Grande. Storia di Giorgio Siculo e della sua setta (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2000), see the index.  Cf. da Milano, Esortatione al martirio, 145 and 147. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-029

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1530s and 1540s, and the proliferation of groups, communities, and even Protestant churches up until the 1560s.³ From the eighteenth century to today, a long tradition of studies has focused on the history of the “Reformation in Italy” and its failure and has investigated the main causes and historical reasons for the latter, which can be grouped into three main issues.⁴ The first issue, which has been highlighted many times, focuses on the repressive action of the tribunals of faith – the Inquisition. Studies on this subject proliferated particularly after the Vatican archives of the former Holy Office were made available in 1998.⁵ The second issue has been connected to the activity of religious renewal favored by the Church of Rome itself, which from time to time has emphasized both the work of the Council of Trent and the activity of the religious orders, both old and new (especially the Jesuits and the Capuchins), as well as the different instances, more or less connected with each other, that converged in the so-called Catholic Reform (of which the Council of Trent and the religious orders were part).⁶ The third issue involves the lack of participation of the nobility and the aristocratic classes – that is, of the secular political elite – in the Reformation. These perspectives have been clarified and substantially reconfirmed by the historiography of the last few decades, research which has contributed to a profound renewal of historical knowledge on the diffusion of heterodox movements and ideas in Italy. Recent studies⁷ devoted to the comparison between the Reformation in France and in Italy have emphasized analogies and differences in the activity of the secular tribunals in France and of the religious tribunals in Italy. However, they have also underlined the very different outcomes achieved in the repression of heterodoxy, which was much more effective in Italy than it was in the French territories. Moreover, it is being brought to light (but, for this purpose, more research is still needed) that a great obstacle to the circulation of the Reformation at the level of the civil authorities was posed not only by the political and governmental fragmentation of Italy – the political weakness of the Italian princes – but also to a great extent by the properly feudal nature of the connections between the papacy and the

 In general, cf. Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie, throughout; more specific studies will be listed in the text below. See also the summary offered by Lucia Felici, La Riforma protestante nell’Europa del Cinquecento (Roma: Carocci, 2016), 147 ff.  For an in-depth summary on the historiography devoted to the issue of the Reformation in Italy, cf. Firpo, “La Riforma italiana del Cinquecento. Le premesse storiografiche,” in “Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede”. Studi sulla vita religiosa del Cinquecento italiano (Milano: Unicopli, 2003), 11– 66. See also Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Alain Tallon, eds., La Réforme en France et en Italie. Contacts, comparaisons et contrastes (Rome: Collection de l’École française de Rome, 2007); Felici, ed., Ripensare la Riforma protestante. Nuove prospettive degli studi italiani (Torino: Claudiana, 2015).  For a general perspective, cf. Andrea Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia. Dal XII al XXI secolo (Milano: Mondadori, 2006).  The foundations of this historiographical perspective can be found in the famous brief volume by Hubert Jedin, Riforma cattolica o Controriforma? (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1957).  Cf. Benedict, Seidel Menchi, and Tallon, La Réforme en France et en Italie.

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political elite in the whole of Italy (and not just the Papal states) through the management of the major benefices and most of the minor ones, too. The great bishoprics and the largest abbeys, whose conferral was always the privilege of the members of important aristocratic families or of the upper bourgeoisie who were not involved in trade, were conferred directly by the pontiffs during the consistory and were thus a very powerful tool of control and subordination of the Italian noble classes and social elites, which depended quite literally on papal decisions for their own prosperity and the prosperity of their relatives, and which therefore tried to avoid any explicit ecclesiological fracture that would immediately and irreparably compromise their economic fortune and social prestige.⁸ However, apart from these main causes – which have been differently emphasized by historiography – the renewal of studies on the Italian religious crisis of the sixteenth century over the last thirty years has highlighted a plurality of new sources and produced many historiographical reconstructions that allow us to put forward another hypothesis as well, in addition to the ones already mentioned. According to this hypothesis, the failure of the Reformation in Italy is also due to a certain critical awareness, which is not only circumscribed to the exponents of the ecclesiastical and political hierarchies that stayed loyal to the Roman Church, but which also extends to the Italian heterodox groups themselves. In other words, it seems possible to suggest that among the causes of the failure to affirm the Reformation in Italy, we must also consider the existence of a wide and multifaceted front of criticism of the Reformation that had been taking hold on the other side of the Alps. The exponents of this front were active in the ranks of Italian anti-Catholic heretical dissent. At the moment, this perspective has been investigated only in part; however, while awaiting further research, it still is possible to clarify and better define it. On the historiographical level, the criticisms and oppositions that the Italian religionis causa exiles raised – especially against Calvin and the Swiss churches after Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva in 1553 – have been well known ever since the publication of Delio Cantimori’s great work Eretici italiani del Cinquecento. ⁹ It is also well known that it was precisely those clashes and conflicts – which had other victims too, such as Bernardino Ochino, who was expelled from Zürich in the middle of the winter of 1563 at the age of 76;¹⁰ or Valentino Gentile, who was executed in Bern in 1566,¹¹ to mention only two of the most famous examples – that

 Cf. the sharp observations by E. Brambilla, “La repressione dell’eresia in Francia e in Italia,” in La Réforme en France et en Italie, 498 – 509, especially 502– 04.  Cf. Cantimori, Eretici italiani, throughout.  On Ochino’s religious trajectory and on the reasons for his exile, cf. Firpo, “‘Boni christiani merito vocantur haeretici’. Bernardino Ochino e la tolleranza”, in Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede, 247– 320.  On Gentile, see Luca Addante, Valentino Gentile e il dissenso religioso nel Cinquecento. Dalla Riforma italiana al radicalismo europeo (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2014).

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started the great debate on religious tolerance inaugurated by Sebastian Castellio’s famous De haereticis an sint persequendi (1554). However, new research and the rereading of well-known sources from renewed perspectives is indicating that, among the Italian heretics, there were some voices that were very critical of the Protestant Reformation. At the same time, in the 1530s, there had also already been attempts to define alternative theologies and ecclesiologies. This means that criticisms of the Reformation appeared in Italy well before the intransigent and intolerant involution of the new churches born out of the Reformation became tragically evident. The turning point of this involution was marked precisely by Servetus being burned at the stake in Geneva in 1553, as demonstrated by the subsequent European debate, while neither the merciless repression of the German Peasants’ War of 1525, which was supported by Luther, nor the destruction of Münster’s Anabaptist “New Jerusalem” in 1535 had had the same outcomes.¹² Thus, in the wake of the issues mentioned above, the historical problem I would like to briefly outline here focuses on the following questions: Apart from and beyond the one already identified, whether rightly or wrongly, by Giulio da Milano in 1552, were there really – in the frenzied decades of the Italian religious crisis of the sixteenth century – one or more “third sects” critical of both the Church of Rome and the churches born out the Reformation? Moreover, is it possible to suggest that these “sects” played some sort of role in the failure of the Reformation in Italy?

2 The Church of the Spirit and Nicodemism: Camillo Renato Paolo Ricci, who is better known as Camillo Renato (and also known as Lisia Fileno and Fileno Lunardi), was born at the beginning of the century, presumably in Palermo. After he joined the Franciscan order, he became interested in Protestant doctrines and spent a long time in Strasbourg – from 1534 to 1537 – where he met Martin Bucer and had an even closer relationship with Wolfgang Capito.¹³ After his return to Italy, he was tried for heresy in Venice and acquitted. In 1538, he went to Bologna, and later, in January or February 1540, to Modena, where he was arrested in the au-

 On the vicissitudes of Münster’s Anabaptist “Kingdom” – the destruction of which was brought about by both Catholic and Lutheran forces – cf. Ugo Gastaldi, Storia dell’anabattismo, vols. 1– 2 (Torino: Claudiana, 1972– 1981), 1:504 ff, and Norman Cohn, I fanatici dell’Apocalisse (Milano: Einaudi, 2000), throughout.  For further details on Renato, apart from the following footnote, cf. Carlo Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo. Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell’Europa del ‘500 (Torino: Einaudi, 1970), 140, 165 – 66; Renato had stayed at Capito’s. See also G.H. Williams, “Camillo Renato c. 1500?–1575,” in Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus, ed. John A. Tedeschi (Firenze: Felice Le Monnier, 1965), 103 – 83; Antonio Rotondò, Studi di storia ereticale del Cinquecento, vols. 1– 2 (Firenze: Olschki, 2008), 1:249 – 77.

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tumn. Later, after his abjuration in December 1540 in Ferrara, he fled to the Grisons – where he was for some time a reference point for many among the most radical Italian heretics and was accused of heresy many times by the Swiss Calvinist pastors – where he lived until his death in 1575. The Apologia, written when he was in prison in Ferrara in December 1540, is an essential document in understanding Renato’s ideas.¹⁴ From Renato’s abjuration,¹⁵ delivered at the end of his trial, it is also possible to learn that his preaching had spread a series of heresies – such as the notion of free will as exclusively directed toward evil, the rejection of purgatory, the denial of the intercession of the saints (on the topic of the saints, the doctrine of the sleep of the soul after death transpired as well), and of sacramental communion for the remission of sins. On top of this, there was also the complete failure to observe the commandments of the Church on the matter of Lenten and precept fasts, the uselessness of the recitations of the office of the Virgin, and the rejection of religious vows, to the point of understanding the Catholic mass as contaminated by “abominationes et superstitiones.” Moreover, during his trial, Renato had supported the notion that the “mandata ecclesiae” were to be observed only if they were not “iniusta” or “contra ius divinum et contra aliquem partem sacrae Scripturae,”¹⁶ thus laying the basis for a complete dissolution of the ecclesiastical magisterium and the authority of the pontiff. A clear testimony of how these heresies had been spread in Modena can be found in the letters that the vicar Sigibaldi wrote to Bishop Morone¹⁷ (who was engaged in diplomatic tasks in Germany), in which he acutely observes that “these Lutherans […] I seem to understand that they want to exterminate ecclesiastical and pontifical authority and power.”¹⁸ What is really worth noting is the fact that, through Renato, it is possible to document that an entirely spiritualistic notion of the Church and of religious experience had been preached in Modena and in the surrounding areas for eight months.¹⁹ This was a notion that blended the fight against the “superstitions” of de-

 Camillo Renato, Opere, documenti e testimonianze, ed. Antonio Rotondò (Firenze/Chicago: Sansoni, 1968), 33 – 89.  Renato, Opere, documenti e testimonianze, 189 – 91.  Renato, Opere, documenti e testimonianze, 184.  For his part, Morone was able to list them with a certain precision when writing to the Roman See; the public discussions focused, obviously in a negative way, on purgatory, indulgences, the mass, the intercession of the saints, the authority of the pope, and free will; cf. Firpo, “Gli “spirituali”, l’Accademia di Modena e il formulario di fede del 1542: controllo del dissenso religioso e nicodemismo,” in Inquisizione romana e Controriforma. Studi sul cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509 – 1580) e il suo processo d’eresia, 2nd ed. (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2005), 60.  Firpo, “Gli “spirituali”,” 62, letter written on October 26, 1540; Renato had been arrested on the 17th of the same month.  On Renato’s preaching in Modena and his relationship with the Modena heterodox movement, cf. Guido Mongini, “Ludovico Castelvetro tra Modena e Chiavenna. Eterodossia, nicodemismo e indiffer-

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votions, ceremonies, and ecclesiastical precepts with the centrality of humanistic studies and an idea of inner regeneration through the Spirit, as well as a concept of interior connection between believers in a community held together by the wholly spiritual bond of charity, which manifests itself in terms of public morality on the ethical level in political and social relationships, both familiar and civic.²⁰ However, it should be underlined that Camillo Renato’s preaching contained some elements that were even more corrosive for the institutions of the Roman Church and, on the ecclesiological and theological levels, subversive of the notion of orthodoxy itself and, therefore, of any confessional Church. In particular, it is possible to trace back to Renato the diffusion of a peculiar theory of the legitimacy of “religious simulation” – a doctrine of Nicodemism, which allowed adherents to join any Church²¹ and thus abrogated – at its very root – the notion of “true Church,” as applied to one historical institution. The fundamental premise of Renato’s doctrines was a notion of faith that was completely internalized and subjective and mainly expressed in a dizzying shrinkage of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, which are reduced to one sole doctrine: the invocation of the name of Christ, which is enough to qualify the believer as “Christi membrum.” Therefore, the true believer is the one who invokes Christ “nec hoc […] factis negat,” thus showing his “iusta vocatio.” Consequently, the true “eccle-

entismo confessionale,” in Ludovico Castelvetro, Filologia ed eresia. Scritti religiosi, ed. Guido Mongini (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2011), 5 – 155, esp. 25 ff.  This was an element that certainly did not displease some figures, such as the Modenese heretics that gathered around the Accademia, who were constantly engaged as magistrates and in other roles in the city government and had their criticism of corruption and ecclesiastical misgovernment one of the principal arguments of their attacks; Cf. Rotondò, Studi di storia ereticale, 1:252, and Renato’s Apologia, in Opere, 48.  Although it is not possible here to offer further details, it is however necessary to highlight that Renato owned a text – which Ginzburg calls the “Nicodemitic letter” (cf. Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo, 139 ff), identified as a letter by Capito that is now lost. The text was divided into 43 points, which corresponded to the first 43 points (of 798; the general introductory part counted 48) of Martin Bucer’s Consilium theologicum privatim conscriptum, a work unpublished until 1988 (cf. M. Buceri, Opera latina, vol. 4, Consilium theologicum privatim conscriptum, ed. P. Fraenkel [Leiden/New York/ København/Köln: Brill, 1988]). This work had been written in 1540, at the time of the diets and the private meetings in Haguenau and Worms that originated the important Diet of Regensburg in 1541. During these private meetings, the Catholic theologians Johann Gropper and Georg Witzel repeatedly debated with Bucer, Capito, and other Protestant theologians and managed to achieve a broad agreement aimed at the reconciliation of the churches and the healing of the confessional rift. The failure of Regensburg in 1541 substantially marked the end of this season of debates and peaceful confrontations. What is worth noting, however, is the fact that Camillo Renato’s ideas made use of and reworked the premises of Bucer and Capito’s Consilium theologicum, without limiting them to the future council – that is, removing any temporal limit. Thus these ideas took on a perpetual validity that was disconnected from any circumstance of time and space. It was precisely on these ideas that Renato founded his doctrine of Nicodemism.

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sia Christi” was nothing more than the “societas eorum qui Christum vere invocant,”²² regardless of their observance and the orthodoxy to which they subscribed. On the basis of such extremely limited premises, Renato legitimized the behaviors of the followers of the “vera fides,” who were forced to live “in Ecclesiis quae papae iugum adhuc sustinent.”²³ Far from declaring the testimony of confessional faith to the point of martyrdom to be compulsory, Camillo Renato instead insisted on an essential principle, to which he traced every possible situation in order to demonstrate the correct behavior and approach – the principle according to which, even in a Church subject to the Roman pontiff, there were true believers. Moreover, all churches, even the Roman ones, were “verae Christi Ecclesiae, quamquam plus nimio errantes et superstitiosae.”²⁴ Thus the Catholic Church was not the Church of the antichrist, but rather a Church full of “superstitiosae caerimoniae”²⁵ and yet pervaded with “viva fides […] in Christum,” in which one can see “primis fructibus fidei, timore Domini et charitate proximi.”²⁶ Hence the duty to “colere Ecclesiam et habere proximos pro fratribus ac membris in Christo.” Given these premises, it is evident that it was not necessary – because it would have been pointless – to abandon or fight the Roman Church, or any other Church or orthodoxy, thus betraying the “mansuetudo” of Christ and the bond of brotherly charity. Therefore, in Renato’s preaching beginning in 1540, the key criterion of the theological teaching that inaugurated the “private” pages of Bucer’s Consilium came to be used in a radically internalized and spiritualistic notion of faith, reduced solely to the invocation of the name of Christ, which was the guarantee of the enlightenment of the Spirit – the only true interpreter of Scripture. This was a notion of faith that had its only inalienable criterion in the constant search for consistency between the invocation of the name of Christ and morality in life. The element of absolute innovation and, therefore, of fracture was the fact that this notion became the premise – the only premise – on the basis of which the Nicodemitic practice was legitimized.²⁷ At the same time, ethical consistency was the extreme objective criterion

 Cf. La lettera nicodemitica di Capitone, in Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo, 207– 13, here 209, art. 1 and 6.  La lettera nicodemitica di Capitone, 209, art. 2.  La lettera nicodemitica di Capitone,. 212, art. 36.  La lettera nicodemitica di Capitone, 209, art. 3.  La lettera nicodemitica di Capitone, for both quotations.  As demonstrated in a key contribution by Albano Biondi, La giustificazione della simulazione nel Cinquecento, in Eresia e Riforma nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Firenze/Chicago: Sansoni, 1974), 5 – 68, the issue of religious simulation is part of the wider problem of the importance and role of simulation-dissimulation in the culture of the sixteenth century; moreover, correcting the perspective illustrated by Ginzburg in Il nicodemismo, Biondi has shown how – apart from and beyond the works by Otto Brunfels and his circle – there are other, earlier examples of the theorization of the legitimacy of religious simulation, among which one of the most notable is Erasmus himself, an author well known to the Modenese academics. What Camillo Renato’s preaching allows us to establish with precision is

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that anchored a radically internalized and subjectivistic notion of religion to its own premises; on the other hand, it also turned the true believer into the visible seal of their own regeneration, the external “fruit” of their adherence to Christ and to the “true faith.” Eventually, the fact that these notions had become a precise manifesto, simultaneously religious and political, is demonstrated by Renato’s claims in his Apologia. This work, which he wrote while in prison in December 1540, evinced close doctrinal affinities between the manifesto pursued by Camillo Renato himself and the discussions that had taken place during the same year on a European level, between Bucer and Capito and the Catholic theologians Gropper and Witzel. These discussions were founded on common premises, focused on the issue of ecclesiastical ceremonies and the superstitions and “abominations” that characterized them, and had resulted in the colloquies of Haguenau and Worms, which represented the prelude to the Diet of Regensburg in 1541. It is precisely from this perspective that it is possible to understand why Renato, when faced with explicit accusations about his point An in missa sint abominationes,²⁸ clarified the true sense of his convictions and, at the same time, declared that he wanted to go to Rome in order to discuss a clear program of reform of the mass: “Ita ex meis verbis, scilicet in missa multas contineri abominationes, nulla potest oriri suspicio abrogandae missae per se, sed abrogandarum superstitionum quae sunt in missa nostri temporis, de quibus putabam me Romae cum reverendissimis sed doctissimis cardinalibus consultaturum in rem Christianam et communem concordiam totius ecclesiae Dei.”²⁹ Shortly afterward, he repeated that he wanted to collaborate in the pacification of religious conflicts: Nihil enim aliud studeo, nihil cogor, nihil cogito quam ut meam operam in pacificanda Germania cum ecclesia Romana collocem atque omnino insumam si dabitur; iamque in hoc erat mihi animus ut Romam accederem et de hoc consultarem ut de Romana ecclesia etiam nos aliquid in gloriam Dei patri sed domini nostri Iesu Christi et in communem ecclesiae utilitatem bene meremur. Quamobrem non missa tolli, sed in suam dignitatem et integritatem restitui cupio, ut aedificetur tota ecclesia Dei.

If, on the one hand, it is very likely that Renato was trying in this way to improve his own position in the trial, on the other hand, it is worth pointing out that his attempt was not merely a ploy. In fact, his project fell within a much wider European debate

the historical moment and circumstances in which the exponents of the Modenese heterodox movement, and especially the academics, were first put in touch with a spiritualistic doctrine that was deliberately and fully Nicodemitic – and that, moreover, in this case also demonstrated strong connections with the Strasbourg circle, where Brunfels had theorized his reflection on Nicodemism. In addition, as already mentioned above, this circle was well known to Renato.  For an interesting comparison, see the pages that Bucer devoted to the issue De abominationibus missae, in Buceri, Opera latina, vol. 4, Consilium theologicum privatim conscriptum, 94– 102.  Renato, Opere, 74, my emphasis.

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that focused, as has already been briefly mentioned, on an irenic agreement, which meant, among other things, accepting some of the Reformed positions on “superstitions” that had seeped into the Catholic liturgy of the mass over time. All of this was overlooked by the inquisitors, as they missed the fact – which was very clear to the Modenese heretics – that those very notions could be both the basis for an irenic program for a future council and, on a very different note, the premise for a completely alternative ecclesiology that would be entirely spiritualistic and Nicodemitic, alien to any dispute or conflict, foreign to the very idea of orthodoxy and the confessional Church, and entirely focused on the principles of faith in Christ and the invocation of his name, together with ethical consistency.

3 Bartolomeo Fonzio and the Egalitarian Church of the Poor Bartolomeo Fonzio’s preaching was analogous with Renato’s thought in many ways.³⁰ The former was born in Venice around 1502, became a conventual Franciscan and, after a wide humanistic and theological education, soon distinguished himself as a preacher. In 1531, a papal breve suspended him from preaching. A subsequent breve ordered that he be put on trial. Thus began Fonzio’s complex trajectory, which was in many ways parallel to and intertwined with Renato’s (who was a Franciscan as well), and which first brought him to Augsburg – where he was licensed to preach but gathered a negative impression of the fierce disputes lacerating the Protestant world on the issue of the Eucharist – and later to Strasbourg. Fonzio – a figure who straddled two worlds, although he was personally close to the fundamental aspirations of the Reformation – tried to contribute to the pacification of the conflicts between Lutherans and Catholics, and again between Lutherans and Zwinglians, showing at the same time a strong aversion to theological disputes – which he considered to be against the spirit of the message of the gospel – and a clear propensity for harmony and religious peace. Since he was able to count on the support of some circles of the Roman curia, a matter about which not much is yet known, he offered himself as a mediator between Rome and the German world

 On Fonzio, cf. A. Olivieri, “Una polemica ereticale nella Padova del Cinquecento: l’‘Epistola Camilli Cautii ad Bernardinum Scardonium’ di Bartolomeo Fonzio,” Atti dell’Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti 225 (1966 – 1967): 489 – 535; Olivieri, “Il ‘Chatechismo’ e la ‘Fidei et doctrinae…ratio’ di Bartolomeo Fonzio eretico veneziano del Cinquecento,” Studi veneziani 9 (1967): 339 – 452; Olivieri, “‘Ortodossia’ ed ‘eresia’ in Bartolomeo Fonzio,” Bollettino della Società di studi valdesi 91 (1970): 39 – 55; Ester Zille, Gli eretici a Cittadella nel Cinquecento (Padova: Rebellato, 1971), 143 – 221; an important entry can be found in G. Fragnito, “Fonzio, Bartolomeo,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 48 (Roma: Treccani, 1997), 769 – 73; cf. also Mongini, Ludovico Castelvetro, 44 ff. Neither Fonzio nor Renato are mentioned in Fratelli d’Italia. Riformatori italiani nel Cinquecento, eds. Mario Biagioni, Matteo Duni, and Lucia Felici (Torino: Claudiana, 2011).

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and found both supporters and fierce adversaries, such as Gian Pietro Carafa himself, who considered him to be the man responsible for the diffusion of heresy in the Venetian territories. In 1533, together with Martin Bucer, he visited the Swiss churches, stopping in Basel and then again in Strasbourg, where he acknowledged with bitterness how much more stringent Bucer’s positions toward Caspar Schwenckfeld and the Anabaptists had become. Moreover, Sebastian Franck had already been expelled from the city in 1531.³¹ At the end of the same year, Fonzio was back in Venice, where he stayed until the beginning of 1534, in order to renew his contacts with the lively heterodox Ecclesia that he had created there and to circulate heretical books – such as Unio dissidentium dogmatum by Hermann Bodenstein (Bodius) and, under the title Libro de la emendatione dil stato christiano, his own heavily edited translation of Luther’s Plea To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation), which had been published anonymously in 1533 in Strasbourg.³² Later, he went to Constantinople with the son of the doge, Alvise Gritti, returning to Venice in 1535 and later going to Augsburg and once again to Strasbourg, where he felt Bucer’s hostility against him. In 1537, he went to Rome, where he waited to be tried until 1540 – 1541, when Contarini – in circumstances which have not yet been much investigated – declared him not guilty of the accusations against him. In 1543, he was in Modena, very close to the academics, and he preached doctrines that were among the most subversive of the time, until he was subjected to an inquisitorial trial. After 1544, he wandered in many places, stopping between 1548 and 1551 in Padua and always keeping in touch with the heterodox radical circles and the Anabaptist groups. Later, he went to Cittadella to take on the role of schoolteacher until 1557, when – pursued by an arrest warrant for heresy issued by the Savi – he traveled for a year between Valtellina and several cities in Lombardy and Veneto in order to strengthen the connections among the various heretical communities. In 1558, he went back to Cittadella and was once again elected a teacher by popular demand. In May or June, however, he was arrested and brought to Venice. His trial went on for four years, and during his time in prison, he wrote the mature compendium of his thourhg, Fidei et doctrinae Bartolomei Fontii ratio. Having rejected the option of abjuration, in line with his conscience, he was drowned in the lagoon on August 4, 1562. Thus we know that Fonzio was in Modena between 1543 and 1544 and quickly got in touch with the academics.³³ What is important to underline here is the fact

 On Franck’s and Schwenckfeld’s activity in Strasbourg and their conflicts with Bucer, cf. Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo, throughout, and Gastaldi, Storia dell’anabattismo, 1:273 ff.  On this work, cf. the observations by Seidel Menchi, “Le traduzioni italiane di Lutero nella prima metà del Cinquecento,” Rinascimento 2, no. 17 (1977): 31– 108, esp. 64– 80.  On Fonzio’s contacts with the academics, cf. Massimo Firpo and Dario Marcatto, Il processo inquisitoriale del cardinal Giovanni Morone, vols. 1– 4 (Roma: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1981– 1995), esp. vols. 1 and 3, and the index.

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that Fonzio spread throughout the territories of Veneto and in Modena both his wide, firsthand knowledge of the churches on the other side of the Alps and their debates and lacerations – thus constantly fostering his connections with the heterodox groups – and his radically spiritualistic understanding of the Church, which went back to the model of the primitive Evangelical community and interpreted it in an anti-hierarchical sense, which was egalitarian and pauperistic, in a sort of radical exasperation of the Franciscan ideals of his original order. Fonzio, an erudite theologian who did not enjoy disputes, taught an ecclesiology that – apart from going back to well-known cornerstones, such as the complete devaluation of the Eucharist, baptism, and confession, which were reduced to mere signs – united pauperism, solidarity, and Nicodemism in the revolutionary notion of a Church of the poor, which was opposed to the “Church of the pontiffs” and comprised of “poor people unknown to the world.” This was a spiritualistic and intrinsically Nicodemitic Church, in which the face of the ancient, true Evangelical Church of Christ and “Joseph, Mary, and Nicodemus” was demonstrated.³⁴ The latter, a wellknown emblem of religious simulation, meant that the rightful members of the spiritualistic and egalitarian Church preached by Fonzio were precisely those who practiced some form of Nicodemitic behavior, gathering in an Ecclesia of “the elect” of Christ – a Church that was hidden because it was fundamentally invisible to the most powerful in the world; a Church that was poor, humble, and sustained by the charity and the reciprocal solidarity of its members, and thus recalled ideas already expressed by Renato, who had preached “charitatem in omnes pauperes.”³⁵ Fonzio’s notions were full of subversive suggestions on the social level, also due to the virulence of his criticism of the Church of the rich and the powerful, who corresponded to the scribes and Pharisees who had killed Christ.³⁶ During the last few years of his life, he shaped a complex ideal centered on a Church that was an alternative to both the Roman one and to the Reformed ones, but was nevertheless provided with an informal hierarchy in embryo.³⁷ Fonzio’s preaching was such as to offer a profound religious identity particularly to the lower classes, among whom his teachings were observed for some time, both in Veneto and in the Modena area. Thus ethical rigor, charity, support for members experiencing difficulties, reciprocal solidarity, and assistance became the basis of a long interval in Modenese heresy that would later converge in the experience of the community of the “brothers,” which lasted for over twenty years.³⁸ Moreover, Fon-

 Cf. Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi nel Cinquecento modenese. Tensioni religiose e vita cittadina ai tempi di Giovanni Morone (Milano: Angeli, 1979), 250 – 52.  Rotondò, Studi di storia ereticale, 1:252.  Cf. for example, Olivieri, “Il ‘Catechismo’,” 353 – 54.  Cf. Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi, 252n103.  Fonzio’s doctrines left some perceivable traces among the Modenese heterodox believers, and perhaps also in Lodovico Castelvetro’s thinking. See, for example, without being able to go into further detail here, Castelvetro’s claims about the poor and his criticism of the alleged moral value of

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zio’s persistence regarding the issue of poverty as a sign of election and the consequences of this idea on social and religious levels seem to mark a specific, if not a different, trajectory from that of Italian Valdesianism precisely because of the strong emphasis on the social dimension of pauperistic and egalitarian spiritualism that fostered Fonzio’s Nicodemitic ecclesiology (we should also mention that Fonzio was able to preach such heretical notions and live for thirty years in Catholic territories thanks to the protection and backing of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities).

4 Nicodemitic Ecclesiology and the Criticism of Religious Conflicts: Marcantonio Flaminio and the Valdesians Several studies, especially those by Massimo Firpo, have repeatedly highlighted the conscious distance from the Reformation – both Lutheran and Calvinist – in the thought of the Spanish alumbrado and exile Juan de Valdés, who fled Spain in order to escape an inquisitorial trial and died in Naples in 1541, after having played a central role in the history of heresy in Italy.³⁹ The different currents of Italian and European Valdesianism (i. e., the multifaceted legacy that originated in the encounter with Valdés’ religious ideas),⁴⁰ especially the more radical ones, were also similarly distant from the Reformation.⁴¹ Although unable to retrace the outcomes of the research already mentioned here, it will suffice to recall – in order to demonstrate the typical approach of the Italian “spiritual” Valdesians who gathered around Cardinal Reginald Pole – a famous letter written by Marcantonio Flaminio (Valdés’ disciple in Naples and the main inspiration for Pole and later for Cardinal Giovanni Morone) that harshly polemicizes against the

wealth, in L.A. Muratori, Opere varie critiche di Lodovico Castelvetro, (Berna[Milano], 1727), especially Chiose intorno al primo libro del Commune di Platone, 199 (“Whether riches make their owners good,” with the comment: “[t]his conclusion is […] against the Gospel”); Chiose intorno al terzo libro, 218 (moral criticism against the rich), the important reflections on 228 ff, in the Chiose intorno il quarto libro, on the fact that wealth harms the city more than poverty, and 255, once again on rich and poor (Chiose intorno al Protagora di Platone). On the Modenese “community of brothers” (of which it is important to highlight its relationship with the academics, at least in the 1540s and beyond), cf. Matteo Al Kalak, L’eresia dei fratelli. Una comunità eterodossa nella Modena del Cinquecento (Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2011).  See at least Firpo, Tra alumbrados e “spirituali”. Studi su Juan de Valdés e il valdesianesimo nella crisi religiosa del ‘500 italiano (Firenze: Olschki, 1990); Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento, esp. 115 ff and 129 ff; Firpo, Juan de Valdés e la Riforma nell’Italia del Cinquecento.  For an overview of European Valdesianism, cf. Firpo, Tra alumbrados e “spirituali”, 104 ff; Firpo, Juan de Valdés, 258 ff.  Cf. Firpo, Tra alumbrados e “spirituali”, 84 ff; Firpo, Juan de Valdés, 233 ff; Luca Addante, Eretici e libertini nel Cinquecento italiano (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2010).

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Reformed churches. Flaminio’s letter, addressed to Pietro Carnesecchi,⁴² dealt with the Eucharist and the mass and defended their validity according to the Catholic practice, simultaneously rejecting Luther’s, Zwingli’s, and Bucer’s criticisms. When writing to his friend with the intention of showing him how “we [must] be ready to account for our faith to everyone”⁴³ and to exhort him not to “be induced by any reason, however plausible it might look, to be separated from the union of the Catholic Church” (something that would have meant placting oneself extra charitatem, according to the criticism that Pole’s Valdesian circle moved against Luther),⁴⁴ Flaminio developed a very lucid criticism of the obstinacy of the Reformed, who were “blinded by human pride, which loves innovations and is the enemy of common ways.” This pride, as Flaminio lucidly points out, “easily hides under the false zealousness of religion,” and [i]t is then that its deceptions are most difficult to discover, when people with similar innovations endanger their honor, possessions, and life; then, in fact, they cannot conceive of being deceived by the flesh and the devil and, thus, they continually persist in falsehood and become very harsh censors of their neighbors, condemning as impiety the universal sense and perpetual custom of the Church and whomever does not become subservient to their opinions. From this arrogance and bitter zeal may the Lord deliver them and may he give them charity and gentleness of spirit and much humility so that they will abstain from hastily judging the dogmas and the customs of the Church, rigidly condemning all those who revere and follow them with true humility of the heart; and may they begin to believe that many of those whom they condemn and believe to be idolatrous and impious because they do not believe what they believe are truly religious, pious and dear to God and, on the contrary, whoever follows their proud conceit is an enemy of God and hateful to him.⁴⁵

This extraordinary passage summarizes the theological premises by which the ecclesiology of Valdés and his disciples was inspired – an ecclesiology that is spiritualistic and deliberately opposed to any institutional fracture. This passage clearly displays his aversion to the controversies over the dogmas – not only those interior controversies fueled by the Roman Church or those over the new churches, but also mainly those that had been lacerating the very churches that had originated from the Reformation for some time – in which the mask of religious zeal could not hide the “arrogance,” “conceit,” and “human pride” that are the exact opposite of the charity, humility, and gentleness of spirit⁴⁶ that should characterize all those who aim to

 Cf. Marcantonio Flaminio, Lettere, ed. A. Pastore (Roma: Dell Ateneo & Bizzarri 1978), 133 – 38; the letter is dated “Trent, January 1, 1543.”  Flaminio, Lettere, 133.  A similar position was illustrated by Pietro Carnesecchi in his last inquisitorial trial (1567); cf. Firpo and Marcatto, I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi (1557 – 1567), vols. 1– 2 (Roma: Città del Vaticano, 1998 – 2000), 2:557– 58.  Flaminio, Lettere, 136, also for the previous quotations.  These expressions are taken from Flaminio, Lettere, 136.

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be the “most excellent portraits of Christ.”⁴⁷ In particular, Flaminio attacked the indiscriminate condemnations uttered by all those who, having become “very harsh censors of their neighbors, [condemn] as impiety” the traditions of the Roman Church and, at the same time, all those who “do not believe what they believe” by judging them to be “idolatrous and impious.” It would be an error to interpret Flaminio’s statements as an indiscriminate acceptance of Catholic ceremonies and dogmas: the Valdesian spiritualism to which he adhered fully delegitimized these and emptied them of any intrinsic meaning while, on the other hand, reiterating their inevitability – so to speak – on the basis of Valdés’ principle, according to which “la iglesia […] juzga lo exteriór.”⁴⁸ Instead, his claims were actually prompted by his awareness that the Christian religious experience, which did not take its nourishment from scholastic science, could also not be fostered by theological disputations (such as, for example, those on the Eucharist, as mentioned above)⁴⁹ or reciprocal interdicts. These were the opposite of that private “spiritual confabulation” necessary to the unfolding of the gradual path of inner enlightenment – the only guarantee of the true experience of a Christian “living faith,” in the face of which any orthodoxy or dogma, as well as any confessional ecclesiology, would remain inevitably at the periphery of the conscience. We know that radical Valdesians were even more opposed to the very idea of orthodoxy and the confessional Church. Some of them took part to the famous Anabaptist synods (collegia patavina and vicentina) held in Veneto between 1550 and 1551, thus initiating a decisive turning point for Anabaptism in Veneto in the direction of anti-trinitarianism (just as had already happened in the Kingdom of Naples upon the initiation of moderate Valdesian positions).⁵⁰ In fact, adherence to any confessional Church on the part of Valdés’ followers was, apart from rare exceptions, the result of a conscious Nicodemitic choice or of the coherent application of the very premises of Valdesian throught, which delegitimized the very notion of orthodoxy and the ecclesiastical magisterium at its root, thus making it possible to belong to any Church in all good conscience.

 Flaminio, Lettere, 141; the passage is taken from a letter to Galeazzo Caracciolo from Viterbo, dated February 14, 1543, but actually represents a key motif in the Valdesian teaching, as spread by Flaminio.  Cf. J. de Valdés, La epístola de san Pablo a los Romanos i la I. a los Corinthios. Ambas traducidas i comentadas por Juan de Valdés (Madrid, 1856), 190.  See, for example, Firpo, “Marcantonio Flaminio, Pietro Carnesecchi e la questione eucaristica,” in “Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede”, 209 – 25.  Cf. Addante, Eretici e libertini, throughout.

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5 Giorgio Siculo: Between Prophecy and Universal Salvation Finally, the thought of the Sicilian monk Giorgio Rioli, with which this brief overview comes to an end, also demonstrated many connections with the Valdesian circle, although it is hardly reducible to it. Rioli was born near Catania in 1517 and joined the Benedictine monastery of San Nicolò l’Arena in 1534. In 1537, Benedetto Fontanini from Mantua sought refuge here; he was the author of the first edition of the famous volume The Benefit of Christ Crucified (which was later edited by Flaminio and, once published in 1543, became the “manifesto” of the Valdesian religious project).⁵¹ This meeting represented a turning point for Giorgio Rioli, who later moved to other Benedictine monasteries in the north of Italy and went to Riva di Trento in order to follow the council. In Riva di Trento, he tried – without success – to take part in the sessions of the council, driven as he was by visions and revelations that he claimed to receive directly from Christ, in order to share with the fathers who had gathered there the message he bore. Accused of heresy, he left Riva di Trento in 1550 and went to Ferrara and Bologna, where he was arrested and put on trial in 1551, and he was eventually strangled as an impenitent heretic in Ferrara in May of the same year. Siculo’s religious thinking plugged into the European debate following the death of the heretic Francesco Spiera, who had abjured, after an inquisitorial trial, his Calvinist faith and eventually died in despair, as he was convinced of having committed an unforgivable sin against the Spirit and, therefore, of being destined for damnation.⁵² Siculo’s ideas were based on his harsh criticism of the Protestant doctrine of predestination, which engendered desperation and a misunderstanding of divine grace and mercy, just as Spiera’s case had demonstrated. These notions could appear – as they did to the eyes of the inquisitors who approved his books for printing – as a controvertist defense of Catholic orthodoxy. In reality, under his anti-Reformed mask, Siculo was laying the foundations for an announcement inspired by a doctrine of universal salvation. Thus, addressing both those who believed in the Protestant doctrines and the Catholics, Siculo, who enjoyed a vast following, circulated extremely subversive and radical notions. His ideas contained not only anti-Catholic elements – such as the rejection of the authority of the pope, of the sacraments, of purgatory, of works, of the mass, and of the cult of the saints and the Virgin – but also anti-trinitarian and Anabaptist doctrines, the denial of the immortality of the soul, and prophetic revelations that announced the triumph of the doctrines Siculo preached. Therefore, the Church as preached by Si On the political impact of the publication of The Benefit of Christ in connection with the first convocations of the Council of Trent and the expectations of conciliation with the Protestant world, cf. Firpo, “Il ‘Beneficio di Christo’ e il concilio di Trento (1542– 1546),” in Dal sacco di Roma all’Inquisizione. Studi su Juan de Valdés e la Riforma italiana (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1998),. 119 – 45.  Cf. Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro Grande, esp. 102– 30.

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culo was a prophetic, Nicodemitic Church that was completely other to the confessional churches. It was a Church with many followers – who were still wanted by the Inquisition over twenty years after Giorgio Siculo’s death – not only among the lower classes, but also among rich merchants, doctors, university professors, students, erudite humanists, bishops, and many other theologians and Benedictine monks all over the central and northeast parts of Italy, from Ferrara to Veneto.

6 From the Reformation in Italy to the Italian Reformation: The “Third Sects” In the statements of the inquisitors, all the figures mentioned above were labeled indistinctly as “Lutherans,” and only seldom was there an awareness of the fact that these “arch-heretics” or “heresiarchs” preached doctrines that were actually very different from Luther’s thought. There were only a few who clearly understood the innovations and peculiarities of these ideas – such as, for example, Giovanni Domenico Sigibaldi, the vicar of Cardinal Morone in Modena. In fact, in characterizing what – upon closer inspection – appears to be largely the effect of Camillo Renato’s long preaching among Modenese heterodox groups, he observed that the city was “infected with the contagion of different heresies just like Prague,” and, aware of the specificity of the heterodoxy at hand, he sharply concluded: “this sect here is worse than the Lutherans as I seem to understand that they have embraced all of the German heresies.”⁵³ These words demonstrate an embryonic awareness of the fact that Modenese heterodoxy was of a different nature and, by then, had already overcome Luther’s thought. Therefore, it was much more dangerous in its radicality. On the other confessional front as well, the awareness of the specificity of the great majority of Italian heresy was widespread, and Calvin’s followers addressed harsh criticisms particularly against Pole, Morone, and the many prestigious exponents of Valdesianism. Thus the controversies raised in 1549 by Pier Paolo Vergerio against the followers of the “Spanish Valdés,” or by Francesco Negri, once again against the Valdesians, insisted – as the latter wrote – on denouncing what from Switzerland looked like a “new school of a Christianity arranged according to their wishes,” where it was possible “not to deny that the justification of man comes from Jesus Christ” without also “admitting the consequences that necessarily follow from it,” thus continuing to “support the papacy,” “have masses [and] a thousand other papist superstitions and impieties.”⁵⁴ And since these judgments did not fully understand the premises and implications of Valdesian spiritualism – as well as the largely similar premises and implications of the other examples mentioned

 Cf. Firpo and Marcatto, Il processo inquisitoriale del cardinal Giovanni Morone, vols. 1– 4 (Roma: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1981– 1995), 2:897.982.  For the quotations, cf. Firpo, Juan de Valdés, 221– 22.

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– the paradoxical conclusion of those who stayed confined within confessional notions of the religious experience could not but be similar to what Negri himself sarcastically claimed when he said that the Roman Inquisition – rather than trying Pole, Grimani, Soranzo, and those who identified with their positions – should instead hold them “very dear, as they showed the way, in Italy, to many chivalrous men who confided in them and went to mass and believed in the papacy through Christ’s vicarship”⁵⁵ just as they did. Negri’s claims finally confirm, from a historical point of view, the role of obstacles and hindrances in the diffusion of the Reformation in Italy which was played by Valdesianism, a suggestion also confirmed by Giulio da Milano’s accusations – paralleled by Calvin’s – against the “third sects” that swarmed Italy. These, in fact, could not but appear to their eyes as many “new schools” of Christianity, “arranged according to their wishes,” irreducible to the orthodoxies of either Geneva or Rome, and therefore persecuted by both. Based on what has been very briefly summarized here, and without denying the importance of the numerous groups and pro-Protestant movements (first Lutherans and then Calvinists) that sometimes produced churches in Italy, it is therefore possible, on a historical level, to suggest that – apart from inquisitorial repression, the activities of old and new religious orders, a partial renewal within the Roman Church, the intrinsic frailties of the Italian political authorities, and the entanglement of their feudal dependencies with the papacy in terms of benefices – the affirmation of the Reformation in Italy was also hindered by a peculiar critical awareness, which originated and spread in the heterodox circles of many “third sects.” These ferments of criticism erupted and spread for almost twenty years before Servetus’ death sentence made evident the authoritarian direction taken by the Reformation on the other side of the Alps, confirming on a European level the intolerance of the new Calvinist Church and its accomplished metamorphosis into a perfect and intransigent orthodoxy that was as strict as the Roman one. In the eyes of more thorough and involved observers – since they were personally engaged in the doctrines and ideas of the Reformation and, moreover, were well equipped with theological tools, thanks to their own professional education, as were Camillo Renato and Bartolomeo Fonzio – the path destined to end with the betrayal of the original aspirations of the Reformation, both Lutheran and Calvinist, had in reality been laid much earlier than the tragic year of 1553, and not in Geneva or in Wittenberg (or, better still, not only there), but rather in Strasbourg in the early 1530s. Bucer’s progressive hardening against the Anabaptists, on the one hand, and the spiritualists – such as Schwenckfeld and Franck, who had already been exiled in 1531 – on the other hand, had precociously and profoundly marked the awareness of the two Italian heretics. The travels on which they embarked later in the 1530s, in the Lutheran territories and among the Swiss churches in embryo, seemed to confirm for them the authoritarian involution of the European reformatory move-

 Firpo, Juan de Valdés, 227.

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ment. This appeared to them to have become a tool and a hostage of the princes – especially in the German territories – and of professional theologians, to the point of having fragmented into intransigent orthodoxies, into Churches lacerated by unending disputes and the progressive criminalization of dissent. At the same time, oblivion quickly descended on the original Evangelical ideals of harmony, tolerance, peace, and the search for common agreement, aimed at the renewal of the conscience on the basis of Paul’s message and the centrality of salvific grace. Thus, one of the common central elements of the notions and ideas discussed above is especially meaningful – the marginalization of the theological-dogmatic given and the consequential refusal to build, and even less to impose, strictly structured theological scaffolding to be taken on as the foundations of the religious community (the Church) and entrusted to some magisterial authority, institution, or pastoral hierarchy with coercive power. In fact, all the ecclesiologies described in this chapter shared a deliberate attempt to put the ethical dimension at the center of Christian experience, understood especially in its practical and concrete implications, and a refusal to anchor the truths of faith to lists of dogmatic propositions in which it was mandatory to believe, under the penalty of exclusion from the community or even exile, persecution, or death. The experimentalism, freedom of enquiry, and reflection on the foundations of the Christian faith that characterized the movements and the figures illustrated above covered new trajectories and orientations, investigated radical and extreme perspectives and hypotheses, and, in a short period of time, arrived at proposals that anticipated the outcomes and solutions – from tolerance to freedom of conscience, from deism to rationalism – that took hold only in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, after having been vastly modified and adapted, in the countries affected by the Reformation and, even more slowly, in the Roman Catholic sphere. In fact, the peculiarities of the Italian Reformation, to which all the heterodox thinkers and currents illustrated above belonged, increasingly seem to have slowed down, countered, and held back the circulation of Lutheran and Calvinist ideas in Italy. Upon closer inspection, the “third sects” appear to be the true cypher and emblem of the Italian Reformation: although attacked by Calvin and his followers as well as by Italian thinkers – such as Giulio da Milano, Pier Paolo Vergerio, and Francesco Negri, who had all adhered to the Geneva Reformation – they actually represented a multiplicity of ecclesiological alternatives, to Rome as well as to Wittenberg and Geneva. They were churches and communities at the center of which stood the ethical dimension of Christianity, the inalienable principle according to which the Christian experience is mainly founded on the individual conscience and on personal access to the Spirit, and the concept of faith as the inner enlightenment of the grace to which all were summoned, in a progressive path of incorporation with Christ, which could not and should not be constricted by any confessional orthodoxy.

Peter Walter

Erasmus of Rotterdam and His Environment 1 The Contribution of Erasmus the Humanist to Piety and Theology 1.1 Humanist Beginnings Before Martin Luther became known to a wider audience from 1517 on, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 – 1536) had probably been the best known and most famous scholar of the time.¹ His fame reached its zenith not least because of the first edition of the Greek New Testament, which Erasmus published in 1516 in Basel, along with his own Latin translation. Erasmus dedicated this edition to none less than “God’s representative on earth,” Pope Leo X (1475 – 1521; he was pope from 1513 – 1521).² Such a high international reputation was unexpected for someone who was the product, just like his older brother Peter, of an illegitimate relationship between a cleric and Erasmus’ mother. Erasmus’ year of birth is uncertain, with dates ranging from 1466 to 1469. Some assume that Erasmus back-dated his year of birth so that he would have been conceived before his father entered the clerical state. Contrary to this assumption, however, most sources suggest the earlier date. Later in his life, it seems that he sometimes presented himself as being younger, perhaps because then his early literary productions – pushed into the market to make use of the author’s fame – would appear to be “youthful folly.” But another reason for doing so could be his intention to relativize his entering the Augustinian Chapter in Steyn near Gouda (1487) – as well as his taking vows a year later – as immature decisions taken in his youth, which could help him in his request for dispensation from his monastic vows.³ At least he was successful in this request, and Leo X fulfilled his wish in 1517. But Erasmus, who was ordained in 1492 in Utrecht, remained a priest even after this event.

Translation from German: Alissa Jones Nelson.  On Erasmus, particularly from a theological point of view, see Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus von Rotterdam. Leben – Werk – Wirkung (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1986); Christine Christ-von Wedel, Erasmus von Rotterdam. Ein Porträt (Basel: Schwabe, 2016).  For the people mentioned in the following, see P.G. Bietenholz and T.B. Deutscher, eds., Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, 3 vols. (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1985 – 1987).  See Harry Vredeveld, “The Ages of Erasmus and the Year of His Birth,” Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993): 754– 809. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-030

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Erasmus led an unstable, vagrant life, staying in one place for only a few years at a time. His talent for Latin became visible early on, and so he worked as a secretary for the bishop of Cambrai, before he enrolled as a student of theology in Paris in 1495. With a few intermissions, Paris would be the center of his life for ten years. As was common practice in his time, he not only studied, but also worked as a tutor for young fellow students, whom he mainly introduced to the studia humanitatis. One of his students, William Blount, the fourth Baron Mountjoy (c. 1478 – 1534), took him to England in 1499/1500. There he met the future King Henry VIII (1491– 1547, reigned 1509 – 1547) and became friends with the future dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, John Colet (1467– 1519), as well as with the future Lord Chancellor Thomas More (1477/1478 – 1535). Erasmus dedicated his first major work to Baron Mountjoy – a collection of more than 800 ancient proverbs (Adagiorum Collectanea, Paris, 1500), which laid the groundwork for his reputation as a humanist. He extended this work until his death to over 4,150 proverbs. The documentation of the sayings’ origins and Erasmus’ commentaries became ever more differentiated, as well.⁴

1.2 The Call for Reform of Individual Believers and the Church In 1504, the Enchiridion militis Christiani (Small Handbook of a Christian Warrior) was published in Antwerp, which laid the basis for Erasmus’ reputation as a spiritual writer. In this work, Erasmus offered a manual for rightful piety, which he saw as the responsibility not only of the clerics, but also of all Christians. Building on the theme of the human life as military service – which we find already in Stoic philosophers such as Seneca and Epictetus, but also in the New Testament (e. g., Eph 6:11– 17) –, Erasmus characterized life as a fight that can only be won with the right weapons: prayer and knowledge of Holy Scripture. A necessary prerequisite for this, already recommended by the ancient sages, is the self-knowledge that allows the human being to realize that they belong to two different realms: physically, humans belong to the animal realm; but in their souls, they belong to the spiritual realm, which is ultimately divine. The primordial unity of the two realms, which sin disrupted, should be regained by restoring the power of reason as the divine element within the human being, which had not been destroyed by sin. To achieve that goal, Erasmus provides 22 rules and further advice that would help to overcome the dominion of worldly concerns, not only in the individual human being, but also in the Church and the entire world. At times, Erasmus combined this with harsh critique, directed particularly against monks, whom he denied any special status when it came to being a Christian. “Monasticism does not equal piety; it is a way  For short descriptions of most of Erasmus’ works mentioned in this chapter, as well as for information on their reception and the most important literature for further reading, see P.G. Bietenholz et al., “Erasmus von Rotterdam,” in Deutscher Humanismus 1480 – 1520. Verfasserlexikon, ed. Franz-Josef Worstbrock (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2008), 1:658 – 804.

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of life that for everyone, depending on their physical and spiritual condition, may or may not be useful.”⁵ The “small handbook” was first published – along with other spiritual and theological texts by Erasmus – in a collected volume with the typical humanistic title Lucubrationes. A separate edition was published in 1515, and in 1518, this edition, now including a lengthy preface, started its triumphal march. Between 1506 and 1509, Erasmus visited the home country of the humanistic movement – Italy. On his outward journey, he was awarded a theological doctoral degree at the quite insignificant University of Turin, and he witnessed how Pope Julius II (1443 – 1513; he was pope from 1503 – 1513) recaptured Bologna for the Papal States. The pope’s triumphant entry into the conquered city, wearing the uniform of a military commander, struck Erasmus as the absolute nadir of a papacy that had denied its religious mission. He may have expressed his disapproval in the satirical dialogue Iulius exclusus e coelis (Speyer, 1517), a story about Peter the heavenly gatekeeper, who denied his successor, Julius II, access to heaven because of the latter’s rather unapostolic way of life and administration. Erasmus always denied authorship of this text.⁶ For Erasmus, the pinnacle of his trip to Italy was not his time in Rome and his meeting with the humanists there, but his work at the famous printing shop of Aldus Manutius (c. 1452– 1515) in Venice, the best-known printer of the time. Here he had access to Greek texts that enabled him to publish a significantly extended version of his edition of ancient sayings (Adagiorum Chiliades, Venice, 1508). From Italy, Erasmus traveled on to England, where he stayed until 1514. On the way, he came up with what is perhaps his most original work, Moriae encomium (Praise of Folly, Paris, 1511, significantly enlarged in Strasburg, 1514). He wrote this piece in the house of Thomas More, to whom he dedicated it. In the title, Erasmus plays with the similarity in sound of his friend’s name and the Greek adjective μωρός (meaning stupid or silly). He lets Folly (μωρία) act as a person with a lot of self-esteem. First of all, Folly makes clear that life without it would be unthinkable, because people care for appearance more than reality. Then it targets the various guilds and societal groups, criticizing in particular the conceited wisdom and arrogance of the theologians, the monks, and the higher and lower clergy. This comic work gets a serious twist at the end, when Folly refers to Paul (1 Cor 1:18 – 31) and talks about the folly of radically following the example of Christ; it also refers to Plato’s Phaedrus and talks about the insanity of those who have left the sensual world

 Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Hajo Holborn, with Annemarie Holborn (München, 1935; repr. C.H. Beck: 1964), 135, 8 – 9; hereafter H.  Peter Fabish assumes that Erasmus was active in the background only; see Fabisch, Iulius exclusus e coelis. Motive und Tendenzen gallikanischer und bibelhumanistischer Papstkritik im Umfeld des Erasmus (Münster: Aschendorff, 2008). As the editor of the work in the Amsterdam edition, however, Silvana Seidel Menchi regards Erasmus as the author; see Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrate (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1969–), 1.8:28 – 34; hereafter ASD.

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behind or have tasted the future bliss. After this deliberate confusion of joke and seriousness, Folly abruptly ends its speech. In 1516, Erasmus wrote to Johannes Reuchlin that for him, England, rather than Italy, was the leading humanistic nation.⁷ Erasmus, a humanist without steady income who needed the help of patrons, found his most loyal supporter in William Warham (c. 1456 – 1532), the archbishop of Canterbury, who paid him a regular pension. At the end of his life, Erasmus had to witness how King Henry VIII, whom he had respected because of his support of humanistic education, had Erasmus’ friends Thomas More and John Fisher (1469 – 1535), the bishop of Rochester, executed as a consequence of the dispute over his marriage and the break of the Anglican Church with Rome. In 1514, Erasmus, who was enthusiastically welcomed by humanistic groups along the River Rhine, went to Basel to work with the printer and publisher Johannes Froben (c. 1460 – 1527). In 1513, Froben had published an improved reprint of the Venetian edition of the Adagia, with a cover presenting Erasmus as the “decoration of Germany.”⁸ Erasmus had originally planned this publication with a Parisian printer, and so at first he was irritated about the move to Froben that had happened behind his back. But the Basel printer was the much better choice when it came to the extensive Greek quotes that were needed for the production of the New Testament Erasmus was planning. This laid the basis for a long and close cooperation.

1.3 Humanistic Philology as the Basis for a Renewed Theology In 1516, Froben published the first edition of the Greek New Testament in Basel, which Erasmus had prepared years before.⁹ As was common at the time, the title was very long and cumbersome: “The entire New Testament, which Erasmus of Rotterdam meticulously checked and improved, not only according to the Greek original text, but also after consulting the testimony of many old correct Latin and Greek manuscripts, in addition to quotes, improvements, and interpretations of the most reliable authors, particularly Origen, Chrysostom, Cyril, Vulgarius [i. e. Theophylact], Jerome, Cyprian, Ambrose, Hilarius, and Augustine, accompanied by comments that inform the reader about why changes were made.”¹⁰ The title makes pretty clear what

 Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami denuo recognitum et auctum, ed. Percy S. Allen et al., 12 vols. (Oxford: Oxonii, 1906 – 1958), no. 457, 2:331, 58 – 59); hereafter Allen.  Erasmi Roterodami Germaniae decoris Adagiorum Chiliades […] (Basel: Ioannes Frobenius, 1513). Cf. Frank Hieronymus, ed., Griechischer Geist aus Baseler Pressen (Basel: Universitätsmuseum, 1992): 16 – 20.  See Martin Wallraff, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Kaspar von Greyerz, eds., Basel 1516: Erasmus’ Edition of the New Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).  Nouum instrumentum omne, diligenter ab Erasmo Roterodamo recognitum et emendatum, non solum ad graecam ueritatem, uerumetiam ad multorum utriusque linguae codicum, eorum ueterum

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Erasmus had achieved here: A new Latin translation of the New Testament, together with the Greek original, so that everybody could check the correctness of the translation. The original Greek text was reconstructed from numerous manuscripts and quotes from the most important church fathers. In an extensive appendix, Erasmus provided the arguments for the emendations of the Vulgate, the Latin translation that was sanctified by centuries of use in liturgy and theology. As Erasmus explained in his dedication to Pope Leo X, the work intended to make accessible to Christians the pure source of “Christian philosophy” (philosophia christiana), as he called the life of the believers, with reference to the church fathers; for too long, Erasmus claimed, these Christians had had to draw from the ponds of an inaccurate and corrupt translation and from the trickle of scholastic theology.¹¹ Erasmus also demanded vernacular translations for uneducated readers. Luther implemented this with regard to the German language; for his translation of the New Testament, written during his time at Wartburg Castle in 1522, he made use of the second printing of the Erasmus edition (Basel, 1519). In addition to the dedication to Pope Leo X, mentioned above, Erasmus also included three introductory sections to the text edition: a call to Bible reading (Paraclesis), a manual for biblical exegesis (Methodus), and a defense against potential critics (Apologia). Particularly interesting is the second introduction, of which a significantly extended separate version – reprinted many times – was published 1518 in Louvain under the title Ratio seu methodus compendio perveniendi ad veram theologiam (Methodology for the Shortest Way to True Theology). Starting from the insight that Holy Scripture as a text not only follows grammatical but also rhetorical rules, Erasmus tried to apply ancient rhetoric to biblical hermeneutics.¹² The text edition, which Erasmus improved in four subsequent printings (1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535), was strongly criticized by some advocates of the Vulgate and also by humanists – and with good reason. Erasmus and his staff had rushed their work in order to be faster than a competitive project in Spain. Since the last verses of the final book of the New Testament – the Revelation of John – were missing in the Greek manuscripts Erasmus used, he simply retranslated them from the Vulgate. Later he corrected this, as well as the careless mistakes mentioned above. But the reproach remained that he had produced an inferior text because of his exclusive use of late Byzantine manuscripts. Today, however, scholars relativize the equation of “late” with “inferior”: late manuscripts can quite possibly transmit a text of which older versions have been lost, and old manuscripts do not necessarily provide a better text. “It remains

simul et emendatorum fidem, postremo ad probatissimorum autorum citationem, emendationem et interpretationem, praecipue, Origenis, Chrysostomi, Cyrilli, Vulgarii, Hieronymi, Cypriani, Ambrosii, Hilarii, Augustini, una cum Annotationibus, quae lectorem doceant, quid qua ratione mutatum sit (Basel: Ioannes Frobenius, 1516).  Allen, no. 384, 2:185, 42– 55.  See Peter Walter, Theologie aus dem Geist der Rhetorik. Zur Schriftauslegung des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1991).

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possible that the text which Erasmus produced 500 years ago is, in numerous passages, better than some of the more recent editions which have attempted to replace it.”¹³ Next to the edition and translation of the New Testament were the many editions of the works of the church fathers, which formed Erasmus’ contribution to the renewal of theology – from the letters of Jerome (c. 347– 419) that Erasmus published in 1516, to the complete Latin edition of Origen (c. 184–ca. 253), which he worked on during the last year of his life.

1.4 Erasmus as Interpreter of Sacred Scripture But Erasmus did more than putting out an edition of the New Testament with commentary. Between 1517 and 1524, he also regularly published paraphrases – first of the epistles of the New Testament, starting with the Letter to the Romans, then of the gospels, and finally of the Acts of the Apostles. This means he covered the entire New Testament, except the Revelation of John. While in his Latin translations he wanted to render the text as accurately as possible, with the paraphrases – which, in his understanding, belonged to the category of commentary – Erasmus intended to present the content of the biblical texts more freely. Translations such as the Vulgate, and also those of Erasmus and Luther, imitate the original text even in the order of words in sentences. The paraphrase, however, could more easily follow the rules of the Latin language, at the same time explaining difficult passages to make comprehension easier. The paraphrase could express what was said differently, without saying something different (sic aliter dicere vt tamen non dicas alia).¹⁴ The result is a fiction, as if the author himself would agree (Paulus ipse loqui videatur).¹⁵ To steal his critics’ thunder, Erasmus later relativized this implicit claim and stressed the nature of the paraphrase as a commentary.¹⁶ In most cases, Erasmus dedicated his paraphrases to the usual circle of people, but the paraphrases of the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles he dedicated to the highest worldly and religious dignitaries of the time. He dedicated his paraphrase of Matthew to Emperor Charles V, that of Mark to King Francis I of France, that of Luke to King Henry VIII of England, that of John to the brother and later successor of Emperor Charles V, Ferdinand, and that of the Acts of the Apostles to Pope Clemens VII. The theological focus of his interpretation corresponds with the principles worked out in the Enchiridion, and in his introductory works more generally, and could be called the Erasmean philosophia Christi. The paraphrases had a significant impact,  Andrew J. Brown, “The Manuscript Sources and Textual Character of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament,” in Basel 1516, 125 – 144, here 142.  Allen, no. 710, 3:138, 30 – 31.  Allen, no. 710, 3:138, 47– 48.  Allen, no, 1333, 5:172, 395 – 97; no. 1381, 5:322, 420 – 24.

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both in the Latin originals and in the vernacular translations. This was particularly true for England, where, according to a royal decree of 1547, every parish church had to have a copy of the English translation of the paraphrases of the gospel on display for everyone to use.¹⁷ In the German-speaking regions, the initial success of the paraphrases of the New Testament letters – translated by Leo Jud (c. 1482 – 1542), a close collaborator of Zwingli – slowed down due to the publication of Luther’s translation of the New Testament. Therefore, German translations of the paraphrases of the gospels came out much later.¹⁸ Parallel to his edition of the New Testament and the New Testament paraphrases, Erasmus started to work on his interpretation of the Psalms, which comprised eleven psalms and utilized various hermeneutical methods. It seems that he initially wanted to write a commentary and paraphrase for the entire collection of psalms, but after his comment on Psalm 4, he gave up the continuous commenting and decided – without apparent systematization – to focus on selected psalms. On the whole, this project seemed to be an incidental work. In three cases, Erasmus used psalm texts for essays on topical questions: on the purity of the Church (Psalm 14 [15]), on the war against the Turks (Psalm 28 [29]), and on the restoration of the unity of the Church (Psalm 83 [84]). His interpretation of Psalm 28 (29) came out shortly after Luther’s first Türkenschriften (Writings on the Turks) of 1529, with the title Utilissima consultatio de bello Turcis inferendo (Very Useful Advice about the Future War against the Turks, Basel, 1530). The Turks, as Erasmus explained with reference to the central keyword of this psalm, are the vox Domini (voice of God) that called the Christians to turn back to their original faith. The Turks were successful – such as, most recently, at the battle of Mohács (1526), followed by the siege of Vienna (1529) – not because of their own virtues, but because of the Christians’ vices, which were just as bad as the evils of their enemies. A just war against the Turks could only be successful if the Christian peoples and their leaders would overcome the problem that triggered God’s wrath in the guise of the Turkish invasion: their sinfulness. In contrast to Luther, for whom the papacy was the main reason for God’s wrath, Erasmus made the whole of Christianity responsible for it. While he did not entirely rule out a war against the Turks – with some minimal moral standards being applied, of course –, he mainly demanded that Christians would become more Christian and, by providing an example, convert their enemies. As to the interpretation of Psalm 83 (84), I will discuss it in the next passage because it refers to the dispute with the Reformers.

 Cf. John Craig, “Forming a Protestant Consciousness? Erasmus’ Paraphrases in English Parishes, 1547– 1666,” in Holy Scripture Speaks: The Production and Reception of Erasmus’ Paraphrases on the New Testament, ed. Hilmar M. Pabel and Mark Vessey (Toronto/Buffalo/London: Toronto University Press, 2002), 313 – 59.  Cf. Heinz Holeczek, Erasmus deutsch (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1983), 1:109 – 128.

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Even though Erasmus always explained philological and historical details, the main objective of his interpretations of the Psalms was clearly spiritual. In accordance with almost the entire Christian tradition, including Martin Luther’s view, he held on to the Christological and ecclesiological reading of the Psalms. But most prominent for him was the tropological interpretation, intending to apply the basic – mainly the spiritual – texts for Christian prayer and make them fruitful for Christian life.

2 Erasmus and the Luther Affair 2.1 Closeness and Distance Contemporaries of Luther may have interpreted his resistance against the sale of indulgences as a continuation of the critique that Erasmus had formulated in his Enchiridion and reinforced in his Moriae encomium – a critique of externalized piety, focused merely on the frequency of attending mass, the veneration of relics, pilgrimages, etc. Franciscans from Cologne drove this point home when they claimed that Erasmus had laid the egg that Luther would hatch.¹⁹ They certainly were not the first Catholic critics to denounce either individual works – such as the Moriae encomium – or Erasmus’ whole endeavor to put theology on a philologically sound basis and renew it from there.²⁰ In the beginning, Erasmus was actually quite sympathetic to Luther. As he wrote in retrospect in 1526, he regarded Luther’s name as a good omen; the name reminded him of the German word Läuterer (purifier) because his father worked in the mining industry, removing all the unwanted ingredients in the process of smelting ore.²¹ However, such sympathy did not prevent him from intervening with his printer in Basel, who, in 1518, had published a large volume of collected Latin works of the reformer. Froben wanted to have his share in the business opportunities of selling Luther’s works – a big business, indeed. As a response, Froben quickly terminated this branch of his book production. Luther did not need that anyway, and other Basel printers were happy to help. The humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485 – 1547) from Schlettstadt (Alsace) – who was close with Erasmus, and after his death published the first biography of Erasmus and a complete edition of his works (9 volumes, Basel, 1540 – 1542) – engaged in propaganda promoting Luther behind Erasmus’ back, just as he was busy selling Erasmus’ works.²² This is not a contradiction be-

 Allen, no. 1528, 5:609, 11.  See Erika Rummel, Erasmus and his Catholic Critics, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1989).  Allen, no. 1672, 6:275, 44– 46.  See Peter Walter, “Die Rückkehr des Erasmus nach Basel 1521 und Beatus Rhenanus,” in Beatus Rhenanus et une réforme de l’Eglise: engagement et changement. Actes du colloque international tenu les 5 et 6 juin 2015 à Strasbourg et à Sélestat, ed. James Hirstein (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, in press).

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cause, in the early years, Luther was primarily perceived as a reformer of the Church in the spirit of Erasmus. The latter’s intervention with Froben was also less related to the content of Luther’s works than to their growing competition. Erasmus was concerned that he would “have to share the stage with Luther from now on.”²³ But he could not stop Luther’s rapid success. Erasmus and Luther never met personally. Their contact was restricted to letters, and it was initiated by Luther, if indirectly. At the end of 1516, through Georg Spalatin (1484– 1545), and without disclosing his name, Luther shared his concerns about Erasmus’ view of the Pauline doctrine of justification as it was laid out in his commentary on the New Testament. He particularly disapproved of Erasmus calling into question Augustine’s use of Rom 5:12 as a proof of original sin.²⁴ It was at the end of March 1519 that Luther took the initiative and wrote directly to Erasmus; he praised him as “our decoration and our hope,” depicting himself as the “little brother in Christ.”²⁵ Erasmus did not respond directly. In the middle of April, he defended Luther in a letter to the Saxon elector Friedrich the Wise (1463 – 1525) against the allegation of heresy, and he encouraged the elector to protect Luther.²⁶ By the end of May 1519, Erasmus responded to Luther, whom he addressed as “dearest brother in Christ.”²⁷ He reported the strong critical reactions that Luther’s writings were triggering in the Catholic center of Leuven, where Erasmus had lived since 1517, and he noted that these reactions were not only directed against Luther, but also against himself.²⁸ Erasmus was publicly attacked – for instance, in sermons. As he put it in a letter to Beatus Rhenanus in May 1521, the “Luther tragedy” had caused such a dispute that neither talking nor being silent was safe anymore. Everything, even if written with the best intentions, was torn apart in all possible ways. Neither would people consider the time in which something had been written; they would move texts that made perfect sense in one period to a period that was completely inappropriate.²⁹ Some of Erasmus’ letters about the Luther Affair were made public before they even reached their addressee. One example is his June 1519 letter to Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg (1490 – 1545), in which Erasmus wrote positively about

 Christoph Galle, Hodie nullus – cras maximus. Berühmtwerden und Berühmtsein im frühen 16. Jahrhundert am Beispiel des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Münster: Aschendorff, 2013), 312.  Allen, no. 501, 2:417, 49 – 418, 72. The Council of Trent would later defend Augustine’s philologically wrong interpretation – in accordance with Luther – in the fourth canon of its decree on original sin, referring back to the second canon of the Synod of Carthage (418); see Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, ed. Peter Hünermann (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2009, 42nd ed.), no. 1514, compared to no. 223; hereafter DH.  Allen, no. 933, 3:517, 2– 3; Allen, no. 933, 3:518, 31.  Allen, no. 939, 3:530, 66 – 86.  Allen, no. 980, 3:605, 1.  Allen, no. 980, 3:605, 4– 27.  Allen, no. 1206, 4:499, 46 – 50.

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Luther.³⁰ In 1521, Erasmus moved to Basel – a city that, in the meantime, had been taken over by supporters of the Reformation, with a few citizens who remained Catholic –, where he could live and work relatively unharmed. He repeatedly commented on the Luther Affair. In his last letter to Ulrich Zwingli (1484– 1531), dated August 31, 1523, he wrote that he could not understand Luther’s paradoxa (paradoxes), for which he refused to die, as had the three Augustinians who had recently been burned at the stake in Brussels.³¹ Luther would deny that he, Erasmus, possessed the spirit; but what kind of spirit would that be, Erasmus asked Zwingli. He had taught everything Luther had taught, but less atrociter (horribly), because he refrained from certain riddles and paradoxes.³² Among the riddles he listed,³³ the denial of free will was a central one. Luther had proclaimed this thesis in the Heidelberger Disputation in 1518,³⁴ and – after it was condemned in the 1520 bull Exsurge Domine, which threatened the author with a ban³⁵ – he defended it again in his Assertio the same year.³⁶

2.2 The Dispute about Free Will In the long run, Erasmus could not ignore the urging of many, including King Henry VIII, to take a position in the Luther Affair. He did so in his 1524 work De libero arbitrio διατριβή sive collatio (On Free Will: Discourses and Comparisons), which was directed against Luther’s position, but also against the opinion of other Reformers, such as Andreas Bodenstein of Karlstadt (c. 1480 – 1541) and Philipp Melanchthon (1497– 1560). We may criticize Erasmus for taking up a thesis that was already condemned by the Church, thereby only making things worse. But we may also see in this – particularly if we take into account his open style of argumentation – Erasmus’ attempt to reconnect to Luther after the conversation was interrupted.³⁷ In this work, Erasmus displays his typical style of argumentation, which his critics – most prominently Luther – disavowed as skepticism. He collates all biblical texts that speak for or against the assumption of free will with regard to salvation, discusses the pros and cons, and in the end leaves the decision to his readers. He limits his discussion to the Bible, which Luther accepted as the only authority in  Allen, no. 1033, 4:96 – 107. See Peter Walter, “Albrecht von Brandenburg und Erasmus von Rotterdam,” in Syngrammata. Gesammelte Schriften zu Theologie und Kirche am Mittelrhein, ed. Claus Arnold (Würzburg: Echter, 2015), 259 – 76, here 268 – 270.  Allen, no. 1384, 5:327, 1– 16.  Allen, no. 1384, 5:330, 87– 91.  Allen, no. 1384, 5:327, 10 – 13.  WA 1:354, 5 – 6.  No. 36: DH 1486.  WA 7:142– 49.  See Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Rhetoric and Reform: Erasmus’ Civil Dispute with Luther (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 34– 38.

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theological disputes. In his introduction, however, Erasmus raises the question of the correct interpretation of Holy Scripture, as some of its passages – particularly when it comes to the theme under consideration – are so obscure that they call for explanation. He then asks whether it would not be likely that God had equipped the clerical hierarchy, ordained as successors of the apostles, with the spirit that enabled them to interpret scripture.³⁸ In the first main part, the proper collatio, he compiles the biblical texts that speak for or against free will, and in the second main part, the diatribe, he uses these texts to philosophically and theologically discuss the problem. But Erasmus does not restrict the first part to a collection of biblical quotations; he also tries to disprove the passages usually used against free will, making use of the church father Origen in particular, who had already discussed the issue.³⁹ Just like Luther, Erasmus excludes the possibility of any human self-redemption. But in contrast to the reformer, Erasmus attributes free will to the human being, even after original sin. Original sin did not obliterate free will, as Luther assumed; it only weakened it, and salvation in Jesus Christ restored it. For Erasmus, denying that redeemed and faithful human beings have free will is not so much an injustice against human beings, the weakness of whom he acknowledges; it is rather an injustice against God, who redeemed the human being through Christ, which is also a recreation. God’s grace and human beings’ free will, according to Erasmus, relate to each other like the first cause to the second cause. God is gracious to the sinful human being, makes free will possible, and leads the person to completion; but he leaves it to the human being to either accept the offer of salvation or turn it down. Without such free will, responsible ethical action would be impossible. Among the examples Erasmus uses to illuminate what is at stake, there is that of a father who shows an apple to his child, who cannot walk properly yet; the father helps and holds the child while it tries to reach the desired fruit, and finally gives the apple to the child as compensation for its effort.⁴⁰ For Erasmus, the denial of free will is a paradox supported by numerous “help paradoxes,” such as the gross exaggeration of the impact of original sin.⁴¹ In the end, Erasmus – as is common in the genre of diatribe – leaves the decision to his readers. In contrast to Luther, he thought that whatever his readers decided, this decision should not divide the community of faith. In fact, Luther’s and Erasmus’ different positions – ultimately based on different interpretations of Augustine – were already supported by Augustinian theologians of the Late Middle Ages, without causing a schism at that time. In the medieval discussion, Gregor of Rimini (c. 1305 – 1358)

 De libero arbitrio διατριβή sive collatio per Desiderium Erasmum Roterodamum, ed. J. von Walter (Leipzig, 1910; repr. 1935), 15, 7– 13; hereafter W.  See Peter Walter, “Inquisitor, non dogmatistes. Die Rolle des Origenes in der Auseinandersetzung des Erasmus von Rotterdam mit Martin Luther,” in Syngrammata. Gesammelte Schriften zu Humanismus und Katholischer Reform, ed. Günther Wassilowsky (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015), 187– 201.  W 83, 30 – 84, 11.  W 87, 12– 25.

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tended to agree with what became Luther’s position, while Hugolin of Orvieto (c. 1300 – 1373) favored Erasmus’ view.⁴² Luther had some reservations about Erasmus early on, as he noted in a letter to Georg Spalatin on January 18, 1518. He assumed the humanist had a purely philological approach to Holy Scripture, while he himself preferred a spiritual one. Whereas Erasmus would side with Jerome, he himself would base his theology on Augustine, and particularly on that church father’s doctrine of grace.⁴³ He responded to De libero arbitrio a year later with his belligerent counter-work De servo arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will), in which he mainly addressed the introduction to Erasmus’ treatise. On the positive side, he pointed out that Erasmus was almost the only one of his enemies who got the core of the reformatory doctrine right.⁴⁴ On the negative side, he bluntly denied Erasmus any competence to speak on theological matters; Luther saw a lack of necessary knowledge in Erasmus and only acknowledged the humanist’s eloquence.⁴⁵ He then summed up the prejudices that Erasmus’ name evokes to this day – above all, that he was a skeptic, and that he shunned clear statements.⁴⁶ In terms of content, Luther refuted Erasmus’ method of interpreting those passages that argue against free will metaphorically and in the line of the church fathers Origen and Jerome. If God said in the book of Exodus, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart” (Ex 4:21; 14:4), then the text meant exactly this, and there was no room for reinterpretation.⁴⁷ Erasmus responded to Luther in 1526/1527 with a massive, two-volume defense under the title Hyperaspistes diatribae adversus servum arbitrium Martini Lutheri (A Warrior Shielding a Discussion of Free Will against Martin Luther’s ‘The Bondage of the Will’).⁴⁸ In this work, Erasmus defended himself particularly against the accusation of being a faithless skeptic. He did not add any new arguments to the dispute itself. Again, Erasmus called Luther’s denial of free will and his claims – such as the one about good deeds being deadly sins – “paradoxes.”⁴⁹ His rejection of Luther was clear:

 See Christoph Burger, “Erasmus’ Auseinandersetzung mit Augustin im Streit um Luther,” in Auctoritas Patrum: Contributions on the Perception of the Church Fathers in the 15th and 16th Century, ed. Leif Grane, Alfred Schindler, and Markus Wriedt (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1993), 1– 14.  WA.B no. 57, 1:133 – 34.  WA 18:787. Erasmus surely was not the first to criticize Luther’s position on the question of free will. For an overview of the Catholic polemical theologians writing between 1519 and 1525, see Hubert Jedin, Des Johannes Cochlaeus Streitschrift de libero arbitrio hominis (1525). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der vortridentinischen katholischen Theologie (Breslau: Müller & Seiffert, 1927), 17– 47.  WA 18:600 – 02.  WA 18:603 – 05.  WA 18:702– 05, 708.  Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera omnia emendatiora et auctiora, ed. J. Clericus, 10 vols. (Lugduni Batavorum, 1703 – 1706; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961– 1962), 10, col. 1249a–1336c, 1337a–1536 f; hereafter LB.  LB 10, col. 1254de and elsewhere.

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I have never left the Catholic Church. I have never felt any inclination to belong to your Church, and therefore I – for many reasons an unhappy person – think I am very happy that I have always kept my distance from your alliance. I know that I dislike much of the Church you call the papist one. But I see the same in your Church, too. It is just easier to bear the evils you are used to. Hence, I endure the Church until I see it improved, and the Church is forced to endure me until I myself will have become a better person. The one who keeps the middle course between two evils does not sail unhappily.⁵⁰

Erasmus disliked two things in those “who wrongly consider themselves evangelical”⁵¹: the assumption that it is possible to restore the original state of Christianity, and the mismatch between claims and behavior. Erasmus was sure that if Paul would have lived at that time, he would not have disapproved of the current state of the Church, but he would have criticized the immorality of the people. The immorality of the clerical leadership – which was also addressed many times in this work – could be healed without tumult, and one should be careful not to let the medicine do more harm than the illness itself. But how can you come together if one side does not want to renew anything and the other does not want to leave anything as it is?⁵² Against the background of a historical development that had improved the Church in many ways, Erasmus thought it absurd to attempt to restore the original state and to turn back the clock. This would be like trying to call an adult back into the cradle and into childhood.⁵³ Instead of improving the Church, those who wrongly called themselves Evangelicals had in fact counteracted efforts at reform. Erasmus mentioned iconoclasm in particular, which had forced him to leave Basel in 1529, but also the abolishing of the mass and confession, as well as other initiatives. He thought it was not very convincing if people left a sermon with an angry face.⁵⁴

2.3 Attempts at Reconciliation But Erasmus never gave up the hope of reconciliation. Three years later he published a commentary on Psalm 83 (84) under the title Liber de sarcienda Ecclesiae concordia (Book on the Restoration of Concord in the Church, Basel, 1533). The commentary was built around the concept of concordia, which for Erasmus was “the most fundamen-

 LB 10, col. 1257 f–1258a.  Epistola Des. Erasmi Rot. contra quosdam, qui se falso iactant Euangelicos (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1530); ASD IX-1, p. 279.  Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1969), 9.1:308, 695 – 702; hereafter ASD.  ASD 9.1:304, 623 – 25.  ASD 9.1:292, 241– 70.

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tal concept of the Christian religion.”⁵⁵ Erasmus dedicated this work to the humanistically educated jurist and future bishop of Naumburg, Julius Pflug (1499 – 1564), who was engaged in the search for peace between the religious parties. In January 1533, he had asked Erasmus to cure the illness of schism with a curative, and certainly not a bitter, medicine.⁵⁶ Erasmus picked up this metaphor when he wrote that the illness of schism was not yet in such a progressed state that it could no longer be healed. But to accomplish that task, he argued, both camps needed to make conciliatory moves. Erasmus here borrowed language from the Greek church fathers, who used the term συγκατάβασις (condescension) for the incarnation of the logos. On the one hand, he demanded reforms, which, in particular, had to restore the spiritual character of the clerical office; on the other hand, he warned against too easily doing away with tradition. His plea was to accept customs that the Lutherans would denounce as misuses – such as the prayer for the deceased, the invocation of the saints, the veneration of images and relics, and confession – as evidence of true piety and to tolerate them accordingly. He hoped a general council could bring unity.⁵⁷ This work saw many reprints, even during Erasmus’ lifetime. It was translated into German twice, as a partial translation by Georg Witzel (1501– 1573) and as a full translation by the Strasburg reformer Wolfgang Fabricius Capito (1478 – 1541). Capito’s translation appeared as early as 1533, and it was dedicated to the translator’s former superior, Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, for whom he had served as counselor and confessor in the early 1520s.⁵⁸ At the time, Erasmus and Capito were already estranged, which raises questions as to the motivation for the translation. Heinz Holeczek comes to the conclusion that the translation’s “main focus […] clearly is the claim of tolerating the reformatory understanding of faith, rather than the reunification of the deeply divided Christianity.”⁵⁹ It therefore follows “the line of the other German editions of Erasmus by Strasburg reformers; from the various texts of Erasmus on the treatment of heretics and on the unity and purity of the Church, they distilled and published those ideas that seemed to support the peaceful acceptance particularly of the faith doctrines of the Reformation.”⁶⁰ Before addressing the second translation, which clearly had a different objective, let us have a look at the reception in Luther’s environment. Luther himself explicitly

 R. Stupperich, Einleitung, in ASD 5.3, 247. See Peter Walter, “Humanismus, Toleranz und individuelle Religionsfreiheit. Erasmus und sein Umkreis,” in Syngrammata (see note 39), 113 – 35, here 118 – 24.  Julius Pflug, Correspondance, ed. J.V. Pollet (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969), 1:288 – 89, 77.  ASD 5.3:303 – 13.  Von der kirchen lieblichen vereinigung vnd von hinlegung diser zeit haltender spaltung in der glauben leer geschriben durch […] Des. Eras. von Roterdam (Strasburg: Mathias Apiarius, 1533).  Holeczek, Erasmus, 265.  Holeczek, Erasmus, 266.

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rejected Erasmus’ proposal. He distinguished unity in faith from unity in love.⁶¹ That there was no unity in love was completely the fault of the “papists.” Unity in faith could never be a matter of compromise, since confidence in faith could only be achieved on the basis of Holy Scripture, and not on the basis of doctrinal decisions by the Church.⁶² He recommended that Erasmus should keep away from theology and should limit himself to rhetoric.⁶³ Luther wrote this in the preface to the work of the Lutheran pastor of Witzenhausen (Hessen) and counselor of the landgrave Philipp Antonius Corvinus (1501– 1553), entitled Judgment on the Question of Whether It Is Helpful to Follow Erasmus’ Recently Suggested Path to Restoration of the Unity of the Church until a Council Will Be Called. ⁶⁴ This work is designed as a dialogue in which Corvinus called his dialogue partner Julianus – probably a hint at Julius Pflug. Corvinus particularly criticized Erasmus’ use of the immorality of some Lutherans to draw conclusions about the erroneousness of the entire Lutheran doctrine.⁶⁵ Just as Luther did in his preface, Corvinus also linked concord in questions of faith to the doctrines’ accordance with Scripture.⁶⁶ It almost seems to be an illustration of Luther’s suggestion to Erasmus to stick with his own métier – rhetoric – when, a year later, Corvinus published an edition of Erasmus’ Apophthegmata (his collection of ancient wisdom sayings) in a version that was abbreviated and thematically structured for the use in schools.⁶⁷ In the same year, he also satirically criticized Witzel’s return to the Catholic Church, using the pseudonym Sylvanus Hessus.⁶⁸ Georg Witzel had changed sides twice during his lifetime. Born as a son of the mayor of Vacha (Rhön), he became acquainted with Erasmus’ thinking during his study in Erfurt and through the Erfurt circle of humanists around Eobanus Hessus (1488 – 1540). He was ordained as a priest early and worked in his father’s town as vicar and town clerk. He became an enthusiastic supporter of Luther, got married at the age of 24 to Elisabeth Kraus from Eisenach (d. 1554), and had to give up his position in Vacha. He got his first position as a Lutheran pastor in Wenigen-Lüpnitz in Thuringia, but he had to leave there as a result of the Peasants’ Revolt. With Luther’s support, he moved to the city of Niemegk, near Wittenberg. He had some contacts with the anti-Trinitarian Johannes Campanus (c. 1500–after 1574) and was accused of belonging to this school himself – which, for a short, time landed him in

 WA 38:276, 16 – 17.  WA 38:278, 8 – 10.  WA 38:278, 24– 25.  Antonius Corvinus, Quatenus expediat aeditam recens Erasmi de sarcienda ecclesiae concordia rationem sequi, tantisper dum adparatur synodus, iuditium (Wittenberg: Nicolaus Schirlentz, 1534).  Fol. B2a–b.  Fol. B3a.  Argutissima quaeque Apophthegmata ex Erasmi Roterodami opere selecta (Magdeburg: Michael Lotter, 1534). Erasmus’ Apophthegmatum opus (Basel, 1532) comprised over 3,000 sayings.  Ludus Sylvani Hessi in defectionem Georgii Wicelii ad Papistas (Wittenberg, 1534).

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jail. Through the study of the church fathers, he found his way back to his old belief and resigned from his parish position in 1531. An unsteady life began, which remained difficult for the family – which, in the meantime, had expanded to eight children. Luther, who had heard of Witzel’s reorientation toward Catholicism, prevented his appointment as professor of Hebrew in Wittenberg. Witzel subsequently withdrew to the territory of Count Hoyer of Mansfeld (1484– 1540), who appointed him as Catholic preacher in Eisleben. Following the advice of his superior, he translated Erasmus’ Liber de sarcienda ecclesiae condordia into German. The translation came out anonymously in 1534, comprising only the last part of the work, which dealt with the necessary conciliatory moves of the confessional parties.⁶⁹ Prior to this translation were two letters in the fall of 1532 and the spring of 1533, in which Witzel enthusiastically praised Erasmus, asking him to act against the “sects” and help in calling a council.⁷⁰ Erasmus, in a letter in the spring of 1534 to the metallurgist Georg Agricola (1490 – 1555) – who, like Witzel, belonged to the circle of Julius Pflug – apologized for not having responded to Witzel. He would have answered that he should not let his annoyance about Luther get out of hand.⁷¹ In the meantime, Luther had prepared his last strike against Erasmus. In March 1534, he published his correspondence with Nikolaus of Amsdorff (1483 – 1565).⁷² The latter had urged Luther to intervene against Erasmus, rather than against Witzel, and to reveal Erasmus’ wickedness. Now Luther reinforced the allegations he had already expressed in De servo arbitrio. He accused Erasmus of ambiguity (amphibologia) and did not even refrain from calling him a devil several times.⁷³ Erasmus responded with his Purgatio aduersus epistolam non sobriam Martini Lutheri (Cleansing in Response to Martin Luther’s Drunk Letter).⁷⁴ He also reproduced his image of Luther when he had talked about his “paradoxes,” as he did in Hyperaspistes. ⁷⁵ On this basis, a settlement was impossible. Many people have wondered why Erasmus returned to Basel in 1535. Is it possible that, in the end, the Upper German Reformation – which was much closer to his ideas than Luther was – attracted him? Most probably, he went back to oversee the printing of his important works. He was planning to return to his Dutch home, but his death foiled that plan. Erasmus died in the night between 11 and 12 July, 1536, and was buried in the Basel Cathedral.

      

Von der einigkeyt der Kirchen durch Erasmum von Roterodam ytzt new ausgangen (Erfurt, 1534). Allen, no. 2716, 10:94– 96; Allen, no. 2786, 10:187– 89. Allen, no. 2918, 10:372, 6 – 373, 8. WA.B no. 2086 and 2093. WA.B no. 2093, 7:37, 305 – 14; 7:30, 80 – 81; 7:32, 109 – 111, and elsewhere. Erasmus, Purgatio aduersus epistolam non sobriam Martini Lutheri (Basel: Frobenius, 1534). ASD 9.1:477, 961.

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3 Conclusion Erasmus and Luther were united in their search for a reform of the Church that was not primarily directed at the institution, but at every individual Christian. For Erasmus, we have the apt formulation: “Reform of studies, reform of morals, reform of Church.”⁷⁶ Luther and Erasmus were also united in their disagreement with scholastic formalism and their preference for a theology of piety based on Holy Scripture. These agreements, however, were overshadowed by different accents in their opinions. Luther was a much more dogmatically oriented theologian, who thought he could derive his theological doctrines straight from Holy Scripture, and who defended his convictions vehemently, at times using rude language. Erasmus, in contrast, was a much more philologically oriented theologian, who took seriously the tensions within the biblical text as well as the development of Church doctrine. That is why he, not least in his dispute with his main opponent, recognized the importance of Church doctrinal authority for securing the unity of the Church.

 This is the subtitle of Franz Bierlaire, Les Colloques d’Érasme: réforme des études, réforme des mœurs, réforme de l’Église au XVIe siècle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978).

Lucio Biasiori

Before the Inquisitor

A Thousand Ways of Being Lutheran

1 Luterano: The Word and the Thing Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries in Italy, when a person was led before the inquisitor with the accusation of being a “luterano” (a Lutheran) – or, less often, a “luterino,” a “luteresco,” or a “martinista,” all different variations of “luterano” – he or she often had little to do with Luther. The Benedictine prophet Giorgio Siculo was strangled as a “heretic and Lutheran” in a Ferrara prison, despite having written ardent pages full of a contradictory – although no less radical – religious message against the “false doctrine of the Protestants;”¹ Leonora Capelli, from Modena, was accused of being a “rotten Lutheran, who publicly spoke and said Lutheran things,” only because she had left her community during the Easter celebrations, a clear sign – according to the inquisitor – of wanting to avoid the duty of confession;² finally, even someone like the miller from Friuli Domenico Scandella, also known as Menocchio, who claimed to be a “Lutheran martyr” and wished that, after his execution, “some Lutherans will learn of it, and will come to collect the ashes,” actually derived his ideas from a web of highbrow and lowbrow culture that has been judged to be “very far from Luther and his doctrines.”³ As indicated by these three examples, which were picked almost at random, the label “Lutheranism” was used to brand any deviation from the theological canons of the Holy Roman Church and to cover religious anti-conformism tout court (Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Lutheran Letters can be considered a proud and very late reworking of the same stereotype). This was not the first time in the history of Christianity that a common denomination was used to label – in order to better condemn – beliefs that were rather more complex and multifaceted. However, the reductio ad Lutherum was different because – just like all stereotypes – it was founded on an element of truth, albeit turned upside down, perceived by both its opponents and its sympathizers:

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  Adriano Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro grande. Storia di Giorgio Siculo e della sua seta (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2000), 19.  Matteo Al Kalak, Gli eretici di Modena. Fede e potere alla metà del Cinquecento (Milano: Ugo Mursia, 2008), 63.  Carlo Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi. Il cosmo di un mugnaio del ’500 (Torino: Einaudi, 1976), 22; Eng. trans. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. J. Tedeschi and A.C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013 [1980]), 16 ff. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-031

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“all comes from Luther,” as the Venetian orator in Vienna, Carlo Contarini, wrote with alarm on April 30, 1525,⁴ while the protonotary Pietro Carnesecchi recalled how the bishop of Bergamo, Vittore Soranzo, and himself used to “call said Luther the ocean, as, just like the ocean, all other heretics receive his plenitude, not unlike the rivers receive their waters from the sea.” However, Luther too, “being outside of the Church, was as a consequence outside of charity and […] although he was right on many issues and had interpreted many passages of the Scripture well, it was still not possible to conclude that, because of this, he had the spirit of God, if not by however much God himself had conceded it for the benefit and edification of his chosen.”⁵ The divergence between Carnesecchi’s beliefs and Luther’s – and here, once again, it is possible to highlight the gap between the word and the thing – would not prevent the former from being put to the stake as a “Lutheran” in 1570, after a decade-long trial. As it is already possible to see from these first few testimonies, this “ocean” is particularly difficult to navigate because, in the mare magnum of Lutheranism, the historical figure of Luther disappears, not only because of a certain level of diffraction inevitably carried within every reception, but also because the number of times in which Luther’s name is mentioned during inquisitorial trials is – for example, when compared to Erasmus’ – relatively small.⁶ Among these few instances, the following pages will focus especially on one, as yet unpublished, and investigated here for the first time – the first-known trial of Italian followers of Luther held in Florence in 1524.⁷ Therefore, the theoretical camera in this chapter will be focused on Florence, a vantage point for many reasons, but first and foremost because the pope with whom Luther fell out, Leo X, and the one who took the first repressive measures against him, Clement VII, both belonged to the Florentine house of Medici. From Florence, the focus will be widened from time to time to include other places and times in an attempt to account for the complex reception of Luther in the inquisitorial domain, not only as far as Italy is concerned,

 O. Niccoli, “Il mostro di Sassonia. Conoscenza e non conoscenza di Lutero in Italia nel Cinquecento (1520 – 1530 ca),” in Lutero in Italia. Studi storici nel V centenario della nascita, ed. L. Perrone (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1983), 21.  Massimo Firpo and Dario Marcatto, I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi (1557 – 1567). Edizione critica, vol. 2.2, Il processo sotto Pio V (1566 – 1567) (Città del Vaticano: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2000), 558. On the “ambivalence of feelings” toward Luther before the inquisitor on his Italian supporters’ part, see the essay by S. Seidel Menchi, “‘Certo Martino è stato terribil homo’. L’immagine di Lutero e la sua efficacia secondo i processi italiani dell’Inquisizione,” in Lutero in Italia, 115 – 37, here 125, of which these pages are an ideal continuation.  On the inquisitorial reception of Erasmus, see S. Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia (1520 – 80), Torino 1987.  Archivio della Curia Arcivescovile di Firenze, Cause criminali 10, 14. Given the frequent quotes from the trial, I have chosen to not burden the text excessively with repeated references to the pages in the footnotes, referring the reader instead to the imminent publication of the trial, which will also better set the context of the events within Luther’s very early reception in Tuscany.

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Fig. 1: Courtesy of the Archivio della Curia Arcivescovile di Firenze

but also taking into account the other two inquisitions – the Spanish and the Portuguese.

2 An Affaire des placards in Arezzo from 1524 The facts are the following: in July 1524, while the newly elected Pope Clement VII – the former archbishop of Florence and arbiter of the political life of the city, Giulio de’ Medici – published the indulgence in Arezzo “pro pace obtinenda et peste delenda,” “cedulas aliquas continentes aliquid de confessione secundum opinionem hereticam Martini Luter [sic]” (to obtain the peace and destroy the pest […] some leafs containing something on confession according the heretic opinion of Martin Luther”) were posted in the city during the night. It was an intolerable provocation that closely resembled the event that had started the Reformation – Luther’s posting of the ninety-five theses on the door of the cathedral of Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. However, this similarity is deceptive. Whoever posted the signs in Arezzo was certainly not aware of the scène à faire of the Reformation that, if it had ever happened, was never mentioned by Luther himself and made an appearance for the first time only in Philip Melanchthon’s late (1546) and certainly not first-hand testimony.⁸ For obvious reasons, the similarity of the Arezzo events with the affaire des placards is likewise

 Erwin Iserloh, The Theses Were Not Posted: Luther Between Reform and Reformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).

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deceptive. This expression refers to the posting of public notices against the institution of the mass in the main French cities in 1534, even inside Francis I’s private rooms, which lead to the first persecutions of the Huguenots and paved the way for the wars of religion. Therefore, the Arezzo episode cannot have descended from its two more famous parents due to the timescale. This, however, certainly does not diminish its importance, rather quite the contrary: on the one hand, the invented tradition of the posting of the ninety-five theses as the first jolt that would unleash the earthquake of the Reformation and, on the other hand, the factual effects of the affaire des placards from 1534 both show how the publicity that came from posting heterodox religious opinions in a public space was an issue thick with consequences and, as such, worthy of the most thorough interest on the part of the judges of the faith. When the actual perpetrator, Donato Angeli from Arezzo, appeared before the vicar of the archbishop and his aides, he was shown a copy of the sign. Donato recognized it and recounted why he had posted it. The previous Sunday, towards evening, he was going “ex sua devotione” (for his devotion) to the Church of the Madonna delle Lacrime. While leaving his home, he had met his neighbor, the notary Antonio del Giallo: “Where are you going?” the latter asked, and Donato replied that he wanted “to go to the Madonna.” And he answered “Wait for me, I’ll join you.” Thus they both set off, and, along the road, they started talking about religion. Donato was the first one to introduce the subject: We have to thank God because, with this absolution of blame and punishment that does not cost any money, we have received a great grace from our pope. We have to find a suitable confessor.” and then Ser Antonio replied “I can demonstrate to you that we should confess to God and not to priests or men,” and he quoted the Psalm of David, Confitebor tibi in toto corde meo (I will confess to you with my whole heart), and immediately the said Antonio added: “Shall we play a joke?” and the defendant immediately said: “Let’s do it.” and then Ser Antonio said: “I will come up with some conclusions and you will copy and post them,” to which he, not considering what this would have implied, answered “I will.

They agreed to meet again the next day, but Donato was hesitant and, in fact, did not show up for the rendezvous, citing the trivial excuse of having “been busy.” Antonio took offense, but still suggested meeting the following day. After Donato declined again, it looked like nothing would come out of it, until, on Tuesday evening, Antonio, arriving in front of the door of the town hall “ad sgabellandam certam farinam,” (Carry customs clearance by paying the Gabelle) saw Donato and found him strangely submissive: “Good evening, Donato. What are you doing?” and he answered “What you wanted,” and then ser Antonius approached Donate and having a paper sheet in his hands said: “Now listen.” He read him the entire text on the piece of paper and, having asked for “inkpot, pen, and paper,” he dictated its content, with the promise of copying it again in the evening and posting one “on the corner of the butcher’s and one on the corner of the parish church.” Donato agreed and suggested that they post another copy on the cor-

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ner of the Baccis. This was not a place like any other. A few years before at the Baccis, where his mother worked as a maid, there had lived a boy about whom a rumor circulated that “the first time he left Arezzo was because he fled for having written a sonnet against the indulgences.”⁹ That boy would later expunge almost all relationships with his hometown. The latter, however, stayed engraved on the name by which he was known to his contemporaries and to posterity – Pietro Aretino. Incidentally, Aretino knew Antonio’s son well, the miniaturist Jacopo del Giallo, whom he called “sweet brother” and whose work he praised as “all drawing and all relief […] sweet, sfumato as if it was oil.”¹⁰ Aretino’s biographers tend to dismiss the news of his escape from Arezzo because of a sonnet against indulgences as an invention of his detractors that shows how the slander of his character had been cultivated since he was very young.¹¹ What is certain is the fact that the corner of the Baccis was a place that had a special meaning in the public life of the city, as this was one of the meeting points of the patricians of Arezzo.¹² Therefore, Donato was showing a good awareness of the impact that his action would have. However, the power balance between the Antonio and Donato had already been defined, and the former, perhaps fearing that the “joke” would get out hand and be discovered even before it was carried out, did not allow it. The night passed without Donato being able to find the courage to accomplish his deed. When Antonio found out in the morning that his accomplice had not carried out the task, he attacked him: “You didn’t do anything; that thing will just come to nothing.” Donato, exasperated by Antonio’s insistence, finally gave in and, on Wednesday evening, posted a sign on the column of the butcher’s shop by the Church of the Madonna del Monte, but he was then scared to post the other one, since many people were there. The next morning, Antonio made sure that Donato still had with him the paper that he had not posted, and, when he replied “I have it,” ser Antonius said: “Give it to me,” and he replied: “No, I want to tear it,” and the other said: “Tear it then.” Thus, with one sign posted and the other torn, this Arezzo affaire des placards seemed to have reached an end.

3 The Shadow of Savonarola on Luther On July 29, 1524, Donato appeared before the judges of the faith, to whom he presented himself as a good Catholic who had been led astray by Antonio’s company. “In

 G. Muzio, Lettere cattoliche (Venezia 1571), 232.  P. Aretino, Lettere sull’arte, ed. E. Camisasca (Milano: Edizioni del Milione, 1957), 1:45; letter dated May 23, 1537.  Cf. P. Larivaille, Pietro Aretino (Roma: Salerno, 1997), 22– 25.  The satirical poet Giovan Santi Saccenti also mentioned it two centuries later, as a place where “kidding” was common; see Raccolta delle rime piacevoli di Giovan Santi Saccenti da Cerreto non mai per avanti pubblicate (Roveredo, 1761), 1:110.

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testimonium sue bone fidei” (as evidence of his good faith) he mentioned the fact that, according to the disposition of the vicar of the bishop of Arezzo, he had come willingly in order to avoid excommunication. In his support, Dom Mauro and Dom Galeotto – two Benedictine monks of the monastery of Saints Flora and Lucilla, where Donato had joined as a novice – also gave evidence. The first stated that Donato had received communion recently from his own hands, while Dom Mauro testified to the “good life” of that “good youth […] of good conscience,” but at the same time also provided information on some sort of religious crisis on Donato’s part (“if he had stayed with us until September, we would have ordained him without any doubts”). Nothing else is known about the reasons that drove him to leave the Cassinese Congregation, but the witness stated that he was sure that Donato – who, incidentally, was named after the patron saint of the city and, therefore, was likely to have received an orthodox religious education – had done wrong “more out of simplicity than out of malice.” The judges in his case were the vicar of the archbishop Giovanni de Statis, a “virtuous man and an intendant,”¹³ the Augustinian Jacopo da Montefalco, the Dominican Cosimo Tornabuoni, and his confrère Zaccaria di Lunigiana. These characters are already known to scholars of religious history of the early sixteenth century: Jacopo da Montefalco had taught physics and metaphysics in Pisa and, in 1517, had taken part in the synod of Florence; Cosimo Tornabuoni and Zaccaria di Lunigiana were “Piagnoni” – ardent followers of the memory of Dominican Friar Girolamo Savonarola.¹⁴ Their presence among the judges of the faith is an indication of the complex link connecting the Savonarolian movement to the circulation of the first pieces of news about the Reformation in Florence. Already in 1520, an admirer of Savonarola, Bartolomeo Cerretani, had made one of the two Piagnoni who were the interlocutors of his work Storia in forma di dialogo della mutatione di Firenze praise Luther as a “venerable clergyman […] whose works, having appeared in Italy and especially in Rome, demonstrate that he ought to be most excellent as far as habits, doctrine, and religion are concerned.”¹⁵ Luther himself had fueled this sense of continuity by reprinting Savonarola’s comment on the Psalm Miserere in 1523. As further proof of an extremely fluid religious context, the following year, two important exponents of Savonarolism found themselves on the other side of the fence. It is possible to conjecture that, during the trial, Friar Zaccaria – who had written a quaestio in which he defended Savonarola from the accusation of heresy with the argument that he only wanted to reform and not refound the Church – became even more convinced of the rightness of his position. The relationship between Savonarolism and Lutheranism, however, did not only involve religion. The pope against whom Luther had unleashed his religious revolt  B. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 12:28.  Cesare Vasoli, “La difesa di Savonarola di fra Zaccaria di Lunigiana,” in Civitas mundi. Studi sulla cultura del Cinquecento (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1996), 43 – 100.  P. Simoncelli, “Preludi e primi echi di Lutero a Firenze,” Storia e Politica 22 (1983): 674– 744.

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was Leo X, alias Giovanni de’ Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent’s son, uncle to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, who would become pope in 1524 and take the name Clement VII. Obviously, posting a sign against a Medici pope in Wittenberg was not the same thing as posting it in Arezzo, where the pontiff was not the corrupted head of a Church perceived as far away and foreign, but rather, if not mainly, the political head of the family that, for almost a century, had held the reigns of Florence and – after the blaze of the Valdichiana rebellion in 1503 – of Arezzo as well. Although there does not seem to be any particular political motivation behind Antonio and Donato’s action, in a few years the figure of Luther would fuel hopes for a renewal in Florence, and not only of a religious kind.¹⁶ This is the case in the trial of 1531 against the physician, heterodox, and anti-Medici partisan Girolamo Buonagrazia. During the very same plague epidemic that pushed Clement VII to promulgate the indulgence of Arezzo, Buonagrazia took part in a meeting of the medical college of Florence in order to find a way to stop the spread of the contagion. His opinion was printed on January 16, 1523, under the title Opera nuova della provisione et cura del morbo. After twenty-five pages of consilia in Latin to his fellow physicians, the remaining ten pages were devoted, in line with the circulation of Lutheran ideas in Italy, “to those who have no notion of the letters.”¹⁷ While he was writing his point of view on the plague, Buonagrazia became more and more convinced that wicked clergymen were all antichrists (“Alias probavi in anno 1523 vel circa Ecclesie prelatos malos esse Antichristos”),¹⁸ and, four year later, he put words into action and gave his heterodox opinions a deliberately militant tone. While Rome was being sacked by the lansquenets and Pope Clement VII was confined to Castel Sant’Angelo, Buonagrazia started a correspondence with Luther himself. The content of these letters is not known, but it is certain that they fueled his opposition against the state that was in power then (“contra statum illum qui tunc vigebat”), where “statum” must be interpreted as “status quo,” a state in which religion and politics – with a Medici on St. Peter’s throne – were the same thing. Thus, in 1527, Buonagrazia started dispensing advice not only against the plague, but against that state and the Pope (“contra illum statum et Pontificem”); his advice suggested, on the one hand, preventing with arms in hands (“armata manu”) the political exiles of the Medici faction from coming back to the city and, on the other hand, putting the Medici palace in the power of the Florentine people (“in potestatem

 P. Simoncelli, “Lutero fra ‘Repubblica’ e ‘Principato’: ideologia politica e riforma, in Atti del simposio su Lutero e la Riforma,” Vicenza 26 – 27 (November 1983): 63 – 73.  Quoted in Anne Jacobson Schutte, Buonagrazia, Girolamo, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 15 (Roma, 1972), available at: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/girolamo-buonagrazia_(Dizio nario-Biografico)/. Jacobson Schutte undermines Buonagrazia’s involvement both with Savonarola and with Luther.  The quotes come from the sentence against Buonagrazia pronounced by Otto di Guardia and published by L. Passerini, “Il primo processo per la Riforma luterana in Firenze,” Archivio storico italiano 4 no. 3 (1879): 337– 45.

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populi florentini”). At his trial, Buonagrazia made amends for his positions, both religious and political: on the one hand, he now miracously (“quodam miraculo”) believed again in Purgatory; on the other, he ascribed all the problems of Florence to the stubbornness of its citizens who believed in Savonarola (“qui crediderunt fratri Ieronimo”) The miraculous character of his reconversion to Catholicism was no more credible than his invectives against Savonarola, in favor of whom he had signed the petition to Alexander VI, demonstrating how the Dominican and the Augustinian could find more common ground in the political domain than in the theological one.¹⁹ Buonagrazia got away with a fine for 2,000 ducats and lifelong banishment in Pisa. The very exile that Buonagrazia had somehow wished for while his political life held him in Florence had finally arrived: “If I had been exiled – he confessed to the Camaldolese Domenico Bencivenni – I would have gone to see Martin Luther, and I would have hurried him […] and I would have gone to see the emperor too, and I would have told him that his confessor is a scoundrel who is deceiving him.”²⁰ Another man from Florence also reflected on how the history of Florence and the history of Italy (the latter being an expression created expressly by him) would have played out if things had gone differently: “The positions I have held under several popes have forced me, for my own good, to further their interests. If it were not for that, I should have loved Martin Luther as much as myself – not so that I might be free of the laws based on Christian religion as it is generally interpreted and understood; but to see this bunch of rascals see their just deserts, that is, to be either without vices or without authority.”²¹ Francesco Guicciardini’s oft-quoted Ricordo, together with Buonagrazia’s even bitterer reflection, shows how the failure of the Reformation in Italy – an issue that has engaged generations of patriots and scholars for centuries – was not only due to inquisitorial repression and to the political and doctrinal confusion of Luther’s sympathizers in Italy, but also to the many “ifs,” the many “interests” that linked the Church to the political and economic future of the Italian ruling classes of the sixteenth century.

 S. Caponetto, “Lutero nella letteratura della prima metà del ’500,” in Lutero in Italia, 51. Simoncelli (Preludi, 727) ignores this fact and considers Buonagrazia to be an anti-Savonarolian, while his profession of anti-Savonarolism during the trial seems to be more a strategic maneuver than anything else.  On the subject of the hopes for a political and ecclesiastical reform championed by the emperor, see, for the following period, Elena Bonora, Aspettando l’imperatore. Principi italiani tra il papa e Carlo V (Torino: Einaudi, 2014).  Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, ed. R. Spongano (Firenze: G.C. Sansoni, 1951), c28; Eng. trans. Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi), trans. Mario Domandi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 48

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4 Rumors, Handwritten Signs, and Books: The Vectors of the “Lutheran Plague” Having highlighted the political implications of the inquisitorial reception of Luther – which are just a hypothesis in the Arezzo episode, but very clear in Buonagrazia’s case –, it is now possible to go back to the trial against the two troublemakers from Arezzo. Antonio del Giallo’s turn came on the same day, just after Donato’s. He confirmed the words of his accomplice. It was he who had penned those pieces of paper, but he had done so as a joke and not because he believed that (“ad effectum faciendi, ut vulgo dicitur, a joke [una baia], et non quia ita crederet”). Then they showed him the text, which he recognized. However, he also said that he had not written two parts of it: the passage from the Psalm Confitebor Domino secundum iustitiam eius – which, instead, Donato had attributed to him, as already mentioned – and the odd acronym (ANCZOSZ) at the bottom of the sign. At this point, the vicar asked for Donato to be led back in. Donato confessed that those words had not been dictated to him by Antonio, but rather that he had transcribed them during the evening. He had remembered them by chance (“sorte”) and claimed to have read them “in Psalmis mortuorum” (Ps 7:18). As they suited his purpose, he had added them of his own initiative, irresponsibly, not pushed by Antonio’s persuasion or under his dictation (it would later be shown that things had actually gone differently). The odd combination of letters – “meaningless, but I put them to give the crowds something to chew on” – was also Donato’s creation. In this case, as well, we must take into account the possibility that Donato did not act entirely spontaneously, since at the beginning of the Reformation – just as with any other revolutionary movement (for example, the slogan W VERDI used during the Italian Risorgimento was a coded acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D’Italia, i. e., Long live Victor Emmanuel King of Italy) – a certain role was also played by methods of communication that were understandable only to initiates, such as acronyms that conveyed a religious message in code.²² And the crowds had indeed much to chew on: in all of Arezzo, it was publicly said that some signs of a heretical flavor (“heresim sapientes”) had been posted, although Antonio del Giallo rushed to say that the rumors he heard only concerned confession and he did not hear about heresy. Donato, having heard grumble that it was heresy, had gone to see Antonio, convinced of having committed a deed that would prove fatal for their reputations (“We are ruined”). Antonio calmed him down: “Don’t worry, we did it as a joke,” and leveraged his greater knowledge of the law and of the alleged extenuating circumstances applicable to similar cases.

 The most well-known example is the verse Verbum Dei Manet in Aeterno, about which cf. I. Ludolphy, “VDMIAE. Ein ‘Reim’ der Reformationszeit,” Jahrbuch der Hessischen Kirchengeschichtlichen Vereinigung 33 (1982): 279 – 82.

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The rest of the confession also confirmed Donato’s words, apart from one detail: Antonio had not acted entirely spontaneously and off the cuff, but was instead inspired by “a book that says that we have to confess only to God.” Having copied those words and dictated them to Donato, he had added the name of Luther since he had heard that he maintained such an opinion (“quia audivit dici illum talem opinionem tenere”). Luther’s controversy against images – which was quickly picked up by Italian heterodox exponents, such as friar minor Ludovico da Cremona, who “praise[d] Martin when he claim[ed] that images should not be adored and should not be painted in the churches, otherwise the rustic then adores the representation and not the represented”²³ – allowed other methods of contact between the faithful and the divine, with Scripture in the primary place. Scripture, in fact, represented, together with justification by faith, one of the two pillars of Luther’s theology. When focusing solely on written texts, however, there is a risk of losing sight of the complexity of the communicative system that allowed Reformation ideas to spread out: if it is true that the invention of printing press certainly played a pivotal role, this was, however, accompanied by other channels of communication as well. The Arezzo case, although seemingly simple, instead shows an important trait in the circulation of the religious message during the sixteenth century –_its multimedial character, which consisted, in this example, of orality, print, manuscript, and orality once again. Antonio del Giallo had heard about Luther’s protest. He had linked to this notion his reading of a book that he used to have and still had for many years at home, and that seemingly touched other subjects. Then, he instilled these hybrid ideas in a handwritten sign with the help of another person, who, although trying to appear simple-minded, had shown himself to be aware of the implications of the place chosen and of the use of indirect communicative stratagems, such as acronyms. Finally, their action again fueled some rumors that spread throughout the city. The intertwining of these media is interesting for historians; the inquisitors, however, were primarily concerned with one of these – the book. Already in February 1519, the bookseller from Pavia, Francesco Calvo, had introduced in the Milan area some of Luther’s works that he had bought in Basel from the publisher Froben.²⁴ The following year, a German Franciscan living in Venice claimed that Luther’s works were so appreciated in the area that the copies that had arrived from Germany had sold out very quickly.²⁵ At the same time as the trial against Donato and Antonio was being held, the Church was trying out its first toughening towards the most dangerous vector of the Lutheran contagion – books: on January 17 and 25 of the same

 Albano Biondi, “Streghe ed eretici nei domini estensi all’epoca dell’Ariosto” (1977), in Umanisti, eretici, streghe. Saggi di storia moderna, ed. M. Donattini (Modena: Comune di Modena, 2008), 81.  Federico Chabod, Lo Stato e la vita religiosa a Milano nell’epoca di Carlo V (Torino: Einaudi, 1971), 305.  Cf. Paul F. Grendler, L’inquisizione romana e l’editoria a Venezia (1540 – 1605) (Roma: Il Veltro, 1983), 119.

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year, Clement VII sent the first breves against the diffusion of Lutheran books to the prince bishop of Trent, Bernardo Clesio and to the nuncio of Venice Tommaso Campeggi in order to prevent their sale in Brescia and Verona (at the same time, the same dispositions were issued to the south as well, to Naples);²⁶ on March 12, in Bologna, the vicar of the bishop ordered the surrender of books published by the heretic Martin Luther to the bishop, under threat of excommunication and of a fine of 100 ducats.²⁷ A few months later, the Augustinian Canons Regular of San Giovanni in Monte proved that the measure had been effective and delivered to the vicar a series of works by Luther that, although all published in 1518 and therefore signaling a lack of updates in the current religious debate, went from Luther’s replies to the Master of the Sacred Palace Sylvester Mazzolini (Prierias) and to Johannes Eck to the sermons on indulgences, from the validity of the excommunications and the preparation of the Eucharist to the Decem praecepta, and finally to the Latin translation of Melanchthon’s defense of Luther against the theologians of the Sorbonne.²⁸ In the following years, some translations of Luther’s works started to be published in Italian vernacular too, although often concealed under the name of other authors, such as Erasmus or cardinal Federico Fregoso,²⁹ while between 1523 and 1525, the first bonfires of “Lutheran” books were lit in Venice, Milan, Lucca, Rome, Naples, Siena, and Florence.³⁰ Thus the judges are indeed prepared to find out that Antonio owns some works by Luther. However, this was not the case: the books – or, better still, the book, as the volumes were bound together – from which Antonio had taken the words of the sign were the Fiore novello molto devoto, a compendium of sacred history that tapped into the wealth of the apocryphal gospels, and I viaggi di sir John Mandeville, this one also a late-medieval cento of geographical and encyclopedic texts. These very books, a few years later, would excite the mind of the above-mentioned Domenico Scandella. The first one – the only one that the miller had bought – made him think that “many

 B. Fontana, “Documenti vaticani contro l’eresia luterana in Italia,” Archivio della R. Società romana di storia patria 15 (1892): 77– 8, 81– 2. On the delicate matter of the Trentino border, cf. A. Paris, Dissenso religioso e libri proibiti nel principato vescovile di Trento tra fine Quattrocento e inizio Seicento (PhD diss., Università degli studi di Trento, 2009 – 2010).  Cf. Guido Dall’Olio, Eretici e inquisitori nella Bologna del Cinquecento (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1999), 55.  Dall’Olio, Eretici e inquisitori nella Bologna, 56n14. The Benedictines of the Cassinese Congregation of Padua and Venice also proved their awareness of Luther’s works in 1523; cf. Barry Collett, Italian Benedictine Scholars and the Reformation: The Congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 77, 102– 04, and 186.  S. Seidel Menchi, “Le traduzioni italiane di Lutero nella prima metà del Cinquecento,” Rinascimento 28 (1977): 31– 107.  C. De Frede, “Roghi di libri ereticali nell’Italia del Cinquecento,” in Ricerche storiche ed economiche in memoria di Corrado Barbagallo, ed. Luigi De Rosa (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1970), 2:317– 28.

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men have been born into the world, but none of a virgin woman;”³¹ the other had provided him with a sense of the relativity of Catholicism, one of the many religions observed by the different communities of the world visited by Mandeville in his fictional travel.³² This book had a similar impact on Antonio del Giallo, who, at least during the time necessary to conceive and compose the sign, relativized the religion into which he had been born and thought about the possibility of stirring things up. When the judges asked him to find the exact passage from which he had taken his heretical idea of the necessity of confessing only to God, Antonio began to transcribe it, starting from the title, Of the customs of this country and of the different manners of Christians and of their rites and habits and of how they confess: Among these Saracens live everywhere many Christians of different kinds and names, all baptized, who have different languages and different habits, but who all believe in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and yet lack some articles of faith. Some call themselves Jacobite, as they were converted by Saint Jacob and baptized by Saint John the Baptist. They say that sins should be confessed only to God, and not to man, because, in sin, the opposite of the one who has been offended must be invoked. And they say that neither God nor the prophets ever ordered man to confess to anyone else but God, just like Moses said in the Bible, and that this is why David said in the psalter Confitebor tibi Domine in toto corde meo.

When even the only passage of the sign attributed to Donato’s initiative was understood to be the fruit of Antonio’s reworking of John Mandeville’s book, Donato was free to go. The judges kept interrogating Antonio in order to find out whether someone had pushed or persuaded him and whether he had any helper. No other contact emerged from these interrogations, and Antonio, even under torture, stuck to his line of having committed the crime “for a chat and a joke.” Thus the trial ended, a warning bell that would ring more broadly three years later, after the overthrowing of the Medici regime and the republican restoration of 1527– 1530, when – as already mentioned – Luther’s message played more than a minor role.

5 Other Inquisitions The trial of Donato Angeli and Antonio del Giallo is an exceptional document that, because of its precocity, shows what is already known about the beginning of the repression of Lutheran ideas in Italy under a different light. Usually this is dated to the restoration of the Roman Inquisition in 1542, with the bull Licet ab initio promulgated by Pope Paul III.³³ Evidently, in Florence, the search for remedies against the luther-

 Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi, 43; Eng. trans., 27.  Cf. Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi, 50, with reference to the passage on the confession quoted immediately afterward.  For a general overview, cf. Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionary (Torino: Einaudi, 1996); and Massimo Firpo, La presa di potere dell’Inquisizione romana

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ana pestis started much earlier than has been assumed up until now, with recourse to the medieval solution of episcopal tribunals or, as in Girolamo Buonagrazia’s case, to the state apparatus of Otto di Guardia. At the same time, this document is “exceptionally normal,”³⁴ since it condenses the complex reception of Luther in inquisitorial trials: from his role in breaking with the opinions of the majority (often regardless of the actual content of Luther’s ideas) to the fundamentally hazy awareness of his works in Italy, where the latter were translated rarely and badly, Luther’s effigy was identified in handbill propaganda with the monstrous offspring of a cow or, instead, carefully held by his followers in portraits, such as the one the tormented painter Lorenzo Lotto completed for one of his customers.³⁵ On the Iberian Peninsula, the situation was not much different, although the Spanish Inquisition had been established in 1478, well before the Lutheran threat appeared on the horizon. Moreover, the Spanish Inquisition addressed the need to pursue religious uniformity mostly against Jews and Muslims (similarly, from this point of view, to the Portuguese one, which would be initiated in 1536, during the clash with Lutheranism). Furthermore, Erasmus’ preaching and the spirituality of the alumbrados (followers of a mystical movement who claimed that observance of the exterior forms of religious life was not necessary for those who had received the “illumination”) had a greater impact in Spain than Luther did.³⁶ There too, however, Luther found some followers in the beginning, as reported before the inquisitor by the secretary of the archbishop of Toledo, the humanist Juan de Vergara: In the beginning, when Luther only touched on the necessity of reforming the Church and on articles concerning the corruption of customs, the whole world approved him and even those who now write against him confess in their books that in the beginning they took him to heart […] but when the people started losing respect and obedience, wise men left that doctrine and persecuted it.³⁷

Their shared humanist education meant that two very different men – such as Vergara and the Dominican from Bologna, Leandro Alberti – agreed on the essence of the judgment to be imposed on Luther, whose friarly vehemence and, according to Alberti, a certain veniality had driven him from a correct criticism of ecclesiastical habits to schism and heresy:

(1550 – 1553) (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2014), in which the definitive consolidation of the inquisitorial machine is moved forward by about a decade.  E. Grendi, “Micro-analisi e storia sociale,” Quaderni storici 35 (1977), 512.  Cf. respectively Seidel Menchi, Le traduzioni; Niccoli, Il mostro di Sassonia; and Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici. Il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra Riforma e Controriforma (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2001), 3.  Stefania Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola. Spiritualità conversa, alumbradismo, inquisizione (1449 – 1559) (Firenze: Olschki, 2004).  M. Augustín Redondo, “Luther et l’Espagne de 1520 à 1536,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 1 (1965): 109 – 65, here 115.

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A very educated man, he clashed with some preachers in Saxony because of the indulgences sent by the pope to those countries, and, after many arguments, seeing (as I have heard) that there was nothing to be gained for him, he started saying that such things should not be sold and that it was a wicked thing to give an indulgence in such a way, and, not yet satisfied, he went as far as to say many other things, thus spreading across the whole of Germany great heresies and errors that have arrived in Italy as well: if God, by his mercy, does not help the Church his bride, his little ship will rock enormously.³⁸

Both Alberti and Vergara would soon exacerbate their minds on Luther, the first through his activity as inquisitor, and the latter when writing from prison to his brother Tovar, with words addressed to the “Dog Luther, may God damn him” (“perro de Luthero quod Deus avertat”).³⁹ Spain and Italy also had in common the clandestine circulation of Luther’s works. As has already been mentioned, his name did not appear on any of his books printed in Italy, which were circulated either anonymously or under the false names of Erasmus (1526, 1540, 1543) or Cardinal Fregoso (1545). The same happened at the beginning of the 1530s in Spain, where Martin Luther and the followers of his false opinions and inventors of new errors seeing that they could not disseminate their books and poisonous doctrine as freely as they wish, cautiously and cleverly inserted many of their damned opinions under the names of other catholic authors, giving their books false titles and elsewhere annotating and commenting on known, approved and orthodox books with false expositions and errors..⁴⁰

These books had an impact – similar to that already seen in a nutshell on Antonio del Giallo – also on the French Augustinian Bernardo Costa, who, on his way along the Camino de Santiago, had gone through Salamanca, where he had assisted at an auto-da-fé of Lutherans that left him deeply shaken. In a barber shop in Consuegra, he had found one of Luther’s books, “whoh preached that there is only one God and that there are neither saints in heaven nor priests or friars, and that priests and friars should be married to nuns and that we ought not to confess to a priest or friar, but only to God.”⁴¹ Even when every concrete hope for the success of the Reformation on the Iberian Peninsula had vanished, Luther still continued to have a certain appeal. An example of this is a priest from Tomar, in the Ribatejo province in Portugal, who, at the beginning of the 1560s, was known to his friends as “Martinho Lutero.”⁴² In the eyes of

 The passage from Istoria di Bologna is quoted in Dall’Olio, Eretici e inquisitori, 63n33.  Quoted in Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, 146.  Augustín Redondo, Luther et l’Espagne, 152.  On Costa’s case, cf. the overview by John E. Longhurst, Luther’s Ghost in Spain (1517 – 1546) (Lawrence, KS: Coronado, 1969).  Paulo D. Braga, Os seguidores de Lutero no Portugal de Quinhentos, in Damião de Góis na Europa do Renascimento. Actas do congresso internacional (Braga: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 2003), 199 – 208, here 202.

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those who were still waiting for their Messiah – such as the marranos, the Jews who had converted to Christianity and who, in many cases, were still secretly in touch with their old beliefs and religious practices –, Luther sometimes even became the object of messianic hopes. This was the case of a group of Jews converted in Lisbon and guided by the converso fishmonger, Duarte Lopes, who, even in 1561, hoped that Luther will win.⁴³ Such a victory would be guaranteed, according to the above-mentioned Bernardo Costa, by an army greater than Charles V’s and Francis I’s ones combined and capable of killing 20,000 priests.⁴⁴ The hopes for Luther’s military intervention were widespread in Italy, too, as proved by the correspondence between Luther and the secretary of the English ambassador in Venice, Baldassare Altieri, who urged the Schmalkaldic League to cross the Alps and claimed to be in touch with a captain from Milan ready to guide 6,000 men against the pope.⁴⁵ These imaginary armies were never recruited, and Luther always remained – in the face of the hopes of his Italian and Spanish sympathizers – what Machiavelli defined as an “unarmed prophet,” destined as such to “ruin.”

6 After the Storm After the religious split of the empire into Catholic and Lutheran states following the Peace of Augsburg (1555), and as the inquisitorial tribunals uprooted the presence of Lutherans in Catholic countries, the figure of Luther faded away to make space for the new focus of controversy for the Catholic Church and also, partly, for Lutheranism itself – John Calvin. The mythical appeal of Geneva as the New Jerusalem and the theologically and socially cohesive character of Calvinism made this version of Protestantism particularly tempting for the heterodox conventicles of the late sixteenth century in Italy, which were mostly in urban contexts constantly threatened by the Inquisition.⁴⁶ When Calvinism was also politically recognized in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), both Luther’s and Calvin’s doctrines ceased to feel like such an emergency as they had a century earlier. Therefore, the Roman Inquisition changed its function and became more and more an ordinary tribunal in charge of policing and punishing behaviors deemed to be immoral or subversive of the order defined by God for the world, such as witchcraft or homosexuality.⁴⁷ This, however, did not mean that the figure of Luther lost its appeal among the population. The most

 Giuseppe Marcocci, I custodi dell’ortodossia. Inquisizione e Chiesa nel Portogallo del Cinquecento (Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2004), 117.  Longhurst, Luther’s Ghost, 21.  A. Stella, “Utopie e velleità insurrezionali dei filoprotestanti italiani (1545 – 1547),” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 27 (1965): 133 – 82.  From this point of view, an exception is represented by the Lutheran groups of Friuli from Gemona and Buia, as studied by Seidel Menchi, “‘Certo Martino è stato terribil homo’.”  On the changes in the inquisitorial tribunals over the long term, cf. Prosperi, Tribunali.

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widely known example of this tendency is Venice, where, even during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, “the Reformation still represented, among wide segments of the population, an appealing option, although mostly confused and chosen in the negative as a reaction to the whole set of Roman prohibitions and prescriptions, perceived as insufferable impositions.”⁴⁸ Therefore, “Lutheran” increasingly came to mean “atheist” – whoever did not believe in the Catholic God did not believe in anything – and “dissolute,” since the abolition of ecclesiastical celibacy and dietary prescriptions was considered an unforgivable concession to lust and gluttony.⁴⁹ Obviously, this was a stereotype patiently consolidated during a century and a half of Catholic controversy. However, it sometimes had unexpected outcomes, as its appealing potential could deprave the very faithful whom it tried to steer away from similar aberrations.⁵⁰ In fact, it is important here to take into account the difficult conditions of sustenance in which the members of the Italian lower classes lived under the old regime. For many, the obligation to eat fish on Fridays had an impact on the finances of the whole family: for these people, Luther’s message could be helpful not only from a spiritual perspective, but also from a material point of view. At least, in the middle of the sixteenth century, this was the case of the hat maker form Bergamo, Battista Pavesi, who, speaking about this abstinence from foods during the forbidden days […] said that it was allowed to eat them because God did not command it, because poor men who cannot buy fish when it is expensive can instead buy meat and only spend three or four soldi a pound, rather than about 15 soldi to buy a pound of fish […] having heard these [words], Giovanni, trader of horses, uttered the following or similar words: “Who is this person? Is it Luther who said this? As soon as I am in Bergamo, I will tell the father inquisitor.”

This Giovanni Sarazinoni, the horse trader, actually went on to testify before the inquisitor, and Pavesi was jailed and then forced to take shelter in Switzerland.⁵¹ Thus “Lutheranism” continued to be a synonym for religious deviance. However, starting in the late sixteenth century, it also became a moral judgment (in the etymological meaning of a judgment on the mores, on customs and habits), as if being “Lutheran,” apart from being a national given, had almost become an anthropological circumstance, too.⁵² Religious controversy was continuously fueled by assessments  F. Barbierato, “Luterani, calvinisti e libertini. Dissidenza religiosa a Venezia nel secondo Seicento,” Studi storici 46 (2005): 798.  G. Spini, Ritratto del protestante come libertino, in Ricerche su letteratura libertina e letteratura clandestina nel Seicento, ed. T. Gregory et al. (Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1981), 177– 88.  See the cases studied by F. Barbierato, “Quel che resta di un’eresia. Presenze calviniste a Venezia nel Seicento,” in Ripensare la riforma protestante. Nuove prospettive degli studi italiani, ed. Lucia Felici (Torino: Claudiana, 2016), 33 – 50, esp. 46 – 48.  Massimo Firpo and Sergio Pagano, I processi inquisitoriali di Vittore Soranzo (1550 – 1558). Edizione critica (Città del Vaticano: Archivio segreto vaticano, 2004), 2:822.  On the nationalistic undertones of the opposition between Catholic Italians and Lutheran Germans, cf. the chapter “La fede italiana in Prosperi,” Tribunali, 16 – 34. Cf. also Seidel Menchi,

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that were further and further from the theological domain and instead involved a more comprehensive – albeit no less controversial – judgment on Luther and his followers. An example of this is the case of another Tuscan man, Giovanni Battista Griselli, who was tried in January 1598 by the Inquisition of Florence (despite the fact that he was from Usigliano, near Lari, which belongs to the diocese of Pisa). In the eyes of his maid, Chiara di Santi, his anti-religious behavior was on the brink of madness: “Having come back home in a very vexed mood, he took a paper cross and a Madonna, this too made of paper, and tore both of them and threw them away.”⁵³ The parish priest confirmed the version of the story told by the woman, adding a detail from his own experience: “Last August, it was a year since, when going by his house one evening at the time of the Hail Mary, he threw a rock at me and hit me and said, ‘May you be cursed and may be cursed the bishop of Lucca who sent you here, together with however many came before you and after you.’” What is interesting here is the fact that the priest explained Griselli’s behavior by his rare participation in religious services and, therefore, his lack of the beneficial effects of the community life that these implied: “It has already been five years since he last came to Mass or to the divine offices, and he has not gone anywhere nearby either, but has almost always stayed at home, melancholic, like the German Lutherans.” Surely these were vague, geographical-anthropological characterizations. In a similar fashion, regarding Griselli’s blasphemy, he used another term of comparison that today sounds much more familiar, although also more exotic: “I have heard him curse like a Turk: ‘Bloody priest, I hope you get a stroke.’”⁵⁴ However, dismissing the diagnosis suggested by the priest of Usigliano as trivial would be misleading: the fact that, in Italy during the late sixteenth century, people cursed like Turks or were as sad as Lutherans is not irrelevant. Rather, precisely because this comparison comes from the mouth of a curate from the periphery of Europe, it shows how widespread the stereotype of Luther’s followers as melancholic creatures who lacked the comforts of ecclesiastical community really was. Maybe the priest from Usigliano had never met an actual Lutheran in real life. His view was probably fueled by some works that had been circulating in the territories of the grand duchy of Tuscany since the middle of the sixteenth century, such as the Discorso sopra lo stato, dottrina et costume de’ lutherani, a translation by the Dominican and Savonarolian from Lucca, Paolino Bernardini, of a text written over thirty years earlier Georg Witzel, a former Lutheran who had come back to the Roman Catholic Church.⁵⁵ The Discorso

“‘Certo Martino è stato terribil homo’,” in which the author analyzes inquisitorial testimonies concerning foreigners coming from Germany or Italians who had direct contacts with Germany.  Archivio della Curia Arcivescovile di Firenze, Tribunale dell’Inquisizione, b. 3, f. 80r. Deposizione di Chiara di Santi della Valdiserchio (January 12, 1598).  Archivio della Curia Arcivescovile di Firenze, Tribunale dell’Inquisizione, b. 3, 93r.  Printed at the bottom of P. Bernardini, Concordia ecclesiastica contra tutti gli heretici (Firenze, 1552). This volume is mentioned by S. Cavazza, “‘Luthero fidelissimo inimico de Messer Jesu Christo’.

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started with the usual identification of Luther with all of his followers: “all evil comes only from one man, i. e., the author of this schism [… A]fter him all the others follow without any discernment.”⁵⁶ However, perhaps due to the German origin and life experiences of the author, this work not only focused on the same old theological polemic, but also, from its very title on widened its scope to “customs” and urged a direct comparison of the beliefs and behaviors of Lutherans and of their “prince”: “They join and separate husbands and wives as they wish […] With the utmost diligence the prince has crucified good deeds. Now, seeing that things have taken a turn for the worse, he pulls out, saying, ‘It is better to force man to do good than to call out for the opposite.’ […] Try for yourself, keep company with them, and you will see how doubtful and unstable they are.”⁵⁷ Thus the treatise took on almost ethnographic undertones, as if Lutherans were comparable to the savages whom Europeans had started pondering after the discoveries of “new” lands. The polemical tone was still prevalent – if not omnipresent –, but the more the difference in their customs was remarked upon, the more they were seen from a detached perspective. This was, regardless of the colorful expression, the point of view of Dom Francesco Rusca from Venice (1719), according to whom “that cuckold Luther had done what he had done, but in some things he was right.”⁵⁸ Agreeing with someone who was addressed as “cuckold” and therefore, on the other hand, disagreeing with someone who was considered a founding father: it might not seem like much, but this process had taken almost two centuries. Even today, with five centuries in between, it is still not an easy task for historians either.

La polemica contro Lutero nella letteratura religiosa in volgare della prima metà del Cinquecento,” in Lutero in Italia, 67– 94.  Bernardini, Concordia ecclesiastica, 334.  Bernardini, Concordia ecclesiastica, 394.  Federico Barbierato, Politici e ateisti. Percorsi della miscredenza a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento (Milano: Unicopli, 2006), 59 – 60.

Enrique García Hernán

Ignatius: The Anti-Lutheran Reformer 1 Introduction Martin Luther and Ignatius of Loyola, given the unique history of their lives, are considered antithetical symbolic figures because they represent two different worldviews in an era marked by reforms in both the Church and society. They became the prototypes that personified the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. This contrast was not only a matter of ecclesiastical interest or disputes among theologians, but underneath everything else, it was a deep political struggle, the core of which was about finding the true Christian way of living in society, since all religious reform implies social reform.¹ These two men were great believers – one initiated the Protestant Reformation, and the other founded the Society of Jesus. But each underwent a process of mythologization, and as a result, they became enemies in one another’s eyes, although they themselves never meant for this to happen. They were destined to face off. Philipp Melanchthon published his first biography of Luther (Historia de vita et actis Lutheri, Heidelberg) in 1548, arguing that Luther’s life was necessary for the Church and for the world. This was followed by a biography written by Johannes Bugenhagen, a follower of Luther, and another panegyric by Johannes Mathesius, who mythologized both Luther’s biography and his Tischreden. Thus began a process of glorifying the man Martin Luther, which culminated in the commemorations of 1617, the first centenary of the controversy over indulgences. His relics were venerated like those of a saint, and people spoke of his prophecies and miracles. The first to canonize him was Hoe in Leipzig (1610), followed by others, such as Dannhauer in Strasbourg (1661), Peter Kawerau (1695), and Johann Krauss in Prague (1716). Everyone considered him a saint, a miracle worker, and a portentous German prophet.² Ignatius, on the other hand, underwent a process of biographical re-elaboration, first on the basis of personal accounts – such as those of his secretary, Alfonso de

Translation from Spanish: Thomas W. Hudgins.  This research is done in the Project of the Spanish Ministerium HAR2015 – 64574-C2– 1/2-P. The differences are noted by N. González Ruiz, San Ignacio-Lutero (Barcelona: Cervantes, 1945); F. Richter, Martin Luther und Ignatius von Loyola (Stuttgart: O. Scholz, 1954); Rogelio García Mateo, “Ignacio de Loyola ¿antilutero? Consideración ecuménica de su confrontación histórica,” Manresa 57 (1985): 251– 59; G. Maron, “Martin Luther und Ignatius von Loyola,” Im Lichte der Reformation. Jahrbuch des Evangelischen Bundes 27 (1984): 31– 54; D. C. Steinmetz, “Luther and Loyola,” in Ignacio de Loyola y su tiempo, ed. J. Plazaola (Bilbao: Ediciones Mensajero, 1992): 791– 800.  Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther, Renegade and Prophet (London: Random House, 2016), see chapter 16 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-032

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Polanco; Pedro de Ribaneira; and Father Jerónimo Nadal – and later on the basis of authorized biographies, such as those by Pedro de Ribadeneira (1572) and Juan Pedro Maffei (1585), which served as the basis for his canonization in 1622. Later Ignatian biographies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were based entirely on the latter two official biographies. Father Daniello Bartoli’s Della vita e dell’Instituto di S. Ignazio fondatore della Compagnia di Gesù, published in Rome in 1650, was the first to provide new information, although he claimed to have written this book for the purpose of apologetics rather than history. It is interesting, however, because number 29 contains part of Ignatius’ Diario spiritual (Spiritual Diary). The Autobiografía (Autobiography) of Ignatius was hardly known until its publication in full, much later in the twentieth century.³

2 Ignatius and Martin Luther: Their World in Common Despite the historiographical tendency to focus on what was antithetical in their lives, Ignatius and Martin Luther shared a common political and spiritual world: both were priests; both were subjects of Charles V; both wrote autobiographies; both inherited the spirituality of the Devotio moderna, praising John Gerson; both went through a process of life-changing conversion; and in 1522, during a moment of spiritual crisis and on the brink of suicide, both decided to change their lives – one in the Tower House of Loyola, another in the Castle of Wartburg. Both of these men set out to write with complete certainty – one the translation of the New Testament into German, the other his Ejercicios espirituales (Spiritual Exercises). Both went through inquisitorial proceedings, and both died of lithiasis. The differences between them were also significant. Luther exchanged his Augustinian habit for the clothing of a gentleman, whereas Ignatius exchanged the clothing of the knights for that of a peregrine (secular layman); the one decided to break the vow of chastity, the other to pronounce it; the German left the priesthood to be closer to his own, while the Spaniard, accustomed to preaching as a simple layman, received ordination to administer the sacraments that the other valued lightly. Luther clung to a written Christ – on paper, in the Bible – as the only possible one; Ignatius found Jesus not in the Bible, but in the Church as a mystical body – that is, in prayer and in “being with Jesus,” hence the name “Society of Jesus.” Much has been written about Lutheranism in Spain and about Ignatius and Luther, and scholars seem to agree that Lutheranism barely entered Spain – that a “ghost” was being pursued – and that it was the Jesuits who first created the myth of an anti-Lutheran Ignatius. Thus Lutheranism was neutralized in Spain,  Enrique García Hernán, Ignacio de Loyola (Madrid: Taurus, 2013; Paris, Seuil 2016), see the introduction

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thanks to the Inquisition and the fact that Ignatius founded his order without taking the Lutheran question into account. My position in this contribution is that Lutheranism really had permeated Spain, although it was clandestine and disguised, and that Ignatius did take the Lutheran problem into account in designing his evangelization strategy. This stands in contrast to those who say that theologians were not clear on what Lutheranism was or who its advocates were, and – relying on the Formula of the Institute (1540) – assert that Ignatius had nothing to do with Luther, and that their contradistinction was a later elaboration.⁴ It is true that the first Jesuits affirmed the opposite, as did the fathers Jerome Nadal (Apología de los Ejercicios), Alfonso de Polanco (Vita and Chronicon), and Pedro de Ribadeneira (Vida de Ignacio de Loyola).⁵ In fact, the passage of the bull Exposcit debitum by Julius III in 1550 makes it clear that the order was intended to defend and propagate the faith. This would explain Nadal’s thinking in his Apología (1554) and his Instrucción breve (1563) for those who went to Germany, which is also evident in his Dialogi pro Societate (1562, with Ignatius as the “antagonist”) and even more so in his Exhortaciones (1567), which includes the idea that God called Ignatius at the time when Luther defected – when “nepharias nupticas contraxit” – and relates the “most pestilent” books published by the reformer in 1522 to Ignatius’ conversion: “unde intelligere possumus peculiariter excitatam Societatem ad iuvandam Ecclesiam tum in Germania tum in India, etc. Eodem itaque anno, quo fit Lutherus a daemone vocatus, pater Ignatius a Deo.”⁶ In 1564, Polanco stated that, in 1521, “poco más o menos, su Divina Providencia comenzó a preparar como un antídoto contra este veneno [Luther] con una conversión notable del padre Ignacio de Loyola.”⁷ Furthermore, in his Vida (1574), he establishes this synchronicity and says that Ignatius was the

 On the ghostly Luther, see Werner Thomas, La represión del protestantismo en España, 1517 – 1648 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001); on Ignatius, see Miquel Batllori, “El Mito contrarreformista de San Ignacio anti-Lutero,” in Ignacio de Loyola, Magister Artium en París 1528 – 1535, eds. Julio Caro Baroja and Antonio Beristain (San Sebastian: Kutxa, 1991): 87– 93; C. O’Neill, “Reforma,” in Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, vol. 4, eds. C. O’Neill et al. (Madrid-Roma: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2001).  In his Apología (MHSI, Fontes Narrativi, vol. 1), Nadal argues against the censure of Friar Tomás de Pedroche, stating that his whole life was ordered against the Lutherans: “Summa eius vitae exponenda, et quod iam a principio litteras quaesierit, totumque institutum suum ordinasse contra lutheranos.” Certainly, there is a change in this sense among the foundational bulls; the first in 1540 says that the Jesuits are “ad fidei propagationem,” while in the bull of 1550 says they are “ut ad fidei defensionem et propagationem.” In his Apología, Nadal concludes that the main objective of the Society is to destroy the Lutherans and the Spanish Alumbrados or Dejados (“in in primis qui nostra aetate oblatran Ecclesiae lutheranos tum etiam derelictos hispanos”) and to achieve a firm union with the Roman Church.  MHSI, Cándido de Dalmases (ed.), Fontes Narrativi (Rome, 1960), 2:227 and 404. Concerning Nadal, see Selecta Natalis monumenta in eius epistolis commemorata (Madrid, 1898 – 1905), in MHSI 13, 15, 21, and 27.  MHSI, Fontes Narrativi, 2:307; see J. E. Vercruysse, “Nadal et la Contre-Réforme,” Gregorianum 72 (1991): 289 – 315.

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“egregium antidotum” against Luther.⁸ Pedro de Ribadeneira was the one who established the parallelism of an anti-Lutheran Ignatius – not in his Latin edition (1572), but in the Castilian edition (1583) and then in a subsequent Latin edition (1586); everyone else took it from there, including Juan Antonio Valtrino in his Vida de Ignacio (1591).⁹ The apex was reached with Jean Bolland and his Imago primi saeculi (Antwerp, 1640).¹⁰ Simón Rodrigues, in his Comentarios (1574), established that the first Jesuits in 1537 had already polemicized against the Lutherans in Constanza – when they were traveling from Paris to meet Ignatius in Venice –, since they had read Luther’s Bible, which had been translated into German (Wittenberg, 1534).¹¹ One might wonder whether this group of companions – while they were in Paris between 1535 and 1537, in Ignatius’ absence – focused on their confrontation with the Reformation at the same time as their desire for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was cooling; given what happened in Parliament and at the University of Paris, it is perfectly possible to conclude that they were certainly affected by the Lutheran question, since their teacher, the Dominican Matthew Ory (Priory of Saint-Jacques), was appointed inquisitor of France in August 1536 and was working on the Septem scholiae contra haereticos. ¹² But it must be kept in mind that during those two years, Ignatius was not with them, and even though they did not find passage to make their pilgrimage, they did not persevere in this attempt by other means, nor did they go directly to the pope, as they had agreed to do. Instead, they engaged in conflicts over doctrine in various parts of northern Italy. Polanco theologized this momentous decision by pointing out: “ God our Lord, whose providence governed them, and who wanted to keep them for his most universal service and the well-being of souls, hindered them this day.”¹³ But they did not go to Rome. Instead they were divided, and Iñigo, Fabro, and Laínez went to Vicenza (followed later by the others). It was there that they convened the celebration of the much-desired council, although in the end, the project was frustrated. Thus they agreed to split up, some heading to universities in Italy, some to Padua, some to Ferrara, some to Bologna, some to Siena, and others to Rome, while Ignatius decided to head to Naples. The objective was “move some

 MHSI, Fontes Narrativi, 3:523.  MHSI, Fontes Narrativi, 3:344.  For this reference, see esp. 552– 54.  MHSI, Fontes Narrativi, 3:55: “ali tiverao tambem os padres grandes emcontros com aquelles herejes e alegando os padres certas autoridades nao erao assi como elless dizaon, he viaon-nas em huma Biblia traslada per Lutero de latim em alemao, a qual tinha todos os lugares que faziao contra seus erros corrompidos e falsificados, ou de todo tirados do teisto da Escritura.”  J. Quétif and J. Échard, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum recensiti (Paris: Ballard and Simart, 1719), 1:163; James F. Farge, Biographical Register of Paris Doctors of Theology (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), 353 – 56.  “Dios Nuestro Señor, cuya providencia los regía, y quería guardar para más universal servicio suyo y bien de las ánimas, les estorbó esta jornada”, James J. Farge, Religion, Reformation and Repression in the Reign of Francis I (Toronto: PIMS, 2015), 1:457.

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students to their Institute.”¹⁴ In each of these places, they would face various problems with the Lutherans. And while they had problems everywhere, their orthodoxy was beyond doubt, according to the testimonies they later requested for the process of founding the order in Rome in 1538. Not only were the Jesuits the creators of the synchronic-providentialist account, but a Dominican friar named Domingo de Baltanás, in the first biography of Luther written in Castilian,¹⁵ also propagated the alleged myths of Ignatius as anti-Lutheran and even the idea that Luther was the son of an incubus.¹⁶ On the Protestant side, in 1551, the theologian Nikolaus Gallus said that the Society of Jesus was founded by the devil; the theologian Johannes Wigang, one of the principal collaborators on the Magdeburg Centuries, published an anti-Jesuit catechism in 1556. This was followed by Martin Chemnitz and Flacius Illyricus, who wrote in similar terms, giving rise to widespread anti-Jesuitism based on this opposition between Ignatius and Luther.¹⁷

3 A New Image of Ignatius in 1535 In my opinion, the image of Ignatius as anti-Lutheran was born in March 1535, right when he left the University of Paris, giving no notice and for no apparent reason. He headed to Spain and left his newly born Society of Jesus – after the votes were cast at Montmartre on August 15, 1534 – in the hands of Pedro Fabro, who probably understood Lutheran theology better than anyone else in the group. At that point, it is believed, Ignatius prepared some of the Reglas para sentir con la Iglesia (Rules for Thinking within the Church) that he would incorporate into the Spiritual Exercises, particularly the tenet of obedience to the Roman Church.¹⁸ In Paris, Ignatius had some contact with professors who were clearly anti-Lutheran, but also with others who were connected with the suspect Cenacle of Meaux; perhaps it was his contact with them that ultimately motivated the two proceedings that

 MHSI, Fontes Narrativi, vol. 1:192 and vol. 3:195.  Vida del venenoso heresiarca Martín Lutero (Sevilla, Martín de Montedosca, 1555), fols. 20 – 27  José Goñi Gaztambide, “La imagen de lutero en España,” Scripta Theologica 15 (1983): 469 – 528; Gianclaudio Civale, “Domingo de Baltanás, monje solicitante en la encrucijada religiosa andaluza: confesión, inquisición y Compañía de Jesús en la Sevilla del Siglo de Oro,” Hispania Sacra 119 (2007): 197– 241; Melquiades Andrés, “Adversarios españoles de Lutero en 1521,” Revista Española de Teología 19 (1959): 175 – 85.  C. O’Neill, “Antijesuitismo,” in Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, vol. 1, eds. C. O’Neill et al. (Madrid-Roma: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2001), 178 – 89; For further information on Gallus, see Nathan Rein, The Chancery of God: Protestant Print, Polemic and Propaganda Against the Empire, Magdeburg 1546 – 1551 (Routledge: London, 2016); Hartmut Voit, Nikolaus Gallus: Ein Beitrag zur Reformationsgeschichte der nachlutherischen Zeit (Neustadt an der Eich: Degener, 1977).  Santiago Madrigal, Estudios de eclesiología ignaciana (Madrid: Brouwer, 2002), 171– 250. According to this author, the rules had an anti-Lutheran orientation.

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were set in motion in Paris – one in 1529, addressing the spiritual unrest among some students, and another in 1534, to alleviate the suspicions surrounding the Spiritual Exercises, which were being propagated among teachers and students alike.¹⁹ He also frequented apologists, such as the Dominican Cipriano Benet, Juan Gelida, Moscoso, Valle, Pedro de Garay (who established a program of reform),²⁰ the Franciscan Alonso de Castro (author of Adversus omnes hereses), François Le Picart (who wanted to be a Jesuit), the Dominicans Matthew Ory (author of Alexipharmacon), Thomas Laurent (the secretary of the inquisitor Valentin Lievin, who examined his Exercises), Noel Beda (author of Adversos clandestinos lutheranos), John Benoist, Jean Adam, Pierre de Cornibus, Robert Wouchop, Jacques Aimery, Gilles Binet, Michael Foullon, Richard du Mans, and especially the Dominican Ambrogio Catarino, the great opponent of Luther. Among the most dubious characters were George Buchanan and Martial Mazurier, to whom he gave his Spiritual Exercises before obtaining his diploma in March 1533; perhaps he also met Friar Michael of Aranda, a friend of Mazurier, who was also questioned by the Inquisition and would eventually become the bishop of San Paul-trois-Chateaux. And among the Spaniards, he made contact with Juan Díaz and Francisco de Encinas, both future Lutherans.²¹ Despite this network of relationships, when the controversy over Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises broke out in 1534, a series of important events had already transpired at the university that might have placed him in a bad light. The Faculty of Theology had already acted against Guillaume Briçonnet and Jacques Lefevre d’Étaples and those in Meaux’s circle; the books of Louis de Berquin and Luther had already been refuted in 1523; in 1524, lists of prohibited books were established; and in the following year, actions were taken against Pierre Caroli, Lefevre d′Étaples, and Gérard Roussel. In 1526, Erasmus had complained to Parliament and the king that two professors at the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne had accused him – namely, Pierre Cousturier and Noel Beda. The first, a Carthusian, placed Luther and Erasmus in the field of heresy (as he would later write in his De potestate ecclesiae in occultis in 1535), and he was in all probability a direct influence on Ignatius’ doctrine of the contemplation.²² In 1530, the protonotary Jean du Tillet had accused Mazurier of Lutheran tendencies, and in the same year, Francis I promised to free France from heresy, so Parliament had appointed two commissioners to search for heretical

 When Ignatius informed John III about his life in 1545, he clearly stated that he had two processes in Paris, which does not seem right, since it appears there was just one. I have already pointed out that I believe it was the same process in two distinct moments.  Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, K. 1483. B.2. 1531. He wrote a treatise in Spanish and Latin, at the request of the ambassador in France, De la Chambre. See AGS. E. 851, 87. Garay to Charles V, Paris April 9, 1530.  Larissa Juliett Taylor, Heresy and Orthotodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 151– 86  Henri Bernard-Maître, “Un théoricien de la contemplation: Pierre Cousturier,” Revue d’ascétique et mystique 32 (1956): 174– 95

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books. The tension was at its height, to the point that Ignatius was called by Inquisitor Ory in March 1535. Soon after this, Ignatius left Paris, and in June of that year, Mazurier was questioned by Parliament.²³ Ignatius had a special relationship with Mazurier, as Polanco pointed out in his Sumario de la historia de la Compañía (1548).²⁴ Was there a relationship between his unexpected trip to Spain and his suspect link with Mazurier? In my opinion, it is very likely. In this relentless sequence of events, it was necessary to present himself as totally anti-Lutheran. I therefore affirm that Ignatius made an important turn in his life in March 1535, when he decided to leave Paris with the intention of presenting himself in Spain as a well-trained and totally orthodox teacher from Paris, with no Alumbradist or Lutheran blemishes. This solemn statement was made by Antonio de Araoz, the first provincial council of Spain, in 1572, criticizing the explanation of this decision offered by Ribadeneira in his biography of Ignatius. In contrast to Ribadeneira, Araoz specifically argues that Ignatius left Paris to remove any suspicion of Lutheranism: It was necessary what he did, which was to publicly return to Spain, because having been imprisoned there and then set free, having been for some years outside the kingdom and in France, and since the error of the Alumbradists and that of Martin Luther had already begun in Spain and in Germany respectively, he wanted, and reasonably so, to take a tour of the main part of Spain, because even though set free by public statements, there were some very evil people.²⁵

It seems unlikely, therefore, as some have argued, that the strict interpretation of Luther offered by the Catholic theologian Johannes Cochlaeus could have influenced the image the Jesuits had of the Protestant camp. Indeed, logic suggests – if there was some dependence or influence – that it could have been the opposite; nor should it be forgotten that Cochlaeus himself, before publishing his biography of Luther in 1548 (Commentaria de actis et sciptis M. Lutheri), had performed the Spiritual Exercises with Pedro Fabro in Worms in 1541. Fabro made him think about the difference between knowing and feeling spiritual things, and he was so convinced that, shortly thereafter, he could be considered a committed “Ignatian,” spreading the practice of the Excercises. ²⁶ Fabro said to Ignatius: “Dr. Cocleo is already going

 Farge, Religion, Reformation and Repression, 415 and 435.  MHSI, Fontes Narrativi, 1:181. Polanco writes: “Tuvo amistad con el doctor Martial y el doctor Valle y Moscos, ayudándoles a todos con los Ejercicios; y con Martial pasó una gracia: que no siendo Iñigo aun bachiller en artes, le quería hacer doctor en teología, diciendo que pues enseñaba a él, que era doctor, que era justo tomase el mismo grado, y poniéndose en tratar el modo de doctorarle.”  “Fue necesario lo que hizo, que era volver a España públicamente, porque habiendo sido preso en ella y dado por libre, habiendo estado algunos años fuera del reino y en Francia, y habiendo ya comenzado en España el error de los alumbrados y en Alemania la herejía de Martín Lutero, quiso, como quien da razón de sí, dar una vuelta por lo principal de España, pues aún con haberle dado por libre por sentencias públicas, no faltaron malévolos”, MHSI, Scripta 1, Censura de Araoz, 1572.  For more on this topic, see Monique Samuel-Scheyder, Johannes Cochlaeus, humaniste et adversaire de Luther (Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1993), esp. 729; the biographies of Luther by

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after some Germans to do the Exercises, and he told me the other day that he believed he had yet to preach, that which he never did in his life, and had no hope or thought of such a thing.”²⁷ And so it was, because a short time later, Cochlaeus gave a copy of the Spiritual Exercises to John of Maltitz, the German bishop of Meißen.²⁸ On the other hand, we should keep in mind that Alumbradism – of which they had accused Ignatius in Alcalá and Salamanca – was a spiritual current originating from Castile, before Luther; this seed had been sown by converts, who sought pure love and rejected external works, the ecclesiastical magisterium, and the Bible. There was a certain superficial resemblance to Lutheranism, especially in its rejection of hierarchical authority and particularly the inquisitorial proceedings, which persecuted converts. In the years after his conversion in Manresa, Ignatius spoke of inner light, vision, and direct knowledge of God, and he also had contact with some Alumbrados in Arévalo and Nájera, before they were known as such – especially with Antonio de Medrano. When the news of Lutheranism came to Spain, Alumbradism was persecuted as a related spiritual stream, especially through the edict of Inquisitor General Alonso Manrique against the Alumbrados in September 1525. Some articles in this document expressly state that some of the affirmations of the Alumbrados are Lutheran; the inquisitors therefore believed that they knew the principles of Lutheranism well and could distinguish them from those of Alumbradism.²⁹ Of the forty-eight propositions contained in the edict, we must emphasize some of the points related to Lutheranism. The sixth is: “ that it weighed him because he had not sinned more, and that knowing the mercy of God, he would have liked to sin more, to enjoy more of that mercy and because God loved more he who had more to forgive (que le pesaba porque no había pecado más, e que conociendo la misericordia de Dios, quisiera haber pecado más, por gozar más de ella y porque aquel a quien Dios tenía más que perdonar aquel amaba más).” This brings us to Luther’s magnificare peccatum, when he advises Melanchthon to sin more boldly. The eighth says that “the confession is not of divine right, but positive (la confesión no es de derecho divino, sino positive),” and the inquisitors concluded that this was a Lutheran proposition and so identified it as such. The twenty-sixth states that the saints do not matter, and this is opposed because “to reprove the doctrine of the saints is Lutheran madness (reprobar la doctrina de los sanctos es locura luterana).” The twenty-seventh

Melanchthon and Cochlaeus in Luther’s Lives: Two Contemporary Accounts of Martin Luther, trans. and ed. Elizabeth Vandiver et al. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002).  “El doctor Cocleo ya anda tras unos alemanes para que hagan los Ejercicios, y me dijo el otro día que él creía que había aun de predicar, lo que nunca hizo en su vida ni tuvo esperanza o pensamiento de tal cosa”, see MHSI, Fontes Narrativi, 1:181.  MHSI, Fabri Monumenta, 91, Fabro to Ignatius, Ratisbona, April 20, 1541.  Antonio Márquez, Los alumbrados. Orígenes y filosofla: 1525 – 1559 (Madrid: Taurus, 1972), 72– 81; M. Andrés Martin, Nueva visión de los “alumbrados” de 1525 (Madrid: Fundación universitaria española, 1973).

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says there is no need for bulls, and this is called an “Lutheran error.” The inquisitors drew these propositions from various proceedings, especially those against Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, where he says – among many other things – that “for the love of God and to know God there is no need for letters (para el amor de Dios y conocer a Dios no hay necesidad de letras).” This was also a salient point of the proceedings against Ignatius in Alcalá and Salamanca: the accusation of Alumbradism was based on the fact that he taught spirituality without having the necessary theological qualifications, which is why he was forbidden to preach.³⁰ Ignatius was very interested in cultivating an image of being totally orthodox and having nothing to do with Alumbrados, and even less with Lutherans. Begun in 1534 in Spain, the process of reworking his biography was publicly consecrated in the summer of 1538, when the Roman trial assessing his orthodoxy was initiated (one aspect completely omitted by the authors of the official history of the Society of Jesus and also ignored by the exponents of Lutheran anti-Jesuitism). For this reason, Nadal said in his Apologia (1554) that the Roman process was like the compendium of all things. Nadal drew a parallel with Eph 1:10 (“as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth”), saying “fuit haec sententia anacephaleosis quaedam actionum omnium.” As Ignatius wrote to his friend, Isabel Roser, his trial in Rome in 1538 for alleged proximity to Alumbradism was providential. Of the six witnesses who directly referred to the person of Ignatius, three of them specifically said that Ignatius openly opposed Luther with his doctrine. The most important observation here is that those who said so were three good apologetic theologians: Ambrosio Catarino, Pedro Ortiz, and Doimi Nascio.³¹ The key question is this: Can we truly believe these witnesses, or did they simply do what was necessary to save their friend from the accusations of heterodoxy made by his enemies in Rome, as reported by Polanco: “quie occulte lutherani dogmata Romae seminabat”?³² My personal opinion is that they were telling the truth: that Ignatius was well acquainted with Lutheran doctrine, and that they were persuaded by his “modo de proceder” that he wanted to “semper oppugnare sectam Lutheri” and to be “in omnibus contrariam (doctrinam) lutheranis.” These proceedings in Rome had a tremendous impact on the first Jesuits, who immediately recognized their decisive importance for the fate of the order; thus it is not surprising that the acquittal formed an integral part of Ribadeneira’s Vida de Ignacio. While the Society created its own myth, the chroniclers of the emperor – perhaps influenced by the works of Cochleaus – struggled to create another, promoting the idea that Charles V was the anti-Luther par excellence. Thus it was a hot topic of de V. Beltrán de Heredia, Miscelánea Beltrán de Heredia: colección de artículos sobre historia de la teología española, vol. 3 (Salamanca: OPE, 1972), 211– 34.  M. del Piazzo and C. de Dalmases, “Il processo sull’ortodossia di S. Ignazio e dei suoi compagni svoltosi a Roma nel 1538,” AHSI 38 (1969): 431– 53.  Chronicon 1:79.

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bate among the Catholics closest to Ignatius as to who was the real anti-Luther – the Jesuit or the Hapsburg emperor. The chroniclers placed in the emperor’s mouth phrases such as: “I was very wrong to not kill him … for not having killed him, that error went from bad to worse: which I believe would have been avoided, if I had killed him (mucho erré en no matarle […] por no le haber muerto yo, fue siempre aquel error de mal en peor: que creo que se atajara, si le matara).”³³ However, when Ignatius presented the Society to Charles V in 1554 and sought his support for the founding of a college in Leuven, he said nothing about Luther, although he did specify that one of the aims of the order was “hereticorum conatibus pro virili sua resistendo.”³⁴ In the writings of Ignatius, although there are references to Lutheranism, there is no personal reference to Luther – not in the Spiritual Exercises, or in the Constituciones (Consitutions), or in the Spiritual Diary, or even in any of his 9,000 letters. And nowhere in Luther’s writings – not in his works or in any of his 4,500 letters – is there any mention of Ignatius. However, in March 1545, Ignatius wrote to John III to make it clear that he had nothing to do with the Lutherans, the Alumbrados, or any of their offshoots; indeed – as was openly said everywhere – he had endured eight diocesan and inquisitorial proceedings concerning his orthodoxy and his preaching without having theological qualifications, and he had always been acquitted in the end. It is true, however, that he did maintain contact with the Alumbrados, especially before the edict against them in 1525 – a matter that deserves further study. Could he also have had contact with the Lutherans in Paris? Surely not, but he did get to know what the apologists at the university thought of Luther. Furthermore, Ignatius did not allow himself to be carried away by a pre-Alumbradist deviation – the spirituality of the Dejados, who defended a greater identification with God through affection, leaving aside matters related to the body, to the point that they believed they did not sin. The Inquisition’s investigations into the Dejados began around 1519 in Guadalajara, whereas the Alumbrados were considered heretics beginning in 1525, when the inquisitor Alonso Manrique gathered important information on them in the Libro de los alumbrados and promulgated an edict in Toledo with forty-eight articles against their doctrines. It is possible that this reaction was not so much a reaction to an “alumbrado” or “dejado” danger, but to Lutheranism – particularly with regard to the appearance of Luther’s books in Spain in 1521, 1523, and 1524 –, although this is debated and the issue is very difficult to understand. There is no doubt, however, that Pope Hadrian and part of the nobility asked Charles V in 1521 to pursue Lutheranism in Spain, and that Ignatius must have known about it.³⁵ In the same year, Charles unburdened his conscience to his  Prudencio de Sandoval, Historia de Carlos V (Pamplona, 1618), vol. 2, ch. 9.  Miquel Batllori, “Carlos V y la Compañía de Jesús,” en Estudios Carolinos (Barcelona: Universidad, 1959), 131– 48; MHSI, Epistolae 12, Romae, 257.  AGS. E. 8, 91. Adriano, Admiral of Castile, Duke of Gandia, Marquis of Astorga, Count de Haro, Marquess of Denia, Count of Miranda, etc. Charles V, Tordesillas, April 11, 1521. See also Thomas

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ambassador in Rome, the Duke of Sesa, claiming that he had done everything possible to avoid “disorders, disrespect and bad deeds (los desórdenes, desacatamientos y malas obras)”³⁶ concerning Luther. In addition, it is necessary to take into account Ignatius’ trip to Rome in 1523. From a theological point of view, the climate could not have been worse. In March, Dr. Johannes Eck arrived with the intention of asking the pope for a genuine Catholic reform in Germany, to suppress the Lutheran university in Wittenberg, and to publish a new bull against Luther’s doctrine.³⁷ Also in Rome, as we will see later, the Spaniard was associated with the Dominican Friar Cipriano Benet, who had studied at the University of Paris and then in Barcelona, where he was a professor of logic from 1514 to 1517. He then moved to the Sapienza University in Rome, where he also taught logic. He was a great scholar and one of the first to face Luther. In fact, on June 12, 1521, Benet read the sentence against Luther at Piazza Navona and proceeded to burn his books.

4 Was Ignatius Really Anti-Lutheran? Thus we find two historiographical streams of thought regarding the problem of compressing Ignatius into an anti-Lutheran. On the one hand, from the very beginning – and in parallel manner among Jesuits and non-Jesuits – the conviction was established that Ignatius had come to the Church to counteract Luther, and at the same time, Protestant polemicists sowed anti-Jesuitism. But on the other hand, recent historiography, particularly modern biographies of Ignatius, asserts that he had nothing to do with Luther – this was a myth, as Batllori has explained. My own opinion is that Ignatius did have some anti-Lutheran views, and that this is not so much a myth as is currently thought. The point is that the essence of his anti-Lutheranism was not like that of the polemicists, the apologists, or the inquisitors; his proposal, which served both Lutherans and non-Lutherans, was his “modo de proceder” and his Spiritual Exercises, and Cochleaus understood this well when he dealt with Fabro. We must ask ourselves three questions: (1) What are the origin of the spiritual processes of Ignatius and of Luther? (2) How much did Ignatius know of Luther and what he represented? (3) What did he know of Luther after his “conversion,” dur-

(La represión del protestantismo en España, 1517 – 1618), who says that it was not because of Protestantism but because of internal power struggles in the Holy Office, struggles between Ferdinand and the Felipists – that is to say, he wanted to reduce the number of converts who advocated the abolition of the Inquisition. Concerning the edict, see M. Ortega Costa, “Las proposiciones del edicto de los Alumbrados. Autores y calificadores,” Cuadernos de Investigación Histórica 1 (1977): 20 – 53; J. E. Longhurst, “Alumbrados, erasmistas y luteranos,” Cuadernos de Historia de España 27 (1958), 99 – 163; 28 (1958): 102– 65; 29/30 (1959): 266 – 92; 31/32 (1960): 322– 56; 35/36 (1962): 337– 53; 37/38 (1963): 356 – 71, and his “Saint Ignatius at Alcalá,” AHSI 26 (1957): 252– 59.  Real Academia de la Historia, Salazar y Castro, A 26.  García, Ignacio de Loyola, ch. 3.

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ing his formative period in Spain and France, and then in Italy before the Roman adoption of the Society? Regarding the first question, it should be noted that it was during his conversion and formation stage that he established the idea of the “eximia ilustracion,” theologized by Jerónimo Nadal, which took place in Manresa in 1522 and which is fixed in two relevant historical records: the Spiritual Diary (1545) and the Autobiography (1555). In the Diary, Ignatius claims that, when he wrote it, he had “a great many revelations of the Most Holy Trinity, the understanding of them being illustrated in them, to the extent that it seemed to me that with good study I did not know so much, and then looking at it more, it appeared to me in the feeling or seeing understanding even though I was studying it my whole life.”³⁸ Thus he had received so much communication from God that, even had he studied all his life, he would never have known so much. The same is reflected in the Autobiography as having happened to him in 1522, adding the important nuance that even had there been no Bible, he would believe in its illumination: “ These things that he has seen confirm it, and they have given him so much confirmation of faith, that he has often thought to himself: If there were no Scripture that would teach us these things of faith, he would be determined to die for them, only for that which he has seen.”³⁹ What is introduced here is the important nuance that even without the Bible he could have faith, only because of what he felt inwardly. This imagery also appears in the writings of Ribadeneira and other Jesuits. All of this leads us to think that these developments had nothing to do with Luther, because Luther put all of his emphasis on Holy Scripture and even totally rejected the “enlightened ones” (Alumbrados or Iluminados) who wanted to do without the Bible to receive the Holy Spirit. We should remember the anti-Alumbradism that appeared in Luther’s writings about the false celestial prophets in 1525 – in Wider die himmlischen Propheten, von den Bildern und Sakrament –,⁴⁰ paradoxically the same year that the Alumbrados were condemned in Toledo. We must also remember that Luther repeated this same idea in his Smalcald Articles (1538), just as Ignatius was being prosecuted in Rome.⁴¹ In defining his position on the confession, Luther stated the following: “we may [thus] be protected against the enthusiasts, i. e., spirits who boast that they have the Spirit without and before the Word, and accordingly judge Scripture or the spoken Word”⁴². Luther really wanted to attack the Taulerian mystics, Carlostadio and Müntzer, but – unless he had news of the Spanish

 “muy muchas intelligençias de la Sanctísima Trinidad, illustrándose el entendimiento con ellas, a tanto que me pareçía que con buen estudiar no supiera tanto, y después mirando más en ello, en el sentir o ver entendiendo me pareçía aunque toda mi vida estudiara”, Diarium spirituale, MHSI, Const. 1, no. 18.  Autobiographia, MHSI, Fontes Narrativi 1, no. 29.  WA 18:63 – 125.  WA 50:192– 320.  Book of Concord, 3.8.3.

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Alumbrados, which is likely – he also unknowingly criticized those who clung to a mere mystical experience, and for that reason, he said that the pope was an “enlightened one,” because “he glories in having locked away all the rights in the chest of his heart”⁴³; moreover, he openly says that the first “enthusiasts” were Adam and Eve, because they were seduced by “spiritual illumination” and by their own fantasies. He was angry with them because he claimed that the Spirit communicates through Holy Scripture. However, it seems that Luther, at the end of 1518, received an “illumination” of his own – which he called the “Tower Experience” – from outwith the Bible, whereby he came to understand that human beings are justified by faith. This event appears in his autobiography in the prologue to his Latin works in 1545: “I felt myself reborn and entered into paradise, opening its gates one by one for me.”⁴⁴ When Cochleaus later recalled the dispute with the Augustinian in 1519, he claimed that Luther had tried to legitimize his doctrines with his Tower Experience, saying, “est mihi revelatum.” Furthermore, Conrad Cordatus reproduces Luther’s words in the same sense: “El Espíritu Santo me ha dado ese conocimiento en la Torre.”⁴⁵ As to what Ignatius knew of Luther, because of his special relationship with the court, he may have received certain news. The presence of the Duke of Najera in Rome in 1520 during the ambassadorship of Don Juan Manuel cannot be conclusively proven, but it would be important, because if he was accompanied by Ignatius (since he was in his service), Ignatius might then have seen the first tensions regarding Leo X’s inquisitorial reform and heard the rumors that were spreading about Luther. If the Duke of Najera traveled to Rome, as it seems he did, it had to be between March and July of 1520, because in February and August he went to Najera to fight against the comuneros. Curiously, in December 1520, the ambassador Juan Manuel had told the pope that the comunero Bishop Acuña was the Luther of Spain – he had little of Luther in his doctrine, but he was a comunero in the sense of disobeying the authorities.⁴⁶ Barely a year later, Cardinal Inquisitor Hadrian of Utrecht ordered

 WA 50:192– 254.  WA 54:186.  Hartmann Grisar, Martín Lutero. Su vida y su obra, trans. D. Victor Espinós (Madrid: Editorial Victoriano Suárez, 1934), 199.  Real Academia de la Historia, Salazar y Castro, A 45, 21. Juan Manuel to Charles V, Rome, December 31, 1520: “quanto a lo de Zamora dije al papa que allí tenía otro Martín Lutero, díjome que bien le placería su privación mas que pensaba que V.A. tenía por ventura necesidad de perdonarle y que quedarían corridos él y V.A., díjele que no quedarían corridos porque no había necesidad de perdonarle, así se perdonaría sino la vida a lo más paréceme que está en ello de buena manera. Yo tornaré a hablar de esto como es menester”; “Dije a S.S. lo de Martín Lutero y da muchas gracias a V.A., y ruégale mucho que en aquello se muestre su buen hijo y protector, y que si quisiera venir acá este Martín Lutero que pueda venir seguro con carta de V.A. y estar y tornar y que acá le darán personas con quien dispute y hable y será recibida su razón en lo que la tuviere y que de esto dará todas las seguridades necesarias.”

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Dr. Toribio de Saldaña, the inquisitor of Barcelona, to burn all Luther’s books he could find, just as Ignatius was about to arrive.⁴⁷ On the other hand, Ignatius had to know that the governors who ruled in Charles’ absence, who gathered at Tordesillas in April 1521, had warned the emperor of the danger Luther posed to his kingdoms in Spain. And surely he already knew about the censures at the University of Leuven and the refutations written by Marliani and Longolio during the years they stayed in Spain. It is also very probable that he heard echoes of the Edict of Worms, since there were Spaniards present at the diet – such as Juan de Vergara – who were connected to humanists such as Vives and Erasmus. However, I think he would probably have known more of the news that circulated in Barcelona during his stay in the city under the magisterium of Jerónimo de Ardévol, since Ignatius was there when the Inquisitor was ordered to find and burn all of Luther’s books.⁴⁸ One could ask whether Ignatius’ experience in the Tower House of Loyola had something to do with what Luther had said. It is unlikely that he himself considered such a question. He knew little of the German, since little was known, and his experience was already clearly differentiated from Luther’s, even in 1522 – that is, when Luther was engaged in his confrontation with Ambrosius Catharinus. Nevertheless, his positioning with regard to Alumbradism was apparently of no benefit to him; the epoch in which the tolerant inquisitor Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros allowed the proliferation of beatas and private revelations connected to Catherine of Siena, and with the Edict of Toledo in 1525, Alumbradism was associated with Lutheranism, with the comuneros, and with the agermanados; all were enemies of the established order and the stability of the domains of the emperor, and Ignatius was diametrically opposed to this destabilization. During his peregrine period between 1522 and 1526 – in Rome, Jerusalem, and then in Spain –, he must have learned of the Lutheran issue, since he went on a pilgrimage to Palestine with three Swiss men (Captain Juan Hünegg, Pedro Füssli, and Enrique Ziegler), several Dutch men, and particularly with the knight Felipe Hagen of Strasbourg. It should be noted that Füssli’s brother was a Zwinglian apologist. In the processes that took place in Spain (in Alcalá and Salamanca), there is no doubt – as Ignatius himself recognized – that he was accused of Alumbradism, but never of being a Lutheran. But what did the Alumbrados know of Luther? Rather little, although the invitation to Ignatius to join the new school in Salamanca – which came from Archbishop Fonseca, a great follower of Erasmian thought – must have

 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Inquisición, book 317, fol. 223. Adriano to Saldaña, Logroño, July 8, 1521: “S.S.Rvma. huvo placer de las diligencias que se han hecho sobre las obras de Martín Lutero, el cual fue ya condenado por hereje por sentencia escrita de mano de SMC., y si algunos libros se hallasen hágase de ellos conforme a la provisión de S.S.Rvma., ni dar lugar en manera alguna a los contrario, que así cumple al servicio de Dios.”  José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, “Reacción antiluterana en España. Dos cartas de Carlos V desde Worms (1521),” Diálogo Ecuménico 8 (1973): 57–63.

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had some connection to the rejection of Luther, given the trajectory of that institution.

5 First Interactions with Lutheranism I think Ignatius heard the first criticism of Luther through a friend he might have met, first in Barcelona or in Rome, and then at the University of Paris. This was the Dominican Dr. Cipriano Benet, who studied at the University of Paris, was a chaplain to Hadrian of Utrecht, a professor of logic for Alexander VI and Julius II, and a participant in the Lateran Council. He was very close to Jeronimo Aleander.⁴⁹ In 1520, he was a professor at Sapienza University in Rome. It was then – in Rome in 1522, when Luther’s writings were publicly burned – that Benet pronounced the Oratio contra dogmata Lutheri, which coincided with the book he published in Rome that year refuting Luther.⁵⁰ It was a defense of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff by means of Scripture, the councils, and the holy fathers – a clear parallel with In Martinum Lutherum oratio by Marliani, which was published in Rome in 1520. Perhaps Ignatius knew nothing of these books – and surely he had not read them, because he hardly knew Latin at the time –, but we do know that he had a good relationship with Cipriano Benet during his stay in Paris. In the only two of his letters from this period that remain, there are references to Benet. In one, written on November 10, 1532, he tells Isabel Roser that he received his letters thanks to Dr. Benet’s mediation; a similar hint is in the other letter, written to Ines Pascual on June 1, 1533. Ignatius, therefore, maintained contact with Benet in Paris at least between 1532 and 1533. It is logical to think that Benet would have taught Ignatius about Luther, since the Dominican was staying with the Jacobites, where Ignatius used to visit, and where Ory, Lievin, and Laurent also were. We know that Benet also published – among other works – the book De fortitudine animi et de perfecta arte militari (1518), dedicated to Julius de Medici; but above all, his most important work in the face of the Lutheran controversy was his De sacrosancto eucharistie, which was reprinted in 1521 – a work dedicated to the Spanish ambassador in Rome, Don Juan Manuel, in which he criticized Luther and announced a more extensive work in which he would discuss the primature of the Roman Pontiff against Luther the heresiarch. Ignatius’ first contact with intellectual Lutheranism probably occurred during his studies in Paris, where some Protestants had already rejected the value of the sacraments, although he believed this was just temporary. The Dominican theologian Ambrogio Catarino Politi was the best informed on this subject; his forceful attack on  Lettres familières de Jérôme Aléandre (1510 – 1540), ed. by Jule Paquier (Paris: A. Picard, 1909), 119 – 20. Aleander to Benet, Rome, October 23, 1526.  The discourse can be found in the Biblioteca Vaticana, as noted in J. Quétif and J. Échard, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum recensiti (Paris: Ballard and Simart, 1721), 2:49.

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Luther for denying the pope’s authority was published in Florence in 1520. He dedicated this work to Charles V; the following year, Luther answered with a harsh Reponsio. ⁵¹ When Catarino answered questions about his relationship with Ignatius in the celebrated Roman process of 1538, he mentioned that he had contact with the first Jesuits in Paris, especially with Broet, Lainez, and Salmerón. He confirmed that he frequently conversed with them about theology and about Holy Scripture, and he observed that their doctrine was Catholic and “contra hereticos omnes, tan veteres quam recentes.” Catarino appears with some frequency in Ignatius’ letters. He taught Salmerón, with whom he had a good relationship. In fact, it was he who awarded doctoral degrees to Salmerón, Broet, and Jayo in Bologna. Among the early Jesuits, it was known that Ignatius liked Catarino’s theology and defended him everywhere he went. Lainez, Salmerón, and even Olave – although he had some doubts – followed the doctrine of Catarino. Ignatius’ support for Catarino was such that there was a moment, in the Dominican’s last hours of life, in which the Spaniard clarified that it was not the duty of the Society to defend Catarino’s doctrine of double justification. The other person he dealt with in Paris was Professor Pedro Ortiz, and his deposition in the Roman proceedings asserts that Jesuit doctrine was contrary to Lutheranism. Pedro Ortiz was an important participant in the diets of Worms and Regensburg, knew the Lutheran writings, and was very close to Pedro Fabro. It is also important to note that Ortiz revised the text of the Exercises, offering a set of recommendations – which were preserved – about how the Exercises should be understood.⁵² During the Roman process, Ortiz emphasized the necessity of university study as a requirement for proceeding along the path of faith with some assurance, seeking openly to justify the work of Ignatius, who had just completed a master’s degree in arts and theological studies, and especially to indicate that Ignatius’ life and work were clearly opposed to the heresy of Luther and to the other heresies “doctriman catholicam et in omnibus contrariam lutheranis.”⁵³ The third testimony that clearly establishes the idea of Ignatius’ anti-Lutheranism is that of Doimo Nascio, “Semper oppugnare sectam Luteri cum Ecclesia Romana Semper tenendo e inharendo,”⁵⁴ which sounds a lot like the Rules for Thinking within

 For more on this topic, see Aaron C. Denlinger, Omnes in Adam ex pacto Dei: Ambrogio Catarino’s Doctrine of Covenantal Solidarity and Its Influence on Post-Reformation Reformed Theologians (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010); Giorgio Caravale, Sulle tracce dell’eresia. Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484 – 1553) (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2007); Giorgio Caravale, Forbidden Prayer: Church Censorship and Devotional Literature in Renaissance Italy (Farnham: Asghate, 2013).  MHSI, Exercitia, 67– 70; Camilo Abad, “Unas ‘Anotaciones’ del Doctor Pedro Ortiz y su hermano Fray Francisco sobre los Ejercicios espirituales de San Ignacio,” AHSJ 25 (1956): 437– 54.  ES 70.  C. Dalmases, M. Del Piazzo, “Il processo sull’ortodossia di S. Ignazio e dei suoi compagni svoltosi a Roma nel 1538,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 38 (1969), 431– 453, 448.

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the Church. ⁵⁵ I would like to emphasize that Nascio was a clergyman, originally from Amelia, a doctor in both rights, who was chosen by the governor of Rome as a witness. Nascio was present because he was a disciple of Francesco Bandini, the bishop of Siena, and above all because he had done the Spiritual Exercises with Ignatius as soon as he arrived in Rome, because he later collaborated on the founding of a Jesuit college in the city where he was born, and only his advanced age prevented him from entering the Order. The curious thing about his testimony is that he went to meet Ignatius at the suggestion of Cardinal Juan Pedro Carafa, who called into question the orthodoxy of the group “quod sapere contra fidem.” Another very important witness was Matthew Ory, who was in Rome in 1538. He said that he knew the whole group well, especially since almost everyone went to their classes at Saint-Jacques. It is important to note that he said he knew Ignatius “familiariter” and that he was denounced before the Inquisition for introducing a “novam sectam.” Ory summoned him, interrogated him, and then examined him. Ignatius told him that he had indeed been tried in Alcalá “super novo modo vivendi,” but Ory found no trace of heresy in him, only a man of good conscience.

6 Ignatius’ Religious Proposal What Ignatius might have known of Luther probably came from reports sent to him by Jesuits – first by Fabro and Bobadilla, and later by Nadal and Canisius. Even before Ignatius was elected general of the Order, Favre’s letters from Worms kept him up to date on the German situation. Indeed, since Ignatius had permission to read forbidden books, he asked Favre to deliver a copy of Melanchthon’s Apologia and the Confessio Augustana to him in Rome.⁵⁶ Peter Fabro was persuaded that the Protestant question could be resolved with charity and patience. In fact, in 1546, when he did not yet know that Luther had just died, he still thought that Luther would eventually return to Catholicism. He even mentioned praying for the conversion of Luther, Calvin, and Melanchthon in his Spiritual Diary, because he had imbued himself with the Ignatian idea of “modo de proceder.” This would explain why, while in Germany, Fabro said that he expected to “to bear much fruit in time by our way of proceeding.”⁵⁷

 S. Madrigal, “A las fuentes de la romanidad: ‘nuestra sancta madre Yglesia hierárquica (quae romana est),” in Las fuentes de los Ejercicios espirituales de S. Ignacio, ed. Juan Plazaola (Bilbao: Ediciones Mensajero, 1998): 513 – 34  The Confessio Augustana was written by Melanchthon in 1531 and was the doctrinal basis of the Lutheran churches. This confession rejects Alumbradism – that is, it does not accept that the Holy Spirit can be received without Scripture. Also in 1531, Melanchthon published the Apologia, which focused on the doctrine of justification.  MHSI, Monumenta Fabri, 44– 51, 50. Worms, December 27, 1540.

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In practice, however, Ignatius wanted to win over the Lutherans. We know that in October 1545, news spread in Trent that the heterodox Capuchin Bernardino Ochino was with his sister in Augsburg. This was a good opportunity to talk to him. Ignatius secretly instructed Jayo to go to Germany and try to convince him to return to Rome to reconcile with the Catholic Church. Already in the previous month, Jayo had asked Ignatius for special permission to reconcile heretics, in relation to the privileges the pope had granted the Society. In September 1546, Lainez and Salmerón, perhaps by means of Catarino, obtained his conversion – although only for a time. Lainez wrote to Ignatius and reported everything that had happened with the greatest care. Ochino had been reconciled by confession, with special permission to acquit him of heresy. Jayo was entrusted with a similar task once the council had been suspended in Ferrara – an attempt to convert the duchess Renata de Valois, which Ignatius followed with great interest. Furthermore, in Bologna, Salmerón absolved many “secret” Lutherans in December 1547, and he thought that by Easter 1548 he would have to reconcile even more, since many of the Lutherans in Bologna had contact with friends in Rome, who were being pressured to declare the names of their companions. Both Broet and Salmerón obtained authorization from the cardinal of Santa Cruz “di assolvere quelli heretici o lutherani che se vorrano redurre all′obedientia della santa Chiesa.”⁵⁸ Broet said that he had already reconciled ten Lutherans, without having to go through the Inquisition. The news immediately reached the ears of the vice-inquisitor, a Dominican, who – together with the vicar of the city – denounced them to the cardinal of Burgos and the bishop of Bologna on the grounds that a new court was being set up to deal with issues of faith. Broet and Salmerón defended themselves by saying that they were acting with apostolic authority delegated from Rome, but since their accusers were not satisfied, they assured them that they would not absolve any more Lutherans “per haber pace con tutti” (in order to have peace with everybody). But they wanted to warn Ignatius, just in case echoes of the affair reached Rome, so they sent him a copy of the brief written by the cardinal of Santa Cruz. However, the efforts of Salmerón and Broet were crowned with a considerable success – that of obtaining the repentance of the important heteredox John Baptist Scotti. Salmerón was the one who won him for the Catholic cause, by virtue of the power that Ignatius had received to reconcile heretics, which Jayo and Salmerón claimed in order to be able to work in what was – for them – a land of “mission.” This caused a serious conflict with the local inquisitors, making the affair extremely problematic. Thus on May 6, 1551, in a private audience after dinner, Julius III received Salmerón and his great friend Catarino, who asked him to grant Ignatius the grace to be able to absolve heretics – and, by extension, to authorize Ignatius to pass this authority on to suitable priests whom he selected –, to which Julius con-

 MHSI, Epistolae Pascasii Broëti, 43 – 44.

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sented. At the end of the meeting, Salmerón and Catarino prepared and signed a document, which was described by Polanco as a vive vocis oraculo from the pope Julius III. Ignatius’ perspective on the German situation demonstrates a clear evolution. In 1540, he promoted Fabro’s mission of religious colloquiums, eventually calling him to Rome in 1549, in the hope that they could work together to resolve the Catholic reform in Germany, but Fabro arrived half dead and could barely speak with Ignatius. Also in 1549, Ignatius strengthened the mission of Jayo, Canisio, and Salmerón in Germany, promoting the foundation of Jesuit colleges, spreading the practice of the Exercises, and requesting some German students to be sent to Rome. In order to deal with increasingly pressing economic problems, in 1551, together with Cardinal Morone, he founded the Germanic College.⁵⁹ In 1553, he articulated a vision of Catholic reform to the nuncio Defino, in which he insisted that such a reform should focus on good schools, good teachers, and good confessors; printing sound books; and restoring Catholic theology. By 1554, Ignatius assumed that God had chosen the Society as one of the means of restoring the Catholic faith in Germany, as he said confidently to Canisio: “Pare che la Compagnia nostra, essendo accettata dalla Providentia Divina fra li mezzi efficaci debba essere sollecita e che possano molto estendersi, adoperandosi quanto più presto potrà a preservare quello che resta sano e a avivare quello che è già ammorbito dalla peste eretica massimamente nelle nazione settentrionali.”⁶⁰ In the same letter, Ignatius set out a plan of reform that provides for capital punishment for heretics in some cases – “aliquando etiam morte mulctari posse”⁶¹ –, which was considered very harsh.

7 Conclusion One cannot speak of Ignatius against Luther – only of two Christians who sought and found God on parallel paths, heirs of the same ecclesiastical tradition, who, through their lives and their works, have left an important mark on the world. Both the Protestant and the Catholic legacies have contributed to the good of humankind by spreading fundamental values in society, such as political development and Christian humanism. The brief biographies of Lainez and Nadal, as well as Polanco’s more extensive one, remained unpublished until the twentieth century, but their thoughts on Ignatius – transmitted through manuscripts and oral tradition – captured his image, protecting him from the dangers of the times in which they lived and drawing a linear biography of a noble knight, a faithful servant of the king and of God, without a trace  J. Lortz, “Germanicum und Gegenreformatio,” in Erneuerung und Einheit, ed. Joseph Lortz and Peter Manns (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1987): 485 – 539.  MHSI, Epp. Ign., 12:259; Ignatius to Canisio, Rome, August 13, 1554.  MHSI, Epp. Ign., 7:398 – 404.

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of heresy, at the service of the papacy, endowed with grace by God as his instrument to defend the Church against his enemies, specifically Luther. This image did not originate with them, but was based on Ignatius’ life experiences and the difficulties he faced in 1534 and facing the Roman process, handed down by individuals who were not part of the Society of Jesus – men like Catarino, Ortiz, and Nascio. Ignatius’ plan to curb the Protestant advance and the evolution of his thinking can be clearly seen in the seven instructions he sent to the Jesuits who were working in Germany. The key was to avoid theological controversy and to encourage the widespread practice of the Spiritual Exercises; civil and ecclesiastical authorities were to prevent the spread of heretical books. There is also a dark spot, which has already been mentioned above – namely, his advocacy of capital punishment and the confiscation of property, which is nevertheless explainable according to the context of the time, although Ignatius said that he did not want to enter into the debate on capital punishment: “de extremo supplicio et de inquisitione ibe constituenda non loquor.”⁶² Shortly before his death, Ignatius approved the creation of the New Jesuit province of Germany; its first administrator was Pedro Canisio, who gave immediate impetus for the foundation of Jesuit colleges in that region. It is true that, in the early years of the Lutheran Reformation, there was no clear idea of what Lutheranism, Erasmism, or Alumbradism were. Twenty years later, however, around 1540, when Ignatius founded the new Jesuit Order, the doctrine was clearer. None of the three movements were related; there were no direct connections. Ignatius approached Erasmianism and Alumbradism, and this undoubtedly bothered many theologians, who saw in Ignatius and his Order something irreducible to the pre-Tridentine Catholic Reform movement. Ignatius was not directly anti-Lutheran; his program was general, valid for anyone, whether Catholic or Protestant, nonbeliever or pagan. As we read in a letter from Ignatius to Fabro in 1554, when the University of Paris was opposed to the presence of Jesuits, Ignatius was astonished and wondered what exactly they opposed about the Society of Jesus in Paris, where it had been born, while in other parts of the world they were always requesting new Jesuits to be sent – even in Germany.⁶³

 D. Bertrand, “De la décision politique. Lettre de Saint Ignace de Loyola sur la question allemande,” RAM 45 (1969): 47– 64 ; A. Birmele, “Ignace de Loyola et Martin Luther,” in Ignacio de Loyola y su tiempo, ed. J. Plazaola (Bilbao: Ediciones Mensajero, 1992): 771– 90 ; C. de Dalmases, “San Ignacio de Loyola y la Contrarreforma,” Studia missionalia 34 (1985): 321– 50; Philip Endean, “Ignatius in Lutheran Light,” The Month 252 (1991): 271– 78; H. Rahner, “Das letzte Arbeitsjahr des Ignatius für Deutschland,” in Ignatius von Loyola als Mensch und Theologe (Freiberg: Herder, 1964): 387– 98.  MHSI, Epp. Ign., 7:661. Ignatius to Broet, Rome, October 15, 1554: “non possiamos bastare in Spagnia, Portogallo, in Italia, Sicilia et anch′in Germania agli desiderii et istanti petitioni de li prelati, quali recerchano alguni degli nostri per gli ministerio.”

Luther in Question

A new memorial is being planned by planned by architects Christoph Zeller and Ingrid Moye, with the assistance of the artist Albert Weis. The memorial is to be set up as part of the modernization of the Square in front of St. Mary’s Church in Berlin. (VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2017).

Violet Soen

From the Interim of Augsburg until the Treaty of Augsburg (1548 – 1555) Although the time span in this chapter only consists of a brief eight-year period between 1548 and 1555, this represented an important historical moment in which Europe underwent a significant transformation. In 1548, Emperor Charles V felt confident enough to force an Interim upon the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, the traditional assembly of estates then gathered in Augsburg. With this temporary arrangement, as its name implied, the Emperor made provisions for the full Catholic reconversion of the Empire and the reform of the Church, while he also tried to satisfy the Lutheran party in an effort to restore peace and order after the religious turmoil of the preceding years. As such, the Interim was only to last “until the Church would be united again.” During this Augsburg Diet of 1548, Charles V certainly acted proactively, encouraged by his victory in Mühlberg over the Protestant Schmalkaldic League on April 24, 1547, a moment famously captured in Titian’s equestrian portrait of the Emperor. Some biographers have therefore seen in the Interim a very personal and zealous document, a testimony to the Religionspolitik of the triumphant Emperor, while others have claimed that it was nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory.¹ When the same Diet met in the same city of Augsburg eight years later in 1555, a depressed Charles V remained in Brussels, where he decided that he would rather abdicate than sign off on the further concessions that his brother was then negotiating with the Protestant party. Unfortunately for the Emperor, though, the messenger announcing this decision arrived at the Diet too late; this made the arrangement agreed upon at Augsburg the last government act issued under Charles’ name.² Much to his disgust, the Religious Peace of Augsburg – as the Diet’s final settlement came to be called – attributed the jus reformandi to territorial and municipal authorities in the Empire, sanctioning the legal coexistence of Catholicism and Lutheranism without imposing a clear temporal limitation. According to the standard historiographical narrative, imposed by Karl Brandi, Charles’ most influential biographer, the ceremonial abdication of the disheartened Emperor in Brussels in October 1555 – and his subsequent monastic-like seclusion in Yuste – served as a dramatic climax

 Heinz Schilling, “The Struggle for the Integrity and Unity of Christendom,” in Charles V and His Time: 1500 – 1558, ed. Hugo Soly (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1999), 285 – 365; Wolfgang Reinhard, “Die kirchenpolitischen Vorstellungen Kaiser Karls V. Ihre Grundlagen und ihr Wandel,” in Confessio Augustana und Confutatio. Der Augsburger Reichtstag von 1530 und die Einheit der Kirche, ed. Erwin Iserloh, Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte 118 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980), 62– 100.  Violet Soen, “Charles V,” in Luther in Context, ed. David Whitford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, forthcoming). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-033

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to his lifelong rivalry with Luther and his supporters.³ Rather than adding this drama to the events, this chapter aims to illustrate how the short-term changes in imperial politics between 1548 and 1555 induced long-term consequences for the reconfiguration of the religious and political map of both Europe and the New World during the early modern era. Even if the legal permission to practice Protestantism came in 1555 with a variety of restrictive conditions and contradictory clauses, it was the first time that the unity of faith no longer figured as a requirement for peace and order.⁴

1 Heresy Edicts or Interim? In sixteenth-century Germany, rather than the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was the ruler endowed with the responsibility of causa fidei, with his brother Ferdinand serving as deputy for German affairs and, from 1531 onward, as king of the Romans (a title that signified an elected heir-apparent to the imperial crown). More crucially, though, due to the Holy Roman Empire’s government structure, the Diet, the assembly of estates that included its electors (Kurfürsten), princes (Reichsfürsten), and imperial cities (Reichsstädte), had an integral voice in religious affairs, as well. The highly complex machinery of government, which both the Diet and the Emperor had long hoped to reform as part of a general Reichsreform, turned Germany into a fertile ground for ever-changing coalitions, especially in the religious sphere.⁵ While the Reformation added another rift in the old, disjointed political system, it also depended on it for its success: starting in 1521, the unusually frequent Diets debated henceforth on how to best deal with the growing religious division within the Empire between the defenders of the Catholic “Old” Church and those supporting the new Protestant teachings, equating the causa fidei with the causa Lutheri until 1555.⁶ The stage for this conflict had been set at the ominous Diet at Worms from January to May 1521, when the newly elected Emperor condemned Luther and his followers by endorsing Pope Leo X’s official verdict that his teachings represented heresy in the bull Exsurge Domine (June 1520) and supporting his excommunication, as issued

 This narrative is still influenced by the most classic biographer of the Emperor, Karl Brandi, Kaiser Karl V. Werden und Schicksal einer Persönlichkeit und eines Weltreiches, vol. 1 (München: Societaets Verlag, 1937); Brandi, Quellen und Erörterungen, vol. 2 (München: Societaets Verlag, 1941). In this respect, see also his pivotal article: Brandi, “Passauer Vertrag und Augsburger Religionsfriede,” Historische Zeitschrift 95 (1905): 206 – 64.  Thomas Brady, “Settlements: The Holy Roman Empire,” in Handbook of European History, 1400 – 1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation, eds. Thomas Brady, Heiko Oberman, and James Tracy (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 2:349 – 83; C. Scott Dixon, “Charles V and the Historians: Some Recent German Works on the Emperor and his Reign,” German History 21 (2003): 104– 24.  Heinrich Lutz, Das Ringen um Deutsche Einheit und kirchliche Erneuerung. Von Maximilan I. bis zum Westfälischen Frieden 1490 bis 1648 (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1987).  Peter Fabisch and Erwin Iserloh, eds., Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri (1517 – 1521), 2 vols. (Münster: Aschendorff, 1991).

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in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem (January 1521).⁷ As a result, the Edict of Worms inaugurated a series of formal anti-heresy edicts within the Empire, which Charles would implement even more strictly in “his” Low Countries under direct Habsburg rule.⁸ Even so, the Diet of Speyer in 1526 passed provisions that relaxed the repressive measures of confiscation and capital punishment, as proscribed in the Wormser Edict, and that tended to no longer consider Lutherans as “heretics.” Importantly, this was not only a temporary measure inspired by the violent unrest that occurred during the Bauernkrieg (the Peasants’ Revolt), but it also represented a significant acknowledgement of the difficulties in enforcing the strict anti-heresy edicts.⁹ At the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, which occurred after the first episodes of open warfare, the Lutheran party – consisting of imperial princes and some “free cities,” even if they were still disparate and disunited at that time – felt strong enough to advance their own, distinct creed, the pivotal Confessio Augustana, while officially identifying those who defended it as Protestants protesting against their persecution.¹⁰ For years, ensuing Diets would vascilate between endorsing heresy edicts and providing temporary measures of coexistence. In both cases, however, the eventual hope consisted in a reconciliation and settlement within the Latin Church. As Heinrich Lutz has convincingly argued, the long-term aim of the Habsburg dynasty did not center on its religious policy, but on reforming the political, military, and financial system of the Empire in order to restore “German Unity” and install a permanent Imperial Peace (Reichsfried).¹¹ Both the Emperor and his brother considered imperial reform necessary in order to establish a better defense against the Ottoman threat, especially after the defeat of the Habsburgs at Mohacs in 1526 had turned the eastern flank of the Empire into a very weak and costly frontier. In fact, the enduring Türkengefahr (Turkish threat) constituted the main item of discussion at most

 Heinrich Lutz, “Das Reich, Karl V, und der Beginn der Reformation. Bemerkungen zu Luther in Worms 1521,” in Beiträge zu neueren Geschichte Österreichs, eds. Heinrich Fichtenau and Erich Zöllner (Vienna: Böhlau, 1974), 47– 70. Soen, “Arise, O Lord (Exsurge Domine),” in Encyclopedia of Martin Luther and the Reformation, ed. Mark Lamport (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017), 38 – 39.  Gert Gielis and Violet Soen, “The Inquisitorial Office in the Sixteenth-century Low Countries: A Dynamic Perspective,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 66 (2015): 47– 66; Aline Goosens, Les Inquisitions dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux à la Renaissance (1519 – 1633), Spiritualités Libres 7, 2 vols. (Brussels: University of Brussels, 1997– 1998); Jochen A. Fühner, Die Kirchen- und die antireformatorische Religionspolitik Kaiser Karls V. in den siebzehn Provinzen der Niederlande 1515 – 1555, Brill’s Series in Church History 23 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004). On the particular policies toward the Netherlands, see also Daniel R. Doyle, “The Sinews of Habsburg Governance in the Sixteenth Century: Mary of Hungary and Political Patronage,” Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000): 349 – 60.  Walter Friedensburg, Der Reichstag zu Speier 1526 im Zusammenhang der politischen und kirchlichen Entwicklung Deutschlands im Reformationszeitalter, Historische Untersuchungen 5 (Berlin, 1887).  Horst Rabe, “Befunde und Überlegungen zur Religionspolitik Karls V. am Vorabend des Augsburger Reichstags 1530,” in Confessio Augustana und Confutatio. Der Augsburger Reichstag 1530 und die Einheit der Kirche, ed. Erwin Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980), 101– 12.  Heinrich Lutz, Christianis Afflicta. Das Ringen um Deutsche Einheit und kirchliche Erneuerung. Von Maximilan I. bis zum Westfälischen Frieden 1490 bis 1648 (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1987).

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Imperial Diets both before and after 1555, a point that the contemporary historiographical fascination with the Luther Affair sometimes tends to underestimate.¹² In order to find political and financial support for their battles against the Ottomans, the Habsburg dynasty would occasionally bypass or side-step the first sanctioned “heresy edicts” by making alliances with Protestant princes.¹³ To make matters even more complex, the Emperor could not prioritize the situation within the Holy Roman Empire before 1542, as he only resided there for brief periods in 1521, 1530, 1532, and 1541. This was a result of the many logistical challenges inherent in ruling the largest Empire of the age, a vast amalgamation of territory that stretched from the Holy Roman Empire and the Iberian Peninsula to the distant reaches of the New World in the Americas and in Asia. As such, his Mediterranean holdings requested as much money and attention for their defense against the Ottomans as did those in the Holy Roman Empire.¹⁴ Even if both international and domestic actions made the religious policy of the Habsburg dynasty look highly ambiguous within the context of the Empire, Charles V, as Heinz Schilling has pointed out, embarked upon a lifelong quest to restore the “integrity and unity of Christendom.” The Emperor projected this endeavor to stretch beyond the borders of Germany and Austria and include his whole global Empire, “in which the sun never set.”¹⁵ In order to do this, Charles first aimed to establish a coalition with the Papacy through a coronation (which eventually happened in Bologna in 1530) and then to convoke a new ecumenical council to follow up on the reform measures previously passed at the Council of Lateran V (1512– 1517) and to meet Luther’s demand for a free Christian council in German territory.¹⁶ While definitively trying to stop the spread of the Reformation, both Charles V and Ferdinand still supported Religionsgespräche between theologians and princes of both the Catholic and Protestant confessions after 1530 and engaged in “confessionally neutral” politics in order to court allies for their battles against the Ottomans and France, their other perennial archenemy.¹⁷

 Eike Wolgast, “Die Religionsfrage auf den Reichstagen 1521 bis 1550/1,” in Der Passauer Vertrag von 1552. Politische Entstehung, reichsrechtliche Bedeutung und Konfessionsgeschichtlichte Bewertung, ed. Winfried Becker, Einzelarbeiten aus der Kirchengeschichte Bayerns 80 (Neustadt: Verein für Bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 2003), 11.  Albrecht Luttenberger, Glaubenseinheit und Reichsfriede. Konzeptionen und Wege konfessionsneutraler Reichspolitik (1530 – 1552), Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 20 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 164– 84.  Ruth Mackay, “Governance and Empire during the Reign of Charles V: A Review Essay,” Sixteenth Century Journal 40 (2009): 769 – 99.  Schilling, “The Struggle for the Integrity and Unity of Christendom”, 285 – 365.  John O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 49 – 76.  Horst Rabe, “Abschied vom Ketzerrecht? Zur Religionspolitik Karls V,” in Reformation und Recht, Festgabe für Gottfried Seebass, eds. Irene Dingel, Volker Leppin, and Christoph Strohm (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2002), 40 – 57.

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From 1543 until 1552, the Emperor did, however, regularly reside within the Empire, as from then on, he placed a priority on imperial reform and religious concord in the hopes of sparking an Imperial Peace. His efforts, though, appear to have been somewhat naïve and show his incompetence in grasping the challenges posed by both the high-level theological debates and the grassroots mobilization that defined this era.¹⁸ To be sure, there were in 1543 immediate and serious setbacks – such as the sudden conversion to Lutheranism of Herman von Wied, the archbishop of Cologne, and the gradual protestantization of the Duchy of Brunswick. Still, the Schmalkaldic League, an organization of Protestant allies created in 1531, encountered serious problems as well: first, divisive antagonisms existed between the rulers of the Landgraviate of Hesse and the Electorate of Saxony; secondly, the ambitions of these princes collided with the interests of the ever-growing number of Protestant cities; and third, different theological and political interpretations of how to proceed after the acceptance of the Confessio Augustana resulted in general inaction. Thus, as a result of the Protestant party’s many weaknesses, the Emperor felt sure of embarking upon war. In 1543, he subdued and incorporated the Duchy of Gelre, the last remaining area he needed in order to unite and regroup his dominions into the Seventeen Provinces, making his holdings along the North Sea and within the Burgundian Imperial Circle “one and indivisible.”¹⁹ Above all, he convincingly defeated Francis I and the French in 1544. The Peace Treaty of Crépy called for the establishment of a general Council of Western Christianity, supported by the Pope, and specified that it was to meet somewhere within the Empire, and the compromise eventually settled upon the little German-Italian-speaking city of Trent. Even if Luther had, to a large extent, galvanized the agenda of this council, it was organized in such a way that only Catholic bishops and theologians could gather in Trent from 1545, as Protestant observers were excluded during this first period.²⁰

2 Interim of Augsburg Historiography shows that the years 1547– 1548 brought some interesting changes to the fore.²¹ After Pope Paul III forced the council to move to Bologna in the spring of 1547, most contemporary observers concluded that reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants had become impossible, especially since the Pope now seemed in

 Wim Blockmans, Emperor Charles V: 1500 – 1558 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2002); see also Wim Blockmans and Nicolette Mout, eds., The World of Charles V: Proceedings of the Colloquium, 4 – 6 October 2000 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2004).  Alastair Duke, “The Elusive Netherlands: The Question of National Identity in the Early Modern Low Countries on the Eve of the Revolt,” The Low Countries Historical Review 119 (2004): 10 – 38.  O’Malley, Trent: What Happened, 49 – 76.  Heinz Schilling, “Veni, vidi, Deus vixit – Karl V. zwischen Religionskrieg und Religionsfrieden,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 89 (1998): 144– 66.

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charge of determining doctrinal and disciplinary issues.²² Not coincidently, Emperor Charles V simultaneously declared war on the Schmalkaldic League of Protestant princes, forcing it to disband after his victory at Mühlberg, while vengefully imprisoning its leaders, John Frederick of Saxony and Philip of Hesse.²³ The following Diet was forced to inaugurate Maurice of Saxony, a relative of John Frederick who had supported the Emperor despite being Protestant, as the new Elector of Saxony, making him one of the key figures for years to come. This Diet in Augsburg, held in 1547– 1548, eventually became known as the geharnischter Reichstag and has already been the subject of many historical studies. Augsburg’s opening stage, for example, has been the particular focus of the doctoral dissertation of Horst Rabe, while a special issue of the Historische Zeitschrift, a symposium sponsored by Louise SchornSchütte, and recent publications by Irene Dingel cum suis have also produced valuable insight into the Diet.²⁴ Unfortunately, contemporary texts from the Augsburg Interim remain quite rare, as the Emperor forced strict secrecy upon all those involved.²⁵ The idea of an “interim” had been gradually developing since at least 1530, but it was Ferdinand who pushed for it during the military preparations in February 1547. In a well-documented Gutachten, the king of the Romans recommended that his brother force the theologians to draft an interim, which would expire once the Council of Trent found a compromise between the rival theologies.²⁶ A clear divide emerged over the desirability of such an interim measure, however, as the Burgundian councilors Nicholas Perrenot de Granvelle and his son Antoine defended the Interim, while the Spanish theologians Pedro de Soto and Pedro de Malvenda opposed it.²⁷ Taking heed of the

 O’Malley, Trent: What Happened, 121– 26.  This happened with the Wittenberg Kapitulation; see James Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War, Campaign Strategy, International Finance and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); see also Jan Martin Lies, ed., Zwischen Krieg und Frieden. Die politischen Beziehungen Landgraf Philipps des Großmütigen zum Haus Habsburg 1534 – 1541 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013); Lies, Dokumentenband zu Landgraf Philipp dem Großmütigen von Hessen, zum Haus Habsburg 1528 – 1541 (Marburg: Historische Kommission für Hesse, 2014).  Horst Rabe, “Zur Entstehung des Augsburger Interims (1547/8),” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 94 (2003): 6 – 104; Luise Schorn-Schütte, ed., Das Interim 1548/50. Herrschaftskrise und Glaubenskonflict (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagsaus, 2005); Irene Dingel, ed., Reaktionen auf das Augsburger Interim. Der Interimistische Streit (1548 – 1549) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010).  Georg Pfeilschifter, ed., Acta reformationis catholicae ecclesiam Germaniae concernentia saeculi XVI. Die Reformverhandlungen des deutschen Episkopats von 1520 bis 1570 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971– 1974), vols. 4– 6. Even so, Horst Rabe has made important observations, as important texts in German have been left out of this edition; cf. Rabe, “Zur Entstehung des Augsburger Interims 1547/8”, 7n4; Joachim Mehlhausen, “Interim,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE), ed. Gerhard Müller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1987), 16:230 – 37.  Letter from Ferdinand to Karl V, Dresden, March 17, 1547; in Pfeilschifter, Acta, 5:30, no. 13.  Krista De Jonghe and Gustaaf Janssens, eds., Les Granvelle et les anciens Pays-Bas (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000); Marco Legnani, Antonio Perrenot de Granvelle. Politica e diplomazia al servizio dell’impero spagnolo (1517 – 1586) (Milan: Unicopli, 2013); Venancio Carro, El maestro

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Diet’s power, the Emperor and Ferdinand went ahead with the Interim but deliberately specified that it would expire once the Council of Trent had reached its conclusion, as they hoped that the Council would ideally include a reconciliation with the Protestants. The trickiest theological issues remained the question of clerical celibacy (or put otherwise, the Priesterehe) and the desirability of the “communion under both species (kinds)” (the question of the Laienkelch), while the most practical questions concerned the confiscations and secularizations of church properties and the forced conversion of believers. Although the Diet would not open before the first of September 1547, many Catholic theologians had already arrived in Augsburg by July or August and started reflecting on a compromise that was to last until a future council could decide upon questions of doctrine and discipline. Once the Diet opened, the first imperial commission immediately got to work and, by December, was able to provide a proposition for a Reformatio in doctrina (which, however, remained adamant about clerical celibacy and opposed communion under both kinds) and a Reformatio in morum (which repeated some of the measures taken in the first session at Trent but was more specific in its guidelines).²⁸ The Emperor did not approve of these documents, as they heavily promoted anti-Protestant measures but did not offer much of a reconciliation. Vainly, he meanwhile tried to have the council back on imperial ground in Trent instead of in Bologna. The second commission, filled with newly appointed members, drafted their own proposition. The commissioners likely based the resulting document on the first committee’s work, but they also found great inspiration in the Vergleichsformelle, an earlier attempt at reconciliation that provided important testimonies for the ongoing Vermittlungstheologie on crucial matters such as justification, soteriology, and the sacraments.²⁹

fr. Pedro de Soto, O. P. (confessor de Carlos V) y las controversias político-teológicas en el siglo XVI (Salamanca: Convento de San Esteben, 1931).  This first commission was composed of Michael Helding, Weihbishof of Mainz; Balthasar Fannemann, Weihbishof of Hildesheim; Eberhard Billick, provincial of the Carmelites of Cologne; and the court preacher Pedro de Malvenda. Within this group, only Helding maintained a moderating voice, although he could do little to steer the committee away from the hard-line solution of rejecting marriages for priests or the communion under both creeds. Though the moderate Johann Gropper was there in Augsburg, he did not participate in the first proposal of the draft. Horst Rabe has since been able to show the importance of the proposal of December 1547 of the first commission of the Augsburger Interim, which remained in the legacy of Valentin von Tetsleben, bishop of Hildesheim. Another text from the circles of Michael Helding remains in Staatsarchiv Würzburg. The document has been edited by Pfeilschifter (Acta, 6:258 – 301, no. 17), but should be read along with the remarks made by Rabe, Augsburger Interim, notes 98 – 100.  This second redaction committee, which met first in February 1548, was composed of Michael Helding; Julius von Pflug, bishop of Naumburg; and Johannes Agricola, court preacher at Brandenburg. Later, Pedro de Soto joined the commission, while Malvenda and Domingo de Soto were also likely participants, and held significant influence behind the scenes. Eventually, Heinrich Muelich, the court preacher for Ferdinand, also took part in the commission. Jacques V. Pollet, Elmar Neuss, eds., Pflugiana. Studien über Julius Pflug (1499 – 1564) (Münster: Aschendorff, 1990); Pollet, Ju-

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The Diet’s official deliberations on the Interim proposed by the second committee started on March 15, 1548. The Emperor eagerly received the endorsement of the Electors of Brandenburg and Palatine early on in the process, allowing him to present the Interim as an initiative of the Diet rather than of his imperial entourage. Also, the new Elector, Maurice of Saxony, was willing to approve the text in his own name but did not want to speak for his subjects, as he sought to establish some local goodwill, since his position was still precarious. Eventually, the Emperor agreed to summon Martin Bucer from Strasbourg (as opposed to having a theologian from Wittenberg), although it remains unclear as to what extent his suggestions had been followed in the final text version of the Interim. ³⁰ As a concession to the Protestants, the final text included the possibility of communion under both kinds and the ability for priests to marry, but only until the council could establish a final opinion on these matters. The teachings of the sacraments, justification, and the general infrastructure of the Catholic hierarchy remained untouched, although some nuanced concessions were made on each of these points. As a result, the imperial confessor, Pedro de Soto, resigned, since the hardline option now seemed a foregone conclusion. Yet, as Irene Dingel has summarized, the 1548 Interim’s pivotal role in provoking the quintessential theological controversies of its times – most notably the Interimistische Streit – has remained this document’s accomplishment.³¹ Eventually, the Catholic Estates vetoed the Interim, considering its content as a series of exceptional concessions to Protestant territories with few recompensing benefits for those that remained Catholic. The Emperor ultimately agreed, though not wholeheartedly, and, after minor editorial changes, accepted the Interim only for the Protestant lands, with the addition of a Formula Reformationis for the Catholic territories. This document touched upon practical religious issues to a far greater extent than either the doctrines or disciplines outlined in the Tridentine decrees, as it introduced new ecclesiastical procedures and abolished certain old practices. Besides the general command for rigor and reform, the Formula emphasized the

lius Pflug (1499 – 1564) et la crise religieuse dans l’Allemagne du XVIe siècle (Leiden/New York/Copenhagen/Cologne: Brill, 1999); and, based on the earlier edition of his correspondence, Pollet, ed., Julius Pflug, Correspondance (Leiden: Brill, 1971– 1977), vols. 1– 3. For the proposition of the second committee of March 1548 (in Latin), see Pfeilschifter, Acta, 6:308 – 48, no. 19; there was a corresponding text in German, though this has been heavily edited from the Latin version.  An edition on the basis of the remaining manuscripts is provided by Joachim Mehlhausen, ed., Das Augsburger Interim von 1548 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970). Several contemporary printed editions in Latin and German are extant.  Irene Dingel, “The Culture of Conflict in the Controversies Leading to the Formula of Concord (1548 – 1580),” in Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture, 1550 – 1675, ed. Robert Kolb (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), 15 – 64; Dingel, “Der rechten lehr zuwider’ Die Beurteilung des Interims in ausgewählten theologischen Reaktionen,” in Das Interim 1548/50. Herrschaftskrise und Glaubenskonflict, ed. Luise Schorn-Schütte (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005), 292– 311. For example, it worked along the lines of the Duplex Justificatio; see Joachim Mehlhausen, Duplex justificatio. Die Rechtfertigungslehre des Augsburger Interims (Bonn, 1970).

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need for the frequent organization of (diocesan) synods, which were to be called to evaluate the religious conditions in a specific diocese. The Emperor pressed for this reform measure to go through by urging his bishops to promulgate the changes. He first directed his efforts toward the south of Germany, then moved northwest to Cologne and Reims. Moreover, he also pressed for its implementation throughout the Low Countries, which he had united into the Burgundian Imperial Circle at Augsburg, and sent invitations to the bishops of Cambrai and Tournai and the archbishop of Utrecht to implement the Formula Reformationis. ³² Nevertheless, the measures met with serious opposition in both Protestant and Catholic territories. Most strikingly, Maurice of Saxony tried to launch a Leipziger Interim and coerced many to follow his modified text within his electorate, while other Protestant princes clearly rejected the Interim. Meanwhile, Charles V continued to attempt to implement his double policy of Interim and Formula Reformationis at the Diet in Augsburg in 1550, showing his steadfast commitment to making the compromise work.³³ Though the Pope eventually gave in to the ideas of the Interim, he felt offended that the Emperor seemed to play cavalier seul with these important matters of Catholic reform.³⁴ As such, the provisional and temporal arrangements made at the Imperial Diet of Augsburg in 1547– 1548 were nothing more than yet another attempt to cope with the deep divisions caused by the teachings and theology of Luther, similar to the discussions that had regularly occurred at all Imperial Diets since 1521.

3 Peace of Passau Three specific events led to the early demise of the Emperor’s twin-track policy of Interim and Formula Reformationis. First, Charles signed the Habsburg Succession Pact in March 1551, in which he agreed that the imperial crown and the Austrian Hausmacht would eventually go to Ferdinand, and then to his son, Maximilian. While this forfeited the claim of Charles’ own son and heir, Philip, he secured the latter’s

 Robert de Croÿ, bishop of Cambrai, then an imperial enclave, was particularly keen on implementing the Formula throughout his over-stretched bishopric, which straddled the Scheldt all the way to Antwerp; see Violet Soen and Aurelie Van de Meulebroucke, “Vanguard Tridentine Reform in the Habsburg Netherlands: The Episcopacy of Robert de Croÿ, Bishop of Cambrai (1519 – 1556),” in Church, Censorship and Reform in the Early Modern Habsburg Netherlands, eds. Violet Soen, Dries Vanysacker, and Wim François (Turnhout: Bibliotheque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 2017), 121– 140; Antoon Jans, “De ‘Formula Reformationis’ van Karel V en haar toepassing in het bisdom Kamerijk. I,” Provinciale commissie voor geschiedenis en volkskunde 11 (2001): 318.  Johannes Herrmann, Augsburg – Leipzig – Passau. Das Leipziger Interim nach Akten des Landeshauptarchivs Dresden 1547 – 1552 (ThD diss., University of Leipzig, 1962).  Alexander Koller, “Der Passauer Vertrag und die Kurie,” in Der Passauer Vertrag von 1552. Politische Entstehung, reichsrechtliche Bedeutung und Konfessionsgeschichtlichte Bewertung, ed. Winfried Becker (Neustadt: Verein für Bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 2003), 124– 39.

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succession rights to Spain and the Seventeen Provinces in the Low Countries.³⁵ The Habsburg Succession Pact empowered Ferdinand to act more freely, especially in relation to the concessions being offered to the Protestants, and gradually created more distance between the Emperor and his brother. The ensuing years thus brought a strange combination of hegemony and collapse within the Habsburg dynasty.³⁶ Secondly, the Council of Trent reopened in 1551– 1552 and issued important decrees on the Eucharist and other sacraments, which made much of the ongoing Vermittlungstheologie redundant.³⁷ The third decisive event was the volte-face of Maurice of Saxony, the Protestant prince who had joined the Emperor in defeating the Schmalkaldic League and had been rewarded for his service by the electorate (although he had not received all the territory of Ernestine Saxony, as he had hoped for).³⁸ His defection was probably inspired by both his marriage to Agnes of Hesse and the fact that his new father-inlaw was still imprisoned after Mühlberg. He had also only timidly implemented the Interim in Saxony and made numerous exceptions to it across his lands. Furthermore, when the Emperor asked him to subdue Magdeburg, he obeyed, but used this action as an excuse for assembling his own troops in order to lead a Rebellion of the Princes (Fürstenaufstand). This new league united in Torgau in 1551, where it received additional support from the then-powerful condottiere Albrecht Alcibiades of Brandenburg and the new King of France, Henry II. Launching the invasion in Habsburg Tirol in 1552, it most famously caused the Emperor to flee – first to Innsbruck, and then across the Alps to Villach.³⁹ Negotiations had already started in the Lindner Verhandlung on April 19, 1552,⁴⁰ where, as Volker Drecoll has shown, the meeting’s five central points, which would eventually be revisited during the Passau Peace, included: (1) liberation of the prisoners, (2) religious peace along the lines imposed by the Diet of Speyer instead of the Interim, (3) the idea/concept of Gravamina, (4) the role of France and its occupation of the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and (5) reconciliation leading to the end of war.⁴¹ Lazarus von Schwendi acted as the mediator between Ferdinand and Charles, with the latter opposing the use of the word Nationalkonzil. By the

 Lutz, Christianitas afflicta, 133 – 37.  Alfred Kohler, Karl V: 1500 – 1558, Eine Biographie (München: C.H. Beck, 1999); Lutz, Christianitas afflicta, 133 – 37.  O’Malley, Trent: What Happened, 145 – 58; Wim François and Violet Soen, “Het Concilie van Trente (1545 – 1563). Een tussentijdse balans na 450 jaar onderzoek,” Perspectief. Tijdschrift van de Katholieke Vereniging voor Oecumene 23 (2014): 14– 20.  Johannes Herrmann and Günther Wartenberg, eds., Politische Korrespondenz des Herzogs und Kurfürsten Moritz von Sachsen, vol. 3, 1. Januar 1547 – 25. Mai 1548 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1978).  Alfred Kohler, “Kaiser Karl V. und der Passauer Vertrag,” in Der Passauer Vertrag von 1552, 139 – 50.  Herrmann, Augsburg – Leipzig – Passau, 194– 203; Luttenberger, Glaubenseinheit, 574– 675.  Volker H. Drecoll, Der Passauer Vertrag (1552), Einleitung und Edition (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2000); Drecoll has also edited this proposition.

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end of April, the Abschied von Linz had arranged for the ensuing negotiations to begin at Passau in May and obtained the participation of all the electors. After Charles’ flight to Villach, the long but wearisome final negotiations resumed on May 30 in the Lamberg Palace in Passau. Here, Maurice of Saxony and the Protestant princes, along with the neutral Imperial Estates, participated in the discussions, while Ferdinand acted as mediator, especially since the two envoys of the Emperor had not received permission to sign off on concessions. For the first time, the Protestant princes could force through a treaty that would recognize a temporal status quo that formally sanctioned their existence within the Empire.⁴² The peace further recognized the Confessio Augustana and included it within the Imperial Peace, meaning that the Wormser Edict and the Interim would be rendered obsolete. Building on earlier concessions granted in Speyer in 1544, the princes also aimed for the integration of those who adhered to the Confessio Augustana into the Imperial Chamber Court and for their recognition within imperial constitutions (Reichsverfassung). Nevertheless, the Emperor opposed these concessions and asked that the religious articles and the so-called fridstand (term of peace) last only until the next Diet, which was already set to take place within a one-year period. With the two sides engaged in a military stalemate, Maurice thought it worthwhile to conclude the peace and codify Protestant gains. Ferdinand, with limited support from Charles V, signed the Passauer Vertrag with Maurice of Saxony on August 2, 1552. It granted formal permission for imperial princes to profess Lutheranism, but obliged them to assist the Catholic Emperor in defending the Empire against the Ottomans. Moreover, the property rights of both Catholic secular and ecclesiastical estates would be secured, so that further confiscations or secularizations after 1552 were impossible, but those that had happened before were regarded as legal.⁴³ Thus, the main significance of the Passau Peace was that it formally ended the Interim, while introducing the means for convoking another Religionsgespräch – an important consequence for Ferdinand. The Emperor continued to refuse to agree with the concessions made by his brother and placed a temporal limitation on the agreement until the next Diet. Maurice agreed to this restriction, but died within the year. While the Peace of Passau provided a legal answer to the growing religious polarization that had plagued the Empire since 1517, it should also be contextualized as a short-term reaction toward a renewed military conflict that had begun in the spring of 1552.

 Becker, Der Passauer Vertrag von 1552; Lutz, Christianitas afflicta, 88 – 106 and 494– 96.  Ernst Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft und Mobilität: Die protestantischen Geistlichen zwölf süddeutscher Reichsstädte zwischen Passauer Vertrag und Restitutionsedikt (Leinfelden/Echterdingen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2002).

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4 Treaty of Augsburg The necessary Diet outlined in the Treaty of Passau would eventually meet in Augsburg from February 5 until September 25, 1555.⁴⁴ Though difficulties had plagued each of the previous Diets, the communication problems that existed between Ferdinand and Emperor Charles V in Brussels, who both literally and metaphorically wanted to distance himself from the meetings, particularly hampered the decisionmaking process. Having fallen into a slight depression after his defeat in 1552, Charles decided to abdicate in order to avoid any association with the ceding of rights to Protestants, passing this power to his brother, Ferdinand. Yet, as announced in the introduction to this chapter, the messenger sent to announce his abdication did not arrive in time, making the Emperor’s signature a necessity.⁴⁵ The deaths of both Popes Julius III and Marcellus II during the Diet were another unforeseen circumstance that slowed negotiations, while the new Pope, Paul IV, only partially recognized the historical significance of the meeting and preferred to send his legate on trivial business to Poland instead of Augsburg. With both the Catholic and Protestant parties still heavily divided, it was Ferdinand’s ability to skillfully negotiate between the two that led – as more than one contemporary observer noticed – to a final, successful compromise. Thus, when Ferdinand became Emperor after Charles’ abdication, he did so as a devout Catholic who had also managed to establish a good reputation among the Protestant party. The final text (“Abschied”) enacted by the Augsburg Diet consisted of 144 articles, though only about twenty of them (articles 7– 30) concerned the religious question, as the rest consisted of necessary reforms of the Imperial Chamber Court and the Imperial Circles at the regional level, while also dealing with local police, finance, and military issues. Taken together, the articles on religion contained numerous discrepancies and showed considerable ambiguity, with much of the vagueness reflecting a deliberate attempt to reconcile theological differences that had become irreconcilable. The most important stipulation addressed the status of the adherents of the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg until the two sides could establish an appropriate settlement to the religious schism. Similarly to the Peace of Passau, the treaty transferred the jus reformandi (“right of reformation”) to the territorial and municipal levels of government, implying that regional lords could force their subjects to practice their desired confession or to demand emigration in cases of non-compliance. As previously mentioned, the Diet of Speyer first introduced changes to the Wormser Edict, but the jus reformandi had been heavily contested over the course of the

 Heinz Schilling and Herbert Smolinsky, eds., Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden 1555, Wissenschaftliches Symposium aus Anlass des 450. Jahrestages des Friedensschlusses (Münster: Aschendorff, 2007).  Violet Soen, “De troonsafstand van Karel V: Achter de schermen van een ceremonie,” in Keizer Karel en Eeklo. Verslag van een colloquium over Keizer Karel, Eeklo, 24 september 2005 (Eeklo, 2006), 67– 76.

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next thirty years and only allowed with strict temporal limitations. Although the Greifswald law professor Joachim Stephan (1544– 1623) officially coined the famous phrase cuius regio, illius religio (“whose the regime, his the religion”) years after the Diet at Augsburg, the expression neatly captures the significance of territorial power in settling the most important religious question of the early modern period. Importantly, the Diet of Augsburg further detailed that territorial and municipal levels of government could only choose between either the Roman Catholic Church or the Confessio Augustana, the crucial confessional text within Lutheranism agreed upon in Augsburg in 1530; all other confessions or denominations (such as Calvinism) remained heretical and exposed their practitioners to the risk of persecution. Moreover, subjects who opposed the confession of their overlord or city were allowed to move and sell goods (as opposed to earlier criminalization and confiscation), but this jus emigrandi was not extended to the subjects living in the Burgundian Kreits, which the Emperor had recently united into the Seventeen Provinces in 1548, and where he continued to ask for persecution, as outlined in the Edict of Worms and the subsequently endorsed local anti-heresy legislation. Given the complicated nature of territorial (over)lordship in the Holy Roman Empire, which allowed many secular and ecclesiastical imperial princes and imperial cities to maintain a variety of privileges, many clarifications were needed for the general rulers. For the newly bi-confessional imperial free cities (Reichsstädte), the treaty imposed a status quo so that the urban governments could establish parity between the two religions, while allowing each inhabitant to freely practice his or her personal beliefs. One of the inevitable problems that arose from the treaty centered on the confiscation and de facto secularization of ecclesiastical goods by Lutheran princes. As a principle, they received the ownership and usufruct of these objects, although the treaty was unclear on whether secularization should have happened before the Peace of Passau in 1552 or before 1555.⁴⁶ The most contested clause, however, regarded the reservatum ecclesiasticum (ecclesiastical reservation), in which the ecclesiastical princes (including bishops, abbots, and abbesses) received permission to convert to Lutheranism, but only if they forfeited their Ambt, dignities, and revenues to a newly appointed Catholic official. The Protestants disliked this clause and fought hard against its inclusion in the treaty, as it ensured that Catholicism was sustained throughout a significant part of the Empire. To counter this, Ferdinand I personally issued the Declaratio Ferdinandea (Ferdinandine Declaration), allowing both established Protestant knights and cities under the lordships of ecclesiastical princes to continue in their faith. Catholics, however, regularly contested the legality of this provision by claiming that it was an outright violation of the Augsburg arrangement, making the implementation of the treaty a highly contentious and perilous affair, especially during the initial decades succeeding its passage. Although the Pope was

 Anton Schindling, “Der Passauer Vertrag und die Kirchengüterfrage,” in Der Passauer Vertrag von 1552, 105 – 23.

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largely absent from Augsburg (due, in part, to long periods of sede vacante throughout the Diet), the Apostolic See also formulated a series of objections to the resulting treaty, most of which centered on the idea that the Emperor had received papal benediction in return for assuming the task of defending the (Catholic) faith. Until the Holy Roman Empire’s formal dissolution in the early nineteenth century, the Augsburg Religious Peace ranked as one of its most influential constitutional documents, putting it on a par with the famous Golden Bull of 1356 as well as a later one, the Westphalian Peace of 1648.⁴⁷ Providing a definitive answer to the most pressing religious questions of the era, the centrality of this topic would disappear from the agenda of the Diets until the eve of the Thirty Years’ War. Few contemporary actors, however, could foresee the long-lasting impact of the arrangements in Augsburg in 1555. Both the third and the twelfth articles, for example, insisted that future compromise could still occur. Yet, unless future reconciliation took place, the Treaty of Augsburg had to be regarded as eternal (für ewig). Emperor Ferdinand, for example, believed that reconciliation was possible up until his death in 1564, and, as a result, he lobbied so that the third period of the Council of Trent briefly engaged with the desiderata of the imperial princes. Due to the Empire’s fragmented nature, the implementation of the Augsburg Religious Peace depended greatly on the local confluence of events,⁴⁸ but all in all it went unchallenged until 1618, despite the Religious Wars in the Low Countries and France in the second half of the sixteenth century and the Post-Tridentine Revival in Catholic territories of the Empire after 1563. Yet, when the bishops of Cologne and Strasbourg both converted to Protestantism in 1583, the resulting Catholic violence showed that the principles of the ecclesiastical reservation and the Ferdinandine Declaration remained highly contested. These pressures remained until the Peace of Westphalia eventually allowed the Reformed religion to represent a third licit confession and attempted to mitigate the right of (over‐)lords to force heterodox temporal subjects to emigrate. Thus, the settlement predicted in 1555 never materialized, and the schism needed to be codified once again in 1648.

5 Conclusion Some historians, most notably Heinz Schilling, have convincingly argued that the 1555 Religious Peace of Augsburg was actually a truce without an end term rather than a positively inspired peace, and that as such, it probably mimicked the conversion-mindset of the Interim of 1548 rather than offering a radical new conception of  Brady, Settlements, 343 – 83.  Gerhard Graf, Günther Wartenberg, and Christian Winter, Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden. Seine Rezeption in den Territorien des Reiches (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2006), discusses the implications for the Patalinate (Kohnle), Württemberg (Ehmer), Kursachsen (Wartenberg), Habsburg territories (Reingrabner), Silesia (Schott), the enclave of Asch (Halla), and Magdeburg (Seehase).

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church and state in the early modern era. Yet, since the Treaty of Augsburg has maintained the reputation of a Religious Peace into modern times, the true power of the pacifist motto certainly held greater importance than its often limiting conditions and contradictory clauses. Even if this influential treaty formally recognized Lutheranism, its most important legacy was that confessional choice became definitively tied to the question of power and lordship for the centuries to come. As a long-lasting result, the Empire – and later Europe and its colonies – became both territorially and confessionally segregated. Even so, Emperor Charles V believed that the treaty had resulted in his personal defeat, and, after his abdication, he wrote many government letters from his home palace next to the monastery in Yuste to his daughters on religious questions in an attempt to prevent the possible spread of Protestantism into the Seventeen Provinces, the Iberian Peninsula, and the New World. Hence, for historians, the period between 1548 and 1555 represents a quest “without end,”⁴⁹ as there still remains so much to discover about the course of events during the Interim and the overall importance and influence of its aftermath.

 Alfred Kohler, “Ein Blick 500 Jahre zurück. Bilanz und Defizite einer ‚endlosen‘ Forschungsgeschichte,” in Karl V. 1500 – 1558. Neue Perspektiven seiner Herrschaft in Europa und Übersee, eds. Alfred Kohler, Barbara Haider, and Christine Ottner (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2002), 11– 21.

Luise Schorn-Schütte

Luther and Politics Luther was not a political person: he was a theologian and a chaplain. But the tight interlocking of politics and religion that was characteristic of early modern Europe caused Luther’s theological and spiritual positions to impact the contemporaneous social order, and thus to act politically. His core concern was to replace the “works righteousness” of the Roman Catholic Church with a belief in the grace of God (sola gratia, sola fide) as the core element of a sola-theology,¹ which led to the dissolution of the division between the clergy and the secular class. The religious believer, absolved of their sins by grace in direct relationship with their creator, no longer required an intermediary, such as a priest or a church hierarchy. Instead, each human could fulfill their Christian duty, their calling, in exactly the place into which God had put them. Sacral ministry was no longer superior to secular ministry. This incorporation of the sacred into the secular had wide-ranging social and political consequences. Luther did not predict – and certainly did not intend – these consequences, but he did have to grapple with them.²

1 Luther’s Understanding of Authority In Luther’s view, human beings were God’s creations. In their original state, in paradise, all humans lived together in a peaceful community; this community existed “from the beginning” – it was created by God. The community comprised those

Translation from German: Frauke Uhlenbruch.  The term sola-theology refers to Luther’s idea of forgiveness of sins by divine grace and individual faith (justification) as well as their foundation on scripture alone (sola scriptura). In Protestant church history, this theology is understood as the core of the Reformation cause after the publication of Luther’s ninety-five theses on October 31, 1517. On this, briefly, see Thomas Kaufmann, Erlöste und Verdammte. Eine Geschichte der Reformation (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2016), 103 – 08 and 407– 08.  Literature on the topic of Luther and politics is contentious and difficult to survey. Hence, only recent biographical works and works which also take into account the consequences of the Reformation are mentioned here: Eike Wolgast, Die Wittenberger Theologie und die Politik der evangelischen Stände: Studien zu Luthers Gutachten in politischen Fragen (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1977); Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther: Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs. Eine Biographie, 3d ed. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2016); Kaufmann, Erlöste; Volker Leppin, Die fremde Reformation: Luthers mystische Wurzeln (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2016); Scott Hendrix, Martin Luther. Visionary Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015); Thomas Brady, German Histories in the Age of Reformations 1400 – 1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Luise Schorn-Schütte, Gottes Wort und Menschenherrschaft: Politisch-Theologische Sprachen im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2015); Robert von Friedeburg, Luther’s Legacy: The Thirty Years War and the Modern Notion of ‘State‘ in the Empire 1530s to 1790s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-034

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who governed and those who were governed as well as different estates that had to perform different services: the magisterial estate (politica), the estate of the housefathers (oeconomia), and the estate of the clergy (ecclesia). The task of the magisterial estate was to secure the best life for all (bonum commune); this was accomplished by preserving the established rule of law and by protecting new laws, by which the authorities themselves would be bound. The legitimacy of executive power depended on how well each individual officeholder performed their magisterial office, not on how that office was attained.³ Luther’s new theological approach revised the late medieval idea of the res publica christiana; a central point was Luther’s assumption that two realms existed.⁴ Regnum christi, the realm of freedom and mercy that only a faithful Christian can recognize, was juxtaposed with regnum mundi, the realm of sinful humans. The two realms did not share a legal community, but God reigned over both. God had established offices and institutions so that they could be put into practice: the institutions thus established were the three hierarchies or estates. The secular institution of the church (ecclesia) was an institution that carried the sacred regime over into the secular domain. The church was not identical with regnum christi; it was ecclesia in mundo, and it was tangled up in the imperfections of the regnum mundi. As opposed to ecclesia and its sacred office, which should and could serve salvation, the offices of regnum mundi acted within the evil world and were emergency countermeasures against sin in the world. This was true for the office of the magistrate (politica) as well as for the office of the parents/housefathers (oeconomia). Relying on this categorization, Luther delegitimized the pope’s secular authority as early as 1523;⁵ a secular regime that sought to bear the sword transgressed the boundary between the two realms/regimes. Secular authority, on the other hand, had the right to bear the sword: it served to protect believers from outside forces and ensured their safety in exercising their beliefs by punishing evildoers and protecting those who were blameless.⁶

 Our understanding of the teaching of the three estates in Luther’s theology and his understanding of authority has become much more nuanced in recent years when compared to earlier research conducted by legal scholars, theologians, and historians. An overview can be found in Schorn-Schütte, Gottes Wort, 31– 45 which includes references to earlier literature; the legal historical perspective is outlined by Mathias Schmoeckel, Das Recht der Reformation: Die epistemologische Revolution der Wissenschaft und die Spaltung der Rechtsordnung in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 16, 154, 180, et al. A thorough classification can be found in Friedeburg, Luther’s Legacy, 82– 135.  Still important as a brief history of research on the topic, see Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther. Eine Einführung in sein Leben und Werk, 2nd ed. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1982), 190 – 97; for a general introduction to the topic of authority, including further literature, see E. Herms, “Obrigkeit,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE), ed. Gerhard Müller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994), 24:723 – 59. On the current state of research, see Schmoeckel, Das Recht, 146 – 50.  Luther, Von welltlicher Uberkeytt wie weyt man yhr gehorsam schuldig sey [1523]; WA 11:245 – 280, here 247.  Schmoeckel, Das Recht, 147– 49.

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The domestic regime of the parents was the first legally ordered office in the world to regulate authority relations, overruling even secular authority. In Luther’s view – which is typical of his time –, the parental office was the original model of secular authority, in accordance with the fourth commandment. Derived from this office were the foundations of the “patriarchal understanding of authority,” which would characterize Lutheranism in the following decades. A conception that could be likened to the conception of statehood in the twentieth century did not exist. Even an authority that functioned as an emergency measure was God-given; rebellion or resistance against it was generally inconceivable in Luther’s opinion. This was true for all authority, even for a bad or non-Christian authority (e. g., a pagan or Muslim authority). The duty of the governed to be obedient ended, however, when boundaries set by biblical natural law⁷ were transgressed, and it also ended in instances in which authority assumed the right to pass laws regarding the soul (“der seelen gesetz zu geben”⁸), as this encroached upon God’s divine government. Finally, the duty to obey ended when secular authority acted in opposition to the gospel.⁹ In all of these cases, passive resistance, possibly including emigration, was permitted in Luther’s view. It was the clerical estate’s responsibility to protest publicly if such actions were taken by the authorities.¹⁰ What happens if authority turns tyrannical? Luther’s contemporaries – from political, legal, and theological viewpoints – were of divided opinions on this question, and Luther’s own position was contradictory. In the late 1520s, when the conflict between “protesting” Imperial Estates and the Catholic emperor intensified, questions of faith and legislation were intertwined. The protesting estates accused the emperor of weighing down their consciences by failing to protect their faith. This led to the interpretation that the emperor was not fulfilling his duties – that he was a bad, un-Christian authority and, thus, a tyrant. According to contemporaneous legal scholars and the protesting Imperial Estates, there was no obligation to obey a tyrant, as the tyrant was no longer an authority. Moreover, there was even a duty to impeach such an authority – by force, if necessary – in order to reinstate the order of creation.¹¹

 See further Merio Scattola, Das Naturrecht vor dem Naturrecht: Zur Geschichte des “ius naturae” im 16. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 1999); Schmoeckel, Das Recht, 53 – 67.  WA 2.262:9 – 12.  On the term “resistance” in Luther and its incorporation into contemporaneous transitions, see, seminally, Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 40 – 53 and 84. The evaluations of these questions are contentious and have a long history of interpretation. See Friedeburg, Self-Defence and religious strife in early modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); for a comparison of the European debates, see Schorn-Schütte, Gottes Wort, 185 – 95.  On the guardianship of the clergy, see Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Frühneuzeit: Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung frühmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996), 390 – 452.  This debate, conducted even among contemporaries in a quite sophisticated way, has been newly deepened and continued in research in recent decades. Late medieval legal tradition, as well as the

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For a long time, Luther rejected these imperial and Roman legal positions on the basis of emergency defense and resistance – presumably because he did not know the imperial constitution well.¹² The legal scholars from Saxony and Hesse as well as some of the theological companions who educated Luther in the late 1520s and 1530s were important in shaping his understanding of authority and his activity as a political advisor (see below, section 2.3).

2 Luther’s Position in Political Conflicts In early modern times, political competence and legitimacy were attributed to princes, to territorial estates, and – in a more limited way – to town councils and mayors. In addition, the pope asserted a claim to a similar exertion of influence; this claim, however, was contested, and not only by Protestants. Luther’s confrontations with these policymakers contain his political statements. The reformer’s experience came from central German territorial principalities, which included Electoral Saxony (Protestant since 1525) and the Landgraviate of Hesse; Electoral Brandenburg, which had been Catholic until 1539; the Duchy of Saxony; and the Bishopric of Magdeburg.¹³ A comparison of the positions Luther took during disputes with Catholic territorial princes and those he took during counsels with princes who had become Protestant shows that he acted as a chaplain and spiritual advisor who took his task of public admonition very seriously, but that he also always tried to stay away from political practice.

interplay of imperial law, Roman law, and feudal law, were pointed out. This was not an entirely new debate; the Protestant differentiations were able to draw on medieval legal traditions. On this, see, extensively, Diethelm Böttcher, Ungehorsam oder Widerstand? Zum Fortleben des mittelalterlichen Widerstandsrechtes in der Reformationszeit (1529 – 1530) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991); leading on from this, see Friedeburg, Self defence, 56 – 73; Schorn-Schütte, Gottes Wort, 41– 45; Gabriele Haug-Moritz, Der Schmalkaldische Bund 1530 – 1541/2: Eine Studie zu den genossenschaftlichen Strukturelementen der politischen Ordnung des Heiligen Römischen Reiches deutscher Nation (Leinfelden: Thorbecke, 2002), 373 – 89; Scattola, Naturrecht, 55 – 58. In the light of these publications, certain English works appear to be in need of correction – among others, Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); the idea that the legitimization of resistance is due to Calvinism alone is also erroneous; on this, see Schorn-Schütte, Gottes Wort, 129 – 30 and 190 – 91.  Luther’s attitude toward the Imperial Constitution is discussed in Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 84– 94, and in Wolfgang Günther, Luthers Vorstellung von der Reichsverfassung (Münster: Aschendorff, 1976).  On the following, see, Gerhard Müller, “Luther und die evangelischen Fürsten,” in Luther und die politische Welt, ed. Erwin Iserloh and Gerhard Müller (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1984), 65 – 83; E. Wolgast, “Luther und die katholischen Fürsten,” in Luther und die politische Welt, 37– 63. In addition, see Armin Kohnle, Reichstag und Reformation: kaiserliche und ständische Religionspolitik von den Anfängen der Causa Lutheri bis zum Nürnberger Religionsfrieden (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2001).

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2.1 Luther and Catholic Secular and Ecclesiastical Territorial Sovereigns Luther’s relationship with the Catholic ruler George of Saxony (born 1471, ruled 1500 – 1539) had not been tense from the beginning, because George was generally understanding of the demand for a reformation of the Church. The duke saw it as his task to repair the severe damage the Church had suffered as part of cura religionis. But his reformist efforts remained explicitly limited to the institution of the Church. After Luther was banned, the duke saw him as a convicted heretic whose teachings would lead to rebellion and to the destruction of the principles of human coexistence. Their disputes became more heated beginning in 1519: Luther’s reformist self-confidence – supported by his academic degree and his preaching office – clashed with the duke’s confidence as a ruler who adhered to the orders of the Church and to his duty to care for his territory and his people. Luther criticized the duke’s attempt to defend his territory against Reformation teachings in tractates and letters: he called it hostile to the gospel and described the duke as a tyrant and a spoiler of souls.¹⁴ Conversely, Luther was confronted with the accusation of inciting turmoil through his preaching and of proximity to the followers of Jan Hus. Having experienced the Peasants’ Revolt, for which Luther was blamed (and not only by Duke George), Luther tried to persuade the duke to tolerate Reformation preaching. His motive was twofold: on the one hand, he was moved by his expectation of the imminent eschaton; on the other, he was impelled by his pastoral concept of ministry, according to which a minister had to care even for his enemies. They were never reconciled, and the duke died in 1539. Nevertheless, Luther never contested the political merits of the duke; as he wrote, the duke “habet pacem et bene constitutam Politicam.”¹⁵ His duty of obedience to the duke as a secular ruler was never in question. Another problem arose from Luther’s disputes with Catholic territorial rulers: Should clerical territorial lordship even exist in the future?¹⁶ Since Luther assumed the division of both forms of government – two regiments –, this spiritual and at the same time highly political question moved Luther throughout his life. Most likely, he was not always aware of the double function the German high clerical class had in the imperial constitution. His fierce criticism of the deficient administration of

 WA 10.2:55.22– 56.3.  WA 40.3:461.28 f.  This thematic complex is discussed extensively in Eike Wolgast, Hochstift und Reformation: Studien zur Geschichte der Reichskirche 1517 – 1648 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995); Wolgast, Luthers Beziehungen zu den Reichsbischöfen (1996), repr. in Wolgast, Aufsätze zur Reformations- und Reichsgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 230 – 54. See also, Schmoeckel, Das Recht, 68 – 71, 125 – 28, 150 – 51, and 165 – 66.

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clerics, of course, also extended to the incumbents of the bishopric.¹⁷ Luther attributed their failures to the illegitimate mingling of secular and sacred authority, which could only be remedied by abolishing the clerical estate. Contemporary legal theory recognized the legal entity of persona duplex in eodem homine, which legitimized the doubling of episcopus and princeps, if the two spheres were strictly separated. Although Luther generally adopted this view, he repeatedly emphasized the danger secular duty posed to sacred duty. Hence, in the 1520s, he demanded a radical solution by removing the secular authority of bishops, which can be seen in his very concrete recommendation in 1525 to the highest cleric of the empire, Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and Magdeburg (1490 – 1545), to secularize his bishopric and to marry. While the secularization of the Duchy of Prussia following Luther’s recommendation did come to fruition that year, the politics of the empire were not affected. The concretization of his demand would have resulted in the overthrow of foundational aspects of the realm’s structure and was therefore utopian; Luther did not repeat his spectacular proposal. In fact, his attitude toward the problem changed profoundly over the following years.¹⁸ As a response to the Augsburg Imperial Diet of 1530, he granted the bishops both functions but demanded that the duty of proclamation of the gospel be transferred to Protestant preachers; as secular rulers, the bishops were only to provide sponsorship and protection. In practical terms, even the Protestant orders returned to the persona duplex solution in the late 1540s: the secular rule of bishops was no longer considered inherently sinful.

2.2 Luther as Spiritual Advisor to Protestant Authorities Luther took the position of spiritual advisor to (imperial) princes who confessed to the Protestant cause, with variable intensity and differing subject matter. Luther saw the two electoral princes of Saxony – Friedrich (born 1463, ruled 1486 – 1525) and Johann (born 1468, ruled 1525 – 1532), who had facilitated scope for action during the early years of the Reformation movement – as largely exemplary authorities. In his lectures, writings, sermons, and letters, he referred to them as examples when developing the ideal image of a wise ruler, following the model of the Old Testament’s King Solomon¹⁹ – a ruler devoted to the construction and protection of the Church and its servants. Thus the question of the new organizing principles of the Church was addressed; this question had been urgently discussed since the 1530s, particularly in locations where the Reformation movement had asserted itself. The central question was always that of the relationship between secular and clerical authority, which was represented in the question of the relationship between formative,  Expressed primarily in “Von den guten Werken” (WA 6:228, 21– 30) and “Wider den falsch genannten geistlichen Stand” (WA 10.2:(93)105 – 158).  See further Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 84– 94.  See Luther’s exegesis of Qohelet (1526) and Song of Songs (1532); WA 31.2:ix–xiii.

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official provisions and the independent practice of faith by communities and ministers. Solutions often had to be tested on very concrete individual issues; however, they were always oriented toward Luther’s fundamental norm that secular authority served as an emergency measure against the sinful world. Luther’s numerous remarks on issues such as the structure of visitations, the selection and payment of church sextons, the meaning and structure of the Church chest (financial administration), and the meaning and structure of the clergy’s academic theological study, among others, became political responses focused on the inner structure of the Church. The Church’s existence and its effect on the world depended on protection from the outside – that is to say, on the protection of secular authorities. The Ordinance of the Common Chest of Leisnig in 1523 became the practical regulation that would set the standard; Luther himself had developed it for the small town of Leisnig, south of Leipzig. The starting point had been an overhaul of the municipal financial system, which brought about a new division of secular and ecclesiastical areas of responsibility. The creation of a common church chest led to a concentration of these communal functions in the town council – the secular authority. At the same time, however, the power to appoint ministers and thus the power to resolve any liturgical disputes was transferred to the community. Connected to this were social responsibilities, including the allocation of funds, which until then had been tasks assigned to the Catholic Church.²⁰ In his introduction to the regulation, Luther characterized these norms as a set of regulations the community had imposed upon itself.²¹ This early example of an order for a municipal community set the standard for the municipal church constitutions that followed. In contrast, church constitutions in areas that were influenced primarily by Bugenhagen developed their own traditions following Luther’s death.²²

2.3 Luther’s Political Assessment at the Imperial Level The eternally contested boundary of religion and politics was not limited to the territorial level: as early as the 1520s, controversies were debated at Imperial Diets and resulted in serious governmental disputes between the emperor and some of the Imperial Estates. The Imperial Diet’s strategies for resolving conflicts were not meant to resolve disputes over questions of faith. They stemmed from late medieval times,

 Schmoeckel, Das Recht, 159 – 60  See the order in Emil Sehling, Ev. Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1.1 (Leipzig, 1902), 596 – 604.  Current research assumes that, due to the development of such basic norms for the orders of new Protestant communities, other legal teachings developed that differed depending on denomination. Legal thinking depended on different theological conventions; a generally neutral position of the law was questioned even in the early years of the Reformation movement. See Schmoeckel, Das Recht, 8 – 10. On the significance of Bugenhagen, briefly, see Schmoeckel, Das Recht, 165 – 66.

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when the unity of Christianity was undisputed. All the fundamentally new conflicts that were brought before the Imperial Diet over the course of the Reformation had to be resolved by relying on the existing methods of imperial law; this was early modernity’s method of managing change. The problem first appeared in April 1529.²³ At the first Diet of Speyer in 1526, the implementation of the Edict of Worms – Luther’s ban – had been left to the Imperial Estates. Some of the princes who were favorably inclined toward the Protestant movement used this opportunity to introduce the Reformation in their territories. King Ferdinand, who represented the emperor at the second Diet of Speyer in April 1529, sought to limit this freedom and reestablish political unity within the empire. Therefore, a proposition brought before the diet intended to prohibit further Reformation measures until a council could be convened; at the same time, the imperial decrees of 1526 were to be repealed. Led by the landgrave Philipp of Hesse (1504 – 1567) and the electoral prince Johann of Saxony, a forceful opposition of Imperial Estates positively inclined toward the Reformation arose – Hesse, Electoral Saxony, Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Brandenburg-Ansbach, and Anhalt. This opposition fought in favor of the retention of the clause on religion from 1526 and filed a formal protest against the majority’s decision on April 19, 1529, known as the “first protestation.” The king rejected the second protestation, which was submitted the next day, but as a consequence, the “protesters” managed to recruit fourteen more supporters from among the Imperial Estates. As a result, the diet was divided; the Protestant minority (the protesting estates) left the diet, and the propositions were passed solely by the votes of the Catholic majority. A majority decision, however, as the protesting minority argued, would be void in this case, since the honor of God and conscience were affected (“die Ehre Gottes und das Gewissen betroffen sei”). In addition, they argued, in accordance with procedural rule, a unanimous decision could not be repealed by a majority vote.²⁴ The protesting estates consistently refused to accept the decision of 1529 and continued to adhere to the validity of the clause on religion of 1526. While this attempt at reconciliation had failed, the opposing groups did exchange mutual confirmations that they would refrain from violence. However, the core of the conflict remained, because this related to the character of the Imperial Constitution and the power relationship between the emperor and the Imperial Estates prescribed therein. If the emperor had indeed weighed down the consciences of the protesting estates, then he was a tyrant according those same estates, who based their argument on imperial,

 On the continuity between late medieval and early modern imperial constitutional traditions, see Böttcher, Ungehorsam, and E. Isenmann, “Widerstandsrecht und Verfassung in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit,” in Menschen und Strukturen in der Geschichte Alteuropas, ed. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger and Helmut Neuhaus (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002), 37– 69.  Regarding the argument of unanimity, see K. Schlaich, “Maioritas – protestatio – itio in partes – corpus Evangelicorum. Das Verfahren im Reichstag des Heiligen Römischen Reichs Deutscher Nation nach der Reformation,” Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte KA 94 (1977): 264– 99; and ibid. 95 (1977): 139 – 79. It was a well-oiled mechanism whose validity, however, was contested.

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feudal, and Roman law. Appointed officers could thus oppose the tyrant (a legitimate defense), as he no longer constituted an authority. He might even be removed from office by force (resistance), since his removal would lead to a restoration of the legitimate order. Relying on the formal instruments of the Imperial Diet, the protesting territorial estates justified their actions theologically: when it comes to questions of faith and the salvation of the soul, a majority decision cannot claim legal force. Thus a new argument was added to the disputes.²⁵ In this highly precarious political situation, the heads of those Imperial Estates that were “protesting” expected advice from their legal advisors as well as from leading theologians of the Reformation movement – that is to say, they sought theological and legal assessments that could aid in political and also in potential military decisions. As early as June 6, 1529, some of the protesting estates met in Rodach (Franconia) and decided on a secret “understanding” in order to begin negotiating a solid defense alliance. The intention to establish such an alliance contained considerable potential for conflict, because it was connected to the question of whether the emperor would need to be “exempted” from such controversies. Thus the legitimacy of a potentially violent “resistance” in the case of a military attack by the emperor was open to debate.²⁶ Although the theologians from Wittenberg were not called upon for these negotiations and the request to compile an assessment for the electoral prince of Saxony was only made in January 1530, Luther composed a carefully formulated letter to Prince Johann on May 22, 1529. In this letter, he argued along predominantly theological and church-political lines and avoided the imperial-political level completely.²⁷ Luther rejected the projected alliance categorically due to the prospective alliance with cities influenced by Zwingli, which seemed unreliable to him. On the other hand, Luther also argued against the alliance because, at the time he was writing, he did not perceive a real threat. At the same time, this enabled a relativization of his oppositional stance, because he left open the question of whether he might support the alliance under different circumstances. A later, undated assessment – written by Luther and several other theologians – outlined the theological arguments more distinctly, but their opposition to the alliance remained sharp. An alliance between estates and the emperor was prone to lead to misunderstandings and “faithendangering erroneous interpretations” among those subjects whose faith was weak.²⁸ Luther left the crucial political questions unanswered: Against whom could such an alliance be directed? Would the allied estates be obligated to support any military action by the emperor? At the same time, the electoral court asked Luther to write a  On this, extensively, see Kohnle, Reichstag, 365 – 75.  On this, including further evidence, see Schorn-Schütte, Gottes Wort, 32– 41.  On the particularities of the assessments and counter-assessments, see Wolgast’s study, which is highly relevant even today: Wittenberger Theologie, 125 – 65.  See Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 132.

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preliminary draft of a letter²⁹ from the Protestant estates to the emperor to inform the emperor of their intentions. Quite obviously, the politicians and jurists from Saxony hoped that the theologian would emphatically support their legal conception; however, he had not understood the imperial legal difficulty or the political threat: “The text Luther drafted is not only an indication of the illusions he had with regard to the emperor’s receptiveness to the changes in the Church, but also shows a political amateurism that is all the more surprising as the author deliberately intended to pose a political argument.”³⁰ Although the alliance of the electoral estates that were in favor of Reformation teachings never came about as originally planned, the question of exclusio Caesaris (the exclusion of the emperor) remained in the highly controversial problem of whether the defense or self-defense of the protesting estates would be justified. However, Luther was not consulted again in the ongoing political negotiations – that is, until the end of 1529. It is surprising that the court of Saxony requested another assessment in September 1529 in order to expedite the resolution of the positions of Hesse and Electoral Saxony. Since Luther and Melanchthon were on their way to Magdeburg, the Saxon chancellor Brück addressed his enquiry to Johannes Bugenhagen. The text was delivered on September 29, 1529.³¹ In contrast to Luther, the pastor from Wittenberg was well aware of the imperialpolitical and legal drama; his arguments were independent of context. His point of departure was a theological explanation of the duties of secular authority, including its limitations. In the years that followed, these explanations would be built upon, moving beyond Luther’s positions. According to Rom 13:1, all authority comes from God, which is why it is the authority’s task to protect the pious and to punish evildoers; this, however, is limited to secular concerns. Thus the lower authorities (inferior lords or magistratus interior) are generally required to obey the higher authority (the superior lord or magistratus superior). However, whenever the superior lord directs his authority against the word of God, his neglects his true duty – the protection of the pious and the punishment of evil. Such an authority has forfeited its office, and the inferior lord does not have to obey him. Bugenhagen understood 1 Sam 15:26 as the biblical basis for this argument: “I will not return with you; for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.”³² Moreover, the inferior authority is, in fact, obligated to denounce

 The draft is recorded under the title Caesari scribendum; see Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 133n50.  Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 133 – 34: “Der von Luther aufgesetzte Text ist nicht nur ein Lehrstück über die Illusionen, die er hinsichtlich der Aufgeschlossenheit des Kaisers für die kirchlichen Veränderungen hegte, sondern zeigt auch einen politischen Dilettantismus, der umso erstaunlicher wirkt, als der Verfasser bewusst politisch argumentieren wollte.”  The exact wording of the assessment can be found in Heinz Scheible, ed., Das Widerstandsrecht als Problem der deutschen Protestanten 1523 – 1546 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1969), 24– 29.  Cited following Böttcher, Ungehorsam, 23.

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the failure of the higher authority in public. In order to protect one’s subjects, military force is permitted. By acknowledging a superior and inferior authority, Bugenhagen strengthened the interpretation of the Imperial Constitution as an aristocracy. The landgrave of Hesse and the Saxon electoral princes – as well as their legal advisors – agreed with this interpretation. The commandment that the inferior authority should obey the superior authority was relativized on this basis; the electoral princes were an authority in their own right, and the exercise of their right to defense was legitimate.³³ The fact that Bugenhagen possessed a much more differentiated knowledge of imperial legal institutions and was able to recognize the political difficulty much more clearly than Luther shows that there were different positions among the leadership of the Wittenberg theologians. Repeated statements by Luther and other theologians up until 1530 demonstrate a very slow differentiation of the positions; Melanchthon’s position, in particular, has been described frequently.³⁴ In general terms, a substantial debate on these imperial-legal questions among contemporaneous theologians and jurists is identifiable.³⁵ Luther, however, accepted these positions only reluctantly until the end. In a vote in November 1529, which is not extant in its original form, he recognizes the duty of a prince to protect the faith of his subjects for the first time. Thus he moved closer to Bugenhagen’s theological argumentation. However, any constitutional-political consequences remained unaddressed. The “ordentliche Ratschlag” (ordinary advice) that the Saxon electoral prince requested and received from the Wittenberg theologian in January 1530 was also restrained;³⁶ the prince seemed to have expected a reference to Bugenhagen’s assessment of September 1529. Both the assessment of March 1530 and a letter written by Luther shortly prior to this characterize the magistratus superior as the authority in all circumstances – the demand for obedience never ends; the magistratus inferior remains subject. This means that the Imperial Constitution can only be understood as a monarchy. Every Christian person – particularly also the electoral one – remains obliged to suffer. The sovereign conscience is placed at the center of theological argumentation: it commands the electoral prince not to give in to the temptation of resistance for political reasons. Bugenhagen derived an independent legitimization of the magistratus inferior from Romans 13; Luther, conversely, stressed that the imperial princes

 On a further characterization of Bugenhagen’s position, see Schorn-Schütte, Gottes Wort, 34– 37  Schorn-Schütte, Gottes Wort, 43 – 45.  On this, see Patrizio Foresta, “Ad futurum concilium: Concilio, diritto naturale e diritto di resistenza nella riflessione giuridica e teologica agli esordi della Riforma protestante,” in Legge e natura: I debattiti teologici e giuridici tra XV e XVII secolo, ed. Riccardo Saccenti and Cinzia Sulas (Rome: Aracne, 2015), 173 – 228.  The text is published in Scheible, Widerstandsrecht, 60 – 63. For further details, see Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 154– 65.

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were mere representatives of the emperor – that is, bearers of power bestowed upon them by the emperor.³⁷ When the negotiations on religion at the Augsburg Diet of 1530 failed, the political pressure exerted on Luther by politicians and jurists from Hesse and electoral Saxony – as well as by a few theologians who argued in a more sophisticated way – became so strong that he adjusted his position. In particular, the question about defense and self-defense of the protesting group had to be settled, legally as well as theologically. The electoral prince and his legal advisors built up pressure on the Wittenberg theologians, the majority of whom continued to follow Luther. At the meeting in Torgau in late October 1530, they were confronted with dual legal instructions – by the jurists from Saxony on the one hand, and by the constitutional argumentations of the landgrave of Hesse on the other.³⁸ Luther did not intend to consolidate theological and legal argumentation, as Bugenhagen and other theologians advocated. The approach available to him succeeded with the help of the Saxon jurists, who pointed out that resistance was legitimate in the case of persistent injustice perpetrated by the emperor.³⁹ This interpretation seemed to Luther a “novum ius, ultra naturale, sed politicum et imperiale,”⁴⁰ which turned the question of self-defense into a res profana, for which theologians were not responsible.⁴¹ In scholarship, this development is characterized as the “Rückzug der Theologen und Verzicht auf Beratung”⁴² (the withdrawal of the theologians and the abstention from advice). This is certainly accurate for the time period under investigation; however, during the decades that followed, another dominant course arose, particularly in Lutheranism – one characterized by communication between theologians, jurists, and politicians. Another non-legal way of arguing was eventually added to Luther’s argumentation, which would make it easier for him to recognize the right to resist an authority. Many of his pious contemporaries expected the end times (apocalypse) immanently, when the church would be secularized and a sinning pope would embody the biblical antichrist or Beerwolf (werewolf). The need for defense against these powers finally led Luther to concede that legitimate self-defense was theologically justified. When even the emperor seemed ready to protect this Beerwolf-pope, the right to defense extended to a defense against the sinning emperor. This apocalyptic line of justification for emergency self-defense was articulated exclusively by Protestant theo-

     

Including all references, see Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 156 – 57. Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 176. Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 176. WA.B 6:37, 29 f. Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 180n39. Wolgast, Wittenberger Theologie, 180n39.

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logians of the 1530s and 1540s. It has quite rightly been judged as a political dimension of developing Lutheranism in the second half of the sixteenth century.⁴³

3 Concluding Remarks Luther, the non-political reformer, resisted the intertwining of politics and religion – of church and world – for a long time. His concern was not political impact; it was the inclusion of the spiritual in the material world. This went hand in hand with certain unintended consequences and political demands of the Imperial Constitution as well as condemnations of political power, which were probably alarming rather than helpful to Luther. In his view, secular authority needed to act as an emergency bishop and take a stance against sin, which only cemented the eternal conflict between church and politics: Where does the internal matter – which secular authority is not supposed to approach – begin? Where does it end? Luther himself was not able to answer this perennial question by theological means; as a contemporary, he had to work hard to acquire his legal position. Other theologians were ahead of him in this respect, and were possibly even superior to him.

 On this, extensively, see Anja Moritz, Interim und Apokalypse: Die religiösen Vereinheitlichungsversuche Karls V. im Spiegel der magdeburgischen Publizistik 1548 – 1551/52 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 211– 81; see also Thomas Kaufmann, “Apokalyptik und politisches Denken im lutherischen Protestantismus in der Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Konfession und Kultur. Lutherischer Protestantismus in der zweiten Hälfte des Reformationsjahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 29 – 66.

Jörg Seiler

Chastity as a Political Issue Martin Luther and the Teutonic Order

1 Introduction Martin Luther repeatedly addressed the topic of chastity in his writings, sometimes in unexpected contexts and with unusual associations. He regarded chastity as a biblical norm that had to be kept.¹ During his time in the monastery, dealing with sexuality and controlling sexual desire apparently did not play an important role for himself.² For him, it was his existential insecurity, his fear of having lost salvation and going to hell, which he could not master, even with radical penitential exercises and monastic piety practices, and which led him to question the monastic life in general. According to his own account, he was an exemplary monk whose eagerness had to be curbed by his confessor. But he did not gain assurance of salvation. Only after having studied Paul’s letters in detail did he establish the conviction that the human being was radically dependent on God’s grace. Nothing that human beings could do – no personal effort, no external support or services, nothing to take merit to oneself – would help them find a gracious God. For Luther, God’s grace was an undeserved divine gift. It is through Jesus Christ that God provides human beings with the justice they need to stand God’s test. The human being had to accept this complete surrender to God’s grace in faith. Faith, being itself another gift from God, refers to the

Translation from German: Alissa Jones Nelson.  On the topic of sexuality see J. Strohl, “Sexualität,” in Das Luther-Lexikon, ed. Volker Leppin and Gury Schneider-Ludorff (Regensburg: Bückle & Böhm, 2014), 642– 45; J. Strohl, “Luther’s New View on Marriage, Sexuality and the Family”, Lutherjahrbuch 76 (2009): 159 – 92, which includes a chronological overview of relevant works; Susan Karant-Nunn and Merry Wiesner-Hanks, eds., Luther on Women: A Sourcebook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 137– 70, which is thematically ordered around the topics of “Sexual Desire,” “Adultery,” “Prostitution,” and “Other Sexual Issues.”  For instance, Luther had the following to say in a table talk in 1531: “I prayed for hours and had a chaste and good opinion of women, and still was damned because I did not believe in Jesus Christ” (Oravi horas und keusch und zuchtig von weibern gehalten et tamen verdampt, quia non credidi in Jesum Christum); Otto Scheel, Dokumente zu Luthers Entwicklung (bis 1519) (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1929), no. 153, p. 59; see also Luther’s commentary on Galatians (1531), no. 164, p. 63 and elsewhere. Regarding the period at the monastery in Erfurt, see Luther und das monastische Erbe, eds. Christoph Bultmann, Volker Leppin and Andreas Lindner (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); Luthers Erfurter Kloster, eds. Lothar Schmelz and Michael Ludscheidt (Erfurt: Burkhardt, 2005); C. Burger, “Der Augustinereremit Martin Luther in Kloster und Universität bis zum Jahre 1512,” in Kloster Amelungsborn 1135 – 1985, eds. Gerhard Ruhbach and Kurt Schmidt-Clausen (Amelungsborn: Weserland Verlag, 1985), 161– 86. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-035

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promises of Holy Scripture. Faith does not need any authorities to transmit or interpret Holy Scripture. On this basis, Luther developed his radical critique of the clerical system, of the practice of selling indulgences, of the Church’s understanding of the sacraments, and of a practice of piety, which he does away with as merely external works that try to compel God. Luther remained radically true to these basic convictions, even when political diplomacy was at stake. They also were the driving force behind the work he published at the end of 1523, under the title An die Herren deutschs Ordens, daß sie falsche Keuschheit meiden und zur rechten ehelichen Keuschheit greifen, Ermahnung (Exhortation to the Men of the Teutonic Order that They Should Avoid False Chastity and Choose the Rightful Matrimonial Chastity).³ Luther asked the Teutonic Knights to get married and to use the possessions of the order to fund the support of their families. If they would follow this advice, a dissolution of the order would no longer be necessary; quite the contrary: the Teutonic Order, if renewed in this way, could serve as a model for other monastic societies.⁴ Luther could have chosen political arguments to comment on the future of the Teutonic Order. Even in the Holy Roman Empire itself at that time, people were skeptical about the survival of the Prussian monastic system. But Luther did not enter the political field here. Rather, he argued biblically and with a good dose of pragmatism. His pragmatic argument in the “Teutonic Order” text runs as follows: if it is difficult even for spouses – with a well-organized sexual life as partners – to practice chastity, then this will be much more difficult for people who take a vow of “celibate chastity for the sake of the heavenly kingdom.” With a few exceptions, nobody would be able to live up to this form of monastic chastity; it also – and this is Luther’s main point – contradicts the biblical norm. Therefore, the Teutonic Knights should lay down their false chastity and strive for rightful matrimonial chastity.

2 The Crisis of the Teutonic Order at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century What were the political frameworks that we need to take into account in our contextualization and interpretation of Luther’s text? The state authority in Prussia, which

 On dating the undated text to the end of 1523 (probably December 12, 1523), see the explanation in WA 12:228 – 44.  On this theme in general, see B. Jähnig, “Die Anfänge der evangelischen Landeskirche im Herzogtum Preußen zur Zeit von Herzog Albrecht,” in Preußen und Livland im Zeichen der Reformation, eds. Arno Mentzel-Reuters and Klaus Neitmann (Osnabrück: Fibre, 2014), 15 – 56; U. Arnold, “Luther und die Reformation im Preußenland,” in Martin Luther und die Reformation in Ostdeutschland und Südosteuropa. Wirkungen und Wechselwirkungen, ed. U. Hutter (Sigmaringen: Thorbeck 1991), 27– 44; Christoph Schmidt, Auf Felsen gesät. Die Reformation in Polen und Livland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000).

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the Teutonic Order had built up since the thirteenth century, faced a serious crisis in the fifteenth century.⁵ In two wars against Poland, the order was the losing party. Not only did it have to pay large amounts of money to the Kingdom of Poland as a result of the wars, which drove the order to the brink of financial ruin, but in 1466, the order also had to hand over the western parts of its territory to Poland and move its headquarters from Marienburg to Königsberg. The order tried to forge strong alliances through the appointment of Grand Masters from among the high nobility, but with little success. In 1511, Albrecht von Brandenburg-Ansbach (Grand Master 1511– 1525) – the son of the margrave Friedrich von Brandenburg-Ansbach, who was married to a Polish princess – was appointed as successor of Friedrich von Sachsen (Grand Master 1498 – 1510)⁶ for the highest office of the order. Albrecht, 21 years old at the time, established strong anti-Polish politics, trying to undo the regulations of the second Peace of Thorn (1466). He was hoping for the emperor’s support, but to no avail. The emperor made an agreement with the Jagiellonians in 1515, recognized the second Peace of Thorn at the Congress of Pressburg, and pledged to end his support of the order.⁷ The Polish-Teutonic War (the so-called “Reiterkrieg,” 1519/20 – 1521) was not successful and ended with a truce. At that point, the Grand Master was running out of time, because he had to make a decision by the end of the truce in 1525 – either to surrender to Poland or to start another armed engagement. To make things even more difficult, in this delicate situation, the provinces refused to provide the head of the order with the support he requested – the alienation between the various provinces of the order was already too strong. In this dangerous situation, in 1522, Albrecht traveled to the empire a second time,⁸ following a first journey in 1517, which was a failure. He was trying to solve a twofold problem: first, he went to the imperial government in Nuremberg to seek support there (as well as at other places in the empire) for another military engagement against Poland. Second, he had realized that the order was seriously in

 R. Czaja, “Die Krise der Landesherrschaft. Der Deutsche Orden und die Gesellschaft seines Staates in Preußen in der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Ordines Militares 16 (2011): 159 – 71; Klaus Militzer, Die Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2012), 219 – 41; Kurt Forstreuter, Vom Ordensstaat zum Fürstentum. Geistige und politische Wandlungen im Deutschordensstaate Preußen unter den Hochmeistern Friedrich und Albrecht (1498 – 1525) (Kitzingen: Holzner, 1951).  M. Biskup, “Friedrich von Sachsen (29.IX.1498 – 14.XII.1510),” in Die Hochmeister des Deutschen Ordens 1190 – 2012, ed. Udo Arnold (Weimar: Bauhaus University Press, 2014), 159 – 64, with further literature.  Hermann Wiesflecker, Kaiser Maximilian I. Das Reich, Österreich und Europa an der Wende zur Neuzeit, vol. 4, Gründung des habsburgischen Weltreiches, Lebensabend und Tod 1508 – 1519 (München: Böhlau, 1981), 181– 204; Manfred Hollegger, Maximilian I. (1459 – 1519). Herrscher und Mensch einer Zeitenwende (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005), 214– 19.  For further information on his itinerary, see Paul Tschackert, Urkundenbuch zur Reformationsgeschichte des Herzogthums Preußen, vol. 2, Urkunden 1523 – 1541 (Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1965 [1890]), no. 55, p. 15 f., hereafter UB Preußen 2.

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need of reform. Regarding this, in 1518 he had already contacted Pope Leo X, who had then provided him with a general mandate for reformation – that is, permission to implement reforms in the order. Hadrian VI and Clemens VII both renewed that mandate.⁹ With regard to content, the mandate remained unspecified. The concrete implementation of the order’s reform was at the discretion of the Grand Master, who kept a low profile in public when it came to his considerations. This was for political reasons, because – depending on how it turned out – his plans for reform could counteract his plans to receive military support.

3 A Reform of the Order with Martin Luther’s Help? Grand Master Albrecht von Brandenburg-Ansbach wanted to implement a reform of the order that would take account of the changing demands of the time. That is why he tried to get in touch with the most prominent monastic critic and reformer of the Church at the time, which of course was Martin Luther. But the plan was dangerous. Concurrently with Albrecht’s negotiation of the truce with Poland, Luther was on his way to the Diet of Worms, with its well-known results: in 1521, Luther was put under an imperial ban, on top of his earlier ban by the Church. Hence, Albrecht had to move carefully. In September 1521, more than half a year before his own trip to the empire, he sent the Saxon diplomat Dietrich von Schönberg to the elector of Saxony with the question of whether it would make sense to have Luther’s feedback on the planned reform of the order.¹⁰ Friedrich der Weise seems to have advised against it.¹¹ Therefore, the Grand Master initially abstained from sending the Teutonic Oder’s to the Saxon court. Everyone agreed that it was too dangerous to have Luther’s involvement publicly known. That would have discredited the work of the Grand Master and hindered his political negotiations. His priority was to build up a military coalition against the king of Poland, and for this, support from the Estates of the Empire was indispensable. If they had known of any contact with Luther, this plan would have been at risk. Nevertheless, Luther had already been informed of the request and the plans in March 1522. He requested of Georg Spalatin that if the electoral Saxon office received any letters from the Grand Master, he should be

 Walther Hubatsch, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche Ostpreussens Bd. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968), 6 f.  Hubatsch, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche, 10 f.  Before Albrecht took office, Friedrich von Sachsen was already involved in the international negotiations about the relationship between the Prussian state and the Polish kingdom. He acted very hesitantly, even though he apparently had a very good reputation among the Teutonic Order; see S. Flemmig, “Friedrich der Weise und der Deutsche Orden in Preußen (1486 – 1525),” in Kurfürst Friedrich der Weise von Sachsen. Politik, Kultur und Reformation, eds. Armin Kohnle and Uwe Schirmer (Leipzig/Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2015), 154– 80.

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informed directly.¹² At the end of 1522, Luther noted that people in the area around Nuremberg were saying that the Grand Master “does not think badly of the Gospel,” which means he was open to the Reformation.¹³ To summarize: Albrecht planned a reform of the Teutonic Order, for which he actually would have liked to have Luther’s advice. But he was afraid that this would make him politically vulnerable. Apparently, there were meetings in Nuremberg that influenced Albrecht’s further actions. He did not succeed in setting up a powerful alliance against Poland, but momentous events that did occur included the meetings with Lazarus Spengler (1479 – 1534) and Andreas Osiander (1498 – 1552), the reformer in Nuremberg. At the time, Albrecht was developing the idea of implementing a secularization of the Prussian monastic system and transforming the state territory into a duchy that would be linked to Poland. Meeting Osiander made him more and more convinced of the Lutheran doctrines. Ten years later (in 1540), he summarized this influence in a letter to his “Father in Christo”: “You alone are the medium that brought us to divine, just, and true insight, a relief that we honor so highly that we do not have words to express it, let alone compare it with anything else.”¹⁴ Luther now actively supported the Grand Master in his considerations. On June 14, 1523, Albrecht sent his advisor, Johann Oeden, to Wittenberg with a handwritten document, informing Luther that the Grand Master was planning a reform of the order and its subordinated clergy. During this meeting, he probably also received a copy of the Teutonic Orders and was asked to comment on them. In his report, he was invited to comment particularly on the question of which parts of the rules were genuinely Christian.¹⁵ With this act, contact was established firmly enough that the Grand Master himself sought a meeting with Luther. The two met on the first Sunday of Advent, November 29, 1523, in Wittenberg. Luther later noted, with regard to this meeting: I also talked to the Grand Master Albrecht. He asked me for advice regarding the rules of his order. I convinced him to give up this stupid and confused rule, to get married, and to turn Prussia into a secular territory – either as a principality or as a duchy. Philipp [Melanchthon] told him the same later, too. He [the Grand Master] smiled and did not respond.¹⁶

The Grand Master’s silence was eloquent. While he was certainly sympathetic to Luther, it was important to keep a formal distance to avoid any political risk. Duke

 Letter from Luther to Spalatin, March 22, 1522; WA.B 2:480 f, no. 463, here 480.  “diciturque non male de euangelio sentire;” letter from Luther to Wenzeslaus Link, December 19, 1522; WA.B 2:632 f, no. 557, here 633.  Quoted in Paul Tschackert, Herzog Albrecht von Preußen als reformatorische Persönlichkeit (Halle, 1894), 14.  Hubatsch, Geschichte, 11.  Letter from Luther to Briesmann, July 4, 1524: “Suasi, vt contempta ista stulta confusaque regula vxorem duceret et prussiam redigeret in politicam formam, siue principatum siue ducatum. Idem sensit et suasit post me phillipus;” WA.B 3:315, no. 756.

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Georg von Sachsen later expressed his conviction that at this meeting, it had already been agreed to send Lutheran preachers to Prussia.¹⁷ And indeed, from the summer of 1523 on, Johannes Briesmann (1488 – 1549) worked as an Evangelical preacher in the territory of the State of the Teutonic Order.¹⁸ On September 27, the Franciscan – still wearing his habit – gave the first Evangelical sermon in Prussia in the Cathedral of Königsberg. Less than a year after that event, Luther instructed Briesmann to make contact with the population and mentally prepare the people for the transformation of the State of the Teutonic Order into a secular duchy.¹⁹ Briesmann became Albrecht’s most important conversation partner in the following years. He also had considerable influence on the bishop of Samland, Georg von Polentz (who was bishop from 1519 to 1550), who replaced the absent sovereign during his stay in the empire as Teutschen Ordens Regent (“Sovereign of the Teutonic Order”).²⁰ Both in royal Prussia²¹ – the former region of the Teutonic Order that had been under Polish rule since 1466 – and in the State of the Teutonic Order, the Protestant movement gained ground early. Under the control of the Teutonic Order, this would have been impossible without the Grand Master’s toleration. During his meeting with Luther, the Grand Master formulated a number of basic questions, and in December 1523 – in direct context of the “Teutonic Order” text – Luther gave his advisory opinion: the Church was not built on Peter or the subsequent popes, but on Christ alone. Therefore, it was the responsibility of the popes and the bishops to teach God’s mysteries, which Christ had revealed “inwardly in the spirit” (inwendig im geyst) – nothing else. And anyone who would teach anything else was a thief and murderer. Christ was the only leader of the community, and he would rule through faith and the gifts of the spirit. Therefore, all the laws of the popes and the councils on purely exterior matters (such as fasting requirements or holidays) had to be rejected. If the pope proclaims their necessity for salvation, he reveals himself as the “antichrist” (widerChrist). Exterior things – such as the papacy, councils, monastic rules, and ceremonies – are not necessary for salvation and should be regarded, at best, as things that may be useful for exterior, everyday life. Hence, it is their elevation as things necessary for salvation that Luther vehemently negates. If they would not be elevated to the level of necessity for salvation, they could still be tolerated. But it would be better if those exterior things were or Letter from Georg von Sachsen to Kasimir von Brandenburg, January 2, 1524; UB Preußen 2, no. 166, p. 45.  For further information, see Paul Tschackert, Urkundenbuch zur Reformationsgeschichte des Herzogthums Preußen, vol. 1, Einleitung (Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1965 [1890]), 41– 48.  Hubatsch, Geschichte, 14.  Eike Wolgast, Hochstift und Reformation. Studien zur Geschichte der Reichskirche zwischen 1517 und 1648 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1995), 198.  See, for example, M. Biskup, “Über die Anfänge der lutherischen Reformation im Königlichen Preußen,” in Das Preußenland als Forschungsaufgabe. Eine europäische Region in ihren geschichtlichen Bezügen (FS Udo Arnold), eds. Bernhart Jähnig und Georg Michels (Lüneburg: Elwert, 2000), 275 – 86.

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ganized by parents and rulers. Neither the pope nor the bishops could alter God’s commandments. The practice so far, Luther argues, has been a practice against and without God’s word.²² It is somewhat surprising that Luther focused his report on the question of the relevance of clerical authorities and tradition. He was not at all interested in concrete suggestions for a reform of the Teutonic Order. If Grand Master Albrecht, during their conversation in November 1523, had addressed this issue, it now became clear that the reformer wanted to approach the topic of monastic reform in a fundamental way. Apparently, Luther was not interested in the concrete Teutonic Order. From his perspective, it could have been maintained in a modified form, or it could have been dissolved. For Luther, this would not have made a big difference. Crucial for him was the radical orientation toward God’s word. He saw institutional concretizations – in the form of doctrinal statements or monastic statutes – as merely exterior phenomena that cannot touch the essence of faith. Again, these things were adiaphora – intermediate things that are neither commanded nor forbidden, but gain their meaning only from contextualization. Qualifying them as necessary for salvation means misusing them in order to stabilize one’s own authority. This was Luther’s accusation against administrative practices on the level of popes, bishops, and councils. For him, it was a fundamental critique, which led him to discredit these institutions as ungodly organizations. Starting from this basic conviction, Luther always argued apodictically. It is hard to imagine that the Grand Master requested this kind of theological self-assurance from Luther. If this were the case, we would have to assume that he already had a firm plan for a fundamental reform of the order and his state territory by the end of 1523. To be sure, he had been engaged in a process of internal orientation toward reformatory ideas since the meeting with Oliander in Nuremberg at the end of 1522, which he later stylized as a “conversion experience.” And yet, Albrecht stayed in the empire for another year (until 1524) to gauge various options. And just at the end of 1523, he was playing with the idea of working for the French king – certainly not a Lutheran! Almost at the same time, a meeting took place with emissaries of the king of Poland (on his initiative). This started a process that, a year later, resulted in the transformation of the State of the Teutonic Order into a secular duchy.²³ Thus, Albrecht acted discursively as a politician, making use of Luther’s questioning of the Church rules and their imperial-political implications. Luther, however, acted discursively as a theologian and a critic of the system, making use of political upheavals and options that presented themselves in the framework of the imperial-political implications of the Reformation. If these had implications for the territory and power of

 Letter from Luther to Grand Master Albrecht, December 1523; WA.B 3:207– 19. For further information, see Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 2, Ordnung und Abgrenzung der Reformation 1521 – 1532 (Stuttgart: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1986), 84.  Jähnig, Anfänge, 22.

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the Teutonic Order, that would be fine with him, but political options were not his central interest. His main concerns were theology and faith. Given these different backgrounds, it is understandable that the Grand Master felt uncomfortable with the publication of Luther’s An die Herren deutschs Ordens (To the Knights of the Teutonic Order) at the end of 1523. This was not because Albrecht differed in opinion from Luther, but because the publication of Luther’s recommendation for secularization could damage him as the Grand Master. In the end, he was still traveling the empire to forge an alliance against Poland. How did Luther envisage the future of the Teutonic Order? What did he expect from Teutonic Knights? What were his arguments?

4 Luther’s Exhortation An die Herren deutschs Ordens Luther’s “exhortation”²⁴ de facto meant the dissolution of the Teutonic Order. Its members should give up their vows and work as the founders of noble families on the properties – then hereditary – of the Teutonic Order. Perhaps the publication is “to be seen as a test to explore the sentiments of both the Teutonic Knights and the Prussian bishops and to prepare the coming events.”²⁵ If so, Luther would have planned it strategically. However, I tend to see the publication as more dominated by Luther’s theology, which he wanted to see pragmatically adapted in a historically attractive situation. Luther certainly knew that he did not need to expect resistance on the part of the Grand Master, even if the latter felt uncomfortable about the situation. Luther begins his essay by telling the Teutonic Knights not to be surprised about his advice to switch “to the matrimonial life of unchaste chastity.” This recommendation would be useful for the Teutonic Order in particular, as it was “a strange order” that had a mixed character, due to its mandate to fight the heathen: it was ordered to use “the worldly sword,” but at the same time, it had to be “spiritual, as well.” This marks the basic motif of the text: Luther wants to demonstrate how it is possible to actually practice chastity. The way the Teutonic Order, or other monastic orders and priests more generally – Luther calls them all “monks” – practice it, he regards as an “unchaste” chastity. Luther repeatedly notes that he had already written against the “atrocities of clerical chastity.” This vow should not – and could not – be kept, except in the case that God provided special grace for it. But this happened very seldom. When he addressed the Teutonic Knights on this topic, it was because he hoped that the Teutonic Order “could be a splendid and strong example for all the other orders.” Hence, Luther saw in the Teutonic Order a kind of pioneer to  WA 12:228. In the following, diacritics of vowels are given in the modern form.  WA 12:230, Introduction.

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finally abolish the rampant lack of chastity and, by doing so, live up to the stipulations of the Gospel. What was the special feature Luther saw in the Teutonic Order that would make it predestined to be a model for all other orders? Covertly, the conversation with the Grand Master certainly played a role. For the first time, Luther saw the possibility of making a monastic community enthusiastic about his ideas. But this is not what he says in the text. Surprisingly, Albrecht von Brandenburg-Ansbach is not mentioned at all. Luther sees the advantage of secularizing the Teutonic Order in the fact that individual members would be “supplied with earthly food” (mit zeytlicher narung versorgt). Hence, the territorial rule of the Prussian state and its economic infrastructure would offer basic provision to the Teutonic Knights, regardless of any form of monastic or communitarian life. And they could keep this basic income, even if they were freed from their vows. That is why Luther advises the order to convert its properties to secular goods, supply the Knights with this money, and, by so doing, build up an orderly rule that, “without [its] glitter and false names, would be more pleasant for God and the world” (on gleyssen und falschen namen fur Gott und der wellt angeneme were).²⁶ The secularization of the order would also make its territorial rule much more acceptable to its subjects than was currently the case. In fact, the order had never succeeded in gaining the sympathy of the population. Rather, the damage of the wars and the fiscal burden had created a divide between the population and its rulers. What is more, for many, the discrepancy between the spiritual ideal and the worldly life of the Teutonic Knights had become outrageous. But Luther regarded the transformation of the Teutonic Order into a secular institution, whose members should live according to Scripture and the Gospel, as a successful concept that would guarantee the survival of the order. It could be a model that would also work for “the higher lords” (grösser herrn) who “are keen to lead an honorable life” (lust zu erbarem leben haben). After all, it “is to be hoped that in the future only a few people will become monks or clerics, because the Gospel will rise and consequently reveal the spiritual meaning” (ist doch zu hoffen, das hynfurt wenig mehr mönche und geystliche werden sollen, weyl das Evangelion auffgehet und die geysterey also auffdeckt).²⁷ Indeed, in 1525, Luther would encourage the archbishop of Mainz, a cousin of the (by then) former Grand Master, to get married and to secularize the Hochstift Mainz.²⁸ This would help “to leave behind the false name and the pretense of a spiritual profession” (den falschen namen und scheyn geystlichs standts fallen und faren lassen).²⁹ Thus, in the case of the elector of Mainz, he argued

 WA 12:232.  WA 12:233.  Hochstift is the name for a territory in the Holy Roman Empire that was under secular authority but was ruled by bishops.  “Letter to the Archbishop Albrecht von Mainz and Magdeburg, to encourage him to enter into matrimony” (Sendschreiben an den Erzbischof Albrecht von Mainz und Magdeburg, sich in den ehelichen Stand zu begeben), 1525; WA 18:402– 11, here 408.

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the same way as in his “Teutonic Order” text, presenting the behavior of the former Grand Master as a good example: Here, Your Electoral Highness has a nice example in the Grand Master of Prussia. How wonderfully and gracefully God had sent a change, which ten years ago nobody could have hoped or expected. […] But because he gave space and honor to the gospel, he himself received more space and honor, more than he could wish for. (Hie hat E. Churf. G. eyn schön exempel, den Hochmeyster in Preussen, wie gar feyn und gnedig hat Got solch enderung geschickt, die vor zehen jaren weder zuhoffen noch zuglauben gewest were, […], Aber weyl er dem Evangelio rhaum und eher gab, hats jme wider vil mer rhaum und eher geben, mer dann er het dürffen wünschen).³⁰

As we know, the archbishop of Mainz did not accept the offer. Luther did not succeed in presenting a stringent, legally safeguarded model that would factor in the constitutional questions of secularization of the Hochstifte and the monastic properties.³¹ More important for him was the political signaling effect, as well as the clarification of a moral dilemma as a necessary result of monastic life. After the brief introductory remarks on the Teutonic Order, Luther turns to his actual topic: the justification for his opinion that it is impossible to keep the vow of chastity within the model of Catholic monastic and priestly life, and that therefore Christians have to choose matrimony as the proper framework for their lives. Luther devoted more than 90 percent of his text to this “exhortation.” He argues on the basis of Gen 2:18: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’” Luther starts by formulating a basic conflict: if, in Holy Scripture, God set down a clear norm that a man should get married because it is not good if he is alone, what sense can there be in a vow that formulates a voluntary renunciation of marriage? The Teutonic Order also adhered to the classic “evangelical counsels” – obedience, poverty, and celibacy. Luther vehemently rejects the latter. In a first line of thought, he addresses a pragmatic argument and asks

 WA 18:410.  Wolgast, Hochstift, 30. Luther’s ideas represent a first phase in his considerations regarding the relationship between spiritual function and worldly office, which the bishop exemplified. At this time, Luther demanded – for example, in the Leisniger Kastenordnung of 1523 – a personal secularization or the renunciation of worldly property, if the spiritual office is retained.; see Wolgast, Hochstift, 31. From the end of the 1520s onward, he tended toward a separation of the bishops’ worldly rule from a sort of disciplinary spiritual supervision, enacted by evangelical vicars. When, at the beginning of the 1540s, the possibility of having evangelical Hochstifte on imperial territory emerged (Naumburg, 1541/42), Luther changed his original ideas of secularization and advocated “retaining the spiritual property for cleciral use” (um das geistliche Gut für kirchliche Verwendung zu bewahren); see Wolgast, Hochstift, 35. On this topic, cf. Walter Ziegler, Die Entscheidung deutscher Länder für oder gegen Luther. Studien zu Reformation und Konfessionalisierung im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Gesammelte Aufsätze (Münster: Aschendorff, 2008), 79 – 13; Martin Heckel, Martin Luther, Reformation und das Recht. Die Entwicklung der Theologie Luthers und ihre Auswirkung auf das Recht unter den Rahmenbedingungen der Reichsreform und der Territorialbildung im Kampf mit Rom und den ‚Schwärmern‘ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).

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whether a woman is a helper for the man in the first place. Everybody “writes and cries” (schreybt und schreyet), Luther notes, that this is not the case. Apparently, women hinder the unfolding of men, and so – as Luther notes in his caricature of clerical norms – the pope introduced the vow of celibacy. By doing so, the pope makes a liar out of God. Luther’s polemic is vehement: What else is this than to master God? What else is mastering God but snubbing him? […] Can there be any good in such a vow and such a chastity that do not originate from God’s miracle, but from their own iniquity, which is so blasphemously against God’s word? If we have God’s miracle, we do not need the vow. If we do not have God’s miracle, the vow is against God and blasphemes God’s word and work. (Was ist das anders denn Gott meystern? Was ist Gott meystern anders, denn uber gott faren. […] Was sollt solchem gelübd und keuscheyt glücks widderfaren, das on gottis wunder aus eygenem frevel so lesterlich wider gottis wort feret? Ist gottis wunder da, so ist das gelübd nicht von nöten. Ist gottis wunder nicht da, so ist das gelübd widder gott und lestert gottis wort und werck.)³²

On the clerical argument that celibacy is an old practice of the Church and that the church fathers sanctioned it, Luther comments by exclaiming: “Ugh, ugh, ugh, our inexpressible blindness, madness, and insane blasphemy!” (Pfu, pfu, pfu unßer unaussprechlicher blindheyt, toll und unsynniger gotts lesterung!)³³ Referring to church tradition never works with Luther. Consequently, he also judges very harshly the idea that, in exceptional cases, the Church can modify or even lift norms that are sanctioned in the Bible. As this had happened repeatedly at Church councils, Luther indignantly continues: Who has given you the power to change God’s word, to cancel it, and to reestablish it? In this way, one would teach God a lesson and trim the feathers of the Holy Ghost. Tell me, who has ever heard of more horrible atrocities? And that these things should be condoned by people who rule over souls! (Wer hat euch die macht geben, Gottis wort zu endern und auffzuheben und widder eyn zu setzen? Also soll man Gott zur schulen füren, und dem heyligen geyst die feddern streychen. Sage myr, wer hat yhe grewlicher grewel gehöret? und solchs sollen furgeben, die da seelen regiren wollen!)³⁴

In his text, Luther acknowledges that councils can regulate things that refer to temporal and undecided matters, but certainly not matters that are so openly revealed as the divine word and God’s will. Luther then changes gears in his argumentation. He sticks to the theme that the divine commandment is entirely apparent and unambiguous. Therefore, it is utterly unchangeable, a conviction that he applies to a contrary thought: What would happen if councils would prescribe that clerics need to be married? Again, for this pos-

 WA 12:234.  WA 12:235.  WA 12:236.

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sibility – which he finds plausible in general – Luther rejects the authority of councils: If it would happen that one, two, a hundred, a thousand, or even more councils decided that clerics can get married, or anything else God’s word had already decided to allow or not to allow, I would rather turn a blind eye and trust to God’s grace the man who, all his life, had had one, two, or three whores, than the one who took a wife in accordance with the decree of such a council and otherwise does not dare to make a decision. (obs geschehe, das eyns, zwey, hundert, tausent und noch mehr Concilia beschlössen, das geystliche möchten ehlich werden, odder was mehr Gottis wort zuvor hat zu thun und zu lassen beschlossen, So wolt ich ehe durch die finger sehen und Gottis gnade vertrawen dem, der seyn leben lang eyne, zwo odder drey huren hette, denn dem, der eyn ehlich weyb neme nach solcher Concilia beschlus, und sonst ausser solchem beschlus keyns thürft nemen.)

Luther always tries to avoid elevating human regulations over divine norms. Hence, it is better to live in sin with prostitutes than to get married just because the Church has issued a decree. It is the neglect of a divine commandment that Luther sees as blasphemy. Compared to this, Luther goes on, even harlotry and lack of chastity, although these are major sins in themselves, are minor transgressions. Now, the matter is as follows: If someone gets married on the basis of a human decision or the ruling of a council, and nothing else, even though he has God’s ruling and word on it, in his heart he despises God’s word and treads upon it. He elevates the human being over God and trusts human words and doctrines more than God’s word and doctrines. He thus acts in diametric opposition to faith, and he denies God himself, setting up the human being as an idol in the place of God. (Nu stehet dise sache also: Wer eyn ehe weyb aus krafft menschlicher satzung oder nach der Concilia schlus, und sonst nicht, neme, so er doch zuvor Gottis beschlus und wort datzu hat, der veracht gottis wort ynn seynem hertzen und leufft mit füssen druber, denn er hebt menschen uber Gott, und vertrawet mehr menschen wort und leren, denn gottis wort und leren, damit handelt er stracks widder den glawben und verleucket gott selber, und setzt an seyne stat menschen zu Abgöttern.)³⁵

Finally, Luther encourages all those clerics who do want to get married, to fully rely on God’s word and take from it courage and security for their transition into matrimonial life: Therefore, any cleric who wants to get married should take God’s word seriously, trust it, and marry in God’s name, regardless of whether there has already been a council before or there will be one later, and he should say: God speaks in Gen 1 and 2. I am a man and you are a woman, and we shall and we have to be together, and multiply. Nobody can or should hinder or forbid us, and it is not in our power to change that. We trust and act according to the word, despite all councils, churches, all human rulings, all vows, customs, or whatever there is or has been. With eyes and ears closed, and only God’s word embraced in our hearts! And even if the councils and human beings will allow it and let us do it in the future, we do not want their approval. We neither do nor do not do anything anymore just because of their permis-

 WA 12:237.

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sion. (Darumb wilcher geystlicher will ehlich werden, der soll gottis wort fur sich nemen, daselbs sich auff verlassen und ynn des selben namen freyen, unangesehen, ob Concilia fur odder hernach komen, und soll also sagen: Gott spricht Gene. 1. und 2. Ich sey eyn man und du eyn weyb, und sollen und müssen zu samen, uns zu mehren, das kan und soll uns niemand weren noch verpieten, und ist nicht unser macht anders geloben. Auff das wort wagen wyrs und thuns, nur zu trotz und zu wider allen Concilien, kirchen, allen menschen setzen, allen gelübden, gewonheytten, und was da widder seyn möcht oder yhe gewesen ist. Augen und oren zu, und nur gottis wort yns hertz gefasset! Und obs uns die Concilia und menschen hynfurt erleubten und zu liessen, so wollen wyr yhr urlaub nicht haben, und umb yhrs zulassens willen nichts widder thun noch lassen.)³⁶

In addition to the use of Gen 2, Luther justifies the biblical basis of matrimony with reference to the commandment to honor one’s father and mother. This brings him to the conclusion that, before God, there is no higher status – no higher office, being, or work – than matrimony. Matrimony brings forth children, and the children in turn can live up to the fourth commandment of the Decalogue. In a final appeal, Luther once more addresses the members of the Teutonic Order: See, now is the good time, now is the blissful day. God’s word shines and calls. Reason and room you have enough to follow, and also worldly property; so pressing is the moral dilemma and the daily sin in the wicked flesh; so forceful is the impossible being that has given foolish vows; so useless is the clerical status and order; there is no council to wait for or to postpone, because God’s word demands. There is no excuse and no other example, but you should, every single one of you, be the first to break the spell. […] Everything presses, calls, and tempts you at this time. You would highly honor God and his word, and you would give a comforting example to the weak, so that God’s word would become recognized again. Nothing can stop you from doing this, except the crazy world’s stupid judgment, saying, “Oh, this is what the Teutonic Knights do?” But since we know that even the world’s prince is judged, we will have no doubt that God has already condemned this and any other judgment. Well, let’s start fresh and with trust, with eyes directed to God in right faith, turning our backs to the world with its rumble, scraping, and blustering, not listening or watching how Sodom and Gomorrah sink behind us or what happens to them! (Sehet, itzt ist die angeneme zeyt, itzt ist der selige tag. Gotts wort leucht und rüfft, Ursach und rawm habt yhr gnug zu folgen, auch zeytlichs guts halben, so dringet die nott der gewissen und teglicher sunde ym krancken fleysch, So zwinget das unmüglich wesen, das nerrisch gelobd ist, So taug der geystlich stand und orden an yhm selbs gar nichts, So ist auf keyn Concilion zu harren noch auffzuschieben, weyl es Gottis wort heyst und foddert, So ist auch nicht zuverzihen und auff anderer exempel zu sehen, sondern yhr sollet, und eyn iglicher, die erste ban brechen […] Alle ding dringen, zwingen, locken und reytzen euch zu disser zeyt, und yhr daran Gott und seynem wort eyn grosse ehre thutt, datzu den schwachen gewissen eyn tröstlich beyspiel gibt, damit Gottis wort widder auff ynn den schwanck keme. Nichts ist, das euch hierynn hyndert, denn der tollen wellt törichts urteyl, das sie sagen wird: ‚Ey, thun die Deutschen Herren das?‘ Aber weyl wyr wissen, das auch der wellt Fürst gerichtet ist, sollen wyr nicht zweyffeln, das auch solchs und alle ander urteyl der wellt fur Gott schon verdampt sind. Nur frisch und getrost hynan, Gott fur augen gesetzt ynn rechtem glawben, und der wellt mit

 WA 12:238.

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yhrem rumpeln, scharren und polltern den rücken gekeret, nicht hören noch sehen, wie Sodoma und Gomorra hynder uns versincke odder wo sie bleyben!)³⁷

Just as in his report for Grand Master Albrecht, so Luther argued theologically in his “Teutonic Order” text. He once more picked up ideas that he had already presented in his recent publications.³⁸ From his perspective, the transformation of Prussian territory was a unique opportunity: Catholic bishops (Georg von Polentz and Erhard von Queiß) would take up his concerns and give up their rule in the monastic territory to devote themselves fully to spiritual tasks (von Polentz did so in 1525, von Queiß in 1527).³⁹ For Luther, both things were important: on the one hand, the return to the Gospel implied the renunciation of the bishops’ worldly rule. On the other hand, he used his contact with the Grand Master to present once more his conviction that monastic life, the vows, and a celibate life were not workable, or rather contradicted the divine will. This was an attack against the spiritual foundation of the Prussian state, and Luther could hope for a signaling effect. Yet, “for him, the external reasons for such a step [the marriage of the Teutonic Knights] were less important than the biblical legitimization of marriage, which no council decree could suspend.”⁴⁰ Both of Luther’s texts had a high legitimating quality for the Grand Master. This becomes apparent when we compare the arguments provided by Luther to the apologies in which Albrecht tried to justify the measures of 1525 to the imperial public.⁴¹ Albrecht and Luther continued their close contact after this decisive period. Indeed, how close the link between Albrecht and his “bishop, pope, and father”⁴² became can be seen in the confessional-political measures and the continued exchange of letters, but also in family relations: in 1538, Albrecht gave a collection of books to Luther’s sons as a present. His oldest son, Hans, received a stipend from the duke to study in Königsberg from 1549 – 1551. He also spent the last years of his life in this city and was buried there. In 1555, Luther’s daughter Margarete married the ducal officer Georg von Kunheim; she found her last resting place in Mühlhausen, a village near Königsberg.⁴³ This close relationship is also reflected in the fact that Luther and

 WA 12:244.  Examples include: “Themata de Votis” (1521); “De votis monasticis iudicium” (in this case, with a comparison of the vows and the fourth commandment to honor one’s father and mother; 1521/22); “Wider den falsch genannten geistlichen stand des Papsts und der Bischöfe” (1522); “Ordenung eyns gemeynen kastens, Radschlag, wie die geystlichen gutter zu handeln sind” (1523); and “Ursach und Antwort, daß Jungfrauen Klöster göttlich verlassen mögen” (1523).  Jähnig, Anfänge, 26.  Brecht, Martin Luther, 2:84.  We find respective arguments for Luther’s considerations particularly in the “Christlichen Verantwortung” (1526) and in “Libell” (1531); Almut Bues, Die Apologien Herzog Albrechts (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009).  Quoted in Tschackert, Herzog Albrecht von Preußen, 70.  Arnold, Luther, 36 f.

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Duke Albrecht exchanged songs and musical compositions.⁴⁴ It is obvious that Luther had found an important ally in Albrecht.

5 The Development in the Prussian State It is unlikely that Luther coordinated the publication of his text with the Grand Master, as the publication – for the reasons discussed above – came at an inconvenient time for Albrecht. During this period, the Samland bishop Georg von Polentz played an important role. He gave the first openly reformatory sermon at Christmas in 1523. Without mentioning the Teutonic Order directly in his sermon, he formulated his general rejection of monastic life. God’s word and the gospel had been obscured in the past, and the sermons had been full of “blather” (Tant). He had to warn against this, so that the believers would listen to the true word of God alone. What followed was a clear reformatory positioning: If we want to get back on the right path and walk blissfully, we will not only have to leave behind the works that are merely exterior, but also our assurance and confidence about our good work […] This means that you have to become pious and just in Christ only through the true living faith and trust in divine grace, and nothing else. (Derhalben wol wir anders auff den rechten wegk widder kommen, vnd selig werden, so mussen nicht alleyn die scheynenden werck abfallen, sondern auch allis czuuorsicht, vnd vortrawen auff vnser gutte werck abfallen, […] Also das du alleyn durch den warhaftigen lebendigen glawben odder vortrawen in götliche barmherczikeit, durh Christum frumm vnd gerecht must werden, vnd sonst nicht anders.)⁴⁵

Von Polentz explicitly mentioned the importance of Johannes Briesmann’s reformatory sermon, which meant an official legitimization. The bishop sent out a political and historical reformatory signal with his Christmas sermon. It is unlikely that this could have happened without Albrecht’s approval. The sermon also paved the way for the return of the Grand Master. It must have been clear to everyone that Prussia was posed for a new political orientation and that, in this process, the confessional change would play a crucial role. The early reformatory development in the Prussian territory relieved Albrecht as sovereign and reduced the remaining political instability. Shortly after his sermon, on January 28, 1524, von Polentz issued a reformatory mandate that recommended the reading of Luther’s works to his clerics.⁴⁶ A little later, he openly supported Luther’s German baptism rule. It seems that the first Evangelical church songs were already being sung in Königsberg at this point. “This de

 Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 3, Die Erhaltung der Kirche 1532 – 1546 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1987), 246.  Bischof Polentz, “Weihnachtspredigt,” 1523, in Walter Hubatsch, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche Ostpreussens, vol. 3, Dokumente (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968), 1– 9, here 7.  Polentz, “Reformationsmandat an die Geistlichen Samlands,” January 28, 1524; UB Preußen 2, no. 176, p. 49.

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facto meant the introduction of the Reformation.”⁴⁷ Luther himself realized the importance of von Polentz’ regulations and immediately had them printed in Wittenberg as a counter-text and an example for other bishops.⁴⁸ He called von Polentz the only bishop who gave honor to Christ and who preached the gospel in Prussia.⁴⁹ Further reformatory regulations followed. Resistance among the population was not to be expected, as people had long been unhappy with religious rule. Hence, political and religious reforms were easily accepted. The only red line that Albrecht would not cross was a reform that would have threatened his own authority and power. For him, consolidating power was key, and he could achieve this goal with the Reformation and with Prussia’s political reorientation.⁵⁰ Already in 1524, before his return to the empire, Albrecht ordered the introduction of the reformatory sermon in the smaller cities, as well.⁵¹ In Pomesanien, which was part of the State of the Teutonic Order, Bishop Erhard von Queiß (c. 1490 – 1525), at the end of 1524, formulated a complete reformatory program for his territory that also allowed for the marriage of monks and nuns. ⁵² In May of the same year, a second meeting between the Grand Master and Luther took place in Wittenberg. This meeting was probably about profane matters – concretely, about mediation in a debt case. It seems that, by then, the two had established mutual trust.⁵³ And yet, until the summer of 1524, Albrecht kept openly denying his sympathy for Luther’s doctrines.⁵⁴ The political changes are well known: from early 1525 onward, it became apparent that Albrecht’s requests for support had failed. Under the influence of Osiander and probably also of Luther, the Grand Master – concurrently with his negotiations about an alliance – had shown himself to be increasingly open to reformatory ideas, which he allowed full latitude in Prussia. It must have become clear to the Grand Master that he had to take the bull by the horns if he wanted to be successful. Therefore, he started direct negotiations with Poland. Immediately after his return from the empire, on April 8, 1525, these led to the Treaty of Krakow. The peace agreement included a provision for the mutual return of the territories that were occupied during the Polish-Teutonic War. Two days later, Albrecht gave an oath of fealty to the king of

 Wolgast, Hochstift, 199.  Wolgast, Hochstift, 199.  Wolgast, Hochstift, 29.  See Arnold, Luther, 32: “Since Albrecht wanted to retain his position as sovereign in Prussia, he had to surrender to Poland and the Reformation, with its religious form of legitimization as a support of his rule and as a defense against his former superiors. […B]ut Albrecht was far too active on the political stage […] to suddenly be led by religious emotions alone. However, this does not mean neglecting the existence of a deep religiosity in Albrecht” (translation mine).  Albrecht to von Polentz, June 13, 1524; UB Preußen 2, no. 230, p. 70.  Queiß, “Reformationsprogramm für das Bistum Pomesanien,” January 1, 1525; UB Preußen 2, no. 300, p. 101– 03.  Hubatsch, Geschichte, 13.  Flemmig, Friedrich der Weise, 176.

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Poland and was given the duchy of Prussia in exchange. In May, the Prussian representatives of the Estate endorsed the secularization of the monastic territory.⁵⁵ Even the few Teutonic Knights who had remained in the state approved of this step, showing almost no resistance.⁵⁶ This acceptance had ripened politically over the course of two years. “[Albrecht] had departed in 1522 as a Catholic Grand Master, and in 1525 he returned as a Lutheran duke, to a territory that had adopted the new doctrine with his approval.”⁵⁷ This transformation was an important political signal for the Reformation, because despite sympathies for Luther in the beginning, only a few – though certainly important –Estates of the Empire openly joined the reformatory movement in 1525/ 26. Most of them were characterized by “an ostensive non-decision […] for one or the other party in the religious conflict.”⁵⁸ Luther dedicated his interpretation of Deuteronomy (1525) to Georg von Polentz, the first bishop to become a Lutheran. In his dedicatory address, written right after the surrender, the reformer praised the persistence of the Samland bishop. Euphorically, he noted: “See the miracle: to Prussia the gospel rushes with full speed and full sails, a place it was not called to, and where nobody had sought it. In Upper and Lower Germany, however, where it came, it is vilified with every possible force and maliciousness, rejected and avoided.” (Und siehe das Wunder: Nach Preußen eilt mit voller Geschwindigkeit und prallen Segeln das Evangelium, wohin es nicht gerufen wurde und wo man es nicht suchte. In Oberund Niederdeutschland hingegen, wohin es kam, wird es mit aller Wucht und Boshaftigkeit geschmäht, zurückgewiesen und gemieden.).⁵⁹ In his direct letter of congratulation to Duke Albrecht, Luther again used the idea of a miracle: I am extremely pleased that God Almighty helped Your Electoral Highness to fulfill this [i. e., the transformation of the territory into a hereditary duchy] so graciously and miraculously. And I wish that the same merciful God will bring to a blessed end what has started so well for Your Electoral Highness, also for the benefit and advantage of the entire country. Amen. (Das E.f.g. Gott der allmechtige so solchem stand genediglich vnd wunderlich geholffen hat, byn ich hoch erfrewet vnd wundsche furder, das der selbige barmhertzige Gott solch angefangenn güete an E.f.g. volfure zu seligem ende, auch des gantzen landes nutz und frumm, Amen.)⁶⁰

 UB Preußen 2, no. 354, p. 118 f.  G. Vercamer, “Ein Hochmeister wird zum Herzog. Reaktionen und Schicksal der letzten Ordensbrüder in Preußen um das Jahr 1525,” Ordines militares 16 (2011): 213 – 39.  Arnold, Luther, 32 f.  Ziegler, Entscheidung, 40.  Dedicatory address to Georg Polentz for the lecture on Deuteronomy, 1523/24 (Deuteronomion Mosi cum annotationibus): “Et vide mirabilia: ad Prussiam pleno cursu plenisque velis currit Euangelion, quo non vocatur, ubi nec quaerebatur; in Germania vero superiore et inferiore, quo ultro venit et accessit, omni furore et infamia blasphematur, repellitur, fugatus;” WA 14:489 – 500, here 499.  WA.B 3:513 f., no. 876.

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Luther and Women Considerations of Luther’s Female Associates and the Biblical Evidence Martin Luther is known for his teaching of a gospel-induced Christian freedom and the equality of all in Christ. His preaching gained him a following near and far, among men and women, just as his treatises were eagerly read across the Europe, leading individuals to make bold decisions and proceeding with a new theological orientation. His reformation program challenged the medieval Catholic Church on multiple levels and even promised social reform, as he called all citizens to join in the renewed building of the kingdom of God on earth. Many changes occurred as a result of the reforms that snowballed from his theology, but how did these changes involve and impact the lives of women? The words “Luther and women” ignite several leads for exploration: How did Luther contribute to the lives of women through his publications and preaching? How did women perceive, support, and challenge Luther’s theology? How did Luther interact with women of his time – who were the women in Luther’s personal world? What was Luther’s thinking on women and gender, and what were his sources and influences? What are our sources on this? How do women studies, or gender studies, and Luther scholarship intersect? The answers to these questions vary and are incomplete. Several more or less uncharted research areas can be named, pointing to different sources, questions, and methods. First, the question of the “personal”: What do we know of Luther’s relationship with women of his time – his family, friends, and associates? His letters offer a helpful, underexplored window onto this. Second, the question of “biblical hermeneutics”: What did Luther say about the women in the Bible? Or what can we suggest he learned from them? How did he engage them in his hermeneutics? His treatment of the Old Testament matriarchs – Eve, Sarah, and others – is a rich source on the biblical mothers of faith, as well as a study of human nature. Third, the question of “theological anthropology”: How did Luther write about women as human beings? His lectures on the book of Genesis in particular offer insights into how Luther understood gendered reality, manifested in created, fallen, and redeemed human life. Fourth, the question of the “political”: How does Luther consider women’s place in his time? His treatment of and sermons on marriage shed light on his consideration of the factors defining women’s legal status and work conditions. Fifth, the question of “gender and feminist scholarship”: What can we say about current feminist approaches to Luther? In the following, after a brief comment on the question of Luther’s influence on women and the sources, Luther’s idea of women is discussed in the light of his personal relations and correspondence with women (which is the emphasis in this chaphttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-036

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ter). After that, brief observations are offered on his exegetical work with women of the Bible, particularly as this relates to his theological anthropology.

1 What Can We Say about Luther’s Impact on Women? The question of Luther’s impact on the lives of women deserves its own space. To accurately respond to this multidimensional question, the evidence needs to be considered in the larger context of the study of the Reformation’s impact and gender issues. The complexity of the question is demonstrated in the differences in the general assessments made thus far, which mostly address the Reformation’s legacy in general rather than Luther’s specifically. Some (e. g., Steve Ozment) deem Luther and his reforms’ impact on the lives of women to be mainly positive, mostly due to the celebrated emphasis on the newly recognized goodness of marriage and women’s vocations within marital arrangements and motherhood, as well as the noted efforts to offer basic education to girls. Others (e. g., Heide Wunder) are less impressed with this apparent domestication of women. In the light of naming the many losses for women (e. g., Merry Wiesner-Hanks) as a result of many of the reforms, such as closing the convent option, in the words of Lyndal Roper, it would be “a profound misreading of the Reformation itself” if its legacy was interpreted as predominantly beneficial for women.¹ How we assess whether and what kind of a Reformation there was for women depends on many factors, but most evidently on which women’s experiences are taken into account and whether it is men’s or women’s experience that serves as the final criteria. The very question about women invites an essential re-examination of the foundations and ramifications of the Protestant reformations: What was the good news for women?² The answers remain ambiguous. One can expect paradigm shifts from a study that places women at the center. Feminist and gender scholars have been pioneering in this important task.

 Steven Ozment, Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 38 and 31– 32; Heide Wunder, Er ist die Sonn, sie ist der Mond. Frauen in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1992), Eng. trans. He Is the Sun, She Is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 1 and 5.  See Kirsi Stjerna, “Conclusions and Observations on Gender and the Reformation,” in Stjerna, Women and the Reformation (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 213 – 22.

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2 On Sources and Questions Major works on Luther have devoted strikingly limited – if any – attention to the multifaceted topic of women and Luther. This is surprising, because “[h]is thoughts on women appear in every genre of his works: Biblical commentary, sermons, polemical tracts, the Bible translation, lectures, letters, and the Table Talks. They appear in Latin and in German,” including his whimsical table talks – hardly a reliable source for serious argumentation.³ This hesitancy is not surprising in the light of the revelations of gender studies: the topic has not been considered a valuable perspective in Luther studies, which, until recently, has remained quite a male-dominated field, as is also reflected in the choices of sources, methods, and questions asked. The emergence of gender studies and feminist scholarship is slowly changing the situation.⁴ In terms of sources, Luther’s theological anthropology and his view of women on the basis of his theology of creation and the fall can be best studied in his end-ofcareer (and life) lectures on the book of Genesis (1535 – 1545), particularly on Genesis chapters 1– 3.⁵ More fragmented but essential information can be detected in his biblical interpretation in general, available in a variety of texts, from his written works to his sermons. Specific treatises on marriage offer an obvious pool of sources (which are not discussed in this chapter). Last but not least, the reformer’s personal letters offer anecdotal material and also reveal his personal relations with actual women.

3 Personal: Luther’s Interactions with Women of His Time 3.1 Luther and His Mother Among late medieval theologians, Luther represents a new kind: one who does not write of women in the abstract, but actually lives with and loves women. It is not insignificant that he fathered several daughters (Elizabeth, Magdalena, and Margarethe) and buried two of them at a young age – a faith-defining experience for him and his wife, as was their boundless love for their daughters. We can surmise that the first female influence on Luther came primarily from his mother, Margarethe Luder, and secondarily from his sisters. Relatively little is known

 Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks, eds., Luther on Women: A Source Book (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 4– 5.  As an example, the International Luther Congress of the anniversary year 2017 in Wittenberg includes a seminar on the topic “Luther on Women/Women on Luther.” The seminar relates to the international work of the Global Lutheran Women’s Network, which explores Luther from interdisciplinary perspectives, enlightened by gender studies.  Enarrationes in Genesin (Lectures on Genesis); WA 42– 44 = LW 1– 8.

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of his mother or their relationship. Most of what we have on Margarethe comes from the words of her son, and that is not much. Perhaps the most famous story repeated in Luther biographies is that of Luther remembering his mother disciplining him so harshly that he bled. Margarethe’s superstition is also mentioned, as evidenced in her conviction that her child’s death had been caused by a witch. There is nothing idiosyncratic here, but rather a reminder of the reality of late medieval religiosity and how all children would likely have been exposed to the household faith of their parents. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence from Luther’s Table Talks and letters suggests that the way he understood proper marital relations was drawn from growing up in a household where the mother worked – physically, with a clear territory of her own, and with autonomy, at that. Perhaps more indirectly than directly, his parents’ examples – at least to a certain degree – shaped his expectations of marital relations and women’s role in the domestic scene. Without psychoanalyzing Luther post-mortem, it is worth pondering the nature of Luther’s relationship with his mother. Extrapolating from Luther’s correspondence, Albrecht Classen concludes: “We can claim with certainty only that Luther felt respect for her, but that he did not harbor a strong emotional attachment to her.” Whether the relationship was affectionate or not, Luther wrote to his mother just before her death and dedicated one of his works to “My beloved mother, Margarethe Luther” (Meiner Lieben Mutter Margarethen Lutherin, 1518). Whether there was tension between mother and son, perhaps over the son’s decision to proceed with a monastic calling, “[n]evertheless there are enough references to his mother to provide us with evidence supporting the thesis that the relationship with her was of influence and relevant in terms of Luther’s understanding of marriage and of the other sex in general.”⁶

3.2 Luther’s Wife, Katharina von Bora The most significant female influence for Luther was his own wife, Katharina von Bora (1499 – 1552) – and, with her, their daughters.⁷ Much of this influence is implied, drawing clues from Luther’s own words to or about his wife. Luther was not shy in letting the whole world know how dear Katharina was to him, as dear as Paul’s letter to the Galatians, his favorite in the New Testament: “It is my Katharina von Bora.” Luther playfully expressed his respect and affection to this “most holy Mrs. Doctoress” and could thank Katharina not only for sharing in his ca Albrecht Classen and Tanya Amber Settle, “Women in Martin Luther’s Life and Theology,” German Studies Review 14 no. 2 (1991): 231– 60, here 242; see also 238 – 42.  See Kirsi Stjerna, “Herr Doktor’ Katharina von Bora, 1499 – 1552: The Lutheran Matriarch” in Stjerna, Women and the Reformation, 51– 70; Martin Treu, “Katharina von Bora, the Woman at Luther’ Side,” Lutheran Quarterly 13 no. 2 (2009):157– 78.

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lamities as a persecuted man, but also for her excellent care in health, household matters, and finances, which, on several levels, nurtured Luther and freed him to “be Luther.”⁸ Katharina first met Luther after she left her Cistercian convent and sought safety in Wittenberg. Before that, she had encountered Luther through his writings, particularly those critiquing celibate life and the monastic calling. Luther was the reason she left her convent life, and as Luther’s spouse, she carved out for herself a new calling. In her, we have an embodied example, first, of a woman’s personal reaction to Luther’s teachings; second, of their personal relationship; third, of her wielding influence on the reformer; and fourth, of a woman who became a model – for better or for worse – of the “Lutheran woman” and the “ideal Lutheran wife.” Coming from the noble family of the von Boras, Katharina had been placed in a convent at the age of five, with the Benedictine sisters in Brehna. After her mother’s death, she was sent to Nimbschen, where she took the veil at fifteen, once it was clear that her family would not take her back, especially after her impoverished father remarried. There is no evidence of Katharina’s unhappiness in her convent life; she never spoke ill of those years. Her escape, however, is proof of her decision to find a different calling after having been exposed to Luther’s writings. Her choice to leave – with eleven other sisters – was a conscious one. Luther was behind the scheme to transport the sisters with the herring wagon of a city merchant, Leonard Koppe. Assisting nuns in leaving their convent in the part of Saxony ruled by Duke George was a dangerous undertaking for Koppe, and Luther’s support was instrumental. This is an endearing piece of evidence of Luther’s concern for the lot of women who responded to his reformation teachings. Luther was aware of the added risks involved for women – convent women in particular – and personally involved himself in ensuring the women’s journey to safety. Katharina was one of the few from the group who eventually arrived in Wittenberg; the others had gone back to their families. She was the last ex-nun without a husband. This worried Luther, who eventually agreed to marry Katharina – out of conviction, certainly, and to spite the pope and the devil; but also to make a point about the goodness of marriage, and to please his parents, who could now expect grandchildren. Luther had previously had his eye on another ex-nun, Ave von Schönfeld, according to his own report, but he had been too late with his proposal. Katharina, on the other hand, had fallen in love with a young student, Hieronymus Baumgartner, who, under family pressure, ended the relationship and married a younger, wealthier woman. It is clear that, while heartbroken, she was not desperate to marry just for the sake of marrying. She was content living in Wittenberg with the famous Cranach family, learning important skills in housekeeping. Luther’s matchmaking efforts failed; he had met his match. Whatever he had thought about women in the ab-

 WA.T 1 no. 146, 69; WA.B 11:291; see also WA.B 11:149, 11:276; Classen, Women, 245 and 239.

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stract was about to change through his encounter with this flesh-and-blood woman – Katharina. Eventually, on June 13, 1525, in the presence of a handful of witnesses (Justus Jonas, Johan Bugenhagen, Johan Apel, and Barbara and Lucas Cranach), Katharina and Martin married, with a larger wedding celebration in town two weeks later. The wedding of the reformer was not universally celebrated; quite the contrary. Not only was it scandalous for a monk and a nun to marry, it appeared to many especially troublesome and apocalyptic that Martin Luther himself would do so. The timing was also awkward, given the bloodshed of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1525. This year also marked the writing of one of Luther’s seminal works, On the Bondage of the Will, in response to Erasmus of Rotterdam’s defense of the freedom of choice. In Luther’s own telling, it was his new bride who strongly urged him to write the text that he himself eventually counted among his very best. Katharina was well prepared to assume the management of Luther’s household, including the finances. In the convent and in the Cranach household, she had learned the necessary skills to run a self-sustaining, flourishing household, with her gardening, fishing, baking, farm animals, and orchards. She even acquired a license for her own well and to brew her own beer. Katharina made a vital contribution to Luther’s physical well-being: with her cooking and home remedies and overall care, Katharina probably extended Luther’s life. Based on Luther’s own words – as he reflected on his experiences with Katharina as a mother and a spouse, and as a woman independent in her faith, Katharina’s influence on him had many dimensions: for one, observing Katharine’s skill and expertise in various areas where he himself was semi-incompetent (such as finances) impressed him. But also, by his own admission, Luther’s view of God’s love and grace was enhanced by observing Katharina in her maternal role. Furthermore, Luther’s experiences as a husband to Katharina enriched his teachings on marriage and sexuality as God’s gifts and blessings. His positive view of sexually expressed love and a respectful, affectionate spousal relationship had a home base. Their affectionate marital relationship illuminated his thinking on maleness and femaleness as well as gendered relations. Luther’s love for his wife is evident and well publicized in his letters. Luther’s terms of endearment are telling: “My heart’s beloved, housewife Katharina Luther.” He was not willing to trade his treasure for anything, not even Venice or France! It is obvious that this experience of spousal love, including the physical intimacy, necessarily shaped Luther’s theological reflection on female-male relations and also on women as sexual beings. Related to this, Luther expressed his overall respect for his wife in several ways – e. g., by signing a letter to Katharina as “your holiness’ willing servant.”⁹

 WA.B 6:270; 11:297, 300; WA.T 1 no. 49, 17; see also Classen, Women, 245 – 46.

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That Katharina earned not only Martin Luther’s affection, but also respect as his equal, is demonstrated in how autonomous the “rich lady of Zulsdorf, [the] lady doctor” was in managing their household affairs. Their affectionate marital relationship entailed unusual spousal equality and a clear division of duties based on the different territories a husband and wife would occupy in their vocations. That Luther’s will named Katharina as the head is significant proof of Luther’s respect for and trust in his wife, as well as of the equality in their relationship. Not surprisingly, when it came time to execute the will, the Saxon lawyers prevented Luther’s wishes from being fully carried out, but in the end, Katharina – under Phillip Melanchthon’s so-called guardianship – maintained significant autonomy as Luther’s widow. The fact that Luther trusted his spouse with financial matters and as the guardian of their household is one of the most significant statements about his attitude toward women and his endorsement of women’s equality in relation to men, including their husbands. Here, Luther was ahead of his time. This piece of his personal history is to be kept in in mind when assessing Luther’s more abstract ideas on women and his various – at times seemingly, or actually, contradictory – words on the matter. One could say that the reality or the bottom line of his views on women is to be found in his domestic, equal relationship with his beloved Katharina. Relating to the matter of the autonomy Katharina had in their household, this extended also to matters of faith and theology, which is significant for the discernment of what Luther thought of women’s theological aptitude: his Table Talks and letters give insights into Luther and Katharina’s engagement on matters of theology and spirituality, among other matters requiring their attention. We know, for example, that Luther urged his wife to read the Bible (and even paid her to do so), while her interest was in “living” the Bible, and that the two debated the proper interpretation of certain passages (e. g., the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac). Clearly Katharina was an opinionated woman, also theologically speaking, and there is no evidence of Luther ever trying to silence her or dismiss her views; quite the contrary. Luther’s letters illustrate how the couple discussed a variety of matters privately; theological issues belonged among their conversations.¹⁰ The evidence that Luther respected wife’s intellect and defended her place around the theological table – not just serving the food, but with a voice – and his tender comments about Katharina’s faith and learning (“better than that of the papists”) are important tidbits of information in piecing together the puzzle of Luther’s notion of women. A question arises as to whether he made a distinction between his own wife and other women: Did he consider his wife exceptional? That we do not know, but conversely, based on his respectful attitude toward his wife, we can draw conclusions  One of the most poignant – and tragic – examples are Luther’s last letters from Eisleben, his birthplace, written shortly before his death: in these letters, Luther reflects with his wife on the fate of the Jews and what he should, would, and had done regarding their expulsion, revealing the couple’s shared anti-Jewish sentiments; see WA.B 11:275 – 76 = LW 50:290 – 92 and WA.B 11:286 – 87 = LW 50:301– 04

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about the depth of Luther’s appreciation of women’s capacities and skills in all matters imaginable. As Albrecht Classen says, “Her intelligence, competence, devotion and persistence made her a vital part of his life, and certainly elevated her worth, as well as the worth of women in general, in his eyes.” ¹¹ At the same time, because the domestic calling – with its extensive duties – satisfied his wife, who did not ask for more in terms of expanding her “wifely vocation” outside of the domestic scene, Luther did not have a stimulus on the home front to articulate a rationale for the vocation of women with a public voice, not to mention their pulpit rights. This raises an interesting question: How did Luther relate to women who did exactly that – who wrote and spoke theologically in public? For this, we have precious letters to explore.

3.3 Luther’s Women Friends and Associates Beyond his immediate family members, Luther’s life involved other women. His household was often frequented by women: many a wife and a widow visited or stayed at his house. One of the most famous was the Duchess of Brandenburg, Elizabeth, the wife of Duke Joachim I, during her exile as part of her effort to convince her husband and sons to adopt the Augsburg Confession in their lands.¹² Luther’s family friends – the Jonases, the Bugenhagens, and the Melanchthons – were a close-knit group, with the constant presence of, more often than not, pregnant or nursing women in Luther’s household. Given that Luther preached regularly at Wittenberg’s St. Mary’s Church, this meant that her listeners included women and that he often had explicit words for them. Outside of the worship space, women sought his advice on a variety of matters: childbirth, spousal relations, marriage, family matters, grief of different kinds, and worry over the salvation of one’s deceased infant were some of the issues in situations where Luther offered pastoral care to women, showing great sensitivity. He also had an opinion – a negative one – about witchcraft and women’s involvement in any activity that would qualify as such. His texts prove his broad experience with women from different walks of life and with a variety of issues pertaining to women’s lives.¹³ We could say that Luther lived his life surrounded by women. In addition, he communicated with women via letters. He had friends and associates in other regions, women with whom he corresponded. It is notable that Luther was in correspondence with two of the most published Reformation women of the day: Argula

 Classen, Women, 247: “Katharina, although not originally of deep relevance to Luther as a person, became one of the most important people, and certainly the most influential woman, in his life.”  Stjerna, “Elizabeth von Brandenburg, 1485 – 1555, and Elisabeth von Braunschweig, 1510 – 1558 – Exiled Mothers, Reforming Rulers,” in indem, Women, 87– 108.  Wiesner-Hanks and Karant-Nunn (Luther) offer a broad and illustrative selection of Luther’s texts addressing various issues relating to women, including marriage, motherhood, sexuality, childbirth, and witchcraft.

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von Grumbach from Bavaria, and Katharina Schütz Zell from Strasbourg. Some of Luther’s letters to these women are extant, whereas their letters to the reformer are lost. While there is no evidence of the two women authors being in correspondence with each other, they were both in direct contact with Luther. Some conclusions can be read between the lines based on Luther’s ways of relating to these women. Argula and Katharina represent the possibility of what the Reformation could have meant for women, for those hearing in Reformation teachings an invitation for women to embrace teaching and leadership roles as well. Both women remain an exceptional minority, however, due to the quick tightening of control after the reformation movement’s first surge of energy and relishing of equality among the new Evangelicals, and as the office of preaching and teaching became institutionalized and was deemed a male responsibility. That said, observing Luther’s relation to these two exceptional women with a public voice is illuminating.

3.4 Argula von Grumbach Argula (1492?–1563?/1568?), a noble lady from a lower Franconian noble family, stands out as Luther’s special associate and friend.¹⁴ The two interacted, met in person, and communicated via correspondence. This mother of little children advised Luther, for example, on the value of marrying and later passed information on breastfeeding via Luther to his wife. Argula met Luther in Coburg on her way to the Diet of Augsburg (1530), and Luther would come to know Argula’s son Georg, when he later attended the University of Wittenberg. Whereas Argula’s letters to Luther are lost, his letters to her remain a valuable source of information about their relationship and about Luther’s attitudes toward a woman acting very differently from the mold presented to Protestant women. Argula’s story is pertinent to the task of assessing Luther’s understanding of women and their roles as well as how he related to women who were outspoken and exercised a public theological voice. She is also a central figure in tracking how women received, related to, and developed Luther’s reformation teachings. Operating in the context of Catholic Bavaria and in the shadow of the Catholic University of Ingolstadt, Argula stands out as an exceptionally brave woman, a layperson who rose to defend Lutheran faith and teachings, declaring Luther free from heresy – while not calling herself a Lutheran, but rather a Christian. She had her own interpretation of the Protestant faith and what it entailed for one’s life. That Luther expressed only admiration for Argula is a valuable piece of evidence regarding the question of Luther and women.

 Stjerna, “Argula von Grumbach, 1492 to 1563/68? – A Bavarian Apologist and a Pamphleteer”, in Stjerna, Women and the Reformation, 71– 85; see also Paul Matheson, ed., Argula von Grumbach: A Woman’s Voice in the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995).

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The occasion of Argula’s rising to public attention was her passionate defense of a student accused of Lutheran heresy. Arsacius Seehofer, an 18-year-old who had returned from Wittenberg with Luther’s and Melanchthon’s texts in his bags, was tried and faced a possible death penalty. Argula commenced a letter-writing campaign, demanding that the university men respond to her, in writing, with proof of the man’s – or child’s, as she noted – wrongdoing or heresy. Her letters to the university, the city council, and men in high places went without a response. Only an anonymous poem by a student and a misogynist sermon from the university professor Hauer revealed the level of turmoil she had caused, even if she never received an official reply. The young man recanted and was sent to a monastery, and Argula disappeared from the scene, after suffering penalties due to disciplinary actions taken against her (first) husband and his subsequent rage against her. From Argula’s writings and Luther’s letters, it is evident that Argula was highly regarded by the reformer, who called her a valiant disciple of Christ fighting among the Bavarian pigs. He was aware that Argula had become evangelical because of his teachings and that she defended his theology publically. He admired this, and in private, via letters, and when discussing Argula with others (e. g., with Georg Spalatin and Paul Speratus), without exception he remains appreciative of her. He articulates no problem with her gender – that is, he does not condemn her acting outside the realm of what was imagined to be fitting for women.¹⁵ However, the reformer did not publically associate with Argula either, not even when addressing the University of Ingolstadt on the same Seehofer matter.¹⁶ What this means is ambiguous: whether Luther failed to respect Argula’s – a woman’s – theological contribution on a par with that of men, or whether, out of desire to protect Argula, he refrained from associating with her publically, is a question left to speculation. But knowing how easy it was for Luther to lash out against his enemies or chastise Evangelicals who were taking his teachings of Christian freedom too far, and hearing no such reaction or curtailing in relation to Argula, it is reasonable to conclude that Luther responded with sensitivity to the gender norms of his day and saw no benefit in referring to a woman’s participation in a situation in which she had clearly already been not only ignored, but also penalized. Luther, of all people, knew the price one had to pay for disobedience and breaking norms! It is notable that Luther dedicated his Betbuchlein, a prayer book, to Argula. With or without Luther’s support, Argula’s own publications – her letters, with nearly 29,000 in circulation at the time – made her one of the most published lay authors

 WA.B 3:235, 247, 241; see also other letters from Luther, WA.B 2:235; 5:392; 5:536.  Classen writes, “with Argula we have one of the most outspoken and ardent female defenders of the Reformation. She also spoke out for women’s rights within the church and thereby endangered most of the support which she might have enjoyed on the side of Luther and his followers.” Luther may have been “uneasy” with Argula being such a “vociferous and belligerent” defender both of women’s rights and the Reformation; see Women, 250 and 248.

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in German at the time, next to Katharina Schütz Zell. She was the most noted female defender of Luther and Luther’s theology in print.

3.4 Katharina Schütz Zell Katharina Schütz Zell (1497– 1557) from Strasburg, a pastor’s wife with the calling of a church mother, also corresponded with Luther.¹⁷ Together with Argula, she represents one of the most vocal and published Reformation women who was also Luther’s personal associate. In a way, she embodies the extent of what a woman could do in the light of Luther’s principles of the priesthood of all believers and sola scriptura as well as his principal insights about the importance of Christian freedom and loving service of one’s neighbor. Katharina was not a follower of Luther per se, although she was inspired by his theology. Early on, she had been drawn to spirituality and attending to the spiritual needs of others, particularly women. Upon marrying the new Evangelical preacher in Strasbourg, Matthew Zell, she saw another path for her calling: she carved out for herself the office of a church mother – a partner in ministry, which included prison ministry, caring for the sick and the poor, speaking up on matters that required attention, and offering pastoral care, both in person and in writing. She worked toward unity between different reforming parties, and she considered compassion and Christian charity as overriding doctrinal divides. In addition to hosting ecumenical tables for theological conversation, she offered safekeeping for religious refugees. In her house, Lutherans, Zwinglians, Anabaptists, Schwenkfelders, and others could gather or hide. Together with Argula, she was the most published female reformer. Her first work originated from her defense of her own marriage – which was criticized by the local bishop – and the marriage of clergy more widely, as well as a defense of marriage in general. This feisty text was tabled for a while, and her second text was published first: a letter of consolation for the women in Kentzingen. Their husbands had been stranded during the war, and Katharina wrote a letter to the women at home, seeking to reinforce their Abraham-like faith and their “elect” status. Her writings exemplify her ongoing intent to emancipate others to engage with the Scriptures and to join in the act of Christian proclamation – by producing a hymnbook, she sought to empower everyone to proclaim the gospel. She went further than Luther in this regard in terms of how she understood the boundaries of lay authorization in the life of the church.

 See Kirsi Stjerna, “Katharina Schütz Zell, 1498 – 1562 – A Publishing Church Mother in Strasburg”, in Stjerna, Women and the Refomation, 109 – 31; see also Elsie McKee, ed., The Writings of a Protestant Reformer in Sixteenth-Century Germany: Katharine Schütz Zell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

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Like Argula, she took the principle of the priesthood of all believers to heart and inserted herself into different situations: she participated in the ecumenical table talks – which she also initiated and hosted, but also, at the end of her life, even presided and preached at funerals; for example, she performed a funeral for a condemned heretic. Most notably, as a frail, aged widow, she preached at her husband’s funeral, with a sermon intended for publication. This scandalous act would have led to her imprisonment, had she not died before the sentence could be imposed. We do not have a record of Luther’s reactions to Katharina’s radically normbreaking activity. We can read from his silence that Luther did not condemn her, whereas he did not publicly condone (other) women taking on similar roles. His letters are telling (1524, 1531): he writes “[t]o the virtuous wife of Matthew Zell, at Strasbourg, my kind and dear friend.” Addressing Katharina as a virtuous lady and a dear sister in Christ, Luther gives thanks for the gifts given to Katharina by God’s grace. He lauds her for having the gift of understanding and a husband from whom to learn what is good. Most importantly, Luther wishes Katharina grace and strength to continue, until they meet in God’s kingdom.¹⁸ In other words, Luther recognizes in Katharina a kindred spirit, an equal. He notices how she has benefitted from her husband’s open-mindedness and support – unlike Argula. He sees Katharina’s work as blessed by God, work the she should continue with Luther’s (implicit) blessing. Luther’s relationship that Katharina shows the Luther who is a friend of women and who, unlike theologians before him, does not consider women incompetent in ministry or theological matters.

3.5 Other Women Luther corresponded with several other women, acting as a spiritual counselor from a distance. These letters shed light on Luther’s negotiations with gender norms, class issues, and matters of authority. Generally speaking, Luther relates to women as his equals, regardless of their gender or social status – that is, his pastoral tone is the same whether he writes to a queen or to a grieving mother. As an example, whether he wrote to Queen Maria of Hungary (in September 1531) or to her children’s old tutor, Barbara Lisskirchen, from Freiberg, Luther wrote to these women as his equals in spiritual matters, sharing with them from his similar personal struggles. Luther wrote several letters to a woman named Dorothea Jörger, who had given funds to support the university and higher learning. Luther affectionately thanks Dorothea as his special friend in Christ. Later, he advises the same woman about writing up her last will and testament.¹⁹ Some of the other women Luther wrote to include: Elizabeth Agricola, the abbess of Hervoldnin Wesphalia, Frau Goritzin,

 See WA.B 6:27.  WA.B 6:194– 97, 407– 09, 546, 461– 62.

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and Else von Kaniz (whom Luther was inviting to Wittenberg as an instructor for girls, addressing her as “the honorable and virtuous maiden […] my dear friend in Christ,” and making her an example for others). These and other surviving letters portray a Luther who, regardless of the patriarchal ideology he inherited, respects the women he encounters and treats them as his equals in spiritual matters. His actual relationships with women certainly inspired his theologizing on spiritual equality and perhaps facilitated an evolution in his thought.²⁰

4 Biblical Hermeneutics The question of Luther and women involves his treatment of the female characters in the Scriptures. Luther has quite a lot to say about these biblical women, so much that he ends up contradicting himself at times – or so it seems. The main reason for this inconsistency may be the tension between his progressive spirit in reading the Scriptures and the gender constructions of his time.²¹ Here, only a few observations are offered. Generally speaking, it appears that Luther targets women in the biblical stories, even the less conspicuous ones, with positive attention. Unlike his contemporaries, he tends to underscore women in the Bible as examples of faith. In doing so, he counters the tradition of interpretation, often lifting the lowliest person in the story – often a woman – to new importance. This is particularly true with the Old Testament matriarchs, whose stories Luther turns upside down and whom he lifts up as the exemplary mothers of faith.²² One of the most special women in the Scriptures is Mary. Luther does not necessarily present Mary in particular as a model for the women of his day; she is in a category of her own. For example, in his sermon on Annunciation Day (1532), Luther sets Mary apart: “No other woman on earth has been shown such grace by her God.”²³ While making soteriological suggestions that present Mary in a different realm vis-à-vis ordinary human beings, and remaining personally quite fond of Mary the mother of God, Luther expresses criticism of excessive devotion to Mary.

 Classen, Women, 245: “We notice the vacillating nature of Luther’s approach toward women. He judges them as equals, and yet always in the end falls back to his traditional concept. Patriarchy has to remain the structuring principle, even though Luther permitted it to be debunked by his own standpoint vis-a-vis learned and intellectual women.”  See Mickey Leland Mattox, Defender of the Most Holy Matriarchs: Martin Luther’s Interpretation of the Women of Genesis in the Enarrationes in Genesin 1535 – 1545 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2003); KarantNunn and Wiesner-Hanks, Luther, 58 – 87.  See Mattox (Defender, 4) who writes: “Like other premodern interpreters, Luther was fascinated by the women of Genesis. Throughout the Enarrationes, he repeatedly imagined his way into their thought world, speculating confidently about what must have been going through their minds as they struggled with faith and faithfulness.”  WA 7:625 – 27; see Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks, Luther, ch. 3, 32– 57.

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While considering Mary as the highest model of faith and virtues, most of all obedience and humility, Luther preaches on Mary the “tender mother of Christ” as the humble teacher, in word and deed, of the rest of humanity.²⁴ It is notable that Luther does not present Mary as a specific model of faith or Christian life for women, but for all human beings. Mary, even if in her underscored divine motherhood, is as if genderless in Luther’s deliberation. The point of interest in Mary, for Luther, is what Mary teaches about Christ and about following Christ.²⁵ Similarly, observing the lineage of Christ, Luther tracks the steps of the Old Testament matriarchs. The women of the Old Testament are dear to Luther. His Genesis lectures offer longer treatments of Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, and Tamar in Genesis, and shorter ones on Rachel, Lea, Dinah, and Potiphar’s wife. With them, and particularly with Eve in the stories of creation and the fall, Luther extrapolates the complexities of human nature, gendered relations, and the dynamics and consequences of sin.²⁶ Reading the biblical stories of the matriarchs – at least to a degree – counter to the traditional interpretations, Luther offers strikingly positive conclusions on the actions and faith journeys of the matriarchs, setting them on an equal footing with their husbands in the larger story.²⁷ With these powerful Old Testament women, however, Luther is not drawing conclusions for women generally to embrace similarly outspoken or public roles. When interpreting the stories of the matriarchs of the Bible, Luther does not connect their stories of empowerment as an authorization or a stimulus for “ordinary” women to speak in public and preach. He does not open the office of proclamation and priesthood to women, even if he does seriously critique the hierarchical structures of priesthood in the Catholic Church. This tension manifests in how he reflects on the role of prophecy and the qualifications for preaching. Naming the “prophet women” in the Bible as examples of how preaching is (in principle) extended to all in the new existence of the priesthood of all believers, Luther, however, directly warns women – or anyone not properly prepared – against

 See Luther’s 1521 commentary on the Magnificat, Luke 1:46 – 55, in LW 21:295 – 355. See also Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks, Luther, 45. In his sermon on the birth of Mary (September 8, 1522; WA 10:3, 3, pp. 12– 31), Luther speaks of the correct honoring of Mary versus unscriptural, excessive honoring of her that would injure Christ. Honoring Mary means rather honoring God – Christ – in her.  See Luther’s sermon on the birth of Mary (September 8, 1522; WA 10:3, 3, pp. 12– 31): “Therefore honor the Mother of God in such a way that you do not stay with her, but come to God and set your heart on him alone and do not push Christ out of the middle […] So let her receive the honor that is appropriate to her as a child of God, praise God in her, as she herself praised God in the Magnificat.” See Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks, Luther, 36 and 37.  For example, with Tamar in Gen 38, “Luther praises the work of the married matron of the Old Testament, insisting that their stories are told in the Scriptures in order to show that Good took delight in their seemingly insignificant lives;” Mattox, Defender, 4.  See Stjerna, “Grief, Glory and Grace: Insights on Eve and Tamar in Luther’s Genesis Commentary,” Seminary Ridge Review 6 no. 2 (2004): 19 – 35; Kris Kvam, “Equality in Eden? Gender Dynamics and Luther’s Lectures on the Creation of Adam and Eve,” Seminary Ridge Review 6 no. 2 (2004): 5 – 18.

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taking this permission too far. He reckons there are times when even children, fools, and women may be called to prophesy, but those are special times.²⁸ In his estimate, the situation in Wittenberg in his lifetime did not qualify as that kind of an emergency. Most importantly, in his reading, the Holy Spirit – through Paul – has ordained that women should be silent and not preach in church, in accordance with Timothy 2:12. Women can say amen, sing, and praise. At home, then – and only there, they can teach and comfort each other with Scripture, according to their ability. Most importantly, at home they can teach their children. That said, when pushed to elaborate, in Luther’s imagination four factors could justify woman taking on the spiritual leadership typically preserved for men: 1) if the woman was truly called by God (and this often involved a call to rebuke men); 2) if she had a special gift to do so; 3) if she was a widow or not married (thus, with no obedience clause in place); or 4) when she was given authority and was advised to do so by a man (her authority thus deriving from a man, or from a situation in which no men are up to the task).²⁹ It was the biblical evidence that gave Luther pause in his hesitancy over women’s speaking role in the church. For example, when preaching on Joel 2:28, he considered the evidence: The four daughters of Philip were prophetesses. A woman can do this. Not preach in public, but console people and teach. A woman can do this just as much as a man. There are certainly women and girls who are able to comfort others and teach true words – that is, who can explain Scripture and teach or console other people so that they will be well. This all counts as prophesying, not preaching. In the same way, a mother should teach her children and her family, because she has been given the true words of the Holy Spirit and understands.³⁰

Under normal conditions, however, women were not invited to do this, but rather to be silent.³¹ Luther’s words on women and prophecy need to be heard in the light of the situation with the prophetic movements of the time, which challenged the channels of order Luther preferred when it came to organizing the proclamation of the word. And it was not just Luther: whereas, in the early stages of the Reformation, there was an opening for prophets (e. g., the Strasbourg prophets) and lay proclamation in general, that ceased with the ordering and institutionalizing of the Reformation, as the ministry of the word became regulated (see, e. g., the order expressed in the Lutheran

 Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks (Luther, 59) argue that “Luther did not break sharply with medieval commentators or his Protestant contemporaries, though he did offer a slightly wider understanding of the emergency situations in which women’s speaking might be justified than did many of them.”  See Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks, Luther, 58.  WA 34:482; Luther’s 1531 sermon on Joel 2:28.  LW 49:388, Luther’s “Infiltrating and clandestine preachers” sermon from 1532; see also KarantNunn and Wiesner-Hanks, Luther, 62– 63.

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Augsburg Confession of 1530, articles 5 – 8). With this ordering of preaching activity, women’s prophetic agency disappeared – although there were exceptions, and the evidence indicates that Luther was not unhappy about this.

5 Theological Anthropology Luther shared his medieval theological predecessors’ curiosity about women, except that he did not write in the abstract. His experience of a personal marital relationship, of family life, and of female friends and associates constituted his secondary source on gender realities and relations. The primary source for him was the Bible. While Luther addresses the topic of women in several of his sermons (e. g., on Genesis), his exegetical works, letters, and treatises – particularly his late Genesis lectures from 1535 – 1545 – offer a goldmine for exploring his conclusive views on women and gender based on his exegetical work and theological understanding. Based on the evidence, Luther had an instinctive appreciation of the gender differences, supported by his actual relations with women and his observations of women in his realm of operations. He read his Bible with a keen interest in the matter. With all his attentiveness to the nuances of matters of sex/gender, he makes a hilarious understatement about the differences between men and women: men and women differ “only in sex.”³² What exactly that “only” entails, Luther – as a biblical scholar – explores in the book of Genesis in terms of what it means to be a man or a woman, both in the first creation and in the post-fall reality.³³ The guiding force in his deliberation is amazement over the mystery of God’s creation, nowhere more manifest than in the creation of a woman, and, in return, in her ability to procreate. The latter provided ongoing stimulus for Luther’s fascination with women’s bodies, especially vis-à-vis motherhood.³⁴ In line with the ancient teachers’ readings of the same Scriptures, Luther explains the creation of a woman from Adam’s rib as indicating both equality and difference: equality in the sharing of the flesh, and a certain inferiority in status (not in nature) due to being created second. The separate time for the creation of the woman – on which Genesis gives two slightly different accounts, one indicating creation on the same day (Gen 1), the other narrating a later creation for Eve (Gen 2) – is interpreted as indicating a gender hierarchy from the very beginning and, as such, a nat-

 This is taken from his explanation of Gen 2:24: “Whatever the man is and has in the home, this the woman is and has; she differs only in sex;” quoted in The Annotated Luther, vol. 6, ed. Euan Cameron (Minneapolis, forthcoming 2017).  See Kirsi Stjerna and Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, “Introduction, Gen. 2:21– 24,” in The Annotated Luther, forthcoming.  For more on this topic, see ch. 6 on sexuality and ch. 5 on marriage and family in Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks, Luther; see also ch. 3 in Women.

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ural basis for men’s and women’s different statuses in the world and for the ordering of their mutual relations, also within the church. When deliberating on the creation of Eve, the order of events, and what unfolds from them, Luther’s eyes are first and foremost on the miracle of life per se. The miracle of birth, the physicality of it, and the women’s created, physical role in it is a positive puzzle for Luther, who expresses giddy excitement about God’s mysterious designs in this regard. Women – fundamentally, in Eve – are the mothers of all the living. This is a deeply theological insight for Luther, one that feminist scholars can develop further in their search for an Eve-centered theological anthropology and for a theology oriented toward the experience of and insights from motherhood. Much of Luther’s deliberation on Eve has to do with his twofold interest: What is the purpose of creating “another” sex? And what is her relationship to the “first” sex, man? Eve’s creation per se is different from that of Adam. Luther’s concern is whether this implies inferiority or inequality. Broadly speaking, he denies any hierarchy in God’s creation of men and women, while noting the different methods used in their creation and their different vocations. The fact that Adam and Eve share a rib is more important to Luther, in final analysis, than the order of creation. He also pays close attention to Adam’s immediate reaction to his new partner: Adam knows who Eve is – a nest and a dwelling place for Adam, as Luther suggests. In other words, based on the creation accounts in Genesis, women were created with equal worth and substance with men, while their purpose and calling was to be found in the immediate dynamics between the first humans: Adam needed Eve for companionship and for procreation, and in return, Eve would enjoy Adam’s abiding love.³⁵ The fall changed this situation. The relationship between men and women became compromised and tense. The sexual energy between them became a source of shame, against God’s design, with the result that the first humans covered their nudity. More importantly, the dynamics between men and women changed, involving a new tension wherein the “natural” hierarchy in callings requires Adam’s intentional work. For women, Luther grieves, the fall meant pain in their most glorious work – childbirth – and the loss of the blessed possibility of giving birth to several babies at one time. Obviously, Luther’s reading of the Eve narratives in the Bible is shaped by his male perspective, while it is equally obvious that he attempts to step into women’s situation and interpret their experience – as he imagines it – with the most positive intent. When describing the impact of the fall on women and their relationships with men, Luther hardly suggests new paradigms, but he fleshes out this centuries-old narrative as an explanation for the status (quo) of gender relations. However, his interpretation is unusual in two areas: first, when he discusses women and sin, whether it be the case of a biblical woman or a contemporary situation, he does not resort

 See Stjerna, Grief; see also Stjerna and Pedersen, “Introduction,” in The Annotated Luther, forthcoming.

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to concluding that sin arises from women’s supposedly weaker nature or greater vulnerability. Quite the contrary – he seems to relish women’s creativity in their fallen nature and the often unfair conditions in which they find themselves, situations where the men are (more often than not) at fault (e.g, the case of Tamar). Second, his starting point – the equal but different creation of the two sexes, combined with his compassionate study of women in the Old Testament, leads him to portray a theological picture of the daughters of Eve that is far less negative than the one he inherited. His Eve and her daughters are valiant examples of faith, whose bodiliness contains the greatest of mysteries: a woman’s body can give birth, even to Jesus. Luther never gets over this reality, in which women were his teachers.

6 Conclusions It makes a difference which of Luther’s texts one engages with when one asks these questions about women. His academic lectures differ from his sermons in addressing the question of the nature and calling of women. This could be taken as proof of Luther’s inconsistency with regard to the question of women or as a sign of the complexity of the issue and the unsettled context within which he was standing – in the watershed between late medieval and early modern horizons. At time, the reformer manifests quite modern instincts, just as he has a wealth of information coming from his own home and from his female associations. He encounters the women of the Bible with open arms. Theologically, he promises inclusivity beyond affirming the spiritual equality of men and women in the creation stories. He occasionally even suggests female imagery for God. He takes steps towards what we could call a feminist interpretation of the stories of women in the Bible and a theological-anthropological analysis of human nature and gender that, when appropriately developed, could sow the seeds of a powerful theology of emancipation. However, politically and for practical purposes, outside of his own home and personal relationships, Luther refrains from moving beyond the patriarchal parameters that structured his society and his church. The male hierarchy is preserved in church and in theology, with more options and freedom available for the male followers of Luther to discern, in contrast to what is presented to women almost exclusively: the glorious calling of motherhood. Underscoring the holiness of the latter obviously had a positive impact on many women who left their convents and established themselves in the domestic scene, without demanding more. Others, as in the case of Argula von Grumbach and Katharina Schütz Zell, recognized in Luther’s theology the seeds of an emancipation that called them to step outside of the norms that Luther had (also) affirmed. As discussed above, Luther did not unilaterally reject these options – quite the contrary. It seems that in the case of Luther, theory and actual reality do not always neatly correlate.

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To conclude, a deeper and broader analysis is still needed when it comes to Luther’s treatment of the topic of women – in his various texts and in the light of his context – in order to unveil his truest instincts and intentions. Advanced work on this topic requires the methodological innovation of feminist scholarship, both in the exegetical realm and in the areas of historical and systematic analysis. Given how prominently women appear in Luther’s last lectures on Genesis, it would seem a most proper path to take, especially in the anniversary year of 2017, with its invitation for both the criticism of tradition and a visionary moving forward with the legacy of Luther. Luther can hardly be understood without “his” women, just as women today can expect to be pleasantly surprised by their critical and compassionate conversations with Martin Luther.

Brooks Schramm

Luther and the Jews 1 The Judenschriften One approach to this neuralgic topic is to focus on the so-called Judenschriften, the five treatises published by Luther that deal specifically with the matter of the Jews and Judaism: That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew (1523); Against the Sabbatarians (1538); On the Jews and Their Lies (January 1543); On the Ineffable Name and on the Lineage of Christ (March 1543); and On the Last Words of David (August 1543). In these publications, Luther does not address Jewish readers directly; rather, he writes about Jews to a Christian audience.

1.1 That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew This was one of the most popular things that Luther ever wrote. The treatise begins with Luther defending himself against charges made at the Diet of Nuremberg (1522) to the effect that he had denied the virginity of Mary, and thus by implication the divinity of Christ. The charges, which were untrue, were an attempt to portray Luther as a proponent of standard Jewish theological claims against Christianity. After debunking the accusations against him, Luther then went on to develop a type of manual on how to deal with the Jews in hopes of converting them. The proposed strategy regarding such conversion involves a two-step process: first, the Jews should not merely be tolerated, but also treated kindly; second, the Jews should to be taught how to interpret Scripture (i. e., the Old Testament) correctly. Luther’s strategy simultaneously includes a frontal assault on the papal church and its reliance on the baptism of Jews, often coerced, and on its failure to catechize Jewish converts properly. It is noteworthy that the treatise lacks any reference to Jewish hardening or stubbornness; rather, the Jews are consistently portrayed as victims of dehumanizing treatment and failed catechesis at the hands of Christians. The irenic tone of the treatise, together with its clear support for public toleration of the Jews, led a number of Luther’s contemporaries – both Christian and Jewish – to regard him as a friend of the Jews. In his later vehement anti-Jewish writings, Luther would accuse the Jews of misusing his earlier intentions. The roots of this later vehemence, however, are already latent in Born a Jew, because the treatise is a sustained critique of Jewish exegesis of Christian prooftexts in the Old Testament, the very same prooftexts that he would draw on in his later anti-Jewish diatribes.

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1.2 Against the Sabbatarians The irenic tone of the 1523 treatise is nowhere to be found in the remaining Judenschriften. Having received a report from a “good friend,” Count Wolfgang Schlick of Falkenau, about “Judaizing” activities among Christians in Moravia (e. g., seventhday Sabbath observance and circumcision), in Against the Sabbatarians Luther builds an argument from Scripture against any Jewish claims upon Christian faith and practice. A distinction is to be made between what may have been happening in Moravia and what Luther thought or feared was happening. His opening remarks paint a confusing picture, in that what he says does not square with what is known about sixteenth-century seventh-day sabbath or “Sabbatarian” movements. Instead, Luther portrays a successful proselytizing effort on the part of Jews directed at Christians. While individual Christian conversions to Judaism were not unheard of, they were extremely rare at a time when Jewish proselytizing was still a capital offense. Thus, Luther’s “Sabbatarians” are best understood as “a bogey man that grew out of the Christian fear that Jews would make proselytes of Christians.”¹ For Luther in particular, this fear included the idea that Christians could be infected with Judaism via the work of Christian Hebraists. Stated differently, Luther simply assumed that Jews were somehow responsible for “Judaizing” activities as such. Written at a time of fluctuating political policy toward the Jews (1536 – 1543), whose rights were revisited in both Electoral Saxony and Electoral Hesse, with this treatise Luther begins to promote a unified policy toward the Jews in German Protestant territories – namely, that of expulsion. Luther’s polemical mantra in the treatise is “1,500 years” (the approximate length of the ongoing Roman exile of the Jews in Luther’s day), which is repeated some 26 times. He uses this polemic as emperical proof that God has rejected the “stiff-necked” and disobedient Jewish people – that is, the Jews have been and are forsaken by God and can no longer claim to be the people of God. This argument from history is one that Luther took over directly from Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349). Overall, the treatise constitutes Luther’s advice to Christians on how to argue with a Jew, and it anticipates much of On the Jews and Their Lies, especially with regard to the accusation of lying.

1.3 The Judenschriften of 1543 The three 1543 treatises are best conceived of as a unit and constitute a three-pronged polemical response on Luther’s part to the challenges posed by the Christian Hebraists, who were, in his view, becoming increasingly influenced by Jewish biblical in-

 Thomas Kaufmann, “Luther and the Jews,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, eds. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 89.

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terpretation. Of these three, On the Jews and Their Lies is the primary and most important document, while the two subsequent treatises function as appendices to it.²

1.4 On the Jews and Their Lies This is generally regarded as Luther’s most infamous writing, and deservedly so. In the fall of 1542, Luther heard again from Schlick, who informed him that Against the Sabbatarians had generated a Jewish response. The response in question was likely Sebastian Münster’s Messiahs of the Christians and the Jews, which describes a dialogue between a Christian and a Jew in which the Christian fails to respond adequately to Jewish interpretation of Old Testament prophetic texts relating to the Messiah.³ Over and over again in the treatise, Luther is worried about Jews making inroads into the church via the “Judaizing” interpretations of Christian Hebraists. But behind this significant issue stands an additional item, which is Luther’s claim to be in possession of new knowledge regarding Jewish “blasphemy.” Much of this new knowledge derived from his recent reading of The Entire Jewish Faith by Anthonius Margaritha, a Jewish convert and contemporary of Luther. From this book, Luther learned about Jewish rituals and prayers that contained slanderous claims about Jesus, his mother, and all Christians, claims that were intensely offensive to Luther on a personal level. With these twin battle lines in view, Luther reverses his public position from twenty years prior regarding toleration of the Jews, arguing forcefully for the expulsion of what he now calls “our plague, our pestilence, and our misfortune.”⁴ Apart from an addendum against Jewish messianic expectations, the treatise contains three major sections: 1) Jewish lies against doctrine or faith; 2) Jewish lies against persons; 3) Luther’s solemn advice on what to do with the Jews. Stating that his previous tolerant stance was based on ignorance of their actual blasphemous practices, Luther articulates his new political position, which is that the Jews should be expelled. His preferred solution was that Jews should go and live “where there are no Christians”:⁵

 See Kaufmann, Luthers “Judenschriften”: ein Beitrag zu ihrer historischen Kontextualisierung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 110 – 27; Stephen G. Burnett, “Jews and Luther/-Lutheranism,” in Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions, eds. Timothy J. Wengert et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, forthcoming).  See Stephen G. Burnett, “A Dialogue of the Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy and Anti-Jewish Polemic in Sebastian Münster’s Messiahs of the Christians and the Jews (1529/39),” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 91 (2000): 168 – 90.  Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann, eds., Luther’s Works, American ed., 55 vols. (Philadelphia/St. Louis, MO: Fortress and Concordia, 1955 – 8)6, 47:275, hereafter LW. See also D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 69 vols. (Weimar, 1883–), 53:528, 29 – 30, hereafter WA.  LW 47:277; WA 53:530, 28.

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In my opinion the problem must be resolved thus: If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews’ blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country. Let them think of their fatherland; then they need no longer wail and lie before God against us that we are holding them captive, nor need we then any longer complain that they are burdening us with their blasphemy and their usury. This is the most natural and the best course of action, which will safeguard the interest of both parties.⁶

If expulsion is not found to be acceptable, then the civil authorities in Protestant territories must be urged to practice a “sharp mercy” toward the Jews so as to prevent them from continuing to blaspheme. Luther itemizes this sharp mercy in two forms: one addressed to the civil authorities and one to the pastors and preachers (who are to encourage the authorities to do their jobs). The first form involves: 1) burning down synagogues; 2) destroying Jewish homes; 3) confiscating Jewish prayer books and talmudic writings; 4) forbidding rabbis to teach; 5) abolishing safe-conduct for Jews; 6) prohibiting usury by the Jews; and 7) enforcing manual labor on the Jews. The second form entails: 1) burning down synagogues; 2) confiscating prayer books, talmudic writings, and the Bible; 3) prohibiting Jewish prayer and teaching; and 4) forbidding Jews to utter the name of God publicly. The unmistakeable intention behind these proposals was that the religious and social substructure of Jewish life in German Protestant lands should be demolished, that Jews should be reduced to a slavelike status, and that they would leave of their own accord as a result.

1.5 On the Ineffable Name and on the Lineage of Christ Announced at the end of On the Jews and Their Lies, the second 1543 treatise, On the Ineffable Name and on the Lineage of Christ, appeared only two months later. It represents a substantial expansion of the brief section on “Jewish lies against persons” from the previous treatise. Part one had a twofold impetus. The first was Luther’s engagement with Toledot Yeshu, the medieval Jewish counterlife of Jesus, which presents him as a magician empowered by knowledge of the ineffable name of God (i. e., the Tetragrammaton or four-letter name). Here Luther translates into German a Latin version of Toledot Yeshu known to him from a recently published work of the fourteenth-century Carthusian monk, Porchetus Salvaticus. The second impetus came once again from the Jewish convert, Margaritha, from whom Luther had learned about Jewish mystical practices connected to the divine name and the interpretive procedure known as gematria. ⁷ In part two, Luther harmonizes the genealogies of Matthew 1 and Luke 3 and thus argues for the true origin of Jesus over against the blasphemous story told in Toledot Yeshu. ⁸ The treatise concludes with stern  LW 47:287– 88; WA 53:538, 7– 13).  Interpretation based on the numerical value of words and phrases.  See Peter von der Osten-Sacken, Martin Luther und die Juden: Neu untersucht anhand von Anton Margarithas “Der gantz Jüdisch glaub” [1530/31] (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002), 140.

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words of caution for the Christian Hebraists and guidelines for the proper translation of prophetic texts from the Hebrew Bible. The tenor of part one is extremely harsh and is riddled with scatological language. The treatise as a whole has recently been called “the ugliest and linguistically dirtiest document that Luther had ever written.”⁹ Luther’s close colleagues – Philip Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, and Andreas Osiander – all expressed displeasure in varying degrees with what Luther had written, and the document was panned by the Swiss reformers and by Roman Catholics as well. On the Jewish side, the issue was taken up by Rabbi Joseph (Josel) of Rosheim, the chief spokesperson for the Jews of Germany. In a letter to the Strasbourg city council complaining about the treatise, Josel stated: “I am amazed that so erudite a person permitted something of this kind to be printed.”¹⁰ Luther, however, had already anticipated these types of reactions to his new treatise, as is evident from his prayer for divine understanding: Oh, my God, my dear Creator and Father! I trust that you will graciously credit me that I have – most reluctantly – had to speak so shamefully about your divine majesty against your cursed enemies, devils, and Jews. You know that I have done this out of the flame of my faith and for the honor of your divine majesty. For this is a matter of utmost seriousness to me.¹¹

From Luther’s own perspective, the treatise was his defense of the second commandment and the proper use of the name of God over against the Jews, while simultaneously attacking the authority of the rabbis and their influence on the Christian Hebraists.

1.6 On the Last Words of David As the last of the 1543 treatises, this text picked up where the previous treatise had left off – namely, with the issue of proper translation of key Old Testament prophetic texts. Luther had come to regard 2 Sam 23:1– 7 as a central christological passage in the Old Testament, and his rather novel claim was that King David was not speaking in this passage about himself as Messiah, but rather about the coming Messiah in whom he believed. The treatise was written to defend this view as well as Luther’s new translation of 2 Sam 23:1, which made this unique interpretation more explicit. Luther is at pains throughout the treatise to articulate his interpretive principles where the Old Testament is concerned, and thus the treatise amounts to a defense of his Old Testament hermeneutics as such. This brings him head-to-head with what he

 Kaufmann, Luthers Juden (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2014), 134.  Chava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim: Leader of Jewry in Early Modern Germany, ed. Adam Shear, trans. Naomi Schendowich (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 417.  WA 53:605, 8 – 13.

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knows of Jewish biblical interpretation and contributes to the anti-Jewish character of the whole. For Luther, there could be no real common ground between Jewish and Christian readings of the Old Testament, because New Testament theology (i. e., Christology) overrides Old Testament Hebrew grammar, even and especially at the level of translation. Because Jews are ignorant of theology – that is, because they reject Christ and the New Testament – Christians must be extremely wary of utilizing Jewish readings of any Old Testament text that has christological implications. Over and over again, Luther states that the secret to Scripture and its interpretation is the message about Christ. Thus the proper role of Old Testament scholarship is to translate and interpret the Hebrew Bible in such a way that it “rhymes” with the New Testament. Thus Luther’s summation: Let this be my translation and exposition of David’s last words according to my own views. May God grant that our theologians boldly apply themselves to the study of Hebrew and retrieve the Bible for us from those rascally thieves. And may they improve on my work. They must not become captive to the rabbis and their tortured grammar and false interpretation. Then we will again find and recognize our dear Lord and Savior clearly and distinctly in Scripture.¹²

1.7 The Problem of “Luther and the Jews” A primary focus on these five treatises generates certain perceptions, the most common of which is the claim that the problem of “Luther and the Jews” is related to his late career, while the early Luther was oriented quite differently toward the Jews and Judaism. The idea is that Luther contradicted himself and that therefore those who follow in his tradition are free to choose one Luther over against another. A related claim is that Luther’s late writings about the Jews are essentially unrelated to the heart of his theology of justification by faith alone and can therefore be jettisoned from discussions of his central theological insights. There is no question that Luther’s late writings exhibit a dramatic increase in hostility toward the Jews, particularly around the contested political issue of toleration or expulsion. But the implication that the earlier Luther was a true friend of the Jews, or that he had at any time a positive theological evaluation of Judaism and those who practice it, cannot withstand critical analysis.

 LW 15:352; WA 54:100, 20 – 26).

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2 A Wider Lens: The Jew in Luther’s Thought 2.1 Luther’s References to the Jews Although Luther only wrote five documents in which the Jews are the central subject matter, his references and allusions to the Jews, Judaism, Israel, synagogues, etc., easily run into the thousands. These references encompass his entire career and occur in every literary genre he employed. When one reads Luther with a close eye toward “the Jewish question,” it becomes apparent that the Jews were not a tangential or occasional element in his thought, but rather a central building block in the construction of his theological worldview, and that this was the case throughout his career, not merely at the end.

2.2 Luther’s Encounters with the Jews Given the prominence of the Jews in Luther’s writings, however, it is somewhat paradoxical that actual Jewish people were not in any way a part of his day-to-day life. The cities of Erfurt and Wittenberg, where Luther spent his adult life, were both devoid of Jews. In fact, “the only city in which Luther ever lived that tolerated Jews was […] Eisleben [his birthplace], where [at the end of his life] he pursued their expulsion. A judenfrei city was the norm in Luther’s lived experience.”¹³ On occasion, Luther did travel to areas where Jewish communities were well established, but there is no reliable documentation regarding contacts between him and representatives of those communities. There are several references in Luther’s writings to exegetical debates with three (or two) learned Jews about the proper christological interpretation of Old Testament texts, and this has given rise to the belief that Luther was regularly engaged in face-to-face debate with Jews. But all of these references are likely refractions of a single encounter that took place in Wittenberg in 1526, an encounter that had an acutely negative impact on him. In the spring of 1537, Luther received a letter from the Strasbourg reformer, Wolfgang Capito, who had written to him on behalf of Josel of Rosheim requesting that Luther write a recommendation of Josel to the elector, John Frederick. Josel desired to intercede with the elector concerning the edict promulgated the previous summer, which had made Electoral Saxony completely off-limits for Jews. Luther wrote back to Josel directly, denying the request and arguing that the Jews had misused his prior public leniency toward them. Luther’s other contacts with or communications concerning Jews are generally related to baptisms of Jews. In a 1530 letter to Heinrich Gnesius, Luther offered advice on how the baptism of a Jewish girl should take place, while emphasizing the importance of the examined faith and intention of the girl. In 1532, Luther reported his ire  Kaufmann, Luthers “Judenschriften”, 157.

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over a Jew who had been baptized in Wittenberg but who had treated it lightly. Similarly, he counseled his friend Nicholas von Amsdorf not to go through with the baptism of a Jew, which he had previously planned, because the Jews are “rogues.” In 1540, a Jew named Michael from Posen came to Wittenberg to seek baptism; Luther permitted it after ascertaining the genuineness of his intentions. His closest personal contact seems to have been with the baptized Jew Bernard, the former Rabbi Jacob Gipher of Göppingen, who had been baptized prior to the summer of 1519 and whose son was baptized in 1523, with Luther in attendance. When Bernard was forced to leave Wittenberg in 1531 due to financial difficulties, both Luther and Melanchthon took care of his children for a time.¹⁴ That the physical presence of Jews in Luther’s own life experience was an anomaly is illustrated in a late letter to his wife of February 7, 1546, from Eisleben, just days before his death. Here Luther notes – with some wonder – that there were fifty Jews living in the town and that there were approximately four hundred Jews who lived and worked in the nearby village of Rissdorf.

2.3 Theology and Politics The place of the Jews and Judaism in Luther’s thought – as well as nuances regarding levels of continuity and discontinuity, consistency and contradiction – are fruitfully approached by distinguishing between two questions: one theological and one political. What Luther thought about the Jews and Judaism, on the one hand, and what he thought should be done with the Jews of Germany, on the other, are not synonymous. In the former case, Luther demonstrates a general consistency over the course of his career, but with a clear increase in antipathy in his later years. In the latter, Luther changed his public position dramatically, from a position of tolerance to one advocating expulsion, but he had clear grounds in mind for doing so.

3 What Did Luther Think about the Jews and Judaism? 3.1 Sources Luther’s knowledge of Judaism was constrained by what he read, and those readings were dominated by overtly anti-Jewish treatises, some of which were written by Christians and others by Jewish converts. Over the course of Luther’s academic career, classical Jewish texts were becoming more widely available to Christian schol Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, trans. James L. Schaaf (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 3:335, 339 – 40.

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ars, but, by his own admission, his skills in Hebrew and Aramaic were not at a level where he could engage with these texts himself in a systematic fashion. As a result, his descriptions of Judaism and Jewish thought have the character of partial truth and caricature, although Luther himself would not have granted such an assessment. Be that as it may, Luther was convinced that he knew more than enough about Judaism to make definitive judgments about it. In the late 1530s, when he first read Margaritha’s The Entire Jewish Faith, in which substantial portions of the Jewish daily liturgy were translated into German, he found in those prayers confirmation of his already developed, unflinching stance over against Jewish religious thought.

3.2 Rupture Where the Jews are concerned, Luther saw a complete rupture between the Judaism of biblical times and that of post-biblical times – that is, between the Judaism of the Old Testament and that of his day. For Luther, the rupture was precipitated by the overwhelming “No” of the Jews to Jesus as the Christ in New Testament times, and it had been maintained by that ongoing “No” ever since. Few Christian thinkers have been more troubled by this “No” than was Luther. Over the course of his entire career, he struggled to find a plausible explanation to account for how it could be. Like many before him, he regarded the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 CE as the strict judgment of God visited on the Jews for the crucifixion of Christ, and the interminable exile of the Jews, which by Luther’s time was approaching 1,500 years, became for him definitive proof that God had cast them off and that they were – obviously – no longer the people of God. In this regard, however, it is not difficult to perceive that Luther himself was terrified by what he knew of Jewish life in the European diaspora. Being landless, always vulnerable to persecution and expulsion, and lacking any clear word from God regarding the end of their exile embodied for Luther what it means to live life under the wrath of God. It was unthinkable to him that the promises of the biblical prophets could have remained unfulfilled for so long, as the Jews claimed, because this contradicted his most basic convictions about the nature of God. To be sure, Luther believed that God on occasion punishes God’s own people, even severely; the biblical record is all too clear on this issue. But Luther argued that God could not punish the Jews in the way they were being punished, if they were still God’s own people. The only tenable explanation for him was that the promises of the prophets had passed to another people, for otherwise God would be a liar. Luther was confounded by how the Jews could continue to deny the reason for their miserable 1,500-year exile, especially when the witness of Scripture was so evident to him. Over the course of his career, he would come to the conclusion that the only thing that could explain it was that God had handed them over to the devil. Thus their resistance to the gospel and their resistance to admitting the reason for their exile were willful and unforgiveable. Though it was not typical of Luther, this

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thoroughgoing demonization of the Jews led late in his career to the dredging up and repeating of scurrilous accusations, to the effect that it was in the nature of Jews to want to kill Christians.

3.3 Election Of all of the theological charges that Luther leveled against the Jews, the most persistent one had to do with the issue of election – that is, the Jewish claim to be the chosen people of God based upon physical descent from Abraham. Luther readily granted that the Jews were indeed Abraham’s physical descendents, but his assertion was that they had consistently misconstrued the nature of God’s promise to Abraham. For him, the promise to Abraham’s seed was in reality the promise of “the Seed” – that is, the promise of the coming Messiah (Gen 3:15). The physical seed of Abraham – the Jews – were God’s chosen instrument in Old Testament times to bear that promise. But Abraham’s true descendents, even in Old Testament times, were always those who believed in the promise of the Messiah and not those who relied on their physical descent. This is what Luther sees as the fundamental error – and sin – of the Jews, who trust as it were that they have been born into grace, that they are bound to God by birth, and thus that God owes them God’s benevolence. For Luther, this purported claim on God constitutes a theological obscenity, because the grace and benevolence of God can only be accessed by faith, and it has never been otherwise. The Jewish claim of chosenness, therefore, becomes the quintessential example of what Luther means by “boasting in the flesh,” and it is at the root of his understanding of Judaism as a purely carnal religion that knows nothing of the spiritual or the eternal. This “boast” of the Jews carries with it two corollaries. The first is what Luther understands as the fully exclusive character of Jewish chosenness; he takes the claim of chosenness to imply the exclusion and ultimate damnation of all other peoples. The second is derived from the first: if the Jews claim election – and thus salvation – exclusively for themselves, then they are by definition despisers of the rest of humanity and, ultimately, misanthropes. The misanthropic character of Jewish life and hope crystalizes for Luther around Jewish messianic expectation, which, as he understands it, longs for the messianic annihilation of all the Gentiles; such longing is illustrated by the love the Jews have for the book of Esther, a book that he detested. The charges that Luther makes about Jewish antagonism toward the non-Jewish world were not wholly invented. Since at least the twelfth century, European Jewish circles had developed a strident anti-Christian literature, which satirized Christian beliefs, attacked Christian exegesis, and longed for the destruction of the enemies of the Jewish people. Aspects of this anti-Christian polemic (which was never intended for outside circulation) had filtered down to Luther, primarily through his reading of Porchetus and Margaritha, and he was acutely offended by it. But beyond the offense that he experienced, Luther came to believe that the most extreme anti-Chris-

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tian positions articulated by Jews (in the wake of the Crusades, no less) were definitive of Jewish thought as such, and this without regard to the increasingly desperate situations that had contributed to the rise of this type of defensive literature within the Jewish community in the first place.

3.4 Jew as Jew When Luther discusses the Jew as Jew, the dominant emphases that come through are those of archetype and antithesis. In his landmark study from the mid-twentieth century, Maurer argued that, for Luther, “the post-biblical Jew is the archetype of the human being standing in opposition to God.”¹⁵ This assessment has recently been reinforced by Kaufmann in his programmatic claim that “the Jews represented for Luther the opposite of what it meant to be a Christian or what it ought to mean.”¹⁶ The Jew as archetypal of the human condition vis-à-vis God and as antithetical to the Christian and to Christian theology are presuppositions of Luther’s own theology. For him, the Jew represents the ultimate human problem that Christ and the gospel are intended to remedy, and throughout his career the Jews and Judaism embodied the negative religious standard against which all other negative religious phenomena were finally measured. One of the regularly recurring phrases in Luther’s writings is “the Jew, the Pope, and the Turk,” which he uses when referring to the primary enemies of the gospel. The frequency of this phrase, together with the similarity of the polemical language Luther uses to attack all three members of the group, have occasionally given rise to the claim that the question of “Luther and the Jews” should not be privileged. There are, however, solid grounds to argue for a qualitative distinction in Luther’s thought where the Jews are concerned. The first of these has already been noted – namely, the archetypal or prototypical role that the Jews play in Luther’s thought. Secondly, Luther regards the Jews as the first enemies of the gospel, whose hostility has never ceased. The current popes, and certainly the Turks, are relative latecomers in the battle against Christ and the gospel. In Luther’s view of church history, the gospel has its sworn enemies in every generation, and he did come to believe that the pope and the Turk were in fact the final apocalyptic enemy, the antichrist. But the Jews nevertheless maintain a distinctive role, because they and they alone have the character of being the perennial enemies of the gospel, a role they share only with the devil himself. Thirdly, the issue of social location is crucial. Luther’s rhetorical attacks on the popes took true courage, placed his life in jeopardy, and resulted in a strict geograph Wilhelm Maurer, “Die Zeit der Reformation,” in Kirche und Synagoge: Handbuch zur Geschichte von Christen und Juden: Darstellung mit Quellen, eds. Karl Heinrich Rengstorf and Siegfried von Kortzfleisch (Stuttgart: Klett, 1968), 1:379.  Kaufmann, Luther and the Jews, 72.

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ical confinement for most of his career. The Turk had an army, and though the threat to Germany was real, it nevertheless remained at a distance from Luther. But for the Jews of Germany and neighboring lands, Luther was a figure with leverage. Both through his writings and his personal influence on Protestant princes, Luther helped to make the lives of his Jewish contemporaries more precarious and influenced the imaginations of subsequent generations of Lutherans toward Jews in numerous deleterious ways. The precariousness of the Jewish social situation and Luther’s influence on it are simply not comparable with the other two categories.

3.5 Conversion In the light of the derogatory views described above, the question arises as to how to account for Luther’s 1523 treatise, That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew, especially given that the treatise found a warm reception within the Jewish community, who saw Luther as a potential beacon of religious tolerance. The contradiction, however, is not nearly as stark as it may appear. At no point in Luther’s career did he ever express hope for the Jew as Jew. He always presupposed Judaism to be a dead religion, and he made no distinction between Judaism and those who practice it, the Jews; what he says about one applies to the other. What he did express, in varying degrees, was a hope for the Jew to become a Christian. The phrase “Jew-friendly Luther” is meaningful only to the extent that it refers to the degree of openness to or optimism about Jewish conversion to Christianity. Already as early as his lectures on Romans (1515 – 1516), he expresses skepticism about traditional readings of Rom 11 to the effect that all Jews would convert at the end of time, and by the end of his career, he would reject this reading altogether. In the early 1520s, he does go through a period when he manifests significant optimism toward the prospect of the conversion of a number of Jews, premised on the assumption that his rediscovery and clarification of the gospel would prove attractive to Jews. But this optimism was to be shortlived, and already by the mid-1520s it disappears and never returns. What does remain roughly consistent is his conviction, expressed most noticeably in his commentary on the Magnificat (June 1521), that there will always be Christians, however few, among Abraham’s seed, and that therefore, in so far as is possible, Christians should treat Jews in a kindly manner.

3.6 Luther and the OT The sheer size of the corpus of Luther’s works can have the effect of obscuring what was at the heart of his life-work – namely, his academic lectures on books and portions of books of the Bible at the University of Wittenberg. During his 32-year career as a professor of Bible, he devoted three or four years to lectures on New Testament books, but the remainder were completely given over to the Old Testament. While so

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much of what Luther wrote was dictated by ecclesiastical and political circumstance, these biblical lectures represent his own free choices and thus reveal something essential about his theological orientation, as intently focused on the Old Testament and its interpretation. His engagement with the Old Testament, however, was not limited to the lecture hall. He preached nearly 180 sermons on the Pentateuch, and he wrote numerous commentaries or expositions on Psalms and collections of Psalms. And perhaps most pertinent was the Old Testament translation project that involved Luther and his team of translators for twelve years (1523 – 1534) and then on to the end of his life, as the translation was subsequently revised. By any estimation, the Old Testament and its proper interpretation were at the core of Luther’s thought. But the decisive issue in this regard was noted by the Jewish scholar, Salo Baron: “Luther’s lifetime preoccupation with the OT made him, on the whole, less rather than more friendly to contemporary Jews.”¹⁷ Why this was the case is anchored in the way Luther insisted that the Old Testament should be read by Christians. His high theological estimation of the Old Testament was a derivative of his conviction that the New Testament and Christianity did not come to displace the Old Testament, but rather to continue it and to fulfill it. This conviction set him on an unavoidable collision course with Jewish readings of the text. In terms of the relationship between the Old Testament and Judaism, three aspects of Luther’s thought are determinative. Possibly the most fundamental of all Christian theological claims is that of the messiahship of Jesus, or Jesus Christ. Luther took for granted that the Christ proclaimed in the New Testament is the same Christ promised in numerous passages in the Old Testament, but, in addition, he labored tirelessly to demonstrate that this equivalence of the one promised and the one proclaimed could be proven by the proper interpretation of these key Old Testament texts. Luther perceived a genuine threat in Jewish readings of the Old Testament, and precisely because this was for him the most basic of all theological issues – that Jesus is the Messiah promised in the Old Testament –, it had to be sustained, otherwise the entire edifice would collapse. From Luther’s perspective, Jewish interpretation represented nothing less than an assault on the very foundations of Christianity itself. Luther’s harshness toward his Christian contemporaries who were making use of Jewish readings of the Old Testament is to be seen in this light. He was convinced that these Christian interpreters were aiding and abetting the demolition of Christianity’s foundation. Secondly, Luther understood the Old Testament to be a Christian book and an integral part of the two-volume Christian Bible, which constituted a theological unity. This enabled him to speak of the Church as being present already in the Old Testament and to refer to certain Old Testament characters as Christians. What binds the two volumes of the Christian Bible together is the promise of the coming

 Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1969), 13:220.

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of the Messiah and faith in that promise. For Luther, the faith of the Old Testament and the faith of the New Testament are the same, and thus the criteria for determining who are and are not the people of God are also the same. The only significant distinction is that Old Testament Christians trusted in the one who would come, while New Testament Christians trust in the one who has come. Luther can even say that Old Testament faith was superior to New Testament faith, because the saints of the Old Testament trusted – contrary to all appearances – in a pure promise. Thus, for Luther, when a Jew converts to Christianity, the Jew is actually returning to the faith of his/her forebears – that is, to the faith of the Old Testament. This, in turn, is consistent with his broader understanding that the New Testament and Christianity represent theological continuity with the Old Testament, while rabbinic Judaism and rabbinic texts are in complete theological discontinuity. Thirdly, attention is to be drawn to Luther’s use of Old Testament curse and judgment language. Aside from the strictly christological prooftexts, it is in these areas where much of his anti-Jewish polemic emerges. The Old Testament itself places strong emphasis on ancient Israel’s infidelity to and disobedience of God, as well on as the judgment that such behavior incurs. But it also emphasizes, by way of counter-argument, God’s eternal love for and fidelity toward Israel. In Luther’s treatment of Old Testament judgment language, he seeks, on the one hand, to discern which passages apply to Israel in its ancient historical context, and, on the other, which are genuinely prophetic and thus apply to Israel at the time of the coming of Christ and beyond. Once this distinction has been made, then anything that falls into the latter category can be used against the Jews as condemnation for their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah.

3.7 Rabbis and Christian Hebraists Luther’s posture toward the tradition of Jewish biblical interpretation became increasingly antagonistic. From his early to his mid-career, the biblical commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349), as well as the Additions to Lyra by the Jewish convert, Paul of Burgos (d. 1435), served as his primary conduit into rabbinic learning (essentially Rashi [d. 1105]). The Wittenberg translation team also had access to a copy of the Second Rabbinic Bible (1525), but this resource was utilized only selectively and tendentiously. In his late career, Luther had access to Sebastian Münster’s diglot Hebrew-Latin Bible with annotations (1534/1535), a Christian Hebraist work of immense learning that drew on medieval Jewish commentators not well represented in either Lyra or the Second Rabbinic Bible, especially Nachmanides (d. 1270). Already by the mid-1520s, Luther had concluded that the rabbis were the central instruments behind ongoing Jewish resistance to the gospel, and his Genesis Lectures (1535 – 1545) are saturated with polemic against rabbinic readings that he encountered via Münster. His most consistent critique of the rabbis is that, while they can on occasion be helpful to Christians in matters of Hebrew grammar, they know nothing of theology: “The Jews

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do not understand the Bible, because they do not understand its subject matter.”¹⁸ From Luther’s perspective, this ignorance of theology then manifests in a “crucifixion” of Scripture on the part of the rabbis. For Luther, the strict corollary of such anti-rabbinic polemic is the folly of Christian interpreters who allow themselves to be influenced theologically by the rabbis. The sixteenth century saw the birth of Christian Hebraism, that intellectual movement within Christianity that sought and eventually gained expertise not only in biblical Hebrew, but also in the Hebrew and Aramaic of classic rabbinic sources and in their systems of thought, as well as in the great medieval Jewish biblical commentators. Luther’s scholarly career spanned the beginnings of this movement, and he himself benefitted from it and, to some extent, contributed to it. But when it came to theological interpretation of Scripture, Luther adopted a rigidly antagonistic stance against the Christian use of rabbinic sources: “On pain of losing divine grace and eternal life, it is forbidden for us Christians to believe or regard as right the scriptural interpretations and glosses of the rabbis.”¹⁹

4 What Did Luther Think Should Be Done with the Jews of Germany? In the twenty years between That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew and On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther transitioned from being a public advocate of tolerance toward the Jews to being a fierce agitator for their expulsion. What happened? In a scholarly debate as fraught as this, we shall restrict ourselves primarily to Luther’s own words. One of Luther’s earliest statements on contemporary Jewry is in a 1514 letter to George Spalatin, where he articulates the position that Jewish “cursing” of and “blasphemy” against God and Christ are prophetically predicated, and thus human beings are powerless to stop it. It is on this basis that he argues against the confiscation and burning of Jewish books in the context of the Reuchlin-Pfefferkorn affair. In his second lectures on the Psalms (Operationes in Psalmos, 1519 – 1521), he castigates Christians for their mistreatment and persecution of Jews: STherefore damnable is the rage of certain Christians (if they can be called Christians), who think that they can demonstrate their compliance to God by persecuting the Jews with extreme hatred, thinking the worst of them, and with extreme pride and contempt insulting them when they bemoan their misery.”²⁰ Similarly in his treatise on the Magnificat (1521): “We ought, therefore, not to treat the Jews in so unkindly a spirit, for there

 D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Tischreden, 6 vols. (Weimar, 1912– 1921), 5:212, 25 – 26 no. 5521.  WA 53:644, 30 – 32.  WA 5:428, 32– 35.

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are future Christians among them, and they are turning every day.”²¹ And finally, from That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew (1523): “If the apostles, who also were Jews, had dealt with us Gentiles as we Gentiles deal with the Jews, there would never have been a Christian among the Gentiles.”²² As late as 1530, in his Commentary on Psalm 82, Luther defends the toleration of the Jews, in spite of their known “blasphemy” against Christ and his mother, on the grounds that Jewish “blasphemy” – unlike that of the Anabaptists – does not take place publically, but only privately. By the late 1530s, however, Luther had read both Margaritha’s The Entire Jewish Faith and Porchetus’ translation of Toledot Yeshu, and the impact of these texts is plainly evident in On the Jews and Their Lies and On the Ineffable Name, respectively. Luther’s infamous proposals are itemized directly on the heels of his description of Jewish “blasphemies” against Christ, his mother, and all Christians, descriptions that are drawn almost verbatim from Margaritha. With full awareness that he would be charged with vascillation, this “new knowledge” nevertheless led Luther to the conviction that his 1523 statement had been a grievous mistake, and On the Jews and Their Lies was written to set the record straight – and, in so doing, to cleanse his conscience: What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing, and blasphemy […]. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly – and I myself was unaware of it – will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us […], it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know […]. With this faithful counsel and warning I wish to cleanse and exonerate my conscience […]. I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated.²³

Luther would maintain this position until the end of his life, as evidenced by his last word on the Jews, spoken from the pulpit in Eisleben only days before his death: This is the final warning I wanted to give you, as your countryman: that you should not participate in the sins of others.²⁴ For I would give good and faithful advice both to the lords and to their subjects. If the Jews will be converted to us and cease their blasphemy, and whatever else they have done to us, we will gladly forgive them. But if not, then neither should we tolerate or endure them among us.²⁵

 LW 21:354– 55; WA 7:600, 34– 35.  LW 45:200; WA 11:19 – 21.  LW 47:268 – 69, 274, 292; WA 53:522, 29 – 32; 523, 6 – 12; 527, 29 – 31; 542, 2– 4.  The phrase “the sins of others” (frembde Suenden) is drawn from 1 Tim 5:22.  Christopher Boyd Brown, ed., Luther’s Works, American Edition, New Series (St. Louis, MO, 2009–), 58:459. (WA 51:196, 12– 17).

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Luther’s goal of achieving a unified policy of expulsion of the Jews in German Protestant territories did not succeed, but his attempt to do so was consistent with the overall trajectory of his lifetime engagement with the question of the Jews and Judaism.

Roni Weinstein

Jews and Lutheranism: An Ambiguous Silence As the Augsburg pact solidified the presence of the Lutheran reform movement in Western Europe, and the split between Catholics and Protestants became an established fact, the effects of Lutheranism were noticeable in the political domain, in the formation of religious communities, in family patterns among laypeople and ex-clerics, in ritual shifts, in the expropriation of church property, and in increasing social control. To a large extent, theological argumentations furnished the basis for the Protestant movement – initiated by a monk and religious reformer.¹ What was the response of Jews to these religious innovations? In spite of the substantial impact of Lutheran reform on Jewish life in sixteenth-century Germany, the interest shown by Jewish thinkers, rabbis, and community leaders in the religious innovation of Martin Luther – and his later followers² – was minimal, verging on total indifference. This chapter aims to give sense to this silence and relate it to the regularization of Jewish life in the late medieval and early modern period (roughly the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) and to internal processes of change within local Jewish culture and religion, as well as to community life in Ashkenazi tradition.³ Confining our regard only to the German context would be misleading, as the Ashkenazi tradition interacted deeply with territories beyond the German Reich – in Italy, in France, or, in the early modern period, in the newly established and chief diaspora in eastern and central Europe (mainly in Poland). Interreligious encounters between Jews and Catholic in medieval Europe were characterized by hostility and claims of monopoly over religious truth, along with mutual curiosity.⁴ Traces of Catholic tradition could be found in Jewish religiosity in Germany, such as the penitential literature. Medieval Hebraism considered the Jewish tradition as an important source for approaching the sacred literature (Hebraica veritas). Yet religious competition had its dark aspects, such as several important

 For brevity’s sake, I will only refer to the recent works of Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther: Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs (München: C.H. Beck, 2012); Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (London: Random House, 2016); and Thomas Kaufmann, Martin Luther (München: C.H. Beck, 2006).  In this chapter, I will focus on Lutheranism and disregard other reform movements, such as Calvinism, the Anglican Church, or the Anabaptists.  The term Ashkenaz (and its derivative adjective Ashkenazi) refer to the particular tradition that evolved in German-speaking territories ever since the coming of Jews to these territories. See Avraham Grossman, The Early Sages of Ashkenaz: Their Lives, Leadership, and Works (900 – 1096) (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Magnus, 2001).  Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. B. Harshav and J. Chipman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Yuval and Ram Ben-Shalom, eds., Conflict and Religious Conversation in Latin Christendom: Studies in Honour of Ora Limor (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-038

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religious disputations, which lead eventually to burnings of the Talmud. Referring to the Lutheran context, Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, a distinguished historian of the previous generation, noted that German Jews responded with almost complete indifference to Lutheran innovation in the religious and theological domain.⁵ The issues of predestination, biblical learning and its fundamental importance (sola scriptura), the dominance of belief (sola fide) over religious acts, the role of religious institutions, monasticism – all of these hardly find any echo in contemporary Jewish writings. Instead, these writings focus on the political and legal implications of Lutheran authorities with regard to specific Jewish communities or the entire Jewish collective. This deafening silence might certainly be attributed to the negative effect of the Lutheran reform, once institutionalized, in imposing economic, legal, and political limitations on Jewish life. Undoubtedly these contributed heavily to deepening the mutual mistrust between Jews and Christians – including Lutheran communities – during the sixteenth century. Yet this explanation by itself does not suffice, for two reasons. First, some of the processes of exclusion and marginalization of Jews had begun some decades before the permanent establishment of Lutheran states, cities, and communities; they relate to long-term changes, which Lutheranism intensified but did not invent. Further, hostility and violence originating from political authorities, churchmen, and mainly inhabitants of the cities in Catholic society during the Middle Ages did not hinder the mutual religious curiosity between Jews and Catholics, as mentioned above. Jewish settlement in German-speaking areas along the Rhine dates back to the Carolingian period, and later expanded to include major imperial cities.⁶ Its progressive growth in demographic extent and geographical dispersion was drastically arrested during the “Black Plague” and the ensuing years.⁷ The plague caused the destruction of 150 communities and was followed by a century of expulsions from various cities – such as Augsburg, Nierenberg, Mainz, and Worms. Even new communities that were trying to recuperate their demographic and economic losses encountered a similar fate. The initiative behind these expulsions was both religious and economic, and expulsions were enacted by city councils and lower-ranking priests, by wandering preachers (such as Bernardino da Feltre), and by papal messengers (such as Johannes de Capistrano and Nicolaus Cusanus). They included areas such as Styria, Carinthia, Württenberg, and Salzburg. By 1520, Alsace harbored

 Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, “The Jews Facing the Reformation” (in Hebrew), Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 4 (1971): 62– 116.  A. Grossman, “The Jewish Community in Ashkenaz in the 10 – 11 Centuries” (in Hebrew), in Jewish Self-Rule through the Ages, vol. 2: The Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, eds. A. Grossman and Y. Kaplan (Jerusalem: Merkas Zalman Shazar, 2004), 57– 74.  Eric Zimmer, The Fiery Embers of the Scholars: The Trials and Tribulations of German Rabbis in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (in Hebrew) (Beer-Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1999), 1– 3; Joseph of Rosheim, Joseph of Rosheim – Historical Writings (in Hebrew), ed. and trans. Chava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996), 18.

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only 120 Jewish families. The legal status of Jews deteriorated; in most cases, they did not return to their original communities. Some were accepted back under worse conditions, which included increasing demands that Jews pay for protection documents (Schutzbriefe) defining their residence and trading rights in cities, as required by local rulers. In the long run, the Reformation contributed to religious diversification in Europe, a phenomenon which could not disregard the Jewish minority. Yet during the sixteenth century, the legal position of the Jews as a religious minority remained predominantly unstable and insecure.⁸ They were caught in a triangle of various legal authorities, divided between city councils, territorial princes, and the German emperor. At the request of certain cities, entire territories remained closed to them. The policy of territorial princes and of the emperor was unpredictable and depended on changing political and economic considerations. To obtain the rights or privileges of habitation, commerce, participation in market activity, or even movement outside their territories, they needed to pay constantly, and at higher price than others. Further, another price was increasing intervention by local princes and imperial officials in the Jewish community and with regard to Jewish legal autonomy, unlike the previous medieval period. The spread of Roman law in sixteenth-century Germany was mirrored in the Jewish case as well, as their status was increasingly formalized in juridical norms (Judenordenungen), such as the one in Hessen.⁹ Even the emperors lacked any consistent policy with regard to the Jewish population; they insisted on receiving regalia payments or taxes from Jews – still legally considered as “property of the imperial treasury” (servi camerae nostrae) during the sixteenth century – in addition to their regular payments to either city or territorial authorities. Privileges and Judenordnungen depended on well-defined functions that Jews could fulfill. Changing conditions and political pressures implied that they were constantly put under the threat of expulsions: Throughout the late medieval period and into the sixteenth century there were numerous expulsions – of various lengths and impacts – and granting of privileges of non tolerandis of the Jews. There seem to have been peaks in expulsions and anti-Jewish activity in the following decades: 1380 – 9, 1420 – 9, 1450 – 9, 1470 – 9, 1490 – 9, and 1510 – 9. [The research project] Germania Judaica identifies some general trends correlating to geographical and chronological sequencing. The

 Dean Phillip Bell, “Jewish Settlement, Politics, and the Reformation,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, eds. Dean Phillip Bell, and Stephen G. Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 422, 431– 32; Bell, Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany: Memory, Power and Community (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 77– 80; Zimmer, The Fiery Embers of the Scholars, 8 – 14; FraenkelGoldschmidt, Joseph of Rosheim, 14– 23; M. Breuer, “The Jewish Middle Ages” and “The Early Modern Period,” in German-Jewish History in Modern Times, vol. 1: Tradition and Enlightenment, 1600 – 1780, eds. Mordechai Breuer and Michael Graetz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 53 – 56, 75 – 77, 87– 94, and 135 – 38. All of these works include further and elaborate bibliographies.  J. F. Battenberg, “Judenordnungen der frühen Neuzeit in Hessen,” in Neunhundert Jahre Geschichte der Juden in Hessen; Beiträge zum politischen, wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Leben, ed. Christiane Heinemann (Wiesbaden: Kommission für die Geschichte der Juden in Hessen, 1983), 83 – 122.

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earliest territorial expulsions were in the southwest (Palatinate), then the southeast (Austria and Bavaria), the east (Silesia), and the north; this was followed by the west (Archbishopric of Mainz) and Middle Germany (Hochstift Bamberg), then the northeast, the southeast again, and finally the northeast. While there were many factors, and often complex situations behind expulsions, it must be pointed out that the local conditions were most determinative.¹⁰

The Jews were expelled from Saxony, where Martin Luther lived, during the year 1537. Luther incited other Lutheran princes to follow his call and expel Jewish communities, or at least to set them in a marginal position.¹¹ These events joined up with contemporary anti-Jewish propaganda – popular leaflets, plays, and stories of the figure of Ahasueros, “the Wandering Jew.” Indeed, most of the cities following Luther’s advice to expel their Jewish residents – or to prevent their settlement in the first place – were Protestant. Territorial princes were pushed into a corner, as they were considered responsible for the religious fidelity of their citizens, which was allegedly impaired by Jewish settlement. Yet it would be hard to detect a direct, causal link between the writings and political activity of Luther on the one hand, and the expulsion of Jews during the sixteenth century on the other hand. The expulsions during the second half of the fifteenth century and throughout the sixteenth century led to migrations of Jews from German-speaking territories to the south – the Jewish-Italian communities north of Rome – and to the east, mainly toward Poland. The Ashkenazi world in the sixteenth century, then, was no longer confined or defined according to linguistic or geographical areas, but extended into wider cultural zones, which would leave their imprint on the classical Ashkenazi tradition of the Middle Ages. A further consequence of these recurring expulsions, either from entire territories or (mainly) from important cities, was a new extension of communities. The number of Jewish settlements during the sixteenth century increased considerably; most of the Jewish population lived either in small cities or in rural surroundings. This double change could not but leave deep marks on Jewish culture and religious life. Eminent rabbinic figures still functioned in Germany throughout the sixteenth century.¹² Some of them lamented the decline in rabbinic scholarship, especially the study of the Talmud and post-Talmudic legal literature (Halakhah) in religious academies (Yeshivahs).¹³ The dispersion of Jews in tiny communities and the reduction in financial support for religious academies placed severe limitations on the functioning of classical institutions for rabbinic scholarship. They were confined to  Citation from Bell, “Jewish Settlement, Politics, and the Reformation,” 432– 33.  Bell, “Jewish Settlement, Politics, and the Reformation,” 433 – 34; Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Joseph of Rosheim, 24– 25.  This is the leading theme in Zimmer’s book; see Zimmer, The Fiery Embers of the Scholars, where he discusses several of these figures.  J. Berkovitz, “Jewish Law and Ritual in Early Modern Germany,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, 482, 485 – 86; Zimmer, The Fiery Embers of the Scholars, 15 – 25; Breuer, “The Jewish Middle Ages” and “Early Modern Period,” 73 – 75, 209 – 13.

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several major cities, a situation which persisted into this century. Leading scholars immigrated to Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, and eventually to Poland. The lack of new and impressive local scholars was balanced by counter-immigrations from Poland to the German communities. The position of Polish traditions and their validity with regard to local Ashkenazi customs is a recurrent theme in contemporary rabbinic literature. It reflects a sense of insecurity, lest the centuries-long heritage is about to lose its strength and be substituted with new “Polish” traditions. This was one of the motivations for the composition of a massive “Literature of Religious Customs” (Sifrut Minhagim is the rabbinic terminology), which we will return to below. Prague was another preferred destination for rabbinic immigration. It was here that the leading scholar and thinker of this period, R. Judah Loew b. Bezalel (c. 1525 – 1609), known as The Maharal of Prague, lived and worked. The fact that his foremost disciples – R. Mordechai Jaffe, R. Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller, and David Gans – remained in the city testifies to the shift of scholarship’s center of gravity of from Germany to the East, due to the increasing importance of Polish learning. This continued even into the next century, as the biography of R. Isaiah Horowitz – author of the very popular moralistic-Kabbalistic tract Shenei Luhot HaBerit – reveals. This rabbi had to escape his community in Frankfurt am Main in 1614 and returned to his native Prague.¹⁴ Along with the traditional writing of Halakhic literature in sixteenth-century Germany, characterized by modern scholars of Talmudic lore as non-innovative, rabbis produced some comprehensive volumes of “Literature of Religious Customs.”¹⁵ This genre of writing certainly had precedents in previous centuries; yet – unlike the medieval period, when these tracts were ranked as secondary in importance in relation to proper legal compositions, and hence composed by the secondary rabbinic elite – the Sifrut Minhagim of the sixteenth century attracted great esteem from leading rabbinic scholars. A scholar of note, such as R. Yair Bachrach (1638 – 1701), dedicated complex discussions to the adaptation of the oral and practical customs to the formal Talmudic instructions. These books testify to the insecure position of Ashkenazi heritage and the fear it might be lost. It seemed, then, that they needed further backing in the light of the increasing “invasion” of scholars and traditions coming from Poland. They responded to the contemporary situation, since the validity of customs depended mainly on communal practice and consensus, rather than on bookish references. For this reason they contain, even if unwillingly, options for change and adaptation, though not always in accordance with rabbinic instructions. Their main relevance to understanding contemporary Ashkenazi religiosity is the increasing shift from Talmudic erudition to daily practice as a basis for the peculiar Jewish  See the fine discussion in Berkovitz, “Jewish Law and Ritual in Early Modern Germany,” 486 – 87.  Berkovitz, “Jewish Law and Ritual in Early Modern Germany,” 492– 93; Berkovitz., “Crisis and Authority in Early Modern Ashkenaz,” Jewish History 26 no. 1– 2 (2012): 179 – 99; Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: The Convert Critique and the Culture of Ashkenaz, 1750 – 1800 (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 2003), esp. 174– 85.

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way of life. Thus this development addressed larger segments of the Jewish population, who had very limited access to intricate rabbinic literature. Customary literature included portions dedicated to repentance and pietism, expressed through penitential activity rather than knowledge or adherence to clear religious positions or theological stances. This was further backed by the spread of Kabbalistic and ethical literature of Ashkenazi hues during the sixteenth century. Christian acquaintance with Jewish lore and tradition had been accumulating ever since the Middle Ages, due both to polemical literature (partly composed by converts from the Jewish to the Catholic religion) and to the expansion of Hebraistic studies in the late medieval and Renaissance periods. A new wave of writing occurred during the sixteenth century in Germany, produced by converts of Jewish origins. These elaborate and massive works – such as those of Johann Jacob Schudt, Antonius Margaritha, and Victor von Karben – provided readers with detailed descriptions of various aspects of Jewish practices.¹⁶ None of them was devoid of apologetic and anti-Jewish positions, and some of them even presented Jewish heritage as a threat to Christian society. Composed in German, rather than the Latin typical of the medieval polemic of converts, they managed to reach a larger audience. The print revolution certainly added to their dissemination. Very much like the rabbinical Sifrut Minhagim, these works instituted a shift with regard to Jewish tradition – from theology to folklore. Interest in the classical issues of theological debates (such as the coming of the Messiah, biblical exegesis, and the fate of Jewish people as a sign of divine rejection) held a secondary position with respect to considering the ethnographic aspects of Jewish life. In this respect, the Jewish collective was no longer a rival to contend with in regard to sacred texts, but another ethnic group with its own particular way of life. The Talmud was presented not as a heretical corpus, but rather as a reservoir of trivial, often senseless practices. This shift has been linked by the historian Ronnie Po-chia Hsia to previous attempts by the Catholic Inquisition to comprehend Jewish rituals and practices, mainly with regard to the trial in Trent dealing with the alleged murder of Simonino di Trento.¹⁷ This position shifted to Germany with the arrival of Catholic monks of Spanish origin. The process of the “folklorization” of Jewish tradition acquired further popularity due to these converts’ books. As mentioned previously, by the sixteenth century, the Jewish communities in northern Europe, including Germany, had a long heritage of managing their collective lives.¹⁸ Maintaining local traditions and autonomy was one of the guiding lines in Ashkenaz. Early modern communities strove to maintain the local spirit of medi-

 Carlebach, Divided Souls, 174– 85; Y. Deutsch, “‘A View of the Jewish Religion’: Conceptions of Jewish Practice and Ritual in Early Modern Europe,” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 3 (2000): 273 – 95.  Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, “Witchcraft, Magic, and the Jews in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany,” in From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1996), 419 – 33.  See above, footnote 6.

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eval origins, but they encountered increasing difficulties.¹⁹ Their unprecedented dispersion in hundreds small communities of a rural character – relying on a smaller number of large, urban, leading communities – weakened local autonomy. Communities were increasingly ruled by oligarchical families, who managed to nominate their members for leadership functions within the community. At the same time territorial rulers, absolutist states, and certainly the German emperor increased their interventions in community life. With the cooperation of the Jewish oligarchy, they could control the payment of taxes, the election of community officials (Parnasim in Hebrew), protection rights, permission to sojourn, jurisdiction over “strangers” (i. e., Jews not appertaining to the local community), and the buying and selling of houses. This bond served German authorities well, as they could impose their political will and financial demands on the community as a unified entity. On the other side of the equation, it enabled community leaders to increase social control and collective discipline on community members. Dean Bell, following Gerhard Lauer, described the Jewish aspect of the “confessionalization” process during the early modern period quite well.²⁰ Community regulations and ledgers were preoccupied with enforcing social order and curbing disobedience of officials’ authority. Educational institutions and study curriculum were controlled. Increasing poverty provided a further indication of the growing gap between the elite and the common people. The communal function most affected by the sacralization of “lay” authorities was the rabbinic milieu; the rabbis were subordinated to the will of the community, either in their nomination process or in their ability to impose their authority, such as their classical role in excommunication (Herem) or in court proceedings. Lay officials attributed to themselves rabbinic titles and functions, and they were even legitimized by rabbinic authorities, as long as they maintained basic standards of justice and equality. Non-Jewish authorities were also involved in nominating rabbis, on both community and territorial levels. The political fragmentation of Germany and the uncompromising safeguarding of political rights by territorial authorities was reflected in Jewish communal life as well. In response to outside pressures, Jewish communities had to endure, and they organized according to territorial-political divisions rather than adhering to local and particularistic autonomy. Several regional meetings of communities took place, of which those in Worms (1542) and Frankfurt am Main (1603) are the best known. The Frankfurt synod intended to respond to internal disputes within Jewish communities by regulating various aspects collective life – such as the creation of a general fund to be financed by all communities, a prohibition against taking legal

 Bell, Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany, 38 – 45, 69 – 78, 146 – 50; Berkovitz, “Crisis and Authority,” 179 – 99; Zimmer, The Fiery Embers of the Scholars, 16 – 19; Breuer, “The Jewish Middle Ages” and “Early Modern Period,” 82– 94, 165 – 72.  Bell, “Confessionalization in Early Modern Germany: A Jewish Perspective,” in Politics and Reformations: Histories and Reformation. Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady, Jr., eds. Christopher Ocker, Michael Printy, Peter Starenko, and Peter Wallace (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), 345 – 72.

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cases beyond local courts of law to Jewish authorities or even to “Gentile” courts, the procedure for printing Jewish books, ritual and religious prohibitions, and a prohibition against adopting non-Jewish modes of life. One of the most important resolutions regarded the establishment of five courts of law (Beit-Din) for the entire Ashkenazi-German population.²¹ Surely these courts were meant to be backed by nonJewish authorities in enforcing their sanctions, especially the dominant political power of the emperor. This resolution indicated a clear process of unification and homogenization of Ashkenazi tradition, at the clear expense of local traditions. In the previous century, an attempt by the Ashkenazi rabbi Zeligmann of Bingen to enforce his authority on the Jewish communities in his area was frustrated by persistent opposition.²² One hundred years later, the establishment of supra-local mechanisms was inevitable. Yet it marked the feebleness of current attempts at Jewish autonomy vis-à-vis the absolutist state. Once the resolutions of the Frankfurt synod (1603) were brought to the knowledge of the Kurfürsten of Mainz and Köln, and later to the emperor, a long and expensive legal process was initiated against the Jewish communities on the charge of infringing on political sovereignty. In their defense, the Jews claimed that they only activated an old and customary process of internal discussion. The legal process clearly indicated that what had been accepted in previous periods with regard to Jewish autonomy could now be defined as political conspiracy. The legal entanglement following the Frankfurt synod – and its resolution through the payment of large sums of money – did not arrest the unification process of Ashkenazi culture and the increasing erasure of local traditions. These processes were primarily linked to similar trends in the non-Jewish German context, yet they were joining an overall change within the Jewish world. The printing of books and their unprecedented dissemination left a deep impact on Jewish culture, as well.²³ The entire Jewish canon was printed during the sixteenth century, including the Talmud and post-Talmudic Halakhic literature. It created an international “Republic of Letters” in the Jewish milieu as well, with a drive toward unified writing. The publication of the codification books of the Sephardi R. Joseph Karo (1575 –1488 ), with annotations by the Polish R. Moses Isserles (1530 – 1572), suggested a focal point of reference to the entire Jewish world.²⁴ The dramatic demographic growth of the Jewish population in Poland led to communal institutions of a new type, beyond the local  Breuer, “The Jewish Middle Ages and Early Modern Period,” 86 – 92. A detailed discussion on Jewish Synods is available in Zimmer, Jewish Synods in Germany during the Late Middle Ages (1286 – 1603) (New York: Ktav, 1978).  Zimmer, The Fiery Embers of the Scholars, 20.  Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century, trans. Jackie Feldman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); E. Reiner, “The Ashkenazi Élite at the Beginning of the Modern Era: Manuscript versus Printed Book,” Polin 10 (1997): 85 – 98.  On the reception process of Karo’s code of law in the sixteenth century and its contribution to an all-Ashkenazi identity, see J. M. Davis, “The Reception of the “Shulhan ’Arukh” and the Formation of Ashkenazic Jewish Identity,” AJS Review 26 no. 2 (2002): 251– 76.

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sphere, aiming to serve the needs of all Jewish communities.²⁵ This new horizon was reflected in rabbinic writings and school curricula. The same process took place in Mediterranean communities, this time by suggesting a comprehensive religious and theological perspective, following the spread of Jewish mystical traditions (Kabbalah) from the Holy Land to all the Jewish communities under Ottoman rule, and later to Western Europe, followed by Central Europe.²⁶ The organizations of Jews in Germany on a territorial basis (Landjudenschaften) served them from the sixteenth century until the Emancipation: One of the most conspicuous factors operative here was the extensive dispersion of the Jewish communities in the wake of the numerous mass expulsions and the rural character of a sizeable proportion of the Jewish population. Given the unrelenting external pressures, an organized banding together of all Jews, some of whom lived extremely isolated and far apart, was an existential necessity for preserving their Jewish identity. On the other hand, the smaller communities were now more stable, which made solid organizational structures both possible and meaningful. Another factor was the progressive territorial fragmentation of the German lands and the claims to sovereignty of every small potentate, which also stimulated interest in the formation of a Landjudenschaft. Thus an official territorial Jewish organization was now a necessity, since in deliberation and decision of central Jewish concerns – such as apportionment of taxes and the steps that had to be taken with the authorities to secure Jewish existence and ease its burdens – the dynastic and legal situation in each principality had to be taken into careful account. Ashkenazi communities maintained their predilection to remain as independent as possible from external Jewish bodies and authorities, which they did not trust to take local traditions and conditions into proper account. Another element was the traditional dependence of Jews living dispersed in smaller localities on a nearby larger organized community. This was expressed in practical terms in two ways: by subordination to the larger community’s local legal jurisdiction and the obligation to contribute to the taxes and other levies imposed by it. The Jews dependent on using community institutions located elsewhere preferred the organization of a Landjudenschaft, in which they enjoyed parity with many others, to dependence on a single larger community in which they would have no influence whatsoever. The Landjudenschaft was thus a comprehensive association encompassing all Jews in a sovereign territory who possessed the right of residence, that is, of all “protected Jews.” They belonged to the association as individuals directly, not via a local community. Only those Jews who were under the protection of noble lords of the manor were exempted from membership in the Landschaft. With its well-developed structures the Lanjudenschaft provided the territorial sovereign with an excellent means for watching over the Jews and exploiting them for the good of the principality, with no extra incurred expenses. From the unified and self-contained community – whose genesis had been in part voluntary, in part created by ordinances of the sovereign – a compulsory association evolved, one to which every Jew resident within the territorial borders was required to belong. There were Landjudenschaften in almost all the territories of the Holy Roman Empire, especially in ecclesiastical states. In structures and administration they patterned themselves on the respective corporative form of the Christian environment.

 Elchanan Reiner, “On the Roots of the Urban Jewish Community in Poland in the Early Modern Period” (in Hebrew), Gal-Ed. On the History and Culture of Polish Jewry 20 (2006): 13 – 37.  Roni Weinstein, Kabbalah and Jewish Modernity (Tel-Aviv: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015).

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The lay leaders of the Landjudenschaften had virtually unlimited power over Jewish society. They regulated religious, social, and economic life and issued ordinances that had to be approved by the government, a procedure that generally was a mere formality. They conducted all negotiations with the authorities and submitted petitions, as a rule drawn up by non-Jewish lawyers. Since the board members often managed affairs as they thought best, they sometimes faced opposition within the communities. There were clear parallels between the development of court Jewry and Landjudenschaft. Both institutions had external functions, serving the state, and internal functions for the Jewish inhabitants. Often the formation of a Landjudenschaft followed from the strong position of a court Jew. Just as the court Jews stood in the service of the absolutist prince, the Landjudenschaft were dependent on the respective sovereign. No resolution, elections, or appointment of high officials in the Judenlandschaft was valid without government approval.²⁷ Contact between Jews and their non-Jewish surroundings continued throughout the sixteenth century on several levels; the daily life of most Jews in rural areas necessitated continuous contact with their neighbors and clients, as testified in admonitions against common drinking and attending religious and family festivities both in the Frankfurt synod and in ethical literature. The Jewish bourgeoisie adopted modes and lifestyles practiced by the Christian bourgeoisie, including clothing and passtimes. Next to these modes of contact, in order to understand the formation of the Jewish response to Lutheranism, it seems highly important to add the encounter between the representatives of the Jewish collective and figures from the Christian majority, whether Catholic or Lutheran. Emblematic in this regard is the figure of Joseph of Rosheim (c. 1478 – 1554).²⁸ Though he had rabbinic erudition – and even served in a rabbinic court of law –, he is known for his activity as a mediator (Shtadlan) between the Jewish communities and the political authorities in Germany. He worked tirelessly during his entire adult life to minimize the threats of expulsion and dangers due to religious accusations against the Jewish tradition (e. g., blasphemy in the Talmud against the Christian faith; Jewish hatred of Christian neighbors). During this period, both Catholics and Protestants accused the Jews of supporting the religious positions of their rivals, and even of cooperating with the Ottomans in their attempt to conquer Europe. Using his economic and political network, as well as his signifi-

 The citation, with minor paraphrasing, derives from Breuer, “The Jewish Middle Ages and Early Modern Period,” 194– 203.  Joseph de Rosheim, Sefer Hammiknah (in Hebrew), Ex autographo auctoris descripsit, prolegomena et annotationibus instruxit Hava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Mekizei Nirdamim Society, 1970); and the classic Selma Stern, Josel von Rosheim, Befehlshaber der Judenschaft im Heiligen Römischen Reich deutscher Nation (Stuttgart: DVA, 1959).

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cant personal talent, Joseph managed to reach the higher levels of political institutions in contemporary Germany, such as the annual meetings of the Imperial Diet. Unlike most later Jewish political mediators, and due to his substantial rabbinic erudition, Joseph left some religious and historiographical tracts, addressed to Jewish readers, in which it is possible to trace his perspective on Jewish religion and his response to current politics, the Lutheran reform included. To start with, his basic attitude to managing Jewish community life under the challenging circumstances of the sixteenth century is pragmatism and a sober response. With regard to the messianic figures of his time (such as Solomon Molcho, David HaReuveni, and Asher Lemlein), he maintained a distant silence.²⁹ As for the extensive Hebraist literature composed during this period and later, mainly written by converts from the Jewish tradition to Christianity (of both denominations), his persistent policy during his activity – as expressed in his writings – was to avoid any religious confrontations. Challenged by members in the Reichstag or by the theologian Wolfgang Capito (with whom he was on friendly terms), he did not abstain from answering, but he openly stated that he only aimed to defend his religious heritage and abstained from challenging that of his rivals.³⁰ When confronted with Talmudic assertions regarding Jesus and his life, as had appeared in Jewish anti-Catholic polemic literature ever since the Middle Ages, he simply denied having been exposed to it. As his writings contain long phrases copied from this literature, his denial is to be taken apologetically.³¹ According to him, one should certainly avoid commenting on the internal theological disputes between Catholics and Protestants. Part of his principal stand in avoiding theological confrontation was derived from his utterly critical and demeaning opinion of the composers of literature dealing with Jewish rituals and traditions: Jewish converts. Conversion was the extension and the end result of informing (Halshanah or Mesirah) on other Jews and on their lives. Following the Kabbalistic literature of pietism, the origins of conversion were ascribed to personal contamination and inborn evil.³² Such persons had no future hope within Jewish tradition and eschatology; it was not by chance that Rosheim denied any religious motivation behind these conversions and inscribed their motivation solely to personal concerns, such as the wish to damage the religion of their forefathers. In the political battle waged between Catholic and Lutheran princes, he undoubtedly favored the imperial forces and hoped for their victory: God foresaw the misery of his people, and he sent his gracious angel, to empower our master Emperor Carl [V], and to overcome them [the Protestant camp], several times, and render

 Carlebach, “Jewish Responses to Christianity in Reformation Germany,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, 475 – 76.  Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Sefer Hammiknah, lxxiv–lxxvii.  Carlebach, “Jewish Responses to Christianity,” 455 – 58.  Carlebach, Divided Souls, 2, 6, 11– 12, 22– 23; Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Sefer Hammiknah, lvii-lix.

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their intentions invalid, and conquer states and cities easily, and [the imperial army] miraculously won and saved the Jewish nation from this new religious movement, established by a priest named Martin Luther, an unrighteous person, who intended to annihilate and kill all the Jews, juveniles as well old ones. Blessed be the Lord who invalidated his intention and rendered their thoughts null.³³

Again, the motivation for Joseph’s support of Charles V is entirely political, and it leans on long years of cooperation with imperial authorities with regard to privileges and concessions granted to Jewish communities. This sense of relative security rested on long precedents, going back to the Middle Ages.³⁴ Whenever a theological aspect entered this relationship, Rosheim hastened to minimize its presence; such was the case when Antonius Margaritha managed to present his work to imperial officials and Joseph was constrained to discuss its content in the diet. He managed not only to dismiss the allegations, but to have Margaritha expelled from Augsburg.³⁵ Martin Luther is presented in this context – as well as in others – not as a religious reformer, but rather as a threat to public order, being “an establisher of a new religious movement.” On the reasons for this innovation Joseph remains completely silent, explained perhaps by Luther’s “unrighteous” personality. With regard to the Jews, Luther’s brutal rhetoric in his later years is compared to Haman’s intentions in the scroll of Esther to destroy the entire Jewish collective. For fear of the political implications of Luther’s work, Joseph asked the Council of Strasburg to prohibit their publication within the city precincts. In response to Martin Bucer’s anti-Jewish writings, he composed an entire tract, contending that the present Jewish people were not the historical continuation of the people of Israel in the biblical stories. Yet this book, Sefer HaMiknah (the eternal pact between God and his chosen people), was primarily dedicated to the expulsions of various Jewish communities. The religious discourse is turned into an internal discussion of the fate of the Jewish collective. Another barrier to being interested in the current theological fermentation in contemporary Germany was the spread of ethical and pietistic literature.³⁶ Jewish Ashkenazi pietism certainly responded to current parallels in the Catholic and Protestant camps, but it mostly indicated the deep affiliations of local communities with the spread of Kabbalistic ethical-pietistic mysticism in the Mediterranean basin, particularly with the evolving center of Ashkenazi culture in Poland. Rosheim reflects

 The citation is discussed in Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Sefer Hammiknah, 74– 75: ,‫”וראה ה’ בעני עמו‬ ‫שלח מלאכו מלכי רחמים לתת כח ועוז ביד אדו’ הקיסר קארלין יר“ה להתגבר עליהן פעמים רבות להפר בריתם וקשר‬ ‫ ועל צד הפלא גבר והציל אומה ישראלית מיד אותה‬,‫מחשבותם ולהשפילם ולכבוש וללכוד מדינות ועיירות בלא עמל‬ ‫ בקש להשמיד ולהרוג כל היהודים‬,‫אמנה ]אמונה[ חדשה שהקים הכומר המכונה בשמו מרטין לוטר איש לא טה”ר‬ “‫ יברך ה’ שהפיר עצתו וקלקל מחשבותם‬.‫מנער ועד זקן‬.  Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Joseph of Rosheim, 14– 16.  On this affair, see Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, Sefer Hammiknah, xxviii–xxxi.  Yacob Elbaum, Repentance and Self-Flagellation in the Writings of the Sages of Germany and Poland 1348 – 1648 (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992).

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this current in his deep preoccupation with Jewish martirium. ³⁷ Martyrology is considered a valuable component in memory books and in family lineages. The importance of rejecting any option of conversion is shown by the ritualization of and preparation for an act of martyrdom: special prayers, confession, and visualizing the sacred name of God so as to block physical pain. It is important to stress that these acts do not contain an anti-Christian element, but instead underline the unity of God and his intimate link with the Jewish people. This pietistic current, with its martyrological aspect, indicate a turning of attention inward and a decreasing interest in outside events. In conclusion, the Lutheran innovation in its theological aspects was certainly known and commented upon among sixteenth-century Jewish thinkers. Yet this commentary happened outside of the German-speaking Jewish communities, among thinkers of Sephardi or Italian origin. This paradox was noted by Ben-Sasson in his seminal article about the response of Jews to the Reformation and has not been seriously contested. This situation might certainly be attributed to Martin Luther’s harsh and violent rhetoric about Jews (which was criticized, for that matter, by Heinrich Bullinger and Andreas Osiander) and in response to his theological and political rivals. But it was not confined to religious rhetoric, since anti-Jewish propaganda was disseminated in printed leaflets, caricatures, plays, and stereotypes. Prior to the Lutheran movement, yet continuing afterward, and at times due to the initiatives of Luther himself and of his followers, the expulsion of Jews from various cities was a recurring phenomenon during the sixteenth century. Yet such a perspective can only provide a partial explanation for the lack of interest in such a major religious movement in early modern Europe, far beyond the German-speaking regions. The new interaction between Jewish communities in Germany and the majority society could provide a more comprehensive elucidation of the mutual interest (or lack thereof) between Jews and various religious denominations in Germany, especially Lutherans. Political factors contributed to a new demographic and geographical dispersion of Jewish communities to new places, especially rural areas. These communities exchanged their political-cultural ethos as “Sacred Communities” (Kahal Kadosh or Kehilah Kedoshah would be the medieval terminology) for a functional pattern. Such communities had to respond to absolutist states and principalities in a fragmented political reality. The notion of security and long-standing symbiosis (not necessarily of a peaceful kind) between this religious minority and the protective umbrella of the Holy Roman Empire – with its enduring religious aura – was over. Early modern linkage was often based on economic and financial giveand-take. In the internal Jewish context, this was reflected in processes of unification of Jewish communities on a territorial-political basis, with increasing social control and limits put on any possible internal opposition. In this aspect, as well, the Jewish

 Carlebach, “Jewish Responses to Christianity,” 477– 79.

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communities shared the process of confessionalization with Catholics and Protestants beyond religious borders.³⁸ The power of community leaders gained an aura of sacrality, at the expense of the rabbinic milieu, which was considered in the sixteenth century as secondary in importance with respect to the oligarchy. Added to this were the increasing economic and social gaps within communities, accompanied by ceaseless internal disputes. Territorial rulers intervened in community life to an increasing extent; no important issue in the internal management of local communities was beyond their reach, and they were motivated not by theological reasoning, but by concerns about financial and political sovereignty. This restructuring of community life and religious tradition and the accompanying processes of unification and standardization were not confined to the German-Ashkenazi world, but erupted on a “global” scale – in Italian communities, in the Northern European Sephardi diaspora, in Jewish-Ottoman communities along the Mediterranean basin, and in the rising center in Poland. The introverted gaze was reinforced by the spread of pietistic literature inspired in turn by the spread of Jewish Kabbalah, and in Germany particularly by the precedent of local pietism (Hasidei Ashkenaz), which lowered Jewish interest in theological innovations within Christianity. This was paralleled by the spread of “Customary Literature” (Sifrut Minahgim) in Ashkenaz, composed and discussed by imminent rabbinic figures, underlining the practical and ritual aspects of Jewish life at the expense of the classical rabbinic erudition of post-Talmudic literature. The accentuation of “ethnographic” aspects of Jewish culture had mirror-like parallels in the Hebraist literature composed by Jewish converts for the use of non-Jewish readers. It marked a similar shift toward considering Jewish religiosity as a conglomerate of practices and rituals, devoid of any coherent theological frame. The fear of potential and real threats emanating from the new Lutheran camp, alongside the shifting of interreligious symbiosis to the political-financial level (most clearly represented by Jewish factors, court Jews, and Shtadlanim) and the folklorization of Jewish tradition, all contributed to a significant decrease in any religious contact, dispute, or interest in new theological innovations. The Lutheran theology was another case in point.

 Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling, eds., Die katholische Konfessionalisierung (Münster: Aschendorff, 1995).

Gregory J. Miller

Luther and the Turks 1 Introduction Although their role is often neglected in standard historical narratives of the Protestant Reformation, the Ottoman Turks were an important part of the mental framework of many leading Christian thinkers in the sixteenth century, including Martin Luther.¹ In the minds of these Europeans, the Turks formed a fearsome, crescentshaped horizon from the Black Sea to North Africa, a horizon that seemed to be pressing toward Christendom, threatening to break through and overwhelm. Pamphlets and broadsheets stoked this fear through reports of Ottoman victories and images of Turkish atrocities. The woodcut image of a turban-clad, scimitar-wielding Turk impaling a Christian child on a fencepost became almost iconic. As far away as England and Scandinavia, an unexpected attack and invasion by the Ottomans was feared. At the same time, however, many Western Europeans seem to have been curious about – and even attracted to – exotic aspects of the Ottomans. Costume books that included Turkish dress, descriptions of life at the Sublime Porte, and histories of the Turks were published and sold. Turkish elements were incorporated into European clothing, furnishings, and celebrations. And then there was coffee and the development of European coffee shops, sometimes advertised with the sign of a turbaned Turk. The Ottoman Empire was a dangerous place, but also one filled with interesting treasures and fascinating stories. Perhaps nowhere is this tension between fear and exotic attraction more clearly presented than in the pamphlets of Bartholomew Georgijevic. In a publication for which he personally visited Martin Luther in an attempt to gain his support, Georgijevic simulataneously wrote about the atrocities of the Ottoman slave trade and also appended a Turkish-Latin phrase book of common words, obviously intended for merchants trading with the Turks. There was fear, there was attraction, and there was rhetoric. Almost from the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, the question of the appropriate response to the Turks became entangled in the political and confessional conflicts of the sixteenth century. When encountering references to the Turks in the writings of the six-

 For Luther on the Turks, see especially Johannes Ehmann, Luther, Turken, und Islam: Eine Untersuchung zum Türken- und Islambild Martin Luthers (1515 – 1546) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 2008); Adam Francisco, Martin Luther and Islam: A Study in Sixteenth Century Polemics and Apologetics (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Gregory Miller, “Luther on the Turks and Islam,” in Harvesting Martin Luther’s Reflections on Theology, Ethics, and the Church, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004); and Gregory Miller, “Luther’s Views of Jews and Turks,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-039

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teenth century, a modern reader must exercise caution. Frequently these mentions are in actuality less about the Turks than about guilt by association. One could almost say that if a confessional argument during the Reformation went on long enough, sooner or later one side (or both) would be accused of being Turkish. All three of these approaches can be found in the writings of Martin Luther. Luther possessed a striking interest in the Turks, and references to them appear throughout his writings, table talks, and sermons from the beginning of his public career to his final years. Perhaps even more than most Western Europeans, the Turks were an important part of Luther’s mental furniture. And due to the importance of Luther, what was of interest to him became of interest to a large number of others, both in his own day and in the decades that followed. This chapter begins with a summary of Luther’s engagement with and understanding of the Turks and Islam. (For Luther and many others, these terms were largely synonymous.) The two most important aspects of Luther’s response to the Ottomans are then discussed: the political response, especially issues surrounding the use of military force; and the theological response, particularly with regard to the role of the Turks in Luther’s eschatology. The conclusion discusses Luther’s overall contributions to the history of Christian-Islamic relations.

2 The Political and Intellectual Context In order to understand Luther’s responses to the Turks, a brief summary of the political and intellectual context is necessary. We tend to use specific events to mark the clean edges of history, even though in nearly all cases this obscures the reality of gradual transformations and important continuities. This is especially true when we use 1291 and the fall of Acre as the end of the Crusades. Although a Christian-controlled Jerusalem became less and less a living possibility, the responses to Islam that had been developed by Christian thinkers in the West over the preceding centuries lived on. Driving the Turks out of Europe was most frequently mentioned, but dreams of a Christian Holy Land (specifically the capture of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher) still moved individuals in early sixteenth-century Germany. The circulation of translations of a prophecy attibuted to Methodius supported these dreams. According to this prophecy, after about 80 years of Turkish control, Constantinople will be freed by a figure generally referred to by scholars of Christian apocalypticism as “The Last World Emperor.” With God’s help, this mighty emperor will gather a huge army and destroy Turkish power forever. The entire world will be conquered for Christianity, and “whoever will not adore the Holy Cross, he will kill.”²

 See, for example, the pamphlet written by Jörg Dappach, Ain schön lied New gemacht von den türkenn. Auss der propheci daruon man lang gesagt hat (1522).

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According to these sixteenth-century supporters of the crusade, the primary reason why the Turks have not yet been subjugated is due to disunity among Christians and a lack of full participation by all of Christendom. Pamphlets emphasized that every Christian is responsible for contributing to the fight with everything they have available, either with their military ability or (especially) with money. One popular anonymous pamphlet, Ain anschlag wie man dem Türcke widerstand thun mag, confidently demonstrated that a Christian army of 250,000 could be put together simply through the payment of a weekly penny by every adult communicant in Christendom.³ If Christians would just unite their resources and change their behavior, they could easily overcome the enemy of the faith. Everyone was responsible, so these pamphleteers argued, because if the followers of Muhammad were not destroyed, Christendom would be destroyed by them, as the subtext of many news reports on the series of Turkish conquests clearly indicated. This great anxiety about the Ottoman advance was not completely unfounded. To a Central European of the time, Ottoman expansion must have appeared unstoppable. Founded by the Seljuk vassal Osman in the early 1300s, the Ottoman Empire was built piece by piece through attacks on the remains of Byzantine territories in Asia Minor. Expanding from their first victory at Bursa in 1326, by the time of the reign of Osman’s second successor, Murad I (1359 – 1389), the Ottomans had captured Western Asia Minor, crossed the Hellespont, and taken most of the central Balkans. Despite defeats by the armies of Timur the Lame (in Asia Minor, c.1395 – 1467), in 1453 the chief Ottoman goal – the capture of Constantinople – had been attained by Muhammad II, the Conqueror (1451– 1481). Muhammad II, one of the most brilliant of the Ottoman sultans, further solidified Ottoman power by conquering all of the Balkans south of the Danube, except for a few isolated strongholds. His expansion into Central Europe was limited only by a defeat at Belgrade (1456). Selim the First (who reigned from 1512 to 1520), the ninth Ottoman sultan and grandson of Muhammad II, turned his attention to the East. Selim added both Egypt and the guardianship of the holy cities Mecca and Medina to his realm by 1517. At the time of Selim’s death in 1520, the Ottoman Empire was the leader of the Muslim world and a significant threat to Christian Europe. It is clear that a significant intensifier of this fear was the fact that these were Muslims or, using sixteenth-century language, Mohammedans. Most writers understood that the Turks were not Arabs, but such distinctions generally were not considered important. The Ottoman advance was scary in large part because it meant the advance of Islam. Stories of Turkish conquests often highlighted the conversion of churches into mosques (especially in Hungary) and the spiritual dangers of falling  The Anschlag estimated that if each church (an average of 93 men) gave one penny per week per individual, this would total 19,468,092 gulden. At a cost of 2 gulden per horse and 1 per footsoldier, 249,094 soldiers could be financed. To do this required an inter-European currency standardization, about which the author goes into great detail. This was a very popular pamphlet; it was reprinted in various guises in response to perceived Turkish threats in 1522, 1523, 1532, 1541, and 1542.

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into the hands of the Turks. This was an enemy that was believed to be able to kill not only the body, but also the soul. Quite naturally, early sixteenth-century Ottoman expansion was of particular concern to the Holy Roman emperor, Maximilian. He formulated an aggressive policy concerning the Turks in connection with his designs on Hungary and the Balkans. By the time of the Treaty of Vienna (1515), he was able to secure the betrothal of his granddaughter Mary to King Ladislav of Hungary’s infant son Louis, thereby securing the succession. As future ruler of “the bulwark of Christendom” – facing Ottoman incursions into Hungary, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, and with dreams of a Hapsburg-Byzantine empire in the East –, Maximilian became an energetic advocate of the crusade.⁴ In an effort to increase funding, Maximilian encouraged the production of a significant body of pro-crusade propaganda and placed pressure on the papacy to declare a crusade and a crusade tax. In 1517, the general peace that was considered a prerequisite for military action against the Turks was finally arranged. On March 13, 1518, Leo X formally proclaimed a crusade and a five-year peace.⁵ There was great expectation of a dramatic Christian victory. Court poets even sang of the reconquest of the Holy Land and hinted that Maximillian may be the Last World Emperor.⁶

3 Luther’s Engagement with Islam and Knowledge of Islam and the Turks This is the immediate context for Luther’s first significant statement about the Turks. It is clear that Luther considered the new crusade tax to be simply a pretext for the Roman “extortion” of money from Germans. In 1518, he published the statement that “to fight against the Turk is to fight against God, who is punishing our sins through them.”⁷ The first action against the Turks must be genuine repentance, not fantasizing about a crusade. This comment became entangled in the wider debate on indulgences and was specifically highlighted by the papacy for condemnation.

 John Bohnstedt, “The Infidel Scourge of God: The Turkish Menace as Seen by German Pamphleteers of the Reformation Era,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 58 no. 9 (1968): 9.  Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204 – 1571), vol. 3, The Sixteenth Century to the Reign of Julius III (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984), 172– 97.  In connection with this promised campaign, court poet Jörg Graff reworked a fifteenth-century song to show Maximilian guiding the ship of the Church against the strong wind of the Turks. Quoting from a prophecy of Methodius he added: “ain newer cristen künig würt (sein nam Maximilian si redten) der würt das hailig land ersetten und füllen mit cristen glauben;” R.V. Liliencron, Die historischen Volkslieder der Deutschen vom 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert, vols. 3 and 4 (Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, 1867– 1869), 212– 15.  WA 7:140.

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Luther’s sharp denunciation of this crusade produced unintended consequences. Some misunderstood him (so Luther later claimed) to be advocating a position of non-aggression and/or non-resistance toward the Turks. It was widely believed that some, perhaps including Luther, actually desired the overlordship of the Turks and might even support an Ottoman invasion of Central Europe. Luther and his circle abhorred this reputation and went out of their way to distinguish their position from those of more pacifist groups. The issue was considered so vital that the 1528 visitation guidelines included a special section absolutely denouncing non-resistance concerning the Turks. Evangelical pastors were to forbid anyone from teaching that the Turk was not to be resisted. Rather, people should be taught that the authorities have been given the sword and power to punish all murderers and robbers, including the Turks.⁸ Luther’s friends encouraged him to write a clarification of his (increasingly embarrassing) earlier comments. One reason the need for a clarification seemed so timely was that the military situation in relation to the Turks had worsened considerably. In less than two hours at the battle of Mohaĉ on August 29, 1526, the Hungarian army was destroyed. Sulaiman occupied Budapest and claimed a large portion of Hungary. The Ottoman armies invaded Central Europe again in 1529, in a campaign that culminated in the famous siege of Vienna. Although forced to withdraw, Sulaiman gave every indication that the Ottoman armies would be back. These events were a wake-up call concerning the severity of the Turkish threat. Luther reported that the news of the siege of Vienna actually made him physically ill.⁹ The Ottoman campaign of 1529 was the precipitator for Luther’s two most important publications on the Ottomans, On War Against the Turks (1529) and Muster Sermon Against the Turks (1529).¹⁰ In these pamphelts, Luther clarified his position concerning the appropriate Christian response to Islam. The heart of his argument was an absolute rejection of medieval crusade theology while simultaneously supporting a (defensive) war against the Turks. This aspect of Luther’s thought is one of his most important contributions to Christian-Islamic relations and will be examined in more detail in the following section. It was not only in the context of the siege of Vienna that Martin Luther demonstrated considerable interest in Islam. He read the Qur’an (albeit in a poor Latin translation, as he himself realized) and was familiar with the most widely circulated medieval Christian sources on Islam. He kept abreast of developments through oral reports, letters, and pamphlet literature. In addition to his two major pamphlets in the wake of the siege of Vienna, Luther published Admonition to Prayer Against the Turks in the context of a renewed call for military action against the Ottomans  Luther and Melanchthon, Unterricht der Visitatoren, WA 26:236 – 40. In the Instructions, a separate section was dedicated to the Turks. The Turks were used as a chief distinction between Evangelicals and Anabaptists.  WA.B 5:163.  Vom Kriege wider die Türken, WA 30.2:81– 148; Heerpredigt wider den Türken, WA 30.2:149 – 97.

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in 1541. In 1542, he published a translation of one of the most important medieval Christian polemics against Islam, the Refutation of the Qur’an by Brother Richard of the Order of Preachers. In 1543, he wrote a preface for his republication of the medieval Booklet on the Rites and Customs of the Turks and an introduction to Theodor Bibliander’s Latin edition of the Qur’an.¹¹ Luther’s connection to the first printed Qur’an is particularly interesting. As early as 1529, Luther lamented the fact that he had no accurate Latin translation of the Qur’an. About this time, the Zürich reformer Theodor Bibliander initiated his study of Arabic with the intention of publishing the first-ever printed Qur’an. By 1542, Bibliander had completed his edition, but a public debate concerning the danger that the Qur’an might present to the Christian community jeopardized the entire project.¹² All printed copies were seized, and the printer was jailed. Luther took a leading role in the concerted effort by several Protestant leaders across confessional lines to allow the printing to continue. The desire to understand Islam through its foundational text and a preference for first-hand observations were defining characteristics of early Protestant engagement with Islam. Luther’s sola fide and sola scriptura framework resulted in the development of a view of Islam as fundamentally a religion of works-righteousness – that is, trying to be justified before God through one’s own pious activities.¹³ For Luther, Islam was so strongly stamped by “works” that every works-righteousness within or without Christianity could be characterized as “Turkish.” Connecting the Turks and his papal opponents as both denigrating Christ and elevating works was one of the most frequently used rhetorical weapons in his writings. At times, Luther did praise Muslims for their piety. According to him, the discipline of the Turks would shame any Papist so much that none would remain in his faith if he were to spend just three days with the Turks.¹⁴ However, in demonstrating the religious “superiority” of the Turks over the Papists, Luther primarily wanted to highlight the meaninglessness of works-righteousness or the moral failings of his confessional opponents. In the end, Luther always used the same argument: no matter how spiritual it seems, without Christ they are lost. Luther viewed the Qur’an to be fundamentally a book of law – not on a par with the Bible, but similar to the papal collections of canon law. Furthermore, these laws were not morally good or even neutral; the Qur’an was a “foul, shameful book.”¹⁵ For

 Vermahnung zum Gebet wider den Türken, WA 51:585 – 625; Verlegung des Alcoran Bruder Richardi, Prediger Ordens. Verdeutscht und herausgegeben von Martin Luther, WA 53:261– 396; Libellus de ritu et moribus Turcorum, WA 30.2:198 – 208; Vorrede zu Theodor Biblianders Koranausgabe, WA 53:561– 72.  Concerning this controversy, see especially Henry Clark’s “The Publication of the Qur’an in Latin: A Reformation Dilemma,” Sixteenth Century Journal 15 no. 1 (1984).  See especially Luther’s preface to a reprinting of George of Hungary’s Libellus de ritu et moribus Turcorum, WA 30.2:205 – 08.  WA 30.2:206.  WA 30.2:121– 22.

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Luther, the Qur’an contained only what human reason could easily bear and blasphemously rejected Christ as God. Luther supported the publication of the Qur’an in Latin because he considered public knowledge of the Qur’an to be the greatest weapon against Islam.¹⁶ Throughout his writings, Luther displays a bare-bones, not entirely accurate comprehension of Islam. He knows that Islam claims to worship the one God, creator of the heavens and the earth, as do Jews and Christians. He knows that Muslims believe in the resurrection of the dead, but understands this only in the material sense of an afterlife characterized by pleasure. He knows that the Turks highly exalt Jesus and consider him to be a great prophet, though not divine. Luther shows no sign of knowing that Islam believes Jesus the prophet was born of a virgin. Luther equates Muhammad with Moses, as a giver of the law. In contrast to the dominant Western medieval understanding, there is no sense that Luther sees Islam as a Christian heresy. Rather, Luther understood Islam as something essentially different from Christianity. In On War Against the Turks, Luther concludes that the faith of the Turks is a separate religion, patched together from Jewish, Christian, and heathen elements. According to Luther, Turks (along with Jews and Papists) claim to know God, to serve him, and to pray to him. They hope that they will be saved, but it is a false hope. The way to God is only through Christ. Without Christ, the best life, the holiest deeds, prayer, and all service are nothing other than error, lies, and death. In a sermon found in the Postils, Luther asked rhetorically: Don’t you know that Turks and Jews believe that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing? Made a covenant with Adam and Eve in paradise, and led the children of Israel out of Egypt by Moses? But for Luther, it makes no difference; they do not believe in God because they do not believe in Christ.¹⁷ In sum, the Turks are one of the great enemies of the Church, and Christians are to pray that God holds them in check.

4 The Crusade and (Just) War Against the Turks Medieval crusade theology wanted God to do more than just hold the Turks in check, of course. Luther’s pessimism regarding human military success against the Turks and his denunciation of the crusade were important historical contributions to the development of Christian responses to Islam. There had been critiques of crusaders prior to Luther (especially of crusader morality), but also a general acceptance of the fundamental points of crusade theology.¹⁸ Luther raised concerns over appropriate responses to the Turks almost from the beginning of his public career. His first objection to the crusade was related to under See Luther’s introduction to Bibliander’s Qur’an, WA 53:565.  Sermon on the Day of Philip and James, WA 52:641– 43.  See, for example, Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of the Crusade, 1095 – 1274 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

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standing the Turks as a punishment from God. Since the reason for the Turkish advance was the sinfulness of the Germans, without reform, any military campaign could not be effective. The first action against the Turks must be for Christians to genuinely repent.¹⁹ This theme of repentance as the best weapon against the Turks remained consistent throughout his career. To defeat the Turks, praying Psalm 20 or 79 were better weapons than any fist or spear.²⁰ The siege of Vienna provided the context for Luther to develop his position on war with the Turks more fully. Luther’s point of departure remained an unequivocal critique of the crusade. But since he was now calling for military action, it was important for him to demonstrate that he had not altered his position in favor of a more martial response in order to please the princes or anyone else (as he had been accused of), but that his earlier comments came from a time when the Turkish threat was more distant. In On War Against the Turks, Luther’s critique of the crusade went beyond calls to repentance or opposition to crusade indulgences as works-righteousness and focused on the crusade as a blasphemous confusion of the heavenly and earthly kingdoms. For Luther, there could be no such thing as a Christian “Holy War.” Christians as Christians (that is, with regard to their Christian calling and responsibilities) were not to lead or even participate in battle. Scripture commanded believers not to resist evil; fighting against the Turks would be a protest against martyrdom. Although Pope Innocent IV had authorized prelates to declare and lead wars while barring them from the actual fighting,²¹ for Luther, ecclesiastical attempts at military leadership angered God and were a prime cause of defeat in battle. Clergy were to preach and pray, not to bear arms and fight or lead campaigns. According to Luther, soldiers even had a right to protest this kind of Church-led crusade through disobedience. “If I were a soldier and saw on the battlefield a priest’s banner or cross, even if it were the very crucifix, I would run away as though the very devil were chasing me!”²² A second area of concern for Luther was the question of whether the Turks should be attacked simply because they were Muslims. In his final opinion, Innocent IV stated that Muslims who lived peacefully within the empire were to be left alone, while those who refused to recognize the dominion of the Roman Church and the (Holy) Roman Empire merited Christian attacks.²³ This, of course, justified almost any military action. In contrast, for Luther there was no religious justification for any military action – be it against false Christians, heretics, or even Turks.

 See, for example, Assertio omnium articulorum M. Lutheri per bullam Leonis X. novissimam damnatorum (1520), WA 7:140 – 41; Grund und Ursach aller Artikel D.M. Luthers (1521), WA 7:443.  Admonition to Prayer, WA 51:607.  Frederick H. Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 187.  War against the Turks, 30.2:115.  Just War in the Middle Ages, 201.

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There are Turks, Jews, heathens, and all too many non-Christians, both with public false teaching and with outrageously shameful life. Let the Turks believe and live as they will, just as one allows the papacy and other false Christians to live. The Emperor’s sword has nothing to do with faith – it belongs to corporal, earthly things.²⁴

Luther’s criticism of the crusade did not lead to a disavowal of violence against the Turks. The Muster Sermon was written specifically to admonish the “fist” against the Ottomans. For Luther, the war against the Turks was his generation’s example of a “good war” for two reasons: 1) defense against raiding parties is an appropriate police action against criminals, and 2) the war against the Turks is a war of resistance against an aggressor. It was the duty of legitimate rulers to defend society against the Turks, just as they would oppose all domestic criminals and disturbers of the peace. Moreover, in fulfilling this commandment, princes were doing a godly, righteous work.²⁵ And as obedient subjects of the earthly order, Christians were obligated to do their duty to defend the realm. In fact, fighting against the Turks was an expression of the second greatest commandment – to love one’s (Christian) neighbor. There is a careful balance here: one should not fight against the Turks under the name of Christ or because they are enemies of Christ, yet this is no blatant secularization of war. For the Christian subject in this just war against the Turks, “your fist and spear is the fist and spear of God”²⁶ but not for the kingdom of God. Despite his support of military action against the invading Turks, Luther remained pessimistic about the possibility of imperial military success. He considered the Turks to be a punishment from God on Germany against which there was no defense. However, he urged Protestant princes to help defend the fatherland against the Turks, even if it was to be feared that after the campaign, they themselves would be attacked. For Luther, the war against the Turks was obedience to the earthly duty to protect the neighbor one is called to love. By no means was this military action an attempt to defend the Church, capture Jerusalem, or expand the kingdom of God. The contrast with earlier Christian responses to Islam is striking. For Luther, the only success would be found in prayer and genuine conversion, followed by God’s eschatological intervention. At the end of time, victory against the Turks would come only by God’s judgment of “thunder, lightning, and hellish fire.”²⁷

 War Against the Turks, 30.2:131.  For example, in Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, Zwen trostbrieve geschriben an der Durchleuchtigen und hochgebornen Fürsten und Herrn Herrn Joachim Churfürste und Marckgraven zu Brandenburger vom Türcken zuge (Nürnberg: Berg, 1532), 4a–5a.  Muster Sermon, 174.  Muster Sermon, 171.

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5 The Turks and Eschatology Comparing the contemporary condition of the world to Scripture, it was clear to Luther that he was living in the last days. He likened contemporary Germany to the days before the flood, when wickedness covered the earth. God would not longer bear it; the last judgment was at the door.²⁸ Because the end of the world was near, the devil raged with his two weapons: the antichrist (the pope) and the tribulation prophesied in Matt 24:21 – the Turks. “The Turks are certainly the last and most furious raging of the devil against Christ [. . . . A]fter the Turk comes the judgment and hell.”²⁹ For Luther, Scripture contained a wealth of information on the last days. One of the most important descriptions was to be found in the book of Daniel. Luther, Melanchthon, and Jonas all wrote interpretations of this book in relation to the Turks.³⁰ Since they were actually experiencing the events prophesied in Daniel, Lutheran theologians thought it completely valid to mine the book for information on the contemporary situation concerning the Turks. According to their interpretation, the four beasts of chapter seven were interpreted historically to represent the four kingdoms of Assyria-Babylon, Medo-Persia, the Greeks, and the Romans. The ten horns represented the ten provinces of the Roman Empire: France, Italy, Spain, Africa, Germany, England, Hungary, Greece, Asia, and Egypt. The Turks entered the interpretation in verse eight: Muhammad and his faith was the little horn that arose in the midst of the ten horns. The eyes of the horn are Muhammad’s Qur’an. The mouth that speaks blasphemous things is Muhammad exalting himself over Christ. The statement that the little horn will oppress and rule over the saints was clearly true of the Turks: “For no people are more the enemies of the Turks than the Christians, the Turks fight against no one with such bloodthirstiness as against Christians.”³¹ Despite its appearance, this exegesis of Daniel gave Lutherans a great deal of confidence. Although Luther would not publicly declare an ad terminus date for Turkish power, he predicted that the Last Judgment would happen in the very near future. Privately, he suggested c.1558, based upon his numerological interpretation of Dan 7:25 (a time, two times, and half a time).³² Not only were the Turks limited chronologically, they were also limited geographically. Daniel stated that the little horn uprooted only three of the other ten horns. The Turks had already captured three “prov-

 Luther, Admonition to Prayer, 592.  Luther, Heerpredigt, 162.  Luther’s interpretation is found primarily in the Muster Sermon. Congruent positions by Justus Jonas and Phillip Melanchthon are found in Das siebend Capitel Danielis von des Türcken Gottes lesterung und schrecklicher morderey mit unterricht (Wittenberg: Lufft, 1529).  Muster Sermon, 169.  This was calculated from 1453 using “time =30 years” (i. e., Christ’s age), therefore 105 years. This would leave twenty years to go, but Luther emphasized that this was only a possible explanation. WA.TR 904, 453.

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inces”: Egypt, Africa, and Asia. According to Scripture, they would take no more territory; although they may be attacked, Hungary, Germany, and the rest of Europe were safe!³³ The book of Revelation also offered valuable insights into the contemporary situation.³⁴ In Lutheran analysis, Muhammad and the Turks appeared prominently in several portions of St. John’s prophecy. Marginal comments in the Deutsche Bibel stated that Muhammad was the second woe (9:13 – 21) between Arius and the pope.³⁵ Although Luther finally reserved the designation “antichrist” for the pope alone³⁶, within Luther’s circle it was acceptable to see the Turks as participating in or as part of the antichrist. Some declared the Turks to be one manifestation, the “physical” or corporal, as the complement to the “spiritual” manifestation of the antichrist in the papacy.³⁷ Later Lutheran theologians would sometimes use the terminology of the “Western Antichrist” (the papacy) and the “Eastern Antichrist” (the Turks). Luther also interpreted the biblical term “Gog/Magog” as designating the Turks. In late spring of 1530, while at the Coburg Fortress waiting for news from the Diet of Augsburg, Luther continued to work on his translation of the Old Testament into German, which at that time had progressed as far as Jeremiah. However, he interrupted his serial progression to skip ahead and do a special translation of Ezekiel 38 and 39, which he supplied with an introduction and sent to Wittenberg for immediate publication as a stand-alone pamphlet. ³⁸ In Ezek 38 and 39, Yahweh instructs the prophet to speak against an enormous invading military power from the north – called Gog, from the land of Magog. Although Yahweh had enticed them to attack the unsuspecting people who live in the “mountains of Israel,” the prophet was to declare that God would miraculously rescue his people and destroy the invaders. Gog and Magog are also referred to in Revelation chapters 16 and 20, where they are the hordes unleashed by Satan when he is loosed after 1000 years of peace for one final battle. In this passage, although Gog/Magog surround the “camp of God’s people, the city that he loves,” God will destroy them from on high with fire from heaven. Immediately after the destruction of Gog/Magog comes the Last Judgment.

 Luther, Heerpredigt, 171.  According to Barnes, the Turkish siege of Vienna was a primary motivation for Luther’s formulation of his interpretation of the book of Revelation. See Robin Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 44.  WA.DB 7:409.  Luther, Vom Kriege, 126.  Evidently this was originally an articulation of Luther: “papa est spiritus Antichristi, et Turca est caro Antichristi. Sie helffen beyde einander wurgen, hic corpore et gladio, ille doctrina et spiritu;” WA.TR 1:135 (no. 330 VD 134b).  This special printing was perhaps the first work he did at Coburg. See WA 30.2:220 – 35. For the entire preface with commentary, see Gregory J. Miller, “Preface to the Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Chapters of Ezekiel, on Gog,” in Luther’s Works (St Louis: Concordia, 2012), 59:277– 84.

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Luther stated that the passages in Ezekiel and Revelation refer to the same event: a massive, final confrontation between the Turks and the “true Israel” (that is, evangelical Germans). Luther did not attempt to fully explicate the complicated chronology found in these two passages. He simply interpreted the 1000 years of the binding of the devil to be the time between the writing of the book of Revelation and the founding of the Turkish kingdom, c.1300, and stated that the figures did not have to be exact.³⁹ According to this interpretation, the devil’s last days of raging were the period of the Ottoman Empire. According to Luther, however, both the Ezekiel and the Revelation passages on Gog/Magog should comfort all true believers. Even though the Turks may attack the city of God (Vienna?), they will not succeed. They will be destroyed not by military force, but by fire from heaven. As in the book of Daniel, after the destruction of the Turks, there is only one more event in human history: the Last Judgment. This extreme sense of immediacy and Luther’s complete rejection of a victory in the scope of human history represent a significant divergence from medieval views of Islam and, in the end, one of the early sixteenth century’s primary contributions to the history of Christian-Islamic relations.

6 Luther’s Legacy Luther’s primary publications concerning the Turks were infrequently reprinted and appear to have been seen by later scholars as having limited direct application. However, Luther’s statements about the Turks in these pamphlets – and even more so those in his influential biblical commentaries and postils – established an “orthodoxy” that remained dominant in Lutheran circles deep into the seventeenth century. The positions Luther established on the nature of Islam, on just war as it applies to non-Christians, and on the role of Islam in the eschaton had significant influence on many later Protestant thinkers, including not only Lutherans, but especially those in the English-speaking world. It is undeniable that there are clear points of continuance in medieval views of Islam and in Luther’s ideas about the Turks. However, in Luther’s writings there are significant – albeit sometimes subtle – transformations. Seen against the immediate context of the crusade theology of the medieval papacy, for example, Luther and his colleagues stand out sharply. According to them, clergy must not call for, lead, or fight in any war. Luther also pointed the way to the transformation of the military response to Islam from a crusade into a defensive war to protect the homeland. Although his own response was very religious in nature, contained within his writings are the seeds of an admission that the Turks were a God-permitted authority that deserved obedience from their subjects (even Christian ones). This would later permit the gradual acceptance of the Ottoman Empire within the European state system.

 WA 48:224.

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Another important long-term consequence of Luther’s view of Islam was that an eschatological interpretation of Islam was built into the very foundations of certain branches of Protestantism. For Luther, the Turks were an important part of a “last days” drama that ended only at the final judgment. This eschatological interpretation of Islam proved to be very influential deep into the seventeenth century, although it was not accepted by everyone, with John Calvin as a key counter-example.⁴⁰ Furthermore, the internal theological concerns of Luther led him to focus on the Qur’an and on Turkish religious beliefs and practices, rather than on traditional antiMuhammad biographical polemic. In addition, Luther rejected the common medieval understanding of Islam as a heretical form of Christianity. Protestant interest in original languages and suspicion of received Roman Catholic views encouraged the search for new sources of information. This impulse in favor of studying texts in their original languages and priviledging first-hand accounts would eventually lead to more accurate knowledge and the widespread rejection of many erroneous medieval ideas concerning Islam. This does not mean, however, that we can argue that Luther and those who were influenced by him made a positive contribution to the history of Christian-Islamic relations with regard to peacemaking or the treatment of the Musim Other. Clearly, Luther saw the Turks as the enemies of God, in fact the very embodiment of satanic violence and fury. Luther knew that the Turks claimed to worship the one God, the God of the Jews and the Christians. But he adamantly rejected that claim; they worship the devil, he said. And Luther claimed that their holy book, the Qur’an, was a foul mixture of human licentiousness and satanic lies. Yet behind Luther’s pronouncements on the shamefulness of the Qur’an was an important re-engagement with the Muslim holy book and authentic Muslim teaching. Luther argued that in order to respond appropriately to Muslims, one had to learn what they really believed and how they really lived, and not simply accept medieval fictions about them. In this way, Luther’s legacy is not just negative. His stated curiosity about authentic Islamic beliefs and practices, and his desire to have an accurate translation of the Qur’an, have been the foundation on which recent fruitful Lutheran interfaith dialogue with Muslims has been built.

 Zwingli and Calvin’s interpretation of the Turks was intentionally non-eschatological. Robin Barnes, Prophecy, 277; Jacques Pannier, “Calvin et les Turcs,” Revue Historique 180 (1937): 283 ff.

Helmut Puff

Martin Luther, the Sexual Reformation, and Same-Sex Sexuality This chapter takes up and discusses a paradox. In the history of sexualities, the Reformation constituted a major shift, as many critics have acknowledged. But when it comes to the history of homosexualities, the picture is quite different.¹ As will be demonstrated in the following pages, when conceptualizing same-sex sexuality, Martin Luther was anything but an innovator. Luther’s discourse on sodomy included variations on common themes of pastoral theology and sexual polemics in the late medieval German lands. This reliance on familiar themes was deliberate; the success of the Reformation as a movement depended on the broad resonance of its ideas and arguments.² But we can certainly detect in Luther’s writings a rhetorical escalation of sodomy’s verbal imagery.

1 The Sexual Reformation On December 6, 1525, Luther sent the following lines to his fellow-reformer, Georg Spalatin: Believe me, I’m happy about your marriage […] just as you are happy about my own […]. Give my friendly regards to your wife. When you are lying in bed next to your Katharina, embracing her with the sweetest hugs and kissing her, remember: “This human being, God’s most precious creature, was given to me by Christ, who deserves all praise and glory.” I will be guessing the day you will receive this letter, and the same night I will love my wife with the same act in memory of you […]. My rib and I send greetings to you and your rib.³

 Arend H. Huussen, Jr. (“Sodomy in the Dutch Republic during the Eighteenth Century,” in ‘Tis Nature’s Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality during the Enlightenment, ed. Robert Purks Maccubbin [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 169 – 78) begins his deliberations with precisely this thesis, applying it to the history of Calvinism in the Netherlands and arguing that the Calvinists had taken their vision of sodomy from others. The only historian of the Reformation who has tried to include same-sex sexuality in his account is Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (London: Penguin, 2003), 599 – 607 (“The Fear of Sodomy”).  R.W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).  Martin Luther, letter to Georg Spalatin, December 6, 1525; WAB 3:634: “Certe gestit mihi animus in tuas nuptias […] quam in meas ipsius. […] Saluta tuam coniugem suavissime, verum vt id tum facias, cum in thoro suavissimis amplexibus & osculis Catharinam tenueris, ac sic cogitaveris: En hunc hominem, optimam creaturulam Dei mei, donauit mihi Christus meus, sit illi laus & gloria. Ego quoque, cum diuinauero diem, qua has acceperis, mox ea nocte simili opere meam amabo in tui memoriam & tibi pari referam. Salutat & te et costam tuam mea costa in Christo” (author’s translation). See Georg Berbig, Georg Spalatin und sein Verhältnis zu Martin Luther auf Grund ihres Briefwechsels bis zum Jahre https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-040

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With these words, the Wittenberg reformer confirmed that his long-time friend had made the right choice with his marriage.⁴ Luther added a wedding gift to the letter and asked an acquaintance to deliver both, since he was unable to participate in the wedding festivities himself.⁵ The two companions were united once more through the letter’s language, despite the geographic distance separating them – Luther, the professor of theology at University of Wittenberg, residing in the former Augustinian monastery; and Spalatin, who took up the position of a parish priest in Altenburg, Saxony, after the death of his superior, the elector Frederick the Wise. On June 27, 1525, Luther had married Katharina von Bora, a former nun, and Spalatin married Katharina Heidenreich (Strobel) on November 19 of the same year.⁶ Both of their marriages meant a radical break with clerical celibacy that, though frequently ridiculed or critiqued, had been highly esteemed for centuries.⁷ Since the beginning of the 1520s, evangelically inspired clerics had acted upon the insight that there was no biblical basis for institutionalizing celibacy. Bartholomäus Bernhardi – a student of Luther, former Augustinian monk, rector of the Leucorea, and parish priest in Kemberg – was one of the first clerics to marry as a result, in May 1521.⁸ Another reformer, Justus Jonas, later noted that thousands followed his example.⁹ Weddings of evangelically minded monks, nuns, priests, and clerics marked an important threshold for parishes in the early Reformation. As with the consumption of meat during Lent and similar public rituals in the early days of the Reformation, these marriages signaled the advent of a new era. They made evident that the application of reform principles transformed society. After 1520, followers occasionally urged Luther to put his theological arguments in favor of marriage into practice and get married himself.¹⁰ Others, however, pressured him not to endanger the work of the gospel by marrying. According to them, 1525 (Halle an der Saale: Nietschmann, 1906), 292. For the letters as a key to understanding Luther, see Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegate and Prophet (New York: Random House, 2016).  Siehe Berbig, Spalatin und sein Verhältnis zu Martin Luther, 288 – 95 (on Luther’s and Spalatin’s marital status). See also Roper, Der Mensch Martin Luther, 224– 27.  Berbig, Spalatin und sein Verhältnis zu Martin Luther, 292.  On Spalatin, see Christopher Spehr, “Georg Spalatin” in Neue Deutsche Biographie, ed. Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Dunkcer and Humblot, 2010), 24:614– 15; Hans Joachim Kessler et al., Spalatin in Altenburg: Eine Stadt plant eine Ausstellung (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2012); Irmgard Huss, Georg Spalatin 1484 – 1545: Ein Leben in der Zeit des Humanismus und der Reformation (Weimar: Böhlau, 1956).  Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman, eds., Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 1993).  Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, From Priest’s Whore to Pastor’s Wife: Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 51– 89.  Stephen E. Buckwalter, Die Priesterehe in Flugschriften der frühen Reformation (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998), 97. See also Dorothea McEwan, Das Wirken des Vorarlberger Reformators Bartholomäus Bernhardi (Dornbirn: Linos, 1986).  Martin Luther, An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation, 1520; WAS 6:404– 69, at 408, 440 – 41.

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a marriage could add grist to the mill for his enemies, who would use the opportunity to allege the real motif of the reformer – lewdness, a locus classicus of late medieval anticlericalism.¹¹ Luther obviously hesitated to exchange the familiar, homosocial world of scholars and monks for the heterosocial, unfamiliar world of a head of household, father, and husband. A growing number of academics since the Late Middle Ages had already set an example by transitioning from a celibate life to a family life.¹² When Luther decided to get married, it was for political reasons, among other things. In the year of the Peasants’ War, his marriage was meant to signal his embrace of the social order – an order he perceived to be under threat.¹³ There is consensus among historians of the period that the Reformation gave birth to a new sexual order, one of the most fundamental changes caused by the reform of religious life in the sixteenth century. The belief that humans are essentially sexual beings and that sexual desire is intrinsic to our bodies is widespread in many societies, and the Reformers embraced it wholeheartedly. After all, Luther declared marriage to be a standard for basically every adult person. To be sure, matrimony was no longer a sacrament in Protestant territories; nevertheless, the Reformers saw in marriage the only legitimate way to lead a sexual life. Reformers subsequently revised marita law, removing impediments to marriage that were part of medieval canon law. The accompanying measures for the new appreciation of marriage included authorizing parents and communities to broker marriage agreements, disciplining pre- and extramarital sexuality, ordering the dissolution – in many cases, the violent dissolution – of monasteries, and prohibiting prostitution.¹⁴ Hence, the introduction of reform principles in Protestant cities and territories incited a sexual reformation and engendered a sexual politics centered on marriage.¹⁵

 Indeed, Catholic polemics against the reformer mainly used this theme; see Helmut Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400 – 1600 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 155 – 56. See, for instance, the frontispiece of Luthers Bad und Spiegel by Kilian Leib, the prior of the Augustinian monastery in Rebdorf, transmitted as a manuscript only. It shows a monk and a nun (indicated by another writing than the author’s dating from the sixteenth century as “ket von bora”) holding hands; the manuscript was written shortly after Luther’s marriage (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, cgm 6551).  Gadi Algazi, “Scholars in Households: Refiguring the Learned Habitus, 1480 – 1550,” Science in Context 16 (2003): 9 – 42.  Spalatin’s marriage is a good example of the continued resistance against pfaffenhuren (“priests’ whores”). On the confrontations in Altenburg see Huss, Spalatin, 292– 307.  Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Lyndal Roper, “Discipline and Respectability: Prostitution and the Reformation in Augsburg,” in Feminism and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 333 – 65.  Isabel Hull, Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700 – 1815 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 9 – 49.

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My description suggests that this Sexual Reformation did not bring liberation from enforced sexual abstinence or sexual repression.¹⁶ In the end, the call to marry was not based on a positive evaluation of sexual activity, even in the case of sex between spouses. We should not be lulled by Luther’s warm-heartedness in the letter quoted above. The stress is on fulfilling a divine mandate, and the spouses’ mutual sexual satisfaction was secondary – granted, with asymmetrical social roles accorded to women and men.¹⁷ Luther regarded sexual desire as a heavy burden for all human beings and the result of original sin. To be unmistakably clear on this point, Luther ended his essay Vom ehelichen Leben (The Estate of Marriage, 1522) with a reference to the consequences of the fall and the idea that “no marital debt [i. e., no sexual intercourse] is without sin.”¹⁸ For Luther, the insight into the general sinfulness of humankind was a relief. If divine grace was the only remedy for humanity’s fallen state, one could accept sexuality with an astonishing serenity, as many of his writings show. That is also why the reformer could express his delight in the sexual act so openly. In fact, Luther experienced religious questions directly and physically.¹⁹ The rib from Luther’s letter to Spalatin referenced creation, but also reflected a religiosity that was in essence bodily. Luther’s call to marry, as formulated in Vom ehelichen Leben, soon became something of an obligation for all adults; researchers have even called this mandate “compulsory heterosexuality.”²⁰ Exempt from this expectation to marry were only those members of the community who were unable to procreate.²¹ To be sure, not all marriageable people actually got married, even in Protestant territories. No matter how strongly Luther pleaded for men and women to marry as soon as they reached sexual maturity, many people lacked the economic basis to support a household.²² However,

 Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); Heide Wunder, “Er ist die Sonn’, sie ist der Mond”: Frauen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1992); Joel Harrington, Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Amy Leonard, Nails in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in Reformation Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).  Rüdiger Schnell, Sexualität und Emotionalität in der vormodernen Ehe (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002).  Martin Luther, Vom ehelichen Leben, 1522; WAS 10.2:275 – 304, at 304.  Roper, Der Mensch Martin Luther, 224– 27.  Raewyn Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 186; Ulinka Rublack, “Interior States and Sexuality in Early Modern Germany,” in After the History of Sexuality: German Genealogies with and beyond Foucault, ed. Scott Spector, Dagmar Herzog, and Helmut Puff (New York: Berghahn, 2012), 43 – 62. Cf. Luther, Vom ehelichen Leben, 276: “Because it is […] completely natural that every man must have a wife, and every woman must have a husband” (Denn es ist […] eyn nöttig naturlich ding, das alles, was eyn man ist, muß ein weyb haben, und was eyn weyb ist, muß eyn man haben).  Luther, Vom ehelichen Leben, 278 – 80.  Maryanne Kowaleski, “Singlewomen in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: The Demographic Perspective,” in Singlewomen in the European Past 1250 – 1800, ed. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 38 – 81.

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even if someone did not get married or failed to remarry, one could still participate in the idea of marriage as a divinely ordained, universal order of the sexes. Thus, for Luther, marriage and procreation constituted “God’s work.”²³ In addition, marriage provided a safety valve for sexual desire, he maintained, and without it, “harlotry [hurerey], adultery [ehebruch], and mute sin [stumme sund] will prevail.”²⁴ With this claim, the discussion of married life and marital sexuality gives way to a vague – no more than that – mention of homosexuality and other illegitimate forms of sexuality. Against the backdrop of the divinely ordained union between a man and a woman, there evidently were many sexual activities that Luther saw and described as antithetical to marital sexuality. Interestingly, Luther’s focus on the sharply drawn line between rightful sexuality in marriage and its many antipodes obscures the view of both marital and non-marital sexuality. On the one hand, the reformer – in contrast to quite a few pre-Reformation theologians – gave almost no advice as to how, when, and how often a couple should live up to their obligation to sexually satisfy one’s spouse.²⁵ On the other hand, the contours of the discarded sexual alternatives become vague in their summary condemnation and their being contrasted with marriage.

2 On the Muteness of Some Sexual Sins When Luther calls “harlotry, adultery, and mute sin” the three consequences of a rejection of marriage or of an institutionalized celibacy, he echoes categories that were prominent in scholasticism: fornicatio, adulterium, and vicium sodomiticum. Medieval theologians had systematized the theology of sins. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, in his Summa Theologica, fans out lust (luxuria), one of the seven deadly sins, into six sub-sins: fornicatio (a sexual act between a man and a woman), adulterium (adultery), incestus (incest), stuprum (certain forms of sexual violence), raptus (abduction

 Luther, Vom ehelichen Leben, 276, 295, 298, etc.  Luther, Vom ehelichen Leben, 276. See also p. 293: “of which Paul writes in Romans 1, and lets them continue their harlotry, impure discharge, until they changed from defiling women to defiling boys and non-rational animals” (da Paulus von schreybt Ro. 1, und ließ sie faren ynn hurerey, unreyne fluß, biß sie hinfurt keyne weyber, sondern knaben und unvernunfftige thier schendeten); see also p. 299: “And isn’t it a good thing that with such a [marital] life, harlotry and unchaste behavior is limited and refused” (Und ist das nicht eyn geringe gutt, das durch solch [ehelich] leben die hurerey und unkeuscheyt nach bleybt und verweret wirt); and finally, p. 300: “If it does not happen within the marriage, it would take place elsewhere, in harlotry or worse sins”) (Geschichts nicht ynn der ehe, wo solts anders denn ynn hurerey odder erger sunden geschehen). On page 301, Luther also gives medical reasons, because sexuality that is not acted on can do harm to the body.  Luther, Vom ehelichen Leben, 275: “Although that makes me shudder, and I don’t like to preach about marriage” (Wie wol mir grawet, und nit gern vom Eelichen leben predige). The first paragraph of this publication makes clear the work’s pastoral-theological impetus.

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or kidnapping of women), and vicium sodomiticum (the sin of sodomy).²⁶ Luther thinned out the list. He dropped categories associated with canon law (incestus, stuprum, and raptus), retaining only terms that referred to sexual practices (fornicatio, adulterium, vicium sodomiticum). He even kept their order in ascending severity: “harlotry, adultery, and mute sin.” Scholastic theology assessed the sinfulness of a sexual transgression according to how it was committed, by whom, and with whom – thus with reference to how strongly it violated creation. Put differently, even if extramarital sex and adultery were transgressions or sins, such acts did not violate the command to procreate. The core problem with sodomy – regardless of whether it referred to masturbation, heterosexual anal sex, homosexual sex, sex with animals, or something else – was the fact that it did not serve procreation (this is why the list can be extended with other “sterile” sins). Hence, vicium sodomiticum was defined as a transgression of God’s order as scholastic theologians elaborated it; it is a transgression contra naturam, or rather against God’s creation, which is described as natura. Therefore, among the acts said to belong under the umbrella term of sodomy, sex with animals was a more severe sin than homosexual sex, according to scholastic theologians. It referred to sexual activity with a species other than the human; sex between men or between women did not cross this line.²⁷ Vicium sodomiticum was basically a philosophical and theological construct; only secondarily, if at all, did these axioms relate to the everyday life of sexual subjects. In other words, theological discussion in the Middle Ages addressed sexual acts rather than types of people. The term sodomia was not linked to a socio-sexual group; what was at stake was the sin of sodomy, and sodomites usually referred to the inhabitants of the biblical city of Sodom. Rather, the category luxuria designated a spectrum of activities that were open to be acted out by everyone. In this mindset, every person – woman or man – was potentially at risk of committing such sins. Luther’s casual mention of the “mute sin” in the context of his Vom ehelichen Leben therefore attributes to all human beings the general capacity for sexual sins, be they “harlotry,” “adultery,” or even “mute sin.” In one passage of this work, it even seems as if those who have sinned sexually could go astray and follow a path that led them

 Thomas Aquinas, “Secunda secundae summas theologiae. Quaestio CLIV, Articulus XI–XII,” in Opera omnia (Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1899), 10:243 – 248; Aquinas, “Prima secundae summae theologiae. Quaestio XCIV, Articulus II,” in Opera omnia, vo. 7 (Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1892), 169 – 170; Aquinas, “Prima secundae summae theologiae. Quaestio XXXI, Articulus VII,” in Opera omnia 6:221– 22. Cf. Mark Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Medieval Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 144. It is not my intention here to claim that Luther used Thomas Aquinas. It is also possible that Luther knew these categorizations from the literature of confession that provided instruments when conversing with laypeople; cf. Pierre Payer, Sex and the New Medieval Literature of Confession, 1150 – 1300 (Toronto: Brepols, 2009).  James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

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to commit ever more severe sexual sins.²⁸ That is why Luther sought to strengthen marriage as a bulwark to avoid more severe sexual sins. It is remarkable that in the passage quoted above Luther – in contradistinction to Thomas Aquinas – refrained from explaining to his readership what “mute sin” meant in relation to his praise of marriage. This definitional void is the result of a pastoral-theological approach to sexual practices.²⁹

3 Luther’s Modes of Writing in Matters of Sodomy Luther was no systematic thinker in sexualibus. At first sight, this statement may seem surprising. Since the Reformation, Luther’s writings have frequently been reduced to dogmatic positions. This reception is by no means accidental. It originated in the confessional age, and Luther himself was instrumental in assembling an edifice of Protestant doctrines. The consolidation of evangelical principles in the territories of the empire entailed that questions of how to lead a Christian life had to be clarified – questions about liturgy, religious practice, etc. The further development of Protestantism need not obscure the fact that Luther was also an occasional theologian, however.³⁰ His thinking unfolded as a result of concrete reasons for writing, from pastoral-theological to political or polemical occasions (with the respective modes of writing being mixed, depending on the occasion).³¹ On these occasiones he applied certain hermeneutical principles, such as prioritizing the Bible over other religious texts. Luther’s pastoral-theological writings serve to educate readers in matters relating to a Christian way of life.³² This approach included protecting his audience from theological sophistry. Consequently, he deemed pre-Reformation lay catechization problematic in that the Catholic Church did not limit its religious education to teaching the best way for people to gain salvation. Rather, the path had been blocked by a confusing multitude of means to salvation. This pastoral-theological orientation of many of Luther’s writings worked against a detailed discussion of same-sex sexuality or other forms of non-marital sexuality. In this regard, his oeuvre differs little from the majority of his predecessors. Theologians used to conceal sexual facts, particularly when they addressed laypeople in their writings. The sin, or sins, specified by the epithet “mute,” traditionally included

 Luther, Vom ehelichen Leben, 293.  Jordan (The Invention of Sodomy, 136 – 58) makes the interesting point that Thomas Aquinas demonstrated a similar restraint in his discussion of vicium sodomiticum.  See, e. g., Martin Luther, Von Ordnung Gottesdienst in der Gemeine, 1523; WAS 12:31– 37, at 37.  Martin Luther, Verhandlungen mit D. Martin Luther auf dem Reichstage zu Worms, 1521; WAS 814– 87, at 832– 35.  This can easily be seen in “Vom ehelichen Leben,” which is the relevant publication for our concern here. See Luther, Vom ehelichen Leben, 275 and 292.

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an imperative: preferably, religious experts should remain silent about these transgressions. The argument of many a theologian against openly addressing same-sex or other allegedly illegitimate practices was that these exhortations would instigate the addressees to imitate the incriminated practices. Therefore, theologians paraphrased various sexual acts with terms such as “mute sin” and similar such expressions.³³ (These paraphrases possibly triggered questions from the audience; in one of his sermons, Berthold of Regensburg once introduced a fictitious listener who expressed his lack of understanding and asked for some explanation in order to teach his audience a lesson about sexual sins.³⁴) Only a few theologians in the Late Middle Ages disagreed with the communis opinio on this specific point. Jean Gerson, Dietrich Coelde, and Bernardino of Siena enlightened laypeople in vernacular sermons and catechetical writings about the alleged reprehensibility of sodomy.³⁵ At the dawn of the Reformation, the muchacclaimed preacher Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg even devoted several sermons exclusively to sodomy as male homosexuality.³⁶ To impart the message to his Strasbourg audience, he linked the theme of male-male sexuality to the urban milieu. In 1508, he used the execution of two men who “had slept with each other and had left their wives” as an opportunity to warn the urban public against the dangers of sexual “heresy” (ketzerie) for body and soul. For instance, he admonished parents to protect their sons, “the pretty young boys,” from sexual temptation by their male peers.³⁷ At the same time, he tried to refute unspecified critics of his anti-sodomy campaign by saying: “Those who did not know [how to commit these sins] / will

 Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany, 50 – 74. Cf. Egino Weidenhiller, Untersuchungen zur deutschsprachigen katechetischen Literatur des späten Mittelalters (Munich: Beck, 1965); Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).  Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, “Die ‘widernatürliche Sünde’ in der theologischen Pest- und Leprametaphorik des 13. Jahrhunderts,” Forum Homosexualität und Literatur 21 (1994): 5 – 19.  Lev Mordechai Thoma, “‘Das seind die sünd der vnküscheit’. Eine Fallstudie um Umgang mit der Sodomie in der Predigt des ausgehenden Mittelalters – ‘Die Brösamlin’ Johannes Geilers von Kaysersberg,” in “Die sünde, der sich der tiuvel schamet in der helle.” Homosexualität in der Kultur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, eds. Lev Mordechai Thoma and Sven Limbeck (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 2009), 137– 53. See also Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, “Dietrich Koldes ‘Verclaringhe’ und ‘Een prophetye gepreect by broeder Dierick van Munster’. Zur Arbeitsweise und Rezeptionsgeschichte des Christenspiegels,” in Vestigia Monasteriensia. Westfalen – Rheinland – Niederlande, eds. Ellen Widder, Mark Mersiowsky, and Peter Johanek (Bielefeld: Regionalegeschicte Verlag, 1995), 73 – 99; Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, Krötenkuss und schwarzer Kater: Ketzerei, Götzendienst und Unzucht in der inquisitorischen Phantasie des 13. Jahrhunderts (Warendorf: Fahlbusch Verlag, 1996); Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany, 50 – 74; Pierre J. Payer, “The Vice against Nature,” in his Sex and the New Medieval Literature of Confession, 1150 – 1300, (Toronto: Brepols, 2009), 126 – 49.  On the transmission of the fragments of this sermon and the print version (not by Geiler) of 1517 that collects them, see Thoma, “‘Das seind die sünd’,” 138 – 39; repr. 150 – 53.  Thoma, “‘Das seind die sünd’,” 151.

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not learn it from these words he heard from me.”³⁸ Explicit language in dealing with sins of sodomy remained an exception, however. Long into the eighteenth century, a rhetorical vagueness prevailed as an instrument the authorities wielded in preventing the spread of sexual transgressions known by the term vicium sodomiticum. ³⁹ When we talk of a discourse of sodomy in this context, this does not usually refer to writings solely on the vicium sodomiticum. Discussions of sodomy in the form of treatises were the exception in the Middle Ages.⁴⁰ Rather, the discourse on sodomy was embedded in other contexts, which is the reason for its enormous impact. It often was the glue that kept various themes together. From this perspective, Luther was in line with the discourse on sodomy of his time. In his theology, this thematic complex did not occupy a prominent place; sodomy was treated almost in passing. This does not mean, however, that it was unimportant; quite the contrary. Whenever Luther addressed the “mute sin,” he condemned it vigorously. Polemics against real or presumed enemies of the sexual or religious reforms were a mode of speech completely different from lay education. Whereas covering up, silencing, or paraphrasing characterized Luther’s pastoral-theological writings on this subject, polemical communication required candidness. For instance, in a letter to Spalatin, Luther described the Altenburg canons who resisted his friend’s marriage with the epithet Sodom, the biblical city consumed by fire and sulfur.⁴¹ Polemical formulas such as this one are more than rhetorical fireworks; they are concepts and mental tools. Their force comes not least from the fact that they evoke generally known modes of thinking, in this case the narrative of the city of Sodom that God punished with complete destruction for the godless actions of its inhabitants (Gen 19:1– 29). According to the sociologist Didier Eribon, sexual defamation and insult rest on stereotypes: “To use an insult is to cite the past. It only has meaning because it has been used by so many earlier speakers.”⁴² In his polemics, Luther made use of an existing rhetorical repertoire, which he varied and adjusted to different contexts.⁴³  Quoted from Thoma “‘Das seind die sünd’,” 151.  Jakob Michelsen, “Die Verfolgung des Delikts Sodomie im 18. Jahrhundert in Brandenburg-Preußen,” in Queer – Gender – Historiographie: Aktuelle Tendenzen und Projekte, eds. Norbert Fintzsch and Marcus Velke (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2016), 217– 52.  See, e. g., Petrus Damiani, “Liber Gomorrhianus,” in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. Kurt Reindel (Munich: Monumenta Germana Historica, 1983), 1:284– 330. Cf. Glenn W. Olsen, Of Sodomites, Effeminates, Hermaphrodites, and Androgynes: Sodomy in the Age of Peter Damian (Toronto: Brepols, 2011).  Berbig, Spalatin, 294.  Didier Eribon, Returning to Reims, trans. Michael Lucey (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2013), 198.  Ingrid Rowland, “Revenge of the Regensburg Humanists, 1493,” Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994): 307– 22. We find these topoi in other languages and countries, as well, such as in France. See, e. g., Rebecca E. Zorach, “The Matter of Italy: Sodomy and the Scandal of Style in Sixteenth-Century France,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 26 (1996): 581– 609; Winfried Schleiner, “Linguistic Xenohomophobia in Sixteenth-Century France: The Case of Henri Estienne,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 34 (2003): 747– 60.

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Although we can find precursors for Luther’s verbal imagery, the sexual-polemical elements in his writings still carry their own argumentative logic. With expressions such as welsche Hochzeiten (“Italian weddings”), Sodomitische und Gomorrische keuscheit (“chastity of Sodom and Gomorrah”), venedische und Türckische breute (“Venetian and Turkish brides”), and Florentzische breutgam (“Florentine bridegroom”), the eloquent polemicist placed sodomy beyond his own geographical, ethnic, and linguistic horizons.⁴⁴ Sodomy is presumably practiced in far-away, southern, particularly Italian climes, but definitely not in German countries. Consequently, in one of his Table Talks, Luther claimed that the German language, “thank God” (Dei gratia), would have no expression for the nuptiae Italicae or welsche Hochzeiten, also known as male-male sex. He even interpreted the claim that allegedly German lacked a word for this sin as evidence of German naiveté in regard to sexual transgressions.⁴⁵ To invest such arguments as the assumed Italian or Turkish⁴⁶ character of sodomy with the power of persuasion, Luther added descriptive details from everyday life to the polemical topoi he deployed. German mercenaries, lustful merchants, and male Curtisanen (as the courtiers at the Roman Curia were called, and not only in Luther’s writings), all of them mobile groups, were said to be responsible for the spread of same-sex sexuality – “as they have learned it in Rome and in Italy.”⁴⁷ As a result, it would seem that sex between men does not originate from human nature; in fact, it is alien to it. It supposedly spreads by way of imitating the devilish behavior of others. With such formulations, Luther intended to mobilize his listeners and readers against everything foreign and un-German; accepting the foreign would inevitably lead to sexual immoralities of various kinds.⁴⁸ These proto-nationalist defamations constituted an attempt to ensure that his addressees would side with the Protestant cause. Not only, as noted above, is every person at risk of contracting and committing these sins; sodomy would also cause earthquakes, diseases, etc. – according to the example of the biblical narrative on Sodom (which only hints at the sexual misbehavior several times). In this way, sodomy is declared a practice of foreigners; it marks one of the dividing lines that distinguishes one’s own religious world from that of others (although it was impossible to check the accusations’ accuracy because of the geographical distance that separated rightful believers from others). Interestingly, when Luther concretized the meaning of sodomy (which was not always

 As an overview, see Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany, 126 – 57.  Martin Luther, WA.Tr 3:630 – 31 (1538): “Nuptiae Italicae. Gott behüt vns fur diesem Teuffel! Den nulla maternal lingua in Germania de illo scelere dei gratia aliquid novit.”  Silke R. Falkner, “‘Having it Off’ with Fish, Camels, and Lads: Sodomitic Pleasures in German Language Turcica,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 13 (2004): 401– 27.  Martin Luther, Auslegung des 101. Psalms (1534 – 35); WAS 51:236 and 262. On this topic, see Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany, 132– 35.  Cf. Caspar Hirschi, Wettkampf der Nationen: Konstruktionen einer deutschen Ehrgemeinschaft an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005).

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the case), he gave preference to sex between men over other forms of sodomy, such as masturbation, heterosexual anal sex, and sex with animals. Any reference to female homosexuality, however, is rare in his writings.⁴⁹ Another important rhetorical strategy in Luther’s polemics on sodomy is inversion, that ancient Christian figure of speech. When Luther invokes sodomy, it usually designates a reversal of true marriage, true Christian piety, the true Church, and so on. The expression welsche Hochzeit denigrates men who have sex with other men, and arguments like this, with their sharp edges, immediately evoke the counterimage of marriage, often against the background of a world that is inescapably nearing its end.⁵⁰ In this regard, the polemical formula also adds to the elevation of marriage, as casual sexual relations are consequently set in opposition to the divinely ordained marital bond. Like other controversialists of his time, Luther also made use of cascading polemical formulas. Lists hammer home their message to his listeners and readers without the individual expressions being explained. These verbal attacks intentionally elude understanding. Instead, they seek to put addressees on alert with their cumulative impact. Hence, “mute sin” for Luther is a variable rather than a fixed message. Its contours and its systematic location are dependent on other thematic complexes – the defense of marriage as well as the fight against non-Christians, Catholics, and inner-Protestant dissenters. By saying what is appalling and shocking, polemicists seek to mobilize their recipients for the cause of the Reformation. Aggressive language thus authorizes the exclusion of those associated with sodomy. A comparison with Luther’s tirades against Jews is close at hand,⁵¹ but, in contrast to his anti-Judaism, his rhetoric on sodomy did not aim at a clearly demarcated marginalized group. This, in fact, is what makes this sexual polemic so malicious and useful. It could be brought to bear on ever-new objects and contexts. Luther’s polemical language even targeted Wittenberg. In July 1545, he compared the city with a Sodom, which he and his wife had to flee, following the example of the biblical story.⁵² In Luther’s time, in other words, there was no idea of a homosexual minority based on certain physical or mental characteristics. As far as we know, sexual acts did not create social identities in the century of the Reformation – perhaps with the exception of marital sexuality, which bestowed social status on spouses, and prostitution. Men took up with men in public places, at the market, in taverns, or in latrines. People of a high station occasionally forced their subordinates into sex and could be relatively sure that their social position protected them from denunci-

 Luther, Vom ehelichen Leben, 293.  Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany, 135 – 39.  As a recent publication on this topic, see Thomas Kaufmann, Luthers Juden (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2014).  Martin Luther, Brief an Seine Frau, 28. Juli 1545; WAB 11:148 – 52, here 150. There are numerous other examples of similar uses of the Sodom analogy in Luther’s letters, such as Luther’s letter to Jakob Propst of July 10, 1529, published in WAB 5:111.

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ation or conviction.⁵³ In the early modern period, women having sex with other women were usually only persecuted if one of the partners claimed a male social gender, and such cases only rarely came to court.⁵⁴ At most, homosexual behavior was thought to be the result of a person’s preferences, which solidified during one’s lifetime.⁵⁵ The “sodomites” were thus of an entirely different type than the Jews, who were identified through their rites, clothing, residence, jurisprudence, and similar differences as a minority, and subject to repressive measures that marked them as such. But in one regard, the comparison between Jews and sodomy is to the point. In his polemical discussion of both, the late Luther became more radical. His writings against the Jews from the years 1543 and 1546 have a counterpart in Wider das Papsttum zu Rom, vom Teufel gestiftet (Against the Papacy in Rome, Founded by the Devil), published in German and Latin in 1545. The few historians of the Reformation who have commented on this treatise vehemently condemn it because of its virulence: it is called “repugnant” (Kurt Stadtwald) or “the most violent and vulgar [treatise] to issue from Luther’s pen” (Mark U. Edwards, Jr.); Peter Matheson even thinks this text is bound to “stretch and strain our categories to the breaking-point.”⁵⁶ The occasion for this publication was a monitory letter from the pope to the emperor, which was passed on to Luther (in a version that the Curia later discarded). Luther wanted to drive a wedge between the emperor and the Curia in order to strengthen the evangelical cause. That is why he vilified the papacy as a religiously and sexually perverted organization. Inverting, feminizing, scatologizing, sexualizing, and demonizing of the pope, the Curia, and the Catholics are all part of the publication’s rhetorical scenarios. To leave nobody in doubt about the diabolic character of the papacy, the author deployed these rhetorical devices ad nauseam. Hence, the Holy See is a den of iniquity, and Rome a center of greed and all unnatural lusts, including Pedasterey (pederasty);⁵⁷ the “Hellish Father Pope and his hermaphrodites”

 Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, “Die ‘unsprechliche stumme Sünde’ in Kölner Akten des ausgehenden Mittelalters,” Geschichte in Köln 22 (1987): 5 – 43; Hergemöller, “Das Verhör des ‘Sodomiticus’ Franz von Alsten (1536/37): Ein Kriminalfall aus dem nachtäuferischen Münster,” Westfälische Zeitschrift 140 (1990): 31– 47.  Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany, 31– 35; Puff, “Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477),” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 (2000): 41– 61.  On this topic, see Joan Cadden, Nothing Natural Is Shameful: Sodomy and Science in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Helmut Puff, “Toward a Philology of the Premodern Lesbian,” in The Lesbian Premodern, eds. Noreen Giffney, Michelle Sauer, and Diane Watt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 145 – 157.  Kurt Stadtwald, Roman Popes and German Patriots: Antipapalism in the Politics of the German Humanist Movement from Gregor Heimburg to Martin Luther (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1996), 25, 195; Mark U. Edwards, Jr., Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1534 – 46 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1983), 185; Peter Matheson, Rhetoric of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 199, 202. Cf. Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany, 142– 44.  Martin Luther, Wider das Papsttum zu Rom, vom Teufel gestiftet, 1545; WAS 54:195 – 299, at 214.

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(der Hellische Vater Bapst und seine Hermaphroditen) are disparaged as “un-Christians” (Unchristen);⁵⁸ and Pope Paul III is titled S. Paula tertius fraw [Mrs.] Bepstin. ⁵⁹ Note the repeated change of gender. This pope, with a body that is sexually undetermined or unknowable, supposedly presided over a sodomitically corrupt court, a “knaves’ school” (Bubenschule)⁶⁰ – thus we see both attacks ad personam and disparagements of the Church in toto. With formulations such as “the pope of the sodomites” (der Sodomiten Bapst),⁶¹ Luther notably contributed to forging collectives – the community bound together by the Augsburg Confession as well as its supposed opponent, the collective of the so-called enemies of the gospel. In Wider das Papsttum, same-sex sexuality therefore functioned as a radical counter-image against the male elites and patriarchal authorities charged with overseeing and advancing the reforms. This is also the reason why the vicium sodomiticum in the sense of male-male sexuality was the focus of Luther’s antipapal polemics; “the pope of the sodomites” was the antithesis of exemplary Protestant leaders. Collaborating with these sexual or physical monsters was entirely out of the question for righteous men (and women). Interestingly, despite these remarkable verbal excesses, there was no increase in trials for sodomy in the sixteenth century according to the state of research. Even though there were occasional convictions of sexual heretics (ketzer) in the early modern period, we do not see a systematic judicial campaign against same-sex sexual acts. Assuming that Luther’s polemics against sodomy provided incentives to prosecute sexual offenses, we can at least suspect that more sodomitici were convicted than before, even more so as secular authorities and the Lutheran Church were closing ranks after the Reformation. This led to a concentration of powers to punish offenders that simply had not existed before. What is more, Charles V’s Constitutio Criminalis Carolina of 1532 gave the “punishment of unchastity against nature” (straff der vnkeusch, so wider die natur beschicht) a new legal foundation; the pertinent article prescribes burning at the stake for men and women who had sex with partners of the same sex or with animals.⁶² Why then is there no increase of persecution in the early modern period? One may explain this disparity between prescription and persecution by reference to the focus on marriage and the publicity of persecutions. To begin with, the

 Luther, Wider das Papsttum, 213.  Luther, Wider das Papsttum, 214.  Luther, Wider das Papsttum, 219  Luther, Wider das Papsttum, 227– 28.  For England, for instance, H.G. Cocks concludes that there were only few lawsuits after 1532; see H.G. Cocks, Visions of Sodom: Religion, Homoerotic Desire, and the End of the World in England, c. 1550 – 1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 106 – 32. For the German-speaking regions see Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany, 29 – 30, 87– 104. W.G. Naphy is currently working on a study on the regulation of sexuality in Calvinist Geneva; the first volume will be devoted to unnatural sex according to the definition of the consistory.

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sexual discipline centered on matrimony, and Protestant authorities focused on disciplining premarital and extramarital sexual activity. Furthermore, reform communities instituted a public decorum regarding sexual matters. Criminal prosecutions on sexual grounds inevitably created publicity, and in these cases, it was difficult to control responses. Before an execution, confessions of guilt were read aloud. If one wanted to build up an honorable religious community, sodomy trials marred the picture. Decorum related to sexual matters therefore also required restraint in criminal proceedings. In other words, the thinking we encountered in medieval and early modern pastoral theology overlapped with the administration of justice regarding sexual offenses.⁶³ The linguistic excess and the wide scope in definitions of sodomy presumably also had the effect that individuals who were attracted to their own sex did not necessarily recognize themselves in these descriptions. Sodomy was, according to Luther’s polemical logic, a sign of the radical Other. Consequently, the polemical – as well as the pastoral-theological – conceptualization of sodomy must have made it difficult to identify what or who was familiar with “crimes” in one’s own confessional milieu. (This does not mean, by the way, that people in the early modern period accepted sexual heterodoxy. Rather, it seems that neighbors and communities sometimes took sexual disciplining into their own hands, without necessarily asking the authorities to intervene – that is, without using socially explosive terms such as sodomy.) If, however, Luther’s rhetoric of sodomy had the purpose of uniting Protestants against their supposed religious, ethnic, and sexual adversaries, his polemical writings reverberated for a long time. In this and other ways, Protestant communities learned to understand themselves as members of a particular confession. The doctrinal positions of the Protestant faith, which emerged from the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century, remained foreign to many ordinary believers, despite enormous efforts to catechize parishioners. Therefore, fostering divides between confessional communities played an important role in the formation of Protestantism.

4 Friendships At the same time, as we have seen, homosociality between men and between women continued to flourish after the Reformation. Modern readers may be tempted to interpret the coarse intimacy in Luther’s letter to Spalatin, quoted at the outset, as sexual. The suggestive and ambiguous reference certainly troubled Spalatin’s biographer, Georg Berbig. In his study, he preserved the sentence about the ribs in Latin, while rendering the rest in German. Just like late nineteenth-century sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing, author of Psychopathia sexualis (1886), he thus

 Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany, 100 – 02.

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concealed the dazzling, ambiguous passage (or aroused the curiosity of his readers). He also reinterpreted the friendship of the two reformers as a “bond of souls” (Seelenbund), although this bond clearly included the physical – at least verbally – and the fact that they were both sexually active with their spouses.⁶⁴ The first editor of Luther’s letters, Johannes Aurifaber, censored the epistle as early as 1568. He abbreviated the sentence describing Luther’s plan to make love to his Katharina at the exact time he assumed that Spalatin would do the same with his Katharina, without indicating the elision – thus adjusting the historical Luther to a certain sexual decorum the Reformers had made their hallmark.⁶⁵ But we should be cautious in our interpretation of the matter. There is no single indication of an erotic relationship between the two reformers. Rather, we have to take note of the fact that Luther saw no reason to hide the phallic familiarity the letter overtly expresses. Luther’s remark – which, even in the context of epistolary codes of the sixteenth century, could be considered juicy – is presented with disarming openness. Needless to say, what Luther wrote here was only thinkable in the genre of a personal letter. In a sermon or in a printed work for a wide audience, such explicitness would certainly have been out of place. Nevertheless, this passage opens further perspectives. The sexually charged intimacy of the two companions echoes the tender and sometimes erotic ties of friendship, as they are documented in the sixteenth century among humanist scholars, but also among other social groups and between women. Hence, Luther’s letter to Spalatin signals that emotional ties between men continued into the Reformation, despite the promotion of marriage by patriarchal authorities. We can conclude that, during the Reformation, meaningful social relations were by no means limited to marriage, family, and the home; sociability was also practiced in homosocial relationships, communities, and in same-sex friendships. While these forms of social life were not independent of the control of the authorities, homosociality created spaces for affective same-sex relationships, including those we, with all due caution, can call sexual.⁶⁶

 Berbig, Spalatin, 293.  Martin Luther, Tomus secundus epistolarum, ed. Johannes Aurifaber (Frankfurt a. d. Oder, 1596), 306.  Alan Bray, “Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship,” History Workshop Journal 29 (1990): 1– 19. Bray demonstrates, for instance, that it was possible to give an erotic interpretation to bands of friendship in the sixteenth century, even though cultural semantics were opposed to such an interpretation; see Alan Bray, The Friend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Helmut Puff, “Same-Sex Possibilities,” in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, eds. Judith Bennett and Ruth M. Karras (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 379 – 95.

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6 Conclusion Studying the Sexual Reformation means charting a historical terrain that contains both the foreign and the familiar. On the one hand, we gain insight into a milieu whose sexual categories rub against today’s thinking in sexual matters; sodomy is fundamentally different from homosexuality. We also get an idea of what love and sexuality looked like in the Reformation period. In the sixteenth century, for instance, tenderness was also a matter for all-male and all-female networks. In this context, the Reformation put marriage on a new religious, juridical, social, and sexual basis, with consequences for the conceptualization of all forms of eroticism in the period. Whereas the medieval Catholic Church explicated sexual transgressions mainly by way of lists of cardinal sins, reform theology focused its sexual doctrines on the Decalogue, and thus on marriage. At the peripheries of the Protestant discourse on sexuality, we see but fantasies of an orgiastic and unpredictable counter-world, not modern sexual minorities. Even under these discursive configurations, same-sex love and sexualities existed, at least as long as terms such as sodomy, unchastity (unkeusch), mute sin (stumme sund), and heresy (ketzerie) were not directed at individual actors. These terms were so potent and deleterious that their use in most contexts was bound to force the authorities to respond. On the other hand, however, what seems familiar in the reform discourse on same-sex sexuality is the stereotypical defamations of everything that is deemed different. In this sense, Luther’s sexual polemics, with all of its excesses, contributed to the formation of confessional communities – one of the main legacies of the Reformation.

Heritage of Lutheran Theology

Wenzel Hollar, Pamphlet with Martin Luther and John the Steadfast, Elector of Saxony. Engraving (Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, 1630).

Christophe Chalamet

Lutheran Scholasticism A Sketch of Lutheran Orthodox Theologies and Their Reception by Karl Barth

1 Introduction In the decades that followed Luther’s death in 1546, a theological movement which would eventually be called “Lutheran orthodoxy” emerged. Scholars commonly distinguish between three phases: “early orthodoxy” (a. 1560 – 1600), “high orthodoxy” (1600 – 1675), and “late orthodoxy” (1675–c. 1720). The Reformed tradition – the heirs of Zwingli, Bullinger, Œcolompadus, and Calvin – developed their own “scholastic” or “orthodox” tradition, often in dialogue and (polemical) debate with Lutheranism. What follows is a series of short vignettes concerning the Lutheran trajectory and its reception in Karl Barth’s works.

2 Historiographical Debates How should this “orthodox” era be seen? Two paradigms clash in answering this question. On the one hand, prominent scholars such as Albrecht Ritschl (1822– 1889), Adolf von Harnack (1851– 1930), and other significant Lutheran scholars considered Luther’s original insights as the high point of Lutheran theology. Luther had rediscovered the gospel’s simple religious and ethical message, a message which calls not for intellectual assent, but for faith primarily understood as trust and as giving rise to actions. Luther, however, was not able to fully extricate theology from late medieval thought, especially nominalism. These aspects marred Luther’s legacy. According to this paradigm, whatever remnants of late medieval (Catholic) scholasticism Luther prolonged were problematic and had to be excised from modern Lutheran theology. Over the years, and already in the course of the sixteenth century, Philipp Melanchthon (1497– 1560) and others relapsed from Luther’s reformatory insights and reintroduced Catholic views. The Church came to be seen as a “school” centered on assent to doctrine, rather than as a community of people who trust in God’s benevolent will. This was followed by the integration of Aristotle’s philosophy and the growth of natural theology within Lutheran dogmatics, an unfortunate development that flew directly in the face of Luther’s critique of Aristotelian philosophy’s role in medieval scholastic theology. The result was – as Ritschl and Harnack saw it – the progressive replacement of a practical interpretation of the Christian faith – and of God – with much more theoretical and abstract interpretations. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-041

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Long before Ritschl and Harnack, the Pietists – such as Gottfried Arnold in his Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer- Historie (1699 – 1700) – had raised similar criticisms.¹ This paradigm, which remained dominant throughout much of the twentieth century and which is still alive, has been challenged in recent decades by scholars who – especially with regard to the Reformed tradition (rather than the Lutheran orthodox era) – have underlined what they see as deep continuities between the first generations of Protestant Reformers and the subsequent, orthodox thinkers.² According to them, the era known as the Protestant orthodoxy, especially its high point in the first half of the sevententh century, was a normal development within Protestantism, as the Reformers’ insights were giving rise to new “confessions” – to new ecclesial institutions, which required thorough and rigorous academic (scholastic) training in dogmatic theology as well as in apologetic and polemical theology for its ministers. And so, according to this interpretation, the rise of a Protestant scholasticism is not surprising and should not be seen as a “fall” from the original notions advanced by Luther and other early Reformers. One of the first scholars to question Ritschl’s (and his friends’) paradigm was Ernst Troeltsch, who, in 1891, published a brilliant dissertation that flipped Ritschl’s approach on its head: instead of first studying Melanchthon and then comparing him to subsequent figures (here Johann Gerhard), Troeltsch decided to first examine Johann Gerhard, and only thereafter Philipp Melanchthon.³ He presented his study of Gerhard and Melanchthon as a “complement” to Ritschl’s views, but it was much more than that.⁴ In full-frontal opposition to Ritschl, Troeltsch was convinced that apologetic theology and its reliance on metaphysics were a good thing. To him, the emergence of a Lutheran scholasticism was a legitimate development. This theology sought to enter into a debate with the culture of the time: “it arose, like all dogmatics and like dogma itself, in connection with the apologetic necessity to join the debate between the specific religious aspects and the culture and knowledge of the time.”⁵ And so the rise of natural theology and the use of Aristotelian philosophy and metaphysics were part of a normal development. Historians of theology should not overlook the fact that even the Protestant orthodox theologians often still took into consideration the “practical” dimension of faith, namely the fact that faith, as

 Markus Matthias, “Orthodoxie I. Lutherische Orthodoxie,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976 – 2004), 25:467, hereafter TRE. Accusations concerning Melanchthon’s relapse from the pure Lutheran doctrine began to be voiced already in 1535; see p. 470.  Chief among these scholars is, arguably, Richard A. Muller. See for instance his Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003).  Offenbarung und Vernunft bei Johann Gerhard und Melanchthon (Göttingen, 1891).  Offenbarung und Vernunft, 6n1: “Ergänzung […] zu Ritschl.”  Offenbarung und Vernunft, 1– 2.

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an act of trust, is closely related to God’s own act toward the human person. In Troeltsch’s eyes, Ritschl had failed to properly appreciate this.⁶ One could argue that the current historiographical debate is reminiscent of Troeltsch’s critique of Ritschl, insofar as scholars – in recent years – have underlined the continuity, amidst discontinuities, between the first generations of Reformers and the development of theological systems in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

3 Melanchthon as Pioneer It is fair to say that Lutheran scholasticism owes a great debt to Melanchthon. The man who came to be known as “Germany’s teacher” (praeceptor Germaniae) made a lasting impact in organizing Luther’s unsystematized – albeit brilliant – theological insights. Luther witnessed and encouraged Melanchthon’s efforts right from the start. In 1521, Melanchthon, then only 24 years old, published his Loci communes, which was the first attempt at a systematic presentation of Luther’s reformatory insights. Luther fully approved this publication, in which his collaborator focused on soteriology and anthropology, excluding theoretical and speculative questions. The most famous sentence in the 1521 edition concerns Christology and the need to embrace Christ as savior, through faith, rather than wondering how the two natures – divine and human – relate to each other in the incarnate one. Melanchthon published revised editions of his book in 1535, 1543 – 1544, and 1559, and much of the debate in the sixteenth century concerned some of his claims in these editions.⁷ The matter is delicate. In the final edition (1559), Melanchthon presents faith as a “firm assent which embraces the entire doctrine of the gospel.”⁸ This, indeed, seems different from Luther’s (and the early Melanchthon’s) interpretation of faith as, primarily, trust and confidence (fiducia). But we should note that what may appear as a mostly intellectual definition of faith is in fact more complex. Elsewhere in the 1559 edition, Melanchthon writes that the worship of God he has in mind is “knowledge of God, belief in God’s word, true reverence, true faith or trust, and true love.”⁹ Here and there, Melanchthon equates faith not just with knowledge, but also with trust, corre-

 Offenbarung und Vernunft, 33n4.  Philipp Melanchthon, Loci praecipui theologici (1559), in Loci communes von 1521. Loci praecipui theologici von 1559 (1. Teil), Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl, vol. 2.1 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1978).  “Deinde etiam cogitemus fidem esse firmam assensionem amplectentem integram Evangelii doctrinam;” Praefatio to the 1559 Loci praecipui theologici, in Loci communes von 1521, 192, lines 4– 6.  “Cultus autem, de quibus hic praecipitur, sunt agnitio Deo, credere verbo Dei, verus timor, vera fides seu fiducia et vera dilectio;” Loci communes von 1521, 317.

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lating it closely with love.¹⁰ Melanchthon did stress that faith is knowledge, that it includes an assent, but he also often made sure to add that faith is a reverence which cannot be severed from love. Melanchthon became the object of much criticism from fellow Lutherans in the last three decades of his life. And yet, as will become clearer below, he played a decisive role in the emergence of the Lutheran orthodox tradition.

4 Lutheran Orthodoxy and Its Fractures Lutheran orthodoxy was a deeply divided tradition. In an age known for its sharp polemics, some of the Lutheran divines did not hesitate to combat not only Roman Catholic scholars – such as Robert Bellarmine –, not only Arminians, Socinians, Jesuits, Labadists, and early Unitarians, not only Anabaptists and mystics, but also mainstream Reformed theologians and fellow Lutheran thinkers who favored efforts at rapprochement with the Reformed (and with Roman Catholicism). Let us consider some of the key figures of the Lutheran orthodoxy.

4.1 Early Orthodoxy – Martin Chemnitz Among the great thinkers of early orthodoxy, Martin Chemnitz (1522 – 1586) stands out.¹¹ In his own massive Loci communes, which were published posthumously (1591), he commented directly on Melanchthon’s own Loci! In the early 1550s, before moving to Braunschweig in 1554, he was a close associate of Melanchthon in Wittenberg, where he had studied and heard Luther lecture and preach (1545 – 1546). Chemnitz was a moderate who followed both Luther and Melanchthon, at a time when some – who eventually became known as “Gnesio-Lutherans” (“genuine Lutherans”), such as Joachim Westphal – thought Melanchthon and his friends, whom they called “Philippists” (after Philipp Melanchthon), were crypto-Calvinists who had betrayed Luther’s true insights, especially on the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist. Chemnitz – along with other significant figures, such as Johannes Brenz and Jakob Andreae – refused this version of Lutheranism. As Chemnitz saw it, sound theology – far from contemplating vain, speculative questions – centers on God’s will as manifested in the Scriptures. With Jakob Heerbrand, Chemnitz is an important figure in the transition from the first generation of Lutheran Reformers to the second and third generations. He opens his Loci theologici with some reflections on the purpose and uses of his book, retracing the ways

 “nam etsi fidem seu fiduciam misericordiae necessario comitatur dilectio;” Loci communes von 1521, 319.  Theodor Mahlmann, “Martin Chemnitz,” in TRE 7:714– 721.

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in which Western theology, over the course of the centuries, began to lose contact with Scripture and became obsessed with certain manuals, such as the Lombard’s Sentences. The real “river” was exchanged for small rivulets. “But then, finally, in our own time, in the year of the Lord 1517, God took pity of his Church and called D. Martin Luther, who began to purify the Church’s doctrine, calling it back to the sources of Scripture and to the rule of the faith of the prophets and apostles.”¹² Chemnitz goes on to explain that Luther, with God’s help, was able to retrieve the apostolic purity of Church doctrine, but his explanations were scattered in various writings, so that it was not easy to get an overview of his teachings.¹³ Therefore, God supplemented Luther’s effort with the labors of Philip Melanchthon, who gathered the various bodies of doctrine in order to present sound doctrine in a comprehensive, structured, and synoptic way.¹⁴ Chemnitz reminds his readers that God did not send his Son into the world so that human beings could hold academic debates and show how clever they are, “but, rather, so that human beings may learn the true knowledge of God and of all the things which are necessary in order to reach eternal salvation.”¹⁵ Chemnitz extends Luther and Melanchthon, as he closely correlates doctrine and the life of faith. The point of Christian theology is to “progress both in doctrine and piety. It is correct to state that theology consists more in affect than in knowledge. Therefore God, in his own language, combines under one single term both knowledge and the affects which follow from knowledge.”¹⁶ Clearly, Chemnitz wishes to maintain the practical import of Christian doctrine and cannot be blamed for fostering an intellectualist interpretation of the faith.

 “Tandem vero nostro tempore, Anno Domini 1517. Deus misertus Ecclesiae suae, excitavit D. Martinum Lutherum, qui doctrinam Ecclesiae coepit repurgare, ita ut ad fontes Scripturae, et ad regulam fidei Propheticae et Apostolicae eam revocaret;” see De Usu et Utilitate Locorum Theologicorum, in Loci theologici, 12 (I quote the 1610 Wittenberg edition, published by Martin Henckel).  “Et Deo bene juvante, feliciter quidem restituta est doctrinae Ecclesiasticae Apostolica puritas; sed erant explicationes in diversis libris Lutheri sparsae, ita ut non facile esset integrum corpus doctrinae animo complecti, cum partes quasi disiectae essent;” see De Usu et Utilitate Locorum Theologicorum.  “Singularis ergo consilio Deus utilissimis et nunquam satis laudatis explicationibus Lutheri, adjunxit labores D. Philippi Melanchthonis: qui in confessione Augustana, ex diversis Lutheri scriptis, integrum corpus doctrinae collegit, continens summam omnium Articulorum fidei proprie et perspicue explicatam;” see De Usu et Utilitate Locorum Theologicorum.  “Semper cogitandum est, Filium Dei non eam ob causam prodiisse ex arcana sede aeterni Patris, et revelasse doctrinam coelestem, ut seminaria spargeret disputationum, quibus ostentandi ingenii causa luderetur: sed potius ut homines de vera Dei agnitione, et omnibus iis, quae ad aeternam salutem consequendam necessaria sunt, erudirentur;” see De Usu et Utilitate Locorum Theologicorum.  “Ita enim mentes proficient simul et doctrina et pietate. Vere enim dictum est, Theologiam magis consistere in affectu, quam in cognitione. Unde Deus in sua lingua sub uno vocabulo comprehendit et notitiam et affectus, qui notitiam sequuntur;” see De Usu et Utilitate Locorum Theologicorum.

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4.2 ‘High’ Orthodoxy The trajectory going from Luther to Chemnitz via Melanchthon was furthered by a series of important figures: Leonhard Hutter (1563 – 1616), Nicolaus Hunnius (1585 – 1643), and especially Johann Gerhard (1582– 1637), one of the towering figures of “high” Lutheran orthodoxy. Johann Gerhard spent most of his career teaching at the University of Jena. He is the author of a massive work, including his Loci theologici, which he first published between 1610 and 1622.¹⁷ The organization of the topics (loci) is significant. The very first chapter of volume 1 deals with Scripture (De Scriptura sacra). It is followed by long chapters on God (including unity and trinity, divine names and attributes) and Christology. The second volume presents the doctrine of creation and angels, providence, election, and reprobation, the imago Dei in homine ante lapsum, original sin, actual sin, and free will. Volume 3 concerns the moral law, the ceremonies of the law, and the forensic aspect of the law, the gospel, repentance, and justification by faith. The fourth volume treats the themes of good works, the sacraments, circumcision, the paschal lamb (the Lord’s Supper), and baptism. The subsequent volumes (5 – 9) address the Eucharist, ecclesial ministries, the political magistrate, marriage and celibacy, death and resurrection, and eschatology (the Last Judgment and the world’s consummation, eternal death and life). Everything in Christian doctrine is founded on Scripture, according to Gerhard. The word of God contained in Scripture is the basis of the entire edifice; it is “the one and only principle of theology,” which extracts doctrine from it.¹⁸ Scripture is perfect. Its perfection consists in the fact that “everything which God wished us to believe, to hope and to become is contained without any indigence.”¹⁹ Gerhard is among the first ardent Protestant defenders of Scripture’s verbal inspiration. He is adamant that Scriputre is theopneustos – inspired by God (2 Tim 3:16) in its very letter. Scripture, therefore, is the basis of Christian doctrine as a whole. The response from human beings to God’s written word can only be obedience and acceptance: “In Scripture, God’s word is presented, and whatever is presented in Scripture, the obedience of faith must simply accept.”²⁰ We thus see here one of the facets of Protestant theology which would eventually come to define, for many later scholars, the era of Protestant “high” orthodoxy (Lutheran as well as Reformed) – namely, the doc-

 What follows rests on a consultation of the following volumes Loci theologici: 1 (1615); 2 (1611); 3 (1613); and 4 (1618).  “Unicum Theologiae principium esse Verbum Dei in Scripturis sacris propositum;” see Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 1:1.  The sentence quoted in the preceding note continues like this: “sive quod idem est, Scripturam sacram, probatur ex ejus perfectione, quae in eo consistit, quod omnia, quae credi, sperari ac fieri Deus a nobis voluit, absq; ulla indigentia contineat.”  “In Scriptura proponitur Dei verbum, et quicquid in Scriptura proponitur, id simplicis fidei oboedientia est acceptandum;” Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 1:25.

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trine of the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. This doctrine became more and more significant, just as the first applications of certain critical methods to Scripture were beginning to emerge. But one of the points was to buttress Protestant arguments in the debate with Roman Catholicism and its ways of relating Scripture to tradition, and thus to the Church. Elsewhere in his system, Gerhard engages Calvin and the Reformed orthodox theologians on the issue of double predestination. His point is very clear: Calvin and his followers err in speaking of a divine predestination for eternal life, on the one hand, and for eternal death, on the other. On the basis of 1 Tim 2:4, Gerhard is convinced that God wishes to save all human beings.²¹ If some do not come to know the truth, it is not because God wished them not to know it. It is, rather, entirely their own fault.²² Christ’s merits are universal in scope.²³ This is what needs to be said against the “figment of the absolute decree of reprobation.”²⁴ This certainly does not mean that all will ultimately be saved. There is a reprobation, also known as the Last Judgment, which is God’s “just judgment.”²⁵ But God did not predestine some to eternal death and others to eternal life; such absolutism in the doctrine of predestination does not conform to the Scriptures. Rather, God ordained all human beings according to God’s mercy. Turning to the topic of “good works” in volume 3, his target once again became – naturally –Roman Catholicism, and especially Robert Bellarmine. Gerhard’s point is to restate, as forcefully as possible, the idea that justification is received by faith without works. Hence the importance of distinguishing between the law (what God commands people to do) and the gospel (the freely given gift of God’s mercy and forgiveness). In connection with the debate on justification, Gerhard makes it very clear that faith is, first and foremost, trust (fiducia). This is denied by Bellarmine, as Gerhard laments.²⁶ Here, Catholics base themselves on distinctions between  “Sic ergo concludimus. Quos Deus vult ad se converti et salvari, eos absoluto quodam odio vel decreto neutiquam a se rejecit et ad aeternam damnationem destinavit. Jam vero Deus omnes homines vult ad se converti et salvari. Ergo neminem eorum absoluto quodam odio vel decreto a se rejecit et ad aeternam damnationem destinavit. […] Deus vult omnes homines salvos fieri, et ad agnitionem veritatis pervenire;” Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 2:205.  “velle Deum, ut omnes homines salvi fiant; velle etiam, ut omnes ad agnitionem veritatis perveniant. Deinde causa, quare non veniant plures ad agnitionem veritatis, non est in Deo, sed in ipsis hominibus, qua de re infra uberius agetur. […] Deus non vult aliquos perire, sed omnes as poenitentiam reverti;” Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 2:207.  Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 2:248 – 49  “figmento de absoluto reprobationis decreto opponim;” Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 2:235.  “Reprobatio est eorum, quos Deus in finali impoenitentia et incredulitate propria culpa perseveraturos praevidit, justo judicio facta aeternae morti adjudicatio;” Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 2:392– 93.  “Certum igitur esto fidem praeter notitiam complecti assensum, quod et Bellarmin. concedit lib. 1 de Justific. c. 7. sed quod praeter notitiam et assensum complectatur etiam fiduciam, id vero totis viribus negat et impugnat, ideo cap. 5. probare instituit, fidem justificantem non esse fiduciam misericordiae, sed solum assensum firmum ac certum […]. Demonstrandum igitur erit, fidem esse fiduciam, quod ex

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intellect and will, which come from ancient philosophical principles and not from Scripture and the “school of the Spirit.” Scripture “does not distinguish between intellect and will, but simply speaks of heart and knowledge and trust and affect, as can be seen from so many passages.”²⁷ Gerhard does not deny that faith is a form of assent, but he denies “with all his might” that this would imply that faith is not a form of trust. Abraham’s faith was a form of assent, but it was also a “complete trust of the heart” (plenam cordis fiduciam).²⁸ Who could not see that Gerhard, on this point, is restating Luther’s interpretation of faith? Gerhard offers the following interpretation of faith: “A promise does not only require a general assent, but also a specific trust and commitment.”²⁹ “Promise and faith are closely linked: the promise is the foundation and basis of faith; hence when the promise is given, faith can and must rely on it with certainty.”³⁰ Gerhard may have been the most significant Lutheran orthodox theologian of the seventeenth century, but he was also a man interested in promoting true piety, as can be seen from his Schola pietatis (published in 5 volumes in Jena, 1622– 23), which Philipp Jakob Spener – one of the great leaders of Lutheran Pietism – praised, and which reveal a deep pastoral concern (as a young boy, Gerhard was mentored by Johann Arndt).³¹

4.3 Intra-Lutheran Polemics – The Abraham Calov–Georg Calixt Debate The level of polemics in seventeenth-century Protestant theology is astounding, all the more so for people – like most of us – who come after the great ecumenical advances of the twentieth century, including the Leuenberg Agreement (or Leuenberg Concord) of 1973, which lifted the mutual condemnations and allowed for ministerial exchanges between most Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Europe. Certainly, it is

sequentibus constat argumentis. 1. ab etymologia. Fides et fiducia […] unam eandemque habent originem;” Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 3:1137– 38.  “Argumentum petitum est non est Schola Spiritus sancti, sed ex principiis Philosophicis, veritati igitur ex Scripturis demonstratae nihil quicquam derogare poterit. Scriptura intellectum et voluntatem non distinguit, sed simpliciter cordi et notitiam et fiduciam, et affectus tribuit, quod ex infinitis locis apparet;” Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 3:1162.  Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 3:1169.  “Promissio requirit non solum assensum generalem, sed et fiduciam et applicationem specialem;” Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 3:1170. The difference between Gerhard and Luther here, as between Melanchthon and Luther, is seen in the use of the non solum/sed et formula. Luther would arguably have expressed the matter with an either/or.  “Promissio et fides sunt correlata: Promissio est fundamentum ac basis fidei; data igitur promissione fides certo eidem inniti potest ac debet;” Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, 3:1185.  Philipp Spener, Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit (1666 – 1686), vol. 4, (1679 – 1686) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 331; in a letter from 1679: “Schola Pietatis ist ein gross werck.”

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still possible – especially in North America, a region of the world known for its deeply conservative and even fundamentalist leanings among Protestants – to meet “strict” Lutherans who do not wish to have anything to do with Calvinists and Zwinglians (the “Reformed”). But most Protestants nowadays, and especially the younger generations, are usually not interested in the old divisions between Protestant denominations or confessions. Studying the history of Protestant theology in the seventeenth century, we find ourselves in a very different world, in which Lutheran theologians who attempted reconciliatory efforts with the Reformed (and with Catholics) – such as Georg Calixt (1586 – 1656) and other theologians from Helmstedt and Königsberg – were sharply condemned as “syncretists” by scholastic theologians, such as Abraham Calov (1612 – 1686), one of the towering figures, with his colleague Johann Andreas Quenstedt (1617– 1688), of Lutheran orthodoxy after Gerhard (†1637).³² Calov was born and raised in Eastern Prussia. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Rostock and first taught, as a young man, at his other alma mater, the University of Königsberg (1637– 1643), in what is today Kaliningrad (Russia), before accepting a call as the pastor and rector of the academic Gymnasium in Danzig (1643 – 1650). He then taught in Wittenberg for thirty-six years, from 1650 until his death. He became well known for issuing a blanket condemnation of all “syncretist” efforts (in the direction of the Reformed and of Rome), refusing at times to consider his adversaries as “orthodox, Catholic, and truly Lutheran.”³³ Calov arguably embodies the climax of “high” – and uncompromising – scholasticism within Lutheran theology. His Systema locorum theologicorum, in 12 volumes (Wittenberg, 1655 – 1677), has yet to be studied closely and thoroughly by historical theologians. What can already be gleaned is the fact that Calov, like other significant figures of seventeenth-century Lutheran scholastic theology, combined a fervor for throroughness, precision, and clarity with a desire to take up the spiritual dimension of the Christian faith. This can be seen in the inclusion of the theme of unio mystica in his elaborate doctrine of ordo salutis – the various steps through which one repents, is justified, and is saved. Elements of Martin Luther’s theology, as well as other more diffuse influences coming from proto-Pietist writings (e. g., Johann Arndt, 1555 – 1621), may have played

 Johannes Wallmann, “Abraham Calov,” in TRE 7:563 – 68; see also Wallmann, Der Theologiebegriff bei Johann Gerhard und Georg Calixt (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1961). Johann Andreas Quensted’s mother was a sister of Johann Gerhard. Calov survived all thirteen of his children and married six times; his sixth wife, whom he married in 1684, at age 72, was a daughter of his colleague Johann Andreas Quensted.  Among others: Digressio de nova Theologia Helmstadio-Regiomontanorum Syncretistarum Georgii Calixti, Conradi Hornei, Michaelis Behmii, Christiani Dreieri, Johann. Latermanni (Danzig, 1649). Cf. Jörg Baur, “Orthodoxie, Genese und Struktur,” in TRE 25:506. Preus counts 28 works by Calov against syncretism! Robert D. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism (St. Louis/London: Concordia, 1970), 1:60.

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a role in the retrieval of this theme. In addition, as a strict Lutheran theologian, Calov expounded on the christological doctine of the communication of idioms (communicatio idiomatum), that is, the notion that the specific properties of Jesus Christ’s two natures are mutually exchanged – hence the doctrine of ubiquity not just of his divine nature, but of his human nature as well, a doctrine which played a key role in the debates and polemics on the Eucharist. This point of doctrine was of great importance to Calov, as well as to numerous Lutheran theologians of the time. Calixt’s irenicism, on the other hand, can be traced, in part, to his training at the University of Helmstedt, in a region where only the earlier Lutheran confessions such as the Augsburg Confession (1530) – and not the later Formula of Concord (1577), in which the doctrines of ubiquity and idioms were expressly put forth – were normative. Calixt represents a strand of Lutheran theology which prolongs Melanchthon’s humanism and his attempts to reconcile various Protestant movements. In this tradition, interpretations of justification which leaned towards synergism (i. e., an emphasis on the role of human action, which accompanies God’s act) could be found, to the horror of stricter Lutherans. The very sharp debates – and indeed polemics – between the Wittenberg theologians (headed by Calov) and the so-called “syncretists” of Helmstedt-Königsberg (headed by Calixt) should not obfuscate the presuppositions commonly shared by these thinkers. One of these presuppositions concerned the use of Aristotelian philosophy and an interest in metaphysics and ontology. With Calov, as well as with Calixt, what was already becoming a recent new trend within Protestant theology – namely, a grounding on both Scripture (or revelation) and nature (or being, or reason) – was quite manifest, as can be seen from Calov’s Metaphysica divina, pars generalis (Rostock, 1636, 1640;2 the pars specialis only appeared in 1650 – 1651 and 1673 as part of his Scripta philosophica). In this book, Calov is making use of Aristotle’s philosophy. He is interested in being and nature itself (esse generalissimum; natura abstractissima) and distinguishes this object of thought from any given object of, or in, this world.³⁴ Calov’s arch-adversary, Georg Calixt, was also fully conversant in such metaphysical matters. He had studied with Cornelius Martini (1568 – 1651), a philosopher and theologian who played a decisive role in introducing Aristotelian metaphysics (in opposition to Ramism) within German Lutheran universities, at the University of Helmstedt, beginning in 1597.³⁵ As a result, Calov’s metaphysical works must not have seemed very original to someone like Calixt. Calixt became one of the pioneers of the so-called “analytical” approach – which means, here, an approach guided by the telos of a given science, rather  Jean-François Courtine, Suarez et le problème de la métaphysique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), 446 – 47.  Martini’s lectures were read avidly, including by Johann Gerhard. Martini considered Thomas Aquinas a “vir certe doctissimus;” see Max Wundt, Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr, 1939), 98 – 103 and 133 – 35; here 102.

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than the “synthetic” approach one finds, for instance, in the tradition of the Loci. ³⁶ In the case of Christian theology, the goal is salvation, and a focus on it leads to two important consequences, which Calixt exploited effectively. First is an emphasis on the practical aspect of theology. The point of theology, far from residing purely and simply on a knowledge of the subject matter, is to understand the concrete and actual progress of believers towards this goal. Second is the realization that not all points of doctrine are essential for salvation – some are adiaphora. Christian theology finds an apt summary in the Apostles’ Creed, which already signals the basic and actual convergence of all Christian confessions. The strict Lutherans, such as Calov, took issue with this and saw here a dangerous attack on certain doctrinal matters, especially ubiquity and the communication of idioms.

5 The End of the Orthodox Era – The Other Discontinuities The turn from the Renaissance and the early modern era to modernity, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was fatal for the Protestant orthodox theologians. From one generation to the next, the ways of thinking of the great systematicians of “high” Protestant scholasticism became deeply problematic: too speculative and abstract, too remote from one’s subjective experience in the world, too prone to intolerant attitudes. The enlightened and the Pietists searched for – and found – different ways of thinking about Christianity and religion. And yet, amidst this strong element of discontinuity, here too continuities can be discerned, insofar as even the highest forms of Protestant orthodoxy were – as has been seen above – not disconnected from existential quests for certainty and meaning.³⁷ A strong anthropological emphasis can already be discerned in the massive seventeenth-century theological systems, which should not be interpreted too quickly and simply as mere “returns” to, or “repetitions” of, medieval summas and sentences. So, the question remains: Did the theologians of the sevententh century pave the way for modern (including Deist) and Pietist theologies? The fact that elaborate reflections on “being qua being” were promoted in Lutheran universities may be seen as a first instance of an increased autonomy of philosophy – and of ontology – with regard to theology.

 Wilhelm Gass, “Georg Calixt,” in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot,1876), 3:696 – 704; and Wallmann, Der Theologiebegriff, 26 – 27 and 56 – 57. Wallmann (88 – 89) and Gass both consider Calix to be the greatest mind in Lutheranism in the seventeenth century. The Italian logician Jacobo Zabarella (1533 – 1589), an Aristotelian, was very influential among German Lutheran theologians, notably through his use of the analytic (demonstratio ab effectu)/synthetic (demonstratio ab causa) distinction. It was a Reformed thinker, Bartholomaeus Keckermann (1572– 1609), who helped introduce Zabarella’s ideas and the “analytic” method in Lutheranism.  “Zu Pietismus und Aufklärung führt eine wesentliche Linie durch die Orthodoxie hindurch;” Wallmann, Der Theologiebegriff, 59. Barth had already voiced this thesis (see below).

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It may then be that the growth of natural theology within Protestant scholasticism prepared, as it were, the explosion of “natural” theologies, especially among Deists, in the late seventeenth and eigtheenth centuries. What about the other discontinuity – that between the orthodox era and Pietism? Here, too, we should avoid seeing a simple gap between the two. Thinkers such as Johann Conrad Dannhauer (1603 – 1666) bridge both movements. Dannhauer was a a former student of Johann Gerhard and a professor of theology at the University of Strasbourg. Like Gerhard, Dannhauer, in his major work Hodosophia christiana sive Theologia positiva (1649), defines theology as a God-given (theodotos) disposition or habitus. ³⁸ Dannhauer also extends Gerhard with his emphasis on the verbal inspiration of Scripture (theopneustos), even in its most minute details, such as the Hebrew vocalization marks.³⁹ Dannhauer was well known for his fierce polemics, which targeted many adversaries, including the Reformed, whom he engaged in his Hodomoria Spiritus Calviniani. ⁴⁰ He had both feet securely planted within the grounds of Lutheran scholasticism; he did not live to see the emergence of Pietism in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, but Spener, who was his student in Strasbourg, admired him. After Dannhauer (†1666), Quenstedt (†1688), and other scholars – such as the pastor David Hollaz (1648 – 1713), a student of Calov and Quenstedt, who in fact become one of the last orthodox thinkers –, a quite different version of the movement would eventually emerge in the early eighteenth century, as the mood in many quarters of Europe turned against doctrinal matters, blaming them for the bloodshed and intolerance of the previous century. Some Protestant churches now decided that certain doctrinal matters, such as God’s triunity or (especially among the Reformed) predestination, were better left aside and not mentioned in the pulpits. A “reasonable”

 “Theologia nostras est habitus divinitus datus, in conscientia pura ac animo devoto, qui hominem summe miserum efficaci doctrina ad salutem, vitamque aeternam reducit;” see Hodosophia christiana sive Theologia positiva (Strasbourg, 1649, repr. 1666 and 1674; Strasbourg/Leipzig, 1713); I quote this last edition, p. 6. J. Gerhard, “Proœmium de natura theologiae,” Loci theologici (Tübingen, 1763), 2:4 and 13. On Dannhauer, see Wallmann, “Strassburger lutherische Orthodoxie im 17. Jahrhundert. Johann Conrad Dannhauer. Versuch einer Annäherung,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 68 no. 1 (1988): 55 – 71.  On the verbal inspiration of the Bible, see the following: “inspirante per gratiam praesentissimam concomitantem; accurante, ne vel in puncto erraret scriptor; revelante de novo res ratione humana superiores,” Dannhauer, Hodosophia christiana sive Theologia positive, 19; “Quod manu Apostolorum scriptum est, ipsa manu Dei scriptum est,” 20; “Jam quod puncta vocalia attinet in textu Hebraeo (de his enim praecipue est controversia, non de accessu grammatico, consistente in literarum figurarione, distinctione et perfectione, appellatione punctorum et ordinatione,) eorum divinitas primum a Scriptura exigitur, deinde in reipsa et facto ostenditur. Exigitur, inquam, a Scripturae Sacrae fine, e quo sic colligimus. Omnis Scriptura perfecta, perficiens hominem Dei ad omne opus bonum, sapientifica ad salutem, regulatrix verae viae salutis, etiam puerorum legentium informatrix, de jure ac necessario vocalibus constare debet e divina inspiratione natis. At omnis scriptura Vet. Test. perfecta etc. igitur de jure ac necessario vocalibus theopneustois constare debet,” 31.  Hodomoria Spiritus Calviniani Duodecim Phantasmatis, 2 vols. (Strasbourg, 1654).

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version of Protestant orthodoxy, with obvious Pietist and enlightened (especially Cartesian) leanings, replaced the older, more stringent versions. Johann Franz Buddeus (1667– 1729) was one of the figures of this new, enlightened, and – above all – Pietist orthodoxy.

6 Karl Barth and Lutheran Orthodoxy We will now make a big jump and consider the following question: How did Karl Barth, who was Reformed, receive the Lutheran orthodox tradition? This is a vast question, which can only be answered very provisionally in what follows. Like Schleiermacher, another signal Reformed thinker, Barth was quite conversant in seventeenth-century Protestant theology. But it did not start that way. As a student of Wilhelm Herrmann (1846 – 1922), one of the main voices in Protestant systematic theology at the turn of the twentieth century, Barth was certainly not encouraged to delve deeply into seventeenth-century theology. Schleiermacher’s Speeches – rather than the voluminous systems of Chemnitz, Gerhard, and Calov – were highly valued. It is only when Barth became a professor of theology at the University of Göttingen and began to give dogmatic lectures, in the early 1920s, that he became interested in these works. Barth discovered Heinrich Heppe’s and Heinrich Schmidt’s compendia of, respectively, Reformed and Lutheran Protestant orthodox writings in 1924.⁴¹ In 1935, Barth wrote about this discovery in a text worth quoting at length. These books, he wrote, fell into my hands; out of date, dusty, unattractive, almost like a table of logarithms, dreary to read, stiff and eccentric on almost every place I opened; in form and content pretty adequately corresponding to what I, like so many others, had described to myself decades ago as the ‘old orthodoxy’. Well, I had the grace not to be slack. I read, I studied, I reflected and found that I was rewarded with the discovery that, here at last, I was in the atmosphere in which the road by way of the reformers to Holy Scripture was a more sensible and natural one to tread, than the atmosphere, now only too familiar to me, of the theological literature determined by Schleiermacher and Ritschl. I found a dogmatics which had both form and substance, oriented upon the central indications (Hinweise) to revelation in the Biblical witness, indications which it also managed to follow out in detail with astonishing richness – a dogmatics which, by adopting and sticking to main concerns of the Reformation, attempted simultaneously a worthy continuation of the doctrinal constructions of the ancient Church, and yet also sought to cherish and preserve continuity with the ecclesial science of the Middle Ages. I found myself visibly in the confines of the Church, but also, at the same time, like these paragons, in the region of a (in its own way) respectable ecclesial science. I started to admire the long, peaceful breathing, the circumspection, the solidity, the strictness (in relation to the subject matter), the superior

 K. Barth, “Zum Geleit,” in Heinrich Heppe, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche (Neukirchen: Erziehungsverein, 1935), vii. Heinrich Schmid, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1983).

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style, the reliable (at least in itself) method, with which this ‘orthodoxy’ had worked. I had cause for astonishment at its wealth of problematized topics and the sheer beauty (pulchritudo) of its trains of thought. In these old fellows I saw that it can be worthwhile to reflect upon the tiniest point with all the might of the Christian presupposition and, for the sake of the much appealedto ‘life’, to be very serious, from beginning to end, about the question of truth. In other words, I saw that Protestant dogmatics had once been a careful, orderly matter, and I conceived the hope that it might perhaps become so again, if it once again found the nerve it had manifestly lost, if it would once again entertain a strict ecclesial and scientific stance.⁴²

Immedialey after writing these revealing lines, Barth makes sure to add that he never intended to “repeat” the seventeenth-century systems. These works had, indeed, in part paved the way for subsequent, problematic developments within Protestant theology.⁴³ How? Through a reliance on certain philosophies (Barth does not specify which ones); through an overly confident use of ancient sources (patristic and medieval), which at times should have been put to the test of reformatory insights; through a tendency to claim “mastery” of revelation on the basis of (divinely illumined) reason; and through a severe reduction of revelation’s mystery, something especially visible in their doctrines of Scripture.⁴⁴ These are serious – and numerous – issues, of course. Barth worked hard at rectifying them in his Church Dogmatics and other writings. But they should not distract us from paying attention to the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians, who are not the “goal,” but only a “station” on the way to the goal. The goal is “a biblical and reformatory theology.” These thinkers matter because they themselves remind us of that goal.⁴⁵ And so Barth used the various compendia of Protestant orthodox theology and relied on Charlotte von Kirschbaum, his secretary and companion, who excerpted several of the major systematic works of that era, providing Barth with a wealth of quotes which he eventually integrated in the Church Dogmatics. Barth voiced this nuanced, critical view of the orthodox theologians here and there, especially in the prefaces to his dogmatic works, in 1927 and 1932. In his 1932 preface to the first volume of his Church Dogmatics, he stated that “not merely the most important but also the most relevant and beautiful problems in dogmatics begin at the very point where the fable of ‘unprofitable scholasticism’ […] persuade [s] us that we ought to stop.”⁴⁶ The message is clear, and must have appeared quite  Barth, “Zum Geleit,” iii–iv. I modify here and there Rinse H. Reeling Brouwer’s translation, in Karl Barth and Post-Reformation Orthodoxy (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), 2– 3. Reeling Brouwer’s study, while excellent, is mostly concerned with seventeenth-century Reformed (not Lutheran) theology as (mis)read by Barth.  Barth, “Zum Geleit,” iv. Barth repeated this critcism elsewhere. See for instance Church Dogmatics 2.1:528 – 29, hereafter CD.  Barth, “Zum Geleit,” iv. For an English translation and interpretation of this important passage, see Reeling Brouwer, Karl Barth, 243 – 48.  Barth, “Zum Geleit,” v.  CD 1.1:xiv. See also the preface to Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1927), 7– 8.

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reactionary to many of Barth’s colleagues: “Fear of scholasticism is the mark of a false prophet.”⁴⁷ But, again, the seventeenth-century systems were not the panacea which could bring modern theology onto the right track. Barth saw, even in figures such as Gerhard, a move away from God’s objectivity toward the human subject and his or her way to salvation.⁴⁸ This slippery slope lead, in Barth’s view, to the anthropocentric, modern theologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Protestant orthodoxy, therefore, was responsible for this “catastrophic crash” in the eighteenth century: its own foundations were severely inadequate.⁴⁹

7 Final Remarks Seventeenth-century Protestant theology still is a “vast terra incognita”⁵⁰ overall, but some modern theologians – including Barth and, of course, a number of historical theologians and historians of ideas – have attempted forays and discovered a richness and a diversity of views, which belies the cliché about the “dead orthodoxy” of that time. At the same time, it is striking to realize that almost no echoes of the European bloodbaths seem to be heard in these works. The world as they knew it – and this is rather troubling – is more or less absent. Just as Barth was not a liberal theologian, but also not simply opposed to certain forms of liberalism within theology, he was not a scholastic theologian, even though he took the scholastic and orthodox traditions seriously. There is no denying that Barth read the orthodox theologians (as well as all the others) as a systematic theologian, and not as a historical theologian stricto sensu. Nor did he have the leisure time to read these massive systems from cover to cover. Thus, critical evaluations of his interpretation of past ideas are welcome. Barth, of course, lived and worked after Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Feuerbach – not before. His philosophical presuppositions, as a reader of Kant and neo-Kantian philosophy (e. g., Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp) and of other thinkers, were vastly different from Gerhard’s and those of other scholars of early modernity. Barth strikes a middle course between, on the one hand, liberal theology and its overly quick rejection of heteronomy (the normativity of dogma, of Scripture, of revelation) and, on the other hand, the misguided orthodox tendency to confuse Scripture with revelation (verbal inspiration and inerrancy) and to reduce God’s word to its written form – the Bible –, to the detriment of the person of Jesus Christ and the Church’s proclamation, which are its other two forms. Such a reduction “implies a

 CD 1.1:279.  CD 1.1:192.  CD 1.1:124.  Kenneth G. Appold, Abraham Calov’s Doctrine of Vocatio in Its Systematic Context (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 4.

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freezing, as it were, of the relation between Scripture and revelation.”⁵¹ In Barth’s mind, many of the Lutheran theologians of the seventeenth century had even higher views of Scripture than their Reformed counterparts.⁵² Johann Gerhard – whom Barth quotes regularly in his Church Dogmatics, often with approval, and whose approach, based on the Loci, Barth sought to follow, in opposition to the “analytical” method⁵³ – had rightly perceived how the authority of Scripture is autopistos, that is, grounded in itself, and not demonstrated retrospectively or externally through apologetic devices: “It is either already known and acknowledged, or it is not accepted.”⁵⁴ Barth readily acknowledged the “seriousness” of Gerhard’s critique of the absolutism of Reformed doctrines of predestination, even if it risked transforming God’s mercy into a principle which could be manipulated by the human subject.⁵⁵ Assuredly, there is something puzzling in seeing Lutheran thinkers embrace metaphysical constructs only decades after Luther’s own demolition of Aristotelian-based scholastic theology. But before we rend our garments and cry “blasphemy!”, it is important to look more closely at how they did it, and for what reasons. Then we might reach a better – and certainly not a-critical – understanding of what these scholars achieved.

    

CD CD CD CD CD

1.1:124. 1.2:460. 1.2:870. 1.2:536. 2.2:72.

Pierre Bühler

Theology of the Cross Its Meaning in Luther and Some Stages of Its Reception History Crux sola est nostra theologia (“The cross alone is our theology”).¹ Everyone dealing with reformatory thinking is familiar with the classic sola-formulas: sola fide (“faith alone”), sola gratia (“grace alone”), and sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”). That in Luther’s work there also was a sola crux – as the quotation shows – is much less well known. The brief sentence confirms the significance of the cross in Luther’s theology; even more, it turns his entire theology into a theology of the cross (theologia crucis). I will elaborate on this in more detail in the first part of this chapter. In the brief second part, a few intermediate reflections on method will be provided, before the third part sketches the reception of Luther’s theology of the cross, describing a few of the stages in historical order.

1 The Fundamental Importance of the Theology of the Cross in Luther² The expressions “theology of the cross” (Kreuzestheologie) and “theologian of the cross” (Kreuzestheologe) were coined by Martin Luther, probably with some mystical influence. Hence, let us first have a closer look at how he came to these expressions, so that we can gain a deeper systematic understanding later.

1.1 Some Historical Information Even though the theology of the cross is a basic element in Luther’s theology, it explicitly characterized only a limited period of his life’s work. He intensively addressed it mainly during the years 1517– 1519, when he raised it to the rank of a theological program. After that, it moved a little bit into the background, only reappearing during the last years of his life, but even then only implicitly and more sporadically. There is, incidentally, some similarity with the Apostle Paul in this: for him, too, the formula “word of the cross” does not characterize his entire

Translation from German: Alissa Jones Nelson.  WA 5:176, 32– 33.  For more detailed information on this section, see Pierre Bühler, Kreuz und Eschatologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der politischen Theologie, im Anschluß an Luthers theologia crucis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), esp. 63 – 285. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-042

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work, but only a limited part; this, however, does not exclude the fact that this dimension played a key role in his entire theology. For Luther, the development of this theme hinged on the interaction of his work on Paul and his critical engagement with the currents of his time.³ The formula theologia crucis appeared for the first time in his lecture on the Letter to the Hebrews (on Hebr 12:11).⁴ Only later, in the course of the dispute about indulgences, did the content of the term become more precise – for instance, we find the differentiation between theologus crucis (“theologian of the cross”) and theologus gloriae (“theologian of glory”) for the first time in the Resolutiones, the commentary on the ninety-five theses against indulgences. A little later, in the spring of 1518, Luther programmatically developed the difference between theologia crucis and theologia gloriae. He did so in the context of the Heidelberg Disputation, as part of a chapter of the Augustinian order.⁵ In his second lecture on Psalms – the Operationes in Psalmos (1519 – 1521) –, the theme of the cross played an important role, too, even though the term theologia crucis remained more in the background. Several hypotheses have tried to explain the relatively rare occurrences of these terms: Did the theme emerge from a particular polemical context? Or was it simply the result of a phase of intensive work on Paul’s thought? Or did it characterize the pre-reformatory Luther, who only later made up his mind about justification by faith, which then rendered superfluous the theme of the theology of the cross? None of these explanations is really convincing. The polemical context certainly played a role, but the lectures on the Letter to the Hebrews and the second lecture on Psalms do not belong in that framework. And while it is true that Paul’s theology permeated Luther’s entire work during this phase, this is also true of his later work. Likewise, the assumption that the theology of the cross was replaced by justification by faith cannot really explain why the first element remained present, and why it even reappeared with a strong emphasis in the second lecture on Psalms. Therefore, another assumption seems more plausible: the contrast between the theology of the cross and the theology of glory had so much captured Luther’s thinking that noting it explicitly became more and more unnecessary.

 For a more detailed description of the progressive development of the years 1517– 1519, see Bühler, Kreuz und Eschatologie, 79 – 132.  See Eduard Ellwein, “Die Entfaltung der theologia crucis in Luthers Hebräerbriefvorlesung,” in Theologische Aufsätze. Karl Barth zum 50. Geburtstag, ed. Ernst Wolf (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1936), 382– 404.  See Heinrich Bornkamm, “Die theologischen Thesen Luthers bei der Heidelberger Disputation 1518 und seine theologia crucis,” in Luther. Gestalt und Wirkungen. Gesammelte Aufsätze, ed. Heinrich Bornkamm (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1975), 130 – 146; Edgar Thaidigsmann, “Kreuz und Wirklichkeit. Zur Aneignung der ‘Heidelberger Disputation’ Luthers,” Lutherjahrbuch 48 (1981): 80 – 96.

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1.2 Systematic Accents A close reading of the relevant texts, particularly of the Heidelberg Disputation,⁶ reveals certain threads that are relevant in a systematic framework.

1.2.1 The Hermeneutical Dimension Unpacking the opposition between the theology of the cross and the theology of glory has a hermeneutical dimension. As the many quotations from and references to the Bible indicate, Luther conceptualized the theology of the cross as a systematic hermeneutic of Holy Scripture, with reference to the concrete historical situation in which Luther found himself. This explains why Luther, in his explanation of the theology of the cross, focused so intently on the question of justification by faith or by works.

1.2.2 The Criteriological Function The theology of the cross does not simply describe the event of the cross and its implications in the sense of one specific locus theologicus among others. Hence, what is at stake is not the development of a theology of the cross, which would then lead to a theology of resurrection or a theology of incarnation. The point is also not to define the theology of the cross as a Christological endeavor and subsequently – and independently – to unfold the doctrine of God, anthropology, or eschatology.⁷ Rather, the theology of the cross has the status of a fundamental theological principle; in other words, it has a criteriological function.⁸ This means that it is the condition for the possibility of all theology, and that it therefore has an impact on Luther’s theology as a whole. Therefore, it would be useless, for instance, to juxtapose the resurrection to the cross, as if the theology of the cross did not deal with both the cross and the resurrection. The same is true for the statement on the incarnation: it is not in oppo-

 This is a summary and synthesis of the theses 19 – 28 and their respective explanations (WA 1:354, 17– 36 and 361, 31– 365, 21). For a full interpretation, see Bühler, Kreuz und Eschatologie, 102– 20.  Karl Barth applied this material conception consistently in his Kirchliche Dogmatik, using the terms “theology of the crossˮ for the statement of the death on the cross and “theology of gloryˮ for the statement of resurrection; see Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1960), 4.1:622– 23; see also Bühler, Kreuz und Eschatologie, 73 – 74.  Similarly, with reference to Paul, see Jürgen Becker, Paulus. Der Apostel der Völker (Tübingen: Uni Taschenbücher, 1992 [1989]), 220 – 21: “For the theology of the cross, it is not the cross that is the matter of discussion; rather, everything receives a new elaboration through the cross. […] Hence, in the cross the reevaluation of all things in this reality takes place, in a sustainable and binding way, because the crucified once and for all only confesses the God who wants to be the God and savior in the depths, in deadly misery, in forlornness, and in nothingness.”

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sition to the theology of the cross, nor does it intend to compete with it or to complete it; rather, it is from the theology of the cross that the statement on the incarnation gains its true meaning. In the Operationes in Psalmos, this function can be seen in formulations such as Crux probat omnia (“the cross assesses everything”) or Crux sola est nostra theologia (“the cross alone is our theology”).⁹ In the Heidelberg Disputation, however, the criteriological function operates in the systematic opposition of theologia crucis and theologia gloriae. The intention of this opposition is not simply to distinguish individual themes of theology from each other (e. g., the cross for Good Friday, and the glory for Easter). It represents a radical alternative between two mutually exclusive ways of doing theology. Therefore, the term “theology of glory” has a polemical function. During the time of the Heidelberg theses, Luther used this term to characterize the strategy of his scholastic opponents; later, he would ascribe it to the mystical approach and to the movement of the so-called enthusiasts.

1.2.3 The Epistemological Dimension The main stress here lies on the function of the crucified Christ with reference to revelation, and hence also to the knowledge of God; true theology and true knowledge of God do not deem God recognizable through his works (Deus manifestus ex operibus), but they recognize God as being hidden in his suffering (Deus absconditus in passionibus).¹⁰

1.2.4 The Paradoxical Dimension This epistemological accent leads to an inversion of the basic perspective, which lends the theology of the cross its paradoxical dimension: this theology is not concerned with the invisibilia, (i. e., the “invisible things” of God, with reference to Rom. 1), but rather with the visibilia (i. e., the “visible things,” which Luther linked to the posteriora, or the “posterior things”). This expression surely refers to Ex 33:23, which describes Moses seeing God’s glory only “from behind” – after it had passed him by. The paradox – corresponding to Paul’s elements of stumbling block and foolishness in 1 Cor 1:18 – 25 – is here expressed in the thesis that these

 WA 5:179, 31 and 176, 32– 33. Both quotations appear in the commentary on Psalm 5. We may also mention the similar statement in WA 5:217, 2– 3: Crux Christi est eruditio verborum dei, Theologia syncerissima.  See the explanation of thesis 20: Quia enim homines cognitione Dei ex operibus abusi sunt, voluit rursus Deus ex passionibus cognosci et reprobare illam sapientiam invisibilium per sapientia visibilium, ut sic, qui Deum non coluerunt manifestum ex operibus, colerent absconditum in passionibus […] Ergo in Christo crucifixo est vera Theologia et cognitio Dei (WA 1:362, 5 – 9 and 18 – 19).

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visibilia et posteriora Dei can be revealed only per passiones et crucem – i. e., “through the passion and the cross” (thesis 20). Consequently, we can say that true salvation manifests itself in the very opposite of what people usually refer to as salvation – namely, in what is, from the human point of view, the most dreadful forlornness. In other words, the event of the cross is a place of humiliation and outrage (mors turpissima crucis).¹¹

1.2.5 Salvific Reparation of a Harmful Inversion Luther further clarifies the creative potential of this paradoxical situation when he stresses that natural salvation is perverted and that the salvific reevaluation accomplished by the cross liberates salvation from this perversion, turning it into a real, true, and free salvation. Hence, we could say that the reevaluation of the cross functions as a “reevaluation of the reevaluation” of salvation.¹² Paul did the same in 1 Cor 1:21 by noting that “God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe,” because “in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him.” Only against the background of the non-acknowledgment of God can the stumbling block and foolishness of the cross reveal themselves in an original, reviving way as God’s true power and wisdom. In this sense, this turn is a salvific reversion of a harmful inversion that had already taken place, and which Luther expressed with the prophetic exclamation in Is 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” According to Luther, this is what characterizes the theologian of glory: dicit Malum bonum et bonum malum (“he calls evil good and good evil”). Luther offered a more precise explanation in the commentaries on his theses: the theology of glory of the “enemies of the cross” has turned the good of the cross into something evil, and the evil of works into something good. Therefore, the reevaluation of the theology of the cross must enable the good, which had turned into something bad, to become good again. In this sense, Luther can content himself with simply contrasting the theologian of glory with what the theologian of the cross does: Theologus crucis dicit id quod res est (“The theologian of the cross says what the fact is”¹³). By simply stating what the fact is, over against the inversion of the theo-

 On this formula of Origen’s, see the detailed discussion in Martin Hengel, “Mors turpissima crucis. Die Kreuzigung in der antiken Welt und die ‘Torheit’ des ‘Wortes vom Kreuz,’” in Rechtfertigung. Festschrift für Ernst Käsemann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Johannes Friedrich, Wolfgang Pöhlmann, and Peter Stuhlmacher (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1976), 125 – 84.  I am inspired here by comparable formulas of Luther, such as “the death of the death,” “the sin of the sin,” etc.  Thesis 21 (WA 1,362,21– 22): Theologus gloriae dicit Malum bonum et bonum malum, Theologus crucis

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logian of glory, he is also the only true theologian: ille digne Theologus dicitur (thesis 19).

1.2.6 The Theology of the Cross and Justification by Faith Alone Although the main focus of the programmatic development of the theology of the cross is on the knowledge of God – that is, on an epistemological concern –, it nevertheless also leads directly to a soteriological argumentation: Luther put forward the question of what happens to the human being from the respective viewpoints of the theologia crucis and the theologia gloriae. With this in mind, it is interesting to see how, at the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther moved from the theme of the theology of the cross to the theme of justification by faith. These two aspects appear here to be fundamentally in solidarity with one another. The theology of glory, says Luther, “completely inflates the human being, blinds him and hardens him.” ¹⁴ This immediately calls down the judgment of the law, which “causes God’s wrath, kills, curses, sues, judges, and condemns everything that is not in Christ.”¹⁵ Without the theology of the cross, the best is misused in the worst sense, as thesis 24 stresses.¹⁶ Thus, the theology of the cross leads us directly to the fundamental duality between law and grace (thesis 26), which discloses – in combination with thesis 25 – the basic alternative between justification by works and justification by faith. “Not the one who does many works is just, but the one who strongly believes in Christ without works. The law says: ‘Do this,’ but it never happens. Grace says: ‘Believe in him,’ and immediately everything is done.”¹⁷ This dialectic between judgment and grace clearly formulates the soteriological problem. Thesis 28 and its explanations address the problem in more detail, with the “love of the cross that originates from the cross.”¹⁸ Put differently, justification by faith is God’s love, which does not turn to where the good is already present in order to enjoy it – this is what human love would do –, but which first creates its object, which means that it gives the good to the needy one who lacks it. Luther expressed this creative act of God’s love aesthetically: God does not love the justified, but rather the sinners, and God’s love transforms the sinners into the justified be-

dicit id quod res est.  Thesis 22 (WA 1:362, 35 – 36): Sapientia illa, quae invisibilia Dei ex operibus intellecta conspicit, omnino inflat, excaecat et indurat.  Thesis 23 (WA 1:363, 16 – 17).  Thesis 24 (WA 1:363, 25 – 26): […] homo sine Theologia crucis optimis pessime abutitur.  Theses 25 – 26 (WA 1:364, 2– 3 and 18 – 19).  Explanations for thesis 28 (WA 1:365, 13 – 14): Et iste est amor crucis ex cruce natus […].

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cause “the sinners are beautiful because they are loved; they are not loved because they are beautiful.”¹⁹ So Luther’s answer to the question is clear: there is a close connection between the theology of the cross and justification by faith. This core message is even more astonishing when we see that Luther attributes a criteriological function to both aspects; just as he can say that the cross alone is our theology, he can call justification by faith the first article, the head, and the heart of all of theology.²⁰ But this does not lead to contradiction; rather, we are dealing here with one and the same criterion, which expressed differently in various contexts, but which is basically one. In the Heidelberg Disputation, this is pronounced in the idea that the justification of sinners happens through amor crucis (“love of the cross”). Both aspects are allowed to come together in an inner coherence, as two foci of an ellipse, so to speak – the more christologically oriented aspect in the cross, and the more soteriologically oriented aspect in justification by faith. In this sense, we can say that Luther’s theology presents a creative resumption of Paul’s theology in the context of the sixteenth century, claiming its coherence and relevance with new approaches.

1.2.7 Judgment and Grace From the paradoxical structure of the theology of the cross, it follows that Luther’s entire soteriology is subordinated to the duality of judgment and grace. Similarly to the “salvific inversion” discussed above, divine grace can be bestowed on the human being only through the verdict that God assigns. The cross is part of this duality: it is always both judgment and grace. The elaboration of this thesis can take different forms, but all forms have to account for this duality. For instance, I think it would be problematic to only stress the aspect of grace in the gospel of the cross, while locating judgment elsewhere – for instance, in the experience of the law. But it would be just as questionable to only stress the aspect of judgment in the cross, while developing the idea of grace at other Christological points, such as in relation to the resurrection or the incarnation.

2 Some Intermediate Reflections on Method The question of how Luther’s theology of the cross can be received and adapted – that is, how it can be actualized in new historical contexts – raises a number of

 WA 1:365, 11– 12: Ideo enim peccatores sunt pulchri, quia diliguntur, non ideo diliguntur, quia sunt pulchri.  Cf. Eberhard Jüngel, Das Evangelium von der Rechtfertigung des Gottlosen als Zentrum des christlichen Glaubens. Eine theologische Studie in ökumenischer Absicht (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998).

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methodological questions. I want to briefly discuss these before moving on to reception history.

2.1 The Foolishness of the Cross and Accountability in Thought As we have seen above, for Luther, the theologian accepts the challenge of being accountable for the way the word of the cross is theorized. This implies the task of talking about it as coherently and relevantly as possible, which also means that the elaboration of a theology of the cross is a very special challenge. How can we express foolishness coherently and relevantly? However, if we were to play off systematic theology against the word of the cross, we would be starting from a false assumption about what systematic theology is. We are not concerned with integrating the cross into a rigid system, which would be impossible anyway. Rather, our concern is to show that the word of the cross, especially in its foolishness, can be coherent and relevant (as Luther noted, the theologian of the cross talks about a simple fact, or id quod res est), and then to systematically draw our conclusions. Thus theology will always have to face the test of the cross.²¹

2.2 Differentiating Various Levels When we discuss coherence and relevance, and if we want to do justice to the development of the theology of the cross, we will also have to keep in mind that these concepts refer to different levels, which are connected but are also distinct from one another. The first level is the event of the cross itself, as it can be experienced in its relevance for everyday life. What is at stake is the historical event – the focal point of all perspectives. On the second level, we see, as Paul would have it, “the word of the cross” – that is, the annunciation of the event of the cross as good news and assurance of salvation for all people. The third level is the level of the theology of the cross, the place of accounting for the word of the cross. Here, the basic perspective is no longer that of annunciation, but of theological accountability for that annunciation. Nevertheless, whatever is worked out on the third level retains its reference to the other two levels.²²

 This is what Luther’s formula theologia crucis conveys, on the condition, of course, that we take the genitive as a genitivus auctoris: the cross is not only the object of this theology; rather, the theology of the cross emerges from the cross and therefore always has to be checked against the cross.  On this distinction of levels in the view of New Testament scholarship, see Konrad Haldimann, “Kreuz – Wort vom Kreuz – Kreuzestheologie. Zu einer Begriffsdifferenzierung in der Paulusinterpretation,” in Kreuzestheologie im Neuen Testament, ed. Andreas Dettwiler and Jean Zumstein (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 1– 25.

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2.3 From the Epistemological to the Practical-Existential An important part of this theological challenge is the fundamental connection between the epistemological question and the practical-existential dimension of the cross. “Therefore, the theology of the cross always aims, in an eminent sense, at the ‘practical,’ at dealing with reality correctly. It leads to experience; it is existential theology.”²³ On this level, the question of the soteriological scope of the theology of the cross arises. Or, put differently, the salvation that is promised in the cross and the resurrection achieves its full measure only as a new opportunity to receive and perceive life, with all of its concrete implications. From this perspective, the soteriological assessment²⁴ of the theology of the cross could consist of expressing salvation existentially as stumbling block and foolishness, formulating it in the dialectical dynamic of judgment and grace. This is the task of every actualization, in direct engagement with multiple contemporary expectations of salvation.

3 Theology of the Cross Today: Some Stages of its Reception History 3.1 The Hermeneutical Fruitfulness of Reception History Ever since Hans-Georg Gadamer,²⁵ we have known how fruitful it is for the hermeneutical understanding to explore the interaction between texts and their impact and reception over the course of centuries. Such interactions offer important hints at certain potentials for meaning in these texts. This is also true of Luther’s theology of the cross. When the young Luther developed his programmatic opposition of theologia crucis and theologia gloriae, he was not operating in a vacuum. He was concerned with critically engaging tradition. First, this implied polemical differentiations. Where did he see forms of theologia gloriae laid out? Second, and in turn, we can ask whence he got the inspiration for his theologia crucis? There can be no doubt that his main reference was Paul, particularly his word of the cross in 1 Cor 1:18 – 25. The receptionhistorical field, however, can also change – for instance, with regard to the question of whether Luther’s program of the theology of the cross also renewed the under-

 Gerhard Ebeling, Luther. Einführung in sein Denken, 6th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017 [1964]), 262.  I intentionally speak of “assessment” here and not of “verification,” since the verb probare in Crux probat omnia means “to check/to assess,” and not “to prove.”  Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 5th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986 [1960]).

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standing of the New Testament in general, especially given the perception of Paul’s message of the cross.²⁶ Consequently, New Testament scholarship has to find an answer to the question of whether the theology of the cross can constitute the “center” of New Testament theology, even though the term does not occur at all in the New Testament. We have only a few expressions that come close to it, such as “word of the cross” or “enemies of the cross.” In the sense of these fruitful hermeneutical interactions, in what follows, I want to briefly sketch a few stages in the reception history of Luther’s theology of the cross. In various aspects, my description borrows quite a bit from the masterful overview that Michael Korthaus published in 2007.²⁷

3.2 Rediscovery at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Luther’s theologia crucis had been forgotten for a long time, perhaps mainly because it was prominent only at a certain phase of his work, while reception history – for various reasons – concentrated on other aspects (such as the much more controversial themes of “Scripture and tradition,” “faith and work,” and “word and sacrament”). What we see, however, in the course of the modern period, is a reception in various philosophical contexts; we may think of Johann Georg Hamann,²⁸ of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s “speculative Good Friday,”²⁹ or of Søren Kierkegaard’s reflection on the cross and the topic of suffering in Christian life, which was linked to the cross.³⁰ Theological scholarship rediscovered the theme of the theology of the cross at the turn of the twentieth century, mainly in the context of the renaissance of Luther and the movement of dialectical theology, for which the return to the Reformation served as a clear differentiation from nineteenth-century liberal theology. Among the most important names in the context of this new engagement with the theology

 Cf., in this sense, Hans Weder, Das Kreuz Jesu bei Paulus. Ein Versuch, über den Geschichtsbezug des christlichen Glaubens nachzudenken (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981).  Michael Korthaus, Kreuzestheologie. Geschichte und Gehalt eines Programmbegriffs in der evangelischen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).  Oswald Bayer, Kreuz und Kritik. Johann Georg Hamanns Letztes Blatt. Text und Interpretation (Tübingen: Mohr, 1983); cf. also Tom Kleffmann, “Luther und Hamann als Theologen des Kreuzes,” in Johann Georg Hamann – Religion in der Gesellschaft, ed. Manfred Beetz and Andre Rudolf (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2012), 208 – 27.  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Glauben und Wissen (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1962), 124. On this topic, see Roger Garaudy, Gott ist tot. Eine Studie über Hegel (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1965). As to the theological interpretation, see Eberhard Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begründung der Theologie des gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1977), 83 – 132.  See, for instance, Sören Kierkegaard, Einübung im Christentum, 26. Abteilung, Gesammelte Werke (Düsseldorf/Cologne: Diederichs, 1962).

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of the cross in the early twentieth century, Martin Kähler and Walther von Loewenich must be mentioned in particular. Kähler published a programmatic essay, Das Kreuz. Grund und Maß für die Christologie (“The Cross: The Basis and Measure of Christology”), the title of which underscores the criteriological function of the cross.³¹ This idea would characterize Kähler’s subsequent dogmatic works, as well.³² In 1929, Walther von Loewenich published a detailed discussion of Luther’s theology of the cross;³³ this book was probably the main reason why the term “theology of the cross” became relatively widely known in the twentieth century. Von Loewenich argues that the theology of the cross marked Luther’s entire work, even though the reformer addressed it explicitly only during a short phase of his life. Von Loewenich then provides a detailed description of the theologia crucis and examines its mystical roots.³⁴ Von Loewenich’s study certainly had an influence on the reception of the theology of the cross in dialectical theology. Karl Barth, however, was a bit reluctant; he even spoke of the tragedy of the theologia crucis as “occidental seriousness” turning into “Nordic melancholy,” which is why Barth tended to compensate it with the theologia gloriae of the resurrection. ³⁵ The Lutheran theology of the cross was more fruitful in Rudolf Bultmann’s work, especially in his interpretation of Paul. This seems to be the reason why the question of a renewed understanding of the cross and the resurrection occupied a central place in the development of his program of demythologization.³⁶ In the wider field of dialectical theology, we must also mention Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his letters and notes from prison, the theme of the cross plays an important – and when it comes to speaking about God, even a criteriological – role: The God who is with us, is the God who leaves us (Mark 15:34)! The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God, is the God before whom we are standing all the time. Before and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world to the cross. God is powerless and weak in the world, and exactly and only because of that, he is with us and helps us.³⁷

 Martin Kähler, Das Kreuz. Grund und Mass für die Christologie (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1911).  For a more detailed discussion of Kähler, see Korthaus, Kreuzestheologie, 26 – 60. In his discussion of this phase of the reception history, Korthaus also includes Bernhard Steffen and Hans-Joachim Iwand in addition to Kähler.  Walther von Loewenich, Luthers theologia crucis, 5th ed. (Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1967 [1929]).  See also, roughly at the same time, Paul Althaus, “Die Bedeutung des Kreuzes im Denken Luthers,” Luther 8 (1926): 97– 107.  Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, 623.  See Rudolf Bultmann, Neues Testament und Mythologie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1985; repr. of the 1941 edition, ed. Ernst Jüngel).  Dietrich Bonhoffer, Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, ed. Chr. Grimmels and R. Bethge, vol. 8, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998), 534– 35.

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With reference to passages such as this one in Bonhoeffer, in the 1960s there emerged, particularly in Anglo-Saxon scholarship, the “God-is-dead theology”; partly following Hegel, this movement interpreted Jesus Christ’s death on the cross as kenosis, as the emptying out of God. Perhaps its most eminent representative was Thomas J.J. Altizer in his book The Gospel of Christian Atheism, published in 1966.³⁸

3.3 The Deepening of Fundamental Theological Meaning in Gerhard Ebeling and Eberhard Jüngel Gerhard Ebeling’s work combines Luther research with a hermeneutical dogmatics influenced by Bultmann and Bonhoeffer. It is therefore to be expected that the Lutheran theologia crucis had a strong impact on his entire oeuvre.³⁹ As we have already seen in the quote above, Ebeling promoted the idea that the theology of the cross leads to life experience; it is existential theology. This means that it is not only necessary for the development of Christology⁴⁰, but it runs through the various deep dimensions of Christian faith, including eschatology.⁴¹ The work of Edgar Thaidigsmann on the theology of the cross in Luther, Hegel, and Barth also comes from the Ebeling school.⁴² Eberhard Jüngel’s reception of Luther’s theology of the cross was quite similar to Ebeling’s. Jüngel, who was more influenced by Karl Barth but who also argued hermeneutically, presented the theology of the cross in his main work, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt (God as the Secret of the World), as a theologia crucifixi – a “theology of the crucified.”⁴³

 Thomas J.J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966).  On the theology of the cross in Ebeling, see the more detailed account in Korthaus, Kreuzestheologie, 173 – 218.  Gerhard Ebeling, Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), Band II: Der Gegensatz zwischen theologia crucis und theologia gloriae ist prägend (see esp. 326 – 329, 29 – 30, 357– 358, 404, 450 – 451). See also, Gerhard Ebeling, Der Sühnetod Christi als Glaubensaussage. Eine hermeneutische Rechenschaft, in Wort und Glaube, (Tübingen, 1995): 4:557– 582.  Gerhard Ebeling, “Fides occidit rationem. Ein Aspekt der theologia crucis in Luthers Auslegung von Gal 3,6,” in Lutherstudien, Band 3, ed. Gerhard Ebeling (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985), 181– 222; Ebeling, “Erwägungen zur Eschatologie,” in Wort und Glaube, Band 3, ed. Gerhard Ebeling (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1975), 428 – 47, esp. 439 – 47, “Eschatologie als theologia crucis”.  Edgar Thaidigsmann, Identitätsverlangen und Widerspruch. Kreuzestheologie bei Luther, Hegel und Barth (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1983).  For more detail, see Korthaus, Kreuzestheologie, 302– 21.

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3.4 The Political Interpretation: Jürgen Moltmann and the Crucified God In 1965, Dorothee Sölle conferred a political dimension to the God-is-dead theology with her book Stellvertretung (Representation).⁴⁴ Jürgen Moltmann’s reception of Luther’s theology of the cross was also politically oriented. In his 1964 book on Theologie der Hoffnung (The Theology of Hope), he thought through and reestablished Christian eschatology in critical conversation with dialectic theology. Then, in 1972, in his book Der gekreuzigte Gott (The Crucified God), with the help of the theology of the cross, he propagated the concept of solidarity with the suffering and the oppressed from this eschatological viewpoint as aspects that are necessarily linked to hope.⁴⁵ As a result, Moltmann – like Ebeling, yet in a completely different sense – called the theology of the cross an eschatologia crucis (“eschatology of the cross”), not primarily as an existential dimension, but as an instruction for political engagement aimed at liberation from alienating societal structures.⁴⁶ This stress on the theology of the cross as a practice of solidarity and liberation triggered an intense debate in the second half of the twentieth century, and it had a strong influence, not least on Latin American liberation theology.⁴⁷

3.5 Theology of the Cross as Center of the New Testament? In 1974, Ulrich Luz published an article that prompted an intriguing discussion about the meaning of the theology of the cross for the inner coherence of the New Testament canon.⁴⁸ We can distinguish several levels of the problem:

 Dorothee Sölle, Stellvertretung. Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem ‘Tode Gottes’, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart/ Berlin: Kreuz, 1982 [1965]); see also her subsequent book Leiden (Stuttgart/Berlin: Kreuz, 1973; 2nd ed. Freiburg: Herder, 1998). The Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori discussed the theme of God’s pain on the cross soon after World War II, but his book became known only through the German translation; see Kazoh Kitamori, Theologie des Schmerzes Gottes, trans. Tsuneaki Kato and Paul Schneiss (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972).  Jürgen Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott. Das Kreuz Christi als Grund und Kritik der christlichen Theologie, 4th ed. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1981 [1972]); cf. Korthaus, Kreuzestheologie, 218 – 63 and 294– 302.  In my dissertation (Bühler, Kreuz und Eschatologie), I tried to bring the basic concepts of the theology of the cross in Ebeling and Moltmann into a critical conversation. For a more detailed discussion, see Korthaus, Kreuzestheologie, 263 – 94.  As contributions to the discussion, see Peter Fumiaki Momose, Kreuzestheologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Jürgen Moltmann (Freiburg: Herder, 1978); Michael Welker (ed.), Diskussion über Jürgen Moltmanns Buch “Der gekreuzigte Gott” (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1979); as to liberation theology in Latin America, see Ignacio Ellacuria and Jon Sobrino (eds.), Mysterium liberationis. Grundbegriffe der Befreiung, 2 vols. (Luzern: Edition Exodus, 1996).  Ulrich Luz, “Theologia crucis als Mitte der Theologie im Neuen Testament,” Evangelische Theologie 34 (1974): 116 – 41.

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Is it appropriate to talk of a “center” of Scripture in the first place? What are the hermeneutical implications of a category that defines the center and peripheries? Are there any works in the New Testament that are, through and through and in an eminently criteriological sense, representative of a theology of the cross? Is this true for Paul at all? And what about other works? How can we identify a theology-of-the-cross characteristic in texts that are mainly narrative? Do all New Testament texts need to be representative of the theology of the cross in this sense? What does it mean if only some of them are, and others are not? Would the latter then necessarily be representative of a theology of glory, given Luther’s fundamental theological distinction?

All of these questions were discussed in detail in a volume that explicitly takes Ulrich Luz’s approach as a point of departure.⁴⁹ A particularly interesting example in this discussion is the Gospel of John: In what sense can we speak of a theology of the cross in the fourth gospel?⁵⁰

3.6 Theology of the Cross as Theology of the Sacrifice of Atonement? In recent decades, scholars have critically assessed the fact that, for centuries, the tradition of interpreting the event of the cross had privileged the idea of a sin offering. Feminist theology, in particular, asks whether this neutralizes the critical power of the cross: Does it not support the passive willingness to make sacrifices – especially among the socially weak, among women and children – instead of acknowledging the resistance against violence that the cross reveals?⁵¹ Should the human “longing for healing and salvation” not be approached quite differently in order to experience liberating redemption?⁵²

 See Dettwiler and Zumstein, Kreuzestheologie.  On the different opinions about this, see Bühler, “Ist Johannes ein Kreuzestheologe? Exegetischsystematische Bemerkungen zu einer noch offenen Debatte,” in Johannes-Studien. Interdisziplinäre Zugänge zum Johannes-Evangelium. Freundesgabe der Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Neuchâtel für Jean Zumstein, ed. Martin Rose (Zürich: Secrétariat de l’Université, 1991), 191– 207; Esther Straub, Kritische Theologie ohne ein Wort vom Kreuz. Zum Verhältnis von Joh 1 – 12 und 13 – 20 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003); Jean Zumstein, “L’interprétation johannique de la mort du Christ,” in La mémoire revisitée. Etudes johanniques (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2017), 339 – 62.  See, for instance, Regula Strobel, “Opfer oder Zeichen des Widerstandes? Kritische Blicke auf problematische Interpretationen der Kreuzigung Jesus,” in Erinnern und aufstehen – antworten auf Kreuzestheologien, ed. Claudia Janssen and Benita Joswig (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 2000), 68 – 82.  Doris Strahm and Regula Strobel (eds.), Vom Verlangen nach Heilwerden. Christologie in feministisch-theologischer Sicht (Fribourg/Luzern: Edition Exodus, 1991); in this volume, see also Regula

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This critique pointed out an important hermeneutical problem that has turned out to be a continuous task for the theology of the cross: What is the language that best expresses the soteriological meaning of the theology of the cross? Closely connected to this is the basic task of critically evaluating the linguistic possibilities handed down through tradition and gauging new ways of speaking that better suit the contemporary situation. Two edited volumes, published in Zürich, take up this challenge, partly in an open conversation with the feminist critique.⁵³

3.7 The Ecumenical Theology of the Cross From an ecumenical perspective, the theology of the cross is also controversial. This was already the case during the Reformation, as Luther positioned this theology critically against scholastic theology, the basic orientation of which he perceived as a theology of glory. This confronts us today with the question of whether the theologia crucis is dependent on confessional identities, or whether it could be a concern that might connect various denominations. A special issue of the Ökumenische Rundschau in 2015 addressed the theme of “the theology of the cross in ecumenical discourse.”⁵⁴ In this context, Theodor Nikolaou’s attempt to engage with the theme of the theology of the cross from the perspective of Eastern Orthodoxy is also interesting.⁵⁵

3.8 Theology of the Cross in Art and Literature Interpretations of the cross have also materialized in art and literature in many ways. Therefore, theological reflection on this theme needs to take into account how the theology of the cross is taken up in the cultural domain, both historically and in our own time. Its influence has played out on various levels of reception history, from an impact on mindsets to changes in religious practices and in the use of political symbolism. Its representation in art is particularly noteworthy here. How have

Strobel, “Feministische Kritik an traditionellen Kreuzestheologien” (52– 64) and “Das Kreuz im Kontext feministischer Theologie. Versuch einer Standortbestimmung” (182– 93).  Hans Jürgen Luibl and Sabine Scheuter (eds.), Opfer. Verschenktes Leben (Zürich: Pano, 2001); Beatrice Acklin Zimmermann and Franz Annen (eds.), Versöhnt durch den Opfertod Christi? Die christliche Sühnopfertheologie auf der Anklagebank (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2009); in this volume, see Bühler, “Kann ein Sühnopfer versöhnen? Grenzen und Herausforderungen der Opfervorstellung für eine heutige Kreuzestheologie,” 139 – 57.  Ulrike Link-Wieczorek (ed.), Ökumenische Rundschau 2 (2015), with contributions by J. D. Weaver, F. van Hulst, E. Hohensee, C. Janssen, J. Niewiadomski, D. Gautier, and V. Küster.  Theodor Nikolaou, “Aspekte einer Kreuzestheologie aus orthodoxer Sicht,” Forum. Zeitschrift des Instituts für Orthodoxe Theologie der Universität München 8 (1994): 201– 13.

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painters and sculptors expressed the meaning of the cross in their work?⁵⁶ The same question applies to poets and writers who engaged with the motif of the cross in the genres of poems, stories, plays, or even operas. A highly interesting aspect in this regard is the question of how the theology of the cross comes to the fore in fiction.⁵⁷ In this third section, we have come across a multitude of engagements with the topic of the theology of the cross. Evidently, the theologia crucis program that Luther launched is far from being settled. It forms a central theological task even today, and it is connected to many interdisciplinary challenges. In this sense, we can note that what precisely it means to say “what the fact is” (id quod res est) in the respective situation is still undecided, and even controversial; this is even more the case when it comes to the question of living accordingly, as the theology of the cross also means “life under the cross”⁵⁸ – or, as the old liturgical greeting has it: Ave crux, spes unica (“Hail, cross, [our] only hope”).

 See, for instance, Hans R. Weber, Und kreuzigten ihn. Meditationen und Bilder aus zwei Jahrtausenden (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980); Wilhelm Ziehr, Das Kreuz. Symbol – Gestalt – Bedeutung (Stuttgart and Zürich: Belser, 1996).  See Bühler, “Narrative Kreuzestheologie – am Beispiel der Legende vom vierten König,” in Kreuzestheologie – kontrovers und erhellend, ed. Klaus Grünwaldt and Udo Hahn (Hannover: Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands, 2007), 137– 52 (this volume also contains a CD with Henning Frederich’s oratory Passionserzählung der Maria Magdalena); Bühler, “Characters as Offers of Narrative Identity: Literary Perspectives in the Story of the Passion,” in Interpretation of Texts: Sacred and Secular, ed. Pierre Bühler and Tibor Fabiny (Zürich/Budapest: Hermeneutikai Kutatóközpont, 1999), 336 – 48.  Von Lowenich, Luthers theologia crucis, 129 – 68.

Franco Motta

The Capture of the Minotaur

The Luther of Catholic Controversialists

1 The Rediscovery of the First Generation of Controversialists Luther’s heretical career within Catholic controversialist theology started immediately after the 95 theses, precisely between the spring and winter of 1518. On January 20, 1518, an academic disputation was held at the university of Frankfurt an der Oder on approximately a hundred theses in defense of indulgences and purgatory written by the rector Konrad Wimpina. The disputation prompted the decision by the chapter of the Dominicans to send to Rome a denunciation for heresy against Luther. In January or February, Johann Eck, the authoritative professor of theology at the university of Ingolstadt, published his Obelisci. In April or May, Johann Tetzel, the preacher of indulgences, published his Fünfzig Positiones. In all of the above-mentioned contributions, the authors highlighted errors of faith and explicitly referenced the positions of Hus and the Hussite Church. During the same months, the Master of the Sacred Palace, Silvestro Mazzolini (better known as Prierias), delivered his report to the commission in charge of assessing Luther’s case. The report, in line with the humanistic trend of the time, was written as a dialogue (a genre that controversalists would abandon soon afterward) and was articulated in three theses on the rule of faith and a corollary that denounced as heresy the denial of the power of the Church to impart absolution according to what was canonically sanctioned.¹ Since controversialist theology is a discipline that experienced an extraordinary revival during this era of religious crisis – to the point of leaving a deep and clear mark on the method used in Catholic faculties of theology until the twentieth century – Luther can rightfully be considered to be its godfather. Not only was a fundamental part of his writing in the crucial years after 1517 characterized by controversy but also, on the opposite front, it is primarily via the confutation of his works that Catholic theology at the very beginning of the Reformation went back to the necessity of

 “Qui circa indulgentias dicit, Ecclesia Romana non posse facere id quod de facto facit, hereticus est”: Responsio ad conclusiones Magistri Martini Luther, in Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri (1517 – 1521), ed. by P. Fabisch, E. Iserloh, vol. I, Das Gutachten des Prierias und weitere Schriften gegen Luthers Ablassthesen (1517 – 1518), (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988) 53 – 107, here 56. The same volume also collects contributions by Wimpina, Eck, and Tetzel. Cf. B. Lohse, Luthers Theologie in ihrer historischen Entwicklung und in ihrem systematischen Zusammenhang (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1995), 120 ff. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-043

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clarifying and arguing its own foundations, devoting several decades to the task up until the council of Trent and beyond. I refer here to the process of doctrinal redefinition described for the first time by German Catholic historiography in the mid-twentieth century – by authoritative scholars such as Joseph Lortz, Hubert Jedin, and Erwin Iserloh – after the publication of works of theological controversy in the series Corpus catholicorum, conceived by Joseph Greving during World War I and inaugurated properly in 1919 with Eck’s Defensio against Andreas Karlstadt.² An entire constellation of texts and authors that had been mostly forgotten for centuries, overwhelmed by the great post-Tridentine controversialist tradition of Stapleton and Bellarmine, and that now was coming back to life revealed how the years between Worms and the Diet of Augsburg were all but a confrontation from afar between the emperor, the papacy, and the reformers. Instead, they were the background of an extraordinary ferment of theological controversy that – apart from more familiar names such as Eck, Johann Cochlaeus or Henry of England – also involved names that at that point were almost forgotten, such as Thomas Murner and Caspar Schatzgeyer.³ As it is obvious, the figure of Luther is absolutely central in the early controversialism of the era of the Reformation. A quick browsing of the titles and contents of the Corpus catholicorum shows that – in the first 44 volumes published (excluding the four most recent ones, i. e. 45 – 48, which are dedicated to Mary Ward, who lived during the seventeenth century) – there are circa 26 works explicitly written against Luther, mostly between 1518 and 1526 (apart from three booklets by Cochlaeus, Georg Witzel, and Johann Hoffmeister from 1538 – 1539 against the Schmalkaldic Articles). Of course, this is a completely empirical assessment that has no statistical value, especially since the series does not exhaust the subject of controversialist literature from the German area during the first years of the Reformation (despite its chronological and geographical limits). However, when combined with further bibliographical studies (for example, on the main online platforms for digital texts), it permits us to advance at least two considerations. The first consider-

 J. Eck, Defensio contra amarulentas D. Andreae Bodenstein Carolstatini invectiones (1518), CCath 1. As remarked by the curator, the series was conceived as a reaction to the lack of modern editions of the German Catholic theologians from the era of the Reformation in comparison with the impressive collections of sources produced by Protestant historiography, such as Luther’s Weimarer Ausgabe, the Corpus reformatorum, the Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum and others (Vorwort, 5*). Another editorial project on Catholic controversialists from the sixteenth century is the collection of biographical entries Katholische Theologen der Reformationszeit, curated by the Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus catholicorum and begun in 1984 under Iserloh’s direction. In 2004, the collection saw the publication of its sixth volume.  “Today – not least thanks to the work organized by Joseph Greving, the founder of the Corpus catholicorum – we know that the literary activity carried out during that period in favor of the old Church was significantly broader than assumed in the past”, in J. Lortz, La Riforma in Germania, vol. II, Costituzione dei fronti, tentativi di unione. Divisione definitive (Milano: Jaca, 1981 (or. ed. 1939 – 1940), 191; cf. 191 and the following pages for the analysis of the authors mentioned.

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ation is that Luther represents the main target of confessional controversialism of Catholic inspiration during the decade following the 95 theses. After that, the focus shifts to the reformatory movement in its entirety, especially after the redaction of the Confessio Augustana in 1530 and the consolidation of the Protestant front. The second consideration is that, at any rate, Luther remains not only the natural eponym of the heresy that bears his name but also the mirror of the errors and vices that constitute its substance. This second consideration is closely linked to the first because it allows us to understand why controversialist works specifically aimed at Luther keep appearing, although less systematically, also during the long era of the confessional struggle, well past his death and the final crystallization of the two fronts. A clear example comes from one of the most widespread topoi in Catholic controversialist literature, i. e. the doctrinal variations within the Protestant world. This phenomenon was considered to be a macroscopic symptom of unreliability in the eyes of an ideology such as the Catholic one, which instead founded its legitimacy on its continuity with tradition. The theme became for the first time the subject of an autonomous work with one of the most successful titles of sixteenth century anti-Lutheranism, i. e. Cochlaeus’s Septiceps Lutherus from 1529, where Luther’s seven heads (the reference to the beast from Revelation 13:1 justifies the use of eschatological tones) are the allegory of as many evolutions in his behavior: from Luther the Doctor, with which he makes his debut in the world in 1517; to Luther the Ecclesiastes, who preaches to the people; to Luther the Svermerus, who incites to revolt (the attribute is a bungled Latinization of the epithet Schwärmer, “enthusiasts”, used by Luther against the prophets from Zwickau); to Luther the Visitator, who with an episcopal miter on his head visits the parishes of the Electorate of Saxony in an act that, in the eyes of the defenders of the ancient hierarchy, appears to be an abuse of episcopal prerogatives. Like much of the rest of controversialist production, this booklet was mostly intended for preachers and cites long quotes from Luther in order to highlight his contradictions.⁴ With this, Luther’s fickleness as the original root of the fickleness and contradictions of Protestantism became a long-lasting rhetorical expedient. It can be found, for example, in Anatomia M. Lutheri, a Flugblatt in which the captions of the Jesuit Vitus Jacobäus from 1567 match an allegory that shows Luther’s corpse being dissected by other heresiarchs, including Calvin, Zwingli, and Pierre Viret among others; or in Theologiae Martini Lutheri trimembris epitome by Friedrich Staphylus (Stapellage) from 1558, a documented denunciation of the internal struggle between Melanchthon’s faction and Flacius Matthias Illyricus’s Gnesio-Lutheran front; or in the hefty Anatomia Lutheri by Johann Pistorius, published in Cologne in two volumes be [J. Cochlaeus], Septiceps Lutherus, ubique sibi, suis scriptis, contrarius, in visitationem Saxonicam, Lypsiae, impressit Valentinus Schumann, 1529; on this volume, G. Wiedermann, Cochlaeus as a Polemicist, in Seven-Headed Luther. Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentenary 1483 – 1983, ed. by P.N. Brooks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, 195 – 205.

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tween 1595 and 1598.⁵ Likewise, it is from the starting point of Luther’s contradictions that one of the most famous works of Catholic apologetic of the Baroque period, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet’s Histoire des variations des Églises protestantes (1688), unravels its analysis of the contradictions within Protestantism. In Staphylus’s short and cutting booklet – Melanchthon’s opinion of it was that “nothing more rabid and venomous has been printed in the last forty years”⁶ – there is a vivid representation of this notion translated into apocalyptic imagery: “[t]he ancient dragon as the paranymph and the beast with seven heads and the pseudoprophet himself as parents” generate the three impure spirits that look like frogs from Revelation 16:13, i. e. the “homologists” (the followers of the Confessio Augustana), the Sacramentarians, and the Anabaptists: And although very distant as far as the heads are concerned, these three impure spirits, like the foxes of Palestine, are tightly intertwined by their tails […], to the point that in the whole of Europe there almost is no heresy that does not bear on itself the character of the homologists, the Sacramentarians, or the Anabaptists.⁷

Among the spirits generated by Luther and the beast with seven heads, the spirit of the Anabaptists produces Thomas Müntzer, the Adamites, and the Sabbatarians; the spirit of the Sacramentarians produces Zwingli, Karlstadt, and the Schwenckfeldians; and the spirit of the homologists produces the Philippists, the Maiorists, the Adiaphorists, and the Gnesio-Lutherans. Each of these in turn produce further filiations, to the point that Staphylus adorned his pamphlet with a diagram listing no less than

 On Anatomia M. Lutheri, see P. Burschel, “Das Monster. Katholische Luther-Imagination im 16. Jahrhundert”, in Luther zwischen den Kulturen. Zeitgenossenschaft – Weltwirkung, ed. by H. Medick, P. Schmid (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 33 – 48, especially 39; H. Oelke, Die Konfessionsbildung des 16. Jahrhunderts im Spiegel illustrierter Flugblätter (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1992), 331– 332. On Staphylus’s and Pistorius’s works, see infra.  B. von Bundschuh, Das Wormser Religionsgespräch von 1557 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der kaiserlichen Religionspolitik (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988) 549.  F. Staphylus, Theologiae Martini Lutheri trimembris epitome, Nuper collecta Wormatiae, durante colloquio, anno 1558, Tertia pars libri. De successione et concordia discipulorum Lutheri in Augustana Confessione, 42r-v: “Lutherus confestim, ubi tragoediae suae esset protasin exorsus, tumultuabatur sane vehementer, et, ut solet sub initio epitaseos tragicae evenire, turbasque vertebat, quoad Lutheranismi sui corpus aliquod, et ventrem pararet, ederetque tandem partum conceptae pestis suae. Ad cuius partus foeturam haud dubie operam contulerunt suam Draco vetus, ut pronubus, et septiceps illa bestia, et ipse pseudoprophetes, ut parentes: etenim ex ore istorum prodierunt tres illi spiritus immundi ranarum similes, Homologistae, Sacramentarii, Anabaptistae. Et quanquam hi ipsi tres immundi spiritus tanquam vulpes Philistiae, capitibus longe sint lateque disiunctissimi, tamen caudis ita sunt inter se […] concopulati, ut nulla pene nunc reperiatur in tota Europa haeresis, quae non aut Homologistarum, aut Sacramentariorum, aut Anabaptistarum, charactere mentem gerat insignitam”. Cf. E. Amann, “Friedrich Staphylus”, in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris 1939), 14,2:2563 – 2566; E.M. Wermter, “Staphylus, Friedrich”, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder 2000), 9:931– 932.

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36 heretical sects generated by the magma of errors and contradictions gurgling in the heresiarch Luther. Aside from the eschatological sensitivity, the same idea can also be found in Bossuet’s much more thought-out Histoire, which, due to its being removed from the urgency of the confessional struggle, illustrates instead the finalized process of sedimentation within the Catholic world of anti-Protestant clichés that date back to over a century and a half before. According to Bossuet, it is in Luther’s character to prevaricate in his theology, impressing the original distortion that would later produce, with a cascading effect, the multiplication of antinomies typical of the Reformed world. The first inconsistency in Luther can be found in the doctrine of the real presence, though by that time, he had already fallen prey to the fury caused by the humiliation of excommunication: “a man, whom pride on one side, and the remains of faith on the other, never ceased to distract interiorly”.⁸ Bossuet’s Luther is Cyclopic and his powerful and charismatic insanity knows how to charm the hearts and subject them to his tyranny: Never was there a master more severe than Luther, nor a tyranny more insupportable than what he exercised in points of doctrine. This arrogance was so well known, as to induce Muncer to say there were two popes – that of Rome, and Luther.⁹

After all, there were already divergences among the first followers: on the one hand, Karlstadt, who was “a brutal, ignorant person, yet artful […] rather a Jew than a Christian”; and on the other hand, Melanchthon, “a man moderate and naturally sincere”. However, not even the latter – the only one among the reformers in whom Bossuet recognized some indisputable gifts – is able to arrest the constant germination of currents and allegiances, to the point that he is, “among the Lutherans his colleagues, as in the midst of enemies”.¹⁰ The main responsibility for this tumult, with its consequences of discord and anarchy among Christians, is to be found, once again, in the fatal and furious figure of the founder: But at length the arrogance of this imperious master declared itself. The whole world rose up against him, even those who were equally intent upon the reformation of the Church. A thou-

 J.B. Bossuet, Histoire des variations des Églises protestantes, vol. I (Paris, chez la veuve de Sebastien Mabre Cramoisy, 1702), livre I, 24– 25; Eng. trans. Id., The History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches (Dublin: Richard Coyne 1836), 37.  Ibid., livre V, 198: “Il n’y eût jamais de maître plus rigoreux que Luther, ni de tyrannie plus insupportable que celle qu’il exerçoit dans les matières de doctrine. Son arrogance étoit si connuë qu’elle faisoit dire à Muncer qu’il y avoit deux papes, l’un celui de Rome, et l’autre Luther”; Eng. trans. 179 – 180.  Ibid., livre II, 44, and V, 201; Eng. trans. 53 and 182.

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sand impious sects enrolled themselves under his banner, and, under the name of Reformation, arms, seditions, civil wars, devastated Christianity.¹¹

Tyranny, arrogance, imperiousness: incidentally, it should be noted that, unlike Staphylus and the literature from a century earlier, the demoniac element is absent in Bossuet’s picture. Once the trajectory of the confessional era reaches its end, towards mid-seventeenth century, all that is left is acrimony and the conflict among affiliations. However, the eschatological element detectable during the climax of the religious conflict seems to have completely deteriorated, at least within the main institutional Churches (the case of the minorities is different; for example, during the same years of the Edict of Fontainebleau, the Huguenot French diaspora reinterpreted its own history in a millenarian key).

2 The Vices of the Heresiarch These themes are only a sample of the many that Bossuet (without going into the historical distances) takes from the work that undoubtedly contributed the most to the shaping of the Catholic image of Luther over time, i. e. Cochlaeus’s Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri Saxonis, published in Mainz in 1549. The volume is not theological but rather historical and controversialist. Nonetheless, it traces the fundamental grid through which Catholic controversialists and publicists interpreted Luther over the centuries and, with him, the first thirty years of the Reformation. I will go back to this work shortly. For the moment, I will only highlight that the historical success of this text as an arsenal of polemical positions was so great that it warranted a study in three volumes tracing its implicit and explicit influences and quotes until the twentieth century.¹² Little more than an Italian compendium of the Commentaria, Giovanni Fallini’s Notizia istorica della vita, ed eresie di Martino Lutero, was written in 1749 “for the education of the Italians who live in the courts of the empire and in the North”. This volume is a string of insults lacking even the least theological inspiration. However, it is interesting precisely because it insists, two centuries after Cochlaeus, on Luther’s human profile to discourage any attempt of relativization, or at least historicization, of the rift caused by the Reformation.¹³

 Ibid., livre V, 187: “Mais enfin l’arrogance de Maître impérieux se déclara. Tout le monde se soulevoit contre lui, et même ceux qui vouloient avec lui réformer l’Eglise. Mille sectes impies s’elevoient sous ses étendards, et sous le nom de réformation, les armes, les seditions, les guerres civiles ravageoient la chrétienté”; Eng. trans. 171.  A. Herte, Das katholische Lutherbild im Bann der Lutherkommentare des Cochläus, voll. I-III (Münster: Aschendorff, 1943).  F. Giovanni, Notizia istorica della vita, ed eresie di Martino Lutero continuata fino alla pace di Westfalia […] per instruzione degli italiani che vivono nelle corti dell’impero, e del Nord (Munich: Vötter,

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A similar attitude is predominant within Catholic culture well beyond the beginning of the twentieth century, as was well understood by Giovanni Miccoli when he noticed how the four centuries of Catholic literature on Luther from Cochlaeus to Pius XII were nothing but “a long chain of texts, of monotonous and intricate fabrications of monstrosities and insults”.¹⁴ A chain, he added, that was “rarely punctuated by an impulse of intellectual curiosity, of human interest to understand and comprehend”: a remark that is entirely correct and yet questions, apart from the attitude towards Luther, also the more general relationship of the Church with historical truth, where the disposition to “understand and comprehend” postulates the abandonment of the theological consistency of interpreting human vicissitudes in the light of the history of salvation and the acceptation of a secularized historical vision that, within Catholic culture, only took place towards mid-twentieth century. It is not by chance that the first historiographical work on the Reformation by a Catholic scholar that is free from confessional prejudice, Joseph Lortz’s Reformation in Deutschland, was declared an “historic shift” (“epochale Wende”) after its publication in 1939, as Hubert Jedin notes, “when the religious struggle of National Socialismnot only drove Catholics and Protestants to join the same front of defense but also made them aware of how much Christian substance they shared”.¹⁵ Despite this, the publisher Herder feared for a long time Pius XII’s negative reaction. The latter, instead, actually only asked to see the table of contents for the volume.¹⁶ After all, even shortly before Lortz, the best Catholic historians had insisted on suggesting interpretations that derived directly from the old controversialist tradition. For example, Ignaz von Döllinger, before his antifallibilist shift, in the entry devoted to Luther in the first edition of Herder’s Kirchenlexicon (1851), dismissed Lu-

1749), Al lettore, A2v-A3r: “For some time now, some moronic spirits are so surprised by the good deeds of the Protestants that, unable to discern custom from the rule of the faith, confuse one with the other and often erroneously infer that maybe Luther’s religion is the good and righteous one”. D. Menozzi, “La figura di Lutero nella cultura italiana del Settecento”, in Lutero in Italia. Studi storici nel V centenario della nascita, ed. L. Perrone (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1983), 139 – 166, especially 149, connects the attitude described by Fallini to the cautious doubts expressed by Ludovico Antonio Muratori in De ingeniorum moderatione about the stubborn denial of any possibility of good faith in Protestants.  G. Miccoli, “’L’avarizia e l’orgoglio di un frate laido…’. Problemi e aspetti dell’interpretazione cattolica di Lutero”, Lutero in Italia, VII-XXXIII, here XXVII. On the Catholic perception of Luther in the twentieth century, cf. also O.H. Pesch, “’Ketzerfürst’ und ‘Vater im Glauben’. Die seltsamen Wege katholischer ‚Lutherrezeption‘”, in Weder Ketzer noch Heiliger. Luthers Bedeutung für den Ökumenischen Dialog, ed. H.F. Geisser, G. Heintze, E. Iserloh et al. (Regensburg: Pustet, 1982), 123 – 174.  H. Jedin, “Mutamenti della interpretazione cattolica della figura di Lutero e loro limiti”, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 23, no. 2 (1969): 361– 377, here 366. “Historical shift” is an expression used in P. Manns, “Joseph Lortz zum 100. Geburtstag: Sein Luther-Verständnis und dessen Bedeutung für die Luther-Forschung Gestern und Heute”, in Zum Gedenken an Joseph Lortz (1887 – 1975). Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte und Ökumene, ed. R. Decot, R. Vinke (Stuttgart: Steiner-Verl. Wiesbaden 1989), 30 – 92.  Manns, Joseph Lortz, 35 ff.

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ther’s action using the usual framework of “grudge”, “scorn”, and “invectives”. This is also the case for Luther’s first biography to be seriously documented, Heinrich Denifle’s Luther und das Luthertum in der ersten Entwicklung from 1903; this is the first volume to connect Luther’s thought to late medieval scholastics but still is structured as a controversialist work, split between the criticism of the corruption that Luther introduced in the monastic order and the denunciation of the contradictions that can be found in the development of the Reformed doctrine.¹⁷ It is too obvious a point to make that for Catholic theologians, historians, and publicists, Luther represented the greatest obstacle to a providential notion of history. The issue is age-old: it had already become clear about ten years before the inauguration of the council of Trent, when the tumult that the Church was experiencing in Germany seemed to be the work of just one person: Doctor Johann Cochlaeus has with him eighteen books yet to be published in which he describes in order, as if they were annuals, all of the tragedy of Luther and the Lutherans. I believe that these books could be very interesting for His Holiness and for those who have been appointed to the council: in them, in fact, it is possible to see how the many sects and all the divisions, rebellions, and seditions are born and multiplied by that one evil. […] Suffice it to say that death befell one hundred thousand peasants in 1525 just because of Luther’s corruption of the Gospel.¹⁸

These words were addressed in 1536 – ten more years would go by before the volume actually came out – by the bishop of Vienna Johann Fabri to the nuncio Giovanni Morone, at the beginning of Paul III’s preparations for the convocation of a synod that would deal with the German issue. It is clear that from such a radical vision of Luther’s responsibility in the social and religious unrest of Germany – a responsibility that is interpreted as an actual identification between the heresiarch and the many evils instilled by the heresy – derives a difficulty, which would last for centuries, not only in dealing with his intellectual figure but also, and more importantly,

 Cf. H. Denifle, Lutero e luteranesimo nel loro primo sviluppo (Roma: Desclée, 1905). Cf. Jedin, Mutamenti della interpretazione cattolica, who defines the volume as “the most bitter and heavy pamphlet that Catholic literature has produced since the sixteenth century”, 364. Together with Denifle, it is also important to mention father Hartmann Grisar, whose biography of Luther, published in 1911– 1912, still widely uses apologetic clichés.  Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum Tractatuum, vol. IV, Actorum pars prima (Freiburg i.Br. 1904), 14 dec. 1536, 52– 59, here 56; Herte, Das katholische Lutherbild, vol. I, Von der Mitte des 16. bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Inland und Ausland (Münster. Aschendorff, 1943), 2: “Doctor Ioannes Cochlaeus decem et octo libros nondum editos habet, in quibus ex ordine describit totam Lutheri et Lutheranorum tragoediam quasi annales. Hos libros conducibiles esse puto, ut habeat Sanct.mus D.N., et hi qui ad concilium deputati sunt. Nam valde conducet ex illis videre, tot sectas, scissuras, rebelliones et seditiones omnes ex hoc uno malo ortas et pullulatas. Et Sanct.mus D.N. in principio concilii per exagerationem detestari debebit huiusmodi inauditas cruentas tragoedias. Nam ex hoc uno evangelio Lutheri depravato perierunt rusticorum plus quam centum millia anno quidem 1525”.

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in understanding the reasons of his success. The fact that this perspective found its main synthesis in a work such as Cochleaus’s – which as already mentioned, is not theological but historical and is even organized by year like the ancient tradition of the annuals – means that the interpretation of Luther and his vicissitudes is dominated not so much by the analysis of his theological errors but rather by the denunciation of his vices. In other words, for a long time, almost three centuries, the interpretation of the origins of the Reformation by Catholic controversialists, with only few exceptions, is completely flattened by the moral portrayal of its founding father. It bears repeating that in this sense, Luther represents the archetypical personification of the evils introduced by Protestantism. “I do not feel enmity or hatred against Luther as a person – Cochlaeus wrote to the duke George of Saxony – but rather against his wickedness and his vices”.¹⁹ An enlightening confession. None of Luther’s many enemies denied his dialectic aptitude or knowledge of the Scriptures. His error was in the distorted use of his gifts and is reproduced unchanged in his imitators and heirs. Effigies of Luther’s likeness were burnt after farcical trials in Altenburg in 1522, again in Vienna in 1567, and in Munich half a century after his death, around 1597.²⁰ It is difficult to refrain from thinking that on those stakes – and without doubt this is the case at least for the two later episodes – what was incinerated instead was the simulacrum of the heresiarch as the symbol of the specter of religious dissent in its entirety. The catalog of the invectives is broad, but not so much so that it cannot be traced back to some baselines. Luther is motivated by lust, which drives him to wanting to destroy the clerical state and spread vice in Germany. According to Cochlaeus, “the license to sin and an insidious freedom have been introduced, youth has been corrupted and made prone to every vice, every restraint to concupiscence has been removed, the ancient modesty of the female sex is abolished”.²¹ According to Alfonso de Castro, Luther, “by attributing to the monks the faculty of freely conducting their  R. Bäumer, Johannes Cochlaeus (1470 – 1552). Leben und Werk im Dienst der katholischen Reform (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980), 108: “Ich bin aber der Person Luthers nicht feindlich oder gehässig, sondern seiner Bosheit und Laster”. On Cochlaeus (Dobneck), see also Ibid., “Johannes Cochlaeus (1470 – 1552)”, Katholische Theologen der Reformationszeit, vol. I, ed. E. Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1984), 73 – 81; Id., “Cochlaeus (Dobeneck), Johannes”, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1994), 2:1239 – 1240.  R.W. Scribner, “Incombustible Luther. The Image of the Reformer in Early Modern Germany”, Past and Present 110 (1986): 38 – 68.  J. Cochlaeus, Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri Saxonis, chronographice, ex ordine ab anno Domini 1517 usque ad annum 1546 inclusive, fideliter conscripta. […] Multiplex praeparata est hic lectori utilitas, per rerum gestarum ex fide et veritate narrationem: ut cognoscat, quanto Luthero fuerit vis ingenii, quantaque laborum tolerantia, quantus animi in affectibus impetus, quanta styli saevitia. Et qualia fuerint de eius doctrina, papae, imperatoris, regum, conciliorum, episcoporum, universitatum, Erasmi, et id genus doctissimorum quorumlibet iudicia, apud S. Victorem prope Moguntiam, ex officina Francisci Behem typographi, 1549, Praefatio in acta historiamque Lutheri, 14v-15r: “Introducta peccandi licentia ac malitiosa libertas, depravata et in omne vitium prona reddita iuventus, carnalis concupiscentiae omne amotum repagulum, ablatus a sexu muliebri antiquus pudor”.

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lives, turns upside down any kind of ecclesiastical order and supports the notion that all types of monkhood are completely alien to the Church”.²² In 1539, Simon Lemnius dedicated to Luther a corrosive dialogue in poetry, the Monachopornomachia, punctuated with obscene references to his marriage to Katharina von Bora.²³ After all, the first communications that Gasparo Contarini (who had been recently appointed to be the orator for Charles V) sent on the subject to the Venetian Senate as soon as he arrived in Worms on April 20, 1521, all focus on the same issue: Many say that this man has reached such a degree of insanity and fury that he rejects the decrees of the council, says that any layman can administer the sacrament of the Eucharist, that marriage can be unbound, that simple fornication is not a sin, and approves of that sharing of women of which Plato speaks in his Republic. ²⁴

Cochlaeus, once again, certifies Luther’s original vocation to turpitude with the ancient motif of onomastic determinism, already mentioned at the beginning of the Commentaria: despite the actual spelling of his last name being Luder, he preferred to go by Luther, “maybe because, to German ears, the word Luder [“bastard”, “scoundrel”, but also “whore”] does not sound very honest”.²⁵ Luther is also afflicted by other original vices such as envy, wrath, disobedience, and hatred towards sacred and secular knowledge. According to Jacob Gretser, polygraph and spearhead theologian of the Society of Jesus in Bavaria during the early seventeenth century, “not only [Luther] was not a scholastic theologian but, more generally speaking, he was the most hateful and fierce enemy of this discipline and the others”.²⁶ According to Martin Becanus, another very active Jesuit controver A. de Castro, Adversus omnes haereses libri XIV, Coloniae, excudebat Melchior Novesianus, 1543, 32r: “Omnem ecclesiasticum ordinem evertit, monachatum omnem ab Ecclesia procul esse iubet, liberam monachis vivendi facultatem tribuens. Cui pesti nisi Deus sua benignitate cito succurrat, timendum est ne ulterius grassetur, et reliquum id modicum quod e Germania superest inficiat”.  Lutius Pisaeus Iuvenalis [Lemnius], Monachopornomachia, datum ex Achaia, Olympiade nona [Moguntiae, Schöffer, 1539].  O. Niccoli, “Il mostro di Sassonia. Conoscenza e non conoscenza di Lutero in Italia nel Cinquecento (1520 – 1530 ca.)”, in Lutero in Italia, 5 – 25, here 19: “Namque admodum a multis accepi, in eam dementiam et eum furorem vir iste devenit ut reijciat decreta conciliorum; dicat a quolibet laico confici posse sacramentum Eucharistiae, matrimoniumque dissolvi posse, fornicationem simplicem peccatum non esse, ac innuit mulierum illam comunitatem de qua Plato in sua Republica”.  Cochlaeus, Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri, 1: “Quamvis vero multis annis antiqua consuetudine dictus fuerit cognomine Luder […] maluit tamen postea dici Luther, quam Luder: ex eo forsitan, quod Luder apud Germanos parum honestum videtur esse vocabulum”. On the subject, see W. Brückner, H. Gruppe, “Luther als Gestalt der Sage”, in Volkserzählung und Reformation. Ein Handbuch zur Tradierung und Funktion von Erzählstoffen und Erzählliteratur im Protestantismus, ed. W. Brückner (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1974), 260 – 294, especially 281.  J. Gretser, Orationes et quaestiones. I. Utrum Lutherus fuerit scholasticus theologus. II. Cur Lutherus Ingolstadiensem Academiam adeo oderit. III. Utrum Lutheranus, salvis primis sectae suae principiis, possit petere et capessere gradus et honores academicos in theologia, iurisprudentia, medicina et philosophia. IV. Num Lutherus in doctorali sua inauguratione observaverit Clementinam de Magistris. Re-

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sialist of the time, Luther’s perfidy, i. e. his lack of respect for pacts, represented his most characteristic trait, which is transmitted from him to the Protestant world: [Luther] was perfidious in three ways. Firstly, because he abandoned the Catholic faith that he had received with baptism and professed for many years, which is the most colossal of perfidies. […] Secondly, because, as a monk, he had promised perpetual chastity to God with a solemn rite. […] Thirdly, because, in the same way, when he was solemnly promoted to be a doctor of theology in a Catholic university, he had promised under oath to defend the commonly received doctrine.²⁷

In Bellarmine’s Controversiae, envy and ambition – especially the envy of the Augustinians towards the Dominicans, who had been entrusted with the task of preaching the indulgences – are “the main cause of all the heresies of our time”,²⁸ as already written by Cochlaeus. Elsewhere, Luther’s characterizing trait is wrath: because of his impetuous and vehement dialectics and uncommon audacity, wrath crystallizes him in freakish apparitions such as Cochlaeus’s “Stygian monster” and “Minotaur with the scapular”, used in 1523 after the attack on his booklet on sacraments, or in the image of a furious Moses ordering the massacre of his own people, as in Stapleton.²⁹ From that sin of wrath derived the chain of hatreds that afflicted the Em-

citatae et discussae in Academia Ingolstadiensi cum anno Redemptoris 1606 14 die Novembris, in Id., Opera omnia, vol. XII, Lutherus academicus, et Waldenses, Ratisbonae, sumptibus Ioanni Conradi Peez, et Felicis Bader, 1738, 32: “Manifestum arbitror, Lutherum non modo non fuisse theologum scholasticum, sed potius et huius, et aliarum scientiarum hostem teterrimum, et immanissimum”.  M. Becanus, Manuale controversiarum in V libros distributus, vol. V (Patavii: ex typographia Seminarii, 1701; 16231), 14: “[Lutherus] triplici titulo fuit perfidus. Primo, quia fidem catholicam, quam in baptismo susceperat, et multis annis professus erat, tandem abiecit, quae summa perfidia est. […] Secundo, quia cum esset monachus, solemni ritu promisit Deo perpetuam castitatem. […] Tertio, cum similiter solemni ritu in academia catholica doctor theologiae promoveretur, promisit, interposto iuramento, se defensurum eam doctrinam, quae tunc usu erat recepta”. The chapter, An in aliis rebus liceat pacisci cum haereticis, deals with the legitimacy of stipulating contracts with the heretics. The general inclination is to avoid them, if possible, in order to be spared from their perfidy. It is however worth noting that Becanus allows wider margins of reliability to Lutherans than to Calvinists. On the author, see P. Begheyn, “Becanus (Schellekens), Martinus”, Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús. Biográfico-temático, C.E. O’Neill, S.I., J.M.a Dominguez, S.I. (directores) (Roma-Madrid 2001), 1:380.  R. Bellarmino, Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos, vol. II, Venetiis, apud Ioannem Malachinum, 1721 (1586 – 15931), dispute De conciliis et Ecclesia, 101: “Initium primum omnium haeresum huius temporis constat fuisse invidentiam, et ambitionem Lutheri, aegre ferentis munus promulgandarum indulgentiarum a sui ordinis monachis, ad monachos ordinis praedicatorum translatum fuisse, ut scribit Ioannes Cochlaeus in actis Lutheri anno 1517”. Cf. Cochlaeus, Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri, 4.  J. Cochlaeus, Adversus cucullatum Minotaurum Wittenbergensem. De sacramentorum gratia iterum (1523), CCath 3, about which see A. Körsgen-Wiedeburg, “Das Bild Martin Luthers in den Flugschriften der frühen Reformationszeit”, in Festgabe für Ernst Walter Zeeden, ed. H. Rabe, H. Molitor, H.-C. Rublack (Münster: Aschendorff, 1976), 153– 177, especially 169. Niccoli, “Il mostro di Sassonia”, 10 – 11, points out that the image of the minotaurs is linked, among other things, to the prodigy that had

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pire, a central theme in Cochlaeus’s work later repeated many times by subsequent authors: Like the traitor Jude […] – the Commentaria goes on – in truth Luther too, with a Gospel of peace, precipitated Germany into conflict and disorder, a strong hatred that not only pitches one city against the other, one people against the other, one province against the other, but also drives to architect wars and disorders the plebs against the senate of their own city, the people against their own prince, the prince against his own emperor. […] Why? Because Luther assured that the Gospel is more real the more it generates rebellions.³⁰

However, probably the sins that are more frequently ascribed to Luther and the Reformed movement are the ones that, following an ancient and authoritative tradition that goes from Augustine to Cajetan, represent the core of heretical aetiology, i. e. pride and stubbornness.³¹ Of the heresiarchs – writes Bellarmine – many things could be said, but there is only one vice that is common to all of them, i. e. pride. Augustine, in the sermon De pastoribus, Chapter 8, says “in different places there are different sects, but one is the mother, pride, that generates them all […]”. Surely, heresies are not invented intentionally and for their own purpose, but rather are born by chance, from some bad circumstance, in the same way monsters are generated.³²

“Elated with his learning, superficial in reality, but great for the time”, writes Bossuet, “[…] he set himself above all mankind”. Luther “with his accomplices” was caught, according to Eck, in the “search for great and marvelous things and became prideful like Lucifer and the noonday demon”. Cochlaeus accuses him of philautia, of

taken place shortly before of a monstrous miscarriage of a calf born with what looked like a scapular. T. Stapleton, Principiorum fidei doctrinalium demonstratio methodica, Parisiis, apud Michaelem Sonnium, 1582 (15781), 477.  Stapleton, Principiorum fidei, 53 – 54: “Quemadmodum fecit olim Iudas proditor, cui dixit Dominus Iuda, osculo (quod pacis et amicitiae symbolum erat) filium hominis tradis? Sic profecto et Lutherus evangelio pacis praecipitavit in bella et seditiones Germaniam. In qua non solum civitas una contra aliam, et gens adversus gentem, provincia adversus provinciam pertinaci odio insurgit: verum etiam plebs contra senatum in eadem civitate, populus adversus principem suum, et princeps adversus imperatorem suum, bella seditionesque meditatur. […] Cur ita? Quia persuasit Lutherus, tanto verius evangelium esse, quanto plus tumultuum parit”. The reference is to the quote from Matthew 10:34 used by Luther in his speech to the diet of Worms, WA 7, 835.  On the subject, see F. Motta, “La voce dell’errore. Eresia e controversia di fede nell’età del conflitto religioso europeo”, Storicamente 1, 8, (2005); www.storicamente.org/1Motta (March 23, 2017).  Bellarmino, Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei, controversia De conciliis et Ecclesia, 100: “De haeresiarchis plurima dici possent, sed unum est vitium omnibus commune, superbia. Augustinus libro de Pastoribus cap. 8 Diversis locis, inquit, sunt diversae, sed una mater superbia omnes genuit, sicut una mater nostra catholica omnes christianos fideles toto orbe diffusos. Et certe nulla haeresis invenitur ex intentione, et per se inventa, sed per accidens ex aliqua mala occasione, ut solent monstra generari”. Cf. Agostino, Sermo XLVI. De pastoribus, in Migne Patrologia Latina, vol. XXXVIII, c. 280.

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self-regard that becomes attachment to one’s own opinion against everyone else’s.³³ Stubbornness, instead, makes Luther “incurable” in the Assertio septem sacramentorum signed by Henry VIII: I am not so much moved to think thus, by Reason of his Disease, though never so mortal; as by his admitting no Medicine, nor of any manual Operation of the Chyrurgion: For how can he be cured, who will not suffer himself to be handled? Or in what Manner is he to be dealt withal; who, if you teach him, trifles with you? If you advise him, is angry? If you exhort him, resists? If in any Thing you would appease him, is incensed? If you resist him, is mad?³⁴

According to Eck – who first attacked Luther and Karlstadt in the famous dispute of Leipzig of 1519 and later Oecolampadius in Baden in 1526 (“I fought closely and from afar against these toothed beasts”, as he recollects) – this incurable tenacity of the men of the Reformation represents in itself evidence of the impossibility of bringing back the heretics to orthodoxy with the strength of arguments. Simply put, with them “one must not dispute”, because “they are so pertinacious as to publicly declare that they will defend their articles of faith until death, which makes it clear that they are incorrigible, obstinate and pertinacious”. Moreover, the Lutherans “take part in the disputations fraudulently because they do not want to debate before an audience of learned men, men of letters and experts of theology, but rather before simple and ignorant laymen, whose capabilities are very far from being able to judge the mysteries of faith”.³⁵ At the end of the century, Stapleton found in the sin of stubbornness the root of Luther and Calvin’s “modern schism”, “who, with their two ardent torches, more than anyone else have set the Christian world afire”: “[o]f the two, the one who first snarled against the Catholic Church was Luther, and how much was attempted,

 Bossuet, Histoire des variations, livre I, 33: “Enflé de son sçavoir, médiocre au fond, mais grand pour le temps, et trop grand pour son salut et pour le repos de l’Eglise, il se mettoit au dessus de tous les hommes, et non seulement de ceux de son siècle, mais encore des plus illustres des siècles passez”: Eng. trans. 44; J. Eck, Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutherum et alios hostes Ecclesiae (1525 – 1543), CCath 34, 7; Cochlaeus, Adversus cucullatum, 8.  Enrico VIII, Assertio septem sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum, CCath 43, 229: “Quod ut censeam, non tam morbus eius quantumvis lethalis me movet quam ipse: quippe qui medicinam nullam, nullam prorsus manum medicantis admittit. Quomodo enim curari potest qui se tractari non patitur? Aut quomodo tractari potest quem si quid doces nugatur, si quid mones irascitur, si quid hortaris obnititur, si quid placas incenditur, si quid adversaris insanit?”; Eng. Henry VIII, Assertio Septem Sacramentorium, or, Defence of the Seven Sacraments (New York 1908), 456.  Eck, Enchiridion locorum communium, Non disputandum cum haereticis. XXVIII [XXVII], 280 – 281: “Plerique eorum [haereticorum] adeo pertinaces sunt, ut libere promittant se articulos usque ad mortem defensuros, quare liquet eos esse incorrigibiles, obstinatos, et pertinaces. […] Iterum patet de Lutheranis haereticis, quod fraudulenter attendunt disputationem, nam quaerunt disputare, non coram doctis et literatis ac in theologia exercitatis, sed coram indoctis, vulgaribus laycis, quorum capacitas se nullo modo extendit ad iudicanda huiusmodi mysteria fidei”. On the author, E. Iserloh (ed.), “Johannes Eck (1486 – 1543)”, in Katholische Theologen, vol. I, 65 – 71; H. Smolinsky, “Eck, Johannes”, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1995), 3:441– 443.

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how many paths were negotiated back and forth to curb his wrath, and all without the least result”.³⁶ The catalog of abuses could obviously go on for much longer, both in the multiplication of the quotes and in the longevity of the themes – the above-mentioned contribution by Miccoli widely proves the harshness of the diatribe for the whole of the nineteenth century and beyond. However, the essence of the argument would not change by much. The hermeneutic key is in the causal link that connects Luther’s sins to the fundamental characters of the movement inspired by him. Pride, for example, is what prevents the heretics from assenting to the authority of tradition and adhering to the consensus Ecclesiae. According to Staphylus, pride is the cornerstone of the first three fundamental theological positions that he makes the men of the Confessio Augustana list: The papists have humiliated the Gospel of Christ, Luther restored it and from the darkness of the pope brought it back to the light of men. Ergo everything that Luther says is to be believed as the prophet of Germany and nothing of what the papists say is to be believed as they have betrayed the Gospel [Primum topicum praedicamentum]. […] Luther was a prophet, the second Elijah and chariot of Israel, ergo everything that he believes to be hagiographic in the Holy Bible must be considered authentic and hagiographic and everything that he rejects must be rejected [Secundum topicum praedicamentum] […]. Only Luther correctly translated the Bible, […] and therefore no other translation but his must be read in the Church [Tertium topicum praedicamentum].³⁷

According to Bellarmine, the success of the Reformation in Germany was caused firstly by Luther’s moral laxity and, therefore, by the ability to attract all sorts of sinners: the gluttons, “because among the Lutherans there are no commanded fasts”; the immoderate, “because all the vows of moderation are made void”; the apostates, “because they have closed the monasteries and transformed them into palaces”; the greedy princes, “who can subject possessions and even clergymen to their control”;

 T. Stapleton, Promptuarium catholicum ad instructionem concionatorum contra nostri tempori haereses, super Evangelia ferialia per totam Quadragesimam, Venetiis, apud Minimam Societatem, 1598, 190: “Contra Ecclesiam catholicam latrare primum Lutherus coepit, ad eius rabiem compescendam, quot media tentata, quot viae calcatae et tritae, sed frustra et inaniter fuerunt? A doctis viris cum eo publice disputatur, Lipsiae, Wittenbergae, Wormatiae. Sedes apostolica articulos eius 41 publico decreto damnavit. Ad comitia imperialia Augustae Vindelicorum evocatus, omnibus melioribus rationibus ut resipiscat inducitur. Academiae in Germania Heidelbergensis, Moguntina et Coloniensis, in Belgio Lovanienis, in Gallia Parisiensis, novam hominis dementiam editis articulis patefecerunt. Omnium gentium docti viri scriptis libris errores suos foedissimos erudite confutarunt”.  Staphylus, Theologiae Martini Lutheri trimembris epitome, 14r-16r: “Papistae evangelium Christi abiecerunt, Lutherus abiectum instauravit, produxitque ex tenebris papae in lucem hominum. Ergo Luthero omnia credenda sunt, tanquam Germanico prophetae, papistis nihil, tanquam evangelii desertoribus. […] Lutherus fuit propheta, et alter Elias et currus Israel: ergo quaecunque ille censet in sacris Bibliis, esse hagiographa scripta, ea debent haberi pro autenticis et hagiographis, quae ille reiecit, pro reiectis. […] Solus Lutherus (nimirum alter Elias et Iudaeus egregius) recte vertit S. Bibliam. Ergo vetus translatio latina, et graeca interpretatio 72 pravae sunt versiones. Proinde nulla alia translatio legenda in ecclesia, nisi Martini Lutheri”.

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and, more generally, the “dishonest and wicked of all sorts, since they have abrogated the need to confess sins and explain oneself to one’s own pastor, which usually is one of the most efficient deterrent from sin”.³⁸

3 Interpretations and Methods It is worth pointing out, however, that this hermeneutic approach is far from unprecedented and actually is as ancient as anti-heretical literature itself. Pride, envy, lust, and all the other sins as well – and, more generally, the idea that moral corruption is the heresiarchs’ principal motive and the cause of the circulation of their deceptions – already belong to the fundamental tools used by one of the founders of the genre, Epiphanius. For example, he wrote about Marcion that he was “consumed by pride and envy”, after having been denied absolution for having seduced a consecrated virgin; or about Arius that he was “inflated with his opinion of himself” and capable of winning the approval of others with adulation.³⁹ At the other end of the timeframe, in mid-seventeenth century, the Annales ecclesiastici, continued by Odorico Rinaldi, similarly explain the beginning of Wycliffe’s heresy with his envy for not having received certain honors.⁴⁰ In this perspective, the interpretation of the Lutheran heresy insists, with some exceptions, on the continuity between new and old heretical phenomena rather than on their difference – following a premise of method that is, on the other hand, at the root of the discipline of controversies, where the uninterrupted replication of heresies works as a mirror e contrario of the uninterrupted transmission of the patrimonium fidei in the Church. Luther’s eccentricity is in the extensiveness of his attacks against the Church and not really in the actual novelty of his doctrines – of which, however, some of the most essential points still are understood in their importance, for example the justification by faith or the universal priesthood. This point makes explicit the shortsightedness that afflicts controversialism in its entirety during the first few decades after the Reformation.

 Bellarmino, Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei, vol. I, controversia De Summo pontifice, 388: “Gulosi ad eos accurrunt, quia non sunt apud Lutheranos stata ieiunia; incontinentes, quia apud eos vota omnia continentiae improbantur, et monachis etiam et sacerdotibus, necnon sanctimonialibus quibuscumque matrimonia conceduntur. Item apostatae omnes, quia apud eos claustra omnia reserantur, et in palatia convertuntur; principes avari et ambitiosi, quia bona ecclesiastica, et personae etiam ecclesiasticae eorum potestati subiiciuntur; otiosi et inimici bonorum operum, quia apud eos sola fides sufficit, opera bona non sunt necessaria. Denique omnes improbi et scelesti, quia sublata est apud eos necessitas confitendi peccata, et rationem reddendi proprio suo pastori, quod maximum esse solet fraenum peccatoribus”.  Epifanio, “Adversus omnes haereses”, Migne. Patrologia Graeca, vol. XLI, cc. 695 – 698, and vol. XLII, cc. 206 – 207.  O. Rinaldi, Annales ecclesiastici ab anno 1198, vol. VII, Lucae, typis Leonardi Venturini, 1752, ad ann. 1377, 294 ff.

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According to Eck, the Protestants “refer back to heresies condemned many times”, from Arius to Hus.⁴¹ The same is supported by Wimpina too in a catalog of Luther’s errors written in 1522 and published in his Anacephalaeosis in 1528.⁴² Similarly, Bellarmine too, in the inaugural lecture to the course on controversies at the Roman College in 1576 – where he de facto explained the theology of history at the heart of the methodological structure of his work – places Luther in the long, devilish chain unraveling from the same Christian origins: in particular, among those who, starting from Berengar of Tours (“father of all the heretics of this age”), have directed their energies against the organism of the Church, the cult of the saints, and the power to forgive sins.⁴³ Stapleton’s interpretation is similar when he traces a genealogy of Lutheranism that goes from Hus to Wycliffe, and then to the Albigenses and the Waldenses, and finally to Berengar. Before Berengar, it is necessary to jump back several centuries in order to reconnect it with the heretics of the ancient era.⁴⁴ Among the very early adversaries of a Luther who is still sub iudice, only Ambrogio Catarino preferred to focus on more recent affinities: among others, the council of Pisa, Antonio Beccadelli, Lorenzo Valla, and, perfidiously, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, who was invited to clarify his position after the praises received by Luther in his commentary to the Epistle to the Galatians.⁴⁵ In order to understand in depth the mind-frame of the theologians listed above, however, it is necessary to differentiate between the “early controversialism” of the period of the confessional conflict and the mature controversialism of the late sixteenth century, which is fundamentally represented by Jesuit theologians, such as Bellarmine, Gregory of Valencia, Becanus, and Gretser, or by theologians who were active in educational institutions managed by the Jesuits, such as Stapleton in Douai and Staphylus in Ingolstadt. This later controversialism, due to the same historical context in which it developed, proved to be able to include Luther within

 Eck, Enchiridion locorum communium, 280: “Quamvis de Luthero et Lutheranis non sit dubium, quin sint haeretici damnati, et pro talibus habendis, quia ipsi revocant haereses saepe damnatas, Arrii, Manichei [sic], Ioviniani, Aerii, Vigilantii, Euticetis, Felicis, Albigentium, Waldentium, Ioan. Wickleff, Ioan. Huss et aliorum haereticorum, ideo contra eos non est disputandum”.  H. Jedin, “Kirchengeschichtliches in der älteren Kontroverstheologie”, in Reformatio Ecclesiae. Beiträge zu kirchlichen Reformbemühungen von der Alten Kirche bis zur Neuzeit, Festgabe für Erwin Iserloh, ed. R. Bäumer (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1980), 273 – 280, especially 274.  Bellarmino, Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei, vol. I, Praefatio habita in Gymnasio Romano anno 1576, 4r.  Stapleton, Principiorum fidei, controversia De vera Ecclesia in se, 90.  A. Catarino, Apologia pro veritate catholicae et apostolicae fidei ac doctrinae adversus impia ac valde pestifera Martini Lutheri dogmata (1520), CCath 27, Qui a Martino laudentur, et de quibus, 339 – 340. On the connection between Valla and the Reformation in Catholic controversialism, cf. S. Camporeale, “Giovanmaria dei Tolosani O.P.: 1530 – 1546. Umanesimo, Riforma e teologia controversista”, Memorie domenicane 17 (1986): 145 – 252, now in Id., Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, Riforma e Controriforma. Studi e testi (Roma 2002), 331– 461.

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a broader reading of the heretical phenomenon – in which he is accompanied by other contemporary heresiarchs such as Calvin, Zwingli, and Bucer – but also of giving him a peculiar role in modern sacred history. Early controversialism, instead, showed all the difficulties underpinning the exercise of a discipline recreated almost ex novo after the epoch of ancient Christianity and of medieval religious disputes. The protagonists of this renewed controversialism, which slowly acquired its own methodology and foundation precisely from the confrontation with Luther’s theology and the vigorous advances of the Reformation, are the names that I already mentioned at the beginning of this contribution. They do not share a common background: some, such as Catarino and Prierias, come from the innermost circles of the curia; others, such as Jacob van Hoogstraaten and Latomus, from the great centers of European scholastics, Cologne and Leuven. Others still – i. e. the great majority of Luther’s opponents in Germany – have a humanistic education and are the ones who had the greatest impact: Eck, Cochlaeus, Fabri, Augustine of Alfeld, Jerome Emser. The latter had published in Leipzig in 1515 Erasmus’s Enchiridion. Cochlaeus had a place of honor for him in his Commentaria and insisted rhetorically on the antithesis between Erasmus’s refinement and calmness and Luther’s crude aggressivity.⁴⁶ This was a generation full of Catholic zeal but still used to an ideal of a literary republic that was shortly destined to end, a victim of religious borders. Not even the motivations that drove these men to intervene can be considered to be uniform. If in Cajetan and Catarino the defense of the primacy had absolute priority, Eck (at least before the dispute of Leipzig [June-July 1519]) saw in Luther the possible protagonist of a reform of the Church that he considered impossible to further postpone.⁴⁷ The Assertio septem sacramentorum, signed by Henry VIII (but written by John Fisher with the help of Thomas More and a dedicated theological commission) and sent with great pomp to Leo X in July 1521, was devised by cardinal Thomas Wolsey to strengthen the diplomatic alliance between the English court and the Holy See.⁴⁸ Cochlaeus’s Dissertatio, hastily completed following the news of Luther’s death and published three years later in 1549 after having been left unfinished for many years, undoubtedly had the objective of warding off a possible reconciliation between the two fronts after the interim of Augsburg.⁴⁹

 For example, Cochlaeus, Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri, 140 ff. The opinion on Erasmus as “vir summae eloquentiae eruditionisque et autoritatis in Germania” is erased in pen in the copy formerly owned by the Biblioteca patriarcale San Domenico di Bologna (and now owned by the Biblioteca comunale dell’Archiginnasio), which I consulted – evidently after his inclusion in the Index in 1559.  Lortz, La Riforma in Germania, vol. II, Costituzione dei fronti, 253, insists on Eck’s persistent efforts towards the convocation of the council and on his harsh tones against the “thousand obnubilating words” of the empty promises on the subject made by the papal legates in Germany.  P. Fraenkel, Einleitung a Enrico VIII, Assertio septem sacramentorum, 1– 48.  This intention is clear especially in the preface De ratione scribendi historias by the chancellor to the duke of Bavaria Konrad Braun (Brunus), which was included in the volume certainly with Cochlaeus’s assent, since the latter had collaborated for a long time with Braun. The author offers

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Of these controversialists of the first 30 years of the Reformation, between the start of Luther’s public activity and the final confessional division that runs parallel to the war of Schmalkalden, a first historical interpretation was offered in the research of some of the Catholic historians already mentioned – especially those who gravitated around the Corpus catholicorum. These historians underline the lack of a common approach, the episodic character of the interventions, the struggles (even on a personal level) often faced in conducting a fight against organized adversaries capable of using an ambitious hegemonic strategy and from which the Roman hierarchy seemed to be detached for a long time, that is to say, more of a makeshift militia than an orderly apparatus.⁵⁰ Subsequent studies highlighted instead the importance of at least two institutional centers that took upon themselves the task of reacting to the nascent Reformation: Bavaria under William IV of Wittelsbach, who, although relatively late (1522), implemented a policy of surveillance and repression of Luther’s work entrusted to Johann Eck’s direction; and even more so, Albertine Saxony under George the Bearded, which was the most important center of the first fight against Lutheranism. Here were active Jerome Emser (chaplain and personal secretary to the duke), Augustine of Alfeld, Cochlaeus, and later Julius von Pflug, Georg Witzel, and less important authors such as Wolfgang Wulffer, Franz Arnoldi, Henning Pyrgallius (Feuerhahn), and Gregor Laticephalus (Breitkopf).⁵¹ It is worth noting that many of these authors

an interesting interpretation, which is completely political, of the Commentaria as a historical work: historical knowledge is firstly useful to the prince in order to refrain from conceding the tribunicia potestas to the people (a possible reference to the demands for tolerance expressed by the Protestant Stände of the Empire), from tolerating heresies, from allowing the organization of colloquies of religion (an advice that, as he regrets, they “follow very little”) and to intervene immediately to execute the mandates of the ecclesiastical authority on the subject of the defense of faith. Cf. K. Braun, De ratione scribendi historias, in Cochlaeus, Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri, s.n.p. [however, 8 – 12], especially 8 – 10. On Braun, see R. Bäumer, “Konrad Braun (1491– 1563)”, in Katholische Theologen, vol. V, ed. E. Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988), 115 – 136. Bäumer himself speaks more benignly of Cochlaeus’s “mistrust” against the attempts of unity pursued by Charles V in “Die Religionspolitik Karls V. im Urteil der Lutherkommentare des Johannes Cochlaeus”, in Politik und Konfession. Festschrift für Konrad Repgen zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. D. Albrecht, H.G. Hockerts, P. Mikat (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1983), 31– 47. On the vicissitudes of the composition of the Commentaria, cf. A. Herte, Die Lutherkommentare des Johannes Cochläus. Kritische Studie zur Geschichtschreibung im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung (Münster: Aschendorff, 1935), 1 ff. The greater conciseness of the narration starting from 1535 is evidently due to the necessity to finish the work, which had been completed until 1534, whilst Cochlaeus was busy with the colloquy of Regensburg of 1546. The Commentaria were published in a second edition in Paris in 1562 and in a third edition in Cologne in 1568; the German translation was published in Ingolstadt in 1582.  Thus in Lortz, La Riforma in Germania, vol. II, 191 ff; E. Iserloh, “Gli oppositori letterari di Lutero di parte cattolica e la Riforma”, in Storia della Chiesa, vol. VI, Riforma e Controriforma, ed. H. Jedin (Milano: Jaca, 1975; original ed. 1967), 229 ff.  G. Schwaiger, “Die Religionspolitik der Bayerischen Herzöge im 16. Jahrhundert”, in Johannes Eck (1486 – 1543) im Streit der Jahrhunderte, ed. E. Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988), 250 – 274; H. Smo-

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were published by Emser’s personal press, including Petrus Sylvius (Forst). To the latter can be traced back the early introduction of the theme of Luther as the forerunner of the Antichrist (Antichristus mixtus, Vermischter Antichrist, in a translation of the sermon De fine mundi by Vincenzo Ferrer from 1524) and a Letter to the Authorities of the German Nation (Missive ader Sendbriff an die Christliche Versammlunge und szonderlich an die Oberkeit Deutscher Nation), from 1525, in which the spread of the Bauernkrieg is connected to Luther’s theses on justifying faith and the interpretation of Scripture.⁵² More than an actual social and institutional bond, what these authors were lacking was instead the capacity to understand in depth the entire theological framework that was taking shape behind the new theses by Luther and the other early reformers. Of course, it was Luther’s method itself – with his rejection of the systematic methodology of the scholastics to instead rely on sermons, speeches, and inspired pleas – that gave his adversaries difficulties, as well as the rapid and seemly disordered evolution of his reflection starting from 1520.⁵³ After all, the battle of ideas conducted through the Flugschriften, which started here and lasted as long as the era of the confessional struggle, required speed and did not allow for any meticulous analysis. After the publication of the Plea to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, in August 1520, Emser intervened with his own booklet in reply; this too addressed to a secular audience. It was followed by Luther’s reply, To the Billy-Goat of Leipzig (Emser’s heraldic crest is a ram), Emser’s retort, To the Bull of Wittenberg, and further works in a duel that, by November 1521, counted five pamphlets by Luther and six by his adversary.⁵⁴ The choice of the early controversialists was primarily the simplest one: a reply point by point to Luther underlining the incongruities, variations, forced translations (as in the case of the new corrected edition of the New Testament in German edited by Emser on Luther’s text).⁵⁵ Many of these works aim to confute certain points of Lutheran theology, such as the already mentioned Adversus cucullatum Minotaurum by Cochlaeus or the Assertio septem sacramentorum by Henry VIII, which are devoted to the doctrine of the sacraments; the Malleus in haeresim Lutheranam by Fabri (1524), on the power of the pope; or the Sacri sacerdotii defensio by John Fisher (1525), in defense of the sacred order. The Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutheranos (1525) is probably the first controversial work that reckons with the nas-

linsky, Augustin von Alveldt und Hieronymus Emser. Eine Untersuchung zur Kontroverstheologie der frühen Reformationszeit im Herzogtum Sachsen (Münster: Aschendorff, 1983), 337 ff.  Smolinsky, Augustin von Alveldt, 346 ff.  J. Lortz, “Wert und Grenzen der katholischen Kontroverstheologie in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts”, in Um Reform und Reformation. Zur Frage nach dem Wesen des “Reformatorischen” bei Martin Luther, ed. August Franzen (Münster: Aschendorff, 1968), 9 – 32.  Smolinsky, Augustin von Alveldt, 238 ff.  H. Smolinsky, “Streit um die Exegese? Die Funktion des Schriftargumentes in der Kontroverstheologie des Hieronymus Emser”, in Zum Gedenken an Joseph Lortz, 359 – 375.

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cent Reformed doctrine in its different articulations, although without really analyzing the issues in depth. Eck wrote it in the months before the conference of Regensburg of June and July 1524, when he was with Cochlaeus, Faber, and Frederic Nausea in the entourage of the legate Lorenzo Campeggi, and explicitly devised it to be an arsenal of arguments for controversialists.⁵⁶ In this very early phase of the clash, the method was disarticulated and hardly efficient: the Catholic authors chase, so to speak, Luther and broadly quote excerpts from his writings, thus legitimizing his message with the public opinion – an approach that will be carefully avoided by later controversialism.⁵⁷ The most prudent men immediately understood the extensiveness of the consequences deriving from Luther’s theses. In the colloquy with him in mid-October 1518, cardinal Cajetan understood that before him there were the outlines of a “new theology” and the following year, in A venatione Lutherana Aegocerotis assertio, Emser (this time with the nom de plume of “ibex”) referred several times to Luther as a “new theologian”.⁵⁸ Of the foundational centerpieces of this new theology identified by the controversialists, some are received (or at least illustrated) following an approach that does not reveal their broader theological meaning but focuses instead on their premises and consequences. For example, the theme of justification by faith alone is categorized mainly as an attack against confession and the priestly power to absolve (for example, in Cochlaeus’s Commentaria or in Castro’s Adversus omnes haereses), whilst the principle of the exclusivity of Scripture is interpreted as the consequence of Luther’s pride and his refusal to yield to tradition.⁵⁹

 P. Fraenkel, “Einleitung”, in: Eck, Enchiridion locorum communium, 7*-59*, especially 13*ff; N.H. Minnich, “On the Origins of Eck’s ‘Enchiridion’”, Johannes Eck (1486 – 1543) im Streit der Jahrhunderte, ed. E. Iserloh, 37– 73. The work was republished by the author in nine different further editions with additions until 1543, and then reprinted 90 times in the sixteenth century. Alongside this text, it is also important to mention another Enchiridion that enjoyed a great success, i. e. Johann Gropper’s, that is actually entitled Institutio compendiaria doctrinae in concilio provinciali pollicita, from 1538, a collection of the documents of the provincial synod of Cologne organized by Gropper for the princebishop Hermann of Wied: H. Filser, Ekklesiologie und Sakramentenlehre des Kardinals Johannes Gropper. Eine Glaubenslehre zwischen Irenik und Kontroverstheologie im Zeitalter der Reformation (Münster: Aschendorff, 1995), 55 ff.  For example, Bäumer, Johannes Cochlaeus (1470 – 1552). Leben und Werk, 102– 103, counts 140 quotes from Luther and 40 from other Reformed authors in Cochaleus’s Commentaria, which cites long passages from De servo arbitrio among the others. A similar approach is signaled by Silvano Cavazza in the Opera utilissima volgare contra le pernitiosissime heresie lutherane per li simplici, by the Franciscan Giovanni da Fano (1532), who quotes long, unabridged passages from Luther’s Assertio omnium articulorum as cited in John Fisher’s confutation.  B. Lohse, Luthers Theologie in ihrer historischen Entwicklung und in ihrem systematischen Zusammenhang, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 128 ff; H. Emser, A venatione Lutherana Aegocerotis assertio, in Id., De disputatione Lipsicensi, quantum ad Boemos obiter deflexa est (1519), CCath 4, 45 – 99, here 45 ff.  Körsgen-Wiedeburg, “Das Bild Martin Luthers”, 171 ff.

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To find a treatise that looks at Lutheranism from the point of view of its methodological premises, doctrinal consequences, and the multifaceted legacy of its founder, it is probably necessary to wait until 1558, with the aforementioned Trimembris epitome by Staphylus. It is not by chance that this volume bears the analytical outlook of a defector who for ten years worked closely in Wittenberg with Melanchthon on the translation of Diodorus Siculus. This is his framework for interpreting the Evangelical doctrine: When Martin Luther, who was gifted with genius and also with deception, was devising the shape of a new theology, he understood that all the strength of the theological science is divided among form, matter, and authority to act. As far as form was concerned, he took the common principles and axioms always used by theologians up to that point and turned them upside down, at the beginning, and then erased them from schools and churches, swapping them with new principles such as dialectic categories [praedicamenta] and positions of arguments [sedes topicae] […]. Then follows matter, a multitude of theological issues that Luther himself partly introduced ex novo but mostly took from ancient heretics.⁶⁰

In this work, ten topica praedicamenta of Luther’s, theological positions organized on the sources of faith and the regula fidei, and as many “metaphysical” traits from the Confessio Augustana (conclusions attributed to Catholic doctrine by means of syllogisms that Staphylus believed to be lacking of any foundation) are followed by the “matter” of Lutheran theology, i. e. the articles of faith divided in five parts (on man, sacraments, the Church, civil authority and the ecclesiastical patrimony) and derived from the works of the theologians of the Reformation in order to highlight contradictions and discord. Finally, in the third section of the work, there is the description, already mentioned above, of the heretical filiations that sprouted over time. This articulation already foreshadowed in its clarity and economy of presentation the methodology of the controversialists of the following generations. However, it is indeed a product of the history of the confessional struggle, of the personal history of the author, and of the events of the internal conflicts within Lutheranism itself.  Staphylus, Theologiae Martini Lutheri trimembris epitome, Argumentum libri, 13r: “Martinus Lutherus ut ingenii, sic doli plenus, cum novam theologiae formam meditaretur, intelligebat omnem theologicae scientiae facultatem rectissime partiri in formam et materiem, et in agendi potestatem. Quod ad formam attinebat, communia principia et axiomata ante semper usurpata a theologis, labefecit initio, mox explosit etiam ex scholis et templis; substituitque nova quaedam principia tanquam dialectica praedicamenta, sedesque topicas argumentorum: unde quoties disceptandum fuit, rationes desumi possent. […] Deinde materies sequitur, tanquam sylva quaestionum theologicarum, quas ipse Lutherus partim novas introduxit, partim ab antiquis haereticis potissimum mutuatus est”. Cf. Amann, “Friedrich Staphylus”; H. Tüchle, “Erste Versuche der katholischen Wiedererneuerung in Schlesien”, in Reformata reformanda, Festgabe für Hubert Jedin zum 17. Juni 1965, ed. E. Iserloh, K. Repgen, vol. II (Münster: Aschendorff, 1965), 114– 129; Bundschuh, Das Wormser Religionsgespräch von 1557, 546 ff. After his conversion in 1552, Staphylus became the adviser on religious politics for the king of Bohemia Ferdinand of Habsburg and the bishop of Wrocław and promoted a rigorous surveillance of the circulation of Evangelical books and preachers.

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4 Hus, the Turks, and the Antichrist Before the Peace of Augsburg, the main focus around which the interpretation of the Lutheran heresy is centered is certainly the great heresiarch of late-medieval Church, Jan Hus. Hussitism is, in fact, the only resource available to the controversialists of the time to analyze the genesis of the Lutheran phenomenon according to categories already known. As such, it is used profusely up until the mid-sixteenth century and does not disappear completely even afterward. In fact, the compilers of the Annales ecclesiastici, in the mid-seventeenth century, justified the amount of space given to Hus with the fact that he is “magister Lutheri et alii impiorum” due to the imputations charged against him in Konstanz: the rejection of the transubstantiation and the permanence of the substance of the bread after consecration; the errors against the sacrament of the order; the contempt of ecclesiastical hierarchy and its doctrinal resolutions; and the theory of the invisible Church.⁶¹ For this opinion, Rinaldi referred abundantly to Cochlaeus, who indeed was the one who canonized the idea of the Reformation as the natural prosecution of the Hussite movement with the publication, in 1549 and shortly before the Commentaria, of a Historia Hussitarum – same publisher, same typeface, same graphics – that implicitly represented its premise. This is clear to the author of the preface to the Commentaria, Konrad Braun: We can assess the utility of these stories [i. e. the Hussites’ and Luther’s] in reason of many aspects, but first and foremost because, in the examples of the two heresiarchs contained in them, Jan Hus and Martin Luther, we can see as if in a mirror what is the nature and what are the causes of the heresies, what are the habits of the heretics and, consequently, what are the blasphemies, the sacrileges, the slanders, the unjust persecutions, the cruelties, and the enormities that in different ways they exercise against the Catholics.⁶²

However, it is necessary to underline that the juxtaposition between Luther and Hus goes back to the very origin of the Reformation. The notion is already outlined in 1518 by Tetzel in the Fünfzig positiones and by Eck in the Obelisci; two years later, the bull of excommunication Exsurge Domine refers to the previous condemnations of the councils and the Holy See against “the heresy of the Greeks and Bohemians”.⁶³

 Rinaldi, Annales ecclesiastici, vol. VIII, ad ann. 1415, 422 ff.  Braun, De ratione scribendi, 11v-12r: “Utilitatem harum historiarum, cum ex multis aliis, tum ex eo maxime metimur: quia in his propositis duorum haeresiarcharum exemplis, Ioanne Hus et Martino Luthero, velut in speculo contemplamur, quae sit natura, et quae causae haeresum: qui haereticorum mores, quae ex his blasphemiae, sacrilegia, calumniae, et iniustae persequutiones, crudelitates et immanitates, quas variis modis in catholicos exercent, et innumera alia id genus mala et incommoda enascantur”. Cf. J. Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum libri XII, Moguntiae, ex officina Francisci Behem, 1549.  The text of the bull is in Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri, vol. II, Vom Augsburger Reichstag 1518 bis zum Wormser Edikt 1521, ed. P. Fabisch, E. Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1991), 364– 411, here 368;

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And in 1521, the introductory speech of John Clerk, Henry VIII’s orator, before the pope at the delivery to the latter of the Assertio septem sacramentorum speaks of Bohemia as the “Mother and Nurse” of the Lutheran heresy.⁶⁴ In reality, the actual impact of Luther’s statements and changes of mind, the substance of the theses that have been attributed to him surreptitiously by his adversaries and the simple appeal the Hussite movement had for the religious unrest of Central Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century – especially for the radical front of the movement, the Unitas Fratrum, with its harsh opposition against the Utraquist majority – overlap and are difficult to unravel. In the disputation of Leipzig, as is well-known, Luther publicly disapproved of Hus’s condemnation during the council of Konstanz and, in the same year (1519), he published a sermon On the Venerable Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ (Ein Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen wahren Leichnams Christi) in which he expreses his wish that a council would allow the chalice to the laity. The duke George of Saxony immediately perceived a sinister “Praguean” (“Pregisch”) tone in the volume and, through the ordinary of Merseburg, tasked Alvelt with the reply, which was published in the summer of 1520 with the title Tractatus de communione sub utraque specie quantum ad laicos and which received a short answer in the pages of Luther’s De captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae. In his work, Alvelt attributes to Luther the Utraquist position that considers the chalice necessary for salvation, a position that Luther never supported; it is an accusation that comes from a misunderstanding or, as Heribert Smolinsky proposes, the deliberate will to suggest to the reader an immediate juxtaposition between Luther and Hus.⁶⁵ The same controversial expedient, after all, had been used shortly before in the report on the dispute of Leipzig that Emser had written as a letter to the administrator of the diocese of Prague Johann Zack. In the letter, Emser had rejected the idea that Luther could be reasonably considered an advocate (“a Theseus”) of the Hussites – a claim that the latter had actually made since the very beginning – since he had rebuked their defection from the Catholic Church. However, he also venomously underlined the common thesis according to which the papacy was an institution of human and not divine right, implicitly inviting Luther to take a stance on the subject.⁶⁶

Engl. trans. by H.J. Hillerbrand from http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo10/l10exdom.htm (August 25, 2017).  Enrico VIII, Assertio septem sacramentorum, 107– 113, here 109; Eng. 158.  Smolinsky, Augustin von Alveldt, 105 ff.  Emser, De disputatione Lipsicensi, 36: “[t]he fact that Martin, just like Jan Hus, explicitly says that the primacy of the supreme Pontiff is of human and not divine institution is still an issue in its infancy and not yet clear. However, he has not devoted himself to this thesis with such an obstinacy that he would not be willing to recant it, were he to be convinced with proper reasons” (“Quod autem nominatim idem Martinus, cum dicto Ioanne [Hus], Summi pontificis principatum humanis rebus subiicere et a Deo non esse contendit, adhuc in herba, vel […] adhuc sub iudice lis est. Et Mar-

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On the other hand, still in 1519, Luther started to keep in contact with the Hussites, and especially with their most radical wing, the Unitas Fratrum guided by Luke of Prague, despite later showing a more cautious approach on the subject.⁶⁷ Already at the time of Luther’s summoning to Worms and up until his “canonization” during his funeral, the Reformed movement enjoys great success from the alleged prophecy attributed to Hus on the stake about the announcement of the true Evangelical message a century after his death.⁶⁸ How was it possible then to distinguish, during the years in which the Lutheran theology was taking shape, between accusations without any foundation, ambiguous attributions, and real convergences? What is clear is that for a long time, the link between Luther and the Hussite movement offered to the controversialists a historical interpretation of the motivations of the Reformation, that is, of the reasons that transformed the protest of a monk into the foundation of a new Church and the unleashing of a generalized religious struggle. In fact, as singular as it may appear – even if singular it is not, since the task of controversialist theology is to rebuke error, not to understand it – the authors discussed up to this point avoided almost completely the issue of the success of the Protestant movement. The same is true for Cochlaeus, although his Commentaria are explicitly presented as a historiographical account and do not abstain from recognizing the impact of the taxation “with which the Roman curia appeared to burden Germany”.⁶⁹ Some authors mentioned only the moral theme of the relaxation of Christian discipline, such as Eck (who refered to the topos of the Mahumetica libertas, of the sexual license ascribed to Muslims) and Alfonso de Castro.⁷⁰ On the other hand, a historical reading of the Protestant phenomenon was still lacking in the mid-nineteenth century, when the revolutionary trauma imposed on Catholic reflection the urgency of an in-depth understanding of the recent past and, following the lead of Augustin Barruel, the link between Reformation and revolution became the hermeneutic canon of political modernity. An example can be found in the first issue of “La civiltà cattolica”, where father Matteo Liberatore interpreted this urgency in the light of the relationship between Protestantism and rationalism: “that truthfully is not distinguishable from it, except like an animal from the embryo”. Once again, therefore, a vice intrinsic to the human being is evoked as the origin of the heresy, this time not a moral but rather an intellectual vice, the “free examination of reason” – which still refers to a universal and meta-historical element, just like the legitimacy of the Roman Church is universal and meta-historical too:

tinus ipse […] non tanta tamen animum obstinatione devovit, ut si ratio rationem redarguat, cedere non velit”). Cf. Smolinsky, Augustin von Alveldt, 227 ff.  S.H. Thomson, “Luther and Bohemia”, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 44 (1953): 160 – 181.  Scribner, “Incombustible Luther”.  Thus for example in the description of the adhesion to the Reformation by Ulrich von Hutten, Cochlaeus, Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri, 21.  Eck, Enchiridion locorum communium, 8; de Castro, Adversus omnes haereses, 21r.

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If the cause needs to be at least equal to the effect, the true cause of this fire should be in something universal and constant in man […]. You can puzzle over it and labor in discussions, but you will not find any other cause for it than the pride of a reason intolerant of the yoke imposed by the revelation and keen to stand on its own. ⁷¹

In the context of this difficulty in attributing historical depth to the beginning and development of the Reformation, it is important to underline the use by the controversialists of the resources of eschatological hermeneutics. The motif of Luther as the figure of the Antichrist starts to appear very early in Catholic controversialism as a signifier that connects internal and external enemies of Christianity, i. e. the Hussites and the Turks. It is Emser, in A venatione Lutherana aegocerotis assertio from 1519 that foreshadowed this idea, although only as a suggestion and without inserting it into a more precise hermeneutic context: “[t]his new theologian, like a dragon fallen from the sky, drags with itself almost a third of the stars. […] The Bohemians immediately kiss him and maybe even the Turks will come bearing gifts”.⁷² Shortly afterward, the suggestion is repeated in Henry VIII’s Assertio, who, in inviting to intervene with a decision against Luther, recalls how the “Turkish fury” rages on land and sea after having been started “by two charlatans” (Muhammad and Sergius the Monk, to whom a medieval tradition attributed the true paternity of the Quran), and that the “Bohemian sect from a little worm has quickly grown to become a huge dragon, with great harm to Germany”.⁷³ In his Enchiridion, Eck went back to the dispute with Luther and Karlstadt in Leipzig, recalling having fought “against the very head of the dragon”.⁷⁴ Also, the juxtaposition between Luther and the Turks enjoyed a great controversial success thanks to his “scandalous” comments on the crusade. By Caspar Macer, preacher in Regensburg, there is a Turcico-Lutherus from 1570 collating passages from the Quran and Luther to show their doctrinal proximity. The Jesuit Nicolaus Serarius wrote a collection of six Lutheroturcicae orationes delivered during the 1590s that join a plea for a crusade against the Turks with the fight against the heresy.⁷⁵  [M. Liberatore], “Razionalismo politico della rivoluzione italiana”, La civiltà cattolica 1, 1 (1850): 53 – 73, here 59. On the position of Liberatore and other publicists and theologians of the re-established Society of Jesus, see Miccoli, “L’avarizia e l’orgoglio di un frate laido…”, XVIIIff.  The reference to the dragon is from Revelation 12:4 ff.  Enrico VIII, Assertio septem sacramentorum, 236 – 237: “Quod si quis forte non credat ab uno homine nihil tantum unquam periculi nasci posse, huic in mentem velim subeat Turchica illa rabies, quae quum nunc tot per terras et maria se diffundens maximam ac pulcherrimam totius orbi partem occuparit, a duobus olim nebulonibus sumpsit initium – ut interim taceam factionem Bohemicam. Quae et ipsa quis nescit e quam exiguo vermiculo in quam immanem draconem haud absque magno Germaniae malo quam propere adolevit?”. The passage is quoted verbatim by Cochlaeus, Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri, 70.  Eck, Enchiridion locorum communium, 9.  C. Macer, Turcico-Lutherus, Ingolstadii, excudebat Alexander Weissenhorn, 1570; N. Serarius, Lutheroturcicae orationes, Moguntiae, e Balthasari Lippii typographeo, 1604. Cf. by the latter the Oratio quarta, 152.

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In the fifth of his hefty and very harsh Centuriae, dedicated “to the entire issue of the life and death” of Luther, the Franciscan Johannes Nas added an astrological interpretation to this apocalyptic picture: when Luther was born, on November 10, 1483, the sky was under a bad constellation that favored “the beginning of a mutation in Christianity unheard-of before since Sergius the Monk” and foreshadowed the advent of the Antichrist with the apostasy of faith and the arrival of false prophets, as in Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians (2 Thessalonians 2:2).⁷⁶ This mix of apocalyptic themes finally turned into a coherent framework for the interpretation of Luther and the Reformation in the last third of the sixteenth century, when controversialist theology took on the task of interpreting in its entirety a confessional division that was already widely accepted, thus being forced to reconstruct the chains of a heretical universe that was plural and contradictory but never completely disjointed from the memory of its founder. The most mature example of this hermeneutic key can be found in Bellarmine’s controversy De Summo pontifice, which refers to the lessons held in the Roman College in 1577– 1578. In dealing with John’s vision on the advent of the Antichrist, the Jesuit believes that Lutheranism is the fifth trumpet sounded by the angel in Revelation 9:1 ff in anticipation of the advent of the Antichrist: The Catholics identify in the sixth trumpet the persecution of the Antichrist, which will effectively be the last and worst one; in the fifth, the greatly harmful heresy that will come before the times of the Antichrist and that many, and with excellent probability, consider to be the Lutheran heresy.⁷⁷

This is a radically coherent interpretation that includes the beginning of the Reformation in a diagnosis of the present as a time that is already eschatological, the time that comes before the advent of the Antichrist, although Bellarmine is cautious in offering forecasts on the timings and ways in which such advent might happen, thus excluding any prophetic deviation. After all, this happened at the climax of the confessional struggle, only a few years after Lepanto, the excommunication of  J. Nas, Centuria quinta, das ist das fünfft Hundert der Evangelischen Wahrheit: darin mit fleiss beschriben wird der ganzt Handel Anfang Lebens und Todts des thewren Manns D. Martin Luthers, Ingolstadt, durch Alexander Weissenhorn, 1570, 3v: “He, as is well known, started a change in Christianity that was unheard-of since the times of Sergius the Monk who, in his monastery in Constantinople, became a heretic and defended in his disputes the Nestorian error until he was expelled” (“Diser [Luther] wie der gantze Welt bewist, hat ein solche änderung in der Christenhait angefangen dergleichen nit geschehen seyt des Münch Sergii welcher zu Constantinopel im Kloster zu einem Ketzer wardt und die Nestorischen Irrthumb mit Disputiren beschützet aber wurt veriagt”). The theme of the bad constellation had been introduced a few years before, in 1565, in the Paris edition of Cochlaeus’s Commentaria: Herte, Das katholische Lutherbild, vol. I, 56.  Bellarmino, Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei, vol. I, controversia De Summo pontifice, 383: “Catholici per sextam tubam intelligunt Antichristi persequutionem, quae vere postrema, et gravissima erit: per quintam autem, haeresim aliquam valde perniciosam, quae Antichristi tempora proxime antecedet, quam quidem esse haeresim Lutheranam multi valde probabiliter coniiciunt”.

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Elizabeth and the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and in the full upswing of the revolt in the Netherlands. Bellarmine himself did not come back to this interpretation, the frequency of which seems to decrease in the following years; it is absent in the works of the controversialists from the early seventeenth century and does not produce any more successors. In the Annales ecclesiastici from 1648, the chronicle of 1517 begins with the ottoman conquest of Egypt and the renewed efforts of Leo X to resume the crusade, to prevent which Satan “excited his most wicked thug, the pseudo-Augustinian” who openly declared “that Muslims should not be fought since they were a scourge of God and men must not oppose to God wanting to use it”.⁷⁸ The resources of eschatology are clearly already abandoned; Luther is the tool of Satan, just like all other heresiarchs are. His distinctive characteristics were by this time lost in a religious mosaic from which prophecy had been definitely expelled.

 Rinaldi, Annales ecclesiastici, vol. XII, 1755, ad ann. 1517, 174: “Excitavit daemon satellitem suum improbissimum Lutherum pseudoaugustinianum, ut iisdem diebus, quibus sanctissima superiora consilia a pontifice regumque interpretibus suscepta fuerant, ad novas haereses in Wittembergensi academia adversus sacrarum indulgentiarum, et sacramenti poenitentiae vim dignitatemque diffunderet, discordiaque et bella inter Christianos fereret; adeo ut confirmata postea audacia etiam aperte Mahometis causam adversum Christum defendendam susciperet, palamque diabolica astutia iactarit, capienda non esse adversus Mahumetanos arma, quod Dei flagellum essent, nec Deo uti eo flagello volenti obsistere deberent homines”.

Antonio Gerace

Justification by Faith

A History of the Debate

1 Introduction The doctrine of justification was of central importance for the Lutheran Reformation of the sixteenth century. It was held to be the “first and chief article” and at the same time the “ruler and judge over all other Christian doctrines.” The doctrine of justification was particularly asserted and defended in its Reformation shape and special valuation over against the Roman Catholic Church and theology of that time, which in turn asserted and defended a doctrine of justification of a different character. From the Reformation perspective, justification was the crux of all the disputes. Doctrinal condemnations were put forward both in the Lutheran Confessions and by the Roman Catholic Church’s Council of Trent. These condemnations are still valid today and thus have a church-dividing effect.¹

These words introduce the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) that was formulated in Augsburg on October 31, 1999, by the Catholic and Lutheran churches. Indeed, justification was – and is – one of the greatest reasons for friction between the two confessions: to fully understand the reasons for this schism, it is necessary to analyze the doctrines set forth by both churches.² Concerning Protestantism, both the writings of Martin Luther and the professions of faith, namely the Augsburg Confession (1530) and the Formula Concordiae (1577), will be examined. Concerning Catholicism, special attention will be given to the Decree Concerning Justification (issued by the Council of Trent on January 13, 1547).³ Before examining the

Translation from Italian: Thomas W. Hudgins.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, available online at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cathluth-joint-declaration_it.html.  Because space is limited, the present study focuses on the contribution to the Roman Church and the Lutheran Church, although other Reformed churches also offer some interesting ideas that are worthy of consideration. For an overview of Protestant churches and their professions of faith, see M. Noll, Confessions and Catechism of the Reformation (Leicester: Apollos, 1991).  The doctrine formulated at the Council of Trent would not be changed, and the Risposta della Chiesa Cattolica alla Dichiarazione congiunta tra la Chiesa Cattolica e la Federazione Luterana Mondiale circa la dottrina della Giustificazione, which appeared in the Osservatore Romano (July 4, 1998): 4, is based on it. This is available online at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/ chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_01081998_off-answer-catholic_it.html (last accessed June 7, 2017). For a discussion of the Dichiarazione (Declaration) and the Risposta (Response), see G. Marchesi, “La Dichiarazione Congiunta tra cattolici e luterani sulla dottrina della giustificazione,” La Civiltà Cattolica 150, no. 4 (1999): 592– 601. On the Catholic-Lutheran dialogue, see also P. Holc, Un https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-044

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Lutheran and Catholic doctrines, however, it is helpful to focus briefly on the concept of justification and the role it has assumed in Christianity, as it is known in the expressions “justification by faith” and “justification by works.” One cannot explain the former without distinguishing it from the latter.

2 The Origin of the Debate The term justification comes from the Latin iustificatio and can carry the meanings “to make right” or “to do the right thing.” Thomas Aquinas made this very clear in the Summa Theologiae: “One can define justification in two ways. One way, according to man being made righteous, that is, by acquiring the habit of justice. And another way, according to man performing acts of righteousness, so that, according to this understanding, justification is nothing but the execution of righteousness.”⁴ Concerning the first understanding, justification refers to the spiritual renewal of humankind, whose one and only God is the creator and allows the faithful to be saved after the fall of Adam, whose sin made Christ’s coming to earth necessary. Thanks to faith in the resurrection of Jesus, human beings, while being unworthy of eternal life,⁵ can be redeemed and saved. Concerning the second understanding, justification refers to the act of doing good. Therefore, we will speak of the first understanding of justification by faith, obtained through Christ’s saving death, in which believers place their own faith, given by God, so that they can be saved. Justification by works, on the other hand, is the position that human beings obtain eternal life by way of good works and the merits earned through them. With respect to salvation, therefore, human beings would not only play a passive role, in which they receive faith, but also an active one, in which they perform good works. This, at least, is Catholicism’s claim – a clear antithesis of the Lutherans’ sola fida, sola gratia, and solus Christus, in which there is no room for cooperation between the human being and God, as will be seen below. Both justification by faith and justification by works are supported by New Testament texts, whose different interpretations were the cause of the split in the six-

ampio consenso sulla dottrina della giustificazione: Studio sul dialogo teologico cattolico-luterano (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1999).  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.2, q.100, ar. 12, in Opera Omnia (Rome: Leonine Commission, 1892), 7:222: “iustificatio dupliciter dicitur. Uno quidem modo, secundum quod homo fit iustus adipiscens habitum iustitiae. Alio vero modo, secundum quod opera iustitiae operatur, ut secundum hoc iustificatio nihil aliud sit quam iustitiae executio.”  In the same Catholic liturgy, shortly before communion, it is remembered that humankind is totally unworthy of God, in whom the faithful trust entirely for eternal salvation: “Lord, I am not worthy to attend your table. Just say the word and I will be saved.” These words are none other than those uttered to Christ by the centurion in Capernaum: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. But only say the word, and my servant will be healed” (Matt 8:8). All New Testament quotations in this chapter are taken from the Christian Standard Bible, 2017.

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teenth-century Church.⁶ With regard to justification by faith, for example, Paul affirms the following: “All have sinned and fall short the glory of God. They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:23 – 24). Moreover, in Ephesians, the apostle of the Gentiles adds, “For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is God’s gift – not from works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8 – 9). Even to the churches of Galatia, Paul states: “You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace. For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness” (Gal 5:4– 5). Thus Paul seems to be very explicit: human beings are made righteous by God and saved precisely thanks to the faith they freely receive from him. There is, therefore, no need to acquire any merit on one’s own. For if salvation is “by grace, then it is not by works; otherwise grace ceases to be grace” (Rom 11:6). In short, “without stumbling into any historical coercion, it can be safely argued that the principles of aut-aut theology, solus Christus, sola gratia, and sola fide are already broadly and in large number documented in the texts that transmitted the Pauline message.”⁷ However, another scriptural author, James, points out the inadequacy of faith, which proves “dead in itself” if it lacks the works that give it life. Thus humankind’s faith and works work together toward this single intent.⁸ “Doing what is right” is the completion of “being made righteous.” Justification becomes evident thanks to works, which are manifested by faith. In his letter, James seems to be writing about instances of the Judeo-Christian school – that is, of the Jews who converted to the gospel message and received the echo of a Pharisaic orthopraxy.⁹ This, in fact, saw the convert act in a right manner – namely, obeying the Mosaic law, as the only way to respect the covenant with Yahweh.¹⁰ Luther, for his part, doubted the authority of this letter – even calling it a “letter of straw” – precisely because it opposed justification by faith, as laid out by Paul.¹¹ Based on this, tracing the doctrine of justification “is the same as tracing the story of two opposing trends that have never prevailed over each other and that have had to live together in a constant

 See V. Subilia, La giustificazione per fede (Brescia: Paideia, 1976), 39.  Subilia, La giustificazione per fede, 46: “senza incappare in nessuna forzatura storica si può tranquillamente sostenere che le formule della teologia dell’aut-aut, del solus Christus, della sola gratia, della sola fide, sono già ampiamente e largamente documentate nei testi che ci hanno trasmesso quel messaggio paolinico.”  “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? […] You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (Jam 2:14– 24).  Rudolf Bultmann even affirms that the author of James’ letter has reworked a Judaic text (Theologie des Neuen Testaments [Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr Siebeck, 1958], 496 – 515).  Subilia, La giustificazione per fede, 52.  Subilia, La giustificazione per fede, 41.

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compromise.”¹² However, this compromise has not always been successful: in the early centuries of Christianity, one already finds a serious fracture – namely, that of Pelagianism. The founder of the movement, a British monk named Pelagius (354– 420), believed salvation was possible based on the merits one acquired through works; in fact, he argued, humankind was not subject to original sin, so grace was not necessary for salvation. These arguments were strongly contested by Augustine and finally condemned by the Council of Carthage in 411 CE.¹³

3 The Arrival of Luther and the Transformation of Europe According to Philipp Melanchthon’s account, which is a debated tradition, on October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his famous ninety-five theses to the door of the church of Wittenberg Castle.¹⁴ The Augustinian friar’s text produced some important repercussions in a short time, and in 1520, Leo X, in the papal bull Exsurge Domine, begged Luther to repent. If he did not, the friar would be excommunicated – an act which eventually took place on January 3, 1521, with the papal bull Decet Romanum Ponteficem. Shortly thereafter, Luther faced off with Charles V at the Diet of Worms (January–May 1521) to propagate his thesis, but his work was declared off-limits within the borders of the empire (in the Edict of Worms, May 8, 1521). This resulted in an unmistakable schism, which birthed the movement known as Protestantism, which in turn had major political implications: on February 27, 1531, Protestant princes – including Philip I of Hesse and Elector John Frederick of Saxony – united in an anti-austerity alliance, forming the Schmalkaldic League. The emperor could not permit the presence of a political-military power opposted to him within his own territories. In an attempt to heal the religious fracture that fueled this political crisis, interconfessional diets were held at Augsburg (1530), Hagenau (1540), Worms (1540 – 1541), and finally in Regensburg (1541 and 1546) – at which, however, no points of common ground were found. Thus a war between Charles V and the Schmalkaldic League became inevitable, and between 1546 and 1547, imperial forces triumphed over the Lutheran princes. Confident that he had restored order in his empire, and waiting to see the results of the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563), Charles V promulgated

 Subilia, La giustificazione per fede, 53: “equivale a tracciare la storia di due tendenze opposte che non hanno mai prevalso totalmente una sull’altra e che hanno dovuto convivere ripiegando in un costante compromesso.”  See S. Prete, Pelagio e il pelagianesimo (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1961). For a good introductory article on the subject, see M.R. Rackett, “What’s Wrong with Pelagianism? Augustine and Jerome on the Dangers of Pelagius and his Followers,” Augustinian Studies 33 (2002): 223 – 37.  A. Pettegree, Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe—And Started the Protestant Reformation (New York: Penguin, 2015), 66 – 77.

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the Augsburg Interim (1548), which shook the Lutheran positions and triggered a new revolt. Once it was clear that another victory – by means of force – was impossible, the emperor finally decided to pursue a diplomatic solution with the princes who were in revolt: on September 25, 1555, the two parties signed the Peace of Augsburg. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio emerged from this agreement, and from then onward, the Catholic unity of Europe became a thing of the past.

4 Martin Luther and the Doctrine of Justification The doctrine of justification assumes a very important position in this complex political context, being precisely the reason for greater friction between Catholics and Lutherans. Even among the latter, however, there was no unanimous consensus on this issue,¹⁵ as evidenced by the presence of “at least a dozen” different theses on this matter.¹⁶ It is precisely this multiplicity of visions that makes it possible to grasp the important role that the doctrine of justification has played in the very definition of the identity of Lutheranism – as promoted by its founders, Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, as well as a distinguished advocate of the second generation of Lutheranism, Martin Chemnitz.¹⁷ Lastly, in 1577, the various bodies that make up the Lutheran Church were able to reach an agreement in the Formula Concordiae (Konkordienformel) – namely, the profession of Protestant faith, which was later published in Liber Concordiae in 1580.¹⁸ Luther had already begun to analyze the problem of God’s righteousness in the Dictata super Psalterium (1513 – 1516), in which there was still “a pattern of cooperation [between humankind and God] that remains catholic.”¹⁹ This pattern remains

 On the notion of “consensus” in the Reformed churches, see P. Foresta, “Transregional Reformation: Synods and Consensus in the Early Reformed Churches,” The Journal of Early Modern Christianity 2 (2015): 189 – 203.  “In the evangelical theology, there’s no consensus on the specialty and meaning concerning the doctrine of justification. There is no single evangelical doctrine of justification, much less one single Lutheran doctrine of justification. There are at least a dozen of them;” O.P. Vainio, Justification and Participation in Christ: The Development of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification from Luther to the Formula of Concord (1580) (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 1. Vainio introduces his monograph with this phrase, as quoted and translated from W. Pannenberg, Hintergründe des Streites um die Rechtfertigungslehre in der evangelischen Theologie (München: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 3.  Vainio, Justification and Participation, 1– 2.  R. Kolb and T. J. Wengert, (eds.), The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000).  “uno schema di cooperazione [fra uomo e Dio] che rimane ben cattolico;” see G. Hennig, “La questione della scoperta riformatrice di Lutero,” Protestantesimo 18 (1963): 148 – 52, here 150. In particular, Hennig presents the thesis of Ernst Bizer – who, in his Fides ex auditu (1958), states that the reform undertaken by Luther was possible “only through an inner rupture of Luther with his theological past, which occurred in the years 1518 – 1519” (solo attraverso una rottura interiore di Lutero con il suo passato teologico, avvenuta negli anni 1518 – 1519); see “La questione della scoperta riformatrice

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evident in Luther’s early writings, although it is veiled by a clear anthropological pessimism,²⁰ and it would linger at least until 1519. In that year, Luther published the Sermo de duplici iustitia, which examined two kinds of righteousness – that of Christ and that of humankind. The German theologian refers first and foremost to the former, that of Christ, which is aliena and ab extra infusa, and which humankind receives by faith through baptism. The faithful are thus brought back to their earliest state – that which existed before the fall of Adam. Such righteousness is, therefore, considered to be greater than that received by the first man, simply because this righteousness is able to make the faithful righteous again, even though they are nevertheless completely subject to sin. As it is said, this righteousness is aliena, so human beings can only receive it ab extra – infused only by grace, without the human being playing an active part in this process. The second righteousness is that of the faithful, which cooperates with the aliena through the “mortification of the flesh” and the “crucifixion of lusts.”²¹ Finally, a remnant of a Catholic echo

di Lutero,” 148 – 49. Bizer proposes his argument according to what Luther affirmed in the preface to his Opera Latina in 1545. See also Subilia, La giustificazione per fede, 127 ff. On Dictata super Psalterium, see especially D. Bellucci, Fede e giustificazione in Lutero. Un esame teologico dei ‘Dictata super Psalterium’ e del commentario sull’Epistola ai Romani (1513 – 1516) (Rome: Libreria Editrice dell’Università, 1963). Bellucci is also of the view that “Luther certainly presents in the Commentary on the Psalms the doctrine of justification in an exegetical and Christological context. However, it does not represent any appropriate original data by which it can be regarded as the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith […] Lust is not yet identified by Luther with original sin, by virtue of this fact: the one who is justified is not intrinsically corrupt, and therefore leaves room for an inner and supernaturally valid justification of man/human being/person. It is true that this righteousness is imperfect […] However, it would be wrong to say that for Luther we have no real intrinsic and personal righteousness on this earth that raises our hope and is like a pledge of what we look forward to in heaven” (certamente Lutero presenta nel Commentario ai Salmi la dottrina della giustificazione in un contesto esegetico e cristologico. Essa però non rappresenta alcun dato propriamente originale che possa farcela considerare come dottrina riformata della fede che giustifica […] la concupiscenza non viene ancora identificata da Lutero con il peccato originale, in forza di questo fatto, il giustificato non è intrinsecamente corrotto, e quindi si lascia libero spazio per una giustificazione interna e soprannaturalmente valida dell’uomo. È vero che questa giustizia è imperfetta […] tuttavia sarebbe errato dire che per Lutero non possediamo su questa terra una vera giustizia intrinseca e personale che fondi la nostra speranza e sia come un pegno di quello che attendiamo nel cielo); Bellucci, Fede e giustificazione in Lutero, 153.  For example, in 1518, Luther, participating in the Heidelberg Disputation as a representative of his order, argued that a good man’s actions are in fact mortal sins. See Subilia, La giustificazione per fede, 132.  “Duplex est iustitia christianorum sicut duplex peccatum est hominis. Prima est aliena et ab extra infusa. Haec est qua Christus iustus est […] haec ergo iustitia datur hominibus in baptismo et omni tempore vere penitente […] Igitur per fidem in Christum sit iustitia Christi nostra iustitia et omnia quae sunt ipsius […] Haec est iustitia infinita et omnia peccata in momento absorbens […] Et haec iustitia est primo fundamento, causa, origo omnis iustitae proprie seu actualis quia vere ipsa datur pro originali iustitia in Adam perdita et operatur id immo maius quam illa iustitia originalis fuisset operatur […] Haec igitur iustitia aliena et sine actibus nostris per solam gratiam infusa nobis […] secunda iustitia est nostra et propria […] quod cooperemur illi prime et aliene. Haec nunc est illa conversatio bona in

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can almost be heard in Luther even in 1520 – for example, when he argues that “faith is not without works” and that “it is impossible for faith to exist without many great, incessant works.”²² However, this does not detract from the fact that the German theologian was strongly convinced that justification could not be derived from the works of humankind, but from Christ alone.²³ After he suffered excommunication – but not as a result of having suffered it –, Luther became perhaps even more explicit in the elaboration of his doctrine. For example, De servo arbitrio (1525) affirms the total gratuity of salvation: God justifies a person through the faith that God himself gives, not by works. In his debate with Erasmus of Rotterdam, Luther also uses the rhetorical device known as reductio ad absurdum to reinforce his argument. He states that if God ever justified a man based on his works, then no one could be saved, given man’s sinful nature; God, on the other hand, saves even the impious, despite all of their faults.²⁴ However, the Lutheran doctrine of justification finds its first official definition in the Augsburg Confession (1530), written by Philipp Melanchthon in the light of the diet held in the city of Augsburg, which intended to consistently expound the Lutheran thesis to Emperor Charles V. The fourth article reads as follows: “Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strengths, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins.”²⁵

operibus bonis primo in mortificationem carnis et crucifixionem concupiscientiarum […] secundo et in charitate erga proximum, tertio in humilitate ac timorem erga deum […] haec igitur iustitia est opus prioris iustitae et fructus atque sequela eiusdem;” M. Luther, Sermo de duplici iustitia (Lipsia 1519), 1r–v. As will be shown in the next section, the very notion of “double righteousness” will be further made use of by Catholic theologians.  Subilia, La giustificazione per fede, 201.  Subilia, La giustificazione per fede, 201.  “Sed fingamus, quaeso, Deum talem esse oportere, qui merita respiciat in damnandis, Nonne pariter contendemus & concedemus, ut & in salvandis merita spectet? Si rationem sequi volumus, aeque iniquum est, indignos coronari, asque indignos puniri. Concludamus itaque, Deum ex meritis praecedentibus iustificare debere, aut iniquum declarabimus, ut qui malis & impiis hominibus delecteretur, & impietatem eorum proemiis invitet & coronet. At vae nobis tunc miseris, apud illum Deum, Quis enim salvus erit? Vide igitur nequitiam cordis humani, Deum, cum indignos sine meritis [note] salvat, imo cum multis demeritis iustificat impios, non accusat iniquitatis, ibi non expostulat, cur hoc velit, cum sit iniquisissimum, sese iudice, sed quia sibi commodum & plausibile est, aequum & bonum iudicat;” M. Luther, De servo arbitrio, in Opera omnia (Wittenberg 1562), 465 – 66.  “Item docent, quod homines non possint iustificari coram Deo propriis viribus, meritis aut operibus, sed gratis iustificentur propter Christum per fidem, cum credunt se in gratiam recipi et peccata remitti propter Christum, qui sua morte pro nostris peccatis satisfecit;” Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (Gö ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 99; Eng. trans. available at: http://bookofconcord.org/augsburgconfession.php.

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The emperor openly condemned the Lutheran confession, stating that he wanted to strengthen the Edict of Worms.²⁶ The Church of Rome also replied in the same year with a confutatio pontificia, which affirmed the necessity of both grace and works for salvation.²⁷ However, strong in his convictions, Melanchthon opposed to the Confutatio Pontificia his Apologia Confessionis Augustanae in 1531, claiming that human beings act rightly to respond to the divine mandate, but that in order to be saved, a human being must not trust in good works and the merits earned through them, but in Christ alone. Therefore, humankind is freely justified by faith.²⁸ In this apology, Melanchthon refers to the notion of apprehensio Christi, which Luther would later develop extensively in his Commentary on Galatians. The reformer had already published a commentary on this letter in 1519, but he decided to put out a new edition in 1535, in which he focused on the notion of apprehensio Christi – that is, the knowledge that human beings have of Christ through faith. Precisely thanks to that knowledge, the form of the known object – Christ – is imprinted in the knowledgeable subject, the human being.²⁹ Thus, after having acquired Christ through faith in him, a person is justified and freed from sin and death: only after this spiritual rebirth can a human being actually perform good works, which are derived precisely from the condition of being “righteous.” Faith in Christ, then, is the formal cause of human charity:³⁰ Without it, every right action becomes impossible. Among the writings of Luther, the Commentary on Galatians takes a prominent position – not only because it is the first after the Roman confutatio,³¹ but also because the Formula Con Cf. P. Arand, J. A. Nestingen, and R. Kolb, The Lutheran Confessions: History and Theology of the Book of Concord (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 139.  See M. Marcocchi, “La risposta alla ‘Confessio augustana’: La ‘confutatio pontificia’ (1530),” Aevum 56, no. 3 (1982): 395 – 406. On the Confessio and the Confutatio, see also Arand, Nestingen, and Kolb, The Lutheran Confessions, 139 – 58.  “Necessario facienda sint bona opera propter mandatum Dei et quod non debeamus confidere nostris operibus, sed gratuita promissione Christi. Nam, ut iusticia legis merantur premia legis, certe gratiam et iustiticiam coram Deo non meremur nostri operibis […] Et in hanc sententia dicimus nos sola fide iustificari, quia fides apprehendit gratiam et misericordiam Dei […] Haec fides imputatur pro iusticia coram Deo;” Ch. Peters, Apologia Confessionis Augustanae: Untersuchungen zur Textgeschichte einer lutherischen Bekenntnisschrift (1530 – 1584) (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1997), 514.  “The proclamation of the Gospel evokes faith in the sinner. This faith grasps and possesses (apprehendit) Christ. The mode of this apprehension is to be understood in terms of Aristotelian epistemology, which Luther uses when he speaks about Christ as the form of faith. Aristotle claimed that in the act of knowing, the form of the object of knowledge is transferred into the knower;” Vainio, Justification and Participation, 31.  “Ex his satis intelligi potest, hic nihil oportere agi, quam audire sic ista gesta esse, & indubitata fide apprehendere, eaque est vere formata fides. Postea, Christo sic apprehenso, me mortuo legi, iustificato a peccato, & liberato a morte, diabolo & inferno per Christum, facio bona opera, diligo Deum, ago gratias, exerceo charitatem erga proximum. Sed illa charitas, vel sequentia opera, nec informant meam fidem nec ornant, sed fides mea informat & ornat charitatem. Haec nostra est Theologia, & paradoxa rationi mirabilia & absurda, quod non solum caecus, surdus sum legi, & liber ab ea, sed plane ei mortuus;” M. Luther, Commentarius secundus in epistolam ad Galatas (Wittenberg, 1554, 1535), 316v.  Vainio, Justification and Participation, 20 ff.

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cordiae will explicitly refer to this work in order to provide a better understanding of the doctrine of justification.³² Another important contribution was made by the Smalcald Articles, which were signed by the Schmalkaldic League in 1537 and reworked by Luther himself for publication in 1538.³³ In this text, the reformer focuses on various themes – such as the mass, purgatory, the invocation of saints, repentance, confession, and absolution –, but again, the foundation upon which his arguments are based is justification, which is “primus et principalis articulus.”³⁴ As Luther states, this is only possible through the death and resurrection of Christ, so it is only through faith that humankind is justified – and this without any contribution from the faithful.

5 The Diet of Regensburg (1541) and Double Righteousness After the previous failures, another diet was held in Regensburg, this one presided over by the papal legate Gasparo Contarini (1483 – 1542). This meeting represented the last attempt to mediate between Catholicism and Lutheranism before the Council of Trent.³⁵ Between April 27 and May 22, three theologians from each confession gathered to discuss various topics, most notably justification. The Catholics were represented by Johann Eck, Johann Gropper, and Julius Pflug, while Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, and Johann Pistorius represented the Protestants. The most important result of the Diet of Regensburg was the drawing up of Article V, in which the two sides reached an agreement on justification. This document contained the ideas of imputed righteousness and inherent righteousness. ³⁶ Contarini effectively describes

 Vainio, Justification and Participation, 20.  Concerning the Smalcald Articles, see Arand, Nestingen, and Kolb, The Lutheran Confessions, 146 – 58.  “Hic primus et principalis articulus est. Quod Iesus Christus, Deus et Dominus noster, sit propter peccata nostra mortuus et propter iustitiam nostram resurrexerit, Rom. 4.7 Et quod ipse solus sit Agnus Dei, qui tollit peccata mundi, Iohan. 1. 8 Et quod Deus omnium nostrum iniquitates in ipsum posuerit, Esaiae 53.9 Omnes peccaverunt et iustificantur gratis absque operibus seu meritis propriis ex ipsius gratia per redemptionem, quae est in Christo Iesu in sanguine eius, Rom. 3.1 ;” M. Luther, Die Schmalkaldischen Artikel, ed. K. Breuer and H.O. Schneider, in Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, 727.  At the latter meeting, there was a call for another, also in Regensburg, in 1546.  To consult the English translation of Article V, see A. Lane, Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant Dialogue: An Evangelical Assessment (New York: T&T Clark, 2002), 233 – 37. The critical edition is found in G. Pfeilschifter, Acta Reformationis Catholicae. Ecclesiam Germaniae Concernentia Saeculi XVI. Die Reformverhandlungen des deutschen Episkopats von 1520 bis 1570, vol. 6, 1538 bis 1548 (Regensburg: Pustet, 1974), 52– 54.

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both concepts in a letter sent to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga on May 25, 1541.³⁷ In this letter, the legate affirms that faith is what makes humankind’s justification possible, and that a person receives, at the same time, both donata righteousness – which is equivalent to imputata – and inhaerens righteousness. The donata is extrinsic to humankind, for it only comes through the death and resurrection of Christ. The inhaerens, in contrast, becomes an integral part of the human being, who then begins to be just and to carry out works of righteousness. Both types of righteousness are necessary for a person to be justified by God; the inherent righteousness, however, being incomplete (incohata), is imperfect and is therefore insufficient for a person to be justified in the sight of God³⁸ – hence the necessity of righteousness obtained through the sacrifice of Christ. This solution was initially appreciated by some Catholic theologians – such as Contarini, Gropper, and Albert Pighius – as well as by Protestants, such as Bucer. Thus the so-called doctrine of “double righteousness” was set forth. However, an insidious problem arose, over which the two sides debated: if justification is what makes a person formally righteous, a double righteousness establishes a twofold formal cause for justification. Thus, the same ontological dignity is attributed both to the iustitia imputata and to the inhaerens, even though the latter is considered imperfect precisely because it is inherent in humankind. Contarini, Gropper, and Bucer seem to propose this, even though the literature is divided on this matter.³⁹

 “Attingimus autem ad duplicem iustitiam, alteram nobis inherentem, qua incipimus esse iusti et efficimur consortes divine nature et habemus charitatem diffusam in cordibus nostris, alteram vero non inherentem sed nobis donatam cum Christo, iustitia inquam Christi, et omne eius meritum. Simul tempore utraque nobis donatur et utramque attingimus per fidem;” G. Contarini, “Ad secretarium Herculis Cardinalis Mantuani de iustificatione epistola, May 25, 1541”, in Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistolarum, Tractatuum Nova Collectio (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1930), 12:318, 34– 38.  “Hec etenim nostra iustitia [inherens] est inchoata et imperfecta, que tueri non potest, quin in multis modis offendamus […] Et id circo in cospecti Dei non possumus ob hanc iustitiam nostram haberi iusti et boni;” Contarini, “Ad secretarium Herculis Cardinalis Mantuani”, 319, 31– 35.  For example, Alister McGrath states that Contarini did not support a double cause of justification, but Hanns Rückert had a different take. See A. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 2:214n33; H. Rückert, Die theologische Entwicklung Gasparo Contarinis (Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Weber, 1926), 82n2. Citing the same letter, it appears that Rückert is correct: “Fide iustificamur, non formaliter, scilicet fides inhaerens nobis efficiat iustos, sicuti albedo efficit parietem album aut sanitas hominem sanum. Nam hoc pacto charitas et gratia Dei nobis inhaerens et iustitia Christi nobis donata et imputata efficit nos iustos ;” Contarini, Ad secretarium Herculis Cardinalis Mantuani, 319, 9 – 13. Even on Bucer there is no agreement: Lugioyo argues that “Bucer’s teaching of justification by faith cannot be accurately described as ‘double justification’ [not in the sense of two formal causes of justification]”; B. Lugioyo, Martin Bucer’s Doctrine of Justification: Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 37– 102, here 101. McGrath says the opposite: “The question which necessarily follows from this analysis is this: did Bucer actually teach a doctrine of double justification strictu sensu – in other words, that the formal cause of justification is both imputed and inherent righteousness? Bucer’s involvement in the drawing up of Regensburg Book (Liber Ratisboniensis), with its important article on justification, is certainly highly suggestive in this respect;” McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 2:35. Gropper, on the other hand, explicitly states this in his Antididagma (1544): “Iustificamur a Deo iustitia

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The debates over double righteousness continued until the Council of Trent: Gerolamo Seripando, at that time the superior general of the Augustinians, again proposed this doctrine in the discussions that led to the decree on justification on January 13, 1547. In October of 1546, for example, he made a cautious appeal to the fathers to not reject a doctrine proposed by Catholic theologians in order to avoid further schisms within the Church.⁴⁰ However, his proposal was rejected; God’s righteousness should in no way be considered double, especially if the inherent one is imperfect. It was of no use for Seripando to explain how such imperfection was not in the grace that a human being receives from God, but in the person who cooperates with it.⁴¹ To avoid any reference to double righteousness that could indicate a twofold formal cause of justification, the Tridentine Decree clearly states that “the only formal cause is God’s justice” (unica formalis causa est iustitia Dei).⁴²

6 The Tridentine Decree on Justification and the Lutheran Formula Concordiae For the fathers of the council, the decree on justification was of primary importance: the intent was to unequivocally define the Catholic doctrine, thus disentangling the only orthodoxy from all the heterodoxies that had developed over the centuries. To separate the truth from that which was false, however, was not easy: from June

duplici, tanquam per causas formales et essentiales. Quarum una et prior est consummate Christi iustitia: non quidem quomodo extra nos in ipso est, sed sicut et quando eadem nobis (dum tamen fide apprehenditus) ad iustitiam imputatur. Haec ipsa ita nobis imputata iustitia Christi, praecipua est et summa iustificationis nostrae causa, cui principaliter inniti et fidere debeamus. Aliter vero iustificamur formaliter, per iustitiam inhaerentem: quae remissione peccatorum simul cum renovationem Spiritus sancti, et diffusione charitatis in corda nostra, secundum mensuram fidei uniuscuisque, nobis donatur, infunditur, et sit propria: atque nobis propria quaedam iustitia, qua efficiamur;” G. Gropper, Antididagma, seu Christianae et catholicae religionis per reverendissimos et illustrissimos dominos canonicos metropolitanae ecclesiae Coloniensis propugnatio (Colonia, 1544), 13v.  “Si sermo hic [the doctrine of double righteousness] apud hereticos tantum audiatur est, procul dubio anathemizandus. Sin inveniatur apud catholicos, nollem certe propter unam voculam, que bonum sensum, pie interpreretur, accipere potest, concordiam ecclesie catholice scindi;” G. Seripando, Pro confirmanda sententia de duplici iustitia catholicorum quorundam doctrina, October 1546, in Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistolarum, Tractatuum Nova Collectio, 12:668, 31– 33.  “Iustitia nostra inherens esse possit imperfecta, non ratione gratiae, que in se perfecta est, sed ratione nostra, qui gratiae cooperamur, ex ea non deminamur iusti;” Seripando, Pro confirmanda sententia, 12:669, 6 – 8.  Decretum de iustificatione, in Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistolarum, Tractatuum Nova Collectio (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1911), 5.3:792, 7, l. 35. On Seripando and double justification, see also A. Marranzini, “Il problema della giustificazione nell’evoluzione del pensiero di Seripando,” in Geronimo Seripando e la Chiesa del suo tempo nel V centenario della nascita, ed. A. Cestaro (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1997), 227– 69, esp. 259 – 68. Also on Seripando, see McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 2:74– 77.

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1546 to January 13, 1547, the fathers discussed the doctrine of justification, and the only common denominator was the condemnation of the Lutheran theses. But even if there was concord in identifying what was heretical, they did not immediately reach a similar consensus as to what was catholic. The reason for this confusion is well-described by Hans Küng, who notes that, prior to the sixteenth century, theologians had not dealt with the theme of justification, which was generally relegated to “the treatises on grace or sacraments.”⁴³ In the prologue of the decree, reference is made to the disputes with the Lutherans which were capable of crippling the unity of the Church.⁴⁴ The text then states that humankind lost its state of primordial innocence with the fall of Adam, exposing humankind to the servitude of sin, which weakens human free will, although it does not completely compromise it.⁴⁵ God then sent his Son to redeem humankind, who, reborn in Christ, is justified by grace. So then what is justification? It is “the passage [translatio] from the state in which man is born a son of the first Adam to the state of grace and adoption of the children of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ our Savior.”⁴⁶ The need for spiritual cleansing is also emphasized – hence the sacrament of baptism, so that humankind can be justified. This process, however, requires the active participation of the faithful, who must first recognize their condition as sinners and possess the will to be redeemed, believing in the salvific work of Christ. During the process of justification, grace intervenes at different times and in different ways, which gives it many different characteristics. First, it is defined as “prevenient,” since it precedes the will of the human being who calls it to him- or herself; it becomes “quickening” because it leads to conversion, and “assisting” as it helps the faithful, in their cooperation with grace, to achieve the same goal: salvation.⁴⁷ The decree also

 Subilia, La giustificazione per fede, 84– 85. The reference is to H. Küng, Rechtfertigung. Die Lehre Karl Barths und eine katholische Besinnung (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1957).  “Cum hoc tempore non sine multarum animarum iactura et gravi ecclesiasticae unitatis detrimento erronea quaedam disseminata sit de iustificatione doctrina […] districtius inhibendo ne deinceps audeat quisquam aliter credere praedicare ut docere quam praesenti decreto statuitur ac declaratur;” Decretum de iustificatione, 791, 40 – 792, 4.  “Primum declarat sancta Synodus ad iustificationis doctrinam probe et sincere intelligendam oportere ut unusquisque agnoscat et fateatur quod cum omnes homines in praevaricatione Adae innocentiam perdidissent facti immundi et (ut apostolus inquit) natura filii irae quemadmodum in decreto de peccato originali exposuit usque adeo servi erant peccati et sub potestate diaboli ac mortis ut non modo gentes per vim naturae sed ne Iudaei quidem per ipsam etiam litteram legis Moysi inde liberari aut surgere possent tametsi in eis liberum arbitrium minime extinctum esset viribus licet attenuatum et inclinatum;” Decretum de iustificatione, 792, 7, 35).  “Quibus verbis iustificationis impii descriptio insinuatur ut sit translatio ab eo statu in quo homo nascitur filius primi Adae in statum gratiae et adoptionis filiorum Dei per secundum Adam Iesum Christum salvatorem nostrum; quae quidem translatio post Evangelium promulgatum sine lavacro regenerationis aut eius voto fieri non potest sicut scriptum est: nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu Sancto non potest introire in regnum Dei;” Decretum de iustificatione, 792, 4, 33 – 38.  “Declarat praeterea ipsius iustificationis exordium in adultis a Dei per Christum Iesum praeveniente gratia sumendum esse hoc est ab eius vocatione qua nullis eorum existentibus meritis vocantur ut qui

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establishes the causes of justification: along with eternal life, the purpose of justification is the glory of Christ and of God – whose mercy, which cleanses humankind of sin, is the efficient cause. Christ, on the other hand, is the “meritorious cause” – meaning that the faithful are saved by the merit Christ has acquired for humankind in God through his suffering and death. The instrument by which the faithful are justified is baptism; and finally, God’s righteousness, which makes humankind righteousn, is the only formal cause of justification, which not only renews the minds of the faithful, but actually makes them right in the sight of God.⁴⁸ The conciliar fathers then specify that the expression “justification by faith,” as used by Paul in his letters, indicates that faith is “the principle of human salvation, the foundation and the root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God”⁴⁹ and to be in communion with him. Justification, furthermore, is free, because it precedes a human being’s works. These statements, whose catholicity is evident, nevertheless serve to highlight their disagreement with those who considered the only possible justification that which comes through faith alone (sola fide), by grace alone (sola gratia), and by means of Christ alone (solus Christus). The Catholic Church, in fact, reaffirms that faith is necessary, but a human being must never be considered justified on the basis of that faith; a human being must always consider his or her own weakness and fear the grace of God, precisely because we cannot know for sure whether we have been saved or not. The faithful must indeed play a very active part in the plan of salvation: once a person has received the righteousness of God through faith in Christ, he or she must do good, progress in virtue, and obey the commandments. The conciliar fathers also reaffirm that without keeping the commandments, a person cannot be justified; in fact, God does not ask of humankind anything that a person cannot do – otherwise, such a request would be completely in vain. The decree then repeats very clearly that no one should be considered

per peccata a Deo aversi erant per eius excitantem atque adiuvantem gratiam ad convertendum se ad suam ipsorum iustificationem eidem gratiae libere assentiendo et cooperando disponantur ita ut tangente Deo cor hominis per Spiritus Sancti illuminationem neque homo ipse nihil omnino agat inspirationem illam recipiens quippe qui illam et abiicere potest neque tamen sine gratia Dei movere se ad iustitiam coram illo libera sua voluntate possit;” Decretum de iustificatione, 792, 5, 40 – 793, 5, 4.  “Huius iustificationis causae sunt: finalis quidem gloria Dei et Christi ac vita aeterna; efficiens vero misericors Deus qui gratuito abluit et sanctificat signans et ungens spiritu promissionis sancto qui est pignus haereditatis nostrae; meritoria autem dilectissimus unigenitus suus Dominus noster Iesus Christus qui cum essemus inimici propter nimiam charitatem qua dilexit nos sua sanctissima passione in ligno crucis nobis iustificationem meruit et pro nobis Deo Patri satisfecit; instrumentalis item sacramentum baptismi quod est sacramentum fidei sine qua nulli umquam contigit iustificatio. Demum unica formalis causa est iustitia Dei non qua ipse iustus est sed qua nos iustos facit qua videlicet ab eo donati renovamur spiritu mentis nostrae et non modo reputamur sed vere iusti nominamur et sumus ;” Decretum de iustificatione, 793, 7, 28 – 37.  Decretum de iustificatione, 794, 8, 13 – 14.

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justified based solely on their own faith.⁵⁰ On the contrary, humankind, through the gift of perseverance, must continue to do good deeds. If they fall into sin, the faithful lose the state of grace, but not the faith; if they are inspired by God, then they can be restored through the sacrament of penance, returning to that state of righteousness.⁵¹ Salvation occurs, therefore, both because a person freely receives justification by faith and because, by doing good until death, a person can achieve the merits of justification by works.⁵² In this context, the conciliar fathers reaffirm their opposition to the doctrine of double righteousness: after having clearly stated that the only formal cause of justification is the righteousness of God, they also state that what is alleged to be two justifications – one inherent and the other given – are in fact one and the same.⁵³ Thirty-three canons are attached to the end of the decree, condemning many heretical claims – from the Pelagians to the Reformed – and placing Catholicism in the aurea mediocritas that makes the Church immune from excesses, whether the exclusivity of work or that of faith in the plan of salvation. Catholicism wants to demonstrate the conciliation of these two elements (faith and works), which are both true because both are revealed in the Scriptures. The Formula Concordiae was developed in 1577 by the Lutheran Church, thirty years after the Tridentine Decree. The third of its twelve articles focuses on justification. First, it reminds us that original sin inheres permanently in humankind’s nature and is indissolubly bound to its substance and essence.⁵⁴ Human free will, therefore, is irretrievably compromised, without the intervention of grace. Christ, therefore, becomes the only hope of salvation: he is righteous, the only one who is so before God, for he alone forgives sins by grace, without humankind having any merit of its own.

 “Sed neque illud asserendum est oportere eos qui vere iustificati sunt absque ulla omnino dubitatione apud semetipsos statuere se esse iustificatos neminem que a peccatis absolvi ac iustificari nisi eum qui certo credat se absolutum et iustificatum esse atque hac sola fide absolutionem et iustificationem perfici quasi qui hoc non credit de Dei promissis de que mortis et resurrectionis Christi efficacia dubitet ;” Decretum de iustificatione, 794, 9, 25 – 29.  “Qui vero ab accepta iustificationis gratia per peccatum exciderunt rursus iustificari poterunt cum excitante Deo per poenitentiae sacramentum merito Christi amissam gratiam recuperare procuraverint;” Decretum de iustificatione, 796, 14, 12– 14.  “Atque ideo bene operantibus usque in finem et in Deo sperantibus proponenda est vita aeterna et tamquam gratia filiis Dei per Christum Iesum misericorditer promissa et tamquam merces ex ipsius Dei promissione bonis ipsorum operibus et meritis fideliter reddenda;” Decretum de iustificatione, 792, 16, 3 – 6.  “Ita neque propria nostra iustitia tamquam ex nobis propria statuitur neque ignoratur aut repudiatur iustitia Dei; quae enim iustitia nostra dicitur quia per eam nobis inhaerentem iustificamur illa eadem Dei est quia a Deo nobis infunditur per Christi meritum;” Decretum de iustificatione, 797, 16, 17– 20.  “Peccatum enim Originis non est quoddam delictum, quod actu perpetratur, sed intime inhaeret infixum ipsi naturae, substantiae et Essentiae hominis;” Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, vol. 2, Die Konkordienformel, ed. I. Dingel (Gö ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 1225 – 27.

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God gives and imputes (donat et imputat) to humankind the righteousness of Christ, and through that righteousness humankind is justified. The same term, justification, does not mean “to absolve of sins.”⁵⁵ With the profession of the Lutheran faith in 1577, the Protestant Church reaffirms once again the sola fide, sola gratia, and solus Christus that bring about justification before God, definitively excluding the possibility that humankind, working together with grace, can make any contribution to salvation based on any merit of its own.

7 Conclusion: Justification as an Ecumenical Problem During the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church explained what constituted justification for the Church of Rome; with the Formula Concordiae, Lutheranism professed its own position. For just over four hundred years, the two churches have been fixated on their own positions. The Second Vatican Council (1962– 1965), however, opened the way for an interfaith dialogue through the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (November 21, 1964).⁵⁶ In 1965, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation in the US initiated a Catholic-Lutheran dialogue,⁵⁷ which produced the Malta Report, “The Gospel and the Church” in 1972,⁵⁸ and eventually the joint statement on “Justification by

 “Christus vere sit nostra iustitia […] ipsum nostram esse coram Deo iustitiam, quod Dominus nobis peccata remittit ex mera gratia absque ullo respectu praecedentium, praesentium aut consequentium nostrorum operum, dignitatis aut meriti. Ille enim donat atque imputat nobis iustitiam oboedientiae Christi, propter eam iustitiam a Deo in gratiam recipimur et iusti reputamur […] solam fidem esse illud medium et instrumentum, quo Christum salvatorem et ita in Christo iustitiam illam, quae coram iuditio Dei consistere potest, apprehendimus; propter Christum enim fides illa nobis ad iustitiam imputatur, Rom. 4 propter solam ipsius oboedientiam ex gratia remissionem peccatorum habeamus, sancti et iusti coram Deo Patre reputemur et aeternam salutem consequamur Credimus, docemus et confitemur, vocabulum iustificare phrasi scripturae sacrae in hoc articulo idem significare quod absolvere a peccatis;” in Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, 2:1237.  In fact, “the unmistakable sign of change when it comes to the controversy over justification came in 1957 with the publication of the thesis of Hans Küng on justification, in which the author, after comparing Karl Barth’s view of the doctrine of justification with that of the Council of Trent, arrives at the conclusion that between the two perspectives there is a fundamental agreement and that the differences are not such as to justify ecclesial division” (il segnale inequivocabile del cambiamento nel modo di considerare la controversia sulla giustificazione era venuto nel 1957 con la pubblicazione della tesi di Hans Küng sulla giustificazione nella quale l’autore, dopo aver messo a confronto la dottrina della giustificazione di Karl Barth con quella del concilio di Trento, giunge alla conclusione che tra le due prospettive esiste un accordo fondamentale e che le differenze non sono tali da giustificare la divisione ecclesiale); A. Maffeis, “La giustificazione nel dialogo ecumenico. Chiarimenti e nodi irrisolti,” Rassegna di Teologia 37 (1996): 625.  Maffeis, “La giustificazione,” 625.  Maffeis, “La giustificazione”, 626 – 27.

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Faith” in 1985.⁵⁹ Other documents followed: in 1986, the Lehrverurteilungen-kirchentrennend? (Do Doctrinal Convictions Still Divide Churches?);⁶⁰ and, in 1994, the document “Church and Justification.”⁶¹ Finally, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was signed on October 31, 1999, allowing the two parties “to articulate a common understanding of our justification made by the grace of God through faith in Christ.”⁶² This document opens with an analysis of the biblical message of justification, with special reference to the New Testament tradition,⁶³ and with the admission that justification is an “ecumenical problem.”⁶⁴ Having laid these foundations, the first statement is that justification “is a work of the one-in-three God,” that Christ was sent to earth to redeem humankind from sin, and that Jesus’ death and resurrection are “the foundation and presupposition of justification.”⁶⁵ Christ is, therefore, “our righteousness […] of which we partake through the Holy Spirit.”⁶⁶ In addition, both Lutherans and Catholics agree that justification is not the result of humankind’s works, but rather of the grace of God and faith in Christ – which is, in any case, a gift from God. Following the presentation of these common assumptions is a more analytical explanation, introducing every aspect of justification with the eloquent expression “together we profess.” However, each joint profession follows the Catholic and Lutheran interpretations in a pattern that seems to provide a shared argument and two antitheses – the Catholic and the Lutheran, respectively – but no synthesis.⁶⁷

 H. G. Anderson and T. A. Murphy (eds.), Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985).  K. Lehmann, and W. Pannenberg (eds.), Lehrverurteilungen—kirchentrennend?, vol. 1, Rechtfertigung, Sakramente und Amt im Zeitalter der Reformation und heute, (Freiburg: Herder; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986). See also Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 3.  Maffeis, “La giustificazione”, 626 – 27.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 5.  Indeed, “We also share the belief that the message of justification specifically addresses the very core of the New Testament testimony concerning God’s salvific work in Christ” (Condividiamo anche la convinzione che il messaggio della giustificazione ci orienta in modo particolare verso il centro stesso della testimonianza che il Nuovo Testamento dà dell’azione salvifica di Dio in Cristo); Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 17.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 13.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 15.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 15.  Indeed, in Risposta della chiesa cattolica alla dichiarazione congiunta tra la chiesa cattolica e la federazione luterana mondiale circa la dottrina della giustificazione, it is expressly stated that “Some [differences] affect aspects of content and, therefore, are not all mutually compatible, as stated in no. 40 [of the Joint Declaration]. If it is true that in the matters on which a consensus has been reached, then the verdicts of the Council of Trent no longer apply, however, divergences that concern other points must instead be overcome before it can be affirmed, as stated in general in no. 41, that these points no longer fall under the verdicts of the Council of Trent. This applies first and foremost to the doctrine of simul iustus et peccator” (alcune [differenze] toccano aspetti di contenuto e quindi non sono tutte reciprocamente compatibili, come invece si afferma al nr. 40 [della Dichiarazione congiun-

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There are, in fact, some important differences. For example, concerning the contribution of humankind to the plan of salvation, Catholicism claims that there is a “cooperation” of the faithful, which is made possible by grace. Lutheranism, on the other hand, reiterates that justification is purely passive. Both confessions then affirm that good works are “a consequence of justification and represent the fruits of it” (conseguenza della giustificazione e ne rappresentano i frutti).⁶⁸ Lutherans, however, maintain the idea that these cannot be regarded as merits, nor are they useful for salvation. Catholics, on the other hand, believe that the actions of humankind are promised “a reward in heaven” (un salario in cielo).⁶⁹ Both confessions agree that without faith, there can be no justification; nevertheless, there is a strong divergence when it comes to the relationship between the human being and sin. Lutherans consider human beings simul iustus et peccator: even though a person is declared righteous before God, “sin still dwells in him” (in lui abita ancora il peccato).⁷⁰ For Catholics, on the other hand, among the faithful, “there remains an inclination (concupiscence) that comes from sin and leads to sin” (resta un’inclinazione (concupiscenza) che viene dal peccato e spinge al peccato).⁷¹ Despite the differences, the document concludes: “The understanding of the doctrine of justification set forth in this Declaration shows the existence of a consensus among Lutherans and Catholics.”⁷² Therefore, in the light of this reciprocal approach, “the doctrinal convictions of the sixteenth century, to the extent that they relate to the doctrine of justification, appear in a new light: the teaching of the Lutheran Churches presented in this Declaration does not fall under the convictions of the Council of Trent. The convictions of Lutheran Confessions do not affect the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church as it is presented in this Declaration”.⁷³

ta]. Se è vero inoltre che in quelle verità sulle quali un consenso è stato raggiunto, le condanne del Concilio di Trento non si applicano più, tuttavia le divergenze che riguardano altri punti devono invece essere superate prima di poter affermare, come si dice genericamente al nr. 41, che tali punti non ricadono più sotto le condanne del Concilio di Trento. Ciò vale in primo luogo per la dottrina sul simul iustus et peccator); this text can be accessed online at the following address: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_01081998_off-answer-catholic_it.html.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 37.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 38.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 29.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 30.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 40.  Dichiarazione congiunta sulla dottrina della giustificazione, no. 41.

André Birmelé

The Theological Self-Understanding of the Evangelical Lutheran Churches The Lutheran World Federation is comprised of member churches that have committed themselves to the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Small Catechism. These reference texts provide the foundation for the theological self-understanding of Evangelical Lutheran churches worldwide. The Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana = CA) was presented to Emperor Charles V in June 1530¹. Its goal was to make clear to the political authorities that the basic tenets of the Lutheran Reformation were in agreement with the Christian teachings established by the Councils of the first centuries, which were the established norm of the empire. This is demonstrated in 21 short articles. In a second part of greater length, the problems that troubled the Church at the time are addressed. It was proposed to summon a council to discuss these issues, but this wish was never achieved. Since this document was not rejected by the emperor, church and political authorities in various regions decided that, in the future, pastors would be placed under obligation to this text at the time of their ordination. This procedure had become necessary because the commitment to obey the current bishops was no longer possible. The hitherto-accepted understanding of the office of the bishop had been rejected by the Reformation. Thus, the text presented to the emperor at the Imperial Diet in Augsburg slowly became a standard confession that created a bond between the various churches of the Lutheran Reformation. Its authority grew in the following centuries, and its status remains in place to this day. The purpose of this chapter is not to simply reiterate the articles of the CA. They bear the characteristics of the sixteenth-century context in which they were formulated. Over the course of history, the individual articles received different emphases and interpretations according to time and place – a pattern which is also characteristic of current Lutheran theology. Nevertheless, certain basic theological principles have remained consistent throughout the centuries. These will be discussed in this paper. In doing so, it will be important to observe the organization and systematic correlation of the different faith statements. The CA provides a precise articulation of religious truths, and this plays a major role in the theological self-understanding of the EvanTranslation from German: Martin Dorn.  The standard texts of the CA and the Small Catechism are found in the volume Bekenntnisschriften der evangelischen-lutherischen Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014, new ed.) = BSELK – the compendium of authoritative confessional writings used by German-language Evangelical Lutheran churches. The English version used here is available at www.bookofconcord.org: Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church: German-Latin-English (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-045

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gelical Lutheran Church to this day. This chapter will address the central theological themes and their decisive articulation in defining Lutheran identity.

1 Christ, the First and Chief Article This formulation, which goes back to Luther himself, introduces the second part of the Smalcald Articles. ² The good news of the gospel is centered on Christ alone (solus Christus). This fundamental conviction defines the Lutheran understanding of theology: theology, the Church, and even church life as a whole, all have meaning in Christ alone.

1.1 The Understanding of God The concept of God is of central importance, for in confessing the trinitarian God, emphasis is placed on God’s condescension as the only path to salvation. God divests and reveals himself. Through Jesus Christ humanity has access to God. In Jesus Christ, God came to all people for their salvation, in that he – in the form of frailty – allowed himself to be handed over and seized. All of this transpired in the incarnation, in the humanity of Jesus, and in his suffering and death for humanity on the cross. Likewise, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God reveals himself to be the victorious Lord who has conquered death and all the powers that enslave humankind. In the humanity of the Word and the corporeality of the sacraments, he has bestowed faith – through the Holy Spirit – for all time. This work of salvation on God’s part, as God continues his condescension in the form of word and sacrament, will be complete on the day when humankind will see God in his kingdom face-toface. The salvific encounter between God and humanity is initiated by God alone. God comes to humanity in the manner of his own choosing. The individual does not initiate his or her move toward God by means of lofty thoughts or deep mysticism. With the emphasis on God’s condescension, his incarnation in Jesus Christ, the Lutheran Reformation wanted to express what they thought of as the central theme of the biblical message, in opposition to the speculative movements in the theology of the Late Middle Ages and the spiritualism of certain religious dissidents of the radical Reformation (e. g., the Schwärmer). This remains valid today and is upheld against all spiritualistic tendencies in piety and theology. Likewise, with respect to philosophical and rational attempts to understand God, which are certainly important to theolog-

 The Smalcald Articles, written by Luther himself, are included both in the BSELK and the Book of Concord. See BSELK 713 – 85. Here BSELK 726; www.bookofconcord.org, Smalcald Articles, part 2, article 1.

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ical thought, it remains necessary to emphasize that here – in this temporal, physical world –, the encounter between God and humanity takes place by the power of the incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth. The belief in God’s condescension in human form calls the Church and the individual believers to care for the neediest among their fellow human beings, for in them one encounters God himself.

1.2 The Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ The condescension of God reaches its climax in the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ³. Here, God reveals his love to humanity by grace alone (sola gratia). God acts because of human sin, which is not primarily a specific misdeed or the sum of single human transgressions. Sin is the fundamental human attitude in relationship to God. God created all people to have fellowship with him. He created humankind in his own image and deemed them worthy, in responsibility before him, of participating in his work in the world. True humanity only occurs when people affirm this relationship to God, their creator; live their lives on the basis of this relationship; and allow it to determine their behavior in fellowship with others. But humankind have alienated themselves from God and betrayed their fellowship with him. People cannot restore this relationship on their own. Nothing remains for them but to rely on themselves, to base their existence on their own work and merits. Humanity as a whole has thus become sinful, without ending its status as God’s creation. For this lost humanity, God, on his own, begins anew. He accepts men and women by grace alone. In the death of Jesus Christ and in his victorious resurrection, God makes true humanity possible for all, in fellowship with himself, through the forgiveness of sin. He leads them through faith to a new life in freedom from the power of sin, in the hope of resurrection and eternal life, and in trust in his grace, even in judgment. Thus, the individual is liberated and called to glorify God, to witness for Jesus Christ, and to live a life of service and commitment to his or her fellow human beings. Luther could not accept the concept – prevalent at the time – that saw in the cross of Christ primarily God’s punishment. The resultant understanding of the mass as a sacrifice offered by the Church for the purpose of redemption and reconciliation with God was rejected by Luther. Anselm’s teaching of satisfactio was often understood in this manner. Using the early church fathers, Luther expounds on the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ in various ways. The simplest is perhaps a stanza composed by Luther, which has its origin in traditional liturgies: “Es war ein wunderlicher Krieg, da Tod und Leben rungen; das Leben behielt den Sieg, es hat den Tod verschlungen. Die Schrift hat verkündet das, wie ein Tod den anderen fraß, ein Spott

 See CA article 3.

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der Tod ist worden.”⁴ Now a new situation arises: life is no longer ended by death. Easter establishes a new creation. This approach is a cantus firmus of the theological self-understanding of the Lutheran churches. Regarding more recent Lutheran theology, one can refer to the Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, in particular. He interprets Easter as prolepsis. In this event, the coming kingdom of God is anticipated, and this needs to be expressed in this day and age.⁵ The understanding of the cross as God’s willingness to take death upon himself receives special emphasis in the work of the Lutheran theologian Eberhard Jüngel.⁶

2 The Gospel of the Justification of the Human Being before God through Faith Alone (sola fide) The true significance of the cross and the resurrection is revealed through human participation. These events took place pro nobis. In the Smalcald Article referred to above, Luther places the emphasis on Christ as the “Chief Article.” The reformer then adds that faith in the crucified and resurrected Christ cannot be separated from the justification thereby given. Justification is the anthropological and soteriological dimension of this event.

2.1 The Justification of the Sinner Human salvation is in no way based on merit, but is entirely a gift of God. This delineation makes the Lutheran understanding of justification very clear. In as much as one believed in the Middle Ages that the effective power of grace needed to be augmented by human effort in order to generate salvation, against that point, the Lutheran Reformation emphasized that human beings simply do not have that capability. Even to try it is an affront to God and his act of grace in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God’s love for humanity, the very core of the gospel, means that people should renounce a religion based on works or merit.

 See stanza 4 of the hymn Christ lag in Todesbanden. This verse appears in stanza 2 of the traditional English rendition from Richard Massie (1800 – 1887), Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands: “It was a strange and dreadful strife/When life and death contended;/The victory remained with life,/The reign of death was ended./Holy Scripture plainly says/That death is swallowed up by death,/Its sting is lost forever;” see Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House/Philadelphia: Board of Publications, Lutheran Church in America, 1978), no. 134.  Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (London/New York: T&T Clark, 1991), 2:220 and 441– 42.  Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, trans. Darrell L. Guder (London/New Dehli/New York/Sydney: Bloomsbury, 1983, repr. 2014), 100 – 04 and 343 – 68.

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Luther came to this understanding through intense study of Holy Scripture. In this process, the language and concepts of the Apostle Paul took on a role of central importance. Luther then made use of the apostle’s legal terminology to develop the message of justification. In the act of justification, God pronounces the human being righteous. He declares that this person is his child. The emphasis is placed on God’s positive verdict. The human response occurs in faith. Faith is the unconditional and absolute “yes” to God’s offer of grace. Faith is the regained childhood and thus a radical renunciation of any appeal to one’s own merit before God. Luther also expresses this in images. In his exposition of Christian freedom, he describes this as a “joyful change” and makes use of biblical metaphors of marriage: The result is a most pleasing picture [. . . Christ] shares in the sins, death, and hell of his bride [. . .] he makes them his own [. . .] It is as if he sinned, suffered, died and descended into hell in order to overcome them all; however, sin, death and hell could not swallow him. In fact, they were swallowed up by him [. . .] Thus the soul that trusts Christ and receives him as its bridegroom through its pledge of faith is free from all sins, secure against death and hell, and given eternal righteousness, life, and salvation.⁷

Because Christ adorns the individual and constantly renews this gift, a person can be assured of salvation.⁸ The focus on the doctrine of justification characterizes the self-understanding of the Evangelical Lutheran churches, and this message, as such, is undisputed. Current theological research and interdenominational dialogue regarding the question of justification have made possible an official declaration common to both the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ), which was signed in a ceremony in Augsburg in 1999.⁹ The text contains the following statement: In faith we together hold the conviction that justification is the work of the triune God. The Father sent his Son into the world to save sinners. The foundation and presupposition of justification is the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. Justification thus means that Christ himself is our righteousness, in which we share through the Holy Spirit in accord with the will of the Father. Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.¹⁰

 Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian: Luther Study Edition, trans. Mark D. Tranvik (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008) 62– 63 = WA 7:55)  This claim of the certainty of salvation was condemned at the Council of Trent. Cf. Dekret über die Rechtfertigung, in Enchiridion Symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, eds. Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünermann (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2014), no. 1563 – 64 (=DH 1563 – 1564).  Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (= JDDJ). Available at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-jointdeclaration_en.html.  JDDJ 15.

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But, at the same time, the Catholic side reminds the Lutherans – quite rightly – that the Christian message of human salvation is also articulated in terms other than those of justification. The terminology of justification is not the only valid form for expressing the central points of the biblical message. In the history of Lutheran thought, several points have repeatedly come up for discussion. They are often comprised of questions dealing with the relationship between the faith that justifies and good works, the understanding of justification as declaring righteous and as making righteous, the relationship between justification and sanctification, and the relevance of the message of justification in its traditional form for people today.

2.2 The Significance of Good Works Already at the time of the Reformation, the Catholic side accused Luther of spurning human works. Luther reacted with the following statement: “If faith is without works, even the smallest, then it does not justify, indeed, then it is not faith at all. It is not possible for faith to exist without diligent, numerous and extensive works.”¹¹ The necessity of good works is the most unnecessary point of debate. The longest article in the first part of the CA, article 20, is devoted to this question, after the problem has already been explicitly mentioned in article 6. Good works belong to faith. However, the correct formulation of this concept is decisive: good works are not the condition upon which God declares a person righteous; rather, they are the unconditional consequence of that justification. The absence of good works is a sign of the lack of faith. Human action does not lead to a new existence before God; rather, the new existence granted to the human being always has new human action before God as a result. In the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, both Lutherans and Catholics have made their agreement on this point public¹². The Lutheran churches endeavor to maintain the fundamental objective of the Reformation’s understanding of justification: to uphold the grace of God in a society in which people increasingly regard themselves as their own creators. It has become necessary to emphasize both the sovereignty of God’s promise of salvation and the answer of faith when confronted with attempts to reduce the Christian message to ethics or with old and new tendencies toward a one-sided, action-oriented understanding of the Christian faith. The Lutheran tradition places special emphasis on the social dimension of the message of justification. Together with other churches and religions, the Lutheran churches actively support efforts for more justice in the world.

 Martin Luther, Questio, utrum opera faciant ad justificationem (1520): WA 7:231.  JDDJ 37– 39.

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2.3 An Anthropological Paradigm Shift In 1968, the Roman Catholic theologian Otto H. Pesch demonstrated that Lutheran theology has undertaken a paradigm shift.¹³ Pesch examines the difference between Luther and Thomas Aquinas. He refers to Luther’s theology as “existential” (or better: “relational”), while that of Thomas is “sapiential” (“substance-ontological”). Pesch sees in these two theological modes of operation – linguistic and philosophical methods – without any real ramifications on the content itself. Many classic points of opposition disappear when one accepts that each of these theologians can be interpreted on the basis of the categories “existential” (Luther) or “sapiential” (Thomas). Even if Pesch’s conclusions are not always accepted, modern theological research has confirmed this difference in the respective lines of thought, and much ecumenical discussion is based on this insight. Furthermore, the idea of relational anthropology now extends far beyond the Lutheran tradition and defines theological thought in many parts of the world. One can illustrate this paradigm shift through the debate that has endured for centuries between Lutherans and Catholics over Luther’s favorite assertions. Even to this day, the debate has not been completely resolved, as demonstrated by the process by which the JDDJ was formulated. For Luther, the believer is both righteous and a sinner at the same time (simul justus simul peccator). The Council of Trent rejected this doctrine and maintained that the justified individual is also wholly righteous.¹⁴ This occurred because, according to Catholic thought, justification, grace, sin, and faith are understood to be human properties. Luther’s assertion is not acceptable in this line of thought. On the other hand, Luther understands sin and grace not as human properties, but rather as the contradictory nature of the relationships in which a person lives. Sin is the state of alienation from God; grace is the new communion with him. When one stands before God (coram deo), one is wholly righteous, because God forgives one’s sins and grants one the righteousness of Christ. This becomes one’s own through faith, and Christ renders one righteous before God. But in view of the self, the believer also recognizes, by means of the law, that he or she remains wholly a sinner at the same time – that sin still lives in the person, for one places one’s trust repeatedly in false gods and does not love God with the complete love that God as creator requires. This means the justified must also ask God daily for forgiveness. They are called time and time again to repentance and penitence, and forgiveness will be granted. The basic concept of the Reformation is centered on the righteousness that the believer never has on his own, but which he or she always has in Christ alone. Jus-

 Otto Hermann Pesch, The God Question in Thomas Aquinas and Luther, trans. Gottfried G. Krodel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972).  DH 1528.

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tification as a whole is understood and described as a new relationship between the believer and the Lord. If one bears this anthropological paradigm shift initiated by the Lutheran Reformation in mind, then, as Pesch has shown, many points that dominated the sixteenth-century debate over the concept of justification can be seen from a completely different angle. Even today, this relational understanding of humanity is decisive for Lutheran theology.

2.4 The Article with which the Church Stands and Falls In the Smalcald Article cited above, Luther places the witness of Christ and the message of justification side by side, and then adds: “Of this article nothing can be yielded or surrendered [nor can anything be granted or permitted contrary to the same], even though heaven and earth, and whatever will not abide, should sink to ruin.”¹⁵ The cross and the resurrection of Christ, together with God’s act of justification for the benefit of humanity, are two sides of the same reality. This act of God is the gospel. All preaching, every act of the Church, and the entirety of Christian existence has here its definitive and non-negotiable core. Throughout the history of Lutheran theology, this core concept has always received special emphasis. It has been called the article with which the Church stands and falls: articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. This phrase goes back to the Genevan Reformed theologian, François Turrettini.¹⁶ The purpose of this emphasis is pastoral, for this “article” addresses the question of human conscience, which – under the shadow of death – must decide between lies and the truth. Faith focuses the believer’s attention on Christ and makes it possible for the believer to discover the merciful and redeeming judgment of the Lord. Because this article helps us to live our lives before God, it becomes the quintessence of Christian life and of all church doctrine. The “article” of justification is an “article of faith,” an expression of the conviction of the believer, and not primarily a teaching, a product of human reason, that makes the believer give an account of his or her faith. A doctrinal dimension is not completely excluded here, because teachings become necessary in order to express faith, but in the end the purpose of this “article” is not didactic. It was not formulated to present a doctrine that would take precedence over all others. Rather, it expresses the message of the gospel – a message that surpasses every theological concept and, when necessary, exposes a concept’s fallacy if it does not adhere to the work of God alone: the will of God expressed in the Christ event, and the message of salvation, which makes  BSELK 727; see www.bookofconcord.org, Smalcald Articles, part 2, article 1.5.  Cf. the research by Theodor Mahlmann, “Articulus stantis et (vel) cadentis ecclesiae,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG) (4th ed., Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 1:799. In his commentary on Psalm 130 in 1532, Luther used a similar phrase: “quia isto articulo stante stat Ecclesia, ruente ruit Ecclesia” in: WA 40, III, 352.

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the life of the believers coram deo possible. Every teaching on justification and every christological tenet must be measured against this article. On this basis, one can approach the organization and correlation of the various articles of faith and doctrine, as the structure of the CA itself makes clear. Once this fundamental conviction is formulated, it is followed subsequently by the single articles of faith. What needs to be said about the Church, baptism, the Eucharist, repentance, church order, and the like is all based on this one “article,” which then has to be expressed in the individual acts and aspects of church life. In modern times, this conceptual structure was discussed and developed at the General Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Helsinki (1963).¹⁷ The emphasis on the “hermeneutic function” of this “article” and the ensuing systematic correlation of the single articles of faith are characteristic of the self-understanding of the Evangelical Lutheran churches.

3 Holy Scripture and Human Faith Before we turn to the consequences of this fundamental conviction for the nature of the Church, two points need to be examined that are not directly addressed in the CA, but are nevertheless complementary to what has been said thus far: the understanding of Scripture and the understanding of faith.

3.1 Scripture Alone (sola scriptura) The Reformation of the sixteenth century is defined by its constant study of the message of Holy Scripture. The Reformers explored Scripture diligently and wrote commentaries on all the books of the Bible. The new possibilities presented by the printing press and the rise of humanism created a new context of which the reformers were aware, and to which they also contributed through their study of Scripture. The emphasis on God’s act of salvation in the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the message of justification were products of this renewed attention to the biblical witness. In the conflict between the recognized authorities – Holy Scripture, decisions regarding church doctrine, and ecclesiastical law – the Reformers became convinced that only the Bible, as the witness to the gospel, can hold such authority. Lutheranism has always been associated with the idea of “Scripture alone” (sola scriptura). With this formulation, the Lutheran Reformation wanted to express three things: 1) Scripture is self-revelatory. It does not need any additions. It is complete, self-sufficient, and effective on its own. It makes full access to the gospel of salva-

 The lecture by the German theologian Gerhard Gloege was decisive on this point. See G. Gloege, Gnade für die Welt. Kritik und Krise des Luthertums (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964).

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tion, the word of God, possible. 2) Scripture is its own interpreter and explicit on its own. It does not need church doctrine to be understood. Rather, every church teaching needs to be evaluated on the basis of Scripture. 3) For these reasons, Scripture is the decisive and enduring norm for church doctrine and preaching. This understanding is, and remains, the guiding norm for the Lutheran churches. Closely tied to this is the rejection of literalistic or fundamentalistic understandings of sola scriptura. Authority is not based on every single letter in the Bible. Scripture as a collection of texts is not the living gospel of Jesus Christ from which faith and the Church draw life. Scripture has to become gospel. This is the work of the Holy Spirit when Scripture is interpreted, and its message is fervently preached and imparted to the people so that it becomes a liberating message of salvation for them. The Holy Spirit discloses the gospel, the “very core of Scripture.” Every passage and text of the Bible is to be interpreted in the light of the gospel. This core is revealed in the witness of Scripture and needs to be discovered anew by paying constant attention to the text. Through proclamation based on the norm of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit awakens and endows faith. This “core of Scripture” is not something attributed to it from the outside. Holy Scripture can only gain significance for Christians as a witness to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ if it is used dynamically. God’s word signifies encounter and communication in that people are addressed by the written word through the Holy Spirit. The Lutheran churches of the modern era do not reject the multitude of methods currently used to read and understand the Bible. The Lutheran theologian Rudolf Bultmann, for example, exercised great influence on the development of historicalcritical research on Scripture and delved into the original meaning of biblical texts. Academic methods of this kind are important to Lutherans. But they belong to a different category than the structure of Christian faith, which does not equate the word of God, the gospel, and Scripture, but does not separate them, either. The act of interpreting Scripture on the basis of its very core – Jesus Christ, pro nobis – is an act of faith.

3.2 The Distinction between Law and Gospel Regarding the interpretation of Scripture, the Lutheran theologian Gerhard Ebeling has demonstrated that the selfsame biblical text can be both law and gospel. It can be a deadening letter if its interpretation becomes an excuse for mere human words. This characteristic can apply to the most beautiful and important Bible passages. But in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the same Bible passages become

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the living word – gospel. This can happen in even the most difficult and dark passages of the Bible. Ebeling illustrates this with reference to Luther himself.¹⁸ But the distinction between law and gospel has another dimension in Lutheran theology, owing to the fact that the term law can be understood in various ways: on the one hand, “law” can refer to God’s creative will and thus to his consecrating word; on the other, it can awaken human awareness of sin and lead to the gospel – it leads to Christ. Law is by no means only a negative term. It opens the way to the gospel, by which the sinner receives salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. So the word of God is revealed both as a word of demand and judgment (law) and as a word of liberation and renewal (gospel). This distinction upholds the characteristic of grace in the gospel against every form of legalism, which turns the righteousness bestowed by the gospel into a human righteousness that has to be earned by each individual. But through the demanding and judging function of the law, all people – as God’s created beings – are charged and convicted as sinners. Accordingly, law and gospel must be distinguished – but not separated – from each other. When the inherent tension of the law towards the “yes” of the gospel is blurred, or the gospel itself cannot be clearly seen anymore and is obscured by the law, then Lutheran theology emphasizes their proper correlation.

3.3 Faith as “Being in Christ” The study of Scripture led Luther to a new understanding of the word “faith.” In the theology of the Middle Ages, the term “faith” was generally equated with “accepting as true.” With this understanding, Luther’s concept of “through faith alone” (sola fide) could only be rejected, for in the traditional theology, faith had to be supplemented with works of love in order to lead to salvation. Here also Luther refers to Paul. He uses the concept of faith as a description of the fundamental relationship between God and humanity. Faith as the process of salvation between God and humanity concerns the whole of a person’s being. Faith is trust. Faith is fellowship with Christ, “being in Christ.” Luther initiates here the paradigm shift discussed above. Faith is a relational term. According to Luther, faith is dead even in the event that one knows all the Christian teachings, for that is not really faith.¹⁹ True faith is the living relationship with God, and this faith is generated by the word of God and lives by this word. If one speaks of justification sola fide, then this denotes such a relationship. Faith is no longer a thing or specific content, but rather Christ himself, who lives in a person. Faith is the human encounter with Christ and the fellowship that grows out of that encoun-

 Gerhard Ebeling, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought, trans. R. A. Wilson (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1964, 4th ed. 1983), esp. chs. 6 – 8.  Martin Luther, Resolution disputationis de fide infusa et acqusita; WA 6:85 f.

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ter. It does not signify fusion, for the difference between God and humanity remains unbridgeable. As the Other, Christ lives within humankind. Only in faith does a person receive full humanity. This is bestowed when a person no longer makes his or her own self their chief object of attention, but rather allows God to act within the person. Faith is not a given of human life, but rather a relationship that causes a radical change in a person – a new birth that completely changes the life a person has lived up to the present point in time. The believer stands “outside of himself”: “As Christians we live in Christ through faith and in the neighbour through love. Through faith we are caught up beyond ourselves into God. Likewise, through love we descend beneath ourselves through love to serve our neighbour. As Christians we always remain in God and in God’s love.”²⁰ In faith, a person is liberated from their own egocentrism. He or she is not preoccupied by the self. The person is liberated from sin, because Christ now lives in him or in her. This faith requires constant communication with God. It lives by listening to Scripture. It is nourished through worship with the whole community, and that community becomes the source of the personal meditation and daily prayers of the individual Christian. This relational understanding of faith is now common in the theology of all Christian churches. Nevertheless, it is necessary to address it here, because only on the basis of this understanding can the essential concepts and tenets of the Lutheran Reformation, and the churches that now stand in that tradition, be properly articulated and understood.

4 The Church In the CA, there is only one explicit reference to the Church: the Church “is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered.”²¹ This statement, despite its brevity, has far-reaching implications that shape the self-understanding of Lutheranism and is given many new forms of expression today.

4.1 Preaching the Gospel and Celebrating the Sacraments Wherever the gospel and the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed, and wherever baptism and the Eucharist are celebrated according to the commission of the New Testament, Christ is truly present. He bestows reconciliation and gathers his congregation. It fol Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, 88 – 89 = WA 7:69). Luther’s understanding of faith is examined by Eberhard Jüngel in his article “Glaube” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG) (4th ed., Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 3:962– 63.  CA 7, in BSELK 102. See www.bookofconcord.org, Augsburg Confession, article 7.

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lows that the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments are the means necessary for salvation. With them Christ creates, sustains, and sends forth his Church. The Lutheran Reformation is cautious in its use of the term “sacrament.” In a strict sense of the word, there is only one sacrament – Christ himself.²² In him, God gives himself to the world in bodily form and becomes manifest for humanity. He is the logos, the Word of God. In a further sense, this also holds true for church practices in which Christ is truly present and tangible. Following the Augustinian tradition, the proclaimed word is the audible sacrament, and baptism and the Eucharist are the visible word. In these three forms – the humanity of the Word and the corporeality of the sacraments – God presents himself to the people. The words of Holy Scripture, water, bread, and wine become bearers of divine promise. In them, salvation is presented to humanity. It is well known that, at the time of the Reformation, the question of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist was a constant point of debate. For Lutheranism, it was never a question of the physical presence in the bread and wine or in the water of baptism. These are and remain part of the natural world. Nevertheless, Christ is present in, with, and under these forms, just as he is present in the words of Scripture, even though the written text cannot be directly equated with the gospel itself. God decided to bind himself to these physical elements in order to give himself to his own, and his gift cannot be separated from them. This was a point of emphasis against the enthusiastic movements of the radical Reformation that claimed to receive God without the incarnation. In the debate with Zwingli, the equal status of proclamation, baptism, and the Eucharist was stressed, because Zwingli felt that baptism and the Eucharist were only outward signs that occurred as a response of faith to the revealed word. In the debate with Rome, the understanding of the mass came into focus, in which the Eucharist was practiced as a sacrifice offered by the Church. The statements in the CA concerning baptism and the Eucharist are fairly short. In baptism, God is the one who acts. He grants the individual his grace²³. In the Eucharist, Christ is truly present and gives himself to his own²⁴.

 Martin Luther: “Unum solum habent sacrae literae sacramentum . . . quod est ipse Christus Dominus,” Disputatio de fide et acquisita These 18; WA 6:86.  CA 9, in BSELK 105 (Latin version). See www.bookofconcord.org, Augsburg Confession, article 9. Luther is more thorough in his Small Catechism, in which he emphasizes that baptism signifies forgiveness of sins and new birth; see BSELK 882– 83. See also www.bookofconcord.org, Small Catechism, 4, “The Sacrament of Holy Baptism.”  CA 10. in BSELK 105 (Latin version). See www.bookofconcord.org, Augsburg Confession, article 10. In this case, Luther is also much more thorough in his Small Catechism. He emphasizes the forgiveness of sins bestowed in the Eucharist, by which the believer is received into the state of salvation; BSELK 888 – 89. See www.bookofconcord.org, Small Catechism, 6, “The Sacrament of the Altar.”

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4.2 The Communion of Saints The means of grace generate faith in the individual. In and through them, the person is justified and assured of salvation. The same means of grace establish, sustain, and send forth the Church, the communion of saints. These two dimensions are inseparable and occur simultaneously. The fellowship of the individual with God is incorporation into the community of saints. Thus Church and justification cannot be separated. The Church is intimately bound to God’s act of justification. Theologically, the Lutheran Reformation follows an understanding of the Church that goes back to the first centuries. It is not only a congregation of the faithful, but is itself an object of faith. This Church, which is an object of faith, is the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and the mother of the faithful.²⁵ This congregation of the saints is invisible and extends beyond space and time. But it is apprehended in the here and now, in the visible community – primarily in the worship services of the congregation that gathers in the name of Jesus Christ, listens to the word, and receives the gifts of salvation. Unified in Christ, it glorifies God in prayer and praise and comes before him with intercessory prayers for the world. This worship service is continued in the service of daily life, in which the individual Christian and the Church as a whole profess the gift of salvation through witness and service in the world. Wherever the gospel is proclaimed according to the word of God and the sacraments are administered, the una, sancta, catholica et apostolica ecclesia is present. Word and sacrament are not merely ancillary components of the Church. They alone make the recognition of the true Church possible. However, the emphasis on the proclamation of the Word and the bestowing of the sacraments should not be understood exclusively. God also acts by other means, such as the confession of faith, the confession of sin, the offices, and church order. These, however, are to be of secondary importance in relation to the community’s celebration of word and sacrament. The historical formation of the Lutheran churches did not always follow this theological understanding. The Church as an object of faith was often depreciated and the community reduced to a mere congregation of converts. The close ties to sec See Martin Luher’s commentary on the third article of the Apostles’ Creed in the Large Catechism, in BSELK 1058 – 70, esp. 1060 – 61. See www.bookofconcord.org, The Large Catechism, The Apostle’s Creed, article 3. Luther speaks of the communio sanctorum and explains that this term is difficult in German. He prefers to use the German word “Gemeinde” (congregation): “So also the word communio, which is added, ought not to be rendered communion (Gemeinschaft), but congregation (Gemeinde). And it is nothing else than an interpretation or explanation by which someone meant to explain what the Christian Church is. This our people, who understood neither Latin nor German, have rendered Gemeinschaft der Heiligen (communion of saints), although no German language speaks thus, nor understands it thus. But to speak correct German, it ought to be eine Gemeinde der Heiligen (a congregation of saints), that is, a congregation made up purely of saints, or, to speak yet more plainly, eine heilige Gemeinde, a holy congregation;” article 3, 49 – 50.

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ular authorities often contributed to the overemphasis of the institutional characteristics of the Church. When the Lutheran World Federation was established in 1947, it was structured, as the term implies, on federalist principles. But the worldwide community of Lutheran churches could not be satisfied with a simple coexistence of churches side by side in a loose organization, for this would not have corresponded to their basic understanding of the Church. The objective was to move from a community (communitas) of churches to a Church communion (communio). It also became apparent, in the new interdenominational ecumenical context, that it would be necessary to make the understanding of the Church as communio sanctorum a central concern. This resulted in a period of dialogue within Lutheranism. It became clear that the term communio sanctorum signifies both communio with God and a communio of believers.²⁶ Additionally, the fact that the New Testament term koinônia (communio), especially in the works of Paul, always includes the idea of mutual solidarity, mutual help, and mutual sharing occupied a central role in formulating the Lutheran concept. The result was that, in 1990, the Lutheran World Federation became a communio, a vibrant and committed community of churches that practice fellowship of the pulpit and the Eucharist and together commit their spiritual and material resources to the service of God’s mission in the world. An important study document was adopted by the Council of the Lutheran World Federation, which, as its title suggests, presents The Self-Understanding of the Lutheran Communion. ²⁷ It brings to expression the concept of the Lutheran Church communion as a gift and a task as well as the experience of unity in a diversity of contexts. It addresses the basic theological tenets and the continuous task of this Church communion to take on new forms without overlooking the special characteristics of the individual member churches, their autonomy, and their variety. The different positions and the challenges they present are also discussed openly. In this manner, the second part of article 7 of the CA was put into practice. It states that the true proclamation of the gospel and the celebration of the sacraments according to the gospel are enough to establish the unity of the Church. Unified traditions or ritual practices are not necessary.²⁸ If there is fellowship in word and sac-

 In Latin, the term communio sanctorum can be supplemented with hominum or rerum. Both possibilities make sense and are not separable. The community of believers is also the community that gathers around the sacred elements (the means of grace, the word, and the sacrament). This corresponds to the communion understanding of the New Testament (Acts 2:41– 44). This aspect is the focus of a study by the Lutheran theologian Werner Elert, with special emphasis on the history of the early Church. See Werner Elert, Abendmahl und Kirchengemeinschaft in der alten Kirche hauptsächlich des Ostens (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1954) = Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries, trans. Norman E. Nagel (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1966).  Available at: https://www.lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/Exhibit 9.2, “The Self-Understanding of the Lutheran Communion.”  CA 7, in BSELK 102. See www.bookofconcord.org, Augsburg Confession, article 7, “Of the Church.”

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rament, then the unity of the Church is guaranteed, despite the variety of conditions under which it exists. Through word and sacrament, God justifies the individual believer. The same means of grace establish, nourish, sustain, and send forth the Church. The same means of grace constitute the unity of the Church. Communion in the word and the sacraments are the necessary – but also sufficient – defining marks of the Church and its unity.

4.3 The Office of the Church The Lutheran Reformation turned against the administration of offices in the Church at the time. It emphasized the priesthood of all baptized believers as a sign of the equality of all Christians before God and of the apostolic duty of the whole Christian community. All who are reconciled in Christ are God’s children; they all can approach God alike and intercede for each other before him. They all participate in the Church’s apostolic office, with the duty to be witnesses for the gospel in word and deed. Nevertheless, the special office conferred through ordination does not become superfluous. Joined to the word that is to be proclaimed and the sacraments that are to be administered, the church office conferred through ordination is also understood to be established by God. Christ himself works through this office and its functions. Already in the fifth article, the CA speaks of the necessity of this special office.²⁹ It cannot be derived from the concept of the priesthood of all believers but is both a part of a given congregation and – in, with, and under the word of God – independent of the congregation. The community of Christ has the right and the duty to install church officeholders, and also to watch over their administration of office. There is a great amount of freedom in creating the concrete organization and structure of this office, as well as in the formation of church order and the style of worship service. This is not the freedom of indifference, but rather the freedom to organize responsibly under the aspect of whether or not the mission and unity of the Church is being served. Even if, in the Lutheran tradition, the congregation gathered for worship around the word and the sacrament is the primary point of reference for the office conferred through ordination, it became clear early on that there have to be forms of leadership and supervision in the Church (episcope) beyond the level of individual congregations. These interregional offices have taken on different forms, according to the respective histories and geographies. In the process, a structure has developed in

 CA 5, in BSELK 100. See www.bookofconcord.org, Augsburg Confession, article 5, “Of the Ministry.”

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which responsibility for interregional leadership and supervision is exercised in three ways: through personal leadership (bishops and church presidents), through councils (cooperation between a number of people in leadership positions, such as bishops or their assistants), and through synods (which are comprised not only of clergy, but also a substantial number of the laity). Episcope is exercised not only by an episkopos, but also through the cooperation of a variety of leading persons and institutions. This is elucidated in a statement by the Lutheran World Federation (Lund, 2007).³⁰ This understanding of office has been a characteristic of the Lutheran churches ever since the Reformation. It differs from Roman Catholicism in that the ordained office holder is not really different from other baptized believers, even if he or she bears a special office. The understanding of ordination as a sacrament is rejected. The three divisions of office (deacon, priest, and bishop) are not held to be a church order established by God. Finally, one should add: in the Lutheran understanding, special office, word, and sacrament do not have the same status. It follows that Lutheran churches assume the presence of the true office of the Church when they observe the true celebration of word and sacrament in a community of faith other than their own – a conclusion that, even today, is not possible for the Roman Catholic Church.

4.4 The Commitment to Church Confessions As already mentioned in the introduction, because at the time of the Lutheran Reformation the administration of the office of the bishop was placed in question, future pastors no longer needed to vow obedience to the bishop at their ordination. Instead, they were bound to the Lutheran confessions, especially the CA. Faith is inextricably bound to confession. According to the Lutheran understanding, confession is not limited to traditional formulations of faith in current use. It is also expressed in confessions and teachings that are formulated anew and passed on. They are then adopted by the Church community, accepted as binding, and thus play a part in helping sustain the Church in every time and place. The common commitment to the CA and Luther’s Small Catechism is a structuring element of the worldwide Lutheran church community³¹. The office of the bishop is certainly held in high esteem, but the guarantee of the tenets and the teachings of the Church are the authoritative confessions.

 Lutherischer Weltbund, Das bischöfliche Amt im Rahmen der Apostolizität der Kirche (Genf: Lutheran World Federation, 2008).  There are differences among the various Lutheran churches regarding the number of binding confessional texts and the understanding of the nature of confessional commitment. Aside from the CA and Luther’s Small Catechism, many use the additional confessional texts collected in the Book of Concord (1580). All of these texts are in BSELK. See also www.bookofconcord.org.

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The basic intent of the church confessions is to express the truth of the Christian faith as a testimony of that faith appropriate to the context of history. The confessions attain their authority through their commitment to the gospel and their faithfulness to Holy Scripture. They are a hermeneutic aid for understanding Scripture and a criterion for differentiating between true and false proclamation and teaching. As norma normata, church confessions are subordinated to Holy Scripture, which alone has the status of norma normans. As an answer of the Church to the gospel, the confessions are not a closed collection of texts. In new historical situations, and in renewed listening to the testimony of Scripture, they have to be constantly reinterpreted and discussed in continuity with the traditional confessions of the church fathers.

5 Ecumenical Commitment and Responsibility toward the Whole World 5.1 Ecumenical Commitment Unity is an essential characteristic of the Church and is a gift of God. The division of the Church stands in opposition to the will of God. This has been rediscovered in the course of recent decades, and – like many other churches – Lutheranism has also consciously worked toward the renewal of unity. According to the Lutheran understanding, the effort to re-establish the unity of the Church is an imperative. What holds for the situation within Lutheranism is equally valid for its relationship to other churches. The unity of the Church is present when a consensus in the understanding of the gospel and in the administration of the sacraments allows for joint worship services. This is necessary, but also sufficient. On the basis of this conviction, the Lutheran theologian Harding Meyer has formulated certain decisive points that have been widely accepted in the worldwide ecumenical movement.³² Meyer developed the concept of “reconciliation in diversity.” The unity of the Church does not imply uniformity. The same understanding of the gospel can be expressed in diverse forms of language and thought and, as a consequence, in diverse ecclesiastical forms. Diversity should not be eliminated, but rather reconciled. “Reconciled diversity” does not mean that differences are simply to be accepted. True reconciliation requires a differentiation between content and form in the expression of faith. In interdenominational dialogue, if it can be shown that, in the diverse forms of expression, the same gospel is being proclaimed, then one can – and must – speak of “reconciled diversity.”

 See Harding Meyer, Versöhnte Verschiedenheit, 3 vols. (Frankfurt: Lembeck; Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1998 – 2009).

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The concept of “differentiated consensus” (or better: “differentiating consensus”) also goes back to Harding Meyer. Legitimate differences comprise a part of a given consensus. An illustration of this is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification signed in 1999 by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, as mentioned above. It states that “[t)he understanding of the doctrine of justification set forth in this Declaration shows that a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification exists between Lutherans and Catholics.”³³ There is no claim that the Lutheran doctrine of justification is identical with that of the Catholics, or the other way around. This consensus is differentiating because it distinguishes between the content of the basic truths, in which there has to be agreement, and the forms in which this content is expressed, where differences can occur. This model of unity was accepted by the General Assemblies of the Lutheran World Federation (Dar es Salaam, 1977, and Budapest, 1984) as the Lutheran path towards the unity of the Church This model represents an open and non-delimiting understanding of the unity of the Church. The Lutheran churches understand themselves, accordingly, as being wholly church without being the whole Church. Other churches belong to the Church of Christ in their own way. It follows that every form of confessionalism that raises its own denominational identity to an absolute is rejected. In order to implement this model, the Lutheran churches have participated in interdenominational dialogues right from the beginning. This path is a continuous process. The dialogue with Rome resulted in the JDDJ, and that automatically raises the question of a differentiating consensus in the area of ecclesiology. The dialogues with the Reformed, Anglican, and Methodist communities resulted in full mutual recognition and reconciliation between the churches in many places around the world. Each speaks its own “language,” but in this the partner churches recognize a true and legitimate expression of the one Church of Jesus Christ.

5.2 Responsibility toward the Whole World God’s love for all people, and the perception of the world as the good creation of the God who creates and sustains all that is through word and spirit, defines Christian responsibility in this world as being comprised of obedient participation in God’s work in the world. In their commitment to God, Christians acknowledge that they cannot in any way earn their own existence, any more than they can earn their own justification before God. They can only accept the existence and justification bestowed on them. God’s perpetual and never-ending act of creation indicates the appropriate human response: awareness of God’s good creation, human gratitude toward God, and commitment to sustaining the creation, peace, and justice among

 JDDJ 40.

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people in these times. In this manner, Christians affirm the condescension and incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. This forbids every form of contempt for humanity. The task God lays on us concerns both Christians, in the contexts of their individual lives, and the Church as a whole. Even if this work cannot have the gradual renewal of God’s kingdom as its goal, it nevertheless takes place in the hope that, at the end of time, God will ultimately judge the fallen creation and complete the new creation he has already begun. In this hope, the Lutheran churches throughout history have taken up their responsibility by founding schools, institutions of social service, and the like, but also through the witness of individual Christians who take a stand for fair conditions in human coexistence and against inhumane circumstances and injustice. Responsibility toward the world is realized in different ways, according to time and place. It is a matter of accompanying fellow human beings and assuaging their needs, but also of bringing the voice of the gospel to bear on questions of social and ethical relevance. Worldly systems of government do not need the Church in order to be legitimized. But the Church must examine both worldly regimes and its own system of administration with respect to their adherence to God’s commandments. The Church may not make use of societal means of coercion for the proclamation of the gospel, nor is it a matter for the state or society to govern its proclamation.

6 Conclusion Ever since the sixteenth century, intense theological efforts concerning the truth of the message to be proclaimed here and now have been a central attribute of the Lutheran self-understanding. The inaccessibility of the gospel requires a continuous theological striving for the truth of the message to be proclaimed here and now. This effort takes place in the understanding of – and critical listening to – the witness of Scripture, the confessions, and the tradition of the Church. It requires a critical examination of contemporary spiritual challenges and attentive listening to the spiritual and theological insights of other churches. It is borne out through trust in the promise that Christ will sustain his Church in the truth.

Oecumenical Relecture

Document of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. 31st of October, 1999 (With permission of the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity).

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The Catholic Damnation and Redemption of Luther¹ 1 Damnation and Redemption, Disaster and Epic “Turned [the] wrong way around, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as ‘History’, harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”² In an odd trick of fate, an issue of historical method raised by a great novelist – an issue that originated in a completely different context and that today seems to have taken on an unexpected urgency – proves to be most accurate in the case of the theological and historiographical success of Luther, a figure suspended between God and the devil, redemption and damnation.³ The issue is further complicated when one looks at the Catholic interpretation of Luther and the Reformation because – over the course of the twentieth century, and especially immediately after the Second Vatican Council – both Luther and the Reformation, after having been imprisoned for a very long time in a “non-historical reading, which was purely doctrinal or even ideological,” have managed to reconquer their own place in “a historical vision of Christianity” in which history “is once again taken on […] as the privileged point of view from which the event of Christian salvation unspools.”⁴ In fact, the council recognized the epistemological

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  I dedicate these pages with sincere gratitude to Prof. Boris Ulianich, to whom I am indebted for encouraging me and making the beginning of my German adventure among Jesuits, Lutheran jurists, and a new family possible.  Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (London: Vintage, 2005), 113 – 44.  Heiko A. Oberman, Martin Lutero. Un uomo tra Dio e il diavolo (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 1987). Two very recent Catholic interpretationens of Luther are offered in Peter Neuner, Martin Luthers Reformation. Eine katholische Würdigung (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2017), and in Daniela Blum, Der katholische Luther. Begegnungen – Prägungen – Rezeptionen, (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016).  Giuseppe Alberigo, “Martin Lutero nella coscienza cattolica contemporanea”, in Nostalgie di unità. Saggi di storia dell’ecumenismo (Genova: Marietti, 1989), 110 – 21, here 110; published also in Attilio Agnoletto, ed., Martin Luther e il protestantesimo in Italia. Bilancio storiografico (Milano: Istituto propaganda libraria, 1984), 210 – 22. The contribution had already been published twice, in a slightly different version, in 1983 and 1984 respectively: Alberigo, “Cosa rappresenta Lutero nella coscienza cattolica contemporanea”, in Lutero nel suo e nel nostro tempo. Studi e conferenze per il 5° centenario della nascita di M. Lutero (Torino: Claudiana, 1983), 29 – 38; Alberigo, “Cosa rappresenta Lutero nella coscienza cattolica contemporanea”, in In necessariis unitas. Mélanges offerts à Jean Luis Leuba, ed. Richard Stauffer (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1984), 15 – 23. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-046

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shift of the twentieth century through which “the balance of theology [has] been shaken […] by the full acquisition of the data coming from modern historical research.”⁵ It is evident that this shift would have not been able to “affect the condemnation deriving from a dogmatic judgment on a series of doctrines believed to be absolutely incompatible with what was thought to be the most vital part of the Catholic Church” had it not meant that the Church “put itself before history,” showing a “new and different attitude” that pushed it to retrieve the “historical dimension in its different articulations,” but also to reach “a renewed awareness of the distinction between the kingdom of God and the Church in history.”⁶ The confessional rift pushed Roman Catholicism to entrench the positions of the Tridentine paradigm and, in its eagerness to circumscribe and consolidate its boundaries once and for all, to create an image of Luther and the Reformation that was functional for this purpose.⁷ Due to a peculiarity already familiar to those who deal with the history of the Christian confessions, the Protestant churches – especially the Lutheran ones – took a path that, in theory, should have led them to results antithetical to those of their Catholic counterpart, but that instead, under a patina of apologetic rhetoric, did nothing but confirm the rock steady fragility of an idol (whether salvific or heretical) erected for their own specific purposes. In the case at hand, the shifts in Martin Luther’s fate that occurred within Catholicism speak less about the former than the latter: for example, let us consider the relationship of Catholics to Scripture, which for centuries was shaped by the centrality that Luther had ascribed to it and marked by a diffident attitude that, during the long Tridentine phase, caused Catholic theology to reference the Bible less and less, to erect a doctrinal system that was philosophically designed according to the alleged canons of Aristotelianism and Thomism, and instead to announce a “doctrine” and a “moral” in preaching – at least until the Second Vatican Council reaffirmed “the primacy of the word of God.” On the other hand, “no other [voice] contributed as decidedly as [Luther’s] to impose an effective reform on the Roman Church, to the point that today it is possible to say that modern Catholicism without Luther would have been completely different and hardly better.” Within this specifically Catholic perspective, Luther also becomes the one who, with “his criticism of the Aristotelian pollution of Christian theology and of the secular compromises of the Roman Church,” forced Western Christianity to “leave the ‘established’ and privileged condition that, starting from Constantine’s edict onwards, had shaped christianitas.”⁸

 G. Ruggieri, “I sinodi tra storia e teologia,” Cristianesimo nella storia 27 (2006): 365 – 92, here 365; now also in Ruggieri, Chiesa sinodale (Bari/Roma: Laterza, 2017), 41. On this topic, cf. John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2008), 36 – 43.  Boris Ulianich, “Quale Lutero?” in Riforma e riforme. Momenti di storia e storiografia (Napoli: ESI, 1995), 57– 67, here 58 – 59.  Paolo Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino. Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2010).  Alberigo, “Martin Lutero nella coscienza cattolica contemporanea,” 112 and 119 – 20.

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From this perspective, “the Catholic representation of Luther has always been an apologetic function of Catholicism as it emerged and presented itself in the different phases of post-Tridentine history.” It definitely “underwent retouches and attempts at revision during certain historical periods and thanks to personalities who were also interested in the reform of the Church,” but this revision “appears linked in specific situations to the rebuttal of certain aspects of traditional Catholicism (and of political papacy) and to the critical rediscovery of Scripture, of a liturgy found and experienced more genuinely, of a less secular and more christological ecclesiology, and of a more open and free theology.”⁹

2 Every Thorn Has Its Rose It is a widely shared opinion that the volumes dedicated to Luther at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Dominican Heinrich Denifle – an excellent authority on the history of the medieval university and mysticism, who dealt with Luther only at the end of his life of study – represent both the final point in a long tradition that began with the Commentaria Ioannis Cochlaei de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri, published by the Mainz presses in 1549, and the (still spitefully polemical) beginning of a new season of Catholic studies on Luther. In fact, this new season – paradoxically thanks to Denifle – took its first steps toward getting rid of the historiographical “ban” on Luther, inflicted by Cochlaeus in the middle of the confessional struggle and after the imperial ban of 1521, and toward overcoming the Sattelzeit of the Catholic representation of Luther, which, having been determined by several positions on the part of the ecclesiastical magisterium and the pastorate, from Leo X’s papacy until the first few months of John XXIII’s, and having been taken on by a dogmatic and reductive historiography, was shaken by Denifle’s erudition, despite the fact that his goal was to provide it with an even more solid foundation.¹⁰ It was certainly not

 Boris Ulianich, “Riflessioni sulla storiografia cattolica relativa a Lutero,” in Riforma e riforme, 441– 54, here 453.  Heinrich S. Denifle and Albert M. Weiß, Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwickelung quellenmäßig dargestellt, vols. 1– 2, 2nd ed. (Mainz: Kirchheim, 1904– 1909). On Denifle, see the very recent contribution by C. Arnold, “Heinrich Suso Denifle OP (1844– 1905). Die Wirkungen einer historischen Polemik gegen Luther,” in Martin Luther. Monument, Ketzer, Mensch. Lutherbilder, Lutherprojektionen und ein ökumenischer Luther, eds. Claus Arnold, Norbert Haag, Andreas Holzem, and Volker Leppin (Freiburg: Herder, 2017), 247– 68, here 250. Cf. the classic work by Adolf Herte, Das katholische Lutherbild im Banne der Lutherkommentare des Cochläus, vols. 1– 3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1943), which reviews Catholic literature on Luther up until the work by Franz Bichler, Luther in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Regensburg/Wien: Salzwasser-Verlag, 1918). On the topic of Catholic manuals until 1943, see M. Marcocchi, “L’immagine di Lutero in alcuni manuali di storia ecclesiastica tra ’800 e ’900,” in Lutero in Italia. Studi storici nel V centenario della nascita, ed. L. Perrone (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1983), 167– 69; for an overall interpretation, cf. G. Miccoli, “‘L’avarizia e l’orgoglio di un frate laido…’. Problemi e aspetti dell’interpretazione cattolica di Lutero. Nota introduttiva,” in Lutero in Ita-

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necessary to wait until Luther’s death in order to witness an unrestrained struggle on both sides, the most illustrious victim of which was the “Evangelical” party in favor of mediation and reconciliation, which enjoyed great historiographical success in the twentieth century – especially in Italy, France, and Germany.¹¹ Since the very beginning – that is, since Sylvester Mazzolini’s reply to the ninety-five theses – the relationship between Rome and Luther has been more an exchange of blows than of ideas, in which neither of the two contestants seemed to be willing to allow the other even the smallest opportunity for dialogue.¹² Denifle’s success in the context of a renewed interpretation of Luther – the influence of which can also be seen in comparing the work on Luther and the Reformation by Ernesto Buonaiuti and Jacques Maritain, who, unlike Mario Bendiscioli, do not seem to realize the innovative reach of coeval German research on Luther¹³ – is almost paradoxical. In order to demonstrate the unilateralism and lack of theological originality in Luther’s doctrine of justification as it had been shaped within Protestant thought, Denifle threw Luther back into the religious life of the late medieval Church and, by downgrading him from exception to rule and fighting his opponents with cold steel, de facto made him once again Catholic. Nevertheless, this Catholic identity included all the psychological problems that Denifle, and later the Jesuit Hartmann Grisar, found in Luther’s personality – who, according to their partisan judgment, was the victim of his own morbid scruples (in bad faith, from a theological point of view) and prone to excess and immorality.¹⁴ This is the most controversial and valuable aspect of Denifle’s discovery of the medieval Luther: both for subjective reasons connected to his personality, education, and culture, and for objective ones linked to his mindset and the historical moment of Catholicism in which he lived, despite having before him all the documents necessary to cross the threshold of ecumenism, Denifle stopped just short of it and was not able to take the further step that, over the course of the following decades, would lia, vii–xxxiii; J. E. Vercruysse, “Katholische Lutherforschung im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Lutherforschung im 20. Jahrhundert. Rückblick – Bilanz – Ausblick, ed. Rainer Vinke (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2004), 191– 212. A very short overview of the papal and episcopal magisterium on Luther can be found in Ulianich, Riflessioni sulla storiografia cattolica relativa a Lutero, 442– 46.  Klaus Ganzer, “Aspekte der katholischen Reformbewegungen im 16. Jahrhundert,” in Kirche auf dem Weg durch die Zeit. Institutionelles Werden und theologisches Ringen. Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Vorträge (Mü nster: Aschendorff, 1997), 181– 211.  Volker Reinhardt, Luther, der Ketzer. Rom und die Reformation (München: C.H. Beck, 2016), 10 – 11.  Boris Ulianich, “Die Reformation in Deutschland di Joseph Lortz. La sua fortuna in Italia e la ‘battaglia’ per l’imprimatur alla III edizione,” in Riforma e riforme, 393 – 439, esp. 402– 04; Boris Ulianich, Riflessioni sulla storiografia cattolica relativa a Lutero, 450 – 51. Ulianich refers to Ernesto Buonaiuti, Lutero e la Riforma in Germania (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926), and to the translation (Brescia, 1928) carried out by the then-national ecclesiastical assistant of the FUCI Giovanni Battista Montini, of Jacques Maritain, Trois reformateur. Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (Paris: Plon, 1925). On Denifle’s influence on Buonaiuti, see also Guido Dall’Olio, Martin Lutero (Roma: Carocci, 2013), 201– 03.  Hartmann Grisar, Luther, 3 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1911– 1912).

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lead to the consideration of Luther as both the son and the father of a shared tradition. In fact, retrieving the scholastic roots of Luther’s beloved German mysticism was not so different, when considered with the advantage of historical distance, from finding in scholasticism – and especially in Thomas Aquinas – the roots of Luther’s doctrine of justification.¹⁵ However, in 1904, the outcome was quite different; having rejected the idea of finding any original or creative spiritual value in Luther, the only possible explanation for his “rebellion” was to be found in his character and his psychopathology.¹⁶ Thus the dispute among sixteenth-century friars seemed to be still ongoing four centuries later, with the Dominican and – after the Aeterni patris – diehard neo-Thomist Denifle still ready to give a hand to his confrère Tetzel against the Augustinian heresiarch. Nonetheless, it was after Denifle that the new trends in research that marked the historiographical revision of Luther between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries began to emerge: the discussion of Luther’s modernity or lack thereof; a new interest in Luther before the dispute over indulgences (i. e., the Luther of the Dictata super Psalterium and the comment on the Epistle to the Romans); renewed attention to his historical context and the medieval tradition (such as the influence of Occamism, nominalism, and Rhineland mysticism); and a greater sensitivity to the distinction between Luther and Lutheranism. At the same time, in Germany, this research was accompanied – on the eve of World War I and, even more so, during the early post-war period – by the increased coming together of Catholics and the Protestants, “both from the perspective of a strengthening of the religious and cultural unity of a country exhausted by its military defeat” and as a united front in support of National Socialism – under the illusion of being able to Christianize and normalize a regime that had among its explicit goals the “deconfessionalization” of Germany¹⁷ – or, progressively and with many nuances and uncertainties, against it. The interconfessional movements that originated during those years, such as the Hochkirchlich-ökumenischer Bund or Max Joseph Metzger’s Una Sancta Bewegung, and the catastrophe of 1945 did nothing but further mitigate the confessional controversy and fuel a “desire to understand Luther.”¹⁸ Denifle’s main target was all too clear: the alleged novelty of the doctrine of justification and, with it, Luther’s “reformatory breakthrough” (the famous reformatori-

 See the key contribution by Otto H. Pesch, Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin. Versuch eines systematisch-theologischen Dialogs (Mainz: Grünewald, 1967).  Dall’Olio, Martin Lutero, 185.  C. Zwierlein, “‘(Ent)konfessionalisierung’ (1935) und ‘Konfessionalisierung’ (1981),” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 98 (2007): 199 – 230.  M. Marcocchi, “Prefazione all’edizione italiana,” in Joseph Lortz, La Riforma in Germania, vol. 1 (Milano: Jaca Book, 1971), xii–xiii; Boris Ulianich, La Chiesa in Lutero (1509 – 1521) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1967), 8.

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scher Durchbruch)¹⁹ – i. e., the very act from which Protestant Christianity had originated and which, after Denifle’s volumes, began to be interpreted by Catholic and Protestant academics alike in a very different light and with anything but negligible consequences. The following might appear a rather risky hypothesis – bearing in mind Hubert Jedin’s criticism of both Denifle and Grisar,²⁰ to whom he opposed Lortz’s “great work” (Die Reformation in Deutschland) – but perhaps the lack of confessional apprehensions with which Jedin approached Contarini’s Turmerlebnis was also partly the result of the task of demythicization that, albeit with very different purposes, Denifle had already started at the beginning of the century.²¹ In more recent years, even a thorough study of the dialogical dimension of theology such as Franz Posset’s contribution on Luther’s Catholic sympathizers, which is very far in its intent from Denifle’s poisonous opus, takes advantage of the path Denifle cleared to show Luther in a context that is still Catholic, made up of theologians who recognized the legitimacy of Luther’s reformatory drive yet did not push beyond the boundaries of their own confessional belonging. In short, what Posset writes about Luther’s early sympathizers can also be applied to the many who, from the sixteenth century onward, have studied and continue to study Luther without the risk of becoming Lutherans themselves because of it.²² Denifle made all the academics who dealt with Luther – the Protestants in primis – aware of the risks involved in unilaterally insisting on the unique and revolutionary character of the “reformatory breakthrough”, which, as it had de facto been shaped from the sixteenth century onward, created more hermeneutical problems than it solved. A similar argument can be made (although from very different premises and for very different purposes) for another cornerstone of Lutheran mythology – the posting of the theses, which had to wait a good fifty years after Denifle before finally being shaken at its foundation.²³ Although he denigrated Luther, Denifle nevertheless contributed to the creation of the widely debated “Catholic Luther,”²⁴ an interpretation that has its roots in the

 Bernhard Lohse, ed., Der Durchbruch der reformatorischen Erkenntnis bei Luther (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968); Thomas Kaufmann, “Die Frage nach dem reformatorischen Durchbruch. Ernst Bizers Lutherbuch und seine Bedeutung,” in Lutherforschung im 20. Jahrhundert, 71– 97.  Hubert Jedin, Lebensbericht. Mit einem Dokumentenhang, ed. Konrad Repgen (Mainz: Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, 1984), 90 – 91, here 143 – 44.  Hubert Jedin, “Ein Turmerlebnis des jungen Contarini,” Historisches Jahrbuch 70 (1951): 115 – 30; now in Hubert Jedin, Kirche des Glaubens, Kirche der Geschichte. Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Vorträge, vol. 1 (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 1966), 167– 80.  Franz Posset, Unser Martin. Martin Luther aus der Sicht katholischer Sympathisanten (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015), 7 and 163.  Uwe Wolff, Iserloh. Der Thesenanschlag fand nicht statt (Freiburg: Reinhardt, Friedrich, 2013).  Cf. the debate elicited by Lortz’s work and critically summarized in Peter Manns, “Nachwort. ‘Lortz, Luther und der Papst‘. Zur Neuausgabe der ‘Reformation in Deutschland,’” in Joseph Lortz,

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controversy between Denifle, Grisar, and Alphons Victor Müller, the former Dominican who converted to Protestantism. In his 1912 work on Luther’s theological sources, Müller was intent on demonstrating – despite attracting Otto Scheel’s disparagement – that all the propositions Denifle defined as Lutheran and, therefore, heretical were not Luther’s invention or the product of his immoral and concupiscent nature, but rather theological positions already known and widespread prior to Luther and, even more importantly, already defended and supported both within and outside of the Augustinian order. In short, by reacting with an equal and opposite force and by unconsciously accepting Denifle’s rules of engagement, Müller made Luther as much of a Catholic as other authoritative exponents of medieval theology, such as Roland of Siena, Hugh of Saint Victor, Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and finally even Girolamo Seripando and the other Augustinians who had taken part to the council of Trent.²⁵ Once the part of his work that is more closely linked to the controversy of the time regarding the alleged doctrinal pollutions of modernism and his compromises with his confessional adversaries is relegated to oblivion, Denifle should be credited for having put Luther “in a historical context from which he seemed to have been decidedly removed in previous studies that had set out to understand, both on the Protestant and on the Catholic side, his reformatory specificum or what Luther mostly characterized in his heresy.” Denifle’s work caused, among other outcomes, the reactions of scholars such as Karl Holl, who wrote his key work Die Entstehung von Luthers Kirchenbegriff in 1915 – after Denifle and Grisar provided the impetus – and thus reawakened the interest of academics in the young Luther and his theology before the public events of 1517.²⁶ An indirect confirmation of the crucial – albeit unforeseen – breakthrough caused by Denifle’s acrimony and erudition is still perceivable in the debate held on October 10, 1967, in honor of Joseph Lortz’s 80th birthday, between Erwin Iserloh, Hubert Jedin, Wilhelm Kasch, Walther von Loewenich, and Peter Manns. At the beginning of this “dispute in an ecumenical spirit,” when dealing with the mother of all questions – that is, what was the specifically reformatory element in Luther – the five academics highlighted that, if it is true that Denifle deconstructed Luther’s intrepid

Die Reformation in Deutschland. Unveränderte Neuausgabe, mit einem Nachwort von Peter Manns (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 1982), 353 – 91, here 377– 91.  Alphons V. Müller, Luthers theologische Quellen. Seine Verteidigung gegen Denifle und Grisar (Gießen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1912), vi–vii. On this topic, see the very fair opinion – which is, so to speak, balanced between Denifle and Müller – offered by Sebastian Merkle, “Luthers Quellen,” in Ausgewählte Reden und Aufsätze, ed. Theobald Freudenberger (Würzburg: Schöningh in Komm., 1965), 212– 23.  Ulianich, La Chiesa in Lutero, 8; Ulianich refers to Karl Holl, “Die Entstehung von Luthers Kirchenbegriff,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 1, Luther (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1948), 288 – 325.

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exegetical originality on the topic of the iustitia Dei in Romans 1:16 – 17,²⁷ it is also undeniable that he could not explain, even with all of his pious erudition, why it was precisely Luther and no one else before him who revolutionized Latin Christianity in such a deep and irreversible way. Once we ascribe to the (historical, cultural, political, ecclesiastical, religious) context that which belongs to the context, the only option left is to recognize the absolute singularity of Luther’s case and of his religious experience. This singularity prevented him from finding the answers to his questions on the subject of faith within the tradition that had preceded him – from Ambrosiaster to Erasmus – and, once translated into political and ecclesiastical terms, caused a confessional rift.²⁸ Therefore, only his religious experience – not some theological, logical, or philosophical doctrine – can explain why Luther was simultaneously traditional and original, unheeded and headstrong, Catholic and reformed, damned and saved. Due to a trick of historiographical fate that is very familiar to those who deal with these studies, Denifle’s work laid the basis for its own fruitful obsolescence, advancing both research and the relationship between the churches through and beyond all confessional fences. “The violence of the attack and the very quality of the attacker turned out to be an advantage,” as Jean Delumeau wrote in his history of the Reformation, because “studies on Luther were rebuilt on a new basis and allowed, after a brutal awakening, that very ‘reinterpretation’ of Luther that is ongoing at the moment [i. e., in 1965].”²⁹ Ecumenical theology has rediscovered the super-confessional or, even better, pre-confessional roots of Western Christianity in the Middle Ages – especially in the mysticism that Denifle also studied, and partly following the path he laid down – abandoning the model, which is by now mostly sterile, of an irreconcilable dichotomy between continuity and rift. This does not mean that first Denifle’s and Grisar’s interpretations do not present some entirely unilateral traits: even if we allow that Luther was aware of Thomist scholasticism exclusively through the mediation of mysticism, it is only the neo-Thomist prejudice that emerged between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries and identified every medieval theology with Thomism that could accuse him of not having had any knowledge of the tradition that had preceded him, as if Bernard of Clairvaux, Meister Eckhart, or Johannes Tauler were some minor stars in a firmament dominated by Thomas. However, we cannot deny that it was also through mysticism that Luther arrived at his reformatory breakthrough, which – together with other well-known factors of a historical and political nature – caused the confessional rift that still exists today, despite the ecumenical efforts of both the last and the current century. Mystical theology in Denifle is  Heinrich S. Denifle, Die abendländischen Schriftausleger bis Luther über Justitia Dei (Rom. 1, 17) und Justificatio (Mainz: Franz Kirchheim, 1905).  August Franzen, ed., Um Reform und Reformation. Zur Frage nach dem “Reformatorischen” bei Martin Luther (Münster: Aschendorff, 1968), 33 – 52, here 33 – 35.  Jean Delumeau, Naissance et affirmation de la Réforme (Paris: PUF, 1965), 287.

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still the tool he uses to defuse Luther’s reformatory potential and reduce him (even when he is being generous) to a terrible theologian. However, after its condemnation by Adolf von Harnack, Albrecht Ritschl, and Karl Barth as the expression of a spirituality wrongfully considered to be typically and solely Catholic, academics such as Erwin Iserloh, Heiko A. Oberman, and Steven Ozment used mystical theology both to react to the butchery perpetrated by German Christians, who at the time were searching for a meeting point between German National Socialism and Lutheran Protestantism, and to open research on the Reformation to international and ecumenical ideas by bringing it back into the house of Lutheranism, whence it had been forcefully removed during the second confessional era of the nineteenth century. No longer “foreign” but once again “a long and intense tradition” within Lutheran Protestantism, late medieval mysticism – with the work of Volker Leppin – became the origin of Luther’s reformatory theology, blurring the boundaries between confessions and integrating the Reformation within the “ecumenical horizon of the history of Christianity.”³⁰ Whether we oppose the Late Middle Ages to the alleged golden age of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries (and thus consider it the final stage of a long decadence) or instead adhere to the idea that the Reformation was the apex and true accomplishment of late medieval spirituality – an actual watershed, whether negative or positive, in European history – the two eras are subject to a comparison that is not fair to either and reduces each to a mere antagonist of the other. Since Leppin’s research, it is not only possible (and necessary!) to reassess the Middle Ages – as Protestants and Lutherans – without any fear for one’s own confessional identity, but we can also say that one can only be a Protestant and a Lutheran if one rediscovers the Middle Ages fully. It is not by chance, in fact, that Luther’s Catholic redemption, which originated with his damnation, has come about through the rediscovery of common medieval roots, especially in mysticism – some of the sharpest among the very weapons once brandished against Luther.

3 The Catholic Luther Joseph Lortz’s work Die Reformation in Deutschland, published in 1939 – 1940, appeared during a historiographical period characterized by great vivacity and fertility in the study of the religious history of the sixteenth century. This period had been preceded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by great works: on the one hand, the Corpus reformatorum and the Weimarer Ausgabe; on the other hand, the Görres-Gesellschaft’s Corpus catholicorum and Concilium Tridentinum come to mind. Such an important period for historical scholarship was accompanied – on

 Volker Leppin, Die fremde Reformation. Luthers mystische Wurzeln (München: C.H. Beck, 2016), 210 – 13.

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the part of the European churches, and particularly in the Catholic Church – by the emergence and consolidation of a multifaceted ecumenical movement, the first steps of which were more strongly opposed the steadier they progressively became, which played a key role in supporting the reception (certainly neither pacific nor painless) of contemporary developments in the subjects of theology, philosophy, and historiography. It will never be possible to prove the following beyond any reasonable doubt, but we can hypothesize that the last anti-modernist resurgences of the second postwar period proved to be not as overwhelming as they might have been, due not only to the contribution of some key figures, but also to a general mood of intellectual and cultural renewal – for which, however, a high price was paid in the form of the bloodiest thirty years of European history and the repercussions of these events around the world. After the passionate discussions that followed the publication of Denifle’s and Grisar’s works,³¹ in 1928, Lucien Febvre published his biography of Martin Luther, which in many ways was innovative in both the Catholic and the Protestant traditions. The following year, Febvre devoted himself to the famous “question badly put” – the origins of the French and European Reformation. Finally, his Le problème de l’incroyance in 1942 (revised in 1947) dealt with the “central dogma,” the material and formal principle, the “criterion of all criteria” of the Reformation – that is, justification by faith – from the point of view not of “an objective theological formulation,” but “mainly as a deep and personal frame of mind,” as something “simply human.”³² On the opposite bank of the Rhine, Karl Brandi, who had been born into a Catholic family but educated in Protestant Göttingen, was “the first German historian to write, between 1927 and 1930, a history of Germany at the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in which there is almost no trace of any confessional approach” and who, over the following years, set the scene for the protagonist of his masterpiece, the emperor Charles V.³³ In 1938, Per la storia religiosa dello Stato di Milano by Federico Chabod was published in Bologna. This volume is evidently a

 M. Brecht, “Die Erforschung des Jungen Luthers. Katholischer Anstoß und evangelische Erwiderung,” in Lutherforschung im 20. Jahrhundert, 1– 17.  Lucien Febvre, Un destin. Martin Luther (Paris: PUF, 1928); Febvre, “Une question mal posée. Les origines de la Réforme française et le problème général des causes de la Réforme,” Revue historique 54 (1929): 1– 73; Febvre, Le problème de l’incroyance au XVIe siècle. La religion de Rabelais, rev. ed. (Paris: Albin Michel, 1947), 301– 15. See the fine obituary by E. Léonard, “Lucien Febvre (1878 – 1956),” in École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses. Annuaire 1957 – 1958 69 (1956): 16 – 19, here 17– 19; available at: www.persee.fr/doc/ephe_0000 – 0002_1956_num_69_65_20272.  W. Reinhard, L’imperatore Carlo V (1500 – 1558) e Karl Brandi (1868 – 1946), in Karl Brandi, Carlo V (Torino: Einaudi, 2001), xi–xxiii, here xx; Karl Brandi, Kaiser Karl V. Werden und Schicksal einer Persönlichkeit und eines Weltreiches (München: Bruckmann, 1937). Reinhard is referring to Brandi, Deutsche Reformation und Gegenreformation, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1927– 1930). The 1961 edition of Brandi’s volume on Charles V came with an introduction by Chabod, now in Brandi, Carlo V, xxv–l.

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“fundamental step forward in modern historiography, which is more and more careful in accepting the concrete particular and the fading of the lights and is more and more resistive to harsh antitheses.” Finally, in the following year, another classic of Italian and European historiography on the subject of the sixteenth century, Cantimori’s Eretici, was published in Florence.³⁴ The development of this most advanced front in historiography also suffered many new setbacks: for example, let us consider the second, together with Lortz, of the “Dioscuri” of twentieth-century ecclesiastical history – that is, Hubert Jedin, who in 1937 published his monumental biography on Seripando. This volume, besides offering an erudite portrait, had as its real purpose the masterful survey of issues such as the Tridentine decree on justification and the overall periodization of the sixteenth century from a religious point of view.³⁵ For his part, when he was working on the history of the Reformation in Germany, Lortz had experienced his own personal “ecumenical breakthrough” and had come to an interpretation that brought Luther as homo religiosus back to center stage and therefore – as Peter Manns, his student and successor as head of the historical and religious department of the Institut für europäische Geschichte in Mainz, wrote a few years later – no longer depicted him as a “heretic,” but rather as a “reformer,” no longer hostage to one tradition or characterized as an archnemesis of the other, but instead as a “father in the faith,” in his full right, of the tradition of the whole Church.³⁶ Lortz shared with Yves Congar’s Chrétiens désunis, published in Paris in 1937, some fundamental notions of his critical interpretation of the Reformation from within a general ecumenical approach – for example, the conviction that even the most profound religious experiences, such as Luther’s, can transform into heresies if developed in an “abstract, autonomous, unilateral” way and turned into the affirmation “of a lonely and indomitable spirit.” Thus, if Luther’s “positive and original” reli Federico Chabod, Per la storia religiosa dello Stato di Milano durante il dominio di Carlo V. Note e documenti (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1938); Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento. Ricerche storiche (Firenze: Sansoni, 1939). On Febvre and Chabod, see Cantimori, “Lucien Febvre” and “Chabod storico della vita religiosa italiana del Cinquecento,” in Storici e storia. Metodo, caratteristiche e significato del lavoro storiografico (Torino: Einaudi, 1978), 213 – 54 and 315 – 42, here 335, in which Cantimori quotes this fine passage by Chabod, from “Gli studi di storia del Rinascimento,” in Cinquant’anni di vita intellettuale italiana (1896 – 1946). Scritti in onore di Benedetto Croce per il suo ottantesimo anniversario, eds. Carlo Antoni and Raffaele Mattioli (Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1966), 143 – 238, here 236.  Jedin, Girolamo Seripando. Sein Leben und Denken im Geisteskampf des 16. Jahrhunderts, vols. 1– 2 (Würzburg: Rita-Verlag, 1937).  Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland, 307n1 and 308; Lortz, Die Reformation als religiöses Anliegen heute. Vier Vorträge im Dienste der Una Sancta (Trier: Paulinus, 1948). See also Peter Manns, Martin Luther. Ketzer oder Vater im Glauben? (Hannover: Luterhaus Verlag, 1980); Manns, “Was macht Martin Luther zum ‚Vater im Glauben‘ für die eine Christenheit?,” in Martin Luther ‘Reformator und Vater im Glauben’. Referate aus der Vortragsreihe des Instituts für europäische Geschichte Mainz (Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag, 1985), 1– 24. The reference in the text is to Yves Congar, La tradition et les traditions, vols. 1– 2 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1960 – 1963).

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gious inspiration was indeed Catholic, it had left “the Catholic sphere” once it developed in a “tragically logical” way toward “abstract, autonomous, unilateral” positions and had surrendered itself to an “aberrant logic.” When facing the dilemma of deciding between a reform within the Church or against it, unlike Francis of Assisi, Luther had chosen the second option.³⁷ Lortz was the most recent exponent in a series – which, although not very long, still carried an undeniable weight – of German Catholic academics, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century with Ignaz Döllinger and arriving, via Johannes Janssen and Ludwig von Pastor, at one of Lortz’s teachers, Sebastian Merkle (to whom Die Reformation in Deutschland is dedicated, together with the moral theologian Fritz Tillmann). These scholars were able to take advantage of certain timid and tentative hints of receptiveness toward the historical-critical method after the end of Pius IX’s papacy as well as of the anti-modernist repression in place during the reign of Pius X, during the tempestuous years of the failure of the revolutions of 1848 – 1849, the establishment of Wilhelm’s Reich, Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, and the overcoming – in an ecumenical and national perspective, also thanks to Zentrum – of the antagonism between liberal Protestantism, Ultramontanism, and Reformkatholizismus. ³⁸ One of the fruits of the contradictory renewal of Catholic culture at the end of the nineteenth century was Leo XIII’s encyclical Saepenumero considerantes (1883), which “seemed to invite Catholics to take on without any fear the cognitive tools and critical methods of the contemporary world in the conviction that, far from harming the Church, they would instead offer a precious contribution to its defense.”³⁹ Denifle’s and Lortz’s research seems to have taken place – not without some contradictions – on the dangerous crest between Leo’s openings (which, however, were overtly apologetic) and the violent reaction distilled in 1907 in the decree Lamentabili sane exitu and the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. ⁴⁰ An example – simultaneously paradoxical and meaningful – of this epistemological schizophrenia can be found in Denifle’s lexical choices. In his title, Denifle already accuses the Protestants of being guilty of the modernists’ capital crime – that is, of the “development” (Entwickelung) of doctrine – and sets out to base his research on Luther and Lutheranism on “original sources” (quellenmäßig), therefore implying, not even very discretely, that the academics of the opposite ranks, who were certainly very illustri-

 Yves Congar, Chrétiens désunis. Principes d’un “oecuménisme” catholique (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1964 [1937]), 53 – 56.  Arnold, Heinrich Suso Denifle, 247– 51.  D. Menozzi, “La Chiesa e la storia. Una dimensione della cristianità da Leone XIII al Vaticano II,” Cristianesimo nella storia 5 (1984): 69 – 106, here 72.  Claus Arnold and Giovanni Vian, eds., The Reception and Application of the Encyclical Pascendi (Venezia: Edizioni Ca’Foscari, 2017). The e-book is available for reading and downloading at the following permalink: http://doi.org/10.14277/978-88-6969-130-0.

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ous, had not done so.⁴¹ In other words, the historical-critical method, the use of which was dangerous in the most sensitive fields of ecclesiastical and theological scholarship, such as exegesis and the history of (one’s own!) Church – Loisy’s and Buonaiuti’s cases come to mind as examples here – was not only legitimate, but also absolutely necessary in order to attack and defend oneself when it came to the confessional foundations of Protestantism, to the point that Denifle’s confrère and intellectual heir, Albert Maria Weiß, in his introduction to the second volume of Luther und Lutherthum, wrote: “the times of the privileged superiority [of the Protestants] on the laws of historiography in the historical research on the Reformation are over.”⁴² Surely, Lortz’s desire to impartially and critically reconstruct the truth of Luther and the Reformation came especially from Merkle’s teaching,⁴³ together with the need to get rid of that “theological uncertainty” (theologische Unklarheit) that, according to him, in both the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries, had enabled the tragic “misunderstanding” (Missverständnis) of the doctrine of justification. This misunderstanding had caused much harm, both to his Church, which had been greatly weakened at the very beginning of its clash with modernity, and to Germany, which had paid the political and religious price of the confessional rift for over four centuries. According to Lortz, that very modernity did not fail to leave its mark on Luther’s domineering subjectivism, which prevented him from being an extraordinary reformer of and in the Church and instead made him a hasty and impatient innovator.⁴⁴ However, the ecumenical sensitivity and the pioneering features of Die Reformation in Deutschland, which should have made of Lortz one of the spiritual fathers of the new mood during John XXIII’s papacy, instead – together with his criticism of the “complicity” (Mitschuld) of Rome and its theological deafness toward the reformatory movements coming from Germany, and also his enthusiasm for National Socialism until 1936 – 1937, as demonstrated in both the paperback Katholischer Zugang zum Nationalsozialismus (1933) and the afterword to the third edition of his Geschichte der Kirche in ideengeschichtlicher Betrachtung (1934)⁴⁵ – turned him into an unpop-

 Arnold, Heinrich Suso Denifle, 252– 57.  Denifle, Weiß, Luther und Lutherthum, 2:viii.  Apart from the already quoted Merkle, Luthers Quellen, see Merkle, Wiederum das Lutherproblem; Merkle, Das Lutherbild der Gegenwart; Merkle, Gutes an Luther und Übles an seinen Tadlern; Merkle, Zu Heinrich Denifle, Luther; all collected in Merkle, Ausgewählte Reden und Aufsätze, respectively 199 – 211, 224– 35, 236 – 43, 588 – 99. In honor of the 100th anniversary of Merkle’s birth, on December 11, 1962, Lortz gave a moving commemorative speech in the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Würzburg, in which he expressed his admiration and gratitude for his teacher; see Merkle, Ausgewählte Reden und Aufsätze, 57– 94.  Marcocchi, Prefazione all’edizione italiana, xx–xxviii. On the “haste” and “impatience” of Luther and the other Reformers, see Congar, Vera e falsa riforma nella Chiesa, with an introduction by A. Melloni (Milano: Jaca Book, 2015), 361. Congar’s volume was published in 1950.  Lortz, Katholischer Zugang zum Nationalsozialismus, kirchengeschichtlich gesehen (Münster: Aschendorff, 1933). Cf. also the afterword, entitled “Nationalsozialismus und Kirche,” in Lortz, Ge-

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ular author in some circles of the curia. Unlike Jedin, whose Roman pedigree Lortz did not share, he was not invited to the council as an expert, despite his ideas on ecumenism later being received in the decree Unitatis redintegratio and becoming a shared legacy of Catholicism. Even more importantly, the opinions and phrases used in the speech given by Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, who had been recently nominated as president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, at the fifth general assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Evian in 1970, were imbued “almost to the letter with opinions and phases similar to those used by Lortz,” without giving due credit to their source.⁴⁶ Moreover, some phases of the “struggle” for the imprimatur of the third edition of Die Reformation in Deutschland in 1960 – 1962 suggest that the real target of Roman ostracism was the work itself and not its author’s support of National Socialism, which turned out to be a very handy pretext. Indeed, it is not by chance that, while the Geschichte der Kirche was already circulating rather freely in its Italian translation in 1958, Die Reformation in Deutschland had to wait until 1979 to be translated and underwent several editorial vicissitudes in the process.⁴⁷ Delio Cantimori critically observed that works such as Lortz’s, while still “fine and interesting” books, do not pay enough attention to the objective importance of the Reformers’ actions, glossing over “the sense of great and fundamental contrasts, of profound differences” between Catholicism and Protestantism and leading not to the “overcoming of any polemical confessional attitude,” but rather, at most, to a retreat – due to “the fading of the ancient religious controversies […] in the face of the new perils that […] threaten Christianity itself” – from the “awareness that is at the origin of the renovating and progressive energy of Protestantism.”⁴⁸ Despite this,

schichte der Kirche in ideengeschichtlicher Betrachtung (Münster: Aschendorff, 1934); according to Lortz, after the concordat of 1933, the “fatal misunderstanding” that had marked the relationship between National Socialism and German Catholicism had lost any reason for being. Catholicism, therefore, had the task of “positively and completely merg[ing]” with the new state, given their “profound affinities.” On this topic – which is extremely controversial and, given the current state of the documents, very difficult to unravel – see Ulianich, Die Reformation in Deutschland di Joseph Lortz, 437– 39. An Italian translation of Lortz’s work Katholischer Zugang zum Nationalsozialismus can be found in Martino Patti, Chiesa cattolica tedesca e Terzo Reich (1933 – 1934). Il caso di M. Schmaus, J. Lortz, F. Taeschner, J. Pieper, F. von Papen (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008), 195 – 218. On Lortz’s attempt to trace “substantial overlaps between Catholicism and National Socialism,” see Mario Bendiscioli, Germania religiosa nel Terzo Reich. Conflitti religiosi e culturali nella Germania Nazista. Dalla testimonianza (1933 – 1945) alla storiografia (1946 – 1976) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1977), 173.  Boris Ulianich, “In memoriam Joseph Lortz,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 11 (1975): 508 – 11, here 510; Marcocchi, Prefazione all’edizione italiana, xxviii–xxx; Manns, Nachwort, 389 – 90.  Boris Ulianich, “Zwischen italienischer Geschichtsschreibung und Vatikanischer Zensur,” in Zum Gedenken an Joseph Lortz (1887 – 1975). Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte und Ökumene, eds. Rolf Decot and Rainer Finke (Stuttgart: Institut für Europäische Geschichte, 1989), 141– 95; the issue was tackled further in Ulianich, Die Reformation in Deutschland di Joseph Lortz, 412– 35.  By Cantimori, see Lucien Febvre, 232– 33 and 238, and “Appunti sullo ‘storicismo’,” in Storici e storia, 495 – 535, here 512.

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however, it is unanimously recognized that Lortz’s masterpiece, “the best work by a Catholic historian on the Reformation in Germany,”⁴⁹ marked a definitive breakthrough, a true “Copernican revolution” in the way we look at Luther,⁵⁰ overcoming “the hostility, diffidence, [and] ignorance of the Catholics” toward Luther, which had “delayed and hindered the reception of his message.”⁵¹ Lortz’s work also marked the apex of a long season of studies in German historical-theological research on Catholic side. With its explicit ecumenical intention, and within the general mood of renewal originating from the council, it broke new paths in research, which were followed especially in Germany and Italy, and which up to that point – albeit with a few exceptions of unquestionable value, such as Paolo Sarpi, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Ruggiero Bonghi, and Ernesto Buonaiuti – had played an entirely marginal role in the international historiographical sphere.⁵² That said, it is also true that it partly concealed the historiographical risk, already highlighted by Cantimori in 1964,⁵³ of recognizing a positive value in the figure of Luther and thus avoiding a full reckoning with the complexity and even the contradictions of the entire reformatory movement, as if Luther could shoulder all the alleged censure and merit of the Reformation and of Protestantism by himself. Although the general ecumenical mood urges us in a very different direction, damning or redeeming Luther does not translate into the damnation or redemption of Reformation and Protestantism.

 Giuseppe Alberigo, ed., La Riforma protestante (Milano: Queriniana, 1959), 259. The statement refers to the second (rectius third) edition of the work (1949), and is repeated in Alberigo, ed., La riforma protestante. Origini e cause (Brescia: Queriniana, 1977), 190, and in Alberigo, La riforma protestante. Origini e cause. II edizione aumentata (Brescia: Queriniana, 1988), 214. The volume was republished recently; see Alberigo, ed., Sola grazia. I testi essenziali della Riforma protestante, new ed. edited by D. Segna (Milano: Garzanti Libri, 2017).  Ulianich, “Riflessioni sulla storiografia cattolica relativa a Lutero,” in La Riforma protestante, 441– 54, here 451– 52.  Alberigo, “Martin Lutero nella coscienza cattolica contemporanea,” 121; Alberigo, “Martin Lutero nella coscienza cattolica dopo il Vaticano,” 222; Alberigo, “Cosa rappresenta Lutero nella coscienza cattolica contemporanea,” 38.  Jedin, Die Erforschung der kirchlichen Reformationsgeschichte seit 1876. Leistungen und Aufgaben der deutschen Katholiken (Münster: Aschendorff, 1931), reprinted together with Remigus Bäumer, Die Erforschung der kirchlichen Reformationsgeschichte seit 1931. Reformation, Katholische Reform und Gegenreformation in der neueren katholischen Reformationsgeschichtsschreibung in Deutschland (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975); Jedin, “Mutamenti della interpretazione cattolica della figura di Lutero e loro limiti,” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 23 (1969): 361– 77; Erwin Iserloh, “Luther in katholischer Sicht gestern und heute,” in Kirche – Ereignis und Institution. Aufsätze und Vorträge, vol. 2, Geschichte und Theologie der Reformation (Münster: Bonifatius, 1985), 233 – 47. On Italian historiography, see A. Melloni, “Il caso e la cosa. Lutero nella storiografia italiana del Novecento,” Cristianesimo nella storia 37 (2016): 613 – 48; Ulianich, Quale Lutero, 57– 61; Ulianich, Riflessioni sulla storiografia cattolica relativa a Lutero. On Buonaiuti, see esp. Ulianich, “Buonaiuti storico della Riforma, in Riforma e riforme,” 323 – 91.  Cantimori, “Interpretazioni della Riforma protestante”, in Storici e storia, 624– 56, here 635 – 36.

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4 Toward 2017 It is possible to measure the level of skepticism (almost a phobia) toward anything that even remotely resembled the ideas and instances of Protestantism – as was the case even after the Second Vatican Council and the first attempts to “bring Luther back home” within Roman Catholicism⁵⁴ – from the sleek volume entitled, provocatively and possibly even threateningly for Catholic and German-speaking ears, Reformation aus Rom. In this volume, the Reformation was no longer the one launched by Luther, but rather John XXIII’s council, which to some had seemed to embrace the very Luther whose “Lutheran confiscation” had “delayed and hindered the reception of […] the message as much as the hostility, diffidence, [and] ignorance of the Catholics,” and with which “the sense of its historicity, of its susceptibility to sin and, therefore, of a need for an always ongoing reform – not only in the form of an institutional rationalization or a doctrinal adjustment but mainly as a search for loyalty toward the gospel and the cross and as faith in God’s mercy – was definitely introduced in the living flesh of the Church.”⁵⁵ Like a two-faced Janus who looks both outside of and within the Catholic Church, the title already announced to its (Catholic) readers the most dangerous of innovations (Reformation) and the most comforting of certainties (Rom); thus, if the “Reformation” comes from Rome, it is a true and not a false reform, brought back into the course of the traditional flow of the Church, under the supervision of the Apostolic See, the “criterion, inspiration, and support” of the unity outside of which “any reformatory movement becomes a sect.”⁵⁶ Thus the “Reformation” is no longer a rebellion against the Church. However, it is completely different – if not antithetical – to the Protestant Reformation, with “the immensity of its deviations, but also the depth of the issues that it had raised and still raises for the Church,” on which falls “the dogmatic responsibility of heresy.” Apart from the “respect” and the “sympathy” that one may have “for certain aspects of Luther’s soul, it is not possible to forget that it was he who first broke the unity that represents the highest good on Earth and that nothing, maybe, will ever be able to restore,” despite the fact that “the historical responsibility for the rift,” as demonstrated by Lortz, is not only Luther’s, but was also due to the “conditions of life of the Church,” which were so worrying as to make the catastrophe “almost fatal.”⁵⁷ Therefore, it is not by chance that, when Catholicism deals with the issue of its renewal and reformatio, it is faced with the obstacle of Luther, since his “personality

 Ulrich Köpf, Martin Luther. Der Reformator und sein Werk (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2015), 243.  Karl Rahner, Mario von Galli, and Otto Baumhauer, eds., Reformation aus Rom. Die katholische Kirche nach dem Konzil (Tübingen: Wunderlich, 1967). The two quotations are from Alberigo, “Martin Lutero nella coscienza,” 119 and 121.  Congar, Chrétiens désunis, 55.  Congar, Vera e falsa riforma nella Chiesa, 269 and 407.

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cannot be approached without the consequence of an examination of conscience.” As in the case of Boris Ulianich’s study on Luther’s ecclesiology, for example, this has influenced the choices made by academics during a time when the Catholic Church was “under the influence of the initiative of the ecumenical movement of the Church and its decisions and, before that, of the spirit of the ecumenical Second Vatican Council.”⁵⁸ Moreover, one of the tasks of Catholic Christianity after the council was to question how much of its reform was indebted to the Reformation – and especially to those who, like Luther, had first shaped its spirit and its form – and finally to ask whether any of Luther’s initiatives were received by the council and, if so, which ones.⁵⁹ By comparing itself with the figure of Luther and his reformatory vitality, Roman Catholicism has almost been forced to redeem him from his damnation and bring him – forcefully, according to some – into Jedin’s third, straight path of Catholic Reform. This is why it appeared to many as if Luther’s ghost was hanging over the conciliar assembly, to the point that the editors of Reformation aus Rom aired 13 television programs on Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). These programs elicited such a great interest among the German public that a paper edition was possible. The broadcasts and the volume were meant for two kinds of recipients, who were addressed with brave, “Lutheran” words: firstly, those who wished to understand what the Second Vatican Council actually meant, and secondly (especially), the many who want to know, apart from this, what can or must become of the Catholic Church after the council: the many who once learned […] that this Church cannot make mistakes and therefore has nothing to revise […]; the many who were educated in certain forms of religious life, which were presented as necessary to salvation, and who now see their relativity […]; the many who were pointed for many years toward a blind obedience as the safest, if not the only, way to salvation and who now have to live and act Christianly on the basis of a free decision, which they have never practiced before, and of a personal judgment, which no one ever helped them to form. In short, the many who once felt safe in the apparent immutability of this Church and now cannot recognize it in an ecclesia semper reformanda. ⁶⁰

Luther and his Reformation also became the standard-bearers of a conciliar reform that seemed to struggle after the episcopal synod of 1967 and the encyclical Humanae vitae of July 1968. In his presentation of the Italian edition – the title of which obviously lacks the semantic differentiation between Reform and Reformation, both translated into Italian with the word riforma, and which introduces a question mark in order to add a dubious tone that was not present in the original German – Ernesto Balducci bitterly acknowledges how “difficult it would be for our own

 Ulianich, La Chiesa in Lutero, 16 – 17.  S. Pfürtner, “Reformation und Reform des Zweiten Vatikanums,” in Strukturen christlicher Existenz. Beiträge zur Erneuerung des geistlichen Lebens, eds. H. Schlier et al. (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 1968), 107– 26, 376 – 80, here 108 and 126.  O. Baumhauer, “Einleitung,” in Reformation aus Rom, 11– 17, here 13 – 14.

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broadcaster to organize something similar. Here, in fact, a certain ‘political’ interpretation of the council has now taken hold […] It has a canon that fully conforms to our rhetorical tradition: to speak plenty of the council without bothering anyone and especially without insisting on its fundamental options of reform.”⁶¹ If the Tridentine period was founded “largely on opposition to the Reformation and on Luther’s demonization” and represented an era in which “modern Catholicism took on a doctrinal and institutional identity that was largely anti-Lutheran,” the Second Vatican Council brought about such a “change of perspective” as to elicit the appearance of “instances and propositions of Lutheran origin” in the council.⁶² The Council of Trent, in formulating Catholic doctrine, did not agree to debate the most urgent doctrinal issues with the Protestants and exercised the judicial function that had traditionally been assumed by councils during their history – without, however, “formulating an answer to the theological challenge posed by the Reformers,” which was based on the “acceptance of the instances of reform actually founded on Scripture.” In contrast, the Second Vatican Council did not perceive “the questions” of the Reformation as a provocation “that challenged essential elements of the Catholic faith,” but rather managed to “articulate a more adequate reply,” accepting some of the instances of the Reformation “through the rediscovery of givens of the tradition of the faith that had been forgotten” and thus giving voice to positions that objectively signified a reception of the Reformers’ positions, rediscovering “through the testimonies of the churches of the Reformation true elements of the Christian message.”⁶³ However, originating as it did from Luther’s immersion in the biblical word, the Reformation was, according to Paolo Ricca, much more than a reformatory option for Catholicism. Instead, it was “a general and profound rethinking of the Christian message and life” that the Council of Trent condemned at the time, not because it had misinterpreted it, but precisely because it had understood it perfectly. Thus it is not a re-form of the existing Church, but rather a new form of Church: the Church of the Reformation is not merely a reformed Catholic Church, but a new form of Christian Church. Therefore, Protestantism is not simply a reformed Catholicism, but a new way to be Christian, a new type of Christianity, originating in the “refoundation of the Church” that gave it a new core, with a “biblical re-substantiation of the Christian faith,”⁶⁴ in place of the old core – the Petrine one. It goes without saying that, from this perspective, Luther cannot be a Catholic reformer, but is instead the most important of the refounding fathers of the Reformation.

 E. Balducci, “Presentazione,” in Riforma da Roma?, 5 – 7, here 5 – 6.  Alberigo, “Cosa rappresenta Lutero nella coscienza cattolica contemporanea,” 29.  A. Maffeis, “Ecclesia semper reformanda: le lezioni della storia e il significato ecumenico,” in La riforma e le riforme nella Chiesa, eds. Antonio Spadaro and Carlos M. Galli (Brescia: Queriniana, 2016), 140 – 55, here 144– 45.  P. Ricca, “Che cos’è stata la Riforma,” in Ripensare la Riforma. Nuove prospettive degli studi italiani, ed. Lucia Felici (Torino: Claudiana, 2015), 347– 52, here 348 – 52.

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In the recent positions expressed by Francis I, it is possible to hear some echoes of Lortz’s ecumenical intuitions, albeit mediated by the official Roman statements that have followed the position expressed by Cardinal Willebrands. For example, in his homily on November 15, 2015, during his visit to the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Rome, Francis I – using words that now represent a shared legacy of the dialogue among confessions – emphasized how fundamental it is that “the Catholic Church courageously carry forward a careful and honest reevaluation of the intentions of the Reformation and of the figure of Martin Luther, in the sense of Ecclesia semper reformanda, in the broad wake traced by the Councils, as well by men and women, enlivened by the light and power of the Holy Spirit.”⁶⁵ On the other hand – just as has happened and continues to happen any time there is a coming together of the churches, or on the occasion of important anniversaries, such as the Luther anniversary in 1983⁶⁶ – a few dissonant voices were also heard among the choir of general appreciation of the current ecumenical mood after the commemoration in Lund on October 31, 2016. The pope – almost as if he were a post-modern Jesuit wolf disguised as a universal shepherd tempting those Evangelicals who were not firm in their confessional identity⁶⁷ – allegedly used “all of his communicative skills, which include an illusory will to cooperate and also massive doses of ambiguity,” in order to re-Catholicize Luther and the Reformation, toying with the idea that the former “was always a son (albeit a fiery and rebellious one) of the Holy Roman Church” and weakening the theological reach of the second, which had been fully understood by the Council of Trent, by reducing it to a mere political and ecclesiastical phenomenon. Therefore, mercy is supposedly the cutting edge of a new Counter-Reformation of the Jesuit pope, of his “soft primacy,” which “accepts all and considers nothing as problematic, but which then is recycled into an enveloping Roman Catholicism” toward the unity of the churches, “surely more Catholic, but still more Romanly so.” On the other hand, Francis I allegedly has terrible credentials for even attempting a reform of the Church, which would remain “very much on this side and below the events of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and the evangelic notion of reform of the Church and in the Church.” Therefore, behind his “missionary drive” hides the cruel face of the

 Available at: w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/november/documents/papafrancesco_20151115_chiesa-evangelica-luterana.html.  Manns, “Zur Lage der Ökumene nach dem Luther-Jahr,” in Martin Luther “Reformator und Vater im Glauben”, 293 – 356.  According to Leonardo De Chirico (Evangelical Theological Perspectives on Post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism [Oxford: Peter Lang, 2003], 305 – 08), the most serious consequence of the current development of evangelical theology is a “progressive erosion” of the theological boundaries of the “cores” of evangelical faith, especially if these contain doctrinal convictions that cannot merge with the criteria of the “current ecumenical correctness”; the reaction to these developments should be a return to the legacy of the Reformation and to the “systemic awareness” of the Reformed tradition, which, unlike the experiential revivalism that is trending at the moment, is the only one able to deal with the Roman Catholic theological system.

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“dogmatic order of Roman Catholicism from the Council of Trent to the First Vatican Council,” while Francis I’s mercy is a true “obstruction […] on the path toward reform” – obviously the real one, that of Luther and the other Reformers.⁶⁸ Another question has also been asked: what is the price that has been paid, and what price are we still willing to pay, to facilitate bringing the churches together? According to Volker Reinhardt, for example, the latest statements by important representatives on both sides seem to allude to the fact that Luther – and the history of confessional rifts connected to his name – are dead and gone. One of the first illustrious victims of this diplomatic and ecclesiastical appeasement is allegedly the Lutheran doctrine of predestination, which is now indefensible in the face of our contemporary open and democratic sensitivity, as well as the deep anthropological pessimism of the Reformers in general – and of Luther in particular. This has supposedly been superseded by a “socio-political actionism” that, without anyone even being aware of it, has reintroduced that very salvation by works against which the theses of 1517 were written and has made unacceptable that very fear of eternal damnation and hell that was the foundation of Luther’s spiritual journey, since it is opposed “to the norms of a liberal and democratic state.” According to Reinhardt, if even Luther’s most uncomfortable and disconcerting aspects are not so much overcome as – even worse – ignored and forgotten, it is not the theological doctrines that will keep the confessional separation alive, but rather aspects of ecclesiastical and political power. Apart from the papacy and its revendication of primacy, with its notion of being the pièce de résistance against “theological dissolution and patchwork religions,” another much more formidable obstacle stands in the way of the reunification of the churches – European nationalism and its stereotypes, which originated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with humanism and the Reformation, and which are now “more aggressive than ever” behind the fine and reassuring “façade of unity” of the European Union. If in order to comprehend one another, it is first necessary to understand one another, then a disenchanted outlook on such a conflictual past – which has still not been overcome – is the best tool to reach this goal, which is as urgent as ever in the conflicts of the contemporary era.⁶⁹ Apart from those noted here, many other similar statements could be quoted to either redeem or damn Luther in the public and historiographical debates on the eve of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. On the other hand, in the jubilee year of 2017, it is equally important and unavoidable to take the measure of the state of the art. In the plethora of more or less academically grounded positions, and in all the mass media formats available today, it is nonetheless necessary to realize that – despite all the confessional shortcomings and idiosyncrasies that are still alive and  De Chirico, “Introduzione,” 1– 2, and De Chirico, “Riforma e riforme nella Chiesa cattolica di papa Francesco,” Studi di teologia 57 (2017), 45 – 49. The texts of the pope’s apostolic visit to Sweden are available at: w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/travels/2016/outside/documents/papa-francescosvezia-2016.html.  Reinhardt, Luther, der Ketzer, 325 – 28.

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kicking – the same urgency of reckoning with Luther’s reformatory challenge ad intra and ad extra that damned him in the sixteenth century has redeemed him four centuries later. The effort to revise the Catholic Church’s judgment of the Protestant Reformation and to draw an image of Luther “wie er eigentlich gewesen ist” has been, and still is, a sign of the changing historiographical and ecclesial times, which – one can only hope – will turn the soil for a new planting that will be as fruitful as the previous one.

Johannes Oeldemann

The Legacy of Martin Luther and the Tradition of the Orthodox Church On the Status of the Modern Orthodox-Lutheran Dialogue

The history of theological dialogues between Lutheran and Orthodox theologians dates back to the Reformation. The Reformers’ interest in having a dialogue with Orthodoxy was rooted in their efforts to demonstrate the conformity of their reform concerns with the teachings of the ancient Church. To ground his doctrine and Church reform, Martin Luther invoked “the testimony of the Greek Church” from the start.¹ Philipp Melanchthon sent a Greek version of the Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana graeca) to the Patriarch of Constantinople so that the Byzantines could get an impression of the teachings of the Wittenberg reform movement.² The correspondence between the Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II and the Tübingen theologians in the years 1573 – 1581 is well-researched and frequently cited. Many points were in fact already raised there that would be discussed later in the theological dialogues.³ After these initial attempts at communication fell through, there were sporadic talks over the following centuries between Protestant and Orthodox theologians. These were motivated partly by dynastic connections – between the Russian tsars and German principalities of Lutheran denomination – and partly by the apologetics both sides engaged in against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Until the twentieth century, however, the following lament from Athanasios Vletsis was still essentially true: “Orthodoxy has dealt with the theology of the Reformation only marginally and, if at all, then chiefly for apologetic reasons.”⁴ It was the ecumenical movement

Translation from German: Christopher William Reid.  W. Hryniewicz, “Martin Luther und die Orthodoxie. Ökumenische Erwägungen,” Ostkirchliche Studien 36 (1987): 154– 77, here 155.  See G. Wenz, “Den Griechen ein Grieche? Die Confessio Augustana Graeca von 1559 und der Briefwechsel der Leitung der Württembergischen Kirche mit Patriarch Jeremias II. von Konstantinopel in den Jahren 1573 bis 1581 im Kontext der Konkordienformel von 1577,” in Das Schisma zwischen Ostund Westkirche 950 bzw. 800 Jahre danach (1054 und 1204), ed. Theodor Nikolaou, Beiträge aus dem Zentrum für ökumenische Forschung München 2 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004), 115 – 41.  See Dorothea Wendebourg, Reformation und Orthodoxie. Der ökumenische Briefwechsel zwischen der Leitung der Württembergischen Kirche und Patriarch Jeremias II. von Konstantinopel in den Jahren 1573 bis 1581 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986).  A. Vletsis, “Luther und die Reformation im Kontext Orthodoxer Theologie: Von der Dialektik der Konfrontation zur Komplementarität einer ökumenischen Verständigung?” in Begegnungen – Entgegnungen. Beiträge zur modernen Gottesfrage, kontextuellen Theologie und Ökumene, eds. Johanna Rahner and Andrea Strübind (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2015), 133 – 49, here 135. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-047

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of the twentieth century that brought a new dynamic to the dialogue between the Reformation and Orthodoxy.

1 Pioneers of Theological Dialogue in the Twentieth Century Within the context of the ecumenical movement, there were direct encounters between Orthodox and Protestant theologians: first within the Faith and Order Movement and the Life and Work Movement, and later at the conferences and committee meetings of the World Council of Churches, founded in Amsterdam in 1948. In addition to these multilateral meetings, Germany’s Evangelical Church in particular sought close contact with Orthodox churches and theologians following the Second World War. The initial driving forces were the Hanover bishop Hanns Lilje (1899 – 1977), who instituted a research center for issues concerning Eastern Churches at the Evangelische Akademie Hermannsburg in 1947, and the head of the External Church Relations Office of the Evangelical Church (at that time still located in Frankfurt, Germany), Martin Niemöller (1892– 1984). The Slavist and theologian Dr. Hildegard Schaeder (1902– 1984) also played an important role, directing the Orthodoxy department within the External Church Relations Office of the Evangelical Church for over twenty years (1948 – 1979). Between 1948 and 1950, the Orthodoxy department and the Hermannsburg research center organized a total of four conferences, in which Protestant denominational researchers and Orthodoxy specialists came together to prepare for the dialogue with the Orthodox churches.⁵ In parallel with these talks on Orthodoxy, efforts were also made to interact directly with Orthodox theologians. Here, the External Church Relations Office first established ties with the Russian exile theologians at the Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe Saint-Serge in Paris. In April 1950, a first round of talks was held in Frankfurt am Main. Participants on the Evangelical side included the theologians Gerhard Ebeling, Edmund Schlink, and Ernst Wolf, while the Orthodox side included the Russian exile theologians Anton Kartašev, Viktor Leontovič, and Vasilij Zenkovskij.⁶ Two more rounds of talks followed, in Frankfurt in 1951 and in Bièvres near Paris in 1952, which also included a Greek theologian, Panagiotis Bratsiotis. In addition to this official ecclesiastical tier, a second level of dialogue emerged at the prompting of individual theologians. A catalyst of this dialogue on the Protestant side was Ernst Benz (1907– 1978), a professor of ecclesiastical and doctrinal his-

 See A. Basdekis, “Die Theologischen Gespräche zwischen der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland und der Orthodoxie. Versuch einer Standortbestimmung,” Ökumenische Rundschau 27 (1978): 223 – 53, here 224– 28.  See Kirche und Kosmos. Orthodoxes und evangelisches Christentum, Studienheft 2, ed. Kirchliches Außenamt der EKD (Witten/Ruhr: Luther Verlag, 1950), 136.

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tory at the University of Marburg. He organized a conference in Marburg in the fall of 1951. He as well invited three representatives of the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris: Sergius Bulgakov, Peter Kovalevskij, and Lev Zander.⁷ In addition to Ernst Benz, two other German Protestant theologians who greatly influenced the dialogue with the Orthodox Church in the twentieth century deserve to be mentioned here. The first is Friedrich Heyer (1908 – 2005), who completed his habilitation with an extensive study of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and assumed the chair of the newly created Department of Denominational Studies in Heidelberg in 1964. During his long teaching career in Heidelberg, he established countless contacts with Orthodox students and teachers. The other noteworthy theologian is Professor Fairy von Lilienfeld (1917– 2009), who held the Chair of History and Theology of the Christian East in Erlangen from 1966 until her retirement in 1984. Von Lilienfeld came from a Baltic German family, studied Slavic after the war, and then took up the study of theology in Naumburg in 1953. She graduated with a doctoral thesis on the leading Russian monk, Father Nile Sorskij. Owing to von Lilienfeld’s profound knowledge of the Russian language and Orthodoxy, she became a mediator between the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and the Russian Orthodox Church. She was even named an honorary member of the Moscow Theological Academy after her retirement.⁸ Her decades of work in the theological dialogue between Orthodox and Protestant theology prepared her for the next chapter of her life – engaging in the theological dialogues between the EKD and individual Orthodox patriarchates.

2 The Theological Dialogues between the EKD and Different Orthodox Patriarchates For historical reasons (e. g., close dynastic links between Germany and Russia) and due to the exigencies of the moment (e. g., a commitment to reconciliation between nations after the end of National Socialism), the Protestant churches in Germany played a pioneering role in the ecumenical dialogue between Orthodoxy and Protestantism in the twentieth century. Germany’s division necessitated the organization of a series of parallel talks. These were conducted respectively by the EKD, the Evangelical Church in (West) Germany, and the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR.

 See the documentation of this conference in Ernst Benz and Lev A. Zander, eds., Evangelisches und Orthodoxes Christentum in Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung (Hamburg: Rauhes Haus, 1952).  See Dagmar Heller, “Fairy von Lilienfeld und die Ökumene mit der Orthodoxie,” Una Sancta 65 (2010): 72– 77.

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2.1 Theological Dialogues between the EKD (West Germany) and the Russian Orthodox Church Martin Niemöller’s visit to the Soviet Union in January 1952 was crucial for the relations between the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and the Moscow Patriarchate. The Moscow Patriarchate invited Niemöller “first and foremost […] as a sort of symbol of the Confessing Church, which was understood as a resistance movement against the Nazi state.”⁹ Niemöller’s trip was widely covered in the press and sparked an intense debate in Western ecclesiastical circles about the relationship with the churches in the “Eastern Bloc.” Another important step on the way to the bilateral dialogue between the Moscow Patriarchate and the EKD was the three-week (!) trip of a EKD delegation to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1954. It was headed by the then-president of the synod and later president of the Federal Republic of Germany, Gustav Heinemann. The trip was followed by an official visit from Adolf Wischmann, the director of the External Church Relations Office of the EKD, to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1958. In the context of the reciprocal visit of a Russian delegation from October 27– 29, 1959, the first round of theological talks was held between representatives of the EKD and the Russian Orthodox Church at the Protestant academy in Arnoldshain. In the literature, these talks are referred to as the “Arnoldshain Dialogues,” after the location of the first meeting.¹⁰ Place and year

Topic

Arnoldshain I: Arnoldshain 

Tradition and the righteousness of faith

Arnoldshain II: Zagorsk 

The agency of the Holy Spirit

Arnoldshain III: Höchst 

Reconciliation

Arnoldshain IV: Leningrad  Baptism – new life – service Arnoldshain V: Kirchberg 

The resurrected Christ and the world’s salvation

Arnoldshain VI: Zagorsk 

The Eucharist

Arnoldshain VII: Arnoldshain 

The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of Christians

Arnoldshain VIII: Odessa 

The hope for the future of humankind according to God’s promise

 G. Kretschmar, “Reformation and Orthodoxy. Das theologische Gespräch zwischen der RussischOrthodoxen Kirche und der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland,” in Begegnung. Beiträge zu einer Hermeneutik des theologischen Gesprächs, eds. Max Seckler et al. (Graz/Vienna/Cologne: Styria, 1972), 537– 51, here 543.  The communiqués of these conversations and the references to their complete documentation in German and Russian are published in Thomas Bremer, Johannes Oeldemann, and Dagmar Stoltmann, eds., Orthodoxie im Dialog. Bilaterale Dialoge der orthodoxen und der orientalisch-orthodoxen Kirchen 1945 – 1997. Eine Dokumentensammlung (Trier: Paulinus, 1999), 312– 65.

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Continued Place and year

Topic

Arnoldshain IX: Schloss Schwanberg 

The ecclesiastical ministry and the apostolic succession

Arnoldshain X: Kiev 

The episcopal ministry in the Church

Arnoldshain XI: Mülheim 

The royal priesthood of the baptized and the apostolic ministry in the Church

Arnoldshain XII: Minsk 

The life of the Church and its testimony as an expression of its holiness and catholicity

In reviewing the topics of the Arnoldshain Dialogues, one notices that the twelve rounds of talks were not subject to any kind of systematic ordering. Nevertheless, each of the topics of the individual talks were connected in some way to the preceding issue. Two classic themes of controversial theology stand in the foreground in the initial round of talks in Arnoldshain in 1959: the understanding of Church tradition and justification by faith. The second round of talks sought to identify a connecting principle between the different approaches on the Orthodox and Protestant sides with its reflections on the agency of the Holy Spirit. After discussions in the third round on the biblical understanding of reconciliation, the fourth round was devoted to the understanding of baptism. Here, the biblical foundations of baptism were initially clarified, and then its importance for membership in the Church and the ministry of the baptized in the world was discussed. The testimony of Christians in the world was then discussed in the fifth round of talks, with particular attention to understanding the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The sixth dialogue on the meaning of the Eucharist was then followed by consultations on the understanding of Christ’s sacrifice and its relation to the sacrifice of Christians. The ecclesiastical ministry was a focus until the ninth round of talks. This discussion was then expanded on with regard to episcopal ministry in the Church and the relationship between the common priesthood of the baptized and ordained ministry. In the twelfth round of talks in 1990, the primary concern was finally the Church itself. Two of its essential features were taken up in the issues of holiness and catholicity.

2.2 Theological Dialogues between the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR and the Moscow Patriarchate We can now turn to the second, parallel series of talks with the Moscow Patriarchate. Until 1969, the Protestant churches in East Germany officially belonged to the Evangelical Church in Germany and were thus formally involved in the first Arnoldshain Dialogues. Nevertheless, East German staff only participated in the first round of talks in Arnoldshain in 1959. Heinrich Vogel from the Humboldt University in Berlin

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participated as a representative of the East German churches. But after the closure of the border in 1961, no East German representative could participate in the subsequent rounds of talks. In 1972, on the occasion of the first visit by a delegation from the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR, Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad proposed that a theological dialogue be initiated. The offer was received positively. After the conference of the Protestant church leadership in the GDR and the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church gave their consent, the first discussion took place in July 1974 at the Moscow Theological Academy, located on the premises of the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius in Sergiyev Posad. The city was called Zagorsk (after the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Zagorskij) in the Soviet Union in order to erase the memory of its actual namesake, St. Sergius of Radonezh. In the literature, these talks are referred to as the “Zagorsk Dialogues,” after the location of the first meeting.¹¹ Place and year

Topic

Zagorsk I: Zagorsk 

The sermon in the church service and the situation of the churches in the context of a socialist society

Zagorsk II: Erfurt 

The kingdom of God as present and future reality

Zagorsk III: Kiev  The sanctifying power of God’s grace in the Church and through the Church Zagorsk IV: Güstrow 

Following Christ in the Christian life

Zagorsk V: Zagorsk 

The appraisal of the Lima documents “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry” – particularly in relation to the ministry

Zagorsk VI: Wittenberg 

God’s people and the nations of the world in the light of baptism

Zagorsk VII: Zagorsk 

The role of the Church in renewing society

In comparing the topics of the Arnoldshain Dialogues with those of the Zagorsk Dialogues, it is striking that the latter do not focus on controversial theological issues. Instead, they deal with the relationship between church and society. At the outset, the concern was with the situation of the churches under socialism as well as the understanding of the kingdom of God and its impact on the present. The seventh, final round of talks discussed the role of the churches in renewing society under the banner of perestroika. In between, there was a thematic block in which the talks (prior to the Arnoldshain Dialogues) were dedicated to the understanding of the Church and – motivated by the Lima documents – of the Church’s ministry

 The communiqués of these conversations and the references to their complete documentation in German and Russian are published in Orthodoxie im Dialog, 396 – 419.

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and baptism. The Joint Report to the Church leaders in 1995 sums up the theological discussions of the Protestant churches in East and West Germany with the Moscow Patriarchate up until 1990: These theological discussions have been conducted in a spirit of ecclesial openness, mutual trust, and spiritual hospitality. […] Through the consultative encounters and the trusting community that has grown in the process, our churches have come to know and to understand each other better. It was possible to clarify and dispel many of the prejudices and concerns, which have traditionally prevailed between our churches. We have achieved a theological rapprochement that has raised our hopes for a full reconciliation.¹²

The Arnoldshain and Zagorsk dialogues thus managed to take essential steps toward beginning any ecumenical dialogue: the building of trust, the reduction of prejudice, and a critical review of the traditional theological differences. After the reunification of Germany, it was necessary to merge these two parallel conversational strands. In a phase in which the churches – both in Germany and in Russia – were largely preoccupied with themselves and their internal consolidation, this was not an easy process.

2.3 Theological Dialogues between the EKD (after Reunification) and the Russian Orthodox Church The first meeting between representatives of the EKD and the Russian Orthodox Church after the reunification of Germany took place in Bad Urach in November 1992. Following the pattern of the previous series of dialogues, this round and those that followed on the German side were called the “Bad Urach Dialogues.”¹³ This designation, however, did not prevail on the Russian side. Place and year

Topic

. Meeting in Bad Urach, 

The Church as the communion of saints and their testimony in the world

 See the Joint Report to the Leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Evangelical Church in Germany on the State of the Bilateral Theological Dialogue, in Orthodoxie im Dialog, 372– 83, here 373.  These conversations are documented in Klaus Schwarz, ed., Bilaterale theologische Dialoge mit der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche (Hermannsburg: Missionhandlung Hermannsburg, 1996), 257– 396; Rolf Koppe, ed., Bilateraler Theologischer Dialog […] 1998 und 2002 (Hermannsburg: Ludwig Harms Haus, 2004); Dagmar Heller, ed., Sechzig Jahre nach Kriegsende – Christliche Werte heute (Frankfurt: Lembeck, 2007); Petra Bosse-Huber and Martin Illert, eds., Theologischer Dialog mit der Russisch-Orthodoxen Kirche 2008 – 2015 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016). The communiqués of the most recent meetings (since 2002) are also available online at: http://www.ekd.de/international/dialog/Orthodoxie/dokumente.html.

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Continued Place and year

Topic

. Meeting in Minsk, 

The Church, the people, and the state in Europe

. Meeting in Mülheim/Ruhr,  Religious education and inter-church relations . Meeting in Moscow/Sergiyev Posad, 

 years after the Second World War: The importance of Christian values today

. Meeting in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, 

Freedom and responsibility from a Christian perspective

. Meeting in Rostov-on-Don,  Churches in multicultural society . Meeting in Munich, 

 years after the Second World War: Peace and reconciliation

At the first meeting in Bad Urach in 1992, the EKD delegation was comprised of representatives from the East and West German regional churches who were already involved with the Arnoldshain and Zagorsk talks. Together with the Russian representatives, some of whom had also participated in the earlier rounds of talks, an attempt was made to evaluate the previous dialogues. Since an agreement could not be reached in this regard in Bad Urach, a six-member working group was established, which produced the above-mentioned Joint Report for the church leadership. The report attempted to outline the theological consensus that had been reached, but also to address the outstanding issues. The church leadership on both sides evaluated the report positively. Nonetheless, since the report emphasizes “solely the desire for reconciliation and understanding,” it was deemed problematic afterwards for “ignoring the critical questions regarding language, government influence, and exploitation of the dialogues.”¹⁴ The report was discussed at the second meeting in Minsk in 1998 but had no substantive impact on the further course of the talks. In view of the political and social changes in Europe, these talks centered on the relationship between church and state. That said, whereas in Minsk the immediate concern was with state laws regarding religion, the meeting in Mülheim addressed questions of religious education. The 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War provided the occasion for the fourth meeting in 2005. This meeting did not, however, result in an agreement on the question of the importance of Christian values. The values debate was also in the background of the fifth meeting in 2008, which grappled particularly with the understanding of human rights under the heading “Freedom and Responsibility.” The election of Margot Käßmann as EKD Council President in 2009 temporarily strained relations in the dialogue between the EKD and the Moscow Patriarchate.

 Martin Illert, Dialog – Narration – Transformation. Die Dialoge der evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland und des Bundes der evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR mit orthodoxen Kirchen seit 1959 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016), 186.

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The celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the dialogue, which were planned for the fall of 2009, were canceled. Nonetheless, the fifty-year relationship between the EKD and the Russian Orthodox Church had already been honored previously in a special bilingual anniversary volume.¹⁵ Margot Käßmann’s resignation facilitated the continuation of the dialogue, which treated the role of the churches in multicultural society at the sixth meeting in Rostov-on-Don. The last round of talks, in Munich in 2015, centered on the issues of peace and reconciliation in the light of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. A notable aspect of this meeting was that for the first time official Catholic guests were invited to participate in the talks. Overall, the dialogue between the EKD and the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most continuous ecumenical dialogues of recent decades. During the Cold War, it helped serve as a bridge between the Christians of the East and the West. After German reunification, the exchange experienced a crisis; the threads of dialogue could only be maintained on the basis of previously gained trust. Thus to a certain extent, the dialogue reflected the developments that had taken place in church and society and thus demonstrates that ecumenism does not take place in a vacuum. Indeed, theological debates are always influenced by non-theological factors.

2.4 Bilateral Theological Dialogue between the EKD and the Ecumenical Patriarchate Non-theological factors have also influenced the dialogue between the EKD and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, although under very different circumstances. The historical backdrop for this dialogue was the growing number of Orthodox Christians who came to Germany in the early 1960s due to the recruitment of numerous guest workers. During this time, there was an agreement between the Protestant Diaconia and the Catholic Caritas: the latter was to take care of the guest workers from Catholic countries (e. g., Italy and Spain), while the former would attend to people from the Orthodox countries (mainly Greeks and Serbs). The initiative to hold a theological dialogue came from the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I. In 1966, he proposed opening a dialogue “of faith and love” during a visit of then-EKD Council President, Bishop Scharf.¹⁶

 Hinhören und Hinsehen. Beziehungen zwischen der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche und der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland, ed. Kirchenamt der EKD in Hannover und Kirchliches Außenamt des Moskauer Patriarchats (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2003).  The communiqués of the first eleven meetings (up to 1997) and references to their complete documentation are published in Orthodoxie im Dialog, 383 – 96. The following meetings are documented in Rolf Koppe, ed., Die Kirchen im zusammenwachsenden Europa. Zwölfte Begegnung im bilateralen Theologischen Dialog (Hermannsburg: Missionhandlung, 2003), 205 – 333; Dagmar Heller and Rolf Koppe, eds., Die Gnade Gottes und das Heil der Welt. Das 13. Gespräch im Rahmen des bilateralen Theologischen Dialogs (Frankfurt: Lembeck, 2006); Petra Bosse-Huber and Martin Illert, eds., Theolo-

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Place and year

Topic

. Meeting in Istanbul, 

Dialogue of faith and love

. Meeting in Arnoldshain, 

Christ – the world’s salvation

. Meeting in Chambésy, 

The image of humankind in Orthodoxy and Protestantism

. Meeting in Friedewald,  The invocation of the Holy Spirit in Holy Communion . Meeting in Bonn, 

The Eucharist and the priesthood

. Meeting in Stapelage, 

The gospel and the Church

. Meeting in Kavala, 

The proclamation of the gospel and the celebration of the Holy Eucharist

. Meeting in Hohenwart,  The agency of the Holy Spirit in the experience of the Church . Meeting in Crete, 

Life from the power of the Holy Spirit

. Meeting in Iserlohn, 

The role of the Church in testimony and service

. Meeting in Rhodes, 

The cosmos as God’s creation and the churches in the face of the ecological problem

. Meeting in Brandenburg/ Havel, 

The churches in an integrating Europe

. Meeting in Istanbul, 

The grace of God and the salvation of the world

. Meeting in Schloss Oppurg, The importance of the councils and confessions for ecumenical  dialogue . Meeting in Crete, 

Relations between church and state from a historical and ecclesial perspective

. Meeting in Hamburg, 

The image of Christ in Orthodox and Protestant piety

The first meeting in Istanbul in 1969 mainly served to lay the groundwork for the dialogue and to agree on potential topics. The overview of the following rounds of talks shows that this dialogue dealt with theological themes in the narrow sense of the word, much more vigorously than the dialogue with the Russian Church. From 1975 to 1990, the dialogue focused intensively on ecclesiology and pneumatology on the basis of Christology and anthropology, while the relationship between the church and the world was highlighted beginning at the tenth meeting in Iserlohn in 1994. Nonetheless, theological issues continued to be treated in this later phase – issues such as the importance of the councils of the Orthodox Church and of the confessional writings for Evangelical Christians, Orthodox icon theology, and gischer Dialog mit dem Ökumenischen Patriarchat. 14. und 15. Begegnung im bilateralen Theologischen Dialog (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2015). The communiqués of the most recent meetings (since 2004) are also available online at: http://www.ekd.de/international/dialog/Orthodoxie/dokumente.html.

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Protestant approaches to the image of Christ. Overall, the dialogue between the EKD and the Ecumenical Patriarchate demonstrated a focus on theological issues, while the rounds of talks clearly strove to identify common foundations.

2.5 Theological Dialogues between the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church The dialogue with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church goes back to an initiative of church leaders of the Protestant Church Federation in the GDR. After reciprocal visits in 1971 and 1975, they invited the Bulgarian Church to participate in theological talks. The first round took place in December 1978 in Herrnhut. This series of talks is thus called the “Herrnhut Dialogues”.¹⁷ Place and year

Topic

Herrnhut I: Herrnhut 

Proclamation oft he Gospel today

Herrnhut II: Sofia 

The source of faith

Herrnhut III: Eisenach 

Baptism and the Eucharist

Herrnhut IV: Sofia 

Spiritual ministry in the Church

Herrnhut V: Reinhardsbrunn  Confession and repentance in their dogmatic and social aspects

After the first round of talks dealt with preaching and the proclamation of the Gospel, especially in the context of worship, the following rounds took up classical topics of ecumenical dialogue, such as Scripture and tradition, baptism and the Eucharist, and church and ministry, as well as repentance and confession. The findings recorded in the communiqués show that this dialogue did not develop any further independent approaches regarding these issues. Its value lies more in the fact that it contributed to the participating churches’ adoption of the agreements already reached in these areas in ecumenical dialogues on global level. After the reunification of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR with the EKD, only one more round of talks took place, in 1992. These talks were then broken off, mainly due to a schism within the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

 The communiqués of these discussions are published in Orthodoxie im Dialog, 419 – 34. After a long delay, a documentary volume was also published; see Rolf Koppe, ed., Herrnhut. Theologische Gespräche mit der Bulgarischen Orthodoxen Kirche (Hermannsburg: Missionhandlung, 2001).

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2.6 Bilateral Theological Dialogue between the EKD and the Romanian Orthodox Church The dialogue between the EKD and the Romanian Orthodox Church began in 1979 with a meeting in Goslar. These discussions were distinguished by theologically profound considerations, which made them one of the most productive encounters in Protestant-Orthodox dialogue. This was likely due in part to the greater continuity in the composition of the two delegations; moreover, in Romania, there is an Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, which is German-influenced, and also a Hungarian-type Reformed Church. From the outset, representatives of these churches were involved in the dialogue as observers and sometimes as speakers. The talks between the EKD and the Romanian Orthodox Church consequently soon touched on essential theological issues that are subject of debate between Orthodoxy and the Reformation.¹⁸ Place and year

Topic

. Meeting in Goslar,  The Holy Scripture, tradition, and confession . Meeting in Iasi, 

The sacraments in the Confessio Augustana and the Orthodox doctrinal confessions

. Meeting in Hüllhorst, 

Repentance and confession in faith and in the lives of our churches

. Meeting in Constanta, 

Salvation in Jesus Christ and the healing of the world

. Meeting in Kloster Kirch- Justification and deification (theosis) of humankind through Jesus berg,  Christ . Meeting in Curtea de Arges, 

Baptism as initiation into the new covenant and as a call to spiritual struggle in following Jesus Christ (synergeia)

. Meeting in Selbitz,  The communion of saints – the calling of our churches in a secularized world

 The communiqués of the first six meetings (up to 1991) and references to their complete documentation are published in Orthodoxie im Dialog, 434– 61. The following meetings are documented in Rolf Koppe, ed., Gemeinschaft der Heiligen – Berufung unserer Kirchen. Siebtes Gespräch […] / Dienen und Versöhnen. Achtes Gespräch (Hermannsburg: Missionhandlung, 1999); Dagmar Heller and Rolf Koppe, eds., Die Kirche – ihre Verantwortung und ihre Einheit. Das neunte und zehnte Gespräch (Frankfurt: Lembeck, 2005); Dagmar Heller and Johann Schneider, eds., Die Ökumenischen Konzilien und die Katholizität der Kirche. Das elfte Gespräch (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2009); Martin Schindehütte and Martin Illert, eds., Theologischer Dialog mit der Rumänischen Orthodoxen Kirche. 12. und 13. Begegnung (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2014). The communiqués of the most recent meetings (since 2002) are also available online at: http://www.ekd.de/international/dialog/Orthodoxie/ dokumente.html.

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Continued Place and year

Topic

. Meeting in Bucharest, 

The Church as a witnessing and serving community

. Meeting in Herrnhut, 

The Church and its political and social responsibility today

. Meeting in Cluj/Klausenburg, 

The essence and unity of Christ’s Church

. Meeting in Eisenach, 

The ecumenical councils and the Church’s catholicity

. Meeting in Sambata de The apostolic character of the Church and its testimony in today’s EuSus,  rope . Meeting in Kloster Drü- Holiness and sanctification beck,  . Meeting in Nuremberg, 

Renewal as the spiritual and missionary task of our churches

From the start, the dialogue centered on the relationship between Scripture and tradition and the importance of testimonies of faith. It then turned to the understanding of the sacraments, in which sacramental theology was first addressed in general, followed by repentance and confession in particular. In focusing on solus Christus and sola gratia, both of the subsequent rounds of talks dealt with two basic principles of Reformation theology and tried to highlight points of reference for the understanding of the justification “by grace alone” in Orthodox theology. According to the understanding of both churches, the justification of humankind is consummated in baptism, while from the Orthodox perspective, the performance of the initiation sacraments also makes clear the need for human involvement (synergeia) in the divine act of salvation. The theme of the “communion of saints” established through baptism formed the bridge to the consideration of various aspects of ecclesiology between the eighth and the fourteenth (and most recent) meetings. The ecumenical relations between the EKD and Romanian Orthodoxy stand out because of the so-called “Youth Dialogue,” which was established in addition to the official theological dialogues. Here, students and vicars from two churches meet to deepen their mutual understanding through personal encounters and to contribute to a wider reception of the dialogue’s findings among the participating churches. In concluding this overview of the theological discussions between the EKD and the various Orthodox patriarchates, it must nevertheless be stated that the latter effort has unfortunately not succeeded. The dialogues have remained largely limited to the involved group of experts and have not made substantial impact on their respective churches.

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3 Evangelical-Orthodox Contacts on Other Levels The shortcoming noted above is all the more reason to bear in mind that these discussions are accompanied by a series of other initiatives and forms of EvangelicalOrthodox encounter.

3.1 Other Forms of Encounter in Germany Fellowship activities between Evangelical and Orthodox theologians have played a crucial role in deepening Evangelical-Orthodox relations. In the 1950s and 1960s, the EKD was already awarding scholarships to Orthodox theologians as part of the exchange programs of the WCC. In 1972, the Protestant side then founded a special scholarship program for Orthodox theologians. For many years, the management of evangelical scholarship work for Orthodox theologians was located at the Diaconia in Stuttgart. After this charitable organization merged with Brot für die Welt in 2012 and became the Evangelisches Werk für Diakonie und Entwicklung, this work has continued from its new base in Berlin.¹⁹ As part of their studies in Germany, many of the Orthodox theologians supported by the EKD have broadened their knowledge of Western ecclesiastical and theological history. In the process, they have become bridge builders between the churches of the East and the West. The same applies to the less numerous but nonetheless highly sustainable initiatives for bringing together Protestant and Orthodox believers in the context of individual city and/or community partnerships. In this context, it is important to call attention to a new dialogue format between the EKD and the Orthodox churches, which is currently still in the development stage. Talks are being conducted between the EKD and the Orthodox Bishops’ Conference in Germany. For many years, there have been good relations at the working level between EKD Church Office and representatives of the Orthodox dioceses in Germany, initially within the scope of the Commission of the Orthodox Church in Germany (KOKiD). After the establishment of the Orthodox Bishops’ Conference in Germany (OBKD) in early 2010, there was a desire to give these discussions a stronger substantive focus. In the spring of 2013, a first theological dialogue took place under the working title “Tübingen II.” This signaled the intention to carry on the talks between the Tubingen theologians and the Ecumenical Patriarchate that were aborted in 1581. In addition to carrying out a critical appraisal of these discussions, the first round of talks in 2013 treated such diverse topics as the importance of the “new per-

 See D. Arion, “Ökumene gestalten – Kirchen stärken – Menschen fördern. 63 Jahre evangelische Stipendienarbeit mit Orthodoxen im ‘Diakonischen Werk der EKD‘ in Stuttgart und bei ‚Brot für die Welt‘ in Berlin,” in Orthodoxie in Deutschland, eds. Thomas Bremer, Assaad Elias Kattan, and Reinhard Thöle (Münster: Aschendorff, 2016), 185 – 93.

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spective on Paul” for exegesis and ecumenical dialogue, the relationship between Scripture and tradition, and possible convergences between Protestant and Orthodox theologies of images.²⁰ However, it remains to be seen how this new series of talks will develop. Ahead of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, it is noteworthy that the Protestant-Orthodox dialogue no longer needs to overcome great distances, as it did in the beginning, but can be conducted on site by Protestant and Orthodox theologians.

3.2 Theological Dialogues in Other Countries Before considering dialogues at the global level, it should be recalled that (apart from Germany) theological dialogues have been conducted between Protestant and Orthodox theologians in other regions of the world as well. For example, there have been talks between the Orthodox and Lutherans in the United States,²¹ the Orthodox and the Reformed in Hungary,²² and the Orthodox, Lutherans, and the Reformed in Romania.²³ The Lutherans in Finland were – and continue to be – particularly involved in the dialogue with Orthodoxy. Indeed, Lutheran theologians from Finland have tried for many years to identify bridges between Martin Luther’s theology and the theological thought of Orthodoxy. Finnish Luther research has shown that the term “faith” in Martin Luther’s theology plays a similar role to the idea of theosis (deification) in Orthodox theology.²⁴ This finding has contributed significantly to a common understanding between Lutherans and the Orthodox on the topic of soteriology in ecumenical dialogue. The two series of theological talks that the Finnish Lutherans have conducted with the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church in Finland further attests to the great interest in having a dialogue with Orthodoxy at present. The dialogue between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland and the Orthodox Church in Russia began in 1970 and has included 15 rounds of talks up to 2011. Notably, each talk covers a theological and dogmatic issue as well as a related subject in social ethics.²⁵ At the beginning of this dialogue, there were three rounds

 See the documentation of the presentations in Petra Bosse-Huber et al., eds., Im Dialog mit der Orthodoxie. FS Reinhard Thöle (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016), 223 – 309.  See Orthodoxie im Dialog, 273 – 91.  See Orthodoxie im Dialog, 299 – 308.  See Orthodoxie im Dialog, 461– 68.  See Tuomo Mannermaa, Der im Glauben gegenwärtige Christus. Rechtfertigung und Vergottung. Zum ökumenischen Dialog (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1989); Simo Peura, Mehr als ein Mensch? Die Vergöttlichung als Thema der Theologie Martin Luthers von 1513 bis 1519 (Darmstadt: Philipp von Zabern, 1994); Johannes Oeldemann, “Rechtfertigung und Theosis im Kontext des ökumenischen Dialogs mit der Orthodoxie,” Catholica 56 (2002): 173 – 92.  The communiqués of the first ten meetings (until 1995) have been published in Orthodoxie im Dialog, 227– 72. The following meetings are documented in Lappeenranta 1998 & Moscow 2002. The

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of talks on the understanding of the Eucharist. While this topic goes to the heart of Church life, each tradition nevertheless has a very different approach. After two rounds of talks on the understanding of redemption, in which the findings of Finnish Luther research were central to the understanding of justification and deification, the following rounds of talks were devoted to ecclesiological and anthropological topics. The dialogue alternated between abstract theological themes and specific applications – regarding religious freedom or human rights, for instance. The same can be said for the second social ethics-oriented theme of the dialogues: while in the 1970s and 1980s, the peace service of the churches was placed front and center – presumably due to political directives from the Soviet side –, the talks in the post-Soviet era have been devoted more to relations between church, state, and society. Overall, this dialogue clearly mirrors the changes in church and society during this period.²⁶ Since 1989, the Finnish Lutherans have also conducted theological dialogues with the Orthodox Church of Finland. Even though almost three-quarters (73 percent) of the population are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and only 1.1 percent of the population belongs to the Orthodox Church of Finland, both churches have the status of a state church. Besides theological topics, discussions between Lutherans and the Orthodox in Finland deal with common pastoral challenges.²⁷ At first, the theological themes principally concerned the importance of tradition and the liturgy, while subsequent rounds also took up questions of spirituality, interfaith dialogue, and the question of God. The pastoral issues included not only denominationally mixed marriages between the Orthodox and Lutherans, but also the problem of unemployment, family ministry, educational concerns, and the future of the state church. The choice of subjects demonstrates that the Orthodox Church in Finland faces the same challenges as the Lutheran Church. At the same time, this dialogue illustrates that there are Orthodox local churches that are open to the issues of the present day and to life in the (post‐)modern world. Eleventh and Twelfth Theological Discussions between the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Russian Orthodox Church (Helsinki: Church Council, 2011); Sinappi, St. Petersburg and Siikaniemi. The 13th, 14th and 15th Theological Discussions between the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Russian Orthodox Church (Helsinki: Church Council, 2013). All texts are also available in the Finnish original and in English translation online at: http://sakasti.evl.fi/sakasti.nsf/sp?open&cid=Content4342D1.  See Heta Hurskainen, Ecumenical Social Ethics as the World Changed. Socio-Ethical Discussion in the Ecumenical Dialogue between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland 1970 – 2008 (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola Society, 2013).  The communiqués of the first four meetings (until 1993) have been published in Orthodoxie im Dialog, 291– 96. The following meetings are documented in Kouvola 1996 & Joensuu 1999. The Fifth and Sixth Theological Discussions between the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Orthodox Church of Finland (Helsinki: Church Council, 2011); From Oulu to Järvenpää. The Finnish LutheranOrthodox Theological Discussions from 2001 to 2012 (Helsinki: Church Council, 2014); The Two Folk Churches in Finland. The 12th Finnish Lutheran-Orthodox Theological Discussions 2014 (Helsinki: Church Council, 2015). All texts are also available in the Finnish original and in English translation online at: http://sakasti.evl.fi/sakasti.nsf/sp?open&cid=Content4342D1.

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4 Theological Dialogues at the Global Level The dialogues mentioned above can be seen as having paved the way for official bilateral dialogues, which have been held since the 1980s. On the one hand, they have taken place between the Lutheran World Federation and the Orthodox Church as a whole and, on the other, between the World Alliance of Reformed Churches or the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the Orthodox.

4.1 The Dialogue between Lutherans and the Orthodox at the Global Level The official dialogue between Lutherans and the Orthodox at the global level goes back to an initiative from the Orthodox side. At the Fourth Pan-Orthodox Conference in Chambésy in 1968, the decision was made to form a theological commission to prepare for a dialogue with the Lutherans²⁸ (although this commission did not start its work until 1977). The first meeting of the International Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission was held in 1981 in Espoo, Finland.²⁹ Since then, the Commission has had a total of 15 plenary assemblies, at which no less than 12 joint documents have been adopted.³⁰ The Official Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue . Plenary assembly in Espoo (Finland), 

Determining the catalogue of topics

. Plenary assembly in Limassol (Cyprus), 

Controversial discussion about ecclesiology

. Plenary assembly in Allentown (USA), 

Document: Divine Revelation

. Plenary assembly in Crete (Greece), 

Document: Scripture and Tradition

 See Anastasios Kallis, Auf dem Weg zu einem Heiligen und Großen Konzil. Ein Quellen- und Arbeitsbuch zur Orthodoxen Ekklesiologie (Münster: Theophano, 2013), 330.  On the background of the dialogue as well as the course of the first phase of the talks, see Risto Saarinen, Faith and Holiness. Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue 1959 – 1994 (Göttingen: Vanenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997).  The documents of the international Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue are published in German in Dokumente wachsender Übereinstimmung [DwÜ]. Sämtliche Berichte und Konsenstexte interkonfessioneller Gespräche auf Weltebene, vol. 2, 1982 – 1990 (Paderborn/Frankfurt: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 258 – 71; vol. 3, 1990 – 2001, 96 – 109; vol. 4, 2001 – 2010, 507– 26. All texts in the original English are also accessible online at: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/ristosaarinen/lutheran-Orthodox-dialogue.

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Continued The Official Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue . Plenary assembly in Bad Segeberg (Germany), 

Document: The Canon and the Inspiration of the Scriptures

. Plenary assembly in Moscow (Russia), 

Discussion about the importance of ecumenical councils and church synods

. Plenary assembly in Sandbjerg (Denmark), 

Document: The Ecumenical Councils and Authority of the Church and in the Church

. Plenary assembly in Limassol (Cyprus), 

Document: The Understanding of Salvation in the Light of the Ecumenical Councils

. Plenary assembly in Sigtuna (Sweden), 

Document: Salvation – Grace, Justification, and Synergy

. Plenary assembly in Damascus Document: The Mystery of the Church, A: Word and Sacraments (Syria),  in the Life of the Church . Plenary assembly in Oslo (Norway), 

Document: The Mystery of the Church, B: Mysteria/Sacraments as a Means of Salvation

. Plenary assembly in Durau (Romania), 

Document: The Mystery of the Church, C: Baptism and Chrismation as Sacraments of Initiation into the Church

. Plenary assembly in Bratislava Document: The Mystery of the Church, D: The Holy Eucharist in (Slovakia),  the Life of the Church . Plenary assembly in Paphos (Cyprus), 

Document: The Mystery of the Church, D.: The Preparation of the Eucharist and Its Ecological and Social Implications

. Plenary assembly in Wittenberg Document: The Mystery of the Church, E: The Essence, Attrib(Germany),  utes, and Mission of the Church

After reviewing the material of the Orthodox and Lutheran preparatory committees, the inaugural meeting determined a catalogue of topics for the dialogue. The original plan was to begin with a discussion of the understanding of the Church. However, the second meeting in Cyprus revealed that the approaches to this topic diverged widely. It was therefore decided to first treat the less controversial topic of “revelation.” In the first dialogue phase (up to 1993), the commission prepared a series of documents on the understanding of divine revelation, including the relationship between Scripture and tradition and the importance of the ecumenical councils. The second dialogue phase (1993 – 1998) was devoted to soteriology, especially the understanding of justification and sanctification.³¹ The ongoing third phase of the dialogue (since 2000) treats ecclesiology under the heading of “The Mystery of the Church” – that is, the topic the commission originally wanted to begin with. Here, the commis-

 The concluding remarks on the ultimate benefit of the dialogues will take a closer look at this topic, which addresses on a key concern of the Reformation.

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sion first addressed the understanding of the sacraments, especially the sacraments of initiation. The fact that each plenary assembly in recent years has managed to agree on a common document is due in part to the considered methodology of the dialogue: each plenary assembly is preceded by one or two preparatory meetings, where a smaller circle of Lutheran and Orthodox commission members collectively prepare a draft text. This draft is then discussed, revised, and jointly adopted at the following plenary assembly of the Joint Commission. Since the most recent plenary assembly in Wittenberg in 2011, there have once again been two such preparatory meetings, which have dealt with the understanding of the priesthood and ordained ministry. The process, however, has not advanced to a point where the findings can be presented to the plenary assembly for consideration. This suggests that the understanding of the Church’s ministry and its practical exercise (e. g., as concerns the ordination of women) present an obstacle to the Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue.

4.2 The Dialogue between the Reformed and the Orthodox at the Global Level The initiative for dialogue between the Reformed and the Orthodox at the global level came from the Reformed side. In addition to the so-called “Debrecen Dialogues” (1972– 1987),³² which involved mainly Orthodox and Protestant theologians from Central and Eastern Europe, the dialogue was prepared by three unofficial consultations between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (1979 – 1983).³³ In 1988, the international Reformed-Orthodox Dialogue Commission first met in Leuenberg in Switzerland. So far, it has adopted three joint documents.³⁴ The Official Reformed-Orthodox Dialogue Leuenberg (Switzerland), Reviewing the findings of regional dialogues; discussion of the doctrine of  the Trinity Minsk (USSR), 

Document: Joint Declaration on the Holy Trinity

Kappel (Switzerland), 

Discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology

Limassol (Cyprus),  Document: Joint Declaration on Christology

 See Orthodoxy in Dialogue, 299 – 308.  See Thomas F. Torrance, ed., Theological Dialogue between Orthodox and Reformed Churches, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985).  The documents of the international Reformed-Orthodox dialogue are published in German in DwÜ 2:316 – 30; DwÜ 3:151– 60; DwÜ 4:981– 97.

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Continued The Official Reformed-Orthodox Dialogue Aberdeen (Scotland), 

Interim report on the Identity and Unity of the Church

Zakynthos (Greece), 

Interim report on the Church as the Body of Christ

Pittsburgh (USA), 

Interim report on Baptism, Chrismation/Confirmation, and Apostolicity

Sambata de Sus (Romania), 

Interim Report on the Holiness of the Church

Beirut (Lebanon), 

Interim Report on Catholicity and the Mission of the Church. Document: Convergences in the Doctrine of the Church

Volos (Greece), 

Lectures on eschatology from the Orthodox and Reformed perspectives

When the International Dialogue Commission began its work in 1988, the members decided to start with the understanding of God. After they had already agreed in Leuenberg on key concepts of the doctrine of the Trinity – such as causality and monarchy – and the distinction between essence and hypostasis, the commission was able to adopt a joint declaration on the understanding of the Trinity at its second meeting in Minsk in 1990. This was then expanded two years later with a text on important features of the theological discourse on the Trinity. A joint declaration on Christology followed in 1994. From 1996 onward, the commission devoted itself to various aspects of the doctrine of the Church. The findings of these deliberations were published in 2005 in a document titled Convergences in the Doctrine of the Church – which, however, is simply a compilation of the interim reports. The document describes, on the one hand, a convergence with a view to understanding the essentials attributes of the Church (unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity) and, on the other, deals with the sacraments of initiation and the understanding of incorporation in the Church as the body of Christ. A deeper understanding with respect to ecclesiology again proved elusive in this dialogue. Consequently, the commission finally decided to focus on the understanding of eschatology.

5 The Value to Date of the Dialogue between Orthodoxy and Protestantism When looking back at the ecumenical dialogue between Orthodoxy and Protestantism, one is struck by the diverse and sustainable network of ecumenical contacts that has evolved over the last six decades. This network is anchored by the mutual respect that has developed due to longstanding personal contacts. Non-theological factors that eventually strained the various dialogues – such as the attempts by

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the Communist regime in Eastern Europe to directly influence the dialogue, or the anti-Western and anti-ecumenical sentiments in many Orthodox churches after the collapse of the Communist regimes – did not jeopardize the continuation of the talks in the end. On the other hand, it is to be regretted that the multitude of theological discussions have not led to a meaningful rapprochement between the Orthodox and Protestant faiths. To be sure, the Orthodox-Protestant dialogue succeeded in overcoming some of the mutual prejudices and misunderstandings of each side regarding the other side’s teachings. Nonetheless, there is still an unmistakable distance between the two when it comes to basic theological principles. This is manifested, for example, in the different positions on the ordination of women or the Church’s blessing of homosexual unions. Controversies over ethical issues are proving to have an evergreater dampening effect on the dialogue. Even if these issues continue to burden relations between Protestantism and Orthodoxy, the dialogues of the past six decades constitute an abundant, still largely undiscovered treasure trove. Providing an overall assessment of the discussions would go beyond the limits of this chapter. By way of conclusion, then, two topics will be singled out to emphasize the dialogue’s value so far. The first of these topics – soteriology – takes up a central concern of the Reformation; the other – ecclesiology – is a central concern of the Orthodox Church. We begin with soteriology. At the start of his reformatory path, Luther posed the well-known question: “How can I find a gracious God?” The biblical message of the justification of humankind was the bedrock of the Reformers’ teachings, which stressed that the salvation of humankind is “by Christ alone” (solus Christus) and “by grace alone” (sola gratia). Alongside the dialogue between EKD and the Romanian Orthodox Church, those of the Finnish Lutherans with the Orthodox in Russia and Finland as well as the international Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue have grappled with this topic. The document ratified by the International Dialogue Commission in 1998 in Sigtuna under the title Salvation – Grace, Justification, and Synergy deserves to be singled out in this context,³⁵ for it is the fruitful culmination of the regional dialogues on the understanding of salvation. The Trinitarian foundation of the understanding of salvation and the consistent inclusion of the ecclesial dimension in the description of the relationship between God and humankind should be highlighted here. True to the basic Trinitarian approach, the document avoids a purely Christological consideration of salvation, emphasizing in a separate section the agency of the Holy Spirit in the interplay between divine grace and human faith. On this basis, it was possible for the first time to relate the reformatory sola gratia and the Orthodox concept of “synergy” to each other in such a way that they were no longer mutually exclusive. To begin with, both sides stress the absolute priority of divine grace:

 German translation in DwÜ 3:103 – 06.

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human beings can “neither seek nor obtain divine grace of their own accord.”³⁶ This shared fundamental conviction is then supplemented by the statement that God’s grace, firstly, “is not necessarily or ineluctably effective, for people can also reject it,”³⁷ and secondly, that the Holy Spirit “illuminates the human spirit by divine grace and strengthens the human will to turn towards God.”³⁸ Within this framework, the Lutherans can maintain the understanding of justification “by grace alone, by faith alone” (sola gratia, sola fide). At the same time, the Orthodox can speak of the “synergy (cooperation) of divine grace and the human will of the believer in the appropriation of the divine life in Christ” insofar as it is God’s grace that “enables our human will to submit to the divine will.”³⁹ The Lutherans explicitly recognize the “personal responsibility of humankind in the acceptance or rejection of divine grace,”⁴⁰ while the Orthodox in turn acknowledge the priority of divine grace. The Orthodox-Lutheran dialogue at the global level has thus led to the conclusion that the central concerns of the Reformation’s doctrine of justification (the absolute priority of God’s redemptive action) as well as the Orthodox doctrine of synergy (the complete personal participation of human beings in the act of salvation) can be accepted by both sides. Moreover, the fact that this conclusion has resulted in the building of bridges for Protestant-Catholic dialogue should be obvious to anyone who has studied the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The value of the dialogues can also be demonstrated on the basis of the second topic – ecclesiology. The Orthodox Church is known to view itself as a faithful guardian of the doctrine of the early Church and thus looks upon innovations, reforms, or even breaks in Church history with great skepticism. From the Orthodox point of view, the core issue of the Orthodox-Protestant dialogue is “the issue of the historical, unbroken continuity and identity of the Church throughout the centuries.” As one Greek theologian observes: “All other differences seem to us to be peripheral aspects and logical consequences of this one underlying issue.”⁴¹ A particularly important aspect of ecclesiology, which also touches on the Church’s ministry, is the apostolic character of the Church. Orthodox and Catholic ecclesiology both emphasize the importance of apostolic succession. In Western controversial theology, a juxtaposition emerged in the post-Reformation period between the “formal” understanding of apostolicity on the Catholic side (with an emphasis on the uninterrupted succession of the episcopate) and the understanding with regard to contents of apostolicity (with an emphasis on fidelity to apostolic teaching) on the Protestant side. Ecumen-

 Erklärung von Sigtuna, no. 4, DwÜ 3:104.  Erklärung von Sigtuna, no. 5, DwÜ 3:104.  Erklärung von Sigtuna, no. 4, DwÜ 3:104.  Erklärung von Sigtuna, no. 5, DwÜ 3:104 f.  Erklärung von Sigtuna, no. 5, DwÜ 3:105.  J. Panagopoulos, “Die Orthodoxie im Gespräch mit Martin Luther,” in Weder Ketzer noch Heiliger. Luthers Bedeutung für den ökumenischen Dialog, ed. Hans Friedrich Geißer et al. (Regensburg: Pustet, 1982), 175 – 200, here 197 f.

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ical dialogue with Orthodoxy reveals that the latter takes a different approach to the understanding of apostolicity, based on the early Church’s notion of successio apostolica. This emphasizes the inseparable link between tradition, succession, and ecclesial communion. Ecumenical dialogue with Orthodoxy makes it possible to free the ecumenical discussion of the understanding of apostolic succession from its polarity – which, in the West, encompasses the two poles of “succession in doctrine” and “succession in ministry.”⁴² The dialogue with Orthodoxy can thus also provide new impetus to the ecumenical debate on the understanding of Church and ministry in the West. The legacy of Martin Luther and the tradition of Orthodoxy enhance Christian ecumenism insofar as they consider the gospel and the Church from different perspectives and thereby contribute to a fuller understanding of Christian revelation. The dialogue with Orthodoxy presents an opportunity for us to free ourselves from the polarization of Western theology, which is a result of the controversial theological debate of the post-Reformation period. The 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Wittenberg reform movement is an auspicious occasion not only for recognizing this opportunity, but for making the most of it.

 Johannes Oeldemann, Die Apostolizität der Kirche im ökumenischen Dialog mit der Orthodoxie (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2000), 391.

Billy Kristanto

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification 1 Introduction Fourteen years after the agreement of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ), an ecumenical officer for the Anglican Church of Canada concluded his article by suggesting an activity for keeping warm during the “ecumenical winter.”¹ Myers was engaging with the four questions in the book Harvesting the Fruits by Cardinal Walter Kasper.² He suggests the method of learning from various others rather than expecting others to learn from one’s own theological tradition. This essay will engage the method proposed by Myers in relation to contemporary ecumenical dialogues. Coming from a Reformed evangelical background, I shall first sketch the doctrine of justification as understood in Lutheran theology. I will draw primarily from Luther’s writings and later theologians of Lutheran orthodoxy. The next part lays out a response to the responses from Roman Catholics, including the official response of the Catholic Church to the JDDJ and a response from Pope Benedict XVI. The third part discusses the potential contributions of the Reformed tradition, not for the purpose of expecting others to learn from them, but instead describing what the Reformed tradition has learned from others. Finally, the last part shall include a “reflection on the biblical foundation” as articulated by the Catholic Church in prospects for future work.³

2 Luther’s Doctrine of Justification and Its Reception in Lutheran Orthodoxy Luther famously characterizes the righteousness of God as iustitia passiva, which is differentiated from iustitia activa. The concept can be found in the Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings (1545): “There I began to understand

 Bruce Myers, “Keeping Warm Reception in the Ecumenical Winter,” The Ecumenical Review 65 no. 3 (2013): 387.  Cf. Walter Kasper, Harvesting the Fruits: Basic Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue (London: Continuum, 2009), 3.  Response of the Catholic Church to the Joint Declaration of the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation on the Doctrine of Justification, prospect 7, available at: http://www.vatican.va/ roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_01081998_off-answercatholic_en.html. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-048

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that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’”⁴ Luther’s understanding of God’s righteousness became an important criterion in his theological development. The meaning of iustitia passiva can only be explained in its inseparable relation to faith as God’s gift. Thus, justification is a forensic act of declaring a sinner righteous. The Formula of Concord (FC) affirms the primacy of forensic righteousness: “For faith does not justify because it is so good a work and so God-pleasing a virtue, but because it lays hold on and accepts the merit of Christ in the promise of the holy Gospel.”⁵ This third article of FC counteracts Osiander’s definition of justification, conceived as Christ’s indwelling in the believer, which included the notion of being made righteous. This conception was replaced by the Spirit’s work of indwelling, which “follows the preceding righteousness of faith, which is precisely the forgiveness of sins and the gracious acceptance of poor sinners on account of the obedience and merit of Christ.”⁶ Thus, the internal work of the Spirit follows the external work of the word through faith. When the JDDJ confesses: “By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works,”⁷ it accommodates the Lutheran emphasis on Christ’s saving work in contrast to human merit. The relation between justification by faith and the renewal of human hearts still requires explanation. Does justification by faith include an internal change of the human heart? Later Lutheran orthodoxy explicitly rejects the notion of internal change. In order to stress the importance of the forensic aspect, Baier wrote: “Justification does not mean a real and internal change of man.”⁸ Likewise, Hollatz explains: Justification is a judicial, and that, too, a gracious act, by which God, reconciled by the satisfaction of Christ, acquits the sinner who believes in Christ of the offenses with which he is charged, and accounts and pronounces him righteous. Since this action takes place apart from man, in God, it cannot intrinsically change man. For, as a debtor for whom another pays his debt, so

 LW 34:337.  Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration (FCSD), article 3.13, quoted in T. G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 541.  FCSD, 3.54.  JDDJ, no. 15.  Johann Wilhelm Baier, Compendium Theologiae Positivae (Jena, 1685), 577; quoted in H. Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Verified from the Original Sources, trans. C. A. Hay and H. E. Jacobs, 2nd Eng. ed., rev. acc. 6th Ger. ed. (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1889), 434.

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that he is considered released from the debt, undergoes not an intrinsic but an extrinsic change in regard to his condition, so the sinner who is reputed and pronounced free from his sins, on account of the satisfaction of Christ applied by true faith, is changed, not intrinsically, but extrinsically, with respect to his better condition.⁹

This is not to say that there is no place for intrinsic change at all in the life of a believer. When Lutherans view justification as primarily extrinsic, it cannot be separated from the high Lutheran view of the word. In his discussion on the renewal of the inner person, Jüngel argues that one should take seriously God’s justifying word as a divine creative act: “Such a Word can never remain ‘external’ to those addressed. Together with the righteousness of God that brings it to us, it touches us so greatly that it touches us more closely than we can touch ourselves. It becomes to us something more inward than our inmost being: interior intimo meo.”¹⁰ Thus, the misunderstanding that Lutherans are heretical in their teaching that the souls of the believers remain the dung heap of sin merely covered up by Christ’s merits fails to see the seriousness of God’s creative word, along with its internal dimension. For Jüngel, that is the reason for Luther’s famous formula: simul iustus et peccator. Chemnitz concluded rightly when he said that, if we set up “merit or worthiness on account of which we might be justified,” then “the divine law can be kept and observed fully and perfectly by the regenerate in this life.”¹¹ For Lutherans, the basis of our justification rests solely on Christ’s saving work. The rejection of merit is not a rejection of merit per se – i. e., the rejection of any idea of reward; rather, it is a rejection of merit as the instrumental cause of our justification. Lutherans never reject the notion of a new quality of the heart manifesting itself in good works as the fruit of justification. Thus, the JDDJ states: “good works – a Christian life lived in faith, hope and love – follow justification and are its fruits.”¹² The JDDJ also states: “According to Catholic understanding, good works, made possible by grace and the working of the Holy Spirit, contribute to growth in grace, so that […] communion with Christ is deepened.”¹³ Although theologians of Lutheran orthodoxy emphasize immediate efficacy, they also emphasize growth and union with Christ as a property and an effect of justification. “Growth, not as to the act which is instantaneous, but in regard to faith and the consciousness of jus-

 David Hollatz, Examen Theologicum Acroamaticum (Stargard: Ernst u. Jenisch, 1707), 928; quoted in Schmid, Doctrinal Theology, 434.  Eberhard Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (Edinburgh/New York: T&T Clark, 2001), 212.  Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, part 1, trans. Fred Kramer (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007), 554 and 644; quoted in Larry Rinehart, “Sola Fide: The Mystery of Salvation by Faith,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 49 no. 4 (2014): 581.  JDDJ, no. 37.  JDDJ, no. 38.

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tification,” belongs to the properties of justification, according to Quenstedt.¹⁴ Quenstedt enumerated “mystical union with God” – thereby quoting John 15:4– 6, 14, 23; Gal 2:19, 20; 3:27; and Eph 3:17 – as one of the effects of justification.¹⁵ Growth and union with Christ are also essential to Luther’s understanding of faith. Hoffman has pointed out that Luther “thought of mystical participation in God, life with Christus mysticus, as a beginning of transmutation of bodily vitality and ego-centered demands into growing harmony with the indwelling Christ. The person who has faith in Christ and converses with Him in prayer and meditation is ‘formed’ according to the Christ-image.”¹⁶ The formation of the believer’s soul in the indwelling Christ belongs to the aspects of Luther’s sola fide. Rinehart also adds the symbolism of Christ’s birth and of light to Luther’s essential view of faith.¹⁷ Again, despite the doctrine of immediate efficacy, Luther also emphasizes the repetitive aspect of faith: “As often as a person comes into faith anew, so often is Christ born in him.”¹⁸ The exclusion of an agreement on sola fide and simul remains an object of criticism against the JDDJ. For instance, Madson perceives it as “the incredible shrinking of justification.”¹⁹ Both sola fide and simul are indeed distinctive and treasured points of Lutheranism. For FC, sola fide is necessary to maintain that (good) works should not be mixed into the treatment of justification.²⁰ Quenstedt explained: Works are excluded not from being present, but from the communication of efficiency; not that they are not present to faith and the justified, but that they have no energy or causation in connection with faith in the justification of man. […] Distinguish between faith considered in respect to justification itself, […] it alone justifies; and considered in the person justified, or after justification, and thus it is never alone, but always attended with other graces; indeed, it is the root and beginning of them all.²¹

Sola fide is never meant to exclude works in the life of the believer, but to safeguard the glory of Christ’s merit. Lutherans teach simul iustus et peccator, which “for Cath-

 “Incrementum, non qvoad actum justificationis, qvi instantaneous, sed ratione fidei ac sensus;” Johann Andreas Quenstedt, Theologia Didactico-Polemica (Wittenberg, 1685) 3:526); quoted in Schmid, Doctrinal Theology, 447. Quenstedt cites 2 Cor 10:15; Col 1:10; 2 Pet 3:18; and Eph 4:14, 15 in support of this point.  “Effecta justificationis sunt: Unio nostri mystica cum DEO;” Quenstedt, Theologia, 3:526; quoted in Schmid, Doctrinal Theology, 446.  Bengt R. Hoffman, Theology of the Heart: The Role of Mysticism in the Theology of Martin Luther, ed. Pearl Willemssen Hoffman (Minneapolis: Kirk House Publishers, 1998), 122.  Rinehart, “Sola Fide,” 596 – 98.  Hoffman, Theology, 93.  Meg H. Madson, “The Incredible Shrinking Doctrine of Justification,” Lutheran Quarterly 11 (1997), 113 – 15; see also Jüngel, Justification, 236n215.  Cf. FCSD, 3..36.  Quenstedt, Theologia 3:552 seq.; quoted in Schmid, Doctrinal Theology, 445.

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olics […] is not acceptable.”²² What Luther teaches, however, is that as long as believers still live in this world, they still struggle against the power of sin. “In this sense, to the extent that I am a Christian, I am righteous, devout and belong to Christ, but to the extent that I look back [respicio] to myself and my sin I am miserable and the greatest of sinners. So it is true to say: in Christ there is no sin, and in our flesh there is no peace and no rest, only perpetual struggle.”²³ The difficulty in achieving a total consensus arises from different understandings of the term concupiscence between Lutherans and Catholics.

3 A Response to Roman Catholic Responses The Roman Catholic Church had offered an official response to the JDDJ. Some major difficulties prevent an affirmation of total consensus between Lutherans and Catholics. These are the formula simul iustus et peccator, the importance of the doctrine of justification, the expression mere passive, and the concept of reward.²⁴ Luther’s simul is unacceptable because, according to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, “the concupiscence that remains in the baptized is not, properly speaking, sin.”²⁵ Sin is taken away in baptism. On the other hand, Lutherans believe that even believers are still sinners, because they still struggle against the power of sin. Ratzinger agrees that a one-sided, voluntaristic, and intellectualistic concept of sin is indeed insufficient.²⁶ On the other hand, he insists that our being cannot simply be reckoned as sinful. The life of a baptized Christian is a lifelong process of redemption, wherein his or her faith consists of many repeated conversions. In this context, Ratzinger can accommodate the core reformational experience of being forgiven repeatedly.²⁷ Central to the discussion of simul is how the relation between original sin and concupiscence is understood. Ratzinger refers to the Augustinian and Tridentine concept of concupiscentia. It is usually understood that while Roman Catholicism distinguishes concupiscence from sin, Protestantism identifies concupiscence with sin.

 Response of the Catholic Church, clarification 1, available at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_01081998_off-answer-catholic_en.html.  Luther, The Third Disputation Against the Antinomians, 1538,; WA 39.1:508; cf. Jüngel, Justification, 216.  Response, clarifications 1– 3.  Response, clarification 1.  Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, “Wie weit trägt der Konsens über die Rechtfertigungslehre?” Communio 29 (2000): 431– 32.  “Und immer ist dabei das Wort des heiligen Benedikt im Auge und im Herzen zu behalten, das den Kern der reformatorischen Erfahrung katholisch ausgedrückt: Et de Dei misericordia nunquam desperare;” Ratzinger, “Konsens,” 432.

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From a Protestant perspective, Pannenberg has pointed out that in Augustine’s theology, concupiscence can be both distinguished from and identified with sin: “At times, Augustine too described concupiscence as a punishment and therefore a consequence of sin […] At other times, however, he could describe concupiscence itself as sin and the cause of further sin.”²⁸ Does Holy Scripture support this tension? To the Romans, Paul writes, “But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness [concupiscentiam/ἐπιθυμία]” (Rom 7:8). In Galatians, Paul distinguishes the desire (ἐπιθυμία) of the flesh, which is contrasted with the desire of the Spirit (cf. Gal 5:16 – 17), from the works of the flesh – the manifestation of the desire of the flesh (cf. Gal 5:19 – 21). Colossians 3:5 teaches that Christians are to put to death evil desire. When the author of Ephesians wrote, “[y]ou were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts [ἐπιθυμία]” (Eph 4:22), he perceived lusts as the cause of the corrupted old self. These deceitful lusts echo the lust that deceived Eve. Within this context, concupiscence can be regarded as sin. From the perspective of the general Epistles, James 1:14– 15 reads: “one is tempted by one’s own desire [ἐπιθυμία], being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.” Concupiscence is not the product of sin; it produces sin. James’ concept of concupiscence finds its closest parallel in the Pauline concept of flesh.²⁹ For Paul, flesh is the corrupted human nature since Adam’s fall. Like Paul’s “flesh,” James’s “concupiscence” can be identified with (original) sin – that is, it precedes actual sin. Similarly, 2 Peter 1:4 speaks about the “corruption that is in the world because of lust [ἐπιθυμία].” While in this case corruption can be interpreted as moral corruption, the context is best understood in terms of human mortality – physical corruption, so that lust can be regarded as “the root cause of evil, through which φθορά (‘corruption’) has entered the world.”³⁰ In this sense, it is the corruption brought on by Adam’s original sin. Thus, ἐπιθυμία is here again identified with sin. Peter contrasts human participation in Adam’s corruption with participation in divine nature. It is clear that the escape from corruption will be fulfilled eschatologically.³¹ As long as humans are still on earth, they will struggle with concupiscence until the day of resurrection. The First Epistle of John also uses the term ἐπιθυμία linked with σάρξ as a subjective genitive. Interpreted against the background of the sensual environment typical of Asia Minor at the time of the writing of this letter, then ἐπιθυμία may refer to

 Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. O’Connell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 87; cf. Augustine, Contra Julianum, 5.3.8; Opus imperf., 1.47.  Cf. Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms, 114– 16.  R. J. Bauckham, 2 Peter, Jude, 182– 83.  Paul also referred to eschatological fulfillment when he spoke about the escape from perishability in 1 Cor 15:53.

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the actual character of sin. Yet this is not the only background to the letter. In its Jewish context, σάρξ refers to the universal, corrupted human nature as an outcome of being separated from God.³² In this regard, ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκός may also refer to lust that comes from the fallen nature of the flesh, rooted in Adam’s original sin. Therefore, the New Testament writings include both the distinction between sin and concupiscence and the identification of sin with concupiscence. This multivalent understanding is essential for the future of ecumenicity. Another difficulty appears in the importance of the doctrine of justification. For the Catholic Church, the message of justification “has to be organically integrated into the fundamental criterion of the ‘regula fidei’, that is, the confession of the one God in three persons, christologically centred and rooted in the living Church and its sacramental life.”³³ For Lutheranism, on the other hand, the criterion of the doctrine of justification is uniquely significant. Ratzinger responds that the doctrine of justification could indeed be called a touchstone (Prüfstein) of true Christian faith, in the sense that it provides crucial theological questions; at the same time, however, this doctrine cannot be used as a meta-theory-like measurement for checking all other theories.³⁴ The doctrine is not a theory; rather, it should be confessed through participation in the communal life of the Church. We can learn from Thomas Aquinas regarding this issue. In his Summa, Thomas teaches that the justification of the ungodly is God’s greatest work. He argues his position on two bases. First, following Augustine, the justification of the ungodly can be said to be greater than the creation of heaven and earth, because the first “terminates at the eternal good of a share in the Godhead,” whereas the latter “terminates at the good of mutable nature.”³⁵ Secondly, and still affirming Augustine, the grace that justifies the ungodly is greater than the glory that beatifies the just, because the first “exceeds the worthiness of the ungodly, who are worthy of punishment,” whereas the latter “exceeds the worthiness of the just, who by the fact of their justification are worthy of glory.”³⁶ While not a meta-theory, these two doctors of the Church assign a supreme place for justification among God’s works. From the perspective of Holy Scripture, the Gospel of John is said to be written “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). Although soteriology is certainly not the only doctrine included in this verse, the gospel arguably focuses

 “The complete phrase, ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκός (‘sinful desire’), therefore refers to fallen human nature in general; to a disposition of hostility toward God, and not simply to particular bodily lusts;” S. Stephen Smalley, World Biblical Commentary, vol. 51, 1,2,3 John (Dallas: Word Incorporated, 2002), 83 – 84.  Response, clarification 2.  Cf. Ratzinger, “Konsens,” 434.  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, 1– 2.113.9, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1920 – 1942).  Thomas, Summa theol., 1– 2.113.9.

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on soteriology. The same can be said for the Gospel of Luke, which is concludes with Jesus’ commissions to the disciples that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:47) and that they “will be my [Jesus’] witnesses” (Acts 1:8). In Romans, the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16). In 1 Peter, final salvation is the hope and comfort in the believers’ suffering for Christ (cf. 1 Pet 5:1, 10). Consonant with the aforementioned biblical references, Lutheranism emphasizes the special status of the doctrine of justification, not in the sense that it should be placed above all other great doctrines – such as the Trinity, Christology, and ecclesiology –, but in the sense that all good theology should be gospel-centered. Regarding mere passive, the Catholic Church states that, along with human freedom to refuse grace, “there is a new capacity to adhere to the divine will, a capacity rightly called ‘cooperatio’.”³⁷ Hence, the expression mere passive is unacceptable for Catholics. Lutherans use the expression to emphasize the notion of sola gratia: there is no human contribution to justification. Ratzinger highlights the importance of cooperatio for the relational character of God’s saving work.³⁸ That is, God did not create humans as marionettes who could not act responsibly before their creator. Maintaining the concept of sola gratia, Ratzinger suggests the inclusion of Eastern Orthodox theologians to broaden our ecumenical dialogue concerning the role of cooperatio in salvation. We include Thomas to solve this major difficulty. On the one hand, Thomas teaches that, for justification, a movement of the free will is required.³⁹ On the other hand, justification is the remission of sins. In this context, Thomas uses the expression “passively” to describe justification: “Justification taken passively implies a movement towards justice, as heating implies a movement towards heat.”⁴⁰ Thus one finds both the active and the passive dimension of justification. In the context of justification as remission of sins, Thomas quoted Rom 4:5: “But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” Similarly, Lutherans use the expression mere passive merely to emphasize that justification as remission of sins can only be received (passively), and not to “deny that believers are fully involved personally in their faith.”⁴¹

    

Response, clarification 3. Cf. Ratzinger, “Konsens,” 433. Cf. Thomas, Summa theol., 1– 2.113.3. Thomas, Summa theol., 1– 2.113.1. JDDJ, no. 21.

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4 Contributions from the Reformed Perspective At the end of her discussion on the relation between justification and sanctification, Johanna Rahner concludes, “Therefore, even the confessional differences so clearly made out by the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (in 1999) could have been seen in a different light if the contribution coming from the theology of Calvin and its pneumatological reformulation of justification at this point would have been more present.”⁴² Indeed, we can broaden our ecumenical understanding of the doctrine of justification by including perspectives from the Reformed tradition. With regard to the issue of gratia infusa, Reformed theology can offer a pneumatological perspective on this matter. Following the Lutheran tradition, Calvin distinguishes justification from regeneration. While justification is granted not “in part but liberally,” regeneration is a gradual process of “reformation into newness of life.”⁴³ Like Thomas, Calvin also bases his understanding on the concept of justification as the free remission of sins. Hence, the remission of sins is not a part, but the whole of righteousness. With regard to regeneration, it precedes faith in the sense that it is not the work of the human being, but of the Holy Spirit.⁴⁴ The Roman Catholic teaching of gratia infusa is very similar to Calvin’s teaching of regeneration. Both are the operation of the Holy Spirit. Not only is the Holy Spirit the source of faith, according to Calvin, but he is also “the energizer of Christ in us.”⁴⁵ Calvin develops Augustine’s Trinitarian concept of the Holy Spirit as the bonding love between the Father and the Son into the soteriological concept of the Holy Spirit as the bond between Christ and his body.⁴⁶ In Calvin’s pneumatology, Christ does not remain “outside of us,” for that would mean a separation; rather, Christ “had to become ours and to dwell within us,” while we have to “grow into one body with him.”⁴⁷ By the Spirit’s secret energy, according to Calvin, believers enjoy communion with Christ. Regeneration, which Calvin also called repentance, consists of two parts: mortification and vivification.⁴⁸ Mortification of the old self and vivification of the new self

 Johanna Rahner, “New Challenges for Catholic Scholarship on Calvin?” in Calvinus Pastor Ecclesiae: Papers of the Eleventh International Congress on Calvin Research, eds. Herman Selderhuis & Arnold Huijgen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 105.  Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.11.  “yet faith itself is a work of the Holy Spirit, who dwells in none but the children of God. So then, in various respects, faith is a part of our regeneration […] The illumination of our minds by the Holy Spirit belongs to our renewal, and thus faith flows from regeneration as from its source;” Calvin, Commentary on John, 1:13.  Ford Lewis Battles, Analysis of the Institutes of the Christian Religion of John Calvin (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2001), 168; cf. Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.4.  Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1.  Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1.  Cf. Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.3.

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are two sides of the same coin. In this regard, Calvin could affirm Luther’s simul iustus et peccator, in the sense that mortification of the flesh is a lifelong process in the life of the believer. The chapters on Christian life in Calvin’s Institutes ⁴⁹ are meant to be the exposition of lifelong repentance, as has been announced before, when Calvin differentiates outward from inward repentance: “Yet in other passages the Spirit has first condemned uncleanness in the very wellspring of the heart, and then proceeded to the external evidences that mark sincere repentance. I will soon set before my readers’ eyes a table of this matter in a description of the life of the Christian.”⁵⁰ The difficulty in finding total consensus on the doctrine of justification between Roman Catholic and Protestant understandings lies in a difference in nomenclature: what the Council of Trent calls justification, Calvin calls repentance or sanctification.⁵¹ Whereas repentance is a lifelong process, justification is instantaneous in the Protestant view. This is not to say that there is no concept of instant justification in the Roman Catholic view. Thomas, for instance, is of the opinion that justification of the ungodly does not take place successively, but in an instant: “The entire justification of the ungodly consists as to its origin in the infusion of grace. For it is by grace that free-will is moved and sin is remitted. Now the infusion of grace takes place in an instant and without succession.”⁵² In Thomas’s thought, one can also find the two sides of the movement of free will, which are similar to Calvin’s concept of mortification and vivification. Four things are necessary for justification, according to Thomas: “the infusion of grace, the movement of the free-will towards God by faith, the movement of the free-will towards sin, and the remission of sins.”⁵³ Whereas Calvin’s regeneration or repentance is comparable to Thomas’s infusion of grace, vivification is comparable to the movement of free will towards God, and mortification to the movement of free will towards sin. Thomas teaches that there are two acts of free will in justification: “one, whereby it tends to God’s justice; the other whereby it hates sin.”⁵⁴ When Protestants use the expression simul iustus et peccator, they want to emphasize that the act of hating sin is a lifelong business. The lifelong Christian struggle to combat sin is also reflected in Calvin’s placement of the Christian life before justification in his Institutes. ⁵⁵ In both later Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxies, sanctification is usually placed after justification. In Calvin’s Institutes, however, the story of Christian life – which is comparable to the sanctification of the believer – precedes the treatment of justification. Following Luther,

 Calvin, Institutes, 3.6 – 10.  Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.16.  Cf. Cornelis P. Venema, “Calvin’s Understanding of the ‘Twofold Grace of God’ and Contemporary Ecumenical Discussion of the Gospel,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 18 (2007): 101.  Thomas, Summa theol., 1– 2.113.7.  Thomas, Summa theol., 1– 2.113.6.  Thomas, Summa theol., 1– 2.113.5.  I.e., the chapters on the Christian Life (3.6 – 10) precede those on justification (3.11).

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Calvin clearly teaches the forensic doctrine of justification: “He is said to be justified in God’s sight who is both reckoned righteous in God’s judgment and has been accepted on account of his righteousness.”⁵⁶ On the other hand, Calvin continues the medieval structure of the precedence of repentance over justification. This intentional ambiguity creatively safeguards the dangers of both work-righteousness and the “vain confidence” rebuked in the Council of Trent.⁵⁷ In Calvin’s thought, believers could not grasp Christ’s righteousness “without at the same time grasping sanctification also. […] Christ justifies no one whom he does not at the same time sanctify.”⁵⁸ Calvin’s concept of sanctification, which cannot be separated from justification, has direct implications on his view of good works. Consistent with his forensic justification, Calvin polemically contests the use of the word merit as unscriptural and dangerous.⁵⁹ For him, there are two main reasons for not using the word – namely, the diminution of God’s glory and of the believers’ assurance of salvation. Calvin’s understanding of merit is highly influenced by Augustine, who also contrasts human merits with God’s grace and mercy.⁶⁰ Yet although Calvin does not condone the use of “merit,” he affirms that, in Scripture, the concept of working for eternal life (which will be rewarded) is not always opposed to grace.⁶¹ Several expressions – such as “God will render to every man according to his works” (Rom 2:6) – can be understood as an order of sequence. The Roman Catholic Church affirms the “meritorious” character of good works with the intention “to emphasize the responsibility of persons for their actions, not to contest the character of those works as gifts.”⁶² Calvin could also affirm that the concept of reward as grace served to encourage people to “be trained through good works” to meditate upon the fruition of the promise of reward.⁶³ With regard to the importance of the doctrine of justification, it should be noted that one of the central theological concepts in Calvin’s Institutes is union with Christ.⁶⁴ By placing justification within the larger picture of union with Christ, Calvin’s theology can offer fruitful dialogues with Roman Catholicism. Union with Christ takes place not only in justification, but also in repentance, Christian life, and pray-

 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.2.  Cf. Council of Trent, 6th Session, ch. 9.  Calvin, Institutes, 3.16.1.  Cf. Calvin, Institutes, 3.15.2.  “Here let human merits which have perished through Adam keep silence, and let that grace of God reign which reigns through Jesus Christ our Lord, the only Son of God, the one Lord;” Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, 15.31, in NPNF I/5, ed. Philip Schaff, rev. B. B. Warfield (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999); “nought shall they attribute to their own merits, all they shall attribute to nought save to Thy mercy;” Enarrationes in Psalmos, 140.16; see also 85.6).  Calvin cited John 6:27 as an example; cf. Institutes, 3.18.1.  JDDJ, no. 38.  Calvin, Institutes, 3.18.3.  Cf. Christoph Strohm, Johannes Calvin (München: C.H. Beck, 2009), 108 – 111.

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er.⁶⁵ In an organic relation with the sacraments, baptism is a token of our union with Christ, while the special fruit of the Lord’s Supper is union with Christ.⁶⁶ By integrating the sacraments into the central criterion of union with Christ, Calvin affirms a high view of sacraments. He accepts a “true and substantial partaking of the body and blood of the Lord.”⁶⁷ If, for Catholics, the message of justification “has to be organically integrated” into the doctrine of the Trinity, Christology, and ecclesiology,⁶⁸ in Calvin’s thought, justification is also organically integrated into other major doctrines. Lastly, according to the Roman Catholic Church, through good works that “contribute to growth in grace, […] the righteousness that comes from God is preserved and communion with Christ is deepened.”⁶⁹ The fourth book of Calvin’s Institutes deals with the external means of grace by which God invites Christians into communion with Christ and preserves them therein. For Calvin, forensic justification and delving deeper in communion with Christ are not at odds.

5 Continuing the Prospects At the end of the official response of the Catholic Church to the JDDJ, one can find prospects for future work proposed by Catholics, including engaging in deeper biblical reflection that “should be extended to the New Testament as a whole and not only to the Pauline writings.”⁷⁰ Following the spirit of this statement, it seems proper to discuss the concepts of justification in the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle of James. The Deuteronomic concepts of reward and punishment belong to the central elements of Matthean ethics.⁷¹ The reward of those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness is great in heaven (cf. Matt 5:10 – 11). Practicing one’s piety in secret before God will be rewarded by the Father (cf. 6:1– 6, 16 – 18). God will reward those who welcome Jesus’ disciples, a prophet, a righteous person, or even little ones (cf. 10:40 – 42). After telling his disciples the cost of discipleship, Jesus said, “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done” (16:27). In the parable of the talents, the master rewarded each of his slaves according to what they have done

 Calvin, Institutes, 3.3; 3.16 – 10, and 3.20, respectively  Cf. Calvin, Institutes, 4.15.6; 4.17.2.  Calvin, Institutes, 4.17.19.  Response, clarification 2.  JDDJ, no. 38.  Response, prospect 7.  Cf. Udo Schnelle, Theology of the New Testament, trans. M. Eugene Boring (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 449.

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(cf. 25:14 ff.). The wedding robe in the parable of the wedding banquet (22:1– 14) is arguably doing God’s will. Doing the will of God is the decisive criterion for determining who will or will not enter the kingdom of heaven (cf. 7:21). While Paul emphasizes the criterion of true faith, as contrasted to the works of the law, Matthew emphasizes the criterion of doing God’s will. It is possible that Paul is responding to the problem of legalism (in Galatians), while Matthew is responding to the danger of lawlessness in the context of apostasy. Matthew’s concepts of reward and punishment should be understood in this context, just as Paul’s concept of justification by faith cannot be separated from the context of legalism. Without considering the different contexts, Paul’s soteriology seems to oppose Matthew’s. The implication of Matthew’s emphasis on doing good works and the concept of reward is that they are not necessarily at odds with the concept of divine grace. Still, in the Gospel of Matthew – and despite its central idea of the better righteousness (cf. 5:20) – Jesus rebukes self-righteous persons: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (9:13). God’s mercy and acceptance, manifested in Jesus’s table fellowship with sinners, precede human obedience to God’s will. Even though good works are dearly esteemed in Matthew, one still finds a statement that what constitutes a person is not human works but divine sight (cf. 6:4).⁷² The Beatitudes begin with the blessedness of the poor in spirit, to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs. Again in Matthew, faith is related to forgiveness of sins and salvation (cf. 9:2; 24:45). Not only justice, but also mercy and faith are the weightier matters of the law (cf. 23:23). With regard to the apparent contradictions between Paul’s and Matthew’s soteriology, Schnelle beautifully concludes: “To set Paul up as the standard of a proper soteriology is to underestimate the fact that all New Testament authors had to express their understanding within the specific conditions of their own symbolic universe, and that they therefore cannot be simply contrasted with each other.”⁷³ The same principle applies to James. In the Epistle of James, the criterion of a faith that is active along with works (cf. Jas 2:22) is of decisive importance. True Christians are not forgetful hearers of the word but “doers who act” and who “will be blessed in their doing” (1:25). Faith that has no works is dead (cf. 2:17). “A person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (2:24). The relation between faith and works is like the relation between the body and the spirit (cf. 2:26). Just as Matthew’s stress on doing God’s will is in perfect harmony with God’s grace and mercy, James’ emphasis on the importance of works is a harmonious counterpoint to his understanding of divine mercy and grace. Wisdom is given by God, “who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly” (1:5). “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above” (1:17). God’s sav-

 Cf. Schnelle, Theology, 443.  Schnelle, Theology, 444.

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ing act in giving humans birth “by the word of truth” (1:18) precedes the human response of becoming doers of the word (cf. 1:22– 25). It is this “implanted word that has the power to save your souls” (1:21). James clearly gives priority to divine wisdom through God’s word in the soteriological event. James’ decisive divergence from Paul lies in their concepts of sin: unlike Paul, James does not understand sin as a fateful destructive power that is tied to fallen human existence, but as a (singular) human act.⁷⁴ Therefore, unlike Paul – who views the law as delivered over to the power of sin –, James views the law as having “an indwelling positive energy […] so that it is anchored as a basic element in God’s saving plan.”⁷⁵ Other desirable biblical passages that can be explored to help understand “the various ways in which Paul describes man’s new condition” are Gal 4:4– 7 and Rom 8:14– 17.⁷⁶ Regarding the category of sonship in Gal 4:4– 7, Paul contrasts the believer’s sonship in Christ with slavery to the law. In this “full freedom of mature sonship,” the life of the believer can be lived.⁷⁷ Paul crafts a chiastic construction in his substitutionary anthropology: Christ was born under the law so that those under the law might receive their sonship. This substitution is identical with the justification of the believer, which is “not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal 2:16). Further on in Galatians, this Christian freedom from the law does not mean Christians can live an antinomistic life: the law of love is the summary of the whole law (cf. 5:14); the fruit of the Spirit is not opposed to any law (cf. 5:22– 23); and Christians fulfill the law of Christ by bearing one another’s burdens (cf. 6:2). In Galatians, justification by faith in Christ confers on believers freedom from the works of the law in order to be able to fulfill the law of Christ and his love. When Protestants use the expression sola fide, they mean to exclude the works of the law, not the law of Christ and the works of love. On the continuing use of the law, Calvin had already written that “the Lord delivers us from the severity of the law, so that our intercourse with himself is not regulated by its covenant, nor our consciences bound by its sentence of condemnation. Yet the law continues to teach and exhort, and thus performs its own office; but our subjection to it is withdrawn by the Spirit of adoption.”⁷⁸ For Calvin, sola fide is not opposed to subjection to the law of Christ in the spirit of sonship. In the Catholic tradition, Thomas also uses the expression sola fide when he talks about faith as the sole hope and cause of justification.⁷⁹ Augustine also has

 Cf. Schnelle, Theology, 287.  Schnelle, Theology, 623.  Response, prospect 7.  R. N. Longenecker, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 41, Galatians (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 2002), 176.  Calvin, Commentary, Gal 5:23.  “Non est ergo in eis [moralibus et caeremonialibus legis] spes iustificationis, sed in sola fide;” Thomas Aquinas, Expositio in Ep. I ad Timotheum cap. 1, lect. 3 (Parma ed., 13.588); quoted in J. A. Fitzmyer, S.J., Romans: A new translation with introduction and commentary (New Haven/London: Yale Uni-

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no difficulty using the expression sola fide, for he understands true faith as living faith, “which works through love.”⁸⁰ As long as faith alone is not understood as a dead faith without the law of Christ and his love, there should be no difficulty in using the expression. Similar to Gal 4:4– 7 are the categories of sonship and heirs in Rom 8:14– 17. As for the category of heirs, particularly noteworthy in Romans is the inclusion of the concept of suffering with Christ as a decisive criterion for true Christians: “and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (8:17). In the same way as Luke (cf. Luke 24:26; Acts 14:22), Paul views suffering as the way to glorification. There is no glorification without suffering. Since God’s children are his heirs, everything in Christ’s life (suffering included) is bestowed upon the lives of the believers. On this verse, Calvin comments: “God’s inheritance is ours, because we have by his grace been adopted as his children; and that it may not be doubtful, its possession has been already conferred on Christ, whose partners we are become: but Christ came to it by the cross; then we must come to it in the same manner.”⁸¹ To be justified is to live by the Spirit, to “put to death the deeds of the body” (8:13), not to “fall back into fear” (8:15), but to have the courage to suffer with Christ. Just as good works follow justification, suffering with Christ is a mark of truly justified Christians. This biblical reflection teaches us that Holy Scripture itself contains creative tensions. On the one hand, we see an emphasis on divine grace and initiative, while on the other hand, an emphasis on the actuality of human works and deeds. On this biblical tension, Lane rightly comments: “The two sides of the tension relate to the Protestant concern to affirm our continuing dependence upon the mercy of God and the Catholic concern to affirm the reality of the transformation that is brought about by God’s grace.”⁸²

6 Conclusion Is the JDDJ compatible with Luther’s theology? To do justice to this complex question, one should answer: there are a great deal of Lutheran theological tenets that have been accommodated in this ecumenical document. On the possibility of reaching a total consensus, however, one can remain hopeful. Here on earth, using Lutheran terminology, Christians are – at the same time – already united and not yet unit-

versity Press, 2008), 360; see also Cornelius à Lapide, The Great Commentary of Cornelius à Lapide: II Corinthians and Galatians, trans. W. F. Cobb (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1908), 8:248.  Augustine, De fide et operibus, 22.40, ed. Josephus Zycha; CSEL 41.84– 85 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, 1900).  Calvin, Commentary, Rom 8:17.  Anthony N. S. Lane, Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant Dialogue: An Evangelical Assessment (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2002), 133.

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ed. In other words, Christians have been united by the precious blood of Jesus, who already died on the cross. In the course of human history, Christians are fulfilling Jesus’s prayer, as articulated in John 17. The controversial expression simul iustus et peccator can be clarified if one accepts the creative tension inherent in Holy Scripture in both distinguishing and identifying concupiscence and sin. This biblical tension has been well received in the theology of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Not only did Thomas call concupiscence sin, he also regarded justification as God’s greatest work. Thomas simply follows Holy Scripture, which has the gospel as its center. Likewise, both Catholics and Lutherans should give the gospel the central place in their proclamation. On the inconsequentiality of the JDDJ, Gottfried Martens has accurately warned: “When justification of the sinner is no longer preached because no one speaks any more of sin, judgement, and grace, then all agreements on the topic of justification are irrelevant.”⁸³ Lutherans do not deny the believers’ personal involvement in their faith. Yet, by not using the term cooperatio, they want to emphasize the passive aspect of justification, which can also be found in Thomas’s concept of justification as the remission of sins. This discussion of Luther and the JDDJ would not be complete without the inclusion of contributions from the Reformed perspective. Calvin’s pneumatological reconstruction of justification, in particular, helps to fill the gap between Roman Catholic and Lutheran theologies. Not only is justification fully integrated into other major doctrines in Calvin’s theology, but its forensic aspect does not distract from deepening communion with Christ. Finally, Holy Scripture demonstrates many creative tensions with regard to justification. Unlike Paul, Matthew emphasizes the concept of reward (which is very close to merit) in his soteriology. His decisive soteriological criterion is not faith, but doing the will of God. Similarly, James rigorously advocates the criterion of active faith along with works. Yet neither Matthew nor James neglects the motif of divine grace and mercy as counterpoints. Even in Romans, Paul also includes suffering as a decisive soteriological criterion. In the context of suffering, the more established churches in the global North are impelled not only “to work for a just social order, in which […] the suffering of the poor [is] eased,” but also to humbly learn from churches of the global South, which are suffering for Christ’s sake.⁸⁴

 Gottfried Martens, “Inconsequential Signatures? The Decade after the Signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” Lutheran Quarterly 24 (2010): 329.  The Church: Towards a Common Vision, §64; cf. Thomas P. Rausch, “Toward a Common Vision of the Church: Will It Fly?” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 50 no. 2 (2015): 270, 280.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Lutheranism in Ecumenical Dialogue 1 Lutheran Engagement with Other Churches before the Modern Ecumenical Movement Luther and his colleagues never set out to start a new church. The political and ecclesiastical situation deteriorated, however, to such an extent that the Wittenberg party ultimately felt compelled to proceed with implementing disputed reforms such as communion in both kinds (“under both species”), clerical marriage, and the ordination of new pastors without bishops. Nevertheless, Luther always maintained that Rome continued to be part of the one church of Christ, possessing the necessary means of salvation. As a result, Lutherans continued to seek reconciliation with other Christians in various ways, first with Roman loyalists and later with Protestants who parted ways with Luther, long before the dawn of the modern ecumenical movement.

1.1 Lutheran-Roman Catholic Relations The Augsburg Confession of 1530 sought to establish common ground between the evangelical and Roman parties, beginning as it did with a list of articles on which both were thought to be agreed. Although this effort failed – such that outbreaks of war between Catholics and Protestants were to characterize the next century and more –, a mere ten years after the Augsburg Confession, further attempts were made to secure reconciliation between Lutherans and Rome. Colloquies were held at Hagenau in 1540 and Worms in 1541. During the period of 1541– 1546, another colloquy took place at Regensburg, with Philip Melanchthon and Martin Bucer representing the Protestants. Despite good will among certain of the key figures and agreement on certain articles, these colloquies failed as well. A second Worms colloquy took place in 1557, but differences within the Protestant party led to its dissolution. Ultimately, the establishment of the Interims, the Council of Trent, and confrontations on the battlefield meant that formal efforts toward Lutheran-Catholic reconciliation were abandoned until the twentieth century. Yet various informal efforts toward mutual understanding continued to take place. Jesuits were occasionally invited to public disputations at the University of Wittenberg,¹ and Lutheran theolo-

 Kenneth Appold, Orthodoxie als Konsensbildung: Das theologische Disputationswesen an der Universität Wittenberg zwischen 1570 und 1710 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-049

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gian and philosopher G. W. Leibniz devoted many decades to conversation with Catholics on topics of dispute, in particular concerning holy communion.²

1.2 Lutheran-Reformed Relations The Marburg Colloquy of 1529 is best remembered for the failure of Zwingli and Luther to agree on the meaning of “is” in “this is my body,” but it has generally been forgotten that they did reach accord on the fourteen other points under dispute. Lutheran-Reformed relations subsequently varied a great deal, often due to the particularities of the local political situation. Under the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, Lutherans in the Holy Roman Empire received protection, but the Reformed did not until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, exacerbating the hostility between them in the meantime. Political tensions also led to the Colloquy of Montbéliard (Mömpelgard in German) in 1586, with Jacob Andreae representing the Lutherans and Theodore Beza the Reformed in discussions as to whether intercommunion might be possible between the two churches.³ The result, again, was failure. Fear of Catholicism was the most effective tool in drawing Lutherans the Reformed together, as can be seen in the relative success of the Leipzig Colloquy of 1631, which took place right in the middle of the Thirty Years’ War.⁴ Within Pietism, which came to the fore in the seventeenth century, the boundaries between Lutheran and Reformed Protestants came to be less strictly observed. Johann Arndt’s True Christianity, for example, was widely read in all confessional varieties of Pietism, and often more than Luther even in Lutheran circles. John Wesley’s Methodist movement was deeply influenced by German Pietism; his own conversion came about in reading Luther’s Preface to Romans, which caused his heart to be “strangely warmed.” However, when unity aimed beyond the cooperative and spiritual to the formal and official, the effect was usually negative. Most damaging in this regard was the Prussian Union of Lutherans and Reformed, mandated by Frederick William III in 1817; similar mandated unions followed in other German territories. Yet even in these United churches, there was no eucharistic fellowship between Lutherans and the Reformed until the late twentieth century. The backlash against union on the part of both Lutherans and the Reformed led to renewed confessionalism and defecting church bodies, some of which emigrated to other continents. Heirs of these churches have remained the most outspoken opponents of ecumenism within the Lutheran family, labeling it with the pejorative term “unionism.”

 George J. Jordan, The Reunion of the Churches: A Study of G. W. Leibnitz and His Great Attempt (London: Constable & Co., 1927).  Jill Raitt, The Colloquy of Montbéliard: Religion and Politics in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).  Bodo Nischan, “Reformed Irenicism and the Leipzig Colloquy of 1631,” Central European History 9 no. 1 (1976): 3 – 26.

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1.3 Lutheran-Anglican Relations While never formally declaring fellowship, relations between continental Protestants and the Church of England tended to be quite friendly. During the sixteenth century, the printing press ensured that the latest Lutheran developments were known in England in a matter of weeks. Luther-influenced clergy in Britain counted among the first martyrs of the Reformation, including Patrick Hamilton and Robert Barnes. Thomas Cranmer, the principal author of the Book of Common Prayer, had spent several years before he became archbishop of Canterbury in 1533 traveling through Germany, where he met many leading Lutheran theologians. After the sixteenth century drew to a close, Lutherans and Anglicans got to know each other better in situations of mission and emigration. A mission founded by Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg in Tranquebar, India, under the auspices of the Lutheran Church of Denmark, was moved at Lutheran initiative in the early eighteenth century to Madras, an Anglican center, establishing cooperation between Lutherans and Anglicans at the “English Mission” for more than a century thereafter.⁵

1.4 Lutheran-Orthodox Relations A particularly intriguing chapter in the pre-ecumenical ecumenism of Lutherans was the effort to reach out to the Eastern church. Luther and Melanchthon regularly invoked the practice of the “Greek church” (as they tended to call it) over against papal decisions. Claiming continuity with the conciliar heritage of early Christianity was one of the foundational arguments made in favor of reform, which was understood as returning to earlier practice in defiance of papal “innovation”; examples include permitting clerical marriage and receiving both kinds in the Lord’s Supper. In 1558 the patriarch of Constantinople, Joasaph II, sent a deacon named Demetrios Mysos to Wittenberg to learn more about the new movement in the West. Mysos spent about six months as a guest of Philip Melanchthon. The two set about translating the Augsburg Confession into Greek so that the patriarch would be able to read it for himself. Unfortunately, as Mysos ended up settling in Romania, Joasaph II never received it. A second exchange between Lutherans and Orthodox took place a decade and a half later. The German embassy in Constantinople asked the Lutheran theologians of Tübingen to provide a chaplain for the embassy. Jacob Andreae and Martin Crusius sent Stephen Gerlach, along with letters from themselves, to the new patriarch Jeremiah II, sparking a correspondence that lasted from 1574 to 1582. This time the patriarch did manage to see the Greek translation of the Augsburg Confession, to which

 Peter Vethanayagamony, It Began in Madras: The Eighteenth Century Lutheran-Anglican Ecumenical Ventures in Mission and Benjamin Schulze (Delhi: ISPCK, 2010).

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he wrote a detailed response. Great areas of agreement were discovered alongside matters of considerable dispute, and eventually Jeremiah asked for an end to theological discussion, favoring mutual greetings and encouragement in its place. Lutheran-Orthodox relations ground to a halt after that, chiefly because of the disastrous political situation within the Ottoman Empire.⁶

2 Modern Lutheran Reflection on the Unity of the Church Already in the late nineteenth century, Lutherans began to gain a larger consciousness of themselves as a worldwide confession, prompted by missions, nationalist movements, and growing concerns about secularism. In 1868 the General Evangelical Lutheran Conference (Allgemeine Evangelisch-Lutherische Konferenz, AELK) was established to gather interested Lutherans from assorted regional and national church bodies. Though mostly centered in Germany and attracting Germans, several assemblies of the AELK took place in Sweden as well, and Americans also participated. In tandem with this self-discovery as a global reality, Lutherans began to reflect on their place within the larger Christian family. While the modern ecumenical movement is generally said to date from the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910, it was really the crisis of World War I and transnational efforts to care for the millions of refugees that propelled Lutheranism into official fellowship with its own members as well as with others. Key organizations in this regard were the National Lutheran Council, based in the United States, whose leaders took an active role in postwar rebuilding; and the Lutheran World Convention, founded by one of the National Lutheran Council’s Executive Directors, John Alfred Morehead. The Lutheran World Convention met for the first time in Eisenach, Germany, in 1923, as the first global fellowship event for the world’s Lutherans. While not yet claiming ecclesiastical status for itself, the event had a tremendous impact on Lutheranism’s self-perception. But this new perspective on itself as a distinct confessional reality did not limit interaction with other Christians; quite the contrary, two of the five public speeches at the Eisenach assembly addressed the question of Christian unity overall. Bishop Ludwig Ihmels, speaking on “The Ecumenical Character of the Lutheran Church,” asserted that the Lutheran church is “but a manifestation of the one essential Church, the communion of believers,” and yet its distinctive confession is relevant for all Christians because “it has to do only with the re-discovery of the old

 George Mastrantonis, Augsburg and Constantinople: The Correspondence between the Tübingen Theologians and Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople on the Augsburg Confession (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1982).

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way to God through faith in Jesus Christ alone.”⁷ He also stressed that Lutheranism does not insist on outward conformity but allows for a multiplicity of forms and shares with Christians everywhere a fidelity to the doctrines of the Trinity and Christ from the early church.⁸ The second address by Frederick H. Knubel meditates at length on the Epistle to the Ephesians as a source for seeking Christian unity and proposes principles for assessing the theological validity of proposals for church union.⁹ Some years later, in 1935, the Executive Committee of the Lutheran World Convention drafted a statement entitled “Lutherans and Ecumenical Movements,” which follows much the same line as Ihmels’ 1923 address. In particular, Augsburg Confession 7 means that Lutherans are ready to recognize true Christians under whatever name or organization they may be found. The universal appeal of the Lutheran interpretation of the Gospel, the elemental quality of the Lutheran understanding of faith, and the catholic breadth of the Lutheran doctrine of the Church impart to Lutheranism an ecumenical quality that must be remembered in these days of emphasis upon externals. In the truest sense Lutheranism is itself an ecumenical movement (§A).

It, too, ends with a proposed standard for evaluating proposed relationships with other Christians.¹⁰ It was also in 1935 that the last assembly of the Lutheran World Convention took place as the world began moving toward war. And yet nearly as soon as the armistice was signed, Lutherans began preparing again for restored fellowship. The LWC was dissolved in 1947 in Lund, Sweden, at the constituting assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Its constitution directed the LWF to “serve Christian unity throughout the world” and to “foster Lutheran participation in ecumenical movements.”

3 Lutheran Participation in the Multilateral Movement Archbishop Nathan Söderblom of the Church of Sweden is credited with having first proposed an international ecumenical council in 1919 at a meeting of the World Al Ludwig Ihmels, “The Ecumenical Character of the Lutheran Church,” in The Lutheran World Convention: The Minutes, Addresses and Discussions of the Conference (Philadelphia, 1925), 56.  Ihmels, “The Ecumenical Character of the Lutheran Church,” 59.  Frederick H. Knubel, “‘That They May All Be One’—What Can the Lutheran Church Contribute to This End?” in The Lutheran World Convention: The Minutes, Addresses and Discussions of the Conference (Philadelphia, 1925), 94–109.  Executive Committee of the Lutheran World Convention, “Lutherans in Ecumenical Movements,” Concordia Theological Monthly 8 no. 6 (1937): 468 – 72.

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liance for Promoting International Friendship through Churches. This led to the creation, first of all, of the Faith and Order Movement, concerning itself with doctrine and ministry, and the Life and Work Movement, dealing with social and diaconal concerns and headed by Söderblom himself. On August 23, 1948, in Amsterdam, Faith and Order merged with Life and Work to form the World Council of Churches (WCC). Lutherans influenced the eventual form of the WCC by arguing vigorously, along with the Orthodox, against a nation-based membership (allotting a certain amount of seats to each nation apart from the church affiliation of the members) in favor of a confessionally based membership (representatives serving on behalf of their churches rather than their nations). American Lutherans in particular opposed the national model, perhaps because they comprised such a small minority of the American Christian population, and suggested that international confessional bodies serve as members instead. In the end, the WCC heeded the confessional concern but opted to grant each denomination direct membership, allowing international and parachurch bodies to have only observer status. Additionally, Lutherans persuaded the WCC to use the language of “receiving” rather than “adopting” reports, such that any given denomination need not feel compromised by any given report. Finally, Lutherans called for an explicit rejection of any plans to turn the WCC into a “super church.”¹¹ Over the years, Lutherans played key roles in the WCC. Franklin Clark Fry, a pastor and later president of the United Lutheran Church in America, served as vicemoderator at the Amsterdam assembly and as central committee moderator for the assemblies in Evanston, Illinois, USA, and New Delhi, India. American Lutheran theologian Joseph A. Sittler gave a widely acclaimed address entitled “Called to Unity” at the New Delhi assembly in 1961, which gave an ecological and cosmic scope to the strivings of the ecumenical movement.¹² Eivind Berggrav, Martin Niemöller, Hanns Lilje, Anne-Marie Aagaard, and Olav Fikse Tveit have also played variously influential roles in the WCC over the years. The Lutheran World Federation had been formed only a year before the World Council of Churches, and given Lutherans’ insistence on their confessional peculiarity, their ecumenical commitment was sometimes called into question. It is not altogether surprising, then, that the LWF Commission on Theology’s first study program dealt with The Unity of the Church, a collection of essays published in 1957 by notable Lutheran theologians such as Peter Brunner, Anders Nygren, Regin Prenter, and Bo Giertz.¹³ Their fundamental argument, based primarily on Augsburg Confession 7 and

 Dorris A. Flesner, American Lutherans Help Shape World Council: The Role of the Lutheran Churches of America in the Formation of the World Council of Churches (St. Louis: Lutheran Historical Conference, 1981).  J. A. Sittler, “Called to Unity,” The Ecumenical Review 14 (1962): 177– 87.  The Unity of the Church: Papers Presented to the Commissions on Theology and Liturgy of the Lutheran World Federation (Rock Island: Augustana Press, 1957).

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Luther’s christocentrism, is that Lutheranism is ecumenical insofar as it is centered on Christ, since outward forms, liturgies, and structures are not matters of necessity. While decidedly open to fellowship with other Christians, the greatest difficulty for the authors lies in the prospect of intercommunion with Christians who deny the real physical presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. In response to the positions taken in The Unity of the Church, the LWF assembly in Minneapolis in 1957 adopted “The Unity of the Church in Christ.” After some discussion of Augsburg Confession 7, it states: The words “it is enough” give the Lutheran churches a freedom also in relation to other churches. Bound by them we are led to the Scriptures and so rescued from the pressures of institutional expediency as well as from complacent acceptance of the status quo. In an ecumenical study of the Scriptures we find the most hopeful means towards a fuller realization of the unity in Christ and towards a deeper understanding of our faith as found in and behind our confessional statements. On this basis also the questions of inter-communion and the nature of the Sacraments can be brought out of the present deadlock.¹⁴

Lutherans worldwide have continued to be active in the multilateral movement. The Faith and Order Commission’s study on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982), to which Lutheran ecumenists and churches were active contributors, was the high point of the multilateral movement in the second half of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century has signaled another shift in multilateral ecumenism, as Evangelicals and Pentecostals began to take tentative steps toward participating in the movement after a long period of distrust. Recognizing this state of affairs, former WCC General Secretary Konrad Raiser established the Global Christian Forum as an event-oriented, non-membership-based occasion for “ecumenicals” and “evangelicals” to talk on equal terms. As in other multilateral movements, Lutherans have been involved in both the leadership and activities of the Global Christian Forum.

4 Lutheran Participation in Bilateral Dialogue It was the sudden reversal of attitude on the part of the Catholic Church during the aggiornamento of the Second Vatican Council that caused a massive shift in the entire ecumenical world. Previously hostile to all efforts toward church unity other than the “home to Rome” model, as witnessed in the 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos, the Catholic Church – in its conciliar decree, Unitatis Redintegratio – commended to all Catholics throughout the world a heartfelt commitment to the reconciliation of divided Christians. Furthermore, the Catholic Church was able to recognize other “Churches and ecclesial Communities” for the first time, admitting that “the

 “The Theses of the Third Assembly: II. The Unity of the Church in Christ,” in Messages of the Third Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1957).

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Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church” (§3). And yet, “since these Churches and ecclesial Communities, on account of their different origins, and different teachings in matters of doctrine on the spiritual life, vary considerably not only with us, but also among themselves, the task of describing them at all adequately is extremely difficult” (§19).¹⁵ In effect, this meant a shift from multilateral to bilateral dialogue. Rome wanted to have a separate conversation with each church or ecclesial community from which it was divided in order to address the problems specific to them. As it turned out, bilateral dialogue fit very well with the Lutheran confessional orientation, too. In 1963 the Helsinki assembly of the Lutheran World Federation established a legally and financially independent Lutheran Foundation for Interconfessional Research, which opened the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France, in 1965. Its scholars were charged with researching questions of ecumenical methodology, participating in the LWF’s international bilateral dialogues, and sharing ecumenical results with the larger Lutheran constituency. Since self-awareness as a global movement has always gone hand-in-hand with Lutheran ecumenism, the Institute has also played a vital role in contributing to the LWF’s reflection on its own status. By the end of the twentieth century, the LWF was able to call itself a “communion of churches,” and along the way it issued a number of statements on its ecumenical commitments, including the 1970 Evian assembly documents More Than Church Unity and Guidelines for Ecumenical Encounter ¹⁶ and the 1984 Budapest assembly documents Self-Understanding and Ecumenical Role of the Lutheran World Federation ¹⁷ and The Unity We Seek. ¹⁸ Since the 1960s, the LWF has engaged in formal dialogue with nine other Christian World Communions.

4.1 Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue¹⁹ Harding Meyer, a research professor at the Institute in Strasbourg from 1969 to 1994 and one of the principal drafters of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justifica Unitatis Redintegratio, available at: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_ council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html.  Both statements can be found in LaVern K. Grosc, ed., Sent into the World: The Proceedings of the Fifth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971).  Self-Understanding and Ecumenical Role of the Lutheran World Federation: Report on a Study Process 1979–1982 (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1984).  C. H. Mau Jr., ed., “In Christ—Hope for the World”: Official Proceedings of the Seventh Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation: Budapest, Hungary, July 22–August 5, 1984, LWF Report No. 19/20 (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1984).  N.B.: Dialogues are named for their respective parties, listed in alphabetical order: thus “Anglican-Lutheran” but “Lutheran-Roman Catholic.”

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tion, has observed that the international Lutheran-Catholic bilateral dialogue was “the ‘parent’ of all later dialogues of this kind.”²⁰ Meetings in Strasbourg in 1965 and 1966 established the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Study Commission, which, after a series of yearly meetings, released The Gospel and the Church – also known as The Malta Report – in 1972. The period from 1965 to 1972 is thus considered “phase one” of the dialogue. Extensive discussion of models of the church, models of unity, and the Eucharist during phase two prompted the renamed Lutheran/Roman Catholic Joint Commission to release Facing Unity in 1984, which charted a path toward an actual, visible, and organizational unity that was “neither absorption nor return, but rather a structured fellowship of churches.”²¹ Phase two also overlapped with two significant Lutheran anniversaries: the 450th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in 1980 and the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth in 1983. Accordingly, the commission released two statements outside the general theme to commemorate these events. All Under One Christ moves toward a shared view of the Augsburg Confession. The statement asserts that “in content and structure, this confession, which is the basis and point of reference for other Lutheran confessional documents, reflects as no other confession does the ecumenical purpose and catholic intention of the Reformation” (§7). Contrary to centuries of polemic on both sides, Lutherans and Catholics both now recognize that Luther never intended “the establishment of a new Church (CA 7,1),” but rather “the preservation and renewal of the Christian faith in its purity in harmony with the Ancient Church” (§10). As such, Catholics can respect the Augsburg Confession as an expression of “the common faith” (§11, 27). The second statement on Martin Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ emerges from decades of renewed research by both Catholic and Lutheran scholars to gain a more nuanced view of Luther. “He is beginning to be honored in common as a witness to the gospel, a teacher in the faith and a herald of spiritual renewal” (§4). Although brief, especially in comparison to the statements that would be drafted in the years thereafter, this statement was unique at its time for presenting a commonly accepted description of Luther’s understanding of justification, the ensuing conflict, and the ways in which Luther’s reforms eventually found their way into Catholicism via Vatican II. By the 1980s, it was felt that this series of bilateral statements demanded something more than polite reception by the respective ecclesiastical parties, if not quite to the level proposed by Facing Unity. Encouragement for something more came from the American and German national bilateral dialogues, whose respective collections Justification by Faith (1983) and The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They  Harding Meyer, “To Serve Christian Unity: Ecumenical Commitment in the LWF,” in From Federation to Communion: The History of the Lutheran World Federation, eds. Jens Holger Schjørring, Prasanna Kumari, and Norman A. Hjelm (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).  Most of the international Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue statements can be found at: http:// www.prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/l-rc/e_lr-c-info.html.

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Still Divide? (1986) claimed to see a way past division on the doctrine “by which the church stands or falls.” Taking up the same theme, the international commission released Church and Justification at the end of phase three (1986 – 1993). The apex of the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue process was the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ), signed by Edward Cardinal Cassidy and Bishop Walter Kasper on behalf of the Catholic Church and by Bishop Christian Krause and all the LWF’s vice presidents on behalf of the LWF, in Augsburg, Germany, on October 31, 1999. The JDDJ’s fundamental claim is: “By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works” (§15). It is and remains the only occasion on which Rome has promulgated a doctrinal statement with a Protestant church. Two theological developments allowed the JDDJ to be accepted by both churches. First and foremost was the concept of “differentiated consensus,” pioneered by the aforementioned Harding Meyer.²² Lutherans had already accepted the idea that other churches could share the same beliefs about the gospel without accepting the exact same formulations as existed in the Augsburg Confession. Differentiated consensus took that logic a step further: it was possible to recognize the same content (Sache) in a diversity of verbal formulations and even theological emphases. Careful theological work could tease out shared but hidden convictions and thereby remove misunderstandings and miscommunications. However, because there is no conviction or content that exists apart from its expression, new language would be needed for both parties to express a mutual, common understanding. This would not require the churches to reject their previous formulations; new ecumenical articulations could stand side by side with old confessional ones. This insight led, in turn, to the second concept: the notion that it was not the convictions themselves but their church-dividing character that was to be overcome. Implicit in this is the realization that the churches themselves have not been static in their passage through history. Thus the Lutheran and Catholic parties could adhere to their sixteenth-century confessions and affirm their intent, while at the same time admitting that the anathemas of that period no longer apply to the present-day partner. It is notable that the Helsinki assembly of the LWF in 1963 had attempted, and failed, to produce a statement on justification for Lutherans in the twentieth century. Only in dialogue with Roman Catholics have Lutherans been able, on a global level, to make a contemporary statement on the doctrine of justification. Here again it is evident that Lutheran world identity and ecumenical commitment exist in close partnership.

 Meyer, Versöhnte Verschiedenheit. Aufsätze zur ökumenischen Theologie I & II (Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck, 1998, repr. 2000).

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After a high point, there is always a letdown. Augsburg Confession 7 assumes that agreement on the gospel “is enough,” and as a result there was a tacit assumption among Lutherans that resolving the doctrine of justification would naturally lead to unity with Catholics. That was, evidently, not the case. The nature of the church itself – the Achilles’ heel of ecumenism throughout its history – remains divisive. Accordingly, after the JDDJ, the once-again renamed Lutheran-Catholic Commission on Unity turned its attention to such matters, producing in 2006 the study document The Apostolicity of the Church, which represents phase four (1996 – 2006) and tackles some of the ecclesiological obstacles that remain. The intention then was to turn to baptism, but with the specter of the 500th anniversary of the ninetyfive theses on the horizon in 2017, the commission took a detour to draft recommendations for joint commemoration of the event with the 2013 statement From Conflict to Communion. This text explores – in much greater detail than the one from 1983 – the history of the Reformation conflicts and Luther’s theological commitments, placed in parallel with the Second Vatican Council rather than the Council of Trent. The question left over from the JDDJ lingers, however, and it hovers over all bilateral dialogues: Why does agreement not lead to unity? It was precisely on the assumption that discovered agreement would do so that such precise and painstaking theological work was undertaken. Yet division remains intractable.

4.2 Lutheran-Reformed Dialogue In the twentieth century, Lutherans and the Reformed took a significant step toward reconciliation with the Barmen Declaration of 1934, a joint statement of faith in opposition to the Nazi regime. Formal international dialogue between Lutherans and the Reformed began in the 1960s and produced a number of notable statements, including Toward Church Fellowship (1989), Called to Communion and Common Witness (2002), and Communion: On Being the Church (2014). However, the most significant steps forward have taken place in the context of regional European dialogues that culminated in the Leuenberg Agreement, signed on March 16, 1973. It begins with the conviction that the divided churches share a “common understanding of the Gospel” (§1) and that, “according to the understanding of the Reformers, the necessary and sufficient pre-requisite for the true unity of the Church is agreement in the right teaching of the Gospel and the right administration of the sacraments” (§2) – though not cited as such, this is an unmistakable reference to Augsburg Confession 7. The common understanding is briefly described, as are the changed historical circumstances and the basic insight that the churches “have learned to distinguish between the fundamental witness of the Reformation confessions of faith and their historically conditioned thought forms” (§5). This in turn allows the statement to take up three traditional areas of dispute between the churches – predestination, Christology, and Christ’s presence at the Lord’s Supper – and declare that contemporary understandings of these three loci mean that

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“they are no longer an obstacle to church fellowship” (§27).²³ The goal was thus not to achieve identical doctrinal or confessional statements, but to allow church fellowship to take place on the basis of sufficient common ground – in other words, satis est. In time, the Leuenberg Fellowship gave rise to the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE), which now includes other confessions, such as Methodists and Waldensians, and member churches in Latin America as well. Other regional Lutheran-Reformed agreements exist elsewhere, among them the Formula of Agreement (1997) in the United States and the fellowship of Lutheran, Reformed, and United churches in the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland. In July 2017, the World Council of Reformed Churches declared its “Association” with the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. Nevertheless, Lutheran-Reformed accord has not met with universal acceptance: the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland has never joined the CPCE, for example, remaining unconvinced on the matter of the sacraments.

4.3 Anglican-Lutheran Dialogue Modern Anglican ecumenism dates back to the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, passed in 1886 by the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. It specifies four principles of unity among Christians that correspond to the “sacred deposit” of the “undivided Catholic Church”: the recognition of the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Scripture as the revealed word of God; the acceptance of the Nicene Creed as a “sufficient statement” of the Christian faith; the sacraments of baptism and communion, “ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him;” and church governance through the historic episcopate, “locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church.” The first three were entirely amenable to Lutherans and in fact corresponded closely to the satis est principle of Augsburg Confession 7. The theological and cultural similarities between Lutherans and Anglicans were amply documented by assorted bilateral working groups in the Pullach Report (1972), the Helsinki Report (1982), the Cold Ash Report (1983), the Niagara Report (1988), the Hanover Report (1996), and Growth in Communion (2002). These have led to repeated calls for closer church fellowship. The fourth item in the Quadrilateral, however, was and remains a sticking point, for the simple reason that Lutherans have not universally placed the same value on the historic episcopate as Anglicans, especially when the gospel itself seemed to be

 William G. Rusch and Daniel F. Martensen, eds., “The Leuenberg Agreement,” in The Leuenberg Agreement and Lutheran-Reformed Relationships: Evaluations by North American and European Theologians (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 144– 54.

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at stake (Augsburg Confession 28). While some Lutheran churches have retained the episcopate without rupture since pre-Reformation times, the lack of the episcopate in others has never been a barrier to fellowship; adherence to the Augsburg Confession and the Small Catechism has served as “enough” within world Lutheranism. The ecumenical result has been regional partnerships between Lutherans and Anglicans of various kinds, without a consistent policy throughout either communion. The Porvoo Common Statement (1992) was signed by the Anglican churches of Great Britain and Ireland and the Nordic and Baltic Lutheran churches, allowing for full altar-and-pulpit fellowship due to the Lutheran partners’ retention of the historic episcopate. Anglican agreements with Lutherans in Germany (Meissen, 1988) and France (Reuilly, 1999) allow for church fellowship but no common exercise of episcopé or unqualified exchange of clergy. Called to Common Mission (1999) established fellowship between the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America by requiring future Lutheran pastors to be ordained by a bishop consecrated in historic succession, although an escape clause was provided for conscientious objectors. However, opposition to this policy within the Lutheran body led to the formation of the new denomination Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, which adopted a deliberately more congregationalist polity. The last report of the Anglican-Lutheran International Commission, To Love and Serve the Lord (2012), addresses issues of diakonia and opportunities for further cooperation. Assuming that sufficient doctrinal work has been done, the renamed Anglican-Lutheran International Co-ordinating Committee addresses the problem of transitivity – that is, translating the various but unequal regional agreements into a worldwide policy for fellowship. And in April 2016, the Anglican Consultative Council declared that it “welcomes and affirms the substance” of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.

4.4 Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue As a result of visits between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the LWF starting in 1967, the first official meeting of the Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission took place in Espoo, Finland, in 1981. Over the course of sixteen plenary gatherings – with preparatory meetings in between – the commission has released twelve joint statements. The first several address sources of authority, considering such topics as Divine Revelation (1985), Scripture and Tradition (1987), The Canon and the Inspiration of the Holy Scripture (1989), and The Ecumenical Councils (1993). The commission then briefly turned to the more typical focus of Lutheran doctrine with Understanding of Salvation in the Light of the Ecumenical Councils (1995) and Salvation:

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Grace, Justification and Synergy (1998).²⁴ This last statement in particular engaged recent Finnish research on Luther’s doctrine of the presence of Christ in faith to reach a new mutual understanding between Lutheran soteriology and the Orthodox doctrine of theosis. ²⁵ Up to this point, no significant matters of disagreement were identified – not even the filioque –, though the statements tended to be fairly brief and lacking the level of in-depth exploration found, for example, in the JDDJ. Beginning with the Damascus meeting in 2000, however, the dialogue has dealt in various ways with the more seriously divisive (here as in all other dialogues) topic of ecclesiology, under the rubric of “The Mystery of the Church.” Statements produced since then have addressed the sacraments and the nature, attributes, and mission of the church. Alongside the international commission’s work, many regional dialogues have taken up the same topics, often in greater depth. These include the bilaterals of the EKD with the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Patriarchate of Constantinople (each independently of the other); the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland with the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Finland (again, independently of one another); and the Lutheran and Orthodox churches in United States.

4.5 Lutheran-Methodist Dialogue While regional fellowship agreements have been concluded between Lutherans and Methodists in Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States, there has been relatively little bilateral dialogue between them. The only international dialogue took place from 1974 to 1979, which produced the document The Church: Community of Grace. Considerably more significant was the World Methodist Council’s Statement of Association with the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 2006.

4.6 Baptist-Lutheran Dialogue As with the Methodists, international dialogue between Lutherans and Baptists has been minimal. The only international dialogue, which took place from 1986 to 1989 between the LWF and the Baptist World Alliance, strove not for fellowship but for

 Most of the Lutheran-Orthodox statements can be found at: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/ristosaarinen/ lutheran-orthodox-dialogue/.  Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification, trans. Kirsi Stjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005).

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“mutual knowledge, respect and cooperation.”²⁶ Unlike all the other dialogues considered thus far, the differing judgment of the respective parties on the validity of infant baptism posed a much more serious obstacle to rapprochement. Despite the evident goodwill in the extended dialogue statement Baptists and Lutherans in Conversation: A Message to Our Churches, neither mutual recognition of baptism nor any kind of church fellowship could be recommended. Since then, work on the conflict between infant-baptism and believer’s-baptism traditions has shifted to the dialogue with Mennonites.

4.7 Adventist-Lutheran Dialogue Following engagements at the highest level between secretaries of the Christian World Communions, the LWF and the Seventh-Day Adventist Church undertook an international dialogue from 1994 to 1998. As in the case of the Baptists, the statement Adventists and Lutherans in Conversation did not attempt to resolve the more extensive differences between the two traditions but simply to improve mutual knowledge and respect.

4.8 Lutheran-Mennonite Dialogue The aforementioned anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in 1980 brought a hitherto neglected group of Christians to the Lutherans’ attention – namely the Mennonites, heirs to sixteenth-century Anabaptism named for an early leader, Menno Simons. As a matter of course, Lutherans had invited them to anniversary celebrations, not realizing that Mennonites represented the very Anabaptists who were condemned by name in articles 5, 9, 12, 16, and 17 of the Augsburg Confession. The ecumenical faux pas was remedied by national dialogues in France (1981– 1984), Germany (1989 – 1992), and the United States (2001– 2004), and finally taken up on an international level when the Lutheran World Federation and Mennonite World Conference began meeting in 2002. In a striking departure from the other dialogues, this dialogue focused not so much on theological matters as on the historical conflict between the two groups. Lutherans rediscovered, to their dismay, the hostile reaction of their ancestors to early Anabaptists, to the extent of promoting and justifying the execution of approximately one hundred rebaptizers. Luther and Melanchthon, though at times advocating a more lenient approach, ultimately endorsed the thousand-year-old law of the

 “A Message to Our Churches,” in Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, 1982 – 1998, eds. Jeffrey Gros, FSC, Harding Meyer, and William G. Rusch (Geneva/Grand Rapids: WCC and Eerdmans, 2000), 155.

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Holy Roman Empire that imposed capital punishment on rebaptism. Johannes Brenz, the Lutheran reformer of Swabia, was found by contrast to reject all forms of political oppression of religious “heretics.” The resulting study, Healing Memories: Reconciling in Christ, broke new ground in being the first jointly authored and approved history of Lutheran-Mennonite relations. This in turn prompted the LWF Council and then Assembly in 2010 to apologize publicly to the Mennonites for Lutheran wrongdoing and to ask their forgiveness, which the Mennonites in turn publicly granted. A task force was subsequently established to implement the new mutual perception on the local level, improving cooperation between the churches and correcting stereotypes about the other. Meanwhile, though certain of the Augsburg Confession’s condemnations could be dismissed as not applying to present-day Mennonites – especially articles 5, 12, and 17 –, the remaining differences of opinion on infant baptism and political/military involvement stand. However, rather than continue to explore these on the bilateral level only, an international trilateral commission (only the second of its kind) was established in 2012 between the LWF, the Mennonite World Conference, and the Catholic Church on the topic of baptism.

4.9 Lutheran-Pentecostal Dialogue Calls in the LWF for the study of Pentecostalism were heard as early as the 1970s, but early work on the topic proceeded one-sidedly, apart from any formal or informal dialogue. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland was the only regional church to take up the challenge of bilateral dialogue with Pentecostals.²⁷ In 2004, the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg initiated a “proto-dialogue” with Classical Pentecostal scholars. Six years later, their joint statement Lutherans and Pentecostals in Dialogue was released, intended as handbook for further dialogue. Again departing from the conventional process of doctrinal comparison, this dialogue proceeded by examining the question “How do we encounter Christ?” in proclamation, the sacraments/ordinances, and charisms. The LWF Council approved a formal dialogue with Classical Pentecostals, which met for the first time in Asia in the fall of 2016 and plans to continue for a total of five years on five continents. Topics to be discussed include experience, tradition, the priesthood of all believers, the prosperity gospel, diakonia, and healing. The presence of Lutheran Charismatics within the LWF makes this dialogue considerably different from the others. It also represents the cutting edge of bilateral and multilateral dialogue. Evangelicals and Pentecostals remained at best suspicious of ecumenism

 Dialogues with the Evangelical Free Church of Finland and the Finnish Pentecostal Movement, Documents of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland 2 (Helsinki: Lutheran Church of Finland, 1990).

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until well into the twenty-first century, but – given the size of their constituency – their growing interest in Christian unity promises to fuel a renewed enthusiasm for ecumenical engagement, much as the interest of the Catholic Church after Vatican II did fifty years ago. In any event, a historical retrospective demonstrates that Lutheranism’s self-understanding as a global reality and its ecumenical interest have always gone hand in hand. As long as Lutherans continue to engage with one another worldwide, so also will they seek their place in the larger Christian family and strive for fellowship, “that they may be one” (John 17:22).

Enrico Galavotti

From Excommunicated to Common Teacher

Luther and the Ecumenical Movement

1 A Stumbling Block At the beginning of the development of what is now conventionally referred to as the ecumenical movement, the first systematic expressions and manifestations of which go back to the early twentieth century, there are a few stumbling blocks that are hard to ignore.¹ One of these stumbling blocks was certainly Martin Luther, or rather the way in which his character, his action, and his theology had been understood and described for centuries within Catholicism. Similarly problematic was the uncritically apologetic approach toward Luther on the part of the Evangelical churches. This approach had always elicited the hostility of the Church of Rome and, although in a qualitatively different way, of other confessions whose origin was remotely reformed. Moreover, it was also necessary to take into account an unexpected development – the coldness, if not the growing indifference, with which Luther was starting to be met within the new denominations of Protestant churches that were proliferating and spreading, mainly outside of Europe, for which Luther was no longer considered a fixed point of reference, much less a hero of the faith. For them, Luther was a character who had been discarded and repressed even before a shared opinion of him could be formed.² Apart from these latter circles – which were mostly unknown to the great majority of Western Christianity and likewise ignored by those who were beginning their efforts within the ecumenical movement – it was easy to realize quickly how Luther, even four centuries after his death, was a living character with whom confrontation

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri  On the origins and the development of the ecumenical movement, I will only refer to the classic work edited by R. Rouse and S.C. Neill, Storia del movimento ecumenico dal 1517 al 1948, vol. 1, Dalla Riforma agli inizi dell’Ottocento (Bologna: EDB, 1973), vol. 2, Dagli inizi dell’Ottocento alla conferenza di Edinburgo (Bologna: EDB 1973), vol.3, Dalla Conferenza di Edinburgo (1910) all’Assemblea Ecumenica di Amsterdam (1948) (Bologna: EDB 1982), and vol. 4, L’avanzata ecumenica (1948 – 1968), ed. H.E. Fey (Bologna: EDB 1982); see also H.J. Urban and H. Wagner, eds., Handbuch der Ökumenik (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1985 – 1987); and N. Lossky, J.S. Pobee, J.M. Bonino et al., eds., Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1991); for a quick introduction, see P. Neuner, Breve manuale dell’Ecumene (Brescia: Queriniana, 1986).  Cf. S. Picciaredda, Le Chiese indipendenti africane. Una storia religiosa e politica del Novecento (Roma: Carocci, 2013); S.A. Fatokun, “Historical Sketch of Pentecostal Movements in Nigeria,” Cristianesimo nella Storia 28 no. 3 (2007): 609 – 34. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-050

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was still problematic for all the Christians engaged, in different ways, in the creation of opportunities for encounter and dialogue. The reasons for this were manifold and included, in the first place, the nerves touched by Luther’s theological thinking; second, there were the effects that such thinking had produced, compelling him to write new “symbols” of the Christian faith (for example, the Confessio Augustana or his Catechisms) that had irreversibly changed the doctrinal structure of Christianity; third, there was also his way of presenting himself as a reformer, which was drastically different from all previous experiences up to that point in Christian circles. These experiences had traditionally envisaged only two possible outcomes: either a dramatic ending in condemnation for heresy (which, in most cases, permanently extinguished any doctrinal dissent) or a metabolization in canonization. After the reforming action begun by Luther in the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church had developed and spread a precise picture of him: Luther, guilty of having opposed the supreme authority of the pope, was considered both as someone who had inflicted a deadly wound on the unity of the Church and as the trigger of a series of cascading errors that had progressively opened up a chasm between Church and society and thrown humanity into a spiral of desolation and violence from which humankind could have saved itself only by returning to and carefully heeding the magisterium and authority of Rome. During the century prior to the beginning of the ecumenical movement, it is quite common to see in the pastoral interventions of Catholic bishops the repetition of a very clear interpretive pattern, according to which Luther was portrayed as an immoral character – a monster, a devil, a guzzler, an alcoholic, a kidnapper of nuns, and so on – who had piled up this load of wickedness in the process of the reform he had so obstinately started. Therefore it was logical, perhaps even necessary, to reject any human understanding of – or even the very possibility of reconciliation with – the memory of the man who had not only seriously injured the unity of Christians, but was also responsible for a dramatic involutional spiral: “[W]ith immoral doctrines and immoral teachers, where is the sanctity of the Reformation?”³ asked the cardinal of Imola, Gaetano Baluffi, as late as 1850. The score had not changed much at the time of the fourth centennial of the birth of Luther (1883), when Catholics still insisted on an image of Luther that was irredeemable from all points of view and toward which the only possible attitude was deprecation;⁴ this was even more the case as the idea that the proliferation of socialism and communism was also distantly inspired by Luther was added to the often reiterated grievances about the “revolutionary” effects of the Lutheran controversy in the eighteenth century.

 Quoted from G. Miccoli, “‘L’avarizia e l’orgoglio di un frate laido…’. Problemi e aspetti dell’interpretazione cattolica di Lutero,” in Lutero in Italia. Studi storici nel V centenario della nascita, ed. L. Perrone (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1983), xiv.  Cf. H. Jedin, “Mutamenti della interpretazione cattolica della figura di Lutero e loro limiti,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 23 no. 1 (1969): 378 – 83 (appendix edited by A. Olivieri).

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From this perspective, it is important to highlight how even the most influential representatives of Catholic theology and culture in the early twentieth century repeated time and time again – in their interventions as well as in their works – a series of ideas, theories, and clichés that were already centuries old: although perhaps cleansed of their most simplistic or vulgar manifestations, these notions were still intact in their substance.⁵ After all, these ideas had their most authoritative support in the papal magisterium, which – at a time when some non-Catholic Christians were getting ready to meet in Edinburgh (1910) for the conference that was later to be considered the starting point of the contemporary ecumenical movement – had renewed the verdict of Luther’s condemnation and thus had suggested that it could not foresee any element that would make it change its opinion on the subject.⁶ According to Pius X, the issue was crystal clear: those who were plagued by the disease of modernism had indeed taken on attitudes and manners already seen in Luther and thus descended from him. This notion was expressed both in the Pascendi (1907)⁷ and in the Editae saepe, an encyclical meant to distinguish between true and false reform of the Church.⁸ Thus even the mere presence of evangelical or reformed communities in  Miccoli, “L’avarizia e l’orgoglio,” xviii.  Thus, in his Catechism of 1905, Pope Pius X, after mentioning Luther and Calvin as supporters of the “great heresy of Protestantism,” qualified Protestantism itself as “the sum of all heresies that existed before it, that existed after it, and that might be born again to slaughter souls,” Compendio della dottrina cristiana prescritto da Sua Santità Papa Pio X alle diocesi della provincia di Roma (Roma: Tipografia Vaticana, 1905), 326 – 27.  “This becomes still clearer to anybody who studies the conduct of modernists […]. Again, when they write history, they pay no heed to the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way, they draw their distinctions between theological and pastoral exegesis and scientific and historical exegesis. So, too, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, when they treat philosophy, history, criticism, feeling no horror at treading in the footsteps of Luther (Prop. 29, condemned by Leo X, “Exsurge Domine,” May 15, 1520: ‘A way has been made for us for weakening the authority of councils, and for freely contradicting their actions, and judging their decrees, and boldly confessing whatever seems true, whether it has been approved or disapproved by any council whatsoever’), they are wont to display a certain contempt for Catholic doctrines, or the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be rebuked for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty.” Encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis of Pope Pius X on the doctrines of the modernists, September 8, 1907, available at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_px_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html.  “[…] those proud and rebellious men came on the scene […]. These men were not concerned with correcting morals, but only with denying dogmas. Thus they increased the chaos. They dropped the reins of law, and unbridled licentiousness ran wild. They despised the authoritative guidance of the Church and pandered to the whims of the dissolute princes and people. They tried to destroy the Church’s doctrine, constitution, and discipline. […] They called this rebellious riot and perversion of faith and morals a reformation, and themselves reformers. In reality, they were corrupters. In undermining the strength of Europe through wars and dissensions, they paved the way for those modern rebellions and apostasy.” Encyclical Editae saepe of Pope Pius X on St. Charles Borromeo, May 26, 1910, available at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_26051910_editae-saepe.html.

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Rome was unacceptable in the eyes of the Holy See. Theodore Roosevelt, the former president of the United States, experienced this attitude firsthand when, passing through Rome in 1910 and having requested an audience with the pope, he was told that the audience would be granted on the condition that he renounced his planned visit to the Methodist community in Rome.⁹ Benedict XV was similarly clear and consistent when, five years later, he deplored “the damage that would be caused to this holy city, and the scandal that would be caused to the Catholic world, if Luther and Calvin were to pitch their tents permanently in the city of the popes.”¹⁰ The unionist choice reaffirmed by Pius XI with his Mortalium animos in 1928 was, in its own way (although this would be understood only much later), an extreme effort to contain the novelty represented by the ecumenical movement and its attempts to approach Rome.¹¹ Although some at that time (such as Yves Congar or Paul Couturier) would choose to ignore such prescriptions and devote themselves to the ecumenical effort while leaving behind the logic of absorption,¹² almost all of the Catholic intellectuals of the day fell in line with the directives of the Holy See, reasserting them according to their respective potentials and sensitivities. Already in 1925, Jacques Maritain, in his Trois réformateurs, had reiterated the most classic image of Luther as someone who, “[u]nable to conquer himself, […] transforms his necessities into theological truths, and his own actual case into a universal law” and found him guilty of “metaphysical egoism.”¹³ Igino Giordani,¹⁴ the future director of the ecumenism branch of the Focolare Movement he co-founded with Chiara Lubich,

 Cf. R. Aubert, “Pio X tra restaurazione e riforma,” in Storia della Chiesa, vol. 22.1, La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878 – 1922), eds. E. Guerriero and A. Zambarbieri (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paulo Editione, 1990) 123 – 24.  Discorso del Santo Padre Benedetto XV al cardinale vicario Basilio Pompili, presidente dell’“Opera della Preservazione della Fede in Roma”, November 21, 1915, available at: https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xv/it/speeches/documents/hf_ben-xv_spe_19151121_card-pompili.html. At the time, there was a rumor that, in anticipation of the fourth centennial of the beginning of the Reformation, there was a plan to build in Rome an Evangelical church that would compete in size with St. Peter’s Basilica.  M. Barbolla, “La genesi della Mortalium animos attraverso lo spoglio degli Archivi Vaticani,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 66 no. 2 (2012): 495 – 538.  Cf. É. Fouilloux, Les catholiques et l’unité chrétienne du XIXe siècle. Itinéraires européens d’expression française (Paris: Persée, 1982).  Jacques Maritain, Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (New York: Thomas V. Cromwell, 1929), 10 – 11 and 14.  According to Giordani, since 1521 there had emerged a “rather well-defined [Luther]: two-faced, devious, thirsty for blood, inconsistent, more Teutonic than Catholic;” and again, it was Luther who had “derived the greatest number of terms for excrements and such. It was he, already in 1521, who called marriage ‘a shitty sacrament’. It was he who, with the reformed language, called the theologians of Leuven, guilty of having condemned his theses, ‘rustic asses, cursed whores, wretched scroungers, blasphemous bowels, blood-thirsty arsonists, fratricides, coarse swine, silent pigs, heretical and idolatrous, vain braggarts, damned heathens, stagnant waters’, and so on;” see I. Giordani, I protestanti alla conquista d’Italia (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1931), 80n69.

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had an even gloomier approach: Giordani professed his belief that evangelicalism had been born out of “a scriptural lapsus by Luther” that did not hold in the face of modern exegetical criticism. Furthermore, he added: Luther could not restrain his flesh and, anguished by remorse and doubts in his heart and by ghosts and lusts in his limbs, believed that he had found what he needed in a passage of the Letter to the Romans in which Paul would have allegedly asserted the justification by faith only. […] Since Luther believed that he could not avoid sin, he deemed that no one else could.

And again, according to Giordani: Luther’s personality as the head of the Reformation has been exalted and ridiculed, but particularly exalted. For the Reformation, i. e., the downgrading of Christianity to a national and bourgeois religion, more was done by the Elector of Saxony than by Friar Martin. He acted as a front and, mostly, theologized the pretexts.

In the end, Giordani argued, Luther had achieved not a reform, but rather a revolt, “and in the Church, revolts are inspired – we feel sorry for our Dearest – not by God but by Satan.”¹⁵

2 The Reciprocal Damnation Therefore, not even the proliferation of new perspectives on and methods of historical research – it is important to remember, for example, that the publication of the works by Calvin, Melanchthon, and Zwingli within the Corpus reformatorum had started in 1834 and that the publication of the Weimarer Ausgabe, offering the Lutheran sources in a critical edition, had begun in 1883; this list should also include the fundamental commentary of 1908 on Luther’s Lecture on Romans, which had previously been considered irremediably lost– was able to change the basic framework of the Catholic understanding of the figure of Luther.¹⁶ This could indeed be explained by a deep resentment – which had, by that time, become an identity trait for the Church of Rome – toward the man who, with his choices, had violated an order strengthened over centuries and called into question the theological and doctrinal bedrock on which Catholicism’s claim to supremacy was founded. In this sense, Luther was not so much or not only one of the many “dissenters” that had stirred against the ecclesiastical institution over the centuries: he represent-

 Giordani, I protestanti alla conquista, 63 – 65, 73.  On this subject, Miccoli has argued that“the cultural coordinates that come into play when expressing the Catholic verdict on Luther reveal a depth and a perseverance that cannot be explained with an erroneous or unscrupulous or instrumental use of the methods of their discipline […], or with the lack of interaction between specific researches and general frameworks of historical comprehension;” see “‘L’avarizia e l’orgoglio,’” xxvi.

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ed something more, something different, and, to the quality of the challenge he brought forward, Catholicism had replied by creating a transgenerational attitude in which were mixed theological hatred, personal deprecation, cultural trivialization, and – as the most common but not least enduring component – interconfessional conflict. Thus, for clerics preparing for the priesthood, Luther was ordinarily the touchstone used when teaching theology in seminaries in order to demonstrate doctrinal mistakes and how to react to them.¹⁷ Precisely since this was such a deeply rooted phenomenon, anti-Lutheranism over time became undisputed: it was absolutely natural to depict Luther in a certain way, and the strength of these images of “cold damnation,” accepted without any particular traumas or decisive choices by the Catholic clergy, would find a way to emerge until the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, and even during its very celebration. This was especially true in episcopal pastoral interventions, which were mostly attempts to copy – more or less successfully – the pontifical magisterium. Speaking and writing about Luther in a certain way was a given, just as it was also a given for every bishop with the duty of the care of souls to exalt the image and the teaching of the pope, condemn socialism and communism, deprecate the proliferation of secularism and naturalism, and heap expressions of veneration on the Virgin Mary, while perhaps seasoning it all with a sprinkle of anti-Semitism. What is certain, however, is the fact that developments in historical research had the effect of starting to soften the sharpest corners of the Catholic anti-Lutheran controversy.¹⁸ From this perspective, the turning point marked by Joseph Lortz’s research is well acknowledged;¹⁹ even prior to that, however, it is possible to register a noticeable change of tone in the work of Konrad Algermissen, whose reservations on the character and work of Luther, however, remained nonetheless intact.²⁰

 Alberto Bellini, reflecting on the Italian case, comes to the conclusion that “modern Italian textbook theology did not tackle – neither directly nor seriously, from the inside – Luther’s theology. It is mostly critical and apologetic: rather than being concerned with understanding what Luther meant, it focuses on presenting Luther in a light that makes him more easily confutable and highlights better, through his irrationality, the Catholic truth;” see “Lutero nella teologia cattolica moderna. Dalla confutazione polemica al confronto ecumenico,” in Lutero in Italia, 247.  In order to find a bearing within the immense bibliography available on Luther and to be introduced to the fundamental hermeneutic developments that have occurred since the nineteenth century, it is advisable to refer to O.H. Pesch, Martin Lutero. Introduzione storica e teologica (Brescia: Queriniana, 2007); for the most recent bibliographical updates, see H. Schilling, Martin Luther. Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs (München: C.H. Beck, 2013); and G. Dall’Olio, Martin Lutero (Roma: Carocci, 2013).  J. Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1939 – 1940).  “Now, Luther had a pessimistic vision of man, believing him to be only sin and corruption, even denying him any collaboration to the divine grace; he did not understand Christ, who saw in man the chance for a collaboration with grace, in the Decalogue not the oppression but the liberation of man, in God not only the one who forgives but also the one who judges and punishes; he did not even understand Paul and his doctrine on the law and the gospel. He only dealt with singular problems and not, instead, with the great external tasks of the kingdom of God. […] Luther is so concerned

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Although summarized in brief, the above considerations represent part of the context in which reflection on Luther took place within the ecumenical circle. From the opposite point of view, it is also necessary to take into account the sedimentation of anti-Roman and anti-papal feelings that had been a fundamental cornerstone of Luther’s preaching and theology. This is a hostility that, among other things, took form at an incredible speed, to the point that – even at the time of Luther’s excommunication in 1521 – it had already reached the point of no return. It had been only four years since the beginning of the debate on Luther’s theses on indulgences – which, incidentally, shows how Luther considered it absolutely natural to engage in dialogue with the pope and his legates – and, in a short time, a perfect equivalence between Rome and the devil had already been established in Luther’s eyes. According to Luther, Leo X was no longer simply a challenger, but the antichrist himself.²¹ This was an idea that – as is well known, and as would be reiterated during the course of the twentieth century again and again by some of the participants in the ecumenical movement²² – was perfectly in line with the eschatological imagery of the time, to which Luther had spontaneously and decisively subscribed.²³ It was this very struggle with the antichrist, which was to be conducted unquestioningly

with the salvation of individuals that he even forgets the Christianization of social life;” see C. Algermissen, La Chiesa e le chiese (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1944), 762 (or. ed. Konfessionskunde. Ein Handbuch der christlichen Kirchen-und Sektenkunde der Gegenwart [Hannover: J. Giesel, 1930]).  It has been noted how “[t]he attack on the papacy as the Antichrist was not the center of Luther’s reformation protest. The center, as we know, was his proclamation of the good news that man is justified solely by faith in Christ and solely by the grace of Jesus Christ, through no merits of his own. It was primarily because Luther believed that the Pope was denying the Gospel or prohibiting him to preach it that he came to the conclusion that the Pope was the Antichrist;” see H.J. McSorley, “Luther’s Ecclesiological Significance for the Twentieth-century Ecumenical Movement,” The Springfielder 34 no. 2 (1970): 131– 39, here 137.  See also, for example: Gruppo di lavoro bilaterale della Conferenza episcopale tedesca e della Chiesa unita evangelica luterana di Germania, “Comunione ecclesiale nella Parola e nel sacramento (1984),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, vol. 2, Documenti del dialogo teologico interconfessionale. Dialoghi locali, 1965 – 1987, eds. G. Cereti and S.J. Voicu (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniani, 1988), 660 – 61; Gruppo di Dombes, “Per la conversione delle chiese (1990),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, vol. 4, Documenti del dialogo teologico interconfessionale. Dialoghi locali, 1988 – 1994, eds. G. Cereti and J.F. Puglisi (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniani, 1996), 350; Gruppo di lavoro bilaterale della Conferenza episcopale tedesca e della Chiesa evangelica luterana unita in Germania, “Communio sanctorum. La chiesa come comunione dei santi (2000),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, vol. 8, Documenti del dialogo teologico interconfessionale. Dialoghi locali, 1995 – 2001, a cura di G. Cereti, J.F. Puglisi (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniani, 2007), 825 and 827; Dialogo luterano-cattolico negli USA, “La chiesa come “koinônia” di salvezza: Strutture e ministeri (2004),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, vol. 10, Documenti del dialogo teologico interconfessionale. Dialoghi locali, 2002 – 2005, eds. G. Cereti and J.F. Puglisi (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniani, 2010), 964– 65.  For an explanation of this worldview, see the most recent edition of the classic by William of Ockham, Dialogo sul papa eretico, ed. A. Salerno (Milano: Bompiani, 2015); on the canonical implications, cf. L. Fonbaustier, La déposition du pape hérétique. Une origine du constitutionnalisme? (Paris: Mare & Martin, 2016).

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and on every level, that justified the tones of the controversy and that, more importantly, prevented and made unrealistic any chance of confrontation or reconciliation:²⁴ from this point of view, the developments of Luther’s later journey were already implied in the very first stages of his path to reform. Luther’s works from 1520, and especially the plea To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, in fact already postulated the incapacity of the Catholic episcopate to fulfill the action of reform that Luther had started to sketch out: this was just the first stage of a complex journey that, after Luther’s death, would bequeath to his heirs an alternative Christian confession, structured over a vast territory and capable of involving a growing number of the faithful. Mirroring what had happened within Catholicism, the demonization of the opponent represented and continued to represent an essential element of cohesion, also for those who had subscribed to the new Evangelical belief. Just as the very first Catholic biographers, such as Johann Cochlaeus or Johann Pistorius,²⁵ had described Luther as someone who had given in to the flattery of Satan, Luther had similarly taken on angelical traits for the coeval biographers of Evangelical inspiration, such as Johannes Aurifaber or Johannes Mathesius: he was a prophet, and maybe even a saint.²⁶ This is a configuration that would dominate Lutherforschung at great depth and length, and it was only between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, in a timeframe bracketed by Leopold von Ranke’s and Karl Holl’s respective works, that scholars would begin to rethink many elements that had been well-established as “canonical” since the dawn of the Reformation – starting, for example, to distinguish between the different stages of Luther’s life and focusing especially on his youth.²⁷

 It is well known how, in the illustrations for the Bibles that Luther licensed for printing, the whore dressed in scarlet and purple and riding the beast with seven heads and ten horns, mentioned in chapter 17 of the book of Revelation, was crowned with the papal tiara; Biblia, das ist, die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch. Mart. Luth. Wittemberg, Begnadet mit Kürfurstlicher zu Sachsen freiheit, vol. 2, Die Propheten alle Deudsch. D. Mar. Luth. (Wittemberg: Hans Lufft, 1533; repr. Köln: Tashen, 2016), 195.  J. Cochlaeus, Commentaria Ioannis Cochlaei, de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri Saxonis, Chronographice, Ex ordine ab Anno Domini M.D.XVII usque ad Annum M.D.XLVI inclusive, fideliter conscripta, Apud S. Victorem prope Moguntiam, ex officina Francisci Behem Typographi, 1549; J. Pistorius, Anatomia Lutheri (Köln: Arnoldum Quentel, 1595 – 1598).  J. Aurifaber, Tischreden oder Colloquia Doct. Mart. Luthers (Eisleben: Urban Gaubisch, 1566); J. Mathesius, Historien von des ehrwirdigen in Gott seligen thewren Manns Gottes Doctoris Martini Luthers Anfang, Lehr, Leben und Sterben (Nürnberg: Ulrich Neuber, 1566).  This was the choice made by, among others, Gottfried Arnold (Gottfried Arnold Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie [Frankfurt am Main, 1699]) and Giovanni Miegge (Lutero. L’uomo e il pensiero fino alla Dieta di Worms, 1483 – 1521 [Torino: Claudiana, 1946]), who tried to find the original and constant core in Luther’s thinking and theology before it became “encrusted” by the choices made in his mature age: not so much, evidently, the decision regarding the Reformation, but the choices regarding some aspects connected to it, such as his fiery anti-Semitism, the condemnation of the Peasants’ Revolt and of the Anabaptists, and also the increasingly violent controversies with the Church of Rome.

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3 A Long Dawn of Change There is no doubt, therefore, that the redefinition of Luther’s character within the activities and debates promoted by the ecumenical movement found a pillar and a fundamental incentive precisely in the process of historiographical revision that, although with different timings and qualitative analyses,²⁸ had been developing since the second half of the nineteenth century. It is also important to point out how an investigation of the official documents connected to the ecumenical debate highlights the importance given to historical considerations, thus underlining how the understanding of Luther in his precise scope and potential required first and foremost a focus on the contexts, the mindsets, and the theologies that had actively come up against each other in the field once Luther had started his process of reform. Thus the confrontational tones used for centuries were put to one side, and a path of understanding of the event was chosen instead, which was indeed typically historiographical.²⁹ Thus in 1927, while the Holy See was preparing the publication of the Mortalium animos, Eugène Choisy, a member of the Faith and Order commission and a reformed minister from Geneva, insisted on the fact that it had certainly not been light-heartedly or with pleasure that Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers had broken all relationships with the hierarchy and had split from the traditional Church. When obliged to choose between loyalty to Christ the Savior – the only head of the Church – and submission to the demands of clerics who claimed to be the only legitimate interpreters of the divine truth, they could not sacrifice the rights of the Master who is the truth, the Savior in whom they confided for their justification.

In the same context, the Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala, Nathan Söderblom, an extremely prominent figure in the budding ecumenical movement, pointed out that when Luther, a passionately devoted son of the Church, was expelled by the papal institution, he was forced, together with his friends, to organize, against his and their will and intention, an autonomous

 Yet we must mention how, in the early twentieth century, on the Catholic side, Heinrich Suso Denifle on the one hand and Hartmann Grisar on the other revamped an image of Luther as a degenerate and a psychopath.  Reflecting on Luther’s Cathechisms, the chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference noted how “the transformation of the image of Luther in Catholic theology represents, however, the silent triumph of thorough scientific research able to contribute to the overcoming of deeply-rooted prejudices, thanks to a careful task of specific research, to the courage of historical research, but also to the patience of the ecumenical renewal;” see K. Lehmann, “Martin Lutero. Nostro maestro comune,” Il Regno-Attualità 6 (1998): 202– 09, here 205; some ideas on the research paths followed within the Catholic circle are illustrated by M. Lienhard, “Luther en perspective catholique. Quelques observations,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 63 no. 1– 2 (1983): 167– 77.

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community. However, they never believed and never accepted that the action of the pope excluded them from the Church – one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.³⁰

The change of perspective on Luther, however, also went through the trauma of war and the acknowledgement, on the Catholic side, that a fundamental experience of resistance to Nazism – such as the Bekennende Kirche, guided by the pastor Martin Niemöller, which would become even more famous after the “discovery” of the figure and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer – found its beating heart explicitly in a closer acceptance of Luther’s teachings and example.³¹ At any rate, it is the Second Vatican Council that marks a turning point, at least on the Catholic side, in the rediscovery of Luther. This is so because – beyond what some despairing, continuist interpretations attempted to represent – the Second Vatican Council marked a clear departure from the long historical era that had been distinguished by the reception, which mostly means the mythologization, of the Council of Trent.³² Anti-Lutheran reaction was a fundamental cultural trait of this era. Therefore, only an event capable of marking the beginning of a new cultural paradigm – and specifically, a revision in the Catholic attitude toward modernity, which was also opposed because it was perceived as a product of the Reformation – could enable the opening of a new perspective on Luther. The liberating effects of the council would soon become evident in those who had already – decades earlier – shown themselves to be open to ecumenical issues. Thus, at a conference held in 1963, Congar said that he was aware of how Luther a encore aujourd’hui un très mauvais renom chez les catholiques, sauf peut-être en Allemagne. Je sais qu’il y a en lui de quoi justifier ce renom. Je sais aussi qu’on ne rende justice, ainsi, ni à

 “I Conferenza Mondiale di Fede e Costituzione (1927),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, vol. 6, Fede e Costituzione. Conferenze mondiali, 1927 – 1993, eds. S. Rosso and E. Turco (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniani, 2005), 302.  Cf. P. Foresta, La resistenza tedesca tra testimonianza e martirio: il sinodo di Barmen (29 – 31 maggio 1934), forthcoming.  Cf. G. Alberigo, “Du Concile de Trente au tridentinisme,” Irénikon 54 no. 2 (1981): 192– 210; and P. Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino. Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2010); on the consequences of this process in the long term, reflections of great depth are to be found in I. Illich, Pervertimento del cristianesimo. Conversazioni con David Cayley su vangelo, chiesa, modernità, ed. F. Milana (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2008). Also meaningful are the considerations by the Dombes Group, according to which “[a]nother caveat is also essential: the Council of Trent should not be confused with Tridentinism. The council was a reaction, often oversensitive though well considered, within a Western Church that was becoming aware of a division whose effects it had not yet evaluated. Tridentinism, by contrast, was both a systematic organization of doctrine carried out on the basis of the council’s documents, regarded as almost self-sufficient, and the establishment of institutions that would leave a considerable mark on Roman Catholicism;” see Groupe des Dombes, “For the Conversion of the Churches,” in For the Communion of the Churches: The Contribution of the Groupe Des Dombes, ed. Catherine E. Clifford, trans. James Grieg (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 149 – 223, here 181.

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son intention foncière, ni même à sa pensée religieuse. Je sais enfin que rien de tout à fait sérieux ne sera fait de notre part vers le protestantisme tant qu’on n’aura pas accompli la démarche de comprendre vraiment Luther et de lui rendre historiquement justice, au lieu de simplement le condamner. Pour cette conviction, qui est mienne, je serais prêt à donner joyeusement ma vie.³³

The experience of what already amounted to a half-century of ecumenical movement and this unexpected conciliar opening thus outlined the possibility – and the legitimacy – of a new way to approach Luther, a path devoid of political calculations and anachronistic attempts to reconfessionalize him by those who, until recently, had looked at him as a die-hard enemy (and not just within Catholicism). However, it was also necessary to avoid the error of depicting – forcibly and much against his will – Luther as a Catholic,³⁴ just as it was impossible to hide the vast expanses that had been opened with the Church of Rome, and also among the other reformed churches. Therefore, it became increasingly clear that Luther ought to be approached and understood as a man of his time; he was part of a certain historical context and was driven especially by a concern quite common at his time – a time that, on the other hand, had been the origin of a multitude of experiences of renewal – that is, a concern about his own personal salvation, which he considered no longer safeguarded by the very ecclesiastical authority that traditionally had been in charge of it. Albeit in vehement and polemical tones, Luther had indeed raised the most important of all questions: “the question of God.”³⁵ In hindsight, Luther emerged as a Christian on a historical ridge. Many scholars have remarked already on the ambivalence of a man who appeared to have a typically medieval cultural approach³⁶ and who, nevertheless, would end up being perceived and described for a great many years as the interrupter who had introduced humanity to a new era – the modern era. However, it was Luther’s time that was fundamentally thick with entanglements and permeations between an old and a new order; it was a time of reforms, in the broadest sense of the word, in which, together with the many elements of crisis and corruption, there were also important seeds of renewal.³⁷  Y.M.-J. Congar, Chrétiens en dialogue. Contributions catholiques à l’Œcuménisme (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1964), 126. And, meaningfully, at the end of a ceremony that had taken place in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls on December 4, 1965, Congar wanted to stop to pray at St. Paul’s tomb: “Je lui parle de Luther, qui a voulu réaffirmer ‘l’Évangile’ pour lequel Paul a lutté;” see Congar, Mon journal du concile, ed. E. Mahieu (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2002), 2:503.  Erwin Iserloh, in particular, insisted on the idea that, in his dialogue with Augustine and Ockham, Luther had distanced himself from a Catholicism that was fundamentally no longer such; see Kirche – Ereignis und Institution. Aufsätze und Vorträge (Münster: Aschendorff, 1985), 2:145 – 55.  Thus it is defined by W. Kasper, Martin Lutero. Una prospettiva ecumenica (Brescia: Queriniana, 2016), 23.  More recently, the issue has been tackled again in the widely debated biography by V. Leppin, Martin Luther (Darmstadt: Primus, 2006, 2nd ed. 2010).  On this subject, Walter Kasper mentions the celebration of the national council of Seville in 1478, which aimed precisely at getting rid of some abuses; the publication of the Complutensian Polyglot

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4 The Fruits of the Dialogue Therefore, the Second Vatican Council – and, even earlier, its announcement –not only promoted a new attitude toward Luther, but also had critical effects on the level of direct dialogue between the representatives of the different Christian churches, fostering meetings, exchanges, and especially the creation of mixed working groups that – among the several themes studied – dealt directly with Luther and thus forced the parties to go beyond pleasantries.³⁸ Ecumenical developments, which were surely also due to the phase of enthusiasm that characterized the first post-conciliar period and that Paul VI himself would later be forced to bridle,³⁹ were clearly perceivable. One proof of this was the speech given by Cardinal Johannes Willebrands during the Fifth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in July 1970, when he acknowledged that, over the centuries, Martin Luther has not always been considered according to his real value by the Catholics, and his theology has not always been illustrated correctly. This circumstance furthered neither truth nor love, and, therefore, it did not serve the purpose of unity that we are striving to achieve between you and the Catholic Church.

Then Willebrands asked:

Bible; the spread of an Italian Evangelism that counted, among others, participants of curial rank such as Gasparo Contarini and Reginald Pole; and at the same time, he also mentions the importance of characters such as the mystic Johannes Tauler; see Kasper, Martin Lutero, 16 – 17.  At the time of the 450th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation, there had been an exchange of letters between Cardinal Augustin Bea and the president of the Lutheran World Federation, Fredrik A. Schiotz, in which the latter had acknowledged that “sometimes we are tempted to celebrate almost with some triumph our commemorative manifestations of the Reformation. Let us pray that, in the important celebrations planned for this year around the whole world, this temptation might be overcome;” see S. Schmidt, Agostino Bea, il cardinale dell’unità (Roma: Città Nuova, 1987), 744. For an introductory understanding of the activities undertaken by the mixed Lutheran-Catholic working group, see J.A. Radano, Lutheran and Catholic Reconciliation on Justification. A Chronology of the Holy See’s Contributions, 1961 – 1999, to a New Relationship between Lutheran & Catholics and to Steps Leading to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids, MI:Eerdmans, 2009).  “Ce n’est pas que ce cheminement œcuménique soit sans difficultés. […] On ne résorbe pas en quelques années une incompréhension et une opposition qui ont duré pendant des siècles. La patience est une vertu œcuménique. La maturation psychologique n’est pas moins lente ni moins difficile que la discussion théologique. La seule éventualité de devoir abandonner de vieilles positions, durcies pas d’amers souvenirs, mêlés à des questions de prestige et à de subtiles polémiques, éveille des réactions qui tendent à se présenter comme des affirmations de principes, sur lesquelles il paraît impossible de transiger. […] Chacun reprend conscience de soi, résiste, se révolte: l’œcuménisme s’arrête,” Discours du Pape Paul VI aux membres du Secrétariat pour l’union des chrétiens, April 28, 1967, available at: https://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/fr/speeches/1967/april/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19670428_unione-cristiani.html.

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[T]oday, who would dare to deny that Martin Luther was a deeply religious personality who looked honestly and with self-sacrifice for the message of the gospel? Who could deny that – despite the torments that he inflicted on the Catholic Church and the Holy See (this, indeed, must not be hushed up) – he preserved a substantial quantity of the riches of the ancient Catholic faith? Has the Second Vatican Council not embraced the needs that were articulated, among others, by Luther, and through which many aspects of the Christian faith and the Christian life are expressed better now than before?

Finally Willebrands did not avoid the issue of justification and showed an important openness that undoubtedly represented a first synthesis of the discussions that had taken place between Catholics and Evangelicals; thus, he stated that the “common research” on this topic has shown that the word faith, in Luther’s sense, is far from excluding deeds, love, and hope. Therefore, it can indeed be said that the notion of faith in Luther, if considered in its entirety, does not mean anything other than what the Catholic Church calls love.

He then concluded by saying that it was a good thing to reflect on a man for whom the doctrine of justification represented the articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae. He can be our common teacher in this field when he says that God ought to always remain the Lord and that our most essential human response ought to be absolute trust and adoration of God.⁴⁰

Some signals of an opportunity to rethink Luther’s role were also arriving from the Evangelicals, who recognized how the controversy championed by the reformers, “particularly by Luther, does not do justice to the Catholic part, especially when it overlaps the opposed notions with the Catholic position and does not acknowledge or overlooks the multi-faceted claims of Catholic theologians;” thus, “regarding the situation after the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, Luther’s words on the ‘horror’ of the mass no longer apply.”⁴¹

5 Toward a New Ecumenical Synthesis Understandably, the fifth centennial of Luther’s birth, celebrated in 1983, was a perfect opportunity to create a new ecumenical synthesis of the different positions. By then, it was possible to consider as a given the progress that had been made, especially during the post-council phase, but at the same time, it was not hard to find signs of a certain slowing down when it came to furthering understanding of Luther’s  J. Willebrands, “Lutero, nostro maestro comune,” Il Regno-Documentazione 16 (1970): 354– 55.  Commissione congiunta cattolico romana-evangelica luterana, “L’eucaristia (1978),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, vol. 1, Documenti del dialogo teologico interconfessionale. Dialoghi internazionali, 1931 – 1984, eds. S.J. Voicu and G. Cereti (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniani, 1986), 643 – 44.

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role and work. On the Catholic side, the appointment of Joseph Ratzinger as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and, at the same time, the expansion of the role of this institution within Wojtyła’s Curia meant, from an ecumenical point of view, the adoption of a decidedly more cautious approach, due to Ratzinger’s ancient and well-rooted reservations about the many Luthers that the Catholics had created over time.⁴² Moreover, another addition to these reservations was the belief that Luther’s positions on the notion of tradition were irrecoverably incompatible with Catholic ones.⁴³ For his part, John Paul II declared that, for Catholics, “the name of Martin Luther is linked, through the centuries, to the memory of a painful time and, in particular, to the experience of the origin of deep ecclesial divisions;” he recognized that the historical research carried out up to that point had allowed for the achievement of “remarkable points of convergence;” however, it was necessary to carry on with this study for the purpose of “arriving, through an investigation without prejudices and motivated only by the search for truth, at a just representation of the reformer, of the entire era of the Reformation, and of the people that were involved in it.”⁴⁴ This approach was mirrored on the Evangelical side, where it was stated that: as much as Luther’s name has been linked for some time to the idea of the division of Christianity, today we recognize that, after all, the divergent paths have not destroyed the communion of the faith and that, regardless of all divisions, the idea of a common belonging of all Christians is still alive. Luther does not belong to just one confession. He has a vocation for the whole of Christianity […] If he were to enter again into the conscience of our time like a witness of the

 Ratzinger noted that “[f]irst, there is the Luther of the Catechisms, the hymns and the liturgical reforms: and this Luther can be received by Catholics whose own biblical and liturgical revivals in this century reproduce many of Luther’s own criticisms of the late medieval Church. But besides this Luther there is also another: the radical theologian and polemicist whose particular version of the doctrine of justification by faith is incompatible with the Catholic understanding of faith as a co-believing with the whole Church, within a Christian existence composed equally by faith, hope and charity;” see A. Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI New Edition: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 195.  Benedetto XVI and V. Messori, Rapporto sulla fede. Vittorio Messori a colloquio con il cardinale Joseph Ratzinger (Cinisello Balsamo: Mondadori, 1985), 166.  Messaggio di Giovanni Paolo II al cardinale Giovanni Willebrands, presidente del Segretariato per l’unione dei cristiani, October 31, 1983, available at: https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/letters/1983/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_19831031_card-willebrands.html. In a speech given three years prior to this in Mainz, to the Council of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, John Paul II, overturning the approach expressed by John XXIII in his address to the crowd on the evening of October 11, 1962, had already stated that “all the gratitude for what is left in common and that unites us cannot make us blind to what still divides us;” see Discorso di Giovanni Paolo II al Consiglio della Chiesa Evangelica, November 17, 1980, available at: https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/speeches/ 1980/november/documents/hf_jp_ii_spe_19801117_chiesa-evangelica.html.

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gospel, men could be more aware of their faith and be thus liberated both from their uncertainties and from their absurd certainties.⁴⁵

The document prepared during the same months by the mixed Catholic-Evangelical committee represented an effective mediation among the multi-faceted positions that had emerged up to that point and, with an calm approach overall, claimed that, both on the Catholic side and on the Evangelical side, “outdated, polemically colored images of Luther” were on the way out and that Luther was starting “to be honored in common as a witness to the gospel, a teacher in the faith, and a herald of spiritual renewal;” Luther, therefore, was a character whose modernity was intact, since his plea “for church reform, a call to repentance, is still relevant for us. He summons us to listen anew to the gospel, to recognize our own unfaithfulness to the gospel, and to witness credibly to it.”⁴⁶ At any rate, the Evangelical churches declared their awareness of his limitations in person and work, and of certain negative effects of his actions. They cannot approve his polemical excesses; they are aghast at the anti-Jewish writings of his old age; they see that his apocalyptic outlook led him to judgments which they cannot approve, e. g., on the papacy, the Anabaptist movement, and the Peasants’ Revolt.⁴⁷

Giuseppe Alberigo’s reflections must also, once again, be read within the context of the fourth/fifth centennial and clearly from an ecumenical perspective. In a lecture to the Waldensian Faculty in Rome, although operating within the context of a historical understanding of the figure of Luther, Alberigo postulated some methodological suggestions that could also be accepted by those who were more exposed on the level of ecumenical relationships. According to Alberigo, therefore, the importance of Luther for all of Christianity was to be looked for in the appropriate perspective and not while looking backwards: it was not possible, through the census of all the elements that were suitable to “re-Catholicizing” Luther, to forcibly abstract him from his time and pretend that the rift of the sixteenth century had not happened. It was necessary to adhere to facts, and the first of these facts was the consideration that, historically, there existed new churches that were the fruit of the Reformation and that held, not in a smaller measure than the Catholic Church, a distinct

 These are the thoughts expressed by the Evangelical bishop Eduard Lohse, chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, in a message dated January 1, 1983: “Attualità di Martin Lutero,” Il Regno-Documenti, 15 (1983): 469 – 70, here 470.  Commissione congiunta cattolico romana-evangelica luterana, “Martin Lutero testimone di Gesù Cristo. Dichiarazione (1983),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, 1:744.  Commissione congiunta, “Martin Lutero testimone di Gesù Cristo. Dichiarazione (1983),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, 1:748 – 49. The opinion just mentioned was clearly shared both in the abovequoted message by Lohse (Attualità di Martin Lutero) and in the message penned by the bishop Werner Leich, who was chairman of the Luther Committee of the Evangelical Churches of the German Democratic Republic, “Rischiare con Dio,” Il Regno-Documenti 15 (1983): 472– 73.

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wealth of doctrine and culture that should not be wasted. Certainly, as Alberigo granted, in Luther’s time there had been many voices that had supported a reform, but only Luther’s had been able to impose on Catholicism a process of self-reform “to the point that it can be said today that, without Luther, modern Catholicism would have been completely different and hardly better.”⁴⁸ However, it is also important to point out that major importance was granted to an in-depth historical analysis only in the case of the ecumenical debate between Evangelicals and Catholics.⁴⁹ In other circles, the preference had been, and still was, for insisting on a permanent and fundamentally uncritical modernization of Luther as a reassurance of the existence of common elements among the different Christian confessions or denominations. This could be verified, first of all, in the document agreed in 1984 between Evangelicals and Methodists.⁵⁰ The AnglicanCatholic mixed committee, in contrast, had later turned to Luther to ratify that baptism on its own was not enough to exercise an office within the Church.⁵¹ Even more representative of this approach was the document subscribed to by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Lutheran World Federation, in which was stated, “[w]e came with questions, we parted with appreciation. While significant doctrinal differences remain, we found much in common: a love for the word of God, a shared heritage from the Reformation, a deep appreciation for the work and teachings of Martin Luther;” these conversations had finally clarified that “both Lutherans and Adventists unconditionally affirm the interrelated principles of the Reformation: sola scriptura; solus Christus; sola fide; sola gratia. Both churches regard themselves as heirs of the Protestant Reformation and as children of Luther.”⁵² Evangelicals and Orthodox

 G. Alberigo, “Cosa rappresenta Lutero nella coscienza cattolica contemporanea,” in Lutero nel suo e nel nostro tempo. Studi e conferenze per il 5° centenario della nascita di M. Lutero (Torino: Claudiano, 1983), 29 – 38, here 35.  An exception, although still referring to discussions with Catholic participation, was represented by the observations of the Jesuit ecumenist Jos Vercruysse in the document agreed between the Church of Rome and the Mennonites, where he claimed that a “revision in the light of modern historiography, of the complex history of the so-called ‘Left Wing of the Reformation’ or ‘Radical Reformation’, which Luther already unjustly collected under the term Schwärmertum, could enhance a better mutual understanding. The proposal to study the common experience of martyrdom together deserves special attention;” cf. the “Commento a Chiesa cattolica-Conferenza mennonita mondiale, Chiamati a essere insieme operatori di pace. Rapporto 1998 – 2003,” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, vol. 7, Documenti del dialogo teologico interconfessionale. Dialoghi internazionali, 1995 – 2005, eds. G. Cereti and J.F. Puglisi (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniani, 2006), 1034.  Commissione congiunta Federazione luterana mondiale-Concilio metodista mondiale, “La chiesa comunità di grazia, Rapporto sul dialogo 1979 – 1984,” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, 1:1143 – 1186.  Commissione internazionale anglicana-cattolico romana, “Il diaconato come opportunità ecumenica. Rapporto di Hannover (1995),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, 7:208.  Confederazione generale degli Avventisti del Settimo giorno e Federazione luterana mondiale, “Rapporto delle conversazioni bilaterali 1994– 1998 (1998),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, 7:380 – 81; later in the document, it is also stated: “Adventists have a high appreciation for the Reformation.

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Christians had turned to Luther’s Small Cathechism to state their common belief that only inspiration by the Holy Spirit could allow the readers of the Bible to comprehend it fully: The Orthodox believe that such authentic interpretation is the service of the fathers of the Church, especially expressed in the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils. Lutherans agree in principle. Lutheran confessional writings affirm that no one can believe in Jesus Christ by one’s own reason or abilities, but that it is the Holy Spirit who calls, gathers, and illuminates believers through the gospel even as he calls, gathers, and enlightens the whole Church on earth, keeping it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.⁵³

The agreement on justification among Catholics and Evangelicals, which was reached between 1998 and 1999 after decades of challenging negotiations (which are well reflected by the unresolved complexity of the final agreement), was important in itself; so too, however, was the formal requalification that ratified Luther’s role outside of the Evangelical and Reformed churches.⁵⁴ The era of the damnatio memoriae was definitely over, but this only served to highlight once again the problem of defining an understanding of Luther that would be, from an ecclesial and theological point of view, shared as much as possible. Historiographical research, although occasionally naïve or anachronistic,⁵⁵ made an important contribution on this topic; however, it evidently could not untangle issues that were not historiographical in nature. There was, in fact, a line that, as Hubert Jedin had already said, was impossible to cross: “we must exercise toward Luther a full historical justice; we must try to understand him, and we can learn from him, making our own the great values that are contained in his works.” However, for Jedin, it was also necessary to be similarly clear that it would be “impossible to integrate all of Luther, all of his personality, all of his theology in the Catholic Church.”⁵⁶ It was also obvious that a new synthesis on Luther, prompted also by the upcoming fifth centennial of the beginning of the Reformation, ought to derive from a sincere metabolization of the steps forward that were made in the ecumenical debate that began in the early 1960s. As Benedict XVI, Ratzinger, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had to put aside the overlap between the Reformation and mod-

They see themselves as heirs of Luther and other Reformers, especially in their adherence to the great principles of sola scriptura, sola fide, solo Christo;” see p. 393.  Commissione internazionale mista per il dialogo teologico luterano-ortodosso, “Il canone e l’ispirazione. Dichiarazione comune (1989),” in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, vol. 3, Documenti del dialogo teologico interconfessionale. Dialoghi internazionali, 1985 – 1994, eds. G. Cereti and J.F. Puglisi (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniani, 1995), 1067– 1068.  See the text in Enchiridion Œcumenicum, 7: 885 – 918.  On this subject, it is possible to mention, for example, the dramatic tones with which Luther’s anti-Semitism has been recently reconstructed – an anti-Semitism that had quite a different interpretation after the celebration of the fourth centennial of the beginning of the Reformation; on this topic, see T. Kaufmann, Gli ebrei di Lutero (Torino: Claudiana, 2016).  Jedin, Mutamenti della interpretazione cattolica, 370.

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ernity that he had always considered as doomed to fail and admit that, at the very least, the questions Luther asked were correct;⁵⁷ on the Evangelical side, it seemed necessary to renew once again the mea culpa for those aspects of Luther that appeared to be completely unacceptable.⁵⁸ What has become increasingly evident is the fact that, from an ecumenical point of view, Luther was and still is destined to remain – as was anticipated at the beginning of this study – a stumbling block: in a way, the “hier stehe ich” that, according to the tradition, he uttered in Worms has become a permanent challenge to understanding him for the Christians of following generations. This is a challenge that the participants in the ecumenical movement took on more or less wittingly and instrumentally; a challenge that sometimes has been circumvented, aiming at a confrontation more focused on the theologies of the different Christian confessions than on those of their respective founders; or a challenge that has been rejected as a never-ending process.⁵⁹ As time went on, the courage underlying Willebrands’ statements from

 Cf. Incontro con i rappresentanti del Consiglio della “Chiesa Evangelica in Germania”. Discorso del Santo Padre Benedetto XVI, September 23, 2011, available at: https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedictxvi/it/speeches/2011/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20110923_evangelical-church-erfurt.html. Francis put himself in the same wake when he declared it “important that the Catholic Church courageously carry forward a careful and honest reevaluation of the intentions of the Reformation and of the figure of Martin Luther, in the sense of ‘Ecclesia semper reformanda’, in the broad wake traced by the Councils, as well as by men and women, enlivened by the light and power of the Holy Spirit;” see Visit to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Rome, Address of His Holiness Pope Francis, November 15, 2015, available at: https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/november/documents/papa-francesco_20151115_chiesa-evangelica-luterana.html.  “On this occasion, Lutherans will also remember the vicious and degrading statements that Martin Luther made against the Jews. They are ashamed of them and deeply deplore them. Lutherans have come to recognize with a deep sense of regret the persecution of Anabaptists by Lutheran authorities and the fact that Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon theologically supported this persecution. They deplore Luther’s violent attacks against the peasants during the Peasants’ War. The awareness of the dark sides of Luther and the Reformation has prompted a critical and self-critical attitude of Lutheran theologians towards Luther and the Wittenberg Reformation. Even though they agree in part with Luther’s criticism of the papacy, nevertheless Lutherans today reject Luther’s identification of the pope with the antichrist,” Commissione luterana-cattolica sull’unità e la commemorazione comune della Riforma nel 2017, “Dal conflitto alla comunione,” supplement to Il Regno-Documenti 11 (2013): 382.  From this perspective, Francis’ off-the-cuff words are exemplary, when he declared that he believed that “Martin Luther’s intentions were not mistaken; he was a reformer. Perhaps some of his methods were not right, although at that time […] we see that the Church was not exactly a model to emulate. There was corruption and worldliness in the Church; attachment to money and power. That was the basis of his protest. He was also intelligent, and he went ahead, justifying his reasons for it. Nowadays, Lutherans and Catholics, and all Protestants, are in agreement on the doctrine of justification: on this very important point he was not mistaken. […] Today, the dialogue is very good, and I believe that the document on justification is one of the richest ecumenical documents, one of the richest and most profound. […] There are divisions, but they also depend on the churches. […] Differences have perhaps done the greatest harm to each of us, and today we are looking to take up again the path of encounter after five hundred years. […] And for theologians to study together,

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1970 on Luther as a “common teacher” became even more evident: no one, in fact, had missed the analogy with the “doctor communis” par excellence, Thomas Aquinas. Willebrands’ courage still has not found any imitators, at least in its most explicit formulations.

searching… One time I said, jokingly, ‘I know when the day of full unity will be!’ ‘When?’ ‘The day after the coming of the Son of Man!’ Because we do not know… The Holy Spirit will grant us this grace;” see In-Flight Press Conference of His Holiness Pope Francis from Armenia to Rome, June 26, 2016, available at: https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2016/june/documents/ papa-francesco_20160626_armenia-conferenza-stampa.html.

Philosophical and Historical Influences

Balthasar Permoser, Statue of Augustine of Hippo. Marble; 17th cen. (INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo).

Giovanni Rota

Luther in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Philosophy 1 Philosophy’s Debts to Luther We scarcely know what we owe to Luther and the Reformation in general. We are freed from the fetters of spiritual narrow-mindedness; we have, in consequence of our increasing culture, become capable of turning back to the fountain head, and of comprehending Christianity in its purity. We have, again, the courage to stand with firm feet upon God’s earth, and to feel ourselves in our divinely-endowed human nature.¹

With these words, Goethe recognized how indebted modern culture was, especially in the German sphere, to the spiritual revolution Luther had carried out three centuries before. Thanks to this revolution, humankind had discovered new, broad horizons and been elevated to a self-assurance that had previously been unthinkable. This acknowledgment applies both to German culture in its broadest sense and to the more circumscribed province of philosophy. In Germany, at least until the second half of the nineteenth century, the intellectual development of those whom we today consider to be “philosophers” tout court underwent a solid theological education, often within the Lutheran confession. In fact, it is possible to say that the great majority of philosophers had lived in an environment imbued with Lutheranism ever since their very first personal and familiar experiences: some of them were pastors (Schleiermacher), had pondered whether to become pastors (Fichte and, outside of Germany, Kierkegaard), or were the sons of Protestant pastors (Hegel, while Schelling was the son of a Protestant deacon). It was in this context that, at the end of the century, Nietzsche – whose family included more than one Protestant pastor, including his own father – said that in Germany “theological blood is the ruin of philosophy. The Protestant pastor is the grandfather of German philosophy.”² The very language of philosophy – after Wolff’s systematization in the eighteenth century – was greatly indebted to Luther, as it was the product of his translation of the Bible into German in 1534. While affirming itself in the field of philosophy, German – a language to which, even today, many attribute a sort of primacy when it comes to speculation – retained a significant trace of that Lutheran theological Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann, ed. J. K. Moorhead, trans. John Oxenford (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1998), 423.  Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, trans. Henry Louis Mencken (New York: Knopf, 1924), 53. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-051

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“blood” so disliked by Nietzsche the “antichrist.” To give just one example, some of the fundamental terms in Hegel’s system (for example, Geist [Spirit]) carry a centuries-old religious value that, even today, poses an enormous problem for anyone attempting to interpret Hegel’s writings in relationship to the Christian tradition. Even from this superficial observation, it is possible to see how the problem of Luther’s impact on the philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries goes far beyond the simple and explicit mentions of his name found, from time to time, in the writings of the philosophers. Apart from the thinkers who delved into specific speculative issues with an explicit reference to Luther’s works, there are also many philosophers in whose work it is difficult to clearly distinguish, on each and every page, between theology and philosophy. This is true, for example, in the case of Schleiermacher, an author whose impact on the history of Protestantism was such that some deem him to be the initiator of a new phase within it. Moreover, the philosophers who assert that history carries within itself the seeds of progress – or, at least, a meaning that reverberates in contemporary culture – must still face the problem of positioning and assessing the figure and work of Luther within the context of the more general intellectual and political development of Western civilization. Thus, in the work of those thinkers from the German sphere who are often animated by political concerns, it is frequently possible to find an exalted Luther – the promoter of modernity. In the work of those interpreters coming from the Catholic sphere, and mostly from outside of Germany, Luther is instead enveloped in a sinister aura as the true destroyer of the spiritual unity of Europe for his role in creating the bases for modern immanentist philosophies.

2 Luther in German Idealism: From Fichte to Hegel Luther is pivotal for classic German idealism and its great projects on the philosophy of history, especially in the work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762– 1814) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831). Fichte’s reservations about Luther³ must be traced back to the former’s partiality to the Gospel of John, which explains his difficulty in attributing value to those aspects of the Reformation that are particularly linked to the Pauline magisterium. Moreover, Fichte did not look favorably on the notion of sola Scriptura or the translation of the Bible into German, almost as if he saw in them the risk of the letter prevailing over the spirit and the peril of a massification of Christianity. Apart from these doubts, Fichte recognized Luther as a champion of liberty, who had gone back to the pure doctrine of Christ, and whose worthy successor was Immanuel Kant. Fichte – who was still influenced by the spirit of the Enlightenment and the appeal of the French Revolution – acknowledged, using Rousseauan

 J. G. Fichte, Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters (1806), in Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, I, 8 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1964), Lesson 7.

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terminology nevertheless, that Luther had contributed to “breaking the chains of humanity.”⁴ Freedom, as Fichte explains, comes from Protestantism; the true philosopher is a Protestant because he is a free thinker. Freedom of thought does not mean overcoming or nullifying faith, but is rather a conscious, non-dogmatic assumption. The fact that “the Reformers were very enlightened free thinkers”⁵ does not mean that reason rejects everything that pertains to faith, but rather that it deals with faith using a non-dogmatic approach. The reference to the Reformation becomes increasingly pressing as soon as Fichte starts delving deeper into the problem of history – when he attempts to structure a transcendental and religious notion of becoming, which incidentally also supports the exaltation of the emancipatory role played by Luther. In his Addresses to the German Nation, the Reformation takes on a key role: its main legacy, according to Fichte, is the “freedom won for the children of God, who assuredly no longer sought for salvation outside themselves and beyond the grave, but were themselves a manifestation of the immediate feeling of salvation. In this he became the pattern for all generations to come, and died for us all.”⁶ Moreover, in Fichte’s pages Luther is represented as one who held the German nation spellbound – “a proof of the German earnestness of soul” – and, at the same time, as rooted in the Absolute: he was “inspired by the eternal” (durch das Ewige begeistert),⁷ and therefore, he was able to take on the role of the “leader” (Anführer) of his fellow countrymen. The need for spiritual renewal had entered a religious soul characterized by a zeal unknown to the spirit of Renaissance humanism and had later been transmitted to an entire people. It is important to bear in mind that the Addresses were given in Berlin in 1807– 1808, during the Napoleonic invasion; moreover, Fichte’s observations on a “German Luther” need to be understood as the German contribution to a more general renewal of the European spirit. This does not mean, however, that the same pages were not also interpreted from a narrow-minded and nationalistic perspective, especially during the second half of the nineteenth century. At the time of German unification, in fact, a predominantly Germanic interpretation of Luther was suggested. Exemplary from this perspective is the Luther portrayed by Heinrich von Treitschke in 1883 as “der Führer der Nation.”⁸ Luther also plays an important role in Hegel’s writings. A famous passage from the preface to Elements of the Philosophy of Right effectively summarizes Hegel’s approach to Luther:

 J. G. Fichte, Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publikums über die französische Revolution (1793), in Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, I, 1 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1964), 255.  Fichte, Fichte, Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publikums über die französische Revolution, 292.  Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, trans. Reginald F. Jones and George H. Turnbull (Chicago: Open Court, 1922), 97.  Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, 95.  Heinrich von Treitschke, Luther und die deutsche Nation (Berlin: Reimer, 1883), 5.

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It is a great obstinacy, the kind of obstinacy which does honour to human beings, that they are unwilling to acknowledge in their attitudes […] anything which has not been justified by thought – and this obstinacy is the characteristic property of the modern age, as well as being the distinctive principle of Protestantism. What Luther inaugurated as faith in feeling and in the testimony of the spirit is the same thing that the spirit, at a more mature stage of its development, endeavours to grasp in the concept so as to free itself in the present and thus find itself therein.⁹

In this quote, one can simultaneously perceive Luther’s greatness (an “obstinacy” that is completely “modern”) and his limits (compared to Luther’s time, the spirit is now “more mature”), which only Hegel’s philosophy had the expectation of overcoming. This ambivalence also reflects the more general and problematic attitude of Hegel’s philosophy toward Christianity. In Hegel’s philosophico-historical and historico-philosophical works, the Reformation is presented as “the all-transfiguring sun,” the movement that thrusts the spirit into the very heart of modernity by making it wear, according to Hegel’s beloved fairy-tale image, the “seven-leagued boots.”¹⁰ Luther is the hero and the protagonist of this breakthrough. According to Hegel, Luther’s work should not be read looking to the past, in an attempt to rediscover a religiosity that is purer because it coincides with the message of its Christian origins. For Hegel, Luther is one of those “worldhistorical persons […] whose vocation it was to be the agents of the world spirit”¹¹ and who accomplished, through their actions, a leap forward in history – progress toward higher forms of spiritual life. Particularly in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Christianity reaches its highest level in the Germanic-Christian world with Luther. Luther is chiefly the vanquisher of the exteriority that characterized the medieval Church, which understood God as a being completely removed from this world and, precisely because of this limited preconception, caused the decline of religion into superstition, submission to authority, particularism, belief in miracles, and renunciation. However, a simple monk had found in the spirit and in subjectivity what the Church had been searching for up until that moment in exteriority (e. g., the Holy Sepulcher for the crusaders). Works are replaced by faith, which, according to Hegel, is not a belief in something that is absent, but of the subjective assurance of the truth of God: “[Luther] maintained that the spirit of Christ really fills the human heart – that Christ therefore is not to be regarded as merely a historical person, but man sustains an immediate relationship to Him in spirit.”¹² Hegel retraced the main points of Luther’s revolution (the rejection of celibacy, the doctrine of the Eucharist) under the

 G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 22.  G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans. Ruben Alvarado (Aalten: Wordbridge Publishing, 2001), 372; Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane and Frances H. Simson (London: Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1896), vol. 3, 158.  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 28.  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 372– 73.

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auspices of the overcoming of exteriority in favor of a renewed “reconciliation” with reality, which eventually translated into an opening of historical institutions to the moral dimension. However, if the Lutheran notion of faith brought to pass the great revolution, it still remains merely in “embryo” in many ways.¹³ Faith – as Hegel explains – has developed that same content “into the form of its representation” by philosophy in accomplished thinking. Speculative knowledge goes as far as the “philosophical cognition of truth,” “the truth as truth in the form of truth – in the form of the absolutely concrete.”¹⁴ According to Hegel, only through philosophy can one achieve one’s full potential to understand reality as rational becoming – a true freedom that is demonstrated as historical reconciliation in the concrete dimension of the state. Therefore, mediation is no longer accomplished in the intimacy of the soul of the believer, as Luther had suggested, but in every moment of the immanent historical process.

3 Luther as the Forerunner of Feuerbach It seems that Ludwig Feuerbach used to call himself, in jest, “Luther II” – so important was the reformer in his eyes. This could appear surprising at first, if one considers the task of disgregation of religion – and especially of Christianity – which Feuerbach carried out. The Lutheran theses that place God and humankind in radical opposition to one another, as well as Luther’s unconditional alliance with God against the sin of humankind, seem at first glance to immediately invalidate any opportunity to demonstrate that God’s attributes are actually human. On the other hand, in his masterpiece The Essence of Christianity – and even more explicitly in the following work, entitled The Essence of Faith According to Luther – Feuerbach already quotes Luther’s words with great skill to confirm his own ideas, which can be summarized as “[r]eligion is human nature reflected, mirrored in itself.” The negation of God, according to Feuerbach, does not imply the negation of the predicates that human beings attribute to him; the object of faith collapses, but its meaning, which is in us, is not lost. What counts is not God but the fact that he is our God – that he is such for us. In this sense, “God is the mirror of man,”¹⁵ even after the disappearance of God as an object. Feuerbach derives his materialistic and humanistic anthropology from Luther. According to Feuerbach, the rift between Luther and tradition was not caused by his having found a new object for his own faith, but by his highlighting an unknown characteristic of Catholicism: Catholicism, in fact, was anchored in the “pure matter  Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 147– 48.  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, trans. R.F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson, and J.M. Stewart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1:240 and 250.  Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. Marian Evans (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1893), 63.

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of fact, considered in itself,” and therefore in the notion that God was a real object. In contrast, Luther found that God was “for us men,” for our salvation. Thus the real meaning of faith is relocated – it is within human beings: “The main thing is not that Christ is Christ but that Christ is for you.”¹⁶ The Lutheran letter thus becomes the bearer of a radically new spirit that is potentially destructive for religion. Therefore, Feuerbach can develop his own theses through “Luther’s own words”:¹⁷ by summoning Luther to act as his witness and amassing an impressive number of Lutheran quotations, Feuerbach follows to its very end the path first laid down by Luther. From this perspective, Lutheran Christology is at the center of Feuerbach’s focus. Christ, who is God incarnated and revealed as a man, is the pivot of the Lutheran theology that Feuerbach organically developed into an anthropology. God is an essence for us, and this makes him a reality with essentially human attributes. The incarnation demonstrates that God manifests himself as a sensible reality. With Christianity, “God went from an essence that had been devised to a sensible reality.” Luther is summoned to confirm Feuerbach’s Christology, according to which Christ is nothing other than “God’s humanity”¹⁸ and therefore his sensibility. The radicality of Luther’s theology of salvation and of the cross contains God’s materialization: “The true God, the authentic object of Lutheran faith and, in general, of Christian religion is only Christ and Christ as he erases any further opportunity to distinguish between in itself and for us.”¹⁹ The main inspiration for Feuerbach’s theology is therefore already contained in Luther: in fact, the reduction of theology to anthropology is already intrinsic in Luther’s notion of faith, although its most extreme consequences are still concealed. Therefore, Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity and his subsequent work on Luther represent the accomplishment of what was already implicit in Luther’s thinking, but which he had not dared to make explicit. Thus, in the process of departure from faith and theology toward the discovery of the true human essence of religion, Luther is not a polemical target, but rather Feuerbach’s guide.

4 Luther and the Revolutionary Thinking Feuerbach was firm in his conviction, which relied on a fundamentally Hegelian model, that Luther was the originator of the modern era. Feuerbach’s humanism, in fact, did not find its precursors in the explicitly materialistic currents of the eighteenth century (such as Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach or Julien Offray de La Mettrie):

 L. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Glaubens im Sinne Luther’s. Ein Beitrag zum “Wesen des Christentums” (Leipzig: Wigand, 1844) 15, 16.  Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Glaubens im Sinne Luther’s, 17.  Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Glaubens im Sinne Luther’s, 33 and 34.  Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Glaubens im Sinne Luther’s, 57.

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“German materialism has a religious origin; it starts with the Reformation.”²⁰ Therefore, the real father of humanistic atheism is Luther. The philosophers usually defined as “Young Hegelians” or the “Hegelian Left” follow in the same wake. Just as Feuerbach put Luther at the start of a process of emancipation that would eventually produce humanistic materialism, radical intellectual circles would also later graft onto the ideal line that runs from Luther to Hegel and then beyond. The history of this theoretical revolution coincided with an increasingly apparent emancipation from transcendence. Therefore, the Lutheran Reformation was the first step toward the redemption of humankind from a state of subjection. Heinrich Heine wrote: Glory to Luther! Glory to the valiant, valued man to whom we owe the rescue of our most precious possessions, and by whose benefits we now exist […]. When Luther announced the proposition that his doctrine should only be refuted by the Bible itself or on reasonable grounds, he opened to human intelligence and reason the right to explain the Bible, and so reason was recognised as head-judge in all religious debates. Hence resulted in Germany the so-called spiritual liberty also known as freedom of thought.²¹

These words exemplify the historical meaning Luther had in the circle in which Karl Marx studied as a young man. In a short article from 1843, Marx was already intervening in a dispute on miracles that took place in the early 1840s between David Friedrich Strauss (the author of the revolutionary and controversial Life of Jesus) and Feuerbach himself. Marx, demonstrating that he had understood and taken on board the position of the latter, defended Feuerbach’s reductionist theses by quoting a long passage from Luther’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke. Luther’s own words proved to be nothing more than “an apology for Feuerbach’s whole book [The Essence of Christianity] – an apology for the definitions of Providence, Omnipotence, Creation, Miracle and Faith as given in that book.”²² A year later, Marx published an introduction to his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher. He set out to investigate the conditions of a practical and material revolution for Germany – “a revolution that raises it not only to the official level of modern nations but to the human level that will be their immediate future.”²³ From this perspective, Luther represented an example of a typical aspect of the German character, which Marx also perceived in the cultural context of his own time. Marx’s peculiar practical concern drove him to denounce the

 Feuerbach, “Ueber Spiritualismus und Materialismus”, in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, Schriften zur Ethik und nachgelassene Aphorismen, ed. F. Jodl (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1960), 155 – 56.  Heinrich Heine, The Works of Heinrich Heine, trans. Charles G. Leland (London: W. Heinemann, 1892), 5:45 and 49.  Karl Marx, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, trans. Lloyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 95 (But not all historians agree to attribute this article to Marx; some think of Feuerbach).  Marx, Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (London: Penguin Classics, 1992), 251– 52.

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merely theoretical and abstractly critical reach of the Lutheran revolution with a judgment that was eventually also applied to the subsequent philosophical revolution of Hegel and his followers: “For Germany, theoretical emancipation has a specific practical significance even from a historical point of view. For Germany’s revolutionary past, in the form of the Reformation, is also theoretical. Just as it was then the monk, so it is now the philosopher in whose brain the revolution begins.” The mere theoretical quality of the Lutheran revolution consisted in the fact that Luther “freed mankind from external religiosity but only by making religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from its chains, but only by putting the heart in chains.” Thus, although Marx acknowledged the development that made faith intimate, which had been so appreciated by the idealists, he also denounced its practical limits. Marx’s focus on Luther was also clearly linked to a specific historic event – the Peasants’ War that took place in southern Germany in 1525 – 1526. Marx defined it as “the most radical episode in German history” and found the cause of its failure in the religious spirit that animated the insurgents (“[it] suffered defeat because of theology”). This interpretation of the Peasants’ War was carried forward by Marx’s friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels,²⁴ who explained it through the lens of the historically determined conditions in Germany during the sixteenth century. Social conventions, relationships of production, and the peculiar phase of development of industry, agriculture, and the market represented a crucial factor in the failure of that revolution. In Engels’ account, Luther took on a key role, as opposed to the “plebeian revolutionary” Thomas Müntzer, the theologian at the head of a faction that openly expressed communistic aspirations. The opposition between Luther and Müntzer allowed Engels to highlight and foreshadow conflicts that would later be typical of his own time: “Luther and [Müntzer], in their doctrines, in their characters, in their actions, accurately embodied the tenets of their separate parties.”²⁵ Luther was the leader and the expression of the bourgeois party, at the head of a movement that at first appeared to be progressive and animated by a revolutionary fervor, but later, in line with a move typical of those who take on the role of “moderate reformers,” fell back on stances that opposed the development of the lower classes and were subject to the politics of the princes. For some time, Engels’ theses represented the expression of Marxist orthodoxy in the interpretation of the peasant revolutions of the sixteenth century and, as a consequence, of the opposition between Luther and Müntzer. They would later be discussed once again and infused with a new spirit in a volume by Ernst Bloch, published for the first time in 1921 (Thomas Münzer als Theologe der Revolution). Bloch’s focus was mainly on the “theologian of the revolution,” but Luther still played a key role in the narrative as Müntzer’s all-round antagonist. Bloch supported an ec-

 Friedrich Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, trans. Moissaye J. Olgin (New York: International Publishers, 1926), 56 and 63.  Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, 57.

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centric idea of communism that recognized religious inspiration as the source of its own vital impulse. Millenarian traditions allowed Bloch to foreground a subject that cannot be determined according to economic categories, but is instead animated by a utopian and religious revolutionary drive – by an “enthusiasm” (Schwärmerei) that cannot be reduced to economic elements. There were certainly not any erudite or historiographical concerns at the root of Bloch’s work. What is certain is that the representation of Luther that comes across in his pages is drastically derogatory. If Müntzer is the hero, the daring apocalyptic revolutionary holding “Gideon’s sword” and animated by the “spirit of utopia,” Luther is his opposite: the champion of an understanding of faith that empties humankind of any will to change and – politically – is eventually stranded in positions subject to the established authority. Bloch wrote: “Luther’s infamous works have made the community timid and the parasites increasingly insolent.”²⁶ Bloch’s Luther, as he appears in his pages, takes backdoor routes and shows himself to be hesitant, ambiguous, neutral, lukewarm, and cautious. The “revolutionary thunder”²⁷ with which Luther starts his religious revolution soon fades, the early apocalyptic and mystical perspective is stifled, and the “apostle of the beginning” becomes the “Judas of the end.”²⁸ According to Bloch, “Luther’s idolatry of the state,” his political moderatism, and his alliance with the lords against the revolutionary peasants finds justification in the core of his theology. The rejection of any merit in works, as exemplified by his dismissal of James’ “epistle of straw,” is the source of a “tired” and “harsh desperation”;²⁹ the strict doctrine of original sin condemns humankind to error and, therefore, extinguishes any revolutionary drive. Luther is a “counter-revolutionary” because he “slanders and negates any form of human freedom”³⁰ and thus kills hope and eliminates any utopia, nullifies the tension toward change, mortifies the subject, and eliminates any chance of a person’s putting up a fight.

5 Lutheran Pessimism and Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer dealt specifically with Luther in his short volume devoted to the problem of the freedom of human will. More than anything else, what interested Schopenhauer in Luther was his firm negation of free will. Luther is certainly among the “predecessors” who, within Christianity, recognized the correct positioning of the issue. In the wake of Augustine, Luther still operated “not with philosophical but

    

Ernst Bloch, Thomas Münzer als Theologe der Revolution (Munich: Wolff, 1921), 52. Bloch, Thomas Münzer, 145. Bloch, Thomas Münzer, 149. Bloch, Thomas Münzer, 170, 172. Bloch, Thomas Münzer, 202– 3.

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with theological reasons,”³¹ basing his thinking on the irrefutable existence of original sin and, therefore, on the radical opposition between the misery of the human condition and God’s omnipotence and omniscience. Similar considerations of Luther’s and Augustine’s importance for the negation of the freedom of human will can be found also in Schopenhauer’s main work, where the philosopher devotes his efforts to demonstrate the substantial coincidence between his own pessimism and the most genuine views within Christianity: “This doctrine teaches that it is not works that save us, but only faith appearing through the effect of grace”³². This is the crux that allowed Schopenhauer to demonstrate the convergence between Christianity in its utmost purity and his own doctrines. Schopenhauer appreciated the impossibility of justification by works for its radical pessimism. Even the mere fact of existing is a sin – a condition of error, pain, and death. Christianity as a doctrine of redemption fundamentally originates in the obscure but truthful acknowledgment of the fact that, for us, it would be better not to exist. Schopenhauer saw in redemption the final goal of Christianity. This goal was now detached – in a surprising move made possible by Schopenhauer’s antisemitism, which was not irrelevant – from a substantially optimistic Jewish tradition and was instead derived from the Eastern doctrines of Brahmanism and Buddhism, which Schopenhauer believed to be more akin to Christianity.³³ Thus, Luther – together with Paul and Augustine, once correctly interpreted – had opened, in his own way, the path to Schopenhauer’s “denial of the will-to-live.” Schopenhauer’s fundamentally positive opinion of Luther’s thinking was accompanied by some critical observations in other passages. The rejection of monasticism (an institution that realizes a “methodical denial of the will”) created the premises for a concession to the world that, according to Schopenhauer, was akin to dangerous optimism: “By eliminating asceticism and its central point, the meritorious nature of celibacy, Protestantism has already given up the innermost kernel of Christianity.” This meant – certainly beyond the real intentions that had animated “Luther’s honest mind” – an optimistic opening to the world: “But in religions, as well as in philosophy, optimism is a fundamental error that bars the way to all truth.” Civilization was Christian/Protestant only because it had accepted the “shell” of Christianity and forgotten its “kernel.” Thus Schopenhauer was able to extend his lapidary judgment on the exterior meaning of Luther’s action to historical Lutheranism as well: “This may be a good religion for comfortable, married, and civilized Protestant parsons; but it is not Christianity.”³⁴ Schopenhauer’s tone was similar to the attacks

 Arthur Schopenhauer, Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will, trans. Eric F.J. Payne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 56.  Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J. Payne (Clinton, Mass.: Falcon’s Wing Press, 1958), 607.  Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 604 and 623.  Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 625 and 626.

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against modernized Protestantism launched in the same years by Kierkegaard in the Kingdom of Denmark.

6 Kierkegaard and the Late Discovery of Luther Søren Kierkegaard’s relationship to Luther is characterized by a passionate ambivalence. It is remarkable that a philosopher who was educated in an environment imbued with Lutheranism and in a Lutheran university read the reformer’s works directly only in his mature years, around 1847: “How strange! The category ‘for you (subjectivity, inwardness)’ with which I ended Either/Or (‘only the truth that edifies is the truth for you’) is precisely Luther’s. I have never really read anything by Luther.”³⁵ This initial affinity was followed by important reservations in a confrontation that was tormented and far from linear. Kierkegaard’s problem is not the “objective” issue of the “truth of Christianity” or of its historical meaning, but rather the “subjective” problem of the “relationship of the individual to Christianity.” Thus, for Kierkegaard, the focus moves from “world history” to the “individual existing human being.” This shift changes the very framework in which Luther is understood. Luther is mainly the “individual” who recognizes in pure interiority the true spiritual principle. The problem of “becoming a Christian” and, therefore, of rendering the teachings of Christ relevant in the contemporary world – the “appropriation [Tilegnelse in Danish; Aneignung in German] of Christianity,” intended as an “antithesis to speculation” and, therefore, as an “absolute paradox”³⁶ – is clarified by Kierkegaard with reference to Luther’s experience: “Take appropriation away from the essentially christian, and what is Luther’s merit then? But open his books. Note the strong pulse-beat of appropriation in every line; note it in the vibrant forward thrust of his whole style, which continually seems to have behind that thunderstorm of terror that killed Alexius and created Luther.”³⁷ Christianity applies only in relationship to the “struggle of an anguished conscience”: “Take away the anguished conscience and you can also close the churches and turn them into ballrooms.”³⁸ It is in the interior labor, in young Luther’s torments – which are characterized by “fear, trembling, and scruple” – that the greatness of his character can be found. However, when Luther later becomes the model of Protestantism, this internal truth becomes “atrocious falsehood.” Once Protestantism is turned into history, it fraudulently takes possession of the interiority of the individual, turns them into an institution, and makes an exterior Church of them: “Is it ever

 Søren Kierkegaard, Papierer, VIII1, A, 465, 1847, 207. (Quotations are taken from: Søren Kierkegaard Papierer, 16 vols. [København, 1909 ff.).  Kierkegaard, Concluding unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, eds. Howard V. Hong and Edna Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), vol. I, 377 and 379.  Kierkegaard, Concluding unscientific Postscript, 366.  Kierkegaard, Papierer, VII1, A, 192, 1846, 129 – 30.

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possible to turn what is so becoming to a particular state (which is fear and trembling and scruples, especially as Luther experienced them) into a general principle?”³⁹ Moreover, if Luther’s great accomplishment was to move the experience of faith back into interiority, Kierkegaard observes a limit in his lack of dialectic quality – that is, in his inability to fully understand the paradoxicality of the experience of faith and the absolute character of Christianity. Thus the “scandal” of faith is much greater for humankind because it is God himself, and not – as Luther thought – the devil, who is the main principle of suffering: it is God who tests Abraham. Luther did not see this connection between opposites, which relies on the fact that “both consolation and suffering come from Christianity because such is the dialectic of the absolute.”⁴⁰ Kierkegaard later dealt with the main issue of justification by faith, focusing especially on the exclusion of the Epistle of James from the Lutheran canon. According to Kierkegaard, Luther does correct the cult of works, but through an exaggeration: in order to underline the inaccessibility of the model, he emphasizes instead God’s mercy. However, while this is acceptable in Luther as long as one understands his action as a reaction to the excesses of the Middle Ages, his error is in having turned grace – which still remains the decisive element – into the only path to salvation. Submitting everything to a salvific grace exempts humankind from the effort of emulating the model of Christ – Kierkegaard refers in this context to the notion of Efterfølgelse (imitation, discipleship). However, the abandonment of the imitatio Christi creates a void and carries the risk of abandoning Christianity tout court. Faith should enable the effort necessary to act while considering the model rather than collapse it under the weight of impossibility.⁴¹ The medieval cloister that Luther abandoned followed the impossible rule of trying to imitate the Christ-model in works. Luther attacked this world with disproportionate ardor, only to fall into the opposite excess: “But then, Christ-grace was so strongly emphasized that Christ-model almost disappeared as something that is too elevated. But this too is not allowed.”⁴² The lack of interest in works translated into indifference toward the world and into the indifference of the world toward Christianity; the inaccessibility of the ideal became the alibi for resting on one’s laurels, for the heathen acceptance of living in an irrelevant Christianity. The analysis of the issue connected to the Epistle of James is therefore solved with a criticism of modern, worldly Christianity, which represents an unexpected outcome of the Reformation. From Kierkegaard’s writings, it is not very clear to what extent this heathen outcome can actually be imputed to Luther, or whether it represents instead a distorted interpretation of his doctrines. Sometimes Kierkegaard seems to absolve Luther of any responsibility: “Oh Luther, who has ever been exploited by his    

Kierkegaard, Papierer, XI2, A, 303, 1853 – 1854, 321– 23. Kierkegaard, Papierer, IX, A, 292, 1848, 163 – 64. See Papirer, X3 A 322, 1850, 233 – 34. Kierkegaard, Papierer , X1, A, 132, 1849, 98 – 99. See also Papirer, X4 A, 291, 1851, 157– 59.

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followers in a diametrically opposite direction from his intentions more than you have?”⁴³ In other cases, Kierkegaard’s passionate condemnation is definitely addressed to Luther, who is allegedly responsible for the decline and massification of Christianity. Thus Luther becomes the man who set in motion the reconciliation of the gospel with the world, with exteriority, and with “objective” thinking, the originator of a religion that is no longer for the “individual,” but rather comfortably accessible to everyone: “Luther, you have an enormous responsibility! In fact, when I look closer at the matter, I see more and more clearly that you took down the pope but only to put the ‘public’ on the throne.”⁴⁴

7 Luther and Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche – who was the son of a Lutheran pastor and, therefore, deeply influenced by the religious environment of his childhood – was initially animated by a sincere admiration for Luther. In Untimely Meditations (1873 – 1876), Nietzsche is concerned with protecting the Reformation from the analytical gaze of modern historians and their “sober, pragmatic curiosity,” which extinguishes and stifles life (in this case, Luther’s sincere experience of faith) in the name of a historicist, cognitive perspective.⁴⁵ Moreover – in this passage and in other pages from this phase of his work – Nietzsche meaningfully mentions Luther alongside the musical heroes of German history, Mozart and Beethoven. This is a Luther in whom it is possible to glimpse some “Dionysiac” characteristics, a Luther who started the “German Reformation” and “in whose chorale the future of German music first resounded.”⁴⁶ Once again, Nietzsche puts Luther alongside Beethoven and Wagner as the bearer of that “uniquely German cheerfulness [Heiterkeit]” that is the “mixture of simplicity, the penetrating glance of love, reflective mind and roguishness”⁴⁷ and can be perceived – in its being the perfect fusion of music and life and the regeneration point of German art – in the works of Richard Wagner, whom Nietzsche worshiped at the time. With the progressive alteration of the foundations of his own understanding of German and European culture, Nietzsche eventually reconsidered his assessment of Luther. Consistently with the approach he took beginning with Human, All Too Human – “all that we require […] is a chemistry of the moral, religious, aesthetic

 Kierkegaard, Papierer, X5, A, 139, 1853, 145. See also Kierkegaard, “For Self-Examination”, in For Self-Examination/Judge for Yourself, eds. Howard V. Hong and Edna Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 16 – 25.  Kierkegaard, Papierer, XI1, A, 108, 1854, 75.  Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” in Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 97.  Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London: Penguin Classics, 1994), 110.  Nietzsche, “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth”, in Untimely Meditations, 232 and 233.

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ideas and sentiments”⁴⁸ – Nietzsche seems mainly concerned with unmasking the real motives behind Luther’s positions. The theology of the cross and the notion of faith crushing works are nothing more than solutions devised by Luther to solve his own personal sense of unease once it became intolerable (Nietzsche’s considerations on the “first Christian,” Paul,⁴⁹ are applied to Luther). Worn out by his attempt to achieve perfection through the works of monastic life, Luther declared the uselessness of any similar conduct and started to feel a “[deadly] hatred” for the priestly ideal of contemplative life that he had pursued obsessively and in vain until that moment.⁵⁰ With justification by faith as the core of Lutheran doctrine, Nietzsche disassembles the notion of faith by revealing its human – all too human – nature: “[I]n all ages – for example, in the case of Luther – ‘faith’ has been no more than a cloak, a pretense, a curtain behind which the instincts have played their game – a shrewd blindness to the domination of certain of the instincts.”⁵¹ Nietzsche finds precisely this personalism at the root of Luther’s actions – actions that had enormous and, according to Nietzsche, nefarious consequences over the centuries. The Reformation starts as a solution devised by Luther to his own personal struggle and is imposed later on the rest of the world with arrogance and by force (“it is primarily a matter of force, only secondarily of truth”). Thus Nietzsche can depict a Luther with a “hard head,” suspicious, litigious, excessively touchy, arrogant, fundamentally in bad faith: these tendencies would later determine the hardening of Luther’s positions against the “deep, gentle spirit of Contarini” during the “tragi-comedy of Regensburg.”⁵² According to Nietzsche, Luther’s impact on the history of Western civilization reveals itself to be fundamentally negative. In The Dawn of Day, the consequences of Luther’s action (“unbeknownst to him and despite him”) are expressed in notions such as “destruction,” “demolition,” and “degeneration” and find their outcome in what Nietzsche calls the “plebianism of the spirit” and the “flattening of the spirit.” Luther, who nevertheless supported the lords in the war against the peasants, did indeed carry out an actual “revolt of the peasants” in the history of Christianity. In these passages, it is possible to see Nietzsche’s intolerance for the affirmation of an industrial mass society, with its democratic and uniform values founded on gregarious tendencies. The outlines of Luther’s wicked action are better defined, from both a moral and a historical point of view, in Nietzsche’s later works. The will to power and accept-

 Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Helen Zimmern (London: The MacMillan Company, 1915), 14.  See Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, trans. John M. Kennedy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1924), 66.  See Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, 84, 88.  Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 113.  Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human II, trans. Paul V. Cohn (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1934), 121– 23.

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ance of the occurrence are the true values overturned, according to Nietzsche, by the Christian morals of the slaves, which are based on a depraved frame of mind. Luther’s contorted and diminished appearance in the guise of a Nordic peasant, already portrayed elsewhere, now finds its logical ethical positioning within the category of ressentiment – “the resentful man, on the other hand, is neither sincere nor naïf, nor honest and candid with himself”⁵³ – and leads the Reformation to become a “fundamentally popular movement of revenge”⁵⁴ that denies vital values. In Nietzsche’s last works, his broad criticism of culture merges with a different assessment of the German contribution to the history of Europe. Specifically, the Renaissance is opposed – increasingly systematically and clearly – to the Reformation as a completely positive point of reference. Luther is no longer the honor of the Germans, the sling that hurls Western civilization into spiritual progress, as had been the case in idealism’s interpretations of the reformer. The renewal of Christian belief and of renunciatory values crushes the great opportunity the Renaissance offered to Europe – the chance to be done with the Christian era. Luther, the “unsuccessful priest,” prevails on the “aspiring pope,” Cesare Borgia.⁵⁵ Thus the Reformation kills the Renaissance: It was the Germans who caused Europe to lose the fruits, the whole meaning of her last period of greatness – the period of the Renaissance. At a moment when a higher order of values, values that were noble, that said yea to life, and that guaranteed a future, had succeeded in triumphing over the opposite values, the values of degeneration, in the very seat of Christianity itself, – and even in the hearts of those sitting there, – Luther, that cursed monk, not only restored the Church, but, what was a thousand times worse, restored Christianity, and at a time too when it lay defeated. Christianity, the Denial of the Will to Live, exalted to a religion! Luther was an impossible monk who, thanks to his own “impossibility,” attacked the Church, and in so doing restored it!⁵⁶

8 Luther in Shestov’s Thought Nietzsche criticizes a sick civilization by finding in Luther, the “impossible monk,” one of the causes of its disease. The Ukrainian philosopher Lev Shestov (1866 – 1938), inspired by Nietzsche, also remonstrates his own era. However, he outlines a comparison between Nietzsche and Luther that results in a fundamental convergence between the two. Moreover, Shestov interprets Luther’s message in a way that has much in common, in its outcomes, with Kierkegaard’s – albeit via an interpretation of the issue of sola fide that is, in some ways, opposite to the latter’s. Shes-

 Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, trans. H.B. Samuel (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1921?), 19 – 20.  Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, 37.  Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 178.  Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Anthony M Ludovici (New York: MacMillan, 1911), 124– 25.

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tov’s Luther is also interpreted through the lens of the great Russian writers Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. “Europe no longer has faith – and this is its greatest sin”:⁵⁷ these words, taken from Dostoyevsky, circumscribe the great problem – which Luther had perceived four centuries earlier – Shestov faced. Shestov thoroughly engages with the interpreters of Lutheran theology and the historians of Luther. His main objective is to diminish Luther’s historical value. Therefore, he avoids any misleading Protestant apology and relies instead on the unflattering portrayals given by the other side (Denifle). Here, one can find the inspiration for his attempt to emphasize the paradoxicality of Luther, his faith, and the peculiar truth connected to it. The setback experienced by European culture originated in not having been able to find a truth that was equally valid on both the secular and the eternal levels. The cause of this can be traced back to the opposition of reason to faith, the search for a precarious balance between the two, and the eventual recourse to reason, with the resulting suffocation of faith. The model of this kind of knowledge is found in Spinoza: in fact, Spinoza’s geometrically structured philosophy ultimately established truth as uniformity and necessity. However, science, as Shestov explains, is only a “coordination of facts” that prejudicially eliminates faith as a “discarded stone.”⁵⁸ Getting rid of the “Spinozan premises” means instead recognizing, together with Luther, that finding the truth mainly translates into feeling possessed by something foreign and accepting faith, which shows itself in solitude as ecstasy, paradox, and illumination. In fact, the “source of truth is not knowledge, the knowledge that reason brings to man, but faith, faith alone.”⁵⁹ In Luther, the truth shows itself in the individual, in the subject: “in his experience,” in his “flesh possessed by concupiscence, indolence, and torpor.” Thus truth loses the sanction of universality and uniformity that Western thinking had always recognized in it and becomes contingent (“elle est là et il n’y a rien à faire,”⁶⁰ as Shestov writes, quoting Tolstoy). Luther was fundamentally misunderstood by the Protestants who came after him. The message of the Servum arbitrium is too harsh and uncomfortable for the world, which opted instead to tame Luther’s ideas. In Shestov, too, there is a tendency to distinguish between the young Luther and the later Luther, who was politically compromised and spoke “everyone’s language.” Not unlike Kierkegaard, Shestov distinguishes between Luther the “believer” and Luther the “reformer.”⁶¹ When taking on the role of the reformer, Luther tends to dissimulate his most authentic and personal experiences. Luther’s truth is the truth of himself, expressed in “extraordinary

 Lev Šestov, Sola fide. Luther et l’Église (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957), 1.  Šestov, Sola fide, 71.  Šestov, Athens and Jerusalem, trans. Bernard Martin (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2016), 154.  Šestov, Sola fide, 112. Šestov insists on Luther’s affinity with “Tolstoy’s heroes”; cf. 7, 10, 92, 93, and 153.  Šestov, Sola fide, 114.

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and incomprehensible” discourses. Educated, modern people cannot but receive Luther’s words with astonishment and annoyance, since his ideas are very far from the general attitude toward spiritual problems. Instead, Shestov’s Luther appears to be a subverter of values: “Luther’s faith – and maybe every true and bold faith – only starts when man dares to cross the fatal boundary marked by reason and good.” Moreover, “faith, in its essence, has nothing to do with our knowledge […]. In order to reach faith, it is necessary to get rid of knowledge and of the ethical ideal.” Therefore, the historical reach of Luther is, according to Shestov, similar to Nietzsche’s impact on Western culture during the nineteenth century: the two formulations of sola fide and “beyond good and evil” eventually prove to be equivalent.⁶² Historians of philosophy, as Shestov explains, delude themselves when they argue that German idealism descends from Luther. This is, in fact, a misunderstanding: it is Nietzsche who is the “true” Lutheran. However, unlike Luther, Nietzsche cannot cling to the Bible and, therefore, plunges into madness. Moreover, while both use their hammer to strike humankinds’s rationalistic arrogance, Luther’s proves to be – according to Shestov – more effective: “[T]herefore, we need to go back to Luther because his hammer strikes harder and more precisely than Nietzsche’s.”⁶³

9 Beyond the Hegelian Visions: Dilthey, Troeltsch, and Weber Wilhelm Dilthey’s historical investigations are different from Hegel’s due to his broader perspective: according to Dilthey, the spiritual evolution of the West needs to be observed in its full variety – a variety that was lost in a philosophical history meant to be a priori and purely conceptual, such as the one set out by Hegel. Thus the connection between Luther and the modern spirit appears to be less univocal and direct than the one that emerged from the idealistic model. Dilthey looks at Luther in the context of a “moral and religious evolution”⁶⁴ that affects humanity in its entirety. The “moral concept on man originating in Luther and in his fellows marks decisive progress on the path of moral and religious evolution, also in comparison with the early Christian eras.” However, together with these “progressive” elements, Dilthey also highlights old, traditional aspects – those spiritual attitudes characterized by a “rigid unilaterality.”⁶⁵

 Šestov, Sola fide, 8 – 10; see also 41 and 117.  Šestov, Sola fide, 587.  Wilhelm Dilthey, “Auffassung und Analyse des Menschen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert” (1891), in Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig/Berlin: Teubner, 1921), 54.  Dilthey, “Auffassung und Analyse des Menschen,” 55.

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Dilthey points out that the real novelty of the Lutheran message is its justification by faith, when understood as a “personal experience of the believer who lives in the continuity of the Christian communion and feels in the personal process of faith a trust in divine grace that comes from making the work of Christ one’s own by means of a gracious personal election.”⁶⁶ However, Dilthey also underlines the fact that Luther remained in the wake of tradition, since his perspective was stuck in premises of a “dogmatic and metaphysical” nature that were de facto irrational. Moreover, Luther expressed a renewed religious ideal of life founded on interiority, which implied a new moral and a new “active energy of the individual.”⁶⁷ However, this renewal did not produce an immediate, concrete, and historically perceptible renewal on the social level. Apart from this, Dilthey’s wide historical project attributes great value, together with Luther, to other figures (Erasmus, Zwingli), who also – and often more effectively – contributed to the spiritual evolution of modernity. Thus Luther is surpassed by a “transcendental” or “spiritualist” current, according to which dogmas fade increasingly into “symbols of an interior process that is always ongoing.”⁶⁸ Great importance is attributed to Sebastian Franck and his “peculiar Christological doctrine,” which is characterized by the fact that “there is an innate moral substratum in every man.” A “natural light” gains ground, and on this basis, an “invisible community to which Socrates and Seneca already belonged” can be founded⁶⁹ – a community truly unbound by any exteriority, one that foreshadows the resolution of Christianity into a religion of humanity, as outlined by Lessing. With Lessing’s name, in fact, these pages by Dilthey reach their conclusion. Thus a modern Christianity – spiritualized and only indirectly definable as Lutheran – is outlined and shows itself ultimately to be a “universal religious panentheism that now – let us indeed say it! – moves forward victoriously against Luther’s positivist profundity.”⁷⁰ In that “let us indeed say it! [sagen wir es heraus!],” it is possible to perceive Dilthey’s awareness of leaving behind a tradition that was excessively respectful toward Luther as well as his own effort to free himself from a cumbersome historiographical portrayal of the reformer. Thus, in comparison with the interpretations from the beginning of the nineteenth century, Dilthey’s reading still portrays the Reformation as a breakthrough in European spirituality. However, its more mature outcomes proved to be very far from Luther’s original spiritual stance.

 Dilthey, “Auffassung und Analyse des Menschen,” 56.  Dilthey, “Auffassung und Analyse des Menschen,” 70.  Dilthey, “Das natürliche System der Geisteswissenschaften im 17. Jahrhundert” (1892– 1893), in Gesammelte Schriften, 224.  Dilthey, “Auffassung und Analyse des Menschen,” 83 and 89.  Dilthey, “Auffassung und Analyse des Menschen,” 77.

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Ernst Troeltsch’s research is explicitly connected to Dilthey’s.⁷¹ It is difficult to overestimate Troeltsch’s theses on the origin of the modern world and the role Protestantism played in the scope of this process. Troeltsch’s works would later come to represent a constant reference point for many historians of Christianity. At the same time, they were also a perennial target of controversy for other theological currents that faulted his historicist perspective for having let slide into the background the true, uncomfortable, and essentially anti-historical message of Luther and the other Reformers of the sixteenth century. Thus Troeltsch had to rebut the critical observations of the many who accused him of having flattened Luther on the Middle Ages and, therefore, of having made him mostly irrelevant and lifeless for modernity.⁷² Troeltsch’s Luther must be understood in the more general context of the relationship between Protestantism and modern culture as well as between religion and history. Troeltsch tackled this problem by arguing that it is precisely in Protestantism that the religion of Christ still showed a great ability to adapt to the social and political circumstances typical of the most recent forms of Western culture. As Troeltsch explained, our world is “our own era and no one can pull oneself out of it by one’s own hair.”⁷³ From this perspective, Christianity adapts to historical circumstances that change over time, and the Absolute returns, always in renewed forms. According to Troeltsch, contemporary Christianity goes hand in hand with humanitarianism, emancipation of thought, anti-dogmatism, a feeling of freedom, and ethical autonomy. Starting from these premises, Troeltsch described the existence of an “early” Protestantism (the original Lutheranism and Calvinism) and a “modern Protestantism” (Anabaptism, the mystics, and the sectarians of Calvinist inspiration). The latter already represented, according to Troeltsch, an element in modern civilization and were affected by the influence of the former – which, however, was still in many ways the expression of a medieval civilization and had played a mainly negative historical role by eliminating the obstacles to historical development posed by a stiff Catholic system.⁷⁴ Thus many aspects of Luther’s message were readjusted – all that is more difficult and “irrational” and not in line with modern sensitivity, with the refinement of reason, with the development of a scientific mindset and a humanitarian and individualistic sensitivity, and with the “extraordinary extension and intensification of the thought of freedom and personality.”⁷⁵ Luther’s main con-

 Ernst Troeltsch, “Meine Bücher”, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte und Religionssoziologie, ed. H. Baron (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1925), 7– 8.  E. Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, trans. W. Montgomery (New York/London: Williams & Norgate, 1912), 60.  Troeltsch, “Das Wesen des modernen Geistes” [1907], in Gesammelte Schriften, 4:336.  Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 56.  Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 205. See also Troeltsch, “Luther, der Protestantismus und die moderne Welt”, in Gesammelte Schriften, 4:213 – 14.

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cern was typical for a medieval man – that is, the “assurance of salvation”:⁷⁶ what really mattered to Luther was his own salvation. The solutions Luther offered via the unfurling of the motifs of grace, faith, and election were actually new answers to old questions. These answers would later experience an autonomous extension and development unimaginable to Luther’s original sensitivity. Alongside Dilthey, another reference point in Troeltsch’s thinking⁷⁷ can be found in the sociologist Max Weber. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Weber formulated his famous thesis on the origin and affirmation of the spirit of capitalism and on its contribution to the downscaling of the impact of Luther in the creation of modernity. Weber emphasized the Lutheran translation of the Bible as a fundamental moment in the history of all Reformed churches, because it was on this basis that a new meaning of the term vocation started to take hold. This led to an ethical characterization of professional life that would come to represent a decisive element in the creation of the capitalistic spirit. However, Weber believed that Luther had not really gone as far as the Protestant sects and Calvinism would later go. In Luther’s thinking, the believer perceives in himself the state of grace through feeling like a “vessel,” a recipient containing the gift of Christ, rather than like a “tool of the divine will,” as in the case of the Calvinists. For Luther, being called meant holding a position assigned by God. Luther stopped at the “unio mystica,”⁷⁸ which preserves a certain interior, sentimental, and finally passive quality; his doctrine was not translated into a premise for systematic action as Weber defined it, referring to Calvinism, as “worldly asceticism.” From this perspective, Luther still appears to be imbued with a spirit that is not very different from the Catholic one and far from the “Puritan’s serious attention to this world.”⁷⁹

10 A New Image of Luther: Otto, Barth, and Gogarten In Dilthey’s, Weber’s, and Troeltsch’s writings, the meaning of Luther’s work was still found within history and for history and was linked to the evolution of human spirituality. Compared to many of the previous interpreters (Hegel, Feuerbach), Luther’s contribution to the shaping of the modern spirit became increasingly indirect in the work of these authors. Some of Luther’s traditional, medieval aspects were underlined. Moreover, apart from Luther, there were also other currents that projected toward rationalism and the modern capitalistic world and had refined the spirit of the

 Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 191.  See Troeltsch, “Meine Bücher”, 11; Troeltsch, Protestantism and progress, 80.  Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1930), 112– 13.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 87.

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Reformation in a humanistic direction. Therefore, the historicist direction suggested once again a substantial alliance between Christianity and modernity, but at the price of an increasingly sporadic impact ascribed to the “Lutheran factor.” Paul Yorck von Wartenburg, Dilthey’s preferred interlocutor, had already accused his friend of having ascribed too much merit to rationalist tendencies, to the detriment of Luther. On the contrary, Yorck – firm in his Lutheran faith – wanted a direct relationship with Luther’s teachings in order to defeat the irrationalist tendencies he perceived in the political reality of his time: “You will not agree with me when I say that Luther must be more present that Kant in our time, if this is to bear within itself any historical future.”⁸⁰ The fracture in the relationship between Protestantism and the modern spirit, between Christianity and culture, was already clearly outlined in the thinking of philosophers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. In Europe, both before and after the general crisis represented by World War I, there were also other pressures pushing toward the investigation of the religious issue from a point of view that was not completely integrated within a historicist or rationalist dynamic. This was the case for the most influential works of the time in the fields of theology and philosophy of religion – for example, in Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy (1917). Otto was driven by a controversy against the general “bias to rationalization” in the Christian culture of his time.⁸¹ He highlighted how the experience of faith was connected to a mysterious and opaque sphere that is subtracted from discursiveness. Religious experience could be referred to a “perfectly sui generis” category⁸² that Otto defined as numinous, and it is characterized by an oscillation between repulsion (“Mysterium tremendum”) and attraction (“fascinosum”). Otto – who had already dealt with Luther’s thinking in depth in Die Anschauung des Heiligen Geistes bei Luther (1898), albeit from a different perspective – recognized his debt to Luther, in whose works he had found the irrational and, more properly speaking, the terrifying and repugnant aspect of the experience of the divinity clearly expressed: “I grew to understand the numinous and its difference from the rational in Luther’s De servo arbitrio long before I identified it in the qādôsh of the Old Testament and in the elements of ‘religious awe’ in the history of religion in general.”⁸³ Together with The Idea of the Holy, the other work that marked the history of theology – and not only of theology – during this period is Karl Barth’s commentary on The Epistle to the Romans, published in its first edition in 1919 and later greatly revised in 1922. Barth presented the message of Luther and the first Reformers as relevant to civilized culture in all of its most radical and irksome aspects. Without reservations, Barth accepted Kierkegaard’s principle, assuming the “infinite qualitative  “P. Yorck an W. Dilthey, Juni 1892,” in Briefwechsel zwischen Wilhelm Dilthey and dem Grafen Paul Yorck von Wartenburg 1877 – 1897 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1923), 145.  Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 3.  Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 7.  Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 99 – 100.

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difference between time and eternity,” history and religion, human culture and faith: “It is religion, then, which sets a question-mark against every system of human culture.”⁸⁴ Thus Barth brought back into the foreground the absolute transcendence of God and the gratuitousness of Christ’s salvific action through his sacrifice. Barth’s volume marked a change in direction toward a less conciliatory, “easy” Christianity. From this perspective, the classic German translation of Luther’s Servum arbitrium by Justus Jonas was once again brought to the fore in 1924⁸⁵ – with obvious polemical purposes and the intent of making it relevant again – by another exponent of the new theological movement, Friedrich Gogarten, who was very close to Barth at the time. Gogarten accompanied the translation with one of his strongest works, in which he harshly attacked the historicist perspective. Against the alliance between Protestantism and culture, the modern spirit and Christianity, Gogarten imposed an interpretation of Luther that broke with history: Luther was no longer – as he had been in different ways for Hegel, Feuerbach, Dilthey, Troeltsch, and the others – the initiator of modernity, despite his more or less evident medieval roots. Gogarten was not interested in the legacies Lutheran doctrine might have left to posterity, and even less in the traces of Lutheranism still detectable in the spirit of modernity or in the fact that Protestantism was used as the foundation of a doctrine of human freedom, as contemporary ethics intended. Instead, the opposition between Erasmus and Luther became the representation of the “deep contrast” between modernity (subjectivism and humanism) and genuine Protestantism. “Dealing with the Reformers can only truly have one meaning: letting ourselves have our eyes opened to reality.”⁸⁶ Finally – to clarify the nature of this dramatic encounter with reality, with our creatural condition – Gogarten used the famous words from Luther’s Acht sermon: “[w]e are all summoned to death and no one will die instead of someone else; on the contrary, each must be in himself armored and equipped for himself to fight the devil and death.”⁸⁷

11 Heidegger’s Luther Dialectic theology effectively expressed the sense of bewilderment experienced by European culture after World War I. In reality, the “crisis” mentioned by both Barth and Gogarten is to be interpreted in a strictly theological sense. This “crisis” was not an internal tangle in the course of history, but rather was precipitated

 Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. E.C. Hoskyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 244.  Martin Luther, Vom unfreien Willen, ed. Friedrich Gogarten, trans. Justus Jonas (München: Kaiser, 1924).  Friedrich Gogarten, Glaube und Wirklichkeit (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1928), 22.  Quoted in Gogarten, Glaube und Wirklichkeit, 22– 23. Gogarten is quoting from Dr. Martin Luther’s Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 28, ed. J.K. Irmischer (Erlangen, 1840), 205 – 06.

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from above and nailed all humankind to the condition of being irremediable sinners. Barth and Gogarten were theologians, and their arguments proceeded in the direction of a rigorous dualism by returning to what, in their eyes, was the true religious message of Luther and the other Reformers, against all the “domestications” imposed by the liberal theological current. This does not mean that some of the typical issues of dialectic theology did not demonstrate a clear affinity with the themes developed in contemporary philosophical expressions more inclined toward immanentist or openly irreligious outcomes. These analogies can be clearly highlighted, precisely with reference to Luther and especially to the words mentioned above, as quoted in Gogarten (“[w]e are all summoned to death and no one will die instead of someone else.”). In fact, it is interesting that the same words were quoted around the same time by Ernst Cassirer⁸⁸ as the key to understanding another central figure in the philosophy of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger. Commenting on Heidegger’s main work (Being and Time, 1927), Cassirer – who had studied in the neoKantian tradition – found the “problem of death” to be the main issue in the existential analytic and remarked how Heidegger’s arguments referred in their substance to religious motifs, both Protestant (Luther) and not (here Cassirer quotes a page from Pascal). Luther is mentioned only a couple of times in Being and Time. One important reference to him can be found in the paragraph devoted to the explanation of the “fundamental emotional situation” of anxiety,⁸⁹ the typical reaction of a person who thus discovers the condition of his or her being-toward-death. This is the key to Heidegger’s existential analytic, and it is important that the attempt to clarify this point proceeds with a reference to Luther, alongside Augustine and Kierkegaard. In fact, the line that – under the auspices of “anxiety” and “fear and trembling” – goes from Paul and Augustine to Luther and finally to Heidegger via Kierkegaard is particularly meaningful. This is a line that Heidegger effectively summarized in a sentence from his Lutheran seminars, held during the 1920s: “[t]he principle of Protestantism has a premise of its own: a man anxious in the face of death, in a state of fear and trembling and plenty of torment [Anfechtung].”⁹⁰ Thus Luther proved to be the model that allowed Heidegger to trace “a more primordial interpretation of man’s Being towards God.”⁹¹ In fact, Being and Time underlined how Luther had guessed the difference between the conceptual apparatus of dogmatics and the “foundation” that recognizes the priority of the experience of faith: the latter is distorted and misrepresented by the application of speculative

 Ernst Cassirer, “Heidegger-Vorlesung,” in Davoser Vorträge. Vorträge über Hermann Cohen, ed. Jörn Bohr and Klaus-Christian Köhnke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2013), 65.  Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001), 492.  “M. Heideggers Luther-Referat”, Appendix in: Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Heidegger, Briefwechsel. 1925 – 1975, ed. Andreas Großmann and Christof Landmesser (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2009), 271.  Heidegger, Being and Time, 30.

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schemes. The progressive publication of Heidegger’s first two university courses has demonstrated the intensity of his reflection on these issues, which is marked by his close confrontation with Troeltsch’s theses, the influence of Otto’s phenomenology of the holy, and especially his reading of Paul, Augustine, the medieval mystics, and indeed Luther. These reflections already contained a fundamentally anti-humanist tendency, which polemicizes against the Western metaphysical tradition, and which will later characterize Heidegger’s thinking. Luther’s aversion to philosophy, his hatred for Aristotle, can be explained by the latter having reduced God to an object of speculation and God’s visible creation to a privileged path toward the invisible. This was the direct consequence of the forced and deforming alliance between Christianity and the Greek philosophical tradition over the course of more than a thousand years. In Heidegger’s work, Luther’s antiphilosophical intuition and the controversy over the theologia gloriae (which Heidegger highlighted particularly in the Disputatio Heidelbergae) were read as a decisive attempt to separate theology and metaphysics and were translated into an attack against the “metaphysical consideration of the world”⁹² and an invitation to reconsider the “cultural connections of Christianity to culture” according to modes opposed to tradition. The “essence of religion” should find its own foundation in itself and not “grasped in the manner of an object and forced into philosophical disciplines.” The latter was the traditional perspective chosen by scholars such as Troeltsch, the historicizer of the Reformation, about whom Heidegger said “[o]ne rightfully accuses that he, similarly to Dilthey, had no understanding of Luther.”⁹³ Therefore, Heidegger took part in the discussion of the relationship between Christianity and history and, by relying on Luther, unhinged this alliance through an invitation to reformulate the issue on completely new bases. Many years later, Heidegger would continue to use Luther’s name to justify the originality of the theological experience: “[f]aith does not need to think the being. If it needed to think it, it would no longer be faith. Luther understood this. However, even in his church this idea seems to be forgotten. I have many reservations when it comes to the idea that the being is theologically suitable to think the existence of God.”⁹⁴ Finally, it must be noted that the anti-humanist outcomes of Heidegger’s anthropology have also been interpreted under the aegis of Luther. Karl Löwith, who was Heidegger’s student, in several pages of his famous autobiography, lingered over the theological matrices of many of Heidegger’s notions. Löwith summarized the “pure decisionism without a precise purpose,” which according to him characterized Heidegger’s thinking, in terms derived from Luther: “[f]rom Luther [Heidegger] took the unexpressed motto of his existential ontology: Unus cuisque robustus sit in existentia sua.” This statement was further clarified by Löwith, who saw in Luther – just  Heidegger, The Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 213.  Heidegger, The Phenomenology of Religious Life, 19.  Heidegger, Seminare, ed. C. Ochwadt (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1986), 437.

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as in Nietzsche – a “fundamentally German phenomenon, radical and fatal.”⁹⁵ This characterization of a historical facticity emptied of any reference to tradition became simple self-affirmation: an “[e]nergetic free play of the categories of existence” that would later allow Heidegger to justify and applaud the affirmation of Nazism.

12 Catholic Interpretations of Luther between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries It was not easy for the historical figure of Luther and his thought to emerge in prevalently Catholic countries. For example, in Italy, his fame as the destroyer of European spiritual and religious unity was long-lasting. This was the perspective in which Luther was mentioned in works such as Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843) by Vincenzo Gioberti (1801– 1852). The Primato – a work intent on demonstrating how Italy is the “princely nation” among others – was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for demonstrating the reliance of Hegel’s pantheism on Luther’s “new heterodoxy.” Gioberti challenged those who intended to “Germanize their own homeland by forcing on it the philosophical and religious knowledge of Luther’s homeland.”⁹⁶ Luther was fundamentally interpreted as the precursor of Hegel and, therefore, of all new German idealistic thinking, which was foreign to the genuine identity of the Italian nation. In fact, the very attempt to use Luther to break into a country such as Italy was not a fortunate choice. This much was clear to those who, starting from the second half of the nineteenth century, tried to introduce new philosophical discourses inspired by Hegel. Luther played a marginal role in Bertrando Spaventa’s thought, especially in the theory that would later be summarized in the formula “the circulation of European thinking.” Spaventa (1817– 1883) was animated by the desire to graft Italian thinking once again onto the more general spiritual movement of Europe. However, in Spaventa’s philosophical and historical vision of European culture, clearly derived from Hegel, Luther could not take more than a marginal role. In fact, Spaventa corrected Hegel’s scheme in favor of a vision that would appear less unpleasant to his Italian readers. This is the reason behind the tendency to valorize – as a positive factor in the general economy of the historical process – the (Italian) period of the Renaissance by placing it alongside (or, even better, ahead of) the (foreign) era of the Reformation. Having left Luther behind, Spaventa’s reconstruction summons Giordano Bruno to the task of “tossing away the monastic robes.”⁹⁷

 Karl Löwith, Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933: ein Bericht (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007), 31, 32, and 8.  Vincenzo Gioberti, Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843) (Milano, 1848), 547.  Bertrando Spaventa, La filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia europea, ed. A. Savorelli (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003), 73.

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Similarly, the other great work of the nineteenth century, born out of the so-called Italian Hegelism, is Francesco De Sanctis’s La storia della letteratura italiana, which established the irrelevance of Luther’s theology for Italy and instead found “its Luther”⁹⁸ in Machiavelli’s secular spirit. A similar positioning of Luther in the background is confirmed by some authors (Benedetto Croce, Giovanni Gentile) in the early twentieth century who were inspired by the idealistic tradition. In their works, Luther is only mentioned in passing, and there is no suggestion of an indepth knowledge of his writings.⁹⁹ During the few first decades of the twentieth century, Luther was still clearly interpreted among the Catholics as a polemical, negative reference point: Gioberti’s century-old arguments on the connection between Luther and the immanentist reflection of modern idealism still seem to broadly apply. According to Agostino Gemelli (1878 – 1959) – the rector of Università Cattolica in Milan and a prominent figure in neo-scholasticism – Hegel was simultaneously an immanentist and a Protestant, German and therefore foreign, but more importantly the advocate of a “full and refined form of pantheism” because he was “intoxicated with German Lutheranism and modern rationalism.”¹⁰⁰ Similar tones can also be found in the monograph devoted to Luther by the exponent of modernism Ernesto Buonaiuti (1881– 1946). The unity of Christian civilization, which had been guaranteed by the Catholic Church until the sixteenth century, was destroyed precisely because of the subversive action of the rebel Luther. From a philosophical point of view, Buonaiuti saw in the “subjectivism” of justification by faith the matrix of all modern irreligious immanentism, which would reach its apex in Hegel’s system.¹⁰¹ However, it is also necessary to point out that Buonaiuti – and this applies to Gemelli as well – wrote his anti-Hegelian and anti-Lutheran pages immediately after a war fought between Italy and “Protestant” Germany and that his darts were also aimed at the so-called Italian neo-idealists, Croce and Gentile, who were considered Hegel’s epigones and against whom Catholic culture was fighting a bitter battle. Outside of Italy, a similar tone also animated the analysis articulated by another philosopher who was not willing to surrender any ground to Luther. The critical reading of the neo-Thomist Jacques Maritain (1882– 1973) was inspired by Catholic historiography, which was harshly critical of Luther (Hartmann Grisar, Heinrich Denifle). Maritain’s reconstruction highlights Luther’s exuberant personality, which is excessive, sensual, and without scruples: “the immense disaster that the Reformation

 Francesco De Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana (Napoli, 1871), 2:41.  See, for example, Benedetto Croce’s pages against the “impolitic” Luther and Giovanni Gentile’s pages against the “mystic” Luther; Gentile, “Filosofia italiana e tedesca”, in Romanità e Germanesimo, ed. J. De Blasi (Firenze: Sansoni, 1941), 375 – 90; Croce, “L’eresia morale di Lutero,” Quaderni della Critica 3 (1945): 116 – 17.  A. Gemelli, “Le ragioni di questo volume,” in Hegel nel centenario della sua morte, special issue, Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica (1932): vii–xv.  See Ernesto Buonaiuti, Lutero e la Riforma in Germania (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926), ch. 6.

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was for humanity is nothing but the effect of an unsuccessful inner test in a clergyman without humility.”¹⁰² Maritain was especially keen on underlining “Luther’s egocentrism,” his “metaphysical egoism,”¹⁰³ thus once again highlighting a theme that was already fully alive in the Catholic sphere – the exasperated subjectivism of which Luther’s dogmas were merely the theological manifestation. Luther was the “prototype of the modern eras,”¹⁰⁴ a man dominated by will, sentiment, and an unrestrained egoism, who had destroyed the very notion of the “person” that, according to Maritain, Thomas Aquinas had instead defined as a balanced encounter between will and intelligence. Thus Maritain saw in Luther – together with Rousseau and Descartes – one of the “fathers of modern conscience.” From his point of view, this remarkable acknowledgment of Luther’s historical impact could not but be the object of harsh condemnation. Maritain traced the devastating consequences of the revolution that originated with Luther well into modern days: in his words, it is possible to perceive, without even looking too hard, his trepidation in the face of the diseases of his time – that is, individualism, voluntarism, and liberalism. Moreover, Maritain – by accusing Luther of having divided and spiritually opposed Germany to the other nations (Maritain here quotes some sentences from Fichte on the “German Luther,” albeit inverting the polarity) – found in the father of the Reformation the primary cause of World War I, which had devastated Europe only a few years earlier.¹⁰⁵

   

Jacques Maritain, Trois réformateurs: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1927), 17. Maritain, Trois réformateurs, 19. Maritain, Trois réformateurs, 38. Maritain, Trois réformateurs, 38.

Fulvio Tessitore

The Universalgeschichtlich Role of the Reformation according to Idealism and Historicism within German Culture 1 The Problem This study is the initial outline of an area requiring much further investigation, an area that could be described as relating to categories and epochs, given that it relates to vast issues of vital relevance to the history of culture and its wider concerns, themes and underlying logic: religion, philosophy, history, art and much more. The “brave”, or perhaps rash, author of this study is fully aware of the complexity of this subject, tackled here on the basis of several historiographical hypotheses. These will be set out immediately because they inform the approach taken to a subject that is complex in terms both of its thematic breadth and of its historiographical principles and criteria. The author is convinced of the possibility and necessity of identifying a specific historiographical tradition to set against the “muddle” of those who believe it possible to conduct historiography without ideas and without philosophy. It should not, however, concede to the idealistic circle or semicircle of history and philosophy, or philosophy and the history of philosophy.¹ Within this framework, which is complex without being general or generalizing, there are precise critical distinctions, exclusions and inclusions to be made, while taking care not to confuse shared cultural contexts and themes, or relationships and interests that may be common to two distinct cultural movements: that of classical idealism and neoidealism, and that of critical historicism, or rather historicism in its sense of “rigorous” or “radical”. Within this framework of ideas, this study also supports the idea of a “religion of historicism”, which opens up a field of questions that have yet to be studied and have only so far been seen as obstacles by those who see historicism

Translation from Italian: Jennifer Higgins.  The following three general monographs, from different periods in my research on the subject, provide more information on the hypotheses informing this research: Fulvio Tessitore, Profilo dello storicismo politico (Turin: UTET, 1981); Tessitore, Introduzione allo storicismo (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1991) (There is also a fifth, expanded edition: Rome-Bari 2009); Tessitore, Interpretazione dello storicismo (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006). For more detailed and analytical information, see Tessitore, Contributi alla storia e alla teoria dello storicismo, vols. 1– 4 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1995 – 2000); Tessitore, Nuovi contributi alla storia e alla teoria dello storicismo (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002); Tessitore, Altri contributi alla storia e alla teoria dello storicismo (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2007); and Tessitore, Ultimi contributi alla storia e alla teoria dello storicismo, vols. 1– 3 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2010). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-052

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as a culture or philosophy that perceives religion as an “inferior philosophy”. It is seen as such by the idealist approach, with its secular understanding of life and history. On the contrary, the conceptual and thematic reach of historicism means that religious experience must be accorded the theoretical substance of an “independent mode of consciousness”. This implies two preliminary choices: the first presupposes a dialectic that is not without “boundaries” and that is strictly idealistic, in which the only positive is the conciliatory synthesis, the guarantee of the unity of the Spirit; the second involves constructing a dialectic that follows the logic of the “moment of particularity”, of “particulars/distinctions” coexisting in the alteristic subjectivity of the “individual/person”, in the objectification of the reality of the connections experienced by individuals and communities. This means allowing a dialectic without synthesis, like that of the Troeltschian Kompromiss, which is not a reductive pragmatic configuration because it recognises that dialectical mediation consists of “high ethics”. It is the rational understanding of the difficulty of life, and of the antinomic nature of reality, objectivity and subjectivity, which knows and must preserve the immediacy of its own “boundaries”. All this determines the method adopted here to tackle historical and historiographical issues.

2 The Idealist Basis: Hegel The point of departure for this study can only be Hegel. The theme of the significance and value of Protestantism in the history of Christianity is present from his earliest writings (those correctly defined by Wilhelm Dilthey and Herman Nohl as “theological”) right up to the final pages of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. I will therefore follow a series of references to this work, using the most explicit historiographical statements about the Reformation in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and the Lectures on the Philosophy of History. The first were delivered nine times in various places (from Jena to Heidelberg in1805 – 1806, 1816 – 1817 and 1817– 1818, then in Berlin in the summer semester of 1819 and the winter semesters of 1820 – 1821, 1823 – 1824, 1825 – 1826, 1827– 1828 and 1828 – 1829, then begun again on 10 November 1831 before Hegel died suddenly on 14 November). The second were delivered five times (also in the winter semesters of 1822 – 1823, 1824– 1825, 1826 – 1827, 1828 – 1829 and 1830 – 1831) in Berlin. The editions of the Lectures that I have used contain many varied wordings but agree on describing the Reformation as “that sun that shone new light on everything and followed the dawn that appeared at the end of the medieval period”, declaring it to be the “third phase of the German empire”, the “period of the Spirit that knows itself to be free, seeking that which is true, eternal and universal in itself and for itself”, announcing the brilliant beginning of the narration of the “third phase” of the history of the world (Welt-

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geschichte): the “modern epoch” of the Lectures on the Philosophy of History.² This definition is as solemn as that found in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, which credits the Lutheran Reform with the “great revolution […] thanks to which the spirit, through the endless division and ferocious discipline” that were “imposed on it” by the “obstinate German character”, “attained the awareness of the conciliation of the self, and in this very form”, that of “fulfillment of spirit”.³ The argument is articulated through a genuine unity of logical development, beginning with the revelation that the “occasion” of the Lutheran Protest was “unimportant: when the thing is necessary in and for itself, and the spirit is ready in itself”, because “it can manifest itself in one way just as well as in another way”, not even necessarily “connected to one individual”, for example Luther, given that “great individuals are productions of historical time”,⁴ understood here as the time of the spirit, or the eternalization of historical time that people perceive in the context of their natural, biological, empirical lives. The same conviction is found in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy where, however, the terms and contents of the Lutheran revolution are more explicitly conceptualized as resulting in the negation of celibacy and the affirmation of property and liberty. Each of these is carefully presented in such a way as to remove the procedures surrounding marriage, so that it should not be reduced to a contractual relationship, to restore the dignity of “living from one’s own work” and “enjoying its fruits” so that wealth should not spoil the professional vocation, and to assert that piety should not be “blind obedience” that “infringes human liberty”.⁵ Similarly, the Lectures underline, in inadvertently Schleiermacherian terms, that “this man”, thanks to reformed religion, is in communication with God and thus able to recognize “his piety and the hope of his paradise and every other similar thing”, all of which require the presence of his heart and therefore of his subjectivity.⁶ The Lectures on the Philosophy of History echo this in their statement that “only the intimacy of the German spirit”, “the territory of the Reformation”, preserves “pure internal spirituality”, just as “a simple monk gained a clear consciousness of the present moment” and rediscovered “the ‘this’ that Christianity had previously sought in a stone tomb, in the deep tomb of the absolute ideal of every perceptible, exterior thing, in the spirit and in the heart”.⁷ However, there follows immediately an anti-Schleiermacherian, Luther-influenced evocation of the liberty of the “this” and “the infinite subjectivity that is the true spirituality, Christ”, which “is in no way pres-

 G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, cf. Italian transl. Lezioni sulla filosofia della storia, transl. by Guido Calogero and Corrado Fratta (Firenze: La nova Italia, 1963), 146 (quoted as LFS).  G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, cf. Italian tranls. Lezioni sulla storia della filosofia, transl. by Ernesto Codignola and Giovanni Sanna (Firenze, La nova Italia, 1964), 238 (quoted as LSF).  G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, LFS, 147.  Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, LSF, 239.  Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, LSF, 241.  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, LFS, 147.

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ent and real in exterior terms”, but only as a “spiritual entity”, attained “through conciliation with God, through faith and through participation”. Whence follows the opposition of the sacrament of communion through the host, which can only be “eaten and broken” in material terms, and thus is not the “This”, whose process of “salvation occurs only in the heart and in the spirit”.⁸ Equally, “the idea of the presence of Christ” is not, and cannot be, something “material, but only a pure presence in the spirit”.⁹ The “certainty” of faith “is not part of […] the finite subject; it is the subjective certainty of the eternal, of truth existing in itself and for itself, the truth of God”.¹⁰ Thus there is no room for any connection to the Schleiermacherian idea of a pietistic origin for the idea of the historical individual. On the contrary, Hegel’s concept is one that “belongs to the individual not for his individual particularity, but for his essence”.¹¹ This is the word that makes everything clear: essentia tollit existentiam, and Hegel recognises, somewhat reducing the revolutionary modernity of the Reformation, that “Lutheran doctrine is thus completely Catholic: it has simply cut away anything relating to the relationship with the exterior and everything connected to it”. This connection is no small matter; it entails acceptance of history, which Catholic Christianity seeks to go beyond, and it means experiencing it fully through real, flesh and blood men. For Hegel, the Reformation meant that the individual must be “full of the divine spirit”, where “all relationships with the exterior must fall short”,¹² as must the characteristics of the empirical individual as opposed to the epistemic individual, whose veins, according to Dilthey, another great interpreter of the Reformation, “run not with blood but with the rarefied lymph of reason understood as purely an action of thought.” This poses no problems for Hegel because for him the subject “must make the objective content his own”, and only thanks to this will “the subjective spirit become free within the truth, deny its particularity and join with itself in its own truth”, that is, by renouncing its “particular content”, in the sense that this content is the “spirit”, “the essence of the subject”,¹³ which is attained when the individual perceives himself within the thought of the Being (as Hegel states in the Logic and the Encyclopedia). This explicitly goes against the Augustinian intimism and personalitarianism of Luther the monk, and still more against the meaning of Augustinian piety. According to Hegel, reformed religion can only be, to use the terms of a different, later theology, the search for caritas in veritate. To clarify, this means refuting the opposing principle, superbly expressed by Vico’s historicist piety, according to which “if one is not pious, one cannot truly be wise”. For Vico, this is the conclusion of the sought-after scienza nuova, in which, according to Christianity, the much-desired way of “knowledge” is the compassion

 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, LFS 148.  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, LFS 149  Ibid.  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, LFS 145 (author’s italics).  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, LFS 150  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History. LFS, 150 – 51.

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of God’s love (caritas) towards men and in men’s love for one another, through which they acquire the certainty of “knowledge”, the awareness of their own subjective freedom within the certainty of natural and spiritual relationships with other men. For Hegel, the path takes a different course: not veritas in caritate but caritas in veritate, which gives the heart the strength and magnitude of love. Hegel states this clearly when he defines the “new church”, which is “the kingdom of freedom of the spirit”¹⁴ as opposed to the “kingdom of the old church”, which entails “the faith of free subjectivity” and of the secular world inspired by it. In the old church, as in the secular society informed by it, only the external matters of life are recognised, given that in the old church and in the secular society that it inspired, “freedom of the spirit” is found within the “form of the subjective consciousness”, which, however, according to Hegelian logic, must “be incorporated into reality”, a reality that can appear when consciousness becomes “truly objective”, that is, when “content” is linked to “form”. This means that there is a “fulfillment of the universal”, and this “is thought”. This is accomplished through that “principle of the free spirit, as the resolution of the self and the truth become objective even in their forms” and can attain “the intensity of the free subjective spirit” when the spirit decides to take on the “form of universality, and thus the objective spirit can be manifested”,¹⁵ explaining that which it has contained for a long time. This process of explicating the spirit’s truth is the result of reformed religion, as Hegel says in the Preface to the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, because reformed religion helps to “comprehend the concept of the spirit”, which is the truth that allows for “emancipation in the present moment and therefore to find oneself in that moment”, the eternal present of the spirit. Luther had begun to think this way but only tentatively, sensing the need for the “reconciliation of man with himself”. Reconciliation is “the awareness of thought” that provides the rigor of “complete knowledge”, the “supreme confirmation” that the subject needs in order to acquire his own “value”. “Man’s very subjectivity, which he desires”, with which he “occupies himself with one thing or another”, is still not “not set on the right course”, until “his own will takes on the form of universality”, the “freedom of man in broader terms, not simply those of subjective will”.¹⁶ These are all characteristics and consequences of the Lutheran Reformation, thanks to the inflexible affirmation of the “absolute relationship with God” in which “all exteriority is dispelled” and which carries the weighty significance of empiricism. Language is also involved in this, being “the first expression of exteriority that man acquires when he begins the process of becoming his own master, that is, accomplishing his own liberation”. Luther, writes Hegel, “would not have completed his Reformation if he had not translated the Bible into German”.¹⁷ To conclude, “the fundamental determination of the Reformation” is “the abstract moment    

Hegel, Hegel, Hegel, Hegel,

Lectures Lectures Lectures Lectures

on on on on

the the the the

Philosophy Philosophy Philosophy Philosophy

of of of of

History. History. History. History.

LFS, 151. LFS, 152. LFS, 240. LFS, 247.

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of the spirit’s being within itself, of being free, of coming to oneself. Freedom is precisely this will of the spirit, which is why in its established content, instead of asserting itself as something else, it has returned within itself”.¹⁸

3 The Historicist Basis: Ranke The Hegelian ideas outlined here are close to another view of Luther and the Reformation developed by Leopold von Ranke out of a youthful project for a biography of Luther. For Ranke, the central problem was that of the historical and conceptual understanding and definition of the “modern world”, which was for him as it was for Hegel a culmination or a defining moment of universal history. For Ranke and Hegel, the Reformation was central to the concept of modern. Therefore, if the issue is to be tackled properly, at least two of Ranke’s works need to be considered, works that form the nucleus of an important survey of modern Europe’s central nervous system. These are the Deutsche Geschichte in Zeitalter der Reformation (1839 – 1847) and the earlier Die römischen Päpste (1834– 1836),¹⁹ both imposing works not only for their interpretative insight but also for their narrative breadth.²⁰ Here it is useful to remember the origin of the Rankin idea of the Reformation, as with Hegel, seeking it in its first significant expression. Between 1816 and 1817, when Ranke was twenty-one, he undertook a series of readings that are summarized in a work now known as the Lutherfragment,²¹ left as a methodical selection of texts by Luther with notes made with a view to producing a biography of Luther that was never written. Except for occasional echoes of Hegel, Ranke’s writing is positioned differently not only in the sense that the focus is historical rather than philosophical, but also because there is a different approach to the theory of history that, already in  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History. LFS, 243.  L. von Ranke, Die römische Päpste, ihre Kirke und ihr Staat im XVI und XVII Jahrundert (1834– 36), now in the Sämmtliche Werke, vols 1– 6 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1867– 1868).  Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte in Zeitalter der Reformation, vols 1– 6 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1839 – 1847), and the critical edition by P. Joachimsen (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1926). To complete the Rankian picture of the modern era, which contains the history of the Reformation, see also the Französische Geschichte vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert, vols 1– 4 (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1852– 1861), now in the edition Sämmtliche Werke, vols 8 – 13 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1870) and Englische Geschichte vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert, vols 1– 7 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1859 – 1868) now in Sämmtliche Werke, vols 14– 22 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1870 – 1872).  See Das Luther-Fragment von 1817, published for the first time as an appendix to the new edition of Ranke’s works, Deutscher Geschichte (as cited above) edited by P. Joachimsen, vol. 6 (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1926), 311– 377 and note 404. The Frankfurt manuscript of 1837, which is used here compared to the E. Schweitzer edition, is edited by W.P. Fuchs, in L. von Ranke, Aus Werk und Nachlass, vol. 3, Frühe Schriften (Munich-Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1973), 340 – 546. There is an Italian translation edited by F. Donadio and F. Tessitore, Lutero e l’idea di storia universal (Naples: Guida, 1986).

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the Lutherfragment, can be traced to Ranke’s leaning towards a theoretical approach linked to “heterodox Kantism”.²² Ranke recognises and accepts that the Reformation witnessed “the struggle between old and new”, “the violence of new ideas” that lead to “previously unexplored concepts” because only thus could “the specificity of each idea” reveal itself and be revealed. This specificity is attained with “good mechanisms” (“guten Rëdenwerk”) and a “relatively calm tension” (“gleichmässig mutigen Spannung”) even though the particularities collide with one another. This breaks down the old ideas that had always been relied on in the past. “In the new existence that is opening up […] a more difficult struggle is inevitable” in the face of the idea that every man can easily attain all his aspirations (Neigung) over “the course of time, changing his own position and being aware of his own influence on the present and the future” (“Einfluss auf Mit und Nachwelt gewinnen”).²³ The conclusion is yet another anticipation of ideas that Ranke developed when he was older, when he said that it was necessary to “entrust history to the link between the ideal and the real”. In 1817, he confirmed this by declaring that only on the solid ground of empirical history could the ideal truly be constructed (“das Ideale warhaft erhübe”).²⁴ These ideas are the premise of the Rankian configuration of Luther’s Reformation and, at the same time, a timely test of the ability to understand the great revolutionary impulse of the Reformation. The Beruf of the historian is immediately obvious from the notes, which, it seems, would have served as a basis for the introduction to the proposed biography. Here the unveiling of the “incomprehensible” (“das Unbegreifliche”) is “incomprehensibly found” (“man hat unbegreiflich gefunden”) because it is entrusted not to processes of rational conceptualisation but to “intuition” (Einsicht), to the great strength that is “possessed in the surest intuition” and has “knowledge with the greatest certainty”. This was a central concern for Luther, who came to “stop attending to the historical” in order not to lose “the faith” that he had attained from the starting point of “anguish”²⁵ and that revealed to him the dramatic theology of the life of man, “simul iustus et peccator, simul iustus et iniustus”,²⁶ no doubt reached through the troubling discovery of the hidden convergence between Paul and Augustine, which made Luther “happy” because it made him “understand” that “God’s justice [Geretigkeit] was the mercy [Barmherzligkeit] that he thought we deserved”.²⁷ This was, in other words, the focus for the search for veritas in caritate

 This is an expression that I employed many years ago, following in the footsteps of Ernst Cassirer’s approach to Kant, to underline the anthropological turn of the “rationalism” of Spät-Aufklärung of the gnoseological revolution of Kantism, which should not be read with emphasis on the “idealistic Kantian Fichtism”, necessarily considered to be orthodox usage.  Ranke, Lutero e l’idea di storia universale, op. cit., p. 172.  Ibid.  Ibid., 25.  See Romans 4:7 ff.  Ranke, Lutero e l’idea di storia universal, 53.

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as opposed to the Hegelian search for caritas in veritate, with a clearly Schleiermacherian tendency based in its turn on the discovery of the meaning and significance of the Menschwerdung as they are expressed in Verse 14 of the Prologue to John’s Gospel. This implies, as was typical of Luther, the convergence of life and doctrine. Ranke states: “We only come into contact with his [Luther’s] life; he lives his doctrine and his doctrine lives in him”, so that the two experiences coincide.²⁸ In this sense Luther did not concern himself with the “historical level”,²⁹ if it implied the subjugation of faith, as it did in the Catholic papacy.³⁰ Luther argues against the risk that we run if we consider the Gospel in abstract terms and thus create a “wide abyss”, between the life of the spirit and human activity (gewöhliche Treiben), thereby throwing our spirit into contradictions.³¹ Luther did not place, as many others did, the “fundamental principle [Grundsetz] above opinion”. In fact, he did the opposite, and as Ranke observes, “in ethical terms he placed opinion above the fundamental principle”.³² Life returned to its right, to its own ethics, subordinating the intellectual plane to the ethical one.³³ Thus, “form was shattered”, and “custom and ethics” forced our solitude and our common feelings to “come out into the open and seize the magnificent freedom offered to them”.³⁴ With an approach that is already decidedly anti-Hegelian, whether consciously or unconsciously, Ranke comments on all that he has gathered from Luther’s texts, saying that “it is a lie to say that the Reformation followed reason alone, or rather that reason was its source. The source was ethics”.³⁵ This was his science, science for life, and it led Luther to not expect to be accepted into the learned circles. When he fulfilled his great project,³⁶ he saw in this science for life the ethical science of history that the Reformation had inspired in him. If the scope of this study allowed, it could also be documented easily through the commentary of the mature Ranke in the History of the Popes (in several pages where he presents, simultaneously, the “regeneration of Catholicism” and the achievement of the Reformation) and in the History of the Reformation in Germany. It is not by chance that, after the annotations concerning the principles set out here, most of the notes in the Lutherfragment focus on the first, brief list of the most important historical moments in the establishment and development of the Reformation, which are developed further in Ranke’s great mature works.³⁷

 Ibid., 31.  Ibid., 81.  Ibid., 79.  Ibid., 81.  Ibid., 83.  Ibid., 85.  Ibid., 87.  Ibid., 86.  See Ibid., 93-154.  One need only compare the themes of the various “notes” in the Lutherfragment with the index of the Deutsche Geschichte.

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The idealist interpretation of the Reformation continued most notably in Italian idealist historiography and philosophy, beginning with Bertrando Spaventa, but it would be impossible to elaborate on this here, in a study that must focus on German culture.

4 “Universal Religious Theism” and Historicism: Wilhelm Dilthey A survey of key moments in the development of Reformation ideas in German historicist culture must, after considering the classic, key ideas of Ranke, turn to the greatest philosopher of Historismus, Wilhelm Dilthey, and then to the exponents of mature Historismus, Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber. It can only hint at the work of Adolf von Harnack and Friedrich Meinecke, which would certainly be included in a more detailed study. When beginning with Dilthey, it is important to remember his early period of theological studies, which lasted more than ten years, influenced by Nietzsche and never forgotten. These studies were woven into the theoretical and historiographical reflections of Historismus, starting from the reflection on the “natural system of the sciences and the spirit”. This is one of the most significant moments in the long history of the rise and fall of the idea of metaphysics, and is narrated in the second book of the Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (1883), which was never completed but was taken up again, not by chance, with the studies he undertook between 1893 and 1903 in the Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation. ³⁸ This work, as well as being one of the many attempts to complete the historical section of the Einleitung, is a shrewd and truly cosmopolitan examination of the role played by cultural anthropology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, beginning with the Italian renaissance. It studies the spread of cultural anthropology through Europe, seeing a dialectic connection between it and the Lutheran Reformation, but gradually favoring the Reformation. Only by understanding this initial preparation is it possible to gain a full grasp of the Diltheyan thought that was to set the direction for the path followed, albeit in a spirit of independence and renewal, throughout the historiographical and theoretical culture of Historismus. This is highlighted by Dilthey himself in 1892, in a paragraph worth

 W. Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. Versuch einer Grundlegung für das Studium der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte, in Gesammelte Schriften, edited by B. Groethuysen, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht; Leipzig: Teubner, 1914; Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation, in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. G. Misch, vol. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht; Leipzig: Teubner, 1914). The Italian translation is L’analisi dell’uomo e l’intuizione della natura dal Rinascimento al secolo XVIII, translated by G. Sanna, vols. I-II (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1974) (Venice, 19271), which I have compared to the German edition. These writings can also considered as the completion of the historical part of the Einleitung.

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re-reading for its statement of the universalgeschichtlich meaning and significance of his interpretation: The movement of the Reformation […] will not be studied here as an element of the history of the Church or of dogma; we shall not examine how new Churches were formed or how changes occurred in Christian dogma, but shall try to interpret this movement as an extremely important link in the chain of the spiritual progress of the sixteenth century. We propose to examine the manner in which the humanity of the theological metaphysics of the medieval period progressed towards the work of the seventeenth century, towards the establishment of man’s dominion over nature, towards the independence of the intellect and of human will, towards the creation […] of a natural system of sciences of the spirit.³⁹

In this context, Dilthey’s thinking focuses on the examination of what he defines as a “universal religious theism” that he sees as the “victorious” cultural phenomenon that came into being in the early sixteenth century “all over Europe”, culminating, as he states elsewhere, in the transcendental philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This seems to be an explicit declaration of a categorical conception of historical development. However, this clarification of the motivations behind the studies that he undertook should not be overlooked for two reasons, firstly because it establishes an historiographical criterion and secondly because it reveals a choice of method that is not without its seeming ambiguities. The first reason declares that Luther and his Reformation signal the beginning of the new era of “modernity”. This is not to diminish the importance of the “revolution” that was carried out, but rather to express awareness of the complexity of the new that follows two extraordinary and clearly defined experiences relating to life and thought: classical antiquity and the medieval period. In relation to the second reason, it should be said that Dilthey’s approach clearly demands a category-defining dimension. However, in reality, the propensity towards a long view of history has not disappeared, and does not even diminish the historiographical strength of the narrative, which immediately takes on an epoch-making dimension, as Dilthey introduces Luther with a resounding “Then came Luther”, reinforced by an apparent methodological interruption that should not be overlooked. “Humanity is in a continuous state of progress, not only scientific progress but also religious and moral progress”. Returning to the strict sense of his understanding of the dialectic “connection” (which is decidedly Kantian, not neo-Kantian) between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften, he proceeds to reveal that “as a single man, thus the whole of humanity lives by progressing according to their own experiences of life”, experiences that do not admit, and on the contrary actively reject, any unilaterality. Certainly, significant changes in moral life have always been linked to changes in religious life. “History has not hitherto indicated the existence of a morality without religion”, and “in this area innovation, if it is to be fruitful, must always have a spiritual link with the past, and must come from the very source of the religious practice of its period, just as one  Dilthey, L’analisi dell’uomo e l’intuizione della natura dal Rinascimento al secolo XVIII, 1:199.

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life is born of a preceding life”.⁴⁰ Only against this backdrop, clearly defining an epoch, can the significance of “Then came Luther” be understood. The nature of this epochality is clarified immediately, giving a glimpse of social history that can be traced in religious ideas. “It is no less important to examine how, from the changed conditions of society, there sprang a new ideal of life, in which man felt his own internal, independent value, and joyfully sought to develop it, working within the concrete conditions of life”, as Luther and Zwingli showed, seeking “this ideal place and freedom within the very bosom of the Church”. This was not said lightly: it was the result of a long, difficult struggle, because “even in this regard it was only with difficulty that the new could make progress in the face of the obstacle of traditions”. The historian needs to comprehend “how men in this era of reform, unlike the medieval texts and their metaphysical theology, created a new way of giving strength and basis to their convictions regarding the relationship of man with the invisible”.⁴¹ From here onwards, Dilthey’s argument proceeds steadily, with a clear sense of the problematic nature of the direction it is taking, without losing sight of the humanist-renaissance-Reformation link in the circularity of the European context which, if it initially seems to support Bertrando Spaventa’s suggestion that Italian philosophy was dominant, soon diverges towards a more cosmopolitan horizon, part of the vast movement that Dilthey called “universal religious theism”. This is presented as a “conviction that the divine has been and still is equally industrious in all the various religions and philosophies, manifesting itself in the religious and moral conscience of every elevated man”, but does not conceal the fact that this could already be seen occurring “by acute medieval observers of the contrast between the religious and moral ways of life of the various religions, and therefore of life itself and of any unprejudiced consideration of life”.⁴² Dilthey records examples of the era of literary civilization of Frederick II and Saladino, making significant reference to Boccaccio’s Parable of the Three Rings, in which “the natural theism shared by the various religions is explicitly shown”. This makes it necessary to recall the preceding outcomes of Greco-Roman classical antiquity, and also the religious myths of the “oriental populations”– as Dilthey does, with an impressive synthesis in the first twenty-five pages of his clear historical reconstruction – in order to then concentrate on the new era: “With the renaissance, the epicureans, the stoics, the pantheists steeped in the sense of nature, the sceptic and the atheist reappear”, which in turn allows the reappearance “little by little, of very varied moral types”.⁴³ Dilthey, concurring inadvertently with one of Ranke’s criteria, maintains that for Luther, “the basis of everything is life”, even more than doctrine. “From life, from his moral and religious experiences, all knowledge of the relationship with the invisible is derived and influenced. Thus the intellectual nexus of the world, which links the rational being to universal rea   

Ibid., 70. Ibid., 55. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 72.

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son, comes second to this, and instead the moral connection takes the upper hand”.⁴⁴ Faith is at the centre of the process, “which is defined by trust in God”.⁴⁵ From this premise all the great principles of the Lutheran revolution derive and take their strength, and Dilthey gives a lengthy, perceptive description of this revolution, never losing sight of “the arena of the workings of faith”, which is “secular society and its ordering”.⁴⁶ This is why, “in the name of the new Christian spirit, Luther invokes the transformation of German society”.⁴⁷ In so doing, Dilthey identifies the intrinsic “historicism” of the process of the moral workings of faith and also includes Luther’s limitations, the pedagogical work of Zwingli, Melanchthon’s doctrinal clarifications, the dissenting rationalism of the socinians and the arminians, the development of historical criticism and the birth of hermeneutics, up to Calvin and Bodin, before proceeding to constructive rationalism and seventeenth-century pantheism from Bruno onwards, up to the historical-evolutionary pantheism of Descartes, Spinoza and Hobbes. This light-footed and learned account takes up the whole second volume of Dilthey’s work. It is not possible in the context of this study to do justice to this narrative without risking falling into a reductive re-telling of such a copious and fruitful historiographical account, but it is useful to dwell on the important assessment made of the “revolutionary agitation” of a faith that was an “active force, whose role was part of moral law”, a law that gave meaning to personal responsibility even when “man became to instrument of divine action”, since “the courage to act, expressed in belligerence, is by no means a defect compared to the courage to endure, but rather a genuine aspect of the ideal man”.⁴⁸ “From such a faith is a person’s active energy derived”, the new “moral and religious ideal of life, a relationship between the person and the invisible that surrounds him, fully realized, outside the senses, in his interiority, in his autonomy”.⁴⁹ This is modern man’s conquest of civilization.

5 Historicism and Social Doctrines of Reformed Christianity: Ernst Troeltsch The final phase of this study is concerned with Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber, whose work is best considered in parallel, given that they have so much in common and that it is difficult, and ultimately futile, to try to establish any precedence of one over the other. Their lives were closely linked between 1897 and 1914, when they both

     

Ibid., 70. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 80. Ibid., 81. Ibid., 91. Ibid., 93.

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worked at Heidelberg University and lived in the same building for some years. It is useful, however, to begin with Troeltsch and to examine his famous little book, Das Bedeutung des Protestantismus in die Entstehung der modernen Welt, the first edition of which appeared in 1906 and the second in 1911, around the same time as his imposing Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (of 1912), because Troeltsch’s interpretation relating to the area of this study cannot be separated from two important works (Die Aufklärung, 1897, and Das Wesen des modernen Geistes, 1907) strongly influenced by the ideas of Dilthey, whose mastery Troeltsch had always admired and to whom he dedicated, alongside Wilhelm Windelband, his Der Historismus und seine Probleme. ⁵⁰ Dilthey’s influence can be seen mainly in the use of the same historiographical criteria and also in many theoretical approaches that are certainly inspired by historicism. There is perhaps less of a sharing of the idea of historicism as philosophy, which Dilthey had already followed for some time, while Troeltsch’s historicism is still a Weltanchauung, confirming the increasingly historicist nature of the whole process of gaining knowledge and, still more, of the whole way of life and way of behaving of contemporary people. While there is no doubt that Troeltsch shared the Diltheyan pluralist, multiple, inter-related concept of life, to the point of doubting the admissibility of the idea of the “sense” of history, a recognition that Dilthey, even before Troeltsch (who feared it) already saw as an inevitable consequence of the process of complete historicization of life destined to affect relativism; while it is equally undeniable that there was a shared belief in the plurality of historical phenomena in an attempt to combine progress of and progress towards, that is, a non-causalist tendentiality and a deterministic finality in the shared intention of avoiding any possible relativist conclusion, one cannot ignore an incidental “contingency” that was present during Troeltsch’s life, but did not affect Dilthey. In order to understand the consequences of Troeltsch’s thought, it is necessary to grasp a complex scenario that cannot be fully explored here but that is important for its theoretical innovation and also made more complex by the political consequences of the philosophical and historicist revolution of Weber and Meinecke. Troeltsch shared Dilthey’s idea of the importance of maintaining the epoch of the centuries going from the Italian renaissance and humanism to the Enlightenment, including the Reformation in the development of its Lutheran and Calvinist aspects, and of the varied types of sects and spiritualism, from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. This is a historical block to be examined and evaluated in all its varied and linked epochal aspects, which were not used by Hegel or the Hegelian Spaventa (nor was it easy to define such a block if not in the sense of an epoch), both of whom were more alert, although never entirely lack Troeltsch’s writings can be read in L’essenza del mondo moderno, trans. G. Cantillo (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1977); and in his Der Historismus und seine Probleme (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1922), translated into Italian as Lo storicismo e i suoi problemi, edited by G. Cantillo and F. Tessitore (Naples: Guida, 1989).

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ing in historiographical interest and intuition, to the category-defining nature of cultural movements studied as a means of coming to a precise definition of the modern era and its importance, the culmination of which was idealism. The ways in which Dilthey and Troeltsch presented Luther were not drastically different, although there were notable differences in their historiographical and theoretical approaches. Both examined the medieval heritage of Luther’s culture and actions, but with different results. In 1906,⁵¹ in a text casting light on the “contradiction between Protestantism and modern culture”, Troeltsch stated that Luther’s Reformation was “above all simply a transformation of Catholicism, a development of problems already present within it, to which he provided a new answer”, and, responding to the many criticisms directed at him as a result, emphasised that he meant to point out the “close connection” between Lutheran theology and “the basic traits of antique and medieval thought”, which can be viewed in a destructive and misguided manner even though these theories provided a firm basis for the new.⁵² These and other dramatic statements were based in the overall perspective of Troeltsch’s comprehensive reconstruction, as will be seen in this study. For now, it is important not to overlook the statements that we could term provisional, that seem to me to sit very differently within the presentation of Luther’s personality in the Soziallehren. Here, “Luther’s religious idea […] presents a high degree of personal originality”, springing from “the internal workings of religious thought”.⁵³ At the centre of this originality, which I would not hesitate to define as revolutionary, can be seen the “new idea” of grace developed by Luther. The ancient “Catholicism was a religion of grace”, but this came to be seen as “a sacramental grace of the supernatural”, that is, an entity whose dissemination relied on the mediation of the Church hierarchy, such that “this conception of grace could be united with that of the law”. With Luther, the “regard for grace” was not “invalidated by compromises related to the concept of law”. Grace “is no longer a mystical, miraculous thing to be instilled via the sacrament, but a sense of God that is acquired through faith, conviction, sentiment, consciousness and trust through the loving will of God […], in the love and emotion felt by Christ for men”. Thus trust in God is the consecration of the dignity of man, of the free and interior consciousness of man, which “despite its weakness, its resistance, its desperation and impurity, can derive the thought of grace from the gospels”.⁵⁴ “Luther understands and thinks of Christianity essentially as grace, as the basis of certainty and salvation”. This could require a new dimension and new distribution within the ec-

 See Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus für die Entstehung der modernen Welt (Munich: Oldenburg, 1906 [1911]), tr. it. Il protestantesimo nella formazione del mondo moderno, translation by G. Sanna (Venice/Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1968, [1929]).  Troeltsch, ibid. 31– 32.  Troeltsch, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1911), tr. it. Le dottrine sociali delle Chiese e dei gruppi cristiani, translated by G. Sanna, vol. II, Il protestantesimo (Florence: La nuova Italia, 1960) 7.  Troeltsch, Le dottrine sociali, 2:13.14.15.

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clesiastical structure (“ecclesiastical Protestantism”) that, despite its abolition of the existing hierarchy, would not negate the strong new ideas about the “objective divine strength” within “the subject and through the subject”. Troeltsch’s lucid conclusion, which introduces an idea that returns at other important moments in his account, “is the profound thought about the historical essence of life, which alone inspires all people and unites them within it, linked by the religious sense of grace”.⁵⁵ Within this idea there are certainly traces of the basis Augustinian belief in a Christian ethics based on love of all things within God and on fraternal love for God’s sake. However, in Luther’s thinking, this Augustinianism, which is very fruitful within humanist intimism, lacks the mediation and transformation of Catholic – ethics, especially that which links natural morals with casuistry.⁵⁶ On the contrary, for Luther, and thanks to Luther, one can be part of this ethics, which nonetheless can and must be defined as ecclesiastical, “only with personal faith” purified of all imperfections so that it may acquire the “universality” of having an “identical requirement of everybody”, “the requirement of faith” made accessible to all and that unites within everybody with “the tolerance of the various effects of the same faith”.⁵⁷ Troeltsch concludes that, thanks to all this, “Protestantism continues this receiving of life into the ethics of a universal Christian society”, which “was tentatively begun in late antiquity” and was achieved in the medieval period but only completely fulfilled in the Reformation.⁵⁸ Thus, although it was indebted in many ways to antiquity and the medieval period, “only with Luther could his great history of the world be explained”.⁵⁹ This history remained, in Troeltsch’s judgment, a work of mediation between the old and the new, but Troeltsch’s view differed from that of Dilthey in one important respect, in the sense that for Dilthey the motivation for the equally well-articulated historiographical reconstruction had a different focus: the awareness of a new kind of thought imposed by the new configuration of the cultural and socio-economic reality of contemporary Europe and, more widely, of the western world, including America. It is important to note that the picture that Troeltsch paints of the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, compared to the same period ana-

 Ibid., 191.  Ibid., 63.  Ibid., 81.  Ibid., 101.  Ibid, 244. In volume 4 of the Gesammelte Schriften (Tübingen 1925) there is an important study written in 1907– 1908, which then reappeared with the addition of Luther, der Protestantismus und die moderne Welt, 202– 254. The 1913 study, Renaissance und Reformation, 261– 292, is also important because it discusses, among other things, the writings by Dilthey referred to here. Along with two other works – Das Verhältnis des Protestantismus zu Kultur (1913) and Calvinismus und Luthertum (1909), 191– 202, 254– 261 – this volume has an appendix containing a number or interesting critiques and discussions relating to the themes and issues of the Reformation (759 – 783). There is also the reply to Felix Rachfahl, which displeased Weber, Die Kulturbedeutung des Calvinismus (1910), 783 – 801, especially pp. 784– 785 and 787– 788. The writings and notes relating to Harnack in this volume are also important.

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lysed by Dilthey, is entirely focussed on the theoretical and social configuration of Lutheran doctrine, beginning with the distinction between Lutheranism and Calvinism, as well as on the varied world of sects and spiritual mysticism until the arrival of the doctrine of “ascetic Protestantism” or “new Protestantism”, described over the course of many well-argued pages, that deserve to be studied in all their learned arguments based on detailed historiographical awareness of the differences and similarities between the phenomena examined. The motivation behind Dilthey’s research was historiographical, while nonetheless deeply theoretical, and sought to define the natural system of the sciences of the spirit as a necessary step within the long process of crises and dissolution of scholarly metaphysical dogma and, in many ways, also of Kantian critical metaphysics, in view of the effectiveness of the historical system of the sciences of the spirit. Troeltsch’s intention, however, was focussed on the definition and verification of the carrying out of a “social ethics” that conformed to the requirement of a civilisation and a cultural world that were very different from those that the long process begun by humanism had prepared and created in the name of what was now a clear conception of modernity. It was thus a question of identifying “the reciprocity of relations and influences” between religion and society, especially in relation to the “modern scientific culture of independent reason”,⁶⁰ even when reason “takes on a religious stance” and therefore “reflects the universal individualism of the modern era and consolidates it”, and is “in tune with its social connotations”, without, however, coming “from it, and not immediately exercising any influence over it”.⁶¹

6 Social Doctrines of Reformed Christianity and Sciences of Reality: Max Weber The best way to conclude this study is with a few observations relating to Max Weber, especially given what has been said here about Dilthey and Troeltsch, whose historiographical ideas and intentions are very close to Weber’s without being identical. This presents the great difficulty of distinguishing between things that are in fact largely similar. There is no need to remind ourselves of the texts dedicated to classical works, such as Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (1904 – 1905); it will be sufficient, when referring to this work, to recall some of its most important principles, thanks to the large amount of often highly authoritative works of secondary literature dedicated to it over the last hundred years. For the purposes of this study it is enough to rely on the most effective summary, that of Weber himself responding to one of his most stubborn critics. There was a need to a) illustrate the way in which certain maxims of ethical living derived from Protestantism had been in  Troeltsch, ibid., 673 – 74.  Ibid., 674.

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a causal relationship with the modern capitalist economic system; and b) recall the often-discussed fact of the important links between Protestantism and professional choices (Beruf) relating to capitalist logic. This made it necessary to c) identify the theoretical and dogmatic basis of ethics in individual versions of Protestantism in order to show that these were not simply secondary elements lacking any conceptual or religious content; and thus d) to explain the psychological and practical motivations contained within the particular kind of religiousness that was gradually developed by Protestantism (Lutheranism, Calvinism, and the sects).⁶² All of this suggested that it was “foolish” to try to derive exclusively from the Reformation, not only the capitalist economic system, but also the “spirit of capitalism” in Weber’s sense of the expression, as a determining rule of behaviour.⁶³ Rather like Dilthey and Troeltsch, Weber, in a dramatic statement, declared that “Luther did not reach a connection between professional work and religious principles based on an essentially new foundation, or more generally on a theoretical foundation”.⁶⁴ He did not, however, overlook the influential originality of Luther’s protest. Here, too, we need only recall Weber’s own words, in which he declared that his “duty” was “simply to throw some light on the mark that religious motivations left on the fabric of the development of our modern material civilisation”, with the intention of leaving behind “the opinion that the Reformation can be attributed to economic changes as something ‘necessary from a historical-evolutionary point of view’”. Furthermore, “it is not a case of defending a foolishly doctrinal idea according to which the ‘capitalist spirit’ […] could have sprung up simply as a result of certain influences of the Reformation”. For Weber, it was necessary to establish “if, and to what extent, religious influences participated in the qualitative configuration and the quantitative expansion of that “spirit” for the world, and which concrete aspects of capitalist-based civilisation can be traced back to it”.⁶⁵ As was shown by Weber, Dilthey and Troeltsch, these influences were mainly derived from “ascetic Protestantism”, one of the forms that began in the sects and that had allowed the development of this form of ascesis that Weber defined as “intra-worldly”, meaning that it participates in the world and for the world, maintaining (or rather practising and using) faith in grace, perceiving the signs of its predestination as far as possible. In reality, all of this research relating to religion is part of Weber’s expression of the relationship between religion and rationality, that is, the critical process of salvation that implies, for him, “the overturning of religion, arising from rationalization with an element, or even a ‘residue’ of irrationality”, and ends , especially after the Enlightenment, in modernisation and, finally, “secularization”. According to Weber, this reveals the intention of his

 Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Religionssoziologie, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1920); Translated into Italian as Sociologia della Religione, edited by P. Rossi, vol. I, Protestantesimo e spirito del capitalismo (Turin: Communità, 2002) 304-303.  Weber, ibid. 2:281.  Ibid., 1:74.  Ibid., 1:79 – 80.

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studies: to provide “a contribution to the illustration of the way in which ‘ideas’ in general operate within history”.⁶⁶ This important statement neatly captures Weber’s truly innovative contribution to establishing the universalgeschichtlich role of the Reformation and of how much was derived from it. This was a contribution that, defeating Troeltsch’s perplexity and resistance, went back to Dilthey and acquired a strictly historicist significance and a crucial anti-idealist, anti-Hegelian dimension. Here we must pause to illustrate, better than any idealist formulation could, the meaning of these pages, while remaining aware of their provisory nature, according to what Weber said about the vast nature of his project described above. In this sense it must be said that Weber brings to an end, in the fullest sense, the long tradition of Historismus, which began with Humboldt and reached Dilthey and beyond, overcoming the “crisis” and outlining, very shrewdly, “historicism’s self-examination”. Weber’s studies of several thematic elements of the “sciences of reality”, rather than being, as has often, mistakenly, been said, a scientific foundation of sociology, are the surest (and still unsurpassed) twentieth-century expressions of the philosophy of historicism, of historicism as a philosophy in all its radicalism and problematic nature. They are a critical example whose importance is not declining but rather remains of strict, rational, constructive importance, and is dedicated to the expert continuation of the sciences of reality, and also of sociology, in one of its first scientific expressions. This study must now tackle, albeit briefly, Troeltsch’s various theories. Weber is very clear in stating his intellectual relationship with Troeltsch, in the many pages dedicated to it in the replies to Felix Rachfahl on the Spirit of Capitalism,⁶⁷ in the Protestantische Ethik. In a note that appears in the 1920 version⁶⁸ of a text written much earlier, he observes that his idea and that of Troeltsch, starting from wide-ranging viewpoints relating to the world history of the ethics of western Christianity, differ in their dominant concerns: Troeltsch focussed “mainly on doctrine” while Weber focussed on the “practical efficacy of religion”. This opinion is expressed again, alongside other explanations of a similar nature, in a note on the final page of the 1920 edition of the book on Protestant ethics. Here, in a clarification of the 1905 text, Weber shows himself to be completely satisfied with the results obtained by the specific communication of his study, which did not require “immediate enactment” because the original “intention” had not been to “replace a causal interpretation of culture and history in a unilaterally ‘materialistic’ sense with a different, equally unilaterally ‘spiritualist’ one, both possible but destined to be of little use to ‘historical truth’”, in an attempt to create some kind of conclusion to research that was in fact many-sided, problematic and critical in nature, and not designed to be fully concluded. The note also clearly states that the expan-

 Ibid., 1:79.  Ibid., 1:284-87.  Ibid., 1:24.

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sion of the research had certainly been undertaken with the intention of making a “comparative study of the historical-universal connections between religion and society” similar to work carried out by Troeltsch. He had already given up on the idea of such a study in light of his friend’s Soziallehren, which developed, with the necessary thorough theological preparation, in the same doctrinal direction as those already mentioned, with technical knowledge (mainly of a theological nature) that Weber did not consider himself to possess. In the face of this “contingent” element, he had to some extent expanded the range of the observations in his 1905 book, which was by now famous, while not straying from the subject of the efficacy of the hylomorphism of religion and society. By this, I think he meant something not entirely different from what I argue on the subject of the necessary transfer, effected by Weber himself, of the infinite Realität in Wirklichkeit, that is the fulfillment of ideas in the sense of revealing the historical significance (Sinn) of the connection between religion and society governed by the western world’s “spirit of capitalism”. Troeltsch in his turn – after many queries by Weber concerning specific points made in his Soziallehren, especially relating to the role of a particular aspect of the Reformation, ascetic Protestantism, and to its influence on the formation of western civilisation⁶⁹ – stressed the independence and diversity of his own argument. The fact is that – and with this my study can conclude – that the true discrepancy, aside from differences between Weber and Troeltsch, concerned the universalgeschichtlich effect of Protestantism, and still more the idea of historicism. In the conclusion to the Soziallehren, Troeltsch’s thinking remains within the questions of the crisis of historicism, as opposed to the historicism of the crisis, in the sense that he was still concerned with the possible relativist outcome understood as ethical indifferentism, in line with his original historiographical and theoretical Frage in light of the acknowledged, inescapable historicization of all of the epistemological and practical dimensions of the contemporaneousness of the world, which had already been expressed clearly in 1894 as the possible solution to be sought in the convergence of Geschichte und Metaphysik. This was a relationship to be defended, even after the highly historicist, revolutionary reading that he put forward in the Absolutheit des Christentums (1911– 1912), and reiterated in the cogent re-statement of the idea of Universalgeschichte in the second chapter of Der Historismus und seine Probleme. ⁷⁰  See Troeltsch, Le dottrine sociali, vol. 2, cit., pp. 23, 262 ff., 290. Weber, ibid., 1:252– 53.  I see an important distinction between the words Weltgeschichte (literally “history of the world”) and Universalgeschichte (“universal history”) and their respective adjectives. The first denotes the idea of history inspired by the “principle of the absolute” and is thus indicative of a generalizing concept rather than a quantitative one; the second refers to the qualitative, evaluative “tendentiality” of historical development that is not deterministically configured. The two are often used interchangeably, especially in the titles of works that use the term with varying degrees of accuracy (as is that case for Hegel’s Vorlesungen über Weltgeschichte and Ranke’s Weltgeschichte, which discuss the idea of universal history as the history of events that follow one another but do not teleologically ensue from one another). However, there are many important, precise differentiations, made for theoretical and historiographical reasons (as is the case with the usage by Dilthey and Weber of the term

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Throughout this stubborn, engaged, spasmodic work, Troeltsch’s concern was to distinguish between the absolute abstract of rational logic of Cartesian origin and the absolute concrete of the Kantian, rather than neo-Kantian, “logical abstractions” (especially those of the third Critique), which provided the criterion for judgment (or selection) of empirical facts to be considered historically⁷¹ against the abstract nature of idealist logic, which aims to recognise the convergence (if not the actual overlapping) of the ordo idearum and the orde rerum. Troeltsch’s conclusion was the establishment – made possible by his resolution of the long struggle between “naturalism” and “historicism”⁷² – of a new “material philosophy of history” whereby “dogmatic concepts” (such as those relating to theology) are born from below, from the materiality of empirical history, and attain “absolutization” (one could also, perhaps, say “universalization”) through the relevance of the link between history and historiography, which Dilthey claimed to have found in Yorck’s Transcendenz ohne Methaphysik. This allows for a narrowing of the gap between Troeltsch’s historicism and Croce’s “absolute historicism”, also in terms of the Reformation’s category-defining significance (which Croce asserted in comparison to the Counter-Reformation, which was for him simply an important moment within a historical epoch). Weber’s concept and conclusion are very different, and focus more on efficacy than on doctrine, which is attained through the process of “abstraction” (selection) necessary to define and understand the historicity of the logical “types” of history, a historicity that is reached in the awareness of being “unhistorical in order to become completely historical”, that is, by negating the absolute nature of history (reality is history and nothing more than history). Thus one can succeed, according to the earlier teachings of Barthold Georg Niebuhr that were admired by Nietzsche, in giving space to and understanding the “non-historical” and then “super-historical” alongside the “historical”, which is the only possible verification of the reality of things that have been experienced and not simply imagined. In this sense, Weber’s idea, which connects the empirical to the conceptual, and explanation to comprehension, in a typical epistemological process of the sciences of reality, is a historicism that no longer fears relativism because it knows that the relativism of reality is linked to the highly logical indeterminacy of the relationship, of the connection, between “objective possibility”

Universalgeschichte). On this issue, Chapter 3 of Troeltsch’s Der Historismus und seine Probleme (“Über den historischen Entwickelungsbegriff und die Universalgeschichte”, pp. 221– 693) is important to keep in mind, being the most complete history of the concept of “universal history” from Hegelianism to “post-speculative realism”, to use Troeltsch’s expression of the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth century. Also relevant here are my own 1993 observations on Troeltsch’s last writings, which were published posthumously with a title not decided by Troeltsch himself, Der Historismus und seine Überwindung (Berlin, 1924). These observations can be found in Lo storicismo e i suoi problemi, cit., vol. 3, pp. 203-214.  See G. Morrone, Valore e realtà. Studi intorno alla logica della storia di Windelband, Rickert e Laski (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013).  This is the theoretical nucleus of previously cited Der Historismus und seine Probleme, especially Chapter 1.

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and “adequate causation”, or that which forms the logical structure of the sciences of reality. For this reason, Weber absolutely rejects any kind of monism or emanationism, which are both to some extent deterministic, and always to some extent deterministic as are all philosophies of history, whether enlightenment, idealistic, positivist or Marxist. In this, Weber is, more than Troeltsch (who claimed himself to be a pupil of Weber), the true discoverer of the “secret” of Diltheyan Historismus, in his attempts to respond to the need to overcome dogmatic metaphysics and critical metaphysics in order to form the “new universal history”. In my view, this was close to Weber’s idea of the “universal history of culture” intended as Geistesgeschichte of the Einzelwissenschaften, of the sciences of reality. This difference⁷³ can be observed in Weber and Troeltsch’s common understanding of the present. Both were conscious of the “transformations” of the present, their present, visible in its “crisis”, which was the emergence (Entstehung, a word used by Troeltsch, Weber and Meinecke) of the new rather than the decadence of the “modern”. For Troeltsch, this awareness (“everything around us is teetering”) amounted to a hope, perhaps even a faith, in the eternal nature of the “nobility of the spirit”. For Weber, it meant knowing how to maintain a level, uncompromising, courageous gaze in the face of “pathologies of the spirit”,⁷⁴ the cold night of “sacrifice and struggle” that are part of a world that is now “without profit and without God”. Pathology of the spirit was the reason for uncompromising observation of the present, not the dissolution of the modern, that could not be attended to by returning to the now-impossible “security” of theories, even the most complete of these theories, Hegel’s ontology of history, to which Weber’s contemporaries still looked for inspiration, as would those who came after them. On the contrary, historicism is the new awareness that the “modern”, at least in the West, which has fully experienced the long process of rationalization in the face of all the intrusions of the mysticism of the Ur, is a “crisis” in the sense of the understanding of indeterminately causal plurality (Vielseitigkeit) and relativity (relationality). This is the meaning of Weber’s “We tell you to hope”, accompanied by the severe and tragic warning of the prophet Isaiah, which ends the Wissenschaft als Beruf: “The sentinel says: ‘Morning comes, and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire; come back again.’”. The people who received this answer asked and waited more than two millennia, and we know their terrible destiny. We want to learn the lesson from this, that waiting and yearning is not enough, and we will do otherwise: we will begin our work and fulfill the “request of each day”. This is an invitation to the ethics of age quod agis. Weber’s reading of this ancient text indicates awareness of the obsolete experience of the spirit of capitalism produced by ascetic Protestantism. The light cloak of  For a brief summary of my theories relating to this, see “L’Historisme en question. Annotazioni su un libro recente,” Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 2 (2014): 426 – 437.  See D. Conte’s insightful book, Storia universale e patologia dello spirito. Saggio su Croce (Bologna: Il mulino, 2005). I fully agree with the subtle arguments put forward in this work, as summarized in its title.

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“professional duty” woven by courageous Lutheran faith in grace, which acts “in our lives like the phantom […] of the religious faith of the past”, has been transformed into a “steel cage”. And: nobody yet knows who, in the future, will inhabit this cage and whether, at the end of this enormous development, there will be entirely new prophets or a powerful rebirth of antique principles and ideals, or – if neither of these occurs – a mechanised ossification, adorned with a sort of convulsive self-importance.⁷⁵

Today this is no longer a prophetic intuition but a lucid diagnosis of the nature of our present time, which shows that “on the paths taken by humanity” people will no longer be happy unless they can rediscover the certain faith taught by the Reformation. For now, unfortunately, not forgetting this faith, they must assume the condition of those who “before the tremendous solemnity of the mystery, which is all around, bow their heads, as one who writes and anxiously commends himself and his country to the unknown god”.⁷⁶

 Weber, Sociologia della Religione, edited by P. Rossi, vol. I, cit., p. 185. I take the liberty of referring here to Chapter 2, “Weber e lo Historismus”, in Tessitore, A partire da Dilthey, trittico anti-hegeliano: Weber, Meinecke, Rosenzweig (Rome, Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Scienze e lettere, 2013). Here I explain a theory not often put forward in secondary literature on Weber, except in a few, important cases, contingent either on a fortunate but mistaken sociological interpretation of Weber, or on equally mistaken historical and philosophical overviews, when Weber is inserted within “contemporary German historicism”.  This is the solemn and dramatic final sentence of G. Fortunato’s 1921 work, Dopo la Guerra dissolvitrice.

Gabriella Cotta

Luther and the Revolution of the Individual 1 Introduction The study of Luther is rife with challenges due to the versatility of his character and of the roles he took on. Theologian, preacher, philologist, translator, religious reformer: after his break with the Church of Rome, Luther dealt with a very wide range of issues – doctrinal, ecclesiastical and institutional, political and juridical – reforming over a thousand years of Catholic tradition in depth and almost always personally taking on the burden of new issues in order to solidly shape a budding Christian confession. His character is exceptional, even just by virtue of this effort; the scope of the work he carried out and the variety of subjects with which he dealt are both impressive. As has already been highlighted elsewhere, what sustained Luther in this herculean effort – preventing him, once overwhelmed by the complexity of the issues he had stirred, from coming back under the authority of the Catholic Church or from being remembered as a heretic incapable of any reconstructive work – was certainly his strong roots in the word of God, which he considered to be immediate and translucent, and in its expressive strength.¹ The exceptional nature of his case is such that many works on Luther show how challenging it is to suggest an interpretation of the man, his work, and his role that leads to unity, while scholars often insist on examining the events of his life, though already very well known, as the hermeneutic key to understanding the outcomes he prompted. This challenge is intensified by the fact that – as is the case with every exceptional character invested with the role of being an epochal hinge as well as a rift – Luther, while straddling two eras, still belonged to both. In order to overcome this challenge – which was often intensified by underlying passions, now assuaged by more serene approaches and more objective research² – I believe that, even if this approach seems paradoxical in the light of Luther’s strong opposition to philosophy, the reconstruction of the philosophical substratum that allowed Luther’s thinking to flourish is indeed a key element in approaching his character more coherently and without the risk of getting lost in the drastic contrasts that

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  Thomas Kaufmann, Lutero (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), 73; Eng. trans. A Short Life of Martin Luther (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2016). Cf. also Gerhard Ebeling, Luther: Einführung in sein Denken (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1964) and Paul Althaus, Die Theologie Martin Luthers (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1962).  Cf. Otto H. Pesch Martin Lutero. Introduzione storica e teologica (Brescia: Queriniana Editrice, 2007), 34 ff. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-053

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color it, particularly when it comes to the anthropological issues that are the subject of this study.³ This method may be deemed reductive when approaching a religious spirit of Luther’s caliber, whose very strong drive toward spiritual renewal is in clear opposition to the enormously theoretically complex structures used in metaphysical reasoning, the argumentations of which were publicly discussed in debates and disputations where philosophical reasoning was repeatedly blended with a theological approach. However, it is necessary to keep in mind that even the deep criticism to which these epistemic interconnections had been explicitly subjected from Duns Scotus onwards, with the aim of clearly distinguishing them, did not prevent repeated intersections between the two domains: their relationship had been too long, too close, and too engrossed with far-reaching issues to suddenly disappear without leaving any residue. Even Luther, who strongly opposed the bonds imposed on faith by metaphysical rationalism and sided with those who aimed to radically distinguish the tasks of theology from those of philosophy, still partook extensively in these discussions. It is precisely within this ongoing confrontation (whether explicit or hidden) with the problem of the relationship between philosophy and theology, taken from the already mature starting point of their irreversible crisis, that it is possible to understand Luther’s simultaneous belonging to the Middle Ages and the modern era. Luther imparted a decisive twist to this crisis and developed the argumentation of a break that, after him, would become definitive. However, a clearcut distinction between epistemic domains, destined from that moment onward to claim their reciprocal autonomy with ever-increasing intransigence, obviously could not have been accomplished without the full, knowing use of both fields. The very notion of freeing theology – and its language⁴ − from its liaisons dangereuses with philosophy could only be brought forward from the starting point of a fully philosophical assumption: thematizing the downsizing of reason to the mere domain of logic, as applied to the practical-empirical dimension. Unpacking this complex theoretical conjunction allows us to shed some light on the breadth of the revolution Luther brought forward, a revolution that was not only religious and theological, but indeed also philosophical and, even more importantly, anthropological. It was a revolution that indelibly marked the era of the commencement of modernity and became one of its most crucial junctures. Indeed, it is not by chance that, from Jacques Maritain to Hans Blumenberg, a link has often been observed between Luther and René Descartes, who are both considered fathers of modernity.

 Cf. Luther’s letter to Johann Braun in 1509, where he claims that he is well nisi violentum est studium, maxime philosophiae, quam ego ab initio libentissime mutarim theologia, an idea that he will often repeat. WA.B 1.5:17, 40 – 44. Cf. mostly the Heidelberg Disputation.  On this subject, apropos of the differences in the semantics used by Luther in philosophical and theological discourses, see Graham White, Luther as a Nominalist: A Study of the Logical Methods Used in Martin Luther’s Disputations in the Light of Their Medieval Background (Helsinki: Luther Agricola Society, 1994), especially paragraph 3.4 in chapter 3, “Luther’s Semantic Theory.”

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Blumenberg points out that Luther, in his Disputation against Scholastic Theology, had already done “with incomparable epigrammatic clarity” for theology what Descartes would later do for the philosophical foundation of the modern era. In fact, both moved from a perspective on the radicalization of the transcendent absolute in order to provide a framework for the creation of modern subjectivity.⁵ Blumenberg’s remark, which seemingly applies to epistemic domains that were already fully differentiated, is actually set against the “effects” of two revolutions, the Lutheran and the Cartesian, the preconditions of which were, in Luther’s case, still connected to the justification of a complete separation between theology and philosophy. It is clear, however, that a “revolution” like the one brought forward by Luther’s radical theological absolutism is such precisely because it carries in itself, whether fully developed or still in nuce, certain visions about the world, humankind, and human relationships and therefore is, in a word, also a philosophy. Indeed, as argued by Wolfhart Pannenberg, Luther’s case shows that it is impossible for any science to progress in its own specific acquisitions without taking into account the conditions of possibility for general knowledge, from which starting point it will later develop.⁶ However, if it is true that theology needs these analyses for its research on God in relationship with the world, the converse is also true: philosophical research – regardless of the conclusions to which it comes – cannot be exempt from examining the issue of transcendence and the divine, thus proving the necessity for spaces of dialogue between the two domains.

2 Education and Core Issues Further confirming the point just made, every biography of Luther points out the influence in his university education of the via nova or moderna, i. e., of nominalism, an approach that had been taking hold all over Europe.⁷ As noted by Blumenberg, in 1277 – three years after Thomas Aquinas’ death – the bishop of Paris had already con-

 Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 178.  Wolfhart Pannenberg, Teologia e filosofia. Il loro rapporto alla luce della storia comune (Brescia: Queriniana Editrice, 1999), 13.  Luther was also deeply influenced by the devotio moderna, which was intertwined with his adherence to the via moderna. On the subject of Luther’s relationship with nominalism, Iserloh suggests that Luther – having studied at the University of Erfurt, which was dominated by the via moderna – specifically chose St. Augustine’s monastery when the time to don the habit came “in order to be able to continue his studies without changing scholastic orientation.” See Erwin Iserloh, Lutero e la Riforma. Contributi a una comprensione ecumenica (Brescia: Queriniana Editrice, 1977), 42. On the subject of the relationship between the via antiqua and the via moderna and their respective coalitions, cf. Alessandro Ghisalberti, “Dalla via moderna alla via antiqua,” in. Lutero e i linguaggi dell’Occidente: Atti del convegno (Trento, 29 – 31 maggio 2000), eds. Giuseppe Beschin, Fabrizio Cambi, and Luca Cristellon (Brescia: Queriniana Editirice, 2002), 57– 71.

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demned Thomas’ proposition regarding the uniqueness of the world, which the latter had derived from Aristotle, as an undue limitation on God’s omnipotence.⁸ This marked a clear turning point, which can be linked back to Scotus, toward the rejection of the typically philosophical theme of “legibility” in the order of creation. Thus the issue of divine freedom was radicalized, as it was no longer linked to “one” world, the sense and purpose of which was comprehensible, however partially and indirectly. Moreover, the century-old issue of universals was obscured, and the theme of singularity was moved to the foreground.⁹ Blumenberg correctly interprets this event, which was only seemingly confined to an academic debate, as a crucial turning point in the medieval speculative horizon, which was from then onward increasingly inspired by theological absolutism and by the theorizing of God’s distance and freedom, which are indeed absolute. Luther’s education took place within this framework – the main reference points of which, apart from William of Ockham, were for Luther Pierre d’Ailly and Gabriel Biel – and within the devotio moderna. ¹⁰ Luther’s violent rejection of philosophy, therefore, cannot be understood outside of the philosophical and theological debate that gave him the conceptual tools to achieve it. This rejection, however, did not prevent his thinking from being deeply influenced in this area, and his affiliation with the via moderna did not make him a mere end-user of other thinkers’ theories. On the contrary, it was precisely these theories that were greatly changed by his contribution.¹¹ Luther was indeed very crit-

 This problem conceals an extremely important issue regarding the possibility of approaching nature rationally, i. e., reading in it the most general sense of the governing criteria imposed on it by God by virtue of the ontological participation of all creatures in the order of the creation. This issue derives, in its general configuration, from classical thought. Since Plato, in fact, classical thought has searched for comprehension of the being and its internal reason by directing itself toward research into the consonant rationality of existence and, therefore, its internal truth. In the Christian era, not only was there a search for a trace of this rationality in creation – and in man, who was at its center –, but participation in the good of all that exists was also theorized as a sign of the filial relationship of every entity to the Supreme Good. The theorization of the uniqueness of the world is strictly linked to this approach, while the different interpretations – from Giordano Bruno to Leibniz – regarding the idea that God instead created “infinite worlds” move toward an increasingly radical thematization of a God who creates simply by an act of will and thus fall in line with the first clear expression of this notion as conveyed by Scotus: quare voluntas voluit hoc, nulla est causa, nisi quia voluntas est voluntas (Duns Scotus, Opus Oxoniense, I, pars I, dist. 8, q. 5, art. 3, n. 24).  Blumenberg, The Legitimacy, 160 – 161.  Kaufmann points out that Luther’s ambivalent assessment of his self, his role, and his nature, ranging from “doctor above all doctors in the entire papacy” to “stinking sack of worms,” (WA 30.2:636, 2 f. and WA 8:685, 6 ff, respectively) is meaningfully influenced by the spirit of the devotio moderna and by works such as Imitatio Christi. Even when Luther’s self-assessment appears to be a less than agreeable form of self-exaltation, this must also be read as a sign of his certainty that Christ speaks through his mouth, in a form of true Christförmigen Lehr. See Kaufmann, Lutero, 21– 22. Cf. also the letter to Staupitz, dated February 20, 1519, in which Luther highlights his own dispossession and the action of God in him (WA.B 1.152:343). Cf. also Pesch, Martin Lutero, 92– 93.  Apropos of this and of the wide use of logic in Luther, cf. White, Luther, in its entire analysis and, in synthesis, in the Introduction, particularly from p. 81 onward.

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ical of some of the classical propositions of this philosophical “via,” as shown by the above-mentioned Disputation against Scholastic Theology of 1517, where he challenged central theses in Biel and Ockham. A year later, in his Heidelberg Disputation, he strongly attacked the “theologians of glory,” i. e., mainly Thomas Aquinas and the Aristotelian line. In these criticisms, philosophical themes are closely intertwined with the theological innovations Luther was developing, in a blending of argumentations that nonetheless allows us a glimpse of their clear speculative foundations.¹² The cultural substratum on which Luther fed during his educational journey was still strongly influenced by Scotus’ thinking, which had been spread extensively throughout Europe by Franciscanism and played a fundamental role in the upheaval that would shortly be brought forward by nominalism. Scotus had thematized the impossibility – which, after him, became more and more radical – of a metaphysical knowledge of God and the understanding of being, which is common to both the finite and the infinite, only from the perspective of the univocity of the entity. This understanding, however, is neither distinct nor determined, as the being is indeed the absolutely determinable. In short, according to Scotus, metaphysical reason can deal with God only as an infinite entity, leaving aside the issue of his essence. On the other hand, Scotus put so much emphasis on the voluntary and deliberate element of the act of creation, which is the fruit of the charitable effusion of the necessary Absolute, that he clearly distinguished creation by putting it under the order of contingency, which is subjected to a relationship of direct and absolute dependency on God.¹³ Moreover, it is necessary to point out that the drastic downsizing of the expertise of philosophical reason, as theorized by Scotus, was rooted in the certainty of the gravity of humankind’s fall and the resulting profound change in humanity’s cognitive faculties. This alteration was such that it prevented humankind from having a “distinct” knowledge of being and only allowed an “abstractive” knowledge, built on the basis of what is perceptible and bound to the corporeal dimension.¹⁴ According to Scotus, it was therefore revelation that made up for the vagueness of the metaphysical context, in which the possibility of understanding God either directly or indirectly through the principles of natural law was obviously denied, with the exception of the irrepressible principle of the effusive gratuity of God’s love as the internal principle of creation. When it comes to the contingent, however, Scotus believed that the privileged exercise of philosophical reason moved from the perspective of the being to the sphere of singularity in an essentialist sense. What was taking shape was the demolition of that very long line of thought that, from Pla-

 Cf. Ebeling, Luther, 90 ff.; Bernhard Lohse, Ratio und fides. Eine Untersuchung über die ratio in der Theologie Luthers, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1958), 77 ff.  Cf. Olivier Boulnois, Duns Scoto. Il rigore della carità (Milano: Jaca Book, 1999), 99.  Cf. Etienne Gilson, Giovanni Duns Scoto. Introduzione alle sue posizioni fondamentali. Con un saggio introduttivo di Costante Marabelli (Milano: Jaca Book, 2008), 64 ff. See also my concise analysis on the subject: “Individuo ed esperienza, libertà e male da Duns Scoto a Lutero,” Filosofia politica 1 (2010): 87– 110.

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to’s metaphysics onward, had tried, with the help of philosophical reason, to find a way to understand existence in its link to the perspective of the being/Being, hypothesizing the latter as being legible – more or less partially and/or indirectly – in the articulation of its internal structure, which is oriented toward and culminates in the Good. It is clear that – once the capacity of the being to offer any knowledge of God in the order and purpose of existence was drastically weakened, and once the entities, according to Scotus’ suggestion, were interpreted within the framework of an “individualized essentialism” in which “every essence exudes, so to speak, its own existence”¹⁵ – the relationship between being and entities, i. e., their ontological relationality, was also bound to become hollow. Another decisive turning point in this direction came from nominalism and its assertion – much more radical than Scotus’ – regarding the possibility of knowing “only” the singular “concrete” particular, which affirms singularity and the “name” periodically attributed to it as the only reality. There could not be a more drastic claim heralding the obsolescence of metaphysics, the “science of the being as being.” Vignaux draws the conclusions of this speculative metamorphosis, observing that, with nominalism, any possibility of “ontological” relationship is extinguished and a new framework of “juxtapositions” – i. e., of placing singularities next to one other – is inaugurated, hollowing out the characteristic issues of classical metaphysics, ranging from the problem of universals to the question of participation and its possible modes.¹⁶ A scenario in which only singularities are hypothesized as existing and knowable assumes that each is traced back only to itself, while the relationship to God is radically changed and becomes vertical and completely dependent on the absoluteness of his will. This speculative revolution, which was increasingly taking hold in European universities, is the inescapable horizon for understanding Luther and assessing the contribution he made in this context, always keeping in mind, however, his tireless and constant study of Scripture, the influence of Paul and Augustine, the impact of the historical context, the situation of degradation experienced by the Church, and the events of his personal life. The theological absolutism that, from Scotus onwards, was progressively taking hold – which was a much more determining factor than the contribution of a strict upbringing or the superstitious atmosphere of Luther’s first education, two elements that are too often cited as crucial to his biography – lent theoretical solidity to Luther’s anthropology and transformed it into a lasting and extremely influential paradigm. The issues summarized here represent Luther’s conceptual grid and clarify the complex relationship between philosophy and theology, reason and faith, the issue of God and the means of understanding the interactions between God and human beings, human beings with one another, and human beings and nature. Lu-

 Cf. Etienne Gilson, L’essere e l’essenza (Milano: Jaca Book, 2007), 120 – 22 ff.  Cf. Paul Vignaux, “Nominalisme,” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique (Paris, 1931), 2,1:717– 84.

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ther’s religious and spiritual inspiration, the strength of his faith, and his reformative sensibility do not erase these elements from his philosophical education. This is true to the point that their traces can be seen everywhere, and his theology is inconceivable without them. Moreover, the journey of the modern subject in its double manifestation starts from this point: the first manifestation focuses on the ontological constitution of the desiring will that, from Luther onward, goes as far as Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche; the second focuses on the rationalistic priority of Descartes’ epistemically self-constitutive cogito that, by placing the subject “I” in an ontologically central position, deeply impacted the history of speculative thinking up until Hegel.¹⁷ However, this second manifestation would not be possible without Luther’s revolution, and post-modern critics oppose the hypostatization of this twoheaded subject, demonstrating the lasting influence of the foundations once laid by Luther.

3 Theoretical Issues in Luther’s Thinking As mentioned above, Luther carries out the important task of “improvement” with regard to some of the key themes of nominalism. Luther’s innovation, in fact, critically rewrites the relationship between humankind and God by bringing up, in much more meaningful terms, the notion of will – not just divine, but also human. It drastically reduces the role of reason in divine matters and condemns it in toto, while exalting it in human matters, and, more generally, it profoundly resignifies the relationship between humankind and the world. The anthropology thus outlined takes substance mostly by overcoming some notions deriving from nominalism – particularly from Biel, an author with whom Luther was very familiar – on an issue concerning the will.¹⁸ that creates the conditions for the epochal passage “from the metaphysics of the being to the metaphysics of the will.”¹⁹ Biel, in fact, believed in the residual possibility that humankind could love God ex puris naturalibus, with a theoretically “positive” movement of the will capable of “potentially” keeping open a link between the human being and God. According to Biel, this “potential” capacity did not limit the “absolute” power of God, to whom was attributed a final and unfathomable decision on whether to accept a similar correct disposition in humankind. Luther, completely rejecting this residual, “natural” capacity on humankind’s part, strongly opposes this notion, and it is this on which his break from nominalism is based. This is already clear in his Disputation

 Cf. Roberto Perini, “Descartes, l’uomo tra finito e infinito,” Cosmopolis 2 (2015), accessed November 10, 2016, http://www.cosmopolis.globalist.it/Detail_News_Display?ID=90659&typeb=3&des cartes-l-uomo-tra-finito-e-infinito.  On the issue of Luther’s break from nominalism and particularly from Biel “on this critical issue,” cf. Giovanni Miegge, Lutero giovane (Milano: Feltrinelli economica, 1977), 85 ff.  Miegge, Lutero, 109 – 10.

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against Scholastic Theology, where the dramatic pessimism typical of Luther’s anthropology emerges as his fundamental legacy in the shaping of the modern idea of the individual.²⁰ Wholly unable to look for and love God “outside of the divine grace,” Luther’s man, an “individual singularity” according to the nominalist model, is now understood as completely self-centered, turned only towards himself and the objects of his concupiscence; paradoxically, it is here – in a scenario that, according to Luther, indicated the absolute dependence of the creature on the creator – that the modern trajectory of humankind’s autonomy from God begins. Luther’s anthropology is focused on a will interpreted for the first time as an original ontological drive, in a foreshadowing of many future reflections that hinge, from Hobbes onwards, on the theme of the constitutivity of the conatus. After all, the theme of the negative power of human will is already clearly outlined, even before the above-mentioned Disputation, in Luther’s Lecture on Romans, in which Luther has not yet reached the maturity of the anthropological vision we find in De Servo arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will).²¹ In the Lecture on Romans, there is also another theme that is key to understanding the new outline of humankind in relationship with nature. Luther, in fact, highlights humankind’s capacity to invest “non sense” in creation by considering all created things as pure “objects of fulfillment” of human desire and, therefore, making them senseless, perverse, and harmful: “Thus act all those who do not love God with an absolute purity and do not burn with thirst for him: and this is a trait of every man who was born from Adam and does not live animated by the Holy Spirit. This is why God universally says that (Psalm) ‘They have together become worthless’ and useless.”²² This reveals an epochal overturning of the metaphysical mindset and its constant attempt to find the internal finalism of the order of being and existing. The definitive closure of humankind toward God, carried out by Luther – after nominalism had already made the being “inexpressible” and, therefore, obscured the human on-

 WA 1:224 and 228, cf. particularly articles 4– 6 and 13.  The theme of humankind’s wickedness is clarified conclusively in The Bondage of the Will and afterwards is reiterated again and again, to the point that it represents a key element in Luther’s thinking. For example, Althaus mentions the Rationis Latomianae confutatio from 1521, where Luther claims that, in order to glorify Christ, it is necessary to recognize the sins of man without any “Ermässigung” (Die Theologie, 129), then urging: “Tu ergo cave illos pestilentissimos (the languid and cold sophists of good deeds) et disce opera dei magna, mirifica et gloriosa esse, ideo scias tete non posse hoc peccatum satis exaggerare” (WA 8:115, 2). Above all, Althaus points out how the real root (Wurzelgrund) of sin is “die Eigenliebe als Anfang aller Sünde” (Die Theologie, 131). Cf. also the propositions in WA 1:222 ff., where Luther reiterates that man “arbor mala factus non potest nisi malum velle et facere” (art. 4), while in the following article he condemns the common saying according to which “appetitus liber potest in utrunque oppositorum, immo non liber sed captivus est” (art. 5).  WA 56:373, 10 – 14.

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tological-relational participation in the Good –, offers a worldly horizon paradoxically dominated by humankind and the negative power of their concupiscence.²³ How meaningful this revolution is becomes clear when set against the shift away from Augustine’s teaching on the analysis of the relationship between humankind and creation, interpreted by Augustine as an inversion – in sin – of the object of enjoyment, which is moved from its natural aim – i. e., God – to what was created, which is nonetheless good.²⁴ Luther, although preserving the principle according to which “things are good in themselves, and whoever recognizes God also knows the things for what they are worth,”²⁵ emphasizes instead, referring to the verses in Ecclesiastes, the general mantle of senselessness with which human concupiscence covers goodness and the sense of existing. The consequences of these assertions would be drawn later, in Luther’s political writings, when, with brutal clarity, he would speak of “the earth made similar to a desert” by the “natural” wickedness of human beings and their desires, foreshadowing a perspective of actual de-creation.²⁶ Augustine’s assertion regarding “the goodness of all things created,” although formally shared, becomes completely hollow, and human beings – whose ontological participation in the Good had always been clearly stated by Augustine, despite his own clear pessimism on the subject – are the cause.²⁷ In the Lecture on Romans, human beings “born from Adam” and not sanctified by the grace of God through the merits of Jesus Christ are considered with radical negativity as “worthless,” both prey to and cause of the non-sense of the “vanity of vanities” (vanitas vanitatum).²⁸ This statement goes far beyond a general pessimism about human nature –

 It is necessary to clarify that here Luther still has not reached his definitive formulations about the nature of man, which will later become wholly negative. In the Lecture on Romans, in fact, there is still hope for change “when the wicked will be condemned and removed […] a liberation that today already happens every day in the saints.” However, shortly before this, he had spoken of “every man” and declared the worthlessness and emptiness of “everyone”; see WA 56:373, 24– 25  “We have wandered far from God; and if we wish to return to our Father’s home, this world must be used, not enjoyed, that so the invisible things of God may be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, – that is, that by means of what is material and temporary we may lay hold upon that which is spiritual and eternal. The true objects of enjoyment, then, are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are at the same time the Trinity, one Being, supreme above all, and common to all who enjoy Him, if He is an object, and not rather the cause of all objects, or indeed even if He is the cause of all.” Augustine, De doctrina christiana libri quatuor 1.4– 5, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. J.F. Shaw (Buffalo: The Christian Literature Company, 1887), 2:523 – 24.  WA 56:373, 17– 19. Cf. here an echo from Augustine: “Quia res in se sunt bone, Et qui Deum cognoscunt, ipsi etiam res non vane, Sed vere cognoscunt, Vtentes eis, non autem fruentes.” Augustine, De doctrina christiana libri quatuor 1.4– 5.  WA 11:251, 14– 15.  Augustine, De natura boni 1.15 – 17. To trace this trajectory, cf. my essay “Individuo ed esperienza.”  By quoting Psalm 38, Luther put man completely under the sign of vanitas: “Veruntamen Vniuersa vanitas omnis homo viuens” (WA 56:372, 30). Therefore, through the action of the old man “the

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whether of an Augustinian or a nominalist kind – and cannot be read merely from a moral point of view.²⁹ Rather, it shows wholly original traits in its description of human beings as surrendered to “interior death” of or by their own concupiscent will, which becomes the ontological trait constitutive of a self-referential individualism that takes the place of the previous structural relationality. In fact, this “death” marks “all men in the same way,” forging the particular and individual destiny of each, and characterizes them so crucially that it puts “the entire creation,” which has symbolically entered into a new era, under the sign of human beings and their desire. Thus we have outlined two themes of Luther’s anthropology. The full development of these themes would take place in The Bondage of the Will, which Luther believed to be one of the most faithful manifestos of his thought.³⁰ The first of these themes concerns the constitutive power of human desire, the original “fomes” potentially extended to each and every object in a universal demand³¹ that makes it the fulcrum of an ontology which can be defined as essentialist³² (following in Scotus’ footsteps and foreshadowing Suárez) and expressed individualistically, both because of its nominalist roots and because nothing more than desire defines the “individual,” expresses its impulses, moves through its conscience, and activates its dynamics. The second theme, which is directly linked to the first, deals with the idea that the “whole” of creation has lost all teleology, not only because of the unintelligibility attributed to it by nominalist logic “per se,” but, even more importantly, because of humankind. Thus a very important issue takes shape, one which will be explained more clearly in Luther’s considerations on the “kingdom of flesh” and the impor-

things that are created subject themselves to a similar deprivation of meaning or perverse enjoyment […] because of man all creatures lose sense,” Lutero, Römervorlesung, 115; cf. WA 56:373.  This is rather a theological-philosophical statement, since every theology is also philosophy, just as philosophy is, more often than is accepted, deeply permeated with theological elements that are adopted, transformed via secularization, or reacted against. On this subject, cf. Enrico De Negri, “Introduzione. Teologia e storicismo,” in G.W.F. Hegel, I principi di Hegel. Frammenti giovanili, scritti del periodo jenense, Prefazione alla Fenomenologia, ed. Enrico De Negri (Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1984), XXII ff. Also by De Negri, cf. La teologia di Lutero: rivelazione e dialettica (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1967); cf. also Blumenberg, The Legitimacy.  On this subject, see my work La nascita dell’individualismo politico. Lutero e le politica della modernità (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), especially chapters 2 and 3.  On the issue of the relationship between will and ‘fomes’, cf. the important contributions by Miegge, Lutero, 126 – 28. On the subject of desire and its difference from will, Thomas Hobbes makes very clear statements in Leviathan 1:6. For a close examination of the same issue, cf. also the analysis by Carmelo Vigna, Etica del desiderio come etica del riconoscimento (Napoli-Salerno: Orthotes Editrice, 2015), 1:65 ff.  From this perspective, Luther is indebted both to Scotus and to nominalism when he acknowledges, correctly, that the latter is the thinker of the primacy of essence on existence (cf. Gilson, L’essere, 120 ff.) and a precursor to Suárez in the immediate link between essence and existence. However, it should also not be overlooked that Luther draws the anti-teleologism that permeates this entire discussion from nominalism.

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tance assumed by reason – now defined as “God’s most useful gift” – in directing politics and using the law to keep, through strength and cunning, that very peace that human nature makes impossible, thus transforming nature and its order into a human “product.” In the Lecture on Romans, in fact, creation is put under the domain of the human being, who, throwing into disorder its internal architecture in the projection of human desire, starts to consider it as “matter at his disposal” and therefore introduces the instrumental relationship with nature that characterizes the modern era. This quick overview highlights the apex of the theoretical trajectory of theological absolutism and its emphasis on the freedom and gratuity of God’s love. Thus the unavoidable outcome of the non-legibility of the world was reached, forever changing the relationship between humankind and nature, and the latter was transformed from the custodian of the “truth of the things” and their relationships, able to elicit the “astonishment of reason” that is at the source of philosophical speculation, into completely exploitable matter. The disarticulation of nature into singular concrete objects, carried out by nominalism, paved the way for a mathematizing observation of nature and introduced the spirit of modern science, which was nevertheless for some time still linked to the search for eternal truths by many of its protagonists. As has already been pointed out, human beings’ way of relating to nature had moved from the cognitive search of the being-with – in which all creatures saw themselves as reciprocally connected in a relationship of hierarchy and sense, at the apex of which was God, the ultimate goal of creation – to a logic of nature’s “machinification,” or even “thingification.”³³ However, it is with Luther that this trajectory presents its ultimate consequences in the crucial passage³⁴ on an earth “made similar to a desert,” completely materialized and subjugated to the logic of a desire of pure and rapacious spoliation. The perspectives Luther opened up outline a world that has become entirely an “object” and is subjugated, in the order of the flesh, to instrumental reason, the only guide for a “concupiscent” humankind, devoid of any teleologically oriented reason.

 Cf. Robert Spaemann, Fini naturali. Storia e riscoperta del pensiero teleologico (Milano: Editioni Ares, 2012), 140 ff. On this subject, compare what the author observes regarding the outcomes of the fading of finalism and the resulting affirmation of instrumental reason and the logic of supremacy. Characteristic of this approach is the interpretation of nature as “mechanism.”  “But God would be wanting in wisdom, if He should reveal righteousness unto men, when they either knew it already or had ‘some seeds’ of it themselves. Since, however, He is not wanting in wisdom, and yet reveals unto men the righteousness of salvation, it is manifest, that ‘Free-will’ even in the most exalted of men, not only has wrought, and can work no righteousness, but does not even know what is righteous before God… Wherefore Paul, comprehending, in this passage, all men together in one mass, concludes that they are all ungodly, unrighteous, and ignorant of the righteousness of faith: so far is it from possibility, that they can will or do any thing good. And this conclusion is moreover confirmed from this:—that God reveals the righteousness of faith to them, as being ignorant and sitting in darkness: therefore, of themselves, they know it not”; see WA 18:758, 23 – 33.

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4 The Oppositive Dialectic Highlighting Luther’s anthropological pessimism is not in itself sufficient to explain the fundamental transformations he introduced: at the same time, it is necessary to take into account his “reading” of God and the correlation, through “contraposition,” between humankind and the mystery of God – the question of his merciful goodness and the enigma of his completely different reason. In other words, it is necessary to attempt to explain Luther’s theorization of alterity/specularity between God and humankind, highlighting its “progress” beyond the theological absolutism of nominalism.³⁵ This is important not only because of its consequences, but also because it clearly shows Luther’s theoretical approach. In the above-mentioned Lecture on Romans – about which so much has been written in order to ascertain whether it still belongs to Catholic orthodoxy or already aligns with reformed positions – the oppositive “dialectic” that characterizes Luther’s thinking unfolds in all of its dramatic strength, clarifying its contraposition to the theologians of the via antiqua. The framework of Luther’s thinking and its real methodological constant is, in fact, a progress through contradictions, as opposed – as Gerhard Ebeling points out – to the method of coordination and correspondence used by the “theologians of glory,” according to the definition given in the Heidelberg Disputation. ³⁶ The clear condemnation of human will brought forward by Luther (theses 13 and 14), for example, is based precisely on the opposition between the works of God and those of humankind (theses 1, 3, and 4) and articulates their irreconcilable contradiction. It is in the Lecture on Romans, however, that we find a particularly strong oppositive description of God and humankind, clearly introducing this way of thinking: And thus, just as the wisdom of God is hidden under the appearance of stupidity and the truth under the form of lying – for so the Word of God, as often as it comes, comes in a form contrary to our own thinking and our certainty of being in the truth; therefore we judge false a word that contradicts us, and Christ himself called his word “our enemy,” in Matthew 5 […] – so also the will of God, although it is truly and naturally “good and acceptable and perfect,” yet it is so hidden under the disguise of the evil, the displeasing, and the hopeless, that to our will and good intention, so to speak, it seems to be nothing but a most evil and most hopeless thing, and in no way the will of God, but rather the will of the devil, unless man, once putting aside his will and

 It is important to clarify the difference between the analysis I am attempting here and that of the critics who tackle Luther with the goal of identifying his contradictions. Doing the latter means, I believe, choosing a path to a complete misunderstanding of Luther’s thinking, which is entirely based on his declared “contraposition” between God and humankind, the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit, heaven and earth, etc. I will instead try to interpret the meaning and consequences of the methodology of contraposition, which in no way means contradiction.  Ebeling, Luther, 261; cf. also De Negri, La teologia, 292 ff, 297.

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his good intentions, submits to it, rejecting completely the image that he had of justice, goodness, and truth.³⁷

Here it is possible to see two very important sides of Luther’s idea of God, both closely interconnected, of which the second is linked to the first: God’s alterity – his being Deus alienus, only visible sub contraria specie ³⁸ – and his unknowability. These are both driving forces in Luther’s oppositive dialectic, which is visible in the relationship between God and humankind and represents the basis of his anthropological innovation. The continuously restated oppositivity and unknowability of God, which is clear in the passage quoted above, are also evident – in contradiction to the core principle of Luther’s religiosity, i. e., his sola Scriptura, the womb of faith that truly represents the strength of his endeavor – in the simultaneous principle of the obscurity of the Scriptures. These – although declared by Luther, in disagreement with Erasmus, to be immediately understandable, in contrast to any symbolic interpretation – are actually such only “externally,” in their linguistic and discursive form.³⁹ Instead, when it comes to internal comprehension, i. e., the comprehension of the heart, “no man can even glimpse at an iota of the Scriptures, unless he possesses the Spirit of God.”⁴⁰ Here too it is possible to see the principle of “contradiction” in action, a principle that is particularly explicit in the theorized impenetrability of the mystery of God’s will, as described by Luther: We know well enough that God does not love or hate as we do; because we love and hate mutably, but He loves and hates from an eternal and immutable nature; and hence it is that accidents and passions do not pertain to Him […] And it is this very state of the truth that of necessity proves “Free-will” to be nothing at all; seeing that the love and hatred of God toward men is immutable and eternal; existing, not only before there was any merit or work of “Free-will,” but before the worlds were made; and that all things take place in us of necessity, accordingly as He loved or loved not from all eternity. So that, not the love of God only, but even the manner of His love imposes on us necessity.⁴¹

According to Luther, as we can see from these assertions, God’s alterity is first and foremost outlined in the radical diversity of his essence and later expressed in his complete unknowability, which is emphasized beyond measure by the method of contraposition.⁴² However, the fulcrum of this opposition is exemplified in the rela-

 WA 56:446, 31– 34, and 447, 1– 9, trans. as Martin Lutero, Lezioni sulla lettera, 2:201– 02.  Cf. Luther’s many assertions on the unknowability and alterity of God: WA 31.2:364; WA 44:429; WA 1:362– 63.  WA 18:609, 5 – 14, trans. as Lutero, Il servo arbitrio, 86 – 87.  WA 18:609, 6 – 7.  WA 18:724, 32– 36; 725,1– 4.  WA 56.1:272, trans. as Lutero, Lezioni sulla lettera, 1:202– 03. On the previous page, Luther describes what he means when he speaks of a sin by which humankind is always marked, even the “one-day-old” child: “not […] the sins committed in acting, […] but […] the fomes of sin […] Since the actual sin […] is the work and the fruit of sin; but sin is then that very same passion, that

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tionship between the two natures – divine and human – to which Christ lends complete concreteness on the cross. As Walther von Löwenich pointed out, the theologia crucis becomes the exact reversal of the theology of “glory” and represents the true access point to the “knowledge” of God. Already in the Heidelberg Disputation, this knowledge was based on the contemplation of the posteriora Dei – i. e., his reversal, his antithesis;⁴³ now this idea is clarified as the vision, on the cross, of the “Perfect Sinner” – i. e., of Christ himself, who, having accepted “all” possible sins, takes on the semblance of the sinner. As von Löwenich remarks, in the cross it is indeed possible to understand our inability to see anything at all in God – in the divine nature of Christ – while at the same time being shown the “perfection” of sin, i. e., the very paradigm of humankind.⁴⁴ On the cross, at a pivotal moment of the incarnation, it is possible to understand the sense of the oppositive dialectic of contradictions devised by Luther as an alternative to the participative dialectic typical of the metaphysical mindset. The violent collision, exemplified by Christ at the moment of his death, between his human nature as the “perfect sinner” and the perfection of his divine nature achieves a complete disintegration of sin, applying divine merits to humankind. This can be declared simul iustus et peccator, in the clear awareness that justice, which completely superimposes human nature, belongs exclusively to God.⁴⁵ This new form of non-participative and non-relational “dialectic” brings forward a way of thinking marked by discontinuity, by an increasingly impulsive voluntarism, and by the supremacy of the existential over the rational. The ramifications of this new way of thinking would extend far beyond Luther, influencing the work of philosophers and theologians such as Søren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, and are clearly present to some extent in Thomas Hobbes and, more generally, in contractualist thinkers, in Blaise Pascal, and in David Hume.⁴⁶ The extent to which this structure “through opposition” in Luther’s thinking – and that of his successors, above all Barth – can be defined as “dialectic,” and whether and how the moment of media-

fomes, that concupiscence, that inclination that brings us to evil and resists good […] just like our justice, which comes from God, is the very same inclination, given to us interiorly from the grace, to do good and avoid evil, sin is the same as keeping away from good and going towards evil, and in turn the works of sin are the fruit of this sin,” (my emphasis; WA 56.1:271). Here too it is possible to see in action the method of contraposition: justice and grace come from God, while humankind is marked indelibly by the “fomes” of sin, which not even baptism can erase; it is a passion cooriginal to man that drives him irresistibly to “covet” the things that have been created.  Cf. WA 1.20:362, 1– 5. For a more in-depth analysis on this subject, see Cotta, La nascita, 32 ff.  Walther von Löwenich, Theologia crucis. Visione teologica di Lutero in prospettiva ecumenica (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1975), 37 ff.  WA 56.1:70 and 272, trans. as Lutero, Lezioni sulla lettera, 74, and especially 203; WA 40.2:332, 19 – 29, where Luther comments on David’s simultaneous repentance when faced with the irreparability of his sin and his faith in God’s mercy; cf. De Negri, La teologia, 64 ff.  It is worth mentioning Kierkegaard’s idea of the “leap of faith,” carried out by the knight of faith, which shows the impossibility of rational mediation between humankind and God and, according to Barth, the continuous intertwining of the negativity of humankind with the total alterity of God.

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tion survives within it, are very important themes (although they can only be mentioned here in passing), both for a correct understanding of Luther and in assessing the impact of his influence, even long after his time.⁴⁷

5 Relation and Opposition The oppositive contrast between God and humankind, as sketched by Luther in the Lecture on Romans and reiterated again and again from the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518 to The Bondage of the Will and in many other situations,⁴⁸ takes on a singular connotation when considered in comparison to the participative dialectic of Augustine, the author who was nevertheless one of Luther’s key references. Augustine’s dialectic is articulated from the starting point of the confirmed belonging of humankind to creation, which is modeled as ordo amoris; this belonging is the ontological foundation of everything that has been created and, for man, also represents his gnosiological basis. Man, in fact, even before having complete knowledge of himself, can find traces within himself of the knowledge of God in the creating word and, only afterwards, of himself “in his own difference.”⁴⁹ This passage is particularly important, as the perception of the self in Augustine clearly reveals the ontological link, in the word, of humankind to God and to good: a complete alterity would, in fact, prevent even the perception of that which is “totally other” from the self. Here Augustine clearly links the ontological, the gnosiological, and the axiological. According to Augustine, this first form of knowledge “may” activate the process of comprehension of the self, in the progressive acquisition of the interior shape of the spiritual being, if humankind responds successfully to the continuous solicitation of the word: creation is, in this sense, not linear but continuous, and susceptible to developments and regressions.⁵⁰ This process unfolds in the continuous and variable awareness, on man’s part, of his own ontological relation – “in difference” and in participation – to that love that originated everything that exists and to the Word of which he carries an indelible trace. Moreover, according to Augustine, existence is the concretely visible sign of the ontological relationship of every creature to love. This makes clear the disposition of every created entity, especially hu-

 Cf., for example, De Negri, La teologia. It is not by chance that the same issue has been raised again in connection to Barth, whose thinking has been defined – not undisputedly – as “dialectic theology.” See Giovanni Miegge’s Introduzione to Karl Barth, L’Epistola ai Romani, ed. Giovanni Miegge (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1962), xxiii.  Cf. also, for example, WA 5:63, 29 – 64, 4.  Cf. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 4.32.50, in Giuseppe Beschin, Città Nuova (Roma, 1973), 47 ff., my emphasis. Cf. also Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 3:20, 31– 32. For a reconstruction of these passages in Augustine, see Beschin’s work on the pages already quoted above.  Cf. Beschin, Città Nuova, 47.

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mankind, toward good, although humanity has dramatically fallen.⁵¹ Even prior to this, the creative action of the word is the expression of the dialectic of participation and difference existing between the persons of the Trinity: therefore, clearly every creature understands the creator “before” understanding itself, with this “before” being meant as ontological as well as chronological.⁵² According to Augustine, only through the generative articulation of love, of which everything is the fruit, can man comprehend and understand himself; this is possible, fleetingly and uncertainly, even when the conditions for such comprehension seem to be completely obscured, as is the case of the atheist. Therefore, love “is” the truth and the being from which everything that exists – even if radically different in its imperfection – comes alive. Therefore, in Augustine, the dialectic progresses platonically through and “thanks to” difference – ex nihilo, which is the very condition of creaturehood – but “through connections”, i. e., through the relationship to being in existence, and not “through contrapositions.” It is these connections, in fact, that allow the legibility of creation in its internal structure, revealing the “sense” – i. e., love – that pervades it and that appears in humankind as an indelible likeness, although irrecoverably disfigured. According to Augustine, specularity between God and humankind is therefore unthinkable, because it would make the creature coincide with that nihil that is the only “absolute” difference from God. Man’s capacity for articulating true discourse with words also reveals his original link to the truth/word: in De Trinitate, Augustine declares that, even before pronouncing words and discourses, man articulates them in his own mind outside of any language, and that the human word, when it takes on an explicit form, has a “certain” similarity to the divine one, the “sign of the word that gives light inwardly” and resonates in his conscience.⁵³ Here too difference is the necessary medium, simultaneously open to the truth and rooted in the ontological shortcoming that marks the state of creaturehood, and this ontological and dialectic juncture does not invalidate the absoluteness of God’s freedom at all. In fact, as pointed out by Werner Beierwaltes, the difference – which is the creation, the temporality – only proceeds absolutely freely from another difference: from the “beginning without time, which is word without time,” quia voluit, for which, then, the “passage […] is carried out rather in a leap, without mediation. The creative procession of the entity  In Civitas Dei, Augustine demonstrates the insuppressible permanence of the tendency towards good even within a reality radically distorted from true finalism, i. e., the political reality exemplified by republican Rome. Cf. Augustine, Civitas Dei 2.21.1– 4; 19.24.26; and his analysis of the giant Cacus in Civitas Dei, 19.12.2.  As Augustine writes: “certainly it is a reasonable studiousness, and not presumptuous intrusion, to inquire whether the same Trinity be not hinted at in an enigmatical mode of speech, by which our inquiry is stimulated.” Cf. Augustine, Civitas Dei 11.24, in A Select Library, trans. Marcus Dods, 2:219; see also De Trinitate 9.  Augustine, De Trinitate 15.11.20, in A Select Library, trans. by A.W. Haddan, 3:209. On this subject, cf. the important reflections by Werner Beierwaltes, Identità e differenza (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1989), 115 – 16.

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from the creator is in itself atemporal, absolutely free and spontaneous, since it is an act determined by nothing but its own self- origination.”⁵⁴ This schematic reconstruction shows the wide distance between the two approaches. In Augustine, diversity is a structural element in the relationship of participation between creation/creature and creator, since, while carrying in itself the distance of every entity created by the creator in belonging to non-being, at the same time it reveals, in the existence and the ontological given, the relationship of dependence on, but also of participation in, the good that generated it. At the same time, God’s self-originality and the autonomy of his will are not impaired, since the generative impulse originated from the Trinitarian dialectic, and the love that pervades it is eminently gratuitous and free. In contrast, according to Luther, the difference is articulated in God in the two opposite faces of the impenetrable and terrible abyss of his will and the grandiosity of his mercy; it is articulated in man, on the one hand, in his complete servitude to evil and, on the other hand, in his complete freedom in surrendering to God.⁵⁵ In the relationship between God and humankind, everything depends on God’s will, on the mystery of his grace, and on the infinite merits of Jesus Christ, thus creating a unilateral “relationship” that proceeds exclusively from top to bottom due to the unbridgeable asymmetry separating the creator from the creature. This asymmetry is such as to drive Luther himself to thematize a relative autonomy of human affairs: although still subjected to God’s design, humankind obeys worldly reason due to the ascertained impossibility of composing, even fragmentarily, either in history or in practice, these abysses of separation. This transformation of the difference from structure of mediation and relation to juxtaposition of opposites paves the way for the secularized autonomy of modern humanity.

6 Conclusions The elements identified up to this point allow us to draw some conclusions regarding the anthropological profile outlined by Luther. The orientation of theological absolutism towards the extreme radicalization of God’s distance from creation, as has been shown, is taken by Luther to its final conclusion with the declaration of humankind’s extraneousness when it comes to “God’s affairs,” the traces of which can no longer be found in human conscience. As a consequence, this determines the destruction of any relationality among human beings, an outcome that was already logically and ontologically implicit in nominalism and is perfected by Luther with the rejection of any residual possibility of participating in the good. The new constitutive principle

 Beierwaltes, Identità, 120 – 21.  The reference here is, of course, to two of Luther’s major works: The Bondage of the Will and On the Freedom of a Christian.

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of a man, who, by now, is fully presented as an “individual,” is therefore will in its impulsive immediacy and not, as seen in Scotus, a simple emphasis on will as humankind’s primary faculty. Moreover, the oppositive ontology and dialectic proposed by Luther in the structuring of his course are loaded with consequences, since the maximization of the alterity, the concealment, and the contraria specie under which God hides himself also carries within itself the maximization of his reversal – i. e., humankind. This maximization concentrates into a “negative,” the ambiguous power of which has already been commented upon, which can be identified in the existential dynamic, which is singular; in the dynamic of the now-atomized community, which is naturally made up of “beasts;” and, once again, in its transformative power for the whole of nature. Therefore, it is possible to identify an essentialization of humankind – completed by Luther while following in Scotus’ footsteps⁵⁶ – around the ontological constitutive of an evil that finds “substance” in desire and is articulated indifferently towards the universal and the individual, virtually containing both: the essence common to all humankind, in fact, is concentrated in universal wickedness/opposition to God, while every individual singularity is forged by the concupiscence that materially directs each existence.⁵⁷ Thus the most challenging short circuit in Luther’s thinking takes shape – a short circuit that draws the attention of whoever tries to truly comprehend Luther without being either hagiographic or demonizing. On the one hand, in Luther’s thinking there is the unquestionable possibility of expanding the space of the freedom of conscience in a man released from the ties of metaphysical thinking, which was often dogmatically stiff, and from the mediation of the institutional structure of the Church between God and humankind. In the same way, the possibility of increasing the spaces of autonomy in an individual who is strongly urged toward self-assessment is also unquestionable, as the contemplation of his own paradigmatic wickedness on the cross should continuously drive him to do.⁵⁸ Moreover, the very contemplation of his sin should interact, beyond the obvious pessimism about himself and humankind, with a boundless faith in the mercy of God, which is also, as claimed in On the Freedom of a Christian, a source of interior freedom and an inspiration for practical action. These processes have the immense value of putting a man in contact with his own heart, which, according to Hegel and thanks to Luther, has now become an actual organ of knowledge.⁵⁹ It is not necessary to reiterate how much this revolution

 Gilson, L’essere, 120 ff.  The substantialization of evil completed by Luther in the original fomes is particularly meaningful since evil, in the Christian metaphysical tradition up to nominalism, is perceived as a lack of being, as belonging to that nihil from which everything was extracted by God’s act of creation.  The fact that this process is characteristic of Lutheranism is also demonstrated by the ample evidence offered by Luther himself. On the subject, see Kaufmann, Lutero, 8 ff.  The theme of the liberation of the heart from a position of irrelevance in relationship to reason obviously has extraordinary impact: it will be sufficient to mention the branch of thinking focused on the passions that, after Luther, pervades the whole of European culture and reaches as far as the phi-

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impacted the creation of modern Europe – and therefore the whole of Western culture – as this is a generally accepted notion. Instead, it will be sufficient to mention Max Weber’s analysis of the spirit of Calvinism, or to think back to the historical reach of the “revolution of the saints” in the New World, to understand the proactive action carried out by the Reformation: in fact, these events, though not directly attributable to Luther, are certainly unthinkable without his world-shattering action. However, the strong urging toward the development of self-conscience in humankind, which comes from Luther, cannot be described as his extraordinary merit without also assessing the effects of the radical pessimism that colors it and that, from Luther on, has been included under the auspices of the individualism that has so heavily characterized the modern era and continues to characterize the contemporary era. The fading of the idea of the natural sociability of human beings, founded on the concept of teleologism toward good and on ontological relationality, which was the fulcrum of metaphysical thinking (and not only of political thinking), and the simultaneous, turbulent emergence of passions as constitutive of the human – both products of Luther’s revolution – have promoted the twisting of reason, both private and public, in an instrumental and utilitarian direction, where the overlapping of the good with the useful certainly was not – and still is not – unproblematic. While the emancipatory effect of Luther’s revolution has already been accounted for in its implications and repercussions on the most diverse fields – theology, history, sociology, politics, economics –, it is more difficult to find analyses measuring the effects of his anthropological pessimism, which is the basis of an important theoretical “wake” originating in the oppositive polarization crossing the new horizon delineated by Luther. The theme of inevitable conflict among individuals and, therefore, of the “artificiality” of politics; of a concept of reason – alongside politics, ethics, and law – basically oriented toward self-preservation; and of an individualistic and self-referential perspective are the counterparts to the freedom and autonomy of humankind brought forward by Lutheranism, just as the process of secularization represents the counterpart to his spiritual revolution.

losophies of existence. Hegel makes this point in Lezioni sulla storia della filosofia, vol. 3.2, La filosofia moderna (Firenze, 1981), 3 ff. Kaufmann correctly recalls how Luther gave himself the name of Eleutherios: “free in God” (see Lutero, 7).

Roland Boer

Luther and Marxism In our own day we are approaching an era of revolution analogous to that of the sixteenth century. Karl Marx¹ I even incline somewhat to old Luther’s view that a man who does not love wine will never be good for anything. Karl Marx²

The relation between Luther and Marxism ranges from profound philosophical tensions to a positive, albeit critical, appreciation. In order to examine these engagements, this study distinguishes between three topics that illustrate the range of possibilities: the differences concerning human nature between Lutheranism and Marxism; the ambivalent depiction of Luther as the ideologue of the bourgeoisie in Engels’ early study of the German Peasant Revolution of 1525; and Marx’s dialectical appraisal of Luther as the inaugurator of the first phase of the German revolution, thereby setting up the second stage, which Marx saw beginning in his own time.

1 Human Nature In order to analyze the differences between Luther and Marxism on the question of human nature, I need to set the scene somewhat more broadly. In societies shaped by Christianity, the understanding of human nature turns on the following question: Can human beings do some good on their own initiative, or are human beings unable to do good, relying completely on God? We may reframe the question in terms of evil and sin: Is evil limited, thereby providing some possibility of good works, or is evil more powerful than human beings, which means that human effort is futile? The terms of these questions in Latin Christianity were set in the debate between Augustine and Pelagius in the fifth century. Although the disagreements were subtle and

 Karl Marx, “Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality: A Contribution to German Cultural History Contra Karl Heinzen,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow, 1847 [1976]), 6:312– 40, here 312; Marx, “Die moralisierende Kritik und die kritisierende Moral. Beitrag zur Deutschen Kulturgeschichte. Gegen Karl Heinzen von Karl Marx,” in Marx Engels Werke (Berlin, 1847 [1972]), 4:331– 60, here 331.  Marx, “Marx to François Lafargue in Bordeaux, London, 12 November 1866,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow, 1866 [1987]), 42:334– 35, here 334; Marx, “Marx an François Lafargue 12. November 1866,” in Marx Engels Werke (Berlin, 1866 [1973]), 31:536 – 57, here 536. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-054

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complex,³ the names “Augustine” and “Pelagius” came to indicate two contrasting positions. While the former argued that only God’s grace was able to overcome the inescapable evil of human existence, the latter argued that good works were possible since evil was more limited.⁴ Luther falls on the Augustinian side, which has implications for the understanding of human nature. The core question was the transformation of a fallen human nature, but the means for such a transformation were open to debate. Augustine argued that the new human nature could be achieved only through God’s grace, for human beings were unable to achieve transformation on their own. Pelagius countered by arguing that human discipline and cultivation could achieve transformation, although not without divine assistance. His own much-admired asceticism was an indication as to how a person might become more holy. As his slogan would have it: if perfection is possible, then it is obligatory. This early theological debate has also been seen in political terms, with – for some Marxists – Augustine coming to embody an aristocratic or ruling class perspective and Pelagius the perspective of those exploited. Thus Augustine’s argument becomes one for leaving the world as it is, a welcome message to the wealthy and powerful, for they need not work to change the world. By contrast, Pelagius (and indeed other “heretics”) become champions for the downtrodden, urging that the only way to abolish poverty is to get rid of the rich.⁵ Anti-socialists from Søren Kierkegaard to Eric Voegelin have agreed, each in their own ways, condemning socialism as a Pelagian heresy.⁶ If we consider a few examples from the Marxist tradition, then this assessment may seem justified, although it was mediated by the European Enlightenment’s assertion of the inherent goodness of human beings. Thus the proletariat and the peasants possess an inherent goodness, which will be released from its exploitation by their masters when the communists have taken the reigns of history. With this opportunity, workers and peasants will wholeheartedly engage in creating a new so-

 For a sense of the intricacy, see some of the key works: Augustine, Four Anti-Pelagian Writings, trans. J. Mourant (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1992); Pelagius, Pelagius’s Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, trans. T. De Bruyn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993); Brinley R. Rees, Pelagius: Life and Letters (Martleshamr: Boydell & Brewer, 1998); William E. Mann, “Augustine on Evil and Original Sin,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, eds. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 40 – 48; James Wetzel, “Predestination, Pelagianism and Foreknowledge,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, 49 – 58.  I leave aside the Greek (Orthodox) effort to mediate: since salvation is a divine gift, one cannot earn salvation; yet the gift can be accepted or refused, and so human activity is involved.  G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 436 – 47; Ellen Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (London: Verso, 2008), 160.  Joachim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, trans. B. Kirmmse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 486 – 90, 502– 5; Eric Voegelin, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989 – 2009), 4:125, 6:135 and 145.

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ciety and economy for mutual benefit. In other words, a Pelagian approach valued the works that one can do now, especially the works of the exploited. This understanding can be seen in Marx’s image of throwing off the chain and plucking the living flower;⁷ in the old slogan “from each according to ability, to each according to need;”⁸ in Anatoly Lunacharsky’s notion of the ideal of human existence (represented by the gods of religion) for which one strives through revolution and education;⁹ in Lenin’s sense that patient and logical argumentation, backed up by “facts, facts, facts,” would persuade anyone who listened;¹⁰ in Stalin’s early observation that “it is obvious that free and comradely labour should result in an equally comradely, and complete, satisfaction of all needs in the future socialist society;”¹¹ or indeed in the whole phenomenon of Stakhanovism and the new Soviet man and woman of the 1930s.¹²

2 Engels, Luther, and Thomas Müntzer The implications for Luther should be obvious. As an Augustinian, he stressed the power of sin and evil, the inability of human beings to do good works on their own,¹³ and an utter reliance on God’s grace through faith. In the terms examined above, this would place Luther firmly with the ruling class, with the wealthy and powerful. Indeed, this is the assessment of Engels – to whom I now turn – in The

 Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: Introduction,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1844, repr. 1975), 3:175 – 87, here 176; Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung,” in Marx Engels Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1844, repr. 1974), 1:378 – 91, here 379.  Cited by every communist leader since Marx, the well-known slogan in its current form first appears with Louis Blanc, after the Paris commune of 1848: “de chacun selon ses facultés, à chacun selon ses besoins,” although it can be traced back through socialist circles in other forms. See Blanc, Plus de Girondins (Paris: Charles Joubert, 1851), 92; Norman Bowie, Towards a New Theory of Distributive Justice (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1971), 82. The slogan is actually a gloss on the biblical text of Acts 4:35: “They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”  Anatoly Vasil’evich Lunacharsky, On Education: Selected Articles and Speeches (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981), 57, 165, 245, and 247.  V.I. Lenin, “Statistics and Sociology,” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1917, repr. 1964), 23:271– 77, here 272.  I.V. Stalin, “Anarchism or Socialism?,” in Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1906 – 7, repr. 1954), 1:297– 373, here 338.  Lewis Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935 – 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).  Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, Luther and Erasmus: On the Bondage of the Will and On the Freedom of the Will, eds. E.G. Rupp and P.S. Watson, vol. 17, Library of Christian Classics (London: SCM, 1969).

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Peasant War in Germany. ¹⁴ This work is the first historical materialist analysis of the Protestant Reformation, with a focus on the radical developments embodied in the Peasant Revolution and its theologian, Thomas Müntzer.¹⁵ Engels’ effort at class analysis determines the structure of the essay, with princes, nobility, clergy, burghers, plebeians, and peasants identified in the opening pages, to be followed by an assessment of the war’s effects on these classes. As for Luther, he represents the wishes of a nascent ruling class, of burghers seeking reform and of princes with similar hopes. By contrast, Müntzer is the mouthpiece of radical peasants and nascent proletarians. Thus, Luther infamously betrayed the Peasant Revolution, calling on all and sundry to eradicate the peasants, miners, and others who had joined the movement. Yet, despite the apparent symmetry between Luther and the first shoots of the bourgeoisie, Engels’ analysis betrays a greater complexity – if not ambivalence – over Luther. Engels traces the way Luther’s rhetoric and practice changed over time. Initially, this Augustinian monk of peasant background voiced staunch condemnations of the Church and its cozy arrangement with the powerful. Indeed, Luther’s early statements evince a revolutionary zeal, which – according to Engels – brought together a united front of exploited peasants, plebeians, burghers, lesser nobility, and even some princes. But when the situation became too heated, Luther opted for his real allies: burghers, nobility, and princes. This entailed a watering down of his fervor, a preference for peaceful reform, and condemnation of the radical extremes. This is, suggests Engels, the real Luther, who became a staunch advocate of the new burgher church. In this light, his earlier fiery statements and acts indicate that he had not yet clarified his true position. Engels works hard to paint Luther into this corner, but he cannot quite do so. In distinguishing between the radical and the moderately liberal Luther, Engels attempts a temporal progression from youthful radicalism to mature moderation. Yet Engels’s analysis betrays a more ambivalent approach to Luther. Let me give the example of Engels’s observation on Luther’s translation of the Bible: Luther had put a powerful tool into the hands of the plebeian movement by translating the Bible. Through the Bible he contrasted the feudalised Christianity of his day with the moderate Christianity of the first centuries, and the decaying feudal society with a picture of a society that

 Friedrich Engels, “The Peasant War in Germany,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1850, repr. 1978), 10:397– 482; Engels, “Der deutsche Bauernkrieg,” in Marx Engels Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1850, repr. 1973), 7:327– 413.  Under Engels’ influence, an interest in Münzer was developed by Karl Kautsky and Ernst Bloch; see Karl Kautsky, Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus II: Der Kommunismus in der deutschen Reformation (Berlin: Dietz, 1895 – 97, repr. 1976), 7– 103; Ernst Bloch, Thomas Münzer als Theologe der Revolution, vol. 2, Ernst Bloch Werkausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969). See further Roland Boer, Criticism of Heaven: On Marxism and Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1– 56; Boer, “Karl Kautsky’s Forerunners of Modern Socialism,” Chiasma: A Site for Thought 1 no. 1 (2014): 129 – 37, available at: http:// chiasmaasiteforthought.com.

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knew nothing of the ramified and artificial feudal hierarchy. The peasants had made extensive use of this instrument against the princes, the nobility, and the clergy. Now Luther turned it against the peasants, extracting from the Bible such a veritable hymn to the God-ordained authorities as no bootlicker of absolute monarchy had ever been able to match.¹⁶

Engels seeks to reveal Luther’s betrayal, but in attempting to do so he identifies what may be called the political ambivalence – if not multivocality – of the Bible itself. It is not for nothing that the Bible has provided inspiration for one revolutionary movement after another at the same time that it has given easy support to sundry tyrants and despots.¹⁷ In this light, the positions of both Luther and Müntzer could be justified by the Bible, without distorting the relevant texts. Might Luther too be more radical than Engels is willing to admit? Let me quote once again the opening sentence of Engels’ text: “Luther had put a powerful tool into the hands of the plebeian movement by translating the Bible.” Engels reveals more than he seems to intend: one cause of the Peasant Revolt may be found in none other than Luther. As we saw, Engels is more than keen to link Luther with the burghers and princes, while Müntzer was the radical theologian and political agitator through and through. Yet this bifurcation misses the fact that Luther first fostered Müntzer’s creative political imagination, firing up his radicalism through the Bible and new forms of theological thought. Luther’s teaching and practice were the spark for Müntzer. Going beyond Engels, I suggest that Müntzer brought to its logical conclusion one dimension of the political ambivalence of theology that Luther had discovered and then sought to shut down. Might it be said that Engels also unwittingly recognizes that Luther had rediscovered a deep theological and political tension at the heart of theology?¹⁸ Theology and indeed the Bible are neither exclusively the preserve of the oppressors and powers that be, nor are they clearly on the side of the downtrodden. Instead, both possibilities open up, so that it becomes very difficult to distinguish reaction from revolution in the biblical texts or theological formulations in question. Luther plays with both, glimpsing the radical possibilities of the Bible only to become alarmed at what he had unleashed. All of this requires a reading of Engels’ text that is sensitive to his ambivalence over Luther. He prefers to condemn Luther for invoking the wrath of God – in the

 Engels, “The Peasant War in Germany,” 419; Engels, “Der deutsche Bauernkrieg,” 350 – 51.  Alongside the references to Karl Kautsky and Ernst Bloch in note 15 above, see also Kautsky, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation, trans. J. L. Mulliken and E. G. Mulliken (London: Fisher and Unwin, 1897); Kautsky, Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus I: Kommunistische Bewegungen im Mittelalter (Berlin: Dietz, 1895 – 97, repr. 1976; Kautsky, Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus II; Kautsky and Paul Lafargue, Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus III: Die beiden ersten grossen Utopisten (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1922, repr. 1977).  This awareness comes to the fore in Engels, “On the History of Early Christianity,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, 27:445 – 69; Engels, “Zur Geschichte des Urchristentums,” in Marx Engels Werke, 22:447– 73. See further, Boer, Criticism of Earth: On Marx, Engels and Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 273 – 306.

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hands of the princes – on Müntzer and the peasants, but he also unwittingly recognizes that Luther had identified the radical – if not revolutionary – dimensions of the Bible and theology, enough for Müntzer to gain inspiration.

3 Marx and Luther The previous analysis has gradually moved from an outright opposition between Luther and Marxism to the first hints of a rapprochement in Engels’ assessment of Luther. I now turn to Marx, since his response to Luther is – perhaps surprisingly – much more positive than one would initially expect. This is particularly the case when Marx cites Luther’s work from 1540, An die Pfarrherrn wider den Wucher zu predigen. ¹⁹ Marx cites Luther approvingly, especially on the topic of interest and the medieval ban on usury,²⁰ so much so that Marx observes that Luther provides “an excellent picture, it fits the capitalist in general.”²¹ Nonetheless, I am more interested in Marx’s earlier engagement with Luther in the 1840s. Here we find a complex and dialectical appreciation of the contribution made by Luther. I begin with the following: Germany’s revolutionary past is theoretical, it is the Reformation. As the revolution then began in the brain of the monk, so now it begins in the brain of the philosopher [. . .] But if Protestantism was not the true solution it was at least the true setting of the problem.²²

 Luther, An die Pfarrherrn wider den Wucher zu predigen (Wittenberg, 1540).  Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1859, repr. 1987), 29:257– 417, here 364 and 448 – 49); Marx, Economic Manuscript of 1861 – 63 (Continuation): A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1861– 63, repr. 1989), 32:531– 41; Marx, Theorie über den Mehrwert (Vierter Band des “Kapitals”). Dritter Teil, in Marx Engels Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1861– 63, repr. 1974), .26.3:516 – 24; Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1867, repr. 1996), 35:146, 203, 314, 388 – 89, and 741; Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Erster Band Buch I: Der Produktionsprozeß des Kapitals, in Marx Engels Werke, Berlin: Dietz, 1867, repr. 1972), 23:149, 207, 328, 619, and 781; Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. III, in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1894, repr. 1998), 37:329, 345, 391– 92, 594, 606, and 889; Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Dritter Band Buch III. Der Gesamtprozeß der kapitalistischen Produktion, in Marx Engels Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1894, repr. 1973), 25:343 – 44, 359, 407, 613, 624– 25, and 911.  Marx, Economic Manuscript of 1861 – 63 (Continuation), 539; Marx, Theorie über den Mehrwert, 525.  Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: Introduction,” 182; Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung,” 385. This text comes from Marx’s most wellknown observations on religion (written in his early twenties), where we find his lyrical statements that religion is the illusory sun, spiritual aroma, heart of a heartless world, soul of a soulless condition, and the ambivalent metaphor of the opium of the people (which was simultaneously medicine and drug, panacea and curse).

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Luther is of course the monk, but I would like identify the key points of this text, which will structure the following analysis: 1) the Reformation was revolutionary in a theoretical sense; 2) the Reformation marks the initial phase of revolution in Germany, with the second due to a philosopher; 3) the Reformation may have set the question in a true fashion, but it was also incomplete. For this reason, the second revolutionary stage is needed. These three points may be reduced to two: the revolution in Germany has two phases, in which the Reformation plays a central role; and the Reformation was revolutionary, although the nature of this revolution remains open to question.

3.1 Two Revolutionary Stages Let us examine the question of two revolutionary phases in more detail. Elsewhere in the same text, Marx speaks of the criticism of religion and indeed of heaven. But what does he mean by the “criticism of religion”? Does he mean the recent work of the Young Hegelians, with Feuerbach the champion at the time? But Feuerbach is the “philosopher” mentioned in the text quoted above, and the criticism of religion is certainly older than Feuerbach. I propose that Marx actually sees the criticism of religion as beginning with none other than Luther. The first revolutionary stage is the criticism of religion. In this light, we can make sense of the following statements: For Germany, the criticism of religion is in the main complete, and the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism (Für Deutschland ist die Kritik der Religion im wesentlichen beendigt, und die Kritik der Religion ist die Voraussetzung aller Kritik).²³ The evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that it proceeds from a resolute positive sublation of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being (Der evidente Beweis für den Radikalismus der deutschen Theorie, also für ihre praktische Energie, ist ihr Ausgang von der entschiedenen positiven Aufhebung der Religion. Die Kritik der Religion endet mit der Lehre, daß der Mensch das höchste Wesen für den Menschen sei, also mit dem kategorischen Imperativ, alle Verhältnisse umzuwerfen, in denen der Mensch ein erniedrigtes, ein geknechtetes, ein verlassenes, ein verächtliches Wesen ist).²⁴

The relationship between the two revolutions is captured by the tension between the two terms Marx uses to speak of the criticism of religion: enden or beenden (beendigen), with the sense of finishing or completing, and Aufhebung, the Hegelian sublation with the implication that it carries on into another level, albeit thoroughly transformed. The first indicates a distinct completion, an end beyond which nothing more  K. Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: Introduction,” 175; Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung,” 378.  Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: Introduction,” 182, trans. modified; Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung,” 385.

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can be done or said. The second suggests transition and transformation; what is transformed may continue, but not in any fashion to which we have become accustomed. As Marx puts it elsewhere, Aufhebung indicates a process in “which denial and preservation, i. e., affirmation, are bound up together (worin die Verneinung und die Aufbewahrung, die Bejahung verknüpft sind).”²⁵ The terminological difference indicates the structure of both passages (even though Aufhebung appears only in the second). In the first passage, “premise” or “prerequisite” (Voraussetzung) signals the presence of a sense of Aufhebung. Thus, the criticism of religion is simultaneously “complete” (beendigt) and functions as a “premise” (Voraussetzung) for all criticism – but not as it was. The second passage makes a similar point: the radicalism of theory in Germany arises from the fact that it “proceeds from a resolute positive sublation (Aufhebung) of religion.” At the same time, the criticism of religion ends (endet) with the teaching that human beings are the highest beings. If we accept my proposal that the criticism of religion designates the Reformation and its legacy (the first revolutionary phase), then what are the implications for understanding its relation to the new revolutionary stage? We may argue that Marx is torn between a resolute effort to end the criticism of religion once and for all – if not to pronounce the end of religion as so many have done since the Enlightenment – and the need to appreciate its transformed presence.²⁶ But I suggest that the two terms are actually related, as Marx’s text reveals. Simply put, one cannot have sublation and transformation (Aufhebung) without the former coming to an end (beenden). It cannot continue in its former state, so it must be completed, brought to an end, so that sublation can take place and it can take on an entirely new form that has an indirect and dialectical connection with the former state. Thus the first revolutionary stage, stemming from Luther, must come to an end so that it can be sublated by a second and more substantial revolution. At the same time, this latter revolution could not have happened and cannot be understood without the former. So the criticism of religion may be complete, but it has been sublated so as to become the premise of all criticism that follows. The later revolution transforms the former.

3.2 A Revolutionary Reformation? Thus far, I have dealt with the relationship between the two revolutions, but the question remains: How was the Reformation itself revolutionary? Let us return to

 Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1844, repr. 1975), 3:229 – 346, here 340; Marx, “Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844,” in Marx Engels Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1844, repr. 1990), 40:465 – 588, here 581.  Arendt Theodoor van Leeuwen, Critique of Heaven (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2002), 184.

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Marx, where he seeks to identify this revolutionary nature in terms of the shift from external to internal religious expression. Luther, we grant, overcame the bondage of piety by replacing it by the bondage of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.²⁷

These sentences have a distinct dialectical balance, emphasising the profound shift brought about by Luther. All the external forms of religious expression – such as piety, authority, priests, and the body – were internalised. Religion became a matter of conviction, faith, laity, the heart, and the inner person. We may recast the distinction in terms of the shift from the public to the private, insofar as the private was not a given but was invented in the process itself. Luther did operate with a given distinction, but in many respects reinvented the internal and the private – which is very much part of the first stage of radical revolutionary criticism. At the same time, the dialectical point is not that all of this was simply internalized, as though one had retreated into a cloister. No, this internalization was a very public and indeed democratic move. Private inwardness of religious expression was made available for all as a common experience. The monk became a man of the world. I am not the first to note the anticipation of Max Weber’s point that monastic discipline became universalized.²⁸ Indeed, elsewhere Marx makes the connection between Luther and Adam Smith – picking up Engels’ point that Smith was the “new Luther”²⁹ – to suggest that Luther’s internalization of faith, the priesthood, and religiosity has an analogous expression in Smith’s proposal that private property is an internal reality rather than an external condition.³⁰ In Capital, this point becomes an undeveloped aside: Roman Catholicism is an externalized form of expression, suitable for a monetary system, while Protestantism is appropriate to the internalized realities of credit and commodities.³¹ Yet this point is less dialectical than Marx’s observations on Luther, which I have been examining in some detail. Instead of homologies between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, Marx’s argument is

 Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: Introduction,” 182; Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung,” 386.  Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (London: Routledge, 1904– 5, repr. 1992); Derek Sayer, Capitalim and Modernity: An Excursus on Marx and Weber (London: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1991).  Engels, “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, 3.418 – 43, here 422; Engels, “Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie,” in Marx Engels Werke, 1:499 – 524, here 503.  Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” 290 – 91; Marx, “Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844,” 530 – 31.  Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 90; Marx, Das Kapital. Erster Band, 93; Marx, Capital, Vol. III, 587; Marx, Das Kapital. Dritter Band, 606.

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that Luther universalizes Christianity by internalizing it and in the process creating, as it were, a whole new category of religious and indeed human existence. This constitutes the first stage of revolution. At the same time, this acknowledgement of Luther also identifies the limits of his revolution. Let us return to the earlier quotation: the first and last sentences indicate that the Lutheran revolution brought with it new types of servitude. Luther may have liberated people from external forms of religious expression, but he enabled a completely new way to be enslaved. This was through the heart, through conviction.³²

3.3 The New Revolution Luther’s revolution may have been necessary, a first stage without which the second would not have been possible, but this revolution is by no means enough, falling short and leading to new forms of enslavement. So what should the new revolution, the second stage, seek to achieve? It must focus on both internal and external dimensions. If internalization has been universalized so that laypeople have become priests, the struggle for liberation must deal with the internalized priest. Further, since Luther was a theologian, he focused on other-worldly matters, thereby missing the materialist basis. Or if there was some impact on the world of class and economics, then it was secondary to Luther’s main agenda. Marx seeks to make this aspect primary. An internal – if not personalized – revolution? Is not Marx the great analyst of economics, of the forces and relations of production, and of the need for a socialist revolution? Yet here we find him arguing for precisely such an internal revolution in response to Luther. The new form of servitude is not merely one of economic exploitation, but also one of the heart, due to Luther’s internalization of religious conviction and practice. Marx’s point is far from petty-bourgeois urgings to change one’s personal attitude as a key to changing the world. Instead, he identifies an internal alienation: Luther had internalized the earlier contradictions between layperson and priest, outer religiosity and internal piety, so that they became contradictions embodied within each person (analogous to the tension between the private individual and the citizen of a state that Marx credits to Hegel and seeks to overcome elsewhere³³). The solution? One the one hand, this requires attention to the external conditions of existence, which need to be revolutionized so that the internal contradiction may be overcome. On the other hand, such a transformation requires

 Here we find an anticipation of the point that would be developed by Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Clinic, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979).  Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, 3:3 – 129; Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts,” in Marx Engels Werke, 1:203 – 333; Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, 3:146 – 74; Marx, “Zur Judenfrage,” in Marx Engels Werke, 1:347– 77.

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a subjective intervention in the very conditions of existence. The conditions do not merely shape who we are, but we can reshape the conditions themselves so that we ourselves can be transformed. In relation to Luther, Marx argues that the missing element in Luther and the Reformation as such was a popular, mass base. The revolution in Luther’s hands was restricted to faith and knowledge, so much so that a common heart could not be found to match the theologian’s head. For Marx, this common, popular basis would be found in the proletariat. In this respect, Marx advocates for philosophy to “grip” the masses, for the liberation of the proletariat from its radical chains in a way that will abolish its very status as a class. Is this charge against Luther fair? To some extent it may be, but if we recall the earlier discussion of Engels, it becomes clear that Luther too had – albeit unwittingly – a more radical edge, which set on their way radical theologians and activists such as Thomas Müntzer and indeed a host of revolutionary Anabaptists (witness the Revolution of Münster in 1534 and 1535). These movements certainly found a way to grip the masses. And in the Italian context, we find none other than Antonio Gramsci longing for an earlier revolution – like the Reformation – in Italy, one that would have grasped the whole of society from bottom to top so that everything changed. As Gramsci observes, “In Italy there has never been an intellectual and moral reform involving the popular masses.”³⁴ Like the Protestant Reformation, a communist revolution must shake up all levels of society. The previous points question Marx’s assertion that he is one of the first to discover a mass basis (in the proletariat). Might it be the case that Marx not so much discovered but rediscovered the question of mass appeal? If the Reformation too had such an appeal, albeit in a different register, then Marx’s discovery of the proletariat as a revolutionary force constitutes a rediscovery. Therefore, I suggest that “the monk” is more present in “the philosopher” – a second Luther, no less – in Marx’s thought than he would care to admit. In other words, Marx’s reflections on Luther constitute more of an Aufhebung of Luther’s revolution. The theological nature of that first stage has been both brought to an end and transformed (beenden and aufheben). Marx’s last sentence of the text I have been exegeting is full of implications: “When all the inner requisites are fulfilled the day of German resurrection will be proclaimed by the ringing of the Gallic cock.”³⁵ The German revolution is none other than a resurrection and the Gallic cock (an allusion to Mark 14:29 – 31; Matt 26:33 – 35; Luke 22:33 – 34) signals the completion of the proletarian revolution that was tasted but stalled with the French Revolution. The resurrection and the crowing cock are of course biblical allusions: Luther would be present in a German revolution, albeit in a way that he would by no means have anticipated.  Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 2:243 – 44. See additionally Boer, Criticism of Heaven, 258 – 73.  Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: Introduction,” 187; Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung,” 391.

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4 Conclusion Sometimes, however, when I commence whistling, Dicky treats me as Luther treated the devil – he turns his … on me. Karl Marx³⁶

My analysis has moved from the significant differences between Luther and Marxism on the question of human nature, with the one following a more Augustinian line and the other tending towards Pelagianism, to a greater interaction between them. Engels may still have kept his distance from Luther, whom he identifies as the ideologue of the emergent bourgeoisie (in terms of burghers and progressive princes), but, at the same time, Engels recognizes at some level the radical potential of Luther’s message – to be taken up by Thomas Müntzer and other radicals. But it was Marx who provided the most significant engagement with Luther, in terms of the dialectical interaction with the champion of the first German revolution. This is not to say that Marxism is in some way a secularized form of Christian thought, or indeed eschatology,³⁷ but that the relation between Marxism and theology is a far more dialectical and conflicted one. The engagement with Luther is but one example of this relation, albeit a good one.

 Marx, “Marx to Eleanor Marx in Paris, London, 26 April 1869,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1869, repr. 1988), 43:270 – 71, here 270 – 71; Marx, “Marx an seine Tochter Eleanor, 26. April 1869,” in Marx Engels Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1869, repr. 1973), 32:601– 2, here 601.  Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdiaev, Wahrheit und Lüge des Kommunismus, trans. Ives Schor (Lucerne: Vita Nova, 1934). For a full analysis, see Boer, “Marxism and Eschatology Reconsidered,” Mediations 25 no. 1 (2011): 39 – 60, available at: http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/marxismand-eschatology-reconsidered.

Jordan J. Ballor

Reformation Protestantism and the “Spirit” of Capitalism 1 Introduction Appearing at the dawn of the twentieth century, the German sociologist and philosopher Max Weber attempted to define a religious basis for economic life in his essays on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The argument in these essays came to be known as “The Weber Thesis,” which held that in the development of the modern world there was an intimate connection between religious doctrines and ethos on the one hand, and economic life and practice on the other. After a summary of Weber’s basic argument, we will proceed to examine more closely the figure of Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) in Weber’s study. Then we shall examine the significance of Protestant rhetoric as it influenced both Protestant ethics and the cultural spirit underpinning modern economic life. As this survey approaches the contemporary era, we will find that there are good reasons to question Weber’s identification of specifically Protestant, and particularly Puritan, backgrounds for the spirit of modern capitalism. We will conclude with an evaluation of Weber’s thesis, which must be judged to be insightful, even as it is incomplete and in some ways mistaken. In highlighting the doctrine of predestination as the dogmatic ground for the Puritan ethic and in turn the spirit of modern economic life, Weber displays an erroneous understanding of both this doctrine and its historical role. At the same time, however, Weber does rightly identify important features of capitalism and its grounding in Christian ethics, and these insights continue to be relevant today.

2 The Weber Thesis Before exploring some of the debates and interpretations of Weber’s thesis and arriving at an evaluation of its merits, it is worth establishing foundational definitions and tracing the basic lines of his argument. This is important because Weber’s thesis has so often been misunderstood and mischaracterized. First, we should unpack the basic terms appearing in the title of his collection of essays: 1) the Protestant ethic, and 2) the spirit of capitalism. For Weber, “modern economic life” was to be identified specifically with capitalism, which Weber defined as “the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by

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means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise.”¹ One of the ways that Weber’s study is often misunderstood is by reading his claims as arguments that the Protestant Reformation or “modern economic life” somehow invented capitalism. In fact, Weber argues that capitalism existed before modernity and took various forms in various places. What is new about modern capitalism, from Weber’s perspective, is the rationalization and the institutionalization of profit making. Profit-driven firms and individuals have existed essentially everywhere and always. But in contrast to these phenomena, the modern West has seen “a very different form of capitalism which has appeared nowhere else: the rational capitalistic organization of (formally) free labour.”² There are other formal elements to modern capitalism as well, and Weber notes in particular “the separation of business from the household” and “rational bookkeeping.”³ But the significance of free labor is fundamental for modern economic life. As Weber puts it, “[e]xact calculation – the basis of everything else – is only possible on a basis of free labour.”⁴ These characteristics of modern economic life are not so much argued by Weber as they are asserted and assumed as the basis for the bulk of the rest of his study, which focuses on the “spirit” of capitalism or the ethical basis for the modern economic system. Weber identifies the spirit of capitalism with Protestant asceticism, which is itself distinguished from other forms of asceticism because of its worldly orientation and egalitarian ethic. As Weber argues, the formal elements of capitalism (e. g., formally free labor, rational bookkeeping) are not in themselves sufficient for explaining the rise of modern capitalism. “For though the development of economic rationalism is partly dependent on rational technique and law,” he writes, “it is at the same time determined by the ability and disposition of men to adopt certain types of practical rational conduct.”⁵ To understand this “ability and disposition of men,” Weber turns to religion and psychology. Thus, asserts Weber, “[t]he magical and religious forces, and the ethical ideas of duty based upon them, have in the past always been among the most important formative influences on conduct.”⁶ He means this as a general observation, which – when applied to the modern situation – focuses especially on “the connection of the spirit of modern economic life with the rational ethics of ascetic Protestantism.”⁷  Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Routledge, 2005), xxxi–xxxii. These essays were originally published as Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus,” in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 20 – 21 (1904– 1905): 1– 54, 1– 110, and later revised in Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1920 – 1921), 1:1– 206.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, xxxiv.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, xxxv.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, xxxvi.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, xxxix.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, xxxix.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, xxxix.

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The doctrinal and ethical connections that Weber draws are complicated and run throughout his study. But one aspect of his argument is worth highlighting here, and that is the role of the doctrine of predestination. Weber’s methodology essentially works backward. He observes the modern state of economic life, which is identifiable with capitalism. Behind capitalism he identifies a distinctive “spirit,” illustrated by the rational asceticism of a figure such as Benjamin Franklin, who penned such adages as “time is money,” “credit is money,” and “[r]emember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on.”⁸ In Weber’s account, this ethic is identifiable with an “iron cage,” a constricted economistic worldview that preaches prudence, thrift, and economization above all. Behind this secularized ethic of capitalistic profit making is a spiritualized ethic, in which material prosperity was worn as a “light cloak” rather than an iron cage. This spiritualized ethic is what Weber calls “ascetic Protestantism” and can be distinguished from monastic or medieval forms by its worldly setting: “The religious life of the saints, as distinguished from the natural life, was – the most important point – no longer lived outside the world in monastic communities, but within the world and its institutions. This rationalization of conduct within this world, but for the sake of the world beyond, was the consequence of the concept of calling of ascetic Protestantism.”⁹ Although he admits that this ascetic Protestant understanding of calling might have various doctrinal foundations, Weber pays particular attention to the doctrine of predestination among Calvinists, and particularly Puritans. Thus, writes Weber, “similar ethical maxims may be correlated with very different dogmatic foundations.”¹⁰ But the Puritan understanding of a worldly calling, placed within the context of the doctrine of predestination, is for Weber the most internally consistent and coherent manifestation of ascetic Protestantism. It is the closest concrete actualization of an ideal type. For Weber, “[a]s far as the influence of the Puritan outlook extended, under all circumstances – and this is, of course, much more important than the mere encouragement of capital accumulation – it favoured the development of a rational bourgeois economic life; it was the most important, and above all the only consistent influence in the development of that life. It stood at the cradle of the modern economic man.”¹¹ The reception of Weber’s thesis has been extensive and varied. A full catalogue cannot be included in the space of this chapter, but a few representative examples of some common readings of Weber can be highlighted. As noted above, many criticize Weber for claiming – in their understanding – that capitalism was a modern invention. Thus the sociologist Rodney Stark writes that “The Protestant Ethic enjoys an almost sacred status among sociologists, al Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 14– 15.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 100.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 55.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 117.

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though economic historians quickly dismissed Weber’s surprisingly undocumented monograph on the irrefutable grounds that the rise of capitalism in Europe preceded the Reformation by centuries.”¹² Stark goes on to highlight a number of other critics of Weber’s thesis, though he does not account for Weber’s claims that it was not capitalism as such that is new in modernity, but a particular form of capitalism. At the very opening of his essays, Weber posits that “capitalism and capitalistic enterprises, even with a considerable rationalization of capitalistic calculation, have existed in all civilized countries of the earth, so far as economic documents permit us to judge.”¹³ Similarly, he admits that “the capitalistic enterprise and the capitalistic entrepreneur, not only as occasional but as regular entrepreneurs, are very old and were very widespread.”¹⁴ Simply pointing out that capitalism is older than the Protestant Reformation does nothing to disprove Weber’s thesis, which depends on a particular definition of modern (as opposed to other forms of) capitalism. Another line of criticism turns not on Weber’s narrative of the history of economic development, but on his construal of religious, spiritual, or psychological causes. Thus the Russian Orthodox philosopher Sergey Bulgakov wondered whether Weber placed too much emphasis on the complex of Puritanism and predestination.¹⁵ R. H. Tawney, in his influential study of the relationship between religion and economic development, observes, “Both the ‘capitalist spirit’ and ‘Protestant ethics,’ therefore, were a good deal more complex than Weber seems to imply.”¹⁶ Simon Schama contends that, in the Dutch context, great wealth was actually a concern rather than a source of comfort, which Weber’s articulation of the relationship between predestination and material goods indicates.¹⁷ And more recently, Gene Edward Veith engages Weber’s thesis and argues that Luther’s significance is more substantial than Weber’s account suggests.¹⁸ Whether or not Weber was correct to identify a particular version of capitalism as characteristic of the modern age, economic history underscores that Weber was engaging with an actual phenomenon of unique significance. Somewhere in the beginning to middle of the eighteenth century, there was an explosion of economic growth

 Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (New York: Random House, 2005), xii. See also Kurt Samuelsson, Religion and Economic Action: The Protestant Ethic, the Rise of Capitalism, and the Abuses of Scholarship (New York: Basic Books, 1961).  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, xxxiii.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, xxxiii.  S. Bulgakov, “The National Economy and the Religious Personality (1909),” Journal of Markets & Morality 11 no. 1 (2008): 157– 59.  Richard H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (Gloucester: Harcourt Brace, 1962), 317n32.  Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Harper Collins, 1987).  Gene E. Veith, Working for Our Neighbor: A Lutheran Primer on Vocation, Economics, and Ordinary Life (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library Press, 2016).

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centered in Europe. When measured by gross domestic product (GDP), for instance, the rate of increase in material wealth is astounding. As the economist Deirdre N. McCloskey puts it, the era saw a rapid increase of both wealth per person and the absolute number of persons: “Never had such a thing happened. Count it in your head: eight and half times more actual food and clothing and housing and education and travel and books for the average human being – even though there were six times more of them.”¹⁹ What McCloskey calls “The Great Enrichment” is a unique historical phenomenon, which she describes further: “in the two centuries after 1800 trade-tested goods and services available to the average person in Sweden or Taiwan rose by a factor of 30 or 100. Not 1000 percent, understand – a mere doubling – but in its highest estimate a factor of 100, nearly 10,000 percent, and at least a factor of 30, or 2,900 percent. The Great Enrichment of the past two centuries has dwarfed any of the previous and temporary achievements.”²⁰ This is the remarkable historical transition that Weber’s study is attempting to explain, at least in part. Weber’s study is thus more focused on the spiritual and religious forces that inform the ethos driving capitalism than it is on the mechanisms of economic development as such. In this way, it is a kind of intellectual history, which in turn is open to modification, clarification, and complement by other forms of historical inquiry. The rest of this chapter will explore Weber’s understanding of the role of Luther and the affirmation of the dignity of everyday work in the Protestant understanding, before continuing with some refinements of Weber’s argument with respect to the role of rhetoric and persuasion – as opposed to doctrinal formulations – in forming capitalism’s ethical spirit. These findings will allow us to explore the more broadly Christian and cross-confessional roots of the spirit of capitalism in the modern world.

3 Luther and the Dignity of Everyday Work For Weber, the significance of Martin Luther’s ethical thought was primarily that it dissolved the sharp division between the moral status of the laity and that of the clergy and monastics. The medieval view was that there were essentially two different systems of morality: one for the common people and another for the spiritually gifted. The laity could be expected to conform to at least some basic standards of civic decency and order, but they were not expected to achieve greater levels of spiritual insight or personal sanctification. These latter possibilities were reserved for the spiritual elites, primarily those who had taken monastic vows or had a clerical calling. Weber credits Luther with introducing a new understanding of the religious idea of calling or vocation (in Latin, vocatio; in German, Beruf). For Luther, the Christian  Dierdre McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 16.  Dierdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), xiv.

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calling has a universal character that includes the lives of anyone who follows Christ, whether in the institutions of the church, state, or society. Thus, contends Luther, No godly person believes that the position of a magistrate is better in the sight of God than that of a subject, for he knows that both are divine institutions and have a divine command behind them. He will not distinguish between the position or work of a father and that of a son, or between that of a teacher and that of a pupil, or between that of a master and that of a servant; but he will declare it as certain that both are pleasing to God if they are done in faith and in obedience to God.²¹

The general relationship between Luther and the diversity of medieval thought is certainly complex. But as Weber writes, “[a]t least one thing was unquestionably new: the valuation of the fulfilment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume. This it was which inevitably gave every-day worldly activity a religious significance, and which first created the conception of a calling in this sense.”²² For Luther, this perspective marked a clear point of departure from the view of the Roman Catholic Church of his day. Affirmation of the common dignity of all human work is impossible for those who neglect the doctrine of faith and love and who teach superstitious works. A monk does not concede that the works which a layman performs in his calling are as good and acceptable to God as his own. A nun thinks much more highly of her own way of life and of her own works than she does of the way of life and works of a housewife who has a husband; for she believes that her own works merit grace and eternal life, but that the works of the other woman do not.²³

In Weber’s account, this redefinition of vocation was Luther’s essential contribution to the development of modern economic thought. It was for Luther to sow the idea and for others to reap the harvest. This is largely because, although Luther clearly affirmed the dignity of everyday work, it was not combined with a sense of dynamism and liberty within the social order. Luther’s call to diligent labor in a vocation in this way had a kind of quietistic element, one that would tend to emphasize satisfaction with one’s given lot and inherited station in life. Thus, says Weber, “for Luther the concept of the calling remained traditionalistic.”²⁴ Luther’s advice was that “everyone should examine his gift. For just as we are unequal in our bodies, our talents, and our property, so we are unequal in spiritual gifts. Everyone should remain in his place in the moral law and the common right until God calls or compels him to do something special.”²⁵     

LW 27:60 – 61. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 40. LW 27:61. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 44. LW 5:310.

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If this insight into the nature of vocation is one of Luther’s unique contributions, the limitations of his own context prevented it from bearing mature fruit. Thus, writes Weber, “Although the Reformation is unthinkable without Luther’s own personal religious development, and was spiritually long influenced by his personality, without Calvinism his work could not have had permanent concrete success.”²⁶ The relationship between Luther and the later developments of the Reformation is thus one of origination to codification and systematization. Weber’s narrative traces Luther’s influence through a variety of later Protestant traditions, particularly what he calls the “ascetic branches of Protestantism.” These are Calvinism, especially in its Puritan expression; Pietism; and Methodism, as well as Baptistic sects. Weber’s survey is selective and impressionistic, a method required both by the brevity of his treatment and the provisional and partial nature of his findings. In a recent study, David Hopper attempts to fill in some of the details of Weber’s sketch, in the sense that he attempts to draw out the connections and developments in the doctrine of vocation from Luther’s understanding to those of Martin Bucer (1491– 1551), John Calvin (1509 – 1564), and Francis Bacon (1561– 1626).²⁷ Hopper also contrasts Luther’s apparent acceptance of the static nature of social relationships with later emphasis on faithful, reasoned approaches to worldly callings. Thus, writes Hopper, “[u]nlike Luther, who did not stress the consideration of occupational options as a fundamental dimension of faithful commitment and endeavor, Bucer encouraged each believer to maximize service in vocational choice, to consider vocation as a means to the greatest good for the greatest number.”²⁸ As we have seen, however, Luther did teach that everyone should both “examine his gift” and “remain in his place in the moral law and the common right,” at least until external factors made it clear that a change must be made. On the one hand, then, Luther did emphasize critical engagement of one’s faculties to best determine how to serve others, through examination of one’s gifts. On the other hand, Luther also preached a certain kind of satisfaction and contentment with whatever the worldly results of that examination entailed: “Let each serve faithfully in his own vocation. If someone else has a loftier situation, let him not be jealous or despise his own lot.”²⁹ The idea that Luther’s conception of vocation and his affirmation of the dignity of everyday work only came to expression in a quiet acceptance of the contemporary social order is misleading. Against what he considered to be the excesses of Anabaptism and the Schwärmerei, Luther indeed emphasized obedience to duly appointed authorities and the need for social order and stability. But faithful execution of the duties of one’s calling certainly required the exercise of all of one’s gifts, reason    

Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 46. David Hopper, Divine Transcendence and the Culture of Change (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). Hopper, Divine Transcendence, 136. LW 28:301.

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included. Likewise, Luther emphasized the responsibility that attended to each calling individually, such that even in the midst of a hierarchical social order, there would be occasion for reformative and responsible action. In his message To the Christian Nobility (1520), Luther appealed to the emperor and the Christian princes to engage in reform of the Church. But in the course of this appeal, Luther affirmed the integral functioning of society in a connected, organic unity, as well as the responsibility of individual constituents to work out their duties in the context of their vocations. Thus, writes Luther, “everyone must benefit and serve every other by means of his own work or office so that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, just as all the members of the body serve one another.”³⁰ In the context of the necessary reform of religion, the primary duties of reform were found with ecclesiastical and civil authorities, the pope and the emperor foremost among them. The general responsibility to reform within one’s sphere of influence was universal, however: “it is the duty of every Christian to espouse the cause of the faith, to understand and defend it, and to denounce every error.”³¹ There is, in this way, a universal aspect to Luther’s teachings on the responsibilities and duties attending to one’s vocation that affected all equally and required everyone to “examine his gift” in the way that might be of most service to others and most faithful to God.

4 Protestant Rhetoric and the Spirit of Capitalism By emphasizing the discontinuity between Luther and the later Protestant movements which he was examining, Weber sought to find a unique or characteristic doctrinal ground for the ethical program of Christian asceticism he identified with Puritanism. He located this doctrinal ground in the teaching of predestination, which was the theological analogue to the ethical program of Christian asceticism. The mysterious doctrine of predestination was supposed to create a psychological need for concrete, temporal affirmation of one’s soteriological status. The faithful execution of one’s worldly duties was found to be the only reliable source of such comfort and assurance. For Calvinism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, “[a]t that time, and in general even to-day, the doctrine of predestination was considered its most characteristic dogma.”³² Here Weber follows the general thrust of late nineteenth-century theological historiography and its attempts to identify a root thesis or perspective, a central dogma (Zentraldogmen), as characteristic of different confessional tradi-

 LW 44:130.  LW 14:136.  Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 56.

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tions.³³ For Calvinism, this was predestination; so with that assumption, Weber attempted to trace out the relationship between predestination as a doctrinal cause and asceticism as an ethical result. Weber develops his theory by arguing first for the connection between economic development and Protestant asceticism, and second for the connection between Protestant asceticism and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. But as we have seen, Weber admits that the latter connection is not intrinsically necessary and that similar ethical systems can have quite different dogmatic foundations, a point reiterated by Bulgakov. As Bulgakov put it, “the link between religious consciousness and economic activity should be related not only to certain doctrines but even more so to practical conclusions from religion and especially to what it required at a given time in history. What is important here is the religious spirit’s way of penetrating life, its direct impact on – so to speak – the temperature of the religious-ascetic attitude to life.”³⁴ In this regard, Weber’s attempt to trace the internal coherence of the Puritan ethic and the doctrine of predestination is unsatisfactory, because it absolutizes a relationship that is contingent and gives occasion for all manner of counterexamples. A more fruitful course would be to explore the proximate grounds of Protestant asceticism, which are not found in predestination, but rather in the hortatory and moral teachings of Protestanism. Protestant rhetoric, in this way, is as much if not more significant than Protestant doctrine for the development of the modern economic system Weber identifies. This is, in fact, how McCloskey concludes her trilogy on the bourgeois revolution – by pointing to the power of ideas, particularly ideas of two sorts: “the ideas in the heads of entrepreneurs for the betterment of themselves (the electric motor, the airplane, the stock market); and the ideas in society at large about the businesspeople and their betterments (in a word, that liberalism).”³⁵ The shift in Luther’s time was more significant in terms of the latter ideas as opposed to the former. That is, Luther’s understanding of vocation inaugurated a set of new ideas and new attitudes toward the worldly service of others that legitimized all kinds of temporal callings, including business and commercial enterprise. McCloskey’s project can be seen as a more thorough and expansive project to correct Weber’s. Where Weber focused on the doctrinal grounding of economic ethics in predestination, for instance, McCloskey is similarly interested in ideas but outlines a rather different set of intellectual factors as significant. For McCloskey, as generally for Weber, “The Great Enrichment is not to be explained, that is, by material matters of race, class, gender, power, climate, culture, religion, genetics, geography, institutions, or nationality.” These structural, material,  A. Schweizer, Die protestantischen Zentraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der reformierten Kirche, 2 vols. (Zurich, 1854– 1856).  Bulgakov, National Economy, 174.  McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality, xii.

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and institutional causes are not the key factors. “On the contrary,” writes McCloskey, “what led to our automobiles and our voting rights, our plumbing and our primary schools, were the fresh ideas that flowed from liberalism, that is, a new system of encouraging betterment and a partial erosion of hierarchy.”³⁶ This dissolution of hierarchy – partial though it was in Luther’s case – is found in the tearing down of the traditional bifurcation between sacred and secular orders, the way of perfection and the way of the common people, the priestly caste and the laypeople. More important than what material factors and potential there is in a society are the ideas about human development and potential that a society manifests. We have seen that Luther exhorted each Christian to “examine his gift.” In Luther’s exposition of the seventh commandment in the Large Catechism, “You are not to steal,” he articulates a positive vision of such gifts in the context of economic justice.³⁷ There is both a negative and a positive aspect to this commandment. First, the commandment is explicitly framed in the negative, “You are not to steal,” which means that for all people, “it is their duty, on pain of God’s displeasure, not to harm their neighbors, to take advantage of them, or to defraud them by any faithless or underhanded business transaction.”³⁸ Positively, however, and for Luther “[m]uch more than that, they are also obligated faithfully to protect their neighbors’ property and to promote and further their interests, especially when they get money, wages, and provisions for doing so.”³⁹ Luther’s Small Catechism concisely summarizes both the negative and positive aspects of this commandment: “We are to fear and love God, so that we neither take our neighbors’ money or property nor acquire them by using shoddy merchandise or crooked deals, but instead help them to improve and protect their property and income.”⁴⁰ Luther’s discourse here is hortatory: the commandments concern things that are to be avoided and things that are to be pursued, things that are to be done and things that are not to be done. The motivation for this economic ethic is not directly related to a specific doctrinal formulation, such as predestination. Rather, it is connected with a simple understanding of the obedience Christians owe to God. In the Large Catechism, Luther not only addresses the obligations of the great lords and worldly potentates, he also addresses the duties of everyday people, “a manservant or a maidservant,” as well as “artisans, workers, and day laborers.”⁴¹ The duty to obey this commandment applies equally to everyone, regardless of station. Even if human beings are to be wary of the temptations of human reason in matters relating to justification, each person is to examine his or her gift and seek to promote and improve the welfare of his or her

     

McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality, xv. BC 416. BC 417. BC 417. BC 353. BC 416.

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neighbors. For this, every aspect of a person’s gift is to be employed, not in a self-aggrandizing or self-serving way, but in a way that denies the self and orients the person’s work to the good of others. In this way, the commandment “You are not to steal,” applied to every Christian in society, leads to an increasingly developed and refined sensibility of Christian asceticism, which Weber identified as so crucial to spirit of the modern economic system.

5 Law and the Christian Life If Luther inaugurated a shift in ethical discourse by making the ascetic discipline of monasticism applicable to all Christians throughout all stations in a way fitting to their calling, this shift was developed, systematized, and codified by following generations. In a general way, this can be described in terms of the application of moral law to the Christian life. Although the distinction between law and gospel is foundational to Luther’s thought, he has already made clear in his Small Catechism that the law, in the form of the Decalogue, was intended not only to expose the sinfulness of human beings, but also to be a positive guide for Christian conduct. Thus Luther summarizes the importance of the Decalogue: “God promises grace and every good thing to all those who keep these commandments. Therefore we also are to love and trust him and gladly act according to his commands.”⁴² In the Large Catechism, Luther expands on this, with emphasis on the significance of the commandments for everyone, regardless of station. The Ten Commandments, he writes, “are the true fountain from which all good works must spring, the true channel through which all good works must flow.”⁴³ Against the dichotomy between common morality and the way of perfection achievable in cloistered monasticism, Luther lauds the faithfulness of everyday people: “Such works are not important or impressive in the eyes of the world. They are not uncommon and showy, reserved to certain times, places, rites, and ceremonies, but are common, everyday domestic duties of one neighbor to another, with nothing glamorous about them.”⁴⁴ In the old, established system, “when a poor servant girl takes care of a little child or faithfully does what she is told, this is regarded as nothing.”⁴⁵ Against this, Luther extols everyday virtue and the Decalogue, which teaches “gentleness, patience, love toward enemies, chastity, kindness,” and so on, as the foundation for the Christian life.⁴⁶ “Each of us is to make them,” writes Luther, “a

    

BC BC BC BC BC

354. 428. 428. 428. 428.

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matter of daily practice in all circumstances, in all activities and dealings, as if they were written everywhere we look, even wherever we go or wherever we stand.”⁴⁷ This understanding of the law as a positive guide for the Christian life is taken up and systematized by Luther’s colleague Philip Melanchthon (1497– 1560). Timothy J. Wengert examines closely and in great detail the modifications Melanchthon made to his Scholia on the book of Colossians between 1528 and 1534.⁴⁸ Wengert traces Melanchthon’s teaching on the third use of the law against the doctrinal backdrop of forensic justification: The believer is declared righteous but is left with a remnant of sin. The law, rather than coming to its true end in the gospel, simply has lost its accusatory voice. Being written in the hearts of all, including believers, that law continues to reveal not only the remnants of sin, but the will of God and the contours of Christian obedience. The conscience, made good by God’s gracious declaration, must by necessity use the law to please God.⁴⁹

What is noteworthy here is that the development of an understanding of the law and its positive use in the Christian life occurs within the context of the doctrine of justification rather than predestination, and in the controversy over antinomianism. The key rhetorical shift that Luther’s work represents – in Weber’s words, the “moral justification of worldly activity” – is itself worked out into the development of a third use (pedagogical) of the law in addition to its accusatory (theological) and restraining (political) uses. Melanchthon’s student Niels Hemmingsen (1513 – 1600) likewise makes explicit the connection between the Decalogue, the moral law, and the natural law, particularly as these apply to the life of the Christian. The law of nature, which is expressed in the Decalogue, forbids that which is destructive of society and commands that which promotes its health and vitality. Thus, in connection with the commandment against theft, Hemmingsen writes that “deceit, thefts, [and] robberies destroy human society and overturn households and polities. Therefore, these things are forbidden by the law of nature. And, on the contrary: whatever preserves human society both in the domestic realm and in the political realm, this belongs to natural justice.”⁵⁰ The threefold distinction of the uses of the law, as well as the connection between moral and natural law and the Decalogue, would become a commonplace in Lutheran theology. As the Lutheran scholastic Johann Gerhard (1582– 1637) writes in his treatment of the law, “the third use of the Law is theological, didactic. In this use it instructs the reborn as to what truly are good works in which they should walk

 BC 431.  Timothy Wengert, Law and Gospel: Philip Melanchthon’s Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1997).  Wengert, Law and Gospel, 196.  N. Hemmingsen, “On the Law of Nature in the Three States of Life, and the Proofs That This Law Is Summarized in the Decalogue,” Journal of Markets & Morality 17 no. 2 (2014): 641.

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and by which they can please God.”⁵¹ For Gerhard, too, “the sum of the moral Law is in the Decalogue.”⁵² In his explication of the commandment against theft, Gerhard continues the practice we have observed in Luther and Hemmingsen, which is that “the affirmative should be concluded from what is forbidden. Namely, this commandment sanctions all of the virtues which support and preserve our neighbor’s property; and it approves of a certain distinction of ownership, the just acquisition of goods and resources, possession, and legitimate use.”⁵³ In his explication of the virtues associated with the commandments, Hemmingsen lists “the distinction of property, faithfulness, and integrity [candor],” which support and preserve society.⁵⁴ Gerhard includes these as well as other virtues in his more developed discussion, listing five virtues: diligence, commutative justice, contentment, parsimony, and beneficence and generosity. Under the first virtue, diligence, Gerhard explicitly connects faithfulness to this command and the doctrine of vocation: “the first virtue of this commandment is diligence in performing the tasks of our vocation. By this we are sure that our vocation and the tasks of our vocation are pleasing to God since we have been reconciled to God through faith in Christ.”⁵⁵ He continues: “with this faith shining forth, we diligently perform the works of our vocation, entrusting the result to God, seeking blessing and success from Him, and humbly await all things needful from his hands.”⁵⁶ In his discussion of the virtue of parsimony or economy, Gerhard concludes, “[i]f we must not steal, then we must certainly protect and use our own property profitably; we must avoid unnecessary expenses, lest we bring voluntary poverty upon ourselves and are driven later to theft and robbery.”⁵⁷ In this brief survey of Lutheran writers after Luther, we can see that many of virtues Weber associates with the Protestant ethic are present, and indeed emphasized. But these virtues are expounded in connection not with predestination, but rather with the doctrine of vocation, sometimes within the context of justification or sanctification. This underscores the truth of Weber’s observation that similar or even identical ethical norms can be grounded in quite different and even differing doctrinal commitments. Even if there is good reason for seeing the developments in Reformed Protestant ethical thought as derivative of and indebted to Luther’s insights, this is not a reason to discount or ignore the development of Lutheran thought through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are, indeed, comparative developments in the scholas-

 J. Gerhard, On the Law of God and On the Ceremonial and Forensic Laws (St. Louis. Concordia, 2015), 224.  J. Gerhard, On the Law of God, 14.  J. Gerhard, On the Law of God, 163.  Hemmingsen, On the Law of Nature, 642.  Gerhard, On the Law, 164.  Gerhard, On the Law, 164.  Gerhard, On the Law, 164.

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tic method and moral casuistry among both the Reformed and the Lutherans.⁵⁸ In many cases, the material conclusions do not differ significantly, either in substance or in emphasis.

6 A Protestant Legacy? If Weber’s narrative about the development of the Protestant ethic is highly selective and favors sources that were considered the most rationally coherent, specifically related to the quest for comfort deriving from a Calvinist understanding of predestination, there is good reason for examining the alternative doctrinal bases among different confessions. We have seen that Lutheran thought after Luther worked out an understanding of the applicability of law, specifically with regard to the commandment against theft, that legitimized worldly callings and provided a basis for using one’s gifts and talents – including one’s reason – for seeking to promote the profit and welfare of one’s neighbor. Given that not only different doctrinal bases but also different confessional traditions might give rise to similar ethical norms, it is also worth inquiring whether the spirit of modern capitalism that Weber identifies is actually not only a Protestant phenomenon. If we grant that the moral teachings of Lutheranism and the Reformed – whether magisterial or Puritan – have a broad overlap, it seems that there might be warrant for inquiring whether there is a broader Christian ethic at work. Wim Decock, for instance, has explored the possibilities for speaking of a Roman Catholic “spirit of capitalism” in his work on theologians of the second scholasticism.⁵⁹ He points out the contrasting opinions of Reformed and Roman Catholic theologians, particularly Wolfgang Musculus of Bern (1497– 1563) and Leonardus Lessius of Leuven (1554– 1623), on the triple contract, a lending mechanism aimed at guaranteeing a rate of return. Thus, writes Decock, “[t]heologians in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, such as Musculus or Lessius, may not have produced manifests in favor of or against capitalism, but their writings on legal and moral problems about with statements which reveal their approval or disapproval of the juridical devices and moral principles that form the legal backbone of a capitalistic economy.”⁶⁰ One such instrument is the triple contract, which had found an early champion in

 See Benjamin Mayes, Counsel and Conscience: Lutheran Casuistry and Moral Reasoning after the Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011).  Wim Decock, “The Catholic Spirit of Capitalism? Contrasting Views on Profit-Making through Capital Investment in the Age of Reformations,” in Law and Religion: The Legal Teachings of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, eds. Wim Decock et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014). See also Wim Decock, Theologians and Contract Law: The Moral Transformation of the Ius Commune (ca. 1500 – 1650) (Leiden: Brill, 2013); and Alejandro Chafuen, Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003).  Decock, The Catholic Spirit of Capitalism?, 22.

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John Eck (1486 – 1543), the antagonist of Luther and Melanchthon, and there are diverse opinions and evaluations of it that span confessional boundaries. In this case, the Jesuit Lessius is far more approving of its validity than the Reformed theologian Musculus. This leads Decock to conclude that, on this issue, there is some “evidence for the thesis that the spirit of commercial capitalism may have been fostered by Catholic theologians rather than by Reformers.”⁶¹ Other, related issues – such as usury – defy easy confessional identification with the Reformed or the Protestants as pro- or proto-capitalistic and Roman Catholics as anti-capitalistic.⁶² Following Weber, much historical work has been done to show the substantial early modern roots of modern capitalism in the writings of Protestant as well as Roman Catholic scholars. As the historian Lord Acton once put it, “the greater part of the political ideas of Milton, Locke, and Rousseau, may be found in the ponderous Latin of Jesuits who were subjects of the Spanish Crown, of Lessius, Molina, Mariana, and Suarez.”⁶³ The historian of economic ideas Joseph Schumpeter would later observe that there was not a single, novel analytic concept in the major writing of Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, that had not already been articulated in some way by Christian scholastics of the previous two centuries.⁶⁴ As for the economic ethic which emphasizes thrift and honesty, in the nineteenth century Pope Leo XIII connected a broad Christian vision with such an approach to civil life. In his 1891 encyclical letter Rerum Novarum, which inaugurated modern Roman Catholic social teaching, Leo writes, “Christian morality, when adequately and completely practiced, leads of itself to temporal prosperity, for it merits the blessing of that God who is the source of all blessings.”⁶⁵ He continues by observing that such morality “powerfully restrains the greed of possession and the thirst for pleasure – twin plagues, which too often make a man who is void of self-restraint miserable in the midst of abundance; it makes men supply for the lack of means through economy, teaching them to be content with frugal living, and further, keeping them out of the reach of those vices which devour not small incomes merely, but large fortunes, and dissipate many a goodly inheritance.”⁶⁶ Leo clearly understands the legacy of this teaching to be broadly Christian rather than specifically bound to a particular confessional tradition.

 Decock, The Catholic Spirit of Capitalism?, 42.  See Jordan Ballor, “Wolfgang Musculus on Psalm 15,” in Wolfgang Musculus, On Righteousness, Oaths, and Usury: A Commentary on Psalm 15 (Grand Rapids: CLP Academic, 2013). See also Ballor, Covenant, Causality, and Law: A Study in the Theology of Wolfgang Musculus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).  J. D. Acton, “Sir Erskine May’s Democracy in Europe,” in Essays in the History of Liberty, ed. J. Rufus Fears (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 71.  Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Routledge, 2009), 184.  See Leo XIII, encyclical letter Rerum Novarum, in Jordan Ballor, ed., Makers of Modern Christian Social Thought: Leo XIII and Abraham Kuyper on the Social Question (Grand Rapids: Acton Institute, 2016), 20.  Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 20.

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Given what has been contended above about the significance of Luther’s emphatic rejection of a double and hierarchical ethical structure, it may be the case that the Roman Catholic Church continues to struggle for a comprehensive and consistent legitimation of the mundane duties of laypersons. This too, however, is not simply a challenge for Roman Catholicism, but also for every Christian community, whether of a strongly clerical tradition or otherwise. The sacred/secular distinction continues to be a common inheritance of modernity. In this regard, the Roman Catholic Church has seen a deepening and development of its understanding and teaching regarding business, enterprise, and entrepreneurship in the modern world. Beginning with Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, a tradition of social encyclicals and the social doctrine of the Church more broadly has been articulated. As Anthony Percy writes, following Rerum Novarum, the “social encyclicals of the Catholic Church have certainly fashioned and polished, consolidated and strengthened kept and guarded the deposit of faith in its social dimension.”⁶⁷ Even so, in the twentieth century, following the introduction of Weber’s thesis, the Roman Catholic social thinker Michael Novak, in his own articulation of the “spirit” of democratic capitalism in 1982, observes that, at least in his experience, “[c] apitalists seemed almost always to be Protestants, either Calvinist or Episcopalian.”⁶⁸ If capitalism is understood to be a more narrowly Protestant rather than an inclusive Christian legacy, the causes of such particularity must be found in something other than the moral teachings, which are largely shared, or the dogmatic foundation of something like predestination, which is in turn affirmed, denied, or demurred among and across various traditions.

7 Conclusion Since its first articulation over a century ago, Max Weber’s thesis about the relationship between religious teaching and economic action has exercised great influence on scholarly debates and popular representations of Christianity and capitalism. In this sense, whatever one decides about the veracity of the thesis generally or about its various particular claims, it must be judged to have been a success. The reformer Martin Luther figures in Weber’s analysis as a kind of lightning flash, introducing a new vision of social life but quickly fading, as later thinkers work out their own understandings of Christian morality and social order. By tearing down a two-tiered, hierarchical moral system, which radically separated laypeople and their daily lives from the lives of the clergy and monastics, Luther inaugurated a new era of social dynamism. For Weber, this is Luther’s main contribution to the development of the religious ethos or spirit of modern economic humanity. It was

 Anthony Percy, Entrepreneurship in the Catholic Tradition (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010), 10.  Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (New York: Madison Books, 1982), 23.

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for the Calvinists, and particularly the English Puritans, to work out a more coherent and rational system of doctrine – with predestination as a central dogma – and its expression in an ethic of worldly asceticism. If judged on the merits of his psychological and theological claims about the relationship between predestination and Puritan ethics, Weber’s thesis must be regarded as deeply flawed. But if understood as emphasizing the intellectual and practical connections between religion and economic life, and particularly the valuation of worldly living in Protestant rhetoric and discourse, the Weber thesis ought to be judged more favorably.

Günter Frank

Luther in Catholic Historiography and Theology: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 1 Introduction For centuries, the Catholic image of Luther was determined by the negative perception of one of his contemporaries, the humanist Johannes Cochlaeus. During the twentieth century, however, the Catholic perception of Luther went through an epochal change, with far-reaching ecumenical and theological implications.

2 Johannes Cochlaeus’ Negative Image of Luther and Its Consequences For four centuries, the Catholic image of Luther – and hence also Catholic perceptions of him – was influenced by the humanist Johannes Cochlaeus (1479 – 1552), who sympathized with Luther early on, but turned into one of his most bitter enemies.¹ Cochlaeus’ critique mainly addressed Luther’s alleged attack on the clerical office, particularly the office of the pope, and the Church’s sacramental practice. In his infamous and repeatedly printed Luther Commentaries ² – on which had

Translation from German: Alissa Jones Nelson.  Remigius Bäumer, ed., Johannes Cochläus (1479 – 1552). Leben und Werk im Dienst der katholischen Reform (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980); Bäumer,”Johannes Cochlaeus (1479 – 1552),” in Katholische Theologen der Reformationszeit, ed. Erwin Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1984), vol. 1; Bäumer, “Johananes Cochläus (1479 – 1552),” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), 8:140 – 46; “Cochläus, Johannes,” in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz,1995): 1:1072– 74; Monique Samuel-Scheyder, Johannes Cochlaeus: Humaniste et adversaire de Luther (Germaniques) (Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1993). General and exhaustive research reports on the Catholic image of Luther in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be found in: Otto Hermann Pesch, Hinführung zu Luther (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1983), esp. 15 – 47, here p. 18, Fn16, with further references; Pesch, “Martin Luther im katholischen Urteil. Zwischen Verteufelung und dankbarer Aneignung,” in Spurenlese. Kulturelle Wirkungen der Reformation, ed. Irene Dingel et al. (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2013): 449 – 84; Johannes Brosseder, “Der katholische Luther,” in Von der Reformation zur Reform. Neue Zugänge zum Konzil von Trient, ed. Günter Frank et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 2015): 65 – 96.  Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri Saxonis chronographice ex ordine ab anno Domini 1517 usque ad annum 1546 inclusive fideliter conscripta, 1548. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-056

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begun working in 1532, and which were first published in 1549 –, Cochlaeus sketched an image of Luther as the destroyer of Church unity who had brought endless suffering to Germany and to all Christians. Even though this publication represents an important source on the Reformation period, it was characterized by dreadful polemics and gross distortions: I will enlighten every honest man, either Christian or Evangelical, about the fact that a lousy runaway monk and a crafty destroyer of nuns, who has neither land nor people, as an ignoble changeling, born by a chambermaid, as they say, and who still today eats away the alms donated by the monastery with a runaway nun – that he is allowed to mock a ruler as a stable boy, to deride him, and to lie about him. (Ich werde einem jeglichen ehrliebenden Biedermann ein Licht aufstecken, ob es christlich oder evangelisch sei, dass ein lausiger ausgelaufener Mönch und bübischer Nonnenfetzer, der weder Land noch Leute hat, als ein unedler Wechselbalg, von einer Badmaid geboren, wie man sagt, und noch heutzutage das Almosen, so zum Kloster gestiftet, mit einer ausgelaufenen Nonne frisst, einen Fürsten […] als einen Rossbuben verhöhnen, schmähen und verlügen darf.)³

These Luther Commentaries, as the Paderborn church historian Adolf Herte (1887– 1970) demonstrated in his three-volume study in the period of National Socialism, continued to influence the Catholic image of Luther until the middle of the twentieth century – even though, ironically, Cochlaeus’ commentaries themselves were added to the index of forbidden books in 1581.⁴ No less devastating, but initially from a different perspective, was the image of Luther that the Munich church historian Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (1799 – 1890) presented. Von Döllinger belonged to the group of Catholic intellectuals around Joseph von Görres (1776 – 1848) and was primarily driven by the idea of a strong papacy, which originated from contemporary ultramontane Catholicism. Immediately after his appointment as professor in Munich, he took over the editing of the Handbuch der christlichen Kirchengeschichte (Handbook of Christian Church History) from his predecessor, Johann Nepomuk Hortig (1774– 1847). In this work, he introduced the reader to Luther under the heading “Ursprung und erster Fortgang der Kirchenspaltung in Deutschland” (“Origin and Early Progress of the Schism of the Church in Germany”).⁵ Just like Cochlaeus, von Döllinger regarded Luther first and foremost as the divider of the Western Church. But he also noted that Luther’s critique of the pope’s primacy had already become apparent in the Leipzig Disputation

 Johannes Cochlaeus, Hertzog Georgens zu Sachssen Ehrlich vnd grundtliche entschuldigung, wider Martin Luthers Auffruerisch vn[d] verlogenne brieff vnd Verantwortung (Dresden: Stöckel, 1533), quoted in Pesch, “Martin Luther im katholischen Urteil,” 451.  Adolf Herte, Das katholische Lutherbild im Bann der Lutherkommentare des Cochläus, 3 vols. (Münster: Aschendorff, 1943); Herte, Die Lutherkommentare des Johannes Cochläus. Kritische Studie zur Geschichtsschreibung im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung (Münster: Aschendorff, 1935).  Johann Josef Ignaz von Döllinger, ed., Handbuch der christlichen Kirchengeschichte von Dr. Johann Nepomuk Hortig […] fortgesetzt und beendigt von Johann Josef Ignaz Döllinger (Landshut: Philipp Kräss, 1828): 2.2:413 – 23.

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of 1519. Subsequently, von Döllinger’s depiction of Luther hinged on this critique, even though he also pointed out that he had found a great deal of truth, beauty, and rigor in Luther. Roughly twenty years later, von Döllinger sent his three-volume history of the Reformation off to the printer.⁶ In this work, he continued to develop the controversial theological theme of the Reformation as a schism, but at this point Luther’s doctrine of justification, which he regarded as basically new, had become central to his interest. He was convinced that “since the apostles, nobody has presented this doctrine, nobody has understood Paul’s letters the way he [Luther] did.”⁷ For the first time, it was Luther’s theology – rather than his biography – that took center stage. Von Döllinger devoted the entire first chapter of this work to Luther’s statements on the doctrine of justification, both in lectures and in debates, in order to uncover the contradictions in this doctrine as well as in his closely connected doctrine of sin and in his anthropology. Von Döllinger subsequently corrected his image of Luther once more – namely, with regard to discussions of the pope’s infallibility, which were triggered by the First Vatican Council. Von Döllinger himself had rejected this dogma on the basis of his knowledge of the sources of church history, with the result that he was excommunicated on April 17, 1871. In the aftermath of this event, von Döllinger found it significant that the Reformation had its origins not only in the figure and the theology of Luther, but also in the crisis of the late medieval Church, in the failure of conciliarism, and in the image of the papacy.⁸ Supplementing this controversial theological reception based on Johannes Cochlaeus’ negative image of Luther, the Lower Rhine church historian Johannes Janssen (1829 – 1891) was instrumental in the formation of a different depiction of Luther.⁹ While Cochlaeus’ and (partly) von Döllinger’s understandings were characterized by the schism of Western Christianity and the implications of Luther’s theology, Janssen focused mainly on Luther’s character and disposition. From then on, it was anxiety disorders – caused by a problematic childhood – and a humanism unsuited to religious proficiency that formed the blueprint for interpreting Luther’s theology and the Roman process. Janssen’s approach had some impact in the twentieth century. But prior to that, the works of Heinrich Denifle (1846 – 1905), a genuine hater of Luther, were fully in

 Ignaz von Döllinger, Die Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre Wirkungen im Umfange des Lutherischen Bekenntnisses, 3 vols. (Regensburg: G. Joseph Manz, 1846 – 1848; repr. Frankfurt: Minerva Verlag, 1962).  Von Döllinger, Die Reformation.Vol. 3, 5.  Ignaz von Döllinger, Ueber die Wiedervereinigung der christlichen Kirchen. Sieben Vorträge, gehalten zu München im Jahr 1872 (Nördlingen: C.H. Beck’sche Buchhandlung, 1888).  Johannes Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters, Bd. 2: Zustände des deutschen Volkes seit dem Beginn der politisch-kirchlichen Revolution bis zum Ausgang der socialen Revolution von 1525 (Freiburg: Herder, 1888).

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line with the consistently negative-pejorative, controversial theological perspective of Cochlaeus. In his three-volume work Luther und Luthertum in ihrer ersten Entwicklung (Luther and Lutheranism in Their Early Development), published in 1904/1905, Denifle attested to Luther’s “self-indulgence” on “moral terrain” and his “complete arbitrariness” on “the terrain of faith.” He evaluated Luther on the basis of the massive number of resignations from the monasteries of the time, which Luther had triggered, and he condemned his “philosophy of the flesh,” which he saw evidenced in desires of the flesh, in an absence of prayer, and in a lack of fervor in Luther’s relation to God. Pope Pius X, otherwise an avid supporter of reforms, officially confirmed this view in his Borromaeus Encyclical of 1910, in which he wrote of the Reformers: “Then haughty and rebellious people stood up, enemies of the cross of Christ […], people with earthly attitudes […] whose God is the belly.”¹⁰ But in 1905, the year of the author’s death, another of Denifle’s studies was published, engaging the discussion on the doctrine of justification in patristic literature and the Middle Ages.¹¹ In contrast to Ignaz von Döllinger, Denifle’s broad study of the sources led him to conclude that the patristic and medieval scholars had had an intensive and wide-ranging debate about the doctrine of justification, but that they did not proclaim any one interpretation. The Jesuit Hartmann Grisar (1845 – 1932), in turn, presented a more moderate interpretation in his work on Luther (which is also in three volumes).¹² He differed from Denifle and Pope Pius X in that he tried to understand the reformer – in a similar way as Janssen – from within, but by interpreting Luther psycho-pathologically, he remained fundamentally dismissive of him. As a result of this interpretation, we see Luther as dependent on his childhood home and as someone who turned his own image of his father into the measure of God’s image. This rigid image of God thus became the reason for his fearfulness. This psychologizing interpretation of Luther – as Erik H. Erikson’s (1902– 1994) Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, published in 1958 and repeatedly reprinted, reveals – had an enormous influence at the time and may still have an effect on interpretations of Luther today.¹³

 Carl Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des römischen Katholizismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1934): 514.  Heinrich Denifle, Die abendländischen Schriftausleger bis Luther über Justitia Dei (Rom 1, 17) und Justificatio: Beitrag zur Geschichte der Exegese, der Literatur und des Dogmas im Mittelalter (Mainz: Kirchheim & Company, 1905).  Hartmann Grisar, Luther, 3 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1924/19253 [1911/1912]).  Werner Beyna, Das moderne katholische Lutherbild (Essen: Ludgerus, 1969): 46 – 52.

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3 First Attempts at a Positive Acknowledgement of Luther Even before World War I, however, we already find contributions that try to positively acknowledge Luther’s reform theology. As early as 1904, the Würzburg church historian Sebastian Merkle (1862– 1945), whose doctoral dissertation was devoted to the Council of Trent, wrote in a review of Denifle’s Luther studies that only with “a careful, objective presentation of the facts […] can an understanding between the confessions be made possible.”¹⁴ Furthermore, he noted: “Over against the opinion of timid minds that it is not appropriate for a Catholic cleric to defend Luther, I formulate my own conviction that everyone who still has a residual sense of truth and justice must protect an enemy who is attacked unjustly.”¹⁵ Merkle again expressed a similarly positive understanding of Luther 25 years later.¹⁶ There can be no doubt that these attempts at reconciliation with Luther and the Reformation paved the way for the work of the church historian whose name will forever be connected with a revised image of Luther: Joseph Lortz (1887– 1975). Lortz was a private lecturer (Privatdozent) under the supervision of Sebastian Merkle in Würzburg; he later lectured in Mainz, where he also served as the founding director of the Institute for European History. In his two-volume Die Reformation in Deutschland (The Reformation in Germany), published 1939/1940, he studied Luther’s theological development in detail. Lortz believed that Luther’s 1515/1516 commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans had revealed the schismatic character of his theology early on. But the revolutionary new aspect of Lortz’s depiction of Luther was that he consistently understood the reformer as a religious figure who deserved respect and admiration. In his theology, Luther looked back on centuries of clerical and theological tradition. What made him a “heretic,” Lortz argued, was his “choice.” But that choice was derived from his natural condition, which Lortz criticized as “deeply rooted subjectivism”: only that which is accessible to subjective experience can be a binding truth of faith.¹⁷ Next to this subjectivism, which he saw as part of Luther’s natural condition, Lortz identified a certain heterodoxy in his theology: on the one hand, there was one of the most influential theological schools of the Late Middle  Sebastian Merkle, “Referat über Heinrich Denifle ‘Luther und Luthertum in ihrer ersten Entwicklung’ und ‘Luther in rationalistischer und christlicher Beleuchtung,’” Deutsche Literaturzeitung 25 (1904): 1239.  Merkle, Reformationsgeschichte Streitfragen. Ein Wort zur Verständigung aus Anlaß des Prozesses Beyhl-Berlichingen (Kirchheim: Kirchheim’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1904). For the context, see Beyna, Lutherbild, 58 – 59.  Merkle, “Gutes an Luther und Übles an seinen Tadlern,” in Luther in ökumenischer Sicht, ed. Alfred von Martin (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1929): 9 – 19.  Lortz’s “subjectivism thesis” also had an impact on philosophy. See Eric Voegelin’s study, only recently published in German: Voegelin, Luther und Calvin. Die große Verwirrung (Paderborn: Wilhelm Finck, 2011).

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Ages, the so-called via moderna, which followed William of Ockham; and on the other hand, there was Gabriel Biel, whose Collectorium on Peter Lombard’s Sentences Luther had studied in Erfurt and could quote from memory. But this “modern” theology, according to Lortz, made Luther blind to the genuinely great traditions of theology and to the fact that theology was not even Catholic. This brought Lortz to his conviction, which has been quoted many times, that “Luther overcame in himself a Catholicism that was not Catholic.”¹⁸ Lortz’s subjectivism thesis inspired controversy among theological audiences. But his interpretation had also discredited an influential theological tradition of the Late Middle Ages. This situation inspired the moral theologian at Erfurt University, Wilhelm Ernst (1927– 2001), to engage in a detailed study of Gabriel Biel’s doctrines. Ernst concluded the exact opposite of what Lortz had argued and stated that the core of Luther’s theology could not be derived from Gabriel Biel’s theology and philosophy.¹⁹ It was still impossible to take Luther’s religious profile seriously. This situation finally changed on the occasion of his 500th birthday, with the large Luther Congress of 1983, which was celebrated in Erfurt as an ecumenical event.

4 The “Golden Age” of Catholic Research on Luther: The “Catholic Luther” Before the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birthday in 1983, Catholic research on Luther had worked intensively on the question of the “Catholic Luther,” reaching its peak in the 1960s and 1970s.²⁰ This debate was triggered by Joseph Lortz’s conviction, quoted above, that “Luther overcame in himself a Catholicism that was not Catholic.” After the Second Vatican Council, the debate was carried out particularly between Peter Manns (1923 – 1991), who followed the school of Lortz, and Otto Hermann Pesch (1931– 2014), who followed the school of the ecumenical theologian Heinrich Fries (1911– 1998). Both authors built up credentials in the field of Luther research. Peter Manns succeeded Joseph Lortz as director of the Institute for European History in Mainz; in 1985, he published his large and influential theological biography of Martin Luther.²¹ In this book, Manns portrays Luther as the joint “father of faith.”

 Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland, 1:176 and 192. Lortz called William of Ockham a “fundamentally non-Catholic personality.”  Wilhelm Ernst, Gott und Mensch am Vorabend der Reformation. Eine Untersuchung zur Moralphilosophie und –theologie bei Gabriel Biel (Leipzig: St. Benno, 1972), esp. 80 and 414.  On this topic, see Brosseder, “Der katholische Luther,” 65 – 69; see also the summary and review by Daniela Blum, Der katholische Luther (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016).  Peter Manns, Martin Luther. Der unbekannte Reformator. Ein Lebensbild (Freiburg: Herder, 1985); see also Manns,”Was macht Luther zum ‘Vater im Glauben’ für die eine Christenheit?,” in Freiheit und

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Eberhard Lohse, who was at that time the chairperson of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, contributed a preface to this book, in which he emphasized that “if Catholic and Evangelical Christians consider together what Luther has to say, they will learn to see the reformer in a new light, and they will draw insights from his sermons and doctrines that make them realize: Whenever they listen to one father of their faith, they will understand that they are brothers to each other, brothers in faith.”²² Otto Hermann Pesch, in his turn, published a systematic study of the theology of justification in the works of Thomas Aquinas and Luther²³ and subsequently a theological biography of Luther that was reprinted several times.²⁴ In both publications, Pesch tried to stress Luther’s Catholicism and called him, together with Cardinal Willebrand, a “joint teacher.”²⁵ In his extensive study of Aquinas’ and Luther’s doctrines of justification, he came to the conclusion that both authors shared the same theological intention, but they used different terms and theological systems of thought. Hence for Pesch, the differences between the two doctrines of justification related only to the forms of their expression, not to the matter itself. This insight led Pesch to the following conclusion: With regard to the questions [of justification] at stake here, between Luther and Thomas a mutual “anathema” is neither necessary nor responsible. With the caveat that Thomas, in all the questions addressed here, represented the doctrines of the Church […] the conclusion is inevitable that, although Luther’s justification of the sinner leaves the terrain of the theology of his time and that of his successors, he did not enter a new country that would be forbidden terrain for Catholic theologians.²⁶

In his doctoral dissertation, Pesch had followed the way into scholasticism paved by Denifle, but with a completely different intention – from the beginning, his study took on an ecumenical perspective. In his Hinführung zu Luther (Introduction to Luther), Pesch tried to introduce his readers to the idea of Luther as “a great theologian of Christianity.” Pesch saw the core of Luther’s theology in his doctrine of justification: God justifies the human being, who is entangled in sin, purely by grace through Jesus Christ. Hence for Pesch, it was not the understanding of the Church, nor the papacy, nor the critique of scholasticism that was at the center of Luther’s theology, but the theology of justification. This theology, however, would require new expressions at different times.

Frömmigkeit: über Martin Luther/mit Beiträgen von Oswald Bayer […], ed. Wolfgang Böhme (Karlsruhe: self-published, 1983): 24– 50.  Manns, Martin Luther, 9 – 10.  Otto Hermann Pesch, Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin. Versuch eines systematisch-theologischen Dialogs (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1967).  Pesch, Hinführung zu Luther.  Pesch, Hinführung zu Luther, 272.  Pesch, Theologie der Rechtfertigung, 950.

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Pesch did not argue for an integration of Luther’s theology into the existing doctrines of Catholic theology, but rather for an extension of Catholic theology that could include Luther’s work, as well. The dispute over the “Catholic Luther” came to its first climax as early as 1967: as a student of Lortz, Peter Manns accused Otto Hermann Pesch of an “existential interpretation of Luther.”²⁷ The influential church historian at the University of Bonn and expert on the Council of Trent, Hubert Jedin (1900 – 1980), warned at the time: “Those who want to make the whole of Luther Catholic, will become Lutherans themselves.”²⁸ This dispute came to a peaceful end in the anniversary year of 1983.²⁹ The Bonn dogmatic theologian Johannes Brosseder (1937– 2014), however, recently pointed out a dilemma in the controversy over the “Catholic Luther”:³⁰ Joseph Lortz’s dictum that “Luther overcame in himself a Catholicism that was not Catholic” led to seemingly insoluble problems, particularly after the Second Vatican Council. What was the benchmark for measuring catholicity? Was it the tradition of pre- and contra-Ockhamite Church doctrine and practice, as they were understood in the sixteenth century? Or was it contemporary Catholic theology and practice, based on their renewal through the Second Vatican Council? Brosseder demonstrates this with reference to Luther’s doctrine of the rediscovery of the justification of the sinner through faith alone: from a contemporary perspective, this doctrine is not only deemed Catholic rather than schismatic, but is also accepted by official clerical offices, as the appendix of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification of October 31, 1999, explicitly and unmistakably reveals;³¹ but in the sixteenth century, the Council of Trent rejected this same doctrine as un-Catholic.³² This, Brosseder argues, shows that in the sixteenth century, there were apparently theological and clerical principles in place that led to Luther’s condemnation, but these cannot be equated with contemporary theological and clerical principles. This means that historical clerical decisions tell us nothing about Luther’s catholicity. By the same token, this does not help us when it comes to the relationship between what is “Catholic” and what is “reformatory.” As Brosseder concludes: “The Roman Catholic Church today should be conscious of the factual defect of its catholicity, and the reformatory

 Pesch, Gerechtfertigt aus Glauben. Luthers Frage an die Kirche (Freiburg: Herder, 1982): 101.  Hubert Jedin, “Zum Wandel des katholischen Lutherbildes,” in Martin Luther. Gestalt und Werk, ed. Helmuth Gering (Karlsruhe: Badenia, 1967): 35 – 46, here 46.  Manns, “Zur Gültigkeit und zur theologisch-ökumenischen Tauglichkeit des Lortzschen Ansatzes vom ‘Katholischen Luther,’” in Ökumenische Erschließung Martin Luthers. Referate und Ergebnisse einer internationalen theologischen Konsultation, ed. Peter Manns and Harding Meyer (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1983): 15 – 43; Pesch, “Der ‘lutherische’ Luther – eine katholische Möglichkeit? Versuch einer Verständigung über ‘historische Lutherforschung’ und ‘systematische Lutherforschung,’” in Ökumenische Erschließung Martin Luthers, 44– 66.  On this topic, see Brosseder, “Der katholische Luther,” esp. 67– 69.  “Gemeinsame Erklärung zur Rechtfertigungslehre” – Annex no. 2 A, in DwÜ 3:438 – 39.  DH 1528.

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churches could move their catholicity, with reference to Martin Luther and the CA [i. e., Confessio Augustana], more explicitly into public consciousness.”³³

5 Setbacks There were, however, also setbacks in the more positive evaluation of Martin Luther as it gradually developed. On the occasion of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Germany in 1980, the Freiburg church historian Remigius Bäumer (1918 – 1998) published his Kleine deutsche Kirchengeschichte (Short History of the German Church). This publication reasserted many of the clichés about Luther that were well known from the time of Johannes Cochläus to that of Heinrich Denifle: Luther’s “Reformation did not bring a reform, but rather split the Church”; Luther was “blind” to the “Catholic truth”; his marriage to the former Cistercian nun Katharina von Bora – “in the midst of the horror of the Peasants’ Revolt” – was “defiled by fornication and the breach of vows, sullied with the blood of all the thousands of slain victims.” Even Luther’s translation of the Bible was not a notable deed, because “by then 18 German translations of the Bible already existed”; what is more, Luther’s translation was too much of “an interpretation in the sense of his theological opinions.” In a similar vein, the theologian Theobald Beer (1902– 2000) – who, after his retirement, directed the Luther Research Institute of the Gustav Siewert Academy in Weilheim-Bierbronnen – presented an image of Luther that is more reminiscent of Denifle and Grisar than of Lortz and Pesch. In his study Der fröhliche Wechsel und Streit. Grundzüge der Theologie Martin Luthers (The Gay Change and Dispute: The Main Features of Martin Luther’s Theology), which was already in its second printing in 1980, Beer expounds the thesis that, from the earliest theological remarks in his marginal notes on Augustin’s De Trinitate onward, Luther split the salvific meaning of the one event of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection into a double reality; this motif of manifold doublings runs through his work – of a twofold justice, a twofold sin, a doubling of grace (Gnade) and gift (Gabe), of faith and love, to name a few examples. This motif of manifold doublings could not be derived from medieval theology, but rather stemmed from The Book of Twenty-Four Philosophers. Regardless of the fact that such a derivation is veritable nonsense,³⁴ Beer’s book has not been well received in the Catholic perception of Luther. The case of Dietrich Emme seems to be different. Between 1980 and 1991, Emme published – mostly as author’s editions, and often in several printings – books with titles such as Martin Luther. Seine Jugend- und Studentenzeit 1483 – 1505 (Martin Luther: His Youth and Student Years, 1483 – 1505) or Martin Luthers Weg ins Kloster (Mar-

 Brosseder, “Der katholische Luther,” 96.  Kurt Flasch, trans., Was ist Gott? Das Buch der 24 Philosophen. Erstmals übersetzt und kommentiert von Kurt Flasch (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2011).

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tin Luther’s Way into the Monastery).³⁵ In these books, the author turns generally accepted scholarly conclusions upside down and criminalizes Luther’s theological motives – for example, in his explanation of Luther’s entering the monastery. Emme considers the “high probability” that, in 1505, Luther stabbed a fellow student with a sword and fled to the monastery to avoid investigation. Unfortunately, these entirely untenable theses are still widespread, and they have found approval in certain Catholic milieus. The considerations of the Cologne psychologist Albert Mock are fully in line with those of Hartmann Grisar. Two years after the Luther anniversary, in 1985, he published his book Abschied von Luther. Psychologische und theologische Reflexionen zum Lutherjahr (Farewell to Luther: Psychological and Theological Reflections on the Luther Year). This book is the result of intensive academic discussion of Luther’s work, numerous biographies, the course of the Luther anniversary, and particularly the divergent research results of Dietrich Emme, Theobald Beer, and others. Nietzsche’s views on Luther, Mock argues, certainly need to be corrected; however, he was right in his opinion that the widely shared and generally “adopted” public image of Luther is a “historical construction” that does not match the historical reality of Luther. Luther’s biography has to be rewritten. To various “new” biographical and theological insights, the author adds Luther’s psychologically and psychopathologically relevant character traits, opening up approaches to a new understanding of the reformer and his theology. Consequently, and by way of example, Luther’s principle of scripture alone (sola scriptura) is now discarded as being the result of his psychical illness. Although these relapses into old Catholic images of Luther were individual contributions, mostly written by lay authors or by authors who lacked a reputation as Catholic ecumenists, they nevertheless represent a stream of reception history that manifested itself in certain Catholic milieus throughout the twentieth century.

6 Catholic Research into Reformation History in the Context of the Ecumenical Movement The debate over the “Catholic Luther” that – departing from Joseph Lortz – increasingly determined the image of Luther in the second half of the twentieth century was not just a singular and solely academic event. It benefited in general from the Catholic Church’s opening up to ecumenism, which also led to a new theological orientation of the Church. In 1928, the Catholic priest Max Josef Metzger (1887– 1943) –

 Emme’s studies on Luther were republished in 2015 and 2016, in anticipation of the anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. See Dietrich Emme, Luthers Theologie und Anthropologie im Spiegel seiner Biographie, ed. Berthold Wald, vol. 2 (Aachen: Patrimonium, 2015); Dietrich Emme, Gesammelte Beiträge zur Biographie des jungen Martin Luther, ed. Richard Niedermeier, vol. 1 (Aachen: Patrimonium, 2016).

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who was sentenced to death by the Nazis on October 14, 1943 – founded the Christkönigsinstitut (Institute of Christ the King) in Meitingen, which was to become an important preparation for the so-called Una-Sancta-Bewegung (Una Sancta Movement).³⁶ Central to this movement was the conviction that a reunification of the faith would only be possible through a “visible unity” of the Church, with an impact that would exceed the limits of the respective denominations. Representatives of this movement also taught that the catholicity of the apostolic tradition had not been fully realized by any historical church. Thus, on the Catholic end, the liturgical movement, the youth movement, and the Bible movement – as well as the reevaluation of the Reformation (particularly by Joseph Lortz) – all contributed to a new ecumenical awareness. One result of this new ecumenical awareness was a reorientation of the Catholic Church and its theology that was unmistakably and irreversibly expressed in the socalled Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis redintegratio) of the Second Vatican Council on November 21, 1964. Chapter 1 of this decree addresses “Catholic Principles on Ecumenism,” emphasizing that “the Sacred Council exhorts all the Catholic faithful to recognize the signs of the times and to take an active and intelligent part in the work of ecumenism.”³⁷ But immediately prior to the start of the council, another impulse had carried forward the controversial theological discussion with reference to ecumenism: this was the idea of Josef Ratzinger, who was a fundamental theologian at the time, to develop the process of ecumenism through the study of the Church’s binding doctrinal texts.³⁸ This also meant that Philipp Melanchthon became a central focus of research once again. Melanchthon wrote most of the confessional texts of the Wittenberg movement, and his students further contributed to the movement with writings from all over Europe. Up to that point, the Catholic perception of Melanchthon and his role at Luther’s side had been marginal. If Catholic historiography addressed him at all, in the nineteenth century it reinforced the prejudices that had been widespread in the Protestant perception of Melanchthon since the 1520s: Melanchthon’s theology showed a weakness of character (moral obliquity) and an irenicism that was inspired by humanism and not at all interested in dogmatic judgments.³⁹

 Gerhard Voss, “Una Sancta,” in LThK (2001), 10:373 – 74; Wolfgang Thönissen, “Aufbruch in ein neues Zeitalter der Kirche. Die Entwicklung des Ökumenismus nach dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil,” ThRv 108 (2012): 267– 82; Antonio Calisi, L’Ecumenismo, il Rinnovamento Carismatico Cattolico e la Comunità di Gesù (Bari: Chàrisma Edizioni, 2015).  Unitatis redintegratio 1.4, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/docu ments/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html.  On the following, see the detailed discussion in Siegfried Wiedenhofer, “Zum katholischen Melanchthonbild im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” ZKTh 102/4 (1980): 425 – 54; Wiedenhofer, “Der römische Katholizismus und Melanchthon,” in Philipp Melanchthon – ein Wegbereiter für die Ökumene, ed. Jörg Haustein (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997): 62– 76.  Beate Kobler, Die Entstehung des negativen Melanchthonbildes. Protestantische Melanchthonkritik bis 1560 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). Negative stereotypes of Melanchthon within the Wittenberg

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In two university courses, Josef Ratzinger systematically addressed the confessional writings of the Reformers: first, the Confessio Augustana (CA) of 1530 (in the first semester of 1958/1959), and two years later, Melanchthon’s tractate De potestate et primatu papae of 1537, which was added to the confessional writings. In fact, these courses inspired two new directions in Catholic research into Reformation history. Vinzenz Pfnür (1937– 2012), one of Ratzinger’s students, published a groundbreaking study of the CA and its doctrine of justification, which later became instrumental in the Catholic acknowledgment of this confessional text.⁴⁰ Because Pfnür analyzed the doctrine of justification in the CA strictly within its own historical context (the formation of the confession, the refutation of late scholastic theology, the enemies within the Reformation, and Melanchthon’s theological development), he arrived at an extremely ecumenically fruitful interpretation of it. The second impulse came from Siegfried Wiedenhofer (1941– 2015), who would later become the first Melanchthon laureate, in his examination of the humanistic structures of Melanchthon’s theology. Wiedenhofer concluded that “the basic structures of Melanchthon’s humanistic-reformatory theology in all relevant aspects are compatible with the fundamental intentions of the authentic Catholic tradition.”⁴¹ From a philosophical perspective, it was Günter Frank who addressed the important question of controversial theology as it related to philosophical theology or “natural theology.”⁴² Karl Barth (1886 – 1968) had already claimed, in his famous controversy with Erich Przywara’s (1889 – 1972) metaphysics of analogy, that because of this doctrine and the “analogia entis” it was based on, he could not become a Catholic.⁴³ Frank’s study emphasized the strictly Catholic character of this philosophical tradition and thus opened up the ecumenical possibilities of theological and philosophical mediation. All of these different impulses – the revised Catholic image of Luther and Melanchthon, the new approach to the theology of the Protestant confessional writings, the spirit of the ecumenical movement, and the ecumenical reorientation of the Catholic Church and its theology in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council – exerted a far-reaching impact on the last thirty years of the twentieth century. In 1968, the Catholic and Evangelical working groups that had been founded separately during

movement included his gentleness, his lack of theological depth, his closeness to the papacy, his compliance in doctrinal disputes, and his moving away from Luther’s positions.  Vinzenz Pfnür, Einig in der Rechtfertigungslehre? Die Rechtfertigungslehre der Confessio Augustana (1530) und die Stellungnahme der katholischen Kontroverstheologie zwischen 1530 und 1535 (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1970).  Wiedenhofer, “Der römische Katholizismus,” 72. See also Wiedenhofer, Formalstrukturen humanistischer und reformatorischer Theologie bei Philipp Melanchthon, 2 vols. (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1976).  Günter Frank, Die theologische Philosophie Philipp Melanchthons (1497 – 1560) (Leipzig: St. Benno, 1995).  Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1932): 1.1:viii. See the detailed discussion in Günter Frank, “Die natürliche Theologie als ökumenisches Problem. Zur Relektüre der ‘theologia naturalis’ bei den Reformatoren Melanchthon und Calvin,” in Calvin – Saint or Sinner?, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010): 215 – 40.

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World War II were united. Following the suggestion of the Heidelberg theologian Edmund Schlink (1903 – 1984), the new alliance adopted the name Ökumenischer Arbeitskreis evangelischer und katholischer Theologen (“Ecumenical Working Group of Evangelical and Catholic Theologians”). Pope Benedict XVI had been a member of this working group until his election as pope in 2005. Edmund Schlink, in turn, participated in the Second Vatican Council as an observing delegate of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). At the same time, he was an official delegate of the EKD at the plenary meetings of the World Council of Churches. In 1975, he had published (under a pseudonym) a “vision of the pope” that has since been through three editions.⁴⁴ A groundbreaking reorientation occurred in 1980, on the 450th anniversary of the Confessio Augustana and the Confutatio. ⁴⁵ On the initiative of Vinzenz Pfnür, since 1974, the joint Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran committee had been discussing the question of whether the Catholic Church could recognize the CA of 1530 as a document of Catholic faith.⁴⁶ In a request to the German Bishops’ Conference, two tasks required as the basis for such an acknowledgment were mentioned: first, it was important to take seriously the historical and contemporary relevance of this confessional document and to correct a Catholic image of Luther that was determined by the polemically exaggerated comments of the reformer during the time of upheaval (1520/1521); second, the Church needed to investigate whether the CA had since lost its schismatic character and thus whether the Catholic Church could also accept it as a joint testimony of faith. The German Bishops’ Conference commissioned the Ecumenical Working Group of Evangelical and Catholic Theologians to clarify these questions bilaterally. In the course of these discussions, however, it became clear that – as Josef Ratzinger noted – a Catholic endorsement of the CA would be dependent on a prior Evangelical endorsement;⁴⁷ the Evangelical side hesitated over this issue, because “the binding character of the reformatory confessional writings […] was not unanimously regulated in the Evangelical churches.”⁴⁸ Therefore, at the end of this anniversary year, in an odd conclusion, the Catholic side could only state: “Let us be happy that we not only found a partial consensus

 Sebastian Knecht, Die Vision des Papstes: Erzählung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975); second edition with a preface by Cardinal Franz König and Bishop Klaus Engelhardt (1997), third edition with a preface by Cardinal Karl Lehmann and Bishop Klaus Engelhardt (2015).  On this see, the summary in Erwin Iserloh, “450 Jahre Confessio Augustana. Eine Bilanz,” Cath (M) 35 (1981): 1– 16.  On the prehistory of this subject, see Harding Meyer et al., eds., Katholische Anerkennung des Augsburgischen Bekenntnisses? Ein Vorstoß zur Einheit zwischen katholischer und lutherischer Kirche (Frankfurt: Lembeck, 1977): 11– 16; Vinzenz Pfnür, “Anerkennung der Confessio Augustana?,” IKZ 4 (1975): 298 – 307; 5 (1976): 374– 81.  Josef Ratzinger, “Anmerkungen zur Frage einer ‘Anerkennung’ der Confessio Augustana durch die katholische Kirche,” MThZ 29 (1978): 225 – 37, here 231.  Reinhard Frieling, “Katholische Anerkennung der CA,” in MD 27 (1976): 85.

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in some truths, but that we were able to find agreement in central truths of faith.”⁴⁹ And furthermore, as Iserloh concluded: “The Catholic statements, therefore, unanimously come to the conclusion that a Catholic endorsement of the CA must be understood in the sense of a basic consensus.”⁵⁰ The Evangelical statements on the endorsement of the CA as a joint confessional text of the churches, however, remained somewhat vague: the CA was a guide, a manual for the interpretation of Holy Scripture, and a request to reflect on clerical thinking and acting; it was not, however, a clear confession of well-defined truths of faith. The 500th birthday of the reformer in 1983 was a climax for the Catholic image of Luther. On the occasion of the Luther Year, the International Dialogue Commission submitted a joint acknowledgment of Martin Luther’s lifetime achievement under the title “Martin Luther – Witness to the Gospel” – a statement which the commission had negotiated with the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church.⁵¹ The commission emphasized that Martin Luther’s achievement was focusing the gospel on the message of the God’s acceptance, agreement, and continuous willingness to relate to human sinners; hence today, Christians should be grateful for the gift that Luther gave the entire community with this concentration on the center of the gospel: “People have started acknowledging him as a witness to the gospel, a teacher of the faith, and one who called for spiritual renewal.”⁵² In 1996, the 450th anniversary of Luther’s death, the Evangelical and Catholic churches in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt echoed this emphasis on a new commonality in the understanding of Luther: “After centuries of discord about his person, today we can together acknowledge him […] as a witness to the gospel, a teacher of the faith, and one who called for spiritual renewal.”⁵³ The growing ecumenical awareness of research on Luther and, more generally, the history of the Reformation also became evident at the third Luther Congress, which was held in Erfurt on the occasion of his 500th birthday and was fully devoted to the work and impact of the reformer. For the first time – and as pinnacle of the “golden age” of Catholic research on Luther – the organizers of the congress invited

 KNA-Dokumentation no. 5, January 23, 1980.  Iserloh, “450 Jahre Confessio Augustana,” 16.  “Martin Luther – Zeuge Jesu Christi. Wort der Gemeinsamen Römisch-katholischen/Evangelischlutherischen Kommission anlässlich des 500. Geburtstages Martin Luthers” (1983), in Dokumente wachsender Übereinstimmung ed. Harding Meyer et al. (Frankfurt: Lembeck, 1992): 2:444– 51.  “Martin Luther.” The document is also included in Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, ed., Reformation in ökumenischer Perspektive (Bonn: Deutsche Bischofskonferenz, 2016), 26.  “Gemeinsamer Zeuge des Evangeliums. Wort zum 450. Todesjahr Martin Luthers aus der evangelischen und katholischen Kirche in Thüringen und Sachsen-Anhalt,” in Reformation in ökumenischer Perspektive, ed. Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (Bonn: Deutsche Bischofskonferenz, 2016): 53 – 59, here 53.

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Catholic scholars.⁵⁴ Otto Hermann Pesch, for instance, gave a lecture on the issue of “Luther and the Church.”⁵⁵ Pesch’s argument was built on a dual thesis: Luther’s critique of clerical theology was addressed to the concrete Church of the Late Middle Ages; the issue of the legitimacy of an independent Lutheran Church, however, which had left the community of the Roman Western Church, was still an open theological question. Luther’s ecclesiological approaches, Pesch argued, did not simply refer to marginal questions (such as church services in the vernacular language or Holy Communion in two kinds), but they engaged the very heart of contemporary Catholic ecclesiology, even though they had entered this discussion indirectly (on the basis of the historical-critical method in exegesis, the history of doctrine, and ecumenical dialogue). At the very least, Pesch’s lecture opened the door to an issue that has been an explosive theme up to the present day and has been the source of the struggle over the possibility of an ecumenical rapprochement when it comes to the definition of the clerical office. This discussion of an ecumenical rapprochement on how the clerical office, particularly the Petrine ministry, should be understood was further stimulated by Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Ut unum sint in 1995,⁵⁶ and particularly by his call for a dialogue on the subject of an ecumenically compatible Petrine ministry. As a response to the pope’s request, the academic advisory board of the International Bridgettine Center of Farfa Sabina took the initiative to found a “permanent working group on the Petrine ministry,” consisting of seven Catholics and seven Lutherans; several meetings between 2005 and 2009 addressed the question of whether and how a future ministry of universal clerical unity could serve the community of churches.⁵⁷ The conclusions of this group have shown that a

 The contributions to the congress were published as “Martin Luther 1483 – 1983. Werk und Wirkung. Referate und Berichte des Sechsten Internationalen Kongresses für Lutherforschung Erfurt, DDR 14.–20. August 1983,” special issue, LJb 52 (1985).  See Pesch’s contribution “Martin Luther 1483 – 1983,” 113 – 39. As a balance for the Luther Year, see Pesch, Lehren aus dem Lutherjahr. Sein Ertrag für die Ökumene (Munich: Schnell & Steiner, 1984).  Pope John Paul II, “Enzyklika Ut unum sint über den Einsatz für die Ökumene (25. Mai 1995),” in Verlautbarungen des Apostolischen Stuhls Nr. 121, ed. Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (Bonn: Deutsche Bischofskonferenz, 1995). Here, Pope John Paul II noted: “I am convinced that I have a special responsibility in this regard, particularly when I notice the ecumenical longing of most Christian communities and hear the request addressed to me to find a form of carrying out the primacy that does not renounce the essential part of its mission, but opens up to a new situation. […] Couldn’t the commonality that really exists between us, even though imperfectly, prompt the clerically responsible and their theologians to start a brotherly, patient dialogue with me about this topic? A dialogue in which we can listen to each other beyond fruitless polemics, having in mind only Christ’s will for his Church and letting ourselves be inspired by his call to prayer? […] ‘May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me’ (John 17:21);” no. 96.  The documents have been published in Die Gruppe von Farfa Sabina. Gemeinschaft der Kirchen und Petrusamt. Lutherisch-katholische Annäherungen (Leipzig/Paderborn: Lembeck, 2014); a Catholic acknowledgment can be found in Myriam Wijlens, “Gemeinschaft der Kirchen und Petrusamt. Lutherisch-katholische Annäherungen. Erläuterungen zur Studie der Gruppe von Farfa Sabina,” Ökumenische Rundschau 61 (2012): 478 – 93.

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Petrine ministry enacted as a service to the communio of independent churches is both imaginable and possible. The results of recent Catholic research on Luther – starting with Ignaz von Döllinger, but particularly in Otto Hermann Pesch’s work – focusing on the doctrine of justification as the center of Luther’s theology finally opened up the subsequent question of whether this doctrine of justification, originally the reason for the schism in Western Christianity, would still be schismatic today. Hence, the question of an ecumenical endorsement of this doctrine arose. The so-called Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ), with its appendix on resources for the joint official endorsement, was signed in Augsburg on the symbolically important day of October 31, 1999, by Christian Krause, then-president of the Lutheran World Federation, and Cardinal Edward Cassidy, then-president of the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.⁵⁸ It is fair to say that this Joint Declaration reaped the harvest of years of Catholic Luther research, but also – more generally – of intensive ecumenical work in Germany and North America.⁵⁹ It is the first ecumenical document jointly drafted by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation. In 2006, the World Methodist Council also signed the declaration, which is not only a paper representing theological consensus but an official doctrinal document for the churches. In the year 2017, even the World Council of Reformed Churches joint the declaration. But the JDDJ has also triggered strong protests. In January 1998, almost 250 evangelical theologians signed a public letter against the declaration, accusing the JDDJ of having betrayed the Reformation for the sake of an ecumenism of minimal consensus, which would not sharpen theological profiles but rather grind them down, ultimately making Catholicism the triumphant hermeneutic champion.⁶⁰

 Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_ doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html. On the declaration’s genesis and reception, see Friedrich Hauschild, ed., Die Gemeinsame Erklärung zur Rechtfertigungslehre. Dokumentation des Entstehungs- und Rezeptionsprozesses (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009).  See Hugh G. Anderson et al., eds., Justification by Faith (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1985); Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, eds., Lehrverurteilungen – kirchentrennend? Rechtfertigung, Sakramente und Amt im Zeitalter Reformation und heute (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986); cf. on the respective materials and reviews, Karl Lehmann, ed., Gemeinsame Römisch-Katholische/Evangelisch-Lutherische Kommission, Kirche und Rechtfertigung. Das Verständnis der Kirche im Lichte der Rechtfertigungslehre (Paderborn/Frankfurt: Bonifatius, 1994); Pesch, “Martin Luther im katholischen Urteil. Zwischen Verteufelung und dankbarer Aneignung,” in Spurenlese. Kulturelle Wirkungen der Reformation, ed. Reformationsgeschichtliche Sozietät der Martin-Luther-Universiät Halle-Wittenberg (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2013): 449 – 48, here 464– 65.  On this protest, see Albrecht Beutel, Thomas Kaufmann, and Hermann Timm, eds., Wider den Augsburger Rechtfertigungsvertrag. Voten evangelischer Hochschullehre (Frankfurt: Gemeinschaftswerk der Evangelischen Publizistik, 1999); fundamental concerns can also be found in Eilert Herms, “Der Dialog zwischen Päpstlichem Einheitsrat und LWB 1965 – 1998. Ausgangsperspektiven, Verlauf, Ergebnis,” ThLZ 123 (1998): 658 – 712.

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The JDDJ had two corresponding goals. On the one hand, it described a “consensus on basic truths of the doctrine of justification”; on the other hand, it argued that “the remaining differences in its explication are no longer the occasion for doctrinal condemnations.”⁶¹ Both goals are linked to key themes that have been on the theological agenda since the Reformation: “Human Powerlessness and Sin in Relation to Justification,”⁶² “Justification as Forgiveness of Sins and Making Righteous,”⁶³ “Justification by Faith and through Grace,”⁶⁴ “The Justified as Sinner,”⁶⁵ “Law and Gospel,”⁶⁶ “Assurance of Salvation,”⁶⁷ and “The Good Works of the Justified.”⁶⁸ The document follows the pattern of explaining first the joint statements, and subsequently the statements as they are specified by denomination. This explicates the basic thesis that, while differences cannot be ignored, these differences do not destroy the underlying commonalities and are therefore no longer schismatic.⁶⁹ We can characterize the document’s hermeneutic as a differentiated consensus: it does not neglect differences, but against the background of basic commonalities, it enables a theologically reasoned plurality. At the end of an epochal change in the Catholic image of Luther in the twentieth century, we can conclude that the Catholic Church has appropriated Martin Luther’s theological goal. Pope Benedict XVI once again appreciated this in his address to the representatives of the EKD in the Chapter Room of the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt on September 23, 2011: “The question: How does God relate to me? How do I stand before God? – this burning question of Luther’s must be asked anew, and it certainly needs to become our question in a new form, not academically, but in reality. I think that this is the first call we should listen to in our encounter with Martin Luther.”⁷⁰

 JDDJ 5, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/ rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html.  JDDJ 19 – 21.  JDDJ 22– 24.  JDDJ 25 – 27.  JDDJ 28 – 30.  JDDJ 31– 33.  JDDJ 34– 36.  JDDJ 37– 39.  JDDJ 40 – 42.  “Ansprache von Papst Benedikt XVI. an die Vertreter der EKD im Kapitelsaal des Augustinerklosters,” in Reformation in ökumenischer Perspektive, ed. Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (Bonn: Deutsche Bischofskonferenz, 2016): 182– 86, here 184.

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Luther and the Third Reich: Consent and Confession 1 Political Theology and the Luther Renaissance (1) A reviewer of the new publications on Martin Luther in 1932 and 1933, the period leading up to the election of Hitler as Reich’s Chancellor and the 450th Anniversary of the birth of the Wittenberg reformer in November 1933, would scarcely be able to avoid the impression that the leading academics in Lutheran theology saw a pressing crisis of state organs, the republican constitution, and the democratic sovereignty of the people, which they diagnosed using categories such as “judgement” or “fateful plight”¹. Three prominent publications in 1932 formed the initial constellation of an illusion going by the name of a “new evangelical state theory”²: Friedrich Gogarten’s Politische Ethik, Werner Elert’s Morphologie des Luthertums, and Emanuel Hirsch’s Vom verborgene Suverän. They show that the controversy about a new evangelical state theory concerned the contents and the validity of Martin Luther’s legacy. The aim was to adapt the basic elements of Luther’s early reformation political orientation for their times. In particular, the much discussed distinction between a worldly-political realm of influence, a “worldly kingdom of God” as a sphere of the creation of “natural law” and “worldly authority”; a religious-Christian sphere of influence, a “spiritual kingdom of God”, whether in the form of the church as the “priesthood of all the baptized”; or “Christianity” as an association of persons, realised in the societal occupations as professional ethics. In the revisions of 1932, this resulted in the concepts of an authoritarian or totalitarian state in the name of voelkisch sovereignty, i. e. in contrast to the rule of the liberal state under the rule of law. They linked with another reform programme, that of an evangelical national church as “Volkskirche”, derived from the principle of the priesthood of all the baptized as the source of “charismatic”, other-worldly authority. A corresponding synodal and episcopal reform of the regional churches and the merging of the reformed, united, and Lutheran confessing churches in a German Evangelical Church should replace the state church bureaucracies. After the end of the evangelical state churches in 1918, this reform

Translation from German: Richard Holmes.  E. Hirsch, “Vom verborgenen Suverän”, Glaube und Volk 2 (1933): 4– 13, 5.  F. Gogarten, Politische Ethik. Versuch einer Grundlegung (Jena: Diederichs, 1932); W. Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums Bd. 2, Soziallehren und Sozialwirkungen des Luthertums (Munich: Beck, 1932); Hirsch, “Vom verborgenen Suverän”. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-057

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was intended to achieve the independence of Volkskirchen (under the religious law of the Weimar constitution). These two reform programmes were confronted in 1933 by the violent impositions of the National Socialist state and enforced conformity, which showed the evangelical churches the illusions of their internal reform programme. As it became increasingly clear that the state was eliminating the rule of law, the state theories proved themselves to be ideologemes. The critical counter-arguments in the theological discussion about Luther, which on closer inspection were already being voiced in 1932/33, became increasingly pertinent by the end of 1934. There were three public controversies about the contents and validity of Luther’s legacy: (a) The requirement or refusal to give an oath of allegiance to the Führer in the state and in the church, which made visible the conceptual incompatibility between the voelkisch, Führer-led state and the republican constitutional state in evangelical state theory. (b) The controversy about the adoption of the so-called “Aryan paragraph” in the church (1933) and the formation of a Confessing Church, showing within Lutheranism the irreconcilable difference between voelkisch, latently racist orders of creation theologies and liberal voices opposing racist special laws and supporting the higher rule of “natural law” and “legal equality”. (c) The reality of a confessing church, formed autonomously following the two confessing synods of the German Evangelical Church in 1934, which collided irreconcilably with the forcibly imposed German-Christian national church. This raised the question as to where in truth Luther’s “church believed in as universal priesthood of all believers” was to be found. Under the forcibly consolidated Nazi rule of injustice, i. e., in the period from the so called June murders of 1934 through to the new oath of allegiance to the Führer and Reich’s Chancellor Adolf Hitler in August 1934 and the collapse of the GermanChristian church authority in October 1934, these three controversies reached a stage that demanded church decisions. In contrast, the discussions of Luther’s legacy concerning questions of the evangelical state and jurisprudence and voelkisch racism were deadlocked in irreconcilable positions. It was only after a phase of stagnation and latency that this discussion of Luther’s legacy received new impulses from a younger generation of theologians, beginning in 1938. (2) Three programmes of Luther research in the Weimar Republic had led to a Luther renaissance between 1917 and 1933. These were dialectical theology, Lutheran confessionalism, and the Luther Renaissance, and they now clashed in the controversies of the so-called “Church struggle” (“Kirchenkampf”). These three networks broke up between 1933 and 1935 and regrouped along the boundaries between the Confessing Church and the German-Christian Churches, the “middle parties” within the Volkskirche and the homogeneous Lutheran churches, the so-called “intact official churches”. The presentation of the scientific positions of the “interpretation” should therefore not completely ignore the public “use” of Luther in the church decisions.

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(a) The most important network of Luther research was the German and Scandinavian Luther renaissance. ³ It was an academic and oecumenical reform movement which impacted the national confessional cultures in differing ways.⁴ The Swedish Lutherans were republican, democratic, and proponents of the welfare state. The increasingly vocal voelkisch-political theologies in the German Luther renaissance after 1933 led to a crisis of international Luther research. Successively, Danish and Swedish Luther researchers withdrew from the German discussion. The German-language Luther renaissance had developed under the influence of the Berlin church historian Karl Holl (1886 – 1926) and his book Luther ⁵. This book had shifted the focus of attention onto the “young Luther” of the early Reformation, and also addressed certain outspoken topoi of Luther that had not been part of the general Lutheran canon. An example was the understanding of the church as the “royal priesthood of all the baptized”, a genuine conscience-religious type of community and spiritual-charismatic authority which Holl anchored in the experience of justification of the “young Luther”.⁶ After the premature death of Karl Holl, members of the Holl School held important university chairs in the 1930s. The most prominent among the older students of Holl were Emanuel Hirsch (1888 – 1972), Erich Vogelsang (1904 – 1944), Hanns Rückert (1901– 1974), Heinrich Bornkamm (1901– 1977), Hermann Wolfgang Beyer (1898 – 1942), and Hans Georg Opitz (1905 – 1941).⁷ The Holl School gave the most outspoken support in 1933/34 to the so-called German Christians, the church party that pushed through the enforced conformity of the regional churches and that, after the church elections of July 1933, dominated most church synods and presbyteries. Underlying this was a reworking of the general priesthood of all the baptized into a principle of authority with the aim of enforced conformity executed by plebiscite. Emanuel Hirsch, who had a reputation for intellectual brilliance, became

 H. Assel, “The Luther Renaissance”, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Martin Luther, ed. D. Nelson, P. Hinlicky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); H. Assel, Der andere Aufbruch. Die Lutherrenaissance – Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910 – 1935), FSÖTh 72 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994).  D. Lange, “Eine andere Luther-Renaissance”, Luthers Erben. Studien zur Rezeptionsgeschichte der reformatorischen Theologie Luthers. Festschrift für Jörg Baur zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. N. Slenczka, W. Sparn (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 245 – 274.  K. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, Bd. I. Luther (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1921, extended and revised 19232+3, 19274+5, 19326, 19487).  With the general priesthood, Holl formulated not a principle of authority but the legal autonomy of church and Volk church from a principle of spiritual-charismatic authority.  T. Kaufmann, H. Oelke (eds.), Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker im “Dritten Reich”, VWGTh 21 (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 2002); in this volume: B. Hamm, “Hanns Rückert als Schüler Karl Holls. Das Paradigma einer theologischen Anfälligkeit für den Nationalsozialismus”, 273 – 309; H. Lehmann, “Heinrich Bornkamm im Spiegel seiner Lutherstudien von 1933 bis 1947”, 367– 380. V. Leppin, “In Rosenbergs Schatten. Zur Lutherdeutung Erich Vogelsangs”, ThZ 61 (2005): 132– 142; I. Garbe, Theologe zwischen den Weltkriegen: Hermann Wolfgang Beyer (1998 – 1942): Zwischen den Zeiten, Konservative Revolution, Wehrmachtsseelsorge, GThF 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004).

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a mentor of the German-Christian Regime of the National Bishop Müller, with whom he began to rise in May 1933 and subsequently fell in October 1934. Equally important in the Luther renaissance was a German-Swedish Network organised around Rudolf Hermann (1887– 1962) and Anders Nygren (1890 – 1978), the most internationally renowned Luther researcher of the Lund School. From Spring 1933, this group sided with the critics of Nazi church policies and in 1934 was on the side of the Confessing Church. From the start, they criticised the racist and anti-Semitic foundations of the Nazi ideology.⁸ A group of young theologians, including Hans Joachim Iwand (1899 – 1960), Ernst Wolf (1902– 1971), at first also Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945) and later Harald Diem (1913 – 1941), as well as the theologically trained author Jochen Klepper (1903 – 1942), were all affected to differing extents by the Luther renaissance of Karl Holl and Rudolf Hermann. From the mid1930s, they worked for substantial revisions of Lutheran theology and political ethics, at first as part of the so-called Young Reformatory Movement,⁹ and then on the basis of the Barmen Theological Declaration of May 1934. (b) The Lutheran Confessionalism, which was virulent in the homogeneous Lutheran regional churches, had as its spokesmen: the Erlanger theologians Werner Elert (1885 – 1954) and Paul Althaus (1888 – 1966). In contrast to Karl Holl, they integrated Luther’s theology and political ethics seamlessly into the confessional traditions of various Lutheranisms, which they constructed as a uniform confessional “Luthertum”. This was signalled already by the title of Elert’s main work Die Morphologie des Luthertums. The confession was to be shaped by Luther’s primal religious experience, the unfathomable fateful hiddenness of the holy, full of terror and fascination, so that Luther’s justification experience of saving grace in jealous holiness becomes contradictory and irrational. From this, Elert developed an anti-Calvinistic, “anti-western”, and voelkisch-modernist interpretation of the confessional tradition as a Lutheran world-view and an authoritarian doctrine of the orders of creation. In parallel to Elert, Paul Althaus, one of the most widely read theologians of German Lutheranism, who for many years was President of the Luther Society (1926 – 1964), was already speaking in 1927 of the experience of the voelkisch “hour” of Germany as the judgement and call of the justifying God, e. g., in his widely circulated lecture to

 Cf. A. Nygren, The Church Controversy in Germany. The Position of the Evangelical Church in the Third Empire (London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1934). Nygren commented publicly on the German situation from October 1933, at first in Swedish publications, then in September 1934 in a book in English. This promoted initiatives such as the visit of the Archbishop of Uppsala, Erling Eidem, to Hitler on 2 May 1934.  The Young Reformatory Movement formed in March 1933 in the course of the constitutional reform debate in the Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchenbund against the plans of the radical German Christians for enforced conformity. Main representatives were W. Künneth, H. Lilje und M. Niemöller. The Berlin Circle around M. Niemöller, G. Jacobi, D. Bonhoeffer, F. Hildebrandt, and H. Sasse became increasingly important.

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the Second German Evangelical Church Congress in Königsberg.¹⁰ The rhetorically skilled Althaus was flexible and often dissimulating in his voelkisch, political-theological terminology, and inasmuch was representative of the mentality of a certain milieu.¹¹ (c) The Luther research of the Dialectical Theology was most prominently represented before 1933 by Friedrich Gogarten (1887– 1967). Karl Barth’s fundamental criticism of the voelkisch Lutheranism of Gogarten, Elert, and Hirsch was taken up productively by the younger theologians of the Luther renaissance (Wolf and Iwand, Bonhoeffer, and Diem). Barth marked his enforced emigration from Germany in 1935 with the essay Evangelium und Gesetz ¹² in which he criticised the voelkisch-political theory equating ‘Volk’ law with God’s law and the political functionalisation since 1923 of “law and gospel” and of Luther’s theology.

2 Three Controversies 1933 and 1934 The three new formulations of state theory in 1932 each failed in its own way when faced with the reality of the Nazi state. All three denied the legitimation of the Weimar Republic and its constitution – favouring either an authoritarian fascist state or a totalitarian National Socialist party dictatorship. For a political ethics of the Lutheran type, this marked a caesura. The Lutheran teaching on authority of the restoration period, which until 1918 determined the majority opinion in Lutheranism, immediately became obsolete when loyalty was largely or completely withdrawn from a legitimate authority, the Weimar Republic. More importantly, the early reformatory concepts of Luther that had been problematised socio-historically with unprecedented precision in the debates between Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, and Karl Holl, namely, “authority” as the rule of secular legal traditions, of “natural law”, of “church” as the priesthood of all the baptized, and of “protestant and Lutheran asceticism”, now all became slogans of voelkisch political theology and state theory.

 P. Althaus, Kirche und Volkstum. Der völkische Wille im Lichte des Evangeliums (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1928).  P. Althaus, Die deutsche Stunde der Kirche, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1933 – 1934); idem, Obrigkeit und Führertum. Wandlungen des evangelischen Staatsethos (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1936); further idem, “Juxta vocationem. Zur lutherischen Lehre von Ordnung und Beruf”, Luthertum 48 (1937): 129 – 141. Althaus, who moved from 1933 onwards closer to Elert, adopted in 1936 the state ethos that Hirsch had already expressed in 1932/33.  K. Barth, Evangelium und Gesetz, TEH 32 (Munich: Kaiser, 1935).

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2.1 Führer State or Constitutional State? In Friedrich Gogarten’s Politischer Ethik, the “political” becomes tangible in a doctrine of the authoritarian state.¹³ “Obedience and bondage” form the core of the political and “the sovereignty of the state […], its ‘sacred right’ over the life and property of its subjects” (124). The Lutheran part of this state theory shows itself in its concept of divine law: the political and voelkisch sovereignty, which is effective in the authority of the state and its coercive rights, stands for the law which upholds and imposes the divine creation order against evil. The problem of the state and its authority is “the first and most important ethical problem”, and it is “solely from the political problem [i. e., state authority and if necessary enforced loyalty]” that all other ethical questions derive their relevance. “It is solely in the political, in the state and in the obedience paid to it, that people still have, in the light of this insight [namely, of their giving in to evil], the possibility of existence.” (118) In the political sovereignty of the state, the saving and preserving rule of the Creator shall be validated in the light of the crisis of orders. In comparison with the liberal legal principle, Gogarten politicizes contemporary personalism with supposedly more morally substantial, concrete communities of honour, nation, and volk. ¹⁴ “Church” forms the sphere of the gospel, beyond the authoritarian state and the force of law.¹⁵ Gogarten’s state demands obedience to its laws up to the limits of obedience to the faith. These limits define the political aspect of political obedience, i. e., the secular aspect of the state. As a proponent of a theological concept of the legitimate secular, the “political” of the state, and of the revealed “holiness” of the church, Gogarten claimed to be Luther’s heir to the spirit of dialectical theology. In fact, Gogarten’s Politische Ethik marked the final demise of dialectical theology. This was made evident by the departure of Karl Barth from their previously shared programme of Dialectical Theology at the end of 1933. The controversy came to a head in November 1934, when Barth refused to swear the personal oath of allegiance to “the Führer and Reich’s Chancellor Adolf Hitler”. In the logic of a political ethics such as that of Gogarten, the personal oath of allegiance to the Führer, along the lines of a soldier’s loyalty, applied to all levels in universities, public administrations, etc., and was a model of authoritarian obedience to the state. The fact that between 30th of January 1933 and 1st of July 1934 the political empowerment laws and racist special laws had not led to a new authoritarian state, but to a totalitarian state that had destroyed key institutions of the liberal state and the rule of law

 F. Gogarten, Politische Ethik, (page numbers in text relate to this). On the antagonism between an “authoritarian” orientation and a voelkisch option for the ‘total state’, cf. C. Strohm, Theologische Ethik im Kampf gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Der Weg Dietrich Bonhoeffers mit den Juristen Hans von Dohnanyi und Gerhard Leibholz in den Widerstand (Munich: Kaiser, 1989), 78 – 83.  Gogarten, Politische Ethik, 57– 64, 108 – 132, 133 – 208.  Ibid., 208 – 220.

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itself, was not provided for in the categories of Gogarten’s political ethics. His state theory had already been overtaken in mid-1934 by the reality of the unjust Nazi state – something that Gogarten systematically obscured with his state theory. The political symbolism of Barth’s refusal to swear allegiance was aimed provocatively at such self-imposed nonage. Barth argued consistently with a political-ethical concept of the oath responsibility out of the responsibility of faith. Oath responsibility was only acceptable with limitations. Barth therefore added to the oath of allegiance¹⁶ the reservatio: “I will be faithful and obedient to the Führer […], as far as I can assume responsibility for this as an evangelical Christian […].” For Barth, this reservatio stood in for the constitutional limits placed upon the oath obligation that had been destroyed in the Führer state after the 30th of June 1934. Confronted with the advanced state of the destruction, Barth also drew attention to constitutional sovereignty as a pre-condition for existence as a citizen and also a Christian. Barth’s refusal to take the oath of allegiance was the symbolic political pinnacle of a theological doctrine of state sovereignty which was irreconcilable with Gogarten and Hirsch. In the discussion about the political ethics of Luther, Barth called for a completely different relationship between the worldly realm, as the rule of the natural law of God, and the spiritual realm, as political existence stemming from belief and from law and gospel – a topic that in 1938 was to be taken up productively by Harald Diem. Barth was actively opposed in December 1934 by Emanuel Hirsch, who was probably responsible for formulating the report on the Führer oath used by the state prosecution in the proceedings against Barth, and which thereby gained official validity.¹⁷

2.2 A Voelkisch Order of Creation or the Rule of ‘Natural Law’? In 1932, Werner Elert followed up the first volume of Morphologie des Luthertums ¹⁸ with a second volume subtitled Soziallehren und Sozialwirkungen des Luthertums. ¹⁹

 The oath of allegiance was: “I will be faithful and obedient to the Führer of the German Empire and people, Adolf Hitler, to observe the law, and to conscientiously fulfil my official duties, so help me God.”  M. Beintker, “Barths Abschied von ‚Zwischen den Zeiten‘. Recherchen und Beobachtungen zum Ende einer Zeitschrift”, ZThK 106 (2009): 201– 222. H. Assel, “Grundlose Souveränität und göttliche Freiheit. Karl Barths Rechtsethik im Konflikt mit Emanuel Hirschs Souveränitätslehre”, Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921 – 1935): Aufbruch – Klärung – Widerstand, Beiträge zum Internationalen Symposium vom 1.–4. Mai 2003 in der Johannes-a-Lasco-Bibliothek Emden, ed. M. Beintker, C. Link, M. Trowitzsch (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2005), 205 – 222; H. Assel, “‘Barth ist entlassen …‘: Emanuel Hirschs Rolle im Fall Barth und seine Briefe an Wilhelm Stapel”, ZThK 91 (1994): 445 – 475.  W. Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums Bd.1: Theologie und Weltanschauung des Luthertums hauptsächlich im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1931).

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He offered a Lutheran world-view of volk-based Führer leadership in the authoritarian state association, which also recommended such a leadership for societal states, strata, and vocations. Under headings such as “Order of creation and the doctrine of three states”, “Vocation and Führer-dom”, “Volkstum und Voelker”, “Luther’s view of the state”, and “Welfare state and socialism”²⁰ Elert projected a Lutheran doctrine of state within the framework of a doctrine of the order of creation of the secular. In the concept “order of creation” the fateful and the ethical moments that this [i. e., secular] realm includes for Luther are, as it were, combined with one another. The fact and the special determinants of my integration in human society are fated. Not I, but the Creator has determined for me this place, this hour, these neighbours, this vocation. The Creator has ‘granted’ the stratification of the society, […] the super-personal units of the marriage, the state, and of the Volk. ²¹

Elert’s “state” as an order of creation shows outlines of a voelkisch and national Führer state, with elements of welfare, culture and education, militarism, civil servant bureaucracy, and state-economy.²² In September 1933, Elert opened up his ‘order of creation’ theology for voelkisch racism and reclaimed the volk-orientation as the comprehensive order of creation, with validity in the state and church, as long as the visible church is also an institution in the worldly realm. Together with Paul Althaus, he was responsible for a Theological Report on the Admission of Christians of Jewish Origins to Church Offices in the German Evangelical Church, issued as a reaction to the General Synod of the Prussian Union of Churches.²³ This was dated the 25th of September 1933, i. e., directly before the German National Synod of the German Evangelical Church, held on the 27th of September in Wittenberg. In view of the growing resistance to such measures in

 Elert, Morphologie Bd. 2 (page numbers only in the text). The subtitle “Social doctrine of Lutheranism” is clearly in opposition to Ernst Troeltsch (E. Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994], reprint of the 1912 edition). Troeltsch measured the importance of Protestantism for the modern world not in terms of Luther’s early reformation, but of those Calvinist churchdoms and Puritan and radical reformatory sects that Max Weber addressed in his famous studies. In view of the “madness” of the lost World War, Troeltsch called for the “development” of Germany towards a republican and mass-democratic, market capitalist constitution and to a demilitarised neutrality under international law. Cf. E. Troeltsch, “Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus für die Entstehung der modernen Welt (1906/1911)”, idem, Schriften zur Bedeutung des Protestantismus für die moderne Welt (1906 – 1913), ed T. Rendtorff, S. Pautler, Kritische Gesamtausgabe Ernst Troeltsch (KGA) 8 (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2001), 183 – 198, 199 – 316; E. Troeltsch, “Wahnsinn oder Entwicklung? Die Entscheidung der Weltgeschichte (1917/1919)”, idem, Schriften zur Politik und Kulturphilosophie 1918 – 1923, ed. G. Hübinger, KGA 15 (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2002), 70 – 94.  Cf. Elert, Morphologie Bd. 2, 37– 64, 65 – 80, 125 – 158, 291– 302, 313 – 334, 409 – 428.  Cf. Ibid., 47.  Cf. Ibid., 301 f., 331– 333.  This so-called “Brown Synod” of the APU had decided on 5/6 September 1933 to introduce the “Aryan Paragraph” in the church.

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the so-called Pfarrernotbund (Emergency Covenant of Pastors), the report pleaded for the adoption by the church of the state Aryan paragraphs, but with provisos: The church must acknowledge the basic right of the state for such legislative measures. It knows that in the current situation it is called on to reconsider its duty, to be the Volkskirche of the Germans, […] The church must therefore demand the holding back of its Jew-Christians from offices. ²⁴ Here, too, the doctrine of the “fateful voelkisch” state that can be “ethically-shaped” by special laws, drawing on Luther’s topos of the worldly as an order of creation, obscured the view of the racist special legislation beginning with the Aryan paragraph. This special view of the Erlangen Lutherans about the voluntary implementation of the Aryan Paragraph in the church met with strong opposition, e. g., in a report of the Marburg Theological Faculty, for which Rudolf Bultmann and Hans von Soden were responsible. But not only this. Already in April 1933, ten days after the decree of the state “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” and months before the church discussion, an open letter to the Bavarian Ministry of Education was organised by Rudolf Hermann, the Greifswald exponent of the Luther renaissance, protesting against the dismissal of the Munich professor and neo-Kantian philosopher Richard Hönigswald under the “Aryan Paragraph”.²⁵ Hermann’s protest against the state Aryan paragraph is an indication that in early 1933 there was by no means a consensus within Lutheran state doctrine about the state’s entitlement to pass racist special legislation. Rudolf Hermann, one of the most renowned international experts on Luther, was a constant critic of these special laws in state and church from April 1933 on, which led him to join the Confessing Church. He took part in the key confessional synods of the German Evangelical Church at a national level, the Barmen Synod (29 – 31 May 1934), and the Dahlem Synod (19 – 20 October 1934). Just how irreconcilable the differences between Hermann and the Erlangen Lutherans had become was made apparent when Elert, as main author together with Althaus, published a counter-declaration to the Barmen Theological Declaration of May 1934 (the Ansbacher Ratschlag), which, in the guise of correct Lutheran doctrine on authority, expressed a shatteringly erroneous belief: As Christians we honour, with thanks to God, […] all authority, even in imperfect form, as the tool of divine unfolding, but we also distinguish as Christians between well-meaning and strange rulers, healthy and distorted orders. […] In this light, as believing Christians we thank

 H. Liebing (ed.), Die Marburger Theologen und der Arierparagraph in der Kirche: Eine Sammlung von Texten aus den Jahren 1933 und 1934. Aus Anlaß des 450-jährigen Bestehens der Philipps-Universität Marburg (Marburg: Elwert, 1977), 20 – 23, 22; on the basis of the report, 9; S. Hermle, J. Thierfelder (eds.), Herausgefordert. Dokumente zur Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart: Calwer, 2008), 164– 167.  S. Friedländer, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden. Bd. 1: Die Jahre der Verfolgung 1933 – 1939 (Munich: Beck, 1998), 65.

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God the Lord that he has given our volk in its time of need the Führer as ‘pious and faithful overlord’ and wishes to prepare a ‘good regiment’ in the National Socialist state order, a regiment with ‘discipline and honour’.²⁶

This is in stark contrast to the sober view that Hermann took of “German revolution” and the reality of the Nazi state in the mid-1930s. Not only was Hermann far from a theological overestimation of the National Socialist state form, but also he measured this totalitarian state form against “God’s commandment and commission”, that is, in terms of the topos of the rule of law as a constituent of Luther’s doctrine of the worldly regiment: It is an historical and political task to find out which form of state is the right one for a nation, a community of nations, or a world empire. But every form of state that becomes a reality stands under God’s commission to serve the just and the good, to resist the unjust and the wicked, and to strive for the right order for those people who are linked together by it and under it.²⁷

The total ‘world-vision state’ that claims to be able to secure the right to life for the German volk should know that it is “summoned and held accountable” before the divine forum.²⁸ Anyone who claims their right to life must themselves live rightly. Making the claim implies accepting the obligation. But it also means that all members that have to assume responsibility for the state and up on which the state wishes to rely must be assured of the validity of justice through its rule.²⁹

In the year that the Nuremberg Race Laws were passed, Hermann insisted on the indispensable “principle of the equality of all before the man-made state law and justice”.³⁰

 K. D. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Äußerungen zur Kirchenfrage. Bd. 2: Das Jahr 1934, 1935 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1935 – 1936), 103; Hermle, Thierfelder (eds.), Herausgefordert, 210.  R. Hermann, “Zur Frage der ‚christlichen‘ Geschichtsdeutung,” Wort und Tat 12 (1936): 69 – 75, 227– 235, 234 (my emphasis, H. Assel).  R. Hermann in the essay published in 1935, “Christlicher Glaube und politisches Handeln”, Rudolf Hermann. Gesammelte und nachgelassene Werke VI: Theologische Fragen nach der Kirche, ed. G. Krause (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), 113 – 122, 115.  Hermann, Christlicher Glaube (in part my italics, H. Assel).  Ibid., 119.

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2.3 Führer Church or Confessing Church? Emanuel Hirsch saw himself as a pioneer of a radical voelkisch and political theology which in the final analysis was also anti-Semitic.³¹ Of key importance for his break with the doctrine of the authoritarian state was a doctrine of voelkisch sovereignty arising from a decisionist religion of conscience which had no precedent in Lutheranism. In 1932/33, Hirsch was the most decisive forerunner of the National Socialist enforced conformity policies. It was no longer the ruling classes, but the “volk”, with the self-assertion made necessary for their mission, that was the divinely established sovereign to whom obedience was due.³² The German “Volksnomos”,³³ the law of the volk, which cannot be determined in democratic procedures, becomes the measure of political loyalty.³⁴ More effective than the right to revolution, which was asserted as a consequence of this sovereignty doctrine, was the permanent reservation against every concrete form of the rule of law, which Hirsch called for with recourse to obedience to the “Volkheit”. After the 30th of January 1933, Hirsch could see himself validated with his version of a new evangelical state theory: After the unambiguous declaration of the Führer, then this must be the specific characteristic of the new German constitutional living code, namely, that the state-political [sphere] is subservient to the Volkstum […], indeed, it only wishes to be seen as an indispensable means to an end for this […].³⁵

The weakness of a permanent political decisionism and revolution in accordance with a concealed “Volkheit” that had to be determined anew for each specific requirement soon became apparent. Therefore, after the so called June Murders of 1934 and in the course of the consolidation of the Führer rule, the other element of the doctrine of the “concealed sovereign” emerged. “Volkheit” manifested itself in a representative public personification of political will. This public ‘sovereign’, who in principle was to be entitled to break with the legality of the state of law, became increasingly identified with the person of Adolf Hitler.³⁶  H. Assel, “Emanuel Hirsch. Völkisch-politischer Theologe der Lutherrenaissance”, Für ein artgemäßes Christentum der Tat. Völkische Theologen im “Dritten Reich”, ed. M. Gailus, C. Vollnhals (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 43 – 67.  Hirsch, “Vom verborgenen Suverän”, 5.  E. Hirsch, Christliche Freiheit und politische Bindung. Ein Brief an Dr. Stapel und anderes (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1935), 17. Cf.: W. Stapel, Der christliche Staatsmann. Eine Theologie des Nationalismus (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1932), 174 et passim.  Hirsch, “Vom verborgenen Suverän”, 7.  E. Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und theologischer Besinnung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1934), 60, cf. 62 f.  Cf. Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige Lage, 61 with 64 f. This can be followed in the unpublished letters of Hirsch to Wilhelm Stapel from 1933 to 1945 and to Hans Grimm 1936 (Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach), cf. the letters of Hirsch to Stapel on 3.12.1935 and 6.12.1935, to Grimm on 23. 2.1936, to Stapel on 14.9.1944, to Stapel on 25.8.1944.

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As adviser to the German-Christian Church, Hirsch felt himself empowered to implement his doctrine in church policies and enforced conformity measures. This led in August 1934 to the third and last theological controversy about Luther’s legacy, which proved to be Hirsch’s downfall. After the finalisation of enforced conformity with the elimination of the paramilitary stormtroopers (SA) and the death of the Reich President Hindenburg on 2nd of August 1934, the armed forces swore a new oath of allegiance to Hitler. Soon afterwards, but before the passage of the Law on the Allegiance of Public Servants and Soldiers of the Armed Forces, the second National Synod of the German Evangelical Church formalised its own regulation requiring all clergy and church officials to swear an oath to Hitler on the 9th of August 1934. This oath, written very much in the style of Emanuel Hirsch,³⁷ was to finalise the enforced conformity of the clergy. The clergy shall swear the following oath: I, (name), swear an oath to God the All-knowing and Holy, that I, as a vocational servant in the office of the proclamation, both in my current office and in every other clerical office, as befits a servant of the gospel in the German Evangelical Church, shall be faithful and obedient to the Führer of the German Volk and State, Adolf Hitler, and shall employ myself for the German Volk with every sacrifice and every service that befits a German evangelical man.³⁸

The religious formulation of this church Führer oath does not directly identify God’s holiness, his “Law” with the Volk law. But, in fact, the oath-taker binds himself without exception to the Führer of the Volk (and only inasmuch to the Chancellor). Since the Führer was sole interpreter of the laws of the Volk, the allegiance encompasses every sacrifice, including the sacrifice of one’s own conscience, the willingness to comply with acts of terror, special laws, policies of war, and extermination. Calling on God as witness in no way constituted a provision of conscience. Anyone refusing to take the oath for religious or moral reasons would face summary dismissal from their post. However, this attempt to introduce a conclusive enforced conformity of the clergy by means of a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler failed in the early autumn of 1934. The oath of allegiance was nothing less than an attempt to make Hitler the highest bishop (summepiscopus) of a national church, which Hirsch hoped would absorb the evangelical confessions. The discredited German-Christian National Bishop Müller and his episcopal epigones were to be replaced by the Führer. Faced with such unprecedented coercion, even the members of the Holl School refused to follow Hirsch. The insistence on conformity of the evangelical church with a Führer church, which would have derived its legitimacy as a church and its church ordinances from the summepiscopal sovereignty of the Führer of the National Socialist movement instead of having Luther’s principle of the general priesthood of all the

 Expressions that indicate Hirsch’s theology are in italics.  Hermle, Thierfelder (eds.), Herausgefordert, 217– 218.

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baptized as the source of its genuine legal autonomy, caused the break between Hirsch and the Holl School. Hirsch not only lost out in church politics in October 1934, but from then on he was also academically almost completely isolated.

3 Decisions and stagnations 1934/35 The spectrum of the theological discussion about Luther at the high point of the controversy in October/November 1934 was as follows: A number of theologians of the Luther Renaissance (e. g., R. Hermann) and the Young Reformatory Movement had supported the Barmen Theological Declaration in May 1934. They rejected the doctrine of the double revelation of God in the law of the volk and in Jesus Christ as the gospel. But even those academically active theologians who rejected the first two theses of the Barmen Theological Declaration with reference to Luther – including almost all of the Holl School, the confessionalists Elert and Althaus and Gogarten – were now hardly able to present plausible arguments against the third and fourth theses of the Declaration.³⁹ The church’s witness to Christ had to be followed not only in the doctrine but also in the church ordinance. There could not be any offices in the church which validated the dominance of one over the others. Correspondingly, there could not be any “special leaders (Führer) vested with ruling powers” in the church. Influenced by Karl Holl’s Luther interpretation, his pupils (except Hirsch) had rejected the idea of the church as an organ of state, with political rulers having summepiscopal power. Like Holl, they argued for the establishment of independent evangelical Volk churches, based on the principle of the general priesthood of all the baptized, drawing their independence from a genuine principle of “spiritual force”, rather than “secular authority”. On this point, there was a (temporary) consensus stretching from the politically National Socialist Holl pupils or theologians such as P. Althaus and F. Gogarten to the critics of the unjust Nazi state such as R. Hermann and D. Bonhoeffer, who had begun his dissertation Sanctorum communio in the year of Holl’s death (1926) inspired by Holl.⁴⁰ He congenially developed Holl’s thesis about Luther’s concept of the church and linked it with Troeltsch’s call for a sociological explication of the modernity of Lutheran social doctrine. Bonhoeffer conceived spiritual community as characteristic of the church. He derived his doctrine of church in terms of social philosophy from personalistic community concepts, and dogmatically through the distinction between sin and revelation as objective spirit and as Holy Ghost. This afforded him a concept of the church as a collective person, “Christ existing as the church”. This church theory also forms the model for Bonhoeffer’s question of representation as “ethical reality”, e. g., a vicarious repre Nevertheless they tried to: W. Elert, Bekenntnis, Blut und Boden. Drei theologische Vorträge (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1934), dated 31 August 1934.  D. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, ed. J. v. Soosten, E. Bethge, DBW 1 (Munich: Kaiser, 1986).

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sentative confession of guilt by the oecumenical churches in view of the nationalist propaganda regarding the question of war guilt. The defence of the independent volk churches served as a consensus in the academic controversies about the validity and the legacy of Luther. In the early autumn of 1934, this temporarily bridged the otherwise irreconcilable differences in political ethics, in the doctrines of state and law, and in the attitude to racist anti-Semitism. The reverse side of the consensus was that a non-voelkisch, non-authoritarian evangelical state theory could only be hinted at in the 5th Thesis of the Barmen Theological Declaration. The first proposals about this were only made after 1938. The evangelical Volk churches defined themselves as independent in accordance with the model of the Luther Renaissance, inasmuch as they traced their origins back to the genuine church principle of spiritual authority inherent in the religious justification experience. It remained to be decided how this broader meaning of “Lutheran” in the sense of the Luther Renaissance was to be linked to the narrower meaning of “Lutheran” in the sense of confessionalism, on the basis of which the confessional texts defined the independent confessional churches. The historical confessions were of secondary importance for many academic theologists of the Luther Renaissance. The reception of the Barmen Theological Declaration (in particular Barmen III and IV on the church itself), as an interpretation of the historical confessions (and the linking of the Theological Declaration to this confessional tradition) resolved this controversy within Lutheranism and within German Protestantism. It opened the way for the inner-evangelical concord or church community between Lutherans and evangelical reformists after 1945. Since the Barmen Synod of May 1934, confessional synods have been regarded as the doctrinal authority, including in Lutheran churches. There had been little discussion of the extent to which these theological arguments for the autonomy of the church correlate with the justification under religious law of the relative legal autonomy of the churches as corporate bodies under the Weimar Constitution. The question whether confessional churches and communities are able to constitute themselves through the emergency church law –as proposed by the second national synod of the Confessing Church in Berlin-Dahlem in November 1934 – proved to be a source of unforeseeable theological and legal conflicts until 1945.

4 Revisions of Lutheran political ethics 1938 – 1945 The irreconcilable positions on political ethics and state theory led to a stagnation of the theological discussion of Luther’s legacy after 1935. However, after 1938 a younger generation of theologians revised the Lutheran political theology and ethics from outside the Theological Faculties and free from the resultant pressures to conform. In the cases of Iwand and Bonhoeffer, after they had lost their academic teaching po-

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sitions.⁴¹ The discussion about Martin Luther after WW II would follow in their footsteps. However, prominent younger theologians either fell in the war (e. g., Harald Diem) or were victims of National Socialist persecution (e. g., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jochen Klepper). (1) A milestone of the revision of political ethics, drawing on Luther and reaching far beyond 1945, was Harald Diem’s dissertation Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms (1938).⁴² Against the usurpation of Luther by voelkisch-political theology, Diem drew attention to the close relationship between Luther’s Bible interpretation (Sermon on the Mount) and the key statements by Luther on spiritual and secular kingdoms. He combined these in a discussion of the problem of “Law and Gospel” (which had been so virulent since Barth’s criticism in 1935). For Luther’s views on Christian responsibility in the church and the world, Diem coined the term “Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms”, which after 1945 was adopted in oecumenical discussions about the re-education of German Lutheranism. Luther was concerned not about making the secular independent and clothing it in its own religious dignity, but about the “Christian instruction of the conscience”, namely, in carrying out the sermon of law and gospel in both kingdoms (sermon of law and gospel here stands for an ecclesial praxis). Law and gospel are forms of the political sermon of the one word of God, whether in the secular, where this sermon targets the political and legal-ethical virtues of Christian citizens, or in the spiritual, where the sermon targets good neighbourliness and the right of the neighbour.⁴³ The critical results of the study of his fallen brother Harald were gathered together by Hermann Diem in 1947. He summarised the discussion of Luther’s state theory and political ethics in Nazi Germany and the general failure of the “new evangelical state theories”:⁴⁴ Luther did not really have a “Doctrine of the two kingdoms”, but rather a doctrine of the “Sermon in the two kingdoms”. This doctrine is: a) “in its application to the reformation period” scriptural, because in the “Christendom” of the time it was possible to preach the sovereignty of Christ over

 E. Wolf, “Zur Frage des Naturrechts bei Thomas von Aquin und bei Luther (1935)”, in: idem, Peregrinatio. Studien zur reformatorischen Theologie und zum Kirchenproblem (Munich: Kaiser, 1954), 183 – 213; H. J. Iwand, “Gesetz und Evangelium I (1937)”, in: idem, Nachgelassene Werke Bd. 4: Gesetz und Evangelium (Munich: Kaiser 1964), 13 – 230 (Lecture to the seminar of the East Prussian Confessing Church); D. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge (Munich: Kaiser, 1937) (drawn from courses in the seminar of the Berlin-Brandenburg Confessing Church 1935 – 1937) = M. Kuske, I. Tödt (ed.), DBW 4 (Munich: Kaiser 1989); G. Ebeling, Evangelische Evangelienauslegung. Eine Untersuchung zu Luthers Hermeneutik (Munich: Kaiser, 1942) (= Thesis Zurich 1938).  H. Diem, “Luthers Lehre von den zwei Reichen untersucht von seinem Verständnis der Bergpredigt aus. Ein Beitrag zum Problem ‚Gesetz und Evangelium‘”, reprinted in: Zur Zwei-Reiche-Lehre Luthers, ed. G. Sauter, TB 49 (Munich: Kaiser, 1973), 1– 173.  H. Diem, Luthers Lehre, 163 – 170  H. Diem, “Luthers Predigt in den zwei Reichen” (1947), reprinted in: Zur Zwei-Reiche-Lehre Luthers, ed. G. Sauter, TB 49 (Munich: Kaiser, 1973), 175 – 214 (pages in the text relate to this).

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both kingdoms, both in law and gospel, in the single word of the proclamation of the entire Christ; b) “in its application to the political situation of the 20th Century” it is not scriptural, because this sermon after the dissolution of that Christendom becomes impossible and thus can no longer be practiced. (214)

The critical, political orientation was reduced through the sermon of law and gospel to the internality of the decisions of conscience. Four decades after Max Weber’s essays on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904/05) and two decades after Karl Holl’s analysis of Weber’s criticism of Luther’s concept of vocation (1924), Hermann Diem’s conclusions seem to confirm Weber’s prediction: Protestant ethic of vocation has contributed to the creation of the mighty cosmos of the modern economic order, but has eliminated “Christendom” as a political reality and as an influence on the style of life in this. Whereas Luther, Calvin, and the Puritans wanted to work to fulfill their vocation, – we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism with irresistible force, and not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition […].⁴⁵

(2) In 1941, Hans Joachim Iwand dedicated his book on Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith⁴⁶ to Martin Niemöller, the founder of the Pfarrernotbund (Emergency Covenant of Pastors), who was at that time interned in a concentration camp. The work develops some of the main elements of the theology of Luther to outline a political-theological existence from the “Justice of God” that is confronted with the reality of the internees. Christian freedom hidden under the manifest bondage is an exposition of the fact of divine justice, and liberal freedom as counter-factual ideal, that for Kant is an exposition of the fact of reason, are open to one another, although neither can be ascribed to the other. The doctrine of justice addresses in general the First Commandment, i. e., not the subjective-inner religious certainty but the conflict about the truth of God in the face of ideological gods. Iwand’s concept of justice develops the basic distinction of law and gospel from the unity of the word of God. But despite sharing some of his views, Iwand does not simply adhere to Barth’s Word of

 M. Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik und der ‚Geist‘ des Kapitalismus (1904/05). I. Das Problem, II. Die Berufsidee des asketischen Protestantismus”, Max Weber: Asketischer Protestantismus und Kapitalismus: Schriften und Reden 1904 – 1911, ed. W. Schluchtner, U. Bube, MWG I, 9 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 97– 122, 123 – 215, 222– 241, 242– 425, 422 (engl. transl. Talcott Parsons, London/New York: Routledge, 1992).  H. J. Iwand, “Glaubensgerechtigkeit nach Luthers Lehre”, TEH 75 (Munich: Lempp, 1941), reprinted in: H. J. Iwand, Glaubensgerechtigkeit. Lutherstudien, ed. G. Sauter, TB 64 (Munich: Kaiser, 19912), 11– 125; C. J. Neddens, Politische Theologie und Theologie des Kreuzes. Werner Elert und Hans Joachim Iwand, FSÖTh 128 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010).

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God theology and his criticism of the political theology of the law. He is concerned with Luther’s theology of the cross as critical, political-ethical life praxis and, like Diem, with the duty of the public-political preached law. How can an announcement of liberation become effective in the unjust Nazi state? In 1947, Iwand wrote, together with Barth, the Darmstadt Statement on the political course taken by the German people. After 1945, he argued for the formation of a Union of Lutherans and Reformists and worked for political reconciliation with the peoples of the Eastern bloc.

5 Epilogue On a Thursday afternoon, on the 10th of December 1942, the evangelical author and poet Jochen Klepper entered the Reich’s Security Service building in Berlin. Soon after, he was sitting in front of the head of the Office of Jewish Affairs, Adolf Eichmann. The meeting would decide the fate of Jochen Klepper’s step-daughter Renate. Renate Klepper-Stein was the daughter from the first marriage of Hanni Klepper, Jochen Klepper’s wife. The girl wore a yellow star. For years, Jochen Klepper had been struggling to organise the emigration of his step-daughter. On this Thursday afternoon, Renate Klepper-Stein’s fate was decided. Eichmann finally refused to issue a permit for her emigration. The last way out of Germany was blocked. During Thursday night, the Klepper family waited in their home in the Berlin-Nikolassee suburb expecting Renate to be taken away. Everything had been arranged to pre-empt this: wills had been made, the funeral arrangements written out. That night, Jochen Klepper wrote a final entry in his diary: “Afternoon, the hearing at the Reich Security Service. We shall die now – oh, that too is with God. – Tonight we are going to our deaths together. Above us in the last hours is the picture of Christ the Redeemer, who struggles for us. In his sight, our lives end.”⁴⁷ The enforced suicide of the Klepper family lay outside the scope of theological interpretations. To be sure, this was not a free choice, nor a martyrdom in a traditional sense. Jochen Klepper’s teacher, Rudolf Hermann, who corresponded with Klepper from 1925 until October 1942, remained silent about it. The theological texts exchanged from 1939 to 1941 between Hermann and Klepper contain various reflections regarding questions of suffering and resistance. Particular emphasis was placed on Luther’s verse, “Take body, goods, honour, child and wife: let it all go, the kingdom [Reich] must yet remain to us.” In a letter on the 23rd of January 1940, Jochen Klepper refers to these lines. He applies Luther’s song to his family situation: You write, dear Professor, of the experiences one has in the things that so hinder work. That is true. Only now have I come to understand the words: “Take body, goods, honour, child and wife”

 J. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel. Aus den Tagebüchern der Jahre 1932 – 1942 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), 1133 (10th December 1942).

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and the circumstances under which they were written. How threatened is, above all, our Renate, who is still with us.⁴⁸

The step from Luther’s hymn to the fate of Renate Klepper-Stein is not an abrupt one. Klepper was tormented by the question of whether the surrender of his step-daughter had to be the extreme consequence of a Lutheran suffering faith and a suffering resistance. It seems like there is an echo of this letter when Hermann writes in a treatise on the reformatory right of resistance against the Kaiser in 1941: There are situations in which giving up solidarity does not bear witness to a strong belief in the divine kingdom (“the kingdom must remain to us”). The witness to the right of the Creator to the worldly and in the worldly realm is apparent more in loyalty to wife and child. One threatens the earthly itself when one takes it merely as earthly. That also applies, it may be added, beyond the “Let it all go”. – If other people, wife and child […] are only something mortal, profane, then we not only endanger ourselves but them too. And it is us who should help to guide our own people beyond and above itself. That is a mission of the church […]⁴⁹

On the 8th of December 1942 – with Renate Klepper-Stein’s fate still in the balance – Klepper returned in his diary to Luther’s hymn: God knows that I cannot bear to let Hanni and the child go into this most terrible and gruesome of all deportations. He knows that I cannot pledge, as Luther could: “Take the body, goods, honour, child and wife.” – Body, goods, honour – yes! But God also knows that I will accept all trials and judgements from Him, if only I know that Hanni and the child are in some way protected.⁵⁰

On the 10th of December 1942, with hopes of emigration finally gone, Klepper passed away with his wife and his step-daughter from life unto death.⁵¹

 H. Assel (ed.) unter Mitarbeit von A. Wiebel, Der du die Zeit in Händen hast. Briefwechsel zwischen Rudolf Hermann und Jochen Klepper 1925 – 1942, BevTh 113 (Munich: Kaiser, 1992), 75 – 76 (23rd January 1940).  R. Hermann, “Luthers Zirkulardisputation über Mt 19,21” (1941), in: idem, Gesammelte Studien zur Theologie Luthers und der Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960), 206 – 250, 227.  J. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel, 1131 (8th December 1942).  Passages from this text have been included in my essay “Theologische Diskussion um Martin Luther im NS-Staat”, in: “Überall Luthers Worte…” Luther im Nationalsozialismus, Katalogband zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung (Berlin: Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, 2017), 183 – 197.

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Luther in Protestant Historiography and Theology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 1 Introduction: Methodological Remarks Freedom fighter, national hero, homo religiosus – this list of images of Luther, which has grown out of a wide-ranging engagement with the reformer over the last two centuries, could easily be extended. The views of Luther as a theological thinker and historical figure are as diverse among the general public as they are in the academic field. This chapter focuses on two particular fields in the engagement with Luther in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: historiography and theology. These are areas which, in certain aspects, overlap and interconnect and which must both be viewed within the context of contemporary philosophical ideas. The facet under particular scrutiny here is that of Protestant approaches to studying Luther in these two fields. Certain elements that may appear more or less obvious with reference to the theological side, nevertheless still raise questions on the historiographical side: Can a Protestant history be identified as such via the personal confessional identity of those who write it? Or can a certain form of historical perception and representation be essentially qualified as Protestant? The difficulties that arise with regard to the latter question – despite the range of models of decadence theory – are obvious. In view of the extraordinary breadth of Protestantism, a unified interpretation of history could hardly be expected. So while this chapter takes a pragmatic approach to the first question, nevertheless only a certain aspect of Protestantism can be scrutinized in what follows: historiography and theology will be investigated in their academic forms and with particular reference to German-speaking areas, since these have long determined the dominant academic culture in this regard. On the one hand, this means that the positions of Protestant theologians linked to state churches will be foregrounded – as, due to the provisions of church-state law, German universities have long since ceased to be sites of pluralistic Protestant discourse that goes beyond the state churches at a personal level, in the sense of church membership. On the other hand, this also means that “popular” forms of historical and theological publications, among which considerable differentiation has been observed in the nineteenth century, are mainly ignored. I will pick up on both of these aspects at the end of this chapter in order to broaden the perspective for future work in this

Translation from German: Madeleine Brook.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-058

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area. At the beginning, I will turn to those dimensions that determined engagement with Luther at the turn of the eighteenth century.

2 Individuality and Freedom: The Pietist and Enlightenment Legacy in the Early Nineteenth Century 2.1 Interpretations of Luther in Pietism and Enlightenment Of those historiographical works dealing with Luther that were inspired by the ideas of Pietism and the early Enlightenment, Gottfried Arnold’s Unparteiische Kirchenund Ketzerhistorie (Impartial History of the Church and Heretics) stands out. Its structuring principle is not the institutionalized church; instead, it traces – in the sense of testes veritates – the credible evidence of individuals, each in a very different relation to organized religion.¹ In line with this set of criteria, in the eighteenth century Luther was honored as one personality among many, and in referring to older patterns of meaning – especially those provided by Spener –, distinctions were made that would prove to be highly influential for later Luther research, such as a distinction between the “young” and the “old” Luther or an emphasis on his link to mysticism (something that had already been highlighted by Zinzendorf). This individualizing focus on the person was carried over into Enlightenment perspectives on Luther, but with even greater emphasis placed on Luther’s influence as a factor in movements seeking freedom. Thus it is possible to say that the image of Luther at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century was above all characterized by the Enlightenment concern with its inherent and exemplary emancipatory ambition, which was underscored – with considerable nuance – by Johann Salomo Semler and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Thus, according to Semler, one can see in Luther’s search for truth and in his defense of freedom of conscience a model that will lead the enlightened individual toward tolerance and freedom of religion.² Lessing further noted that “[t]he true Lutheran does not wish to be defended by Luther’s writings but by Luther’s spirit; and Luther’s spirit absolutely requires that no man may be prevented from advancing in knowledge of the truth according to his own judgment.”³ In comparison to earlier confessionally orthodox positions the Enlightenment paradigm of

 Gottfried Arnold, Unparteyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie […] (Leipzig/Frankfurt: Fritsch, 1699 – 1700).  Johann S. Semler, Lebensbeschreibung, von ihm selbst abgefasst, vol. 2 (1782); cf. the excerpt in Bernd Moeller (ed.), Kirchengeschichte. Deutsche Texte 1699 – 1927 (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1994), 212– 19.  Gotthold E. Lessing, Anti-Goeze (1778), as cited in Lessings Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe in 25 Bänden, eds. Julius Petersen and Waldemar von Olshausen (Berlin, 1925), 23:194.

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the perception of Luther – emphasizing emanicpatory aspects – therefore encompassed a marked shift in focus from the teachings to the person, from the works to the effect, and accordingly – in terms of the history of ideas –, a movement from the positional to the structural.

2.2 Johann Georg Hamann and the “Recalcitrant” in Luther Contrary to this in certain respects is the position of Johann Georg Hamann, which to some degree had conciliatory intentions and which would be extremely influential in later work on Luther. Hamann’s extensive work on Luther’s writings revealed aspects in the reformer’s theology that were recalcitrant to his own time, thereby taking up a position against a certain moralistic and rationalistic restrictiveness. Hamann analyzed the topics of suffering, the cross, and death as central elements of the reformer’s theology. In the resulting and newly plausible contrapositions of theologia gloriae and theologia crucis, Hamann also sees the contraposition of illusionary, utopian thought on the one hand and realistic thought on the other. He found elements of his own religious experience prefigured in Luther’s writings, particularly with respect to the powerful reality of the word of God, from which he developed his own philosophy of language. In this philosophy, language is encountered as something – as Ranke would later formulate it – “real-spiritual” (realgeistig) and dynamic, as the manifestation of the transcendental in the individual, which Hamann describes using the analogy of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist.⁴

2.3 Johann Gottried Herder and Luther’s “Genius” Under Hamann’s influence, it is, for the most part, Luther’s creative linguistic influence to which Johann Gottfried Herder pays particular attention and which he productively seeks to extend. Herder contends that Luther’s revival of the German language opened up new intellectual heights for the nation, liberating it from scholastic narrowness. This national process is, for Herder, prefigured in Luther’s “genius,” which was able to free itself of its monastic, scholastic confinement, but – as Hamann noted in another context – did so within the bonds of Luther’s faith in the word of God and alongside the fundamental momentum of the justification of the sinner as the momentum of transition into free existence. Although Herder underscores these theological motives, it is his depiction of Luther as a personality of

 Johann G. Hamann, Briefwechsel (1759 – 1786); cf. the summary in Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte. Mit ausgewählten Texten von Lessing bis zur Gegenwart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 202– 05.

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“genius” that became influential.⁵ Goethe also extended this perspective; he was not able to make much of the events of the Reformation period – mediated as they were by Arnold’s History of the Church and Heretics –, but he depicted Luther as a personality who paved the road to progress into the future.⁶

3 Theological Engagement with Luther in the Early Nineteenth Century It is striking that academic engagement with Luther in the early nineteenth century – as already outlined above – flowed with particular intensity from the pens of philosophers and historically minded literary scholars. Fichte, Schlegel, Hegel – they all elevated Luther to a prominent position in their historical-theological studies and systems, all of which had, in their different ways, an impact on subsequent theological and historical discourse on Luther.

3.1 Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher Those who attempt to identify the role Luther played in the work of the theologian who would be definitive for the nineteenth century, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, find that it proves impossible to identify any specific image or any clear reception of Luther in Schleiermacher’s work. What can be found certain analogies, which can, however, be explained in the broadest sense as part of the wider environment of reception history – for example, as a result of the influence of the Moravian Church (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine) on Schleiermacher –, but it is hard to identify clear historical genetics. Similarly to Luther, Schleiermacher clearly differentiated between religion on the one hand and morality and thought on the other. He argued that faith, as the synoptic expression of the positive Christian religion, therefore cannot be sought in morality and thought – for, unlike the latter, it is an original phenomenon found in the heart or emotion of the human being. Furthermore, also as in Luther’s thought, true religion is the result of the historical self-mediation of God in Jesus Christ, as the Word of God made flesh. Clear differences in Christology and harmartiology, and also in the interpretation of the word of God, arise in

 Johann G. Herder, Über die Neuere Deutsche Literattur. Fragmente (1766), Von deutscher Art und Sprache (1773), Vom Erkennen und Empfinden. Entwurf (1775); on these texts and other excerpts, see Bornkamm, Luther, 205 – 15 .  Johann W. Goethe, “Briefe des Pastors zu *** an den neuen Pastor zu ***” (1773), in Goethes Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläums-Ausgabe in 40 Bänden (Stuttgart/Berlin: Cotta, 1902), 36:83 – 94; see also Gespräch[e] mit Eckermann, February 17, 1832 (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1836).

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Schleiermacher’s accentuation of a theology of consciousness.⁷ Even if Luther did not occupy a prominent place in Schleiermacher’s thought, Schleiermacher’s relation to historically present, positive religion also furthered the reception of Luther in the nineteenth century.

3.2 Evangelical Awakening and Lutheran Confessionalism There was no homogeneous approach to the manner in which Luther was ascribed theological prominence and importance in the revival movement. Luther could be regarded as a particular “divine instrument”⁸ or rather be prominently included alongside the other Reformers. Thus both Zwingli and Calvin are placed alongside Luther,⁹ and the Lutheran rejection of the Zwinglian doctrine of the Eucharist is presented as regrettable,¹⁰ while the rather “mild” and “peaceful” Melanchthon is characterized as a necessary corrective to the “forceful” Luther.¹¹ As far as the strands that led to Lutheran confessionalism are concerned, like Schleiermacher, they also looked to Luther’s “return to the original doctrine of justification, to the original celebration of the Eucharist and to the original understanding of the relationship between clergy and laity,”¹² but they balked at Schleiermacher’s unionist church politics. In Silesia in 1817, Lutherans resisted the Prussian union between the Lutheran and the Reformed churches; in Kiel, Claus Harms edited Luther’s ninety-five theses in celebration of the 1817 anniversary of the Reformation and even added ninety-five of his own theses, in which he protested against the union and referred to Luther’s interpretation of the office and confession of the church.¹³ Wilhelm Löhe in Neuendettelsau emphasized the Lutheran elements of his conception of the church,¹⁴ and August Friedrich Christian Vilmar referred to Lu Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1821– 1822, 1830 – 1832); Schleiermacher, Vorlesungen über die Kirchengeschichte (1806 – 1826), in Friedrich Schleiermacher. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2006), 2.6.  Heinrich E.F. Guerike, Handbuch der Allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte (Halle: Gebauer, 1833), 2:581.  F.A.B Westermeier, Das Leben von Huldreich Zwingli und Johann Calvin (Halle: Waisenhaus, 1846); Westermeier, Geschichte der christlichen Kirche. Bd. 4., welcher die Geschichte der Reformation enthält. Abth. 1. Enthaltend die Geschichte der deutschen Reformation bis zum Tode Luthers. Dr. Martin Luthers Leben (Halle: Waisenhaus 1845).  Johann C. Blumhardt, Handbüchlein der Weltgeschichte (Calw/Stuttgart: Calwer Verlagsverein, 1843), 199.  Wilhelm Leipoldt, Die Geschichte der christlichen Kirche (Schwelm: M. Scherz, 1834), 157.  Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche, 1809 ff.; as cited in Bornkamm, Luther, 275.  Claus Harms, Das sind die 95 theses oder Streitsätze Dr. Luthers, theuren Andenkens. Zum besondern Abdruck besorgt und mit andern 95 Sätzen als mit einer Uebersetzung aus Ao. 1517 in 1817 begleitet (Kiel: Akademische Buchhandlung, 1817).  Wilhelm Löhe, Drei Bücher von der Kirche (Stuttgart: Liesching, 1845).

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ther in his vigorous definition of ministry in the church.¹⁵ The Erlangen experiential theologians Adolf von Harleß and Johann Christian Konrad von Hoffmann – and later Reinhold Seeberg, following in their footsteps – would connect the experiences of the conscience with the objective demands of Scripture and confession in order to counter the theological restrictions in Schleiermacher’s concept of religion. However, before tracing this aspect in the theology of the second half of the century, it is important to analyze the developments that took place in the field of historiography.

4 Luther in the Protestant Historiography of the Nineteenth Century 4.1 Marheineke, Ranke, and a new Approach to the Sources The Reformation jubilee of 1817 not only inspired a number of activities stemming from church and confessional politics, but it also stimulated historiographical engagement with the Reformation – which, where publications were concerned, initially became tangible in the extensive 1816 work Geschichte der teutschen Reformation (History of the German Reformation) by Philipp Marheineke.¹⁶ Marheineke was a theologian, but he eschewed all historiographical and historico-theological preliminaries in order to present his work as, in the first instance, a densely woven fabric of documents and longer excerpts taken from Luther’s texts, in particular. He deliberately avoided all “judgments […], reflections and hypotheses.”¹⁷ Similar in nature to this work as a collection of materials was the 1817 LutherFragment of the young Leopold Ranke, which would ultimately have a much greater scholarly influence, but which initially remained unpublished. This fragmentary work represents a collection of aphorisms and excerpts from Luther’s writings, as well as from other sources, and a number of texts by the author himself. Even though the work culminates in a hymn celebrating the anniversary of the Reformation, it nonetheless concretizes a historiographical approach that does not take its principal point of departure from either devotional or theological interest; nor, at least according to its claims, does it aim to pin the historical material to a predefined philosophical system.¹⁸ Instead, it comprises studies of sources as the basis for a biography of Luther, and all of this material was later recontextualised and accentuated in its integration into Ranke’s Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (German His-

 August F.G. Vilmar, Die Lehre vom geistlichen Amt, ed. K.W. Piderit (Marburg: Elwert, 1870).  Philipp Marheineke, Geschichte der teutschen Reformation (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1816).  Vorrede, as cited in the second edition (Berlin, 1831), xvii.  The Fragment was first published – more or less – in its original form as an appendix to P. Jochimsen’s revised edition of von Ranke’s Deutscher Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (Munich, 1926), 6:313 – 99.

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tory in the Age of the Reformation).¹⁹ Fichte’s idea of divine intervention in history – which could be detected particularly in great individuals, as well as in events and in larger groups and units of time, such as states and epochs – at climactic points and especially in moments of origin (in this case, of course, the initia Lutheri) clearly stands in the background of Ranke’s study. However, in this context, Luther is characterized as a historical figure through his personal struggles, challenges, and discoveries, and not as a representative of an abstract principle. Yet, as a result of the fragment’s integration into Ranke’s Deutsche Geschichte, the focus shifts markedly toward a history of nation-states and institutions.

4.2 Ferdinand Christian Baur and Hegel’s Legacy The portrayal of the Reformation and of Luther by Ferdinand Christian Baur is, to a certain extent, influenced by Ranke, but it is a great deal more heavily indebted to the influence of Hegel. Baur, in Hegelian dialectical categories, sees in the Reformation the turning point in which the spirit – alienated from itself – returns from objectivity to subjectivity, from the external to the internal, and begins to become conscious of its true freedom within the principle of subjectivity.²⁰ In the Evangelical interpretation of history, in which constant reference to the origin of Christianity and the reasons for contemporary distance from it is always necessary, individuals can appear as “living […] individual […] point[s], in which the rays that converge from different directions ignite”; thus – all abstraction notwithstanding – a vivid portrayal of Luther also emerges, one that reveals his religious motives but also characterizes him reductively as “a real German.”²¹

4.3 National Interpretations of Luther This nationalistic flavor can already be found in the work of Herder, Fichte, and Heine, and it is also likely to be found among Ranke’s disciples, to varying degrees. It was a tendency that was only present to a moderate degree in Ranke himself. Gustav Freytag followed in Ranke’s footsteps in the third volume of his popular work Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit (Images from the German Past),²² in which he echoed both Ranke’s fundamental historical view and his interpretation of Luther, which emphasized individuality and historicity. However, he reinforced – albeit with-

 Leopold von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation, 6 vols. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1839 – 1847).  Ferdinand C. Baur: Die christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung von der ältesten Zeit bis auf die neueste (Tübingen: Osiander, 1838).  Baur, Geschichte der christlichen Kirche (Tübingen: L.F. Fues, 1863), 4:523.  Gustav Freytag, Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1859).

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out pathos – the image of Luther as a national figure in his emphasis on the German nature of the Reformation. Johann Gustav Droysen, taking a Lutheran and idealistic approach similar to Ranke, underscored the “internal consonance of Protestant and idealistic approaches to history,”²³ within which he laid greater emphasis on the revolutionary aspects of Luther’s influence.²⁴ The second-great nineteenth-century portrayal of the Reformation, after that of Ranke, was Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (History of the German Reformation) by Friedrich von Bezold,²⁵ which also emphasizes the revolutionary element. However, this time attention is drawn to the revolutionary aspect of the peasants, and Luther’s conduct in relation to them appears in a decidedly negative light. In comparison to Ranke, a broader socio-historical approach is discernible, which does not perceive Luther’s religious motivations in the same way as did Ranke and Droysen. When Bezold describes Luther’s prophetic consciousness as the “boldest embodiment of Germanic individualism that is known to history,”²⁶ certain nationalistic reductionisms of the time make themselves heard – aspects which are at their most influential in historical and philosophical contexts, although they are differently weighted under such circumstances. The national historiography of the German unification movement and of the new German Empire – as in the work of Heinrich von Treitschke, the most condensed form this national historiography took in relation to the presentation of Luther – followed on from the notion of Volksgeist, as also found in the work of Fichte, Arndt, and Herder. It also saw the figure and work of Luther as the embodiment of the “German being.” This understanding of Luther as a national symbol and a German hero becomes tangible in Treitschke’s speech on the occasion of the 1883 anniversary of the Reformation: “We Germans see no mystery in all of this; we say simply: this is the blood of our blood. From the deep eyes of this elemental German farmer’s son flashed the old heroic courage of the Germanic people which does not flee the world, but rather seeks to command it through the power of moral will.”²⁷ The biography of Luther by Adolf Hausrath, published twenty years later, forged a link between the religious and the nationalistic images of the reformer: “A new soul has entered into the German nation. He has awakened all its masculine instincts; he has taught it to sing ‘and if the world were full of devils, yet we shall still succeed.’ He has poured iron into the blood of the nation.”²⁸ This connected particularly with the political conservatism that was closely aligned with confessional Lutheranism. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Berlin professor Friedrich Julius Stahl, a con-

 Cited in Bornkamm, Luther, 49.  Johann G. Droysen, Geschichte der Preußischen Politik, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Veit, 1857).  Friedrich von Bezold, Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (Berlin: Grothe, 1890).  Von Bezold, Geschichte der deutschen Reformation, 448.  Heinrich von Treitschke, Aufsätze, Reden und Briefe, ed. Karl M. Schiller (Meersburg: Hendel, 1929), 246.  Adolf Hausrath, Luthers Leben (Berlin: Grote, 1904), 2:499.

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vinced Lutheran who was highly influenced by Ranke in his religiously contoured interpretation of Luther, had already attempted to mediate his rather abstract analysis of Protestantism – which was informed by his Lutheran confession – with his conservative concept of the state.²⁹ In a similar way, Heinrich Leo had connected a strongly conservative portrayal of Luther with romantic history – which brings us back to Lutheran confessionalism and the theology associated with it.

5 Between Neo-Lutheranism and Liberal Theology: Luther in the Protestant Theology of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century 5.1 The “Erlangen School” and Neo-Lutheranism The faculty of theology at the University of Erlangen represented the center of the strand of nineteenth-century theological history known as “Neo-Lutheranism.” The most significant ideas for a confessionally oriented view of Luther emanated from Erlangen – which, however, sought to mediate these ideas with those of the contemporary theological movements that followed in Schleiermacher’s wake. Its beginnings can be traced to the appointment of Adolf von Harleß in 1833, and the era of the “Erlangen School” continued until the death of Franz Hermann Reinhold Frank in 1894. The Erlangen School produced a theology which sought to base subjective faith on objective foundations – the Bible, confessions of faith, and, in particular, the Lutheran confessions of faith – and to combine the ideas of Schleiermacher with those of revivalism, confessionalism, and biblicism. With respect to the role and perception of Luther, this led to two points of crystallization that propelled scholarship: on the one hand, the efforts of J.C.K. Hofmann and his student, Christoph Ernst Luthardt, to produce a biblical hermeneutics in the context of a salvific view of history raised questions about a Lutheran ecclesiology and the differences between Luther and Lutheran orthodoxy, or indeed his epigones; on the other hand, Gottfried Thomasius and Frank’s emphasis on the Formula of Concord as an appropriate expression of the doctrine of reincarnation raised the question of the relation of Luther’s doctrinal statements to the experiences of faith in his own life.³⁰ The issue at stake was thus the

 Friedrich J. Stahl, Die gegenwärtigen Parteien in Staat und Kirche (Berlin: Hertz, 1863); Stahl, Der Protestantismus als politisches Prinzip (Berlin: Schultze, 1853).  G.C. Adolph von Harleß, Theologische Encyklopädie und Methodologie vom Standpunkte der protestantischen Kirche (Nürnberg: Schrag, 1837); von Harleß, Kirche und Amt nach lutherischer Lehre. In grundlegenden Sätzen mit Luther’s Zeugnissen (Stuttgart: Liesching, 1853); Johann C.K. Hofmann, Der Schriftbeweis. Ein theologischer Versuch (Nördlingen: C.H. Beck, 1852– 1855); Hofmann, Biblische Hermeneutik. Nach Manuskripten u. Vorlesungen, ed. W. Volck (Nördlingen: C.H. Beck 1880); Gottfried Thomasius, Das Bekenntnis der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche in der Konsequenz seines Prinzips

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relation between Luther and the theology of his successors which had come to constitute Lutheranism.

5.2 Albrecht Ritschl: Luther’s Doctrine of Justification as a Liberation to Shape the World In contrast to the Neo-Lutheran theology that focused on the Lutheran confessions, Albrecht Ritschl, who would become the founder of liberal theology in the second half of the nineteenth century, initiated a different approach to Luther. In religious-philosophical terms, he was a follower of Kant rather than Hegel; he considered that Luther’s achievement was the liberation of faith from speculative metaphysics and mysticism. The freedom of a Christian, according to Luther, stemmed from the justification of sinners and their reconciliation with God through Christ. Justification and reconciliation are thus to be viewed as an expression of divine love and as offering greater freedom for human beings in an intra-worldly sense. This freedom would lead to ethical-spiritual sovereignty over the world and affirmation of one’s vocation and social position. Ritschl was clearly influenced by Luther’s concept of social status and vocation in his understanding of ethics, which was based on the notion that God’s love represented the embodiment of the kingdom of God. Ritschl set out his interpretation of Luther, contextualized by historical theology, in his principal publication, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Conciliation),³¹ and in Geschichte des Pietismus (History of Pietism).³² In these works, he contextualized Luther and the Reformation in the theological history of the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period, but he also drew on analysis based on his theological ideas. Thus Ritschl interprets – to give just one example – the discourse on Deus absconditus in Luther’s De servo arbitrio as a metaphysical relic of nominalistic influences on the reformer, which were ultimately obsolete.

5.3 Theodosius Harnack and Luther’s Discourse on a Wrathful and Hidden God The most significant theological interpretation of Luther of the nineteenth century – beside Ritschl – was directed against precisely the view of Luther outlined above: Theodosius Harnack’s two-volume work Luthers Theologie mit besonderer Beziehung (Nürnberg: Recknagel, 1848); Thomasius, Die christliche Dogmengeschichte, 2 vols. (Erlangen: Andreas Deichert, 1874– 76); Franz H.R.Frank, Die Theologie der Konkordien Formel (Erlangen: Blaesing, 1858).  Albrecht Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, 3 vols. (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1870 – 1874).  Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, 3 vols. (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1880 – 1886).

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auf seine Versöhnungs- und Erlösungslehre (Luther’s Theology, with Particular Reference to His Doctrine of Conciliation and Salvation), which emerged from the Erlangen School of theology.³³ Harnack criticises Ritschl’s optimistic concept of theology and ethics, which he views as overly reliant on the idea of the love of God, thereby ignoring the dark facets of Luther’s concept of God – that is, Luther’s discourse on the wrath and the hidden nature of God: Never was there more powerful and shocking preaching on the wrath of God in the Christian church than when Luther did so. […] When the claim is made that Luther proclaimed the God of love in contrast to the medieval God of wrath, this is at best only half true and does not demonstrate a deep understanding of the theology of the reformer. […] Luther is able to teach with such earnestness on the wrath of God because he has learned what sin and grace are at the foot of the cross of Christ. On numerous occasions, he declares that we can see in the crucified Christ how great the love, but also “how great, solemn, and terrifying is the wrath of God against sin” and “that neither of the two can be comprehended by reason,” neither “what wrath is” nor “that an antidote to such wrath lies in the mercifulness of God.”³⁴

Harnack underscores Luther’s understanding of God as the fulcrum of his theology: God is thus simultaneously both a wrathful, hidden judge and a reconciler, a savior. Contrary to Ritschl, he does not contextualize Luther in theological history, and he pays scant attention to the historical context of the scriptures he interprets. As a result, Harnack’s Luther has a certain timeless and monolithic character. While Ritschl’s Luther interpretation was further developed by his students, Adolf von Harnack and Wilhelm Herrmann, Theodosius Harnack’s work on Luther was taken up in conservative confessional circles. It would be given renewed attention in 1927, in the context of dialectical theology.

6 Harnack and Troeltsch: Theological and Socio-religious Luther Interpretations at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century 6.1 Adolf von Harnack: Luther in the Framework of an “Undogmatic Christianity” Theodosius Harnack’s son Adolf, did not follow in his father’s footsteps with regard to his presentation of the history of dogma. Instead, he looked to Ritschl and saw in Luther the reestablishment of Pauline Christianity in the spirit of the new age, much as Luther’s Reformation was also indebted to the Middle Ages. His assessment of the

 Theodosius Harnack, Luthers Theologie mit besonderer Beziehung auf seine Versöhnungs- und Erlösungslehre, 2 vols. (Erlangen: Blaesing, 1862– 1886).  Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 1:363 – 64.

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reformer in his book Dogmengeschichte (The History of Dogma)³⁵ is, accordingly, ambivalent: on the one hand, von Harnack argues that the reformer had rediscovered the inwardness of religion; on the other hand, he asserts that he had restored the dogmatic orientation of early Christianity. “The same man who had liberated the Gospel of Jesus Christ from churchdom and moralism had reinforced its legitimacy in the forms of the old Catholic theology; indeed, he had once again bestowed on these forms meaning and importance for faith after centuries of obsolescence.”³⁶ Von Harnack’s view that the core of Christianity was “undogmatic” rested on the hypothesis that, for Luther, faith exists in the natural exercise of Christian freedom – which, within the framework of organic development thinking, would prove to be culturally influential across all levels of society as the unfolding concept of Christian charity.

6.2 Ernst Troeltsch: Luther and the Question of the Beginnings of the Modern Period Like Ritschl, Ernst Troeltsch categorized Luther’s roots in nominalism as a medieval relic and differentiated between old and new Protestantism – i. e., between the Reformation on the one hand, which represented the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern period, but which was ultimately anchored in the Middle Ages; and the transformation of the Reformation into the modern, personal religion of conscience on the other hand, which made possible the authority of the human individual in relation to the world and simultaneously permitted the world to be ruled within the framework of a moral-religious order. The personal religion of conscience, understood in this way, thus assumes the function of the most important guiding value of culture. In performing this function, New Protestantism would therefore have “a great task in the modern world that is in accordance with its own innermost being: the assimilation of the ethical, intrinsic values of an intra-worldly life into a final life purpose, which elevates us to communion with God, above the world and its temporal and relative values.”³⁷ In this cultural synthesis and its foundation in religious sociology, Luther appears largely as a figure of the Middle Ages, while the move into the modern age is above all ascribed to those strands of spiritualism and Anabaptism that were suppressed by the confessional churches. Largely driven out of Europe and forced to emigrate to the New World, they had nevertheless, according to Troeltsch, had a considerable impact on Europe as a notable influence in the promotion and growth of the Enlightenment, thereby bringing forth a completely new form

 Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3 vols. (Freiburg: Mohr, 1886 – 1890).  Von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4th ed. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1910), 3:814.  Ernst Troeltsch, Luther, der Protestantismus und die moderne Welt (1907/08), in Troeltsch. Gesammelte Schriften (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1925), 4:230.

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of Protestantism and its theology. New Protestantism was therefore more closely aligned with figures such as Sebastian Franck than with Luther.³⁸ Troeltsch’s cultural synthesis – which aimed to impart the moral, cultural values of faith while at the same time preserving the religious independence of the individual – descended into crisis as society became disillusioned with cultural idealism after the First World War. Two new developments – each with quite a different approach to Luther – arose out of this crisis and would have a lasting effect on Protestant theology in the twentieth century.

7 Redirections in Times of Crisis: Luther Renaissance and Dialectical Theology 7.1 Karl Holl and the Beginnings of the Luther Renaissance The first of these two new directions stood in partial continuity with previous currents of thought, but it also profited considerably from the critical edition of Luther’s texts, which had been appearing successively since 1883, as well as from the contemporaneous discovery of Luther’s early lectures on Paul’s Letter to the Romans and on the Psalms. Karl Holl, a student of Adolf von Harnack who had crossed over from patristics, had already begun intensive research on Luther in the years just prior to the First World War, with considerable historical precision and deep systematic theological focus. Holl partially developed the interpretations of Luther initiated by Ritschl and Herrmann further, but he vehemently opposed Troeltsch. Against the latter’s interpretation, he set out a clear reading of Luther as the founder of the modern age, both in regard to Luther’s concept of the relationship between God and humankind and in regard to active, world-shaping conduct. In his widely respected speech on the occasion of the 1917 anniversary of the Reformation, entitled Was verstand Luther unter Religion? (What Did Luther Understand by Religion?),³⁹ Holl outlined a redefinition of Luther’s religion as a theonomic religion of conscience, from which a Neubau der Sittlichkeit (reconstruction of morality)⁴⁰ would proceed. In contrast to Ritschl, the idea of a wrathful God played a significant role in Holl’s understanding. In his 1917 speech – that is to say, at a time in which Germany’s war plans were clearly failing – and in his historiographically significant volume of essays entitled Luther,  Ernst Troeltsch, Protestantisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit (1906/1909/1922), in Troeltsch. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2004), vol. 7; Troeltsch, Schriften zur Bedeutung des Protestantismus für die moderne Welt (1906 – 1913), in Troeltsch. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 8; Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1912).  Karl Holl, Was verstand Luther unter Religion? (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1917).  Holl, Neubau der Sittlichkeit (1919), in Luther. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1921), 1:131– 244.

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published in 1921,⁴¹ Holl developed an image of Luther that, while not entirely free of the nationalistic constructions established in the nineteenth century, nevertheless certainly rejected a nationalistic absorption of Luther and concentrated instead, in an elementary fashion, entirely on his religious discovery of the message of justification. According to Holl, this was the focal point of Luther’s theology. With the utmost methodological precision, he reconstructed the development of Luther’s understanding of God’s justification of human beings by analyzing Luther’s early texts, in particular his early lectures. In his interpretation of Luther’s doctrine of justification, Holl connected dimensions of human experience with theocentricity: the human being sees him- or herself as entirely unworthy of communion with God; the experience of justification, especially in a time of crisis, lies in the fact that God recognizes the human being and establishes communion with him or her. For Holl, the location of this relationship with God is the conscience. In his reading of Luther, Christ appears as the instrument of God that brings about the unification of the human being with God through the unification of wills. Justification, which expresses this divine influence, should be interpreted “analytically,” since God has already foreseen the future renewal of the human being as a fulfilled reality in his decree of justification. Since God’s will is an effective will, it can also alter the reality of the human being and is thus simultaneously the declaration of justification as well as the beginning of the justification process for the human being. This focus on will develops the New Kantian Luther interpretations, while the argumentation, which makes use of paradoxical structures (“future – present”), illustrates the existential side of Holl’s interpretation of Luther.

7.2 The Development of Dialectical Theology The reference to paradoxical structures and existentialist modes of interpretation points toward the second new development of this period, which initially went by the name “word of God theology,” but which has come to be known generally as “dialectical theology.” Theologians of both Lutheran and Reformed dispositions found common ground under this umbrella – for example, Karl Barth, Friedrich Gogarten, Eduard Thurneysen, Paul Tillich, and Rudolf Bultmann –, but they also discovered differences. In view of the tumultuous experiences of the First World War, which included the loss of faith in the New Protestant concept of God’s a priori presence in the moralreligious self-experience of the human being, the starting point for this new theological direction lay once again in speaking of the revelation of God himself and of his conduct, rather than speaking of his effects in terms of human religion. By making reference also to Luther’s theology, this new theological direction attempted to ex-

 Holl, Luther, vol. 1.

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plain the incomprehensible actions of God in history as dialectically fulfilled by judgment and grace. This new theology was skeptical about the terms “moral” and “conscience,” as used by Holl. Among other projects, Gogarten edited Luther’s De servo arbitrio. ⁴² He no longer saw religion as the zenith, but rather as the crisis of culture “ – in other words, the aporiae of the nineteenth century and the theology of the word of God that was to be newly formulated at the start of the twentieth century. This should not be understood as a cultural pessimism that impeded the activity of human beings, but rather as a relativization of human notions of feasibility in the face of divine judgment. In this sense, Gogarten considered himself to be in accord with Luther. With reference to Luther, he sought a new concept of reality under the mantle of the law and the gospel.⁴³ The question of the relation between the law and the gospel would also play a significant role in the work of Karl Barth, a student of Ritschl’s student, Wilhelm Herrmann. As a member of the Reformed church, Barth also engaged with Luther, but he did not establish a clearly contoured image of the reformer.⁴⁴ Barth shared with Luther a belief in the living power of the word of God and his christocentrism. However, he expressed increasingly savage criticism of Luther’s doctrine of the law and the gospel as well as of his interpretation of the human scope of action. While he dedicated a certain deal of energy to Luther in the late 1920s in particular, Barth clearly distanced himself from Luther from the 1930s onward.

8 Luther and the Order of the World: The Challenges of the 1920s and 1930s A connection between the insights of the Luther renaissance and dialectical theology was primarily achieved in Walther von Loewenich’s study on the theology of the cross.⁴⁵ In the first volume of his Kirchlichen Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics) Karl Barth – similarly to von Loewenich – emphasized the pertinence of Luther’s faith analogy and his theology of the word in order to demonstrate that in justification, contrary to Holl’s analytical justification doctrine, word and faith constituted God’s indwelling in human beings.⁴⁶ Barth’s early theological criticism of Luther was founded in his transgression of the eschatological boundary between the finite

 Luther, Vom unfreien Willen, ed. Friedrich Gogarten (Munich: Kaiser, 1924).  Friedrich Gogarten, “Theologie und Wissenschaft. Grundsätzliche Bemerkungen zu Karl Holls ‘Luther’,” Die Christliche Welt 38 (1924): 34– 43, 71– 80, 121– 22; Gogarten, Illusionen. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Kulturidealismus (Jena: Diederichs, 1926).  The only related assessment of Luther is in Karl Barth, Lutherfeier 1933 (Munich: Kaiser, 1933), 8 – 12.  Walther von Loewenich, Luthers theologia crucis (Munich: Luther-Verlag, 1929).  Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik (Munich: Kaiser, 1932), 1.1:252– 53.

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and the infinite, while his later criticism was directed against the (in his view) inappropriate ontological equivalences in Luther’s Christology.⁴⁷ These theological distinctions became politically relevant as a result of the developments of the 1930s. The outbreak of the Kirchenkampf led to the rupture of dialectical theology and, in reaction to Gogarten’s hypothesis of the break-up of divine law under the aegis of the Volksnomos,⁴⁸ to the dispute surrounding the Lutheran understanding of the law and the gospel. The Neo-Protestantism of the Erlangen School was involved in this in a particular way, for it was there that a theological approach had developed – under Paul Althaus⁴⁹ and Werner Erlert⁵⁰ – which clearly elevated the aspects of creation theology in contrast to the aspects of justification theology in Luther’s works. This emphasis on the world order as established at creation set the stage for an accentuation of the concept of the nation, which would later be highly influential in the analysis of the contemporary church. On this basis, the majority of German Luther scholars were already receptive to an interpretation of Luther that had been co-opted by National Socialism already prior to, but especially after 1933, including scholars such as Emanuel Hirsch⁵¹ and Erich Seeberg.⁵² In the context of this dispute, from 1933 onward, Barth increasingly distanced himself from Luther and declared himself to be in favor of the sequence of the gospel before the law, or rather of the law as a form of the gospel. The dispute surrounding Luther’s understanding of the difference between the law and the gospel and the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms would continue to occupy Luther scholars during the twentieth century – including, for example, Wilfried Joest, Hans Iwand, Gerhard Ebeling, Eberhard Jüngel, Oswald Bayer, and Bertold Klappert.

9 Luther Scholarship after 1945 The development of new paths in Luther scholarship after 1945 did not begin abruptly, but – in part due to the numerous levels of continuity in academic teaching – took place gradually. Nevertheless, we can observe a struggle to achieve a certain compat-

 Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, 4.1:586-–88; 4.2:88 – 90.  Friedrich Gogarten, Einheit von Evangelium und Volkstum? (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1933); Ist Volksgesetz Gottes Gesetz? (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934).  Paul Althaus, Theologie der Ordnungen (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1934); Althaus, Kirche und Staat nach lutherischer Lehre (Leipzig: Deichert, 1935); Althaus, Luther und die politische Welt (Weimar, 1937).  Werner Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums (Munich: Beck, 1931).  Emanuel Hirsch, Deutsches Volkstum und evangelischer Glaube (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934).  Erich Seeberg, Martin Luther. Gedächtnisrede zu seinem 450. Geurtstag. bei der Gedenkfeier der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin 1933 (Berlin: Preussische Druckerei- und Verlags-Aktiengesellschaft, 1933).

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ibility between the image of Luther and the dominant systematic theology influenced by Barth.

9.1 Gerhard Ebeling: Luther and the Hermeneutics of the Word of God The work of Gerhard Ebeling is of particular importance in this struggle, his fruitful and pioneering scholarship opened up the insights of the Luther renaissance and of dialectic-existentialist theology. His early studies on Luther’s hermeneutics, above all his dissertation Evangelische Evangelienauslegung (Evangelical Gospel Exegesis),⁵³ attempt to demonstrate that Luther was well versed in the medieval traditions of exegesis, but that even in his early lectures, he was already developing his own position, which looked forward to the modern age and linked historical meaning with the dimension of the notion of pro nobis that is based on the moral sense of Scripture. The focal point of Luther’s theology, according to Ebeling, lay principally in hermeneutics, and it is within this context that the doctrine of justification is also to be understood – contrary to, for example, the individualistic reductionism to be found in the school of thought surrounding Hirsch. In the light of a concept of extra nos based on the Scriptures, Ebeling was skeptical of any interpretation of Luther on the basis of mysticism – for example, that of Seeberg. Central for Ebeling’s interpretation of Luther, however, are the dialectical differentiations on which he considers Luther’s theology to be built: letter – spirit, coram deo – coram hominibus, spiritual – worldly, faith – work, and word – faith.⁵⁴ In his later work in particular,⁵⁵ Ebeling speaks of Luther’s “relational ontology” as based on relationships and qualities, by which the ontological mode of the human being before God is determined. Ebeling’s many students – for example, Reinhard Schwarz, Karl Heinz zur Mühlen, and Pierre Bühler – carried on the idea of this relational approach and developed it into a prominent theological position in the German Luther scholarship of recent decades.

9.2 Ernst Bizer, the Question of a Reformatory Breakthrough, and the Question of Methodology in Luther Scholarship The work of Ernst Bizer, in addition to that of Ebeling, was significant in the scholarly debates of the 1950s. In his principal work Fides ex auditu,⁵⁶ Bizer investigates Lu-

 Gerhard Ebeling, Evangelische Evangelienauslegung. Eine Untersuchung zu Luthers Hermeneutik (Munich: Kaiser, 1942).  Ebeling, Luther. Einführung in sein Denken (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1964).  Ebeling, Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens, 3 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1979).  Ernst Bizer, Fides ex auditu. Eine Untersuchung über die Entdeckung der Gerechtigkeit Gottes durch Martin Luther (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1958).

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ther’s beginnings as a reformer and – contrary to the position of Holl, for example, in which “early dating” was based on Luther’s extensive autobiographical testimony from 1545 – argues for a “late dating” by highlighting Luther’s reception of a humility theology stemming from the Middle Ages. As the title of his book demonstrates, for Bizer, Luther’s decisive reformatory discovery was the dimension of the word which, when heard, produces faith – thus we hear clear echoes of a contemporary word of God theology. The scholarly debate initiated by Bizer – which continued intensively into the 1960s, and indeed even to the present day – concerned itself with two questions: What is the core materialiter of Luther’s reformatory discovery? And how should it be dated? With regard to historical contextualization, as the discussion progressed, scholarship leaned toward a late dating, in conjunction with elements of a gradual development and a selective breakthrough experience that were variously emphasized. More controversial – since it ultimately touched on the core of the Lutheran self-image – was the question regarding the content of the reformatory discovery. Methodologically, the difficulties of mediating between systematic theological assertions and historical analysis became clear in this context. The great syntheses of Oswald Bayer⁵⁷ and Karl Heinz zur Mühlen⁵⁸ that came out of this struggle ultimately lean toward a systematic theological basis. This breakthrough debate was therefore also generally beneficial for the methodological orientation of Luther scholarship. In the mid-1960s, Kurt Aland was one of those who, in this context, argued for a historical, biographical direction in Luther scholarship.⁵⁹ This was already underway at the time and would subsequently become prevalent – as demonstrated by the fact that no relevant synthesis of Luther’s theology was published between the publication of Theologie Luthers (The Theology of Luther) by Paul Althaus in 1962⁶⁰ and Luthers Theologie (Luther’s Theology) by Bernhard Lohse in 1995.⁶¹

9.3 Heiko A. Oberman and the Medieval Luther Within this more consistent “historicization” in Luther scholarship – in addition to the integration of socio-historical approaches, which we will discuss below –, other historical-theological topics continued to constitute points of discussion. The research of Heiko A. Oberman would prove to have a lasting influence in this re-

 Oswald Bayer, Promissio. Geschichte der reformatorischen Wende in Luthers Theologe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971).  Karl Heinz zur Mühlen, Nos extra nos. Luthers Theologie zwischen Mystik und Scholastik (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1972).  Kurt Aland, Der Weg zur Reformation. Zeitpunkt und Charakter des reformatorischen Erlebnisses Martin Luthers (Munich: Kaiser, 1965).  Paul Althaus, Die Theologie Martin Luthers (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1962).  Bernhard Lohse, Luthers Theologie in ihrer historischen Entwicklung und ihrem systematischen Zusammenhang (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995).

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gard.⁶² He investigated the late medieval conditions for Luther’s theology and revealed the continuities in Luther’s development between the Late Middle Ages and the Reformation. Oberman brought Luther’s reference to bear on terminological and substantive topics in the scholastic theologies of Gregory of Rimini, William of Ockham, and Gabriel Biel, and he also incorporated elements of Luther’s mysticism and the devotio moderna into his argument – reference points that subsequently influenced historical Luther scholarship, particularly in Germany (for example, in the work of Berndt Hamm) and in the US (for example, in the work of David Steinmetz).

9.4 Bernd Moeller and Luther in the Context of Social History The second strand of this new historiographical direction is principally associated with the name of Bernd Moeller. In 1962, he published his study Reichsstadt und Reformation (Imperial Cities and the Reformation),⁶³ in which he brought elements of a socio-historical perspective to bear on Reformation scholarship. Moeller highlighted the role of towns as the primary context for the success of the Reformation against the background of the boom in pamphlet printing that resulted from the media revolution of the period. While Luther is the central figure in this, a clear development was already visible that would subsequently shift the focus away from Luther in Reformation historiography. Other urban reformers appeared; moreover, the socio-historical approach asked more probing questions regarding group processes and structures.⁶⁴ The specific focus on Luther thus reduced significantly in the light of this development.

10 The 1980s, the Internationalization of Luther Scholarship, and Looking Ahead This was all to change in the early 1980s, coincidentally more or less alongside the quincentenary year of Luther’s birth in 1983. Biographical studies dominated the publication landscape at this time: the extensive Luther biography by Martin Brecht, with its wealth of source material;⁶⁵ an essayistic and provocative but nevertheless extremely well-researched portrayal of Luther by Heiko A. Oberman;⁶⁶ and the highly nuanced study of Luther by Reinhard Schwarz, which brought together historical and

 Heiko A. Oberman, Spätscholastik und Reformation, 2 vols. (Zürich: EVZ, 1965 – 1977).  Bernd Moeller, Reichsstadt und Reformation (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1962).  Cf. the work of Peter Blicke on communalism or the work of Heinz Schilling, Wolfgang Reinhard, and others on confessionalization and social discipline.  Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1981– 1987).  Oberman, Luther. Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel (Berlin: Siedler, 1981).

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theological work.⁶⁷ Even in the Marxist historiography of the GDR, in 1983 there is at least an occasional tendency to bring Luther more to the foreground once again. There had always been church historians – such as Walter Elliger, Franz Lau, and Helmar Junghans – or historians with ecclesiastic tendencies, such as Karl Heinz Blaschke, who had resisted a socialist appropriation of historical scholarship and conducted historiographically independent research on Luther and the Reformation.⁶⁸ Furthermore, the 1980s were a period in which Finnish scholarship on Luther – especially the contributions of Tuomo Mannermaa, Simon Peura, and Risto Saarinen on the motif of theosis in Luther’s work – entered into the international discourse.⁶⁹ These scholars engaged critically with the ethicization of Reformation faith, in evidence since the work of Ritschl, and with the neglect of ontological categories. Inspired by ecumenical dialogues, they emphasize the aspect of unio with Christ in Luther’s texts and the associated transformation of the entire human being. Swedish scholarship also engaged with different categories than German scholarship, which focused on justification and the assurance of salvation: since the 1920s, these scholars had emphasized in particular the “struggle motif” (Kampfmotiv) between God and Satan or between the spirit and the flesh in Luther’s theology, as well as its consequences for the relationship of the law and the gospel and for the two kingdoms doctrine.⁷⁰ The Finnish scholar Lennart Pinomaa picked up these paradigms in his research on the wrath of God.⁷¹ In contrast to German scholarship on Luther, the North American research landscape has traditionally focused much more closely on Martin Luther’s biography than on his theology. Yet it, too, has experienced certain cycles and phases that have also been aligned with the popular commemoration of Luther. Thus the intensifying engagement with Luther in the nineteenth century reached its zenith in the anniversary year of 1883. Several German scholarly works appeared in translation at the turn of the century.⁷² Significant contributions to Luther scholarship are linked to Preserved Smith, who emerged from the

 Reinhard Schwarz, Luther (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986).  See the large collected work (including contributions from other countries) by Helmar Junghans (ed.), Leben und Werk Martin Luthers von 1516 bis 1546, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983).  Tuomo Mannermaa, Der im Glauben gegenwärtige Christus. Rechtfertigung und Vergottung (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1989); Simo Peura, Mehr als ein Mensch? Die Vergöttlichung als Thema der Theologie Martin Luthers von 1513 bis 1519 (Darmstadt: Philipp von Zabern, 1990); Risto Saarinen, Gottes Wirken auf uns. Die transzendentale Deutung des Gegenwart-Christi-Motivs in der Lutherforschung (Göttingen: Steiner, 1989).  Gustaf Aulén, Das christliche Gottesbild in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1930); Anders Nygren, Eros und Agape, 2 vols. (Gütersloh: Evangelischer Verlag, 1930 – 1937); Gustaf Wingren, Luthers Lehre vom Beruf (Munich: Kaiser, 1952).  Lennart Pinomaa, Der Zorn Gottes in der Theologie Luthers (Helsinki, 1937).  Julius Köstlin, The Theology of Luther (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1897); Hartmann Grisar, Luther (St. Louis: Herder, 1913 – 1917); Heinrich Denifle, Luther and Lutherdom (Sommerset, OH: Torch Press, 1917).

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“New History School” and, among other things, paid particular attention to Luther’s table talks.⁷³ Historiographically speaking, a glance at the subsequent decades – in which the Luther biography of Roland Bainton⁷⁴ stands out – shows that the same systematic formation of schools of thought found in the German-speaking countries is not to that degree evident in North America. A huge variety of methodological approaches and topics may be encountered, but here, too, Heiko A. Oberman – who taught in the US – influenced an entire generation of students. In order to gain a more comprehensive overview of Protestant engagement with Luther in the historiography and theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – and these comments naturally stand at the end of this chapter, by way of looking ahead –, future research will need to enquire into the transfer processes between the various scholarly cultures. It will need to take into account Protestantism in all of its breadth – for example, Baptist voices will generally provide a different perspective than Lutheran voices – as well as the transfer from academic to popular literary genres. The multi-volume Reformation history by Merle d’Aubignes may stand as an example of this type of research:⁷⁵ not only has his work been translated into twelve languages, it has also found wide dissemination in the form of Luther-focused extracts published by tract societies and religious societies on both sides of the Atlantic.⁷⁶

 Preserved Smith, Luther’s Table Talks: A Critical Study (New York: Columbia University Press, 1907); Smith, The Life and Letters of Martin Luther (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911).  Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950).  J.-H. Merle d’Aubigné, Histoire de la Réformation du seizième siecle, 5 vols. (Paris: Didot, 1835 – 1853).  See, for example, The great reformer, or, sketches of the life of Luther. By the author of “Claremont tales.” Chiefly collected from D’Aubignè’s History of the Reformation (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication n.d.), or the many volumes of History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century which were published from the 1840s onward by the American Tract Society in New York and the Religious Tract Society in London.

Communicating Luther

The Luther Rose is the symbol of Lutheranism (Peter Hermes Furian / Alamy Stock Photo).

Thomas Albert Howard

The Past in the Present: Remembering Luther in 1617, 1817, and 1883¹ 1 Introduction

The 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 invites curiosity about how past commemorations of the Reformation have been observed. In Protestant Germanspeaking lands, a rich tradition of publically remembering the Reformation stretches back to the first centenary “Reformation jubilee” (Reformationsjubiläum) in 1617.² Martin Luther’s birth and death dates, respectively 1483 and 1546, have also been ceremoniously commemorated over the centuries, in German-speaking lands and beyond. In the literature on commemoration and social memory, one encounters the refrain that acts of public remembrance have as a principal aim the stabilization of group identity. The retrospective gaze helps a group (in our case, German Protestants) remember who they are and extend their identity into the future. As John Gillis writes, “The core meaning of any individual or group identity, namely, a sense of sameness over space and time, is sustained by remembering and what is remembered is defined by the assumed identity.”³ Put differently, acts of commemoration seek to shore up collective identities, to “stop time” in order to ensure appropriate uniformity between past and present. ⁴ Without shared referents in the past, group identities would be fleeting or non-existent. Identities, in other words, must be continually activated by rituals of memory and commemoration, or else they will peter out and the past that once gave substance and energy to identity will become what the great memory theorist Maurice Halbwachs once called “dead memory.”⁵ In many cases, such motivations for commemorations are no doubt accurate. And I believe they generally hold true for the first Reformation jubilee of 1617, which is treated in this chapter. But commemorative occasions can also serve as powerful catalysts and shapers of social innovation and change in history. This point will be made by examining two later jubilees: 1) the 300th anniversary of the Reformation in 1817, as commemorated in the states of the newly formed German Confederation  An earlier version of this chapter appeared in T. A. Howard and Mark Noll, eds., Protestantism after 500 Years. (Oxford University Press, 2016). I am grateful to be able to reproduce some of this material here.  D. E. Kennedy, ed., Authorized Pasts: Essays in Official History (Melbourne, Australia, 1995), 75 ff.  John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 3.  Pierre Nora, ed., Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), x, 6.  Jeffry K. Olick et al., eds., The Collective Memory Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 177. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-059

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(1815); and 2) the 400th anniversary of Luther’s birth in 1883, as commemorated in the newly founded German Empire (1871). Commemorations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took place as profoundly religious events in the confessionally divided Holy Roman Empire. But in the wake of the Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century and the disruptive revolutionary-Napoleonic years (1789 – 1815), new, distinctly modern historical forces took root and grew in Central Europe: namely, liberalism, nationalism, and a new historical consciousness, often designated with the umbrella term “historicism.”⁶ These new forces did not wholly displace older religious motives for commemoration; what is interesting, in fact, is precisely how powerful religious elements retain their salience in nineteenth-century commemorations, while at the same time mutating in ways that accommodate – and even foster – innovative, modern ideas and sensibilities.

2 1617: The First Reformation Centennial Jubilee In order to observe how nineteenth-century jubilees contrasted with earlier ones, we must first turn our gaze on 1617. Not surprisingly, in a time of divided confessions across Europe, matters of religious identity stood at the center of commemorations: questions of biblical exegesis, theological polemics, and eschatological speculation pervade the events of this year. What is more, in the complex realities of the Holy Roman Empire, the line between religion and politics was greatly blurred, and we might do better to think of the events of 1617 as religio-political in character.⁷ The commemoration of the Reformation in 1617 did not take place without precedents. In the late sixteenth century, a patchwork of different dates had been set aside for annual remembrance. The vast majority of commemorations prior to 1617, however, either focused on the birth, baptism, or death of Luther, or a date marking a territory’s embrace of Protestantism. The date of October 31, 1517, and the “posting of the ninety-five theses” (the Thesenanschlag in German) played virtually no role in the earliest commemorations.⁸ In fact, the only known mention in the sixteenth century of the posting of the ninety-five theses – which later became the major focus of commemorations – came in a brief vita of Luther, penned in 1547 by Philip Melanchthon and published in the first collected edition of Luther’s writings.⁹

 On the term historicism, see Georg Iggers, “Historicism: The History and Meaning of the Term,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (Spring 1995): 129 – 52.  R. J. W. Evans et al., eds., The Holy Roman Empire, 1495 – 1806 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 8 – 11.  Hans-Jürgen Schönstadt, “Das Reformationsjubiläum 1617: Geschichtliche Herkunft und geistige Prägung,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 93 (1982): 5 – 6.  See C. G. Bretschneider, ed., Philippi Melanchthonis Opera in Corpus Reformatorum (Halle, 1839), 6:161.

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The circumstances and events of 1617, however, hoisted 1517 into the historical limelight, where it has stayed ever since. As the seventeenth century dawned, Protestant territories within the Holy Roman Empire were confronted by several realities that would shape the memory of the Reformation. The first was the threat of an increasingly assertive Tridentine Catholic Church; the second, division in their own ranks between Lutheran and Calvinist areas. Finally, there existed divisions within Lutheranism – between stricter traditionalists and more moderate (“Philippist”) voices, who sought greater conciliation with their Reformed counterparts. These confessional dynamics fundamentally structured the social environment that witnessed the commemorations in 1617.¹⁰ In 1607, with other Catholic territories nodding approval, Maximillian I of Bavaria reimposed the Catholic faith on the small city of Donauwörth, stirring alarm in many Protestant quarters. This act precipitated in short order the formation of the so-called Protestant Union in 1608 under the (Reformed) leadership of Elector Friedrich V of the Rhineland Palatinate. Thereafter, in the years leading up to 1617, leaders and representatives from several Protestant territories – both Lutheran and Reformed – met annually to discuss the Catholic threat, along with other matters. Among the first known calls for a centenary celebration was a new year’s sermon given in Heidelberg in 1617 by the royal chaplain, one Abraham Scultetus (1566 – 1625), who opined that, one hundred years ago, “the eternal, all-powerful God has looked upon us graciously and delivered us from the horrible darkness of the papacy” and “led [us] into the bright light of the Gospel.”¹¹ In April 1617, at the Protestant Union’s annual meeting in Heilbronn, Friedrich V followed up by suggesting that commemorations take place between October 31 and November 2 to mark the beginnings of the Reformation. The driving force behind the initiative was the desire to reduce tension between Lutheran and Calvinist members of the Union. At this time, the latter were not legally recognized in the Holy Roman Empire and, in the light of the Catholic threat, desired to build bridges to their Protestant co-religionists, differences and acrimony notwithstanding. Exactly what commemorative events were to take place was left up to the individual territories, but in a joint resolution of April 23, 1617, the signatories affirmed that during the celebrations, all bitterness and personal attacks among Protestants should be suspended and a general thanksgiving offered to God for the recovery and maintenance of the true Evangelical faith some 100 years ago.¹² But the Calvinist-Lutheran rupture could not be muted so easily. As the conciliatory plans of the Protestant league were being hatched, scholars in Saxon Witten-

 Thomas A. Brady, German Histories in the Age of the Reformation, 1400 – 1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 259 – 318.  Quoted in Gustav Benrath, Reformierte Kirchengeschichtsschreibung an der Universität Heidelberg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Speyer: Zechner, 1963), 37 f.  Hans-Jürgen Schönstädt, Antichrist, Weltheilsgeschehen und Gottes Werkzeug. Römische Kirche, Reformation und Luther im Spiegel des Reformationsjubiläum 1617 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1978), 13 – 15.

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berg concurrently had seized upon the moment to assert their own custodial leadership of Lutheran orthodoxy and rally together the “pure” territories – those that had officially accepted the Augsburg Confession (1530) and the Formula of Concord (1577), the benchmarks of confessional Lutheranism. Already in November of 1616, and again in April of 1617, the dean of the philosophical faculty at Wittenberg, Erasmus Schmidt, made reference to a “jubilee year” (Jobeljahr) or “celebratory year” (Halljahr) year in 1617, recognizing one hundred years since Luther’s initial actions.¹³ On April 22, 1617, Wittenberg’s theological faculty wrote to Georg I, elector of Saxony, requesting that “the first Luther jubilee” (primus Jubilaeus Lutheranus) be “celebrated with festive and heartfelt worship.”¹⁴ The elector heartily approved, and the decision was supported by church authorities in Dresden, who enjoined all other orthodox Lutheran territories in the empire to observe the centenary. Wittenberg’s theologians requested that Georg I issue an official “Instruction and Order” to set things in motion. This transpired on August 12, 1617, when the elector called for the first centennial evangelisches Jubel-Fest and outlined the time and place of the celebrations, including a list of biblical texts on which th Deeming many preachers ill-fit to reckon adequately with the significance of the occasion, the Dresden court preacher Matthias Hoë von Hoënegg (1580 – 1645) published exegetical guidelines on the biblical passages deemed appropriate for the occasion. Printed copies of Georg’s “Order and Instruction” and other directives were sent out to Lutheran territories. Clearly, Saxony saw 1617 as an opportunity to shore up its authority, both against the Catholic threat and against the dilution of the Protestant faith by Calvinists and by the Lutherans who had rebuffed the Formula of Concord. As sermons and pamphlets indicate, in the preparation before and during the events between October 31 and November 2, the first evangelical jubilee was conceived as a commemoration of corrected faith – in contrast to the false beliefs and superseded jubilees of the Jews and the Catholics. Rome was the corrupting innovator, it was repeatedly maintained; Luther had only returned things to the way they were supposed to be. Neither Catholic territories within the empire nor Rome took Protestant developments in 1617 kindly. The Protestant appropriation of the term “jubilee” proved especially vexing. In 1300, the first Catholic jubilee had taken place at the instigation of Pope Boniface VIII.¹⁵ Originally, these were to take place every 100 years; later the timeline was reduced to 50 years, following the biblical example of the Jewish jubilee in Leviticus 25. Then, in 1470, it was officially reduced to every 25 years. Prior to 1617, highly triumphalist, Tridentine jubilees had been celebrated in 1575 and 1600; the next was scheduled for 1625. But faced with the specter of a Protestant jubilee, an indignant Pope Paul V declared on June 12, 1617, that the remainder of the year  Schmidt’s utterances are the first known evidence of awareness of the historical significance of 1617. See Schönstädt, Antichrist, 12– 13.  Quoted in Schönstädt, Antichrist, 16.  Stricher, “L’annee jubilaire et la tradition catholique,” Foi et Vie 99 (2000): 73 – 86.

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was going to be observed as a year of extraordinary jubilee for the Catholic Church.¹⁶ Alas, the Catholic jubilee must fall outside of the scope of this inquiry. But what actually happened in Protestant lands between October 31 and November 2, 1617? And what is the general significance of these events for subsequent Reformation jubilees? A trove of evidence has been left behind, in the form of official ordinances and reports, sermons, academic addresses, debates, poems, plays, prayers, pamphlets, woodcuts, and commemorative coins and medals. While the ordinances and records are mostly prescriptive in character, telling us little about how ordinary people experienced the jubilee, they do have much to tell us about how elites planned and orchestrated the celebrations and what they hoped to accomplish through them. The instructions (Verzeichnus) for the Lutheran imperial city of Ulm are representative of the larger phenomenon; these are particularly important, in fact, as the published version recounts some retrospective details of what actually took place – and these, in fact, do give at least some sense of the experience. As was the case in other areas, the jubilee in Ulm was celebrated over a three-day period, from October 31 to November 2. A few days prior, however, on October 26, the ecclesiastical superintendent of Ulm, one Conrad Dieterich (1575 – 1635), informed the town’s citizens that, for the coming jubilee, they were to comport themselves as virtuous Christians and not be found drinking, disturbing the peace, or in any other disorderly behavior. Instead, they were to listen to sermons, pray, partake of the Eucharist, and reflect on God’s grace in bringing the purified faith to their city. The focal sites of the jubilee were Ulm’s main parish cathedral, the Münster, and the Spitalkirche – the Hospital or Trinity Church. Because of the large number of expected participants, additional clergy were brought in from the countryside.¹⁷ The entire period was to be treated as a time of high feast: bells were rung before and after services, and a full choir with an organ was employed during services. The sermon delivered on October 31 at the city cathedral recalled and derided the indulgence trade, while the one on November 1 proclaimed the proper purpose of worship and inveighed against the papal abuse of the mass. Three sermons were delivered on the day of the celebration proper, Sunday, November 2, all making connections between biblical passages and Reformation events.¹⁸

 See Ruth Kastner, Geistlicher Rauffhandel: Form und Funktion der illustrierten Flugblätter zum Reformationsjubiiläum in ihrem historischen und publizistischen Kontext (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1982), 30 – 33; and Charles Zika, “The Reformation Jubilee of 1617,” in D. E. Kennedy, ed., Authorized Pasts: Essays in Official History (Melbourne, 1995), 84.  Conrad Dieterich, Zwo Ulmische Jubel und Danckpredigten (Ulm, 1618). Cf. Schönstädt, Antichrist, 64– 67.  Dieterich, Zwo Ulmische Jubel und Danckpredigten, 9 ff. Cf. Kastner, Geistlicher Rauffhandel, 62– 63.

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The official instructions for Ulm indicate that similar services with the same biblical texts took place at the Spitalkirche and in all the rural parishes under the supervision of the Ulm church council; children in even the smallest villages were given a keepsake medal (Geltlein). The jubilee trickled into the week following. On Monday, the rector of the Latin school read a poem on the life of Martin Luther, composed for the occasion. On Tuesday, the rector’s assistant delivered an oration on Luther and the Reformation. Later in the week, several orations in Latin were delivered by students, focusing on turning points in Luther’s life.¹⁹ The record from Ulm provides a glimpse into what took place in other Protestant territories, although differences in detail abounded.²⁰ Again, most of the records are prescriptive or else homiletic, illustrating more what the elites intended for the jubilee than how the commoners experienced it. Nonetheless, several common themes thread the celebrations. First, and not surprisingly, the person of Martin Luther takes center stage in both written and visual artifacts from 1617; he emerges as the undisputed hero of the Reformation. Like Moses, he was interpreted to be a chosen messenger, God’s man or instrument (Gottesman, Gottes Werkzeug), to liberate the faithful from the bondage of “Egypt” – that is, the false, papist church. Luther’s image appeared on broadsheets and commemorative medals and coins, and countless references to him occur in sermons from 1617. Mirroring medieval hagiographies of saints, sermons and images recounted key turning points in Luther’s life – such as his decision to become a monk, his burning of Pope Leo X’s bull condemning him, his defiant appearance in 1521 before Charles V at the Diet of Worms, his translation of Scripture at Wartburg Castle, his marriage to Katherina von Bora, and his death and burial. Much was made of the disparity between Luther’s stature – “one little monk” – and the bloated, corrupt papist system that he attacked. The disparity, in fact, was regularly seen as prima facie evidence that only God could have been behind an occurrence of such implausibility.²¹ Second, and related, symbols already associated with Luther in the sixteenth century received wide circulation in the jubilee festivities of 1617, influencing subsequent commemorations and shaping Protestant historical consciousness more generally. Three are particularly noteworthy. The first is the so-called “Luther rose,” an open white rose on a blue field, at the center of which was a red heart emblazoned with a black cross. Luther himself had devised this symbol, adapting it from his family’s coat of arms, and had given it a theological interpretation. The black cross signified death and suffering; the red heart, life; the white rose, peace through justification; and the blue field, heavenly joy. Already in wide circulation in the sixteenth century, the Luther rose appeared on numerous broadsheets, coins, and

 Zika, “The Reformation Jubilee of 1617,” 86.  Schönstadt, Antichrist, 20 – 85.  Zika, “The Reformation Jubilee of 1617,” 96.

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medals in 1617.²² The second image is that of a swan. During the heady days of the 1520s and 1530s, a story gained wide currency that the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus – from his prison cell – had said that, although he might be a weak goose, a more powerful bird would come after him to reform the church. In his funeral sermon for Luther, Wittenberg’s Johannes Bugenhagen made the coming bird a swan and attributed this line to Hus: “You may burn the goose, but in a hundred years will come a swan you will not be able to burn.”²³ The third symbol was the image of a lamp or light derived from Matthew 5:14– 16: “You are the light of the world. [. . .] Men do not light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light and life to all in the house.” Frequently, in jubilee artifacts from 1617, the two symbols – swan and light – are joined.²⁴ Third, a firm link between theological and political authority recurred as a motif in 1617. Absent the Catholic hierarchy in Lutheran lands, the prince came to function first as an “emergency bishop” (Notbischof) and then as the summus episcopus, the titular head of the Church and its armed protector.²⁵ In Saxony, a direct connection was made between the past support and protection offered to Luther by Elector Friedrich the Wise and the current protection of the church by the elector in 1617, Georg I. A striking example of this relationship appears in an etching done by Balthasar Schwan, as part of a series of broadsheets published in Nuremberg in 1617. Luther and his key ally, Philipp Melanchthon, both stand by an altar, with Luther pointing to the open Bible with the phrase, “The Word of God remains forever.” The two reformers are flanked by Friedrich the Elector on the left, with his sword resting on the altar, a sign of his past protection of the pure faith; and by Georg I on the right, his sword raised in the air, symbolizing his ongoing protection in the present. Variations on this etching were frequently produced in 1617; numerous coins and medals show Friedrich the Wise on one side and Georg I or another Protestant territorial prince on the other.²⁶

3 1817: The First Modern Centennial of the Reformation After 1617, and prior to its collapse in 1806, the Holy Roman Empire had witnessed numerous additional commemorations of key Reformations events. In 1717, Luther’s  Kastner, Geistlicher Rauffhandel, 183.  Quoted in Robert Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 327.  Heinrich Gottlieb Kreussler, Luthers Andenken in Jubel-Münzen (Leipzig, 1818), plate .  Lewis Spitz, “Luther’s Ecclesiology and his Concept of the Prince at Notbischof,” Church History 22 (1953): 113 – 41.  John Roger Paas, The German Political Broadsheet: 1600 – 1700 (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1986), 2:111, plate 302.

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attack against indulgences was marked again; in 1630 and 1730, the Augsburg Confession (1530) was remembered.²⁷ And all along, the birth and death dates of Luther and other key Reformers received wide, public ceremonial attention. While differences in these events abound, their commonalities are most striking. They were planned and experienced as profoundly religious events expressing the realities of the confessionally divided nature of the empire. Prior to the nineteenth century, in other words, Reformation jubilees were by and large confessional affairs, promoted by state churches for the primary purpose of reflecting on Luther’s recovery of religious truth and the political protection of that truth given by the arm of the various states in the Holy Roman Empire.²⁸ By 1817, however, important changes were afoot that affected Reformation commemorations; these changes did not vitiate their religious element, but enabled their retrospective gaze concurrently to incubate and transmit distinctly modern social and intellectual currents. These changes did not happen overnight, but it is fair to generalize that a number of developments and events in the eighteenth century precipitated a metamorphosis in the memory of the Reformation. Some of these changes can be attributed to the revolutionary-Napoleonic watershed years after 1789, to be sure, and with them the turbulent rise of a novel, bourgeois ethos. But others go back to developments earlier in the eighteenth century. Four developments, in particular, which gained momentum prior to1817, merit spotlighting. First, the trickle of Enlightenment sensibilities, some already evident in the 1717 commemorations, had become a gushing stream by 1817, greatly affecting views of the Reformation. While Enlightenment figures certainly did not speak with one voice, many converged on a stadial view of human history – the view that history was not simply the arena of sin, death, and salvation, but a forward-moving enterprise, capable of discernable development and progress. For those who subscribed to such views, Luther could still be regarded as the restorer of proper religion, but in doing so, he also became a catalyzing agent advancing the human story away from superstition and darkness (medieval Catholicism) toward reason and light (modern Protestantism). Second, the Evangelical renewal movement of Pietism exerted a significant influence on assessments of the Reformation throughout the eighteenth century – indeed, it was among Pietists that the word “Reformation” first began to designate a discrete period of church history. While one rightly resists making an overly sharp distinction between Lutheranism and Pietism (as well as between Pietism and Aufklärung) in the eighteenth century, Pietists were less inclined to confessional rigidity when interpreting the Reformation and more open to thinking about its ethical and affective aspects. Leading Pietist scholars focused attention on the vital, introspective piety of  On 1717, see Harm Cordes, Hilaria evangelica academia: Das Reformationsjubiläum von 1717 an den deutschen lutherischen Universitäten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006).  Klaus Tanner, ed., Konstruktion von Geschichte: Jubelrede, Predigt, Protestantische Historiographie (Leipzing: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012), 15 ff.

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Luther and contrasted that to the doctrinal rigidity and state control of the Lutheran churches of their times. Many also made distinctions within Luther’s own life, extolling the young Luther as a “liberator” and pitting that image against the mature, wizened Luther as “statesman and church builder.”²⁹ Pietist-inflected interpretations and evocations of the Reformation, radiating especially from the university town of Halle, gained ground throughout the eighteenth century.³⁰ Third, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are well known as the crucible period during which historicism (Historismus) was born. Historicism is a notoriously difficult concept to get a handle on, in part no doubt because scholars have used it as shorthand to signify such a massive and multifaceted shift in modern German and Western thought – what Friedrich Meinecke called “one of the greatest intellectual revolutions that has ever taken place in human thought.”³¹ Its representative figures – such as the philologist Friedrich August Wolf, the jurist Friedrich Carl von Savigny, or the historian Leopold von Ranke – looked primarily to the past and to the category of “development” (Entwicklung) to understand any human phenomena, not least the French Revolution, which had given practically all Europeans an acute sense of historical rupture and change.³² The “turn to history” in German thought brought with it renewed and copious attention to the Reformation as a watershed moment in the not-too-distant past. What is more, many scholars felt that a causal link existed between the Reformation’s challenge to authority in the sixteenth century and the liberal, modernizing impulses of their present. Finally, early currents of German nationalism influenced assessments of the Reformation in the nineteenth century. Incubating in the thought of a few eighteenthcentury thinkers and popularized as a result of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, nationalism had a marked impact on the jubilee of 1817 – and, indeed, on practically all commemorations during the nineteenth century. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744– 1803) portrayed Luther as a German hero, the repository of a noble past and the herald of a bright future for the German-speaking peoples of Central Europe. “Become once more [Luther] the Teacher of thy nation, its Prophet, its Pastor,” Herder exclaimed.³³ With a handful of others, Herder inspired the Idealist-Romantic notion that each nation possesses a “soul” or “spirit” (Geist), which at times manifested itself in a “great man,” a larger-than-life genius, who embodied this spirit in his very being, albeit while contributing to the spiritual commonweal of humanity. For the English, it was Shakespeare; for Italians, Dante; and for Ger-

 Tonkin, “Reformation Studies,” in Hillerbrand, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 403.  A. J. Dickens and John Tonkin, The Reformation in Historical Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 116 ff.  Friedrich Meinecke, Historism: The Rise of a New Historical Outlook, trans. J. E. Anderson (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), liv.  Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismark, 1800 – 1866, trans. Daniel Nolan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 441– 71.  Quoted in Zeeden, The Legacy of Luther, 172.

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mans, Luther.³⁴ The image of Luther as the harbinger of the German nation stirred to life toward the end of the eighteenth century and became more broadly popular after the Battle of Nations near Leipzig in October 1813 – an event that effectively threw off the Napoleonic yoke and intensified nationalist sentiment, especially among the young and educated classes. The intertwined fate of Napoleon and the German people, in fact, provides the crucial, immediate context for understanding the Reformation commemorations of 1817. As Thomas Nipperdey has famously written, “In the beginning was Napoleon. His influence upon the German people, their lives and experiences was overwhelming at a time when the initial foundations of a modern German state were being laid.”³⁵ In his quest for European mastery, Napoleon’s actions had precipitated the massive reorganization of ecclesiastical and political arrangements, resulting in the humiliation of Prussia at the Battle of Jena in 1806 and the cessation of the Holy Roman Empire in the same year. Under Napoleon’s yoke, sparks of liberalism and nationalism fanned to life, reaching a crescendo as a consequence of the aforementioned Battle of Nations. Regrettably, however, in the view of nationalists, no robust, pan-German state emerged after Napoleon’s defeat. Instead, the German people had foisted upon them the unwieldy “German Confederation,” a sop to nationalist sentiment, but in reality an integral part of the reactionary scheme hatched by Count Metternich and other architects of Restoration at the Congress of Vienna (1814– 15). In short, the peace settlement of Vienna sought to put a lid on German liberalism and nationalism and to restore the Ancien-Régime principles of throne and altar. But neither liberalism nor nationalism complied. In fact, they dramatically burst onto the scene in October 1817, when German students from eleven different universities convened at Wartburg Castle to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Nations and the 300th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. This was one of two defining events of 1817. The other was the establishment of the Prussian Union Church (Unionskirche), a government-orchestrated effort to merge the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Hohenzollern lands in an effort to create one harmonious, Reformation-heritage (evangelisch) church – an example imitated by other territorial churches. Examining more closely the Wartburg student rally and the Prussian Union Church, followed by sampling the content of celebratory addresses and sermons (Festpredigt) from October 31 – November 2, 1817, will give us a broader perspective on the 300th anniversary of the Reformation as a departure from past centenaries and an agent of historical change. Frustrated by the conservative settlement at Vienna in 1815, nearly 500 young men – all members of university “fraternities” or Burschenschaften – met at Wartburg Castle on October 18 – 19, 1817. Many had fought in the wars against Napoleon, and

 Robert Ergang, Herder and the Foundations of German Nationalism (New York, 1931), 177– 212.  Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1.

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they wanted to rekindle the exalted nationalist-liberal sentiment they had felt in 1813. In the “Wartburg Rally Declarations,” the students summarized their aims: national unity, constitutional freedom, a liberal pan-German government, and the elimination of the vestiges of feudalism.³⁶ The site where Luther translated the New Testament into German in 1521– 1522 seemed an apt symbolic location for such a gathering. Amid the drinking, singing, and nostalgia for the recent past, speeches were given, in which students exhorted one another to long for the German nation, to love freedom, to transcend particularism, and to defy the reactionary political climate. With reference to Luther setting fire to the papal bull condemning him, students staged a book burning of works deemed “un-German” by their ideological standards. At their root, the enthusiasms of the Wartburg rally reflected the students’ sense of betrayal; the nationalist-liberal longings of 1813 had been stifled by the political settlement of 1815, and the students wanted to use the Reformation’s tercentenary in 1817 to bring the spirit of 1813 back to life. For those who experienced Wartburg, it was an intoxicating event and, in the judgment of historians, a key moment in shaping German national sentiment.³⁷ A heady blend of nationalist hopes, historical awareness, and Protestant conviction permeated the rally. As one popular song put it: “In our own manner, we want / to observe the great festival day. / Today is Doctor Luther’s day, / [Thus] above all, everyone must sing / long live doctor Luther!”³⁸ But Luther was not just tied to the “nation.” In the judgment of the Wartburg celebrants, the Reformation had also inaugurated an expansive understanding of spiritual freedom (Geistesfreiheit) and inwardness (Innerlichkeit). Just as the Prussian General Gebhard von Blücher had defeated Napoleon in 1813, so Luther had earlier defeated papal tyranny and superstition – longstanding impediments to freedom. The freedom envisioned by the students, however, was not the license often associated with Western liberalism, but a freedom that manifested itself in the hope for the progressive national unity and statehood of the German people. This sensibility pervaded the Jubelfeier of 1817. The ruling elite of Prussia envisioned a different sort of unity, but one that nonetheless dovetailed with nationalist sentiments and goals: the unity of the two Protestant confessions into one united Evangelical church or Unionskirche – something unthinkable in earlier, more confessional epochs. In part, the drive toward union arose from the king’s personal religious motivations. In the years preceding the union, Friedrich Wilhelm III (r. 1797– 1840) had taken an interest in the episcopal structure of the Church of England and in the liturgies of the Orthodox and Catholic churches. In comparison, his churches in Prussia seemed poorly organized and their liturgically too variegated. What is more, the Reformed king had previously married a Luther-

 Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 245.  James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770 – 1866 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 406 – 07.  Robert Keil and Richard Keil, Die burschenschaftlichen Wartburgfeste von 1817 und 1867 (Jena, 1868), 14.

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an woman from Mecklenburg, and had found it frustrating that they could not share communion together.³⁹ Yet the decision for union did not emanate from the king’s whims alone; other intellectual and political exigencies came into play. To a number of Prussian ministers, the Church Union represented a welcome opportunity to overcome confessionalism and thus achieve a more progressive understanding of religion, one more in line with the outlook of the Enlightenment and German idealist philosophy. Furthermore, the union was recognized as a matter of raison d’état – of bringing religion “into harmony with the direction of the state,” as Minister Karl von Altenstein put it. ⁴⁰ In turn, a single Protestant church organically connected to the state would present a “united front” against the sizable Catholic minority and the smaller Jewish one. The dual goals of diminishing intra-Protestant confessionalism and consolidating (Prussian) national unity gained wide support – not least from the likes of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, who energetically championed union from the pulpit and university lectern alike.⁴¹ The actual process of church union fully got underway in September 1817.⁴² In anticipation of the tercentenary celebration of the Reformation in October, the king issued a proclamation on September 27, 1817, in which he deplored Protestant divisions, argued that only externals still divided the two churches, and commended reunification as an act of deep religious significance. The king made clear that the Reformed did not have to become Lutheran, nor the Lutheran Reformed, but that from their separate identities a new “Evangelical” church would develop.⁴³ A medal to mark the event was minted: Luther and Calvin graced one side, and on the other a symbol of the Mother Church appeared, clutching her two sons to her bosom.⁴⁴ The drive toward Protestant union was not limited to Prussia, but spread to other German states as well.⁴⁵ A variety of particular circumstances accompanied these unions, but practically all of them drew inspiration from the lofty rhetoric of the Reformation’s tercentenary and the example of Prussia. What is more, almost all were

 Thomas Stamm, König Preussens grosser Zeit: Friedrich Wilhelm III (Berlin: Sielder, 1992), 150 – 80.  Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University, 235 ff.  Martin Redeker, Schleiermacher: Life and Thought, trans. John Wallhausser (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), 189 – 91.  Walter Elliger, ed., Die evangelische Kirche der Union (Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1967), 44– 45 and 195 – 96.  See Klaus Wappler, “Reformationsjubiläum und Kirchenunion (1817),” in J. F. Gerhard and Joachim Rogge, eds., Die Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche der Union (Leipzig: Evangelsiche Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 1:112 ff.; and Elliger, ed., Die evangelische Kirche der Union, 45 f.  Hugo Schnell, Martin Luther und die Reformation auf Münzen und Medaillen (Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1983), 75 and 231, image 273.  John E. Groh, Nineteenth-Century German Protestantism: The Church as Social Model (Washington, DC: University of America Press, 1982), 41– 43.

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“top-down” affairs, influenced and orchestrated by church and state bureaucracies and carried out under the banner of “national interest.” Not everyone was pleased with this arrangement. In the judgment of more tradition-minded Lutherans, the top-down unity coerced by the state was anathema – a betrayal of what Luther desired, not its fulfillment. No one evinced greater displeasure than the Kiel pastor Claus Harms (1778 – 1855), who took it upon himself in 1817 to pen his own ninety-five theses against the Prussian union, publishing them alongside Luther’s original ninety-five, which he called the “cradle and diapers in which our Lutheran church lay.” As a diehard confessional Lutheran, Harms’ exasperation with the direction of events in 1817 offers strong testimony about how this jubilee departed from previous ones. Harms interpreted “unionism” as a worrisome manifestation of various eighteenth-century currents of thought, which he grouped under the catch-all rubric of “rationalism.” In his judgment, such rationalism had pitted progress, the autonomous conscience, and the imperatives of theological conciliation against the time-tested truths of an older, creedal Lutheranism. A sampling of Harms’ theses provides a window onto his concerns: 3. With the idea of a progressive Reformation (fortschreitenden Reformation) – as this idea is defined and how it is brought up – one reforms Lutheranism into paganism and Christianity out of the world. […] 43. When reason touches on religion, it throws out the pearls and plays with the husks, the empty words. […] 77. To say that time has abolished the dividing wall between Lutherans and Reformed is not clear talk. At issue is: Who has fallen away from the faith of their church, the Lutherans or the Reformed? Or perhaps both?⁴⁶

The publication of Harms’ theses on October 31,1817, lit a tinderbox of controversy; over sixty pamphlets appeared, weighing in for or against him.⁴⁷ In the ensuing decades, the controversy did not die down. In fact, an attempt to impose a new, uniform liturgical book throughout Prussia resulted in the further disaffection of large numbers of so-called “Old Lutherans,” led by the Silesian pastor Johannes G. Scheibel (1783 – 1843), many of whom decided to emmigrate.⁴⁸ In the celebratory sermons and addresses of 1817, the themes of historicism, nationalism, and bourgeois liberalism cropped up repeatedly. Again, these did not entirely displace older confessional themes, but the disparity between 1617 (and 1717), on the one hand, and 1817, on the other, is striking.

 Claus Harms, Ausgewählte Schriften und Predigten, ed. G. E. Hofmann (Flensburg: Christian Wolff Verlag, 1955), 1:204– 22.  Fuhrmann, Das Reformationsjubiläum 1817, 35.  On the Old Lutheran emmigration, see Wilhelm Iwan, Die altlutherische Auswanderung um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhundert, 2 vols. (Ludwigsburg, 1943).

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In particular, the Enlightenment theme of historical progress stands out in 1817. The Reformation might have been a religious event that sought to return Christianity to its sources, but the net, salutary effect of this retrospective vision was to inaugurate a new vision of historical progress and freedom. The Reformation, thus understood, became a stepping stone (Vorstufe) to the modern world, a premonition (Vorboten) of modern enlightenment. In this vision, Roman Catholicism was less a false church (though perhaps that, too) than a massive impediment to historical progress. A pastor from Bayreuth, Johann Gottlieb Reuter (1765 – 1831) , aptly illustrates this outlook in a sermon from 1817. The Reformation served all of humanity because it brought with it “enlightenment and morality” (Aufklärung und Sittlichkeit). He elaborated: “The Christian peoples, who sat enveloped in lamentable darkness, saw in the Reformation a welcome, bright light, which awakened their spirits to a new, active life. The chains that previously held the free development of all thinking minds were loosened. The free spirit of inquiry was aroused, and one no longer could be satisfied with holy errors maintained by custom and superstition.”⁴⁹ In Berlin, both Friedrich Schleiermacher and the pastor August Ludwig Hanstein (1761– 1821) made similar arguments, interpreting the Reformation as humanity’s collective step in the right direction. As dean of Berlin’s theological faculty, Schleiermacher gave an address on November 3, 1817, in which he praised the Reformation for introducing the critical spirit into theology, without which it would slip back into Catholic dogmatism, itself a species of “Jewish” priestcraft.⁵⁰ Luther’s acts in the sixteenth century represented for Schleiermacher “the complete overthrow of the superstition of arbitrary works and external merit.” While Catholic universities fell prey to papal authority, Protestant universities “were ennobled by freedom of teaching and learning.”⁵¹ In a series of before-and-after scenarios, Hanstein made his case for the progressive character of the Reformation. “The Reformation brought instead of the word of man, the word of God; instead of constrained interpretation, free inquiry into Holy Scripture; instead of dark, blind faith, the rational clarity of free conviction; instead of the coercion of conscience under priestly power, the freedom of the spirit and heart under a concience under God’s power.”⁵² Indeed, numerous homilies and orations in 1817 sought to connect the Reformation with the birthpangs of modern reason, political liberalism, and/or bourgeois society. It was frequently pointed out that all of the major reformers – Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, and others – hailed not from aristocratic, but from middle-class

 Johann Gottlieb Reuter, Fünf Predigten zu und bei der Secularfeier der Kirchenreformation 1817 gehalten (Bayreuth, 1817), 23 – 24.  Kurt Nowak, Schleiermacher: Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 364– 65.  Schleiermacher, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed., Hans-Joachim Birkner et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), 1.10:11.  August Ludwig Hanstein, Das Jubeljahr der evangelischen Kirche. (Berlin, 1817), 31.

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backgrounds.⁵³ K.H.L. Pölitz of the University of Leipzig captured a broadly felt sentiment in the title of an address he gave on October 30, 1817: “The similarity between the fight for civic and political freedom in our age and the fight for religious and ecclesiastical freedom in the age of the Reformation.”⁵⁴ The Berlin biblical scholar Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780 – 1849) went further still, contending that the Reformation contained the seeds of practically every sort of modern freedom: “The spirit of Protestantism,” he opined, “necessarily brings the spirit of freedom and the independence of the people (das Volk); Protestant freedom leads necessarily to political freedom.”⁵⁵ Not only did the Reformation anticipate modern political ideals, but its influence had improved the material and social circumstances of life. In contrast to Catholicism, which induced society to accept autocracy, sloth, and social squalor, Protestantism – so many argued – encouraged civic virtue, domestic manners, and bourgeois respectibility. Adumbrating Max Weber’s notion of a “Protestant ethic,” Gottfried Erdmann Petri of Zittau, for example, argued that the Reformation – by reshaping everday habits – led to overall improved social and moral conditions. “Whereever Protestantism triumphs,” he proclaimed, “the conditions of ethics, of the industry of businesses, and of domestic life receive a better form.” The Erlangen pastor Carl Georg Friedrich Goes (1762– 1836) reasoned similarly: “A good [Protestant] Christian [is] a good citizen (Bürger),” he contended. A sense of “vocation and duty” (Beruf und Pflicht) followed in the wake of the Reformation; through its influence, the Lord brought “blessing and prosperity to bourgeois life and activity.”⁵⁶ Significantly, it was only around the time of the tercentenary that images of the ninety-five theses being posted on the castle church door in Wittenberg “went viral,” as we might say today. The image had several variations. Often the artist depicted a young student proxy posting the theses while Luther and other scholars in the foreground led a theological discussion. Sometimes Luther was portrayed posting the theses himself; this now-iconic image appeared in print for the first time in 1817, in a cycle of Luther’s life by the artist Georg Paul Buchner. Alongside the image of the reformer burning his bull of excommunication and his defiance of Charles V at Worms in 1521, the image of the ninety-five theses formed a kind of mental tryptich

 Fuhrmann, Das Reformationsjubiläum 1817, 54 ff; and Lutz Winckler, Martin Luther als Bürger und Patriot: Das Reformationsjubiläum von 1817 und der politische Protestantismus des Wartburgfestes (Lübeck: Matthiesen Verlag, 1969), 23 ff.  Karl Heinrich L. Pölitz, “Die Änlichkeit des Kampfes um …,” in Friedrich Keyser, ed., Reformations-Almanach für Luthers Verehrer auf das evangelische Jubeljahr 1817 (Erfurt, 1819), 123.  W. M. L. de Wette, “Ueber den sittlichen Geist der Reformation in Beziehung auf unsere Zeit” [1817] in Reformationsalmanach auf das Jahr 1819 (Erfurt, 1819), 286 – 87.  C. G. F. Goes, Luthers Kirchenreformation nach ihrer Veranlassung, Eigenthümlichkeit Beschaffenheit und wohlthätigen Wirksamkeit in einigen Kanzelvorträgen am dritten Säkularfeste nebst kurzem Berichte über die hiesige Festfeyerlichkeit (Erlangen, 1817), 65 ff.

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for the post-Enlightenment liberal spirit of the times: Luther had first shown that reason cannot always trust tradition and authority.⁵⁷ To say that themes of bourgeois respectibility, liberalism, nationalism, or historical progress permeated the tercentenary jubilee is not to say that older confessional themes vanished. As we have already seen, the orthodox pastor Claus Harms took strong exception in 1817 to the “rationalism” and “unionism” that he felt was subverting Luther’s pure religious teachings. And he was not alone.⁵⁸ Channeling the stricter orthodoxy of the early-modern era, but also in touch with the awakening movement (Erweckungsbewegung) and the political conservatism of their day, such voices sought to focus on doctrinal purity above all else – and on Luther’s teachings on justification and the Eucharist, in particular.⁵⁹ Nonetheless, the fact that such voices were perceived – and regularly perceived themselves – as a protest movement against more dominant trends suggests that the Reformation centenary of 1817 no longer functioned strictly as an effort to stabilize confessional Protestant identities. It had become the vehichle through which newer ideologies, alongside the modification of older ones, could express themselves and, through the power of public memory, shape the future course of German history.

4 1883: Martin Luther and the German Empire The tercentenary celebration of 1817 set in motion a century of Reformation commemorations – what one scholar has called the nineteenth century’s “epidemic” of commemorations. Leaving aside the birth and death dates of key Reformers besides Luther, mention ought to be made of the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in 1830, the 300th anniversary of Luther’s death in 1846, the 200th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in 1848, the 300th anniversary of the Peace of Augsburg in 1855, and the 350th anniversary of Luther’s challenge to indulgences in 1867.⁶⁰ The ninteenth century also witnessed the designing and erection of numerous monuments (Denkmäler) to Luther and the Reformation. The foundation stone for the first of many Luther statues was laid in Wittenberg in 1817, by no less a person than Prussia’s King Friedrich Wilhelm III. His successor, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, used the occasion of the rennovation of the Castle Church there in 1856 – 1857 to put up bronze doors engraved with Luther’s ninety-five theses.

 Hartmut Lehmann, Luthergedächtnis 1817 bis 2017 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 17– 34.  Fuhrmann, Das Reformationsjubiläum 1817, 72.  On the awakening movement (Erweckungsbewegung) and its influence in the early nineteenth century, see Robert M. Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Church Elite in Prussia, 1815 – 1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 128.  Dorothea Wendebourg, “Die Reformationsjubiläen des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 108 (2011): 270 – 335.

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But such actions were mere prelude to 1883 – the 400th anniversary of Luther’s birth, an epic jubilee, the first after the founding of the German Empire in 1871. As was true in 1817, religious – and particularly Protestant-confessional – motivations and motifs were by no means absent in 1883. But what strikes one is how the memory of Luther at this time was put in the service of newer movements and developments: in a major key, imperialist nationalism; and in a minor key, the new scholarly ethos of historicism. The latter is evidenced in fresh efforts to achieve greater historical understanding of Luther and the Reformation. The former is seen in the fact that the remembered Luther frequently comes across less as a restorer of religious truth than as the hero of the German nation, indeed the quintessential, primal German man – a liberator of the “teutonic mind” from Rome, the author of practically every major German achivement, and no less than the creator of a new ideal of humanity.⁶¹ The Luthermania of 1883, as the historian Thomas A. Brady once quipped, amounted to a “belated birthday for the new German Reich.”⁶² The tone of the Luther jubilee of 1883 was set from above. Emperor Wilhelm I issued an order on May 21, 1883, encouraging all churches in the German Empire festively to mark the 400th anniversary of Luther’s birth. The selected dates were November 9 – 11, Friday through Sunday (November 10 was his actual birthday). On Friday, church bells were to be rung; on Saturday, activities in educational institutions should take place; and on Sunday, special commemorative worship services were to be held.⁶³ In cities and towns across Protestant Germany, a spate of events took place on these dates. These included parades and torch-lit processions; academic orations; the distribution of commemorative medals and medallions; the singing of hymns, particularly “A Mighty Fortress”; the unveiling of more monuments and busts of Luther; the publication of pamphlet and histories; encomiums to secular powers for their past and present protection of Protestantism; the laying of foundation stones for new churches; and, of course, countless sermons reflecting on Luther’s life and the broader significance of the Reformation.⁶⁴ To be sure, a jumble of themes and emphases are apparent in these events. But, again, among the most conspicuous in 1883 was the refrain that Luther was a German hero, a powerful early manifestion of German culture and national identity, which, finally, had rendezvoused with political destiny in 1871. German Protestants in 1883, as Hartmut Lehmann has written, collectively felt that “Luther’s heritage demanded [. . .] nothing less than the comple-

 Landry, Ecumenism, Memory, and German Nationalism, 90 – 91.  Thomas A. Brady, The Protestant Reformation in German History (Washington, D. C.: German Historical Institute, 1998), 15. On the large literature from this jubilee, see Hans Dufel, “Das Luther-Jubiläum 1883,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 95 (1984): 1– 94.  Lehmann, Luthergedächtnis, 59.  Lehmann, Luthergedächtnis, 74 ff.

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tion of Germany’s unification.”⁶⁵ 1871 made good, in other words, on potentialities unleashed in 1517, which, in turn, were celebrated in 1883. Such a triumphalist, nationalist sentiment appeared nowhere more clearly than in an address, “Luther and the German Nation,” given in Darmstadt by the Prussian historian Heinrich von Treitschke. Bewailing the fact that German Catholics, still reeling from Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, could not rightly appreciate Luther’s legacy, Treitschke identified the Wittenberg reformer as “the pioneer of the whole German nation,” as a man possessing “the power of independent thought that typifies the German character,” and as someone “with all the native energy and unquenchable fire of German defiance.”⁶⁶ An untiring champion of German political unification under Prussian leadership, Treitsckhe praised Luther for liberating the state from “ecclesiastical despotism” and setting in motion the possibility of state sovereignty. Luther’s “two kingdoms” political teaching, in particular, merited Treitschke’s commendation: “Luther first smashed into ruins the dictum behind which the Romanists entrench themselves: he denied that ‘spiritual power is higher than temporal power,’ and taught that the state is itself ordained of God, and that it is justified in fulfilling, and indeed pledged to fulfill, the moral purposes of its existence independently of the Church.”⁶⁷ The consequences of this teaching, according to Treitschke, were especially salutary for the future of Germany: “The emancipation of the state from the tyranny of church control nowhere brought with it so rich and lasting a blessing as in Germany.”⁶⁸ Together with many others in 1883, Treitschke traced the achievements of German language, literature, and education back to the “little monk” of Wittenberg. “Goethe alone has rivaled him in his command over language,” Treitschke noted; “but, notwithstanding this eloquence, [Luther] remains the most ‘popular’ of all our writers.” In translating the New Testament at Wartburg Castle, “we received our literary language at a definite moment of time and at the hands of a single man.” In doing so, Luther allowed “that God might speak German to the German nation.”⁶⁹ What was good for language was good for education. By dignifying the vernacular and allowing conscience to trump traditional authorities, Luther had set in motion forces salutary for German higher education. These forces bore fruit especially in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment at the Reform University of Halle, epitomized there by the polymath Christian Thomasius, the first scholar to lecture in the vernac-

 Hartmut Lehmann, “Martin Luther as a National Hero,” in J. C. Eade, ed., Romantic Nationalism in Europe (Canberra: Australian National University, 1983), 197.  Heinrich von Treitschke, Historische und politische Aufsätze (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1897), 4:378 – 80 and 384.  Treitschke, Historische und politische Aufsätze, 387.  Treitschke, Historische und politische Aufsätze, 388.  Treitschke, Historische und politische Aufsätze, 390 – 92.

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ular and one keen to appeal to conscience over custom in championing an enlightened cosmopolitanism. But whether at Halle or elsewhere, Treitschke emphasized, “all the leaders of this new learning were Protestants.”⁷⁰ In short, the German Empire in 1883 possessed a historical hero worthy of its present-day aspirations. But not only that. Luther in fact towered above other national heroes. There was something primal, commanding, awe-inspiring about this determined monk. In breaking with the Church, he had unwittingly and incipiently forged “Germania.” The nation, the Volksgeist, first became personified in his person: “No other modern nation can boast of a man who was the mouthpiece of his countrymen in quite the same way, and who succeeded as fully in giving expression to the deepest essence of his nation.”⁷¹ If a pungent imperialist nationalism was one aspect of Treitschke’s talk, the Prussian historian also gave indication of the new scholarly historicism of the ninteenth century. Great strides in “historical science,” he observed, had made possible a more penetrating understanding of Luther and the Reformation. Many other addresses in 1883 made this point. The young Adolf Harnack, for example, held an oration on “Martin Luther and his Significance for the History of Scholarship and Education,” in which he argued that Luther, although no great scholar himself by modern standards, had helped conquer medieval obscurantism through his defiance and thereby paved the way for the rise of “free inquiry.”⁷² Two other influential examples from 1883 will underscore the significane of this anniversary for historical scholarhsip. First, the 1883 anniversary witnessed the launch of the monumental “Weimarer Ausgabe” of Luther’s works.⁷³ While there had been earlier collected editions, the editors deemed these insufficiently based on “scholarly research” (wissenschaftliche Forschung); therefore, a genuinely critical collection of Luther’s works had become “an urgent necessity.” In light of the “upcoming Luther jubilee,” as recounted in the preface to volume 1, the consistorial counselor of Halle, Julius Köstlin, approached the Prussian Ministry of Culture about the need for such a project. Since his proposal was also supported by the prestigious Berlin Academy of Science, a “large sum” was granted by the emperor “to secure and set in motion the scholarly preparation of the edition.”⁷⁴ Publication began in 1883 with the publisher Hermann Böhlau and, with various twists and turns, continued through 121 volumes until 2009. Another major scholarly effort tied to the Luther jubilee and launched on February 13, 1883, was the launch of the Society for the History of the Reformation (Verein für Reformationsgeschichte). Established first in Magdeburg and inititually directed

 Treitschke, Historische und politische Aufsätze, 391.  Treitschke, Historische und politische Aufsätze, 393 – 94.  Adolf von Harnack, Martin Luther (Giessen, 1911).  The Weimarer Ausgabe or “WA” is the unofficial title. The actual title is: D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesammtausgabe.  WA 1:xv–xvi.

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by Julius Köstlin, its original goasl was “to spread broadly the results of completed research about the emergence of the Protestant Church, about the personalities and facts of the Reformation, and about [its] effects in all areas of the life of the people.” Mainly through conferences and publications, the society pursued its ends, notably launching a series of publications in 1883 that has resulted in 200 volumes. Research impulses, however, blended freely with religious ones, for the society also sought “to solidify and strengthen Protestant consciousness through immediate contact with the history of our church.”⁷⁵ Such religious objectives blended worrisomely with nationalist ones in the late nineteenth century through the Nazi period. But since then, the society has reoriented itself toward strictly scholarly aims and today plays a leading international role in promoting knowledge of the sixteenth century, not least through its journal, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte.

5 Conclusion As the Society for the History of the Reformation makes clear, it is not always easy to disentangle religious elements from other aspects of nineteenth-century commemorations. The powerful inertia of older confessional realities certainly persists in 1817 and 1883 – and, indeed, in practically all of the many commemorative occasions of the nineteenth century At the same time, if one compares the activities and events of these two jubilees with earlier ones, not least with that of 1617, it is clear that, far from simply seeking to reify older confessional ideas and identities, the commemorations of the nineteenth century stand out as mirrors and agents of newer developments – particularly, as I have argued, of liberalism, nationalism, and historicism, which are among the defining ideologies of the nineteenth century. Thus understood, we need to take with a grain of salt the claim that acts of commemoration aim primarily at stabilizing identity and/or seeking to preserve continuity between past and present. That is certainly true – and perhaps more often true than not. But the Reformation jubilees of both 1817 and 1883, in contrast to their pre-modern counterparts, also indicate that acts of commemoration can be enlisted to reflect, shape, and introduce novel forces into history. These were not simply conduits or transmitters of the old, but definers and harbingers of the new. In this sense, we might view these jubilees as not unlike the sixteenth-century Reformation itself: a series of acts motivated by the desire for retrieval and restoration that, in the final analysis, left a legacy of profound change, disruption, and innovation in human history.

 From article 1 of the society’s founding charter, available at: http://www.reformationsgeschichte.de/.

Marcin Wisłocki

Architecture and Reformation 1 Introduction The Lutheran Reformation, together with its development during the confessional age, proved to be a substantial cause of and influence in far-reaching changes in architecture, particularly ecclesiastical architecture. On the one hand, the new theology, liturgy, and devotion inspired new attitudes toward the church edifice, its function, and its role and place in worship, as well as its symbolism and that of its furnishings. On the other hand, these changes also ushered in a wide range of practical effects, involving both medieval structures and newly constructed buildings – their appearance, spatial disposition, and interior arrangement, as well as the location and form of their principal furnishings. The mutual impact of religious changes and the evolution of architecture appears to be a very complex issue, due to both the territorial differentiation of Lutheranism at every stage of its development and to the constant influences of various changeable factors – such as vernacular medieval traditions, new currents within theology and devotional movements (e. g., Pietism), as well as relations with other confessions, in the sense of both controversies and reciprocal influences. Moreover, these factors were accompanied by determinants of other kinds, including social, political, and purely artistic and aesthetic ones. The problem of how to establish the differentiated contribution of particular factors remains a subject for further research.

2 Martin Luther on Church Buildings Luther had no particular interest in artistic questions, nor did he formulate any systematic theory of ecclesiastical edifices in the sense of an established architectural program. However, his theological considerations and explicit advice pertaining to certain questions of liturgy proved essential to how Protestant churches were understood. Moreover, these considerations also yielded certain concrete solutions, especially with respect to interior arrangement and iconographic furnishings. Luther’s thoughts on these topics were primarily the result of his theology, subordinated mainly to sola principles: “solus Christus” (Christ alone), “sola gratia” (grace alone), “sola fide” (faith alone), and “sola scriptura” (the word of God alone).¹

 H. Umbach, VIVA VOX EVANGELII. Zentrale Aussagen Martin Luthers zu Gottesdienst und Kirchengebäuden als Folge der reformatorischen Rückbesinnung auf das rechtfertigende Wort Gottes als articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, in Protestantischer Kirchenbau der Frühen Neuzeit in Europa. Grundhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-060

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Since his main emphasis at the beginning was on ideas, such as justification by faith and Christian freedom, initially he focused more on human deeds as related to edifices and their décor than on churches themselves. Accordingly, Luther’s key belief on that point was that endowments, whether of buildings or of works of art, could by no means be considered a way to ensure for oneself a heavenly reward. Even prior to the breakthrough of the Reformation, in his Lectures on the Epistle to the Corinthians (1516), Luther explicitly criticized the significance of ecclesiastical art, the creation and endowment of which he qualified as “shadows of things worthy of children.”² This criticism still mirrored the traditional viewpoint, since his posting of the ninety-five theses further developed his sense of the right understanding of the commandment to love one’s neighbor and, consequently, his sense of the social costs of constructing churches (Explanations of the Theses, 1518).³ Ultimately, it was justification and salvation, primarily in the polemic discourse against justification by works (“Werkgerechtigkeit”), that provided the crucial context for Luther’s opinions on that matter. Just as pious practices – such as pilgrimages, prayers, kneeling, and lighting candles – could never be accepted as a potential source of justification, so those practices associated with architecture and images – i. e., both creation and endowment – could never bring people closer to salvation. And even though Luther would later write that to finance a church building or to donate a religious painting might be understood as a “good Christian work,” there could be no question of any eschatological outcome of such actions. Moreover, for Luther, any attempt to seek salvation in deeds of this kind meant nothing less than an “anti-Christian” misuse and severe transgression of the divine commandments. The extent to which Luther thought these beliefs presented a danger to Christian life is evidenced by the appeal in his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520) – which is extraordinary in the light of all of his writings – to tear down field and forest chapels, which were so popular in the Late Middle Ages, but which Luther saw as sites of particular “godless practices” associated with indulgences and with the idolatrous cult of images.⁴ However, the church as a place of worship also became a topic for the reformer shortly after 1517, among other issues subordinated to his concept of the Christian life and cult. Since God should be adored “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), it is unnecessary to have a separate place to administer the divine service – so says Luther in his Treatise on Good Works (1520).⁵ Therefore worship may be performed anywhere,

lagen und neue Forschungskonzepte, ed. Jan Harasimowicz (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2015), 27– 36.  Sergiusz Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image in Western and Eastern Europe (London/New York: Taylor and Francis, 1993), 5.  Michalski, The Reformation, 5 – 6.  Michalski, The Reformation, 8.  Carl C. Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany, Studies in the Reformation 2 (Athens, OH/ Detroit, MI: Ohio University Press, 1979), 58 – 59.

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and people can pray even in a stable or a pigsty. A sermon can be proclaimed under a linden tree, in a barn, or in a town hall. Again, a baptismal font could even be situated “by the Elbe River.”⁶ The issue of choice and of arranging spaces for liturgical purposes was explained to a lesser degree, with the help of theological arguments, but was justified for the sake of social “decorum” resulting from functional, utilitarian, pedagogical, and moral considerations.⁷ The crucial keystone of Luther’s teaching on that point was that he categorized churches, along with images and external forms of worship, as “adiaphora” (Mitteldinge) – i. e., neither evil nor good, and as such pertaining to the realm of Christian freedom. According to the reformer, a church building is erected neither for God nor for his glory, and it is by no means better than any other structure. Still, it is a matter of common practice to establish and arrange an appropriate place where a congregation could gather to pray, to listen to the word of God, and to administer the sacraments, in accordance with St. Paul’s instruction that “all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Cor 14:40). Moreover, Luther wrote that it is a good idea to have a separate building for that purpose, since a church is not a place where people go to eat, drink, and dance. If the above-mentioned opinions show a kind of restraint regarding the necessity of using a special space for worship, there is no lack of positive and apologetic tone in Luther’s writings on that issue. Interestingly, the theologian understood the church as a holy place – although his reasons for that were of a different nature than those of the Middle Ages or the Catholic orthodoxy. On the one hand, in accordance with Gen 28:17, he described ecclesiastical buildings as houses of God and gates of heaven. On the other hand, however, their sanctity was in no way ontological per se, but was solely a matter of their functional status, resulting from proclaiming the word of God and from prayer. “Where the Word of God is proclaimed, God dwells there indeed” – as Luther wrote in his In Genesim Declamationes (1527) – “and again, where there is no Word, he does not dwell there, even if one might build a house as large as one would like to.”⁸ Those two elements – proclaiming the Word and prayer – served as “conditio sine qua non” for an edifice to truly be called a house of God. Moreover, they became somewhat canonical in the light of later writings by clergymen, such as theological treatises and sermons, in particular those held at the inauguration of a church or one of its furnishings – one example is Porta Coeli, or Proof that Only Lutheran Churches and Pulpits Are, through Their Teaching, Houses of God and Gates of Heaven by Conrad Tiburtius Rango, issued in Szczecin/Stettin in 1680.⁹ These developments present a constant shift in emphasis and testify to the increasingly positive and apologetic understanding of architec-

 Michalski, The Reformation, 41.  Jan Harasimowicz, Treści i funkcje ideowe sztuki śląskiej Reformacji 1520 – 1650, Acta Universitatis Vratislaviensis no. 819, Historia Sztuki II (Wrocław, 1986), 21.  Umbach, VIVA VOX, 27– 36.  C.T. Rango, Porta Coeli, oder Beweiß / Daß die Lutherische Kirchen und Kantzeln der Lehre wegen / allein Gottes- Häuser / und Pforten des Himmels sind […] (Stettin, 1680).

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tonic and visual frameworks for worship as a “Christian custom” (christliches Brauchtum). Apart from the concrete advice Luther expressed with regard to certain liturgical furnishings (which will be discussed below), he had little interest in delivering more direct suggestions on the appearance and spatial disposition of church buildings. But a few of his statements allow us to discern some general opinions. Thus, in accordance with his early understanding of the social costs of constructing edifices, Christians should erect “neither particular churches nor temples with great costs and loading,”¹⁰ although he was not entirely against any embellishment. In turn, in his Sermon on the Three Kinds of Good Life for the Instruction of Consciences (1520), the theologian recalled the tripartite structure of a Christian temple – so common in his days and sanctioned by centuries-old tradition – as consisting of “atrium,” “sanctum,” and “sanctum sanctorum.”¹¹ Although that juxtaposition, taken from the spatial division of both the tabernacle and Solomon’s temple, was used for the didactic purpose of presenting the various stages of Christian life, it might also serve as an interpretive key for Lutheran edifices in the following decades. Moreover, the significance of the tripartite division as an evident norm reflects how strongly Luther was accustomed to the extant tradition on that point. Accordingly, he explicitly advised retaining a separate choir as a place for administering the Eucharist and explained this preference as a matter of didactic value. Significantly, the tripartite structure remained an element of theoretical reflection among some Lutheran clergymen of the next generations and could be elaborately explained as a theologically justified rule – for example, in Philipp Arnoldi’s Caeremonia Lutheranae, issued in Königsberg in 1616.¹² Characteristically, this biblically and historically oriented theology – taking into account precedents from Old Testament and early Christian times as good examples to follow – appears in numerous sermons and writings of other kinds.

3 The Reformation and Medieval Churches The eve of the Reformation witnessed incredibly intense activity in the realm of ecclesiastical architecture and art. Even after the theological novelties of the Reformation had reached cities and towns in the Reich and outside its borders, dozens of newly constructed churches and chapels – along with their altarpieces, votive figures, and paintings – were still being erected. Many of the edifices begun at that

 WA 49:594. Ulrich Schlegelmilch, Descriptio templi. Architektur und Fest in der lateinischen Dichtung des konfessionellen Zeitalters (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2003), 463.  Umbach, VIVA VOX, 27– 36.  H. Mai, “Tradition und Innovation im protestantischen Kirchenbau bis zum Ende des Barocks,” in Geschichte des protestantischen Kirchenbaus. Festschrift für Peter Poscharsky, eds. Klaus Raschzok and Rainer Sörries (Erlangen: Junge und Sohn, 1994), 11– 26.

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time – whether under construction or undergoing substantial renovation work – were finally completed long after the Augsburg Confession had been introduced. However, one of the most important effects of these religious changes was that the existing number of churches proved sufficient, especially in cities and towns. From the 1520s onwards, this foundational activity – in the sense of both buildings, their décor and furnishings, as well as images and figures – gradually began to decrease and finally almost ceased. Moreover, the dissolution of the religious orders meant that some edifices proved unnecessary from the liturgical point of view. For that reason, a number of cloister churches were adapted for secular functions – with explicit approval by Luther – and turned into hospitals, schools, refuges, armories, or warehouses.¹³ Furthermore, some structures – particularly those that were badly preserved – were designated redundant and finally dismantled in order to improve city walls – such was the case of St. Mary in Demmin in Pomerania. Dozens of monastery complexes, especially those located outside cities or towns, were dismantled (e. g., the Benedictine cloisters in Döbeln and Pegau in Saxony) or taken over by territorial rulers and changed into residential buildings (e. g., the Cistercian abbeys in Kołbacz/Kolbatz, Pomerania, in 1539; Dobrilugk, Lusitania, in 1541; and Bad Doberan, Mecklenburg, in 1552). And while the new royal or ducal owners directed their main efforts toward the representational and domestic functions of the former cloisters, the disposition and appearance of the juxtaposed churches remained mostly unchanged. In turn, some cloisters were simply abandoned, became dilapidated, and after many years turned to ruins – as was the case of Białoboki/Belbuck in Pomerania, which was abandoned in 1521). In particular instances, some of the complexes located directly adjacent to larger cities were pulled down as a potential threat in the event of military conflicts – such as the Premonstratensian abbey at Ołbin/Elbing by Wrocław/Breslau in Silesia in 1529. An extraordinary example from that perspective is the case of Stockholm, where the Swedish king Gustav I Vasa in 1527 declared that all parish churches outside the main island of the capital city should be dismantled, causing a substantial lack of places of worship and, consequently, overcrowded churches in the subsequent decades¹⁴. However, most of the medieval churches – if we take into account their structure – remained untouched over a long period and were only gradually adapted to the changes of worship. First of all, they were adapted with galleries, which were constructed to provide a sufficient number of seats for congregations (e. g., Holy Cross Church in Dresden in 1543; Marktkirche in Halle in 1554; St. Thomas Church in Leipzig in 1570) and to enable them to listen to the proclaimed word of God. Apart from such endeavors, the scale of works was mostly restricted to necessary repairs due to  H. Mai, “Der Einfluss der Reformation auf Kirchenbau und kirchliche Kunst,” in Das Jahrhundert der Reformation in Sachsen, ed. Helmar Junghans (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2005), 153– 76.  Per G. Hamberg, Temples for Protestants: Studies in the Architectural Milieu of the Early Reformed Church and the Lutheran Church (Gothenburg: Goteborgs Universitet, 2002), 181– 82.

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fires, damage sustained in war, or simply the bad state of preservation. If the refurbishment works aimed to extend the existing space, in the first decades after the Reformation this was frequently achieved through an additional, asymmetrically located aisle opposite the pulpit – such as in Dzierżoniów/Reichenbach in Silesia in 1585, or Dobra/Daber in Pomerania before 1600.¹⁵ In general terms, changes and modifications to the medieval spaces paralleled – at least to some extent – the evolution of the newly built edifices.

4 Newly Founded Churches 4.1 Court Chapels Among the most notable promoters of the Reformation’s religious changes were territorial rulers, for whom providing a visual equivalent of the new confession became an important propagandistic aim. The court chapels in their residences were among the earliest entirely new Protestant ecclesiastical buildings. The first example, constructed at the Castle of Neuburg on the Danube for Count Palatine Otto-Henry in 1540 – 1543, was admittedly intended for the Catholic service, yet due to the conversion of its founder, it served from the very beginning as a place for the renewed worship. The painted history of salvation on its vaults, conceived by the theologian Andreas Osiander and executed by Hans Bocksberger the Elder, indicates the confessional character of its interior. However, it was the court chapel of the Hartenfels Castle at Torgau in Saxony (built by Nickel Grohmann in 1543 – 1544 [Fig. 1]), erected on the initiative of the Saxon elector John Frederick the Magnanimous, that became the foundational, normative pattern for further buildings of that kind. The chapel at Torgau, consecrated by Luther himself, gained a reputation as the first church where – as the reformer stated in his dedicatory sermon on October 5, 1544 – the “papal idolatry” had never been practiced and only the “pure Gospel” had been proclaimed.¹⁶ Moreover, while “Solomon had never built so beautiful a temple as there is at Torgau” – as Luther said in his Tischreden ¹⁷ –, it was explicitly understood in the context of Old Testament precedence. Its unified interior, supported by wall pillars and covered with Gothic rib vaults, was surrounded by two storeys of galleries with a hierarchically organized order of seats and integrated with the ducal chambers. Apart from the entrance portal from the courtyard, which was covered with a carved decoration focused on Christ’s Passion, the chapel was in no way distinguished from the rest of the castle wing. In turn, the simplicity of the embellish Harasimowicz, Treści, 22; Marcin Wisłocki, Sztuka protestancka na Pomorzu 1535 – 1684, Biblioteka Naukowa Muzeum Narodowego w Szczecinie, Seria Historia Sztuki (Szczecin, 2005), 56.  Reinhold Wex, “Oben und unten oder Martin Luthers Predigtkunst angesichts der Torgauer Schloßkapelle,” Kritische Berichte 11 (1983): 4– 24.  Michalski, The Reformation, 40.

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Fig. 1. Court Chapel, Hartenfels in Torgau (1543 – 1544, Nickel Grohmann); cf. Harald Marx, Cecilie Hollberg (ed.), Glaube und Macht. Sachsen im Europa der Reformationszeit. Aufsätze, Dresden 2004.

ment in its interior corresponds to Luther’s opinion on that issue, as stated in his dedicatory sermon. The significance of that structure, the spatial concept of which was regarded as explicitly Protestant, made it a useful instrument to convey the new confessional attitude, and it was therefore widely imitated – by dukes and other noblemen, both within the Reich and outside of its borders – and functioned independently of the changing language of architectonic forms. Thus, in addition to examples that demonstrate the prevailing Gothic elements (such as Dresden in Saxony in 1549 – 1555 and Schwerin in Mecklenburg in 1560 – 1563) and edifices characterized by the Netherlandish mannerist forms (such as Augustusburg in Saxony in 1568 – 1572, built by Erhardt van der Meer), examples of pure Italianate taste were also executed (such as at Szczecin/Stettin in Pomerania in 1575 – 1577, by the Italian master builder Wilhelm

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Fig. 2. Court Chapel, Szczecin/Stettin (1575 – 1577, Wilhelm Zacharias). Photo from archive before 1945, Muzeum Narodowe Szczecin/Stettin.

Zacharias [Fig. 2]). The inspiring role of Torgau is also evident in more geographically and chronologically distant chapels, and its attraction was still vivid as late as the seventeenth century, not solely within the Lutheran milieu (examples include Frederiksborg in Denmark in 1606 – 1617, possibly built by Giovanni Maria Nosseni; or Siedlisko/Carolath in Silesia, built for the Reformed barons of Schönaich, c. 1608 – 1618).¹⁸

 Hugo Johannsen, “The Saxon Connection: On The Architectural Genesis of Christian IV’s Palace Chapel (1606 – 1617) at Frederiksborg Castle,” in On the Opposite Sides of the Balic Sea: Relations between Scandinavian and Central European Countries, eds. Jan Harasimowicz, Piotr Oszczanowski, and Marcin Wisłocki (Wrocław, 2006), 369 – 79; Harasimowicz, Treści, 24– 25.

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4.2 Parish Churches During the first decades after the Reformation, hardly any types of church buildings were introduced. Instead, continuity remained the most distinctive feature of the period, both in general spatial disposition and in particular forms of décor. It was the traditional Gothic hall structure with a polygonal choir, so common in the Late Middle Ages, that was understood as appropriate for a “sermon church” (Predigtkirche) in those days. Its “democratically” organized interior, embodying the need for spatial unification, still proved useful for the new confession.¹⁹ It was in Saxony – as the territory where Luther’s teaching first became widespread – where eminent realizations of this type, though begun prior to Luther’s posting of the ninety-five theses, were completed simultaneously with the ongoing religious changes (examples of this include St. Wolfgang in Schneeberg, consecrated in 1540; or St. Mary in Pirna, finished in 1546). Interestingly, it was this scheme that became, at least to some extent, a pattern for later realizations.²⁰ The earliest entirely new constructions reveal various ways of continuing and developing the traditional architectural plans. The Lutheran congregation in Jachymov/ Joachimsthal in Bohemia (with its church built in 1534– 1540 by Hans Kopp and Johann Münich [Fig. 3]), a rich community famous for its silver mines, built an extraordinarily broad nave, originally covered by a wooden ceiling and closed by an apsidal choir on its eastern side. A distinguishing feature of its interior were the galleries along its walls – a distinctive feature of Protestant architecture in general, which derives from late medieval Saxon churches, with St. Anna in the adjacent Annaberg-Buchholz (completed in 1525) as the unquestionable source of inspiration in this case. In turn, the town church in Marienberg in Saxony (built in 1558 – 1564) presents a three-aisled hall structure with a square closure. A similar scheme was still in use in the monumental parish town churches that originated more frequently beginning in the early seventeenth century, such as St Mary in Wolfenbüttel (built by Paul Francke in 1607/8 – 1624 [Fig. 4]) and the parish church in Bückeburg (built by Giovanni Maria Nosseni in 1611– 1615). Both consisted of a nave with two aisles inside, surrounded by galleries, preceded by a porch on the ground floor of a square tower, and, finally, closed by a polygonal choir (in Wolfenbüttel this was a separate element). Thus the traditional tripartite disposition was still in use. Another significant aspect of continuity in these edifices is their language of forms: Gothic-shaped ribbed vaults and tracery windows, which were commonly defined as “kirchisch” in written sources of those days, were considered appropriate to ecclesiastical structures and regarded in the sense of the Vitruvian category of “decorum.”²¹ However,  Harasimowicz, “Der Kirchenbau im konfessionellen Zeitalter,” Das Münster 1 (2016): 3 – 12.  Henry-Russell Hitchcock, German Renaissance Architecture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).  Hermann Hipp, Studien zur ‘Nachgotik‘ des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, Böhmen, Österreich und der Schweiz, vols. 1– 3 (Hannover: Ewald Böttger, 1979); Ludger J. Sutthof: Gotik im Barock.

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Fig. 3. Jachymov/Joachimsthal in Bohemia (1534 – 1540, Hans Kopp, Johann Münich). Photo: Justyna Chodasewicz.

they could also, at least to some extent, be comprehended as a way to distance these structures from “papal” architectonic vocabulary known from Rome. Just how deeply rooted these medieval schemes and forms were is evidenced by a number of examples in other territories, which were even more conservative. Proof of this is found in the Stockholm parish churches founded by King John III Vasa to address the lack of worship places caused by the decision of his predecessor: the single-aisled St. Claire Church (built by Willem Boy in the 1570s), and St. James (begun by Willem Boy in the 1580s, finished by Hans Ferster in 1643 [Fig. 5]) as a pseudo-basilica structure, both with side annexes suggesting the cross shape and with polygonal eastern closures. Even plans as traditional as the St. Salvator Church in Prague (1611– 1614) were realized – a three-aisled basilica with a one-nave choir and a two-towered western facade. How long this late-Gothic appearance survived is demonstrated by the single-nave parish church in Tyresö (built by Hans Ferster in 1638 – 1640), the threeaisled pseudo-basilica Kristine Church in Falun in Dalarna (also built by Hans Ferster in 1638 – 1640,) and the Holy Trinity Church in Copenhagen (built by Hans van Steenwinckel the Younger in 1637– 1656 [Fig. 6]) as a three-aisled hall.

Zur Frage der Kontinuität des Stiles außerhalb seiner Epoche: Möglichkeiten der Motivation bei der Stilwahl (Münster: LIT Verlag, 1990).

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Fig. 4. St. Mary in Wolfenbüttel (Paul Francke, 1607/8 – 1624). Photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Marienkirche_(Wolfenbüttel)02.JPG. CC BY-SA 4.0.

5 Changes in Ecclesiastical Interiors during the Confessional Age 5.1 “The Preserving Power of Lutheranism” The earliest sermons proclaiming reformation teachings were held in totally unchanged interiors. In general, the initial years brought hardly any alterations to the existing spaces. Significantly, it was iconoclasm that brought the first alterations, albeit against the will of Luther. However, the wave of destruction of altarpieces and images that began in 1521 in cities both within the Reich and outside of its borders (such as Trzebiatów/Treptow in early 1521, Wittenberg in 1521/1522, and Gdansk/Danzig in 1523 and 1525) proved only episodic and of a mostly limited scale, if we take into account the territories and centers where the Augsburg Confession ultimately prevailed. Yet Luther’s shift of emphasis toward an explicit apology for ecclesiastical art, expressed against Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and the “heavenly prophets,” became essential to the mild and tolerant attitude toward medieval ecclesiastical heritage. This feature, as a mark of the new confession, understood as “the pre-

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Fig. 5. St. James in Stockholm (1580er Jahre, Willem Boy; 1643, Hans Ferster). Photo: Marcin Wisłocki.

Fig. 6. Trinity Church in Copenhagen (1637 – 1656, Hans van Steenwinckel d.J.).Photo: Anna Michalska.

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serving power of Lutheranism” (bewahrende Kraft des Luthertums), had the paradoxical result that – in general terms – more medieval works of art survived in Lutheran churches than in Catholic ones.²² Not only a number of altarpieces – including those displaying scenes contradictory to the new theology, e. g., glorifying Mary as the queen of heaven and earth – pulpits, and baptismal fonts (the latter category was particularly valued as evidence of the continuity of a “Christian custom”), but also even votive figures and paintings, along with various artwork of other kinds, frequently remained untouched for centuries (e. g., in St. Lawrence in Nuremberg). In many cities or towns, only those side altarpieces whose presence could hinder the congregations in introducing the necessary changes were removed. If a medieval work of art became a subject of dispute, Luther’s tolerant attitude could be called upon as a substantial argument for leaving the art untouched. Such was the case of Michael Wolgemut’s altarpiece in the St. Mary Church in Zwickau in Saxony (dating from 1479), displaying Mary with the Christ-child and female saints: after the choir had been refurbished in 1563 – 1565, the altarpiece was installed in its previous location.²³ Anxiety surrounding the increasing role of Reformed tendencies during the socalled “second Reformation” in the last decades of the sixteenth century and, consequently, iconoclasm in the cities and towns of the Reich (for example, in Marburg in 1605, Berlin in 1615, Güstrow in 1618, and Prague in 1619), made this conservative tendency even stronger. Numerous writings in which any attempt to undermine the status quo was decried as a godless attack on the Christian cult itself may serve as proof of that. While some authors – such as Vincenz Schmuck in 1608 – compared the appearance of Reformed churches to Turkish mosques, other clergymen, such as Polycarp Leyser, were heard to say, “better Papist than Calvinist” (lieber Papistisch als Calvinistisch).²⁴ In view of this tendency, it can be no surprise that this period saw an enormous number of Lutheran churches gradually being recast as “image spaces” consisting of both pre-Reformation works of art (altarpieces and baptismal fonts) and new furnishings, richly ornamented with painted or carved figural decoration. Notable examples include the churches in Klępsk/Klemzig (New Markgravate), in Żórawina/Rothsürben and Brzezina/Gross Bresa (Silesia), and in Wysiedle/Woitzel (Pomerania).

 Johann M. Fritz, ed., Die bewahrende Kraft des Luthertums: mittelalterliche Kunstwerke in evangelischen Kirchen, (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 1997).  H. Mai, “Zmiany w użytkowaniu kościołów w miastach Saksonii po wprowadzeniu reformacji,” in Sztuka miast i mieszczaństwa XV-XVIII wieku w Europie Środkowowschodniej, ed. Jan Harasimowicz (Wrocław, 1990), 261– 81.  Wisłocki, “Houses of God, Gates of Heaven, Doors of Grace: Changes in Perception of Lutheran Church Interiors as ‘Holy Places’,” in Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence, ed. Jaynie Anderson (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2009), 384– 88.

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Fig. 7. Pulpit in St. Maria Magdalena in Wrocław/Breslau in Silesia (1579 – 1583). Cf. Ludwig Burgemeister, Günther Grundmann, Die Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Niederschlesien, vol. 1: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Breslau, part 2, Breslau 1933.

5.2 Between sacramentum audibile and verbum visibile: Furnishings in the Service of Liturgy Independently of that “preserving power,” the changed liturgy meant that church interiors gradually began to be transformed at the same time as novel solutions were introduced in newly constructed buildings. Since the proclaimed word was indeed conditio sine qua non for an edifice to qualify as a house of God, as Luther had it, it was the pulpit that gained crucial importance, much more so than in the Late Middle Ages. Whether located near one of the pillars, on a lateral wall, or – in some smaller churches – by the triumphal arch, the pulpit became the main focal point of the nave and thus constituted a kind of a transverse axis there. Frequently having a monumental structure with a figural support, a richly decorated gate, parapets of platform and stairs, as well as a soundboard crowned by a high canopy (e. g., in St. Maria Magdalena in Wrocław/Breslau in Silesia in 1579 – 1583 [Fig. 7]; and in cathe-

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drals in Magdeburg in 1597 and Freiberg in Saxony in 1638), it served as a kind of “permanent sermon” (dauerhafte Predigt). The content of that sermon, visualized in comprehensive sets of biblical and allegorical depictions, involved the history of salvation and the eternal presence of the word within it. This latter aspect was additionally confirmed by specially chosen “powerful quotes” (kräftige Sprüche) from the Bible, the use of which – so strongly emphasized by Luther – became one of the most distinguishing features of Protestant art in general.²⁵ In contrast to Reformed teaching, the Wittenberg theologian defined the Eucharist – along with baptism – as a sacrament; therefore the fixed altar – although it was regarded neither as a place of sacrifice, nor as a cult object – retained its substantial role in Lutheran churches. Whereas its function was subordinated solely to the Communion rite as celebrated for an entire congregation, the side altarpieces – even though they could remain in their previous places – lost any liturgical justification. In his Formula missae et communionis (1523), Luther considered that a celebrant should administer the sacrament while facing the congregation and, because of this, he stated that the altar should have the form of a table to present the idea – among others – of the “table of the Lord” (Tisch des Herrn).²⁶ However, even though this advice was followed in some instances (e. g., in the chapel at the Hartenfels Castle in Torgau in 1544, or in a number of examples in Wurttemberg), the power of tradition proved sufficiently strong that, in this case, the reformer’s opinion was not widely received. It was the traditional retable form that prevailed and ultimately received explicit approval by the reformer himself: in his commentary on Psalm 111 (1530), he wrote openly about an “altar panel” and advised that the Last Supper should be painted there.²⁷ In this way, the new confessional quality of the altar – again justified for didactic purposes – could manifest with the help of this iconographic program, and this found many applications, including the parish church at Wittenberg itself in 1547. The subsequent decades witnessed the constantly increasing significance of that furnishing, which usually constituted a kind of multistoreyed picture wall with comprehensive sets of depictions focusing on the second article of the Apostles Creed on the theme of redemption. In many instances, they might so entirely dominate a choir space (e. g., in Basedow in Mecklenburg in 1592; in Pirna in Saxony c. 1610 [Fig. 8]; and in Recz/Reetz in New Markgravate in 1607– 1611) that they could not but give way to Catholic realizations. Didactic purposes also became crucial in the issue of the spatial role of baptismal fonts. While in his Taufbüchlein (1523 and 1526) Luther advised performing the sacrament in the presence of the entire community, the font was to be installed in

 H. Preuss, Martin Luther der Künstler (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1931), 75.  P. Poscharsky, “Altar. III: Mittelalter, IV: Reformationszeit und Neuzeit,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, eds. Gerhard Krause and Gerhard Müller (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1978), 2:318 – 27.  Michalski, The Reformation, 33 and 48.

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Fig. 8. Altar St. Mary in Pirna in Saxony (ca. 1610). Photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20081002030DR_Pirna_Marienkirche.jpg?uselang=de. CC BY-SA 4.0.

the choir, mostly on the longitudinal axis and close to the altar.²⁸ In contrast to the medieval practice that usually placed a fons baptismi symbolically close to the western entrance, the rite of introducing a new member into a Lutheran congregation had to be visible to all the believers, for the purpose – among others – of confirming them in the catechetical teaching on this sacrament. Consequently, baptismal fonts also became key focal points and could take on an extraordinarily extensive form – in some instances, together with their spatially elaborated environment –, such as  Jonathan D. Trigg, Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 56 (Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill, 1994), 67; Katarzyna Cieślak, Między Rzymem, Wittenbergą a Genewą. Sztuka Gdańska jako miasta podzielonego wyznaniowo (Wrocław: Fundacja na Rzecz Nauki Polskiej, 2000), 264.

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Abb. 9. Baptismal font in Kamień Pomorski/Kammin in Pommern (13th century, with grill work, 1685). Archival photo before 1945, Muzeum Narodowe Szczecin/Stettin.

standing on a high pedestal with stairs; surrounded by a balustrade, a grid, or a special colonnade with a canopy; and covered with a splendid monumental cover (e. g., in St. Mary Magdalena in Wrocław/Breslau in Silesia in 1571– 1576). Significantly, the meaning of a medieval work could also be reinterpreted in this way (e. g., in the cathedral in Kamień Pomorski/Kammin in Pomerania in 1685 [Fig. 9], or in St. Aegidius in Lübeck in 1710). The pulpit, the altar, and the baptismal font, as sites of performing the sermon and the sacraments, constituted a theologically justified triad aimed at visualizing the inseparable relation between – as Luther wrote, following St. Augustine – sacramentum audibile on the one hand, and verbum visibile on the other.²⁹ It was for this reason that Luther explicitly advised a clear spatial relation between them. He explained this, with the help of the so-called comma Johanneum (1 John 5:6 – 8), as referring to the threefold divine witness – of the spirit, of blood, and of water –, which was to be understood in the Trinitarian context. There is no doubt that this thought found broad reception, both in documents of ecclesiastical law in the state churches

 Umbach, VIVA VOX, 27– 36.

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Abb. 10. Confessional box in Schaprode/island of Rügen (1722). Photo: Marcin Wisłocki.

(e. g., the Pomeranian Agenda of 1568) and in the edifices themselves – primarily in the way these furnishings considerably dominated the church interior. Even the individual confession belongs among the rites that found their spatial frame in Lutheran churches. Although it lost its sacramental sanction, until the eighteenth century it was practiced in many territories, as sanctioned by ecclesiastical law and administered in specially arranged confession boxes. Again for pedagogical reasons, confessionals were usually located in the choir, in order to make penance public and visible for the whole congregation. A number of examples stood on both sides of the altar and took on such distinguished forms that they could resemble patron’s lodges. In addition, they frequently acquired significance in iconographic programs focused on penance, remission of sins, and inward change of the soul – such as in the examples in Reichenbach in Lusitania in 1685, St. Peter and Paul in Görlitz in 1694 and 1717, or those on the island of Rügen (e. g., Sagard in 1720, and Schaprode in 1722 [Fig. 10]). A particular sign of Lutheran confessional identity was the organ, the use of which the reformer approved in his Deutsche Messe (1526).³⁰ Due to the essential significance of music in Lutheran worship, that instrument gradually took on an entire-

 Kurt Goldammer, Kultsymbolik des Protestantismus (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1966), 75; Joyce L. Irwin, Neither Voice nor Heart Alone: German Lutheran Theology of Music in the Age of the Barock (Bern/New York/Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993), 1– 7.

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Abb. 11. Organ in St. Mary in Stralsund (1653 – 1659). Photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:01_Stralsund_St_Marien_009.jpg?uselang=de. CC BY-SA 3.0.

ly new quality. Music, as a “gift and present from God,” constituted a didactic medium that was helpful in receiving his word, which resulted from Luther’s emphasis on faith as arising from hearing (ex auditu, Rom 10:17).³¹ Organs – along with lavishly embellished organ cases and music galleries, the decoration of which conveyed ideas of praising God with the help of instruments and voices – became visible signs of the permanent presence of music (Fig. 11).³² That need proved especially vivid in the face of threats by the Reformed, who rejected ecclesiastical instrumental

 See Luther’s sermon on Psalm 8, given on August, 6, 1545, in WA 51:11, 29 – 33.  Irwin, Neither Voice, 1– 7; see also Mattthias Range, “The Material Presence of Music in Church: The Hanseatic City of Lübeck,” in Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrew Spicer (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2012), 197– 220.

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music as idolatrous; examples of ardent apology for music in iconographic programs in Gdansk (e. g., Holy Trinity Church in 1616 – 1618; St. John’s Church in 1625 – 1653 and 1672) or in the Netherlands (e. g., Oude Lutherse Kerk in Amsterdam in 1692) may serve as undoubted proof of this.³³

5.3 Ecclesiastical Space as the Image of Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms Apart from the role of the above-mentioned liturgical furnishings, over the course of time the appearance of Lutheran interiors was – to a great extent – defined by their systems of pews and galleries, which were arranged to provide the necessary space for the audience to participate in the service. This proved a crucial subject in ecclesiastical law and even in separate documents devoted to that question (Kirchenstuhlordnung, e. g., in Stargard in Pomerania in 1596). In general, and from the liturgical perspective, the systems of benches and galleries reveal varied solutions to the issue of bringing together the traditional longitudinal axis – subordinated to the Eucharist and the altar on the one hand – and the increasingly significant transverse one – subordinated to the word proclaimed from the pulpit on the other hand.³⁴ However, independently of these liturgical factors, the social aspect of their disposition was also of great importance. The latter found its expression in differentiated hierarchies of seats, in the sense of their location, appearance, decoration, and iconographic programs. Galleries or lodges for royal, ducal, or noble patrons; distinguished places for city councillors (Fig. 12), guild elders, and clergymen; along with ordinary seats for common men and women – all meant that the entire space was to display a detailed image of a community, with all of its social divisions. According to Luther, all of those inequalities were sanctioned by God himself.³⁵ For that reason, in his Torgau sermon (1544), the theologian recalled the socially established order of seats in the chapel.³⁶ Significantly, this hierarchy (so defined) also corresponded to the visual equivalent of the post-mortem memory in ecclesiastical spaces – epitaphs and grave monuments. Independently of the new concept of memoria – according to which works of art of that kind were not only for the purpose of commemorating people, but also to convey the catechetic teaching on salvation and future resurrection,³⁷ as Luther wrote –, both the location and the form of these features were strongly determined by hierarchical divisions within a congregation.

 Cieślak, Między Rzymem, 274– 93.  Reinhold Wex, Ordnung und Unfriede. Raumprobleme des protestantischen Kirchenbaus im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert in Deutschland (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1984).  Helmut Umbach, Heilige Räume – Pforten des Himmels. Vom Umgang der Protestanten mit ihren Kirchen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005).  Wex, “Oben und unten,” 4– 24.  Michalski, The Reformation, 41.

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Abb. 12. Gallery for city council men in Stralsund (1652). Archival photo before 1945, Muzeum Narodowe Szczecin/Stettin.

If all the elements of church décor and furnishing discussed thus far embodied various aspects of catechetic teaching as being helpful on the way to heaven, the vaults and ceilings – according to their traditional symbolism – provided the pictorial equivalent of that heaven throughout the entire sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even later (these were painted with stars, angels or angelic choirs, and scenes showing the transcendence of Christ; see the examples in Klępsk/Klemzig in New Markgravate in 1613; Mühlhausen in East Prussia in 1693 – 1696; and Brzesko/Brietzig in Pomerania in 1697). In this way, the entire interior, with its system of galleries and benches, constituted – in reference to Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms (Zwei-Reiche-Lehre) – an image of a Christian community regarded as both a worldly and socially determined phenomenon and, in its theological context, as related to the history of salvation, as a communio sanctorum on its way to heaven. It was also for this reason that the idea of a Lutheran church as a holy place was clearly expressed in ecclesiastical spaces themselves. In accordance with Gen 28:17, congregations referred to that idea not only in iconographic and inscriptional programs (e. g., on entrance doors and in the decoration of pulpits or vaults), but even over the entire space of a church, as was the case in the court chapel in Weimar

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in 1658; this concept was based on the idea of scala coeli, taken from the biblical history of the patriarch Jacob.³⁸

6 New Pursuit of a Sermon Space (Predigtraum) After the Lutheran state churches had been organizationally and doctrinally established and solidified, and the confessional identity of the congregations became a common fact, an essential shift in emphasis in architectural thinking came into expression. Since the middle of the seventeenth century, new explorations and experiments increasingly emerged, aiming to create spaces more suitable for the sermon in worship. Their focus was – first of all – on centralized, clear, and unified concepts, both in floor plans and in the arrangement of liturgical furnishings. Among the significant factors that inspired these efforts was a kind of parallelization between the Lutheran and the Reformed church-building tradition after the Thirty Years War.³⁹ Moreover, ongoing changes within the Lutheran denomination of that time also arose from the growing presence of the Pietist movement, which aroused new needs in that realm. Parallel to this, the first systematic attempts to summarize the theory of the Protestant churches from a purely architectonic perspective not only contributed to these pursuits, but also enabled new ideas to be widely spread. In the first place, there were writings, such as KirchenGebäw by Joseph Furttenbach (Augsburg, 1649) and Architectonisches Bedencken von Protestantischer Kleinen Kirchen Figur und Einrichtung and Vollständige Anweisung alle Arten von Kirchen wohl anzugeben by the Pietist Leonhard Christoph Sturm (Hamburg, 1712 and 1718, respectively).⁴⁰ It is significant that, independently of any differentiated factors that influenced new solutions in the arrangement of liturgical furnishings at that time, they may be understood – at least to some extent – as embodying the ultimate consequences of Luther’s teaching. The inseparable relation between the word and the Eucharist, so explicitly emphasized by the Wittenberg theologian, found its specific solution in a vertical juxtaposition of the pulpit and the altar, thus constituting one liturgical center and one spatial axis. The first – and indeed unique – early example of this kind was executed in the chapel of the Wilhelmsburg Castle in Schmalkalden in Hessen in 1585 – 1590 (Fig. 13), where all the elements of the liturgy are symbolically brought together thanks to the vertical composition of the altar as a table containing a basin for baptismal water, with the pulpit and the organ above. However, it was the so-called Prinzipalstück in Joseph Furttenbach’s work (1649) – displaying the axial disposition of the altar, pulpit, and organ as an integral unity – that resulted  im  

R. Leeb, “Die Heiligkeit des reformatorischen Kirchenraums oder: Was ist heilig? Über Sakralität Protestantismus,” in Protestantischer Kirchenbau, ed. Harasimowicz, 37– 48. Mai, Tradition, 11– 26; Harasimowicz, “Der Kirchenbau”, 3 – 12. Mai, Tradition, 11– 26; Harasimowicz, “Der Kirchenbau”, 3 – 12.

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Abb. 13. Court chapel of the Wilhelmsburg in Schmalkalden/Thuringia, formerly Hesse (1585 – 1590, Christoph Müller).Photo: Jan Harasimowicz.

in the wide reception of this type of arrangement.⁴¹ Beginning with this work, the socalled Kanzelaltar achieved its great popularity across the duchies of the Reich and outwith its borders (e. g., the chapel at the castle in Weimar in 1658; and Concordienkirche in Ruhla in Thuringia, c. 1680). Parallel to this, the tendency to bring the organ into the main axis above the altarpiece also became visible during that time, even though the pulpit could be installed in a traditional way – that is, laterally (e. g., the Church of Grace in Jelenia Góra/Hirschberg in Silesia in 1724– 1727 and 1733 [Fig. 14]; and the Frauenkirche in Dresden in 1732– 1736).

 Emily Fisher Gray, The Body of the Faithful: Joseph Furttenbach’s Lutheran Church Plan, in The Early Modern Parish Church, ed. Andrew Spicer (Aldershot: Farnham, 2016), 103 – 118.

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Abb. 14. Altar and organ of Church of Grace in Jelenia Góra/Hirschberg in Silesia, (1724 – 1727, 1733). Photo: Romuald Sołdek.

In turn, new solutions in the realm of floor plans – such as differentiated variants of Greek crosses and polygons – would hardly have been possible without concrete Reformed inspiration, both the French Huguenot and the Netherlandish.⁴² However, the intentions behind choosing these concepts were of a different nature: they were not solely confessional, but also representational and strictly artistic. Examples include the Swedish royal commissions in Stockholm, designed by Jean de la Vallée: Catherine Church (1656 – 1695) as the Greek cross, and the octagonal Hedvig Eleonora Church (1669 – 1737), both crowned by a high dome. The scheme of the Greek cross itself, as a reception of Noorderkerk in Amsterdam (built by Hendrik de Keyser in 1620 – 1623), became widespread across German duchies particularly thanks to com Harasimowicz, Der Kirchenbau, 3 – 12.

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Abb. 15. Frauenkirche in Dresden (Georg Bähr, 1726 – 1743).Photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:100130_150006_Dresden_Frauenkirche_winter_blue_sky-2.jpg. CC BY-SA 3.0.

missions made by the Reformed rulers of Brandenburg and Anhalt, but also in those built for Lutherans (e. g., the Holy Trinity Church in Zerbst in Anhalt in 1683 – 1696, by the Dutch architect Cornelis Ryckwaert). During the next century, this type of floor plan culminated in such eminent concepts as the Frauenkirche in Dresden (built by Georg Bähr in 1726 – 1743 [Fig. 15]), which was praised by contemporaries not only because of its functionality, but also due to the homogeneity and clarity of its space. Furthermore, different variants of this scheme reached both the northern and the eastern peripheries of Lutheran Europe (e. g., in Slovakia, in Kežmarok in 1717 and in Hronsek in 1725 – 1726; and in Finland, in Kiiminki in 1760 and in Petä-

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Abb. 16. Church in Rennebu, Norway (1669). Photo: Anna Michalska.

jävesi in 1763 – 1765) and in some regions even became one of the prevailing solutions. Another scheme of increasing significance was the transverse rectangle church (Querkirche) with its sole liturgical center – the altar and the pulpit, put together and placed in the middle of one of its lateral sides. Admittedly, the pattern for this type is the Lutheran chapel of the castle at Stuttgart in Wurttemberg (built by Blasius Berwart in 1553 – 1560), yet the later development proceeded among the Reformed as a consequence of a doctrinally justified rejection of the traditional axis, which was subordinated to the fixed altar at the eastern closure. Nevertheless, since the late seventeenth century, and parallel to the rise of the Kanzelaltar, the Querkirche also became popular in Lutheran circles (e. g., in St. Salvator Church in Zellerfeld/Lower Saxony, built by Erich Hans Ernst in 1675 – 1683).⁴³ However, the search for innovative centralized layouts for the sermon as the focus of worship yielded many more spatial concepts – such as the letter-L plan (the so-called Winkelhakenkirche), which was applied in the newly established town of Freudenstadt in Wurttemberg, built by Heinrich Schickhardt in 1601– 1608; T-shaped edifices, as in Großenhain in Saxony, built by Johann Georg Schmidt in 1744– 1748; and the letter-Y plans, as seen, for example, in Rennebu in Norway in 1669 (Fig. 16).

 Mai, Tradition, 11– 26; Harasimowicz, Der Kirchenbau, 3 – 12.

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Abb. 17. Church of Peace in Świdnica/Schweidnitz in Silesia (1656 – 1657). Photo: Agnieszka SeidelGrzesińska.

Independently of those common tendencies, Lutheran ecclesiastical architecture was characterized by territorial differentiation. Particular concepts originated under special circumstances – among other situations, in the face of a need to defend confessional identity. Examples of this include the Churches of Peace (Friedenskirchen) in Silesia, built according to the outcomes of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) in the duchies directly under Catholic Habsburg rule: in Głogów/Glogau in 1652, in Jawor/ Jauer in 1654– 1655, and in Świdnica/Schweidnitz in 1656 – 1657 (Fig. 17). Though he faced rigorous restrictions in location, material, and form, independently of the diversity in their layouts, their architect Albrecht von Säbisch designed monumental timber-framed edifices, the latter of which was finally able to accommodate no less than 7,500 people. The substantial homogeneity of these spaces resulted from creatively modified French Huguenot and Dutch inspirations, and they were characterized by substantial democracy in their order of seats and accompanied by lavishly elaborate iconographic programs as signs of confessional self-expression, as opposed to the Catholic faith in the sovereign.⁴⁴

 Harasimowicz, “Evangelische Kirchenräume der frühen Neuzeit,” in Zwischen Gotteshaus und Taverne. Öffentliche Räume in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, eds. Susanne Rau and Gerd Schwerhoff, Norm und Struktur. Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit 21 (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2004), 413 – 45.

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In general, the evolution of Lutheran church architecture after the confessional age was marked by factors, including parallels to Reformed architecture and significant inspiration from Pietistic circles and their devotion, that increasingly lead toward spatial purity, as explicitly claimed by Leonhard Christoph Sturm. However, the Enlightenment and classical ideals of beauty had further consequences for this evolution, not solely with respect to the unity and clarity of church floor plans (which can be seen in both the liturgical and the social aspects of their arrangement), but also in an essential reduction of imagery and embellishment. This marked the path toward the present common understanding of a widespread topos of austerity, characterized by simplicity and whitewashed walls, which meant a complete retreat from the appearance of churches in the days of Martin Luther and the first generations of his followers.

7 Luther’s Influence on Secular Architecture The influence of Luther’s teaching on architecture involves not only ecclesiastical edifices, but also secular ones, both private and public, albeit in a limited way and mostly dating from the confessional age. First of all, it is a matter of confessional manifestations – whether undertaken through a pictorial or a scriptural medium, or both – mostly displayed on facades as “screens” opening onto public space, but also in interior décor. In accordance with Luther’s explicit advice to place “powerful quotations” from the Bible (kräftige Sprüche) on walls, inscriptions on cornices, friezes, and portals proved appropriate tools to convey these novel religious ideas. Since the early years of the Reformation, it was the motto “Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum” (“But the word of the Lord endures forever;” 1 Pet 1:25, Isa 40:8) that served as a notably explicit declaration. In addition to dozens of examples in church décor and furnishings (especially pulpits), this quotation – frequently reduced to its Latin initials VDMIAE – appears in the residences of territorial rulers (e. g., the dukes’ castle in Brzeg/Brieg in Silesia in 1551– 1553) as well as in town halls and burgher houses (e. g., the house “Under the Green Pumpkin” at Market Place 23 in Wrocław/Breslau in Silesia in 1541). In addition to this, a wide range of other quotations from the Bible, Luther’s catechism, and other writings by theologians found their places on the facades of burgher houses during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In some instances, they constituted a kind of scriptural “gallery,” presenting the key ideas of the renewed doctrine and piety – for example, in Osterwieck in Anhalt, testifying to the logocentric focus of the Reformation along with the sola scriptura principle.⁴⁵

 Klaus Thiele, “Osterwieck. Die Fachwerkstadt aus dem Reformationsjahrhundert,” in Osterwieck.

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Not only the word, but also the visual image on edifices as a distinct catechetical medium found its justification in Luther’s writings. “Yes, would to God that I could persuade the rich and the mighty that they would permit the whole Bible to be painted on houses, on the inside and outside, so that all can see it. That would be a Christian work,” wrote the reformer in his Against the Heavenly Prophets, on Images and Sacrament (1525). The purpose of decorations of that kind was primarily didactic, “for the sake of remembrance and better understanding, since they do no more harm on walls than in books,” as Luther noted. Moreover, as he stated, it is much better to represent biblical histories on walls “than to paint shameless worldly things.”⁴⁶ Accordingly, Old and New Testament depictions appear on walls, portals, window frames, and friezes, thus constituting the owner’s confession of faith, or even explicitly alluding to his conversion to the “pure and unchanged Gospel” – for example, in the relief scene of the Conversion of St. Paul in the Loitz house in Szczecin/Stettin in 1546. In turn, a comprehensive program of Old and New Testament scenes, focused mainly on ideas of salvation and justification, can be seen in the so-called “Biblical House” (Biblisches Haus) in Görlitz (built by Hans Kramer the Younger in 1570 – 1572). Wall paintings in interiors – along with various elements of décor, such as chimneys, tiles, or oven doors – could be equipped with bearers of confessional meaning, such as the “Allegory of Law and Grace” as the visual equivalent of the Lutheran teaching on the principle of sola gratia. Moreover, even elements of decoration such as monumental tapestries – which were often propagandistic instruments in the early modern period – might serve to convey these new ideas in an explicit way. A significant example is the so-called Croy Tapestry (Croy-Teppich, 1554), with two colligated ducal houses – Pomerania and Ernestine Saxony – listening to Luther’s preaching. Thanks to commissions of that kind, secular spaces could also transmit the legacy of the reformer.

8 Conclusion Although the Lutheran Reformation – in its various aspects – made a substantial impact on architecture, its influence was mixed with diverse cultural, artistic, social, and political factors. Independent of the significance of Luther’s attitude toward ecclesiastical buildings, changes to the liturgy and the new understanding of particular furnishings proved to be of crucial importance in this matter. Since the very beginning, the essential role may be ascribed to occurrences (e. g., early iconoclasm and

Die Fachwerkstadt aus dem Reformationsjahrhundert, ed. Klaus Thiele, Harz-Forschungen 26 (Berlin/ Wernigerode: Schloß Wernigerode, 2010), 9 – 73.  WA 18:83, 4; see also Margarete Stirm, Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, 45 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1977), 86. This English translation follows the text available at: http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/luther/temporary/againsten.html.

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the so-called Second Reformation) that, albeit sometimes indirectly, inspired concrete solutions resulting from the need to distance oneself from “heretical” practices. However, the role of other confessions was of crucial importance not solely in the sense of ardent discourse and concurrence, but also with respect to mutual inspiration, especially after the processes of confessionalization had been completed. In general, the ongoing changes mirror two substantial aspects that evolved over time: tradition –as “the preserving power of Lutheranism” (bewahrende Kraft des Luthertums) – versus innovation – which, at least in some cases and to some extent, may be comprehended in the sense of continuous reinterpretation of the reformer’s teaching.⁴⁷ Both of these aspects, although seemingly contradictory, still testify the idea of “renewal as selective tradition.”⁴⁸

 Mai, Tradition, 11– 26.  Wolfgang Brückner, Erneuerung als selektive Tradition. Kontinuationsfragen im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert aus dem Bereich der Konfessionellen Kultur, in Der Übergang zur Neuzeit und die Wirkung von Traditionen. Vorträge gehalten auf der Tagung der Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Hamburg am 13. und 14. Oktober 1977, Veröffentlichungen der Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Hamburg 32 (Göttingen, 1978), 55 – 78.

Maria Lucia Weigel

Martin Luther in Portraits 1 Introduction Martin Luther remains to the present day the most frequently depicted representative of Protestantism. Portraits of him are exclusively based on compositions that were created in the sixteenth century. All of them can be traced back to the portraits of the reformer from the Cranach workshop. Lucas Cranach the Elder, the court painter to the elector of Saxony, was personally acquainted with Luther and intimately familiar with the humanistic circles at the court of Wittenberg.¹ Cranach accompanied the reformer artistically through the phases of his public work by appropriately expressing in humanist-influenced portraits different theological and ecclesiastical statements that were linked with the person of Luther in public perception or were intended to be conveyed through portraiture. His son, Lucas Cranach the Younger, continued this work, even after the reformer’s death. Luther did not commission any portraits himself; the elector’s patronage and demand on the free market were both equally probable reasons for this production of images. In the century of their creation, the image types developed in Cranach’s Wittenberg workshop for portraits of Luther were considered authentic portraits of the reformer. The pictorial traditions that grew from these types are still important today.

2 Visual Rhetoric in Portraits of Luther The sixteenth-century beholder of a portrait appreciated the verisimilitude of the representation. However, this was related to other concepts than those dominant in the twenty-first century. In the humanistic understanding of a person, inscriptions provide the beholder with opportunities to gain insight beyond the image, revealing the nature and spirit of the person represented. It is generally argued that these manifested themselves solely in the written work and could not be represented as an image.² The beholder thus sees the image merely as a byproduct of the overall, intangible structure that is the object of the spiritual profile. The painted or engraved image

Translation from German: Tas Skorupa.  Edgar Bierende, Lucas Cranach d. Ä. und der deutsche Humanismus: Tafelmalerei im Kontext von Rhetorik, Chroniken und Fürstenspiegeln (Munich/Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2002), esp. 42 and 259 – 69.  First on the portrait medallion that Erasmus commissioned of himself; cf. Walther Ludwig, “Das bessere Bildnis des Gelehrten,ˮ Philologus 142 no. 1 (1998): 123 – 61, here 131– 33. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-061

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only shows the transient outer shell, according to the Neoplatonic understanding of the body, which recedes in comparison to the everlasting image of the mind. However, due to the mere existence of the work, both extremes are united in the work of art, since this is also a work of the mind.³ The work, as does the mind, lays claim to eternity and thus enables the subject to continue living in the image. Aspects of mimetic similarity also have their place in the sixteenth-century portrait. Ever since antiquity, nature had been the primary reference for any pictorial representation.⁴ In portraits of this period, the true-to-nature rendition of cloth and fur, three-dimensional space, and play of light increased a portrait’s verisimilitude and imparted authenticity to the subject.⁵ The portrayed person seems to be physically present for all eternity, as a counterpart with whom the beholder could conceivably engage in a dialogue, even over the temporal distance. Yet this closeness to nature as a reference value can also be related to other concepts. For example, the study of physiognomy, a tradition from antiquity that was popular in humanistic circles, offered the analysis of numerous facial features in which it was believed that the character of the person represented was directly reflected.⁶ Anatomical details were correspondingly emphasized, exaggerated, or staged with artistic means. A further possibility for expressing the true identity of the person depicted was to incorporate inscriptions, attributes, coats of arms, and the like.⁷ Starting in the sixteenth century, all the above-mentioned strategies were applied to the portraits of Luther that appeared in the context of and in parallel with

 Peter-Klaus Schuster, “Individuelle Ewigkeit: Hoffnungen und Ansprüche im Bildnis der Lutherzeit,” in Biographie und Autobiographie in der Renaissance. Arbeitsgespräch in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel von 1. bis 3. November 1982, ed. August Buck (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983), 121– 73, here 124.  Although here and there this could mean the appearance of immediacy and vigor, which did not necessarily include mimetic description of nature, but stood in a tense relationship with it. For late antiquity and the Renaissance, cf. Klaus Niehr, “ad vivum—al vif: Begriffs- und kunstgeschichtliche Anmerkungen zur Auseinandersetzung mit der Natur in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit,ˮ in Natur im Mittelalter. Konzeptionen—Erfahrungen—Wirkungen. Akten des 9. Symposiums des Mediävistenverbandes, Marburg, 14.–17. März 2001, ed. Peter Dilg (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 472– 85, here 477 and 484 f.  Cf. here and below, Christof Metzger, “Eine Glaubensfrage: Auf der Suche nach der Wahrheit im Bildnis der Dürerzeit,ˮ in Dürer—Cranach—Holbein: Die Entdeckung des Menschen. Das deutsche Porträt um 1500, ed. Sabine Haag, Christiane Lange, Christof Metzger, and Karl Schütz, exh. cat. Vienna and Munich (Munich 2011), 21– 47.  On the reception of popular, pseudo-Aristotelian physiognomy tractates in German art of the sixteenth century, cf. Ulrich Reißer, Physiognomik und Ausdruckstheorie der Renaissance: Der Einfluß charakterologischer Lehren auf Kunst und Kunsttheorie des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, Beiträge zur Kunstwissenschaft 69 (Munich: Scaneg, 1997), esp. 19 – 31 and 308 – 15; Christof Metzger, “ʻWie man den Menschen erkennen sollʼ: Neue Überlegungen zu den Charakterstudien Hans Schäufelins,ˮ Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien 12 (2010): 8 – 39, here 18 and 20 f.  Cf. Hans Belting, “Wappen und Porträt. Zwei Medien des Körpers,ˮ in Das Porträt vor der Erfindung des Porträts, ed. Martin Büchsel and Peter Schmidt (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2003), 89 – 100.

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the reformer’s literary reception.⁸ Portraits of him should be primarily viewed as artifacts to which an intention of portrayal is attached. This intention appears in the form of visual argumentation. Rooted in the humanistic understanding of images, the design concepts of the sixteenth-century Luther portraits are closely related to the strategies of rhetoric that have been passed down from antiquity.⁹ There are rhetorical figures in the work of art that take the form of visual topoi, which are meant to convince the viewer of specific messages. Picture motifs and ways of representation refer to contemporary theological, intellectual, and artistic discourse beyond the image. These situate the portraits of the reformer simultaneously within the network of relationships of patron, artist, and audience, thus providing evidence of the historical context in which the portraits were created and were to assert themselves. Based on the image types created in the Cranach workshop, which were produced in series and then promptly absorbed in many ways, image traditions emerged that have proved for centuries how important the prototypes were. The need to update the figure of the church founder in images in each era – and to thus keep it firmly anchored in the visual memory of the Protestant church – seems to be decisive. The constant updating of the memory of Luther in images also helped each era to find and demonstrate its own identity. Luther became a memorial figure.¹⁰ In the process, there were new contextualizations of the handed-down compositions, which in turn reflect how embedded they were in each contemporary discourse. These processes can be traced back to the first half of the sixteenth century using the reception history of Luther portraits from the Cranach workshop. While the reception of the first Luther portraits outside of Wittenberg served to establish the man who had interpreted the Bible in a new way, the adaptations of later portraits of the reformer were intended to consolidate the developing Protestant identity.¹¹

 Cf. Matthias Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit und konfessioneller Identitätsstiftung: Lutherische Kirchen- und Universalgeschichtsschreibung 1546 – 1617 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), esp. 100 – 07.  Cf. fundamental research on the connection between rhetoric, art theory, and art in the Renaissance: Rensselaer W. Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting,ˮ Art Bulletin 22 (1940), 197– 269; Nadja J. Koch, “Die Werkstatt des Humanisten: Zur produktionstheoretischen Betrachtungsweise der Künste in Antike und Früher Neuzeit,ˮ in Bildrhetorik, ed. Joachim Knape (Baden-Baden: Koerner Valentin, 2007), 161– 79; Ludwig, “Das bessere Bildnis,” 123 – 61; Lars Olof Larsson, “… Nur die Stimme fehlt!”: Porträt und Rhetorik in der Frühen Neuzeit (Kiel: Verlag Ludwig, 2012), esp. 27– 34.  On the concept of the memorial figure, which is central to cultural memory, cf. Jan Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, 7th ed. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2013), 52 f.  On the complex interdependence of confessionalization and art, cf. the concise overview in Judith Orschler, “Protestantische Lehr- und Erbauungsgraphik: Perspektiven der Erforschung konfessioneller Bilderwelten, Teil 1,ˮ Jahrbuch für Volkskunde, new ser., 20 (1997): 211– 44, here 215 f. and 224– 28. On the evaluation of Luther in the arising orthodoxy, cf. Robert Kolb, “Die Umgestaltung und theologische Bedeutung des Lutherbildes im späten 16. Jahrhundert,ˮ in Die lutherische Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland: Wissenschaftliches Symposion des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 1988, ed. Hans-Christoph Rublack (Gütersloh. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1992), 202– 31. Although Kolb observes

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This included segregation from other denominations just as much as self-reassurance among the different groups within Lutheranism. The aspect of the authenticity of the portrait – which seemed to be a feature of the Luther portraits of the Cranach workshop, in particular – also played an important role after the sixteenth century. Yet the original context and position of the portraits in contemporary discourse were not taken into account, or only partially so, and were replaced by new positions. The aspects that Cranach focused on in the Luther portraits – the monk inspired by the Holy Spirit; the preacher of the gospel; the authority of university teaching with regard to the implementation of the new doctrine; Luther as founder, father, and teacher of the church – were constantly changed or given new accents, even while returning to the patterns from the Cranach workshop: the promised prophet, the confessor and hero of the faith in the fight against the church of the pope as well as other denominations, and the national hero of the Germans. The new contextualization was the result of different attributes, added texts, the type of staging, or the place of presentation. Each Luther portrait was treated as a timeless icon, since the portraits emphasized the aspect of unchanged tradition rather than the circumstances of their creation. In the continuous image tradition, the continuity and authenticity of the Lutheranism that was presented pars pro toto in these portraits were asserted, especially in the turn against other movements within Lutheranism that used the same media strategies. The dissemination and reception of the Luther portraits from the Cranach workshop happened essentially through the medium of prints. This made large print-runs possible – larger in the technique of woodcuts than in copper engravings – and assured quick and prompt dissemination of the compositions. This also sped up reception, in which transformations and new contextualizations occurred. The Cranach workshop used these methods of distribution to make their own compositions, which started out as paintings, available to a broad audience.

3 Martin Luther in Portraits: A Chronological Overview In the following section, the most important portrait types that feature the likeness of the reformer in a single portrait will be presented. The primary criterion with regard to the selection of important types is the formation of an image tradition. Individual examples of the reception of sixteenth-century portraits – in their time and in later

in the arising orthodoxy a stepping back of the aspects of authoritative Bible exegete and counter-authority to those in the clerical hierarchy, in many cases these connotations remain alive in the image traditions, survive into the nineteenth century, and are even linked with Cranach’s portrait types, as is proven by the Luther monuments that will be discussed below.

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periods – thus complete the overview.¹² The intellectual discourse surrounding these developments, which is the premise for the reception and adaptation of these archetypes, can only be outlined schematically. Germany will be the focus of this overview, since this is where the various portrait types originated.

3.1 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luther Portrait Prints of the 1520s, and Their Reception The first Luther portraits that can be recognized in terms of physiognomy are from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder and feature a complex, humanist-influenced formal language. In 1520, the court painter of Saxony created a copper engraving of a portrait of Martin Luther as an Augustinian monk, which had been preceded by another engraving in three stages, only a few of which have survived (Fig. 1).¹³ The engraving shows the reformer in a half-length portrait with a tonsure and in a monk’s habit, facing the left, with an open book in his right hand and his left hand raised in a speaking gesture. Luther fills the image and is positioned in a shadowed niche, and below his figure there is a tablet that contains the date, the artist’s signature, and the following inscription: “AETHERNA IPSE SVAE MENTIS SIMVLACHRA LVTHERVS EXPRIMIT. AT VVLTVS CERA LVCAE OCCIDVOS.”¹⁴ Both the placement of this inscription on a tablet and the arched niche are citations from antiquity, as is the impossibility of depicting that which cannot be depicted, as suggested in the inscription; while the tablet is taken from the Roman cult of the dead, the niche refers to the way that honorary stat-

 The portrait of the reformer in different iconographic manifestations has been the subject of research since the early twentieth century. An overview of single-portrait representations is given in Christian Rietschel, (“Lutherbilder des 16. bis 19. Jahrhunderts,ˮ in Luther im Porträt: Druckgraphik 1550 – 1900, ed. Stadt Bad Oeynhausen, compiled by Klaus Harlinghausen, exh. cat. Bad Homburg (Marburg an der Lahn: Stadt Bad Oeynhausen, 1983), 5 – 20, with reference to older scholarship; and Rainer Sörries, “Die Ikonographie Martin Luthers: Der Reformator in der Kunst vom 16. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert,ˮ in ”Er fühlt der Zeiten ungeheuren Bruch und fest umklammert er sein Bibelbuch …”: Zum Lutherkult im 19. Jahrhundert, eds. Harry Eidam and Gerhard Seib, exh. cat. Mühlhausen and Erfurt (Berlin: Schelzky & Jeep, 1996), 23 – 53. A systematic analysis of Luther portraits of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries still needs to be done, as has been pointed out by Martin Treu in his foreword to Luther mit dem Schwan: Tod und Verklärung eines großen Mannes, ed. Lutherhalle Wittenberg in conjunction with Gerhard Seib, exh. cat. Wittenberg (Berlin 1996), 7 f., here 7. On Luther portraits from the Cranach workshop, cf. Martin Warnke, Cranachs Luther: Entwürfe für ein Image (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1984); and Cranach, Luther und die Bildnisse, ed. Günter Schuchardt, exh. cat. Wartburg and Eisenach (Regensburg, 2015), with a look at their reception in the twentieth century. An overview of the portrait types on medallions and coins is given by Hugo Schnell, Martin Luther und die Reformation auf Münzen und Medaillen (Munich: Klinkhardt, 1983).  Cf. Warnke, Cranachs Luther, 24– 27.  “Luther expresses the enduring nature of his spirit himself, but his mortal features come from the wax of Lucas.” Regarding the German translation, see Ludwig, “Das bessere Bildnis,” 134.

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Figure. 1 Lucas Cranach d. Ä., Martin Luther als Mönch (1520). Copper engraving, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

ues were displayed in public spaces. At the same time, it refers to the traditional ways of representing Christian saints. In this way, it not only addresses the audience’s conventions of perception, but it also places Luther in this image tradition. The inscription also makes reference to antiquity: the wax refers both to wax portraits in the Roman cult of death and to the wax-covered writing tablets of antiquity, which

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the artist claims to be drawing on.¹⁵ In response to Dürer’s portrait of Luther’s opponent, Albrecht of Brandenburg, Cranach himself also created a portrait of the cardinal using the new technique of copper engraving, which does not show him in a very flattering light.¹⁶ He then juxtaposed this portrait with another that shows Luther filled with inspiration. This type of portrait politics must have been sanctioned by the elector; it contributed to wider approval of Luther, and not only at the university in Wittenberg. Cranach’s Luther portrait of 1520 spread quickly and as far as southern Germany. In Augsburg, several adaptations were published as front-pages of the editions of Luther’s trials, which were printed in conjunction with the Diet of Worms, and other writings by Luther.¹⁷ In these images, Cranach’s Luther is laterally reversed, positioned among antique architecture that recedes in depth. The simple niche of the prototype is thus expanded to suggest antiquity, the reception of which was especially cultivated in Augsburg. The ornament on the pillars imitates in detail the Roman architectural decoration that had been passed down by Italian painters.¹⁸ Luther is staged as a humanist, which he could be considered due to his translation of the Bible with the help of philological methods developed by the humanists. He thus became a leading figure in the reformation movement that was propagated by humanists within the Catholic Church.¹⁹ One year after Cranach’s portrait print was published, a woodcut adaptation by the Strasbourg artist Hans Baldung, known as Grien, was created; this image is also laterally reversed (Fig. 2). Instead of an arched niche, there is a halo, and over Luther’s head flies the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Although the woodcut was already in circulation,²⁰ it also figures as the title page in Acta et res gestae D. Martini Lutheri, a pamphlet on the events that befell Luther at the Diet of Worms in 1521. This report was published in Strasbourg while the diet was still going on. Baldung sympathized with the reformation movement, and it is possible that his composition in-

 Cf. Ludwig, “Das bessere Bildnis,” 134 f.  Cf. Warnke, Cranachs Luther, 20 – 22.  Cf. here and below, Ilonka van Gülpen, Der deutsche Humanismus und die frühe ReformationsPropaganda 1520 – 1526: Das Lutherporträt im Dienst der Bildpublizistik (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms, 2002), 277– 79. Cf. also the compilation of reuse and multiple use of this image type in Robert W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 263 – 65.  Cf. Claudia Baer, Die italienischen Bau- und Ornamentformen in der Augsburger Kunst zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993), 163 and 166; on humanism as the cause, see 302 f.  On the economy of Luther representations in humanistic circles, cf. Thomas Kaufmann, Der Anfang der Reformation, Studien zur Kontextualität der Theologie, Publizistik und Inszenierung Luthers und der reformatorischen Bewegung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 269. On further examples of images that position Luther in the humanistic context, cf. Warnke, Cranachs Luther, 53 – 56.  Cf. Gülpen, Der deutsche Humanismus, 287– 91.

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Figure 2 Hans Baldung, gen. Grien, Martin Luther mit Heiligenschein und Geisttaube (1521). Woodcut, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg

tended to stage Luther as a saint of the Reformation.²¹ Corresponding to the audience’s expectations, Baldung used a visual vocabulary adapted from the iconography of Catholic saints. Luther is characterized as an interpreter of the Bible who is inspired by the Holy Spirit, chosen by God in his task, and oriented toward the gospel. An inscription above the scene was added for the 1523 edition of a collection of Luther’s sermons and confirms what the image shows: “Martinus Luther ein dyener Jhesu Christi / und ein wideruffrichter Christlicher leer” (Martin Luther a servant of Jesus Christ / and restorer of Christian doctrine). This reflects the topos of glad tidings, which were lost in the Catholic Church, used for propaganda purposes. Ritual veneration of images of this type by worshipers is documented.²² A copper engraving of 1521 by Lucas Cranach the Elder shows Luther in a tightly framed bust format, shown in profile facing left, wearing a monk’s habit and a doctoral hat (Fig. 3). A superimposed inscription reads: “LVCAE OPVS EFFIGIES HAEC EST MORITVRA LVTHERI AETHERNAM MENTIS EXPRIMIT IPSE SVAE.”²³ Cranach

 Cf. Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, ed. Werner Hofmann, exh. cat. Hamburg (Munich, 1983), 153 f. However, Gülpen emphasizes the blasphemous content of the image, which was intended to provoke conservative circles.  Paul Kalkoff, Die Depeschen des Nuntius Aleander vom Wormser Reichstage 1521, 2nd rev. ed. (Halle, 1897), 58. Although the woodcut by Baldung is not explicitly mentioned, the venerated Luther pictures have the same iconography; cf. Gülpen, Der deutsche Humanismus, 241 f.  “Lucas’s work is this mortal image of Luther; he expresses the immortal effigy of his spirit himself.” Cf. Ludwig, “Das bessere Bildnis,” 135, for the German translation. The author is probably Spalatin; cf. Gülpen, Der deutsche Humanismus, 151.

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Figure 3 Lucas Cranach d. Ä., Martin Luther mit Doktorhut (1521). Copper engraving, Melanchthonhaus Bretten

positioned the interpreter of the Bible in the context of and with the means of scholarly communication. This included references to the ancient treatises of physiognomics in the representation of physiognomic details. The bulge over his eyebrows marks him as a man of action; like the lock of hair that emerges from under his hat, it is also linked to the anatomic equivalent on the head of a lion.²⁴ The depiction in pro-

 Cf. Wolfgang Holler, “Kat. Nr. 48: Lucas Cranach d. Ä., Profilbildnis Luthers als Augustinermönch

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file dates from the coins of antiquity and was popular in humanistic circles north of the Alps as a timeless style of representation removed from the perils of everyday life, thus ennobling the sitter.²⁵ The block-like shape of the figure emphasizes the immutability of Luther’s doctrines: the argument is turned into an image that stands for the legitimacy of his work and his courage to carry it out.²⁶ It is presumed that the portrait was created in connection with Luther’s refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms for an audience interested in the reform of the Church and also educated in humanism. A copper engraving created by the Augsburg artist Daniel Hopfer in 1523 is an example of the kind of copying of Cranach’s composition that quickly happened in other parts of the German Empire.²⁷ Hopfer’s laterally reversed adaptation of the Cranach engraving can be understood in the spirit of competitive emulation and erudite artistic commentary. Luther’s head now has an aureole, and the inscription in German Fraktur reads: “Des lutters gestalt mag wol verderbenn / sein christlich gemiet wirt nymer sterben” (The likeness of Luther may well decay / but his Christian soul will never die), followed by the year. Hopfer popularized the image by adding the halo from the tradition of representing Catholic saints and by translating the Latin inscription into German. Unlike the original, Luther’s soul is explicitly indicated as Christian here. This intentional deviation from the original can be read as a reference to the promotion of German identity, as was later explained with regard to Ulrich von Hutten. In this case, Luther would be staged as the German reformer who stood up against the Roman Church of the pope.

mit Doktorhut, 1521,ˮ in Cranach in Weimar, ed. Wolfgang Holler and Karin Kolb, exh. cat. Weimar, (Dresden, 2015), 81.  Cf. Schuster, “Individuelle Ewigkeit,” 127, and Johannes Helmrath, “Bildfunktionen der antiken Kaisermünze in der Renaissance oder Die Entstehung der Numismatik aus der Faszination der Serie,ˮ in Zentren und Wirkungsräume der Antike-Rezeption: Zur Bedeutung von Raum und Kommunikation für die neuzeitliche Transformation der griechisch-römischen Antike, eds. Kathrin Schade, Detlef Rößler, and Alfred Schäfer (Münster: Scriptorium, 2007), 77– 97.  This is how the portrait is interpreted in art history; cf. Warnke, Cranachs Luther, 46 – 48. On the representation of corporality in Luther portraits as a visual strategy, cf. the interesting approach taken by Lyndal Roper, Der feiste Doktor. Luther, sein Körper und seine Biographen, trans. Karin Wördemann (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 15 – 23.  Cf. Günter Schuchardt, “Katalog—Teil 1,ˮ in Cranach, Luther und die Bildnisse, 53 – 137, here 82 and 83 (ill.).

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3.2 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Paintings and Prints of Luther as Junker Jörg at the Beginning of the 1520s, and Their Reception in Printmaking Martin Luther was kidnapped by sympathizers after attending the Diet of Worms and taken to Wartburg Castle; he returned to Wittenberg in February 1522. Lucas Cranach the Elder accompanied the reformer artistically in this situation, as well; it is possible that the compositional concept was created during Luther’s short visit to Wittenberg in December 1521. It served as the prototype for several painted versions. One of these shows Luther as a half figure with his right hand raised in a gesture of speech (Fig. 4).²⁸ These were the first painted portraits of Luther (not counting several paintings that are based on the portrait engravings of 1520 and 1521 and are difficult to date). A woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder shows Junker Jörg in a tightly framed half-length portrait bust against the sky.²⁹ To disguise his identity, Luther had not only shed his monk’s habit, but he also grew a beard and let his hair grow out. The change in his external appearance, which was initially imposed upon Luther, defied the Church’s rules for clerics and was interpreted by Luther himself as an act of protest against the Church’s laws and a step towards evangelical freedom.³⁰ Luther, who wears a doublet and sword in the painted versions, is staged as a soldier of Christ, like Saint George (Jörg in German) against the dragon – the Church of the pope.³¹ The three types of Luther portraits discussed thus far were used until the nineteenth century as memorial figures. In 1572, they appeared together in Veit Thiem’s triptych, known as the Lutherschrein, in the Stadtkirche in Weimar.³² Cranach’s Luther portraits also served as models here.³³ An adaption of this composition is bound in the Reformation Almanac published by Friedrich Keyser in Erfurt in 1817.³⁴ Luther is memorialized in a breakdown of the portrait types following the stages of his biography. These stand for different aspects of his career, as already laid out in the Cranach images, and are condensed into the image of a memorial figure: inspired interpreter of the Bible and fighter for the cause of Christ, as well as teaching authority and church founder.

 Cf. Günter Schuchardt, “Privileg und Monopol—Die Lutherporträts der Cranach-Werkstatt,ˮ in Cranach, Luther und die Bildnisse, 24– 52, here 33.  Cf. Schuchardt, “Katalog—Teil 1”, 90, 91 (ill.).  Cf. Ute Mennecke, “Luther als Junker Jörg,ˮ Luj (2012), 79. Jg., 63 – 99, here 79.  Cf. Mennecke, “Luther als Junker Jörg,ˮ 65n9.  Cf. Helga Hoffmann, Das Weimarer Luthertriptychon von 1572. Sein konfessionspolitischer Kontext und sein Maler Veit Thiem (Langenweißbach/Erfurt: Beier & Beran, 2015), ill. 1, n.p.  On the representation of the monk with a belt loop and a closed book, cf. Schuchardt, “Privileg und Monopol,ˮ 37.  Reformations-Almanach für Luthers Verehrer auf das evangelische Jubeljahr 1817, ed. Friedrich Keyser (Erfurt, 1817).

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Figure 4 Lucas Cranach d. Ä., Martin Luther als Junker Jörg (1522). Oil on wood, Klassik Stiftung Weimar

3.3 Half-Length Portraits of Martin Luther Wearing a Robe and Beret from the Cranach Workshop, Beginning in the Mid-1520s, and Their Reception in Printmaking After shedding his monk’s frock in the fall of 1524, Luther appears bare-headed in painted portraits in bust or half-length format and in three-quarter profile. On the occasion of Luther’s marriage to Katharina von Bora, the Cranach workshop produced four series of painted double portraits between 1525 and 1529, of

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Figure 5 Lucas Cranach d. Ä., Doppelbildnis Martin Luther und Katharina von Bora (1529). Tempera and oil on wood, Melanchthonhaus Bretten

which individual examples could be displayed as diptychs in folding frames or as portrait medallions (Fig. 5).³⁵ These double portraits can be understood as visual statements against the priestly practices of celibacy and concubinage, visualizing the ideal image of Christian marriage. In the series produced beginning in 1528, Luther wears a black beret. This type of image of the church father and representative of the “New Church” established a tradition of composition that continues into the present. It is also used in the double portraits of Luther and Philipp Melanchthon that were produced in the Cranach workshop in a series beginning in 1532, possibly in connection with the Diet of Augsburg in 1530.³⁶ The oeuvre of the Soest artist Heinrich Aldegrever shows evidence of print reception based on the painted Cranach models, which in turn have their own history of reception (Fig. 6). The copper engraving of 1540 shows Luther in half-length format against a dark, hatched background behind a framed inscription tablet with the year it was created and the following text: “ASSERVIT CHRISTVM DIVINA VOSE LVTHERVS CVLTIBVS OPPRESSAM RESTITVITQVE FIDEM ILLIVS ABSENTIS VVLTV

 Cf. Schuchardt, “Privileg und Monopol,ˮ 38 – 42.  Cf. Schuchardt, “Privileg und Monopol,ˮ 42– 45, esp. 44.

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Figure 6 Heinrich Aldegrever, Martin Luther (1540). Copper engraving, Melanchthonhaus Bretten

HAEC DEPINGIT IMAGO PRAESENTE MELIVS CERNERE NEMO POTEST. MARTINVS LVTHERVS.” Over Luther’s head, the unshaded text area – which, in the spirit of suggesting spatial depth, is overlapped by his beret – contains the inscription: “IACTA CVRAM TVAM IN DOMINVM ET IPSE TE ENVTRIET.”³⁷ As early as 1530, a prototype

 “Luther came to Christ’s defense with his divine words and restored the faith that had been pressured by ritual customs. This image shows his face, while he is far away; if he were here, nobody could see him better. Martin Luther.” “Throw your worries on the Lord, and he will feed you.” For

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from the Cranach workshop served the Nuremberg artist Jörg Pencz as a model for his Luther portrait. This could have been used by Aldegrever as a prototype.³⁸ In both cases, a portrait of Melanchthon would have been the counterpart. Aldegrever’s monogram over Luther’s left shoulder is based on Dürer’s monogram.³⁹

3.4 Half-Length Painted Portraits of Martin Luther from the Cranach Workshop of the Type Showing Him as an Old Man, Beginning in the 1530s, and Their Reception in Printmaking The half-length type of portrait showing the reformer wearing a robe and beret was followed by the equally popular, last portrait type to be created during Luther’s lifetime, which also shows him half-length and dressed in a black robe, but now bareheaded, with gray hair and a red doublet, holding a book in his hands. This type is found beginning in 1539, in paintings from the Cranach workshop, which by that time was probably led by Lucas Cranach the Younger.⁴⁰ Following Luther’s death, he was promoted in the medium of prints, which were disseminated quickly in a more tightly framed composition. These developed into a compositional tradition – with various new contextualizations – that has continued into the present. Melchior Lorck adapted this type in a copper engraving of 1548 (Fig. 7).⁴¹ Luther is shown behind a lectern, beside which a half-hidden inkwell is positioned. A tableau of books in the front foreground features prominently in the composition. A letter with a handwritten address and the Luther rose in a coat of arms complete the scene, along with two Latin inscriptions at the upper left and a polemical verse in Latin, aimed at the pope. The second of the inscriptions includes Luther’s dates of birth and death and his place of burial, while the first makes a reference to the “gelehrte Hand” (skilled hand) mentioned in the copperplate portrait of Melanchthon made by Dürer in 1526: “Imprimit haec formam viventis imago Lutheri / Mentem nulla potest pingere docta manus. / At quanta fueris pietate, labore, fideq the German translations of both inscriptions, cf. Klaus Kösters, “Bilderstreit und Sinnenlust (Teil 1): Der Kampf um den rechten Glauben und die Druckgraphik,ˮ in Bilderstreit und Sinnenlust: Heinrich Aldegrever (1502 – 2002), ed. Klaus Kösters and Reimer Möller im Auftrag der Stadt Soest und des Landschaftsverbandes Westfalen-Lippe, exh. cat. Soest, Lippstadt, and Unna (Unna, 2002), 15 – 32, here 31n26.  Cf. Eckhard Schaar, “Kat. Nr. 5: Heinrich Aldegrever, Martin Luther, 1540,ˮ in Köpfe der Lutherzeit, ed. Werner Hofmann, exh. cat. Hamburg (Munich, 1983), 46, 47 (ill.); on Pencz’s engraving cf. Eckhard Schaar, “Kat. Nr. 105: Georg Pencz, Martin Luther, 1530,ˮ in Köpfe der Lutherzeit, 236, 237 (ill.).  Cf. Schuchardt, “Katalog—Teil 1,ˮ 114.  Here and below, cf. Schuchardt, “Privileg und Monopol,ˮ 45 f., and Schuchardt, “Katalog—Teil 1,ˮ 116 f.  On Lorck’s Luther portrait, cf. here and below, Bernd Schäfer, Wahre abcontrafactur: Martin Luther und bedeutende seiner Zeitgenossen im grafischen Porträt des 16. Jahrhunderts, exh. cat. Gotha (Gotha, 2010), 68 (ill.) and 69, and Schuchardt, “Katalog—Teil 1,ˮ 126 f.

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Figure 7 Melchior Lorck, Martin Luther am Schreibpult (1548). Copper engraving, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg

[ue]. / Cernitur ex scriptis, sancte Luthere, tuis.”⁴² Lorck based the composition of his engraving on Dürer’s portrait engraving of Erasmus of Rotterdam from 1526, which he

 “This image shows the features of the living Luther. Not even an adept hand can paint his mind. And how great you were in terms of piety, labors, and faith, will be evident from your writings, Saint Luther.” For the German translation, cf. Susanne Skowronek, Autorenbilder: Wort und Bild in den Porträtkupferstichen von Dichtern und Schriftstellern des Barock (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000), 61. On the inscription in Dürer’s engraving of Melanchthon, cf. Rudolf Preimesberger, “Albrecht Dürer: Das Dilemma des Porträts, epigrammatisch (1526),ˮ in Porträt, eds. Rudolph Preimesberger, Hannah Baader, and Nicola Suthor Geschichte der klassischen Bildgattungen in Quellentext-

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cited and varied in the spirit of competitive emulation. In the interpretation of this print, the personal statement of the scholar – who called himself the second Saint Jerome, making reference to his own work as a translator of this Christian scholar – is always pointed out. This image tradition is flanked by several earlier prints by Dürer showing Saint Jerome in his study, which also contains a tableau of books. By quoting the famous Erasmus portrait, Lorck is transferring Dürer’s interpretation onto the figure of Luther. It now plays the role of a portrait of the reformer as the second Jerome. At the same time, the artist handles the known humanistic topos of the impossibility of depicting the spirit in an image. In Lorck’s composition, as in the one by Dürer, the tableau of books refers to the possibility of portraying the spirit in the form of his own writings.

3.5 Full-Length Portraits of Luther from the Cranach Workshop and Their Reception in Sixteenth-century Printmaking At the behest of Elector Johann Friedrich of Saxony, known as Johann the Magnanimous, Luther was buried in the Schlosskirche (Castle Church) in Wittenberg in a pit tomb, with various epitaphs displayed nearby in chronological order. Shortly after Luther’s death, the elector probably commissioned a bronze epitaph that showed Luther in full length, wearing a robe, and holding a closed book in his hands, following a composition by the Cranach workshop.⁴³ The bronze panel was transferred to Jena due to the political situation. As a replacement for Wittenberg, a now-lost painted epitaph was commissioned from the Cranach workshop by the university. It showed Luther life-size in a rounded niche, wearing a robe and holding a closed book in his hand, as is documented by a painting from the Cranach workshop based on the original (Fig. 8). The epitaph painting was displayed on a column next to the pulpit.⁴⁴ In the painting, Luther turns toward the congregation and the pulpit, with his gaze focused on the preacher, who proclaims God’s word as a follower of Luther. As a teaching authority, the reformer also stood for the founding of the New Church. The bronze panel in its prestigious position in Jena was well received in printmaking in precise reproductions of the inscription, as was the painted, full-length portrait.⁴⁵ In the year of Luther’s death, in addition to the woodcut showing the re-

en und Kommentaren, ed. Kunsthistorisches Institut der Freien Universität Berlin 2 (Berlin, 1999), 220 – 227, here 220.  Cf. here and below, Arwed Arnulf, “Luthers Epitaphien: Die Luther-Memoria, ihre konfessionspolitische Inanspruchnahme, Veränderung und Rezeption: Epitaphgestaltung im Umfeld der Wittenberger Universität,ˮ Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 38 (2011): 75 – 112; on the bronze panel, 6 (ill.), 81.  Cf. Arnulf, “Luthers Epitaphien,” 92– 94.  On the reception of the bronze grave panel in printmaking, cf. Otto Kammer, “Non Cultus sed Memoriae causa—zum Gedächtnis des hochwürdigen Mannes: Ein Blick auf die Vorgeschichte der Lu-

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Figure 8 Lucas Cranach d. J., Werkstatt, Martin Luther in Ganzfigur (after 1546). Oil on wood, Schwerin, Staatliches Museum

former in half length, the Cranach workshop also published a woodcut showing the full figure of Luther.⁴⁶ This print was also absorbed and given new contexts of meaning. In addition to the original connotation of Luther as a doctor and founder of the church, others were added. The reception of the full-length portrait of Luther painted therdenkmäler,ˮ in Luther mit dem Schwan, 33 – 61, here 35 f. The painted full-length portrait is reproduced in printed form, facing the left, opposite 76 in Just Schöpffer, Unverbrandter Luther oder historische Erzählung von D.Martin Luthern und dessen im Feuer erhaltenen Bildnissen. Erster Theil (Zerbst, 1765).  Cf. Arnulf, “Luthers Epitaphien,” 94, fig. 17.

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on parchment in the so-called Cranach-Stammbuch (Cranach family album) of 1543 did not begin until a new, illustrated edition was published in the nineteenth century.⁴⁷ Following Melanchthon’s death in 1560, his tomb in the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg was also fitted with a full-length portrait from the Cranach workshop. Both reformers together represented the New Church and the legitimacy of their teaching at the place of its founding. This is also reflected in the many prints, mostly memorial sheets, that were produced up until the nineteenth century. The combination of the two Reformers had a programmatic character in the sixteenth century, especially in the context of the discussions within the Protestant Church.⁴⁸ Luther’s appearance as part of the cycle of time that was experienced as the history of salvation had already begun before his death, stemming from the reformer’s own self-designation in this role, but after his death, its propagandistic aims became stronger.⁴⁹ This apocalyptic aspect is occasionally reflected in prints of Luther’s portrait after the sixteenth century by the addition of wings and trumpets to full-length images of the reformer, identifying him as the angel of the apocalypse. The epithets “promised prophet”, “apostle”, and “third Elijah,” which were also used during his lifetime and increasingly after his death, were not seen in the repertoire of images, but were communicated in the form of text.⁵⁰ Starting in the early seventeenth century, the full-length Luther is sometimes identified by the attribute of a swan.⁵¹ Before he was burned at the stake, the Bohemian theologian Jan Hus is said to have called himself, following the meaning of his name, a weak goose who was not capable of higher achievements. His fellow sufferer, Jerome of Prague, is said to have admonished his judges, stating that they would be called to account before the throne of God after one hundred years. Luther was

 Christian von Mechel, ed., Lucas Cranachs Stammbuch, enthaltend die von ihm selbst in Miniatur gemalte Abbildung des den Segen ertheilenden Heilandes und die Bildnisse der vorzüglichsten Fürsten und Gelehrten aus der Reformations-Geschichte (Berlin, 1814).  On the tension-filled theological and intellectual reception of both Reformers in the sixteenth century, cf. the volume from the conference Memoria – theologische Synthese – Autoritätenkonflikt: Die Rezeption Luthers und Melanchthons in der Schülergeneration, ed. Irene Dingel, with the collaboration of Andrea Hofmann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), with a complete bibliography.  On Luther’s own position in the history of salvation, cf. Hans Preuss, Martin Luther: Der Prophet (Gütersloh. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1933), 36 – 58, 96 – 131. On the apocalyptic component, cf. Thomas Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, Lutherischer Protestantismus in der zweiten Hälfte des Reformationsjahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 22, 33 – 66. This type of interpretation did not lose popularity until the end of the seventeenth century; cf. Wolfgang Sommer, “Luther – Prophet der Deutschen und der Endzeit,ˮ in Zeitenwende—Zeitenende: Beiträge zur Apokalyptik und Eschatologie, ed. Wolfgang Sommer (Stuttgart/ Berlin/Cologne: Kohlhammer, 1997), 109 – 28, here 109.  Cf. Sommer, “Luther,” 110 f. On the intellectual background, cf. Robert Kolb, “Die Umgestaltung,” 202– 31, and on the representation in images, cf. Preuss, Martin Luther, 67– 71; 68 f. on the representations on medallions whose inscriptions declare Luther a prophet, but for lack of space do not show him in full figure; 103 – 05 on his designation as an apostle.  Cf. Jutta Strehle, “Luther mit dem Schwan,ˮ in Luther mit dem Schwan, 81– 118.

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aware of these statements; he had called himself a follower of Hus for the first time in conjunction with the Leipzig disputation in 1519 and had interpreted himself as the swan, following a topos of ancient literature and also fulfilling the prophecy of the Bohemians.⁵² Divine support of the Lutheran cause is proven by the fulfillment of this prophecy, thus legitimizing Luther in the dimension of the history of salvation against the background of growing confessional escalations. Beginning in the early seventeenth century, prints often combined the full-length representation of Luther with the interior of a study, in the tradition of Saint Jerome.⁵³ Around 1580, Wolfgang Stuber had already quoted Dürer’s famous composition of Saint Jerome in his study, now with Luther at his lectern.⁵⁴ The interior and its furnishings are related to the content of Dürer’s version of the portrait of Jerome, also in the full-length depiction of Luther. The images from the 1520s showing Luther at his desk with the Holy Spirit in the form of a bird flying over his head also belong to this category; they are in the tradition of the representations of the evangelists.⁵⁵ The eulogies held on the occasion of Luther’s death had the decisive result that the figure of the reformer was linked with his homeland, although there was no consistent reference to the humanistic utopia of a national state.⁵⁶ This is seen in the topos of Luther as the prophet of the Germans, who ranked among the prophets of the Old Testament, made statements about the future destiny of Germany, and encouraged conversion in the light of the coming Judgment Day. Many prophetic texts involving Luther appeared at the end of the sixteenth century in the context of apocalyptic interpretations of the present. This topos was still thriving in the seventeenth century. It was used again in German histories written in the nineteenth century, without the apocalyptic context. Another aspect of the national component was reflected visually – not in its own image type, but suggested in accompanying inscriptions – in a flyer of 1520 that was produced in reaction to the freedom treatise

 Cf. Friedrich Goethe, “So wurde der Schwan zum Luther-Emblem,ˮ in Luther mit dem Schwan, 62– 65; and Strehle, “Luther mit dem Schwan,ˮ 81; as well as the recent article by Martin Treu, “Die Gans und der Schwan: Martin Luther und Jan Hus im Vermächtnis der Bilder,ˮ Luther (2016): 87. Jg., H, 127– 41, here 133 f.  Cf. Grit Jacobs, “Widerhall und Kontinuität – Ein Blick auf die Lutherporträts vom späten 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart,ˮ in Cranach, Luther und die Bildnisse, 138 – 61, here 146 f.  Cf. Peter-Klaus Schuster, “Kat. Nr. 82: Wolfgang Stuber (zugeschrieben), Martin Luther als Hl. Hieronymus im Gehäuse, um 1580,ˮ in Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, 208, with fig. 82.  On Luther’s self-designation as an evangelist, cf. Preuss, Martin Luther, 102; 70 on his representation as Saint Luke. On the representation of Luther as Saint Matthew, cf. Peter-Klaus Schuster, “Kat. Nr. 28: Lucas Cranach der Ältere, Luther als Evangelist Matthäus, 1530,ˮ in Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, 154, with fig. 28.  Cf. Robert Kolb, “Die Umgestaltung,” 204 f.; and below, Sommer, “Luther,” 111– 27. On the humanistic concept of a German national state, cf. Caspar Hirschi, “Vorwärts in neue Vergangenheiten: Funktionen des humanistischen Nationalismus in Deutschland,ˮ in Funktionen des Humanismus: Studien zum Nutzen des Neuen in der humanistischen Kultur, ed. Thomas Maissen and Gerrit Walther (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 363 – 95, with reference to older literature.

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Oratio ad Carolum maximum Augustum et Germanos Principes by Ulrich von Hutten.⁵⁷ Here the monk Luther is shown in a half-length adaption of Cranach’s copperplate portrait of 1520 opposite Hutten as a Bible exegete, with both men interpreted as defenders of the gospel and of the fatherland. The title page of Hutten’s Gesprächbüchlin (Conversation Booklet), published in January 1521, in the framework of rich iconography and with similar intent, shows the monk as a full figure directly opposite the knight. Luther presents a closed book that the viewer can assume is the gospel.⁵⁸ Hutten’s intention to link Luther to the humanist-influenced national movement was based less on the content of Luther’s teaching than on his anti-Roman stance and his quality as an interpreter of Holy Scripture.⁵⁹ These aspects form the intellectual basis of the images of the nineteenth century, without creating individual image types.⁶⁰ They are reflected in two noteworthy monument projects, which, in turn, had their own history of reception.

3.5.1 Full-Length Luther after Cranach in Nineteenth-century Monuments The Luther portrait appeared in the nineteenth century in connection with new genres, of which the full-figure monument was one of the most artistically innovative. Reserved for nobility and military leaders until the eighteenth century, the way for the representation of commoners was cleared with the first Luther monument in a public space, created by Johann Gottfried Schadow in 1821 for the market square in Wittenberg (Fig. 9).⁶¹ The project was initiated in 1803 with a call for designs for a Luther monument by the Vaterländisch-literarischen Gesellschaft (National Literary Society) in Mansfeld.⁶² The king of Prussia had assumed patronage of the proj-

 Cf. here and below Gülpen, Der deutsche Humanismus, 244– 55 and 461, fig. 48.  Cf. Gülpen, Der deutsche Humanismus, 255 – 59, 462, fig. 49.  Cf. Gülpen, Der deutsche Humanismus, 300 f. and 318, on the same accentuation in Michael Stifel, who for his paper Von der Christförmigen, rechtgegründten leer Doctoris Martini Lutheri, which was published in the early 1520s in Strasbourg, adapted the full-length type of Luther as a monk from Hutten’s conversation book.  Cf. Sörries, “Die Ikonographie Martin Luthers,” 29 – 35, and Martin Scharfe, “Nach-Luther: Zu Form und Bedeutung der Luther-Verehrung im 19. Jahrhundert,ˮ in ”Er fühlt der Zeiten ungeheuren Bruch,” 11– 21. On the anchoring of the national image of Luther in the educated German bourgeoisie and the legitimization of the Protestant emperorship by means of the national hero Luther, cf. Henrike Holsing, “Luther – Gottesmann und Nationalheld: Sein Image in der deutschen Historienmalerei des 19. Jahrhunderts” (PhD diss., Universität zu Köln, 2004), 169 – 226, available at: http://kups.ub. uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/2132.  For a concise typology and sources on the Luther monument in general, cf. the article by Ruth Slenczka, “Luther in der Kunst,ˮ in Das Luther-Lexikon, ed. Volker Leppin and Gury Schneider-Ludorff, with the collaboration of Ingo Klitzsch (Regensburg: Bückle & Böhm, 2014), 396 – 402, here 400 – 02, with reference to older literature.  Here and below, Mario Titze, “Preußen und Luther: Zwei Luther-Denkmale des 19. Jahrhunderts in Wittenberg,ˮ Denkmalpflege in Sachsen-Anhalt 4 no. 1 (1996): 62– 74.

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Figure 9 Johann Gottfried Schadow, Lutherdenkmal Wittenberg (1821). Detail (phto: Weigel)

ect, and following the Wars of Liberation, he took over the project completely and asserted his role as the protector of the Evangelical Christians. In this spirit, he relocated the Luther monument to Wittenberg, the place of the reformer’s activities. He staged himself politically twofold with a confession that spanned the times by having Luther shown as a translator acknowledging the Bible. A standing figure was cast in bronze, showing the full-length Luther wearing university robes under a Neogothic baldachin. In his left hand, he holds an open book containing texts from the Old and New Testaments, with the inscription “verdeutscht von Doktor Martin Luther” (translated into German by Dr. Martin Luther). The reformer’s gaze seems to meet that of the beholder standing below him, with his right hand lying on the book and pointing to its text. Luther, here presented as a translator of the Bible in the

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Figure 10 Ernst Rietschel, Lutherdenkmal Worms (1868). Detail (photo: Weigel)

place where he worked, was raised to a national level in the context of the monument’s creation. The confessional drive was even more apparent in the multiple-figure Luther monument that was inaugurated in Worms in 1868 (Fig. 10). Both the monument and the narrative around its creation are firmly anchored in the cultural memory of German Protestants.⁶³ Planning for the memorial was scheduled – albeit without

 Here and below, Christiane Theiselmann, Das Wormser Lutherdenkmal Ernst Rietschels (1856 – 1868) im Rahmen der Lutherrezeption des 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main/Bern/New York/ Paris: Peter Lang, 1992).

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documentation – to begin in 1817, the year in which the first Reformation anniversary since the liberation from the French occupation was celebrated with national undertones.⁶⁴ The last words passed down from Luther’s apology at the diet decorate the base of the monument: “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me! Amen!” In Protestant history of the nineteenth century, the coup against Rome was also interpreted as a struggle against the tyranny of foreign rule over Germany, which belonged to the right faith, and could be perceived – so soon after the Wars of Liberation of 1813 – as an event that paralleled the current political situation in Germany. As in Wittenberg, it was a civic club that initiated the realization of the grand monument in Worms. Ernst Rietschel, a Dresden-based pupil of Christian Daniel Rauch who was familiar with Schadow’s monument, was commissioned – as a Protestant artist – to create the monument.⁶⁵ The bronze statue of the main reformer is elevated on a raised base amidst sovereigns as protectors of the Reformation and personifications of the participating cities, surrounded by Melanchthon, Wyclif, and Hus – who, as early as the sixteenth century, had been called pre-reformers – as well as other pioneers of the Reformation. Portrait medallions of friends and helpers and scenic reliefs complete the program. Multiple designs of the central figure preceded the version that was ultimately completed. One of them shows Luther as a monk, wearing a habit and tonsure, with his right fist lying on the closed Bible. This design, which complied with historical tradition, was also the version favored by the sculptor, in the spirit of historicism that was prevalent at the time.⁶⁶ Nevertheless, the design that was ultimately implemented was a combination of the doctor of theology as a teaching authority in a university robe and the fist motif, which referred to the scene at the diet. In comparison with the Wittenberg monument, Rietschel’s Luther stands in a pose that symbolizes decisiveness. His right leg is put further forward than is usually the case for a supporting leg in contrapposto, and the foot extends over the edge of the plinth. His gaze is directed at the sky, and his right arm is placed in front of his body with an impulsive gesture motivated by the position of his hand.

3.6 Portraits of the Deceased Luther The typology of Luther portraits ends with the death portrait of the reformer. At midday on the day that Luther died, February 18, 1546, an unidentified artist from Eisleben sketched the reformer on his deathbed.⁶⁷ The Halle-based painter Lucas Furtena-

 Theiselmann, Das Wormser Lutherdenkmal, 8.  Theiselmann, Das Wormser Lutherdenkmal, 19 and 27.  Theiselmann, Das Wormser Lutherdenkmal, 38, and below, 41.  Cf. here and below, Schuchardt, “Privileg und Monopol,ˮ 48 – 50, and Schuchardt, “Katalog— Teil 1,ˮ 131– 35 with reference to the typology of Georg Stuhlfaut, Die Bildnisse D. Martin Luthers im Tode (Weimar: Böhlau, 1927).

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Figure 11 Cranach-Werkstatt, Wittenberg, Martin Luther auf dem Totenbett (1546). Oil on wood, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover

gel made an additional drawing of the deceased man as well as a design for a painting. One of these made its way to the Cranach workshop in Wittenberg. Three paintings with the snake signet of the workshop were created there, as well as six others, possibly painted at a later date (Fig. 11). They show Luther in half length, in a white shirt, with a calm facial expression, closed eyes, and hands laid on top of one another. In one version, the pillow is missing, and in its place is a dark background. Like the other Luther portraits, these portraits were created with a propagandistic intention, since they indicate the peaceful death of the reformer and not the death predicted by his opponents. This type also found its way into printmaking, not only as a

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single portrait, but also in collections of multiple portraits of the reformer at different ages.⁶⁸

 Cf. Stuhlfaut, Die Bildnisse, pl. xiv, nos. 23 and 24.

Mauro Casadei Turroni Monti

Lutheran Music and the Migrations of Taste 1 The Lutheran (Re)Naissance Luther embraced music as if he was holding a poor person in his arms: not a fraudulent beggar, but rather the “true poor” toward whom the Church of Rome, by then abject and pot-bellied, did not even turn anymore. In 1523, Luther asked the princes and the authorities who supported the Reformation to be careful and cautious in dealing with beggars and know that – where the people do not give and do not help the honest poor and the neighbors in need, as God commanded – they instead give, persuaded by the devil and against God’s judgment, tenfold more to vagrants and desperate scoundrels, just as up until now we have done with monasteries, cloisters, churches, chapels, and mendicant friars while leaving behind the true poor.¹

The cornerstone of the last transformed the needs and means of evangelization,² especially when it came to the Lutheran project of extending to everyone the comprehension of the Holy Scriptures, including the meanings hidden between the lines and beginning in musical sonorities.³ Today, all the pastoral, ethical, and political implications of Luther’s project are well known. Nonetheless, it also exposed its flank to the schismatic interests of the regents and landgraves close to Luther, who were greedy in confiscating both powers and assets from the Roman Church and making profits at the expense of Charles V. As a matter of fact, while Rome was still looking around in search of reforms – the Tridentine fathers gathered too late, Charles Borromeo was too young for his “re-

 M. Lutero, Prefazione to Liber vagatorum, in Il libro dei vagabondi, ed. P. Camporesi (Torino: Garzanti Libri, 1973), 289.  For a correct understanding of this notion of poverty, it is necessary to underline that “[w]hen the poor did express themselves – at the end of the twelfth century, during the fourteenth century, and during the Peasants’ Revolt in the time of Luther – they and their spokesmen seem not to have had a clear idea of either their fate or their solidarity, because they did not know themselves;” see Michel Mollat, I poveri nel medioevo (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 1982), 14; Eng. trans. The Poor in the Middle Ages, trans. A. Goldhammer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 10.  Among the most recent contributions in the field of musicology, I would like to mention Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007); Nicola Sfredda, La musica nelle chiese della Riforma (Torino: Claudiana, 2010); Miikka A. Anttila, Luther’s Theology of Music. Spiritual Beauty and Pleasure (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013); J.A. Loewe, “‘Musica est optimum’: Martin Luther’s Theory of Music,” Music & Letters 94 no. 4 (2013): 573 – 605; R. Mellace, “‘Musica optimum Dei donum’: il ruolo della musica nella Chiesa luterana,” in Musica e sentimento religioso. Un’ipotesi di ricerca tra musicologia e pedagogia, eds. Mauro Casadei Turroni Monti and Cesarino Ruini (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2017), 70 – 82. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-062

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form” to cross paths with pre-schismatic Lutheranism, and the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri was yet to be conceived – and was obstinate in opposing, from a doctrinal point of view, what was mainly an emotional and spiritual impulse on the part of the German protest,⁴ which was as versatile as it was incendiary, Luther instead governed this very protest as a good shepherd (although rickety in his theology), always keeping watch for any idolatry and Mariolatry, and also as a poet and musician. Luther’s character can be understood without any errors, as long as Carducci’s “Luther his cassock / Casts off in disdain”⁵ is interpreted from the perspective of

 Cf. G. Dedieu, Il protestantesimo luterano e calvinista, in Enciclopedia apologetica della religione cattolica (Alba, 1955), 631. After Luther’s excommunication, the Catholic revulsion against him would relent a bit only after the Second Vatican Council. This change of course became more evident in 1983, at the time of the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth. Readers would have perceived a change in attitude in contributions such as “Lutero un demonio o un maestro?,” written by N. Fabbretti for the journal Historia 310 (December 1983): 75 – 86). Among other things, this article features the illustration of a famous painting in which Luther is shown in his Eisenach home: while his wife Katharina von Bora, who was once a nun herself, holds in her arms her youngest child, who is fast asleep, four other children sing with the part or by heart as their father accompanies them on the lute, looking extremely pleased. Apart from the painting, another interesting testimony can be found in the introduction to the prolegomena of the German Collegium musicum by Luther’s friend Johann Walter: “Walter, who was Luther’s friend, relates that before and after a meal, [Luther] would sing and Melanchthon would accompany him as bass. The collections of songs Kurzweilig, frische gute Liedlein are very numerous and pertain to an intimate kind of music;” see Alfredo Untersteiner, Storia della musica (Milano: Hoepli Ulrico, 1916), 231.  These verses are quoted from To Satan, a hymn to modernity that would later play an important role in Arturo Frizzi’s paradigmatic patriotic sylloge. Frizzi himself was a socialist and a rebellious idealist, a “Lutheran.” See Frizzi, Nuovo canzoniere illustrato (Mantova: Frizzi, 1920 [1910]), 27– 30, here 29; Eng. trans. in Giosue Carducci, Carducci: A Selection of His Poems, trans. G.L. Bickersteth (London: Longmans & Green, 1913), 93. According to Carducci, Satan’s victory – i. e., progress – is announced by both the rebellious Luther and the rowdy Savonarola, a pair that should be analyzed also from the point of view of musical reform: “With voice as of tempest / No yoke may confine / Cries Savonarola, / Our great Florentine.” It is also worth pointing out that, at the threshold of World War I, the Lutheran Reformation had some echoes in Italy also within Mazzinian and interventionist circles. These movements, in fact, were inspired by Luther’s ability to “design a destiny” (cf. Marino Biondi, Renato Serra. Storia e storiografia della critica [Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2008], 251 [esp. the footnotes] and 339). It is also necessary not to underestimate how – between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and once the Catholic allergy to Luther had been put aside – secular Italian culture considered Luther a great man, to the point of including him among the eminent “prophets”: “think what power was wielded by the prophet-orators, such as Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Mahomet, Luther.” It also dwelt on his heroism as far as the ninety-five theses on indulgence were concerned: “[f] rom the 31st of October 1517 […] this man fought bravely until his death, using his pen as a sword, and his words as scourges. / He was the one man of conspicuous genius who had the courage to rise against the greatest authority of the times, the pope. Luther was born for combat; he only ceased to fight when he ceased to live.” One of the weapons in Luther’s arsenal was music: “[i]n the famous hymn of the Reformation, “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,” we see the character of Luther faithfully reflected. / He was as rigid as a bar of iron, and as proud as a despot. / The Reform, instituted by him, perpetuates in simple and severe rites, in concise and eloquent canons, the stamp of Luther’s character, as snow preserves the imprint of feet which have pressed it. / His rigidity and austere

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the inextricable connection that links Luther to his Late Middle Ages monastic education within the Augustinian milieu: from it, in fact, the Reformation draws some notions that are not in conflict with Roman Christianity. For this purpose, it is possible to endorse completely the following semantic and aesthetic framing: Unlike Ambrose, who sees choirs in the universe, Augustine reduces the human soul to a compact unity and then extracts from it the conscience of the monotheistic God. Before our eyes, instead of a theater encompassing the whole world, there is a universal drama that goes on until the end and appeals to a “sense of time” in the spectator. There is not, unlike in Ambrose, a widening of the keyboard; it is the instrument of the soul that is actually spiritualized. The Lied that rises from the Augustinian soul is linear and aimed directly at God; it is more similar to the lonely struggle in which the soul turns away from the earth – just as in a Beethovenian largo – than to the choral quality of Baroque Jesuitical music. Wherever Christians live in the cell of meditation (Pascal, Kierkegaard, Rilke), Augustine’s “one clear harp in divers tones” (to quote Tennyson) will reverberate; on the contrary, wherever the “great theater of the world” bursts open, for example in Baroque or Romantic art (Calderón, Hofmannsthal, Wagner, the opera), there will be choirs and Ambrose’s synesthesia. Augustine, the encyclopedist who tried to make all branches of human knowledge converge into a unity, is one possibility for the Christian; Ambrose’s amplitude and fullness is another. […] If we now think back to our problem of historic semantics, “world harmony (Stimmung),” we can see that Ambrose contributed more to the notion of world harmony and Augustine to the notion of Stimmung; however, the one is not conceivable without the other. […] On the other hand, the term Stimmung, which emphasizes the world as a spiritual fact, mostly comes from Augustine, and the echoes of the universal harmony contained in it – still detectable in Luther’s time – will later disappear from modern German.⁶

Another consideration: According to Luther […], music is not only a donum Dei in the Augustinian sense, but also (still in a quadrivial perspective) a doctrina numeris inclusa, where every sonorous note holds such cosmological implications that, in it, it is possible to fully recognize the great and perfect wisdom of God, who is the creator. Thus, among the sciences, “the highest honor and the seat closest to theology” is reserved for the ars musica, therefore erasing all traces of the moralistic fear of the seduction of sound that had characterized the mindset of the Church for many centuries. The initiative of radical purification of doctrine and rite that took place within the circle of the Wittenberg Reformers – Luther himself, Melanchthon, Georg Rhau, and Johann Walter – is at the source of a liturgical and musical tradition that will later culminate in Heinrich Schütz’s and Johann Sebastian Bach’s works. At its foundation, we can find the chorale, and more specifically the Protestant or Lutheran chorale that Luther included in his new liturgical ceremonials (Formula Missae, 1523; Deutsche Messe und Ordnung Gottesdiensts, 1526).⁷

pride were transmitted to the new faith; we find Luther in Protestantism, as we found Cakia-Muni in Buddhism, and Mahomet in Islamism;” see Adolfo Padovan, I figli della Gloria (Milano: Hoepli, 1920), 393 and 403 – 04; Eng. trans. The Sons of Glory: Studies in Genius, trans. Litta Visconti Arese (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1902), 261, 268, and 269.  Leo Spitzer, L’armonia del mondo. Storia semantica di un’idea (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009), 35 – 36.  Giovanni Guanti, Estetica musicale. La storia e le fonti (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1999), 92.

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After all, Luther devised a mass-media strategy that aimed at translating every scholarly asset into the vernacular in order to offer an alternative to the nascent secularization promoted by the Renaissance. This is the case with movable type, too, the novelty of which was extensively used for both traditional books and the first fliers meant for propagandistic distribution. Music was, for its part, one of the main elements of this vernacular, and through it Luther attempted an alphabetization of the common believer – but not of the disorderly weaklings dear to Müntzer. There could be something to be learnt from Luther’s project even today,⁸ if it is true that the deciding factor within this process of vulgarization, which was primarily of a biblical nature, was “being able to offer it” – to the conscience rather than to the action of the Christian –, together with ancient traditions and customs crossed with an innovative liturgy, school, catechesis, and so forth. This was not done in order to found “another” Church that would be different from the “papist” one. However, this was nevertheless the final outcome when Luther lost control of the political implications of his telluric renewal, which became – over time – more and more bourgeois.⁹ Be that as it may, the foundations of the future geopolitics of Germany were laid on Luther’s propensity for medieval teachings, to which he kept referring: Luther believed in the unity of church and state, according to a notion inherited from the Middle Ages, and therefore it was natural for him to accept the prince as the head of the Reformation in his own state. The prince, seeing the Reformation as a way to secure the enthusiastic support of the progressive middle classes, happened to gain immense advantages from Luther’s teaching; he created a group of influential jurists and clergymen, which was to be chaired by himself or another trustworthy person, with the purpose of acting as a central government within the church and taking on the responsibility for administration.¹⁰

This does not change the fact that the Catholic chroniclers from the Renaissance, who were widely removed from such social and political interpretations, “simply” attributed to Luther the responsibility for the fratricidal conflicts that were taking place all over Europe, an infecting weed that “was deeply rooted” everywhere. Liturgy, too, which is the very DNA of music, was not able to exculpate itself from these wars of religion. Bernardo Segni, shamefully, has no doubts: [I]t must be known that Martin, a friar of the Order of St. Augustine, surnamed Luther, started a heresy, called after him, that is the worst one ever experienced by the Christian Church. It was planted at the time of Pope Leo, and, little by little, it bore many leaves and, finally, pernicious fruits. He started well in the beginning (as almost all new things do): since he hated the bad behaviors of the Roman clergymen and the abuses of the court, which had many benefices and lived licentiously, it seemed that he was gaining great merit. However, having gone sour

 Cf. Alberto Melloni, ed., Rapporto sull’analfabetismo religioso in Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014).  This was similar, in a way, to what had happened to St. Francis’ revolution and his friars, who were “minimal” in the beginning and then became institutional. By the way, both Luther and St. Francis were very interested in the notion of a change adorned with music.  H. Raynor, Storia sociale della musica, ed. E. Napoli (Milano: Il Saggiatore, 1990), 158.

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shortly afterward, he found further poison deeper within the Church and, therefore, overturned all of its orders and set out to nullify all the pious commandments of the Christian religion. Thus he condemned confession, canceled Lent and fasting, took faith away from the Eucharist by saying that the body of Christ was not really to be found in it; finally, he eliminated penance and tried to demonstrate to men that they do not have any free will. His blaze spread so widely and in such a short time that not only most of Germany, but also the whole of England was on fire, and the heresy was deeply rooted in France and in Italy, too.¹¹

Historiography would later acknowledge that Luther’s protest had lent itself, without fully understanding what was at stake, to a brooding game of Risk that encompassed political and economic factors. At a later date, there would be some attempts to offer an inter-Christian theological and pastoral interpretation of the Reformation by observing the events through a less livid lens. Nonetheless, interpreting Luther as a re +bellum, a belligerent rebel, would become a given, irrespective of the purpose thereof: from the above-mentioned Carducci’s Satan to Pasolini’s Lutheran Letters, which are directed against the political caste, and passing – in a sense – via Mussolini the revolutionary (to quote the title of Renzo De Felice’s Mussolini il rivoluzionario from 1965). The latter, Mussolini, is interesting to us in a couple of contexts. The first of these is Mussolini’s work at the Accademia d’Italia, where he leveraged the Protestant revolution against the shoals of the Council of Trent: Could I possibly fill the academy with priests? Papini was pressing at my door. Cardinal Gasparri – a theologian, jurist, politician – could not be left in the street. Dom Lorenzo Perosi was, according to my taste, the heir and the innovator of Pierluigi da Palestrina’s great Christian music. […] There was an attempt to ignore how I had always been more in favor of Luther, Calvin, and Huss than of Cardinal Pallavicino and his history of the Council of Trent. […] And am I really to be blamed if, ever since the age of reason, I have been on the side of Luther instead of the Holy Office?

The second is his book, Giovanni Huss, il veridico. When the Holy Office prohibited it, Mussolini had an outburst, in which he evoked – between the lines – the devastating issue of the indulgences: “Huss, Luther, and Calvin did more for God than many of the protagonists of the Council of Trent. Galileo, anchored as he was to his own truth,

 This is an excerpt from the fourth book of the Istorie fiorentine, written by Bernardo Segni in 1523 – 1555. I am quoting from Storie fiorentine, vol. 1 (Milano, 1805), 263 – 64. The fiery dispute of the Reformation was carried out in extremely bloody battles. Segni describes the Piedmont battle in Ceresole d’Alba of 1544, with tones that are a cross between the Passion of Christ and a diehard prophetic millenarism: “[m]ore than twelve thousand Germans died in that battle. It had been the Holy Easter of the Resurrection the day before, and the Germans – who were Lutherans and enemies of the Christian religion –, without any confession or communion and with great spite against religion, had gone so far as to burn wooden crosses and play dice on the holy stones. Therefore, it felt like they had been rightly punished by God for such an impiety, and in a way that none of them could, by going back home, tell the sad story of the events, since they all died;” Storie fiorentine, 2:309.

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served the Church more than the pontifical logistics of grace, in the name of which so many errors and crimes have been committed.”¹² Thus, Luther’s (Re)Naissance, from the early Reformation to liberal Protestantism and the ecumenical attempts, also fostered the topos of Luther versus the Church and corruption, which is incorruptible and passe-partout. Moreover, it was also possible to be faced with the even more generic distinction between Christ (= the Church) and Luther.¹³ Within the field of music, there will be plenty of cases and anecdotes. For example, some used this leitmotiv against the Second Vatican Council, wanting to depreciate its new participative logic by opposing it once again to Luther’s. For this purpose, musical migrations are a tempting opportunity: And if, for the Church of Rome, “all instruments, apart from the organ, are the devil’s tools,” according to Luther, “music is [instead] a gift from God” that allows the believers, through the Reformed liturgy, to take part in the cult as the Catholic Church never managed to achieve and never will, not even after the Second Vatican Council brought forward notions such as “beat masses” and guitars in the church. Which is tantamount to saying, the final shelving of a millennial legacy.¹⁴

Another example is the fact that the ecumenical musical modernization of the Second Vatican Council was preceded by the well-known liturgical and musical reform connected to the Cecilian Movement. The Cecilian Movement took hold especially in Austria, Germany, France, and Italy. It was a challenging attempt at an update, especially for the Italians, who were met with opposition and tricks of all sorts. This went on to the point that the enemies of the Cecilian Movement associated the Austrian and German efforts – which had Regensburg as their starting point – with Luther’s ghost, trusting in the fact that Italian public opinion would still associate Germany with the scare of the Wittenberg revolt: The text that acts as the preface to Pubblicazione periodica di musica sacra, edited by Manganelli in 1880 “under the auspices of Propaganda Fide,” hosts a voice from the Roman circle that was particularly opposed to the reform underway. Here is an excerpt: “[i]n Germany, moreover, they are even proclaiming the ‘reformation’ of religious music; to us, and we confess this freely, even the mention of the word reformation sounds indeed very jarring when it concerns religious is-

 For the two quotes, see Yvon De Begnac, Taccuini mussoliniani, ed. F. Perfetti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), 315, 323, 362– 63, and 592.  See note 5 above. See also the following article from 1932 on the subjective/objective principles of musical execution: “[w]ho believes that becoming Bach and Beethoven, Dante and Leopardi, Christ and Luther in the act of re-evoking and reliving their work means repudiating the real, accomplished, and unchangeable existence of those masters is the victim of a case of phenomenism;” A. Parente, “L’interpretazione musicale e la vita dello spirito,” in La Rassegna musicale. Antologia, ed. Luigi Pestalozza (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1966), 542.  “Dall’organo alle chitarre è tutta un’altra musica. Il millenario rapporto fra le sette note e la Chiesa in un saggio di Luigi Garbini: dagli splendori antichi alla decadenza,” il Giornale 23 (December 2005); review of Luigi Garbini, Breve storia della musica sacra (Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2005).

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sues and comes from Luther’s country.” […] These are some “signs” of the controversy that, as we shall see, will become very intense between 1884 and 1894.¹⁵

Nonetheless, it is also necessary to mention that, in 1880, the inauguration of the Società italiana di S. Cecilia took place in Milan under Dom Ambrogio Amelli’s chairmanship¹⁶. From Amelli’s ardor would later develop, especially at the beginning of twentieth century, some openings that rejected a similar cliché. For example, Amelli’s energetic defense already stands out in the acts of the founding congress of the association. Amelli, who aimed to solicit the support of ecclesiastical and civil institutions, explicitly mentions the existence of affinities between Romans and Protestants when it comes to musical education. The minutes record it as follows: Upon the chairman’s suggestion, the congress also voted for the government and the cities to encourage – with the necessary support, following the example of other Catholic and Protestant nations – the progress and development of this very important branch of the musical arts, for the prestige of the divine cult and of the nation, by contributing to the maintenance of chapels and the construction of organs, at least in the poorest cathedrals, and also by favoring the publication of religious music and by awarding special prizes in this field of composition.¹⁷

2 Catholic and Protestant Musical Axiology Let us turn to a few examples from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to compare the Lutheran regions and the Church in Italy. We shall do so in order to reiterate that music was a symptom of a global wind of reform that swept the whole of Europe, with musical analogies recognizable especially in the context of values – in Saxony and Italy, in fact, some liturgical, devotional, and educational musical strategies resembled one another and acted as proofs of a transitive, albeit subliminal, circulation and migration. Suffice to mention, for example, a certain grassroots Catholicism that was active in Florence, Rome, and Naples. This can be imagined as a line that connects Philip Neri to Cardinal Bellarmino via the Jesuits in Naples.¹⁸ The teachings were already full of lauds in the Jesuitical catechisms of the late sixteenth century – for example,

 Cf. Felice Rainoldi, Sentieri della musica sacra. Dall’Ottocento al Concilio Vaticano II. Documentazione su ideologie e prassi (Roma: CLV, 1996), 213.  He was one of the Italian princes of that reform; on this subject, see Casadei Turroni Monti, Lettere dal fronte ceciliano. Le visioni di don Guerrino Amelli nei carteggi conservati a S. Maria del Monte di Cesena (Firenze: Olschki, 2011).  Atti ufficiali della Generale Associazione italiana di S. Cecilia (Milano, 1880?), 1:24.  See the contributions by Rostirolla on the diffusion of the laud in Giancarlo Rostirolla, Danilo Zardin, and Oscar Mischiati, La lauda spirituale tra Cinque e Seicento. Poesie e canti devozionali nell’Italia della Controriforma, ed. G. Filippi et al. (Roma: Istituto di bibliografia musicale, 2001).

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in Giacomo Ledesma or in Bellarmino’s A Short Christian Doctrine ¹⁹ – that came “with the addition of the spiritual lauds to be sung at the time of the Christian doctrine.” From this perspective, the name of Bellarmino – which would otherwise look out of place when put side by side with Luther’s (Bellarmino, in fact, anticipated the group of Segneri and his followers, according to whom the only contact between Rome and Luther was the heretic Savonarola) – belongs to a certain branch of catechistic literature in which it is possible to discern Catholic and Protestant musical harmonies on the subject of educational tactics that would otherwise be in competition: The book of catechism is a typical, and extremely timely, invention of that period. From Luther to Bellarmino, and their respective epigones over the following centuries, there was a longstanding challenge to offer the most incisive and memorable formulations to help people learn the notions of the biblical text, the truths of the creed, and the moral precepts. This took place within confessional precincts that were already clear-cut.

In all this racing and elbowing of one another, at stake was the urgent need to educate the “European societies of the pre-industrial era,” in which secularization was starting to make an appearance: the challenge was to make them learn “the alphabet together with the catechism or, more often, through the catechism.”²⁰ In these opposing catechisms, music acted as a shared magic potion that charmed and converted the reader to the point of view of the desired values. Certainly, according to modern historical and analytical philology, the Jesuitical lauds should be safeguarded from the temptation to interpret them as a nuance of the Philippine branch, in terms of both repertoire and the relationship between lyrics and music. On the contrary, the Neapolitan production would instead demonstrate “the existence, within the repertoire of the lauds, of a Jesuitical vein that is largely independent of the Philippine one and vastly underestimated by scholars” and that also clarifies “the importance of other poles of diffusion of the lauds, such as Milan and Florence.” In Ledesma’s brief book, one notices that

 See the end of the mile-long title by the Jesuit from Palermo, P.M. Ferreri, Istruzioni in forma di catechismo per la pratica della dottrina christiana spiegate nel Gesù di Palermo […] divise in quattro parti, nelle quali diffusamente si tratta delle istruzioni proemiali alla Dottrina. / Parte 1. Della fede, e spiegasi il Simbolo degli Appostoli. / Parte II. Della speranza, e si spiegano l’orazione domenicale, e la salutazione apostolica. / Parte III. Della carità, e si spiegano i dieci comandamenti. / Parte IV. De’ sette sacramenti della Santa Chiesa, e nel fine un’appendice delle virtù, e opere buone, e de’ vizj, e peccati, coll’aggiunta di una nuova istruzione dell’infanzia del Bambino Gesù, della dottrina breve del Bellarmino, e dell’istessa spiegata in versi. In questa veneta edizione più corrette, ed accresciute dal medesimo autore (Venezia, 1798); the section on Bellarmino is on pages 355 – 69.  For the above quote and these excerpts, cf. F. Pajer, “Scuola e università in Europa: profili evolutivi dei saperi religiosi nella sfera educativa pubblica,” in Rapporto sull’analfabetismo religioso in Italia, 59 – 60. It would be very useful to read the footnote on p. 60. This is a clever overview of education and catechism in Protestant Europe at the time.

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[t]he psychological subtlety and the surprising concreteness of the precepts illustrated in [Ledesma’s] brief treatise clarify without doubt the cultural awareness and the methodological wisdom with which the Jesuits took on this practice. However, let it be clear that we are not dealing here with the umpteenth “suggestive” comparison, indemonstrable and largely arbitrary, between historically juxtaposed ideas – of the kind that is so appealing to some improvisers of the Kulturgeschichte… Here we have maximum pertinence, and the connection between Ledesma’s method and the repertoire at hand is multifaceted and explicit.²¹

As far as we are concerned, the reader should be advised not to consider these excerpts as connected to our migratory hypotheses. As already mentioned, we are following a research criterion that is based on values and is meta-religious, almost a crooked semiosis (= of the oikoumene) that tells us which are the signs of a shared instinct toward the extended and popular availability of music as an art. Hence the revelation of a single river of lauds that runs between the Jesuits and the Philippines and is also mirrored in the waters of the Germanic North. Incidentally, if we were to move our focus to the Eastern European lands of evangelization, we would have on our side liturgical and musical history and philosophy, too. From this perspective, the case of Poland is emblematic: here, religious music would later become an infusion of Lutheranism and Roman missionary orders. According to the Slovakian scholar Janka Bednáriková, In the sixteenth century, the Lutheran Church takes on its structure, with its own schools and temples. The following century, by contrast, is characterized by a tendency toward Counter-Reformation. Gregorian chant does not disappear from liturgy, mainly thanks to the Jesuits, the Franciscans, and the Piarists. Nonetheless, the influence of the Lutheran hymn slowly creates the premises for a new type of musical spirituality that is not in close relationship to liturgy: hence the advent of folk songs in Slovakian, later published as collections (cantionales). In this context, the Gregorian chant becomes instead a source of inspiration for new religious chants, and its interpretation will be modified even in its mensuration and to the point of being accompanied by an organ.²²

Spontanéité is a milestone on the path that Romans and Lutherans have been treading back and forth (until Francis I, we might add as a side note): Pour les collectivités locales chrétiennes, on observe de manière intéressante une courbe partant du plus cérémoniel avec les paroisses catholiques, vers le plus participatif avec les communautés évangéliques charismatiques. Cette courbe suit grosso modo l’histoire du christianisme. Il semble que chaque nouvel embranchement dans le christianisme se distingue en générant une liturgie plus spontanée. Il est vrai qu’au temps de la Réforme, un des facteurs de popularisation da la nouvelle foi a été l’intégration du chant populaire dans l’hymnologie (cf. la Deutsche Messe

 This is a comment on the contributions by Rostirolla in the review of Rostirolla, Zardin, and Mischiati’s volume La lauda spirituale tra Cinque e Seicento by Daniele V. Filippi, Philomusica 2 no. 1 (2003), available online at http://riviste.paviauniversitypress.it/index.php/phi/article/view/02– 01REC02/7.  J. Bednáriková, “Codici liturgici medievali in Slovacchia,” Studi gregoriani 30 (2014): 83.

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de Luther en 1526). Même dans la rigueur calviniste, le chant des psaumes a été jugé utile à l’édification. […] La Réforme innove effectivement sur le plan de la cérémonie religieuse en développant une expression plus spontanée avec l’adoption de prédication en langue vernaculaire ainsi que par l’introduction de nouveaux chants et de psaumes chantés. […] la nouvelle entité se place sur un segment du champ plus conforme à la culture ambiante. Cela est vrai pour la réforme, mais également pour les réveils piétistes qui générèrent les communautés évangéliques (et messianiques aux Etats-Unis), puis l’émergence du pentecôtisme avec les évangéliques charismatiques. Il semble que ce principe soit aussi applicable pour les traditions non chrétiennes avec les bahaïs issues de l’Islam chiite beaucoup moins cérémoniel que les communautés musulmanes.²³

The complexity of these contexts prompts us to take them into account once again from different perspectives.

2.1 Extended Schooling and Education Let us start with a nice summary of music according to Luther: “We already considered with what energy Luther attacked the fanatical zeal of those who wanted to put all forms of cult on the same level and ban the fine arts from religion. What Luther did for religious music proves clearly how far he was from false spiritualism. The songs of the German Church are one of the most beautiful fruits of the Reformation.²⁴ This is a quote that would not be out of place, if one were to retain the emphasis, in relation to Philip Neri’s inclinations, to the point that it is possible to define music as a “common teacher” that educates, assists, and preserves spirituality in the forgotten and deformed society of the time. This is a deeply axiological understanding that can also be referred to other recommendations of Luther’s that Neri would have endorsed. Among these, the predominant imperative is preserving for the most miserable at least some form of schooling. For example, it can be very interesting to try to understand what is the real aim of Luther’s speech when praying, with his hands joined, not to lose contact with the ancient idioms: If we abandon languages, not only do we lose the gospel, but we shall also not know either Latin or German anymore. Unfortunately, however, we Germans are destined to always remain brutes and imbeciles, as our neighbors call us. Apart from languages, it is also necessary to learn all the things that cultivate the heart and develop the intelligence: history, music, mathematics. If the child of the lower class is busy with manual labor, let him at least spend a few hours a day in school.²⁵

 ich:  

Christophe Monnot, Croire ensemble. Analyse institutionnelle du paysage religieux en Suisse (ZurEditions Seismo, 2013), 169 – 70. I am quoting from the anonymous text Vita di Martino Lutero (Firenze, 1871), 190 – 91. Vita di Martino Lutero, 197; cf. also footnote 32 below.

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This underground back and forth, these migrations favored by pontoneers, such as the axiological network between the Lied and the laud, did not fade in the Catholic history, theology, and moralism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – which still abounded with anti-Protestant haranguers, also due to very critical situations, such as interconfessional cohabitation in Cologne and in the “lands of the Rhine” during Pius VI’s time²⁶ – as we can see, just as a sample, in the title wielded by Abbot Gaume in his Catechism (1838): The Church Violently Attacked [by] Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Henry VIII. It even cast a shadow until after the Second Vatican Council, such as in the “drama of Luther,” by virtue of which, in 1967, the theologian Raimondo Spiazzi would have “Luther’s ego” lie down on the sofa of a dogmatic psychoanalyst.²⁷ Some of these separatist writers felt an urgency to underline how Luther’s project depended on the role played by the medieval Church in freeing Germany from the “yoke of the Romans”: “[f]or all that it possessed of faith, science, and intellectual art at Luther’s advent, it was indebted to its ancient bishops.”²⁸ It is true, of course, that Luther the musician had wintered in diocesan schools, but he also complained abundantly about their punitive strictness: “The great reformer […] studied music at school in Mannsfeld and was later accepted among the choristers of the church of Eisenach. In 1505, he joined the Order of St. Augustine in Erfurt. Until 1523, he took great interest in perfecting ecclesiastical singing and introduced unison singing in the liturgy of the Protestant Church.²⁹ I am intentionally quoting this excerpt from such an authoritative musical dictionary – albeit from yesteryear (1928) – to better emphasize how, even well within the twentieth century, it still was not clear that Luther only had the competence of a (decent) dilettante. On the other hand, the contemporary realization of such a given³⁰ shows us today

 Cf. the journal Annali delle scienze religiose 10 (1840): 47 ff.  I am quoting respectively from J.J. Gaume, Catechismo di perseveranza ossia Esposizione storica, dogmatica, morale, liturgica, apologetica, filosofica e sociale della religione dall’origine del mondo sino ai nostri giorni. Prima edizione milanese sulla settima di Parigi riveduta ed aumentata di note sulla geologia e di un indice generale delle materie (Milano, 1859), 6:234; and Raimondo Spiazzi, La Chiesa nella storia, vol. 1, Una esperienza bimillenaria (Roma: Fides, 1967), 189 – 91. Spiazzi’s interpretation found its precedents in authoritative figures such as Luigi Anelli, a patriot, priest, and conciliator: in his I riformatori nel secolo XVI, vols. 1– 2 (Milano, 1891), he insisted on Luther’s “psychic instability,” partly excusing him for his “melancholic” character due to a childhood that lacked any comfort. As foreseeable, the review of the Jesuits in La Civiltà Cattolica 43 no. 15.2 (1892) harshly criticized his work and speculated that, “since [Anelli] has already told so many tales about the causes and the precursors of the Reformation, we can only expect to hear even more incredible stories on Luther, who was its champion;” p. 529.  J.M.V. Audin, History of the Life, Writings, & Doctrines of Luther, trans. W.B. Turnbull (London, 1854), 186.  From the entry Lutero (Dr.) Martino, in Carlo Schmidl, Dizionario universale dei musicisti (Milano: G. Ricordi, 1928).  Cf., for example, Alberto Basso, “Corale, II,” in Dizionario Enciclopedico Universale della Musica e dei Musicisti, Il lessico (Torino: UTET, 1983).

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how music was the keystone of the Reformation, especially thanks to Luther’s capacity –indeed excellent and hypnotic – to secure collaborations with exquisite musicians. This was just like Neri, after all, who was not much more than a good chorister, but also had an affable charm in his gentle educational charity, a gift that he used to draw in the best names – and not just in the field of music – among those who were willing to “get their hands dirty” in his oratory for the redemption and education of the least among the adolescents.³¹ Thus, it is necessary to understand here that school and music were an agora of transversality. Luther leaned toward teaching methods that “reference the conquests and values of humanist pedagogy, evoke classical models, and exalt the gratifying and playful aspect of education.”³² Therefore, it is clear how, outside of music and its sphere of action, the scholastic, philosophical, and doctrinal ecclesiastical habitus, which pervaded with mortifying severity³³ the environment in which Luther had been brought up, although having the merit of having sharpened his acumen, was reformed in favor of maieutic persuasions and more educational paths. The Philippines would later represent, so to speak, the neighbors living on the opposite side of the Counter-Reformation street: “Well,” perhaps you will say, “but surely everyone can educate their daughters and sons on their own and instruct them in discipline.” [… Because] the education that one receives at home, without these schools, aims at making us wise through personal experience. However, before this can happen, we shall die a hundred times and for the whole of our lives act thoughtlessly, because personal experience takes a long time. However, since young people necessarily must dance and jump or otherwise do something that pleases them, and this certainly cannot be prohibited to them, nor would it be wise to forbid them everything, why then should we not establish schools for them and offer them this culture? And this is even more so now that, may God be praised, all is organized in such a way that children can learn with pleasure and entertainment, whether they study languages, another subject, or history. […] If we put so much time and effort into teaching children how to play cards, sing, and dance, why should we not devote as much time in teaching them to read and the other sciences when they are young, capable, and willing to, and have no other commitment? I speak for myself: if I had children and means, not only I would make them study languages and history,

 See my contribution “I piccoli di san Filippo Neri tra musica e ricreazione, una precoce ‘scuola attiva’”, presented recently at the conference La lauda filippina. Origini e sviluppo: contributi per un riuso nella prassi liturgica, directed by F. Luisi, Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra – Congregazione dell’Oratorio, June 10, 2016.  Fiorella De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero (Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2001), 141; in order to strengthen her theses, the author quotes the excerpt mentioned in footnote 34 below, starting from when Luther imagines having children of school age.  Centuries later, Dom Bosco will still have to fight against a persecutory school. Luther wrote, “[n] ow our schools are no longer that hell or purgatory in which we were tortured with declinations and conjugations and learnt absolutely nothing, regardless of the blows, the fear, and the worry,” in a text from 1524; see M. Lutero, Ai borgomastri e ai consiglieri di tutte le città tedesche perché istituiscano e mantengano scuole cristiane (1524), in Opere scelte, vol. 4, Scuola e cultura. Compiti delle autorità, doveri dei genitori (1524 e 1530), ed. M.C. Laurenzi (Torino: Claudiana, 1990), 55.

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but also learn singing, music, and the whole of mathematics. What is this, in fact, if not children’s play? In the past, the Greeks instructed their children in this way, and the outcome was some extraordinarily capable people, who were later able to take on any kind of activity. How sorry I am now for not having read more poets and history books and for not having had someone who would teach them to me! Instead, I had to read the devil’s dung – the philosophers and the sophists – at great expense, effort, and damage, so that now I have plenty that needs to be swept away.³⁴

Luther was also the son of poor parents, and despite his many talents (especially the pen and the “tongue,” apart from some colorful expressions), he never lost sight of the destitution of the masses. Sometimes, it is possible to see him as a precursor of the street priests, freely establishing contacts with future educational and musical trajectories, as in the case of Dom Bosco. This notion outlines better the boundaries of our arguments, which are connected to musical flourishes devoted to the tastes where deep and centuries-old inter-Christian transversalities pulse, regardless of historiographical and theological divisions. Although Dom Bosco, from a doctrinal point of view, put his best efforts into instructing the simplest people against the cunning of the Protestant ministers,³⁵ he would still have been attracted to Luther’s preaching, particularly when it speaks about the “beggars”: We must know that God is a wondrous lord, and his task is to transform all beggars into lords, just as from nothing he creates everything. Nobody can take this task away from him or forbid him to accomplish it. Everywhere in the world he makes his praises sung beautifully, such as in Psalm 113: “Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high,who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes, with the princes of his people.” They say, and it is true, that even the pope went to school. Therefore, do not despise the boys who, from the doorways, ask for Panem propter Deum and sing nursery rhymes on the topic of bread. As it was said in this Psalm, here you can hear great princes and lords sing. I too was one of those mendicant schoolboys and received bread from the doorways, especially in Eisenach, my beloved city, even though my dear father supported me with so much love and tenacity at the university of Erfurt and, with the hard-gained fruits of his hard labor, helped me get where I am now. Nonetheless, I too was a mendicant schoolboy.³⁶

 Scuola e cultura, 53 – 55.  Everyone has probably read his pamphlets Il cattolico istruito nella sua religione. Trattenimenti di un padre di famiglia co’ suoi figliuoli secondo i bisogni del tempo, epilogati dal sac. Bosco Giovanni (Torino, 1853). The manuals, summaries, and handbooks against the Protestants reach the very threshold of the Second Vatican Council. I will only mention a particularly fierce one written a few years earlier, by Guido Berardi, Bibbia con Bibbia. Metodo pratico per rispondere ai protestanti (Fano: LDC, 1956).  M. Lutero, Una predica sul dovere di tenere i figli a scuola (1530), in Opere scelte, vol. 4:123 – 24 and 126.

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Giovanni Bosco and the Salesians are some of the modern migrants within our interChristian center of values. Over the centuries, this educational structure was already displaying open and understanding arms: Thus, a pressing declaration took hold in the mindset of the Christian elites: religious ignorance is the cause of damnation. On this point, Luther and St. Vincent de Paul, Calvin and St. Charles Borromeo saw eye to eye. Starting from the moment when the two Reformations – which were opposed but also joined – developed their action on the field, the main efforts of the Western churches have aimed at teaching the Christian doctrine to the masses, especially to the peasants, who had been ignored up until that moment… Hence the internal missions that, from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, sprinkled Roman Europe; hence… the multiplication of schools; hence finally the enormous importance of the catechism, the diffusion of which was facilitated by printing.³⁷

2.2 Dogma and Songs One last piece of the puzzle, but a very persuasive one. The “mendicant” profile of the Lutheran mission saturates the inspiration of Luther’s hymnody, where “the feeling and the imagination exert an overly exclusive sway.” This is so much so that, when tackling the Christian dogmatic antitheses, Möhler does not refer to the hymns, where the rigor of the theologian seems to be slightly tipsy. The following excerpt on the sources of the “scientific exposition of the doctrinal differences among the various religious parties” is particularly enlightening: Other sources, meanwhile, which offer any desirable explanation, or more accurate descriptions, in reference to the matters at hand, must not be neglected. To liturgies, prayers, and hymns, also, which are publicly used and are recognized by authority, symbolism may accordingly appeal; for in these the public faith is expressed. In appealing to hymns, however, great prudence is necessary, as in these the feeling and the imagination exerts an overly exclusive sway, and speaks a peculiar language, which has nothing in common with dogmatic precision. Hence, even from the Lutheran church-songs, although they comprise much that is very serviceable to our purpose, and some peculiar Protestant doctrines are very accurately expressed in them – as also in Catholic lays, hymns, and the like –, we have refrained from adducing any proofs.³⁸

These statements represent the precise frame of the theses illustrated up to this point. Thus, our migrations seem to escape borders and philological and doctrinal separations and instead show themselves to be more of an alphabet belonging to

 Emphasis added; this is an excerpt from a lecture given by Jean Delumeau in 1975 that can be found in Théodule Rey-Mermet, Il santo dei secoli dei Lumi, Alfonso de Liguori (1696 – 1787) (Roma: Città Nouva, 1983), 330 – 31.  Adam Johann Möhler, Simbolica o esposizione delle antitesi dogmatiche tra cattolici e protestanti secondo i loro scritti confessionali pubblici, ed. Josef R. Geiselmann (Milano: Jaca Book, 1984), 52– 53; Eng. trans. Symbolism: or, Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences between Catholics and Protestants as Evidenced by their Symbolical Writings, trans. J.B. Robertson (London: Charles Dolman, 1847), 7– 8.

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the common Church, when seen from below, often inhabited by “feeling” and “imagination,” where music is, in an inter-Christian way, one of the preferred places of transmission of the faith.³⁹ Father Olivier’s title I due volti del prete. Le possibilità di una crisi ⁴⁰ comes to mind for a book that, from Luther to the Second Vatican Council, represents a figurative description of migrations. It has nothing to do with our migrations directly, but it is still a useful and suggestive pretext to offer greater clarity to their explanation.

3 Interlude on Post-Risorgimento Italy Intrigued as we are by the analogies evoked by Amelli in 1880 between Catholic and Protestant scholastic musical institutions, let us linger a bit more on Italy during that century. I have been studying for a while now the contribution of Catholic music to the formation of a post-Risorgimento Italianity, a topic largely unknown or misunderstood to this day.⁴¹ Within this reassessment, inter-Christian modulations are surfacing in the scholastic musical offerings. These are distributed among manuals and anthologies and allow us to deduce the collaboration of Italian Protestants in the patriotic and cultural development of a national sentiment. It is also important to point out that, from the point of view of documents, the further back we go in the nineteenth century, the less the criterion of transversality – through which one can look for a secular Catholic or Christian mediation or alchemy – appears to have been practiced. However, for the Evangelical confessions, even just the discovery of an anthology published in 1853 with the title Cantici sacri ad uso dei cristiani d’Italia ⁴² is still noteworthy. The anthology collects excerpts published in the area around Geneva, which is at the heart of that church. In the preface, the publishers (the writer is certainly a pastor), having underlined the relationship between singing and the first Christian liturgies, make their Italian intentions explicitly known:

 I am quoting the expression already used in my title: Casadei Turroni Monti, “La musica sacra come luogo di trasmissione della fede,” in Cristiani d’Italia. Chiese, società, Stato, 1861 – 2011, ed. Alberto Melloni (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2011), 1:597– 610, available online at: http:// www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/la-musica-sacra-come-luogo-di-trasmissione-della-fede_%28Cristianid%27Italia%29/.  Daniel Olivier, I due volti del prete. Le possibilità di una crisi (Roma: Coines edizioni, 1973); by the same author I would also like to mention Le foi de Luther. La cause de l’Évangile dans l’Église (Paris: Beauchesne, 1978).  I would like to mention my two most recent contributions, still forthcoming: “L’Italia postrisorgimentale tra musica sacra e sentimento religioso,” in Musica e sentimento religioso; and “L’identità italiana nella musica cattolica dal Risorgimento alla Grande guerra,” Cristianesimo nella storia (2017): forthcoming.  Cantici sacri ad uso dei cristiani d’Italia (Eaux-Vives, 1853).

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The thought of fulfilling, as much as we possibly could, this natural aspiration of every Evangelical church prompted us to offer this collection as a tribute to Italy […], whilst operating in the Peninsula. Among the poems that we have collected in this volume, some are already known and sung by Italian Christians; others are translated and have served the edification of the Christian churches all over the world for centuries; others, finally, are the fruit of the inspiration of an Italian heart and have been set to music by an Italian composer. Ultimately, they have all been carefully examined by a society of Evangelical Christians, so that the final product would lack as little as possible on the side of art and, at the same time, be blameless on the side of doctrine.

The “non-regional” part of the songs was meant to prompt a missionary drive by inspiring “the thought that an Evangelical Italian felt in a foreign land the bond of unity and brotherhood that connects all the redeemed.” In the table of contents, however, there is also a Preghiera per la Patria for Italian believers. The homeland mentioned in it is, however, the one where we are all pilgrims on the way to heaven and is offended by the secularization and progress typical of post-Risorgimento: Signor pietose scendano Le sante tue rugiade La prisca fè ripulluli Nell’Itale contrade Che risplendea sì fulgida Nella remota età. Quando il beato Apostolo Scrivea con Santo orgoglio Ch’era modello ai popoli In vetta al Campidoglio La pura Fè magnanima L’ardente Carità.

Or la Città dei Cesari Come cangiò sembianza! Dov’è chi canti e celebri Signor la tua possanza Ed in Gesù glorifichi L’immenso eterno amor? Sui campi in cui la fertile Messe del ver crescea Funesta e ria zizania Nemica man spargea Degli avi eletti i posteri Vaneggian nell’error.

Ed ahi più fero turbine Or sull’Italia mugge Scienza fatale efimera Il tuo vangel distrugge Ed osa infamia e scandalo La croce tua chiamar. Signor deh! sorgi e dissipa L’antico e il nuovo errore Discenda sull’Italia Fecondo il divo amore S’alzi al tuo Cristo un cantico Dall’uno all’altro mar.⁴³

No patriotic hint is detectable in the music for the Evangelical schools for children: the collection L’arpa evangelica, printed by the Florentine publisher Claudiana (in many editions, from 1867 to the early twentieth century), includes songs such as

 Cantici sacri ad uso dei cristiani d’Italia, 66 – 68; this is song no. 24, for three voices (soprano, alto, and bass). In the excerpt from the Prefazione, I have added the emphasis. Eng. trans.: “Oh Lord, may your holy dew fall and the old faith bud again in the Italian land that shone so brightly in the ancient era, when the blessed apostle wrote, with a holy pride that was a model for the people of the Campidoglio, about generous faith and burning charity. How the city of the Caesars is changed now! Who will sing and celebrate your might, oh Lord, and glorify in Jesus’ immense and eternal love? In the fields where the fertile crop of truth used to grow, an inimical hand has sowed the seeds of ruinous and wicked discord, and the descendants of the chosen progenitors are now ranting in error. And, alas, an even more fierce whirlwind is bellowing now in Italy: ephemeral and fatal science destroys your gospel and dares to call your cross infamy and scandal. Oh Lord, please rise and dissipate the old and the new error; may your divine and fertile love fall on Italy, and let a song rise to your Christ from one sea to the other.”

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La Patria Celeste, Il bel paese, Nella Patria del Signor, and La Vera Patria, all intent on teaching children the motto “[m]y homeland is in heaven.” Italy is mentioned to the schoolchildren only in the hymn with lyrics by Rossetti, L’evangelizzazione d’Italia: Innalzate il Vessil della Croce! Libertade bandite agli schiavi! Di salvezza elevate la voce Dell’Italia fra il duplice mar! Proclamate la Buona Novella Della Grazia a chi grazia dispera, Annunziate alla gente rubella Che il Signore è venuto a salvar!

Rimirate! La messe biondeggia È matura pel Regno de’ cieli; accrescete di Cristo la greggia, Adducendo nuove alme al Signor. Vi dia Cristo coraggio e sapienza, vi sia guida lo Spirto Divino; Combattete il livor, la violenza Con la prece che viene dal cor.⁴⁴

Willing or not, these footprints outline a contiguity that must be analyzed in more depth in the corresponding musical manuals of Catholic inspiration. In truth, during the nineteenth century, interconfessional cohabitation would still be loaded with detrimental tensions. Nonetheless, the contribution of the Protestant churches was always one of musical renewal, inspired by the original Lutheran principle of “assembly participation.” To these circumstances I once devoted some reflections, to which I still am attached: In Italy during the Risorgimento – while rummaging in the chest of yearbooks, Christmas presents, and historical and statistical pamphlets for families –, there are generally no points of convergence with the Protestant Christian confessions. Who were those believers? The answer to this question is easy: “the foreigners are usually English, or from Geneva, or those who in Piedmont are called Barbetti [i. e., the Waldensians]. Italians are mostly either sectarians or apostate and renegade priests and friars, or also reckless hooligans who have already been seduced themselves.”

Actually, the intent to model collections of songs on the spirit of assembly participation is certainly characteristic of the history of Protestant religious music. A booklet from the late nineteenth century, published in French Switzerland “pour les assemblées d’alliance évangélique, de mission, d’évangélisation et autres,” attempts to diversify and enrich the strict “caractère ecclésiastique” with new grafts while still remaining within a tradition that is certainly not myopically self-referential, since “nous avons fait une large place aux cantiques anciens, publiés dans les recueils des diverses Églises. Ils ont acquis droit de cité dans nos assemblées chrétiennes, et sont con Cf. the polyphonic Protestant booklet L’arpa evangelica ossia raccolta d’inni e cantici per i fanciulli (Firenze: Claudiana, 1902), see the index. Eng. trans.: “Raise the Standard of the Cross! Announce freedom to the slaves! Spread the news of the salvation of Italy between the two seas. Announce the good news of grace to those who despair of receiving grace, proclaim to the rebellious people that the Lord has come to save us! Look! The crop is turning yellow and is ripe for the kingdom of heaven; make the flock of Christ larger by bringing new souls to the Lord. May Christ give you courage and wisdom, and may the Holy Spirit guide you; fight envy and violence with the prayer that comes from your heart.”

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nus et aimés de tous.” In terms of authors, they went from Händel, Haydn, Mozart, and Mendelssohn to Luther, Vulpius, Malan, and Bost and to the anonymous composers of ancient and folk tunes and of the traditional melodies. All songs are in the vernacular language, according to a custom that the Holy See would finally understand as “truly apostolate” only at the time of World War II (apart from elements such as the Proprium for the solemn festivities, whether pontifical or popular). A similar link between tradition and novelty has not changed the criteria for the compilation of more recent hymnals and religious song collections, where “modernity and the updating of the melodies is guaranteed,” up to the point of reaching back to Fabrizio De Andrè. This is the Waldensian case, which can be generalized to apply to the varieties of non-Catholic confessions, especially – and it is important to underline this – in the cautious reformability of the musical repertoire, which, already prior to the Italian Risorgimento, ecclesiastical writers recorded “in all of their errors” with the same scornful tone already illustrated above.⁴⁵ On the Catholic side, the attitude would remain similar well into the twentieth century. I discovered this not long ago: The scholastic, recreational, and ecclesiastic choral quality of music becomes the crossroad of Italianity and welcomes habits that will later light the way for secular and devoted anthological directives and for social and choral entertainment directives for colleges and performers, circulating preferably in the numerous occasions offered by literary and musical academies. Secular publishers sensed good business, as in the example of Bertarelli from Milan: this firm, having bought the publisher Musica sacra from the same city (on which the Italian Cecilian Movement had impressed its reformed repertoires) in 1920, indefatigably poured out, until the dawn of fascism, “choral music for colleges, educational institutions, choral societies, and especially the teacher-training schools of the kingdom, together with elementary schools, nursery schools, and kindergartens.” By contrast, the confessional collections destined for the scholae cantorum “of the main seminars, choral societies, and musical chapels” – as Casimiri points out –, where singing is closely matched thematically to the liturgical calendar both of the gospel (see the scholarly anthologiae vocales/poliphonicae “autoribus antiquis et modernis,” edited, for example, by Ravanello, Casimiri, Pagella, et al.) and the Marian cult (a pretext for “popular” productions of catchy songs, especially in the month of May), are far less open; the collections for every circumstance, such as the Manuale di preci e cantici pel popolo italiano – published in 1912 by the press “to honor the wishes of the Holy Father Pius X” – that came with practical and theoretical instructions, uncommon long after alphabetization, almost represent a small treatise of Salesian inspiration.⁴⁶

 This is the short chapter “L’altro cristianesimo degli italiani,” in Casadei Turroni Monti, La musica sacra come luogo di trasmissione della fede, 605 – 06.  Casadei Turroni Monti, L’identità italiana nella musica cattolica dal Risorgimento alla Grande guerra, to which I refer the reader for the bibliography of the quoted excerpt.

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4 The Archipelago of Migrations In which ways and with what firmness would the musical practices of the Reformation be preserved over time? First, by slowly diluting a certain individualism that existed in the Lutheran trajectory, which would otherwise have cast an awkward shadow on the multifaceted characteristics of the Protestant Reformation.⁴⁷ After all, let us not forget that “[Luther’s] love for music always went beyond doctrinal scruples on the advisability of distributing compositions by Catholic authors destined for their Church.”⁴⁸ From this perspective, music would therefore remain functional in the more general inclination, which was progressively oriented toward ecumenism. In truth, ecumenism is a “seed” that today “is so dried up in the West, thanks to the courtesies of the people in charge and the negotiations among theologians, that the term has come to be used by not a few rascals to mean the relationship among Christianity and other religions,” however during the very recent Evangelical jubilee of Lund, that very “seed” represented, according to Francis I, “not compromises kept in the shadow of power relationships, but the wish to experience how the Church too can live out unity as a tension that continuously reforms and gathers it.”⁴⁹ Over the course of the twentieth century – having experienced the martyrdoms of Bonhoeffer, Kolbe, and Stein almost within a shared sanctorale, and after the openings created by the Second Vatican Council –, a historic, narrative interpretation that is still vital today would gain strength because of this seed, with passionate defenders such as the priest Nazareno Fabbretti, who spoke of Luther as if he were speaking of himself, born as he was to be among the people: Who is Luther in reality, though? How much is left of him today in the Reformation – and, therefore, in the conciliar renewal of the Catholic Church itself –, and how much and how faithfully has he been passed down to us by the Lutherans, by Lutheranism, by the entire multifaceted

 In the Protestant creed, the multiplication of tributaries is irrepressible, even in Europe. It will suffice to take a stroll in Geneva, a location among the chosen ones: “[l]es Anglicans inaugurent en effet leur église, bâtie sur l’un des terrains laissés vacants par la démolition des fortifications de Genève, en août 1853 (bien que des cultes anglicans aient déjà été célébrés à Genève au XVIe siècle et depuis 1814). Genève connaît dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle une floraison d’Eglises étrangères (Eglise méthodiste épiscopale italienne, Eglise évangélique italienne, Eglise épiscopale américaine, Eglise évangélique libre allemande, Eglise méthodiste allemande) qui reflète la multiplicité des communautés de langue étrangère à Genève et aussi des églises dissidentes, à côté de celles déjà établies telles que l’Eglise allemande réformée et l’Eglise luthérienne;” see V. Lathion, Un dimanche pour Dieu ou pour l’homme? Une croisade philanthropique et religieuse pour la défense du dimanche chrétien: modèles et pratiques aux XIXe et début du XXe siècles (PhD diss., University of Geneva, 2007, no. L.642), 106, see footnote.  Raynor, Storia sociale della musica, 121; in this book, I recommend browsing in its entirety chapter 9, “Riforma e Controriforma,” 146 – 69.  A. Melloni, “Nel segno dei poveri il viaggio luterano di Francesco,” la Repubblica 27 (October 2016): 35.

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apparatus of Protestants and Evangelicals that have him as a reference point, including the Anglicans and the Waldensians later?

A great historian of the Reformation, Heinrich Boehmer, says that “[t]here are as many Luthers as there are books on Luther.” However, the positive side, the stimulating core of the issue that needs to go side by side with a reading of Luther today, five centuries after his birth (on November 10, 1483), is luckily a given and a sure thing for Catholics too, as demonstrated by the definition of Luther that Cardinal Johannes Willebrands gave, in the name of Paul VI, in 1970 during the ecumenical meeting in Evian: “Luther, our common teacher.” A teacher of faith, a teacher of prayer, a teacher also of updated methods of reform of the ecclesiastical liturgy. […] [I]t was never his intention to found “another Church,” but only to reform and to renovate, not in doctrine but in the reading, in the genuine understanding of the Bible and of life in faith, in the Church in which he was born, in which he became a monk, and which he always loved with a brave, furious, stormy, and – at the same time – most tender love.⁵⁰

Music is also encompassed within the “methods of the ecclesiastical liturgy”: through Luther’s infatuation with the Roman Church, once removed from the conduct of the Vatican at that time, a musical reform was outlined that peaked in the transformations of the Gregorian melopoeia, which he loved. Since the Wittenberg Gesangbuch of 1524, Lutheran hymnody – apart from hits such as Ein’ feste Burg, the hymn that “is the Marseillaise of the Reformation”⁵¹ – is like a para-theological framework⁵² of a Protestantism that is undergoing modernization. Of course, this is accompanied by a constant suspicion of any liturgy that is trapped within a lifeless liturgical and musical ceremony, against the formalisms of which is opposed the choraliter song in the vernacular, which – in pre-Lutheran Germany – had only colored devotion without actually innervating sacred action. Luther opened the path for an omnivorous inspiration and a choice of musical sources in which what was already familiar to people would prevail: thus, apart from salvaging some parts of the Catholic Ordinarium missae, the remaining textual and musical Latin legacy is calibrated in Lutheran translations by always keeping in mind the popular wavelengths. The same applies to the choice of pre-existing German music, whether ancient (and/or religious) or not. And so forth. This is always accomplished while obeying a categorical practical principle: just as in biblical translation, where the writing is informed by the devotional needs of the people  Fabbretti, Lutero un demonio o un maestro? 76.  Thus in Audin, History of the Life, Writings, & Doctrines of Luther, 306.  In the sequence from theology to music, Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam speak, for a change, similar languages, since the latter, in his Ratio seu methodus perveniendi ad veram Theologiam (1519), states that “clearly theology needs all the tools of secular knowledge, from grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics to arithmetic and music, and finally to natural sciences, cosmography, and history;” see De Michelis Pintacuda, Tra Erasmo e Lutero, 158.

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ex auditu, the musical and textual source is approached in the same way. Its authority is plunged into thousands of disguises, (re)elaborations, and (re)paraphrases that pass it from hand to hand, often through contrafacta that are helpful in keeping children off the streets, thus finally “creating a background of universally diffused melodies in which it is maybe not too risky to say that the national unity of Germany is accomplished for the first time.”⁵³ The impact on Anglican liturgy would be decisive – but with mediocre results⁵⁴ –, also in connection with openness toward Catholic musical influences. As far as we are concerned, this is a sign of migration. As far as the English anti-Protestant writers of the time were concerned, this was a pretext for a harsh dispute. Let us consider the opinion of one of the most versatile and authoritative of these writers, John Henry Newman: a ritual dashed upon the ground, trodden on, and broken piecemeal; prayers clipped, pieced, torn, shuffled about at pleasure, until the meaning of the composition perished, and offices which had been poetry were no longer even good prose; antiphons, hymns, benedictions, invo-

 Massimo Mila, Breve storia della musica (Milano 1948), 77; I would like to point out that the chapter La Riforma was hardly retouched in the following revisions. The summaries of this timeless manual are extremely clear and well written, including the one on our topic: “[i]n Germany, the Reformation gave an intensely religious tone to the Lied, which we have already seen discussed by the Minnesänger and later by Isaak. Luther himself was thoughtfully concerned with offering to the people simple and incisive songs: thus, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the wealth of chorales was developed, an immense source of flexible and vigorous themes coming from the German choral tradition and endowed with an immediate and powerful echo in the fibers of the nation. All the great German composers would draw from it successfully, and Bach would take its instrumental elaboration to a sublime level. The more extensive vocal genres, which roughly correspond to the oratorio, instead of dealing with the lives of the saints and the Old Testament, are rather focused on the gospels of the passion, in line with the special attention that the Reformation gave to the New Testament;” see 113.  My friend and colleague Guido Milanese does not beat around the bush: “[i]t also needs to be taken into account how the complex situation of Anglican theology – in which Protestant influences had clearly effectively altered the unclear balance, already based on a compromise, of the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles from 1563 – had led to massive architectonic and, at the same time, liturgical alterations, in which the focus on the sermon was accompanied by the fundamental uselessness of the altar. The division between nave and presbytery, marked by the use of the traditional “rood screen,” had become useless, and, from a musical point of view, this had determined the positioning of the choristers and the instrumentalists in the “galleries” (usually the west gallery) and created a situation in which the liturgy was reduced to an alternating reading between the priest and the verger or the believers and to musical interjections of poor quality, straddling the liturgical and the devotional – such as, for example, psalms that had been translated and adapted metrically. The musical element, as well-witnessed by the documents produced, for example, by Rainbow, was either completely lacking or very poor in the rural parishes; in the urban ones, where an attempt was made to teach the believers how to take part in the singing, the results were generally negative; and in the cathedrals, which had preserved a musical structure in the liturgy, the singing was carried out by the choir;” see Milanese, “Newman e il gregoriano: note preliminari,” Studi gregoriani 30 (2014): 7.

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cations, shovelled away; Scripture lessons turned into chapters; heaviness, feebleness, unwieldiness, where the Catholic rites had had the lightness and airiness of a spirit; vestments chucked off, lights quenched, jewels stolen, the pomp and circumstances of worship annihilated; a dreariness which could be felt, and which seemed the token of an incipient Socinianism, forcing itself upon the eye, the ear, the nostrils of the worshipper; a smell of dust and damp, not of incense; a sound of ministers preaching Catholic prayers, and parish clerks droning out Catholic canticles; the royal arms for the crucifix; huge ugly boxes of wood, sacred to preachers, frowning on the congregation in the place of the mysterious altar.⁵⁵

Luther’s choices contributed to an open and participative music that was the vector of Lutheran liberalism and was not oppressed by the prohibitions to which Calvin, a notorious melophobe, subjected it in his philosophy, like an asphyxiating moral and Puritan corset,⁵⁶ reducing it to the merely necessary vocal homophony and reservata to the “Lord’s Supper.” In this context, it is interesting to consider the musical conclusion with which Audin, in the mid-nineteenth century, ends his description of the unpleasant rift that took place in Worms in 1541 between the Protestant leadership (Calvin was there, too) and the Catholics. Audin used a couplet from an epinicion by Calvin in which the victory of Christ over the papacy is celebrated: Finding himself in a large city [Geneva], where everything was new to him, its customs as well as its language, he, at first, attracted certain young pupils, who, after his lecture, came to visit the professor at his lodgings, in order to hear him converse, and, by friendly offices and attentions, to beguile the hours of his exile. It was a joy for the theologian to commune with his scholars, in a language which he tenderly loved, and which, with some glory, he had spoken in his Christian Institutes. He attempted to learn German, but very soon had thrown his grammar aside; that idiom, replete with images, was unsuited to a mind so positive as his, which, content with the idea, never troubled itself about the form. Calvin had wished to sing at Worms; the city which Luther had formerly entered entoning his Marseillese: Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott, “My God is my citadel.” It was at the commencement of the year 1541 that Calvin began his salutation in Latin verses, where, speaking of the Pope, he said: Digit! signo spatiorum concutit orbem, Nee minus est hodie, quam fuit ante ferox. A pitiful distich, unworthy of a pupil of the fourth class. Calvin was no poet, as must be admitted: never was there an ear less musical than his.⁵⁷

 Newman, Essays (London, 1907), 2:443 – 44.  To the point of categorical rejection of the radical Calvinist movements, such as the Quakers, who exclude from their circles any musical form or personnel; because of this, they are called “indecent” by Möhler, Simbolica o esposizione delle antitesi, 404.  Thus writes Audin – a French Catholic schemer and scholar, indefatigable when it comes to Protestant topics – in a monograph on Calvin (plagiarizing Henry and Bolsec; cf. the contribution by M. Sacquin, “Calvin’s Image in Catholic France during the Nineteenth Century,” in Sober, Strict and Scriptural. Collective Memories of John Calvin, 1800 – 2000, eds. Johan de Nit, Herman Paul, and Bart Wallet [Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009], 29), which was soon translated into Italian: J.M.V. Audin, Storia della vita, delle opere e delle dottrine di Calvino (Milano, 1843 [Paris, 1841]), 188 – 89; Eng. trans. History of the Life, Works, and Doctrines of John Calvin, trans. J. McGill (Baltimore, n.d.), 245 – 46. One of the

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Having also taken into account Zwingli’s and Calvin’s “sono-clasms” within the musical Protestant legacy, in Luther matured the premises of a music that was often popularly iconological – medievally told via images – and therefore far away, although figuratively, from the “renewed campaign of iconoclasm” against the ancient Carolingian customs through which “Calvin resolutely condemns the cult of images, which is considered at best fitting for a puerile saecolum.”⁵⁸ These were the two sides of the Protestant coin. However, the Lutheran one, also within the economy of our contribution, certainly shone brighter. Let us hear from the Calvinist minister from Berlin, Paul Henry, in 1835, as translated years later by an Anglican: Luther willingly retained music, images, and the altar in the house of God. Zwingli on the other hand, wanting in imagination and elevation of thought, was opposed to church-singing, and rejected images with greater violence than Calvin, who only feared the Roman catholic corruptions. The experience of three hundred years, during which the Lutheran church has now existed, proves that the use of outward means does not necessarily lead to superstition and heresy, and that this reformer therefore went too far. ⁵⁹

The condition of highbrow/lowbrow music – from homophonous/simple harmonization to Bach’s transcendent architectures, and via all the Hasslers and Schützes – is balanced on the thin line of participation illustrated above (under the sign of the Lied and the chorale) but never leans on the side of Palestrina’s Western Catholic canon, which is meant to leave the faithful astonished and reduced to spectators. Luther is careful not to fall into the “separation between performer and listener, [since] the ideal pursued by Luther went in the opposite direction and fell in line with his didactic intent. The believers, in fact, were to participate actively in the liturgical function by singing their faith collectively and were not meant to just listen passively

sources used by Audin was merciless on the topic of Calvin’s short poem: “[n]o other poetical composition but that here mentioned is found in the works of Calvin. The psalms were not translated by him. He had not the chivalrous feeling, the musical and poetical sense and spirit, which rendered Luther so worthy of love and admiration;” see P. Henry, Life and Times of John Calvin, the Great Reformer, trans. H. Stebbing (New York, 1851 [Hamburg, 1835 – 1844]), 1:241.  A. Serravezza, “La questione delle immagini sacre e l’estetica musicale,” in L’immagine musicale, ed. Paolo Gozza (Milano/Udine: Mimesis Edizioni, 2014), 115.  Emphasis added; Henry, Life and Times of John Calvin, 88. In chapter 7, it is worth reading the part on “Church music,” from which I would at least like to quote the following: “[i]n Germany also those hymns only are effective in the church which were composed in times of strong religious excitement. The old hymns as now altered are like venerable gothic edifices, with modern additions, or covered with glaring paint. Our Luther, who had a genuine musical feeling, opened the path for German church-singing, and his whole soul poured itself wonderfully forth in the mystery of this noble art. Calvin has only left some few remarks in praise of music. Luther in this respect stands higher: he would not separate the art from religion, and in the preface to his spiritual songs he says, ‘I am not of opinion that all kinds of art should be cast down and trodden under foot by the Gospel, as some fanatics would have it; but I would have all the arts, especially that of music, devoted to it, and employed in its service;’” see pages 415 – 16.

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to pompous and complex polyphonic masses.”⁶⁰ In other words, the Lutheran collaborative assembly was reduced in the Church of Rome to a privilege only for ministrants and clerics or for the schola cantorum. [Luther] wished also for devotional songs to be sung not only in church, but also in the home, and this new form of active participation of the believers in the holy offices created an effect of further linguistic and cultural cohesion, certainly favoring a basic musical alphabetization that was impossible in the Catholic nations, where instead the professionalism of the ecclesiastical musical performance, which was reserved for specialized artists, and the distance and lack of participation of the assembly of believers were ratified once again by the Council of Trent.⁶¹

Luther had a few collaborators who acted as hinges between these two poles, especially Johann Walter and Ludwig Senfl. The latter was well known in Palestrina’s Rome and later became a very good friend of Luther’s. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Italian aesthetic and musical historiography was already clear about this issue: With Bruck and the prolific Senfl (who was born towards the end of the fifteenth century and died in 1550), the ancient German school reached its apex. A song by the latter, Ewiger Gott (Eternal God) – perhaps the best of his religious pieces – expresses the spirit of a whole epoch, a strong spirit that ignited the noblest minds in Germany. Senfl, who was well-versed in the theory of counterpoint, also wrote imitations and canons on one line for multiple voices and with different measures in the Flemish style. He finished Isaak’s Offices; he was Luther’s collaborator, together with Walther and Ruppich: the famous Geystlich gesang-buchleyn was composed during his time (1524). A seven-voices song by Walther is a testament to German inspiration and its religious ardor for the Reformation. He wrote with faith and conviction, full of an enthusiasm for the new religion that was equal to Palestrina’s enthusiasm for Catholicism. The choral melodies came, in part, from the hymns of the ancient church and from folk songs, while others were specifically composed for the new cult.⁶²

Although with some inaccuracies, this is in line with today’s theses. In this context, it is certainly possible to say that the Lutheran musical structure, which is the mediator of the Verbum Dei,⁶³ would become the vehicle of a stylistic and aesthetic migration

 From the chapter “La Riforma protestante e la battaglia antimodernistica nella musica” by Enrico Fubini, L’estetica musicale dall’antichità al Settecento (Torino: Einaudi, 1976), 141.  Guanti, Estetica musicale. La storia e le fonti, 93.  The quote is from Amintore Galli, a fervent Catholic who had some experiences beyond the Alps, in his monumental Estetica della musica ossia del bello nella musica sacra, teatrale e da concerto in ordine alla sua storia (Torino, 1900), 306 – 07 and 309; I have not corrected the spelling of foreign names and titles.  “He considered music, like language, a divine revelation, of heavenly origin, and that without God man would not have discovered it. In his eyes no remedy was more efficacious than music for driving away the evil thoughts, angry desires, ambitious aspirations, and carnal suggestions, which we inherit from our first parent. It was the most certain voice by which man could convey to the throne of God his pains, his cares, his tears, his miseries, his love, and his gratitude; it was

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between the two templates of the Bible and popular faith that is agile, lenient in its contradictions,⁶⁴ and malleable. If we were to jump, for example, to late Romanticism, we would see the Lutheran example confirmed once again in Johannes Brahms, from the Marian folk songs of his early years to the biblical abandonments of his mature old age, from the Requiem to the Songs op. 121 of 1896, composed a year before his death: As a young man he had founded a women’s choir in his hometown and composed Marienlieder (Songs of Mary), Op. 22, hagiographic folksongs for them. His Deutsches Requiem (German Requiem), Op. 45, made him famous, and then he settled in Vienna, the capital of music. His Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), Op. 121, all to the Bible, was last. Thus, it was early songs in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Protestant Hamburg followed later by volumes of music to Luther’s translation of the Bible in Catholic Vienna. Brahms had a religious itch he scratched continually, and he was a contrarian as well. In later years he supplied a verbal background to his religious music, an epistolary ostinato to a friend indicating how much he sought the “heathen” parts of the Bible.⁶⁵

The case of Brahms is connected to a Lutheran continuum that was still very strong at the beginning of the twentieth century. From this perspective, it is even possible to say that the whole of the seventeenth century was a “hinge” century. We are now reminded of Mellace’s internal title, Il Seicento, secolo chiave, tra accrescimento del repertorio e progettualità catechetica, and the first considerations it contains: The choral repertoire, in fact, grew over several generations in the two centuries that divide Luther and Bach, in a constant process of renewal and accumulation, both in the lyrics and in the melodies. With its malleability, the Kirchenlied proved to be able to mirror historical and often dramatic ordeals and the no less eventful cultural evolution of Reformed Germany between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries by taking on, from time to time, the voice and perspective of a small number of theologians and poets capable of interpreting and modulating the religious

the language of the angels in heaven, and on earth that of the old prophets. Next to theology he loved music, and often said: ‘The man who does not love music, cannot be loved by Luther.’ What a charming science is music! its notes impart life to speech, it expels the cares, inquietudes, and sorrows of the heart. Every instructor of youth, every clergyman should be a musician.” And so forth, in a growing “enthusiasm” that is the key to understanding the soul (see Audin, History of the Life, Writings, & Doctrines of Luther, 253 – 54). It is worth noting here that the pairing of teacher and priest is synonymous with that of school and catechism: this was the true motto of the Lutheran faith when it comes to music.  This moderation is the wisdom of the Protestant evangelization, where “Calvin’s work and action, unlike less intransigent Reformed positions, inspired in different regions of Northern Europe (mainly the Netherlands, but also some German states, England, and France) violent episodes of iconoclasm, with the expropriation of churches and the destruction of statues and paintings. These events are known in the Netherlands as Beeldenstorm and in German-speaking countries as Bildersturm;” see Serravezza, La questione delle immagini sacre, 115 – 16.  R. Knox, “Brahms and His Religion,” Il Saggiatore musicale 22 no. 2 (2015): 215 – 16.

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sentiment in poetic and musical forms that are always current, greatly effective, and successful.⁶⁶

The Cantata, one of the most exquisite religious and musical fruits of those lands, would see the light in the century between the Thirty Years War and Pietism – between the recrudescence of Renaissance sociability and the intimate and domestic spiral: Thus the cantata “rereads,” together with the faithful, with the help of choral and solo singing, the readings prescribed for a certain festivity or Sunday and comments on them through a textual structure devised exactly for that purpose. Thus, it is a sort of squared preaching that extends the reach of the divine word, a notion pivotal in Lutheran liturgy. The text of the cantata – apart from guaranteeing a further exegesis of the readings, which is theological and musical in nature – would also suggest to the assembly a complete devotional path, suitably sophisticated on the theological level and enriched by engaging psychological contexts. On the textual level, the cantata refers to two fundamental formal archetypes. On the one hand, strophic poetry, which is represented mainly by the chorale, and, starting from the late seventeenth century, by a devoted poetry of Pietist inspiration called ode. On the other hand, there was a second form from Italy that progressively took the place of the first, thanks to its special congeniality with Baroque imagery: this is the madrigal. These forms were progressively involved in a continuous process of elaboration in the thousands of compositions of Lutheran Germany, especially in the north of the country. Many authors – among whom it is worth mentioning Heinrich Schütz, Hermann Schein, Hans Leo Hassler, Dietrich Buxtehude, Michael Praetorius, Johann Pachelbel, Samuel Scheidt, Georg Böhm, and Nicolaus Bruhns – thus contributed to the stratification of a formidable repertoire and created a seamless liturgical practice: a fertile tradition in which the Bach clan took part, as well.⁶⁷

When following Luther’s musical migrant temperament along the whole of the eighteenth century – a temperament that, in Germany, was met, at the time of Bach, with resistance among Pietists and conservatives⁶⁸ –, it must also be said that, in its historical and critical confrontation with secular music, Protestant Germany would be protected and excluded from the synthetic development, imbibed with cosmopolitanism, that would later manifest itself during the nineteenth century. Even monographs by modest authors were not mistaken on this subject: Whilst Marcellus II – or his successor, as some claim – condemned to ostracism the Flemish hieroglyphs and decreed that no other music should be performed but that by Pier Luigi, or by those who faithfully followed his way, in Germany, Luther, by reforming religion, gave to the music of his country that certain mystical and serious footprint that it still has today; and,

 Mellace, “Musica optimum Dei donum”, 73 – 74.  Mellace, “Musica optimum Dei donum,” 77.  “In Mühlhausen, for example, the Pietist and non-Pietist clergy linked to urban churches were engaged in a holy war, one against the other, and the musicians – for a time Bach, too, worked as an organist in this city – were subject to violent attacks from both sides and also from the fanatics of the old style of music, who were so satisfied with the past that they opposed any change;” see Raynor, Storia sociale della musica, 248.

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after him, Johann Walter, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, confirmed it, leaving to the Germans a model of songs that has had so much influence on the general character of their later music. From this, it is possible to understand something peculiar: while Luther, who is a music enthusiast, is founding chapels in every corner of Germany, and while the popes, by reforming the art, are doing the same in Italy, secular music comes to the forefront once again and tries in vain, in its Sunday best, to make its way, defended and clothed as it was in the poetry of the Renaissance. Palestrina is hailed in Rome, but the Flemish keep triumphing in every Italian court and chapel; and Germany, which is suffering too from foreign influence, halts and prefers to abandon itself to that strict ideal inspired by the characters of the Reformation, condemning itself, however, to a silence that lasted two and half centuries.⁶⁹

However, within the aesthetic and philosophic thinking that runs from the nineteenth century onward, a new metamorphosis would occur toward a new kind of proselytism: And the aesthetic and musical thinking from the nineteenth century seems to us to be touched by the phenomenon of the sacralization of art […] to the point of making it possible to speak of a “battle of the Romantics.” The sacralization of art […] marks a vastly influential change. […] It is an instance that affirms itself regardless of the secularization of the world and, perhaps, not without any relationship to it. From religion to art, from theology to aesthetics: the religious hatred (some speak, in order to define the implacable hostility of the doctrinal contrasts, of “theological hatred”) becomes aesthetic aversion; the investment of values directed toward the divine pours in the direction of beauty; the perimeter of the sacred is reconfigured in order to include objects of art; these are collected in physical spaces (galleries, theaters) that are conceived as temples and are sometimes even the destination of pilgrimages, or in ideal spaces, i. e., the repertoires, perceived as the pantheons of the new religion […] If music, too, following the reorganization of the aesthetic sphere, tends to move into a dimension that is closer to cult and faith, the discourse of which it is the topic shows a categorical propensity toward religion.

Musicology teaches us that the two-faced Janus of Luther and Calvin grew to become a fertile model of the migrations of taste, to the point of turning into a source of identity for Romantic and twentieth century music and art in sensibilities that are oblivious or indifferent to the inter-Christian contexts in which they originated: At the root of the controversy there was the confrontation between, on one side, the idea that the abstraction brings us closer to fundamental values and represents a conquest that leads humanity further away from primitive beliefs and practices (the “time of error” in the Islamic version of iconophobia or the saeculum puerile in Calvin), and, on the other side, the [meta-Lutheran] belief in a vehicle that fits the idea, whose values are immanent, and whose sensible representation is not incoherent with their substance. […] Thus it happened that, at the center of the aesthetic and musical debate of the nineteenth century (and part of the twentieth century), […]

 From a booklet written by the pianist and composer from Siena, R. Lapi, Dell’avvenire della musica in Italia. Origini, passato, presente. Cenni storico-critici dettati per l’Esposizione musicale che ha luogo in Milano nel 1881 (Torino, 1881?), 27– 28.

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ideas and attitudes matured in the field of faith migrated to the new field and found new relevance, offering themselves in an aesthetic modernity that is oblivious to the original collocation but not lacking the tones and the fervor of someone who is aware of being engaged in essential values.⁷⁰

This is where our investigation ends, by rising to the extreme statio of Protestant ecumenical musical bi/taste, to its most surprising intrusion: born with Luther – who had bent it, as Mila would say, “to his purposes of education of the masses” – and then manhandled by Calvin, only to extend today “to a divergence of values that is not circumscribed by the relationship with the divinity.”

 The last two quotations are from Serravezza, La questione delle immagini sacre, 135 and 137– 38, respectively.

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Education, Learning, and Instruction during the Reformation 1 Educational History between the Late Middle Ages and the Reformation “No universities, no Reformation.”¹ Even though this statement has become almost a commonplace, it serves as a reminder that it is no more possible to consider the educational history of the Reformation in isolation from its background in the Late Middle Ages than in isolation from its connection with the person of Martin Luther. The interweaving of the educational history of the Late Middle Ages and the Reformation period can be expressed in three similar statements: No towns, no Reformation. – No humanism, no Reformation. – No printing, no Reformation. The urban and academic culture of the Late Middle Ages, together with printing and humanism, are essential historical factors without which a reform of teaching, ways of life, and education would have been unthinkable. However, it would be a fallacy to believe that this was an inevitable outcome. Although the majority of European town burgesses were in principle open to reformatory ideas, not all towns and cities became Evangelical – not even in the Holy Roman Empire, as shown by the prominent example of Cologne.² At first, the Reformation was received reticently in academic milieus. The University of Leuven was quick to distance itself from Luther’s ideas and endeavored to oppose reformatory ideas, both in Leuven itself and throughout Western christianitas. Elsewhere – for example, at the University of Rostock – the ideas of the Reformation were received with reticence and did not exert an influence until the middle of the century.³ At the other end of the spectrum was the University of Wittenberg, where the majority of lecturers followed Luther’s ideas, and also the first Evangelical universities founded in Marburg (in 1527) and in Königsberg (in 1544). The expression of reformatory ideas in the public sphere and their rapid and effective dissemination would have been unthinkable without

Translation from German: Richard Holmes.  Thomas Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung. Die Rostocker Theologieprofessoren und ihr Beitrag zur theologischen Bildung und kirchlichen Gestaltung im Herzogtum Mecklenburg zwischen 1550 und 1675 (Gütersloh: Güterlsloher Verlagshaus, 1997), 11.  Andreea Badea, Kurfürstliche Präeminenz, Landesherrschaft und Reform. Das Scheitern der Kölner Reformation unter Hermann von Wied (Münster: Aschendorff, 2009).  Marko A. Pluns, Die Universität Rostock 1418 – 1563. Eine Hochschule im Spannungsfeld zwischen Stadt, Landesherren und wendischen Hansestädten (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2007), 487– 88. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-063

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printing. Although for several decades the Reformation had a clear lead in the use of printing, the Roman Catholic Church also made use of printed material in its reaction to the Reformation. While the Reformation would be hard to imagine without the reciprocity of reformatory teaching and humanist scholarship, the Reformation did not fully absorb all humanist tendencies, and although numerous humanists found their way into the Reformation camp, by no means all of them did.

2 Humanism and Universities 2.1 Theology and artes The original humanism emerging from Italy, “as the educational movement of the Renaissance,”⁴ had a lasting impact on the reformatory conception of scholarly investigation and the overall understanding of education in the Reformation. Therefore, considering the relationship of the Reformation to the Renaissance and humanism only in terms of opposites and commonalities falls short.⁵ There is a merging and interconnection of the Reformation and humanism, with oppoistion only in part. North of the Alps, humanism – which, like the Reformation itself, was not a monolithic unity, but rather a highly diverse movement – was absorbed and transformed by the Reformation. The networks of humanism branched out in southern Germany and stretched into central and northern Germany, with stations in Erfurt, Wittenberg, and Rostock.⁶ The Erfurt humanists Nikolaus Marschalk and Balthasar Fabritius Phaccus established Greek studies in Wittenberg,⁷ and Marschalk also moved a printing press there, which was used to produce classical works and Greek grammars.⁸ Hermann von dem Busche – closely associated with other humanists, including Johannes Reuchlin – delivered the opening speech at the Leucorea in 1502 and taught rhetoric and poetics there until he moved to Leipzig. The Italian humanist Peter of Ravenna taught in Wittenberg in 1503 – 1504. Christoph Scheurl, who came to Wittenberg in 1507 on the recommendation of Johann von Staupitz, had studied in Bologna and took this as his model when drafting the statutes for the Leucorea. Prior to 1517, Johann Lang, Georg Spalatin, and Martin Luther had already been proponents of a

 August Buck, “Der italienische Humanismus,” in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, Band I: 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert. Von der Reformation bis zum Ende der Glaubenskämpfe, ed. Notker Hammerstein (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1996), 1– 56, here 1.  Renaissance – Reformation. Gegensätze und Gemeinsamkeiten is the title of an anthology edited by August Buck, published in 1984.  Czaika, Sveno Jacobi, 201– 05.  Martin Treu, “Balthasar Fabritius Phaccus – Wittenberger Humanist und Freund Ulrich von Hutten,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte (=ARG) 80 (1989): 68 – 87.  Maria Grossmann, “Humanismus in Wittenberg 1486 – 1517,” Luther-Jahrbuch (1972): 11– 30, here 25 – 26.

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biblical humanist program, dedicated to studying the original source texts (ad fontes) and the ancient languages.⁹ In 1517 and over the years that followed, the Wittenberg scholars also shared with humanism an interest in studying the church fathers¹⁰ and in living a virtuous life achieved through study and instruction as well as in the criticism of church hierarchies, of vulgar Catholicism and its obsession with superficialities, and of the via antiqua or scholasticism.¹¹ Martin Luther – who, in accordance with the late medieval academic tradition, had the duty as a professor of theology to interpret the Bible¹² – broke with the tradition of interpreting Lombard’s Sentences. Thanks to a humanist impetus, in his lectures on the Psalms between 1513 and 1515, he already favored textual interpretation.¹³ Philipp Melanchthon particularly synthesized the core ideas of humanism and the Reformation. Melanchthon’s educational program drew on Ciceronian scholarship and returned to latinitas, eloquenza, or bella lingua as the core of humanism. Despite Luther’s pointed but limited aversion to the medieval reception of Aristotle (originating from Augustinianism),¹⁴ philosophical considerations were also incorporated, with a positive reception of Aristotle’s philosophy (although not his metaphysics or his ontology) as Philosophia Christi in the theology and moral philosophy of the Reformation.¹⁵ Melanchton’s Loci method¹⁶ was expressed in 1521 and subse-

 Helmar Junghans, “Martin Luthers Einfluss auf die Wittenberger Universitätsreform,” in Die Theologische Fakultät Wittenberg 1502 bis 1602. Beiträge zur 500. Wiederkehr des Gründungsjahres der Leucorea, eds. Irene Dingel and Günter Wardenberg (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002), 55 – 70, here 58 – 64; Junghans, Der junge Luther und die Humanisten (Göttingen, 1985), 58 – 60. Grossmann, “Humanismus in Wittenberg,” 11– 30.  Buck, “Der italienische Humanismus,” 16; Junghans, “Martin Luthers Einfluss,” 66; Jens-Martin Kruse, “Paulus und die Wittenberger Theologie. Die Auslegung des Römerbriefes bei Luther, Lang und Melanchthon,” in Die Theologische Fakultät Wittenberg, 113 – 32, here 114– 16; Markus Wriedt, “Schrift und Tradition. Die Bedeutung des Rückbezugs auf die altkirchlichen Autoritäten in Philipp Melanchthons Schriften zum Verständnis des Abendmahls,” in Die Patristik in der Frühen Neuzeit. Die Relektüre der Kirchenväter in den Wissenschaften des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, eds. Günter Frank, Thomas Leinkauf, and Markus Wriedt (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2006), 145 – 68.  Ernest G. Schwiebert, “New Groups and Ideas at the University of Wittenberg,” ARG 49 (1958): 60 – 79.  This was generally the duty of a theology professor. Martin Luther’s professorship as “lectura in biblia,” therefore, did not differ from other theology professorship around 1500, as is repeatedly claimed. Ulrich Köpf, “Martin Luthers theologischer Lehrstuhl,” in Theologische Fakultät Wittenberg, 71– 86, here 72– 83.  Lawrence Murphy, S.J., “The Prologue of Martin Luther to the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1509): The Clash of Philosophy and Theology,” ARG 67 (1976): 54– 75; Murphy, “Martin Luther, the Erfurt Cloister, and Gabriel Biel: The Relation of Philosophy to Theology,” ARG 67 (1976): 5 – 24.  Adolar Zumkeller O.E.S.A., “Die Augustinertheologen Simon Fidati von Cascia und Hugolin von Orvieto und Martin Luthers Kritik an Aristoteles,” ARG 54 (1963): 15 – 38.  Heinz Scheible, “Die Philosophische Fakultät der Universität Wittenberg von der Gründung bis zur Vertreibung der Philippisten,” ARG 98 (2007): 7– 44, here 33 – 35; Günter Frank, “Einleitung: Zum Philosophiebegriff Melanchthons,” in Der Philosoph Melanchthon, eds. Günter Frank and Felix

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quently in various versions of Loci communes,¹⁷ which brought together the main parts of reformatory teaching and became the model for theological textbooks;¹⁸ it was even copied by Johannes Eck, the Catholic antipode of the Reformation.¹⁹ Above all – as a result of Philipp Melanchthon’s encyclopaedic learning, his decades of work at the Wittenberg artes faculty, and his wide-ranging writings on many fields of early modern science, dialectics, rhetoric and poesy, mathematics,²⁰ and mathematical astrology (which Luther “unreservedly supported”²¹) –, physics and medicine as well as moral philosophy and ethics were preserved in the educational canon of Protestant universities and productively developed. Melanchthon’s interest in historiography, as shown paradigmatically in his editing of the Chronicon Carionis, also led to the anchoring of history in the academic syllabus after his death.²² This historiography had an apologetic function, directed against confessional opponents.²³

2.2 Jurisprudence The Reformation followed on seamlessly from the core concerns of humanism and preserved the medieval structure of the universities with the four faculties of arts,

Mundt (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2012), 1– 10, here 2; Marcel Nieden, “Wittenberger Anweisungen zum Theologie-Studium,” in Theologische Fakultät Wittenberg, 133 – 54, here 135 – 37.  Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggermann, “Topik und Loci Communes: Melanchthons Traditionen,” in Der Philosoph Melanchthon, 77– 94.  Ulrich Köpf, “Melanchthons Loci und ihre Bedeutung für die Entstehung einer evangelischen Dogmatik,” in Philipp Melanchthon. Lehrer Deutschlands, Reformator Europas, eds. Irene Dingel and Armin Kohnle (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2011), 129 – 52; Helmar Junghans, “Philipp Melanchthons Loci theologici als Lehrbuch während seiner Lebenszeit,” in Philipp Melanchthon, 153– 62.  Günter Frank, “Topische Dogmatik im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung. Philipp Melanchthon, Wolfgang Musculus, Melchior Cano,” in Philipp Melanchthon, 251– 70.  Johannes Eck, Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Ludderanos, Landshut, 1525 [=VD16 E 331], printed in some forty editions in the sixteenth century; see Czaika, Sveno Jacobi, 132.  Charlotte Methuen, “Zur Bedeutung der Mathematik für die Theologie Philipp Melanchthons,” in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften seiner Zeit, eds. Stefan Rhein and Günther Frank (Sigmaringen: Frommann-Holzboog, 1998), 85 – 104; Karin Reich, “Melanchthon und die Mathematik seiner Zeit,” in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften 105 – 22.  Wolfgang Maaser, “Luther und die Naturwissenschaften – systematische Aspekte an ausgewählten Beispielen,” in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften, 25 – 42, here 29.  Heinz Scheible, “Der Bildungsreformer Melanchthon,” in Die Leucorea zur Zeit des späten Melanchthon. Institutionen und Formen gelehrter Bildung um 1550, eds. Matthias Asche, Heiner Lück, Manfred Rudersdorf, and Markus Wriedt (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2015), 93 – 117, here 98.  Harald Bollbuck, “Die Geburt protestantischer Kirchengeschichtsschreibung aus theologischer Topik – Zur historischen Methode der Magdeburger Zenturien,” in Hermeneutik, Methodenlehre, Exegese. Zur Theorie der Interpretation in der Frühen Neuzeit, eds. Günter Frank and Stephan Meier-Oeser (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2011), 123 – 46.

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theology, jurisprudence, and medicine. The theology of the Reformation called for and encouraged the positioning of jurisprudence.²⁴ Canon law was not totally rejected, but was recognized in areas such as marital law as forward-looking, if not unreservedly valid.²⁵ Reformation jurists, such as Melchior Kling²⁶ and Konrad Lagus²⁷ in Wittenberg or Johannes Oldendorp in Rostock and Frankfurt an der Oder,²⁸ helped to make canon law fruitful for jurisprudence at Evangelical universities and, with a view to the wider legal situation, also developed the law concerning the right to resist and the right of self-defense.²⁹ Melanchthon’s view of natural law as implanted in the “heart of man”³⁰ – rather than derived from the Scriptures – was of immense importance.

2.3 Medicine Although medicine was of far less direct relevance for the Reformation than jurisprudence, it remained part of the academic canon and was further developed in accordance with the latest anatomical knowledge;³¹ around 1550, Andreas Vesalius’ anatomical work De humani corporis fabricia had already been received by Melanchthon and his pupils in Wittenberg.³² Numerous Wittenberg students, including theologians such as Paul Eber and Nicolaus Selneccer, worked on medical and anatomical questions in the spirit of Vesalius, as did Melanchthon’s son-in-law, the physician Caspar Peucer. The University of Wittenberg thus became a hub from which the new medical and anatomical knowledge was disseminated by the students educated there – including Johann Aichholtz (1520 – 1588), who went to Vienna; An-

 Heiner Lück, “Einführung: Die Universität Wittenberg und ihre Juristenfakultät,” in Wittenberg. Ein Zentrum europäischer Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtskultur, eds. Heiner Lück & Heinrich de Wall (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2006), 13 – 35.  Christoph Link, “Luther und die Juristen – Die Herausbildung eines evangelischen Kirchenrechts im Gefolge der Wittenberger Reformation,” in Wittenberg, 63 – 82; Anneliese Spengler-Ruppenthal, “Das kanonische Recht in den Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Canon Law in Protestant Lands, ed. Richard H. Helmholz (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1992), 49 – 122.  Rolf Lieberwirth, “Melchior Kling (1504.1571), Reformations- und Reformjurist,” in Wittenberg, 35 – 62.  Hans Erich Troje, “Konrad Lagus (um 1500 – 1546) und die europäische Rechstwissenschaft,” in Wittenberg, 151– 74.  Isabelle Defflers, “Einige Anmerkungen zur Ausstrahlung der Naturrechtslehre Melanchthons,” in Die Leucorea zur Zeit, 359 – 78, here 368 – 70.  Heinz Scheible (ed.), Das Widerstandsrecht als Problem der deutschen Protestanten 1523 – 1546 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1969).  Defflers, “Einige Anmerkungen,” 365.  Maike Rotzoll, “Die Wittenberger Medizin in der Praxis – Leibmedici, Stadtphysici und Medizinpolicey,” in Die Leucorea zur Zeit, 421– 38.  Hans-Theodor Koch, “Melanchthon und die Vesal-Rezeption in Wittenberg,” in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften, 203 – 18, here 213.

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ders Christensen (1551– 1606), who became a physician in Copenhagen; and many others. ³³ While jurisprudence as an academic subject had direct relevance for the shaping of evangelical teaching and Christian living in the world, Luther classed medicine under sapientia or ratio humana,³⁴ thus belonging to the earthly world. With Luther’s blessing and full approval,³⁵ and thanks to Melanchthon’s encyclopaedic interests, the medicine of the Renaissance and the early modern period was further developed as an academic subject in Lutheranism.

2.4 Erasmus and Jesuit Education The academic traditions and developments of the Late Middle Ages are linked in many ways to humanism and the Reformation. The Reformation does not represent a clear break with the Late Middle Ages; neither is it possible to assume a violent confrontation between humanism and the Reformation – the interactions were much more intricate.³⁶ This is demonstrated, for example, by the reception of Erasmus’ humanist ideas and criticism of the Church within the Reformation. Despite the weighty discussion between Luther and Erasmus about free will, the Reformation – to a large extent – carried forward the works and ideas of Erasmus.³⁷ The Catholic Church – including the Sorbonne and the University of Leuven – not only discredited Erasmus at an early stage as “lutheranus,”³⁸ but also placed his works on the Index prohibitorum librorum and severely punished the mere ownership of Erasmus’ books (for example, in Italy). Whereas “Christian humanism” – or better, the humanism in the Catholic Church – “failed totally”³⁹ as a result of the Council of Trent, and Erasmus fell under “damnatio memoriae,”⁴⁰ the great scholar found a lasting home in Protestantism, together with humanism itself. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuit  Wolfgang U. Eckart, “Philipp Melanchthon und seine Medizin der Reformation: Erkenntnis, Autorität und Ordnung,” in Die Leucorea zur Zeit, 397– 420; Eckart, Philipp Melanchthon und die Medizin, in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften, 183 – 202.  Martin Luther, Disputatio de homine 1536, in WA 39.1:175—77, here 175. Cf. Bengt Hägglund, De Homine. Människouppfattningen i äldre luthersk tradition (Lund: Gleerup, 1959), 58 – 62; Gerhard Ebeling, Disputatio de homine. Teil 1: Text und Traditionshintergrund (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977), 7– 8.  Richard Toellner, “Die medizinischen Fakultäten unter dem Einfluss der Reformation,” in Renaissance – Reformation. Gegensätze und Gemeinsamkeiten, ed. A. Buck (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984), 287– 97, here 297.  Junghans, “Martin Luthers Einfluss,” 70.  Czaika, Sveno Jacobi, 109 – 23.  Silvana Seidel Menchi, Erasmus als Ketzer. Reformation und Inquisition im Italien des 16. Jahrhunderts (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 33 – 50.  August Buck, “Christlicher Humanismus in Italien”, in Renaissance – Reformation, 23 – 34, here 34.  Silvana Seidel Menchi, “Humanismus und Reformation im Spiegel der italienischen Inquisitionsprozeßakten,” in Renaissance – Reformation, 47– 64, here 64.

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Order took a stance mainly oriented against Erasmus rather than against Protestantism.⁴¹ In this context, it is noteworthy that Loyola’s lack of interest in jurisprudence and medicine meant that the “typical Jesuit universities consisted of only two faculties”⁴² – namely, of arts and theology. As a consequence, members of the Societas Jesu only occupied the chairs of these faculties at extant traditional universities with four faculties, while the other chairs continued as before. The Reformation tended to continue medieval educational history more smoothly than did Tridentine Catholicism. The “Wittenberg model of Melanchthon, with his synthesis of Reformation und humanism,”⁴³ was implemented by newly founded universities in Marburg, Königsberg, and Helmstedt, followed by the reform of older universities – for example, in Rostock –, which emanated from the medieval division of the universities into four faculties.

2.5 Matriculation at the Universities and Participation Profiles After 1517, the escalating theological conflict – above all, Martin Luther’s criticism of Aristotle and scholasticism – not only called into question the necessity of theological education or the existence of schools of higher education, but can in general be understood as a call to achieve the reform of the Church by means of an educational reform, a “good reformation of the universities.”⁴⁴ The tangled growth⁴⁵ of the Reformation in the period around and after 1520, as well as the anti-educational agitation of radical lay preachers, led to a dramatic decline in matriculation numbers in the 1520s.⁴⁶ This major crisis⁴⁷ stimulated a restructuring of the arts faculties, which had in fact already begun before the Reformation, and which was not restricted solely to Protestant universities. In the first two decades of the sixteenth century, Wittenberg, Leipzig, and Frankfurt had already done away with tuition fees for the regens  Erwin Iserloh, “Evangelismus und Katholische Reform in der italienischen Renaissance,” in Renaissance – Reformation, 35 – 46, here 36 – 37.  Matthias Asche, “Bildungsbeziehungen zwischen Ungarn, Siebenbürgen und den deutschen Universitäten im 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhundert,” in Deutschland und Ungarn in ihren Bildungs- und Wissenschaftsbeziehungen während der Renaissance, eds. Wilhelm Kühlmann and Anton Schindling (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2004), 27– 53, here 48.  Anton Schindling, “Bildungsinstitutionen als Ziele der studentischen Migration,” in Peregrinatio Hungarica. Studenten aus Ungarn an deutschen und österreichischen Hochschulen vom 16. Bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Márta Fata, Gyula Kurucz, and Anton Schindling (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2006), 39 – 54, here 48.  Martin Luther, An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation 1520, in WA 6:381– 470, here 458.  Helmar Junghans, “Plädoyer für ‘Wildwuchs der Reformation‘ als Metapher,” Luther-Jahrbuch 65 (1998): 101– 08.  Arno Seifert, “Das höhere Schulwesen. Universitäten und Gymnasien,” in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, 197– 374, here 256.  Franz Eulenburg, Die Frequenz der deutschen Universitäten von ihrer Gründung bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin: Oldenbrough Akademiverlag, 1994 [1904]).

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and had instead introduced paid lecturers. The majority of universities followed suit after 1520. After the decline in matriculation numbers in the 1520s, this structural change led to a growing demand for academic education and increasing numbers of students over the course of the sixteenth century.⁴⁸ This process was promoted by the founding of new universities and the revival of abandoned institutions, such as the Swedish University of Uppsala, which only became fully operable again after 1593. Throughout Europe, not only in Protestant countries, regional universities were established, and in the early nation-states – such as Spain, France, and England –, provincial universities served specific areas.⁴⁹ Amid attempts by regional rulers to ensure the teaching of the “right” faith and appropriate confessional education, academic peregrinations were increasingly subjected to confessional controls. Before the Reformation, many universities had already tended to be regional in character. At the University of Rostock, both before and after the Reformation, some 40 – 50 percent of the students came from the Hanseatic trading and communication area.⁵⁰ Over the course of the wars of religion, academic education in the seventeenth century became less international; in particular, universities in France and Italy were only rarely visited by foreign students.⁵¹ However, the Reformation and the rise of denominalization did not lead to an immediate or complete decline in academic peregrinations. In the Holy Roman Empire, local rulers’ ordinances forbidding students to attend the teaching institutions of other confessions were only introduced after the Thirty Years’ War.⁵² Young nobles on the Grand Tour continued to visit foreign universities and colleges, often those of different confessions.⁵³ Other students also continued to study in other countries,⁵⁴ although in successively lower proportions than in the Late Middle Ages and throughout the sixteenth century. The fact that far from every territory in the Holy Roman Empire had its own school of higher education implies that some universities held significance across wider re Matthias Asche, “Peregrinatio academica in Europa im Konfessionellen Zeitalter. Bestandsaufnahme eines unübersichtlichen Forschungsfeldes und Versuch einer Interpretation unter migrationsgeschichtlichen Aspekten,” Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte 6 (2005): 3 – 33, here 13 f  Asche, “Peregrinatio academica,” 20 – 21.  Matthias Asche, “Der Ostseeraum als Universitäts- und Bildungslandschaft im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit – Baustein für eine hansische Kulturgeschichte,” Blätter für Deutsche Landesgeschichte 135 (1999): 1– 20, here 9.  Asche, “Peregrinatio academica,” 19 – 20.  Rainer A. Müller, Geschichte der Universität. Von der mittelalterlichen Universitas zur deutschen Hochschule (Munich: Callwey, 1990), 58 – 59.  Cf. Simone Giese, Studenten aus Mitternacht. Bildungsideal und peregrinatio academica des schwedischen Adels im Zeichen von Humanismus und Konfessionalisierung (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2009).  Cf. Claudia A. Zonta, Schlesische Studenten an italienischen Universitäten. Eine prosopographische Studie zur frühneuzeitlichen Bildungsgeschichte (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2004); Peregrinatio Hungarica,; Herman J. Selderhuis and Markus Wriedt, Konfession, Migration und Elitenbildung. Studien zur Theologenausbildung des 16. Jahrhunderts (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007); Asche, “Peregrinatio academica.”

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gions. In particular, students from smaller territories – such as the imperial towns and cities that offered no opportunity for academic education – therefore attended universities of a suitable confession in other places.

2.6 The Evangelical Family Universities New educational landscapes developed in the wake of the Reformation, and confessionally-oriented educational expectations and policies meant that university attendance was in part regionalized, in part provincialized, but was at least increasingly divided according to confessional boundaries. In connection with this, a type of “family university” developed in Protestant territories. In many places, a connex of education, science, and interrelationships developed as a “remote effect” of Luther’s marriage to the former nun Katharina von Bora in 1525, Luther’s domestic life in a former monastery, and also as a result of the household practices of Luther and Melanchthon, who took in students and members of the early modern res publica litteraria. ⁵⁵ The universities in Rostock, Giessen, Marburg, and Basel are typical examples of family universities, in which successive generations of families provided a large portion of the university’s lecturers and professors over generations, in some cases even centuries. In addition, these university families became linked by marriage with other societal elites, clergy and state officials, and also with patricians, merchants, and – as in the case of Basel – with members of the printers’ guild.⁵⁶ In this context, it is interesting to explore the period around and after 1550. In the case of newly-founded or fundamentally reformed universities, it was often Wittenberg teaching personnel who took up academic posts – frequently proposed and recommended by Philipp Melanchthon. His pupil David Chytræus went to Rostock in 1551;⁵⁷ Georg Sabinus, one of Melanchthon’s pupils and his son-in-law, was the first rector of the University of Königsberg, founded in 1544.⁵⁸ The founding statutes

 Julian Kümmerle, “Absinkendes Niveau, fehlende Kritik und geringe Leistung? Familienuniversitäten und Universitätsfamilien im Alten Reich,” in Orte der Gelahrtheit. Personen, Prozesse und Reformen an protestantischen Universitäten des Alten Reiches, ed. Daniela Siebe (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2008), 143 – 58, here 143.  Luise Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Frühneuzeit. Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung frühmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996); Matthias Asche, “Von Konfessionseiden und gelehrten Glaubensflüchtlingen, von Konvertiten und heterodoxen Gelehrten. Mobilitätsphänomene konfessionell devianter Professoren zwischen obrigkeitlicher Duldung, Landesverweis und freiwilligem Abzug,” in Religion und Mobilität. Zum Verhältnis von raumbezogener Mobilität und religiöser Identitätsbildung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa, eds. Henning P. Jürgens and Thomas Weller (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 375 – 409, here 367– 78.  Czaika, “David Chytraeus,” in Frühe Neuzeit in Deutschland 1520 – 1620. Verfasserlexikon des 16. Jahrhunderts, Bd. 1 (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 511– 22.  Matthias Asche, Von der Viadrina an die Albertina und zurück – der Wittenberger MelanchthonSchüler Georg Sabinus in Frankfurt an der Oder und Königsberg, in Die Leucorea zur Zeit, 233 – 62.

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of the University of Königsberg, the revised statutes of the High School in Rostock (1563), and the statutes of the University of Helmstedt (founded in 1574, with the involvement of Rostock) all drew directly on the statues drafted for Wittenberg by Melanchthon in 1533.⁵⁹ This emphasizes the character of these statutes as a “key document”⁶⁰ for numerous institutions that followed the model of the Wittenberg Reformation. The importance of the Wittenberg statutes also shows how closely the family connections and teacher-pupil relationships were linked to theological and university reforms. The nepotism and clientelism at Protestant universities in the early modern period may seem problematic today, but the function of universities at that time was primarily to preserve and pass on existing knowledge in the service of the early modern state.⁶¹ Of course, the phenomenon of the family university arose because the clergy in the Evangelical churches were no longer required to be celibate. However, the Protestant family universities may also illustrate non-denominational structures of patronage and clientelism. In the Catholic territories, it was not possible to hand down academic positions through connubial links. The equivalent of the family in these contexts could be the orders – in the Reformation period, the Jesuits above all others were pioneers among the Catholic educational orders.⁶² Selfrecruitment at Catholic educational institutions thus took place not through a family, but within the structures of the order in question.⁶³ However, it is possible to identify family influences, in particular the connections between the personnel at Jesuit colleges and universities and other societal elites. In Breslau, a number of rectors of the Jesuit university came from Breslau families of high standing.⁶⁴ A comparison of the Protestant family university with equivalent phenomena in the Catholic tradition is not possible at present, because the necessary prosopographic investigations for the Catholic regions are lacking.⁶⁵

 Matthias Asche, “Über den Nutzen von Landesuniversitäten. Leistung und Grenzen der protestantischen ‘Familienuniversität‘,” in Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Bistums und Hochstifts Würzburg, Band LIII, eds. Peter Herde and Anton Schindling (Würzburg: Würzburger Diözesangeschichtsverein, 1998), 133 – 49, here 146.  Armin Kohnle, “Lehrpersonal- und Lehrprofil der Leucorea zwischen Neufundation (1536) und Melanchthons Tod (1560) – Die Theologische Fakultät,” in Die Leucorea zur Zeit, 149 – 64, here 151.  Asche, “Von Konfessionseiden,” 378.  Matthias Asche, “Humanistische Bildungskonzeptionen im Konfessionellen Zeitalter. Ein Problemaufriß in zehn Thesen,” in Jesuitica. Forschungen zur frühen Geschichte des Jesuitenordens in Bayern bis zur Aufhebung 1773, eds. Rita Haub und Julius Oswald (München: C.H.Beck, 2001), 373 – 404, here 392.  Asche, “Humanistische Bildungskonzeptionen,” 387  Norbert Conrads, “Zur Eröffnung der Ausstellung in Görlitz,” in Die tolerierte Universität. 300 Jahre Universität Breslau 1702 – 2002, ed. N. Conrads (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2004), 10 – 15, here 13.  Asche, “Über den Nutzen,” 141n29.

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3 The School System 3.1 Reform Initiatives The Reformation carried forward and developed humanist interests in educational policies. This is demonstrated by the scholars’ schools, which draw on humanist forerunners, the best known of which is probably the Latin school of the Brethren of the Common Life in Deventer, attended by Erasmus of Rotterdam. The territorial authorities in the Holy Roman Empire successively took on responsibility for schooling, beginning in the 1520s; resources previously administered by the Catholic Church – such as monasteries, their incomes, and their buildings – were rededicated for schooling and education in many Evangelical territories. There were school ordinances – either as part of the Evangelical Church ordinances or as separate texts – for the majority of Evangelical territories in the sixteenth century, outlining the framework for schooling and education in greater or lesser detail. However, with so many different territories, the school landscape of the Holy Roman Empire is much more varied and unclear than the university landscape. Martin Luther had already argued in the Address to the Christian Nobility (1520) that “in schools of all kinds, the chief and most common lesson should be the Scriptures”.⁶⁶ Luther also expressed his hope that each town would also have a girls’ school in which girls might be taught the gospel, either in German or Latin.⁶⁷ According to Luther, the Scriptures not only transmitted the fundamental reformatory insight that justification is only possible through the work of Christ’s salvation and through faith, but also that reading the Bible is the core of Christian education. Luther’s Letter to the Mayors and Aldermen (1524), in which he distances himself from the effects of Andreas Karlstadt’s reform program and the closure of many monastery and church schools in the early years of the Reformation, shows the humanist impetus of Luther’s educational ideas. In addition to giving lessons on language and grammar, schools should also teach poetry, history, music, and mathematics.⁶⁸ According to Luther, the central texts and interpretive traditions of medieval scholasticism were not only theologically dubious, but were also the reason for the dramatic decline in the standards of Latin.⁶⁹ The town schools that Luther proposed to the mayors and aldermen were to be attended by both boys and girls. Six years later, in A Sermon on Keeping Children in School,⁷⁰ Luther then developed the idea of compulsory schooling.⁷¹

 Luther, An den christlichen Adel, 461.  Luther, An den christlichen Adel, 461.  Martin Luther, An die Ratsherren aller Städte Deutsches Lands, dass sie Christliche Schulen aufrichten und halten sollen (1524); WA 15:27– 53, here 46.  WA 15:50.  Martin Luther, Eine Predigt, dass man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle; WA 30.2:517– 88.

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Beginning in the late 1520s, Evangelical schools were established in various towns and cities – for example, in Magdeburg, Nuremberg, Eisleben, Ulm, Memmingen, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Braunschweig. A leading role in the organization of these schools was played initially by the Wittenberg Reformers Philipp Melanchthon and Johannes Bugenhagen, with their church ordinance initiatives for various territories in the empire. Melanchthon’s Unterricht der Visitatoren an die Pfarrherren (1528),⁷² which was read widely in the sixteenth century and effectively constituted a church ordinance for the Electorate of Saxony,⁷³ included a chapter on schools, which dealt with very specific organizational questions. For example, “he suggests children should be broken up into three distinct groups: children who are learning to read, children who are ready to learn grammar, and advanced pupils who are able to read, in particular ancient texts.”⁷⁴ Melanchthon also recommended numerous talented students from the Leucorea as teachers.⁷⁵ In the church and school ordinances of the Reformation, the responsibility of the authorities for education is combined with the religious interests of the Reformers. The “prince schools” founded in Albertine Saxony beginning in the 1540s – in Schulpforta, Meissen, and Grimma – served as a model for other regions, as did the grammar school founded by Johannes Sturm in Strasbourg in 1537.⁷⁶ Sturm was guided by Melanchthon’s pedagogical and didactic ideas. In 1566, Emperor Maximilian II awarded the Strasbourg Gymnasium academic privileges and the right to award doctorates.⁷⁷ In the Reformed areas of the empire – which, for reasons of religious policy (the Peace of Augsburg only covered Catholics and members of the Confessio Augustana), were unable to receive the privilege of founding a university –, the Strasbourg model was adopted. In Bremen, Zerbst, Hanau, and Duisburg, among others, academic grammar schools (also known as gymnasium illustre) were founded. Outside of the Holy Roman Empire, for example in Lutheran Sweden, academic grammar schools were also successively founded, although in this case with a delay of several decades. Numerous grammar schools were continuations of medieval schools – such as the Duisburg Gymnasium,

 Albrecht Beutel, “Kommentar,” in Martin Luther, Kirche und Schule: Schriften III, 299 – 382, here 333.  Philipp Melanchthon, Vnterricht der Visitatorn an die Pfarhern ym Kurfurstenthum zu Sachssen (Wittenberg: Nickel Schirlentz, 1528) (= VD16 M2600).  Heinz Scheible, “Die Reform von Schule und Universität,” in Aufsätze zu Melanchthon, ed. h. Schieble (Tübingen. Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 152– 72, here 162.  Horst F. Rupp, “Schule/Schulwesen,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter,1999), 30:591– 627, here 599.  Heinz Scheible and Christiane Mundhenk, Melanchthons Briefwechsel: Regesten, Bd. 1 – 14; Texte, Bd. 1 – 17 (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977– 2016).  Notker Hammerstein, “Die historische und bildungsgeschichtliche Physiognomie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, 57– 102, here 68 – 69.  Anton Schindling, Humanistische Hochschule und freie Reichsstadt – Gymnasium und Akademie in Strassburg 1538 bis 1621 (Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag, 1977).

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which had its origins in a Latin school founded in 1280.⁷⁸ In the Swedish Empire, grammar schools in the diocese cities were developed from medieval cathedral schools. These grammar schools in turn often developed into full-blown universities – as in Strasbourg in 1621, or in Turku in Finland, where the Åbo University was opened in 1640, only twelve years after the grammar school had been founded.⁷⁹ Academic schools – such as prince schools, gymnasiums, and other forms of grammar schools, such as the Wurttemberg Paedagogia in Tübingen and in Stuttgart⁸⁰ or the hundred Latin schools spread throughout the Danish Empire⁸¹ – were mainly intended to prepare pupils for academic careers, particularly as theologians and as candidates for other public offices, including scribes, administrators, and bookkeepers.⁸² Since the higher, academic, and Latin schools were intended to prepare pupils for public office or for further academic study, they were exclusively for boys. However, many Evangelical church ordinances in the sixteenth century expressly stipulated that girls were to be taught in primary schools or that separate German schools were to be established for daughters or girls.⁸³ Other church ordinances generally referred to German or primary schools for “children” or for the “young,” which implies that education was intended to be for both sexes.⁸⁴ Johannes Bugenhagen’s Braunschweig Church Order of 1543⁸⁵ is an illustration of the Wittenberg reformer’s interest in promoting the rights of women; he formulates a “concise and theological-

 Werner Hesse, Beiträge zur Geschichte der früheren Universität in Duisburg (Duisburg, 1879), 6 – 7.  Timo Joutsivo, “Papeiksi ja virkamiehiksi,” in Huoneentaulun maailma: Kasvatus ja koulutus Suomessa keskiajalta 1860-luvulle, eds. Jussi Hanska and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2010), 112– 83, here 113 – 34.  Sabine Holtz, Bildung und Herrschaft. Zur Verwissenschaftlichung politischer Führungsschichten im 17. Jahrhundert (Leinfelden/Echterdingen: Thorbeke, 2002), 275.  Charlotte Appel and Morten Fink-Jensen, Dansk skolehistorie: Da læreren holdt skole. Tiden før 1780 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2013), 49 – 51.  Hammerstein, “Die historische und bildungsgeschichtliche Physiognomie,” 69.  While the sixteenth century provides a veritable treasure trove of examples, only a few can be cited here: “Zuchtordnung [Ravensburg, 1546],” in Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts [= EKO]: Siebzehnter Band: Baden Württemberg IV, eds. Gottfried Seebass and Eike Wolgast (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 476 – 94, here 491– 92; “Artikel zum Kirchen- und Schulwesen [Esslingen, 1538],” in EKO, Siebzehnter Band, 392– 93; “Gutachten des Leutpriesters und der Prädikanten zu den ihnen vorgelegten Basler und Strassburger Ordnungen [Strassburg, 1526],” in EKO, Zwanzigster Band: Elsass. 1. Teilband: Straßburg, 213 – 17, here 215.  “Kirchenordnung Kaspar Löners 1544 [Nördlingen],” in Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, Bd. 12: Bayern: Schwaben, ed. Emil Sehling (Tübingen: Mohr, 1963), 310 – 16, here 314. “Kirchenordnung von 1579 [Nördlingen],” in Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, Bd. 12, 335 – 93, here 341– 42.  “Braunschweig-Wolfenbütteler Kirchenordnung 1543/Christelike kerken-ordeninge im lande Brunschwig, Wulfenbüttels deles [Wittenberg, 1543],” in EKO, Sechster Band: I.1: Niedersachsen, eds. Rudolf Smend and Ernst Wolf, 22– 81.

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ly well-founded concept for the education of girls.”⁸⁶ Bugenhagen recommends that, in addition to reading and memorizing the usual literature, hymns, catechisms, and the German Psalter, girls should – if possible – also learn to write. Mothers were responsible for instructing their daughters on domestic matters. Bugenhagen also justified the education of girls on the grounds of biblical theology, citing Proverbs 31:30 (“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised”).⁸⁷ In addition to Luther’s writings on schools, the church and school ordinances of the Reformation period also illustrate that the Reformers assumed that, in principle, all children should be able to go to school. Education and the understanding of written texts, particularly the ability to read biblical and religious texts, are inseparable in the thought of the Reformation. Bugenhagen’s church ordinances – not only for Braunschweig – also serve to demonstrate that education and school attendance were not to be dependent on the social standing of the parents or their income, and in particular, places at grammar schools should be awarded according to the ability of the children. School fees should be socially graded, and free places were to be made available for the most needy.⁸⁸ Martin Luther and the other actors of the Reformation called for schooling and education in their programs and combined this organically with a theological justification, but steps toward the reorganization of schools and teaching were also evident in Catholic areas, some as early as 1530 – that is, before the Jesuit educational reforms. These also made use of “modern” instruments of territorial church policies – namely, “visitations and church ordinances, as well as the passing of state ordinances,”⁸⁹ although these were placed in a different theological framework. However, in their endeavors to reform educational structures and content, the different confessions followed a typical trend of the times.

3.2 The Reality of Schools Of course, normative sources – such as church and school ordinances or the programmatic texts of the Reformers – only show one side of the coin, and moreover, one that is viewed differently according to scientific trends, especially in church history research in the spirit of the Luther renaissance. Consequently, advances in edu-

 Tim Lorentzen, Johannes Bugenhagen als Reformator der öffentlichen Fürsorge (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 404.  Lorentzen, Johannes Bugenhagen, 404– 07.  Lorentzen, Johannes Bugenhagen, 389 – 99.  Johannes Kistenich, “Forschungsprobleme zum katholischen Schulwesen im Alten Reich zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung (ca. 1530 – 1750),” in Erziehung und Schulwesen zwischen Konfessionalisierung und Säkularisierung. Forschungsperspektiven, europäische Fallbeispiele und Hilfsmittel, eds. Heinz Schilling and Stefan Ehrenpreis (Münster: Waxmann, 2003), 101– 28, here 104.

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cational history have been exaggerated. The reality of school life often differed markedly from the objective formulated in school and church ordinances – that of offering education to the entire population. American historians drew attention to this more than a quarter of a century ago, after evaluating serial sources “from below.” In rural Evangelical areas, educational opportunities and successes were much smaller than normative sources would seem to suggest.⁹⁰ It is only possible to speak of the limited success of evangelical educational programs. On the other hand, confessional preferences – in this case, mostly regarding church historians with a Catholic orientation – introduced additional negative connotations with the image of Evangelical educational successes. It is said that the Reformation, for example in Scandinavia, destroyed a functioning late medieval educational system. Furthermore, the closure of nunneries considerably reduced the educational opportunities for women. However, these assessments of Evangelical educational measures do not stand up to scrutiny in the light of the facts. In Sweden, academic education was already in crisis before the Reformation; regarding the education of women, particularly their ability to read and write, after the Reformation it is impossible to prove any significant differences between Protestant and Catholic areas. ⁹¹ A mono-causal explanation for the increased interest in education after the Reformation as the result of the reformatory efforts fails to take note of the fact that humanists, town burgesses, and early modern town authorities (in their thirst for more responsibilities) had already begun to initiate important steps prior to the Reformation. It was doubtless the Reformation started by Luther – together with its local, regional, and national phenotypes – that combined the call for a theological reorientation and reform of the Church with a broad educational program. At first, the response of the Catholic Church was in part reactionary, in part reactive; only gradually did the Church become proactive, in the decades following Luther’s posting of his ninety-five theses. Here, attention should be drawn to Jesuit educational reform. The confessional competition generated by the Reformation thus had a generally positive effect on educational opportunities for the people, relatively independent of the confessional allegiance of a territory – even if, as already noted, the educational reality often lagged some distance behind the programs.

 Susan C. Karant-Nunn, “The Reality of Early Lutheran Education: The Electoral District of Saxony – A Case Study,” Lutherjahrbuch 57 (1990): 128 – 46; Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); James Kittelson, “Successes and failures in the German Reformation; The Report from Strasbourg,” ARG 73 (1982): 153– 75.  Anne Conrad, “Bildungschancen für Frauen und Mädchen im interkonfessionellen Vergleich,” ARG 95 (2004): 283 – 300; Charlotte Methuen, “‘And your daughters shall prophesy!’ Luther, Reforming Women and the Construction of Authority,” ARG 104 (2013): 82– 109.

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4 Printing and Literacy Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of printing with moveable type meant a leap forward in the reproduction of texts; in the decades prior to the Reformation, access to the written word had already become successively easier and cheaper, or had been cum grano salis “democratized.” The causa lutheri resulted in an unprecedented public echo, and printed works played a prominent role not only in the discourse between the representatives of the early modern res publica litteraria, but also in public discourse. Polemical, satirical, and popular texts were distributed in their millions in the Holy Roman Empire and over large parts of Europe.⁹² Short pamphlets, leaflets, and handbills reached the common person – all the more so because most of the texts were published in the vernacular. Apart from the established written languages – such as Italian, French, English, and German –, the Reformation promoted the emergence of new written languages in northern and eastern Europe.⁹³ This process began in the decades leading up to 1550 and continued into the eighteenth century. It was mostly translations of the Bible or religious texts, such as catechisms and hymns, that marked the emergence of a new written language. Even though, at the start of the sixteenth century, only a small percentage of the population were probably able to read, texts used in church – such as catechisms, hymnbooks, or primers – reached the majority of people. Printed texts were read to the illiterate in private, semi-public, or public settings. Church hymns, which had received a lasting stimulus through the Reformation, had the added mnemonic advantage that combinations of words and music were more easily passed on.⁹⁴ During the fifteenth century, the level of literacy had already steadily increased, so that the Reformation was following up on an existing development;⁹⁵ however, it created the additional incentive of reading “to save one’s soul.”⁹⁶ The Reformation’s emphasis on the word of God – especially by Martin Luther himself – is reflected not only in the importance attached to sermons for reformatory instruction, but also in attitudes toward printed books. Many

 Cf. Hans-Jörg Künast, Getruckt zu Augspurg. Buchdruck und Buchhandel in Augsburg zwischen 1468 und 1555 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1997).  Klaus Bochmann, “Die Reformation und die Entstehung neuer Schriftsprachen in Europa,” in Die Reformation. Fürsten – Höfe – Räume, eds. Armin Kohnle et. al. (Leipzig: Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2017 [in print]).  Marcel Nieden, “Die Wittenberger Reformation als Medienereignis,” in Europäische Geschichte Online (EGO), ed. Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG) (Mainz, 2012), http://www.iegego.eu/niedenm-2012-de.  Cf. Anne Jacobson Schutte, “Printing, Piety and the People in Italy: The First Thirty Years,” ARG 71 (1980): 5 – 36.  Thomas Kaufmann, Das Ende der Reformation. Magdeburgs “Herrgotts Kanzlei” (1548 – 1551/2) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 66; cf.: Rudolf Endres, “Die Verbreitung der Schreib- und Lesefähigkeit zur Zeit der Reformation,” in Festgabe Heinz Hürten zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Harald Dickerhof (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1988), 213 – 23.

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old books and manuscripts were either sorted out or destroyed;⁹⁷ others were reused in a reformatory interpretive framework. Above all, the Reformation used the printing press much more effectively and creatively.⁹⁸ Intellectualization, tradition-building, and the establishment of an Evangelical collective memory flowed into one another in reformatory printed tests, in reading experiences, and in the new Evangelical private, school, and church libraries.⁹⁹ In contrast to the confession culture of Tridentine Catholicism – which was oriented more toward actions, rites, and mysteries –, Lutheranism and the Reformed Church concentrated particularly on the word of God and its transmission in sermons and in print. Although it is often difficult to identify confessional differences regarding levels of education and literacy in the population – particularly in the multi-confessional Holy Roman Empire –, it is nevertheless significant that, in a European comparison, Evangelical Sweden had an outstanding level of literacy in towns and in the countryside at the start of the eighteenth century for both men and women, although with marked regional differences. As a measure of social discipline in early modern confessional states, the reading of basic religious texts – particularly Luther’s Small Catechism – had been declared one of the most important duties of a Christian and a citizen.¹⁰⁰

5 Domestic Education and the Family Even though the division of aspects of social life into “public” and “private” in the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period tends to be anachronistic, academic and basic education obviously belonged to the public sphere, under the organization of the authorities. However, the important place for religious education was the family, or rather the early modern oeconomia – the household, which was not identical with either the nuclear family or wider kinship relations, but would have included

 Marc Mudrak, “Zensiert und zerrissen: Alte Bücher und religiöse Differenzierung in Zürich und Biberach, 1520 – 1532,” ARG 106 (2015): 39 – 66; Joachim Ott, “Buchdruck Polemik und Zensur um 1560. Eine Bücherliste des Jenaer Bibliothekars Martin Bott,” in Buch und Reformation. Beiträge zu einer Buch- und Bibliotheksgeschichte Mitteldeutschlands im 16. Jahrhundert, eds. Enno Bünz, Thomas Fuchs, and Stephan Rhein (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2014), 241– 76.  Andrew Pettegree, Brand Luther. 1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation (New York: Penguin, 2015).  Thomas Fuchs, “Prolegomena zu einer evangelischen Theologie der Bibliothek. Die Gründung der Kirchenbibliothek von St. Nicolai in Leipzig,” in Buch und Reformation, 287– 304, here 288 – 90.  Knut Tveit, “Schulische Erziehung in Nordeuropa 1750 – 1825 – Dänemark, Finnland, Island, Norwegen und Schweden,” in Revolution des Wissens? Europa und seine Schulen im Zeitalter der Aufklärung – Ein Handbuch zur europäischen Schulgeschichte, eds. Wolfgang Schmale and Nan L. Dodde (Bochum: Winkler Verlag, 1991), 49 – 95, here 75 f; Egil Johansson, “Kyrkan och undervisningen,” in Sveriges kyrkohistoria: Enhetskyrkans tid, ed. Ingun Montgomery (Stockholm: Verbum 2002), 248 – 58.

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servants, apprentices, and journeymen. The Table of Duties ¹⁰¹ that Martin Luther included in his Small Catechism (1529) described the contemporary order of society and the household or the family and gave the head of the household and the parents the responsibility for inculcating the Christian way of living, religious education, and the realization of Christian neighborly love.¹⁰² The contribution of the Reformation to the educational history of the sixteenth century and the early modern period is traditionally associated – as it is here – mainly with institutionalized academic and basic education, but it should not be forgotten that, over the centuries, the common people gained their first and possibly their most important educational experiences in the early modern oeconomia through catechistic texts, particularly Martin Luther’s catechisms or other texts which were profoundly influenced by this work. Domestic education is always related in an interactive way to the public sector; it interacts with life in the service of God. It is demanded and supported by the authorities and supervised by disciplinary measures. It makes the individual a full member of the Christian community and the early modern confessionalized state. At the same time, domestic religious education produced confessionally aware individuals and uniform confessional cultures; it also had the potential to encourage the religious modernization and criticism that, among other factors, affected Pietism and the Enlightenment. It has thus also influenced the deconstruction of modern and post-modern religious discourses.¹⁰³

 Martin Luther, Kleiner Katechismus; WA 30:239 – 425 = Haustafel, 326 – 39.  Albrecht Peters, Kommentar zu Luthers Katechismen (Göttingen: Vendenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 5:95 – 118; Julius Hoffmann, Die Hausväterliteratur und die Predigten über den christlichen Hausstand. Lehre vom Haus und Bildung für das häusliche Leben im 16., 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Weinheim: Beltz, 1959).  Cf. Kaspar von Greyerz, Passagen und Stationen. Lebensstufen zwischen Mittelalter und Moderne (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010).

Esther P. Wipfler

Luther in Cinema and on Television 1 Introduction¹ In no other medium can the transformation of Martin Luther’s image be as clearly tracked as in film. This mass medium shows how scholarship – whether theological, historiographical, or psychological – or the interpretation of the Reformation as a whole has been popularized over the course of the last century. Moreover, the filmic image of the reformer is also part of a specific Lutheran approach to the visual arts.² Films about Martin Luther are mostly a German and Anglo-American phenomenon. There are only two exceptions: Frère Martin (1981) and Martin Luther, Heretic (1983) were produced for French and British TV, respectively. However, the second was made in cooperation with an American producer, who also arranged to have it screened on TV in the United States. Although Lutheranism is still very strong in Northern Europe, no Scandinavian film focuses on the German reformer. There are several reasons for this: first, Luther does not have the same cult status in Scandinavian countries – they have other, local religious heroes, such as King Gustav Adolf II of Sweden. Second, there has never been a film industry or system of sponsorship in Scandinavia that would finance such an expensive genre as the history film. The history of Luther as a film figure started in the early twentienth century in Germany and has always had a strong bond with that country. Nevertheless, an analysis of all the films reveals that a metamorphosis in the ways the protagonist was represented has taken place.³

 This article summarizes, to a certain extent, the results of my book (Esther Wipfler, Martin Luther in Motion Pictures. History of a Metamorphosis; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011) and overlaps – in the part due to the cinematic image of the reformer – with my paper “‘Here I stand I can do no other …’ Diverging Visions of Martin Luther in German and American Biopics,” presented at the conference Reformation on the Screen in Lutherstadt Wittenberg in 2015, the proceedings of which are going to be published in 2018.  On this, see Thomas Kaufmann, “Die Bilderfrage im frühneuzeitlichen Luthertum,” in Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder. Reformatorischer Bildersturm im Kontext der europäischen Geschichte, ed. Peter Blickle et al. (München: Oldenbourg, 2002), 407– 51; Esther Wipfler, “Götzenbild oder Adiaphoron – Positionen protestantischen Bildverständnisses,” in Verbotene Bilder. Heiligenfiguren aus Russland, ed. Marianne Stößl (München: Hirmer, 2006), 41– 48.  For further detail, see Wipfler, Luther. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-064

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2 Cinema Tracing the development of the Luther film genre, which originated in 1911 as part of an ongoing Luther renaissance, reveals a paradigm shift in the way the famous reformer was perceived within the span of only a few decades: from romantic aesthete in the 1913 Wittenberger Nachtigall to hero of the “German Reformation” in the 1927 film. This shift was not triggered by the stylization of Luther as a national hero, which had happened much earlier; to a certain extent, the heroization had already begun in the sixteenth century and reached its first climax with the institutionalization of the Luther memorial sites in Prussia.⁴ The reasons for the metamorphosis of Luther as a film figure are more complex. It was not only the changing spirit of the times, but also the intentions of each set of producers – who were, at first, probably commercially motivated. This may also have been the reason why sentimentality was initially given priority in Luther films. Later, the thrust of the films became increasingly clerical. An examination of church involvement has clearly shown how, in the last silent film (finished in 1927), a particular interest group – the Evangelischer Bund – determined what image of Luther was to be conveyed. Whereas the view of Luther in German films increasingly emphasized the nationalist element until 1927, since 1953 the Anglo-American films have focused on the element of liberation from traditional thinking and from the authorities of the Middle Ages, as well as on new beginnings. These elements would become the basis for nearly all later filmic representation of Luther. Thus it is legitimate to speak of an Americanization of Luther in film, though some core qualities of Luther’s image are present in both the European and the American traditions. Moreover, viewer responses to Luther films has shown itself to be an indicator of the degree of secularization in a society. It also shows whether or not members of the movie-going public perceive themselves to have a connection to a particular religious affiliation at a given time, and if so, how strongly connected they are. Luther films have always been – apart from some exceptions at the very beginning of the history of the genre – ambitious undertakings. As far as we know, all the initiators of these films sympathized with Luther and his issues. For them, it was most important to do justice to the status of the historic figure as a national myth in Germany⁵ or a church founder in America. Unlike other media – especially print media⁶ – there has never been a polemical film taking a stance against the reformer.  Martin Steffens, Luthergedenkstätten im 19. Jahrhundert. Memoria – Repräsentation – Denkmalpflege, (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2008); see also the review by Wipfler in Kunstchronik 62 (2009), 224– 29.  Herfried Münkler, Die Deutschen und ihre Mythen (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2009), 181– 96.  See Wipfler, “Papstesel contra Lutherischer Narr. Themen und Motive der illustrierten polemischen Druckgraphik der Reformationszeit,” in Luther und Tirol, ed. Leo Andergassen (exhibition catalogue Schloss Tirol, 2017), 142 – 157.

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The filmic representation of Luther stands at the end of a tradition of text and image that goes back to his lifetime. References to topoi formulated in the sixteenth century persisted in film – in part to lend an aura of authenticity. The representation of Luther in feature films is – apart from the protagonist’s physical similarity to the portraits by Lucas Cranach the Elder⁷ – anything but uniform, even when only the positive aspects of his personality played a role in characterization. The person of Luther on the whole was supposed to remain a likeable and admirable character, providing a model for Christian life, though which aspects of his personality were emphasized could change depending on the screenplay writer, the theological advisers, and the Zeitgeist. Therefore Luther appeared in cinema – and later on television – as a romantic lover, a titan of German nationalism, a man talented in the arts and fond of children, a preacher racked by doubt, a groundbreaking theologian, or the passionate antagonist of spiritual and temporal potentates as well as of Thomas Müntzer and the peasantry. The character of Luther was also shaped by the actors who portrayed him. Directors tended to choose actors who were famous, who looked back on long years of stage experience, and in some cases had even attained “star” status. Today many of the names (Hermann Litt, Rudolf Essek, Karl Wüstenhagen, Eugen Klöpfer, and Niall McGinnis, among others) have been forgotten, but others are still well known, such as Stacy Keach and Joseph Fiennes. Through them, the filmic Luther speaks not only German, but also French and English, which has expanded awareness of the historical person considerably. However, these films never had a noticeable effect in terms of proselytization. Rather, they served to confirm the faith of those who were already members of the Lutheran Church or other Protestant denominations. Considering the conditions under which the genre originated, the Luther film is recognizably associated with the context of the German middle-class Protestant culture of commemoration.⁸ Luther anniversaries have always inspired new treatments of the reformer, and this applies equally to cinematic history. However, the officially commemorated Luther Years – such as 1983 and 1996 – have been too rare to serve as an occasion for more regular celebration. Films have also been produced in and for the years 1913, 1923, 1953, 1973, and 2003. Using the year of Luther’s birth 1483 as a point of reference rather than the pivotal dates of Reformation history – such as the posting of the ninety-five theses or the Augsburg Confession – reveals how strongly the commemorative culture of the Lutheran Church is centered on the reformer’s life.

 There is no doubt that Cranach initiated Luther’s iconography with his portraits; see Martin Warnke, Cranachs Luther. Entwürfe für ein Image (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1984); Ilonka van Gülpen, Der deutsche Humanismus und die frühe Reformations-Propaganda. 1520 – 1526. Das Lutherporträt im Dienst der Bildpublizistik (Hildesheim: Olms, 2002), 160 – 62.  Steffens, Luthergedenkstätten, 15 – 25, 32– 58, 325 – 50; Wolfgang Flügel, Konfession und Jubiläum. Zur Institutionalisierung der lutherischen Gedenkkultur in Sachsen 1617 – 1830 (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2005).

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Already in the sixteenth century, Luther had been stylized, most notably in pictures. A frequently cited example is the woodcut designed by Hans Baldung (known as Baldung Grien), published in 1521, in which Luther is hagiographically depicted as a monk with a nimbus and the dove of the Holy Spirit.⁹ Luther himself also contributed to the stylization of his own person. Although he enrolled in 1501 at Erfurt University as “Martinus Ludher ex Mansfeldt,” in signing the letter he wrote to the archbishop of Mainz on October 31, 1517, he styled himself “Luther” for the first time, because he saw himself as “Eleutherius,” meaning “the one who has been made free (by God).”¹⁰ In the films, he is consistently addressed as “Luther.” Viewed against this background, the Luther film seems to refute the much-cited theory that treats historical biography as a crisis phenomenon.¹¹ The idea that the biopic served as a medium of self-assurance in times of political and ideological uncertainty only applies to the 1927 Luther film. The extremely nationalistic view of the protagonist in this film reflected the situation of Lutheranism as a former state church that was forced into a defensive position during the Weimar Republic. Although the churches had received privileged status in the Weimar Constitution of 1919, fear of anarchy arose during the short revolutionary period that followed World War I, and this fear was projected onto the left-wing parties (e. g., the KPD, SPD, and USPD). Moreover, the ideological neutrality of the Weimar state was interpreted as a weakening of the Christian faith. Lutheranism at that juncture wanted to express its claim to spiritual leadership in political terms and used the nationalist vocabulary to do so. In the 1927 film, it becomes clear how the medium of cinema contributed to ensuring the continuity of the Kulturkampf – the nineteenth-century cultural struggle – enacted by the prime minister of Prussia and later Reich chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815 – 1898) in order to reduce the influence of the Roman Catholic Church on education, social life, and politics, first in Prussia and then in the Reich. Even though the anniversary of Luther’s birth provided an occasion for representing his life story, most Luther films do not begin with his birth, but rather at a later biographical turning point, such as his entering the monastery or taking monastic vows. In other words, they begin with the launch of his religious life. This treatment corresponds to the traditional structure of filmic biography, which often starts at the moment the idea embodied by the protagonist takes hold.¹² All Luther films

 Martin Luther und die Reformation in Deutschland (exhibition catalogue Nuremberg, Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 222; cf. on this also Henrike Holsing, Luther – Gottesmann und Nationalheld: Sein Image in der deutschen Historienmalerei des 19. Jahrhunderts (PhD diss., Cologne University, 2004), available at: http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/volltexte/2007/2132/, 19n41.  Cf. Bernd Möller, “Thesenanschläge,” in Faszination Thesenanschlag – Faktum oder Fiktion, eds. Joachim Ott and Martin Treu (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2008), 11.  Henry McKean Taylor, Rolle des Lebens: Die Filmbiographie als narratives System (Marburg: Schüren, 2002), 378.  McKean Taylor, Rolle des Lebens, 93.

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share the canonical scenes originally drawn from the repertory formulated in illustrated Luther biographies, historical paintings, and the theater. These scenes include: Luther entering the Erfurt friary, posting the ninety-five theses, burning the papal bull at the Elster Gate in Wittenberg, attending the Diet of Worms, and staying incognito as Junker Jörg at Wartburg Castle, as well as scenes depicting Reformation iconoclasm. In addition, the dramatic epiphany Luther experienced in 1505 during a thunderstorm near Stotternheim, when he cried out “Help! Saint Anna, I want to become a monk!” has more than once played a pivotal role in these representations.¹³ Since the Luther film is a hybrid of the biographical (biopic¹⁴) and the religious film, these two traditions must be considered. As a religious genre, the Luther film represents a specifically Lutheran response to the Jesus films.¹⁵ The Jesus films more or less followed the traditional Christian iconography and were promoted by the Roman Catholic Church, which understood the potential of the new medium very early on and did not hold back. The Catholic Church began producing its own films in 1917. In contrast, the first Lutheran Film Congress (Erster Evangelischer Filmkongress) did not convene in Germany until 1931. At the time, the proper way of representing Jesus was still a major issue for Protestants. The first Protestant film about Christ, The Jesus Film,¹⁶ was (unsurprisingly) initiated by Evangelical Christians in the United States. It was not released in West Germany until 1979. However, signs of christiformitas in the figure of Luther appear in many films, not only in his physical appearance as an ascetic, but also in the scenes depicting his teaching or good deeds. Looking at the narrative, it is clear that in most of the films, Luther’s life is narrated diachronically. Only one – the 1964 television film – breaks with this pattern by using a retrospective view of Luther’s life as he recalls it on his deathbed. The whole story is told in flashbacks. With this exception, the character of Luther always remains the driving force of the narrative, a typical feature of the traditional, closed biographical narrative system,¹⁷ which is indebted to both a belief in progress and

 See, for example, Luther: Ein Film der deutschen Reformation, directed by Hans Kyser (Berlin: UFA Studios, 1927); Luther, directed by Kurt Veth (Potsdam-Babelsberg: DEFA, 1983); Martin Luther, directed by Eric Till (Berlin/Minneapolis, MN: NFP/Thrivent, 2003). For further detail on the sources of these topoi, their forms, and reasons for the changes in them, see Wipfler, Luther.  For biographical film, the term biopic has been used since 1951. The biopic had its classical period from 1927 to 1960; see George F. Custen, Bio-Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992); for the latest tendencies, see Sigrid Nieberle, Literarhistorische Filmbiographien: Autorschaft und Literaturgeschichte im Kino. Mit einer Filmographie 1909 – 2007 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008).  For example, La passion du Christ, 1897; The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, 1902−05; The King of Kings, 1927  Directed by John Krish and Peter Sykes (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros, 1979).  Cf. McKean Taylor, Rolle des Lebens, 139.

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the cult of genius.¹⁸ As for content, Luther as a character is noticeably reinterpreted and redefined. The response to the earliest Luther films of 1911 (Doktor Martin Luther) and 1913 (Wittenberger Nachtigall) was ambivalent and motivated in part by critical opinions voiced in the media itself. Nonetheless, the films shaped the canon of scenes that would be used in the cinematic Luther iconography. The focus shifts over time, however. For example, the biographical narrative of Luther’s marriage that characterizes the early silent films nearly disappears in the later films until it is revived after World War II, when an attempt was made to invest the religious hero with more human qualities. Serious involvement on the part of the Lutheran Church cannot be verified until the 1923 Luther film. The head of the Eisenach municipal administrative Department for Art, Sport, and Tourism – Baron von der Heyden-Rynsch – suggested the film be shown on the occasion of the Lutheran World Congress held in Eisenach on August 21, 1923. Yet the top-ranking church authorities limited their involvement to advising on the screenplay and eventually having the film distributed by the Evangelische Bildkammer. Opinions were divided on the film. The reviewers criticized the weaknesses of the performances and voiced fundamental doubts about whether the medium of film could do justice to the religious subject matter. The production, Luther: Ein Film der deutschen Reformation (1926 – 1927), was far more professional and sophisticated. It served the anti-Catholic propaganda supported by the Evangelischer Bund, on whose initiative the corporation responsible for the production was founded and whose head – the Berlin cathedral pastor and university instructor Bruno Döhring – had a paramount influence on the screenplay. Döhring, who would found the Deutsche Reformationspartei (German Reformation Party) in 1928, definitely wanted to win over the wider public to his political cause. The explicit anti-Catholic message took a variety of forms: scenes showing the luxurious life of the papal court; monks with alcohol and prostitutes; the quasi-delirious veneration of a statue of the Virgin Mary, which was supposed to illustrate idolatry; and − last but not least − the fact that the character of the Dominican preacher Johannes Tetzel was played by a well-known film comedian of the time. This led to such severe conflicts between Lutherans and Roman Catholics that the tradition of the Luther film in Germany ended for the time being. It was not until after World War II that the next big Luther film project would be realized in West Germany by the American Lutheran Film Associates. The film Martin Luther premiered in Minneapolis in 1953 and was released in West German cinemas the following year (first in Hanover, and then in Nuremberg). The commissioners were not interested in presenting the reformer as a German national hero. Instead, they moved toward demythologizing the figure of Luther by portraying him as an introverted intellectual rather than as a superhuman being. To accomplish this goal,

 Cf. McKean Taylor, Rolle des Lebens, 167.

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the canon of scenes prescribed for a Luther biography did not have to change. However, critical aspects were omitted. All of this changed with the ambitious production by the American Film Theatre in 1973. The producer, Ely Landau, was able to attract Broadway and Hollywood stars to the production: Stacy Keach played the lead in Luther, and Judy Dench was cast as Katharina von Bora. What was radically new about this film – which otherwise followed the script of John Osborne’s play (1961)¹⁹ − was the idea of staging Luther’s life and work from 1506 to 1530 in the setting of a Gothic church. This location served, albeit perhaps unintentionally, as a metaphor for medieval society. In 1983, this multivalent motif was again cited when Rainer Wolffhardt staged his Luther film in the Church of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg. In the American Theatre film, director Guy Green did not include the scene of Luther nailing his theses to the portal of Castle Church in Wittenberg, which is part of Osborne’s play. Instead, the episode is only mentioned. Perhaps the scene was eliminated because it was not part of the collective memory of a British or American audience. Green staged the burning of the papal bull at the Elster Gate as an expression of disobedience and protest against the authorities. However, the public seems not to have noticed this film, since there were only a few reviews. It was not until 2003 that cinema once again linked up with the sentimental beginnings of the Luther film, albeit unintentionally. The film was initiated by the German film producer Alexander Thies (NFP neue film production GmbH, Berlin) and sponsored mainly by Thrivent Financial, an American Lutheran Fraternal Benefit Society (NPO). It was made for a worldwide cinema audience and was not merely intended to affirm Lutheran belief, but also to appeal to the emotions so as to have a missionary effect. In an interview recorded on the DVD of the 2003 film, director Eric Till emphasized that previous characterizations of Luther had lacked sensitivity and passion, the very values that should be imparted to audiences today. Joseph Fiennes, who played the lead, had received the accolade “the handsome Luther” (Der schöne Luther) even before the official German premiere of the film on Reformation Day (October 31) 2003. He is depicted as a figure of suffering, accompanied by Johannes Staupitz – played by Bruno Ganz as a caring father figure. Luther quarrels, specifically with the papal legate Girolamo Aleandro – played by Jonathan Firth as a power-mad intriguer – and Cardinal Cajetan – intelligently accounted for by Mathieu Carrière. The rebel friar is under the protection of Frederick the Wise (Frederick III, Elector of Saxony), played in a quirky rendition by screen legend Peter Ustinov, whose Frederick seems senile on the surface, but is secretly sly and resourceful. As Ustinov explained in an interview, the Elector of Saxony had learnt from Luther to have the courage of his convictions. Accordingly, what could be learned from Luther above all was how to believe in oneself.²⁰ Further, as Ustinov stated in an interview

 See Wipfler, Luther, 54– 56  Münchner Wochenblatt (2003): 45, G5.

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recorded on the DVD with the Luther film of 2003: “Luther was too good a Catholic to remain a Catholic. […] He was so critical of some of the habits of the clergy […] He was […] scandalized by this commercialization […] He took action against it and started the Reformation. […] It [the film] does speak of the independence of the human being to think and to think deeply.”²¹ The concept of the film was primarily intended to affect the emotions of the viewers. This slant was conveyed chiefly via the star of the film, who was the prime vehicle for eliciting viewer sympathies. Consequently, Joseph Fiennes also explained Luther and his era in the bonus material marketed with the DVD: I think it is very much about the minority and the suppressed […] It’s about the control the Catholic Church had on the masses during that time, through language and interpretation […] You can’t keep [a] man down and you can’t control [him …] Sooner or later he will gain knowledge, and through knowledge, power to be liberated in freedom of […] conscience. […] As he starts out, he is an innocent man who gets driven by a clause, […] an argument in the Testament which, in the interpretation of the Catholic Church, amounts more or less to a debit and credit account […] Martin Luther very much saw […] it is a gift […] that one doesn’t need to buy […] one’s way into heaven.

In this film, the reformer usually acts on his own; the leitmotif is a close-up of his face. Melanchthon and other contemporaries of Luther play only a marginal role in the events of the Reformation.

3 Television The representation of Martin Luther on TV was not a phenomenon isolated from Luther’s development in cinema. Rather, television depended on the field of the feature film. Nearly all the post-war productions have been screened on TV. It started with the 1953 Martin Luther movie in the US and Canada. New impulses for productions made specifically for TV came from the theater (first of all, from John Osborne’s Luther) and a new theory about Luther’s motivations: with Erik H. Eriksons’ Young Man Luther, published in 1958, a psychological view of Luther’s actions became popular. This new perspective affected the theatrical and filmic representation of the reformer in the 1960s and beyond in a fundamental way. This was initially visible in the 1964 German television production Der arme Mann Luther (The Poor Man Luther), based on a script by Leopold Ahlsen, which was broadcast in 1965. The film was conceived of as a stage production, with minimalist props and scenery. Indeed, it was still performed on stage in 1967, even after it had been shown abroad on television (in Finland, Switzerland, and the Neth-

 Münchner Wochenblatt (2003): 45, G5.

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erlands).²² The economical staging lends the historical material a markedly timeless quality. At first, Luther’s world of fears and doubts is scored – still without a picture – with the dissonant strains of a “Mitten wyr ym leben sind / mit dem tod vmbfangen” (“In the midst of life we are in death”), sung a capella. The camera then shows Luther in his pastoral vestments on a bier with his eyes closed – first from a bird’s-eye view, then in an extreme close-up from the side – while the narrator relates in a soft voice that Luther died in Eisleben in 1546, a poor man who sought a merciful God all his life. The flashback begins with Luther opening his eyes and Tetzel holding forth in a tirade full of hatred. For the first time, Luther appears as a passive character. Even as the film progresses, he remains more reactive than proactive. However, the externalized interior monologue brings viewers closer to Luther as a man, an effect supported by the camera, which repeatedly zooms in and out in revealing shots of his face. The main theme of Der arme Mann Luther is his personal conflict with the authorities. It is carried out in retrospective, dream-like sequences, as Luther remembers them on his deathbed. Indeed, in the end he finds himself alone, deserted by all former companions and adherents: Karlstadt, Sickingen, Staupitz, and Müntzer have doubts about his work. Käthe alone stands by him. The reformer’s diabolical alter ego (played by Hannes Messemer) tempts Luther (played by Dieter Zeidler) to recant even in the hour of his death. However, this attempt fails: Luther refuses to recant and trusts in the grace of God. In Great Britain and the US, John Osborne’s play Luther appeared on TV in the 1960s. The play was filmed twice for television by the BBC. In 1965, it was featured as the “play of the month,” and in 1968, with a different director and cast, it was shown as part of the pre-Christmas program. The fact that the first production was savaged by the London Times critic might explain why it was dropped. The second production, in contrast, received a positive media response and was also broadcast once on ABC in the US. The continuing popularity of Osborne’s interpretation of Luther as an anti-authoritarian rebel was exactly in tune with the various protest movements of the time. The two-part French feature film Frère Martin (Brother Martin), with Bernard Lincot playing Martin Luther, is an exceptional phenomenon. There is still no other French feature film about the reformer. Frère Martin with Bernard Lincot in the leading role was first broadcast in France in 1981, and then shown on the German TV channel ARD in the Luther Year of 1983. Jean Delannoy, who directed the film, had already explored Protestant subject matter in other film productions,²³ an interest that may also have been due to his being of Hugenot descent. The screenplay of Frere Martin is based on a 1950s screenplay by Alexandre Astruc (1923 – 2016).²⁴ As Friedrich Kraft, “Die bösen Bälge,” in idem, Luther als Bühnenheld (Hamburg: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1971), 82.  Wipfler, Luther, 157, n119.  Interview mit Alexandre Astruc, in Martin Luther. Reformator – Ketzer – Nationalheld. Texte, Bilder, Dokumente in ARD und ZDF, Materialien zu Fernsehsendungen, eds. Margret Trapmann and Fritz

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truc, who had a German Lutheran mother,²⁵ probably knew the biography Un destin – Martin Luther by Lucien Febvre (1878 – 1956) that had appeared in many editions since 1928. Febvre, who founded the Annales School of History, was interested in contextualizing historical events – such as the Reformation – with a view to their socio-economic conditions and their long-term effects. Therefore, the historian portrayed Luther as an innovative thinker without any stylization.²⁶ The film is based on the same idea. The action begins in Erfurt in 1507, showing Luther as a mendicant friar begging for alms from peasants and beginning to question the exploitation of the poor. The plot ends with Luther’s return from the Wartburg to Wittenberg in 1522, where he finds the churches empty and religious art destroyed. Astruc interprets Luther, on the one hand, from the perspective of a historian of philosophy, as the harbinger of a movement of intellectual and spiritual emancipation. On the other, he sees him from a socially critical perspective as someone who questioned the feudal system. The title of the film, Brother Martin, already seems to refer not only to Luther as an Augustinian friar, but also as an embodiment of egalitarian principles. In the first scene, the begging Luther is nearly knocked over by a furious hunting party that illustrates the excesses of the ancien régime. Of course, the overthrow of the existing social order – sparked, in Astruc eyes, by Luther – did not occur in the early sixteenth century. Nevertheless, Astruc has succeeded in plausibly demythologizing Luther as a hero by juxtaposing a narrative about a young couple, with whom viewers could identify, on almost equal footing with that of Luther. The model of a parallel action strand “in the midst of the people” was enlarged in the 1983 GDR production. In Astruc’s film, Luther’s purely theological teachings in On the Freedom of a Christian are oversimplified by a representative of the profane world, who only reads the political and economic advantages in the theses: no tax to pay to Rome and a questioning of papal authority. Nevertheless, Astruc views Luther’s deed as a “coup d’état spirituel,” one that ends with iconoclasm and anticipates the slogans of the French Revolution: “Death to the Pope and the clergy” (Mort au pape et aux curés); “Let us burn down the churches, let us burn down the castles” (Brûlons les églises, brûlons les châteaux). The strong differences in directional impetus and the range of social classes causing the Peasants’ Revolt, iconoclasm, and Luther’s reform movement have been blended here without allowing the different positions to be fully articulated.

Hufen (München: Goldmann Verlag, 1983), 152– 55, here 152; Gerhard Ph. Wolf, Das neuere französische Lutherbild (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1974).  See M. Lecoq, “Alexandre Astruc et le Dieu caché,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Francais 154 (Avril–Mai–Juin 2008): 255 – 61.  Cf. Thomas Etzemüller, Biographien: Lesen – erforschen – erzählen (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2012), 109 – 11. See also Wolf, Lutherbild, 69 – 75 and 318 f.

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The 1983 BBC Production Martin Luther, Heretic, directed by Norman Stone and based on the screenplay by William Nicholson,²⁷ also focuses on Luther’s life from 1506 to 1522. This time, the narration is centered on the protagonist’s point of view. Jonathan Pryce, who plays the title character, portrays Luther as a fervent, spiritual leader of a homogenous mass movement. In this film, the reformer’s motivation goes back to his childhood, when he saw a terrifying mystery play with a horrible devil catching the sinners’ souls in order to bring them to hell. As an adult, he admits, “I’ve lived my life in terror of that judgment.” The visual reference to Tetzel’s sale of indulgences explains how the Church was profiting from these fears and why Luther, when he criticized this practice, had to be condemned as a heretic. As in the American Film Theatre production, Maurice Denham plays the part of Johannes Staupitz. He represents a member of the old Church who sympathizes with his pupil Martin and his reforms, but is unwilling to abandon or abolish the old system. Apart from this parallel and the fact that, in both films, the dark sides of the Reformation – such as the Peasants’ Revolt and iconoclasm – are omitted, there are no similarities between the two films. In the written summary of the effects of the Reformation screened as part of the end credits of the film, the existence of 350 million Protestants worldwide is mentioned. This kind of information also appears also at the end of the 2003 film, with a significant increase of the figure – to 540 million. There is also such a remarkable similarity in age and physical appearance between the protagonists of these two film that one can assume that Till was inspired by the 1983 film. The Luther Year of 1983 also led to very different representations of Luther in the two Germanys: in the GDR, as a five-part historical epic that took over seven hours to narrate; and in the Federal Republic, as a two-part parable staged in St. Lorenz in Nuremberg. Thus, Luther’s cause was given a completely different context in the two states. Rainer Wolffhardt’s film for the ZDF was based on a screenplay by Theodor Schübel and was shot almost entirely in and in front of the medieval church of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg.²⁸ Thus Luther’s cause was presented as inseparable from the ecclesiastical context. Wolffhardt, who was borrowing from the American Film Theater production of John Osborne’s stage play, perhaps unconsciously linked his film with the theological – and iconographic – tradition of envisioning the church building as ecclesia itself, a tradition that originated in early Christian times.²⁹ As Wolffhardt explained in 1983, the challenge of the location of his film consisted in

 The producer, David Thompson, cooperated with Concordia Films in St. Louis, Missouri, an enterprise specializing in religious films. It organized the screening on North American TV, where it was shown in the jubilee year 1983, as in Great Britain.  Theodor Schübel, Martin Luther (München: Droemer Knaur, 1983).  Olof Linton, “Ekklesia I (bedeutungsgeschichtlich),” in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 4 (1959): 915 f.; Ernst Dassmann, “Kirche II (bildersprachlich),” in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (2004), 20:967 f. and 989 – 93.

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“subjecting it to a continual metamorphosis; from the establishment of medieval Catholicism to the calling into question of all the values embodied in it and the establishment of Protestantism, which in turn was also increasingly questioned in the course of politicization and institutionalization.”³⁰ A critic characterized it as a “symbolic universal theater.”³¹ The director, who had once worked with Bertolt Brecht at the Munich Kammerspiele, is convinced that objectivity is impossible. One may, at best, approach historical truth, and in so doing, one must be selective. In the case of Luther, Wolffhardt said he had omitted the anti-Semitic aspect, which earned him a great deal of criticism.³² Lambert Hamel played the reformer vigorously and passionately, as both a preacher and the father of a family, who – at the end – is sustained by a realization: “had [I] all the faith in the world so that I moved mountains yet had I not love, I would be as nothing.”³³ The GDR film Martin Luther was produced under the direction of Kurt Veth, with the support of Studio Barrandov in Prague the DEFA Studio für Spielfilm (Feature Film Studio). This epic, starring Ulrich Thein, represents the largest monument erected to the reformer on film. The scriptwriters were advised by members of the MartinLuther-Committee of the GDR, which was founded in 1980. Erich Honecker, general secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, who led the German Democratic Republic from 1971 until 1989, also presided over the committee. The committee, appointed to coordinate the celebrations of Luther’s anniversary, included such experts as the theology professor Herbert Trebs and the historian Gerhard Brendler, who published his views on Luther in 1983 in two monographs – Martin Luther. Theologie und Revolution. Eine marxistische Darstellung and Martin Luther und die Bibel. According to Detlef Urban, “The SED had officially declared 1983 as Karl Marx Year, but no expense was spared by the comrades for Martin Luther and his five-hundredth birthday”.³⁴ The film was not only one of the most elaborate contributions to the GDR national commemoration of Luther, but it also redefined the reformer’s role in relation to Thomas Müntzer.³⁵ Preparations began in 1978. The GDR film met with a positive re-

 Rainer Wolffhardt, “‘Am farb’gen Abglanz haben wir das Leben’. Versuch über den Versuch der Versinnlichung des Stoffes,” in Reformator, 60 – 69; here 68 (original quotation in German).  Religion im Film. Lexikon mit Kurzkritiken und Stichworten zu 2400 Kinofilmen, 3rd enl. ed. (Köln: KIM, 1999), 343 (here the film is erroneously dated to 1996): “sinnbildhaftes Welttheater.”  Thus Wolffhardt in the Geschichtsdidaktisches Kolloquium (Didactic History Colloquium) at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, May 14, 2002.  “hätte [ich] allen Glauben, so dass ich Berge versetzte, und hätte die Liebe nicht, so wär ich nichts;” cf. 1 Cor 13:2.  Detlef Urban, “‘Ein Genie sehr bedeutender Art’. Bemerkungen zu einem Lutherfilm im DDR-Fernsehen,” in Deutschland Archiv. Zeitschrift für das vereinigte Deutschland 16 (1983): 1253 – 55; here 1253: “Zwar hat die SED offiziell das Jahr 1983 zum Karl-Marx-Jahr deklariert, aber für Martin Luther und dessen fünfhundertsten Geburtstag ist den Genossen nichts zu teuer.”  Günter Vogler, “Luther oder Müntzer? Die Rolle frühneuzeitlicher Gestalten für die Identitätsfindung der DDR,” in Geschichtsbilder und Gründungsmythen, ed. Hans-Joachim Gehrke (Würzburg: Ergon, 2001), 417– 36.

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sponse from all sides. In 1983, it had 2.34 million viewers. Thein portrayed Luther as a fighter enmeshed in self-doubt, who occasionally had to wrestle with the devil, but always won. The film was seen early on by Eckart Kroneberg as part of – and reflecting – the new evaluation of the figure of Luther in GDR historiography: “Luther is not whitewashed; he fails because of his limitations. Nevertheless, he is rehabilitated. The former betrayer of the people is today an early bourgeois revolutionary. The film refrained from imputing political motives to him rather than theological ones. It no longer had to do that. With this film, the GDR has claimed Luther for itself. He is to be part of the national self-awareness.”³⁶ Nevertheless, Luther’s final words had an obvious political cast to them, which must be understood against the background of international rearmament: “As long as I live, I shall beseech God – Germany shall have no hardship through war.” Furthermore, as a complement to this feature, the DEFA produced a three-part documentary on behalf of the national television station DDR 1. The first part treated the youth of Martin (Ein Schüler aus Mansfeld. Die Jugendjahre Martin Luthers, 27 min.); the second addressed his exile at Wartburg Castle (Der die Zeit beim Worte nahm. Martin Luther auf der Wartburg, 28 min.); and the final and longest installment (Bürger Luther 1508 – 1546, 45 min.) covered the decisive periods of Luther’s life. It was also screened in cinemas and, at a later stage, adapted for educational purposes in the GDR.³⁷ This filmic format addressed Luther’s class affiliation and what Honecker regarded as the tragedy of Luther’s life: having initiated a revolutionary process, Luther could not prevent it from turning into a slaughter of men.³⁸ Moreover, the DEFA Trickfilmstudios (a studio for animated cartoons) produced a short animated cartoon film, Copyright by Martin Luther, which presented the Reformation humorously as a media revolution. After the decline of the GDR, Lew Hohmann also produced a documentary with re-enacted scenes, entitled Martin Luther. Ein Leben zwischen Gott und Teufel (Martin Luther: A Life between God and the Devil).³⁹ The documentary was part of a complete history of Middle Germany and broadcast only on the regional channel MDR on November 16, 2003. The re-enacted scenes show Luther (played by Matthias Hummitzsch) as a breaker of taboos whose words resulted in war and death on the one

 Tagesspiegel, October 30, 1983: “Luther wird nicht weißgewaschen, er scheitert an seinen Grenzen. Aber er wird rehabilitiert. Der Volksverräter von damals ist heute ein frühbürgerlicher Revolutionär. Der Film unterließ es, ihm anstelle der theologischen politische Motive unterzuschieben. Das hatte er auch nicht mehr nötig. Mit diesem Film hat die DDR Luther für sich vereinnahmt – er soll Teil des nationalen Selbstbewusstseins sein.”  On this point, see Rotraut Simons, “Das DDR-Fernsehen und die Luther-Ehrung,” in Luther und die DDR. Der Reformator und das DDR-Fernsehen 1983, eds. Horst Dähn and Joachim Heise (Berlin: Edition Ost, 1996), 99 – 185.  Cf. the report of this preview by Yvonne Matthes in a letter to Kurt Eifert, DEFA-Dokumentarfilmstudio, on May 6, 1982; DRA, Standort Potsdam, HA Kultur Luther Wittenberg; transcript available at: http://www.staat-kirche-forschung.de/seiten/eBooks.  Released on DVD, June 16, 2005 (Ottonia Media GmbH), 45 min.

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hand, and hope, freedom, and self-determination on the other. In this way, Luther became a “revolutionary against his own will” and eased the birth of a new age. The GDR hero and protagonist of the early bourgeois revolution has obviously been transformed into a post-communist hero of Middle Germany, representing liberal Christian-democratic values. In 1983, there was only one film that portrayed Martin Luther as a reactionary: the feature film Huldrych Zwingli, Reformator about the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484 – 1531), commissioned by the Council of the Swiss Reformed Church of the Kanton Zürich (Kirchenrat der Evangelisch-Reformierten Landeskirche des Kantons Zürich) and directed by Wilfried Bolliger. In this film, Zwingli (played by Wolfram Berger) meets Luther (played by Wolfgang Reichmann) at Marburg in 1529 to discuss the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. In this scene, Zwingli defends his argument – that the wine and the bread have only a symbolic meaning – against the already well-established professor Luther, who insists (in a slightly arrogant manner) on the real presence of Christ in the wine and the bread. Back home, Zwingli characterizes his opponent as a slippery squid in ink that no one will ever be able to catch. A new opening was chosen for the documentary broadcast in 2007. This feature, directed by the theologian Günther Klein for the ZDF series Giganten (giants), contains long re-enactments featuring Luther (played by Ben Becker) in exile at Wartburg Castle (scenes which were actually filmed at a castle in Romania). This sojourn provides the framework for flashbacks on Luther’s life and work. Klein shows the history of Luther’s internal conflict with the devil, who appears in various guises. According to Klein, the reformer not only defeated the devil metaphorically with ink, but also overcame the Middle Ages by introducing a new category in (religious) thought: freedom. In the documentary Luther und die Nation (Luther and the Nation), screened in the following year on the same TV channel as part of the series Die Deutschen (The Germans), Luther’s accomplishments are put into perspective by emphasizing their long-term political and cultural results. These include the formation of a common German language and the catalytic effect of the Reformation on the development of early modern territorial states, which were the basis of the federalization of Germany. Therefore, the balance between interpretive statements and enacted scenes in this program shifted significantly in favor of the commentary.

4 Conclusions After this survey of the transformation of Luther’s filmic image over time, the question might arise as to how his character develops within filmic narration. For Luther, the question is: Do the films begin with a Luther who is still Catholic? Do they convey the impression that Luther’s teachings develop as a gradual process? The answer to both of these questions is no. In the silent film era, the boy Luther is characterized as a puer senex who precociously possesses all virtues and talents he will later need as

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the Protestant reformer. In the 1923 film, Luther is even saved by divine providence – by Christ himself –, which allows him to accomplish his future mission of liberation. Luther is always a man seeking God, a man who is at odds with himself. He plods along the path he has set out for himself, and a change in course is inspired only by external events (such as the thunderstorm at Stotternheim, the behavior of the secularized clergy in Rome, or Tetzel’s trade in papal indulgences). The core theses of Luther’s teaching are motivated by these triggers. They are not shown as the fruit of intellectual investigation of the Bible or debates with church fathers. Hence, these filmic representations contradict what is known today about how Luther’s theology evolved. Luther films adhere fairly consistently to a positive image of the hero. Other important historical figures of the Reformation, such as Philipp Melanchthon,⁴⁰ are thrust into the background. This focus on Luther conveys the outdated idea that “great men” always “make history” on their own. Whereas the view of Luther in German films increasingly emphasized the nationalist element until 1927, the post-war films show an emphasis on the theme of emancipation and liberation. They extol the rejection of an exploitative system informed by the doctrine of justice – as interpreted by the Catholic Church, meaning salvation for righteousness accompanied by good deeds – and the overcoming of those teachings through Luther’s doctrine of imputed righteousness. How this doctrinal conflict is visualized in each instance is also a core question in dealing with how Luther is represented in film. Certain main aspects of Luther’s image can be seen in nearly all of these movies: the omission of Luther’s late hostility against Jews, a more or less obvious justification of his adversarial attitude toward the peasants’ cause, and his tolerance of the bigamy of Landgrave Philipp I of Hesse for political reasons. Luther’s adversarial attitude toward the peasants’ cause was not questioned prior to the 1960s. Problematic stances appear only in other filmic formats, such as documentaries.⁴¹ Family life is increasingly given greater scope, beginning with the film adaption of John Osborne’s play in 1973, but the illnesses of Luther’s later years, his six children, and the death of his daughter Magdalene are not mentioned until the TV productions of 1983. After World War II, the reformer’s image mutates from that of the German national hero into that of a champion of freedom of thought and a rebel against traditional authorities. In this sense, Luther corresponds to the American

 On his representation, see Wipfler, “’Reformator wider Willen’ und ‘Melanchthon-Rap’. Der Lehrer Deutschlands in den modernen Medien – Ein Überblick mit Schwerpunkt auf dem Jubiläumsjahr 2010,” in Philipp Melanchthon. Zur populären Rezeption des Reformators, eds. Stefan Rhein and Martin Treu (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016), 167– 179.  For example, the documentary Luther und die Juden (ZDF, November 12, 1983); on this topic, see the author of the film, Paul Karalus, “Erstlich, dass man ihre Synagoge oder Schule mit Feuer anstecke …”, in Reformator, 223 – 40. Only one documentary with feature film elements mentions Luther’s hostility toward the Jews: the production commissioned by the MDR that was broadcast in 2003.

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role model of the pioneer at the intellectual frontier. Heading a populist movement, he breaks down institutional barriers and promotes spiritual freedom. Nevertheless, Luther remains a member of the bourgeoisie, thus giving middle-class audiences a chance to identify with the reformer. Luther also personifies the Protestant Church and its values. Since the representation of his individual faith does not eliminate the idea of the Christian community, the cinematic Luther is absolutely not an “anti-ecclesiastic character,” as described by Werner Schneider-Quindeau.⁴² Moreover, viewer response to Luther films has shown itself to be an indicator of the degree of secularization in a society. It also demonstrates whether or not viewers perceive themselves as linked to a particular religious affiliation at a given time, and if so, how strongly. In terms of critical reaction, there was a change between 1953 and 2003 from emotionally charged reactions, expressed in extreme polemics by those who were for or against particular films,⁴³ to more moderate commentary.⁴⁴ The extra material on the DVD of the 2003 German film also demonstrates a significant allocation of roles: Luther’s life is interpreted there by the actor Joseph Fiennes, but the theologian Dr. Hans Christian Knuth (at that time bishop of the Nordelbische Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche) is condemned to read out Luther’s Small Catechism without any comment. This reveals a phenomenon that was already described in 1962 by Hermann Gerber: “that a good bit of conveying the message has shifted from theologians to laymen.”⁴⁵ What has been called secularization has evidently not eliminated religion;⁴⁶ instead, it has changed the way it is handled. As new icons emerge from each era, which are then invariably also personified in the figures of the old heroes, it is not surprising that a new feature film was produced for the 2017 Reformation Jubilee. However, the film Katharina Luther, broadcast by the ARD, focuses on the reformer’s wife. This change in perspective makes it possible to address the “dark sides” of the reformer as well. In addition, another paradigm shift takes place: the figure of Martin Luther is portrayed as embedded in his social network, and the allegedly marginal figures of the Reformation have become new protagonists.

 Werner Schneider-Quindeau, “Der Reformator als Leinwandheld: Lutherfilme zwischen Geschichte und Ideologie,” in Handbuch Theologie und populärer Film, eds. Thomas Bohrmann, Werner Veith, and Stephan Zöller (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009), Vol. 2, 195 f.  See Wipfler, Luther, 115 – 25.  Wipfler, Luther, 126 f.  Hermann Gerber, Problematik des Religiösen Films (München: Evangelischer Presseverband, 1962), 7.  Cf. Albert J. Bergesen and Andrew M. Greeley, God in the Movies (New Brunswick: Routledge, 2000), 177.

Geographical Crossroads

Score for the Chinese translation of the hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”

Johannes Burkhardt

From the Wars of Religion to a Post-Westphalian World In the popular historical consciousness, the Thirty Years’ War is one of the most wellknown historical events after the Reformation: its extraordinary duration is already signaled in its very name. This fact provides the basis for an ‘Archduke’ joke frequently told in Vienna. The young archduke is supposed to have some knowledge of history, but is a bit slow-witted. In view of his noble birth, however, his responses to his tutor’s questions cannot be declared “wrong.” The situation places extraordinary demands on the tutor’s intellectual agility. The tutor asks, “How long did the Thirty Years’ War last?” The archduke answers, “15 years.” His tutor: “In a way, yes! After all, there was no fighting at night.” This rather silly joke, which makes much more sense if we recall the necessity for winter encampments and the fact that there were several interim peace treaties, may serve to remind us that the term “Thirty Years’ War” has also been fiercely debated among scholars. The Thirty Years’ War actually comprises a series of four individual wars, each named after the respective opponents of the Habsburg Empire: the Bohemian-Palatine War, the Lower Saxon and Danish War, the Swedish War, and the Franco-Swedish War. We might, moreover, point to the Mantuan War of Succession as a proxy war between France and the Habsburgs in the 1620s and even, from 1621, to the longest and final phase of the 80-year Dutch War of Independence as other engagements pertinent to what we call the Thirty Years’ War. The struggle for the Baltic Sea had already begun many years earlier, and the war between France and Spain only ended a decade later. The American scholar Sigfrid Henry Steinberg thus made the long-accepted and widely held assertion that the dramatic term “the Thirty Years’ War” was in any case an arbitrary and ex post facto description applied by historians in thrall to their retrospective gaze.¹ This assertion is false. Of course, as long as the war continued, it could not be known that it would last thirty years. However, Konrad Repgen has shown that the years of the war’s duration were counted from the very beginning of the conflict, and the number was even stated in dozens of war publications in titles containing phrases such as “now having lasted 5, 6, 10, 14, 20, 29 years” (jetzt 5, 6, 10, 14, 20, 29 Jahre währender) and ultimately “30-year war” (30jähriger Krieg). Thus the conflict was indeed experienced as a single war and moreover as one of the longest wars in

 Sigfrid H. Steinberg, The “Thirty Years War” and the Conflict for European Hegemony 1600 – 1660 (London: Arnold, 1981), 1: “a figment of retrospective imagination.” See also Steinberg, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg. Eine neue Interpretation, in Der Dreißigjährige Krieg, ed. H.U. Rudolf (Darmstadt, 1977), 51– 67. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-065

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history – longer even than the Peloponnesian War, as both poets and scholars knew.² The unity of this “war of wars” (Krieges der Kriege)³ – in the sense of both one war comprising several wars and a war to exceed all others – was also the unity of the theater of the war in Central Europe, where the European powers clashed. For the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, it was a dreadful unity. From the northeast to the southwest, a diagonal path of destruction swept through Germany, and this classic demographic finding almost always increases with each statistical reexamination.⁴ The unholy trinity of violence, pestilence, and starvation cost the lives of a third – and in some areas, the lives of two-thirds – of the population. What must those who survived have felt? The high number of years also archives the traumatic experience of this series of wars and military campaigns that brought epidemics and starvation in their wake, moving incessantly onward, eventually reaching almost all of the German lands and nearly devastating them. The full extent of the threat to civilization that this war represented was already obvious to contemporary observers. The war came to an end at the last moment, just before the damage became irreversible and irreparable. Its special position among the wars of history has repeatedly inspired a large number of writers and historians, as well as individuals in publishing and the media, to produce vast works and presentations that reinforce this image. Just like the 500-year anniversary of the Reformation, the 400-year anniversary of the start of the war in 1618 once again provides an occasion for historical reexamination and reassessment of the current significance of an extraordinary historical megaevent. In addition to a variety of new publications by specialist historians as well as by media-savvy publishers, a well-known political scientist has thrown his perspective into the ring. The publisher’s announcement presents the war as “the longest and bloodiest war of religion in history” (der längste und blutigste Religionskrieg der Geschichte).⁵

 Konrad Repgen, “Seit wann gibt es den Begriff ‘Dreißigjähriger Krieg’?”, in Festschrift für H. Gollwitzer (Münster: Aschendorff, 1982), 59 – 70; Repgen, “Noch einmal zu Begriff ‘Dreißigjähriger Krieg’,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 9 (1982): 347– 52; Repgen, “Über die Geschichtsschreibung des Dreißigjährigen Krieges,” in Krieg und Politik 1618 – 1648 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1988).  Introduced in Johannes Burkhardt, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg, Neue Historische Bibliothek 542, ed. Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992), 15; Burkhardt, Der Krieg der Kriege. Eine neue Geschichte des Dreißigjährigen Krieges (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2018 forthcoming).  Günther Franz, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg und das deutsche Volk, 4th ed. (Stuttgart: G. Fischer, 1979); Werner Lengger, Leben und Sterben in Schwaben. Studien zur Bevölkerungsentwicklung und Migration zwischen Lech und Iller, Ries und Alpen im 17. Jahrhundert (Augsburg: Wißner, 2002), 2 vols.  According to the book announcement made by the publisher Rowohlt-Verlag for Herfried Münkler, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg. Europäische Katastrophe, deutsches Trauma 1618 – 1648 (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2017). The publisher’s announcement is available online: https://www.rowohlt.de/hardcover/herfried-muenkler-der-dreissigjaehrige-krieg.html.

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1 A Time of Religious Wars Among the wars of religion fought in the early modern period exclusively as part of the violent conflict that had existed between the competing religious groups since the Reformation, the Thirty Years’ War certainly appears as a high point, and even a turning point. Even the first Swiss wars between the Zürich priest Huldrych Zwingli and the non-Reformed parts of the interior in 1529 were, on both sides, explicitly waged “for the sake of faith” (wegen des gloubens). The description “wars of religion” also applies to the Schmalkaldic War between Emperor Charles V and the Protestant Imperial Estates and the subsequent revolt of the imperial princes, the series of French civil wars and Huguenot wars or “guerres de religion” in the second half of the sixteenth century, as well as the early stages of the Dutch war of independence with Catholic Spain. “This war is for religion” was also the message in England upon the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The term “guerra di religione” was current in papal diplomacy, and even when its use became taboo in the eighteenth century, it was frequently said that, even if a conflict might no longer be called a war of religion, it certainly had all the appearances of one: “se non può dirsi guerra di religione, ne ha almeno tutte le apparenze.” The term was present in most European languages in the early stages of the Thirty Years’ War, and the discourse surrounding it questioned whether the conflict was even a religious war and whether it was legitimate “to fight over the true religion” (umb die wahre religion zu kriegen), with the text in question concluding that it was.⁶ What must be taken into account here is not only the intolerance of individuals during this period, but also the inherent “structural intolerance” of the age.⁷ It is usually bad enough for the intensity of depictions of the enemy when the warring opponents belong to different religions; it is even worse when they belong to one and the same Christian religion, but each denomination firmly believes that it and only it is in possession of the whole Christian truth, while their confessional competitors have strayed quite iniquitously. This dynamic was still fully alive in this early period of confessionalization and confessional development.⁸ Even Martin Luther was so utterly convinced of the truth and sole validity of his religious views that he might more appropriately be viewed as a fundamentalist than a hero of freedom of conscience

 All citations can be found in Burkhardt, “Religionskrieg,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1997), 28:681– 87.  Burkhardt, Dreißigjähriger Krieg, 143.  On the groundbreaking paradigm of early modern confessionalization, first proposed by Ernst Walter Zeeden, Wolfgang Reinhard, and Heinz Schilling, see the comprehensive research review by Burkhardt, “Das Konfessionsbildungskonzept von Ernst Walter Zeeden: Eine Erfolgsgeschichte und zwei Problemlösungen,” in Ernst Walter Zeeden (1916 – 2011) als Historiker der Reformation, Konfessionsbildung und “Deutschen Kultur”. Relektüren eines geschichtswissenschaftlichen Vordenkers, ed. Markus Gerstmeier and Anton Schindling (Münster: Aschendorff, 2016), 59 – 88.

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and concomitant tolerance.⁹ He assumed freedom of conscience for himself, because he believed he had the right to do so, but excluded all others – even the “Sacramentarians” in Zürich, and most especially the “papists” or followers of the “antichrist” in Rome – from Christianity. The Catholic party naturally saw it from quite the opposite viewpoint and painted the “arch-heretic” in Wittenberg as in league with the devil. Thus the sixteenth century became a century of verbal abuse, and this was internalized in the early stages of European confessionalization.¹⁰ While one side possessed the “true, original gospel” and categorically excluded all others who did not teach it in the same way, the other side belonged to the “true, original church organization” and denied all others the right to exist. However – with the exceptions of the death of Zwingli on the battlefield and other extraordinary cases, such as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre – wars of religion were not usually waged by the Reformers, confessional activists, or wider confessional groups themselves. Instead, they were waged by political powers, and the armies were put into the field by these warlords. The duty of a ruler was to secure the true religion within their domains, and this duty could, via theories of resistance and missionizing, extend beyond their borders in various ways and to varying degrees. Politicians used this confessional dynamic to delimit and mobilize, but were also themselves put under pressure by it. The ghosts thus conjured up could not easily be purged. But even religious wars must come to an end, and peace must be restored at some point. After the Swiss forerunners, it was above all the Peace of Augsburg and the Edict of Nantes that were important in the long run. In the peace treaties as well, it was not theologians who made the peaceful coexistence of the religions possible, but the politicians who forced it through. Even before the French Wars of Religion were ended due to the arbitration of King Henri IV’s edict, the so-called Peace of Augsburg paved the political way for a renunciation of force by the confessionally diverse members of the empire, which they had negotiated beforehand in Passau and passed into imperial law at the Diet of Augsburg. The fundamental tenet on which it was based – that the confession of a state should be the choice of the respective ruler (with exceptions made for the prince-bishoprics and the free imperial cities, as well as some special provisions elsewhere) – brought Germany over half a century of more or less unbroken peace, until it collapsed in 1618. Whether the disputes over the interpretation of the treaty concerning confessional membership and rights of ownership and their impact on the ability of the imperial institu-

 Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther. Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs. Eine Biographie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2013), 627. Schilling does not apply the term fundamentalism to Luther, but he does indicate in this vein that “plurality and tolerance were not the children, but at best the great-grandchildren of the Reformation” (Pluralität und Toleranz […] nicht die Kinder, sondern allenfalls die Urenkel der Reformation [waren]).  Bent Jörgensen, Konfessionelle Selbst- und Fremdbezeichnungen. Zur Terminologie der Religionsparteien im 16. Jahrhundert, Colloquia Augustana 32 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 49 – 128.

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tions to communicate and function were to blame¹¹ is now deemed questionable, because none of these cases of conflict led directly to war. Indeed, the offices of imperial management were already working to reconcile the crisis, and the Imperial Circles and other institutions continued to function – even cross-confessionally – throughout the entire war.¹² Of much greater impact in the war game were the external influences arising from the papal and Jesuit confessional militancy (previously known as the “Counter-Reformation”), with its focal points in Vienna and Munich, on the one hand, and from “international Calvinism” (Heinz Schilling), with its Palatinate outposts, on the other hand. Thus the imperial right of religious freedom, which had technically been secure in Central Europe for some time, was challenged by phased confessionalizing militancy, and the impact of this was reinforced by something quite different.

2 The Media’s Remobilization of the Religious War During the Thirty Years’ War – and Its Limits In comparison to the wars mentioned above, the Thirty Years’ War was indeed the “longest and bloodiest” war. But was its duration and severity really the result of religion? That is certainly the general perception and the classic interpretation. It seems plausible to pinpoint the cause of its duration and severity as insoluble religious conflict. The most astonishing indication of this lies in a discovery, the significance of which has only recently been recognized: there is a direct relationship between the Reformation and the start of the Thirty Years’ War. In fact, the war began almost exactly 100 years after Martin Luther composed his ninety-five theses in 1517, an event which was celebrated all over both Lutheran and Reformed Germany at the end of October 1617, for the first time, as a great Reformation jubilee. These celebrations took place over several days and were widely publicized at all levels of society and across the media. This must have been received on the Catholic side as an enormous provocation – not least because, since 1300, it had been the prerogative of the pope to declare a “jubilee year,” and the most important goal of the year was to obtain an indulgence. Yet now the Lutherans had declared a “pseudo-jubilee year,” not

 An approach critical of my reading as a religious war is based on this classic perspective and influenced by southwest German archival research and reinvigorated terminology; see A. Gotthard, “Der deutsche Konfessionskrieg seit 1619 – ein Resultat gestörter politischer Kommunikation,” Historisches Jahrbuch 122 (2002): 141– 72. My response can be found in Burkhardt, “Auf der Suche nach dem Dissens. Eine Bemerkung zu einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit meinem ‘Dreißigjährigen Krieg’,” Historisches Jahrbuch 123 (2003): 357– 63.  Winfried Schulze and Stefan Ehrenpreis, Friedliche Intentionen – kriegerische Effekte. War der Ausbruch des Dreißigjährigen Krieges unvermeidlich?, Studien zur neueren Geschichte 1 (St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 2002); Fabian Schulze, “Die Reichskreise im Dreißigjährigen Krieg” (PhD diss., Universität Augsburg, forthcoming 2017).

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to mark the birth year of Christ, but instead to mark an aspect of Martin Luther’s life – and that aspect was his symbolic act directed against indulgences! The pope promptly announced a counter-jubilee year for the abolition of the “heresies.” Nothing could have been better designed to replay the whole Reformation story so controversially as this contradictory double jubilee. Thus, in the months leading up to the defenestration in Prague in the spring of 1618, a religious and political mobilization took place. Even contemporary chroniclers in Ulm and Augsburg saw a connection and described the jubilee year and the Catholic counter-publicity as the “start” of the war.¹³ An empirical test of this thesis, examining the sources in multi-confessional border regions, has confirmed that this jubilee year had a polarizing effect and promoted the perception of the war as a religious war.¹⁴ The manner in which events from a century before echoed at this time seems almost incredible: strong references to Reformation history played an important role, not only at the outbreak of the war, but also in its continuation. After a long decade of conflict, the war was really over: the emperor, allied with Spain and the Catholic League, had quelled the Bohemian uprising; defeated his rival, Count Palatine; occupied the Palatinate; and successfully ended Danish intervention with the Peace of Lübeck in 1629. The emperor had won the war, and hostilities had already come to a complete standstill. Then in 1630, Gustav Adolf, the king of Sweden, landed on the German Baltic coast. The primary reason was not simply religious,¹⁵ but that is

 The sources are given in Burkhardt, Dreißigjähriger Krieg, 225 – 32; Burkhardt, “Reformations- und Lutherfeiern. Die Verbürgerlichung der reformatorischen Jubiläumskultur,” in Öffentliche Festkultur im 19. Jh. Politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, eds. Dieter Düding, Peter Friedemann, and Paul Münch (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1988), 212– 36. An earlier analysis – with, however, less emphasis on the factor of war – can be found in Ruth Kastner, Geistlicher Rauffhandel. Form und Funktion illustrierter Flugblätter zum Reformationsjubiläum 1617 in ihrem historischen und publizistischen Kontext (Frankfurt/Bern: Peter Lang, 1982). On the 1617 Reformation jubilee year, see also Volker Leppin, “‘… das der Römische Antichrist offenbaret das helle Liecht des Heiligen Evangelii wiederumb angezündet’. Memoria und Aggression im Reformationsjubiläum 1617,” in Konfessioneller Fundamentalismus, ed. Heinz Schilling (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), 115 – 134.  C. Kohlmann, “‘Von unsern Widersachern den Bapisten vil erlitten und ussgestanden’. Kriegsund Krisenerfahrung von lutherischen Pfarrern und Gläubigen im Amt Hornberg des Herzogtums Württemberg während des Dreißigjährigen Krieges und nach dem Westfälischen Frieden,” in Das Strafgericht Gottes. Kriegserfahrungen und Religion im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation im Zeitalter des Dreißigjährigen Krieges, eds. Matthias Asche and Anton Schindling (Münster: Aschendorff, 2001), 123 – 211, here 149 – 60, and esp. 124 and 211.  No less than eleven reasons for intervention have been discussed in the historical scholarship and are summarized in Sverker Oredsson, Geschichtsschreibung und Kult. Gustav Adolf, Schweden und der Dreißigjährige Krieg (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994). The official war manifestos generally, including this example, hardly mention or do not mention the religious conflict at all, because they legitimize the war by accusing their enemies of having breached common social and legal norms. See Anuschka Tischer, Offizielle Kriegsbegründungen in der Frühen Neuzeit. Herrscherkommuniktion in Europa zwischen Souveränität und korporativem Selbstverständnis (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2012), 165 – 71;

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how it was presented to the Holy Roman Empire and how it was understood in Germany. Considering the situation, this was entirely believable, because Emperor Ferdinand’s 1629 Edict of Restitution put the Lutheran Imperial Estates in a difficult situation. On the vexed question of whether spiritual property also came under the purview of the princes when they had recourse to their right to determine the confession of their territories, the emperor had, at the height of his military success, decided in favor of Catholic legal opinion and decreed that monasteries and bishoprics should be restored. An important propagandistic aspect was that the summer of 1630 saw the first centenary of the Confessio Augustana, the Lutheran confessional statement established at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, to which each side had committed in their own way. Some Catholic publicists had already prophesied the downfall of the Lutheran religion, saying it would not survive to see its first century. The Lutherans, however, expressed their hopes for the future in the figure of a savior, which increasingly took on the features of the Swedish king, who had landed on German shores just in time for the centenary. Professional visual propaganda experienced its zenith at this point: the war of broadsheets and pamphlets opened the door to a confessional remobilization, which effectively diverted the path to peace.¹⁶ The extraordinariness of these centenary events extended to the entire war. Like no other war before, or any for a long time afterwards, it was a media war. The modern print media – without which, of course, Luther and the Reformation would have been inconceivable – had now found their second current, important subject and were significant contributors in continuing the war. Like the pamphlets and broadsheets of Luther’s era, once again, this principally meant the effective image-text combinations of single-sheet prints, frequently with propagandistic or satirical tones, as well as contemporary discursive and inflammatory tracts. The publishers of printed images, which displayed to a curious public the spectacle and the important figures of the war, were particularly prone to reviving the memorable Reformation polemic that had proliferated in the same genre a century earlier and applying it to contemporary events. Thus the fleeing Bohemian “Winter King” was mocked in a series of engravings, banished alongside Luther, his wife, and other Reformers, while papal satires of the past were also reproduced – this time with the addition of Jesuits sitting on cannon or appearing as apocalyptic monsters. The bias of this political-religious agenda may – in particularly drastic cases, such as the iconization of Gustav Adolf – have contributed to increased acceptance of the Swedish king, whose aid had not been called upon by the imperial princes – nor, indeed, did they even want it. The conflict thus tended to be seen as a religious war and has continued to contrib-

bibliographical sources for the manifestos concerning the Swedish intervention can be found on p. 238.  Burkhardt, “Die kriegstreibende Rolle historischer Jubiläen im Dreißigjährigen Krieg und im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Krieg und Frieden in der historischen Gedächtniskultur. Studien zur friedenspolitischen Bedeutung historischer Argumente und Jubiläen von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart (Munich: Vogel, 2000), 91– 102.

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Fig. 1: Gustav Adolf, Triumphal Wagon. From contemporary visual propaganda: at the request of the Lutheran Church (right), Gustav Adolf, pushed by the German princes, rolls into the empire and toward the imperial throne. Source: Bildarchiv des Instituts für Europäische Kulturgeschichte, Augsburg.

ute to the perception of the war as a war of religion up to the present day. However, it could also be that we have simply fallen for the power of the images that have been endlessly reprinted and lovingly collected since the nineteenth century, as has been the case with respect to the representation of war through visual propaganda ever since. Of course, this reading of the Thirty Years’ War as a war of religion has its limits. While confessional differences played a powerful part in the Thirty Years’ War when they suited the various agendas, the fact that the Gustav Adolf episode (1630 – 1632) is the only time in which the religious and political parties were truly aligned along confessional lines is often overlooked. Before that, Lutheran Saxony was allied with the Catholic Holy Roman emperor against its confessional kinsman, Bohemia; afterward, Catholic France intervened on the wrong side, confessionally speaking. The most powerful leading electorate of the time, Saxony – the symbolic heartland of the Reformation and the site of strong Reformation memory – even during the centenary year of 1617, had repeatedly refused membership in the Protestant Union, which dissolved at the outbreak of war without itself firing a single shot. Elector Johann Georg I explicitly refused to give the Bohemian revolt any support or to acknowledge the Bohemian crown, arguing that politics, not religion, lay at the root

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of the Bohemian insubordination.¹⁷ This denial of the war as a religious war carried influence in the empire and permitted Lutheran Imperial Estates to cooperate with the head of the empire. Even the Catholic powers advised the emperor against issuing the Edict of Restitution. Although this edict provided a biased interpretation of the Peace of Augsburg, it did not revoke it, as Louis XIV’s Edict of Nantes would later do – and prudent minds also advised against this, because it, too, conjured up the specter of religious war. It had not been a religious war thus far, but now it had become one – thus declared the Saxon Elector, who had always striven for compromise and conciliation, with resignation as he took the Swedish side. But not for long. The transconfessional Peace of Prague – which was initiated by Saxony, the electorate that set the tone, and concluded with the emperor – suspended the Edict of Restitution and thus also the religious war in Germany. When France openly stepped into the war on the side of Lutheran Sweden against the Catholic emperor, the original aim to establish structural intolerance – to impose religious unity according to the parameters of the respective power’s confessional predisposition, through the use of political force – lost its entire foundation. Thus we see that the confessional question was not influential throughout the war and cannot represent its principle conflict.¹⁸

3 The Military Prolongation Factor Another factor in addition to that of religion was the unique dynamic of the military.¹⁹ Religion only occasionally played a role for the army, and then only in part. Some armies appear to have been more or less confessionally homogenous in the early stages of the war – for example, the army of the Catholic League, under the pious General Tilly, or the troops at the core of Gustav Adolf’s forces, conscripted in Lutheran Sweden. But the largest army under the imperial commander Wallenstein was, from its inception and right up into the officer ranks, ethnically and confessionally diverse, and the participants in the war followed this example, recruiting whomever they could – in the end, even “the Swedes” included very few actual Swedes. The soldiers served in return for pay and loot, not for the concepts of nation or religion. The population did not suffer under a militant confessional conflict, but under the military violence of war, inflicted by the forces passing through or quartered in their area – violence that was inflicted, as has so often been pointed out, by both friend and foe in equal measure.²⁰ If it appears at first glance that the Luther-

 Frank Müller, Kursachsen und der böhmische Aufstand 1618 – 1622 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1997).  Anders A. Gotthard, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg. Eine Einführung (Cologne: UTB, 2016), 292.  For background on this, see the collated volume of classic scholarly positions by Clifford J. Rogers (ed.), The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder: Westview, 1995).  For example, Klara Staigers Tagebuch, ed. Ortrun Fina (Regensburg: Pustet, 1981).

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an rectories were equally as affected by the violence as the Catholic abbeys, this is less to do with particular confessional animosities than with the fact that in these impoverished areas, the cellars and churches of these institutions still had supplies and items of value that could be plundered, and they also had the most literate individuals and chroniclers, who could record the looting and violence for posterity.²¹ It was not the confessions that engaged in an antagonistic face-off here, but rather the military on the one hand and the civilian population on the other, fighting for survival both against each other and alongside each other. This conflict was not about religion, but rather over the last available resources. The duration and severity of the conflict cannot be laid at the door of religion in this case, but must be laid at the feet of military force, which took on a life of its own. Indeed, the death of Gustav Adolf in 1632 would have been a good reason to end the war; but now the Swedish army was in Germany, and moreover in southern Germany. And it was not the only one. There was still Wallenstein’s army, the army of the Catholic League, as well as that of Spain in the west, and soon there would also be the French army. In this period of war entrepreneurship, the mercenaries lived off the war, and in the event of peace, they would lose the financial foundation of their existence. The war was not least a macabre employment measure, although the prospect of regular pay was increasingly doubtful, and the armies were maintained through contributions, requisitioning, and extortion instead. So what could be done with the armies? On one occasion, in response to rumors of peace, the Swedish army had, in a kind of military revolt, wrested from its political leadership the assurance that Sweden would not conclude a peace without consulting the military leadership. It was simply not conceivable that impoverished Sweden would ever be able to produce the military pay, for which it was now in arrears, or the payments that would be due if peace were concluded. A considerable proportion of the ongoing negotiations was therefore dedicated to the Swedish demand for “satisfaction” for its military. For its unsolicited aid to the German Imperial Estates, Sweden demanded 20 million reichstaler. Since it proved impossible to achieve peace without this, the Imperial Estates finally agreed to pay five million reichstaler. That was a considerable challenge, in view of the war damages they had suffered. A congress in Nürnberg negotiated for a year in order to distribute the costs across the Imperial Estates. It succeeded in raising this extraordinary tax from 300 individual debtors and celebrated this success with an enormous banquet. Platoon by platoon, the foreign armies withdrew as the outstanding funds were gradually paid.²²

 Benigna von Krusenstjern, ed., Selbstzeugnisse der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges, Selbstzeugnisse der Neuzeit 6 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997); Mitteldeutsche Selbstzeugnisse der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges, ed. Hans Medick and Norbert Winnige, available online: http://www.mdsz.thulb.uni-jena.de/sz/index.php.  Fundamental on this topic is Antje Oschmann, Der Nürnberger Exekutionstag 1649 – 1650. Das Ende des Dreißigjährigen Krieges in Deutschland (Münster: Aschendorff, 1991).

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Fig. 2: Treaty Banquet: Banquet celebrating peace after organizing the satisfaction of the military in Nürnberg. Engraving after a painting by Sandrart. Source: Bildarchiv des Instituts für Europäische Kulturgeschichte, Augsburg.

There were, of course, attempts to solve the problem in this area. The “standing armies” of the post-Westphalian period, which were sometimes an “army stood still” since the Thirty Years’ War,²³ could have offered the military a means of existence without constant recourse to war. The soldiers were then no longer only recruited in the event of war; rulers had them drill and exercise during peacetime as well. But full nationalization of the armies, in the sense of integrating them as a state institution, was not achieved. The army remained an instrument in the hands of the monarch, outside the control of political functionaries and institutions, and thus subject to the whim of the ruler. The continued bellicosity of the post-Westphalian world can be seen in the standing armies of such warlords as Louis XIV and Frederick the Great.

 Burkhardt, Dreißigjähriger Krieg, 213. For a critical modification of this term, see B.R. Kroener, “Kriegswesen,” in Herrschaft und Gesellschaft 1300 – 1800, Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte 92 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013), 36 – 43.

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However, there is a better German tradition that originated in the Peace of Westphalia, for it was here that the Imperial Diet – and not the individual princes – was granted jurisdiction over war and peace. An imperial army would only be recruited and deployed upon a resolution of this first German parliament, empowered by the Imperial Estates. In accordance with imperial tradition, it would only be deployed on defensive engagements.²⁴ Thus it is entirely in accordance with the development of tradition in German history when, in modern Germany, the parliament must decide whether to approve or reject the deployment of its military in engagements that do not directly serve the defense of the country. However, such institutional control and commitment to defense was not the norm in Europe, and later German history in particular did not strictly uphold this principle.

4 The Nation-building War and Its Westphalian Solution Thus the real political grounds for the continuation of the war come into focus: the intervention of foreign powers. In the 1620s, the Thirty Years’ War was not exclusively – but was certainly also – a German problem, and after the Swedish alliances, the Imperial Estates returned to the Holy Roman Empire and its emperor. With the 1635 Peace of Prague concluded between the emperor and Electoral Saxony, a peace with which nearly all the Imperial Estates affiliated themselves, the German war was effectively over. But the foreign powers were still on imperial territory – the Spaniards, as allies of the Habsburg empire, but above all the Swedes, and soon the French would join them. The peace treaty itself obliged the Imperial Estates to join with the emperor in persuading these powers to withdraw from Germany. Initially, attractive and not unrealistic offers of peace were made, but the Swedish, French, and Habsburg powers declined. Why? What factors lay behind the moment at which the war became a European war? Europe was considered a political unit, but it was not yet formed on the basis of the coexistence of equal states. The ideal of political order was still heavily influenced by the hierarchical notions of an estate-based society, which, like a triangle or a pyramid, must have an apex. But who should stand at this apex? The Holy Roman emperor, the Spanish king, or the entire Habsburg dynasty? The French king, who, with his title “most Christian” (Très Chrétin), also lay claim to political pri-

 H. Neuhaus, “Das Problem der militärischen Exekutive in der Spätphase des Alten Reiches,” in Staatsverfassung und Heeresverfassung in der europäischen Geschichte der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Johannes Kunisch, Historische Forschungen 28 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1986), 297– 46; Neuhaus, “‘Defension’. Das frühneuzeitliche Heilige Römische Reich als Verteidigungsgemeinschaft,” in Lesebuch Altes Reich, eds. Stefan Wendehorst and Siegrid Westphal, Bibliothek Altes Reich 1 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 119 – 26.

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macy in Christian Europe? Or the Swedish king, Gustav Adolf, who would claim the ocean of the North via the claim he had on the Baltic Sea, and who, while invoking his Gothic ancestors, now threatened to march through half of Europe like a latterday king of migrating peoples and snatch the imperial throne? All three universalistic competitors had their opportunity at various times.²⁵ In the late 1630s, however, it became clear that none of them was capable of achieving it, which is why a compromise had to be made. But how? In the old system of socio-political order, the apex position was intended to be a permanent position, which, for that reason, had to be filled. If one did not occupy it, that did not mean that nobody would take it; in fact, it was feared that somebody else might take it. And even if it was agreed to leave that spot vacant, this did not result in a permanent or long-term solution in this system, but rather in an interregnum, or even in anarchy. A change in the model or even a new ideal of socio-political order was required: the state system. Constitutional doctrines from Bodin to Grotius and Hobbes, with categories and terms concerning international law – such as sovereignty and reason of state – had developed a concept of multiple nations, which, however, had yet to be implemented or even received in theoretical thought.²⁶ The wearisome ceremonial disputes during the Westphalian peace negotiations – Who could be part of it? Who could not? – need to be viewed in the context of this order, which had yet to be reconstituted or demarcated. Thus the former universal powers were forced to reduce the extent of their respective claims and became subjects of international law who had to acknowledge each other as political stakeholders, equally authorized to act in war and peace.²⁷ At stake was not simply a few instances of territorial transfer and border regime changes, but rather a new system of social order and its international political form. This order had to be considered, implemented, and established, and that took time – years of preliminary considerations  For a comprehensive overview, see Burkhardt, Dreißigjähriger Krieg, 30 – 127; see also Andreas Zellhuber, Der gotische Weg in den deutschen Krieg. Gustav Adolf und der schwedische Gotizismus, Documenta Augustana 10 (Augsburg: Wißner Verlag, 2002).  In addition to the well-known works, an astounding connection between Hobbes and the publications from the early part of the war has been discovered. The English theoretician had translated from Latin into English a text described as a report about the political chances of Frederick V of the Palatinate; the text had been composed by an educated member of the Welsers, an Augsburg merchant family, and disseminated in several editions. The English edition and commentary can be found in Noel Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years’s War. An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes (Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press, 2007); a Latin and German original text is reprinted and commentated in W.E.J. Weber, ed., Secretissima Instructio – Allergeheimste Instruction. Friderico V. Comiti Palatino Electo Regi Bohemiae, Data an Friederichen, Pfaltzgrafen, erwehlten König in Böhmen (1620), Documenta Augustana 9 (Augsburg: Wißner Verlag, 2002).  In contrast to the widely accepted image of an entirely fixed, egalitarian state system, recent research has shown that even after 1648, there was a continuing sense of hierarchical ordering in international relations, which even achieved a certain amount of political importance as a negotiating bloc. See Regina Dauser, Ehren-Namen. Herrschertitulaturen im völkerrechtlichen Vertrag, 1648 – 1748, Norm und Struktur 46 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2017).

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and four years of negotiations in Münster and Osnabrück, all while the events of war continued. This might not have been openly presented as the context, but it is the subtext to the negotiations and should be acknowledged.²⁸ The result was that the peace treaty addressed first and foremost the former competitors for universal power – for that is how we may term the conflict that had taken place ever since Emperor Charles V’s monarchia universalis had enveloped half of Europe²⁹ – making them the antagonists and contracting parties in the Peace of Westphalia. The emperor concluded peace with France in Münster and with Sweden in Osnabrück, with all the ceremonial and rhetorical outlay that codified the basic parallel international hierarchization of these powers. This became the core element of the European state system. Thus the Thirty Years’ War was also a war of state formation (Staatsbildungskrieg).³⁰ This term, which I coined in 1991 and which has since found broad acceptance in the scholarly debate,³¹ does not mean that forming states and establishing a multi-state system was the intention and martial aim of these powers. It was simply the result of the war. But it was certainly the case for a number of secessionist state formations that occurred “from below,” which all wished to separate themselves from the universal power of the Habsburgs. This can first be seen in the Bohemian revolt, with its attempt to form a state in the “Confoederatio Bohemica,” comprising the five regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, the two Lusatias, and an elective crown that had fallen to the Palatinate; the confederation foundered at the Battle of White Mountain but nevertheless initiated the Thirty Years’ War. At the end of the conflict, there emerged the “Confoederatio Helvetica,” for which the Peace of Westphalia proved to be a successful first step toward Swiss independence. Above all, the Thirty Years’ War came to be the final act in the successful state-forming war of the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands against the Spanish Habsburgs.

 Important volumes by expert scholars issued on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the peace include: Heinz Duchhardt, Der Westfälische Friede. Diplomatie – politische Zäsur – kulturelles Umfeld – Rezeptionsgeschichte (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998); Klaus Bußmann and Heinz Schilling, eds., 1648 – Krieg und Frieden in Europa, 2. vols (Münster: Bruckmann, 1998). A summary and analysis of the anniversary is recorded in Inken Schmidt-Voges and Siegrid Westphal, eds., Pax perpetua. Neuere Forschungen zum Frieden in der Frühen Neuzeit, Bibliothek Altes Reich 8 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010).  Franz Bosbach, Monarchia Universalis. Ein politischer Leitbegriff der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988).  Burkhardt, “Der Dreißigjährige Krieg als frühmoderner Staatsbildungskrieg,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 45 (1994): 487– 99; Burkhardt, “Wars of States or Wars of State-Formation?,” in War, the State and International Law in Seventeenth-Century Europe, eds. Olaf Asbach and Peter Schröder (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), 17– 34.  The most comprehensive reception, review, and discussion can be found in Edgar Wolfrum, Krieg und Frieden in der Neuzeit. Vom Westfälischen Frieden bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Darmstadt: WBG, 2003), 35 – 37 and 67– 69. A concise summary can be found in Hans-Joachim Müller, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg. Leben und Überleben im konfessionellen Zeitalter (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2015), 113 – 15.

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For the warring universal powers, however, accepting individual states was the solution that brought about peace, and this was the result of the war. Nevertheless, all of this – the insoluble universalistic antagonism present in the old hierarchical model, the search for a solution beyond the old hierarchical order, and the realization of a new pluralistic concept – had a significant impact on the second half of the war and beyond. Seen in this light, the extraordinary duration of the war becomes more understandable. It required creative imagination and organizational energy to introduce a new political model for Europe, on the basis of which peace would be possible.³² Not for nothing was this political system – which continued to function right up to the early part of our modern period, which overcame the hierarchical and universalistic order of Europe, and which replaced it with the legitimation of equal, sovereign, individual states in Europe and in the rest of the world – known as the “Westphalian System.”³³ German state formation took a different path, however, because the German countries did not become individual sovereign states, as previous German scholarship believed. Instead, state formation took place on two levels – at an individual state level, on the one hand, and at a nation-state level, on the other – a process that determined all of German history, from its beginnings up to the present day. This double-state structure was once again endangered during the Thirty Years’ War: first when, at the height of his success, the emperor threatened to expand his position of power; and second, when individual alliances between several princes and the emperor’s wartime enemies raised the specter of secession. But all the Imperial Estates soon reintegrated into the empire, were active participants in the peace negotiations, and ultimately virtually forced the long overdue conclusion of peace.³⁴ However, the Peace of Westphalia restored the federal system and extended it into the postWestphalian world. The peace treaty, in the imperial form acceptable at the time, had confirmed the territorial sovereignty and capacity for alliances of the individual Imperial Estates; an overarching nation-state entity, which also possessed regulatory competence in interconfessional matters, was now established as an alternative state form, with the imperial head to be elected by the electoral princes, and with renewed state institutions, imperial circles, imperial courts, and an imperial diet that sat permanently from 1663 onward³⁵ – while the rest of Europe went in a different direction, at least for the time being.

 Other delays resulting from utopian preconditions, such as the search for an “honorable peace,” are explained in Christoph Kampmann, Europa und das Reich im Dreißigjährigen Krieg. Geschichte eines europäischen Konflikts (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2013), 180 – 87.  See the critical analysis of this term – and other relevant essays – by the important peace historian Heinz Duchhardt, Frieden im Europa der Vormoderne. Ausgewählte Aufsätze 1979 – 2011, ed. M. Espenhorst (Paderborn/Munich: Schöningh, 2012).  In particular, Siegrid Westphal, Der Westfälische Frieden (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2015).  Harriet Rudolph and Astrid Schlachta, eds., Reichsstadt – Reich – Europa. Neue Perspektiven auf den Immerwährenden Reichstag zu Regensburg (1663 – 1806) (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2015);

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Fig. 3: Peace of Westphalia. Foundation of the Westphalian System: The Emperor concludes the peace treaty with Christina of Sweden and a young Louis XIV of France. Source: Bildarchiv des Instituts für Europäische Kulturgeschichte, Augsburg.

5 The Post-Westphalian World and the Abolition of the Religious War in the Federal Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation But why, then, did the series of wars in the second half of the early modern period not really come to end after the Peace of Westphalia? After all, it had been a pluralistic peace treaty, presented in 1648 as one that would hold for all of Europe for eternity. In order to answer this question, we must remember that, while the coordination of the European states was established as the new norm in 1648 – it was for this reason that all future peace treaties repeatedly referenced the Peace of Westphalia³⁶ – it Susanne Friedrich, Drehscheibe Regensburg. Das Informations- und Kommunikationssystem des Immerwährenden Reichstags um 1700, Colloquia Augustana 23 (Berlin: Akademie, 2007).  On the current significance and function of the large collections and their translations, see B. Durst, Archive des Völkerrechts. Gedruckte Sammlungen europäischer Mächteverträge in der Frühen Neuzeit, Colloquia Augustana, 34 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016).

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now had to be defended against recidivism among the former universal powers, and this initially required renewed violence and war. Furthermore, a number of additional factors played into the hands of the various states as they sought to continue and reinforce their own establishment, but at the same time, these factors produced side effects that encouraged war. If we consider these factors – elsewhere I have summarized them as a typology of war in a theory of early modern bellicosity³⁷ – then it is possible to see that many military, dynastic, and hereditary policies or economic state deficits continued to have an impact beyond the Thirty Years’ War. However, certain factors took a much less central role than in the past. This is most clearly the case for the religious war in the post-Westphalian world. Although confessional arguments may have continued to play a role in international relations, they no longer concerned a genuine question of faith, or even the implementation by force of a supposed religious truth; rather, religion became simply a means to achieve a political end, or even empty propaganda. Even in the eighteenth century, the Chancellor of State, Kaunitz, instructed his ambassador to Paris to deploy all arguments that might support an alliance between the French and the Viennese courts – even religious arguments, if he believed they would be of use. But that was neither the reason for nor the spirit of the alliance that went down in history as a “diplomatic revolution”; it was instead a search for obvious commonalities as part of the process of overcoming the historical Franco-Habsburg enmity. Moreover, in the subsequent Seven Years’ War, it was Frederick the Great of all people who attempted to use propaganda to position himself as a Protestant hero for Europe, but even the Protestant Imperial Estates in Germany did not believe the enlightened sarcast when, at the same time, he was marching into Saxony and setting about plundering and annexing the old Lutheran country.³⁸ As had been the case in the Religious Peace of Augsburg, the insoluble inner-religious problem was dealt with at a judicial and political level and solved in the Treaty of Osnabrück, which attained constitutional force in Germany. Now the religious parties were finally integrated into the imperial constitution, and this time, they expressly included the Reformed Calvinist groups, which had played an active part in encouraging the war in the early stages of the conflict. The juridification of the religious groups culminated, in imperial legal terms, in their “parity” – defined as number or process – within the imperial bodies. The complex relations that were brought about by the various interpretations of the Religious Peace of Augsburg, the multiple confessional changes undergone by rulers and their subjects, and the upheavals of war could all be defused by a single brilliant solution: a cut-off year ruling.³⁹ The dis-

 Burkhardt, “Die Friedlosigkeit der Frühen Neuzeit. Grundlegung einer Theorie der Bellizität Europas,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 24 (1997): 509 – 74.  Burkhardt, Vollendung und Neuorientierung des frühmodernen Reiches 1648 – 1763, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte 11 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2006), 396 – 417, esp. 408 – 11.  Ralf-Peter Fuchs, Ein ‘Medium zum Frieden’. Die Normaljahrsregel und die Beendigung des Dreißigjährigen Krieges, Bibliothek Altes Reich 4 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010).

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tribution of confessions in Germany would be fixed as of this “base year,” covering all the majorities and minorities present at that time. But how was the date of this base year to be chosen? The Lutheran side wanted to take the pre-war conditions of 1618 as the new standard, while the Catholic party preferred 1627, the date already specified in the Treaty of Prague, in which certain territorial gains had been conceded. Always ready to compromise, Electoral Saxony suggested a year midway between the two, and so 1624 became the new base year. Whether Germans today are Lutheran or Catholic is largely down to whether their ancestors went to a Catholic or a Lutheran church on January 1, 1624. This may not tally with our notions of free self-determination, but it was effective in terms of preserving the religious peace. The agreement surrounding 1624 also included the guarantee of territorial subjects’ confessional rights in relation to their ruler; this meant, for example, that the conversion of the Saxon elector August the Strong to the Catholic Church in order to become king of Poland had no further consequences for Lutheran Electoral Saxony – except that Dresden, the elector’s residential city, contains two restored sacred buildings of international renown: the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) for the Lutheran city population and the Catholic Hofkirche (Court Church) by Gaetano Chiaveri. The hard work of a determined generation of constitutional lawyers ensured that the peaceful intention of this base year was implemented, thereby also fixing the German confessional map. This solution of not solving insoluble conflicts, but rather “freezing” the status quo, was in this case not just politically tested: it was enshrined in law, and it proved stable in the midst of later world-historical issues. The “Cold War,” which prevented a “hot war” in the twentieth century by respecting existing spheres of influence, became the most well-known example of this peace strategy, and it has also been discussed as an option in the current conflicts in the Middle East. Above all, however, the improved juridification of this confessional conflict in Germany abolished the war of religion. After the Peace of Westphalia, nobody could argue for a war of religion. Rightly or wrongly, the term frequently stood for the catastrophe of the Thirty Years’ War, the likes of which nobody in the post-Westphalian world wished to experience again. For Germany, which had been most adversely affected by the events of the Thirty Years’ War, the bogeyman of religious war was sufficient to keep the ongoing culture of confessional-political conflict within civilized limits. A war of religion threatened to erupt in Germany on two subsequent occasions. In 1721, the organization with special interests among the Lutheran Imperial Estates, the Corpus Evangelicorum, deflected Catholic attacks by outside groups within the Holy Roman Empire with such politically brazen means that the situation threatened to escalate. The fact that it did not was due to the astute imperial politicians who reminded them of the cautionary tale of the Thirty Years’ War.⁴⁰ Later, during the Seven

 Burkhardt, Vollendung und Neuorientierung, 326 – 41.

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Years’ War, the Diplomatic Revolution unexpectedly pitted Catholic and Lutheran powers against each other; it was a constellation that the papacy, as well as Prussia and England on the opposing side, attempted to depict as a confessional war. However, the emperor and the Holy Roman Empire acted decisively to counter this, and so this “farewell to the war of religion” (Abschied vom Religionskrieg) was now final.⁴¹ In both cases, skillful crisis management in the empire prevented a return to the religious war. On this point, at least, Germany had learned from its history, and the age of the religious war was truly at an end.

6 Conclusion These observations and comments paint an overall picture of the path of history from the wars of religion to the post-Westphalian world. Luther’s Reformation and the subsequent unleashing of a process of confessionalization certainly provided a wealth of cultural catalysts, but it also introduced a tolerance problem through the claim, made on all sides, to have exclusive access to religious truth. This structural intolerance generated and legitimated religious wars all over Europe, of which the Thirty Years’ War was the most extensive, when measured by duration and severity. This war served as a reference point, but at the same time, it became obvious that – while the problem of religion was a significant contextual, memorial, and media-relevant factor – it was not the decisive cause of this extraordinarily catastrophic war. The impact of the independent dynamic of the military was also influential, and the fundamental political problem of the era, which underlay the events of the war, was even more so: this problem, as we have seen above, was state formation. The successful or unsuccessful formation of states from below, as well as the competitive antagonism of the universal powers – which was in need of limitation and even reduction – kept the war open-ended, whether openly or subtly, from the Defenestration of Prague onward, until the multi-state Westphalian System for Europe was developed, widely acknowledged, and accepted. The post-Westphalian world had to defend the new order against universalist power recidivism and continued to be entangled in wars against disquieting state contamination and autonomy deficits. But the war of religion, which even during the Thirty Years’ War had become instead a war of state formation, was driven back and abolished. In this federal empire, cooperation between the individual state level and the nation-state level ensured a lasting reorganization of imperial religious law. Thus, in the multi-confessional country of the Reformation, religious war and structural intolerance were overcome through political and legal measures before the European Enlightenment and its ideals brought religion onto the ideological path of tolerance.

 Burkhardt, Abschied vom Religionskrieg. Der Siebenjährige Krieg und die päpstliche Diplomatie, Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom 61 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1985).

Michela Catto

At the Source of Every Evil Images and Interpretations of the Reformation and Luther in Modern Italy

1 Introduction Peu de personnes prirent le parti de Luther en Italie. Ce peuple inge´nieux, occupe´ d’intrigues et de plaisirs, n’eut aucune part a` ces troubles. Les Espagnols, tout vifs et tout spirituels qu’ils sont, ne s’en mê le`rent pas. Les Français, quoiqu’ils aient avec l’esprit de ces peuples un goû t plus violent pour les nouveaute´s, furent longtemps sans prendre parti. Le the´â tre de cette guerre d’esprit e´tait chez les Allemands, chez les Suisses, qui n’e´taient pas re´pute´s alors les hommes de la terre les plus de´lie´s, et qui passent pour circonspects. La cour de Rome, savante et polie, ne s’e´ tait pas attendue que ceux qu’elle traitait de barbares pourraient, la Bible comme le fer a` la main, lui ravir la moitie´ de l’Europe et e´branler l’autre.¹

In the “ethnic” geopolitics of the Reformation outlined by Voltaire in his Essai sur les moeurs (1756), Italy is represented as being not very receptive of the Protestant doctrine, but rather all gathered around its decadent, parasitical, and scheming Roman court. The history of Italian indifference toward the religious reformations coming from countries further north goes back to long before Voltaire published his universal history. This opinion was shared even by the Italian intellectuals who lived at the same time as Luther and the Council of Trent (i. e., the very remedy that stopped the spread of Protestantism in Italy). Through them, it became a long-lasting cliché.

2 The Idea of Reformation in Italy Francesco Guicciardini,² Paolo Sarpi, and many others wrote about Rome’s misjudgments and Leo X’s lack of concern when the first news of a claim for reforms arrived

Translation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations, avec préfaces, avertissements, notes, etc. par M. Beuchot (Paris 1829), 3:192 (cap. CXXVIII).  F. Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi), trans. Mario Domandi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 48: “The positions I have held under several popes have forced me, for my own good, to further their interests. If it were not for that, I should have loved Martin Luther as much as myself – not so that I might be free of the laws based on Christian religion as it is generally interpreted and understood; but to see this bunch of rascals see their just deserts, that is, to be either without vices of without authority;” see Guicciardini, The History of Italy, trans. Sidney Alexander https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-066

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from Germany.³ Sarpi also added a consideration that expanded the victory of the papacy with regard to the Reformation to the Italian socio-political context, saying that, even recently, Italians want to safeguard the Roman curia: the latter, in fact, seems to bring both dignity and advantage to this land, due to the amount of money that comes in through the curia. And they will stay steady in their opinion as long as the curia, just as in the past, lets them participate as sons in the grandeur of its fortune, acts as protector of Italian freedom, and does not attempt to dominate despotically.⁴

Very keenly, keeping away from any doctrinal issues per se, Sarpi suggested a close connection between the papal court, its nepotism, and the Italian ruling class; he showed its consistency and how Italian society had rallied in the face of the advance of the Reformation, remaining completely united around the pope. The political dimension of the unsuccessful renewal of “Italic” customs had already been highlighted in the analyses by Niccolò Machiavelli, for whom Francesco De Sanctis coined the concise sobriquet “Italian reformer.”⁵ Machiavelli had devoted much of his effort to the condemnation of the corruption existing in different domains of Italian life. According to Machiavelli, “ruin happened because in princes and republics there was a lack of that virtue, that strength, that drive, that political intelligence, and that sure knowledge of the real laws of politics, that critical prudence or common sense.” However, he extended his considerations to a vision in which everybody was responsible, since all blames and defects were to be found “in the populations, starting from the advisers, the chancellors, and the secretaries, down to the peasants,” who all lacked “that seriousness and public solidarity founded on religion, which represent the solidity of princes and republics and the substance of authentic political and military energy.”⁶

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 322: “The Pope strove at first to extinguish this poisonous doctrine, but he did not employ those remedies and medicines suitable for curing such a malady.”  “[Leo X] would have been a perfect pontiff, if to these he had coupled some notions of religious matters and some greater inclination to piety, both things with which he did not seem to concern himself too much;” see Paolo Sarpi, Istoria del concilio tridentino, ed. C. Vivanti (Torino: Einaudi, 2011 [1974]), 1:10. Also, speaking of the reaction to Luther’s bull of condemnation: “Others, going a bit further, considered that – having suggested 42 propositions and having condemned them as heretical, scandalous, false, offensive for pious ears, and misleading for simple minds, without explaining which ones were heretical, which scandalous, which false, but with the term “respectively” attributing to each of them an uncertain quality – there was an even greater doubt than before, which meant not defining the matter but rather making it more controversial than it already was and showing even more the need for another authority and prudence in order to end it;” see Sarpi, Istoria, 25).  Sarpi, Letter to Jacques Leschassier of May 13, 1608, Sarpi, Opere, ed. Gaetano Cozzi and Luisa Cozzi (Milano/Napoli: Ricciardi, 1969), 252.  Francesco De Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana (Napoli: Morano, 1879), 2:41.  Delio Cantimori, “Niccolò Machiavelli: il politico e lo storico,” in Storia della letteratura italiana, eds. Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno, vol. 4 (Milano: Garzanti, 1966), now in Cantimori, Machia-

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Apart from the political analyses and the opinions of the intellectuals on the consequences of the unsuccessful reform of the politics and customs of the Church of Rome, Italians only received a little, convoluted news about Luther. However, this played an important role and represented a long-term issue in Italy.⁷ Martin Luther was the precursor of the antichrist, the destroyer of the unity of the Church, the unscrupulous demagogue whose ideas had perverted consciences and the established order, the master of every wickedness. The destructive power of his thinking was not met by a systemic or really controversial discussion of his doctrine. Literature – not only from the sixteenth century – dwelt very little on the doctrinal issues and was far more interested in Luther’s character and his physical and mental traits, which were obviously deformed and distorted and, therefore, a clear reflection of his upending of the natural order. The scorn for good customs (starting with the sacrament of matrimony) and the attack on the authority of the Church, its doctrine, and its rules for life were tied in with a portrayal devoid of human traits; in time, this representation lost the fanciful and superstitious features characteristic of the early sixteenth century and took on the traits and the “deviancies” described by the new social disciplines, as well as no less extravagant psychological interpretations – such as, for example, the theory of the paranoid origin of Luther’s doctrine.⁸ On March 26, 1523, Tommasino Lancellotti wrote in his chronicle of the city of Modena: Someone brought to Modena a representation of a monster born in Saxony from a cow, who has an almost human head and a tonsure and a leather scapular like the scapular of a friar, and front arms and legs and feet like a pig and a pig’s tail; they say he was a friar called Martin Utero who died and who, a few years ago, was preaching the heresy in Germany.⁹

As part of the scarcity of news on the “monster from Saxony,” many studies have highlighted the biased and false element of propaganda, which is all centered either on heresy interpreted as rebellion against Rome or on lasciviousness.¹⁰ Such propaganda, however, contributed to slowing down the quickly spreading doctrine.¹¹ velli, Guicciardini, le idee religiose del Cinquecento, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2013), 41.  On the lack of knowledge of the Lutheran doctrine, see the considerations by V. Vinay, “Il piccolo catechismo di Lutero come strumento di evangelizzazione fra gli italiani dal XVI al XX secolo,” Protestantesimo 35 (1970): 65 – 84.  On the long-term persistence of these descriptions, later made even more powerful by the contributions of the new social disciplines (and with some interesting psychopathologic interpretations), see Guido Dall’Olio, Martin Lutero (Roma: Carocci, 2013), ch. 6, “Interpretazioni di Lutero,” 161– 206.  Quoted in O. Niccoli, “Il mostro di Sassonia. Conoscenza e non conoscenza di Lutero in Italia nel Cinquecento (1520 – 1530 ca),” in Lutero in Italia. Studi storici nel V centenario della nascita, ed. L. Perrone (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1983), 5 – 25, here 8.  Apart from the work by O. Niccoli mentioned above, cf. S. Cavazza, “‘Luthero fidelissimo inimico de messer Jesu Christo’. La polemica contro Lutero nella letteratura religiosa in volgare della prima metà del Cinquecento,” in Lutero in Italia, 65 – 94.

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However, it is worth mentioning that, although such representations of Luther were the most common in several Italian contexts, during the eighteenth century there were also other kinds of interpretations, which suggested cautious distinctions and new ways of approaching the theological and historical issue and created the basis for an innovative understanding. For example, one of the notions that started to take hold was the idea of some sort of co-responsibility for the Protestant Reformation, shared between the papacy – which had been insensitive to German needs – and the desire for an internal reform of the corrupt papal court. In some pages from the Annali d’Italia, Ludovico Antonio Muratori allowed himself several hints – which were later criticized – at the state of decadence existing in Italy during the sixteenth century: The great commerce of indulgences that was undertaken back then to collect money in the whole of Western Christianity – seemingly to build the Vatican Basilica, but actually also for other worldly purposes – was what started a fire in Germany that, day after day, grew bigger and came to represent that great wound in the Church of the Lord that nevertheless we deplore, and that only God will be able to heal, when his other judgments are fulfilled.¹²

Thus the traditional and polemic representations were now accompanied by the interpretation of the historian, who – by understanding the Reformation not merely as a rift devised by a “fanatic” – also addressed the numerous signs pointing toward the “lack of an authentic wish for religious regeneration on the part of the Catholic authorities.”¹³ This was obviously a first step towards the mitigation of the accusations against the “Protestant revolution” by the Catholics. Thus, similar accusations became necessary only structurally, to reproach Luther for not having been able to side with the Italian reformers – Gasparo Contarini, Reginald Pole, and the others – who wished to improve the Church and to eliminate corruption and abuse, as can be seen in Angelo Maria Querini’s irenic project for the reunification of the religious confessions in the eighteenth century.¹⁴ Until about the mid-nineteenth century, Catholic historiography did not offer many interpretations of the Reformation – or, at least, not as many as those provided, of course, by Protestant historiography.¹⁵ The first is dominated not only by the

 Cf. S. Seidel Menchi, “Le tradizioni di Lutero nella prima metà del Cinquecento,” Rinascimento 17 (1974): 31– 108, here 36. On the subject of the Italian reformers, see Massimo Firpo, La Riforma italiana del Cinquecento. Le premesse storiografiche, in ‘Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede’. Studi sulla vita religiosa del Cinquecento italiano (Milano: Unicopli, 2003), 11– 66.  L.A. Muratori, Opere, ed. Giorgio Falco and Fiorenzo Forti (Milano/Napoli: Ricciardi, 1964), 2:1360 – 61.  D. Menozzi, “La figura di Lutero nella cultura italiana del Settecento,” in Lutero in Italia, 141– 66, here 150.  Menozzi, “La figura di Lutero nella cultura italiana del Settecento,” 154.  Delio Cantimori, “Interpretazioni della Riforma protestante,” in Storici e storia. Metodo, caratteristiche e significato del lavoro storiografico (Torino: Einaudi, 1972), 624– 56, here 630. See also B. Gherardini, “Lutero nella recente storiografia cattolica,” Protestantesimo 38 (1983): 129 – 50; and G. Micco-

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perpetuation of a monstrous and sick image of Luther and by an imprecise use of the term Protestantism (often confused with Luther’s character), but is also prone to omissions when it comes to Lutheran theological-doctrinal thinking and favors an entirely political explanation of the Reformation. This reconstruction of the Italian context was destined to endure in a country where the temporal power of the popes continued until 1870. The Renaissance – intended also as a historiographical category that excluded Rome and its court from among its protagonists¹⁶ – would therefore be interpreted as the “Italian Reformation,” and the hated “Counter-Reformation” – with its repression, discipline, and immovability – would take on the traits of a positive period for Italy, thanks to a revalorization of the role of the Church. The latter, in fact, would become the practical-political subject that made it possible to achieve stability in the country at a time in which war, bloodshed, and revolutions raged all over Europe. Luther was the symbol of arrogance and haughtiness, and his doctrine was completely erroneous from a theological point of view; his Reformation, however, was first and foremost the cause of the wars and devastation triggered by the loss of universalism and of the socio-political disorders derived from it.¹⁷ In his description of the complete decadence of Italy during the seventeenth century – the century in which “all fell into decay, from the love of the motherland and of political and military life, from religiosity to social custom, from thinking to language” – Benedetto Croce underlined with a twist how the Church and the Jesuits, “who had extinguished the sparks of religious divisions lighted here and there in

li, “‘L’avarizia e l’orgoglio di un frate laido …’. Problemi e aspetti dell’interpretazione cattolica di Lutero,” in Lutero in Italia, vii–xxxiii. On the subject of Italian historiography about the Reformation, see the works by P. Simoncelli, “La storiografia italiana sulla Riforma e i movimenti ereticali in Italia (1950 – 1975). Note e appunti,” and G. Dall’Olio, “La storiografia italiana sulla Riforma in Italia (1975 – 1997),” both in Cinquant’anni di storiografia italiana sulla Riforma e i movimenti ereticali in Italia. 1950 – 2000, 90 Convegno di studi sulla Roma e sui movimenti religiosi in Italia, ed. S. Peyronel (Torino: Claudiana, 2002), 15 – 36 and 37– 67, respectively. A similar scarcity of contributions is observed up to the twentieth century also in theological literature, on which see M. Marcocchi, “L’immagine di Lutero in alcuni manuali di storia ecclesiastica tra ‘800 e ‘900,” in Lutero in Italia, 167– 99.  See the interesting recapitulation in G. Signorotto, “Roma nel Rinascimento,” in Il Rinascimento italiano e l’Europa, vol. 1, Storia e storiografia, ed. Marcello Fantoni (Vicenza: Angelo Colla, 2005), 331– 54.  For this purpose, the representation evoked by Domenico Bernini (1657– 1723) is very effective. In his Historia di tutte l’heresie, he wrote: “the horridness of bloody events, of revolutions, of battles, of sacking and plundering, are circumstances commonly connected to the Lutheran heresy more than any other heresy among the ones described up until now. This heresy, as is known, is made mighty in the world not less because of the abominableness of its dogmas than because of the falsity of politics, which is handled with arms and not with reason;” see Bernino, Historia di tutte l’heresie, (Roma, 1709), 4:244. On the author, cf. A. Rotondò, “Bernini Domenico,” in Dizionario Biografico degli italiani (Roma, 1967), 9:364– 365.

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our land as well,” prevented the addition of “religious contrasts to the other contrasts and disagreements already existing among Italians.”¹⁸ With the advent of Risorgimento and post-Risorgimento historiography, the traditions opposed to the temporal power of the Church and the role that the latter played in the unsuccessful modernization of Italy gained new strength. The lack of an Italian Reformation and the influence of the corrupting activities of the Church would increasingly take on the traits of the historical delays accrued in Italy – in comparison to other Protestant nations – as a possible explanation for conditions of political, economic, social, and moral backwardness; the decadence of Italian customs; the corruption of the clergy; the existence of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, acting as a conservative political force; the hypocrisy, the indifference, the conformism, and even the “Jesuitism,” to the point of emphasizing the Church’s use of spiritual tools intended to promote ignorance, superstition, and easy devotionalism among the masses. “Is it necessary to come to the conclusion that Italy is a cultural area fundamentally immovable in the face of problems that elsewhere urge us to rethink the figure of Luther?”¹⁹ asked Daniele Menozzi, suggesting some interpretive hypotheses that, in essence, opened the possibility of new paths. Alongside the traditional legacy of the interpretation of Luther and Protestantism, Menozzi outlined working perspectives and possibilities that left room for a more open-minded vision. Some of these ideas are retraced in this chapter through some of the protagonists of the modern age: Jansenists, Jesuits, and the proponents of the Enlightenment. Luther and his doctrine, in fact, were thought to be the origin of other doctrines that turned out to be even more dangerous for the Church.

3 Luther, Atheism, and the Free Circulation of Ideas In 1572, the bull Ut pestiferarum opinionum founded the Sacred Congregation of the Index. From its very name, it was clear that the Index was meant to control – through censorship and prohibition – books and ideas considered to be dangerous, both from classical culture and from the innovations of the century. The objective was to defend the Church and religion. The consequences for Italian cultural life were long-lasting and are still described by historiographers as one of the causes of the original features and collective mindset of Italians, as well as of the lack of experiments of modernity in Italy.²⁰

 Benedetto Croce, Storia dell’età barocca in Italia (Bari: Adelphi, 1953), 9 – 14. On this theme in Croce, see Fulvio De Giorgi, La Controriforma come totalitarismo. Nota su Croce storico (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2013).  Menozzi, La figura di Lutero, 143.  On this subject, see respectively Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo. La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scrittura (1471 – 1605) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), 20; Firpo, La Riforma italiana,

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A Counter-Index – a list of all the works that a good Catholic could and should read – was offered by the Jesuit Antonio Possevino in his Bibliotheca selecta (1593).²¹ This list contained the very best available in the cultural context of the sixteenth century as a triumphant vision of Catholicism and of an era that seemed to be superior and richer in knowledge past eras, due to new and extraordinary acquisitions – such as the discovery of the New World, political and military victories, and the progress achieved by the Church thanks to new religious orders and their missionary work, the main protagonist of which was the Society of Jesus. It was an era that appeared to be superior also thanks to the eradication of heresy, since, even though some professors seek the freedom (if not license) to find and hold more opinions than would really be advisable – and when they are pulled back within the boundaries of mediocrity, they complain that their vigor and power of acumen and diligence, which they received from God, are diminished – yet they ought to know that modest and pious minds should not desire any freedom but the one the goes hand in hand with virtue and piety.²²

The Bibliotheca selecta was not just a mirror of prohibited culture. It contained instructions for the expurgatio of the works that would later be added to the Index and, of course, was actively involved in confuting texts and doctrines by authors who had already been condemned. Among its hundreds of pages, book 8, which is dedicated to “de theologia et atheismis haereticorum,” contains a long and detailed description of the opinions – judged to be atheistic – held by Luther and Calvin.²³ The perspective taken in this book deals not only with the origins of their doctrines, outlining and discussing them generally in the context of more ancient heresies, but also goes into depth on the details of the doctrine of the Eucharist, free will, the Holy Trinity, and the attributes of God, as well as the doctrine of Purgatory. It is difficult to say why the Jesuit Possevino would accuse the Lutheran doctrine and Luther himself 19 – 20; and Vittorio Frajese, La censura in Italia. Dall’Inquisizione alla Polizia (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2014).  Antonio Possevino, Bibliotheca Selecta qua agitur de ratione studiorum in historia, in disciplinis, in salute omnium procuranda (Roma, 1593). On the subject of the Bibliotheca, I would like to mention Luigi Balsamo, La bibliografia. Storia di una tradizione (Firenze: Sansoni, 1984), 24– 48; C. Carella, “Antonio Possevino e la biblioteca ‘selecta’ del principe cristiano,” in ‘Bibliothecae selectae’ da Cusano e Leopardi, ed. E. Canone (Firenze: Olschki, 1993), 507– 13; and L. Balsamo, “How to Doctor a Bibliography: Antonio Possevino’s Practice,” in Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy, ed. Gigliola Fragnito (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 50 – 78.  Possevino, Coltura degl’ingegni, ed. Alessandro Arcangeli (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1990 [Vicenza 1598]), 61. On this subject, see also A. Prosperi, “La Chiesa e la circolazione della cultura nell’Italia della Controriforma. Effetti involontari della censura,” in La censura libraria nell’Europa del secolo XVI, ed. Ugo Rozzo (Udine: Forum, 1997), 147– 61.  Possevino, Bibliotheca Selecta, 452– 57. This is a continuation of the work already published in Vilnius in 1586 under the title De Atheismis Lutherani, Melanchtonis, Calvini, Bezae…. On the subject of the atheism of the Reformers in Catholic works from the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, see G. Spini, “Ritratto del protestante come libertino,” in Ricerche su letteratura libertina e letteratura clandestina nel Seicento (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1981), 177– 88.

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(who is always associated with Calvin) of atheism. The meaning of the word atheism, which had only recently reappeared in the context of the sixteenth century,²⁴ seems not yet to have been fixed, nor yet loaded with the whole of the theological meaning it takes on today. It more closely resembles the negation of certain aspects of orthodox doctrine and a political vision of the “godless” and, therefore, is connected to the denial of the authority of the Church, the pope, and the councils over the life of the state and its citizens. The connection – which is certainly not original – between heresy and atheism²⁵ was suggested also by Pierre Bayle in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697), in which the many pages devoted to Luther had the specific objective of discussing all the lies written about the reformer. Quoting the Jesuit François Garasse in a footnote,²⁶ Bayle mentioned that Luther had been accused “d’avoir avoué qu’aiant combattu dix ans contre sa conscience, il étoit enfin venu à bout de n’en avoir point du tout et d’être tombé dans l’Athéisme.”²⁷ The attribute of atheism ascribed to Luther and his doctrine would have a certain success in the Catholic controversy, when it was possible to discern on the horizon not only – or no longer solely – the challenge to the authority of the Church brought forward by Luther and the principle of the freedom of conscience, but rather the very possibility that a society without religion could exist and that such society could even be made of virtuous atheists. In his Plea to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation of 1520, Luther had stated the impossibility of the existence of Christ in two bodies, the secular and the religious, just as within the religious community “priests, bishops, and popes are not distinguished from other Christians by height or dignity, but because they are delegated to administer the word of God and the sacraments, and this is their task, just as secular authority holds the sword and the rod so as to punish the wicked and protect the good.”²⁸ To put it simply, ancient ecclesiology and the value of charisma were suddenly wiped away, and Christian freedom was affirmed. This was an individual and subjective criterion that dethroned “God from

 C. Bianca, “Per una storia del termine Atheus nel Cinquecento: fonti e traduzioni greco-latine,” Studi filosofici 3 (1980): 71– 104.  L. Simonutti, “‘Pittura detestabile’. L’iconografia dell’eretico e dell’ateo tra Rinascimento e Barocco,” Rivista Storica Italiana 118 no. 2 (2006): 557– 606; and D. Pastine, “L’immagine del libertino nell’apologetica cattolica del XVII secolo,” in Ricerche su letteratura libertina, 143 – 73.  On François Garasse, cf. Richard H. Popkin, La storia dello scetticismo. Da Erasmo a Spinoza (Milano: Anabasi, 1995 [1979]), 156 – 60; and especially Tullio Gregory, Theophrastus redivivo. Erudizione e ateismo nel ’600 (Napoli: Morano, 1979).  P. Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique (Amsterdam, 1730), 3:222, available at: http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:143.bayle.3262494. Bayle returned to the same subject in his Continuation des Pensées diverses (1704).  Lutero, Alla nobiltà cristiana della nazione tedesca, in Scritti politici, ed. G. Panzieri Saija (Torino: UTET, 1949), 133.

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the role of responsible ruler of the human world.”²⁹ The application of this principle of religious self-determination and the intangibility of the conscience was complex – even after the passage in On Secular Authority (1523) and the formulation of the “twokingdoms doctrine” – in the context of the political changes that were taking place in Germany, but this is where the basis was laid for the limitation of earthly power and for the responsibility of the conscience in an immediate relationship between the believer and God. This is also where the fundamental right of every human being to “judge and control such a secret, spiritual, hidden matter as faith” was established.³⁰ In the “decent society of atheists” imagined by Pierre Bayle, being virtuous was independent of the profession of religion and, instead, was accessible also to those who lacked any belief, marking a sort of incompatibility between religion and civil society: “[b]ut whence comes it, then, it will be said to me, that everyone supposes atheist to be the greatest scoundrels in the universe, who kill, rape, and plunder all they can? It is because one falsely imagines that a man always acts according to his principles, that is, according to what he believes in the matter of religion.”³¹ From an intersection of several cultural traditions (skepticism, Cartesianism, libertinism, and Augustinianism in its Jansenist and Protestant variants), Bayle carried out a task of extreme relativization that allowed him to “guarantee to any individual the possibility of operating in all conscience any religious choice, even if contradictory.”³² The genesis of the connection between atheism and Luther is a motif that repeats itself uninterruptedly throughout the modern age and with an even greater intensity in the eighteenth century, when the “plague of atheism” was the symptom of a modernity being traumatically born.³³ In 1714, the theologian Costantino Roncaglia published his Effetti della pretesa riforma di Lutero e Calvino e del giansenismo in Lucca. Roncaglia, who had made Bossuet known and edited Noël d’Alexandre’s Historia ecclesiastica,³⁴ saw in atheism not only “the core of every heresy,”³⁵ but also the eighth effect of the Reformation: “my objective is therefore to make known how there was

 P. Adamo and G. Giorello, “Un altro cristianesimo,” in La rivoluzione protestante. L’altro cristianesimo, ed. William G. Naphy (Milano: Cortina Rafaello, 2010 [2007]), xii.  Cf. Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther: Rebel in an Age of Upheaval, trans. R.J. Gordon (Oxford. Oxford University Press, 2017), 412.  Pierre Bayle, Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet, trans. Robert C. Bartlett (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000), 220.  Cf. L. Bianchi, “Bayle e l’ateo virtuoso. Origine e sviluppo di un dibattito,” in I filosofi e la società senza religione, eds. Marco Geuna and Gianbattista Gori (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011), 61– 80, here 74. See also Gianluca Mori, L’ateismo dei moderni. Filosofia e negazione di Dio da Spinoza a d’Holbach (Roma: Carocci, 2016), esp. 102– 10.  Cf. Michel de Certeau, The Possession at Loudun, trans. Michael B. Smith (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000), 101. The expression refers to the famous episode of demonic possession that occurred in Loudun beginning in October 1632.  Pietro Stella, Il giansenismo in Italia, vol 1, I preludi tra Seicento e primo Settecento (Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2006), 117n60.  C. Roncaglia, Effetti della pretesa riforma di Lutero e Calvino e del giansenismo (Lucca, 1714), 229.

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atheism in them and that they taught it to others by taking away from God what they liked and attributing to God many things that are repugnant to him, which is tantamount to actually denying his existence.”³⁶ The Reformation was a pretesa – a pretext –, because it was actually nothing but the manifestation of something much more ancient and diabolical. In some Catholic literature, the process was inverted and the genealogy turned upside down. In Nicola Spedalieri’s De’ Diritti dell’uomo (1791),³⁷ free examination is seen as the fatal process that progresses from Protestantism to deism and atheism: “the Protestant rejects the authority of the Church and expects that all controversies on the revealed doctrine will be solved only through the internal inspiration of grace.”³⁸ This work was written in a revolutionary time and aimed at outlining an analogy between the Reformers and the followers of the Enlightenment by showing the first to be the precursors of the latter. In an evolution of socio-political behaviors, the Reformers were now the philosophes, and both were carriers of a corruption and subversion in the Church and in society that would have tragic consequences for civil life.³⁹ Denying the possibility of any public happiness outside of the Church and religion, Spedalieri drew a straight line from Protestantism to socianism, and finally to deism and atheism,⁴⁰ thus including Luther’s schism among the main heresies that corrupted the truth. The very condemnation of the Encyclopédie, promulgated by Clement XIII in 1759, underlined how “indifference in religious matters, materialism, fatalism, deism, and all unrestrained freedoms of thinking” were a contagion that originated “in the countries infected with the heresy.”⁴¹ These countries, as Patrizia Delpiano points out, were never clearly defined, but rather mentioned as “there,” beyond

 Roncaglia, Effetti della pretesa riforma, 202. The other seven effects of the Reformation concerned the variation, confusion and discord on the dogmas, slander against the saints, the spirit of defamation and lies, the depravation of customs, and slander against the princes.  Cf. G. Ruggieri, “Teologia e società. Momenti di un confronto sul finire del Settecento in riferimento all’opera di Nicola Spedalieri,” Cristianesimo nella storia 2 (1981): 437– 86; and Attilio Pisanò, Una teoria comunitaria dei diritti umani: i Diritti dell’uomo di Nicola Spedalieri (Milano: Giuffrè, 2004). See also Alfonso Prandi, Cristianesimo offeso e difeso. La sfida libertino-illuministica al cristianesimo e i tentativi di risposta apologetica in uno studio analitico inteso a valutarne il significato culturale e politico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1975), 349 – 80 ff.  N. Spedalieri, De’ diritti dell’uomo libri VI … far rifiorire essa religione (Venezia 1797), 2:266. See Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa e diritti umani. Legge naturale e modernità politica dalla Rivoluzione francese ai nostri giorni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012).  Menozzi, La figura di Lutero, 163. See also Patrizia Delpiano, Liberi di scrivere. La battaglia per la stampa nell’età dei Lumi (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2015), 158 – 59.  On the connection between socianism and deism, see the contribution by L. Addante, “Dall’eresia al libertinage e al deismo: vecchie e nuove prospettive sugli esiti del radicalismo religioso italiano,” in Ripensare la riforma protestante. Nuove prospettive degli studi italiani, ed. Lucia Felici (Torino: Claudiana, 2016), 173 – 98.  Patrizia Delpiano, Il governo della lettura. Chiesa e libri nell’Italia del Settecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), 96.

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the Alps, in an undefined area stretching from England to Holland via France, but nonetheless always connected to Protestantism. Naturalism – the sole and exclusive use of reason – had its roots in Luther: the provisions of the National Assembly were inspired by the Lutheran principle of freedom, as Pius VI would say in his short condemnation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1791):⁴² all the major catastrophes and impieties of the eighteenth century had their origins in Luther, in that “system of innovators who – once separated by the orthodox Church, which is the infallible teacher of the truth – have entrusted to each and every man the task of judging religion and faith.”⁴³ Even when dealing with other aspects and contemplating the issue from another perspective, similar considerations always brought the Catholic debate to the same conclusions: the Lutheran heresy was the source of the incredulity of the eighteenth century. In the works of Alfonso Maria de Liguori, the Counter-Reformation elements of the Lutheran representation are still visible,⁴⁴ but the issues relevant to his century – such as the disruption between the visible and the invisible Church – are now more explicit. The point is not only to observe its long genealogy, but also to reclaim the authority of the Roman Church that “has always been the same at all times, so that the truths that we believe today were believed in the early centuries, too.”⁴⁵ This is a defense of the principle of authority. In fact, if the Church were to be concealed, “to whom would men turn to know what they ought to believe and do in order to obtain eternal salvation”? It is indeed an attack on the Reformed – and Jansenist – world, but the real targets are those who the author believes to be its promoters, since, “regardless of the authority and the infallibility, […] Italy still abounds with deists and materialists.” Liguori had devoted many works to the latter, such as Breve dissertazione contra gli errori dei moderni increduli, generalmente oggidì nominati materialisti e deisti, published in 1756; and Verità della fede contro i materialisti che negano l’esistenza di Dio, i deisti che negano la religione rivelata, ed i settari che negano la Chiesa cattolica essere l’unica vera, published in 1767. Fully involved in the uneasiness and concerns of his time, Liguori is against chaos and any uncertainty that expands from morality – according to his vision – to political, social, and economic life. As Liguori wrote, “as long as the heretics do not find a firm rule that reassures them with the certainty of faith regarding the true meaning of Scripture, they can never have a certain rule of faith. And this is why these Evangelical Reformers are always

 Menozzi, La figura di Lutero, 164.  A. Valsecchi, De’ fondamenti della religione e de’ fonti dell’empietà libri III (Padova, 1868), 3:viii; quoted in Delpiano, Liberi di scrivere, 157). See Daniele Menozzi, La chiesa cattolica e la secolarizzazione (Torino: Einaudi, 1993).  Menozzi, La figura di Lutero, 155.  Thus in his Evidenza della fede. Ossia verità della fede fatta evidente per i contrassegni della sua credibilità (1762). This quote and the following are taken from G. Lissa, “Alfonso e l’illuminismo,” in Alfonso M. de Liguori e la civiltà letteraria del Settecento, ed. P. Giannantonio (Firenze. Olschki, 1999), 233 – 67, here 255 and 257.

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in disagreement, not only with the other Reformed churches, but also among themselves.”⁴⁶ Liguori’s main effort was addressed to the ideas that came from books, from those “ominous” books “published across the mountains” that introduced the “wicked custom of madly mulling over the dogmas of the holy religion.”⁴⁷ The fact that the problem resided in the circulation of ideas and doctrine was perceived also by those who, in a specular way, found the cause of the decadence in the Index: as Bertrando Spaventa wrote in 1855, “while in the Index Catholicism prohibited the main works of human intelligence and, although hostile to the autonomy of secular authority, fought against the manifestation of popular freedom, the Reformation established the principle of the freedom of examination and, by supporting religious freedom, favored the development of political freedom.”⁴⁸ The cause of the cultural backwardness of Italy was thus found in the repressive systems that had blocked the circulation of ideas. We [Italians] are bad subjects, bad citizens, and bad men, because we are bad Christians. And we are bad Christians because we are educated badly in our religion. As Christians, we should learn, and worship above all, the precepts of God, and only later the precepts of the Church; as disciples of priests and friars, we hardly know the will of God, and, on the contrary, every day have our ears filled with the precepts of Church.

So wrote Carlo Antonio Pilati of Trent in his Di una riforma d’Italia, ossia dei mezzi di riformare i più cattivi costumi e le più perniciose leggi d’Italia (in two volumes; Coira, 1767– 1769), a work that was quickly translated into French, English, and German. Pilati, who still professed to be a Catholic, had a certain familiarity with the Protestant world and German culture⁴⁹ and also a certain sympathy for those circles. His criticism was against the system of Christian education, which makes people “lazy, timid, lonely, miserable, stingy, sad, melancholic, stupid, inept at anything and any action,” while “in order to join everything together as Christians, we should be good citizens, good subjects, and good men.” However, the most original and precocious element of his thinking was his exhortation to fight against the power of the Church and the clergy, convinced as he was that the practical superiority and greater wealth of the countries touched by the Reformation derived from having done away with superstitions. The reason for thinking so was clear in the “cities of Germany, where part

 A. de’ Liguori, “Opera dommatica contro gli eretici,” in Opere di S. Alfonso Maria de Liguori (Napoli, 1871), 8:14– 15.  E. da Domodossola, Dissertazione in forma di dialoghi … megliorata ed accresciuta (Roma, 1784– 1785), quoted in Delpiano, Liberi di scrivere, 154.  B. Spaventa, Del principio della riforma religiosa, politica e civile nel secolo XVI (1855). On the interpretation of Luther and the Reformation in Italian culture of the nineteenth century, cf. Miccoli, ‘L’avarizia e l’orgoglio’, xxiiiff.  Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore. II. La Chiesa e la Repubblica dentro i loro limiti (Torino: Einaudi, 1976), 250 – 325.

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of the citizens are brought up in Luther’s sects and the other part in the faith of the Roman Church.” In fact, while Lutherans, “due to the lack of ecclesiastical benefices, are forced to be industrious but still manage to be rich and good citizens,” the Catholics, “due to the abundance of spiritual prebends, live in poverty and debauchery.”⁵⁰ The Reformation was thus loaded with interpretations and meanings connected to the vision of the entire historical development of the West, a trait that – although already found in Machiavelli’s pages – would later be extensively explored in the literature of Risorgimento.

4 Luther, Jesuits, and Jansenists In 1757, the Jansenist priest Nicole Mesnier published his Problème historique qui des jésuites ou de Luther et Calvin ont le plus nuit à l’église chrétienne?, which came with a long subtitle: La solution de ce problème découvrira la véritable cause des maux qui affligent l’église et le royaume de France et le seul moyen efficace qu’on puisse prendre pour les faire cesser. ⁵¹ Although added to the Index on May 17, 1759,⁵² this work was translated into Italian⁵³ and published in Lausanne in 1763. The author explicitly compared Luther and Calvin’s heresy to the Society of Jesus, asking of the morality, praxis, sacraments, and relationship with authority spread by the Jesuits the rhetorical question, “Who caused the greatest harm to the Church?” Taking inspiration from Bossuet (but also adding Calvin to his comments), Mesnier began a systemic comparison, the true target of which was the Society of Jesus, as can be perceived from the long footnotes that accompanied the text. Mesnier – who was very well informed on the internal controversies of the Societas; on its difficult relationship with the papacy; on anti-Jesuit literature of Catholic inspiration that, beginning with the Dominican theologian Melchor Cano, had drawn attention to the Jesuit heresy; and on the disputable positions it had taken during the Council of Trent – asked the reader a complex and fundamental question: “Who, between these two, does [the reader] believe to have harmed the Church more: the ones who – in order to establish an alleged Reformation, which was their objective – overturned the dogmas and the discipline, or the ones who meant to introduce laxity and, in order to do so, contested the purity of the doctrine in almost all articles and the sanctity of its morality in all

 Cf. Venturi, Settecento riformatore, 267.  On this work, published in Avignon (Paris) in 1757 and in Utrecht in 1763, see O. Barbier, R. Billard and P. Billard, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes (Paris 1875), 3:1047.  Jesus M. De Bujanda, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, 1600 – 1966 (Montréal/Genève: MediaspaulDroz, 2002), 11:612.  N. Mesnier, Problema istorico in cui si domanda chi abbia più nociuto alla Chiesa cristiana o i gesuiti, o Lutero e Calvino (Losanna, 1763). Also published, with some additions and omissions, under the title Esame istorico delle massime, e dottrine de’ gesuiti e di Lutero e Calvino (Venezia, 1767).

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its points?”⁵⁴ Or again, “Who do you think is more to blame: the ones who degrade a legitimate authority, or those who create an imaginary one? Those who take away from the pope what he has, or those who give to him something that is not within his reach? Those who look at him as a man, or those who raise him to the status of a God?”⁵⁵ In many ways, Mesnier’s accusations fell into the usual anti-Jesuit catalogue of the Catholic world, made even more intense at that time by the great controversies over the Society of Jesus that were the prelude to its expulsion from many European countries and its later suppression. Jesuits were accused of denying the authority of Jesus Christ; of exalting papal authority exclusively in the interests of their group;⁵⁶ of having even gone beyond the two Reformers by rejecting and distorting Holy Scripture, not only from the Old Testament, but also from the New Testament;⁵⁷ of having pushed the faithful away from Scripture by hiding it, prohibiting it, and representing it as “an obscure book, capable of making them depraved, and dangerous even to theologians themselves,” thus letting them “rot […] in an ignorance that weakens the real duties and gives back to the law of God the traditions of men;”⁵⁸ and, finally, of having turned the Church into a political body.⁵⁹ Thus the Society of Jesus was seen as the main cause of the moral and political decadence of Christianity. Incidentally, this rhetorical structure did not differ much from the one used by the Jesuits themselves, who – as in the case of the missionary Pedro Rodríguez de Calatayud – drew parallelisms between Epicureans and the Reformers⁶⁰ and were quick to list the many terrifying events proceeding from the Reformed heresies of the early modern age to Quesnel, and then to the minister of finances, Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes.⁶¹ A similar scheme had also been applied by the Roman court

 Mesnier, Problema istorico, 1:47– 48.  Mesnier, Problema istorico, 1:149.  Mesnier, Problema istorico, 1:163: “They want to make the popes rule in order to rule through them and make them the tool of their reign.”  Mesnier, Problema istorico, 1:190.  Mesnier, Problema istorico, 1:197– 98.  Mesnier, Problema istorico, 1:521– 22: “If Luther and Calvin argued that the Church could not order any more, Jesuits argue that it cannot command any more but for external acts, that it does not have any right over the internal ones, and that its authority only extends to the bodies and not to the spirits, which are always free and independent.”  Such as in Libri tres de continentia Christiana adversus Epicuraeos hujus temporis, impios Lutheri et Calvini asseclas. (Duaci, ex typographia Balthazarius Belleri, 1638), by the Jesuit Jean Bourgeois (1574– 1653). Cf. C. Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (Bruxelles/Paris, 1891), 2:34– 35.  Tratado en que se vuelve por la indemnidad… con algunas del Señor Fiscal Campomanes, author de ella y ellas: cf. Sommervogel, Bibliotèque de la Compagnie, 2:534– 35. On the author, who died in exile in Bologna on February 27, 1773, cf. the entry edited by E. Gil, in Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, ed. Charles O’Neill and J.M. Domínguez (Roma/Madrid: Univ. Pontifica Comillas, 2001), 1:599 – 600.

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against the princes who encouraged the ecclesiastical policy of the Savoy, which was accused of being inspired by Calvin and Luther.⁶² For Pietro Tamburini,⁶³ a Jansenist professor in Pavia, it was clear that the Protestant world and the Society of Jesus were united in their desire to destroy the Church and ecclesiastical discipline: there was a perfect overlap between the spirit of Luther’s Reformation, “keen on destroying and not on building,” and the attitude of the Jesuits, who – with “new systems” – had demolished ecclesiastical discipline, both in relation to customs and to faith.⁶⁴ Giuseppe Piatti, for his part, when confuting Tamburini’s works, could not but remark that the “theories of those alleged Reformers so celebrated by Tamburini” had, in relation to indulgences, “renewed Wycliffe’s, Jan Hus’, Jerome of Prague’s, Calvin’s, and Luther’s doctrines;”⁶⁵ and Francisco Gustà observed an analogy between the Jansenist Tamburini and Luther on the issue of matrimony.⁶⁶ All of these forces, although engaged in an internal fight, united against Luther and the Protestant world. If the Jansenists accused the Jesuits of moral corruption and found the reasons for such corruption in Lutheran doctrine, the Jesuits, for their part, were convinced that Jansenist doctrine was the expression of free-thinking, which was the seed of atheism and the manifestation of Protestant-like and, consequently, anti-monarchic tendencies. In the Italian context, which lacked any room for reform, the accusations against the philosophes – as heirs of the Reformers – were extended to what was left, in Italy, of the Jansenist spirit. The Giornale ecclesiastico di Roma reiterated in 1796 the connection existing between the Protestant rift and incredulity and found in Calvin and Luther those responsible for “infecting the universe;” however, in the following year, the accusation was extended to the philosophical “sect” organized “under the name of Lodges” and to every residue of Jansenist thinking: the worst of all the innovators were the ones who, although remaining in the Church, “call out to the Reformation and perpetually speak against the Roman Church and a despotism that they call papal and episcopal.”⁶⁷ Although considered to be the heirs of the Reformers, the philosophes – who were involved in the Catholic debate in different ways, in a struggle in which anti-Enlightenment “represented, in several ways, a resurgence (or prosecution) of the

 Stella, Il giansenismo in Italia, 1:208n33.  On Tamburini, see Emanuela Verzella, Nella rivoluzione delle cose politiche e degli umani cervelli. Il dibattito sulle Lettere teologico-politiche di Pietro Tamburini (Torino: Le Lettere, 1998); and Paolo Corsini and Daniele Montanari, eds., Pietro Tamburini e il giansenismo lombardo (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1993).  Menozzi, La figura di Lutero, 161.  Giuseppe Piatti, La cattiva logica del giansenista D. Pietro Tamburini (Torino: Francesco Prato, 1795), 77– 78.  F. Gustà, Gli errori di Pietro Tamburini nelle prelezioni di etica Cristiana (Fuligno, 1804). On Francisco Gustà, see Miquel Batllori, Francisco Gustà apologista y crítico (Barcelona: Balmes, 1943).  Cf. G. Ricuperati, “Politica, cultura e religione nei giornali italiani del ‘700,” in Cattolicesimo e Lumi nel Settecento italiano, ed. Mario Rosa (Roma: Herder, 1981), 49 – 76, esp. 71– 73.

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Counter-Reformation”⁶⁸ – had a completely different understanding of the religious Reformation. Their fight against “fanaticism” – and a certain emotive religiosity that had brought corruption and anarchy to the history of humanity – was meant against religion tout court, regardless of whether this was Roman, Reformed, or “heathen.” For the followers of the Enlightenment, who supported the idea of tolerance, the Reformation and the Catholic opposition to it represented the beginning of the bloody wars in Europe that had already gone on for too long. These were horrendous fights, especially for those who aspired to peace, that had moved from the battlefields into schools of theology – “guerres des cannibales,”⁶⁹ the most vital points of which were no longer understood at that time and, therefore, were despised. The battle of the Enlightenment was against all dogmas and in favor of religious tolerance. Thus the origin of political and religious disruption and the continuous and ferocious conflicts derived from it was to be found in the Reformation. However, the latter shared responsibility with the Church of Rome. The situation was interpreted differently beyond the barricades, where – among the many causes that had determined such a state of weakness in Europe, including economic, political, cultural, financial, and social factors – the French Revolution was chosen instead. Moreover, its connection to and origin in the Enlightenment were often highlighted. The priest and former Jesuit Nikolaus Joseph Albert von Diessbach, promoter of the Christian Friendship, in a letter addressed to Emperor Leopold II in 1790, claimed that the French Revolution was nothing but “the full manifestation of the ‘satanic’ seeds of the dissolution of authority introduced by Luther in the Church.”⁷⁰ Luther and the philosophes were bundled together, and once again the reformer was placed at the source of disorder and chaos: “Wicked Luther! You are the first cause of this new war on religion, declared with renewed boldness and fury by impious incredulity.”⁷¹ A very singular destiny for a man who had only wished to reform, without any revolutionary aim, the customs of the Church and of the Christian world.

 Delpiano, Liberi di scrivere, 177.  Voltaire, Essai sur le moeurs, 188.  Mario Rosa, La contrastata ragione. Riforme e religione nell’Italia del Settecento (Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2009), 205.  N.J.A. von Diessbach, Il zelo meditativo di un pio solitario cristiano e cattolico espresso in una serie di riflessioni e di affetti (Torino, 1774), 29; quoted in Delpiano, Liberi di scrivere, 155 – 56.

Pál Ács

Biblical Studies and Bible Translations in Hungary in the Age of the Reformation 1540 −1640 1 Holy Writ − Sacred Writing 1.1 Theology The Reformation – in Europe and Hungary alike – had determined itself by the Bible from the start. “My conscience is captive to the Word of God,” said Luther in 1521, during the Imperial Diet in Worms.¹ Paradoxical as it may sound, this self-definition significantly transformed the Bible itself. When looking back on the “century of Reformation”² from the twenty-first century, we tend to view this change as the process of reading, interpretation, and evaluation of the written text (the “Scripture”). If, however, we look at the different steps of knowing and absorbing the Bible in a historical context, it is easy to see that this motion went in the opposite direction. The one-time users of the Bible – from the publication of the first Protestant Hungarian translation of the Bible to the printing of the first Catholic Hungarian Bible – reached the text itself from the absolute self-value of Holy Writ, through the axioms of interpretation believed to be eternal, independent of textual facts. When Protestant movements are discussed, we often hear that the Reformation made the Bible the foundation of faith. This is only true if the word “faith” denotes belief. If, however, we use the word “faith” as a means of gaining salvation, the order is reversed: faith is the basis of biblical criticism and not the other way around – in other words, the principle of sola fide (by faith alone) precedes the principle of sola scriptura (by Scripture alone). This is brilliantly demonstrated by a painting from the parish of a Lutheran congregation in Györköny (in Tolna County).³ The painting depicts Luther and Frederick the Wise around the ark of the covenant, resting on the rock of “faith;” the Holy Bible is placed on the ark, topped by a menorah (a candlea-

 Roland H. Bainton, Here I stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Hendrickson, 1980 [1950]), 185; Larry D. Mansch, and Curtic Peters, Martin Luther: The Life and Lessons (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016), 119.  Pál Ács and Howard Louthan, “Bibles and Books: Bohemia and Hungary,” in A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe, eds. Howard Louthan, and Graeme Murdock (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015), 402.  J. Heltai and B. Gáborjáni Szabó, eds., Biblia Sacra Hungarica. “A könyv, mely örök életet ád” [“The Book that Gives Eternal Life”], exhibition catalogue, Hungarian National Széchényi Library, November 21, 2008 – March 29, 2009 (Budapest, 2008), 158. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-067

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Fig. 1 Allegory of Augustana Confessio with Frederick the Wise and Luther. Unknown master, terminus ante quem: 1724. Canvas, oil. 95x78 cm. It is the property of the Evangelical-Lutheran Parish of Györköny, Tolna County, Hungary. Deposit in the Lutheran Museum, Budapest. It is a copy of an 1630 etching by Jacob van der Heyden (1573−1645). Photo: Lutheran Museum, Budapest

bra with seven branches) symbolizing the Augsburg Confession, the “branches of faith.” Most Bible users (regardless of religion) of the time interpreted Holy Scripture thus illuminated by faith as the word of God. The fact that the Bible had been dictated word for word was later placed in the 1675 text of Formula Consensus Helvetica,

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extending divine inspiration beyond consonants of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to vowel signs (the Masoretic Hebrew punctuation), as well.⁴ As István Gyulai, a Transylvanian Protestant translator of the Bible, said in 1551, “this kowledge did not come from man or an angel, but from the almighty and wise God himself.”⁵ The preface to György Káldi’s Jesuit translation of the Bible says that the Holy Spirit is “the creator of Holy Scripture” (1626).⁶ The Protestant Gáspár Károlyi explains in his dedication to the Vizsoly Bible (1590) that until the appearance of Moses, God talked to the fathers “through his own sacred mouth.” Later he revealed himself to Moses and the prophets, and finally “through his Son.”⁷ Thus, God first talks, then he himself writes on Moses’ stone tablets, while his “words” are written down later by the prophets and evangelists, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Everybody familiar with the Bible knew that the expression “the word of God” (translated thus from the Greek logos) did not simply denote a book. The famous prologue to John’s Gospel (according to most interpretations) calls the word the eternal “person” (hypostasis) of the one and indivisible God.⁸ The word is thus God’s Son on one hand, and God’s creating word on the other (“through whom all things came into existence”), but also the concrete verbal revelation of God – directly inspired by the Holy Spirit (who, according to the famous filioque addition to the Constantinopolitan Creed in 381,⁹ proceeds from the Father “and the Son”) – to the prophets and evangelists, who are thus simple spokesmen, scribes of the words of God. The created world and the Bible are both “books” of God, the expressions of his word, and this is emphasized by almost all Hungarian translators of the Bible. György Káldi cites Saint Paulinus of Nola (353/54−431) as a remarkable example, as he used to have two niches (tabernacles) in his church – one for the Eucharist, and one for the Holy Scripture.¹⁰ With this gesture, Saint Paulinus emphasized the double (mystical and concrete) presence of the word in the life of the congregation. So when Luther – and, in his traces, Hungarian Reformers – claimed to be “captive to the word of God,” he (and they) may have meant at least three things: the “Word” – the Son of God, Christ, as they were his followers; the “word” – that is, Holy Scripture, as they considered it to be God’s own sacred writing, his written mes-

 Jorge L. Borges, “A Defense of the Kabbalah,” in Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot Weinberger (New York: Penguin, 2000), 83.  G. Heltai et al., trans., Biblia [The Holy Bible], 7 vols. (Kolozsvár, 1551−1565); E. Zvara, ed., ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak’. Magyar nyelvű bibliafordítások és -kiadások előszavai és ajánlásai a 16−17. századból [“To the Christian Readers.” Forewords and Dedications of 16th–17th Century Hungarian Bible Translations and Editions] (Budapest, 2003), 72.  Heltai et al., Biblia, 212.  Heltai et al., Biblia, 175.  Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 1951), 2:21−25.  A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak’, 211.

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sage; and the “word” that the Holy Spirit dictates to his prophets as direct inspiration, as they considered themselves to be the heirs of the prophets, the hearers of the word. This is characteristically summarized in András Farkas’ poem, “On the Jewish and Hungarian Nations” (1538), one of the earliest and most significant works of the literature of the Hungarian Reformation: God has sent us Many wise people and candid teachers Who preach us through the Word The salvation of the Blessed Jesus Christ…¹¹

The first Hungarian Reformers – especially Mátyás Dévai, the so-called “Hungarian Luther”¹² – promoted the institution of a universal priesthood in Hungary, as well.¹³ Few then suspected the dangers of this spirituality that emphasized direct inspiration.

1.2 Hermeneutics In the beginning, the early Reformation inarguably followed medieval heretical movements in the interpretation of the Bible.¹⁴ When Mátyás Dévai – imprisoned for his Protestant views in Vienna in 1533 – wanted to make preaching available to everyone, including women, he touched on an extremely sensitive issue.¹⁵ Christianity had long argued about who is entitled to explain the Bible. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church made a clear distinction between the narrative and moralizing parts of Holy Scripture (aperta) and the dogmatically important texts (profunda).¹⁶ The former, easily understandable episodes did not fall under any ban; however, only clerics were entitled to explain and interpret the latter (and to have the Eucharist with bread and wine). Heretics wanted to take these privileges away from priests. The book and the chalice were the most characteristic symbols of the contents of

 B. Varjas, ed., Balassi Bálint és a 16. század költői [Bálint Balassi and the Poets of the 16th Century] (Budapest, 1979), 1:393.  Jan-Andrea Bernhard, Konsolidierung des reformierten Bekenntnisses im Reich der Stephanskrone. Ein Beitrag zur Kommunikationsgeschichte zwischen Ungarn und der Schweiz in der frühen Neuzeit (1500−1700) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 188−206.  Z. Csepregi, A reformáció nyelve. Tanulmányok a magyarországi reformáció első negyedszázadának vizsgálata alapján [The Language of the Reformation: Studies about the Reformation in the Hungarian Kingdom during the First Quarter of the Sixteenth Century] (Budapest, 2013), 228−38.  Alan J. Hauser, and Duane F. Watson, A History of Biblical Interpretation, vol. 2, The Medieval through the Reformation Periods (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2009).  Csepregi, A reformáció nyelve, 229−30.  Jacques Le Goff, Saint Francis of Assisi (London/New York: Psychlogy Press, 2004), 10.

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their movements.¹⁷ They translated the Bible into their own languages everywhere in Europe to provide an advantage to their preachers in the free interpretation of God’s word. The Protestant translations of the Bible offered the word “freely,” without requiring a human mediator – not so much for reading as for preaching –, just as the Protestant communion omitted the gesture of “transubstantiation,” denying the notion that it is the words of the ordained priest that (by God’s power) make the bread and wine into the Lord’s body and blood. The Anabaptist revolutions throughout Europe, turning radically interpreted Scripture into bloody deeds,¹⁸ soon intimidated Reformers away from the “institution” of a universal priesthood – promoted by Mátyás Dévai – and the free, spiritual explanation of the Bible. Hungary was only lightly brushed by these storms,¹⁹ but this was enough to make Hungarian Protestants more cautious. The Reformation experienced a tough situation: on the one hand, it could not give up the freedom of biblical interpretation; on the other hand, it had to define limits against unlimited interpretation. The dedication to the Vizsoly Bible summarizes several decades of cautious Protestant hermeneutics: “We should not boldly accept every piece of information coming from somebody’s mouth; instead, we should compare it with the writings of the prophets and the apostles, as the Holy Spirit instructs us.” The meaning is clear: the Bible cannot be interpreted by angels, devils, or diets, as Holy Scripture explains itself. This means that it is ultimately Christ who illuminates Holy Scripture, because – as Gáspár Károlyi cites the Gospel of John – “no one has ever seen God but the Son.”²⁰ In practice, this meant that the dogmatically important parts (profunda) of the Old Testament were viewed in the mirror of the New Testament. István Gyulai, a member of the Bible translation workshop of Gáspár Heltai, clearly explains that the first words of the book of Genesis must be interpreted as a testimony to the Holy Trinity: “Because the one who created the world is the Father. And the Word he spoke is the Son of God, as Saint John says. And the soul of God floating on water and giving it life is the Holy Spirit of God proceeding from the Father and the Son.”²¹ Thus, when Protestant hermeneutics explained several Old Testament texts – the book of Psalms, the Song of Songs, the book of Jonah, the book of Daniel, the book of Ezekiel, the book of Revelation, and many other biblical texts – figuratively, as announcements referring to the future, it applied the method of Jewish bib-

 Thomas A. Fudge, Jan Hus. Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia (London/New York: I.B. Taurus, 2010); N. Nowakowska, “Reform before Reform? Religios Currents in Central Europe, c. 1500,” in A Companion to the Reformation, 121−43; Ph. Haberken, “The Lands of the Bohemian Crown. Conflict, Coexistence, and the Quest for the True Church,” in A Companion to the Reformation, 11−39.  Alastair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1981), 14−17.  Csepregi, A reformáció nyelve, 187−93.  John 1:18; see also Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak’” 176.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 81.

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lical interpretation, the pesher ²² (“solution”) type, popular in the ancient Christian Church (the commentary on the Apocalypse was one of the most popular genres in this age, which was so sensitive to apocalypticism).²³ This Jewish interpretation technique, also used by the authors of the New Testament, developed into both post-biblical Jewish and Christian biblical hermeneutics – that is, the four layers of meaning of Holy Scripture, built on each other: literal (that is, historical), moral, allegorical, and anagogic (referring to the future) layers of meaning. The scholastic explanation of the Bible was also based on this four-storey theory.²⁴ We know that Dante applied the same procedure in the aesthetics of literature,²⁵ from which Coluccio Salutati placed it back into theology, emphasizing that God is the greatest poet²⁶ and that the Bible was not historia but fabula,²⁷ as its more profound meaning is elaborated in allegories, just like in poetry. Nevertheless, Bible translations made in the framework of the Reformation opposed all those who “seek spiritual meaning in all of the Old Testament.”²⁸ Thus, Protestants tried to tame unlimited allegorizing and “origenizing” – named after the creator of this method, Origen, who had lived in second- and third-century Alexandria – that insisted on the four layers of meaning.²⁹ According to Luther and his Hungarian followers, allegories are “overdecorated whores,”³⁰ and only the literal interpretation (sensus historicus) of the Bible is acceptable. With this spectacular gesture – so it may seem –, they simultaneously excluded scholasticism and literature from their field of vision. While Erasmus had praised the richness of words (copia verborum), Luther declared it useless (inutilis verborum copia).³¹

 Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus (London: Penguin, 2000).  C. L. Beckwith, ed., Refomation Commentary on Scripture. Old Testament 12. Ezekiel, Daniel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012); S. Bene, “Ratio temporum. Dániel próféta és a magyar történetírás” [The Prophet Daniel and Hungarian Historiography], in Clio inter arma. Tanulmányok a 16−18. századi magyarországi történetírásról [Studies on 16th−18th Century Hungarian Historiography], ed. G. Tóth (Budapest, 2014), 87−116; Sándor Őze, Apocalypticism in Early Reformation Hungary (Budapest/Leipzig: Leipzig University Press, 2015).  P. Ács, “‘Én fiam vagy, Dávid…’ A historikus értelmezés korlátai a 2. zsoltár unitárius fordításában” [“You Are My Son, David…” Limits of Historical Interpretation in the Unitarian Translation of Psalm 2], Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 111 (2008): 632−44.  Charles S. Singleton, Allegoria, in La poesia della Divina Commedia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), 17 −35.  Paul R. Blum, Philosophy of Religion in the Renaissance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 65.  Peter G. Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula. Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age (Leiden: Brill, 1994).  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 83.  Henning G. Reventlow, History of Biblical Interpretation, vol. 3, Renaissance, Reformation, Humanism (Atlanta: SBL, 2010).  WA.TR 1:607,6 (Nr. 1219).  Clarence H. Miller, ed., Erasmus and Luther. The Battle over Free Will, trans. Clarence H. Miller and Peter Macardle (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2012), 83.

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We have good reason to ask how it is possible that Protestant Bibles continued to allegorize, relating several passages of the Old Testament to the New Testament (interpreting them as “prefigurations”). The answer is that they attributed a literal meaning to the figurative planes of meaning (the prophecies that may relate to Christ) relevant to them, not considering these as allegories at all. Thus, the Reformation simply regulated the typological thinking that assumed a strong link between the Old and New Testaments instead of supressing it altogether. The great Protestant hermeneutical change occurred at the second level of the explanation of the Scripture: mystical interpretation was replaced by prophetic interpretation.³² As we can see, nobody in the age of the Reformation argued the fact that the Bible is a text with two meanings – a literal and a spiritual layer. “That is why our Lord Christ tells the Jews to get acquainted with the Scripture (the Old Testament), because it proves him” – writes István Gyulai.³³

1.3 Philology Gáspár Heltai’s Bible translation circle was aware that “even the Turks say that the book called Alcoran is the knowledge of God […] They also say that […] their books were brought from God by the angel Gabriel.”³⁴ This is a clear allusion to the Muslim belief that God’s announcements have a heavenly core copy – an original matrix, the mother of the “book” (Umm-ul-Kitab) – from which the earthly copies are made.³⁵ Christian concepts of the text of the Bible were very similar. Some Lutheran theologians refrained from listing Scripture among created things, as they interpreted it as the embodiment of the Holy Spirit.³⁶ Needless to say, different religions held different views on the authentic earthly copy of the “heavenly original.” Orthodox Christians, with reference to the miracle of the Translation of the Seventy, believed in the perfection of the Greek Septuagint,³⁷ while Western Christianity respected – in György Káldi’s words – “the old one in Latin, called Vulgata Editio,” referring to “the great treasure” of the Holy Spirit “given to the Church,” thanks to which Saint Jerome’s translation faithfully kept the “real meaning” of Holy Scripture.³⁸ We know – as Gáspár Károlyi, a translator of the Bible, also suggests – that the dogmatically

 Ács, “Én fiam vagy, Dávid,” 638.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 83.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 77.  R. Simon, A Korán világa [The World of the Quran] (Budapest, 1987), 79; J. D. McAuliffe, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Quran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3; Borges, “A Defense of the Kabbalah,” 83.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 77.  N. Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context. Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2000).  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 214.

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respected Bible is a version of the Latin Bible annotated by the ninth-century Carolingian scholar Alcuin and standardized in Paris in the thirteenth century.³⁹ Humanist Bible experts insisted on the previously neglected Greek studies and challenged the authority attributed to the Vulgate. Lorenzo Valla studied the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament extensively and corrected the text of the Vulgate several times;⁴⁰ later, Erasmus of Rotterdam also retranslated it from Greek (1516), and Hungarian Erasmian Bible translators⁴¹ based their work on this highly important edition.⁴² The works of Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin provided important inspiration for Christian Hebraism, and as a result, the Old Testament was read, studied, and translated in and from Hebrew.⁴³ The first polylingual Bible, Biblia Polyglotta Complutensia (1514−1517), was published in Alcala⁴⁴ – it was widely used in Hungary, too –, while the institution for studying the three sacred languages, Collegium Trilingue (1517) was founded in Leuven, inspired by Erasmus.⁴⁵ The Bible translation program of the Hungarian Reformation also returned to the ancient sources of sacred texts and followed Erasmus’ principle – to provide the Holy Writ to “each nation in its own language.”⁴⁶ However, in many respects, they did not like the Erasmian Hungarian translations of the first half of the sixteenth century.⁴⁷ Gáspár Heltai and his circle – the translators of the first, almost complete Hungarian Bible – insisted on Luther’s view, adjusting their translation principles to it and considering Luther’s 1522– 1534 German language Bible translation as authoritative. The Wittenberg reformer shared his principles on Bible translation in his Table Talk: “in case of ambiguity […] I considered the meaning […] that is more in harmony with the New Testament.”⁴⁸ He made it clear: Christ interprets Scripture as far as theology and hermeneutics – and also grammar and philology – are concerned. “Because the Holy Spirit does not always follow grammar […] grammar must, however, follow the mean-

 A. Hamilton, “Humanists and the Bible,” in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. J. Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 102.  J. Monfasani, “Criticism of Biblical Humanists in Quattrocento Italy,” in Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus, ed. Erika Rummel (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 15−38.  Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 148−57.  Hamilton, Humanists and the Bible, 111−12.  Allison Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson, eds., Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).  Erika Rummel, Jimenez de Cisneros. On the Threshold of Spain’s Golden Age (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Reformation Studies, 1999), 53−65; Frances Luttikhuizen, Underground Protestantism in Sixteenth Century Spain: A Much Ignored Side of Spanish History (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 41−43.  Henry de Vocht, History of the Foundation and the Rise of the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense, 1517 −1550, 4 vols, (Louvain: Kraus, 1951−1955).  Á. Ritoók-Szalay, “Erasmus und die ungarischen Intellektuellen des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Erasmus und Europa, ed. August Buck (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988), 111−28.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 125  WA.TR 5:218,19 f..

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ing of the Holy Spirit,” says István Gyulai, inspired by Luther.⁴⁹ Thus, biblical studies still function as ancilla theologiae (the servant of theology). It would be a mistake to assume a significant theoretical difference between humanist and Protestant biblical studies. Humanist scholars of Greek, Christian Hebraists, and Protestants all agreed that the Bible has a heavenly matrix; they only differed in the methods they used to reconstruct this text. After all, everyone returned to the sources to reinforce his own principles of faith and to disprove those of his opponents. Cardinal Jiménez uses a very characteristic simile in his preface to the Alcala Bible. As we know, the text of the Latin Bible is surrounded by Hebrew and Greek texts in that edition. The cardinal compares the only true Latin Holy Scripture to the Savior crucified between the two thieves – that is, between the synagogue and Orthodox Christianity.⁵⁰ It is useful to illustrate the mechanism of theology-led philology with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century translations of one single word of one single “locus” of the Bible. The Church has always interpreted Psalm 22 as a prophecy of the crucifixion of Christ. In verse 17 (or 16, according to the Hebrew numbering), we read both in Gáspár Károlyi’s Hungarian Bible⁵¹ and in the King James Version very similar interpretations: “For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.” The word “pierced” is the subject of a centuries-old controversy between Jewish and Christian interpreters of the Bible. The Hebrew Bible – in harmony with the text of the psalm – says: ‫( יראכ‬kaari), that is, “like the lion.” All Christian (Catholic and Protestant) Bibles in Europe and Hungary – from the Vulgate to the Septuagint and the different national translations – corrected this word, assuming that the true reading of the Hebrew text is ‫( וראכ‬kaaru), that is, “cut through,” and that Jewish copyists accidentally mixed up two very similar letters, wav and yod; thus, it is a simple distortion. Nobody on the Christian side took account of the fact that the word ‫( וראכ‬kaaru) does not exist in Hebrew, and an aleph must also be deleted in order to create a Hebrew word meaning “pierced.” The letters thus created, ‫( ורכ‬karu), indeed mean “to dig” or “to cut through;” such a tradition, however, never existed in Hebrew manuscripts. This means that Christian philologists made a dogmatic decision on a philological question. The correction, however, could have been more than a simple conjecture. The translation of the Septuagint (ὢρυξαν) shows that the minority interpretation with the meaning “pierced” is rather old and was already used in the time of Christ.⁵² This minority, Christian interpretation also seems to be supported by a papyrus frag-

 Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 79.  Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 188.  G. Károlyi, trans., Szent Biblia [The Holy Bible] (Vizsoly, 1590), 1:547r.  H.F.W. Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, ed. and trans. S. P. Tregelles (London, 1860), ccclxxxviii.

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ment from the first or second century, found near the Dead Sea.⁵³ (Nevertheless, more arguments point to the correctness of the majority interpretation, “like the lion.”) Every Hungarian Bible translator insisted on the “pierced” version – from the Evangelical Lutheran István Székely,⁵⁴ translator of the Psalms, through the Reformed Gáspár Károlyi, to the Unitarian Miklós Bogáti Fazakas.⁵⁵ This was true despite the fact that their sources had clearly mentioned the philological problems. Péter Melius, who was highly familiar with Hebrew, even wrote an essay on this and other similar issues to disprove “the blasphemy of rabbis.”⁵⁶ It is not surprising, then, that a translation faithful to the Masoretic Hebrew original – “like the lion” – is only found in the Psalm book (1624−1629) of Simon Péchi, a Szekler Sabbatarian who respected Jewish traditions. Péchi even remarks: “I had to stick to the sensus [literal meaning] because foderunt (pierced) does not exist in Jewish writings.”⁵⁷

2 The Hungarian Bible 2.1 Protestant Translations In the era discussed, several Hungarian Bible translations were made “in the framework of the Reformation.”⁵⁸ Each translation had a different method of creation and translation, a different theological concept, a different circle of supporters, and a different intention to create a canon. István Bencédi Székely’s annotated translation of the Psalms (1548) was the first in this line.⁵⁹ Székely’s work inarguably bore the sign of the Reformation, emphasizing that “in this work David speaks neither Jewish, Latin, nor Greek, but Hungarian.”⁶⁰ Just like the Erasmian János Sylvester,⁶¹ Székely

 P.W. Flint, “The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls: Psalms Manuscripts, Editions, and the Oxford Hebrew Bible,” in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms: Conflict and Convergence, ed. Susan Gillingham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 11−34.  I. Székely, trans., Zsoltárkönyv [The Book of Psalms] (Krakow, 1548), 20r.  M. Bogáti Fazakas, trans., Magyar zsoltár [Hungarian Psalter], ed. G. Gilicze and G. Szentmártoni Szabó, epilogue R. Dán (Budapest, 1979), 49.  R. Dán, Humanizmus, reformáció, antitrinitarizmus és a héber nyelv Magyarországon [Humanism, Antitrinitarianism and Hebrew language in Hungary] (Budapest, 1973), 86; cf. Rowland G. Finch and George H. Box, eds., The Longer Commentary of R. David Kimhi on the first Book of Psalms (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1919), 102−03.  S. Péchi, trans., Psaltérium [The Book of Psalms], ed. Á. Szilády (Budapest, 1913), 36.  J. Horváth, A reformáció jegyében. A Mohács utáni félszázad irodalomtörténete [In the Spirit of the Reformation: The History of Hungarian Literature a Half Century after the Battle at Mohács] (Budapest, 1957).  Székely, Zsoltárkönyv.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 70.  The complete translation of the New Testament, published by János Sylvester in Sárvár-Újsziget (1541), closely follows the translation and commentaries by Erasmus. Sylvester remained a faithful

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was a “homo trilinguis”: he knew the three sacred languages and translated from the Hebrew original instead of the text of the Vulgate.⁶² It is of course difficult to judge the extent of his knowledge of Hebrew, as his information came almost exclusively from Sebastian Münster’s famous Hebrew–Latin Bible (Basel, 1534−1535).⁶³ Münster, István Székely, and Christian Hebraists sought to reach a text in line with Christian faith on the basis of the principle of hebraica veritas (going all the way back to Saint Jerome) through the study of Hebrew sources.⁶⁴ The antagonistic conflict between Christianity and the Jews was an axiom for them, too.⁶⁵ Still, despite their Protestant conviction, they belonged to the humanist generation of the era preceding Protestantism in many respects. Not surprisingly, Luther often criticized Münster, who – according to Luther – was too close to the teachings of educated medieval rabbis (such as Rashi and David Kimhi).⁶⁶ In the preface to his work, Székely promises to publish “the complete Bible soon.”⁶⁷ He did not have time to do this, but his commentaries to the Psalms show that he had indeed planned to translate the book of Genesis. One of the greatest – and, despite its merits, largely forgotten – achievements of Bible publication during the Reformation was the seven-volume work, published in Kolozsvár (today Cluj-Napoca, Romania) between 1551 and 1565, of the translation workshop led by Gáspár Heltai.⁶⁸ It is evident that Heltai – who had a printing house, a paper mill, and a publishing workshop – used Gutenberg’s invention to spread the Hungarian Reformation Bible, following European examples.⁶⁹ The series contains almost the entire text of the Bible. The publication was funded by Prince Sigismund John and other Transylvanian aristocrats.⁷⁰ However, this Holy Scripture was not only intended for distribution in Transylvania, but also in the Hungarian Kingdom – some examples did not contain a dedication to the prince. The volumes were held in high esteem by Lukács Ormosdi Székely, a Catholic aristocrat living in Western Transdanubia, very far from Transylvania.⁷¹ Calvinists also urged the com-

Catholic until the end of his life; he did not join the Reformation. See Ritoók-Szalay, Erasmus und die ungarischen Intellektuellen.  Dán, Humanizmus, reformáció, 47−60.  Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, eds., Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 178−79.  Erika Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, eds. Dean Bell, and Stephen G. Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 7−10.  See Shimon P. Markish, Erasmus and the Jews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).  WA.TR 5:218.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 70.  Heltai, trans., Biblia.  Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 166−69.  M. Balázs, “Heltai Gáspár zsoltárfordításáról” [On the Psalm Translations of Gáspár Heltai], in Biblia Hungarica Philologica. Magyarországi Bibliák a filológiai tudományokban [Bibles Printed in Hungary in Philological Studies], ed. J. Heltai (Budapest, 2009), 55.  F. Szakály, “A magyar nyelvű bibliafordítás terjedéséhez” [The Distribution of the Hungarian Bible Translation], in Művelődési törekvések a korai újkorban. Tanulmányok Keserű Bálint tiszteletére [Cul-

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pletion of the Heltai Bible. In 1574, the bishop Péter Károlyi started to translate those books of the Old Testament that Gáspár Heltai and his group had not translated, but since Péter Károlyi died a year later, he could not finish the work.⁷² The members of Gáspár Heltai’s team were personal disciples of famous Bible researchers from Kraków and Wittenberg; the group had a few experts in Greek and Hebrew. One of the members of Heltai’s group, Gergely Vízaknai, even published a Latin commentary on Genesis. The book of Sirach was translated into Hungarian in Tolna – in the territory of Ottoman Hungary – by Mátyás Tövisi and Imre Szigeti, with Heltai’s group editing and correcting the text.⁷³ With the books of the Old Testament, writes István Gyulai, “we followed the Jewish Bible, but we often distanced ourselves from the Jewish words, wishing to follow the Hungarian language for the sake of the true meaning.”⁷⁴ (These Horatian translation principles accompany the history of Hungarian Bible translations throughout.) Their whole translation method and theological perspective was in harmony with Luther’s view and the Luther Bible.⁷⁵ Heltai cuts a clear line between God’s word and literary styles: “We should not consider these books or stories as fables or writings born from human feelings […] they are not vain discussions or silly fables, but the true words of the blessed Lord,” Heltai instructs.⁷⁶ The book of Psalms – which Luther calls the “little Bible” – was translated into Hungarian by Gáspár Heltai himself. It is useful to compare it with István Székely’s earlier work. No more humanist philology, no more insights, just Luther’s clear message: “In this book, the Holy Spirit compares the two countries, the country of our Lord Jesus Christ and the country of the Saint King David.”⁷⁷ The whole series of books mediates Luther’s evangelization to Hungarians: “let this world rage and feast. It will soon come to an end.” In the meantime, the conditions of the Reformation were changing all over Hungary, divided into three periods. In the 1560s, Hungarian followers of the Swiss Reformation gained strength in many areas, while in the 1570s, especially in Transylvania and Ottoman Hungary, Antitrinitarians played an important role. It was in these rapidly changing times that the influential Calvinist minister of Debrecen, Péter Melius, translated the Bible. His most important funder was János Enyingi Török, a landholder of Debrecen. Melius also wanted to translate the entire Bible, but he only translated the two books of Samuel and Kings (Debrecen, 1565), the book of

tural Endeavours in the Early Modern Period. Studies in Honour of Bálint Keserű], ed. M. Balázs et al. (Szeged, 1997), 545−54.  See P. Károlyi, Az halálról, feltámadásról és az örök életről hasznos és szükséges könyvecske [Useful and Necessary Booklet on Death, Resurrection and Eternal Life] (Debrecen, 1574).  G. Kathona, Fejezetek a török hódoltságkori reformáció történetéből [Some Chapters of the History of the Reformation in Ottoman Hungary] (Budapest, 1974), 27−29.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 79.  Balázs, Heltai Gáspár zsoltárfordításáról, 79.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 131.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 121−22.

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Job (Debrecen, 1565), and the New Testament (1567); we do not have any copies of the latter. If we have a look at Melius’ translations of the Bible,⁷⁸ we immediately notice that the text is almost hidden among the commentaries in the margins: “I tell you what to know in the margin, next to the text,” he says. Melius was an ardent reformer; he used the Bible as a powerful weapon in his struggle against Catholics, Antitrinitarians, and Anabaptists: “See, the Lord’s grace comes to us each day, his country is built, and the devil’s country is demolished. The light of the word of God shines brighter and brighter every day,” teaches Melius.⁷⁹ It is obvious that the most important thing for the Debrecen minister was no longer hermeneutics (in the sense of an introduction to the meaning of the Bible), but exegesis – that is, the transposition of hermeneutics into everyday life. Melius’ comments in the margins are eminent sources on contemporary Hungarian circumstances. Melius studied exegesis extensively and made commentaries for almost the entire Bible; his translations were in line with his exegetical activities. He translated Hebrew texts into Hungarian from the editions, Latin translations, and commentaries of Münster, Vatablus (François Vatable), and Bible translators from Geneva.⁸⁰ He liked to use – with Christian intentions, of course – the Kabbalah, the popular practice of post-biblical Jewish discipline. With the help of numerology, he decoded hidden meanings in Scripture – for instance, “the Pope is the Beast.” Melius took part in the discussions of Swiss theologians on a high level. In one of his letters to Heinrich Bullinger, he sent him an essay (now lost) to disprove the grammatical arguments of highly respected Bible interpreters such as Joseph Albo, David Kimhi, and others – similarly to the textual considerations mentioned above in connection with Psalm 22. Thus, Péter Melius tried to lean on hebraica veritas, but, at the same time, he excluded from it the Jewish view of the Bible – following his Wittenberg master, Johannes Forster. Péter Melius often mentioned God as “Yahweh Elohim,” even though he knew that the first Jewish name of God is singular, and the second one is plural. This is pure Melius exegesis, translated into Hungarian as “Holy Trinity One God.”⁸¹ Tamás Félegyházi’s translation of the New Testament was published in Debrecen in 1586.⁸² The author, working closely with Péter Melius, had been a Reformed schoolmaster in Debrecen, but in 1570, he moved to the Antitrinitarian Kolozsvár, taking all his Debrecen students with him.⁸³ In the next school year, however, Félegyházi returned to Melius and Debrecen. After Melius’ death, he took his place as a minister. His New Testament with a Calvinist spirit was very popular in his time but has almost been forgotten by now. The book – similarly to those by Melius – provides

 Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 170.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 170.  J. P. Vásárhelyi, “Robert Estienne magyarországi hatása” [The Influence of Robert Estienne in Hungary], in Biblia Hungarica Philologica, 65−75.  Dán, Humanizmus, reformáció, 71−87.  Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 172−73.  Horváth, A reformáció jegyében, 301.

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rich exegetical material in the margins, often taking up more space than the biblical text. Research has not yet concluded what sources Félegyházi used for his translation. Considering that the Hungarian Bible translator (a highly educated theologian) was deeply interested in the works of the Geneva reformer, Théodore de Bèze, it is highly probable that the source of the translation was Bèze’s Latin New Testament, which was translated from Greek (first edition: Geneva, 1556), using the explanations attached to it. Bèze’s New Testament was created with the specific aim of replacing Erasmus’ translation, which was by then undesirable for the Geneva Reformation.⁸⁴ Tamás Félegyházi died before finishing the work, and his colleague, György Gönci tried to fill in the gaps (he translated the Letter of Jude but did not write the commentaries to the book of Revelation) and also provided a preface. The greatest Bible translation of the Hungarian Protestants, the Vizsoly Bible, edited by Gáspár Károlyi, dean of Gönc,⁸⁵ was published four years later in Vizsoly in 1590.⁸⁶ These ambitious plans were funded by wealthy Calvinist aristocrats from Eastern Hungary – András and Gáspár Mágócsy and Sigismund Rákóczi, the would-be Transylvanian prince. Rákóczi commissioned the printer Bálint Mantskovit to move all of his appliances from Galgóc (today Hlohovec in Slovakia) to Vizsoly and publish the Bible there. The Bible translation took about fifteen years, and it was printed over one and a half years (between February 1589 and July 1590). The great work was not done by a single author, but by a team of translators, similar to that of Gáspár Heltai, but Károlyi edited everything.⁸⁷ They also used Heltai’s edition – at least, the Old Testament part of the Károlyi Bible shows correspondences with Heltai’s text. The Kolozsvár and Gönc translation teams used different methods; Heltai and his colleagues worked as a group, while Károlyi seemes to have distributed the work among his co-translators. Thanks to a fortunate discovery in the 1980s, researchers found a page of the print manuscript of the Vizsoly Bible with Károlyi’s handwritten notes in the margin.⁸⁸ The manuscript helped researchers reconstruct the different phases of editing and prepress. Gáspár Károlyi – whose preface to the Vizsoly Bible has been quoted above – worked against the Catholic view, which was dominant after the Council of Trent. He used an army of arguments to destabilize the authority of the Vulgate and announced a clear Protestant program of using and

 B. Roussel, “Le Novum Testamentum de Théodore de Bèze. L’édition, la traduction, ez l’annotation de l’Épître de Jude,” in Theodore de Bèze, 1519−1605, ed. I.D. Backus (Genève, 2007), 185−94.  A. Szabó, ed., Károlyi Gáspár a gönci prédikátor [Gáspár Károlyi, Minister of Gönc] (Budapest, 1984).  Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 194−95.  A. Szabó, A rejtőzködő bibliafordító: Károlyi Gáspár [The Hidden Bible Translator, Gáspár Károlyi] (Budapest, 2012).  A. Szabó, “A Vizsolyi Biblia nyomdai kéziratának töredéke” [A Fragment of the Print Manuscript of the Vizsoly Bible], Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 87 (1983): 523−27.

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reading the Bible:⁸⁹ “I shall never stop warning you that it is not enough to listen to what we say here; you must also read the Scripture at home.”⁹⁰ This theoretically significant program required centuries of development to be realized, as the Vizsoly Bible – which was of considerable size and weight – was far from being available to everyone. The translation group led by Károlyi enlarged the sources that had already been used previously in the modern translation of a Heidelberg professor of Hebrew, Immanuel Tremellius, “who was a Jew by nature.”⁹¹ Research has recently shown that the 1 Samuel was translated on the basis of the translation and commentary of Petrus Martyr (Pietro Martire Vermigli).⁹² Gáspár Károlyi and his co-workers lead Hungarian readers toward an increasingly theologically crystallized, Protestant world of the Bible, but at the same time, they wished to stick to their traditions. The book of Esther, for instance, which shows great differences in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin sources, is begun according to the “true letter” – Hebrew – and continued according to the Septuagint and the Vulgate, while “some parts are not to be found anywhere,”⁹³ as we read in the margin. Unfortunately, the quick printing in Vizsoly somewhat decreased the quality if the end result. Albert Szenci Molnár corrected these mistakes – comparing the text with the best sources⁹⁴ – and redacted Gáspár Károlyi’s Bible according to an even more modern Calvinist standard (Hanau, 1608; Oppenheim, 1612). Szenci Molnár’s editions separated deuterocanonical texts – or, to use the Protestant term, the biblical apocrypha – from canonical ones and sought a more confined, more Puritan canonical order. At the same time, Szenci Molnár’s editions show that Gáspár Károlyi’s Bible was constantly developed and modified, following the current tendencies of Protestant Bible perspectives. The Károlyi Bible never really became the Holy Scripture of one denomination. Hungarian Lutherans also used it for a long time, as the idea of an independent Lutheran Bible only occurred in the eighteenth century.⁹⁵

2.2 Catholic Translations The Catholic Church has always refuted the widespread accusation of banning the reading of the Bible in national languages. It is indeed true that – according to me K. Péter, “Bibellesen. Ein Programm für jedermann im Ungarn des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Iter Germanicum. Deutschland und die Reformierte Kirche in Ungarn des 16 – 17. Jahrhundert, ed. A. Szabó (Budapest, 1999), 7– 38.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 178.  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 179; Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 182 −83.  M. Imre, A Vizsolyi Biblia egyik forrása: Petrus Martyr [Peter Martyr, One of the Sources of the Vizsoly Bible] (Debrecen, 2006).  Károlyi, Szent Biblia, 1:507r.  Vásárhelyi, Robert Estienne, 70.  Z. Csepregi, Evangélikus bibliafordítások a 18. században, in Biblia Hungarica Philologica, 171−84.

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dieval practice – Catholic priests could use several Hungarian passages of the Bible. Miklós Telegdi’s three-volume book of sermons⁹⁶ featured his own translations of holy lessons (pericopes) for Sundays and festive days, based on the Vulgate (Vienna−Nagyszombat [today Trnava, Slovakia], 1577−1580). For a long time, this was the most complete Catholic extract of the Bible in Hungarian. The real turn came with the Jesuits, following the Council of Trent, which had fixed the status of the Bible. Seemingly, they simply wanted to preserve the authority of the Vulgate; in reality, they introduced a Catholic Reformation⁹⁷ in response to the Protestant one, using the argumentative techniques of Protestants and turning them against their opponents. The famous Jesuit István Szántó Arator started to translate the Bible into Hungarian, but his manuscript is lost.⁹⁸ Péter Pázmány, archbishop of Esztergom, a former Jesuit, mocked Protestant translations by saying “new translations are no more than insecure, unreliable, and contradictory pieces of grammarizing.”⁹⁹ It is in this spirit that his fellow Jesuit, György Káldi, created the Hungarian Catholic Bible on the basis of the Vulgate, which would be used for centuries. Following a long permission procedure in Rome, it was published in Vienna in 1626. The handwritten fragments of the Káldi Bible were discovered recently in printing covers.¹⁰⁰ In his Instructive Warning, cited above, Káldi also attacked Protestant translators, especially Gáspár Károlyi and Albert Szenci Molnár, because instead of translating God’s pure and unambiguous words, they “keep selecting parts they like.”¹⁰¹ He was extremely cunning in revealing that Protestant biblical scholars changed their beliefs too often. He tried to exploit the real interpretative conflicts of the Protestant side. We are still not fully aware of the history of Káldi’s Bible. He could not have used Szántó Arator’s lost work; he worked independently. It is possible, however, that he used a “two-hundred-year old,” partial translation – very similar to the medieval Hungarian Bible translation of the Jordánszky Codex ¹⁰² – that he referred to in his Instructive Warning. The Káldi Bible – as a Catholic fortress erected against Károlyi’s Vizsoly Bible – made the division between Catholics and Protestants complete and final in the use of Holy Scripture as well.

 Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 202.  Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (London: Psychology Press, 1999).  A. Molnár. “A horvát és magyar katolikus bibliafordítás és a római inkvizíció” [The Croatian and Hungarian Catholic Bible Translations and the Roman Inquisition], Magyar Könyvszemle 119 (2002): 24−37.  P. Pázmány Hodogeus (Pozsony [today Bratislava, Slovakia], 1637); see E. Hargittay, “Pázmány Péter a Szentírásról és az Anyaszentegyházról” [Péter Pázmány on the Holy Scripture and the Mother Church], in ‘Tenger az igaz hitrül való egyenetlenségek vitatásának eláradott özöne…’ Tanulmányok 16 – 19. századi hitvitáinkról [Studies on 16th−19th Century Theological Disputes in Hungary], eds. J. Heltai and R. Tasi (Miskolc, 2005), 79 – 84.  P. Erdő, A Káldi-biblia kéziratos töredékei [Handwritten Fragments of the Káldi Bible], facsimile edition, (Budapest, 2015).  Zvara, ‘Az keresztyén olvasóknak,’ 247.  Heltai and Gáborjáni Szabó, Biblia Sacra Hungarica, 128−29.

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3 The Bible and Literature 3.1 Psalmus Hungaricus In the century of the Reformation, Hungarian biblical literature was very rich. It would take a long time to enumerate biblical histories, jeremiads, verse commentaries, and biblical paraphrases. And if we intended to study the influence of the Bible on the literary language of the century, we would probably have to look at the entire literary corpus. However, paraphrases of the Bible cannot be considered Holy Scripture by any standard – contemporary or modern; they are simply parts of devotional literature, and we are not going to study them here. The Hungarian psalm literature in verse during the age of the Reformation is another issue, however.¹⁰³ In the singing of psalms, of emphatic importance in the life of the Protestant communities, their spirituality and the world of the Bible were closely related. Members of the congregation sang psalms with the feeling that they were citing words of divine inspiration. The best Protestant poets of the sixteenth century – Mihály Sztárai, Gergely Szegedi, Máté Skaricza, and many others – all increased the number of psalms to be sung in congregations in Hungarian verse forms, to Hungarian melodies. By the end of the century, the Protestant psalms “of Hungarian verse forms” could almost fill an entire Psalter.¹⁰⁴ However, these translations were severely criticized for taking too many liberties in mediating the words of the Bible. Imre Újfalvi, the editor of a Protestant song book (Debrecen, 1602), remarked: “We should not remove or add anything when it comes to the text. Not to mention things that are alien to its spirit.” Protestants, according to increasingly Puritan principles, attacked the praefatios (introductory stanzas) and conclusions of psalms – as these, in their view, did not mediate God’s words. They only tolerated psalms that followed the text of the Bible “without new meanings” and “without any kind of appendix.”¹⁰⁵ Albert Szenci Molnár’s new Reformed translation of the Psalms (Herborn, 1607) was published with the explicit aim of including only “pure” songs, following the “true letter” in God’s house. It is for this reason that Szenci Molnár translated the Geneva psalms, in perfect harmony with current Calvinist canonical principles, but which sounded strange to Hungarian ears – as they faithfully adhered to verse forms prescribed by French melodies.¹⁰⁶ A year later, Szenci Molnár’s book of psalms – which had great merits otherwise – became part of the revised Károlyi Bible and  É. Petrőczi and A. Szabó, eds., A zsoltár a régi magyar irodalomban [The Psalm in Ancient Hungarian Literature] (Budapest, 2011).  L. Bóta, “A magyar zsoltár Szenci Molnár Albert előtt” [Hungarian Psalms before Albert Szenci Molnár], in Szenci Molnár Albert és a késő-reneszánsz [Albert Szenci Molnár and the Late Renaissance], eds. S. Csanda and B. Keserű (Szeged, 1978), 163−78.  I. Újfalvi, Keresztyéni énekek [Christian Hymns] (Debrecen, 1602), facsimile edition and complementary study by P. Ács (Budapest, 2004), 20−21.  I. Bán, Szenci Molnár Albert, a költő [Albert Szenci Molnár, the Poet], in Szenci Molnár, 137−53.

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achieved a status (almost) equivalent to holy texts. The Geneva psalms did not entirely chase the traditional, and at the same time more permissive “Psalmus Hungaricus”¹⁰⁷ from Calvinist churches; nevertheless, the free voice of the Holy Spirit became more and more silent. At the same time, Hungarian Unitarians (and Szekler Sabbatarians, who still belonged to the Unitarians at that time) – having different views than Calvinists on the sacredness of the text of the book of Psalms – created three complete Hungarian translations. Miklós Bogáti Fazakas¹⁰⁸ and János Thordai¹⁰⁹ developed the Hungarian Psalter in verse forms adapted to Hungarian melodies, with a significant amount of poetic freedom, while Simon Péchi¹¹⁰ used the results of postbiblical Jewish Bible discipline when translating psalms from Hebrew.

3.2 Around the “Arian Bible” From the 1570s, deniers of the Holy Trinity became stronger than ever in Transylvania and in Ottoman Hungary, conducting heated debates on the dogmatically important parts of the Bible (profunda), making the worst dreams of the Catholic Church (and humanist criticism of the Bible) come true.¹¹¹ The most abstract issues of the Holy Trinity were openly discussed everywhere, in pubs and in markets, ignoring (the otherwise highly respected) Erasmus’ warning that theology is not for the uneducated. In Nagyharsány (in the territory of Ottoman Hungary) in 1574, those denying the Holy Trinity confronted their opponents in an open debate. György Alvinczi, an Antitrinitarian minister, said that the Bible “is like horse shit which contains grains of barley and oak, just as the Holy Scripture contains useful things.” Since Alvinczi held the same opinion on the Quran, the Turkish qadi hung him. Shortly afterward, Antirinitarians confronted Calvinists in the Buda debate, reinforcing their view that the Bible – in the form then known – was a human creation with true and false aspects alike, so the best solution would be to print a Bible in which “human creations” are in small print, and divine creations are in capitals.¹¹² It is not difficult to recognize here the views of famous heretic theologians who had fled to Transylvania. Jacobus Palaeologus, a Greek freethinker who had a fundamental influence on Hungarian

 A traditional sixteenth-century translation of Psalm 55 by Mihály Kecskeméti Vég provided the basis for Zoltán Kodály’s famous choral work, Psalmus Hungaricus, composed in 1923.  Bogáti, Magyar zsoltár.  B. Stoll, M. Tarnócz, and I. Varga, eds., Az unitáriusok költészete [The Poetry of the Hungarian Unitarians]. (Budapest, 1967), 156−391.  Péchi, Psaltérium.  Ács, “Én fiam vagy, Dávid,” 640.  M. Balázs, Teológia és irodalom. Az Erdélyen kívüli antitrinitarizmus kezdetei [Theology and Literature. The Beginning of Antitrinitarianism Outside Transylvania] (Budapest, 1996), 45−74.

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Unitarian thinking,¹¹³ had announced shortly before this, in a diet organized in Torda (today Turda in Transylvania), that he possessed a manuscript of the Gospel of John, written at a time near that of Jesus, which does not say “God was the Word” but “God’s was the Word.” According to Palaeologus, the original, correct text of the Gospel was intentionally distorted by Alexandrian theologians who believed in the Holy Trinity. We know from Jesuit sources that there was an intention to form a Bible translation workshop in Kolozsvár, led by Palaeologus, where the famous heretic Biblical scholars living in Transylvania – Johannes Sommer and Matthias Vehe-Glirius – would have worked.¹¹⁴ The book would have been a new Latin translation of the Bible, replacing Santes Pagninus’ Bible annotated by Michael Servetus (Lyon, 1542)¹¹⁵ and that of Sabastian Castellio, published in Basel in 1551.¹¹⁶ The theologians of the radical Reformation preferred these Bibles at the time. The “Arian Bible” of Kolozsvár could not have been made, and we do not know whether the Greek manuscript of the Bible (now lost) was really that old. It is also clear that Unitarian biblical criticism cannot be called academically objective in a modern sense, as Antirinitarians – just like their opponents who believed in the Holy Trinity – held dogmatic assumptions.¹¹⁷ The conclusion, however, is much more important: Palaeologus and his followers held completely different views on the authority of the Bible than anyone had before them. The work they planned wished to revise the Bible on the basis of common sense and sources considered dogmatically and textually authentic, and they did not attribute sacred significance to Scripture. As successors of Lorenzo Valla, Erasmus, and humanist studies of Holy Scripture,¹¹⁸ they believed that the philology of the Bible requires the same critical aspects as the literary works of profane authors. The Antitrinitarian criticism of the Bible took an important step towards not only treating Holy Scripture as a literary text, but considering most of it as such.

 M. Rothkegel, “Iacobus Palaeologus und die Reformation. Antireformatische Polemik in der verlorenen Schrift Pro Serveto contra Calvinum,” in Radikale Reformation. Die Unitarier in Siebenbürgen, eds. Ulrich A. Wien, Julia Brandt, András F. Balogh (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2013), 91−134.  A. Pirnát, “A bibliakritika történetének egy ismeretlen fejezete” [An Unknown Chapter of Biblical Criticism], in Válogatott eretnekségek. Kiadatlan tanulmányok [Selected Heresies: Unpublished Studies], ed. P. Ács and M. Balázs (Budapest, 2017).  N. Fernández Marcos and E. Fernández Tejero, “Pagnino, Servet y Arias Montano. Avatares de una traducción latina de la Biblia Hebrea,” Sefarad 63 (2003): 283−329.  Carlos Gilly, Spanien und der Basler Buchdruck bis 1600. Einer Querschnitt durch die spanische Geistesgeschichte aus der Sicht einer europäischen Buchdruckerstadt (Basel/Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1985), 193; Ács, “Én fiam vagy, Dávid,” 638.  D. A. Frick, Polish Sacred Philology in the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation: Chapters in the History of Controversies 1551−1632 (Berkely: University of California Press, 1989), 81−115.  Albert Rabil, Jr., Erasmus and the New Testament: The Mind of a Christian Humanist (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1972); Hamilton, Humanists and the Bible; Monfasani, Criticism of Biblical Humanists.

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3.3 Literary Criticism and Biblical Studies Other interpreters used other means in recognizing that the development of biblical studies was closely related to the growing richness of literature. János Rimay¹¹⁹ was the first to discuss general issues of the history of literature in his preface to Bálint Balassi’s collected love poems.¹²⁰ He started the preface with an ambitious summary of the history of culture. He designated the turn of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries as the peak of great spiritual changes. By that time, he says, science and “handicrafts” – that is, techne arts – were developed enough to compete with “works of old times,” the works of classical antiquity. A similar development took place in “written crafts”: “we experience a wonderful gift of our Lord, decorating this era with the perfection of his word, with the true knowledge of his Holy Son, with the unambiguous revelation of his intentions.” This statement by Rimay may only be interpreted to mean that humanism leads to the true knowledge of the Bible, which in turn leads to the Reformation. The true faith – the light of the “heavenly lamp” – drove away stupidity, and the Latin language was reinstated in its original nature, while “each national language” was strengthened, too. According to Rimay, the result and glorious completion of this renovation and the Reformation taking place in harmony with God’s will was Bálint Balassi’s love poetry, which many ignorant people criticized. It seems that in Rimay’s eyes, humanism, the Renaissance, and the Reformation; the development of vernacular and Latin languages; biblical studies and fiction (bonae litterae) all formed part of the same unstoppable process.¹²¹ This process, however, did not move in the direction of “progress” in terms of breaking with the past, but rather the other way around: it was a “re-formatio” in the original sense of the word,¹²² the restoration of a former perfection. When János Rimay mentioned a deep link between the Renaissance and the Reformation, he carried on the spirit of Erasmus’ biblical humanism. For Erasmus, the idea of converting the pagans meant that all of antiquity became sacred.¹²³ He was convinced that God had not only revealed himself to the Jews, but had planted the seed of the gospel in the soil of pagan centuries before the advent of Christ; thus, classic culture also hides the seeds of a more valuable Christian philosophy. This means that Christian humanism

 János Rimay (1570−1631) was a distinguished Hungarian mannerist poet and a pupil of Bálint Balassi (1554−1594), the greatest Hungarian Renaissance poet. On Rimay, see P. Ács, “Ratio e oratio. Tipologie poetiche in János Rimay,” Annali dell’ Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli. Studi FinnoUngarici 1 (1995): 149−72.  J. Rimay, Összes művei [Collected Works], ed. S. Eckhardt (Budapest, 1955), 39 – 40.  Ács and Louthan, Bibles and Books, 404.  Z. Csepregi, “Die Auffassung der Reformation bei Honterus und seinen Zeitgenossen,” in Radikale Reformation, 1−17.  P. Ács, “The Reception of Erasmianism in Hungary and the Contexts of the Erasmian Program: The ‘Cultural Patriotism’ of Benedek Komjáti,” in “Whose Love of Which Country”: Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe, eds. Balázs Trencsényi and Márton Zászkaliczky (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 75−90.

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– for Renaissance intellectuals – entailed not only the use of liberal arts in biblical studies, but a mutual sacredness in the service of universal salvation.

Girolamo Imbruglia

Protestantism and the Enlightenment, 1691 – 1780 1 Introduction Ernst Troeltsch, a Lutheran, stated that “the Enlightenment does not derive from the intimate religious drives of Protestantism. In fact, the Enlightenment essentially represents a withdrawal from the religious element and, in the face of a religion that has become oppressive, a shelter in morality and humanism.”¹ By making this distinction, Troeltsch intended to preserve Lutheran faith from the attacks of the Enlightenment. Beginning with Hegelian idealism, a counter position – although similar in its outcome – has held that the Enlightenment represented the eradication of faith. On the contrary, it is important to recognize that the Enlightenment, in its task of secularization, integrated the issue of religion in order to understand its emotive root and transform its social sense. According to this analysis, Protestantism played a decisive role because it was the belief system to which the Enlightenment generally referred in thinking about religion. This chapter will illustrate five central points of this analysis. Pierre Bayle’s controversy on theodicy and the nature of God with the Calvinist Pierre Jurieu – which took place between 1691 and 1699 – represents the terminus a quo of our periodization. In fact, Bayle criticized the cruel paradoxicality of the Protestant idea of divinity and suggested an image of it that was different both from the Calvinist one and from Spinozan atheism, thus drawing the outline for the debates that followed during the Enlightenment. However, the theological discussion was not the only point of controversy between the Enlightenment and Protestantism. “Having weighed Christianity before God on the scale of truth – as Voltaire wrote – it is also necessary to weigh it on the scale of politics.”² The historical and political investigation of Protestantism represents another important feature of this analysis – more precisely, the need to understand the nature of the Protestant religion politically was one of the most important, although often neglected, ressorts of the development of historiographical thinking during the Enlightenment. From this perspective, Voltaire and David Hume both came to the same conclusion about the historical experience of ProtesTranslation from Italian: Antonella Lettieri.  Ernst Troeltsch, L’illuminismo (1897), in L’essenza del mondo moderno, ed. G. Cantillo (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1977), 232, cf. 215.  “Après avoir pesé devant Dieu le christianisme dans les balances de la vérité, il faut le peser dans celles de la politique;” Voltaire, “Examen important de milord Bolingbroke ou le tombeau du fanatisme,” in Mélanges, ed. J. van den Heuvel (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 1117. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-068

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tantism. Although they started from opposite anthropological and philosophical theories, both saw in Protestantism the danger of an uncontrollable déraison. In the 1770s, Edward Gibbon and Hermann Samuel Reimarus – ending a century of scholarly and philosophique research on the history of religions, from Hugo Grotius to Baruch Spinoza – pushed this vision even further and, since they were closer to Hume than to Voltaire, denied the divine character of the Christian doctrine and the experience of Christ. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sensitive to the theme of theodicy and far from both Voltaire and Hume, radically altered Calvinism and made religion into a republican force – a force for freedom. In 1780 – at the end of this trajectory of dramatic questions on the history and nature of religion, seemingly wishing to achieve a balanced perspective from the point of view of the Enlightenment –, Denis Diderot discussed Protestantism as the force behind European civilisation on the one hand, and dissolved its doctrinal consistency in order to define religion as the social energy of civilization on the other.

2 Voltaire and David Hume Voltaire was explicit in his concept of religion: “erudite pastors of the Protestant churches and even the greatest philosophers followed his opinions [that is, those of Servetus, who was accused of antitrinitarianism and sentenced to death by Calvin in Geneva in 1553] and Sozzini’s. They went even further than them: their religion is the adoration of God with the mediation of Christ.”³ D’Alembert held the same position in his entry “Genève” in the Encyclopédie. A history of violence and persecution was at the origins of the Christian theology of deism, the only form of rational religion and the true conquest of the Enlightenment. Voltaire admitted a significant homogeneity between Luther and Calvin on the doctrinal level, although he sometimes overlooked the differences between Calvinists and Lutherans on the issue of predestination, a topic that was no longer at the center of the philosophique debate.⁴ Nonetheless, the differences between Luther, Calvin, and the Catholics is illustrated ironically in the issue of transubstantiation: “Luther retained one part of the mystery and rejected the other. He admits that the body of Jesus Christ is in the consecrated host; however, he is in it, as Luther puts it, like fire in red-hot iron […] thus, while those who were called papists eat God without

 “des savants pasteurs des Églises protestantes, et même les plus grands philosophes ont embrassé ses sentiments et ceux de Socin. Ils ont encore été plus loin qu’eux: leur religion est l’adoration d’un Dieu par la médiation du Christ;” Essai sur les Mœurs (Paris: Garnier frères, 1963), 2:247.  Voltaire, Histoire de Charles XII, in Œuvres historiques, ed. René Pomeau (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 288.

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bread, the Lutherans eat both bread and God. Immediately afterward came the Calvinists, who ate the bread but not God.”⁵ Nonetheless, the fact that the Protestants had defended the right to interpretation for everyone worked in their favor.⁶ When considering Christianity in this light, Protestantism seemed to be preferable to Catholicism.⁷ “If the Protestants are mistaken like the others in principle, they have fewer errors in the results, and, since one must deal with men, I prefer to deal with those who mislead the least.”⁸ Aiming a sharp objection at himself, Voltaire confessed to choosing “a religion like one buys fabric in a shop. You go to the merchant who sells it the least dearly.” In the market of religions, which Voltaire had witnessed in London and described in his Lettres philosophiques, it was necessary to exclude “human prudence” and choose instead the divine one, which speaks to everyone. “The conscience that [God] gave all men is their universal law.”⁹ The principle of true religion is listening to the word of nature in the rationality of the conscience. The existence of the divinity is proved by the rational need to find a creator for the world.¹⁰ Religion is, according to Voltaire, an ideology on two levels. Next to the universality of religion are the beliefs of the masses, who are still not ready for deism. One of these beliefs is the divinity of Christ. Thus it is impossible to think of the death of the god. “A charlatan went so far as to say, […] when speaking of the agony and passion of Jesus Christ, that if Socrates died as a wise man, Jesus Christ died as a god; as if there were some gods used to death, as if bloody sweat was the hallmark of the death of

 “Luther retenait une partie du mystère, et rejetait l’autre. Il avoue que le corps de Jésus-Christ est dans les espèces consacrées; mais il est, dit-il, comme le feu est dans le fer enflammé […] Ainsi, tandis que ceux qu’on appelait papistes mangeaient Dieu sans pain, les luthériens mangeaient du pain, et Dieu. Les calvinistes vinrent bientôt après, qui mangèrent le pain, et qui ne mangèrent point Dieu;” Essai sur les Mœurs, 2:219.  In fact, Calvinist tradition always defended the interpretation – albeit distinct from Lutheranism – according to which salvation comes not from the free or authoritarian (as in the case of Catholicism) examination of Holy Scripture, but solely by grace. Cf. R. Voeltzel, Vraie et fausse église selon les théologiens protestants français du XVIIe siècle (Paris: P.U.F., 1956), 139 ff.  On the contrary, “it must be admitted that the clergy has generally been improved by the Protestants, just like a rival becomes more prudent thanks to the watchful jealousy of the other rival” (en général le clergé a été corrigé par les protestants, comme un rival devient plus circonspect par la jalousie surveillante de son rival); Essai sur les Mœurs, 2:218.  “Si les protestants se trompent comme les autres dans le principe, ils ont moins d’erreur dans les conséquences; et puisqu’il faut traiter avec les hommes, j’aime à traiter avec ceux qui trompent le moins;” Voltaire, Catéchisme de l’honnête homme, in Mélanges, 668; Eng. trans. Voltaire, Catechism of the Honest Man, in Voltaire’s Revolution: Writings from His Campaign to Free Laws from Religion, ed. and trans. G.K. Noyer (New York: Prometheus Books, 2015), 136.  “Une religion comme on achète des étoffes chez les marchands: vous allez chez qui vend le moins cher”; “La conscience que Dieu a donnée à tous les hommes est leur loi universelle;” Voltaire, Catéchisme de l’honnête homme, in Mélanges, 668; Eng. trans. Catechism of the Honest Man, 136.  René Pomeau, La religion de Voltaire (Paris: Nizet, 1956).

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God, and, finally, as if it was God dying.”¹¹ Christ was left out of deism and of the religious and rational foundation of morals. “The same thing has happened to Jesus and St. Ignatius: he was a madman.”¹² In order to escape the circle of superstitious religion and atheism,¹³ it was necessary to come to deism, which allowed for a rational practice of tolerance, as Voltaire always nobly taught. His great battle in favor of Calas elicited admiration among the circles of the Enlightenment and the gratitude of the Protestant world for his work.¹⁴ Nevertheless, he wrote, “I believe that any man of good sense and any honest man must feel horror for the Christian sect.”¹⁵ History had shown the madness of the Christian religion, the deception of religious beliefs, and its integration of the will to power in earthly logic.¹⁶ Therefore, Christianity was violence. “It is undoubtedly a melancholy consideration, that the Church has been always torn by intestine divisions and that so much blood should have been for so many ages shed by those who proclaim the God of peace. This rage was unknown to Paganism.”¹⁷ Paganism had only moral rules and ceremonies and had avoided “the spirit of dogmatism” that had caused countless wars of religion. According to Voltaire, this was the problem of the history of Christianity – its enigma. “I have often considered how, and by what means, that dogmatic spirit which divided the schools of Pagan antiquity, without occasioning any disturbances, should among us produce such horrible ones.” Fanaticism was not a sufficient explanation. Brahmins were fanatics, too, but they did not harm themselves or others. The root of this “new plague” was “in that republican spirit which animated the primitive

 Voltaire, letter to Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d’Olivet, January 5, 1767, in Correspondance (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 8:824– 25. The reference is to Rousseau, cf. infra footnote 67: “Un charlatan est parvenu jusqu’à dire, […] en parlant de l’angoisse et de la passion de Jésus-Christ, que si Socrate mourut en sage, Jésus-Christ mourut en dieu; comme s’il y avait des dieux accoutumés à la mort, comme si on savait comment ils meurent, comme si une sueur de sang était le caractère de la mort de Dieu, enfin comme si c’était Dieu qui fût mort.”  “II est arrivé la même chose à Jésus qu’à saint Ignace: c’était un fou;” Voltaire, Piccini Notebooks, ed. Theodore Besterman (Genève: Les Délices, 1952), 2:537; Eng. trans. Voltaire, Thoughts, Remarks, and Observations (London, 1802), 98 – 99.  Voltaire, Homélies, in Mélanges, 1134, esp. 1127.  Cf. Graham Gargett, Voltaire and Protestantism (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1980), 14.  “Je conclus que tout homme sensé, tout homme de bien, doit avoir la secte chrétienne en horreur;” Voltaire, Examen, 1116.  In the Dialogues chrétiens, the priest says to the pastor: “Ha, so! Then interest can find room in your heart, when it comes to the interest of religion! You can balance between God and Mammon!” (Ah, fi, donc! Quoi l’intérêt peut trouver place dans votre cœur, quand il s’agit de celui de la religion! vous pouvez balancer entre Dieu et Mammon!); see Mélanges, 365.  “Il est affreux sans doute que l’Église chrétienne ait toujours été déchirée par ses querelles, et que le sang ait coulé pendant tant de siècles par des mains qui portaient le Dieu de la paix. Cette fureur fut inconnue au paganisme;” Le siècle de Louis XIV, in Œuvres historiques, 1041; Eng. trans. Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV, trans. by R. Griffith, (London 1780), 2:328.

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churches against the authority that hates resistance of every sort.”¹⁸ This short-circuit between the primitive Church and Protestantism is the solution to this enigma and explains why, in Voltaire’s historical reconstruction of Luther, the successors of the latter – the Anabaptists¹⁹ and the Calvinists – prevailed. According to Voltaire, neither Luther nor Calvin belonged to the Renaissance. In describing L’idée générale du XVIe siècle – and how, during the early sixteenth century, Europe “saw the dawn of a fine era” –, Voltaire recalls the social force of commerce, the expansion of territories beyond Europe, the révolutions in culture and politics; in contrast, “the religious disputes that were already starting to appear stained the end of this century: they made it horrid and ended up attributing to it a sort of barbarism that the Herules, the Vandals, and the Huns never knew.”²⁰ Voltaire excludes Luther – who is no longer a contemporary of Raphael, Ariosto, or Erasmus – from the stage of the sixteenth century and includes him in the blurred world of the heresies of the Late Middle Ages. In the twelfth century, Peter Waldo founded the Waldensian sect “that on many fundamental issues was similar to the sects of the Cathars, of Wycliffe, of Jan Hus, of Luther, and of Zwingli.”²¹ Luther and Calvin belonged to the era of the Hierosolymitan Church even more than to the Middle Ages. “It seems to me that the Protestant religion was not invented by either Luther or Zwingli. It seems to me that it is closer to its sources than the Roman religion and that it adopts only what it finds expressly written in the Gospels of the Christians, whereas the Romans have overladen the faith with new rites and dogmas.”²² The same notion can be found in the Siècle de Louis XIV as well, but with an important clarification: “The ancient opinions embraced by the Vaudois, the Albigenses, and the Hussites, revived and differently explained by Luther and Zuinglius, were eagerly adopted in Germany, as they furnished pretence for seizing on the many lands possessed by the Emperors, who were then taking large strides towards arbi-

 “J’ai recherché longtemps comment et pourquoi cet esprit dogmatique, qui divisa les écoles de l’antiquité païenne sans causer le moindre trouble, en a produit parmi nous de si horribles;” “dans ce combat naturel de l’esprit républicain, qui anima les premières Églises, contre l’autorité, qui hait la résistance en tout genre;” Le siècle de Louis XIV, 1041; Eng. trans. The Age of Louis XIV, 2:328.  Voltaire, Essai sur les Mœurs, 2:238.  Voltaire, Essai sur les Mœurs, 2:136: “les querelles de religion, qui déjà commençaient à naître, souillèrent la fin de ce siècle: elles la rendirent affreuse, et y portèrent enfin une espèce de barbarie que les Hérules, les Vandales et les Huns, n’avaient jamais connue.”  Voltaire, Essai sur les Mœurs, 2:275: “qui ressemblait à celle des Albigeois, de Wiclef, de Jean Hus, de Luther, de Zuingle, sur plusieurs points principaux.”  “Il me semble que la religion protestante n’est inventée ni par Luther ni par Zwingle. Il me semble qu’elle se rapproche plus de sa source que la religion romaine, qu’elle n’adopte que ce qui se trouve expressément dans l’Evangile des chrétiens, tandis que les Romains ont chargé le culte des cérémonies et des dogmes nouveaux;” Voltaire, Catéchisme de l’honnête homme, 667; Eng. trans. 136.

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trary power.”²³ Thus history reveals that underneath positive religious belief there is nothing but political necessity and a desire for economic power. Calvinism, being alien to the reason and culture of the Renaissance, decreed its end and started bloody conflicts. The history of Louis XIV shows how the Protestants turned the religious issue into a social and political one. “Calvinism from its very nature necessarily produced civil wars, and shook the foundations of States.”²⁴ It was a “civil war”²⁵ triggered – as any other religious war – by the prevalence of the controversy over moral life. According to Voltaire, these wars of religion were not an aspect of civilization. It is never conflict, whether religious or political, that civilizes. This was Hume’s interpretation as well. However, Hume’s theory of religion was radically different from the rationalistic and deistic one discussed above, because it was based on the idea of belief – a passionate force which reason could assess and check but never eliminate. Religion is a belief, the product of primitive passions, just like fear; it does not originate from admiration for the order of the universe, but rather from bewilderment and terror in the face of its unintelligibility. According to Hume, religion – which does not have the same structure as deism – possesses instead the necessary forms of superstition and enthusiasm,²⁶ and therefore the creation of institutions with which to control this irrationality is indispensable. The reciprocal advantages of the mutual support between the Church of England and the Hannover monarchy, according to Hume, prove this point, since this is how the Puritans – who were fanatics, and hence a threat to social stability – were stopped.²⁷ Hume used the category of persecution to explain the internal dynamic of fanaticism within Christianity. His historical sense of the issue was the same as that pointed out by Voltaire: “[t]he details of these horrors make your hair stand on end; however, their quantity is such that they end up being boring. Many imbeciles were killed whilst being told that the mass must be listened to in Latin.”²⁸ Christian madness belonged at the same time to those who became martyrs and those who took

 “Les anciens dogmes embrassés par les Vaudois, les Albigeois, les Hussites, renouvelés et différemment expliqués par Luther et Zuingle, furent reçus avec avidité dans l’Allemagne, comme un prétexte pour s’emparer de tant de terres dont les évêques et les abbés s’étaient mis en possession, et pour résister aux empereurs, qui alors marchaient à grands pas au pouvoir despotique;” Voltaire, Le siècle de Louis XIV, 1043; Eng. trans. 330.  “Le calvinisme devait nécessairement enfanter des guerres civiles, et ébranler les fondements des États,” Voltaire, Le siècle de Louis XIV, 1063; Eng. trans. 357.  Voltaire, Du protestantisme et de la guerre des Cévennes (1763), in Œuvres historiques, 1278 and 1280.  David Hume, The History of Great Britain, vol. 1, The Reign of James I and Charles I (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 71.  J. Seed, “The Spectre of Puritanism. Forgetting the Seventeenth century in David Hume’s History of England,” in Social History 30 (2005): 444– 62.  Hume, The History of Great Britain, 1:339 ff.

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upon themselves the role of persecutors.²⁹ “Next, the Reformed did what the Christians from the fourth and fifth century had done before: having been persecuted, they then started persecuting.”³⁰ The cases mentioned by Voltaire are countless. In Du protestantisme et de la guerre des Cévennes, his sympathy for the Calvinist “savage riff-raff” (la populace sauvage) is accentuated, since it appears evident to him that their persecution by the Catholic church and the monarchy was gratuitous; Antoine’s destiny, discussed in the Commentaire sur le livre des délits et des peines, is exemplary as well. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism and then to Judaism in Venice; finally, he went back to Geneva, where he was executed in 1632. He had not managed to resolve for himself the conflict between Calvinism, which he was forced to preach, and the religion of Moses, in which he believed.³¹ Although with meaningful differences, both Protestants and Catholics were intolerant and loved “to persecute” the philosophes, the former “gently” and the latter “without ceremony” (for “les voies abrégées”).³² Voltaire and Hume drew from history different answers to the question of the nature of divinity. On the basis of human history, Hume argued that God was a fetish, fashioned by fear, a view that could later be rethought as theism;³³ Voltaire, in contrast, did not derive any answer from history.³⁴ It was not possible to explain why one would subject oneself to practices and deceptions that disgusted reason; the process of their creation and their success was unintelligible, as were their arguments about evil in the world, about Manichaeism, about God méchant or impuissant and his unintelligible justice, and about an optimism that was turned upside down in the system of “despairing fatality.” It was simply necessary to accept natural religion – since at least it did not produce “all the evil that it was impossible for Christian fanaticism not to create”³⁵ –, adore the divinity thus discovered, and “be an honest man” (être honnête homme). Thus Voltaire demonstrated what Lutheranism had become in history; however, what was still obscure to him was what this religion – the religion – was.

 “Le détail de ces horreurs vous fait dresser les cheveux; mais la multiplicité est si grande qu’elle ennuie. On faisait périr des milliers d’imbéciles, en leur disant qu’il fallait entendre la messe en latin;” Voltaire, Conseils raisonnables à M. Bergier, in Œuvres complètes, ed L. Moland (Paris, 1879), 27:51.  “Les réformés firent ensuite ce qu’avaient fait les chrétiens des IVe et Ve siècles: après avoir été persécutés, ils devinrent persécuteurs à leur tour;” Voltaire, Examen, 1113.  Van den Heuvel, ed., Mélanges, 799.  Voltaire, Dialogues chrétiens, 367.  Hume, The Natural History of Religion (London, 1757).  Voltaire, Homélies, 1122 ff.  “Mal qu’il était impossible que le fanatisme chrétien n’en fît pas;” Voltaire, Examen, 1117.

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3 Edward Gibbon and Hermann Samuel Reimarus The discussion on the history of Christianity reached its conclusion with Gibbon: In the connection of the church and state I have considered the former as subservient only and relative to the latter: a salutary maxim, if in fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever been held sacred. The oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the dark abyss of predestination and grace, and the strange transformations of the Eucharist from the sign to the substance of Christ’s body, I have purposely abandoned to the curiosity of speculative divines. But I have reviewed, with diligence and pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history, by which the decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected, the propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic church, the ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the mysterious controversies concerning the Trinity and incarnation.³⁶

Gibbon’s impatience with the harshness of the Presbyterian tradition³⁷ had its roots in his acceptance of Hume’s philosophy and in his certainty of the value of reason. The condemnation of Servetus by Calvin had been the work of a man of “enlightened mind” (esprit eclairé) and “atrocious soul” (âme atroce),³⁸ “a stern theologian, who loved liberty too well to endure that Christians should wear any other chains than those imposed by himself.”³⁹ The judgment on Protestantism is clear: “After a fair discussion we shall rather be surprised by the timidity, than scandalised by the freedom, of our first reformers.”⁴⁰ They had accepted the traditions and the images of the Old Testament, the absurd nature of Christ, the “great mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation,”⁴¹ and even transubstantiation, which had prevailed over the “evidence of their senses.” He observed ironically that the loss of the Eucharistic mystery in Protestantism – thanks to Zwingli – “was amply compensated by the stupendous doctrines of original sin, redemption, faith, grace, and predestination, which have been strained from the epistles of St. Paul.”⁴² The Calvinist God is cruel and irrational. “Hitherto the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the Protestants; and many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God, than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.” Nonetheless, even if the comparative history of religions brings them face to face with each other’s superstitions, the philosophes must give credit to Luther – and to his heirs and “rival[s],” who were “fearless enthusiasts” – for two reasons: they destroyed “the lofty fabric of superstition” and broke

 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Fred de Fau & Co., 1906), 8:309.  Gibbon, letter to Catherine Porten, in Miscellaneous Works, (London, 1814): 1:85  Gibbon, The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, esq., with Memoirs of his Life and Writings (London, 1837), 517.  Gibbon, Miscellaneous Works, 221.  Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 10:21.  Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 10:1.  Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 10:22.

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“the chain of authority […], which restrains the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave from speaking as he thinks.”⁴³ From the eighth century to the mid-fifteenth century, there had been a “long dream of superstition, the Virgin and the Saints, their visions and miracles, their relics and images, [which] were preached by the monks and worshipped by the people; and the appellation of people might be extended without injustice to the first ranks of civil society.”⁴⁴ Thus the Reformers provided “the imitation of Paganism […] by a pure and spiritual worship of prayer and thanksgiving, the most worthy of man, the least unworthy of the Deity […] The nature of the tiger [i. e., superstition] was the same, but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs.” The first Christians were ignorant, intolerant, even criminal, and the Hierosolymitan Church had brought their worst side to the surface; the tallying of martyrs allowed Gibbon to use the category of persecution to show the impossibility of pointing to the true religion: The most furious and desperate of rebels are the sectaries of a religion long persecuted, and at length provoked. In an holy cause they are no longer susceptible of fear or remorse: the justice of their arms hardens them against the feelings of humanity; and they revenge their fathers’ wrongs on the children of their tyrants. Such have been the Hussites of Bohemia and the Calvinists of France, and such, in the ninth century, were the Paulicians of Armenia and the adjacent provinces.⁴⁵

Calvin and Thomas Cranmer also persecuted Protestant heretics. However, the Reformation had sown a seed of liberty that needed to be defended against any Calvinist or Lutheran orthodoxy. “The struggles of Wickliff in England, of Huss in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual; but the names of Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin are pronounced with gratitude as the deliverers of nations.”⁴⁶ This freedom, in fact, was “the consequence, rather than the design, of the Reformation.” It was a process of heterogenesis that resulted in tolerance. “Since the days of Luther and Calvin, a secret reformation has been silently working in the bosom of the reformed churches […] and the disciples of Erasmus diffused a spirit of freedom and moderation.” Gibbon was careful to distinguish the two reformations, with the Protestant on the one hand and the Enlightenment on the other, in which “the liberty of conscience has been claimed as a common benefit, an inalienable right.”⁴⁷ However, the risk of exaltation still had not been warded off completely, and it would reappear in the Christian logic of persecution and fanaticism. Luther’s spirit and principles carried an internal inconsistency that risked wasting his positive legacy. In fact, it was doubtful whether it would be possible to renounce the Protestant doctrinal corpus: “Arminians, Arians, and Socinians, whose numbers must not be     

Gibbon, Gibbon, Gibbon, Gibbon, Gibbon,

Decline Decline Decline Decline Decline

and and and and and

Fall, 10:23. Fall, 10:2. Fall, 10:11– 12. Fall, 10:20. Fall, 10:23 – 24, emphasis added.

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computed from their separate congregations; and the pillars of revelation are shaken by those men who preserve the name without the substance of religion, who indulge the licence without the temper of philosophy.” All the issues already found in the Christian doctrines of the church fathers and in scholasticism achieved their final improvement in the Reformation and through “popular use,” thanks to the first Reformers, “who enforced them as the absolute and essential terms of salvation.”⁴⁸ In fact, it was likely that the “sublime simplicity” of Protestantism was well suited to “popular devotion.”⁴⁹ Gibbon, like Hume, praised the power of ecclesiastical institutions⁵⁰ and relied on philosophy in order to correct Protestant principles without voiding them. Thus Gibbon’s history of the Christian religion voided the category of sacred history. There was no true religion, the history of which could justify its claim to religious truth: all religions, whether their beliefs were false or (possibly) true, developed and experienced conflicts in the arena of secular history and were tied up in political struggles. In his history of Protestantism, Gibbon distinguished the issue of the idea of God, which could be left behind, from the issue of the nature of religion, which deserved precise analysis. This is the belief that is essential to social life. Gibbon, having read Hume, knew that life is impossible without belief, and he had a profound understanding of human nature, including the déraison through which he interpreted early and modern Christianity. Gibbon, who did not believe in revelation and was an atheist, intended “not to attack religion but to write its history”⁵¹ and, through this history, to show what was “the substance of religion.” Even though the divine fetish was useless, there was still a need for religion. Through the figure of Christ, and therefore through Luther’s example, Gibbon was prompted to defend not Protestantism and Christianity, but rather the bitter necessity of myth, which the elite had to control in every society. While the Protestant deists and Voltaire had imagined god without religions, the skeptic Gibbon thought religions without god. Gibbon published the first part of the Decline in 1776; Lessing was then printing some fragments of Reimarus’ work, Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes (An Apology for, or Some Words in Defense of, Reasoning Worshipers of God).⁵² In 1754, Reimarus had published The Principal Truths of Natural Religion. In this work, he asserted the existence of God and showed that belief in God does not require a cult, but rather faith, which can elicit moral conduct coherent with the teachings of the gospel. Reimarus’s purpose was not to study the development

 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 10:22.  Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 10:22.  Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 10:24– 25. Here Gibbon added the famous footnote in which he pointed to Joseph Priestley’s thinking in the History of the Corruptions of Christianity as deserving “public animadversion” and the attention of priests and magistrates.  J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 5, Religion: The First Triumph (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 380.  Hermann S. Reimarus, I frammenti dell’Anonimo di Wolfenbüttel pubblicati da G.E. Lessing (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1977).

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from natural religion to positive religions, as the deists had done before; his objective was instead to present natural religion as the only belief worthy of faith.⁵³ In the Apology, Reimarus used biblical exegesis from the seventeenth century to show that there is nothing supernatural in the Old and New Testaments. Christ⁵⁴ is not the abstract voice of divine reason, but rather a historical figure. According to Reimarus, the messianic teachings of Christ were part of the Jewish beliefs of his time and lost their importance with his death. His disciples retrieved his corpse, invented his resurrection – thus creating the bases for the dogma of the incarnation –, and transformed his preaching into the apocalyptic doctrine of the anticipation of the second coming of Christ in glory. Following Spinoza, Christ is not connected to the beliefs that flourished immediately after his death and were organized into Christian doctrine during the first few centuries following his death. Christianity was a religion like all the others, and the response that it had provided to the need for salvation was – as in any other religion – a form of deception. Christ was an invention of the apostles. By criticizing Protestantism, Reimarus presented to the German public the issue of the symbolic nature of the religious experience.

4 Evil in the World and God However, the new question of the nature of God had been asked by Protestantism, even though Calvin himself had admitted its paradoxicality: “Those, therefore, who, in considering this question, propose to inquire what the essence of God is, only delude us with frigid speculations.”⁵⁵ By now, this question was at the center of the Calvinist debate with the new European culture in the age of the crisis of European conscience. At the end of the seventeenth century, when Protestant orthodoxy was finally settled,⁵⁶ the main religious issue was the Versöhnung – divine justice and evil. The reforming apologists of the late seventeenth century (but also Pascal) were met with three adversaries: idolatry; the enemies of Protestant orthodoxy and especially the Socinians, for example Johannes Crellius, who in 1630 had published his De Deo; modern atheism and Spinoza. The controversy over theodicy that set the Calvinist Jurieu in opposition to Bayle between 1691 and 1699⁵⁷ revealed the enjeu of  Cf. Giuseppe d’Alessandro, Illuminismo dimenticato. Eichorn e il suo tempo (Naples: Liguori, 2000).  This is fragment 7 published by Lessing, Vor dem Zwecke Jesu und Seiner Jünger, noch ein Fragment des Wolfenbüttelschen Ungenannten (Braunschweig, 1778), It. trans. Reimarus, I frammenti, 351– 534.  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody: Signalman Publishing, 2007), 1.2.2:8.  Cf. Martin Greshat, ed., Gestalten der Kirchengeschichte, vol. 7, Orthodoxie und Pietismus (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1994).  Hubert Bost and Anthony McKenna, eds., L’“affaire Bayle”. La bataille entre Pierre Bayle et Pierre Jurieu devant le consistoire de l’Église wallonne de Rotterdam (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Institut

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those discussions. In fact, Bayle’s reply to the Calvinist doctrine was so radical on the level of theology that it represented an actual break and a moment of transition toward the culture of Enlightenment. Apart from Bayle’s Pensées diverses and the Commentaire on the principles of tolerance and on atheism, Jurieu also mentioned his Dictionnaire critique, especially the entries on “Manichéens,” “Marcionites,” and “Pauliciens,” in which Bayle had dealt with the issue of theodicy. Jurieu was opposed to any anti-Calvinism: to Lutheranism, to Socinians, to the atheists and Spinoza, to the Arminians, and to the laxity of the Jesuits. His position had the virtue of being radical: the Calvinist God is the apex of Christian thinking; he is to be honored not only because human beings know the Calvinist sensus divinitatis, but also precisely because he is the cause of evil, a pure power indifferent to human destinies, who does not reply to human expectations.⁵⁸ Bayle’s reply to a similar notion of God – that it was “the most grotesque doctrine and the most absurd paradox that has ever been suggested in theology” – was outraged and insightful. In “Pauliciens,” he illustrated Jurieu’s theses: the solution of evil between God and humanity was a problem within Christianity, and Jurieu had aptly described the rigorist answer, which consisted of admitting by faith the inscrutability of divine conduct; however, he had been mistaken in turning to human logic in order to justify it.⁵⁹ The confutation of this is in his Remarque I. Faith and reason cannot coexist. Christianity – in its most consistent version, which was either Calvinism or Socinianism (which, in fact, had taken prescience away from God – could not guarantee the same agreement with reason that Calvin had affirmed. Thus Bayle suggests a new and much wider definition of religion that is dominated by the idea of God as goodness: “Whoever is really able to think and refers to natural reason and this extraordinary idea of an infinite goodness, which represents from a moral point of view the main character of the divine nature, will be stricken

Claude Longeon, 2006); Sergio Landucci, La teodicea nell’età cartesiana (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1986), ch. 5.  Pierre Jurieu, Jugement sur les méthodes rigides et relâchées d’expliquer la Providence et la Grâce, 2 vols. (Rotterdam, 1686).  Bayle introduces Jurieu’s theses as follows: the rigorist hypothesis leads to religion because it “puts divinity at the highest conceivable level of grandeur and elevation: in fact, it annihilates the creature before the creator, so much so that the creator, in this system, is not bound to any sort of law before his creature, but rather can dispose of it as he wishes and use it for his own glory in whichever way he likes best, without it having any right to contradict him;” (La plus monstrueuse doctrine, et le plus absurde paradoxe, qu’on ait jamais avancé en Théologie […] elle pose la divinité dans le plus haut degré de grandeur et d’élévation où elle peut être conçue. Car elle anéantit tellement la Créature devant le Créateur, que le Createur dans ce système n’est lié d’aucune espèce de loix à l’égard de la créature, mais il en peut disposer comme bon luy semble, et la peut faire servir à sa gloire par telle voye qu’il lui plaist, sans qu’elle soit en droit de le contredire); see Bayle, “Pauliciens,” in Dictionnaire historique et critique (Amsterdam, 1734), 4:536a and b.

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by what is said in the Holy Scripture.”⁶⁰ This was Bayle’s criticism of Spinoza’s system, as well. “This necessary cause – since it does not put any limit to its power and does not have as the rule of its actions neither goodness nor justice nor wisdom but rather the sheer infinite power of its own nature – had to adapt according to all possible realities,”⁶¹ and therefore, according to Bayle, Spinoza has built his own system as an answer to the Manichean objection to the unique principle of reality. In order to reply to atheism, therefore, it was not enough to “recognize a first principle that is the creator of all things.” Strato and some other ancient philosophers, and only Spinoza among the modern ones, recognize this primary principle. In order not to fall into atheism, it is therefore necessary to admit that this First Being does not act through emanation – that the action through which it produces the world is not immanent, that it is not determined by a natural necessity, that it rules nature according to its own will, that it listens to human prayers, and that these can prompt it to change the natural course of reality.⁶² Thus, Bayle formulated his idea of God and religion: Let one recognize as much as one wants a first being, a supreme God, a first principle: all of this is not enough as foundation of a religion […] it is also necessary to determine that this first being knows reality in its entirety with only one act of its intellect and that, with a unique act of its will, it keeps the order in the Universe or changes it according to its desire. Hence the hope of having one’s prayers granted, the fear of being punished if one behaves badly, the confidence in the reward when one lives honestly; finally, hence Religion in its entirety and, without all of this, there is no Religion.⁶³

 “Tout grand raisonneur, qui ne consulte que la lumière naturelle, et cette idée brillante d’une bonté infinie, qui moralement parlant constitue le principal caractere de la nature divine, se choquera de ce que dit l’Ecriture;” Bayle, “Socin,” in Dictionnaire historique, 5:174b.  “Cette cause nécessaire, ne mettant aucunes bornes à sa puissance, et n’ayant pour regle de ses actions ni la bonté, ni la justice, ni la science, mais la seule force infinie de sa nature, a dû se modifier selon toutes les réalitez possibles;” Bayle, “Spinoza,” Dictionnaire historique, 5:214b).  “Straton et quelques autres philosophes parmi les anciens et Spinoza parmi les modernes reconnaissent ce premier principe. Il faut donc pour se distinguer de l’athéisme reconnaitre que ce premier être n’agit pas par voie d’émanation, que l’action par laquelle il produit le monde n’est point immanente, qu’il n’est point déterminé par une nécessité naturelle, qu’il dispose de la Nature selon son bon plaisir, qu’il entend nos prières et qu’elles le peuvent induire à changer le cours naturelle des choses;” Bayle, Continuation des pensées diverses, in Œuvres diverses (La Haye, 1737), 3:312.  “Qu’on reconnaisse tant qu’on voudra un premier être, un Dieu suprême, un premier principe, n’est pas assez pour le fondement d’une religion: […] il faut de plus établir que ce premier être par un acte unique de son entendement connait toutes choses et que par un acte unique de sa volonté il maintient un certain ordre dans l’Univers, ou le change selon son bon plaisir. De-là l’espérance d’être exaucé quand on le prie, la crainte d’être puni quand on se gouverne mal, la confiance d’être récompensé quand on vit bien, toute la Religion en un mot, et sans cela point de Religion;” Bayle, Continuation des pensées diverses, 3:329.

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5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau An echo of these debates on theodicy can also be found in Rousseau. From Protestantism, Rousseau accepted revelation as the basis of religion but rejected the dogma of the Trinity. Offering a definition of God was impossible⁶⁴ without recourse to the ideas of an infinite intelligence, wisdom, justice, and power, and to that goodness that originates from the vision of the order of the world.⁶⁵ Just as in Bayle’s argument, theodicy separated the philosophe not from God, but from Calvin. It was necessary to négliger and, therefore, not to maintain a Calvinist faith in “all those mysterious doctrines which are words without ideas for us.”⁶⁶ The history of Christianity, its novelty compared to paganism, and the transformations Protestantism contributed to it were all summarized for him in the figure of Christ, who had a divine nature: “the life and death of Christ are those of a God.”⁶⁷ Just like the other philosophes, Rousseau knew that the critical exegesis of the seventeenth century had replied to criticisms of the falsehood of the evangelical narrative, which was “full of incredible things, things repugnant to reason.” It was thus necessary to “respect in silence what you can neither reject nor understand, and humble yourself in the sight of the Divine Being who alone knows the truth.”⁶⁸ Rousseau rediscovered the religious education of his childhood in order to refute “the base and foolish interpretations given to the words of Jesus Christ by persons quite unworthy of understanding them.”⁶⁹ By partially accepting the philosophie and the artificialist argument of deism (the “final causes” and the “intelligence” that guided the universe and humanity), and by going back to the evangelical text, Rousseau retrieved what was “essential in religion” and freed it from the “host” of ceremonies and “petty forms.” After writing the Discours sur l’inégalité,

 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, [Sur Dieu], Fragments sur Dieu et sur la révélation (1735?), in Œuvres Complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 4:1033.  On the “source of […] evil” (source du mal), Rousseau later wrote – after the Lisbon earthquake – that “the question, then, is not why is man not perfectly happy, but why does he exist?” (la question n’est point, pourquoi l’homme n’est pas parfaitement heureux, mais pourquoi il existe), Lettre à Voltaire, in Œuvres Complètes, 4:1061; Eng. trans. Letter to Voltaire, in “The Discourses” and Other Early Political Writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 234. Cf. E. Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989 [1932]).  “tous ces dogmes mistérieux qui ne sont pour nous que des mots sans idées;” Rousseau, Emile, in Œuvres Complètes, 4:729; Eng. trans. Emile, or Education, trans. Barbara Foxley (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1921), 344.  Rousseau, Emile, 626: “La vie et la mort de Jesus sont d’un Dieu;” Eng. trans. p. 272.  Rousseau, Emile, 627: “plein de choses incroyables, de choses qui répugnent à la raison […] respecter en silence ce qu’on ne sauroit ni rejetter ni comprendre, et s’humilier devant le grand Etre qui seul sait la vérité;” Eng. trans. p. 272.  Rousseau, Les Confessions, in Œuvres Complètes, 1:392: “les basses et sotes interpretations que donnoient à Jesus-Christ les gens les moins dignes de l’entendre;” Eng. trans. The Confessions, trans. by J.M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1953), 366.

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he thought, “since I wished to be a citizen I must become a Protestant and return to the established faith of my country.”⁷⁰ In the Lettre à M. de Franquières (1769), comparing Socrates and Christ, Rousseau – who was an admirer of both – exalted the superiority of the latter by leveraging the Protestant exegetical tradition that had demonstrated that Christ had neither performed nor requested any miracles. Having thus erased this “terrible difficulty” (objection terrible), what was left was the Christ of the gospel, who was the model for Rousseau’s imitatio Christi. “His noble project was to raise up his people anew, once again to make it a free people and worthy of being free; for this is where the beginning had to be made.” Misunderstood and despised by his “cowardly compatriots” (lâches compatriotes), and having understood that he would not be able to start “une révolution” among his people, he “sought to make one in the Universe by his disciples.”⁷¹ In fact, the relationship between religion and politics created gaps that were difficult to bridge. When linking religion and politics, it was impossible to follow the theocratic logic of Calvinism. A choice was necessary. Calvin had been an extraordinary man, “but in the end he was a man, and what is worse, a Theologian;”⁷² instead, his génie ⁷³ is evident if one reads him as a legislator. Calvin’s theology is now in the background; in the foreground is the social and political value of Christianity, which is explored particularly in the last chapter of Rousseau’s The Social Contract, De la religion civile. This dissociation of Calvin’s legacy was possible because Rousseau offered an original reading of the standard division of a religion into three parts (the cult, the “dogma,” and “morality”⁷⁴) in order to guarantee freedom and tolerance, which were denied by the Genevan republic. Thus the conflict with the Protestant world was unavoidable. In a political state, Christianity had a positive moral power as “sentiment, opinion, [and] belief,” but it should not be part of the Constitution: “as political Law, dogmatic Christianity is a bad establish-

 “Voulant être Citoyen je devois être Protestant et rentrer dans le culte établi dans mon pays;” Rousseau, Les Confessions, 1:392; Eng. trans. p. 366.  “Son noble projet étoit de relever son peuple, d’en faire derechef un peuple libre et digne de l’être; car c’étoit par là qu’il falloit commencer”; “il voulut en faire une par ses disciples dans l’Univers;” Rousseau, Lettre à M. de Franquières, in Œuvres Complètes, 4:1145 – 46; Eng. trans. Rousseau, Letter to Franquières, in“The Social Contract” and Other Later Political Writing, trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 284.  “Mais enfin c’étoit un homme, et qui pis est, un Théologien;” Rousseau, Lettres écrites de la montagne, in Œuvres Complètes, 3.2:715; Eng. trans. Rousseau, Letters Written from the Mountain, in Letter to Beaumont, Letters Written from the Mountain, and Related Writings, trans. Christopher Kelly and Judith R. Bush (Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2012), 156. This letter is a reply to Calvinist orthodoxy in defense of the Contrat social and Emile.  JRousseau, Du contrat social, in Œuvres Complètes, 2:382.  “Le dogme et la morale;” Rousseau, Lettres écrites, 1:694; Eng. trans. 139.

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ment.”⁷⁵ Civil religion was the extraordinary project that separated Rousseau from Protestantism.

6 Diderot “It would be desirable for someone to provide us with a history of the heresies: this would require a very vast knowledge, explain many obscure facts, and paint the most humiliating picture, but also the picture most capable of eliciting in men the spirit of peace.”⁷⁶ Diderot remarks that, up until that moment, scholarly religious historiography had been erudite and partisan; now it needed to be philosophique. Although sharing Hume’s philosophie, since he accepted his theory of fetishism,⁷⁷ Diderot offered a different interpretation of the Protestant movement. As we have seen above, Hume had defined religion as a pendulum swinging between superstition and fanaticism, attributing the former to the Catholics and the latter to the Protestants, and reading the institution of the Church as a protection against the negativity of those beliefs. Gibbon shared the same conclusion. Rousseau, instead, had devised a Protestant deism, but more importantly he had seen within Calvinism the potential to build a community that would be politically free and morally religious. Diderot’s trajectory was different. In the entry “Credulité”⁷⁸ in the Encyclopédie, Diderot defined incredulity as specific to Protestantism. It is possible to suppose that he might have had in mind a passage from the Histoire des variations des Eglises protestantes by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet,⁷⁹ where the author had outlined a genealogy running from Luther to Zwingli to the Anabaptists and finally to Socianism, which was thus the product not of pre-existing heresies, but of the Protestant heresy. This notion, also developed in the entry “Unitaires” by Jacques-André Naigeon,⁸⁰ is also included in Diderot and Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes: “By an impulse founded on the nature of religions themselves, Catholicism tends incessantly to Protestantism, Protestantism to Socinianism, Socinianism to deism, and deism to scepticism.”⁸¹ Thus Bossuet

 “Sentiment, opinion, croyance […] comme loi politique, le Christianisme dogmatique est un mauvais établissement;” Rousseau, Lettres écrites, 1:706; Eng. trans. pp. 148 – 49.  “Il seroit à souhaiter que quelqu’un nous donnât une histoire des hérésies; elle supposeroit des connoissances très-étendues, expliqueroit beaucoup de faits obscurs, et formeroit le tableau le plus humiliant, mais le plus capable d’inspirer aux hommes l’esprit de la paix;” Denis Diderot, “Hématites,” in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris, 1765), 8:110.  Diderot, “Oindre,” in Encyclopédie, 11:432.  Diderot, “Crédulité,” in Encyclopédie, 4:452a.  In Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Histoire des variations des Eglises protestantes, in Œuvres Complètes (Paris, 1885), 15:134– 38.  J.-A. Naigeon, “Unitaires,” in Encyclopédie, 17:400.  “Par une impulsion fondée dans la nature même des religions, le catholicisme tend sans cesse au protestantisme; le protestantisme au socinianisme; le socinianisme au déisme; le déisme au scepti-

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was turned upside down. For the Catholic apologist, in fact, Socinianism was the expression of the falsehood of the Protestant doctrine, while for Diderot it manifested the truth of Christianity and of every other religion. This is so, however, within the field of religion, which is still interpreted as a superior form of fetishism – of superstition. In this work, Diderot did not manage to write the Humean “natural” history of heresy that he had imagined, but instead outlined a philosophique et politique history of religions. Christianity did not go – as one might have expected – “from idolatry to theism,” because the barbaric populations had imposed on it a turn toward the marvelous, which allowed for the creation of ecclesiastical deception on the basis of the natural religious dimension. It was against this deception that Luther rebelled. According to Diderot, the topic of the free study was the reason behind Protestantism’s great success, together with its criticism of Catholicism.⁸² Lutheranism – which was destined to cause a remarkable change in Europe, either by its own influence or on the basis of the example it provided – had occasioned a great fermentation in the minds of all human beings; a new religion arose from the midst of it, which at first appeared much more like a rebellion guided by fanaticism than like a sect governed by any fixed principles. In fact, innovators in general follow a regular system, composed of doctrines connected to each other, and – at least in the beginning – take up arms only to defend themselves. On the contrary, the Anabaptists – as if they had read the Bible only to find the command to attack – lifted up the standard of rebellion before they had agreed on a system of doctrine.⁸³ For Diderot, the history of French Protestantism was crucial, although in a different sense from Hume and Voltaire. In fact, Diderot distinguished between fanaticism and enthusiasm and saw in the latter a positive ambiguity that was fundamental in the shaping of human civilization. In those struggles, despite all the blood spilled, there was a positive element – the conflict, the category that was the foundation of European civilization: “What is the cause of progress and of the blossoming of literature and the arts among ancient and modern people? The great number of heroic actions and illustrious men to be honored [… I]t was right in the middle of civil wars

cisme;” Guillame-Thomas Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des Établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Genève, 1780), 4:468; Eng. trans. Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, trans. J.O. Justamond (Edinburgh, 1804), 6:136.  Raynal, Histoire philosophique, 2:335, 333; Eng. trans. 2:421.  “Le luthéranisme, qui devoit changer la face de l’Europe, ou par lui-même, ou par l’exemple qu’il donnoit, avoit occasionné dans les esprits une fermentation extraordinaire; lorsqu’on vit sortir de son sein orageux une religion nouvelle, qui paroissoit bien plus une révolte conduite par le fanatisme, qu’une secte réglée qui se gouverne par des principes. La plupart des novateurs suivent un systême lié, des dogmes établis, et ne combattent d’abord que pour les défendre, lorsque la persécution les irrite et les révolte jusqu’à leur mettre les armes à la main. Les anabaptistes, comme s’ils n’avoient cherché dans la bible qu’un cri de guerre, levèrent l’étendard de la rébellion, avant d’être convenus d’un corps de doctrine;” Raynal, Histoire philosophique, 4:267; Eng. trans. 4:259.

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in England and in France, after the massacres of the League and of the Fronde, that immortal men appeared on the scene.”⁸⁴ Culture is the product of conflict and enthusiasm, which therefore should not be condemned, but rather recognized as an aspect of civilization. By Diderot’s time, there was a different kind of fanaticism, “a fanaticism more fortunate, the offspring of politics and of liberty,”⁸⁵ which had at its roots a sentiment that was not the natural one of religion, which was “fear of evil, and […] ignorance of its causes or of its remedy.”⁸⁶ Instead, this passion, the image of which is attested by the Protestants, is enthusiasm. This was the positive drive of the process of secularization. Thus, as religion, Protestantism – which lacked any reason – completed its function. But if I might be allowed to explain myself upon a matter so important, I should venture to say, that neither in England, nor in the countries of Germany, of the United provinces, and of the north, the true principles have been traced. Had they been better known, how much blood and how many troubles would they have spared, the blood of pagans, heretics, and christians, since the first origin of natural forms of worship to the present day.⁸⁷

Diderot left the circle of religious fanaticism behind and created a new polarity between enthusiasm and reason. Enthusiasm, which is a secularized religion, is the form of the ideal social energy of society and needs to be controlled and channeled by three principles: “It appears to me, that the state is not made for religion, but religion for the state […]. The general interest is the universal rule that ought to prevail in a state […]. The people, or the sovereign authority, depositary of theirs, have alone the right to judge of the conformity of any institution whatever with the general interest.”⁸⁸ Religion would not disappear. “We live under the influence of three codes, the natural, the civil, and the religious code. It is evident, that as long as these three sorts of legislations shall be contradictory to each other, it will be impossible to  “Quelle est la cause des progrès et de l’éclat des lettres et des beaux-arts chez les peuples tant anciens que modernes? La multitude d’actions héroïques et de grands hommes à célébre. […] Ce fut au milieu des troubles civils en Angleterre, en France après les massacres de la Ligue et de la Fronde, que des auteurs immortels parurent;” Diderot, Fragments politiques (Paris: Hermann, 2011), 129.  “Un fanatisme plus heureux, né de la politique et de la liberté;” Raynal, Histoire philosophique, 4:403; Eng. trans. 6:72.  “La crainte du mal, et l’ignorance de ses causes, et de ses remèdes;” Raynal, Histoire philosophique, 2:334; Eng. trans. 2:420.  “Mais s’il m’étoit permis de m’expliquer sur une matière aussi importante, j’oserois assurer que ni en Angleterre, ni dans les contrées hérétiques de l’Allemagne, des Provinces-Unies et du Nord, on n’est remonté aux véritables principes. Mieux connus, que de sang et de troubles ils auroient épargné; de sang païen, de sang hérétique, de sang chrétien, depuis la première origine des cultes nationaux jusqu’à ce jour;” Raynal, Histoire philosophique, 4:533; Eng. trans. 6:200.  “L’état, ce me semble, n’est point fait pour la religion, mais la religion est faite pour l’état; […] L’intérêt général est la règle de tout ce qui doit subsister dans l’état; […] Le peuple, ou l’autorité souveraine dépositaire de la sienne, a seule le droit de juger de la conformité de quelque institution que ce soit avec l’intérêt general,” Raynal, Histoire philosophique, 4:533; Eng. trans. 6:200.

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be virtuous.”⁸⁹ Identity – of which the three codes represent the three faces – is composed by nature and its transformations in history. Religion, next to the natural and the political code, is the cultural code that constitutes the indispensable social and symbolic energy in which a society exists. Religion was transformed into a symbolic form; its symbol was not the Calvinist Christ of the cross, but rather the Christ of the human communities: “we have two different Christs: Christ on the cross is very different from Christ in the midst of his apostles.”⁹⁰

 “It will sometimes be necessary to trample upon nature in order to obey social institutions, and to counteract social institutions to conform to the precepts of religion. The consequence of this will be, that while we are alternatively infringing upon these several authorities, we shall respect neither of them, and that we shall neither be men, nor citizens, nor pious persons. Good morals would therefore require previous reform, which should reduce these codes to identity. Religion ought neither to forbid not to prescribe anything to us but what is prescribed or forbidden by the civil law; and the civil and religious laws ought to model themselves upon natural law, which hath been, is, and will, always be the strongest” (Nous vivons sous trois codes, le code naturel, le code civil, le code religieux. Il est évident que tant que ces trois sortes de législations seront contradictoires entre elles, il est impossible qu’on soit vertueux”; “Il faudra tantôt fouler aux pieds la nature, pour obéir aux institutions sociales, et les institutions sociales, pour se conformer aux préceptes de la religion. Qu’en arrivera-t-il? C’est qu’alternativement infracteurs de ces différentes autorités, nous n’en respecterons aucune; et que nous ne serons ni hommes, ni citoyens, ni pieux. Les bonnes mœurs exigeroient donc une réforme préliminaire qui réduisît les codes à l’identité. La religion ne devroit nous défendre ou nous prescrire que ce qui nous seroit prescrit ou défendu par la loi civile, et les loix civiles et religieuses se modeler sur la loi naturelle qui a été, qui est, et qui sera toujours la plus forte); Raynal, Histoire philosophique, 4:694; Eng. trans. 6:362.  “Avons-nous deux différents caractères du Christ: le Christ sur la Croix est autre chose que le Christ au milieu des apôtres;” Diderot, Salon de 1765, in Œuvres Complètes (Paris: Hermann, 1984), 14:378; Eng. trans. The Salon of 1765, in Diderot on Art, trans. John Goodman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 136. From another point of view, Diderot not only admits the emotional power of “exterior ceremony […] over the people” (cérémonies extérieures sur le peuple) and over himself, but also its social value: “suppress all representations and all images and soon they’ll fall out and cut each other’s throat over the most fundamental articles of their faith” (supprimez toute représentation et toute image, et bientôt ils ne s’entendront plus et s’entr’égorgeront sur les articles les plus simples de leur croyance); Diderot, Salon de 1765, 14:378; Eng. trans. 136.

Mariano Delgado

Patterns in the Reception of Luther in the Hispanic World From the Sixteenth Century to the Present Until the Second Vatican Council and the beginnings of the modern understanding of religious freedom that accompanied it, the Hispanic world was regarded as a Roman Catholic realm, heavily influenced by the Tridentine reforms of the sixteenth century and the ultramontanism of the nineteenth century. In this chapter, I will trace a number of patterns in the reception of Luther (and of Lutheranism), which have developed over the course of history since the sixteenth century and which are typical for the Hispanic world. In doing so, I will pay particular attention to the Inquisition, scholastic theology (especially Melchor Cano), the Franciscans involved in the sixteenth-century Mexico mission (such as Bernardino de Sahagún and Jerónimo de Mendieta), the Roman Catholic apologist Jaime Balmes in the nineteenth century, the philosophical perspectives of Miguel de Unamuno and José Luis Aranguren, and the historical interpretation of the church in the work of Ricardo García-Villoslada in the twentieth century.

1 The Inquisition’s “German Heresy” Between 1523 and 1525, many of Luther’s books were discovered and burned in Spain.¹ On February 8, 1525, a certain Martín de Salinas wrote to Prince Ferdinand, the brother of the Holy Roman emperor, that three galleys packed full of Luther’s books were on their way from Venice to a port on the coast of Granada. Thus this delivery of books could be foiled just in time. However, the passage of Luther’s works – and those of other Protestant authors – to Spain via Antwerp could never be entirely controlled. Their target readers were not just the conversos in Spain (recent Christians who had converted from Judaism and Islam), but also monks who were sympathetic to Luther (especially those belonging to the orders of Augustine and Jerome) and followers of the Alumbrados. It is thus possible to speak of a “Lutheran offensive” be-

Translation from German: Madeleine Brook.  See especially Augustin Redondo, “Luther et l’Espagne de 1520 à 1536,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 1 (1965): 109 – 65; Werner Thomas, La represión del protestantismo en España, 1517 – 1648 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001); Thomas, Los protestantes y la Inquisición en España en tiempos de Reforma y Contrareforma (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001); Ernst H.J. Schäfer, Beiträge zur Geschichte des spanischen Protestantismus und der Inquisition im 16. Jahrhundert, 3 vols. (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1969 [1902]). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-069

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tween 1523 and 1525, “which could explain the measures taken against the first Alumbrados.”² In fact, the first trial of Alumbrados took place from 1524 to 1525, after the arrest of Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz and Isabel de la Cruz. The Alumbrados, a group that had germinated and thrived on the spiritually nutritious soil of Spain, drew its influences from the ideas of the devotio moderna and humanism, as well as from Judaism and Islam. They tended, in general, to make silent prayer an absolute tenet, to emphasize the immediacy of God as a living book, to venerate marriage and dismiss as irrelevant the monastic life as well as the church sacraments, processions, and veneration of the saints. They viewed the latter as idolatry. Many of them were conversos who believed in a universal obligation to work toward spiritual perfection and favored the concept of dejamiento (subjecting oneself fully to the grace of God while disregarding pious rituals, ceremonies, and active participation in the process of purification) as the means to achieving it. They anticipated that the end of the world would come soon, probably at some point in the subsequent twelve years. Their ideas contained Erasmian and Protestant echoes – or so said the edict issued by the Inquisition in Toledo in 1525, which represented an attempt to systematize the result of the judicial hearings held in the cases of two Alumbrados, Pedro Ruiz de Alcáraz and Isabel de la Cruz.³ However, scholars have been unable to ascertain whether either of them had actually read any of Luther’s works. The texts written by Luther and other Protestants continued to find their way to Spain, under the cover of titles by less suspicious authors, and their owners also proved to be good at hiding them. Beginning in 1530, the Inquisition intensified its search for these works as well as for those written by Alumbrados, who were frequently named in the same breath as the Lutherans.⁴ Yet up until 1536, one cannot discern a fully developed Lutheranism, but rather a “whiff” of the Lutheran spirit that swept over Spain in waves in the years 1521, 1523 – 1525, 1528 – 1531, and 1535.⁵ From this point well into the 1550s, the records of the Inquisition contain barely a mention of Luther, but they do show evidence of a growing mistrust of the influence of Erasmus. From as early as January 9, 1536, the edicts of the Inquisition pose questions about the ownership of “books by Luther or his adepts or books by Erasmus.”⁶

 Redondo, “Luther et l’Espagne,” 137. All quotations have been translated into English specifically for this chapter.  See Antonio Márquez, Los Alumbrados. Orígenes y filosofía 1525 – 1559 (Madrid: Taurus, 1972), esp. “The Edict of 1525,” 273 – 83; on this topic, see also Márquez, Alumbrados o iluminados, in Diccionario de Historia Eclesiástica de España, ed. Quintin Aldea Vaquero (Madrid: CSIC Instituto Enrique Flórez, 1972), 1:47– 50; Álvaro Huerga, Historia de los alumbrados (1570 – 1630), 5 vols. (Madrid: Funcadión universitaria española, 1978 – 1994); Jeffrey Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth-century Spain: The Alumbrados, Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1992).  Cf., for example, an edict of August 17, 1530. In 1532, the suspicion – which was ultimately not very credible – was even expressed that Luther’s works were being printed in Aragon and Valencia.  Redondo, “Luther et l’Espagne,” 164.  Redondo, “Luther et l’Espagne,” 160.

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The 1550s was a decade of increased vigilance in matters regarding book censorship. Books and Bible translations with commentaries by Protestant authors continued to infiltrate Spain, which led to fears about the development of crypto-Protestantism. This, in turn, caused a religious reaction against any tendencies in Spanish Catholicism that could be considered “philoprotestant.” The gaze of the authorities turned on Alumbrados and Erasmians in particular, as well as on vernacular translations of the Bible and on religious authors who wrote in the vernacular and argued for the benefits of silent prayer. Simultaneously, the theological aristocratism of the scholastics was reinforced, underscoring the idea that the interpretation of the Bible and of religious literature was reserved for the clergy alone; the laity, and especially women, were excluded from religious exegesis. Levels of tolerance fell even further in 1557 and 1558, after the chance discovery of crypto-Protestant conventicles in Seville and Valladolid, which had been successfully smuggling books by Protestant authors into the country. The discovery was made when a certain Julianillo (Julián Hernández, d. 1560) was arrested in Andalusia for transporting a ton of examples of the New Testament translation by Juan Pérez de Pineda (d. 1567), which had been printed in Geneva in 1556, as well as books by Protestant authors. After that, it was easy to identify the recipients of these “dangerous” imported items. The authorities were dismayed, for this meant they had precisely the same problem in their own backyard that the rest of Europe had been struggling to repress. They feared the development of situations “as in Germany,” unless rapid and radical measures were taken to counter the development. From his peaceful retirement residence in the monastery of Yuste in Extremadura, Charles V (d. 1558) wrote to his daughter Johanna (d. 1573) in Valladolid, who was acting as regent in the absence of Philip II (d. 1598), and to his son in Brussels. It was imperative, he wrote, that stringent measures should be taken (mucho rigor y recio castigo) against the impudence of these “ragamuffins” (piojosos), that they should be given short shrift (breve remedio), and an example should be made of them (ejemplar castigo).⁷ The Inquisitor General Fernando de Valdés (d. 1566) welcomed this hard line and got straight to work. The chronicles report that in Valladolid on May 21, 1559, after a sermon by the Dominican monk Melchor Cano (d. 1560) and in the presence of the Infante, Don Carlos (d. 1568), fourteen people were sentenced to death at the stake and sixteen were acquitted; in Seville on September 24, 1559, nineteen heretics were burned (one of them in effigy), and seven narrowly escaped that fate by being conciliated. After Philip II returned to Spain, another auto-da-fé was held in his presence, in Valladolid on October 8, 1559, which ended in the execution of twelve people by fire, while another eighteen were publicly conciliated. A further auto-da-fé took place in Seville on December 22, 1560, with the burning of seventeen people (three

 See José I. Tellechea, El arzobispo Carranza y su tiempo, 2 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1968), esp. 232– 34, here 2:233.

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of them in effigy) and the conciliation of another 37 individuals.⁸ As Marcel Bataillon has rightly pointed out, some of the people who were burned during this fraught period, “just a few years earlier, would have atoned for their sins with merely a light penance.”⁹ This assertion can be neatly illustrated by the fate of Juan Gil – otherwise known under the Latinized form of his name, Dr. Egidio. He had died peacefully in November 1555 (or early in 1556, according to other sources), but posthumously he was among those burned “in effigy” in Seville in 1560. He had been a canon of the cathedral in Seville and had occupied the most important ministry. It was due to his reputation as a preacher that Charles V had nominated him in 1549 as bishop of Tortosa. Soon afterwards, he was denounced to the Inquisition and arrested. He was accused of “Lutheranism” and, as a result, has since been considered a Spanish proto-Protestant. However, scholars have expressed the opinion that his case in fact reflects a combination of ideas typical for the heterodox movements present in Spain at the time, which drew on Erasmian, Valdesianism, and Illuminist schools of religious thought, although they were by no means completely free of a “Lutheran” tone. A theological commission, among whose officers were the Dominicans Domingo de Soto (d. 1560) and Bartolomé Carranza (d. 1576), came to the conclusion that Dr. Egidio must ceremonially recant (de vehementi) certain propositions before he could be allowed his freedom, upon execution of a small penance. This recantation was carried out in a grand ceremony in the Cathedral of Seville on August 21, 1552. Egidio was then sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. In the end, he did not quite serve the full sentence, and he was, in any case, permitted to spend his confinement under good conditions. By mid-1553, he was reinstated in his office as a cathedral canon, with all its many benefices, and he occupied that office until his death. He was, however, no longer permitted to preach. Amid the shock of the discovery of crypto-Protestants in 1557 and 1558, among whom were several friends and acquaintances of Dr. Egidio, Grand Inquisitor Valdés called him the “Father of Sevillan Protestantism.” The Sevillan crypto-Protestants were henceforth known as “passionate apostles and followers of Dr. Egidio, from whom they [adopted] the language, the errors, and the false teachings.”¹⁰ One of the first consequences of these events was an increase in book censorship. On September 7, 1558, Philip II signed the Pragmatic Sanction concerning the publication and censorship of books. It is the most severe censorship measure in the history of the Spanish Inquisition. Contrary to the wishes of the Inquisitor, the

 Alain Milhou, “Die iberische Halbinsel: I. Spanien,” in Die Geschichte des Christentums, vol. 8, Die Zeit der Konfessionen (1530 – 1620/30), ed. Heribert Smolinsky (Freiburg: Herder Verlag, 1992), 662– 726, here 685 – 86.  Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y España. Estudios sobre la historia espiritual del siglo XVI (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), 709.  Both quotations are taken from the entry “Juan Gil” in Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa, available online at: www.enciclopedia-aragonesa. com/voz.asp?voz_id=6299.

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Pragmatic Sanction contains no mention of a reward for denunciation or of entrusting the Inquisition with the inspection of books prior to their going to print. Instead, the Pragmatic Sanction emphasized that permission to print lay solely with the privy council – under penalty of death for those who “printed or had [books] printed or were engaged in the printing process” of books without official permission to print.¹¹ In addition, the universities of Salamanca, Valladolid, and Alcalá – as well as the archbishops, bishops, prelates, and religious superiors “of all orders in this royal realm” – were ordered to visit the libraries within their jurisdictions “very carefully and speedily.” They were to write a report, signed with their names, on all the suspicious or degenerate books, on any books that contained errors and false teachings, and on any books that concerned indecent subject matter and provided a bad example. The report would detail the contents of these books, how they were composed and put together, and whether they were written in Latin or in a vernacular language. This was to be carried out regardless of whether the books had been printed with royal authorization, and the reports were then to be addressed to the privy council, “in order that it might examine the matter and decree what may be necessary.”¹² A further decree forbade universities from undertaking book censorship after printing, as this was the exclusive remit of the Inquisition. On August 17, 1559, Valdés – on the advice of the Salamancan theologian Melchor Cano – published a detailed index, which led to the confiscation and burning of many books, including all translations of the Bible and translations of individual books of the Bible into the vernacular; numerous texts by Protestant authors and by Erasmus, as well as works written by his students, Alfonso and Juan de Valdés; the Institutiones, which were then ascribed to the Rhenish mystic Johannes Tauler; and even a number of spiritual works written in the vernacular by Spanish mystics, such as Francisco de Osuna OFM, Juan de Ávila, Francisco de Borja SJ, and Luis de Granada OP. The ban on vernacular translations of the Bible had particularly serious consequences, because the religious books written by the Spanish authors mentioned above could be reissued six or seven years later, with minor amendments concerning the matter of silent prayer, the vernacular Bible translations, however, could not. Protestant literature circulated relatively widely in spite of the measures taken by the Inquisition, as is confirmed by the Inquisition itself. After a large burning of many books, the Inquisition in Seville made an inventory of the confiscated books, which had been stored under lock and key in case “one of these might at some time be required for assessment.”¹³ Among the works listed were many by some of the most prominent and important Protestant authors, including Martin Luther (Omnium operum tomus primus, secundus, tertius, quartus et sextus), Heinrich  Fermin Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América. Legislación y censura (siglos XV–XVII), 2 vols. (Madrid: Arco Libros, 2000), 2:801.  Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, 2:803.  Schäfer, Beiträge, 2:392– 400.

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Bullinger, Huldrych Zwingli, Jean Calvin, Johannes Oecolampadius, Martin Bucer, Philipp Melanchthon, and Theodor Bibliander. What the Inquisition considered to be “Lutheran” can be gleaned from the case records and sentences of the trials as well as from the assessment reports and qualifications written by the Inquisition’s censors. A good example is the list of errors found in those individuals who were convicted in 1559 in Valladolid as crypto-Protestants, which was set out by the well-known theologians Andrés Pérez, Domingo de Soto, Melchor Cano, Alonso de Horozco, and Rodrigo Vadillo.¹⁴ The spectrum of errors they note ranges from belief in justification by faith alone through to the rejection of religious vows and of the cult of the saints, as well as the rejection of purgatory and rites of devotion, such as fasting or frequent attendance at mass and reciting the breviary; the listed errors also included naming the pope as the antichrist and questioning the religious vocation, maintaining that married laypersons or even all Christians could consecrate because all Christians were priests, and so on. But these “Lutheran errors” were not included in globo in any single work or sermon by any of those who had been sentenced. They were simply listed by the Inquisition as an aid to the court hearings, usually in such a way that, if there was any doubt, statements were interpreted to the detriment of the accused (i. e., as Lutheran).

2 Melchor Cano: Luther as a “Foul-smelling Lagoon, into which the Errors of All Heretics Flow” In the encyclical Pascendi (September 8, 1907), Pius X famously described modernism as a “melting pot of all heresies” (omnium haereseon collectum).¹⁵ A similar turn of phrase was also used against Luther – for example, by the scholastic Dominican theologian Melchor Cano, for whom Luther represented a “foul-smelling lagoon” into which flowed “the errors of all heretics” (Lutherus etiam, qui omnes omnium haereticorum haeresesin unam fecit Camarinam confluere).¹⁶ Three short excerpts from his 1559 evaluation of the catechism commentary written by his fellow Dominican, Bartolomé Carranza (Comentarios al Catechismo Christiano, Antwerp 1558), illustrate what Cano understood the term “Lutheran” to mean: First, Cano assesses Carranza’s statement that “in all matters of our religion, I hold the oldest things to be the healthiest and soundest” to be “one of the dangerous things that are in this book and that are related to the many errors of the Lutherans.” According to Cano, this means having no sense of the history and development of the  Schäfer, Beiträge, 3:88 – 101.  The full text is available online at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/la/encyclicals/documents/ hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html.  Melchor Cano, De locis theologicis. Ed. Juan Belda Plans (Madrid: BAC, 2006), 9.3:499.

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church. For him, there were many practices in the early church that it would not be at all wise to continue, even if we wanted to practice them today, “for the times and the people are different […] and the circumstances are different.”¹⁷ In judgments such as this, Cano does not display a rigorous tone, but rather an affinity with “contextuality.” This is not the only example in which, from a twentyfirst century perspective, Cano appears more modern than Carranza. For Carranza, “wearing make-up and doing oneself up is a very bad thing”; great damage could occur as a result of light and airy clothing, because “the woman no longer feels bound to obey the man in such matters; instead she commits sin.” Cano qualifies this as “incautious advice, over which women may easily stumble and thus disturb the peace and the consciences of their husbands.”¹⁸ Cano also uses this rebuke as an excuse to observe that times have changed even in religious orders, for St. Francis and St. Dominic might well believe that their sons and daughters were inadequate to the religious life if they were to see their current vestments, and have them thrown into a dungeon as a consequence: “So in our current times, not all instances of making oneself up or of airy dress are necessarily bad.”¹⁹ Second, Cano also criticizes the following statement by Carranza as “Lutheran”: “Faith in and knowledge of the savior is the keystone of the entire Christian building.” For Cano, this indicates a Lutheran influence, because faith – according to Catholic teaching – is the foundation stone or foundation of the building, the first stone on which the other Christian virtues are built. If someone uses the word keystone, they mean the last stone with which the building is completed, which is why love is the keystone; this not only completes the building and binds all the stones together, but it also makes faith perfect, such that St. Thomas states that love provides him with a virtuous character and life, while faith is nothing but a dead and useless stone without it.²⁰ Finally, Cano criticizes the statement that religious people and perfect Christians need not pay heed to the liturgical calendar; in other words, that they could ignore Sundays and church holidays “because for them all days are church holidays, as they always have joy in God.” In Cano’s eyes, this contempt for the ecclesiastical commandment to honor Sundays and holidays could be traced not only to the Alumbrados, but also to the Lutherans, for they disseminate “a false freedom of the spirit, which lies in freeing the perfect [Christians] and the clergy from the external rites and ceremonies of the church” (Lutherus docuit praeceptum hoc de externo cultu ces-

 Cf. the Spanish version of this assessment in Fermín Caballero, Conquenses ilustres, vol. 2, Melchor Cano (Madrid: Colegio de Sordo-Mudos y de Ciegos, 1871), 536 – 615, here 543. On Cano’s assessment, cf. Ulrich Horst, “Die Loci Theologici Melchior Canos und sein Gutachten zum Catechismo Christiano Bartolomé Carranzas,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Phliosophie und Theologie 36 (1989): 47– 92.  Caballero, Conquenses ilustres, 580.  Caballero, Conquenses ilustres, 581.  Caballero, Conquenses ilustres, 559.

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sase quo ad perfectos christianos, quibus non opus praeciptur, sed quies).²¹ In Cano’s eyes, such disregard for church attendance is “heretical” because – just like the neglect of oral prayer – it leads to “Quietism,” which he locates at the intersection between Alumbradism and Lutheranism.²² However, Cano’s narrow field of vision is evident here: the freedom of a Christian, which is in fact highly venerated in the Catholic tradition, is – in this difficult period – identified exclusively with the Alumbrados and Lutherans. The same Cano who critiqued Carranza’s book so forcefully (in rigore ut iacent) and found in favor of the heresy charges in the cases against the Protestants of Valladolid left a lasting mark on the post-Tridentine paradigm of Catholic theology with his work De locis theologicis, which was published posthumously in 1563. Cano’s book presents the Catholic self-image in its response to the Reformation – for example, when he writes that Holy Scripture, or at least the New Testament, was created in the lap of the Catholic Church. Scripture did not exist before the Church, which is why the Catholic Church － represented by the various levels of the magisterium － is the legitimate interpreter of Scripture: that same interpretation of the Church is the genuine interpretation of the Scriptures, out of which – however much the heretic may gnash his teeth – not only will a certain sign of the ‘Catholic truth’ be obtained, but also the distinction of this true argument, which we seek in order to demonstrate those theological conclusions […] The Church therefore guards both and will always guard both: both the word and the Spirit of the Word.²³

While Cano goes on to commend the study of biblical languages, he asserts that in all things to do with faith, it is not permissible to correct the Latin Bible using Hebrew or Greek editions. His theological methodology lies in the search for positive authorities or sources for the statements of faith. The hierarchical sequence of sources is defined as follows: Holy Scripture, tradition, the magisterium of the Catholic Church, the magisterium of the councils, the magisterium of the Roman Church, the magisterium of the church fathers, the magisterium of the scholastic theologians (including the canonists), natural reason, the authority of the philosophers, and the authority of history.²⁴ Cano’s methodological hierarchy is a Catholic response to the Reformers’ overemphasis on Scripture and simultaneous disregard for tradition, magisterium, and reason. He emphasizes that the first two loci – scripture and tradition – are very different from the other sources in quality. Above all, they are the foundation of the entire theological construction: “These [loci] are the foundation of the theological and church teachings that Christ set out through the apostles; the others, regardless of whether they are the councils, the popes, or the holy church fathers, simply build    

Caballero, Conquenses ilustres, 572. Caballero, Conquenses ilustres, 593. Cano, De Locis, 12.5:717. Cano, De Locis, 1.3:9 – 10.

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on them.”²⁵ In other words, “[o]f the ten theological sources, the first two contain the ‘true and legitimate principles’ of theology, while the last three contain the ‘external and foreign [principles],’ and the five in the middle contain either the interpretation of the true principles or the conclusions that arise and can be drawn from them.”²⁶ Through this it is evident that Cano – in contrast to Melanchthon or Calvin, whom he calls “very eloquent, if also impious men”²⁷ – does not intend to present a survey of the most important theological questions concerning individual confessional identity, but instead seeks to set out the methodology of Catholic theology, not least as a response to the Protestant way of doing theology. Cano himself states that he wants to accomplish something similar for theology to that which Aristotle achieved with his Topics – to establish general sources from which the arguments to prove or disprove any theological question could be drawn:²⁸ “For it is one thing to pile up arguments or to scatter them and squander them, and it is another thing to have them at your command, with method and technical knowledge.”²⁹ Cano had not only read Melanchthon and Calvin, he had also – above all – read Luther, whom he repeatedly calls a “flagbearer of the German heresy” (signifer impietatis Germanica) and a student of John Wycliffe.³⁰ Of all the Reformers, Cano cites Luther most frequently – naturally in order to distance himself from Luther or to reveal the illogicality or carelessness of Luther’s argumentation. On the subject of the interpretation of Holy Scripture, Cano criticizes Luther’s opinion that the laity possess sufficient reason to be able to interpret Scripture on their own.³¹ Moreover, Cano reproaches Luther for behaving like a conceited victor, as if the battle had been won before it had even begun. In addition, Cano accuses Luther of rejecting the canonicity of the Epistle of James, arguing that – contrary to the many positive testimonies in church history, including all the councils – Luther evidently only trusted his own upstanding and uncorrupted testimony (integro atque incorrupto).³² Cano disputes Luther’s opinion that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by Paul or by any other of the apostles, arguing that Luther asserts this because (according to Cano) the letter contradicts his emphasis on justification by faith alone. Cano believes that Luther argues frivolously here³³ – yet to this day, Bible scholars have been unable to confirm the identity of the author of this letter, and they suspect that in fact it was not Paul, but instead a Jewish Christian from

 Cano, De Locis, 12.2:690.  Cano, De Locis, 12.2:692.  Cano, De Locis, 1.3:9.  See Cano, De Locis, 1.3:9.  Cano, De Locis, 12.2:681.  See, among others, Cano, De Locis, 8.1:455.  Cano, De Locis, 2.6:41: “Quo testimonio Lutherus quasi re confecta gloriatur, et nondum collata manu, tamquam ferox victor insultat.”  See Cano, De Locis, 2.9:69.  Cano, De Locis, 2.10:77– 78.

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among Paul’s followers. Cano expresses the view that it would be absurd to listen only to Luther or Oecolompadius, off in a corner of the church ranting about church tradition and their respect for the fathers of the faith since the time of the apostles.³⁴ Among other things, Cano says that, where the true church is concerned, simply the fact that one group calls itself “catholic” – meaning universal or for the whole world – while the other describes itself as “Lutheran” demonstrates that the true church can only be the Catholic Church.³⁵ With reference to the authority of the councils, Cano accuses Luther of dismissing – as usual – a profound subject with a single sentence (for example, the “errant” Council of Constance), yet providing absolutely no proof: Saepius erraverunt concilia, praesertim Constantiense, quod omnium impiissime erravit. ³⁶ Luther’s criticism of scholasticism receives similar treatment, described as “ignorance of the truth and useless sophistry” (asserit Theologiam scholasticam esse aliud nihil quam ignorantiam veritatis inanemque fallaciamn).³⁷ With sardonic irony, Cano says of himself that since he has been thoroughly trained in scholastic disputation, he will not bring his full dialectical arsenal to bear against poor Luther.³⁸ Luther – so argues Cano – had not only claimed that philosophy is dangerous for theologians, but that in fact all speculative disciplines are fallacious.³⁹ Such a statement would certainly have exasperated Cano, who counted human reason among the ten sources of theology. Moreover, he cannot refrain from applying his scholastic aristocratism to the issues at hand; he claims that in Germany, this has led to a situation in which carpenters who have learned the New Testament off by heart are considered great and illustrious theologians: “Even simple women who can reel off the gospels and the Pauline epistles by heart have challenged the theologians of all the universities to disputes, and they dare to attack men – not as honorable, but as corrupted women […] Indeed, this is the Lutheran theology.”⁴⁰

3 The Franciscans of the Mexico Mission: Hernán Cortés as a Providential Figure against Luther While the scholastic theologians at the universities in Spanish America continued to swim in Cano’s wake,⁴¹ the Franciscans of the Mexico mission developed a compen-

 Cano, De Locis, 3.6:204– 05.  See Cano, De Locis, 4.6:287.  Cano, De Locis, 5.1:294.  Cano, De Locis, 8.1:455.  Cano, De Locis, 8.1:455 – 56.  Cano, De Locis, 9.3:499.  Cano, De Locis, 9.3:500.  On Mexico, see Alicia Mayer, Lutero en el Paraíso. La Nueva España en el espejo del reformador alemán (México : Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2008). On Spanish America more generally,

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satory providential theology to explain the successes of their mission. This self-confidence can be found, for example, in the foreword to Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (1570) by the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún, the greatest ethnographer of the religion and culture of the Aztecs: “It seems certain that our dear Lord God, in these our times, in these lands, and with this people, wishes to return to the Church that of which the devil has robbed it in England, Germany, and France, in Asia and Palestine. Therefore, we are profoundly obligated to thank Our Lord and to work in faith in this, our New Spain.”⁴² The Franciscan Jerónimo de Mendieta develops this more fully in his text Historia eclesiástica indiana (1596). Here he compares Hernán Cortés – the conqueror of Mexico, whom he presents as a new Moses who will free the Indians from their Egyptian servitude – with the damage that damned Luther has caused in old Christendom. Furthermore, he develops this parallel to the extent of insisting that Cortés was born in the same year as Luther (1483) – although we now know that Cortés was in fact born in 1485 – and the conquest of Mexico began in the same year as Luther’s famous “Tower Experience” (1519): It is highly noteworthy that, without doubt, God chose this brave Captain D. Hernán Cortés as his special instrument to clear the gate and the path for the preachers of the gospel in this New World, so that the Catholic Church could be reconstituted with the conversion of many souls and recompensed for the losses and for the things that that damned Luther has caused at the same time in old Christendom. Thus the loss on the one side is compensated by the gain on the other. Indeed, it is curious that in the same year in which Luther was born in Eisleben, a town in Saxony, Hernán Cortés saw the light of the world for the first time in the Spanish town of Medellín: the former would bring confusion to the world and draw under the banner of the devil many believers who had been Catholic ever since the time of their parents and grandparents and even longer than that; the latter would shepherd into the Church numerous people who, since time immemorial, have been under the rule of Satan, trapped in vice and blinded by idolatry. And so, at the same time – that is, 1519 – that Luther began to corrupt the gospel for believers who had received it and known it from time immemorial, Cortés began to proclaim it faithfully and honestly among people who had never before had knowledge of it and had never heard Christian preaching.⁴³

This confidence can be found in the Catholic artwork of the Baroque period that was most often created in the Spanish territories (including those overseas) and belongs to the “Church triumphant” genre of art, depicting allegories of Catholic triumph over heathenism, idolatry, and heresy.⁴⁴ It is only in nineteenth-century Protestant see Josep Ignasi Saranyana et al., eds., Teología en América Latina, 4 vols. (Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 1999 – 2008).  Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España. Ed de J. C. Temprano (Crónicas de América 55a), (Madrid: Historia 16, 1990), 6.  Jerónimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, 2 vols, ed. Francisco Solano y Pérez-Lila (Madrid: Atlas, 1973), here 1:107– 08 (bk. 3, ch. 1).  Cf. several examples from the Mexican Baroque period in Mayer, Lutero en el Paraíso, in the image insert between 288 – 89.

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historical philosophy and historiography – for example, in the works of Hegel and Leopold von Ranke – that the interpretation of the early modern period is reduced to an active, vibrant Reformation on the one hand and a reactionary, dark Counter-Reformation on the other hand. For Hegel, the Reformation was famously “the all-enlightening sun […] after the long, eventful, and terrible night of the Middle Ages.”⁴⁵

4 Jaime Balmes: An Ultramontane Apologist for Catholic Influence in Europe It is not easy to categorize the Catalan priest Jaime Balmes (1810 – 1848).⁴⁶ He is a good philosophical representative for ultramontanism and the Catholic apologetics of the nineteenth century, yet his work El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo en sus relaciones con la civilización europea (1842) is less a controversial theological tract than a historical philosophical essay with affinities to, but also differences from, the thought of Chateaubriand – not least as a response to Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe (1828) by the French Calvinist François Guizot (1787– 1874). Guizot writes of European history as marching “along God’s paths,” in accordance with providence, on a foundation of Protestantism, liberalism, rationalism, and progressive thought. Protestantism, according to Guizot, threw open the door to tolerance and rationality and thus formed the basis for this development. In contrast to this, Balmes attempts to set the record straight in his work by providing a Catholic perspective on the modern development of Europe. Intolerance is part of human nature, he says, and the blame for this is historically much more the fault of Protestantism than of Catholicism. The Reformation was thus not a true reform, for “to reform does not mean to destroy.”⁴⁷ In response to Guizot, Balmes defends his thesis that Protestantism did not establish freedom of conscience, but rather that freedom of conscience established the conditions for Protestantism. Thus Protestantism was an effect rather than a cause. The lack of an authority principle, he claims, led to the anarchic faith of Protestantism.⁴⁸ It was this that threw European civilization off course and caused “three centuries full of evil.”⁴⁹ In the first part of his work, Balmes refers to Bossuet to illustrate his view that the fallacy of Protestant teachings results from its perpetual change and alteration. In contrast to this, Balmes praises the principle of authority and unity embodied by the Catholic Church in questions of

 G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), 491.  See Javier Barraycoa Martínez, “El Balmes apologeta en El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo,” Espíritu 60, no. 142 (2011): 379 – 98, here 381– 85.  Jaime Balmes, El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo (Madrid: BAC, 1949), 685.  See Barraycoa Martínez, Balmes, 393.  Balmes, El protestantismo, 685.

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faith. It is this, he maintains – and not Protestantism, liberalism, or the class struggle –, which has provided the true engine of history. Thus Balmes attempts to invert Guizot’s argument – and in doing so demonstrates his talent for intellectual polemic. Ultimately, he sees in Protestantism not the foundation of political freedoms, but instead the conditions that enable the establishment of tyrannical, totalitarian powers, against which he defends the Catholic teachings of tyrannicide and the right to resistance.⁵⁰ Overall, Balmes’ work represents a historical-philosophical apology in the spirit of the age; like other Catholics (such as Chateaubriand, Donoso Cortés, and Joseph de Maistre), his is a reaction against the Hegelian historical-philosophical interpretation proffered by early nineteenth-century Protestant authors, who – as discussed above – saw in the Reformation the high point of the history of Christianity and of Western civilization.

5 Miguel de Unamuno and José Luis Aranguren: An Existential Perspective on Protestantism Both Miguel de Unamuno and José Luis Aranguren belong to that group of twentiethcentury Spanish philosophers who discussed Protestantism in depth, including its Lutheran strand. Unamuno (1864 – 1936) did so rather sporadically in his essay La agonía del cristianismo (1925), while Aranguren (1909 – 1996) wrote extensively on the subject, including in his groundbreaking and frequently cited work Catolicismo y protestantismo como formas de existencia (1952). Unamuno defined religion sui generis in his 1907 essay Mi religión, explicitly denying that he was being labelled and defending his individuality and uniqueness, further declaring that nobody had been able to persuade him of either the existence or the non-existence of God: “And if I do believe in God, or at least believe that I believe in Him [creo creer en El], then it is above all because I want God to exist and also because He has revealed Himself to me from heart to heart, in the Gospels, through Christ and in history. It is a matter of the heart.”⁵¹ In the chapter titled “Word and Letter” (Verbo y letra) in his book La agonía del cristianismo, he addresses Protestantism as the “tyranny of the letter.”⁵² He opens the chapter with a quotation from the prologue to the Book of John and comments on those words: “And this word that was made flesh died after his suffering, his

 See Barraycoa Martínez, Balmes, 395.  Miguel de Unamuno, “Mi religión,” in Obras completas (Madrid: Biblioteca Castro, 2008), 9:51– 56.  de Unamuno, “La agonía del cristianismo,” in Obras completas, 10:535 – 620, here 557– 62, esp. 559.

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agony; then the word became the letter.”⁵³ Unamuno calls the Reformation instigated by Hus, Wycliffe, and Luther “the greatest of all heresies” after Arianism: The Reformation, which was an explosion of the letter, attempted to bring the word to the fore, to rescue the word from the book, to rescue the Gospel from history; but instead it revived the old contradiction. And then the agony of Christendom truly took place! The Protestants, who had instituted the sacrament of the Word – a sacrament that killed the Eucharist – chained the word to the letter. And they made it their task to teach the people how to read more than how to hear.⁵⁴

For Unamuno, hearing the word with the heart – and this is where the mystic tradition comes through a bit in his work – is the approach epitomized in John 14:23, the favorite quotation of Teresa of Ávila: “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” Teresa experienced Christ as a “living book”: “His Majesty had become the true book in which I saw the truths.”⁵⁵ Thus perhaps a basic tenet of Christianity shines through much more in Teresa’s christocentric thought than in Luther’s concept of sola scriptura, and it was this that appealed to Unamuno: Christianity is not simply a scriptural religion; God’s Word did not descend from heaven one night in Bethlehem as “text,” like the Quran on the night of al-Qadr (Surah 97). For Christians, the word became flesh/human in Jesus Christ. He is the living Word of God – and he shares this directly “from heart to heart” with his own people when the Catholic Church sets up barriers to accessing Scripture. Aranguren had already focused his attention on the Reformation in his philosophy dissertation, which was published in 1954 as El protestantismo y la moral. However, his 1952 book Catolicismo y protestantismo como formas de existencia had a greater impact. Prior to the Council, it was more or less required reading for progressive Hispanic Catholics. In the foreword to the 1980 edition, he explains that the book bears the mark of the times in which it was written, which were influenced by existential philosophy.⁵⁶ With reference to the German terms Stimmung and Haltung, which he translates into Spanish as talante, he attempts to establish something akin to an existential correspondence between Luther’s theology (among other things) and his way of life, and between the Catholic Tridentine theology and the spi de Unamuno, “La agonía del cristianismo,” 557.  de Unamuno, “La agonía del cristianismo,” 561. For a more extensive discussion of Unamuno’s view of Protestantism in his works, cf. Manuel Gutiérrez Marín, Unamuno und der Protestantismus (Utrecht. 1963), among others.  Teresa de Jesús, Obras completas. Eds. Efrén de la Madre de Dios / Otger Steggink (Madrid: BAC, 9 1997), here “Libro de mi vida,” 26.5. Here Teresa reports on her sadness when the servants of the Inquisition came to her in her cloister cell and took away several books in Spanish, which had given her much comfort. But in the same moment, she felt solace in the immediacy of the mystic experience: “Then the Lord said to me: ‘Do not be distressed, for I will give to you a living book.’”  See José L. Aranguren, Catolicismo y protestantismo como formas de existencia (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1980), 10.

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rit of the Baroque. Even in 1980, he was aware that the Catholic environment was still very far from being able to do hermeneutic justice to Luther (or to Calvin, or to Jansenism).⁵⁷ Aranguren – now a critical, post-conciliar Catholic – thus strikes a blow for heterodoxy (“heterodoxy is the salt that maintains the Church’s freshness”), calls Luther “the greatest of all heretics,” and argues for “a pluriform communion, a brotherliness among the various decentralized ‘churches.’” In his eyes, this comprises “the only practicable alternative to the ecclesial-curial absolutism of the Vatican.”⁵⁸ The most interesting aspect of his work is how Aranguren sees in Luther the foundation for the philosophical development of Hegel, Kant, and Kierkegaard. Aranguren summarizes his view of Luther, which does not quite fall into line with recent Luther research, very briefly at the end of his chapter on “Luther and His Theology.” He views Luther’s religious existence as polarized between two extremes of devotional experience: “on the one hand is the tragic awareness in life of human evil, human enmity with God, the impossibility of being able to satisfy God, the sinfulness of our existence, which nothing and nobody can redeem: the theology of the Cross”; and on the other hand is devotion and piety, “the pure dedication, trust, and comfort in God: the theology of solace.”⁵⁹ Confronted with this dichotomy, Aranguren calls Luther’s Christianity “his only psychologically feasible possibility for salvation, but also the heaviest burden that has ever been laid on the shoulders of human beings.”⁶⁰

6 Ricardo García-Villoslada: At the Cutting Edge of Catholic Church History In 1973, the Jesuit and church historian Ricardo García-Villoslada published his twovolume reference work Martín Lutero. ⁶¹ The opening lines announce a certain sympathy and a tone that had thus far been lacking among Hispanic Catholic authors: “In this work, I intend to tell the dramatic story of a person with one of the richest and most forceful personalities that the fertile German nation has ever produced.”⁶² Using documentary evidence, García-Villoslada aims to present a critical biography of Luther from his birth onward and to do him justice through frequent citation and quotation. At the same time, the author declares that he will frequently withhold his judgment and commentary “for fear of a potentially passionate subjectivism”; he

 Aranguren, Catolicismo y protestantismo, 10.  Aranguren, Catolicismo y protestantismo, 11.  Aranguren, Catolicismo y protestantismo, 76.  Aranguren, Catolicismo y protestantismo, 77. On religion in Aranguren’s work, cf. also Adela Cortina, “J. L. Aranguren: Religion pensada, religión vivida,” Isegoría. Revista de Filosofía, Moral y Política 52 (2015): 167– 85.  Ricardo García-Villoslada, Martín Lutero, vol. 1, El fraile hambriento de Dios; vol. 2, En lucha contra Roma (Madrid : Editorial Católica, 1973).  García-Villoslada, El fraile hambriento de Dios, 15.

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explains that he prefers simply to report the facts and attitudes, although “it runs the risk of making my report impersonal and rather more analytical than synthetic.”⁶³ He is less concerned with presenting an easy read than he is with producing an academically useful work. García-Villoslada engaged with Luther at the cutting edge of contemporary research – as mentioned above, for the first time in Hispanic culture. Not only did he examine the scholarly contributions of Catholic authors such as Joseph Lortz, Erwin Iserloh, and Otto H. Pesch, he also analyzed the latest Protestant research on Luther. The result is impressive, even if the modern reader finds the author’s aforementioned restraint occasionally regrettable. García-Villoslada pays tribute to the young Luther as a mystic with a yearning for closeness to God and respects the reformer – including the momentous radical turn his thought took – even though he, as a Jesuit, naturally leans toward a different view of the Church. García-Villoslada’s work is still the best Spanish study on Luther and has had considerable influence on other authors, such as Rafael Lazcano.⁶⁴

7 Final Remarks The reception of Luther in Spain and in the Hispanic world more generally – or, to put it another way, the entire confrontation between Protestants and Catholics in the early modern period – is in part the result of a disruption in communication, with the reasons for this rooted in religion, power politics, the history of mentalities, and cultural history. In the process, what was overlooked was that all the sixteenthcentury reform movements, including the Catholic Reformation, were essentially a struggle for the very essence of Christianity (substantia christianismi, as it was then termed). The perspectives of particular groups came to be held supreme internally and thus led adherents to overlook their fundamental similarities with the other side. For centuries, the various sides of the argument remained stuck in repetitive patterns of controversial theology that promoted a distorted perception of the other – right up to the middle of the twentieth century, when scholars finally began to engage with the true image of the other side, with objective knowledge and without polemic.

 García-Villoslada, El fraile hambriento de Dios, 22.  See Rafael Lazcano, Biografía de Martín Lutero (1483 – 1546) (Madrid: Revista Agustiniana, 2009).

Christine Helmer

Luther in America

Luther was probably unaware of America, but soon enough America would become aware of him. As Lutherans from Germany and the Nordic countries settled in the new lands, they brought their Lutheran inheritances with them, and then they changed and adapted these inheritances in relation to the social, cultural, and political environment in which they found themselves. Thus Luther in America, or the way Luther is interpreted by American Lutheran theologians and scholars, has emerged as a unique dimension of the ongoing discussion of Luther, just as Luther continues to be used in the United States as a theological resource for addressing pressing questions about religion, culture, and politics today. My purpose in this chapter is to highlight the accomplishments of Luther scholars in the second half of the twentieth century in America, more specifically in North America, that have made a significant impact on the ways Luther has entered the global conversation. My focus is theological rather than historical. I will outline movements which I will identify with specific persons as representative of them, rather than survey the many individual scholars writing on Luther in America.¹ In this spirit, I address four different “Luthers” in the pages ahead. The “Law/Gospel Luther” represents a strand of American scholarship on Luther that places the law/gospel distinction as the most important aspect of Luther’s reformation thought. This Luther is characterized by the American reception of the Lutheran theology of Werner Elert, the most famous Lutheran theologian of post-World War II Germany and teacher of many American Lutherans who went to Germany to study with him. The “Catholic Luther” is studied by another strand of Lutheran theologians primarily associated with the contemporary American theologian George A. Lindbeck. Theologians in this group call into critical question the construction of Luther as a modern Protestant theologian, which has been the preoccupation of German Luther scholarship since the early twentieth century, and instead locate Luther within a research agenda motivated by ecumenical proposals for rapprochement between Lutherans and Roman Catholics. The “Feminist Luther” is the Luther studied by contemporary feminist theologians in America, who are critical of Luther scholarship that persists in underscoring male structures of oppression. The essay concludes with the “Global Luther.” Here I consider how Luther scholars in America are contributing theologically creative and historically grounded studies of topics that are important in the world today.

 More on the topic of “Luther in America” can be found in my article “The American Luther,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 47 no. 2 (Summer 2008): 114– 24. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-070

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1 The Law/Gospel Luther The post-World War II years, and in particular the decade of the 1950s, were characterized by new developments in the academic ambitions of Luther scholars and Lutheran theologians in America. Educated at top-tier universities, many of the theologians who came of age during this decade advanced to academic positions in major theological seminaries and university divinity schools. They taught biblical studies, church history, and systematic theology to a young generation of clergy, church leaders, and theologians in many different Christian denominations. Jaroslav Pelikan, Sydney Ahlstrom, and George A. Lindbeck at Yale Divinity School and Yale University, Martin Marty at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Ronald F. Thiemann at Harvard Divinity School were among the intellectual leaders of the postwar Lutheran theologians who had broken through the denominational barriers and helped to shape theological conversations in the broader American context. Other theologians, also educated at top research institutions, taught in Lutheran seminaries. While this period also witnessed a significant and consequential ecclesial differentiation in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church when particular theologians formed the “Seminary in Exile” over issues of biblical authorship, it was this generation of Lutheran theologians that brought Luther out from the confines of narrow denominational interests and into the mainstream. While Lutheran theologians were entering broader theological conversations in America, the “Luther” they studied was, for the most part, the product of German scholarship. As Hartmut Lehmann writes in his book, Martin Luther in the American Imagination (1988), the cultural transfer of knowledge from Europe to the United States during the post-World War II period was one-sided. While on the whole German Luther scholars paid no attention to American scholarship, American Lutherans tended to think that German scholarship was superior, and thus cited it more often than they did their own research.² The two exceptions – distinctly American works on Luther – were, in fact, not written by Lutherans at all. Roland Bainton, a Quaker and church historian at Yale Divinity School, first published his biography of Luther, Here I Stand, in 1950.³ This book was translated into many languages and is read around the world even today. The European psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson had a Jewish Danish mother. His psychoanalytic study, Young Man Luther, published in 1958, rapidly became one of the best-known books on Luther far beyond Luther circles.⁴ Erikson’s book met with resistance among Luther scholars. Its psychological focus was perceived to call into question the fundamental category that Lutherans had learned from Luther to apply to the human condition. These Lutheran theolo-

 Hartmut Lehmann, Martin Luther in the American Imagination, American Studies/A Monograph Series 63 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1988), 11– 12.  Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York: Meridian, 1955).  Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1993).

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gians had been taught to distinguish sharply between the realm of the world and the realm of grace. Grace was a reality entirely distinct from the world, which included human psychology. According to these theologians, grace identified God’s salvific action to humans. It could not be integrated into the world without destroying its divine character. Any hint that human psychology was somehow affected by grace threatened to undermine the fundamental claim that God’s grace could not be appropriated with any permanence into human consciousness. Rather, grace was to be repeatedly communicated to humans through the “external” word. The gospel preached to sinners creates faith that justifies. Yet this justifying faith is an impermanent condition, a function of the divine reality, remaining necessarily external to any human claim on it. The Luther scholars who rejected not only Erikson’s argument, but an entire research project that connected Luther’s theological genius to his psycho-spiritual personality, had learned their Luther in Germany. Many theologians of the post-World War II generation had studied in Germany on year-long grants. Erlangen, known as a center of confessional Lutheranism, was the preferred destination. It was there that American Lutherans encountered Werner Elert (1885 – 1954), regarded as the most prominent Luther scholar in postwar Germany. It was from Elert that American Luther scholars learned to apply Luther’s distinction between law and gospel not just to the Bible, but to all of reality. Elert’s understanding of Luther’s law/gospel dialectic was far removed from what Luther actually meant. Elert’s theological perspective had been shaped by the experience of World War I, as had that of an entire generation of Protestant theologians. This postwar generation was fixed on the crisis that had broken down the synthesis achieved by earlier Protestant theologians between theology and culture. Now, instead, God and world were to be radically distinguished. God’s judgment on the world emerged as a key theme in their thought. Luther was appropriated during this time, not so much as a historical figure, but as a contemporary dialogue partner who facilitated the construction of a new way of doing theology after Germany’s cultural and political breakdown. Elert’s constructive theology is identified by two structural markers that, as German Lutheran theologian Oswald Bayer has shown, Elert developed early on his career, already in 1921.⁵ According to Elert, there is a fundamental “diastase” – meaning separation or disagreement – between two sides of God. The divine wrath is expressed as the divine judgment on the world through the law; the gospel revealed in Christ establishes peace between God and the sinner. Wrath and the gospel identify two aspects of God’s relation to the world that cannot be relativized, as Bayer interprets them, in a “monistic” synthesis.⁶

 Oswald Bayer, “Werner Elert,” in Theologie, Handbuch Systematischer Theologie 1 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1994), 281– 309.  Bayer, Theologie, 295.

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The idea of “diastase” was Elert’s critical response to the crisis of the postwar years, and he continued to develop this central insight through the 1940s, during and after World War II. The discussions among Protestant theologians in the 1930s had to do with the question of response to the cooption of the German church by Nazi ideology. These discussions, concluding with the Barmen Declaration of 1934, opened a rift between adherents to Karl Barth’s theological insistence on Jesus Christ as the one word of God in both law and gospel and those Lutheran theologians who identified both words as distinct.⁷ Law and gospel, these Lutheran theologians insisted, each had specific functions in the world; law judges the world in its sin, while gospel bestows forgiveness. The danger that Lutheran theologians – such as Elert – discerned in Barth’s position was that the gospel’s integrity as a divine gift was compromised if it was confused with law, and the law’s severity would be effaced if it was understood in tandem with the gospel. It was only a short step from “diastase” to a near-hermetic theological worldview. American Lutheran theologian David Yeago has pointed out the dominant tenor among twentieth-century confessional Lutherans that “have, indeed, widely assumed that the law/gospel distinction is the proper structuring horizon of all Christian thought and action.”⁸ The result is “a kind of ontology of human existence”⁹ that separates the realm of law, or the world, from the gospel, the realm of divine agency that can never take hold in the world. Lutheran theologians in America, inspired by Elert, underscored the tension, contrast, or even opposition between both realms. Gerhard Forde, for example, applied the division between the two realms to the knowledge of God. Making use of the opposition in Luther’s Heidelberg Disputations between the theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross, Forde used the language of “combat” between the “theology of glory” as “virtual catchall for all theologies and religions” and the cross that is set “apart from and over against all of these.”¹⁰ Thus a fundamental and irreconcilable opposition was driven between sin and grace, law and gospel, world and cross. The contrast also characterizes a dominant strand in Lutheran homiletic theory. The work of German immigrant and American Lutheran theologian C. W. F. Walther was popular in Lutheran seminaries. In his text on law and gospel, Walther casts the opposition in particularly vehement language. Insisting that the law must be preached in “full sternness,” he states that “[i]f you do this, you will be handling a sharp knife that cuts into the life of people […] From the effects of your preaching they will go down on their knees at home” and “see how awfully contaminated with

 See Matthew Becker, “Werner Elert (1885 – 1954),” in Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians, ed. Mark Mattes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 95 – 135, esp. 113 – 14.  David S. Yeago, “Gnosticism, Antinomianism, and Reformation Theology: Reflections on the Costs of a Construal,” Pro Ecclesia 2 no. 1 (Winter 1993): 39.  Yeago, “Gnosticism,” 41.  Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 2.

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sins they were and how sorely they needed the gospel.”¹¹ While Walther’s work prescribed the law/gospel distinction as a fundamental category for preaching, the recent translations into English of three books by Oswald Bayer underscore the importance of the law/gospel distinction as central to contemporary Lutheran theology.¹² Bayer develops his central insight into Luther’s understanding of the gospel as the word of promise that creates forgiveness in the oral declaration of it in the liturgy. This word of the gospel is prepared by the word of the law that condemns the sinner’s attempts at self-justification. While American Lutheran theologians have for the past half century been inspired by Elert’s distinction, they have been for the most part ignorant of his political commitments. It was the Canadian historian James Stayer who first documented Elert’s connection to the Nazis during Germany’s Third Reich. Elert had drafted the “Ansbach Memorandum” on June 11, 1934, a document that Stayer shows was a response to the Barmen Declaration (May 31, 1934), “stak[ing] out an orthodox Lutheran tradition that was pro-Nazi, although distinct from that of the German Christians and their Luther Renaissance advisers.”¹³ Elert had signed this document together with his colleague in Erlangen, the Luther scholar Paul Althaus (1888 – 1966). Like Elert’s works, Althaus’ Introduction to Luther’s Theology, first translated into English in 1966, was widely read in America.¹⁴ Yet Althaus had also allied himself with National Socialism and signed the Ansbach Memorandum after two drafts, although he allegedly expressed criticisms of Nazi racial politics and the theological distortions of German Christians. The law/gospel dialectic has been criticized in recent years, not only for its expansion into an ontological category, but for its anti-Semitic dimension. The Swedish bishop and American New Testament scholar Krister Stendahl identified the antiSemitism at stake in the Lutheran theological (mis)understanding of the term “law.” Stendahl clarified the historical difference between Paul’s view of law and Luther’s idiosyncratic second use of the law, namely its accusing function, and thereby

 C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1928), 79, 81, and 83 (the reference is to the English translation of the 1897 lectures); cited in Marit Trelstad, “Charity Terror Begins at Home: Luther and the ‘Terrifying and Killing’ Law,” in Lutherrenaissance: Past and Present, eds. Christine Helmer and Bo Kristian Holm, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 106 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 247– 48.  Oswald Bayer, Living By Faith: Justification and Sanctification, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Lutheran Quarterly Books (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003); Bayer, Theology the Lutheran Way, ed. and trans. Jeffrey G. Silcock and Mark C. Mattes, Lutheran Quarterly Books (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007); Bayer, Martin Luther: A Contemporary Interpretation, trans. Thomas H. Trapp, Lutheran Quarterly Books (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008).  James M. Stayer, Martin Luther, German Saviour: German Evangelical Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917 – 1933, McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 131.  Paul Althaus, Introduction to Luther’s Theology, trans. Robert C. Schulz (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1966).

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disaggregated two meanings of a term that Lutheran theologians had conflated into one term – law – that they deployed with an anti-Semitic connotation.¹⁵ The “law” in the law/gospel dialectic has to do with the divine law that accuses humans of their sin, not the laws of Jewish piety. George Lindbeck also opened another avenue for interpreting Luther on “law” – namely, the first use of the law or the political and civil law. In a powerful essay, Lindbeck shows how Luther approaches a rabbinic appreciation for the law in creation. Lindbeck argues that obedience to the commandments is made possible by divine goodness in the first place.¹⁶ Moving beyond the theological constriction of the law/gospel category is essential to bringing Luther’s more expansive theology into conversation with contemporary interests in interreligious dialogue, ethics, and politics. As American Lutheran scholars move away from their reliance on post-World War II German theologians for interpreting Luther, they are freer to discover other theological and cultural resources that are more helpful to articulating a theology that regards the world as the realm of both the human work for justice and divine work of grace.

2 The Catholic Luther While the “Protestant Luther” was cast in the mold of law and gospel, another side of the confessional coin would become the subject of a different inquiry. The search for the Catholic Luther began in the second half of the twentieth century, when German Roman Catholic theologian and Luther scholar Peter Manns proposed that Luther was not the vilified Protestant object of Catholic polemic, but a Catholic reformer who was deeply steeped in late medieval thought and piety.¹⁷ The “Catholic Luther” was also the object of research by two other European scholars who had made Luther’s connections to medieval thought their object of research. In 1963, Dutch historian and immigrant to America Heiko A. Oberman published what would become one of the most important books on Luther’s Catholic inheritances. The Harvest of Medieval Theology (1963) was a study of various aspects of Luther’s theology – for example, Christology and justification – that situated his thought in relation to its medieval “forerunners.”¹⁸ Oberman looked at the medieval thinkers Luther would have studied as a theology student in Erfurt, among them Peter Lombard, William Ock-

 Krister Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, and Other Essays (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1976).  George A. Lindbeck, “Martin Luther and the Rabbinic Mind,” in Understanding the Rabbinic Mind: Essays on the Hermeneutics of Max Kadushin, ed. Peter Ochs, South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 14 (Atlanta: Scholars Press 1990), 141– 64, esp. 155.  Peter Manns, ed., Martin Luther: “Reformator und Vater im Glauben”: Referate aus der Vortragsreihe des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, VIEG 18 (Suttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1995).  Heiko A. Oberman, Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963; repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000).

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ham, and Gabriel Biel. He showed that Luther’s reformation insights did not emerge in a vacuum, but were preceded and deeply informed by medieval questions regarding Christ’s nature, God’s will, and human freedom. In 1967, another important study on Luther and the Middle Ages was published. German Dominican Otto Hermann Pesch compared Luther and Aquinas on the doctrine of justification in a book that would become exemplary for comparative theology, Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin. ¹⁹ What for centuries had been considered a doctrine separating Lutherans from Roman Catholics turned out to be more similar than different when one investigated the theologians at the origins of respective positions on justification. Oberman’s work would go on to influence an entire generation of historians interested in dismantling the artificial separation between medieval studies and early modern studies, while Pesch would inspire American Lutheran theologians to articulate a new model for ecumenical theology. George Lindbeck had already been interested in the relationship between Luther and the late medieval thinker Pierre D’Ailly when he was invited as a Protestant observer to the Second Vatican Council. The council had a lasting impression on Lindbeck, and upon reading Pesch’s book, Lindbeck became convinced that the differences between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism had been overplayed through centuries of mutual polemic. The impasse of the Grunddifferenz, or foundational difference, between the two Western Christian churches had been a key idea in Protestant theology since at least Friedrich Schleiermacher. In § 24 of his Christian Faith, Friedrich Schleiermacher claimed that each proposition in Protestant theology must reflect the foundational opposition to Roman Catholic theology in view of the self–Christ–church relation. Protestants see the relationship between self and Christ as primary, while Catholics have it the other way around – the church mediates Christ to the believer.²⁰ While Schleiermacher averred that historical progress might eventually end in erasing the difference, the perceptions of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, at least in early nineteenth-century Prussia, assumed a radical distinction.

 Otto Hermann Pesch, Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin: Versuch eines systematisch-theologischen Dialogs, Walberger Studien/Theologische Reihe 4 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1967).  Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (1830/31), eds. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, trans. D. M. Baillie et al. (Edinburgh: Blackwell, 1999), 103, § 24, proposition: “In so far as the Reformation was not simply a purification and reaction from abuses which had crept in, but was the origination of a distinctive form of the Christian communion, the antithesis between Protestantism and Catholicism may provisionally be conceived thus: the former makes the individual’s relation to the Church dependent on his relation to Christ, while the latter contrariwise makes the individual’s relation to Christ dependent on his relation to the Church.” For a critical reading of Schleiermacher’s view of Catholicism, see Julia A. Lamm, “Schleiermacher on ‘The Roman Church’: Anti-Catholic Polemics, Ideology, and the Future of Historical-Empirical Dogmatics,” in Schleiermacher, the Study of Religion, and the Future of Theology: A Transatlantic Dialogue, eds. Brent W. Sockness and Wilhelm Gräb, TBT 148 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 243 – 56.

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Lindbeck challenged this theological assumption in his famous volume, The Nature of Doctrine, first published in 1984.²¹ Rather than viewing difference as constitutive, Lindbeck conceptualized differences between the Christian confessions in the analogy of a “language game.” Christians speak the same “language;” they all invoke terms like “the new creature in Christ” in ways that insist on Christ’s activity of freeing human persons for new life in him. Differences are thus not about which terms are used, but how they are used. The question of “how” presupposes a coherent manner of speaking that is informed by distinct rules. Words are meaningfully used as a function of the “semiotic system” in which they are deployed.²² Lindbeck refers to “grammar” in order to explain how different confessions deploy terms as a function of a constitutive grammar or linguistic structure. A confessional “grammar” structures the discourse particular to each confessional “language game.” Lindbeck’s proposal for ecumenical theology was thus to develop a theory of doctrine along the lines of his linguistic analogy. Doctrines function as the underlying grammar and regulate the deployment of terms within a particular confessional discursive system. Doctrines determine deployment of terms in ways that are unique to different confessions, yet as Christian doctrines, they are sufficiently similar to allow them to be identified as belonging to the Christian “language game.” Lindbeck’s new understanding of doctrine influenced a generation of ecumenical theologians and Luther scholars. Not only did Lindbeck’s proposal pave the way for the signing of the Joint Declaration between Lutherans and Roman Catholics on October 31, 1999,²³ but it inspired Lutherans to take Luther seriously as a Catholic reformer. David Yeago captured this ecumenical orientation in an article, “The Catholic Luther” (1996), by identifying the common Catholic root at the basis of the political and ecclesiastical division between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.²⁴ The study of Luther as a late medieval Catholic theologian, however, required learning nominalist philosophy – a task for which Luther scholars who had been socialized to see Luther as an early modern theologian were unequipped. British philosopher Graham White’s 1994 book, Luther as Nominalist: A Study of the Logical Methods Used in Martin Luther’s Disputations in the Light of Their Medieval Background, provided the philosophically rigorous precedent. White studied Luther’s late disputa-

 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1984). This volume was reprinted in a 25th anniversary edition, with a foreword by Bruce D. Marshall and a new afterword by the author (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009).  Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 114: “Meaning is more fully intratextual in semiotic systems […] than in other forms of ruled human behavior such as carpentry or transportation systems; but among semiotic systems, intertextuality (though still in an extended sense) is greatest in natural languages, cultures, and religions which (unlike mathematics) are potentially all-embracing and possess the property of reflexivity.”  For the full text, see Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, English-language edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000).  David S. Yeago, “The Catholic Luther,” First Things 61 (March 1996): 41.

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tions and showed that Luther applied philosophical-theological strategies from late medieval thinkers – such as William Ockham, Robert Holcot, and Pierre d’Ailly – to his articulation of the doctrines of Christ and the Trinity.²⁵ Luther did not see philosophy as the enemy of theology, but as its necessary helpmate in clarifying the logic and semantics operating in Christian doctrine. My own work on Luther’s understanding of the Trinity (1999) took up White’s foundational insights, and – in tandem with Marilyn McCord Adams’ two-volume 1989 work on William Ockham – I demonstrated that Luther’s speculative account of the Trinity was to be interpreted in the context of specific late medieval philosophical-theological debates.²⁶ A younger generation of talented Luther scholars is now further deepening our understanding of how Luther’s theology was deeply intertwined with questions in medieval philosophy. David Luy,²⁷ Candace Kohli, and Aaron Moldenhauer are all working on doctrine in Luther’s disputations.²⁸ They are making use of resources in late medieval philosophy that Finnish Luther scholar Risto Saarinen²⁹ – together with philosophers and theologians from the University of Helsinki – have compiled in recent years, in addition to working on texts by Gabriel Biel and other nominalist thinkers. The Catholic Luther is an exciting historical and philosophically sophisticated research program that will preoccupy both Luther scholars and medieval philosophers for many years to come.

3 The Feminist Luther For centuries, the main players in Luther scholarship have been men. Men enjoyed access to higher education, which gave them the necessary tools for conducting theological research and the credentials to teach theology. These generations of male scholars enjoyed the benefits of patriarchal institutions of higher learning, gaining access to university positions in which the majority of Luther scholars were men.  Graham White, Luther as Nominalist a Study of the Logical Methods Used in Martin Luther’s Disputations in the Light of Their Medieval Background, Schriften der Luther-Agricola Gesellschaft 30 (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola Society, 1994).  Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham, 2 vols., Publications in Medieval Studies (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989); Christine Helmer, The Trinity and Martin Luther: A Study of the Relationship Between Genre, Language, and the Trinity in Luther’s Late Works (1523 – 1546), Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte/Abteilung Abendländische Religionsgeschichte 174 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1999; new ed. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).  See David J. Luy, Dominus Mortis: Martin Luther on the Incorruptibility of God in Christ (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014); Candace completed her dissertation, “Help for the Good: Martin Luther’s Understanding of Human Agency and the Law in the Antinomian Disputations (1537– 40)” at Northwestern University in 2017; Aaron Moldenhauer is currently completing his dissertation, “The Metaphysics of Martin Luther’s Christology,” at Northwestern University.  See the recent conference “Beyond Oberman: Luther and the Middle Ages,” which was inspired by Oberman’s and White’s works; available at: http://sites.northwestern.edu/luther2016/.  An exemplary book in this regard is Risto Saarinen, Weakness of Will in Reformation and Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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Men have been privileged in church leadership as well. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that women could be ordained in some Lutheran churches around the world. Even so, women’s ordination – as the recent case in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia (ELCL) has made clear – is not regarded as a right in perpetuity, but as one that may be revoked, as it was there in June 2016.³⁰ Ordination continues to be denied to women in two Lutheran churches in the United States, the Missouri and the Wisconsin synods. The faculty at these seminaries is also exclusively male. Theological education and ordination are, however, merely two issues that affect the dominant gendered representation in Luther scholarship. Other factors – social and cultural – continue to shape the content of Luther research, the ways in which academic discussions take place, and how women are generally regarded in the scholarly world. If men participate in systemic structures that oppress women at all levels of their existence, then male Luther scholars are not exempt from this socio-cultural implication. From microaggressions and implicit bias to explicit sexism, every female Luther scholar I know can recount occasions when male Luther scholars have treated them with condescending sexism and explicit exclusion. Rather than witnessing an increase in the number of female Luther scholars over the past two decades, the number has actually decreased. When Luther scholars resist engaging with scholarly work by female authors, and when avenues of opportunity to publish, teach, and research continue to be denied to women, then it is no surprise that women scholars choose areas of study other than Luther (as I did when I spent a decade of my scholarly work on Friedrich Schleiermacher after having written a book on Luther).³¹ Yet work in Luther scholarship by women scholars has, in spite of resistance and exclusion, contributed critical and constructive perspectives. While it is acknowledged that Luther represented the patriarchal worldview of the early sixteenth century, women scholars have engaged with dimensions of his work in order to promote an understanding of human personhood that entails freeing one’s neighbor – a category that includes women, among others – from personal and systemic oppression. The law/gospel dialectic, so entrenched in late twentieth-century Luther scholarship done by men, is the particular critical object of study in a compelling article by the  See the text available at: http://www.baltictimes.com/latvian_lutheran_church_officially_bans_ women_s_ordination/.  Marit Trelstad makes a similar point: “For example, international Lutheran women scholars have noticed the stunning paucity of reference to their work in much of Lutheran scholarship still today. In addition, women’s historical writings in relation to the Lutheran tradition have received little attention in the past and in the present. Within the last years, however, the careful work of Kirsi Stjerna reveals that there is much to discover concerning women’s impact on the Reformation. For the most part, however, the birthing and rebirth of Lutheran scholarship oddly seems to have been done entirely without women […] Lutheran theology has lagged in its genuine integration of feminist and liberation theological insights where other mainline Christian traditions have opened themselves to transformation by these voices.” Trelstad, “Charity Terror,” 237.

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American feminist Lutheran theologian Marit Trelstad. In an essay, “Charity Terror Begins at Home: Luther and the ‘Terrifying and Killing’ Law” (2015), Trelstad points to the striking analogy between the law/gospel relation and the abuse of women. Law strikes a person down in a perpetual cycle of abuse, while gospel promises the roses. Trelstad refers to C. W. F. Walther’s violent language pertaining to the law in order to underline its abusive connotations.³² A theology of law in this sense reinforces structures of violence against women. Yet Trelstad distinguishes between two kinds of preaching of the law. Using Luther’s Antinomian Disputations from 1537 as her primary texts, Trelstad argues that the descriptive function of the law is to honestly name sin and promote truth-telling, while it is the performative function of the law that corrupts law into an abusive tool for striking down human beings. Trelstad writes, “It is one thing for loved ones to hold themselves accountable to each other’s expectations of love, trust, and respect in a relationship. It is quite another thing for one partner to wield expectations over the other as a tool for abasement and humiliation – killing and striking at their self-esteem so that they would be all the more grateful for their abuser’s love – and to do this without end.”³³ The law/gospel category thus requires critical revision in order to work out Luther’s theological intention in a constructive way. Sin must be named, specifically sin that debases God’s good creation. Yet the conceptualization and language of violence in view of law must be criticized because it is this language – and the reality to which it points – that perpetuates the cycle of the abuse of women. Another key area of feminist Lutheran theological concern has to do with epistemology, or theories of knowing. Recent work in feminist theory and feminist philosophy of religion has identified distinct ways of knowing as particular to women, among them mysticism and other types of knowing that destabilize and critique rational and normative knowledge associated with male clerical and theological power. More mystical, intuitive, and heterodox epistemologies shape the ways in which women determine theological content. Topics addressed by feminist theologians thus focus on exposing the spiritual, theological, and political abuses that traditional theories of sin and salvation have perpetuated. The sin of self-love, for example, is a sin to which self-effacing women are not prone, while justification that avoids justice is deemed inadequate and subservient to power interests. Feminist Luther scholars in America have participated in global discussions of feminist theology and have taken up Luther’s theology of the cross as a distinctive contribution. Mary M. Solberg’s powerful work, Compelling Knowledge: A Feminist Proposal for an Epistemology of the Cross (1997), leads the way.³⁴ Solberg organizes her book around the distinction between a theology of the cross and an epistemology of the cross. Drawing on Luther’s “Heidelberg Disputations” from 1518, Solberg ar See footnote 11 above.  Trelstad, “Charity Terror,” 248.  Mary M. Solberg, Compelling Knowledge: A Feminist Proposal for an Epistemology of the Cross (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997).

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gues that Luther’s theology of the cross represents a radical, power-destabilizing, and audacious God who saves in an unexpected form. Through an epistemology of the cross, Solberg constructively retrieves Luther’s theology of the cross in order to highlight God’s transformation of ways of knowing reality and living in reality. The cross’s soteriological meaning has serious implications for knowing and doing; its critical function serves to contrast worldly power and ambition with compassionate existence. In Crossing the Divide: Luther, Feminism, and the Cross (2004), Deanna Thompson looks productively at the intersection between feminist theology and Luther scholarship in order to develop a soteriologically and politically viable theology that advocates women’s freedom from abusive structures, innocent suffering, and patriarchal power.³⁵ A critical reading of Luther, according to Thompson, must adopt feminist theologies to challenge traditional theories of atonement that have been used to justify women’s oppression. A critical appropriation of Luther as “theologian of the cross” can announce salvation as women’s freedom to be whole persons in relations of friendship with others. Marit Trelstad’s 2006 edited collection, Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today, also addresses a critical reception of Luther’s theology of the cross that has been used to legitimate women’s suffering.³⁶ The cross’s justification of abusive theologies must be challenged, and in its place, constructive theologies must be articulated that see the cross as freedom from sexism and oppression. Yet the question remains as to how long the “divide” between feminist theology and Luther scholarship – as Deanna Thompson has described it – will persist. Issues that feminist theologians have brought to Luther scholarship have concerned women’s equality, reproductive justice, and human sexuality. These issues were taken up and adopted in a statement on human sexuality by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly in August 2009.³⁷ The motion precipitated the departure of some ELCA congregations to form new Lutheran institutions. Pastoral and theological work remains to be done to convince Lutherans across their synodical divides that theological revisionism and a critical appropriation of the tradition can be accomplished together with a commitment to both Lutheran identity and intellectually rigorous study of Luther.

 Deanna A. Thompson, Crossing the Divide: Luther, Feminism and the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004).  Marit Trelstad, ed., Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006).  Available at the website: https://www.elca.org/en/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/ Human-Sexuality.

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4 The Global Luther Over the past two decades, Luther scholars in America have expanded their discussions beyond those with German colleagues. A new era of global conversation has added new topics to scholarly questions and has diversified perspectives on both Luther and the contemporary reception of his ideas. The reception of Finnish Luther scholarship, for example, has inspired American Luther scholars to take an ecumenical orientation as a valuable aim. Danish Luther scholars – such as Bo Kristian Holm, Niels Henrik Gregersen, and Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen – have corrected the law/gospel fixation of the American-German discussion and have added a new appreciation for creation’s inherent goodness to investigations of Luther. Furthermore, the fact that both English and German are the languages of international conferences and publications has facilitated the participation of American scholars. Luther is now a global figure, someone who has transcended his own sixteenth-century Saxon origins and whose reception is no longer normatively determined by scholars in Germany. As a result, the global Luther has emerged as a significant conversation partner for questions of both historical interest and contemporary urgency. One of the most important developments in this regard has been the scholarship initiated by North American historians and theologians on Luther as associated with the implications of the “Germanic Luther” of twentieth-century Germany. The issue of Luther and the Jews has, until recently, been suppressed or marginalized by Luther scholars in Europe and North America. Part of the obfuscation has to do with the way in which German Luther scholars and theologians have chosen to wrestle with their own past, which included the active participation of some Lutheran theologians in Nazism. Another factor has been the inability of Luther scholars to recognize both the centrality of anti-Judaism in Luther’s writings and the appropriation of his work by the Nazis. That the November Pogrom took place on the eve of Luther’s birthday – on November 9, 1938 – was no historical coincidence. Luther’s 1543 text, On the Jews and their Lies, explicitly advocated the burning of Jewish synagogues and violence against Jews, a mandate that became a reality in Nazi Germany. It is particularly scholarship conducted outside of Germany that has contributed to knowledge of the reception of Luther’s anti-Jewish perspective in Nazi Germany and to the central role anti-Judaism played in his own theology. The Canadian historian James M. Stayer – in his important work Martin Luther, German Saviour (2000) – paved the way for inquiry into the Nazism of significant German Lutheran theologians.³⁸ Theologians whose works had been read in America, such as Paul Althaus and Werner Elert, were exposed for their associations with Nazi politics and its racist anti-Semitism. The American historian Susannah Heschel has also investigated the Nazi ideology of theologians in the Third Reich, particularly the theology faculty in Jena. There, the Nazis founded the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jew See footnote 13 above.

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ish Influence on German Church Life in order to divest Lutheran hymns, catechisms, and Bibles of any associations with Hebrew terms or Judaism.³⁹ This institute was inaugurated on May 6, 1939 at the Wartburg Castle, where Luther had translated the New Testament. Another American historian, Dean Bell, has done detailed and compelling historical work in identifying the history of anti-Judaism in medieval and early modern Europe.⁴⁰ Bell has been followed by the Lutheran theologians Brooks Schramm and Kirsi Stjerna, who have recently edited an anthology of many of Luther’s texts that exhibit anti-Judaism.⁴¹ Their work shows that Luther’s anti-Judaism cannot be restricted to the four classic texts he composed, but is to be seen as central to his entire corpus.⁴² Essays by the American Lutheran Craig Nessan and by Bishop Munib Younan have contributed to the clarification of Luther’s violence with respect to Jews, Muslims, Anabaptists, and others; Bishop Younan’s essay also shows how contemporary interreligious initiatives are necessary in the world today.⁴³ While the recognition of the centrality of anti-Judaism in Luther’s works is still a desideratum in the field, the study of Luther’s life – with all its ambivalence, complexity, and drama – has captivated many North American thinkers. Following in the footsteps of Bainton, biographers have continued to explore the major historical conflicts, world-historical events, and religious ideas that have made Luther’s biography a 500-year object of fascination. Heiko Oberman’s biography dramatizes the opposition between God and the devil as the parameter for Luther’s life,⁴⁴ while Paul Hinlicky imagines a conversation in heaven between Luther and the pope who excommunicated him from Rome.⁴⁵ James Kittelson, Martin Marty, and Scott Hendrix are Lutherans who have written on Luther’s life, while Richard Marius, an

 Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).  Dean Phillip Bell, Jews in the Early Modern World (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008); Dean Phillip Bell, Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany: Memory, Power, and Community (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2016; repr. of 2007 ed.); Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett, eds., Jews, Judaism and the Reformation of Sixteenth-Century Germany, Studies in Central European Histories 37 (Leiden: Brill, 2006).  Brooks Schramm and Kirsi I. Stjerna, eds., Martin Luther, the Bible, and the Jewish People: A Reader (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012).  These are: That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew (1523) in LW 45:195 – 230; Against the Sabbatarians (1538) in LW 47:65 – 98; On the Jews and their Lies (1543) in LW 47:147– 306; On the Ineffable Name and on the Lineage of Christ (1543), only in German, in WA 53:579 – 648, with excerpts of English translation in Schramm and Stjerna, Martin Luther, 178 – 80;  Munib A. Younan, “Beyond Luther: Prophetic Interfaith Dialogue for Life,” in The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times, ed. Christine Helmer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 49 – 64; Craig L. Nessan, “Beyond Luther to Ethical Reformation: Peasants, Anabaptists, Jews,” in Befreiung von Gewalt zum Leben in Frieden/Liberation from Violence for Life in Peace, eds. Ulrich Duchrow and Craig Nessan, Die Reformation radikalisieren/Radicalizing Reformation 4 (Berlin: LIT Verlag 2015), 77– 104.  Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwartbart (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989; repr. 2006).  Paul R. Hinlicky, Luther vs. Pope Leo: A Conversation in Purgatory (Nashville: Abingdon, 2017).

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instructor of writing at Harvard University for decades, has also made a distinctive contribution to this scholarship.⁴⁶ Another biography of Luther, intertwined with that of Desiderius Erasmus, was written by the contemporary American journalist Michael Massing. This book – Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind (2017) – demonstrates the complicated theological and religious layers involved in understanding the sixteenth-century Catholic Reformation and its lingering tensions in contemporary America.⁴⁷ Gone are the here-I-stand portrayals of Luther from the 1950s. A more tentative, probing, and anxious Luther has emerged, one whose theological ideas are closely attuned to his spirituality and whose psychological oscillations between compassion and violence are also part of the complex picture. The Protestant Reformation is now seen not so much as the product of one man, but as a multi-braided complex of factors, relationships, and historical occurrences, of which Luther was a part, rather than the sole originator or singular protagonist. The past, however, is of historical interest to the extent that it can be productively mined to address contemporary problems and questions. It is perhaps this dual focus on past and present that characterizes American contributions to the global Luther. Particularly significant is the topic of economic and political justice. In Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God (2002), Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda sets Luther’s theology of the cross in opposition to global capitalism and the environmental crisis.⁴⁸ This study indicates with powerful empirical evidence the deleterious effects of a global market economy on poverty and on the environment. Its analysis is supplemented by a constructive ethical model of agency that appropriates Luther’s theology of justification. Moe-Lobeda finds inspiration for a subversive view of human agency in Luther scholarship from Finland, which, she argues, better explains transformative and economically responsible agency than the predominant forensic model. Walter Altmann’s Luther and Liberation: A Latin American Perspective (1992; translated by Mary Solberg) contextualizes Luther’s doctrine of justification in relation to the church’s work to promote economic and political justice.⁴⁹ Luther’s theology has not been domesticated or exhausted by five hundred years of familiarity, as Altmann makes clear; its liberatory edge can still be productively mined for today’s world. Marion Grau has also creatively interpreted Luther’s famous doctrine of the communication of attributes through the lens of economic exchange in the harsh

 James M. Kittelson, Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986); Martin Marty, Martin Luther (New York: Penguin, 2004); Scott H. Hendrix, Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015); Richard Marius, Martin Luther: Christian Between God and Death (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).  Michael Massing, Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind (San Francisco: HaperOne, 2017).  Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002).  Walter Altmann’s Luther and Liberation: A Latin American Perspective, trans. Mary Solberg (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992).

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context of global capitalism, thereby demonstrating the critical potential of Luther’s deep theological insights for the economic injustices wreaked by globalization.⁵⁰ Vítor Westhelle’s recent book, The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross (2006), appeals to Luther’s theology of the cross as a corrective to abusive atonement theories and works out Luther’s two kingdoms theory with a distinctive focus on economic justice.⁵¹ These American authors show that Luther’s significance as a historical figure can only be established in view of global challenges today. The term “global Luther” can be read in two senses. One sense takes global in terms of the representation of scholars from around the globe. Organizations such as the LWF and the recently formed International Women’s Theological Network aim at connecting Luther scholarship as it is produced around the world. A second sense takes the global Luther as representative of theological topics that may have relevance for Lutheran theologians, pastors, and laity around the world. This sense inspired the production of my edited collection, The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times. ⁵² Authors in this volume review Luther for the purpose of answering contemporary questions. Religious pluralism and social justice, justification and literary criticism, music and the emotions, psychology and theology are all topics and areas of inquiry that have emerged around the world in recent years in relations between the global North and South, topics on which Luther might provide an important perspective. Engagement with Luther in the future requires that scholars take up contemporary issues of global capitalism, protection of women’s and children’s rights, racial injustice, exploitation associated with dominant economic powers, and the refugee crisis – all of which require theological examination and political activism. If Luther’s insights into the real effects of the gospel under the conditions of self-destroying humanity are to be taken seriously, then his work must be introduced into contemporary discussions. Luther’s theology has had a reception history of five hundred years, and his ideas continue to challenge theologians in the American context.⁵³ Luther stubbornly insists on grace in a context in which holiness dominates; he is committed to the external word of divine forgiveness in a country in which introspection and biblical literalism are significant forms of piety; his anti-Judaism and violence against those who disagree with him must continue to be exposed in a landscape marked by religious diversity and – often enough – religious conflict. Furthermore, American scholarship on Luther, while pressing historical and philosophical topics, can also move beyond them in challenging an American Christianity that has absorbed the culture

 Marion Grau, Of Divine Economy: Refinancing Redemption (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004).  Vítor Westhelle, The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006).  Christine Helmer, ed., The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009).  On Luther’s impact on the modern West, see my free online MOOC (massive open online course) available at: www.coursera.org/learn/luther-and-the-west .

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of materialism and racism. One thing is certain – America will give Luther new tasks after the five-hundredth anniversary of his Reformation.

Rady Roldán-Figueroa

Martin Luther in Latin America From the Counter-Reformation Myth of Latin American Catholicism to Luther as Religious Caudillo

Those who have researched the history of Protestantism in colonial Latin America have done so by looking at the records of the Inquisition in New Spain and Peru.¹ The consensus among scholars is that a robust Protestant presence in Latin America can only be detected in the nineteenth century.² This chapter follows a different strategy. First, by looking at colonial writers, it examines the way that the image of Luther and the Luther affair was used to make sense of the colonial enterprise. The chapter discusses how figures such as Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478 – 1557), Bartolomé de las Casas (1484– 1566), and Jerónimo de Mendieta (1525 – 1604) construed the figure of Luther in narratives that sought to explain the conquest and colonization of the New World. As will be shown, all three perceived the Luther affair as an event that disrupted the civilizing and Christianizing effort that was underway. One of the main assertions is that Mendieta, in particular, contributed the core elements of a theo-political myth that explained the place of the Spanish possessions within a Counter-Reformation narrative centered in Europe. Then, the second part of the chapter considers how Protestant missionaries introduced a new perspective on Luther. The chapter also explains how Luther was represented by different nineteenth-century authors as evangelist, pedagogue, and lukewarm revolutionary.

1 The Luther Affair and the Counter-Reformation Myth of Latin American Catholicism Perhaps it would be an overstatement to suggest that the image of Luther figured prominently in the way that both peninsulares and criollos understood the Christendom character of the Spanish overseas empire. However, the Luther affair was an important point of reference in the minds of some of those who were interested in making theological and historical sense of the conquest and colonization of the lands and people on the other side of the Atlantic. A common perception was the characterization of Luther as the German heresiarch, even in the absence of a clear under-

 Gonzalo Báez Camargo, Protestantes enjuiciados por la Inquisición en Iberoamérica (Mexico: Casa Unida de Publicaciones, 1960); Jean-Pierre Bastian, Historia del protestantismo en América Latina (Mexico: Ediciones CUPSA, 1990).  Jean-Pierre Bastian, Protestantes, liberales y francomasones: sociedades de ideas y modernidad en América Latina, siglo XIX (Mexico: Comisión de Estudios de Historia de la Iglesia en América Latina: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1990). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-071

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standing of what Luther was about. Equally prevalent was the assumption that the Luther affair was an unfortunate distraction that sidetracked Charles V and prevented him from giving proper attention to the affairs of his American possessions. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478 – 1557) devoted nearly thirty-five years of his life to his Historia general de las Indias, which he wrote between 1514 and 1549.³ The years of work behind this voluminous chronicle of the Spanish conquest of the Americas overlapped with the rise and spread of Protestantism in Germany and other parts of Europe. Interestingly, he did not delve in any considerable measure into Luther or the significance of the movement he spearheaded. However, he did articulate – and recorded for posterity – an opinion that was common at the time. Namely, Charles V was too busy and bogged down with the affairs of the empire to give any significant attention to the Americas. Fernández de Oviedo published Historia general de las Indias in 1535.⁴ A third part, consisting of twelve books, remained unpublished until the edition that José Amador de los Rios (1818 – 1878) issued between 1851 and 1855.⁵ Among the events that Fernández de Oviedo chronicled in the third part of the Historia general were the civil wars of Peru, which lasted from 1537 until 1554. The “civil wars” were a series of armed conflicts between Spanish conquistadors involving control over the recently conquered city of Cuzco. The factions at the time comprised the Pizarrists – followers of Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475 – 1541) and his brothers – and the Almagrists. The latter were the supporters of Diego de Almagro (1475 – 1538), Pizarro’s old friend and fellow captain-general. In the “War of Salinas” of 1538, Almagro was defeated and eventually executed by order of Hernando Pizarro (d. 1578), Francisco’s brother. In turn, the Almagristas, led by Juan de Rada (d. 1541), attacked Francisco Pizarro and assassinated him in 1541.⁶ In particular, Fernández de Oviedo sought to explain the circumstances that led Juan de Rada to avenge the death of Diego de Almagro. The lapse of three years between Almagro’s and Francisco Pizarro’s respective deaths was a vivid testimony to the inefficiency of colonial rule at the time. The inadequacy of the administration of justice was evident to contemporaries such as Fernández de Oviedo, leading him to speculate and offer an explanation for the power vacuum and resulting factionalism. He maintained that no one but the king himself had the legitimacy to address the injustice committed against Almagro: “the offense made against Almagro could

 Kathleen Ann Myers, Fernández de Oviedo’s Chronicle of America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 2.  Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, La historia general de las Indias (Seville: Juan Cromberger, 1535).  Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y tierra firme del mar océano, ed. José Amador de los Ríos, 4 vols. (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1851– 1855).  James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532 – 1560: A Social History, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 2– 5.

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not be punished by any particular person, but only by the king or his special envoy.”⁷ However, Rada and the Almagristas (or, as Oviedo calls them, “los de Chile”) awaited the “remedy of justice for three years” before they acted in disregard of the king’s prerogatives.⁸ Why was the administration of justice delayed? Why did Charles V neglect his royal obligations, permitting newly conquered Peru to descend into civil strife and chaos? Certainly it was not the fault of the Consejo de Indias, comprised – in Fernández de Oviedo’s opinion – of “a great number and quality of learned and experienced fathers of good judgment.”⁹ Instead, he concluded that the answer to this question had to be found in the Luther affair. According to Fernández de Oviedo, the Consejo de Indias was not able to promptly address the civil strife in Peru because “of the absence of the emperor, our lord, who was in Germany defending the faith and Christian religion.”¹⁰ The “affair of the heretical Luther and his minions” was, in Fernández de Oviedo’s view, the “greatest of all obstacles” to the administration of justice in Peru.¹¹ Fernández de Oviedo found in the Luther affair a convenient answer to one of the earliest manifestations of the long-term and recurrent failure of European imperialist projects. Europeans could not deliver the kind of civilizing promise that served as an ideological underpinning for their expansionist designs. Bartolomé de las Casas was another Spanish figure who responded to the civilizational breakdown experienced amidst the establishment of colonial rule in the Americas. In 1545, as the newly consecrated bishop of Chiapas, he decried the lack of stable and reliable institutions of public administration. He drafted the Representación a la Audiencia de los Confines of October 19, 1545, in concert with Francisco Marroquín and Fray Antonio de Valdivieso, respectively bishops of Guatemala and Nicaragua.¹² They claimed the ecclesiastical right of bishops to adjudicate civil cases in those situations affecting the poor. Furthermore, they argued that the poor, oppressed, and injured were “under the protection and shelter of the Church.”¹³ The picture they depicted was one of unruliness and uncertainty. Magistrates were inefficient as well as complicit in the wrongs done to the local population, both indigenous people and poorer Spaniards. While Marroquín quickly abandoned his counterparts, Las Casas re-

 Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural (1855), 4:362.  Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 4:362.  Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 4:362.  Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 4:363.  Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 4:363.  Bartolomé de las Casas, “Representación a la Audiencia de los Confines (19 October 1545),” in Obras completas, ed. Paulino Castañeda (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1995), 13:199 – 205; Francesca Cantù, “Per un rinnovamento della coscienza pastorale del cinquecento: il vescovo Bartolomé de las Casas ed il problema indiano,” Annuario dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per l’età Moderna e Contemporanea 25 – 26 (1973 – 1974): 5 – 118.  Las Casas, “Representación a la Audiencia de los Confines,” 13:201.

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mained steadfast in his advocacy. Eventually, however, he concluded that he could only be effective back in Spain. In a letter he penned in 1535, Las Casas also criticized the destructive consequences of the short-lived German colonial venture in Venezuela.¹⁴ He lamented Charles V’s decision in 1528 to grant rights to the Welser banking family to colonize the territory east of Cape La Vela and west of Cape Maracapana.¹⁵ Charles V was heavily indebted to the Welsers, and he used Venezuela as a bargaining chip to level off his financial commitments.¹⁶ Welser control over Venezuela eventually came to an end in 1556. Nevertheless, the treatment of the local population at the hands of German colonists set off a wave of refugees, most of whom resettled in Curaçao.¹⁷ Las Casas attributed the ill fate of the indigenous people who were arbitrarily placed under German rule to a variety of causes. Among these was Charles V’s bad judgment as well as the Luther affair. He railed against the “crimes and havoc” that the German explorers committed in the region.¹⁸ He observed that the king had been ill advised to give these lands as collateral for the extensive financing he received from the Welsers. Las Casas concluded that, with this deal and transaction, Charles V had condemned the peaceful inhabitants of the region to a terrible fate and to destruction. Instead of sending preachers, the emperor sent “hungry wolves to take care of the sheep.” To top it all, he added, the Germans who came to colonize those regions were all “heretics born to that fierce beast of Luther.”¹⁹ The Luther affair, however, also contributed a foil against which the conquest could be interpreted. Indeed, post-Tridentine commentators viewed the extra-European spread of Catholicism as a providentially guided development. Thus seen, the conquest was the way through which divine providence compensated the Church with the lands and people of the New World after parts of Europe were lost to Protestantism. In fact, this was a myth characteristic of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. In his Segunda parte de la historia del cisma de Inglaterra, published in 1593, the Jesuit Pedro Ribadeneira cited the spread of Catholicism to Japan as God’s way

 Bartolomé de las Casas, “Carta a un personaje de la corte (15 October 1535),” Obras completas, 13:87– 98; Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770 – 1870 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 12; Christine R. Johnson, The German Discovery of the World: Renaissance Encounters with the Strange and Marvelous (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 187.  Milagros del Vas Mingo, Las Capitulaciones de Indias en el siglo XVI (Madrid: Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1986), 251– 55.  Cornelis Ch. Goslinga, A Short History of the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam (The Hague: Martinus Nijhodd, 1979), 16 – 17.  Goslinga, A Short History of the Netherlands Antilles, 17; Johnson, The German Discovery of the World, 188.  Las Casas, “Carta a un personaje de la corte,” 13:97.  Las Casas, “Carta a un personaje de la corte,” 13:97.

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of compensating for the loss of England.²⁰ The myth proved to be of long-lasting influence, as it shaped Catholic self-understanding throughout Latin America. Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta (1525 – 1604) articulated a similar view, almost concurrently with Ribadeneira. A Franciscan since 1540, he arrived in Veracruz in 1554. He spent time in Tlaxcala, where he made the acquaintance of Toribio de Motolinia, one of the first Franciscan missionaries in Mexico. He learned Nahuatl and in 1556 began work with Nahua Indians in the region of Toluca.²¹ In 1571, during a visit to Spain, he was commissioned to write a history of the Franciscan Provincia del Santo Evangelio of New Spain.²² The result was the Historia eclesiástica indiana, a work that has received attention for its millennial reading of the Christianization of Mexico.²³ Phelan argued that Mendieta articulated a “mystical interpretation of the conquest.”²⁴ The work remained unpublished until 1870, but Mendieta had completed it by the time of his death in 1604.²⁵ Like Fernández de Oviedo and Las Casas before him, Mendieta did not reflect profusely on Luther or on any major developments associated with the spread of Protestantism in Europe. He echoed their opinion and noted that in the 1520s, Charles V did not provide the necessary resources for the Christianization of Mexico. He attributed this neglect in part to Luther and in part to the revolt of the comuneros of Castile.²⁶ Moreover, he wrote the Historia with an eye on the new confessional symbol of the Roman Catholic Church. His references to the Council of Trent invested the work with an implicit imprimatur, even if its millennial content resulted in offi-

 Pedro de Ribadeneira, Segunda parte de la historia del cisma de Inglaterra (Alcala: En casa de Juan Iñiguez de Lequeirica, 1593); Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Father Luis Piñeiro, S.J., the Tridentine Economy of Relics, and the Defense of the Jesuit Missionary Enterprise in Tokugawa Japan,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 101 (2010): 226.  Luis González, Jerónimo de Mendieta: vida, pasión y mensaje de un indigenista apocalíptico (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1996), 21– 22.  Jerónimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, ed. Joaquín García Icazbalceta (Mexico: Antigua Librería, 1870), xix; Jerónimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, ed. Francisco Solano y Pérez-Lila (Madrid: Editorial Atlas, 1973), 1:1; Carlos Sempat Assadourian, “Memoriales de Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta,” Historia Mexicana 37 (1988): 357– 422.  John Leddy Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World, 2nd rev. ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970); Steven E. Turley, Franciscan Spirituality and Mission in New Spain, 1524 – 1599: Conflict Beneath the Sycamore Tree (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013).  Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom, 6; Rodolfo De Roux López, “Entre el aquí y ahora y el después y más allá: milenio, nuevo mundo y utopía,” 76/77 Caravelle (1988–) (2001): 375 – 87.  According to García Icazbalceta, Mendieta had concluded the work in 1596; see Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, xxiii; Solano, however, maintains that Mendieta was still at work in the Historia at the time of his death; see Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana (1973), 1:xxxvii.  Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, 191; Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana (1973), 1:117; on the comuneros, see Stephen Haliczer, The Comuneros of Castile: The Forging of a Revolution (1475 – 1521) (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981).

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cial censure and eventual relegation to obscurity.²⁷ Yet, he found a special place for Luther in his narrative. He contrasted the figure of the German heresiarch to that of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés (1485 – 1547). Mendieta posited that Cortés had been carefully “chosen” and that God used him as an “instrument.” Furthermore, through him God “opened the door and made way for the preachers of the gospel in the new world.” According to Mendieta, the conquest “restored and compensated” the Catholic Church. The conquest led to, in his words, “the conversion of many souls for the lost and great ruin that the accursed Luther caused.”²⁸ Mendieta saw portentous parallels between Luther and Cortés. He believed they were born the same year, but with different fates. Luther was born to disturb the world and to mislead many Catholics away from the faith. Cortés, on the other hand, was born to bring countless people to the faith and deliver them from idolatry.²⁹ Moreover, according to Mendieta, both began their corresponding life-missions in the same year. Thus, for Mendieta, the Luther affair began with Luther’s eighteenday debate with John Eck, which took place during July 1519. On the other side of the Atlantic, Cortés commenced his march to conquer Tenochtitlan the same year.³⁰ In this way, what was lost in Europe was restored in the Americas. Mendieta’s correlation of Luther and Cortés placed the conquest in a larger frame of reference. It sought to explain the Christianization of the New World in terms that made sense from the perspective of Counter-Reformation Europe. This notion proved to be appealing, and it continued to re-emerge in later centuries. Thus, according to José Patricio Fernández de Uribe (1742– 1796), it was the matronage of the Virgen de Guadalupe that prevented the spread of the heresies of Luther and Calvin throughout the Spanish colonies. In 1778, Fernández de Uribe, a prebendary in the Cathedral of Mexico, wrote a “historical-critical” treatise on the apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe.³¹ In Disertación histórico-crítica, he maintained that the Roman Catholic Church was obliged to wield the sword of tradition against the followers of Luther

 For Mendieta’s references to the Council of Trent, see Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana (1870), 306, 365, and 678; Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana (1973), 1:184 and 2:12 and 195.  Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, (1870), 174; Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana (1973), 1:108.  Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica, 175; Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana (1973), 1:108.  Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica, 175; Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana (1973), 1:108. Mendieta’s comparison of Luther and Cortés has received the attention of several scholars; see, for instance, Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom, 32; Frank Graziano, The Millennial New World (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 29.  José Patricio Fernández de Uribe, “Disertación histórico-crítica en que el autor del sermón que precede sostiene la celestial imagen de María Santísima de Guadalupe de México, milagrosamente aparecida al humilde neófito Juan Diego,” in Sermón de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de México predicado en su santuario el año de 1777 día 14 de diciembre de la solemne fiesta con que su ilustre congregación celebra su aparición milagrosa, el que dio motivo para escribir la adjunta disertación, como en ella misma se expresa (Mexico: Oficina de D. Mariano de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1801).

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and Calvin.³² He argued that, just at the time when the heresies of Luther and Calvin were spreading as an infectious disease throughout Europe, Spain was extirpating idolatry in the new lands under its sovereign rule and tutelage. Moreover, no heresy had taken root or flourished in New Spain in the 258 years since Hernán Cortés marched on Tenochtitlan. The good fortune of the Spanish colonies was in part the result of the arduous labors of the Spanish Crown and the always-vigilant intervention of the Holy Inquisition.³³ However, the fact that the insidious heresies of Luther and Calvin did not contaminate New Spain was a miracle in itself, one which could be attributed to the intervention of the Virgen de Guadalupe.³⁴ The myth of the Counter-Reformation character of Latin American Catholicism endured beyond the eighteenth century and was by no means circumscribed to New Spain. In fact, the myth became more widely disseminated in the nineteenth century, after the advent of the new American republics. Luther and the Luther affair – not the growth and spread of Protestant missionary activity at the time – continued to provide the backdrop against which the purity of Latin American Catholicism could be assessed. Certainly, in this new context, the myth offered conservative sectors of Latin American society with a line of defense against the protruding influences of the Enlightenment and the secularist tendencies of political liberalism. After all, it was none other than Simón Bolívar himself who, in 1826, instructed the Bolivian constitutional convention about the ideal place of religion in the new political system: “Sacred precepts and dogmas are useful, enlightening, and metaphysically evident; we should all profess them, but this duty is moral and not political.”³⁵ In the end, it was the combined influence of these intellectual currents that made Luther, or the image of Luther, genuinely attractive for the first time in Latin America. In Peru, José María de Córdova y Urrutia incorporated the myth into an intriguing account of the history of Peru. In his Las tres épocas del Perú (1844), Córdova y Urrutia essayed a dynastic history from Manco Capac (c. 1200) to President Ramón Castilla (1797– 1867).³⁶ Córdova y Urrutia was part of the civil service at the time he published Las tres épocas and was promoted under Castilla in 1846.³⁷ He was most likely aligned with Castilla’s ideological tendencies, and it was the latter who led the con-

 Fernández de Uribe, “Disertación histórico-crítica,” 42.  Fernández de Uribe, “Disertación histórico-crítica,” 120 – 21.  Fernández de Uribe, “Disertación histórico-crítica,” 124– 25.  Simón Bolívar, Proyecto de Constitución para la República de Bolivia, y discurso del libertador (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Hallet y Ca., 1826), 15.  José María Córdova y Urrutia, Las tres épocas del Perú, o compendio de su historia, in Colección de documentos literarios del Perú, ed. Manuel de Odriozola, vol. 7 (Lima: Imprenta del Estado, 1875); Sebastián Lorente, Escritos fundacionales de historia peruana, ed. Mark Thurner (Lima: Fondo Editorial Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2005), 49 – 50.  José María Córdova y Urrutia, Estadística histórica, geográfica, industrial y comercial de los pueblos que componen las provincias del departamento de Lima, ed. César Coloma Porcari (Lima: Sociedad “Entre Nous,” 1992), 14.

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servadores in the Peruvian congress to adopt the constitution of 1860.³⁸ According to the new constitution, “the nation professes the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, the state protects it, and does not allow the public exercise of any other.”³⁹ Córdova y Urrutia appropriated the Counter-Reformation myth in a clever way. As the title of his work suggests, he organized the narrative in three epochs or dynasties. The structure corresponded with the political history of Peru. In fact, Thurner described him as the inventor of Peru’s post-independence “master narrative structure.”⁴⁰ The first part of the work corresponded with the foundation of the empire of the Incas. He designated the second epoch as the “dinastía ultramarina” or “seaborne dynasty.” Lastly, the third epoch was that of “independent Peru.” He used the myth to explain the transition between the Inca empire and the “seaborne dynasty,” which Charles V headed from Europe.⁴¹ The Luther affair was once more seen as part of an intricate network of developments that left its imprint in Latin American history. While the “discovery” was one of the most transcendental events in history, it was lamentable that the conquest hindered the implementation of a policy that could elevate inhabitants to the “highest level of civilization that they were capable of.”⁴² The work of centuries was destroyed by “unquenched greed.” In the middle of such traumatic events, a handful of ministers took advantage of the “docile nature of the Peruvians” and introduced their “holy religion.” In this way, they recovered what was lost in Europe. In an interesting turn, while Ribadeneira in 1593 saw divine providence using Japan to restore the balance in Europe, he saw divine providence using Peru to the same end. Specifically, Córdova y Urrutia saw in the Christianization of Peru a kind of restoration of what was lost in England. After all, the followers of Luther and Calvin were responsible for the apostasy of Henry VIII as well as for the defection of England from the Catholic world.⁴³ Francisco Bauzá (1849 – 1899) was the author of another important national narrative, this one describing the colonial history of Uruguay. He was one of the most significant historians of Uruguay of the nineteenth century.⁴⁴ As a politician, he firm-

 Lorente, Escritos fundacionales, 49.  John Lynch, “La América Andina y el viejo mundo,” in Historia de América Andina, ed. Juan Maiguashca (Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador, 2003), 5:492; Constitución política del Perú, reformada por el Congreso de 1860, Edición Oficial (Lima: Imprenta de José María Masías, 1860), Título II, art. 4.  Mark Thurner, “Peruvian Genealogies of History and Nation,” in After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas, ed. Mark Thurner and Andrés Guerrero (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2003), 147.  Córdova y Urrutia, Las tres épocas, 31.  Córdova y Urrutia, Las tres épocas, 31.  Córdova y Urrutia, Las tres épocas, 31.  Tomás Sansón Corbo, “La Revolución de Mayo en la historiografía uruguaya de orientación nacionalista,” Anuario del Instituto de Historia Argentina 10 (2010): 87– 106; Sansón Corbo, “La historiografía colonial y los fundamentos de la tesis independentista clásica en Uruguay,” Anuario del Instituto de Historia Argentina 12 (2012): 1– 26.

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ly believed and defended the notion that religious – i. e., Roman Catholic – education be offered in public schools.⁴⁵ He introduced legislation in 1879 to amend the statute that had governed Uruguayan public education since 1877.⁴⁶ His measure would have introduced religious education in the country’s public schools, and it did not pass. That year, he published the essay De la educación común defending religious education in public schools, and in 1884, he co-founded the Instituto Pedagógico, a private school that embodied his ideas about the role of religious education.⁴⁷ Bauzá published his Historia de la dominación española en el Uruguay in 1880, shortly after beginning his public crusade for religious education.⁴⁸ He offered an account of Uruguay’s colonial history, describing the emergence of a proto-national identity in the country. He also made use of the Counter-Reformation myth of Latin American Catholicism to explain the “discovery” and conquest of the New World. He framed the myth in relation to two men: King Ferdinand of Aragon (r. 1479 – 1516) and Pope Leo X (r. 1513 – 1521). “Ferdinand of Aragon,” he declared, “witnessed the decline of his powerful empire due to the enthronement of a weak family, and Leo X was about to face the spectacle of Luther’s schism, the first indication of the rapid political destruction of Rome.”⁴⁹ Yet both men received great consolation, for just as the Spanish monarch saw his European possessions under threat, he also witnessed how “immense territories containing the germ of powerful nations received the heritage of the language and costumes of Spain.” Similarly, just as the temporal power of the Roman pontiff was shaken, “new conquered people in America, Asia, and Africa were receiving the instruction of the gospel, and the sectarians of his faith grew by millions.” Certainly, he took some distance from the conquest, calling it a “calamity” and referring to his coreligionists as “sectarians.”⁵⁰ Nevertheless, he also understood the Luther affair to have had a resonance of global proportions that forever affected the fate of the Americas. The myth also surfaced in Ecuador. The Franciscan José María Aguirre (1851– 1919) used it in 1892 to explain the theological importance of the “discovery.” Born in Ecuador, Aguirre was a well-known preacher in his country. His eloquence earned him the distinction of preaching during the official, government-sponsored religious service commemorating the fourth centenary of the “discovery” of America. The event was held at the Cathedral of Quito on 12 October 1892. The Ecuadorian poet

 Susana Monreal, “Francisco Bauzá y su proyecto educativo de alternativa,” in A la búsqueda de Francisco Bauzá (1849 – 1899), Prisma 14 (2000): 72– 95.  Monreal, “Francisco Bauzá,” 77.  Monreal, “Francisco Bauzá,” 77 and 81; Francisco Bauzá, De la educación común (Montevideo: Imp. La Nación, 1879)  Francisco Bauzá, Historia de la dominación española en el Uruguay (Montevideo: Tip. de Morella Hnos., 1880).  Bauzá, Historia de la dominación, 27– 28.  Bauzá, Historia de la dominación, 27– 28.

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and journalist Antonio Alomía Llori (1867– 1918) wrote an account of the celebration and published it along with Aguirre’s sermon.⁵¹ Aguirre’s sermon was imbued with pride over the role that his religious order had played in the Christianization of the New World. Among the Franciscan luminaries he noted were Christopher Columbus (1451– 1506), a Franciscan tertiary; Francisco Solano (1549 – 1610), a missionary to Peru; and Felipe de Jesús (d. 1597), who was martyred in Nagasaki in 1597.⁵² The Franciscans did not merely endeavor to accomplish the Christianization or “evangelization” of the New World. Instead, they “worked in the civilizing of America.”⁵³ He opened his sermon by affirming that the “right philosophy of history” allows for supernatural intervention in the great affairs of humanity. Accordingly, without doubt, the “discovery” of America was predisposed by God for the fulfillment of great ends. Aguirre contrasted the figures of Columbus and Luther. Columbus made his mark precisely when the “great union of Europe, formed and sustained” by the Catholic faith, was about to come to an end.⁵⁴ Martin Luther, on the other hand, was the “apostle of Lucifer,” who caused havoc on earth just like the fallen angel did in heaven. Luther “pushed nations into the abysm of heresy.”⁵⁵ These were nations that “shined as luminaries for their Catholicism.”⁵⁶ In this context, the Catholic Church needed new nations in order to “replace these fallen angels.” He compared the Christian faith with a “white dove” and suggested that, at the time of the discovery, it was about to abandon its ancient abode in Europe in search of a new home. “Which will be the blessed region,” he asked rhetorically, “that will receive in its bosom this dove, that is flying over the waters at sunset and that brings with it the olive branch of peace that flourished in those old fields?”⁵⁷ What was the vehicle that God chose to help accomplish this “transmigration”? That vehicle was “Cristóforo Colombo,” whose name, according to Aguirre, meant “dove that carries Christ.”⁵⁸

 Antonio Alomía Llori, Celebración en Quito del cuarto centenario del descubrimiento de América (Quito: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1893).  Alomía Llori, Celebración, 13.  Alomía Llori, Celebración, 13.  Alomía Llori, Celebración, 14.  Alomía Llori, Celebración, 14.  Alomía Llori, Celebración, 15.  Alomía Llori, Celebración, 15.  Alomía Llori, Celebración, 15.

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2 Martin Luther as the Evangelist, Educator, and Religious Caudillo In the nineteenth century, the Counter-Reformation myth of Latin American Catholicism ran parallel to a series of new readings of Martin Luther. A common thread was the view of Martin Luther as the harbinger of modernity. His reform movement was broadly seen as a revolt against the Roman Catholic hierarchy. It was this attitude – and not the complex theological questions of Luther’s day – that captured the imagination of a plethora of thinkers. These new “readers,” in spite of many regional and national differences, shared a common outlook shaped by the growing influence of positivism, notions of social progress, and a general anticlerical posture. At least two elements contributed to a new reception of Martin Luther in parts of Latin America. One of them was the growth of British commercial interests in the region and German immigration to countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. A concomitant development was the increasing activity of Protestant missionaries throughout the region. These two elements often worked in tandem in the introduction of a different perspective on Luther, one that can be characterized as Luther the evangelist. Protestant printing houses and publications were a good example of these two elements working together. In 1877, the Methodist missionary Thomas Bond Wood (1844– 1922) from Indiana founded a Protestant periodical in Montevideo, Uruguay.⁵⁹ By the end of his life, Wood had enjoyed an extensive career as a missionary in Argentina, Uruguay, and Peru. His weekly publication, El Evangelista, featured articles that promoted Protestantism as a modernizing alternative for the region. According to Frederick V. Mills, El Evangelista was “the first Spanish evangelical paper in the world.”⁶⁰ The establishment of this periodical in Montevideo was not fortuitous. The Iglesia Evangélica del Río de la Plata was founded by German immigrants in Buenos Aires in 1843, and a branch was opened in Montevideo in 1857.⁶¹ Thus, by the time Wood began his work in the Uruguayan capital there was already a good nucleus of Protestant coreligionists eager to collaborate in the missional endeavor. As part of its content, El Evangelista regularly featured articles translated by Wood himself, from English or German, that represented a friendly face of Martin Luther. It also provided a platform from which Roman Catholic representations of Protestantism could be refuted. Wood authored several short essays defending Protestantism as well as the figure of Martin Luther. In a special four-part supplement, he offered a polemical retort

 Frederick V. Mills. “Wood, Thomas Bond,” American National Biography Online (Feb. 2000), available at: http://www.anb.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/articles/08/08 – 01698.html.  Mills. “Wood, Thomas Bond.”  Fortunato Mallimaci, Guía de la diversidad religiosa de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2003), 141.

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to an article published by a Catholic priest against Protestantism.⁶² Mariano Soler (1846 – 1908), who eventually became the archbishop of Montevideo, published his piece in La Tribuna under the title, “El protestantismo, bajo el aspecto histórico, filosófico y religioso.”⁶³ In “Análisis y refutación de la crítica del Dr. Soler sobre el protestantismo,” Wood listed some twenty-four objections to Soler’s interpretation of the Protestant Reformation, including the latter’s representation of Martin Luther. He took the opportunity to advance a different image of the German reformer. In fact, Soler described Luther as the “apostate friar of Eisleben.”⁶⁴ Wood called this characterization a “subtle but grave error.”⁶⁵ He also took issue with Soler’s depiction of Luther as a “vulgar,” “corrupt,” and “irreligious” friar. Instead, he pointed out how Luther was a learned man, with an extensive academic preparation that included the highest degree granted by a university. Moreover, before becoming an Augustinian, Luther was a faithful “child of the Church.” However, Luther “abandoned his career in order to bury himself in a convent, obeying the fanatical teachings of the Church, which made him believe that it was easier to save his soul in a living tomb than in fulfilling the duties that providence gave him.” Luther realized that this was a mistake. “A genius like his,” Wood expressed, “does not remain buried alive.”⁶⁶ Luther’s reading of the Bible “opened his heart to the simplicity, purity and sublime efficacy of the religion of Jesus Christ in the way that Jesus Christ taught it.”⁶⁷ He emphasized the reformer’s character as a preacher and evangelist. From the moment of his conversion, Luther redirected his entire life to the communication of his own experience. “Those souls,” he continued, “that were thirsty for truth and salvation recognized in him the messenger of that Gospel that Christendom longed for, and Rome denied it.”⁶⁸ Wood also described Luther as a herald of social progress. Luther paved the way for “three centuries of progress, the greatest known in history.” He couched his description in the optimism that characterized the period’s faith in the forces of modernity. The outcomes of Luther’s reformation continued to be “per-

 Thomas Bond Wood, “Análisis y refutación de la crítica del Dr. Soler sobre el protestantismo,” El Evangelista 1 no. 14 (1 December 1877), supplement 1:113 – 16; El Evangelista 1 no. 15 (8 December 1877), supplement 2:125 – 28; El Evangelista 1 no. 16 (15 December 1877), supplement 3:137– 40; El Evangelista 1 no. 17 (22 December 1877), supplement 4:149 – 52.  Cf., Mariano Soler, Catolicismo y protestantismo: razones decisivas y perentorias por las que un verdadero cristiano no puede ser protestante sino católico-romano: pastoral (Montevideo: Tipografía Uruguaya de Marcos Martínez, 1902); on Mariano Soler, see Alberto Hein et al., Mariano Soler y el discurso modernizador, Cuadernos franciscanos del sur, no. 2 (Montevideo: Instituto San Bernardino de Montevideo, Departamento de Historia CIPFE, 1990).  As cited in Wood, “Análisis y refutación,” supplement 1:113.  Wood, “Análisis y refutación,” supplement 1:114.  Wood, “Análisis y refutación,” supplement 1:114.  Wood, “Análisis y refutación,” supplement 1:115.  Wood, “Análisis y refutación,” supplement 1:115.

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fected” as they “spread” and become more common. He drew a stark contrast with the “irreformable” and “static” character of the “obsolete Roman hierarchy.”⁶⁹ Wood contributed in yet another way to the dissemination of a more palatable image of Luther and Protestantism. He gathered an active network of missionaries and lay religious workers who were intent on spreading their faith in the region. The distribution of Protestant literature was a central component of this effort. For this purpose, the group administered a central depository located in Montevideo’s Florida Street. This facility was overseen by Manuel A. Balverde. The weekly publication often included a “catalogue” – a sort of loose leaflet – of books and pamphlets that were available for sale in their depository. A catalogue published in 1879 listed over one hundred titles of books and pamphlets on subjects ranging from Bible translations and biblical studies to family life.⁷⁰ Many of the tracts were controversial in character and addressed Roman Catholic dogma. Interestingly, the catalogue reveals that resources dedicated specifically to Martin Luther were very limited. In fact, only one item in the list dealt with Martin Luther directly, and this was the biography Martín Lutero, biografía auténtica (1878).⁷¹ The work was a translation, most likely from English, of a work by an unknown author. It was published in Madrid by the Librería Nacional y Extranjera, as part of the series “Galería de Reformadores.” Librería Nacional y Extranjera was an affiliate of the Religious Tract Society, a London-based publishing agency dedicated to the dissemination of Protestant religious literature.⁷² In its 1880 annual report, the Religious Tract Society listed Martín Lutero, biografía autentica as one of its Spanish translations.⁷³ The catalogue included other books that are noteworthy, as they illustrate the material circulation of Protestant ideas and underscore the indirect access that Spanish readers in the region had to Martin Luther.⁷⁴ For instance, the catalogue mentioned a two-volume Historia de la Reformación. The work referenced was Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigné’s Histoire de la Reformation au XVIe sicle in the Spanish translation of Ramón Monsalvatge, Historia de la reformación del siglo decimosecsto [sic]

 Wood, “Análisis y refutación,” supplement 1:115.  “Catálogo de los libros y folletos que se hallan de venta en el depósito central de tratados religiosos en Montevideo,” unbounded leaflet that forms part of the digitized copy of El Evangelista 3 (1879/1880); the original is located at Harvard University, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Period. 576.58.  Anon., Martín Lutero. Biografía auténtica (Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, Librería Nacional y Extranjera, 1878).  Aileen Fyfe, “The Religious Tract Society,” in The Oxford History of the Irish Book, vol. IV, The Irish Book in English (1800 – 1891), ed. James H. Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4:357– 63.  Religious Tract Society, The Eighty-First Annual Report of the Religious Tract Society (London: Pardon and Sons, Printers, 1880).  “Catálogo de los libros y folletos” (c. 1879/1880).

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(1850), which was published in New York.⁷⁵ Monsalvatge himself was a former Capuchin who converted to Protestantism.⁷⁶ In addition, interested book buyers could acquire a nineteenth-century edition of Epístola consolatoria by the sixteenth-century Spanish Protestants Juan Pérez (c. 1500 – 1568), pamphlet-sized selections from Michael Hobart Seymour (1800 – 1874), as well as works by Javier Galvete (1852– 1877).⁷⁷ Lastly, Protestant propagandists in Montevideo did not shy away from using controversial works by Roman Catholic authors. For instance, for sale in the evangelical depot was a Spanish translation of Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger’s Papst und das Concil (1869), which was published in Valparaiso, Chile, as El Papa y el concilio (1870).⁷⁸ As is well known, in his work the German theologian rejected the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility. In the absence of an abundant supply of primary sources, Latin American intellectuals relied on secondary works for their appreciation of the life and times of Martin Luther. They were not limited, moreover, to translations from English or to the very few works written in Spanish. Instead, they also drew from French sources. For instance, shortly before his death, Marc Monnier (1827– 1885) published the first volume of his Histoire de la littérature moderne, La Renaissance de Dante a Luther (1884). Monnier’s death in 1885 was lamented by the Latin American literati. The editor of Revista cubana: periódico de ciencias, literatura y bellas artes noted Monnier’s passing and acknowledged the significance of his last work, which he described as “one of the most lively and interesting portraits that to this day have been drawn of that literary epoch, so rich and fertile for the study of the human spirit, known as the Renaissance.”⁷⁹ Another contributor, Enrique Piñeyro, wrote a review of Monnier’s Histoire from Paris.⁸⁰ He questioned Monnier’s decision to fold the Renaissance between Dante and Martin Luther and attributed this decision to Monnier’s own af-

 Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigné, Histoire de la Réformation du seizième siècle (Brussels: Societé Belge de Librairie, 1844); Merle d’Aubigné, Historia de la reformación del siglo decimosecsto [sic], trans. Ramón Monsalvatge, 2 vols. (New York, 1850).  Ramón Monsalvatge, The Life of Ramon Monsalvatge, a converted Spanish monk, of the Order of the Capuchins (New York: J. F. Trow & Co., 1845).  The following are listed in “Catálogo de los libros y folletos” (c. 1879/1880), I have added bibliographical data since the catalogue is a mere title list: Juan Pérez, Epístola consolatoria, ed. Benjamin B. Wiffen (London: J. Nisbet, 1871); Michael Hobart Seymour, El sacrificio de la misa y el capítulo sexto de san Juan (New York: Sociedad Americana de Tratados [American Tract Society], no year); two chapters from Michael Hobart Seymour, Noches con los romanistas: con un capítulo preliminar sobre los resultados morales del sistema romano, trans. Henry Barrington Pratt (New York: Sociedad Americana de Tratados [American Tract Society], 185?); Javier Galvete, Fragmentos y ensayos (Madrid: Librería Nacional y Extranjera, 1879).  Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, Der Papst und das Concil (Leipzig: E. F. Steinacker, 1869); Ignaz von Döllinger, El Papa y el concilio (Valparaíso: Imprenta de la “Patria,” 1870).  Anon., “Marc Monnier,” Revista cubana: periódico de ciencias, literatura y bellas artes (1885): 478 – 79.  Enrique Piñeyro, [untitled letter under “Correspondencia Literaria”], Revista cubana: periódico de ciencias, literatura y bellas artes (1885): 517– 23.

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filiation with the University of Geneva. As for Luther, Piñeyro found the contrast with Dante to be asymmetrical. “One of them,” he noted, “is a colossal artist, a marvelous writer, a star of the first order in the universe of art, the orbit of the other, however, moves in a different direction, in another level, and even in another world.”⁸¹ While Piñeyro found Luther to be inadequate, others saw the reformer as an important and unavoidable point of reference. Indeed, several intellectual leaders who shaped the young Latin American republics saw Luther and the German Reformation as a milepost that signaled a climactic point in the history of human progress. Such was the perspective of Domingo F. Sarmiento (1811– 1888).⁸² An educator who began his career teaching in rural schools, Sarmiento left Argentina in 1841 and moved to Chile in order to avoid the military dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793 – 1877). In 1842, he established the Escuela Normal de Preceptores in Santiago for the training of teachers.⁸³ He travelled throughout Europe and the United States, becoming an adept admirer of the educational system of the latter country.⁸⁴ He wrote a short biography of the North American educator Horace Mann (1796 – 1859) and held fast to the historiographical ideas of Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881).⁸⁵ Sarmiento was elected president of Argentina in 1868 and ruled the country until 1874. He was a prolific writer, with numerous books and articles, but his best-known work was Facundo (1845), widely acclaimed as the Argentinian epic of the nineteenth century.⁸⁶ In his Discurso en honor a Darwin, Sarmiento expressed his personal adherence to the theory or “doctrine” of evolution.⁸⁷ He described evolution as a general progress observable throughout the cosmos, from the stars in the galaxies to the simplest geological formations. Evolution was also observable in human progress, from the evolution of humanity to the evolution of human learning, especially in disciplines such as linguistics and sociology. He described evolution as a general movement from what is “simple to the compounded, from embryonic to complex, from the lack of form to beauty.”⁸⁸ Moreover, he viewed the theory of evolution as a “process of the spirit,” a “harmonious and beautiful” principle in which he could find solace, silencing in this way “doubt, which is the torment of the soul.”⁸⁹

 Piñeyro, [untitled letter], 518.  Alejandro Ulloa, Domingo F. Sarmiento, un hombre de su tiempo (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2009).  Ricardo Donoso, Sarmiento, director de la Escuela Normal, 1842 – 1845 (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Universitaria, 1942).  Luis M. Savino and Javier F. García Basalo, Sarmiento, los Estados Unidos y la educación pública (Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios Americanos, 2015).  Domingo F. Sarmiento, Vida de Horacio Mann, in Obras de D. F. Sarmiento, ed. A. Belin Sarmiento (Buenos Aires: Imprenta y Litografía Mariano Moreno, 1900), 43:323 – 62.  Domingo F. Sarmiento, Civilización y barbarie: Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga (Santiago: Imprenta del Progreso, 1845).  Domingo F. Sarmiento, Darwin en una conferencia, seguido de, El congreso de Tucumán y su espíritu (Buenos Aires: Establecimiento Tipográfico de el Nacional, 1882).  Sarmiento, Darwin, 21.  Sarmiento, Darwin, 21.

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Sarmiento applied the concept of evolution to the development of Western culture and used racist categories to explain social progress. He posited the superiority of Greco-Roman “civilization, arts, and laws.” While Western nations were also called “Christian countries,” they actually inherited their civilization from the Greeks and Romans. The “northern barbarians” introduced their institutions, especially the representative system. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Christianity became the “bond of union among the semi-learned men.” However, the religious ideas of the Hebrew people “infiltrated” Christian notions of government. In consequence, principles and institutions such as the “freedom of thought and the arts of the Greeks,” the “senate, the municipality and law” of the Romans, and the right of “representation” of the Anglo-Saxons were undermined by Christianity’s Semitic influence.⁹⁰ It was from this social-evolutionary perspective that he understood the historical place of Luther and the Luther affair. According to Sarmiento, by the time of Alexander VI (1492– 1503), the “moral spirit of Christianity” was no longer giving direction to society. Indeed, that moral spirit was falling apart, as “kings, princes, and popes gave themselves to the most scandalous disorders.” He voiced the anti-Roman Catholic sentiments that characterized the liberalism of the period. Accordingly, he portrayed Luther as “shocked by the horrors of the prostitute,” as he maintained that the “Rome of the Borgias” was known at the time. He opened up for examination the beliefs which made that Rome possible, concluding that without Alexander, there would be no Luther.⁹¹ In his view, the Reformation only demanded “more Christianity, more morality, more purity, less mysteries, less authority and less ecclesiastical hierarchy.”⁹² The Protestant spirit of inquiry gave birth to historical criticism in the Church, while the printing press advanced the secularization of life. If Sarmiento could only understand Luther in the light of the excesses of the Borgias, it is also true that he could only understand Ignatius of Loyola in the light of Luther. Ignatius was the “head of a militia” who “organized an army of wise and astute politicians,” whose only aim was to bring to a halt humanity’s progress. In this way, Sarmiento summarized the cultural struggle of his day as a contest between the forces of progress, represented by Luther’s revolt against the Roman hierarchy, and the forces of tradition, as embodied in the figure of Ignatius of Loyola. Interestingly, liberals throughout Latin America understood Luther and Protestantism as a source of inspiration for educational reform. The Puerto Rican philosopher Eugenio María de Hostos (1839 – 1903) saw in public education the vehicle to advance his progressive aspirations for the region. Educated in Spain, Hostos was an ardent advocate for the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico. In 1871, he travelled to Chile in order to promote the patriotic cause of the two remaining Spanish possessions in the Western Hemisphere. He rapidly became active among the elite

 Sarmiento, Darwin, 22.  Sarmiento, Darwin, 29.  Sarmiento, Darwin, 29 – 30.

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intellectual circles of Santiago. Here he published some of his most important works, such as a new edition of La Peregrinación de Bayoán (1873) and his lectures on the “scientific education of women,” La enseñanza científica de la mujer (1873).⁹³ In 1873, he visited Brazil and then settled in the Dominican Republic. It was there that he composed his most mature works, Lecciones de derecho constitucional (1887) and Moral social (1888).⁹⁴ In 1889, he returned to Chile at the behest of President José Manuel Balmaceda (1840 – 1891). He played a significant role in Chilean public education. Hostos had by then shifted his attention to pedagogy and was interested in educational reform. Consequently, he produced several new works that incorporated his positivist views and Americanista ideals into the teaching of several subjects. Among these works were Programa de geografía e historia (1893) and Programa de Castellano (1893).⁹⁵ After spending time in the United States, he returned to the Dominican Republic in 1900 and continued to shape the educational system there until his death. His work Ciencia de la pedagogía was published posthumously in 1939.⁹⁶ This volume gathered his notes related to the basic concepts and history of pedagogy. These were notes that he used in the training of teachers in the Dominican Republic in 1881 and 1882. Here he credited Martin Luther with establishing the foundations of the modern public school.⁹⁷ He described Luther as both reformer and “teacher” (“pedagogo”) and considered the public school as a “daughter of Protestantism.”⁹⁸ According to Hostos, free thought was the product of the Reformation. He described “free thought” as the “political act of applying individual reason to the examination of religious dogmas as well as philosophical, political, and social doctrines.”⁹⁹ Hostos believed that Protestants had a better grasp of the contribution of knowledge to the progress and betterment of humankind than did Roman Catholics. Luther and other European Protestants could be credited with laying the foundations of public schools because they made mandatory the state-sponsored primary education

 Eugenio María de Hostos, La peregrinación de Bayoan: diario (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta del Sud-América, 1873). His three lectures on the “scientific education of women” were published separately; Eugenio María de Hostos, “La educación científica de la mujer,” Revista Sud-América [Santiago, Chile] (10 June 1873): 232– 40; Hostos, “La educación científica de la mujer” (Segunda conferencia), Revista Sud-América (25 June 1873): 324– 37; Hostos, “La educación científica de la mujer. CartaContestación al señor Luis Rodríguez Velasco,” Revista Sud-América (25 July 1873): 608 – 32.  Eugenio María de Hostos, Lecciones de derecho constitucional (Santo Domingo: Cuna de América, 1887); Hostos, Moral social (Santo Domingo: Impr. De García Hermanos, 1888).  Eugenio María de Hostos, Programa de jeografía [sic] e historia (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Cervantes, 1893); Hostos, Programa de castellano (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Cervantes, 1893).  Eugenio María de Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, in Obras completas (edición crítica), ed. Julio Cesar López and Vivian Quiles Calderín (Rio Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1991), 6.1:13.  Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, 153.  Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, 163.  Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, 164.

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of children. They understood that the creation of schools and the organization of teaching were functions of the state and, consequently, German, Swiss, and Scandinavian Protestants did a great “service to civilization.” They made of the public elementary schools one of the “indispensable organs of culture” for the “civilizing” of humankind. “In this sense,” he concluded, “Luther was not simply a religious reformer but a true agent of civilization [civilizador].”¹⁰⁰ Hostos was unique in his high regard for Protestantism. “In the history of Western Civilization,” he remarked, “the organization of Protestant schools amounted to one of the true foundations of the social order.”¹⁰¹ Nevertheless, while Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin knew the importance of schools for the “uniformity” of religion, they did not realize their worth for the social order. Luther was not a “farseeing” man, nor did he have ample knowledge. However, he did have the necessary perseverance to promote the idea of public education. Furthermore, Luther was not content with teaching how to read the Bible, and in this way he set an example that even Catholics could follow.¹⁰² Hostos drew his conclusions from Luther’s “Letter to the Mayors and Aldermen of all the Cities of Germany in Behalf of Christian Schools” (1524).¹⁰³ In his interpretation of Luther’s letter, Hostos underscored that the introduction of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in public schools led to the undermining of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Moreover, he celebrated Luther’s idea of instructing boys and girls together so that they could have access to the same quality of instruction. The establishment of public libraries was another programmatic aspect of Luther’s educational thought that Hostos now proposed to his students in the Dominican Republic.¹⁰⁴ He contrasted Luther’s progressive educational ideas with the role of the Inquisition, responsible for the suppression of learning and book burning. Based on this comparison, he came to the conclusion that Protestant educational reforms accounted for the development of Germany, while the restrictive outlook of Catholicism accounted for the impoverishment of Catholic countries.¹⁰⁵ Nevertheless, Hostos also saw that Luther’s inclination for the liberal arts could lead to long-term detrimental consequences for the development of the “positive” sciences.¹⁰⁶ Hostos’ Moral social (1888) was one of the earliest systematic treatments of sociology written by a Latin American scholar. In it he described Protestantism as a

 Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, 164– 65.  Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, 165.  Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, 165.  The edition or translation of the letter that he used remains uncertain. See Martin Luther, To the Councilmen of all Cities in Germany that they Establish and Maintain Christian Schools (1524), in Luther’s Works, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehman (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958 – 1986), 45:347– 78.  Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, 166.  Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, 167.  Hostos, Ciencia de la pedagogía, 167.

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progressive movement – a far more advanced form of Christianity than Roman Catholicism. ¹⁰⁷ The original impulse behind Luther’s protest was, however, the progressive force of history. In Hostos’ opinion, Luther regretted his own action, and yet there was nothing he could do to stop it or to prevent it from going forward. In fact, he regarded Luther’s protest as the first modern manifestation of free thought (libre examen). From the beginning, the Reformation was guided by the free exercise of individual initiative. This principle led to open war against all activity guided by the principle of hierarchy. The Puritans, also inspired by Luther but responding to the same progressive force of history, replaced hierarchical mental authority with that of “personal inspiration.”¹⁰⁸ On balance, however, Hostos understood Luther primarily as a religious reformer. Consequently, Luther’s ideas, in Hostos’ estimation, were not comprehensive enough and were insufficient to provide an account of human history and human progress. Furthermore, after the Spanish American War (1898), Puerto Rico became a territorial possession of the United States. It very soon became clear that the United States was not interested in relinquishing control over the island. Hostos himself was involved in diplomatic conversations with President William McKinley (1843 – 1901) in January 1899. The new political reality of the island certainly made Hostos more critical of Protestantism and, consequently, of the figure of Martin Luther. He made the point in a remarkably creative way in his short dialogue, “Barrenderos e iluminadores.”¹⁰⁹ In this short piece, Hostos situated Goethe in a conversation with an unnamed character as they commented on the French Revolution. The topic of the exchange was the difference between political and intellectual revolutions, or the revolutions of “brutes” and those of “luminaries.” Goethe argued that political revolutions were merely mechanisms for the disposal of piled-up social malaises. Political revolutions would not be necessary if intellectual revolutions were allowed to unfold to their logical conclusions. Following this scheme, he placed Luther alongside Oliver Cromwell (1599 – 1658) and Maximilien Robespierre (1758 – 1794). Luther was the leader of a political rather than an intellectual revolution. That is, he was the head of a revolution of “brutes” and not of “luminaries.” Goethe, furthermore, set the figure of Luther against those of Francis Bacon (1561– 1626), Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727), and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744– 1829), whom he regarded as the fore-

 Eugenio María de Hostos, Moral social, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Imprenta de Bailly-Bailliere e Hijos, 1906), 165 – 70.  Hostos, Moral social (1906), 165.  Eugenio María de Hostos, “Barrenderos e iluminadores,” Revista literaria: publicación quincenal de ciencias, artes y letras [Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic] 1.1 (23 March 1901), 13 – 14. The dialogue was first published in the Dominican Republic in 1901 and not in Cuba in 1904– 1905, as indicated by the editors of Obras completas (edición critica) (1992), cf., Hostos, “Barrenderos e iluminadores,” in Obras completas (edición crítica), ed. Julio César López y Vivian Quiles Calderín (Rio Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1992), 1.2:359 – 63, here 359n333.

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runners of the intellectual revolutions that charted the progress of Western civilization. This dialogue is quite revealing, since Hostos placed Luther at the center. The piece was as much about the character of revolutions as it was about the historical meaning of Martin Luther.¹¹⁰ In fact, Hostos’ view of Luther as a revolutionary was quite common. For instance, Mariano A. Pelliza, in the introduction to his Historia argentina (1888), described Luther as a revolutionary caudillo. Luther’s historical importance was that “he appeared as the caudillo of new ideas, and that these new ideas were the revolution against the Catholic theocracy.”¹¹¹ By 1901, however, Hostos no longer shared this mythical political reading of Luther. He no longer saw Luther and Protestantism as the way forward and away from what he deemed as the obscurantism of the Roman Catholic tradition. Instead, he now associated Luther with the Protestantism that shaped the early history of the United States, and by extension, he also regarded the American Revolutionary War as a revolution of “brutes.”¹¹²

 Hostos, “Barrenderos e iluminadores,” 13 – 14.  Mariano A. Pelliza, Historia argentina (Buenos Aires: Felix Lajouane, 1888), 1:11.  Pelliza, Historia argentina, 1:11.

Judith Becker

Missions in Africa: Lutheran Churches, Enculturation, and Ecumenism The European Lutheran missions were interdenominational from the start. In the first more than one hundred years of the Evangelical mission, individual missionaries for the most part were devoutly Lutheran, as were some of the initial communities. This was not generally the case, however, for entire mission organizations. Furthermore, the meaning of “Lutheran” was defined very differently depending on the time and the location of the tradition of the respective missionaries and of the communities that sent them. Organized Evangelical missionary work began with the Danish-Egnlish-Halle Mission in the early eighteenth century. Under the auspices of Frederick IV of Denmark (r. 1699 – 1730), the German August Hermann Francke (1663 – 1727) sent two theology students – Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682– 1719) and Heinrich Plütschau (1677– 1752) – to Tranquebar (which is today Tharangambadi) in southern India. As the Lutheran mission was a European undertaking from its inception, it was also marked from the outset by different currents within Lutheranism itself and by different confessional cultures. This aspect continues to figure prominently to this day, influencing present-day Lutheran missions and churches, not only in Europe, but also and especially in Africa. What is more, only four years after the missionaries Ziegenbalg and Plütschau were sent out, the Anglican Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) also joined the Danish-Halle Mission (DEHM). Thus, even though its missionaries generally still went through training in Lutheran Halle and partly in Copenhagen, the mission was no longer exclusively Lutheran. The Moravian Church began to proselytize outside of Europe shortly after its founding at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was only the second Evangelical community to do so. Here, too, classification according to the terms “ecumenical,” “Lutheran,” or other denominational affiliations is difficult. The Moravians are to be considered simultaneously Lutheran and interdenominational: they were equally influenced by the theology and tradition of the Czech Brethren and the specific interpretation of Lutheranism of Nicolaus Zinzendorf (1700 – 1760). Reformed theology also had a meaningful impact on the Moravian Church. What, then, does it mean to be “Lutheran” – in the mission, in Africa, and beyond? This chapter aims to demonstrate the diversity of the “Lutheran” European missions and Lutheran churches on the African continent. Given the sheer size of the continent and the extent of the relevant period, it will only be possible to highlight some of the various Lutheran missions and churches. First of all, the present Translation from German: Christopher William Reid.

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study will focus on German-speaking missions. A large percentage of the Lutheran mission-inspired churches established in Africa originated with German missions. There were also Lutheran missions from Sweden, Norway, Finland, and North America. The German missions concentrated on southern and eastern Africa, where the German Empire had set up colonies. Second, this chapter will concentrate on Sub-Saharan Africa. Even here, the variety of approaches, experiences, and traditions is significant. With its centuries- and indeed millennia-old Christian churches, North Africa would have to be discussed separately. Indeed, the North African encounter with the Lutherans took place in a completely different context than that of Sub-Saharan Africa. It is thus only possible to remark that Christianity has existed in Africa since its inception.¹ The following discussion intends to present an overview of the diversity of Lutheran missions, religion, and culture in Africa. For this purpose, the first part of the chapter will concern the establishment of devoutly Lutheran mission societies in the nineteenth century in relation to the mission of Lutherans in interdenominational mission societies. It will further address the relationship between confessional theology and pietistic or revivalist faith in the missions. The missionary work of the nineteenth century took place in the context of colonialism and imperialism. This reality not only shaped missionary strategies, the choice of mission areas, the respective approaches of various missions, and their views on the people of Africa, but was also directly related to the religious orientations and convictions of at least some of the missionary societies. The role of the imperialist mindset will be discussed in the second part of this study. The third part deals with the establishment of Lutheran churches in Africa, while the fourth part elucidates the conflict between Europeaninfluenced theology and religiosity and initial efforts toward contextual missionary work. The fifth part of this chapter will explain the significance of African Indigenous Churches – known as AICs. They were established early in Sub-Saharan Africa and organized independently of the mission churches. They also developed their own theology.² The sixth part deals with African theology in the second half of the twentieth century. The article then concludes with some theological perspectives for Luther research in dialogue with theologies developed in Africa.

 For a theologically integrative approach from an African perspective, see Kwame Bediako, Theology and Identity: The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and in Modern Africa (Oxford: Regnum Books, 1992). An overview is offered in Ogbu U. Kalu, ed., African Christianity: An African Story (Pretoria: Africa World Press, 2005), and Bengt Sundkler and Christopher Steed, A History of the Church in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).  On the naming and also the difficulty of classifying the AICs denominationally, from the perspective of turn of the millennium, see John S. Pobee and Gabriel Ositelu II, African Initiatives in Christianity: The Growth, Gifts and Diversities of Indigenous African Churches – A Challenge to the Ecumenical Movement, with a foreword by W. Hollenweger (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1998), ix and 3; see also Phillip D. Mazambara, The Self-Understanding of African Instituted Churches: A Study Based on the Church of Apostles Founded by John of Marange in Zimbabwe (Aachen: Verlag an der Lottbek, 1999), 27– 38.

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1 Lutheran Missionaries and Lutheran Mission Societies The great period of the European missions began toward the end of the eighteenth century. Missionary societies were founded in many European countries, quickly superseding the relatively tentative efforts made in the early eighteenth century. The first of these new organizations emerged in Great Britain, which included the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS, 1792), the London Missionary Society (LMS, 1795), and the Church Missionary Society (CMS, 1799).³ In German-speaking countries, mission societies were not founded until the beginning of the nineteenth century. They trained the missionaries for other European societies before eventually deciding to send men (and later women) to countries outside of Europe. These first German mission societies were all interdenominational – their express concern was with the right faith, not the right religious affiliation. The first and largest of these newly established mission societies was the Basel Mission (1815).⁴ Its governing body, the Committee, was mostly comprised of Reformed citizens of Basel. Until the twentieth century, its presidents came exclusively from the Basel bourgeoisie. The inspectors – that is, the directors of the mission school, who also conducted the daily affairs of the mission – were, with one exception, citizens of Württemberg who were shaped by Württemberg Lutheran Pietism and revivalism. As a result, the Württemberg (Lutheran) Church tried to influence the Basel Mission, especially after the putatively Reformed Anglican CMS had sent out Württemberg missionaries. Even more important than these ecclesiastical relations, however, was the disposition of the individual missionaries. Before the Basel Mission under Joseph Josenhans (Inspectorate 1850 – 1879) became more organized and hierarchical, they had  Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792 – 1992 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992); Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society 1795 – 1895, 2 vols. (London: Henry Frowde, 1899); Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society: Its Environment, Its Men and Its Work, 4 vols. (London: Church Missionary Society, 1899 – 1916); Kevin Ward and Brian Stanley, eds., The Church Mission Society and World Christianity, 1799 – 1999 (Grand Rapids/ Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2000).  On the history of the Basel Mission in Africa, see Wilhelm Schlatter, Geschichte der Basler Mission 1815 – 1915, vol. 3, Die Geschichte der Basler Mission in Afrika (Basel: Basler Missionsbuchhandlung, 1916); Jon Miller, Missionary Zeal and Institutional Control: Organizational Contradictions in the Basel Mission on the Gold Coast, 1828 – 1917 (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2003); for more on women in the mission, see Ulrike Sill, Encounters in Quest of Christian Womanhood: The Basel Mission in Pre- and Early Colonial Ghana (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Because of their factual confessional orientation in Africa, Sigvard of Sicard describes the Basel Mission, as well as the Berlin Mission, as “Lutheran”; see von Sicard, The Lutheran Church on the Coast of Tanzania, 1887 – 1914, with special reference to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, Synod of Uzaramo-Uluguru, (Lund: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1970), 19. Nonetheless, there are several factual errors and mistakes in attribution, for example, of missionaries to mission societies.

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particularly wide latitude to enforce their ideas of “real” Christianity in the early decades of their work in various territories. Despite the official interdenominational character of the Basel Mission, Lutheran religious affiliation and Lutheran aspects were thus also transported to some mission territories. Some missionaries introduced Lutheran confessional writings to their congregations, above all Luther’s catechisms. Other Württemberg missionaries preferred the catechism of Johannes Brenz (mainly because of his depiction of the theology of baptism).⁵ Still others wrote their own catechisms, regulations, teachings, and confessions, tailored to the circumstances of the mission.⁶ In liturgy and community organization, they generally adapted Lutheran ideas to the particular situation of the young community. One of the best-known examples of such a free hand was the Rhenish missionary Carl Hugo Hahn, who came into conflict with the directors of his mission over questions of religious affiliation.⁷ Hahn not only insisted on introducing the Lutheran faith to his mission congregations, but also on excluding Reformed Christians. These positions contradicted the official denominational neutrality of the Rhenish Missionary Society (Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft, RMG). In 1844, Hahn founded the first German mission in Herero territory – Neu-Barmen in Otjikango. Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt had established the first RMG station under the Nama two years earlier.⁸ They were the first German mission stations in southwestern Africa. In West Africa, German missionaries were active in Liberia on behalf of the Basel Mission beginning in 1827 and employed in the Gold Coast (Ghana) beginning in 1828. Though many of the mission societies are now perceived as Lutheran in hindsight, they were officially interdenominational societies, whose missionaries introduced Lutheran doctrine and rites locally. One of the primary reasons for the relative confessional indifference of most mission societies and many missionaries in the last third of the nineteenth century lay in their conceptions of piety. Many of the Lutheran missionaries – with the exception of noteworthy figures, such as Carl Hugo Hahn – imparted Lutheran faith in their missionary work simply because they had grown up with it. It was the theology, ecclesiology, and spirituality

 See, for example, Der evangelische Heidenbote 16 (1843), 5; here, a quote may be found from the Basel Mission in India, as well as the arguments of the missionary to India Hermann Gundert, in the Basel Mission Archives, C-1.7 Talatscheri 1841, no. 4, H. Gundert, April 1841, 2r.  See, for example, von Sicard, The Lutheran Church, 154– 58.  On the Rhenish Missionary Society, see Gustav Menzel, Aus 150 Jahren Missionsgeschichte. Die Rheinische Mission (Wuppertal: Verlag der Vereinigten Evangelischen Mission, 1978); on Hahn, see esp. 100 – 03. See also Kevin Ward, “Deutsche Lutheraner und englische Anglikaner im südlichen Afrika bis 1918. Eine gemeinsame und eine divergierende Geschichte,” in Deutsche Evangelische Kirche im kolonialen südlichen Afrika. Die Rolle der Auslandsarbeit von den Anfängen bis in die 1920er Jahre, eds. Hans von Lessing et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011), 435 – 53.  Thorsten Altena, “Ein Häuflein Christen mitten in der Heidenwelt des dunklen Erdteils”. Zum Selbstund Fremdverständnis protestantischer Missionare im kolonialen Afrika 1884 – 1918 (Münster: Waxmann, 2003), 33.

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they were familiar with and which they had also been taught was “right.” On the other hand, more than a few were willing to distance themselves from confessional theology in the mission territories when it seemed to stand in the way of the mission’s success. Other aspects – such as the “real” faith and the “right” way of life – were more important to them. Much of what was generally influenced by European Christian history or rooted in revivalism was thus later perceived as “Lutheran” (or alternatively “Reformed” or “Anglican”) because it had become entwined in the mission territories. The silence of the congregation during worship is but one example.⁹ For the revivalists, inner and outer quietude was a defining characteristic of the “real” Christian faith and “real” conversion.¹⁰ In the 1830s, there was a return to denominational affiliations.¹¹ The interdenominational mission was now increasingly viewed with a critical eye. The Evangelical Lutheran Mission Society was founded in Dresden in 1836 as an explicit alternative to the Basel Mission. It was one of the first overtly confessional Lutheran mission societies and is one of the few to bear the denominational affiliation in its name.¹² In 1848, the Mission Society moved to Leipzig. Today, it operates under the name Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionswerk Leipzig (The Leipzig Mission). The Leipzig Mission took over the mission station in Tranquebar from the DEHM in the 1840s. Later, it also founded mission stations in Africa. During the era of imperialism, it was especially active in what is today Tanzania. By 1842, Wilhelm Löhe (1808 – 1872) from Neuendettelsau had already sent “helpers” to North America. Over the course of the following decades, an increasing number of preachers in this high-church revivalist Lutheran initiative were sent to non-European countries. Initially, their mission was to attend to the spiritual needs of German emigrants. Missionary work among indigenous people did not begin until 1886, starting in New Guinea. Apart from these first steps, a large-scale, German, overtly Lutheran denominational mission did not exist until the period of German imperialism in 1884/1885. Here, as elsewhere, mission and colonial policy were linked much more closely

 See, for example, B. J. Katabaro, “Ist das noch lutherisch? Das reformatorische Erbe der ELCT in Tansania,” Jahrbuch Mission 47 (2015): 83 – 88.  Cf. the example of the Basel Mission in South India in Judith Becker, Conversio im Wandel. Basler Missionare zwischen Europa und Südindien und die Ausbildung einer Kontaktreligiosität, 1834 – 1860 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 244– 51.  For this, Olaf Blaschke coined the term “second-denominational age;” Blaschke, “The 19th Jahrhundert: Ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter?” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2000): 38 – 75.  In the case of mission societies from other European countries, the denominational character of the societies supported by these churches and their members was clearer than in the German-speaking world because of the religious affiliation of the majority or state church. At the same time, these societies were less concerned with confessional boundaries due to a lack of denominational alternatives. This was especially true for the Scandinavian missions. But even there, the mission was by and large more revivalist than confessional in nature.

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than before. In fact, this was a European-wide phenomenon. Missionary societies in which national and religious affiliations went hand in hand were also founded in other countries. The Lutheran Svenska Kyrkans Mission (SKM) was accordingly established as a mission society of the Swedish (state) church in 1874.¹³ Furthermore, the Church of England demonstrated an ever-growing interest in the CMS in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the final decades of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, the Lutheran denomination was equated with “Germanness” in many parts of Germany.¹⁴ Thus Lutheranism was to be exported around the world. In this way, “German” religion and “German” culture were meant to be simultaneously introduced in the colonies. The Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Missionsgesellschaft (The Bethel Mission), founded in 1886 by the colonialist Carl Peters, epitomizes this combination of Lutheran mission and German imperialism. Peters left the mission in 1887, shortly after its founding, and it was then renamed the “Evangelical Mission Society for German East Africa” (EMDOA).¹⁵ After Friedrich von Bodelschwingh assumed the leadership of the EMDOA in 1890, it began to flourish. The mission moved to Bethel in 1906, earning it the name “The Bethel Mission.” It started operating in present-day Tanzania, and later also in Rwanda. In the EMDOA/Bethel Mission, the Lutheran faith merged with allegiance to the state and more or less openly colonialist ideas. Most of the missionaries had studied theology in Bethel. They were influenced by von Bodelschwingh’s idiosyncratic approach and the relationship between inner mission and foreign mission. These Lutheran societies operated alongside the still-successful missionary work of interdenominational societies and the Lutheran work of denominationally committed missionaries within the interdenominational missionary societies. This broad spectrum of mediators and lines of mediation already suggests the diversity of Lutheran cultures in the missions.

2 Missions and Colonialism The EMDOA/Bethel Mission is one prominent example of the link between Lutheran missions and colonialism. Although the Rhenish Missionary Society at the beginning of the 1880s was even more influenced by colonialist views than the EMDOA, unlike the latter, it was officially interdenominational. Nonetheless, the inspector of the

 At the same time, Sweden had no colonies and deliberately refrained from imperialism.  A chronology is offered by G. Scriba, “Chronologie der lutherischen Kirchengeschichte Südafrikas (1652– 1928),” in German Evangelical Church, 285 – 305.  For the history of the Bethel Mission, see Gustav Menzel, Die Bethel-Mission. Aus 100 Jahren Missionsgeschichte (Neukirchen/Vluyn: Vereinte Evangelische Mission, 1986).

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RMG, Friedrich Fabri (1824– 1891), is considered one of the most important representatives of imperialism in the missionary movement. The Rhenish Missionary Society was headed by Friedrich Fabri beginning in 1857. Fabri had increasingly and intensively engaged in the German colonial movement, and he published a treatise under the title Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien? Eine politisch-ökonomische Betrachtung ¹⁶ (Does Germany Need Colonies? A Political and Economic Consideration) in 1879. In 1884, he left the RMG to devote himself to colonial policy and its propagation. His colonial activities had gradually become incompatible with mission leadership. Fabri was not a “mission insider”; until he was called to Barmen, he had dedicated himself to the inner rather than the foreign missions. The RMG, which was entangled in serious sectarian disputes, became interested in Fabri due to his support of the denominational union (the fact that, as a southern German, his understanding of the union was inconsistent with that of the RMG, which had been established in the church of the Old Prussian Union, only became apparent later).¹⁷ Unlike other missiologists, Fabri integrated racist conceptions into his theology: the various peoples stood at different proximities to the kingdom of God. Some supposedly participated in the apostate movements referenced in biblical prehistory – which could be detected in their cultures, their social orders, and even in their physiognomies,.¹⁸ Fabri thus located humanity’s division into different peoples in prehistoric times, which resulted in the dominant position of the one – namely, white people – and the subjugation (though not necessarily suppression) of the other. In addition, Fabri was convinced that it was the Christians’ task to engage the world. This view – along with his unquestioned assumption that obedience to secular authority was indispensable to a Christian way of life – bolstered his commitment to German imperialism. He also advocated the separation of church and state.¹⁹ Fabri’s support for colonialism, however, was informed by his social engagement. Before he began working for RMG, he had already been engaged in the Inner Mission. He saw only one solution to increasing poverty in Germany in the 1870s: “guided emigration overseas.” In Fabri’s view, this was the reason Germany needed colonies. As a result of his treatise, Fabri became famous in the German colonial movement and, ultimately, “a key figure in the colonial movement.”²⁰ He obtained leading positions in various colonial societies and was later even an adviser to Otto von Bismarck. That said, in 1889, ten years after his treatise appeared, he published a condemnatory retrospective of previous colonial policy.²¹

 See Friedrich Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien? Eine politisch-ökonomische Betrachtung (Gotha: Perthes, 1879).  See Menzel, Rheinische Mission, 71 f.  See Menzel, Rheinische Mission, 76.  See Menzel, Rheinische Mission, 77.  See Menzel, Rheinische Mission, 78.  See Fabri, Fünf Jahre deutscher Kolonialpolitik. Rück- und Ausblicke (Gotha: Perthes, 1889).

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Gustav Warneck (1834– 1910) and Franz Michael Zahn (1833 – 1900) endorsed a fairly prominent alternative position. They were strongly opposed to any “secularization” of the missionary work. For this reason, they were against the merging of processes of evangelizing and of “civilizing” as well as the organizational and institutional linking of missionary work with colonial/imperial administration.²² Of course, this did nothing to alter the fact that the missions were not just part of the colonial system, but also benefitted from it. What is more, very few missionaries questioned colonialism. Indeed, the contemporary interpretation of the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms seemed to legitimize this view theologically. By the turn of the century, four German-speaking societies had started missions in German East Africa: the EMDOA, the Basel Mission, the Moravian Church, and the Leipzig Mission.²³ Here, they would become colonial missions. Other German missionary societies followed shortly before the First World War. In those regions of Africa where Germany had no colonies, the missionary societies had to pick sides regarding the respective colonial administration. Most of the mission societies supported the colonial administrations – at least insofar as it was to their benefit.²⁴ This was even true, though to a lesser extent, for faith missions.

3 Three Lutheran Churches in Africa Beginning in the nineteenth century, several missionary societies, first and foremost the CMS, demanded that the newly established churches become independent as soon as possible. Henry Venn’s three-self principle (self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating) became a famous slogan for this viewpoint.²⁵ In fact, it took many decades before the Western mission societies determined that communities of missionaries could actually stand on their own.²⁶ In most countries, it was not the decision of Western mission societies that led to the independence of the indigenous churches, but rather the end of political colonialism. In the German mission

 See esp. Gustav Warneck, Abriß einer Geschichte der protestantischen Missionen von der Reformation bis auf die Gegenwart. Mit einem Anhang über die katholischen Missionen (1882), (Berlin: Verlag Martin Warneck, 1910).  See Altena, “Häuflein Christen,” 52– 71.  See the comprehensive studies on English missions under colonialism in Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700 – 1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester: Apollos, 1990).  Rufus Anderson took the same view for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. See Dana L. Robert, “Introduction,” in Converting Colonialism: Visions and Realities in Mission History, 1706 – 1914, ed. Dana L. Robert (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 1– 20, here 13 – 16.  See the interpretation of the “not yet” in Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

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churches, the First World War – which resulted in the detention or deportation of German and Swiss missionaries in many places – served as a catalyst, allowing the indigenous churches to venture a first step toward independence. The specific situation on the ground, however, varied enormously in different parts of Africa. In the following, two exemplary approaches will be presented, with reference to the Lutheran churches in today’s South Africa and the Lutheran Church in Tanzania. In southern Africa, the first Lutheran churches arose among white immigrants; in East and West Africa, however, Lutheran churches date back to the actual mission among indigenous Africans. White settlers began emigrating to South Africa in the seventeenth century, partly for economic and partly for religious reasons. In 1652, the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) established a supply station in South Africa.²⁷ Germans also arrived in the country at this time, along with the Dutch traders. The first religious refugees included Huguenot – French Reformed – exiles who sought to escape persecution in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Until the nineteenth century, the spiritual care of both the Reformed and the Lutherans was directed almost exclusively by white people. Nonetheless, the boundaries at this time were fluid. Some Europeans began relationships with indigenous slaves, while others married Africans.²⁸ Still, the population was not yet divided into completely separate groups based on skin color.²⁹ From the early eighteenth century, the Moravian Church was the first and only European society to also carry out missionary work among the indigenous black population.³⁰ At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Cape Colony passed over into British possession. Beginning in 1814, it was a British colony.³¹ In terms of religious-historical development, this meant a reinforcement of Lutheranism. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the church had still been officially Reformed; the Lutherans were merely permitted to participate in worship and communion. In the last third of the eighteenth century, an unofficial Lutheran community developed in Cape Town. In 1779, Lutherans were given religious freedom in the Cape; in 1780, the first Lutheran church was founded, of which 400 of the 401 founding members

 See Christian Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen. Lutherische Missions- und Siedlergemeinden in Südafrika im Spannungsfeld der Rassentrennung (1652 – 1910) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 22; see also Hohmann, “Die Beziehungen der deutschsprachigen lutherischen Gemeinden in der Kapregion zur Lutherischen Kirche in Hannover (1862 bis 1895),” in German Evangelical Church, 393 – 418. A list of events can be found in Scriba, Chronologie.  See Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen, 26.  This also points to the problem of assigning the terms “black” and “white” in a coherent way. Though the categorizations were refined over time, the difficulty of classification remained. It illustrates the impossibility of dividing up humanity into categories based on specific features.  On the Moravians as a global community, see Gisela Mettele, Weltbürgertum oder Gottesreich. Die Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine als globale Gemeinschaft 1727 – 1857 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009).  See Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen, 32.

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originally came from Germany. At the end of the year, the first Lutheran pastor was appointed. His successor was provided by the Lutheran Church in Hanover, after the Lutheran consistory in Amsterdam had ignored the church’s requests for a new pastor.³² As a result, the Hanoverian Church gained influence over religious developments in the Cape Colony. Over the course of the nineteenth century, new Lutheran churches were founded at the Cape (partly due to schisms). In 1861, the German Lutheran congregation emerged in Cape Town, after splitting off from the Dutch congregation. In 1895, the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of South Africa was established.³³ Evangelism among the indigenous population was not undertaken until the time of the Moravian Mission – among other reasons, because baptism would have put the converted blacks on a par with white settlers legally and economically.³⁴ The Moravian Georg Schmidt (1709 – 1785) conducted missionary work at the Cape beginning in 1737.³⁵ The mission, however, was soon interrupted for several decades; Schmidt had to return to Europe in 1744, and the next Moravian missionaries did not arrive at the Cape until 1792.³⁶ In 1829, the Rhenish Mission began with evangelism in South Africa; the Berlin Mission followed in 1834. As in other African countries, the acquisition of the German South West-Africa Colony (what is today Namibia) in southern Africa in 1884 marked the beginning of the colonial mission. Due to the different Lutheran missionary societies in southern Africa, a variety of Lutheran churches were built. There are accordingly three Lutheran churches in Namibia alone, due to the history of competing European missions.³⁷ In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Moravian Mission promoted the independence of the African missionary communities.³⁸ Nonetheless, the congregations were not actually granted independence until the beginning of the First World War. The Europeans had always found reasons to maintain their dominant position. The Moravian communities increasingly sought independence, partly due to the disparity between indigenous Africans and missionaries in financial, economic, and organizational matters. They were also motivated by their lower standing regarding theology and church leadership as well as by the paternalism of the Europeans. Some of them tended to align themselves with the newly emerging AICs.³⁹

 See Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen, 66 – 72.  See Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen, 117– 28.  See Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen, 74 and 76 – 78.  See Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen, 81.  See Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen, 90.  See Ward, Deutsche Lutheraner und englische Anglikaner. On the Hermannsburg Mission in Southern Africa, see Karl E. Böhmer, August Hardeland and the “Rheinische” and “Hermannsburger” Missions in Borneo and Southern Africa (1839 – 1870): The History of a Paradigm Shift and Its Impact on South African Lutheran Churches (Göttingen: Edition Ruprecht, 2016).  See Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen, 175 – 77.  See Auf getrennten Wegen, 202 f. On the designation of the AICs, see note 2 above.

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Lutheran missionary work among indigenous Africans began in West Africa in the early nineteenth century, when the Anglican CMS sent Lutheran Germans. In 1806, the Lutheran ordained missionaries Gustav Reinhold Nylander and Leopold Butscher were sent to Sierra Leone. They had both been trained in the Berlin Mission seminar of Johannes Jaenicke.⁴⁰ Despite the Lutheran faith of the first missionaries, Anglican churches were later founded on the basis of the work of the CMS. Similarly, because of the interdenominational orientation of the Basel Mission, the missionary work of the Basel missionaries in West Africa (which emerged beginning in 1827 and were also mainly carried out in the early years by Lutherans) did not result in the establishment of devoutly Lutheran churches, but rather in Reformed and Union churches. The situation was different in East Africa. There, distinctly Lutheran evangelism was carried out, especially during the era of German imperialism. For the most part, the missionary work was attributed to the expeditions and plans of two Basel-trained missionaries, Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810 – 1881) and Johannes Rebmann (1820 – 1876), even though the mission appeared much later. Krapf and Rebmann arrived in East Africa in 1844.⁴¹ Nevertheless, from the outset, missionary work was not only a Western undertaking. African Christians ably and effectively evangelized among their relatives, neighbors, and friends, and even in remote areas outside of their native territory. Without this indigenous missionary work, Western missionary efforts would have quickly failed. In addition, indigenous people were critical in a number of related roles: as language teachers for the missionaries, as school teachers (and later female school teachers) for the local children, as translators and sources of information about local customs and traditions, and in many other roles.⁴² When missionaries went into new areas to establish a mission, they were usually accompanied by local catechists or other staff from neighboring regions. Of course, these African employees were only rarely mentioned in mission history, generally not until recent times.⁴³

 Church Missionary Society, Register of Missionaries (Clerical, Lay & Female), and Native Clergy, From 1804 to 1904, in two parts; University of Birmingham, Special Collections Archives, Sign.: CMS BV 2500, [1904], nos. 3+4.  See Karl F. Ledderhose, “Krapf, Johann Ludwig,” General German Biography 17 (1883): 49 – 55, https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/gnd118715496.html#adbcontent; see also Ledderhose, “Rebmann, Johann,” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 27 (1888): 485 – 89, https://www.deutsche-biogra phie.de/gnd116368705.html#adbcontent.  One example among many is provided by G.D. Yigbe, “Von Gewährsleuten zu Gehilfen und Gelehrigen. Der Beitrag afrikanischer Mitarbeiter zur Entstehung einer verschriftlichten Kultur in Deutsch-Togo,” in Mission global. Eine Verflechtungsgeschichte seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, eds. Rebekka Habermas and Richard Hölzl (Köln: Böhlau, 2014), 159 – 75. See also, from the perspective of an appreciation of the mission, Joseph W. Parsalaw, A History of the Lutheran Church, Diocese in the Arusha Region from 1904 to 1958 (Erlangen: Erlanger Verlag für Mission und Ökumene, 1999).  See, for example, Leonard A. Mtaita, The Wandering Shepherds and the Good Shepherd: Contextualization as the Way of Doing Mission with the Maasai in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanza-

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The early strategy of using Africans as missionaries in Africa was instituted less out of an appreciation for the indigenous population than out of the experience that German missionaries often did not survive their first year in Africa. European missionary societies assumed that blacks, no matter where they were born, were best suited for the climate and living conditions in Africa. In 1843, the Basel Mission started using Christians from Caribbean churches for evangelism in West Africa.⁴⁴ The CMS ordained the first African bishop, Samuel Crowther (1809 – 1891), in 1881 in what it today Nigeria. In the wake of the First World War, all German missionaries were expelled from Tanzania in 1920. This brought about a dramatic change, as the African communities were now independent – at least until the stations were taken over by other mission organizations and/or the missionaries returned a few years later. Teachers and evangelists assumed control of both the church leadership and the missionary initiatives.⁴⁵ The churches, however, did not gain broad autonomy until after the Second World War. The first indigenous bishop of the Lutheran Church of Northern Tanganmyika, Stefano Ruben Moshi (1906 – 1976), was elected in 1960. He was the son of the first indigenous missionary of the Leipzig Mission, Ruben Moshi.⁴⁶

4 European Missions and African Cultures The Lutheran missionaries’ access to the indigenous African religions and cultures varied widely. It generally depended on the time, place, and the personality of the missionaries.⁴⁷ The respective African culture they encountered also played a role. In most cases, African religion and culture had less of an impact on the missionaries’ perceptions than the prejudices that were manifested in Europe. Southern Africa had an entirely different history than West and East Africa. By the time the large wave of European and North American missionaries arrived in southern Africa, the region had already witnessed relatively prosperous white settler communities, and in some areas, there were established Lutheran churches. In southern Africa, the indigenous communities existed alongside the white communities, which in fact often re-

nia, Pare Diocese (Erlangen: Erlanger Verlag für Mission und Ökumene, 1998), 116 f, on the beginnings of the mission among the Maasai.  Cf. Katja Füllberg-Stolberg, “‘Ein Sauerteig christlichen Lebens in der Masse afrikanischen Heidentums‘. Westindische Konvertiten an der Goldküste (1843 – 1850),” in Mission global, 31– 57; Schlatter, Basler Mission, 6 – 12 and 32– 36.  See Sundkler and Steed, History, 879 f.; Maanga, Church Growth.  See Sundkler and Steed, History, 882. In 1963, the church joined with two other regional churches to form the ELCT.  An analysis and categorization of the cultural access of German missionaries during imperialism is found in Altena, “Häuflein Christen,” 98 – 144.

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jected the former. In contrast, the missionaries in West and East Africa were more strongly oriented toward the indigenous population. After a brief overview, the following section will discuss an example from East Africa Tanzania. In most regions the missionaries rarely transmitted confessions, catechisms, and rituals from Europe to Africa unaltered. Much more often, they adapted them to the local conditions and needs.⁴⁸ The first Lutheran German missionaries, sent by the CMS, arrived in West Africa at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They were explicitly charged with making amends for the evils of European slavery through Christian proselytizing. In other words, they were to lead the local population to the kingdom of God and eternal bliss.⁴⁹ They were quite open-minded toward the Africans as people. They sometimes equated the locals with Europeans or even attributed higher intelligence or greater skill to them in their mission reports.⁵⁰ At the same time, they typically described the African culture they encountered negatively. They traced the problematic characteristics, however, back to the long period of oppression and slavery. As in Europe, revivalist Lutherans hoped that evangelization would solve social problems. The idea of progress was inherent to this early mission. The goal of progress in the world entailed Europeanization, albeit without the perceived negative aspects of contemporary Europe (industrialization, urbanization, pauperism, de-Christianization, and “moral decline”). The missionaries attempted early on to establish “purely Christian” locations in Africa that were organized according to their ideas of Christian life. Simultaneously, they not only fought against the slave trade and slavery, but they fought also intensely against the liquor trade and other practices imported from Europe, which in their view contributed to “moral decay.”⁵¹ When it was recognized that the Africans could not be converted either quickly or en masse to the Christian lifestyle that the missionaries propagated, a period of disillusionment set in. From this point onward, African religions, cultures, and people were no longer viewed in a positive light. Concurrent to these experiences, and largely independent of them, theories of a hierarchy of the “races” were beginning to take hold in Europe. People with dark skin landed on the lower end of the

 See, for example, von Sicard, The Lutheran Church, 154– 58 and 180 – 83. Some missionaries undertook these adaptations with the approval of the mission leadership, others without its knowledge. They rarely contravened specific instructions. There are abundant discussions about the right form of confession and catechism in the mission sources.  The original name of the CMS, the “Society for Missions to Africa and the East,” already hinted at this focus. An explicit justification is provided in the first issue of the newly established journal of the CMS, the Church Missionary Record 1 (1830): 1 f.  See, for example, Der evangelische Heidenbote (1840): 89: “seitdem hat es sich auch hinlänglich bewiesen, daß der Neger dieselbe Fähigkeit besitze, wie der Europäer.”  For one example among many, with illustrative pictures and, above all, captions, see Der evangelische Heidenbote (1914): 64– 66. The Hermannsburg Mission took the concept of “Christian” villages to the furthest extreme by deliberately sending out non-academically educated farm laborers and craftsmen. See, for example, Bohemian, August Hardeland, 173 – 75.

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scale, although they had previously been regarded as “noble savages” and as role models for Europeans.⁵² In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the mission theology changed once again. Put simply, there were now two approaches: one direction sought to transmit European – more precisely, German, British, or French – culture to Africa by way of Christianity. African communities were to be founded and organized according to the European model. Thus, Lutheranism in Africa was meant to closely resemble Lutheranism in Germany.⁵³ Not only would this strengthen the unity of Lutheran churches worldwide, but it also allowed for the export of German culture – which was entirely deliberate. Sometimes the mission stood in the service of imperialism; in other cases, it used colonial and imperial structures for its own work. Around the turn of the century, the missionaries also viewed themselves increasingly as Germans (or as English, French, or Swedish, respectively). Mission work also went in another direction, however. Precisely because of the increasing prominence of the nation and ethnicity in Europe, mission work in the mission territories emphasized local culture and language and everything that was thought to belong to a people – “das Volk.” Christianity was to be integrated into the indigenous culture, thus transforming it from the inside out. To this end, it was deemed necessary to preserve the local culture. Bruno Gutmann (1876 – 1966) undertook this type of Lutheran mission from 1902 to 1938 (which was temporarily interrupted by his expulsion, due to the First World War, from 1920 to 1926). He worked on Kilimanjaro in what is today Tanzania after a training period, first with the Chaga (Chagga) in Masama and later in Moshi. Gutmann was sent by the Leipzig Mission. Theologically, he stood in the tradition of the mission’s first inspector, Karl Graul (1814– 1864). He was otherwise heavily influenced by the first chair of mission studies in Germany, Gustav Warneck. In this tradition, Gutmann also emphasized the importance of ethnicity, “national character,” and local traditions for Christianization. In Masama and Moshi, he consequently made an effort to preserve the indigenous culture. On the one hand, he collected traditional stories and narratives and put them down in writing. The Chaga, as a result, have records of their history that would otherwise have been lost. Indeed, when they returned to their heritage in the second half of the twentieth century, the traditional accounts that Gutmann and other missionaries had collected were a critical resource. On the other hand, the appreciation of the indigenous culture had a negative impact on the Chaga. Gutmann, who wanted to preserve the culture, in the process also actively inhibited the Chaga’s cultural development. As a conservative missionary, moreover, he wanted to preserve the past. A number of progress-oriented Chaga  See, for example, Ute Frevert, Eurovisionen. Ansichten guter Europäer im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Perlentaucher, 2003), 82.  On mimesis and the presumption that Africans were not entirely equal to Europeans, see especially Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 2012 [1994]), 121– 31.

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therefore turned away from the mission; they sought to strengthen their influence and importance by dressing like Europeans, speaking European languages – mainly English –, and adopting European practices. Gutmann moved to prevent this, however.⁵⁴ The preservation of indigenous culture went hand in hand with the relegation of the indigenous people to a subordinate status to that of the Europeans. Both culture and hierarchy needed to be upheld. For both political and ecclesiastical order, this meant that groups which had previously occupied a minor leadership role gained influence. There was no change in ecclesiological theory, only in actual practice. In Moshi, for example, the church elders – who supported the missionary – gained increasing clout, while teachers and other full-time employees lost their standing. ⁵⁵ Gutmann devised a theology that related to the Chaga culture, as he perceived it. It reconciled elements that had developed under European Christianity with those of the Chaga culture. The community thus stood at the center of his theological preaching because of the great importance that community had for the Chaga. In this topos, Gutmann saw an opportunity to combine Christianity and indigenous culture. The emphasis on community, and particularly its elevation as an absolutely essential element of indigenous culture, implied for Gutmann that no social differentiation should be allowed to take place. This was yet another reason he was opposed to the development of the Chaga and to social stratification (a position which his prominent standing as a white missionary would have relativized over time). According to Gutmann’s interpretation, the preservation of culture meant preserving the past – an understanding that others of his religious persuasion also represented in Europe. In the African context, the European missionaries construed this view in such a way that they decided for themselves (or at least they sought to decide) which elements of African cultures were important and worth preserving. Therefore, the appreciation of African cultures at the turn of the twentieth century was all too often accompanied by the incapacitation of the African people. To be sure, this form of indigenization of Lutheran churches by giving priority to “dem Volk” also raised awareness of the importance of ethnicity and nation in Africa. Early advocates of African independence – ecclesiastical and political alike – were often trained in mission schools or had close contact with missions that intervened in the indigenous culture and pursued strategies influenced by an appreciation of the “Volk” concept when they were growing up. The incapacitation of African Christians in connection with nationalization was also one of the factors that led to the establishment of AICs. However, from the beginning, mission work was not only a European enterprise. The first generation of African converts already had a missionary effect. The longer

 See Klaus Fiedler, Christentum und afrikanische Kultur. Konservative deutsche Missionare in Tanzania 1900 – 1940 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1983), 111.  See Fiedler, Christentum und afrikanische Kultur, 52.

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Christianity existed in a region, the more central the role of indigenous Christians became in spreading it. This was evident in Tanzania, especially for the Chaga, from the mid-1910s.⁵⁶ It is worth noting that the Chaga primarily thought of themselves as Lutherans, and only secondarily as Christians. Denominational loyalty was so inherent to this group that Christianity and Lutheranism were put on the same level.⁵⁷ They even transmitted this peculiar feature in their missions. The mission among the Maasai, who were also in Tanzania, began in the region of Arusha in 1904⁵⁸ and spread more widely in 1927, between the First and Second World Wars. The African communities founded by German-speaking missionaries before the First World War had since won their independence. Among the Maasai, in addition to the Leipzig missionaries, indigenous evangelists from other areas of Tanzania were active. Their involvement contributed significantly to the success of the mission among the Maasai, whose nomadic lifestyle was not only foreign to the German missionaries, but also contradicted the latter’s understanding of sedentariness as a fundamental condition for a Christian lifestyle.⁵⁹ Here, too, ecclesiological concepts were translated into the local context. The Church, for instance, was “the New Brotherhood of God.”⁶⁰ The Maasai understanding of brotherhood (or-porror) as solidarity within an age group was thus extended to the community of all Christians.

5 African Lutheran Churches and AICs Generally, African Lutheran churches emerged from a specific mission. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT), for example, consists of a merger of the early mission churches of the EMDOA/Bethel Mission, the Berlin and Leipzig Missionary Societies, and Lutheran missions from Scandinavia and the USA.⁶¹ Most African Lutheran churches refer positively to their mission history and emphasize their similarities. Some feel more strongly connected to the Lutheran heritage than is the case in today’s European Lutheran churches. The influence of European missions has remained in a number of these churches for some time. Broadly speaking, it is possible to distinguish between three types of African churches: conservative denominational churches, moderate traditional churches,

 See Godson S. Maanga, Church Growth in Tanzania: The Role of Chagga Migrants within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (Neuendettelsau: Erlanger Verlag für Mission und Ökumene, 2012).  See Maanga, Church Growth in Tanzania, 18 and 404.  On the mission in Arusha, see Parsalaw, History of the Lutheran Church.  On the Maasai mission, see Mtaita, Wandering Shepard; Kiel, Christen in der Steppe. On sedentariness, see Becker, “‘Gehet hin in alle Welt …’ Sendungsbewusstsein in der evangelischen Missionsbewegung der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Evangelische Theologie 72 (2012): 134– 54.  See Mtaita, Wandering Shepards, 162.  See Katabaro, “Ist das noch lutherisch?” 83 f. The ELCT was founded in 1963.

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and AICs – which, after a history of more than one hundred years, may have acquired conservative traits, too. AICs developed in the second half of the nineteenth century as a counter-movement to the mission churches. An AIC was founded in Basutoland in 1872.⁶² They gained great visibility from the 1890s onward and distanced themselves from the cultural, theological, and, for the most part, the religious heritage of European missions. Most emphasized characteristics that were perceived to be African. These include certain practices, such as polygamy, as well as a specific way of interacting with spirits; they display an interest in salvation and healing as well as other issues that have receded into the background in Europe in most Protestant churches and ecclesial communities since the Enlightenment.⁶³ Efforts to discipline the AICs with the help of categorization have been made several times. One of the oldest approaches comes from the Swedish mission scholar and former bishop in Tanzania, Bengt Sundkler (1908 – 1995). He distinguished between two types of AICs: Ethiopian and Zionist churches.⁶⁴ The Ethiopian churches often resembled the mission churches in ecclesiology and theology – using elements understood as genuinely African. The Zionist churches, in most cases, could be assigned to the category of Pentecostal churches. Encounters with the Holy Spirit and healings stood in the foreground. In the 1890s, the idea emerged that the Ethiopian church was a genuine African church, and it became a model for many other African churches.⁶⁵ With recourse to Psalm 68:32, in which Kush (Nubia, Egypt) “[will] stretch out his hands to God,”⁶⁶ the  See Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen, 195. Mazambara (Self-Understanding, 23) dates the earliest AIC to 1815.  A contextualizing discussion of polygamy is found in Mtaita, Wandering Shepard, 211– 31; on possession, see 236 – 54.  Sundkler, Bantupropheten in Südafrika (Stuttgart: Evangelische Verlag Werk, 1964), esp. 60 – 67. On the role of apostles in AICs, see Mazambara, Self-Understanding; here there is also a discussion of different kinds of typologization, 52– 76.  Edward W. Blyden, African Life and Customs. Reprinted from the Sierra Leone Weekly News (London: African Publication Society, 1969); J. Hanciles, “Back to Africa: White Abolitionists and Black Missionaries,” in African Christianity, 191– 216; Ogbu, “Ethiopianism in African Christianity,” in African Christianity, 258 – 77; Kalu, “West African Christianity: Padres, Pastors, Prophets, and Pentecostals,” in Introducing World Christianity, ed. Charles E. Farhadian (Chichester/Malden, MA: Wiley, 2012), 36 – 50. There was a large Orthodox church in Ethiopia. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, Evangelical mission societies began to work in Ethiopia. In the twentieth century, various Lutheran missions found success, especially among those who belonged only to the governing group, the Amhara. In 1959, the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) was founded, and it was renamed the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus in Ethiopia (ECMY) in 1969. It is a Lutheran Union Church. See Gustav Are´n, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (Stockholm/Addis Abeba: The Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 1978); Øyvind M. Eide, Revolution & Religion in Ethiopia: The Growth & Persecution of the Mekane Yesus Church, 1974 – 85 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000); Olav Sæverås, “On Church-Mission Relations in Ethiopia 1944– 1969, with Special Reference to the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus and the Lutheran Missions” (PhD diss., University of Oslo, 1974).  In Ethiopia today, Cushitic languages are spoken, among others.

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Ethiopian church was attributed to the oldest tradition. Furthermore, Ethiopia was the only African country to successfully repel a European colonial invasion.⁶⁷ The AICs, which wanted to actively reject the paternalism of European missionaries while emphasizing tradition, took their cue from the Ethiopian church.⁶⁸ The conservative denominational churches in particular, together with some AICs, share a strict biblical literalism. They are also united by a theology that is often based less on a theological system than on certain practices, which engender the theology. “Doing theology” is usually considered to be more important than theological theory and systematic theology. It is combined with a specific form of biblicism, which attempts to derive answers to current problems directly from the Bible.⁶⁹ A third characteristic of many African churches is an explicit discussion of questions of spirituality and a belief in spirits. The approaches vary, but in most regions and churches of Africa, European – enlightened – answers were perceived as unsatisfactory. Indeed, African Christians often felt as though they were not being taken seriously by the European missions – which was yet another reason for the establishment of AICs. In addition, many AICs emerged out of spiritual or prophetic movements.⁷⁰ By the end of the twentieth century, almost all AICs had rejected divination and sorcery. Nonetheless, their attitude toward ancestor worship was ambiguous.⁷¹ Given that the AICs have such a large number of members and such far-reaching influence in Africa, Zimbabwe-born mission scholar Allan Anderson likened them at the turn of the twenty-first century to the European Reformation of the sixteenth century. He suggests that they have a similarly comprehensive meaning for global Christianity as did the Reformation.⁷²

6 Theology in Africa in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century Christian theology in Africa is characterized by a wide spectrum. African Christians reacted to the very different influences of the various missionary societies and missionaries in diverse ways, which in turn led to a multiplicity of approaches and positions. The following section will discuss four theological currents: first, conservative religious positions from consciously Lutheran churches; second, a supplemental Lutheran approach, which attempts to show how Luther’s teachings could be transferred to the African context; third, conceptions of Black Theology;  See Allan Anderson, African Reformation. African Initiated Christianity in the 20th Century (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001), 16.  See Pobee and Ositelu, African Initiatives, 21– 23.  See Anderson, African Reformation, 222.  See Anderson, African Reformation, 34.  Cf. Anderson, African Reformation, 195 and 202.  See Anderson, African Reformation, 4 and 7.

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and fourth, theologies that work out the similarities between African and European Christian history, and in the process draw on the Reformation experiences in Europe. They do this in order to integrate a central event for European Christianity into their theology and thereby to emphasize the similarities to a greater extent, in the sense of a World Christianity. In Africa, conservative confessional Lutheran theology looks back on the Lutheran theology mediated in the nineteenth century as “truly” Christian. The Africans’ point of reference is the respective founding history of their church. In this way, positions are set out in theological thought – as well as in the ecclesiological order and in ethical attitudes – that are rooted in the European revivalist Lutheran confessionalism of the nineteenth century. This theology considers a departure from the concepts of the missionaries of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a falling away from the “real” faith. It applies to developments in Africa – such as, for example, when traditional music is included in church services –, but also to those in Europe and across global Christendom. It also includes positions that are represented in the Lutheran World Federation. Brighton Juel Katabaro, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT), sees “the Lutheran heritage” as being at risk due to the preaching of the prosperity gospel, healing prayers, and exorcism, as well as “crying out in prayer.” He notes, “In general, the silence in worship that we have inherited as the ELCT from the Lutheran missionaries is missing.”⁷³ Katabaro identifies the cause of these changes as the influence of Pentecostal and charismatic churches, whose practices have also been adopted in the ELCT. He seeks to preserve the Lutheran tradition as it was mediated in its European guise. At the same time, he unwittingly sees this incarnation, which is entirely in the spirit of the first missionaries, as constitutive of Lutheran doctrine. In Wittenberg in 2004, Bishop Walter Obare Omwanza spoke on behalf of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya (ELCK) about defending so-called “true” Lutheran positions by means of his church.⁷⁴ As correct positions, he singled out the teachings of the Lutheran German and Scandinavian missionaries from the pietistic traditions, represented in the territories that now belong to Kenya, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These appear to have greater influence on the definition of “Lutheranism” in the ELCK – or the current within the ELCK that Obare Omwanza represents – than genuine Reformation Lutheran teachings. Unions and ecumenism are rejected for confessional, theological, ecclesio-political, and ethical reasons – along with, for example, the Lutheran World Federation, which Obare Omwanza accuses of having abandoned central Lutheran positions. He cites the rejec-

 Katabaro, “Ist das noch lutherisch?” 84 and 86 f.  See W.O. Omwanza, “Konfessionelles Luthertum in Ostafrika,” Lutherische Beiträge 10 (2005): 43 – 51.

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tion of women’s ordination and the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification as evidence of the confessional loyalty of his church.⁷⁵ How little these positions are considered tenable in Europe is demonstrated in the introductory note to Obare Omwanza’s contribution to the religiously conservative Lutherische Beiträgen of the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany: “Naturally, an African sees the currents that influenced modern history, philosophy, and theology in Europe through his own eyes.”⁷⁶ The footnote simultaneously illustrates the editor’s desire to distance himself from the positions represented in the article and to make an appeal to the reader’s understanding. At the same time, it also points to the expected sense of superiority of German-speaking readers who might find this contribution backward. In addition to these conservative conceptualizations, there are a few approaches which, from a decidedly Lutheran standpoint and perspectives based on genuine Lutheran research, evince a confessionally non-conservative African Lutheran theology.⁷⁷ In an essay from 2014, Tom Joseph Omolo presents a concise overview of Lutheran teachings and their potential importance in the African context. He cites, among others, the concept of the human as a relational being. “Such an anthropological framework would perhaps be more applicable to African socio-religious life than to any other continent in the twenty-first century.”⁷⁸ Previously, however, such approaches have failed to garner attention, either among the global Lutheran congregation or in African theologies. Many African theologies were heavily influenced by the liberation theological conceptions of Black Theology. They applied approaches from Latin American liberation theology and combined them with specific African experiences. In this regard, the South African theologian Allan Aubrey Boesak, one of the most influential representatives of Black Theology, can be cited as an example. Responding to the experience of Apartheid, in which even black and white churches of the same denomination were segregated and white Christians oppressed their black peers, he developed a theology – in dialogue with the Bible and the Christian tradition – that centered on the experience of oppression (of “blackness”). As in the Lutheran tradition (although without direct reference to it), he explained that the doctrine of justification be-

 See Omwanza, “Konfessionelles Luthertum,” 49.  Omwanza, “Konfessionelles Luthertum,” 43.  See T.J. Omolo, “Luther in Africa,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, eds. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and Lubomir Batka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 621– 26, here 621. See also K.G. Appold, “Luther’s Abiding Significance for World Protestantism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, 598 – 610. See also the depiction of Naaman Láiser’s theology by Christel Kiel, Christen in der Steppe. Die Máasai-Mission der Nord-Ost-Diözese in der Lutherischen Kirche Tansanias (Erlangen: Erlanger Verlag für Mission und Ökumene, 1996), 357– 69.  Omolo, Luther in Africa, 623.

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longed to the heart of faith.⁷⁹ Here, justification is not primarily intended to mean spiritual justification, but rather, as Boesak puts it, “the truth of the biblical revelation is God’s liberation of the oppressed.”⁸⁰ On this basis, he developed an ethic of liberation and the equality of all people. In relation to the Lutheran doctrine and way of life, his approach stands out in two respects. First, the doctrine of justification is employed fruitfully for the African context. It emerges against a different backdrop and has much more profound political and social implications than Omolo’s explicitly Lutheran theology of almost forty years later. Of course, the doctrine of justification is not an exclusively Lutheran approach, and Boesak himself belonged to the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk. Nonetheless, the fact that the doctrine of justification was placed so unambiguously at the center of this theology alluded to the Reformation and provided a starting point for reformatory-liberation theological discussions. On the other hand, Boesak also dealt explicitly with the history of Christianity. He described it as a history of decline – the pre-Constantine church, in which all people were equal, became the discriminatory state church He accused the Reformers of having been neither interested in peoples outside of Europe, who were enslaved and oppressed even then, nor engaged on behalf of the oppressed within Europe (whom Boesak also defines as “black”). In terms of historical impact, the factual correctness of this view was undoubtedly less important than the fact that it was embedded in a convincing theological conceptualization, relating the history of the Reformation to the experiences of black people in Africa. The Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako (1945 – 2008) was especially concerned with how European and African religious histories can be related to each other in the sense of World Christianity. He sought to present African religious history as an integral part of the global history of Christianity, which in fact it is, and to highlight historical similarities.⁸¹ In this vein, he explicitly deals with the history of the Reformation in an essay from 2011 – one of the very few attempts to do so by an African theologian.⁸² Like Boesak, he detects structural parallels, but on a completely different level – namely, that of cultural mediation. Thus, where it is the task of theology in contemporary Africa to communicate and translate in African cultures a Christian faith that has been shaped over a long European history, the Refor See also Eberhard Jüngel, Das Evangelium von der Rechtfertigung des Gottlosen als Zentrum des christlichen Glaubens. Eine theologische Studie in ökumenischer Absicht (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999).  Allan A. Boesak, Farewell to Innocence: A Social-Ethical Study of Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Wipf & Stock, 1977), 105.  This approach can already be found in his dissertation. See Bediako, Theology and Identity.  See Bediako, “Conclusion: The Emergence of World Christianity and the Remaking of Theology,” in Understanding World Christianity: The Vision and Work of Andrew F. Walls, eds. William R. Burrows, Mark R. Gornik, and Janice A. McLean (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 243 – 55. For more detail on historiography and African theology, see Bediako, Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995).

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mation was similarly a time when a Latin Christian faith, dominated by longstanding academic and monastic tradition, had to be communicated and translated into the languages of the “barbarians” in the north.⁸³ In both cases, it was a matter of transcending cultural boundaries. With his description of uneducated Christians during the European Reformation as “barbarians,” Bediako highlights another parallel between Africans and the people of the sixteenth century – one of perception, not reality – and, at the same time, puts the Europeans in their rightful place, from which one can then initiate a dialogue among equals.

7 The Lutheran Reformation and Africa: Theological Perspectives The history of Lutheranism in Africa is long and varied. Today, there are some Lutheran churches that are members of ecumenical communities, others that are members of the Lutheran World Federation, and still others – like the ELCK – that accuse the LWF of having abandoned basic Lutheran doctrine. In addition, there are not only churches of other Western denominations, but also genuinely African AICs, and in theology African concerns are usually – though certainly not always – deemed to be more important than differences in confessional teachings. Both the conscious belonging to the Lutheran denomination and the intentional demarcation from Western confessionalism developed out of the encounter with Western missionaries and in dialogue with a theology influenced by European history. One current within this wide-ranging African theology seeks to devise ways of aligning African and Western concerns or even of shaping Christian historiography internationally by referring back to the European Christian tradition, and especially to the Reformation as the central event in the history of Protestantism. In this manner, similarities are demonstrated in order to stress the linkages between Africa and the West. Western theologies in general, and Lutheran theology in particular, could view this as a starting point. In dialogue with Lutheran theologies from Africa, as well as interdenominational African theologies, approaches could be developed that mediate the knowledge and experience of the Reformation in the present in a way that is viable for the future. This applies both to the theological interpretation of the teachings of Luther and the Reformation and to cultural transfers, which accompanied the Reformation in the sixteenth century and must be carried out again and again. For research on the history of Christianity, this approach entails focusing on common issues and concerns as well as highlighting and conveying diversity, which should re-

 See Bediako, “Conclusion,” 249. On translations in Christianity, also with reference to the history of the Reformation, see the fundamental study by Lamin O. Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001 [1989]).

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place the mutual unidimensional perception of “Africa” or “the” Reformation. This goes against a monolithic depiction of Luther as well as a fixation on a particular state of affairs. The prerequisite for such a dialogue – an accurate historical contextualization of the Reformation as well as the cultures and religions of Africa – has already been accomplished in many regions. The mutual exchange of findings is still largely pending. Nonetheless, it would provide a valuable impetus to Luther research and to the study of the history of global Lutheranism – not only in Africa, but also in the West.

Daniel Jeyaraj

Luther in Asia: India¹

1 The Legal Basis for Lutheranism in India The History of Lutheranism in India began with a legal provision incorporated into the trade treaty on the Danish colony of Tranquebar, situated on the Coromandel Coast in Southeast India. In November 1620, King Ragunatha Nāyak of Tanjore signed this treaty with Ove Giedde, the commander of the Danish ships, which were returning from Sri Lanka. The third clause of this treaty permitted the Danes in Tranquebar to freely practice their faith, called the “religion of Augsburg.” The employees of the Danish East India Company concentrated their energy in establishing trade, political, military, and other existential networks with Hindus and Muslims in the Kingdom of Tanjore. The Augsburg Settlement (1555), which ended the wars between the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics in Western Europe and upheld the agreement of cuius regio, eius religio (“whose region, his religion”), did not apply to the Danish territory of Tranquebar. The eleventh clause of the above-mentioned trade treaty required the Danes to maintain friendly relationships with the Portuguese traders, administrators, and Portuguese-speaking Christians who were living in many parts of the Kingdom of Tanjore and along the Coromandel Coast. The Roman Catholic Christians, who lived in Tranquebar, had their own congregations. The Muslims constituted a significant portion of the population of Tranquebar. They worshipped in two separate mosques. Their merchants played an important role in establishing Danish trade. Other Indian inhabitants of Tranquebar belonged to various bhakti religions, such as Śaivism, Vaiṣṇavism, and Śaktism. They maintained 51 temples dedicated to various Śaivite and Vaiṣṇavite goddesses and gods. One of these temples stood close to the official residence of the governor of Tranquebar. He would have listened to the sound of bells coming from this temple. The Mācilāmaṇinātar Temple, dedicated the Śiva as the “Spotless Lord” (now battered and ruined by the encroaching sea waves), remained an important place for the social and religious life of the inhabitants of Tranquebar. The administrators of the first Danish East India Company ignored the principle of cuius regio, eius religio because its existence depended on the goodwill and cooperation of the Muslim or “Hindu” traders, spies, soldiers, translators, office workers, and providers of other services. External events – such as the ThirtyYears’ War (1618 – 1648) – prevented Danish ships from sailing to Tranquebar (1640 – 1669). After the first Danish East India Company was dissolved, the second Danish East India Company (1670 – 1729) was constituted. Its administrators boldly erected the Zion Church (1701) as a distinct European place for corporate worship. Their shareholders in Copenhagen, their administrators in Tranquebar, and their clergy had no interest either in sharing the Lutheran doctrines with their Indian https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-073

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neighbors or inviting them to join their church. The racial, religious, and moral gap between the Europeans and the Indians in Tranquebar remained wide and seemed unbridgeable.

2 The Origins of Lutheranism in India The domestic upheavals within the Danish royal household, caused by King Friedrich IV’s extramarital affairs with Elisabeth Helene von Vieregg (1679 – 1704), troubled his mother, Charlotte Amelia; his wife, Queen Louise of Mecklenburg (d. 1721); and his court preacher, Franz Julius Lütkens (d. 1712). They also upset most Danes. Before the dust had settled, the king urgently charged Lütkens to find Lutherans to work as missionaries in Danish colonies outside of Europe. Immediately, Lütkens requested his Pietist friend in Berlin, Joachim Lange (d. 1744), for help; Lange quickly persuaded his former student, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, who happened to be in Berlin at that time, to accept the king’s invitation. Ziegenbalg somehow convinced his friend, Heinrich Plütschau, who was six years older, to accompany him to meet Bishop Henrik Bornemann (d. 1710), the leading clergyman of the Danish Lutheran Church in Copenhagen. He disliked the Pietists. Moreover, like many of his Lutheran colleagues, educated at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, he believed that the apostles of Jesus Christ had already preached the gospel throughout the world; no Lutheran should be so presumptuous as to become a missionary. Even the Roman Catholic missionaries – who had, by that time, been working in various parts of the world – were deemed imposters. This false apostolic ideal did not satisfy King Friedrich IV. He personally intervened and revealed his determination to appoint the German Lutheran Pietists as missionaries. The bishop thus had no choice but to ordain them as missionaries. However, he did not integrate them into the Danish Lutheran Church. As a result, this missionary enterprise remained a royal prerogative, and the Danish Lutheran Church had little or nothing to do with it. It is noteworthy that Ziegenbalg and Plütschau received their ordination according to the rites of the Danish Lutheran Church. They vowed to impart to Indians nothing but the accepted teachings and practices of the (Danish) Lutheran Church. Later in 1709, Ziegenbalg reflected on the Lutheran identity of his missionary work and was resolved to uphold it, in the spirit and zeal of Martin Luther himself. Luther interpreted the Bible through the prism of his teaching on justification by faith. Accordingly, the sin of Adam and Eve, the first human beings, ruined the image of God in them. The salvation procured by Jesus Christ through his vicarious death on the cross would restore this image to its original state only in those people who, by God’s grace and through faith, positively embraced Christ’s teachings. Human achievements, however good and virtuous they might be, would not grant them salvation. After all, salvation was God’s gift to every penitent person. The combined effect of the four-fold absolutes – namely, Christ alone, Scripture alone, grace alone, and faith alone – remained an enduring mark of Lutheranism. Luther’s teachings on

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the law and the gospel, the two-kingdom theory, good works as expressions of gratitude for being saved by God’s grace, and the priesthood of all believers, as well as his love of corporate singing and music, his support for a person’s freedom of conscience, his destigmatization of non-spiritual works, and his support for good education for all people, fascinated Ziegenbalg and his successors in Tranquebar. They found the small and large catechisms helpful and used them in their ministry. In their opinion, these catechisms accurately summarized Lutheran teachings. Ziegenbalg and Plütschau knew Luther’s theology, but they learned the art of translating theological principles into beneficial acts from Lutheran Pietists, such as Philip Jacob Spener (d. 1705), August Hermann Francke (d. 1727), Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen (d. 1739), and others. Spener promoted heartfelt spirituality and its tangible manifestations in Christian fellowship within the mainline Lutheran churches, Bible-centered theological studies in the university, and clear communication of the biblical message to ordinary people. Francke went a step further in converting Lutheran theology and Spener’s teachings into sustained activities that transformed the lives of the socially neglected people of his time. In 1698, he founded an orphanage in Halle (Saale), Germany, which admitted street children, educated them in his schools, and sent them to university. His free library and curiosity cabinet enabled the students to advance their study and research skills. His used his knowledge of biblical languages to advance biblical studies. His performative love with and for his neighbors (tätige Nächstenliebe) resulted in schools, hostels, hospitals, a printing press, and a pharmacy. He maintained a network of friends all over Europe and distributed his publications through them. His foundations became an important center, not merely for biblical scholarship and the intellectual pursuit of knowledge, but also for cultural learning, philanthropy, and the support of mission activities. Francke did not choose either Ziegenbalg or Plütschau for missionary work in India. They were already near the Cape of Good Hope when they informed him about their missionary journey to Tranquebar. He seized this opportunity and supported them and their successors. He systematically collected all missionary correspondence and preserved these letters in his archives. Beginning in 1710, he regularly published excerpts of missionary writings, which are now known as Halle Reports (1710 – 1770). Freylinghausen succeeded in directing the Francke Foundations. In his capacity as a pastor and teacher, he compiled hymns that would reiterate Lutheran Pietism; he also composed systematic theologies (Grundlegung der Theologie, 1703, 1705). Paraphrased and translated versions of his hymns and theologies would eventually influence Lutheranism among the Tamils. Ziegenbalg and Plütschau personally knew these Lutheran Pietists, their writings, and their ways of educating poor children, and they held them up as their role models. After their ordination in Copenhagen, they would receive additional instructions that would shape their future work in India. On November 17, 1705, King Friedrich IV gave Ziegenbalg and Plütschau detailed job descriptions: during their sea voyage, they should learn from the people who had already been to India. Soon after their arrival in Tranquebar, they should consider the prevailing circumstances and

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begin working at the earliest opportunity among non-Christians. Thirdly, they should identify the residual knowledge of God among the non-Christians and use it as a stepping-stone to convey the content of the Bible. They should have the assurance that the power inherent in the word of God would transform those who received God’s word. Fourthly, they should preach only those teachings of the Lutheran Book of Concord that were recognized in Denmark. Just as the Lord Jesus Christ began his ministry by calling his listeners to repentance and offering forgiveness of their sins, the missionaries should start their ministry among Indians. Fifthly, the missionaries should teach simplified forms of Lutheran doctrines; sixthly, they should embody and exhibit these doctrines in their own lives. The next three points of the job description encouraged the missionaries to pray for God’s blessings on the royal household of Denmark, who would support their ministry with an annual salary. The tenth point instructed the missionaries to send their annual report directly to the king; these reports should narrate their attempts and successes in ministry. They should also contain suggestions for further improvement. King Friedrich IV also attached a separate letter, in which he asked the missionaries to work among the non-Christians who were living both in Tranquebar and along its boarders and to teach them the holy doctrines of God’s word, as explained in the Books of Concord and – particularly – in the Augsburg Confession. These instructions formed the basis for all successive Lutheran missionary undertakings in India. Endowed with the royal letters of appointment as missionaries, Ziegenbalg and Plütschau reached Tranquebar on July 9, 1706; the Danish administrators did not welcome them and left them stranded on the harbor beach. Earlier, the administrators had received secret orders from the director of the second Danish East India Company asking them to thwart the missionary attempts of these German Lutheran Pietists. The director was rightly afraid that the work of the missionaries might liberate the oppressed peoples of Tranquebar, hurt the sentiments of the Muslim and “Hindu” trade partners, and endanger the trade and colonial aspirations of the company. Friedrich IV, the absolute monarch of Denmark and its oversea colonies, did not deem it necessary to consult the director of the trading company, but simply expected him to obey his orders. The director resented this royal assumption, and the power of the absolute monarch could not sway the colonial administrators of Tranquebar; they sided with their director. This unsettled relationship between the goals the commercial company and the aims of the Christian missionary undertakings remained a thorny issue, but their incompatibility turned out to a blessing in disguise. The Lutheran missionaries fortunately could not aspire to transplant a colonial Lutheranism; instead, they focused their attention on developing an indigenous Tamil-Lutheran Christianity. As time went by, they developed, experimented with, and fine-tuned the following key principles.

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3 Mission Methods of the Lutherans Firstly, both the missionaries and the Indians gradually developed mutual understanding. As children of their times and circumstances, the identities of the missionaries revolved around their declared loyalty to the God of the Bible, the king of Denmark, the Lutheran churches in Denmark and Germany, the Pietists in Halle (Saale), their immediate families and friends, the colonial administrators of Tranquebar, and finally to the Tamil people. Before their arrival in Tranquebar, and prior to personally engaging with the Tamils, they assumed – like their fellow Germans – that the Tamils were “barbaric” people whose lives were disorganized, whose language had no grammar, and whose “pagan” religion was confused; in other words, they condiered the Tamils as less than human beings. They were in need of Lutheran Pietism for their life here on earth, and then in eternity. Similarly, the Tamils had preconceived ideas about the Europeans, whom they had met in seaport towns. Roman Catholic Christians from Portugal, France, and Italy lived in Puducherry; Jesuit missionaries belonging to the Madurai Mission cared for their followers in every major town and city in Tamil country. Protestant Christians from the British Isles, Holland, and Denmark had their trading and colonial centers in Chennai, Cuddalore, Nagapatnam, and other seaport areas. Indians observed these European Christians and realized that they originally came for trade, but they developed into colonial powers. They employed Indians for low wages and mistreated them. Their avarice and cruelty toward Indians earned them the reputation of being man-eaters (rākṣasas) and irreligious and wicked people (adharmins). They ate beef and drank alcohol. Their values surrounding marriage and family were rather loose and amounted to infidelity. Their religion greatly differed from Tamil bhakti religions, such as Saivism and Vaishnavism; the Tamils did not see any common ground for interreligious engagement. In the midst of these seemingly incompatible contexts, both the Lutheran missionaries and the Indians needed conversion, communication, and trust. Ziegenbalg hired a blind Tamil schoolteacher, persuaded him to bring his pupils to his home, and acquired the basics of the Tamil language. A few other Indians showed him hospitality and revealed to him various aspects of Tamil culture and literature. Gradually, Ziegenbalg gave up his derogatory opinions about the Tamils and began to interact with them as friends. Once the Tamils realized that he was not a colonial European and wanted to serve the Tamils by introducing Lutheran doctrines and ways of life to them, they began to slowly trust him. This convergence proved helpful for both sides. Secondly, the Lutheran missionaries habitually learned to understand the socioreligious contexts of Indians by personally engaging with them in the places where they lived and worked. They received visitors, who came to them either for discussions on important matters or to satisfy their curiosity. They purposefully and systematically collected, read, and kept Tamil works on various themes and genres. This exercise gave them the opportunity to comprehend the refined nature of

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Tamil language, social habits, religious doctrines and stories, moral values, and aspirations. The missionaries did not hesitate to read the Tamil writings of the Jesuit missionaries, who had been working among the Tamils since the days of Francis Xavier (d. 1552). In Europe, Roman Catholic Christians and Lutherans were at loggerheads; but in India, at least in the early stages of Lutheran missionary activities, the situation was different. For example, Ziegenbalg benefited from reading Henrique Henrique’s Tamil grammar. He even translated parts of this book for his Grammatica Damulica (1716). He also read several Jesuit writings on morality and incorporated these ideas into his Way of Dharma (1708). Moreover, he got hold of Jesuit translations of several biblical passages and stories and used them in his own translation of the New Testament. Thus, discovering the literary, social, and religious heritage of Indians led the missionaries to identify the backgrounds, purposes, and processes by which Indians constructed meanings, beliefs, and customs, interpreted contemporary events, and articulated hopes for the future. Therefore they were able to keep what was good and indispensable (e. g., God-consciousness, strong relationships within families, respect for older people, eating habits, and native medicine); they rejected what was incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ and the fuller realization of human life (e. g., image worship, female infanticide, the burning of widows on the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands, and expensive rituals and pilgrimages); they also refined many socio-cultural and religious elements and used them to convey Christian meanings (e. g., baptizing words with new meanings and implications, dress codes, melodies for songs and kīrtans). These socio-cultural and religious negotiations tried to root the Christian faith into the fabric of Indian society, with partial success. Thirdly, like Luther, the Lutherans viewed the Bible as the greatest wealth that any people could possibly possess. They also believed that individuals should have an opportunity to read, interpret, and apply the Bible in their mother tongue. Wherever they worked, they found the legacy of Roman Catholic Christians who had been there before them. They read translated passages of the Bible in their Sunday mass; they narrated biblical stories. In this process, they identified or coined words and phrases to convey Christian meanings. The Lutherans readily borrowed these words, assessed their meanings, and filled them with new meanings. For example, Ziegenbalg discovered a whole library of Jesuit writings, read and refined them, and used them in his translation works. He used the same words and phrases that Roberto de Nobili had familiarized earlier: the unrevealed God is Parāparavastu (“the Highest Being”); the Lord is Sarveśvara (“the lord of all”); the Holy Spirit is Ispirinthu Sāntu (a transliteration of the Portuguese term, Espírito Santo). Mother Mary is Mātā (“mother”). In order to prepare meaningful translations, the missionaries worked with mother-tongue Tamil speakers; it was not easy for them to transfer the meanings, emotions, and impact of the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic words and concepts into Indian vernaculars. For example, Indians understood sin (pāpa) not as a violation of principles established by a holy and just God, but rather as an inappropriate thought resulting in the omission of ritual or religious duties at

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home or in the temple. They were more afraid of the almighty power of karma and its aftereffects. The success of the Lutherans depended on teaching Indians that God in Jesus Christ had broken the vicious cycle of karma and provided forgiveness. Salvation, for Christians, was not successfully swimming across the ocean of births and deaths (piṟva-p peruṅkadal), but receiving Christ’s forgiveness. Thus, the missionaries and Indian Lutherans reoriented the meanings of popular Indian religious words and filled them with Christian meanings. Bible translations produced several other benefits: dialects that did not have a script received scripts and were accorded the same value as written languages. When they heard God, the prophets, and the apostles speaking their dialect, they were thrilled; they gained self-confidence and new identity. Their ability to think and speak improved. They became a people of the Book. Additionally, Bible translations rejuvenated written languages; their scripts were standardized, and some languages received new dictionaries and grammars. People accepted prose as a legitimate means of communicating religious truths. Previously, metrical poems had been used for this purpose; only a few trained people understood the content of these poems. The introduction of the mechanized printing press in Tranquebar in 1712 heralded a turning point in disseminating knowledge to all people and in increasing of the literacy of the general public. New ideas from the Bible – read, interpreted, and implemented by common people – sowed the seeds for social transformation. Fourthly, the Lutheran congregations assumed the socio-cultural characteristics of a particular place. The missionaries understood that they could perhaps transplant church architecture and melodies for hymns translated from German, English, or Scandinavian languages, but they could not import socio-cultural relationships. Indigenous Lutheran congregations reflected the Indianness of their contexts. Lutheran attitudes toward and treatment of caste took on a preeminent role. In contrast to the Jesuit missionaries of the Madurai Mission, who perceived caste as a social institution guaranteeing dignity and status, Ziegenbalg saw caste as an injurious religious institution that should be done away with. He cited biblical narratives of creation and Christ’s offer of salvation; all people were created equal, and Christ died and rose for them all. He was fully aware that the birth-based feudal system of European society was crumbling away at that time. He did not want to tolerate it among Christians. However, his successor, Christoph Theodosius Walther (d. 1741), permitted the observance of caste among Lutheran Christians. Even the noble Christian Friedrich Schwartz (d. 1798) tolerated it in Tanjore. 50 years later, Karl Graul (d. 1864) opposed English missionaries – such as George Uglow Pope – who wanted to abolish caste distinctions among Christians. At that time, the Danish Lutheran Church began supporting Ernest Ochs, who founded the Arcot Lutheran Church as the casteless church, which in effect was the church for the Ādidravida Community. The opponents pointed out the unequal distribution of resources and opportunities and the untouchability of fellow human beings as reasons for eliminating caste. Those who tolerated caste distinctions among Christians saw it as a source of dignity

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and protection in times of need – particularly pertaining to rites of passage, such as marriage, as well as to food habits, greeting formalities, and the like. In this context, the Lutherans had to overcome social, cultural, and religious conflicts caused by different ways of thinking and organizing life. In addition to caste, they had to negotiate access to common wells, roads, and other resources; opportunities for modern education; new employment opportunitites; moving away from ancestral villages; accumulating wealth and making social progress. Lutheran schools, hostels, and vocational training institutions (for skills such as carpentry, embroidery, weaving, tailoring, and tile making) generated new opportunities for oppressed people groups. Ziegenbalg understood his mission holistically and defined it as “service to the soul” and “service to the body.” He provided school education, interest-free loans to start small businesses, and vocational training in reading, writing, accountancy, and medicine. Ziegenbalg opened a girls’ school (1707) for the first time in the history of India and laid the foundation for female education. He and his colleagues developed curricula that reflected the teachings of the Pietists in Halle, but had enough space for local needs. Thus, his students studied Bible, catechism, theology, and life skills. Schwartz later expanded this method of serving the public. He devised better legal codes for Tanjore, persuaded people to sell and buy goods without hoarding them during times of need, worked toward resettling migrant workers in Tanjore, mediated between the English and Hyder Ali, and ensured peace – at least for some time. Christian Wilhelm Gericke saved the inhabitants of Nagapatnam and Cuddalore from war-induced poverty. Missionaries like Christoph Samuel John (d. 1813) and Johann Philip Rottler (d. 1836) pursued scientific knowledge in astronomy, zoology, botany, fisheries, lexicography, and the like and opened up new avenues for education. The combined impact of these efforts enabled the Lutherans to enjoy a small degree of tolerance among Indians. Fifthly, the Lutherans in India aspired to establish Indian-led Christian communities and institutions. They understood the church as the gathering of fellow Christians, in which God’s word was preached and the sacraments were administered correctly – according to the teachings of the Book of Concord. However, the Indian situations, particularly caste, required special considerations of seating arrangements, particularly in the Bethlehem Church in Poraiyār (built in 1745). During the Eucharist, Christians from higher caste backgrounds refused to accept the same chalice from which Christians from lower castes drank. In Tanjore, the citadel of caste, Schwartz permitted two chalices and maintained (superficial) harmony. However, fellow Lutherans in Tranquebar and Trichy refused to uphold this practice. Likewise, Christians had great difficulty in finding partners for inter-caste marriages. They consulted native astrologers for auspicious and inauspicious times to conduct marriages, name children, bury the dead, and undertake any business. They were unable to distance themselves from primal religious and cultural practices. Lutheran identity did not penetrate the deeper levels of Indian consciousness. Most of the Indians who embraced Lutheranism came from the lower social strata. The first five converts, who were baptized on May 12, 1707, and formed the nucleus

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of the Jerusalem Church in Tranquebar, were the servants of Europeans. Their exemplary life as Tamils and as Christians, energized by a new sense of human dignity, attracted fellow Tamils to adopt Lutheranism as their way of life. A number of Tamil Lutherans had previously been Roman Catholics. After the papacy suppressed the Madurai Mission in 1773, several Roman Catholics joined Lutheran congregations in Tranquebar, Trichy, Tanjore, Chennai, and other places. The children of Lutheran parents, educated in the mission schools in the arts and various sciences, grew up, took employment in various places, and spread Lutheranism elsewhere. Ziegenbalg and other missionaries, such as Christoph Theodosius Walther (d. 1741), understood their role as temporary. They believed that an Indian church should have Indian leaders. Therefore, Ziegenbalg founded the first theological seminary in 1716 and trained bright Tamil Lutheran students to assume leadership roles in the church and church-related institutions. Walther pressed for the ordination of Indian Lutherans as pastors. The ordination of Aaron – alias Ārumugam – Pillay in December 1733 as the first Tamil Lutheran pastor, equal to all other European clergy, opened a new chapter in the history of Lutheranism in India. Other Tamil Lutheran pastors included Diago (ordained in 1741, d. 1781), Ambrose (ordained in 1749, d. 1777), Philip (ordained in 1772, d. 1788), Rājappan (ordained in 1778, d. 1796/7), Sattiyanātan (ordained in 1790, d. 1815), Abraham, Ñānapirakācam, Adaikkalam, Vētanāyakam, and Savarirājan (all five ordained in 1811), Vicuvāci, and Nallathambi (ordained in 1817). These and other Indian Lutheran pastors, catechists, and their helpers narrowed the gap between German Lutheranism and the piety of Tamil Lutherans. They acted as the mediators between the European Lutheran missionaries and the Tamil people; gradually, Indian Lutherans stopped publically attending Hindu festivals and observing Hindu religious ceremonies.

4 Lutheran Expansion in Eighteenth-century India The internal migration of Tamil Lutherans, the arrival of new European missionaries, discord, departures, the sudden death or unavailability of European missionaries, and work opportunities for Christians in other places affected the growth of Lutheranism in different parts of India. In 1710, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in London accepted Ziegenbalg and his colleague Johann Ernst Gründler (d. 1720) as corresponding members. This opportunity enabled the English in India to get in touch with the Lutherans. In 1717, Savarimuthu, a catechist from Tranquebar, founded the first Lutheran school in Cuddalore, a garrison town of the English East India Company (EIC). Their chaplains, George Lewis and William Stevenson, and their governors, Edward Harrison and Joseph Collet, permitted the establishment of this school. Until the French East India Company occupied Cuddalore (1758), Johann Anton Sartorius (d. 1738), Johann Ernst Geister (d. 1750), and Johannn Zecharia Kiernander (d. 1799) served the Lutherans there. Kiernander’s colleague, George Heinrich Conrad Hüttemann (d. 1781), viewed Indians as slaves, vagabonds, wretches,

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and beggars. Naturally, he could not work among Indians. Later, Gericke went to the Lutherans of Cuddalore from 1767 to 1782. In the nineteenth century, Cuddalore would house the headquarters of the Arcot Lutheran Church.

4.1 Lutherans in Chennai In 1726, the “Black Town” of Chennai, in the modern Vepery and Purasawalkam areas, became the center of Lutheran activity. Ziegenbalg visited Chennai in 1710 and 1711 but could not establish any branch there. However, Benjamin Schultze (d. 1760), who disagreed with Walther over the quality of the language used in the translation of the New Testament, moved from Tranquebar to Chennai and established a church and a school. There he realized the importance of the Telugu language. He translated into Tamil and Telugu the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (d. 1471) as well as True Christianity and the Garden of Paradise by Johann Arndt (d.1621). He also composed a grammar for the Hindustani language. After his departure to Halle (Saale), Johann Philip Fabricius (d. 1791) headed the Lutherans, beginning in 1742. Fabricius’ revised translation of the Bible is known as the “Golden Version.” People called his hymnbook a “heart-melting book” (neñcurukkinūl). His Malabar-English Dictionary (1799) contributed to the development of Tamil lexicography. When Fabricius mismanaged money and got into considerable, irrecoverable debt, Gericke assumed leadership (1788). His successor, Carl Wilhelm Paroled (d. 1817), continued the work until he moved to Kolkata (1802) to teach Tamil at William College. Currently, Rotler Street in Vepery, Chennai, reminds people of J.P. Rottler’s yeomen service to education and science in India.

4.2 Lutherans in Tanjore In 1728, Rājanāyakkan, a Roman Catholic soldier from a pariah community, founded a Lutheran congregation in Tanjore, the capital city of the kingdom of Tanjore. In 1727, he read Ziegenbalg’s Tamil New Testament (1714) and approached the Lutheran missionaries in Tranquebar for advice. The missionaries accepted him as their catechist and sent him to work among the people of his community in Tanjore. Consequently, a small congregation emerged. The Roman Catholic Christians opposed and even attacked him. In the same year (1728), Christian Friedrich Pressier (d. 1738) visited him and attended the wedding of a princess in Tanjore. This visit may have benefitted the Lutherans there. Rājanāyakkan wanted to know more about Christianity in Europe, Africa, and the Americans and requested Walther to write about it in Tamil. As a result, Walter published his significant history book (Caritira postakam, also called Historia Sacra) in 1735. It traces the history of the “Christian” Church from the creation narrative in Genesis through the Old Testament, the New Testament, and European history, ending in the year 1735. It synchronizes Gre-

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gorian dates with the Tamil calendar. It tells how various Christian habits and rituals (e. g., reading marriage banns, the rosary) entered the Church. It contains detailed sections on the missionary histories of the Portuguese, French, Dutch, English, and Danish in Asia and in India. In 1739, Walther published the Latin-Tamil grammar by Costanzo G. Beschi (d. 1747), entitled Grammatiia Latino-Tamulica, and added a large appendix, entitled Observationes Grammaticae quibus Linguae Tamulicae (“Grammatical Observations about the Tamil Language”). Beschi was unhappy about this, and subsequent translators of Beschi’s grammar did not translate Walther’s observations. In the meantime, Rājanāyakkan got into various troubles and sadly ended up as a cremator of corpses. The arrival of Christian Frederick Schwartz (d. 1798) in Tanjore in 1772, however, marked the flourishing of the Lutheran congregation in Tanjore. Wilhelm Berg, a German captain in the army of the king of Tanjore, introduced Schwartz to Tulaji, the king of Tanjore. Later, the king entrusted his adopted son, Serfojee II, to Schwartz for care and protection. Schwartz’s diplomacy with Hyder Ali, the governors of the EIC in Chennai, the Navab of Arcot, and – above all – the trust he enjoyed among the common people made him an extraordinary missionary. Though he received some help from the Anglicans associated with the SPCK, he remained a Lutheran. He paid five catechists and several assistants from his salary. He founded schools and asked the local rulers to finance them. Soon after Edward Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine in 1796, Schwartz introduced it to the people of Tanjore. People respected his integrity and honesty. His exemplary life earned him the name Rajaguru (“royal teacher”). One of his famous students was the well-known composer of Tamil lyrics Vētanāyakam Sāstriyār (d. 1864). His books on Tamil Christian morality and his view of caste as a necessary symbol of social dignity deserve attention. Schwartz’ other student, King Serfojee II, founded the Saraswathi Mahal Library in Tanjore and collected precious manuscript in Sanskrit, Tamil, and other languages.

4.3 Lutherans in Kolkata and Serampore Lutheran traders from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden who lived in Kolkata, the capital city of the EIC, had wanted to have a Lutheran pastor for a long time. In 1758, J.Z. Kiernander, who had been working in Cuddalore, and his wife, Wendela Kiernander, went there. They received initial support from Robert Clive, the winner of the Battle of Plassy (1757). After Wendela died, Kiernander married Ann Wolley (1762), the widow of a naval officer. Together, they built the first Protestant church and dedicated it in 1770 as Beth Tephilla (“House of Prayer,” now known as the Lal Girja, “the Red Church,” or the “Old Mission Church”). After Ann’s death, Kiernander sold her jewels and built a school for Bengali, Armenian, and Portuguese children. In March 1774, his health began to fail. His son Robert William undertook a real estate business and lost almost everything. At the request of Kiernander, in 1775 the SPCK sent John Christmann Diemer (d. 1792), an Englishman, to work in the

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school. Diemer could not tolerate Kiernander, married the wealthy Mary Weston, and left the school. In 1778, the SPCK sent Johann Wilhelm Gerlach (d. 1791), but he joined the EIC. Kiernander’s creditors demanded money, and Kiernander sold his assets. Charles Grant, the future director of the EIC, and David Brown, the Anglican chaplain, bought the church in 1787 and looked after it. In 1799, the SPCK persuaded William Tobias Ringeltaube (d. 1816) to assist the ailing Kiernander, but Ringeltaube returned because his salary did not allow him to cope with the cost of living in Kolkata. In 1757, Bartholomäus Leberecht Ziegenbalg, who had been born to Bartholomäus and Maria Dorothea Ziegenbalg on July 26, 1719, became the director of the Danish Colony of Friedrichsnagar (Serampore) near Kolkata. At his invitation, Kiernander went there to conduct Lutheran worship services. In 1800, this colony accepted William Carey, the first Baptist missionary, and permitted him and his companions to stay and work. Colonel Ole Bie, who had worked in Tranquebar three times and knew Schwartz, welcomed Carey to Serampore. After the death of his first wife, in 1808, Carey married Charlotte Rumohr of Schleswig, a Danish territory (now a part of Germany). There, he established the Serampore College in 1818; the theological section of this college still grants theological degrees to pastors of all mainline churches in India. The services of Carey and his friends, William Ward and Joshua Marshman, played an important role in translating the Bible into several Asian languages, establishing a horticultural institute and a newspaper, and abolishing social evils, such as Satī (“widow burning”).

4.4 Lutherans in Tirucirāppalli The Nawab of Arcot resided in the city of Tirucirāppalli for some time and noticed that he could not collect revenues from his subordinate rulers. Therefore, he requested the EIC in Chennai to send soldiers to assist his revenue officers. Some of these soldiers were Lutherans from Tranquebar. In 1762, Schwartz accompanied them to Tirucirāppalli and took care of them for ten years. His ministry was so successful that he erected the Christ Church (1766). In 1771, an explosion at the ammunition depot killed numerous soldiers; many children became fatherless. Schwartz established an orphanage and took care of 146 Lutherans. After he moved to Tanjore in 1772, the SPCK supported John Jacob Schöllkopf (d. 1777) and Christian Pohle (d. 1818) to care for the Lutherans in Tirucirāppalli. Pohle protected them during Hyder Ali’s invasion and the ensuing famine and soldiers’ revolt (1783 – 1790). In 1793, Joseph Daniel Jänike joined him, and they looked after about 2,000 Lutherans in Tirucirāppalli.

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4.5 Lutherans in Pālayamkōttai Schwartz baptized Clarinda, a Marāthi Brahmin widow, whom Harry Lyttelton, an English soldier, had saved from Satī. She accompanied him to Pālayamkōttai and learned Christian principles from him. After his death, she shared the gospel with others in her neighborhood, and a congregation with 40 members from diverse background emerged. In 1785, Schwartz dedicated the church, which is now known as the Clarinda Church. Schwartz sent the catechists Sattiyanāthan and Rāyappan to assist her. One of their converts was David Sundaranandam; through his witness to his Nādār community, many Nādārs embraced Lutheranism. Soon, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) sent the German missionary C.T.E. Rhenius to Pālayamkōttai, and he became the apostle to Tirunelvēli. The Society for the Promotion of the Gospel sent George Uglow Pope and Robert Caldwell to work among the Nādārs of Tirunelvēli. In 1820, Ludwig Bornhard Ehregott Schmid of CMS opened a theological institution in Pālayamkōttai; students who successfully studied Tamil, English, mathematics, geometry, history, and geography could become schoolteachers. Catechist candidates studied the additional subjects of Sanskrit, Indic religions, and history of religion. Then, those who studied the biblical languages could become pastors. Opposition to Christians grew, and to safeguard them, Rhenius founded villages of refuge, among which Muthalūr, Meygnānapuram (1825), Idayankulam (1827), Āsirvāthapuram (1828), and Nazareth (1829) were important. Gradually, these Lutherans were led into Anglicanism.

5 Lutheran Growth in Nineteenth-century India The nineteenth century changed the Lutherans in India in many ways. The works of the Orientalists associated with the Asiatic Society (1784), particularly their English translations of Sanskrit writings (e. g., William Jones’ translation of Shakuntala and Charles Wilkin’s Bhagavad Gita), enabled the Europeans to discover and appreciate Sanskrit Hinduism afresh. Politically, the British attack on Copenhagen (1807– 1814) during the Napoleonic Wars (1799 – 1815) led the EIC in Chennai to occupy Tranquebar (1808 – 1816), and the situation of the Lutherans deteriorated. A lack of missionary enthusiasm in Germany, fueled by historical criticism of the Bible as a book of fables and the ideals of Romanticism (by Johann Gottfried von Herder); the (malaria) epidemic in the Danish territories of Zealand and Lolland (1831); and Danish wars with Schleswig (1848 – 1850) left no resources for Lutheran missionary work in India. August Frederick Cämmerer (d. 1837) was the last Danish-Halle missionary in Tranquebar. Gradually, the Danish government combined the offices of missionaries and clergy. Hans Knudsen, the last Danish clergy-missionary, who spent six years in Tranquebar, returned to Denmark in 1843. In 1821, the Danish Lutheran Church started its own non-governmental Danish Mission Society and looked for opportunities to work in India. At the same time, the EIC’s Pious Clause of 1813 established an

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Anglican bishopric in Kolkata. The expanded Pious Clause of 1833 – necessitated by British free trade, the need for free residence of Euro-American traders in India, and the Indian desire to acquire Euro-American technical skills and education – opened British territories in India to missionary work by all Protestant denominations from Europe, North America, and Australia. More missionaries came from Britain and the United States of America than from other countries. Seizing upon these changes, the Danes sold their territories in India – including Tranquebar and Serampore – to the EIC in 1845 and hesitantly transferred the churches and their properties in Tranquebar and a few other places to the Evangelical Lutheran Mission of Leipzig (1819/1836). The remaining Lutheran congregations in Tanjore, Tiruccirāppalli, Tirunelvēli, Chennai, and Kolkata became Anglican.

5.1 German and Scandinavian Lutherans in Nineteenth-century India Karl Graul (d. 1864), the first director of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission of Leipzig (ELM, 1844 – 1861), sent Johan Heinrich Karl Cordes (1813 – 1892) to look after and revive the Lutherans in Tranquebar. Cordes preserved Lutheran identity against the Anglican intrusion and spread his vision. Graul, who briefly visited Tamil country (1849 – 1853), engaged in a bitter controversy over caste with George Uglow Pope and Robert Caldwell, the Anglican missionaries mentioned above. He wanted to tolerate it among Christians, but they, following directives from their bishops in Kolkata, tried to remove it. Graul’s approach to caste conflicted with that of his missionary, Ernest Ochs. Ochs’ determination to found a casteless church separated him from the ELM (1863), and the Danish Mission Society accepted him as their missionary. Ochs laid the foundation for the Arcot Lutheran Church (1864), and gradually Mēlpattampākkam, Tirukkōvilūr, Tiruvannāmalai, Nellikuppam, Viruttāccalam, and Chennai became important centers that catered to the spiritual needs of the socially excluded Ādidrāvidas. The ELM missionaries Hugo Schanz (d. 1892), Wilhelm Germann (d. 1902), and Hilko Wiardo Schomerus (d. 1945) engaged with Tamil bhakti literature and the legacy of the Lutherans in India. Unlike their director, Graul – who failed to recognize the scholarly assistance provided by N. Samuel in his Bibliotheca Tamulica–, these scholars acknowledged the importance of Tamil contributions to their intellectual achievements. Germann published biographies on Ziegenbalg, Plütschau, Fabricius, and Schwartz. Carl Jacob Sandegren – who, beginning in 1868, served in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, and other places – represented the Church of Sweden Mission. His marriage to Johanne Kremmer, a daughter of the ELM missionary Carl Friedrich Kremmer (who had been at the Adaikalanātar Church in Chennai since 1848), paved the way for a cordial relationship with the ELM. Their sons, Johannes Sandegren, Hermann Sandegren, and Paul Sandegren – all born and raised in Tamil country – rendered yeomen services to the Tamil Lutherans. In 1863, Arunōtayam (“Dawn”) became the official journal of the Tamil-speaking Lutherans.

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After the First War of Independence (1857) and the Proclamation of Queen Victoria (November 1858), British legal codes were applied in “British India.” Religious toleration actually meant preference for Hindus for high government offices and disdain for Christians. The Indian Marriage Act (1865) required Lutheran missionaries to apply for and receive licenses. Many Lutheran missionaries could not accept this requirement and returned to Europe. Those who stayed in India were unenthusiastic about the Euro-American dominated decennial conferences in Allahabad (1872), Kolkata (1882/3), Mumbai (1892/3), and Chennai (1902). Yet the Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Mission (GELM, 1845), the Hermannsburg Evangelical Lutheran Mission (HELM, 1865), the Schleswig-Holstein Evangelical Lutheran Mission of Breklum (1876), and the Danish East Jeypore Mission (1890) continued to send Lutheran missionaries to India. The missionaries of the GELM catalyzed great changes among the Kols and the Santals. Slowly, Lutheran work among other Ādivāsi groups (the Mundas, the Uraons, and others) and migrant workers in Assam and Bihar increased and transformed their lives for the better. Swedish missionaries began working among the Ghonds (1877), who lived in the region of modern Madhya Pradesh. The Tamil Lutherans Daniel Pillay (d. 1802), John Lazarus, and N. Samuel produced writings filled with Reformation ideas. Some Tamil Lutherans immigrated to Bangalore (1893), the Fiji Islands, Yangon in Myanmar, Natal in South Africa, and Kilimanjaro in Kenya. Most of them were traders, carpenters, and masons. Wherever they went, they witnessed to their Lutheran faith.

5.2 American Lutherans in Nineteenth-century India Benjamin Schultze knew Telugu-speaking Christians in Chennai and in Telugu country. Since 1742, Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg (d. 1787), a Pietist from the Francke Foundations, had pastored the diaspora of German Lutherans and Salzburg emigrants in Pennsylvania and Georgia in the United States. Thus, the German-speaking Lutherans of Pennsylvania knew of the Lutherans in India. Following C. Rhenius’ request for financial help, John Christian Frederick Heyer (d. 1873) came to Guntur (1842) as the first Lutheran missionary from Pennsylvania. As a professional schoolteacher and theologian, he laid the foundation for the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church. A large section of the Mala community embraced Lutheran teachings and benefited from Lutheran educational, medical, and other vocational institutions. Other German-speaking Lutheran missionaries of the ELM and the HELM in neighboring places cooperated with Heyer. In 1865, August Mylius, a famous missionary of the HELM, started his work in southern parts (Nellore, Cittūr) of Telugu country. In 1894, the Missouri Evangelical Lutheran Church accepted the dissident German missionaries of the ELM – Theodore Naether and Thomas Mohn – and helped start a new center in Āmbūr. Their Concordia Schools educated large numbers of Indian students, and their work evolved into the Indian Evangelical Lutheran Church. US-American concepts of Manifest Destiny, the separation of church and state, the

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equality of all people before the constitution, and their determination to improve the physical, mental, and social life of the people impacted Indian Lutherans.

6 The International Impact of Lutherans from India In 1708, Joachim Lange published Ziegenbalg’s mission report in Berlin, and this publication started the new genre of Lutheran missionary journals in Germany. The Francke Foundations published extracts of missionary reports from India as the Halle Reports (1710 – 1772), the New History of the Evangelical Mission for the Conversion of Indians in East India (1772– 1848), and Missionary News from the East India Mission Institute in Halle (1849 – 1880). European readers received vital information about India, and Pietist networks in Europe benefited. Anton Wilhelm Böhme translated some of these reports as Propagation of the Gospel in the East (1709 – 1718). The Puritan Cotton Mather in New England and the parents of John Wesley read the English translations and derived missionary inspiration from them. This created an international ecumenical cooperation of Christians in India, Germany, Denmark, and England. Several missionary societies in Leipzig, Basel, Copenhagen, London, and Boston benefited from the examples of Lutherans in India. Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf (d. 1760) grew up hearing the stories of the Tranquebar Mission, both in Berlin and in Halle (Saale), and developed his missionary ideas and implementation skills accordingly. Hans Egede (d. 1758) read the Halle Reports and became the first Danish missionary to the Eskimos. The story of Lutherans in India increased international communication, support, and understanding among certain segments of Christians.

7 Conclusion Lutheran Reformation ideas created distinct Indian-Lutheran communities; they unlocked their innate potential to transcend traditional categories of mere existence or survival. Firmly rooted in India and dealing with contentious issues of caste, gender, poverty, and justice, these Lutheran communities maintained global views on Christianity and humanity. Lutherans in India spread their new values, identities, opportunities, interpretations, and literature (Bibles, theologies, catechisms, and textbooks on various academic disciplines) through their institutions (churches, schools, vocational training and advocacy institutions, and hospitals); they edified countless Indian communities and, thus, contributed to nation building. Their legacy continued to grow wider and deeper in Indian socio-cultural contexts.

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Ecclesia semper reformanda: Medieval Ideas and Attempts at Church Reform (Christopher M. Bellitto) Alberigo, G., “Réforme en tant que critère de l’histoire de l’Église”, in Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 76, 1981, 72 – 81. Alberigo, G. (Ed.), Christian Unity. The Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438/9 – 1989, Leuven 1991. Amargier, P., Une Église du renouveau: Réformes et réformateurs, de Charlemagne à Jean Hus 750 – 1415, Paris 1998. Atwood, C.D., Always Reforming. A History of Christianity Since 1300, Macon, GA, 2001. Aubert, R. (Ed.), Progress and Decline in the History of Church Renewal, New York 1967. Backus, I. (Ed.), The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, vols. I – II, Leiden 1997. Baker, D. (Ed.), Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History, Oxford 1977. Bellitto, C.M., Nicolas de Clamanges. Spirituality, Personal Reform, and Pastoral Renewal on the Eve of the Reformations, Washington 2001. Bellitto, C.M., Renewing Christianity. A History of Church Reform from Day One to Vatican II, New York 2001. Bellitto, C.M., Flanagin, D.Z. (Ed.), Reassessing Reform. A Historical Investigation into Church Renewal, Washington 2012. Benson, R.L., Constable, G., Lanham, C.D. (Eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge, MA, 1982. Berman, H.J., Law and Revolution, vols. I – II, Cambridge, MA, 1983 – 2003. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R., Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Western Schism, 1378 – 1417, University Park 2006. Blumenthal, U.-R., Papal Reform and Canon Law in the 11th and 12th Centuries, Brookfield, VT, 1998. Bori, P.C., Haddad, M., Melloni, A. (Ed.), Réformes. Comprendre et comparer les religions, Berlin 2007. Brady Jr., T.A., Oberman, H.A., Tracy, J.D. (Ed.), Handbook of European History 1400 – 1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, vols. I – II, Leiden 1995. Cameron, E., Waldenses. Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe, Oxford 2000. Capitani, O., “Reformatio Ecclesiae: a proposito di unità e identità nella costruzione dell’Europa medievale”, in Studi Medievali, 47, 2006, 1 – 27. Caterina da Siena, Lettere, ed. by P. Misciattelli, Florence 1939. Caterina da Siena, Le lettere, ed. by U. Meattini, Milan 1993. Chenu, M.-D., La théologie au douzième siècle, Paris 1957.

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Chenu, M.-D., Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century. Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, ed. by J. Taylor, L.K. Little, Chicago 1968. Christianson, G., Izbicki, T.M. (Ed.), Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, Leiden 1996. Cohen, A.S., “The Art of Reform in a Bavarian Nunnery around 1000,” in Speculum, 74, 1999, 992 – 2010. Congar, Y.M.-J., Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église, Paris 19682. Constable, G., Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought, Cambridge 1995. Constable, G., The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, Cambridge 1996. Crowder, C.M.D. (Ed.), Unity, Heresy, and Reform, 1378 – 1460. The Conciliar Response to the Great Schism, New York 1977. Duggan, L.G., “The Unresponsiveness of the Late Medieval Church. A Reconsideration,” in Sixteenth Century Journal, 9, 1978, 3 – 26. Dykema, P.A., Oberman, H.A. (Eds.), Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Leiden 1993, 19 – 30. Eldevik, J., Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire. Tithes, Lordship, and Community, 950 – 1150, New York 2012. Elm, K. (Ed.), Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, Berlin 1989. Frank, T., Winkler, N. (Ed.), Renovatio et unitas – Nikolaus von Kues als Reformer: Theorie und Praxis der reformatio im 15. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 2012. Frassetto, M. (Ed.), Medieval Purity and Piety. Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform, New York 1998. Frech, K.A., Reform an Haupt und Gliedern. Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung und Verwendung der Formulierung im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter, Frankfurt 1992. Fudge, T.A., Jan Hus. Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia, London 2010. Fudge, T.A., Heresy and Hussites in Late Medieval Europe, Aldershot 2014. Gastaldelli, F. (Ed.), Opere di San Bernardo, vols. I – VI, Rome 1984 – 1987. Hamm, B., The Reformation of Faith in the Context of Late Medieval Theology and Piety, Leiden 2004. Haskins, C.H., The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, Cambridge, MA, 1927. Helmrath, J., “Theorie und Praxis der Kirchenreform in Spätmittelalter”, in Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte, 11, 1992, 41 – 70. Helmrath, J., Müller, H. (Eds.), Studien zum 15. Jahrhundert. Festschrift für Erich Meuthen zum 65. Geburtstag, vols. I – II, Munich 1994. Hendrix, S.H., Recultivating the Vineyard. The Reformation Agendas of Christianization, Louisville, KY, 2004. Hendrix, S.H., Martin Luther. Visionary Reformer, New Haven 2015. Hornbeck, J.P., Somerset, F., Bose, M., A Companion to Lollardy, Leiden 2016. Howe, J., Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Italy. Dominic of Sora and His Patrons, Philadelphia 1997. Howe, J., Before the Gregorian Reform. The Latin Church at the Turn of the First Millennium, Ithaca 2016. Johnson, A.M., Maxfield, J.A. (Eds.), The Reformation as Christianization, Tübingen 2012. Krey, P.D.W., Krey, P.D.S. (Eds.), The Catholic Luther. His Early Writings, Mahwah, NJ, 2016. Küng, H., The Council, Reform, and Reunion, New York 1962. Ladner, G.B., The Idea of Reform. Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers, New York 19672. Levy, I.C. (Ed.), A Companion to John Wyclif Late Medieval Theologian, Leiden 2006. Macy, G., “Was There a ‘The Church’ in the Middle Ages?,” in Studies in Church History, 32, 1996, 107 – 116.

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Vanderputten, S., Monastic Reform as Process. Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900 – 1100, Ithaca, NY, 2013. Van Engen, J., “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” in American Historical Review, 91, 1986, 519 – 552. Van Engen, J. (Ed.), Devotio Moderna. Basic Writings, New York 1988. Van Engen, J., “Multiple Options. The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church,” in Church History, 77, 2, 2008, 257 – 284. Van Engen, J., Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life. The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, Philadelphia 2008. Weinstein, D., Bell, R.M., Saints and Society. The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000 – 1700, Chicago 1982. Winston-Allen, A., Convent Chronicles. Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages, University Park, PA, 2004.

Religion, Reason, and Superstition from Late Antiquity to Luther’s Reform (Euan Cameron) Angelo Carletti, Summa angelica de casibus conscientiae, Chivasso 1486. Baumann, K., Aberglaube fü r Laien. Zur Programmatik und Überlieferung spätmittelalterlicher Superstitionenkritik, vols. I – II, Wü rzburg 1989. Bombast von Hohenheim, T. [Paracelsus], Opera omnia medico-chemico-chirurgica, tribus voluminibus comprehensa, vols. I – III, Genevae 1658. Bowden, H., “Before Superstition and After: Theophrastus and Plutarch on ‘Deisidaimonia’,” in Past and Present, 199, suppl. 3, 2008, 56 – 71. Caspari, C.P. (Ed.), Martin von Bracara’s Schrift ‘De Correctione Rusticorum’: zum ersten Male vollständig und in verbessertem Text herausgegeben, Christiania 1883. Colman, J., “Lucretius on Religion,” in Perspectives on Political Science, 38, 4, 2009, 228 – 239. Copeland, C., Machielsen, J. (Eds.), Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period, Leiden 2013. d’Alvernia, G., Opera Omnia, vols. I – II, Parisiis 1674. Dickie, M. W., “Heliodorus and Plutarch on the Evil Eye,” in Classical Philology, 86, 1, 1991, 17 – 29. Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars. Traditional Religion in England, c.1400 – c.1580, New Haven/London 20052. Filotas, B., Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature, Toronto 2005. Förner, F., Panoplia armaturae Dei, adversus omnem superstitionum…, Ingolstadt 1626. Gerson, J., Opera Omnia, ed. by L.E. Du Pin, vols. I – V, Den Haag 17282. Gillespie, S., Hardie, P. (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge/New York 2007. Goodey, C.F., Stainton, T., “Intellectual Disability and the Myth of the Changeling Myth,” in Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 37, 3, 2001, 223 – 240. Harmening, D., Superstitio: Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters, Berlin 1979. Harmless, W., Desert Christians. An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism, Oxford/New York 2004. Heath Barnum, P. (Ed.), Dives and Pauper, vols. I – III, London 1976 – 2004. Heinrich Institoris, Jakob Sprenger (Eds.), Malleus Maleficarum: de lamiis et strigibus, vols. I – II, Frankfurt 1588. Heinrich von Gorkum, Tractatus de supersticiosis quibusdam casibus, Eßlingen 1473.

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Luther as Church Father (Wolf-Friedrich Schäufele) Altaner, B., Patrologie, Freiburg 19585. Althaus, P., Luther als der Vater des evangelischen Kirchenliedes, Leipzig 1917. Betz, H.D., Browning, D.S., Janowski, B. et al. (Eds.), Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Handwörterbuch fü r Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, vols. I – VIII, Leiden 1998 – 20074. Beutel, A. (Ed.), Luther Handbuch, Tübingen 2005. Beyer, M., Rhein, S., Wartenberg, G. (Eds.), Melanchthon deutsch, vols. I – IV, Leipzig 1997 – 2012. Bornkamm, H., Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte. Mit ausgewählten Texten von Lessing bis zur Gegenwart, Heidelberg 1955. Denifle, H., Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwicklung quellenmäßig dargestellt, vols. I – II, Mainz 1904 – 1909. Dingel, I. (Ed.), Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, vols. I – II, Göttingen 2014. Dingel, I., Ilic, L. (Ed.), Matthias Flacius Illyricus – Biographische Kontexte, theologische Wirkungen, historische Rezeption, Göttingen 2016. Ebeling, G., Lutherstudien, vols. I – III, Tübingen 1971 – 1985. Elliger, W., Die evangelische Kirche der Union. Ihre Vorgeschichte und Geschichte, Witten 1967. Facing Unity. Models, Forms and Phases of Catholic-Lutheran Church Fellowship, Genua 1985. Facius, G., “Warum Luther nicht rehabilitiert werden wird”, in Die Welt, 21. 09. 2008, https://www.welt.de/politik/article2473658/Warum-Luther-nichtrehabilitiert-werden-wird.html. Ficker, J., “Die Bildnisse Luthers aus der Zeit seines Lebens”, in Lutherjahrbuch, 16, 1934, 103 – 161. Grisar, H., Luther, vols. I – III, Freiburg 1911 – 1913. Grosc, L.K (Ed.), Sent into the World. The Proceedings of the Fifth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation, (Evian, July 14 – 24, 1970), Minneapolis 1971. Hahn, U., Mügge, M. (Eds.), Martin Luther – Vorbild im Glauben. Die Bedeutung des Reformators im ökumenischen Gespräch, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1996. Herte, A., Das katholische Lutherbild im Bann der Lutherkommentare des Cochläus, vols. I – III, Münster 1943. Hofmann, F.G., Katharina von Bora oder Dr. Martin Luther als Gatte und Vater. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Priesterehe so wie des ehelichen und häuslichen Lebens des großen Reformators, Leipzig 1845. Huldreich Zwingli, Sämtliche Werke, vols. I – XVII, Leipzig 1905 – 2013. Jesse, H., Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher. Der Kirchenvater des 19. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2002. Joestel, V., Strehle, J., Luthers Bild und Lutherbilder. Ein Rundgang durch die Wirkungsgeschichte, Wittenberg 2003. Kaufmann, T., Der Anfang der Reformation, Tübingen 2012. Kessler, M., Wallraff, M., Smend, R. (Eds.), Biblische Theologie und historisches Denken. Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien, Basel 2008. Kolb, R., Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero. Images of the Reformer, 1520 – 1620, Grand Rapids 1999. Köstlin, H.A., Luther als der Vater des evangelischen Kirchengesanges, Leipzig 1881.

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Before the Inquisitor. A Thousand Ways of Being Lutheran (Lucio Biasiori) Al Kalak, M., Gli eretici di Modena. Fede e potere alla metà del Cinquecento, Milan 2008. Atti del simposio su Lutero e la Riforma, (Vicenza, 26 – 27 novembre 1983), Vicenza 1985. Barbierato, F., “Luterani, calvinisti e libertini. Dissidenza religiosa a Venice nel secondo Seicento,” in Studi storici, 46, 2005, 797 – 844. Barbierato, F., Politici e ateisti. Percorsi della miscredenza a Venice tra Sei e Settecento, Milan 2006. Benedetto Varchi, Storia fiorentina, vols. I – III, Rome 2003. Biondi, A., Umanisti, eretici, streghe. Saggi di storia moderna, ed. by M. Donattini, Modena 2008. Bonora, E., Aspettando l’imperatore. Principi italiani tra il papa e Carlo V, Turin 2014. Chabod, F., Lo Stato e la vita religiosa a Milan nell’epoca di Carlo V, Turin 1971. Collett, B., Italian Benedictine Scholars and the Reformation. The Congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua, Oxford 1985. Dall’Olio G., Eretici e inquisitori nella Bologna del Cinquecento, Bologna 1999. Damião de Góis na Europa do Renascimento. Actas do congresso internacional, Braga 2003. De Rosa, L. (Ed.), Ricerche storiche ed economiche in memoria di Corrado Barbagallo, vols. I – III, Naples 1970. Felici, L. (Ed.), Ripensare la riforma protestante. Nuove prospettive degli studi italiani, Turin 2016. Firpo, M., Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici. Il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra Riforma e Controriforma, Rome/Bari 2001. Firpo, M., La presa di potere dell’Inquisizione romana (1550 – 1553), Rome/Bari 2014. Firpo, M., Marcatto, D., I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi (1557 – 1567). Edizione critica, vols. I – II, Vatican City 1998 – 2000. Firpo, M., Pagano, S., I processi inquisitoriali di Vittore Soranzo (1550 – 1558). Edizione critica, vols. I – II, Vatican City 2004. Fontana, B., “Documenti vaticani contro l’eresia luterana in Italia,” in Archivio della R. Società romana di storia patria, 15, 1892, 71 – 165; 365 – 474 Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, edizione critica ed. by R. Spongano, Florence 1951. Ginzburg, C., Il formaggio e i vermi. Il cosmo di un mugnaio del ’500, Turin 1976. Girolamo Muzio, Lettere cattoliche, Venice 1571. Gregory, T., Canziani, G., Paganini, G. et al. (Eds.), Ricerche su letteratura libertina e letteratura clandestina nel Seicento, Florence 1981. Grendi, E., “Micro-analisi e storia sociale,” in Quaderni storici, 35, 1977, 506 – 520. Grendler, P.F., L’inquisizione romana e l’editoria a Venice (1540 – 1605), Rome 1983. Iserloh, E., Lutero tra Riforma cattolica e riforma protestante, Brescia 1970. Larivaille, P., Pietro Aretino, Rome 1997. Longhurst, J.E., Luther’s Ghost in Spain (1517 – 1546), Kansas 1969.

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Jews and Lutheranism: An Ambiguous Silence (Roni Weinstein) Bell, D.P., Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany. Memory, Power and Community, Aldershot Hampshire 2007. Bell, D.P., Burnett, S.G. (Eds.), Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, Leiden 2006.

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Luther and the Turks (Gregory J. Miller) Barnes, R., Prophecy and Gnosis. Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation, Stanford 1988. Bohnstedt, J., “The Infidel Scourge of God. The Turkish Menace as Seen by German Pamphleteers of the Reformation Era,” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 58, 9, Philadelphia 1968, 1 – 58. Clark, H., “The Publication of the Qur’an in Latin. A Reformation Dilemma,” in Sixteenth Century Journal, 15, 1, 1984, 3 – 12. Ehmann, J., Luther, Turken, und Islam. Eine Untersuchung zum Türken- und Islambild Martin Luthers (1515 – 1546), Munich 2008. Francisco, A.S., Martin Luther and Islam. A Study in Sixteenth Century Polemics and Apologetics, Leiden/Boston 2007. Kolb, R., Dingel, I., Batka, L. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, Oxford 2014. Liliencron, R.V., Die historischen Volkslieder der Deutschen vom 13 bis 16. Jahrhundert, vols. I – IV, Leipzig 1867 – 1869. Pannier, J., “Calvin et les Turcs,” in Revue Historique, 180, 1937, 268 – 286. Russell, F.H., Just War in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 1977. Setton, K.M., The Papacy and the Levant (1204 – 1571), vols. I – IV, Philadelphia 1976 – 1984. Siberry, E., Criticism of the Crusade, 1095 – 1274, Oxford 1985. Wengert, T.J. (Ed.), Harvesting Martin Luther’s Reflections on Theology, Ethics, and the Church, Grand Rapids 2004.

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