Preparing for Death, Remembering the Dead 9783666550829, 9783525550823, 9783647550824

Citation preview

Refo500 Academic Studies

Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis In Co-operation with Günter Frank (Bretten), Bruce Gordon (New Haven), Ute Lotz-Heumann (Tucson), Mathijs Lamberigts (Leuven), Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Bern), Tarald Rasmussen (Oslo), Johannes Schilling (Kiel), Günther Wassilowsky (Linz), Siegrid Westphal (Osnabrück), David M. Whitford (Trotwood) Volume 22

Tarald Rasmussen / Jon Øygarden Flæten (eds.)

Preparing for Death, Remembering the Dead

With 78 figures

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-525-55082-3 ISBN 978-3-647-55082-4 (e-book) q 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Printing and binding: CPI buchbuecher.de GmbH, Birkach Printed in Germany

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Volker Leppin Preparing for Death. From the Late Medieval ars moriendi to the Lutheran Funeral Sermon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Peter Marshall After Purgatory : Death and Remembrance in the Reformation World . .

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Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly Ruth, Judith, Artemisia – Models for the Early Modern Widow . . . . . .

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Philipp Zitzlsperger A Change in Forms and the Migration of Bodies in Rome – from the Cardinal’s Tomb to the Cenotaph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Herman J. Selderhuis Ars Moriendi in Early Modern Calvinism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen Spacing Death – Facing Death: Conceptualizing the Encounter With Death During the Early Modern Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Claudia Resch Reforming Late Medieval ars moriendi: Changes and Compromises in Early Reformation Manuals for Use at the Deathbed . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Sivert Angel Preachers as Paul: Learning and Exemplarity in Lutheran Funeral Sermons. A Motif – Perspective on Faith and Works in Face of Death

. . 173

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Bridget Heal Commemoration and Consolation: Images in Lutheran Saxony, c.1550 – 1700 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Arne Bugge Amundsen Funeral Sermons and Lutheran Social Practices. An Example from 16th-century Denmark-Norway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Kristin B. Aavitsland Remembering Death in Denmark-Norway during the Period of Lutheran Orthodoxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Zsombor T†th How to Comfort a Dying Family Member? The Practice of an Early Modern Hungarian Calvinist. A case study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Eivor Andersen Oftestad “Let’s Kick the Devil in His Nose”. The Introduction of a Lutheran Art of Dying in 16th-century Denmark-Norway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Luca Baschera Preparation for Death in Sixteenth-Century Zurich: Heinrich Bullinger and Otto Werdmüller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 Herman A. Speelman Melanchthon and Calvin on Confession, Contrition, and Penitence . . . . 329 Konrad Küster Death and the Lutheran Idea of Becoming a Heavenly Musician

. . . . . 351

Leon van den Broeke No Funeral Sermons: Dutch or Calvinistic Prohibition? . . . . . . . . . . 361

Introduction

The Second RefoRC Conference was held in Oslo in May 2012, with the same title as this volume: Preparing for Death – Remembering the Dead, as the main theme for keynote speakers as well as for short paper presentations. Keynote speakers were invited in order to illuminate this broad research theme not only from different disciplinary angles (church history, history, cultural history, art history, archeology, literary history), but also from various geographical and confessional perspectives within a European context. The two sides of the double approach – preparing for death as well as remembering the dead – may often be associated with rather separate fields of research. One field is investigating the uses and transformations of the Late Medieval traditions of the ars moriendi in Early Modern spirituality. The other is more interested in the transformations of the cultural memory of the deceased after the abolition of purgatory in the Protestant parts of Europe, or in corresponding transformations of the ways to remember the deceased within a confessionalized Early Modern Catholic culture. These differences in approach are confirmed through the contributions of this volume. But at the same time, several contributions also point to continuities between the two research approaches, demonstrating for instance the interconnections between the “preparing for death”-genre ars moriendi and the “remembering the dead”-genre funeral sermons. Both represented the idealized version of a Christian life, a kind of pattern for a devout way of living, presented to people confronting death as well as to people remembering the dead, – be it in the immediate liturgical context of the funeral or in the printed collections of funeral sermons for uses beyond this context. The broad multidisciplinary and multiconfessional approach of this volume has made it difficult to introduce a strict systematic order to the presentation of the contributions included in the book. The keynote lectures are presented in the first part of the volume (pp. 9 – 151). The second part includes a selection of the short papers. The conference has been organized by RefoRC in cooperation with the Faculty

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of Theology at the University of Oslo, and here specifically in cooperation with the research project Death in Early Protestant Tradition, funded by the Research council of Norway (RCN). The RCN has also supported the conference with a specific grant. Tarald Rasmussen, The Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo

Volker Leppin

Preparing for Death. From the Late Medieval ars moriendi to the Lutheran Funeral Sermon

Our only comfort in life and death should be Jesus Christ1 – what the Heidelberg Catechism says in its first question not only concerns Reformed Christians, but is addressd to Lutherans as well and even to Catholics. It states the common ground of what we can observe in the Late Middle Ages and in Reformation times. There is someone to comfort, but there is also a very special situation demanding comfort: death. Obviously, there took place a change in the way this comfort worked. The following observations will try to understand this alteration. This cannot be done without a sketch of the broader lines.

Late Medieval Piety and its Polarities Scholarship on the late Middle Ages always feels the shadows of later events. For decades, the interest in the late medieval period was inspired by the endeavor to understand the Reformation. Just to mention the most famous example: Heiko Augustinus Oberman would not have written on the Harvest of the Middle Age (Oberman: 1963) if he had not thought of the Reformation as spring – whatever might have been the winter in between. With his studies on the late Middle Ages somehow, he answered a Catholic concept that had been developed in the decades before by Joseph Lortz (Lortz: 1939/40) and Erwin Iserloh (Iserloh: 1967) to show the inevitability of the Reformation in a frame of understanding that would not blame the Reformation for being totally misguided. The more Lortz and Iserloh painted a dark picture of the Middle Ages, the more they could understand the Reformation as something right or at least understandable as a reaction against the Middle Ages which had failed to be Catholic in the proper 1 “[1.] Frag. Was ist dein einiger trost in leben und sterben? Antwort. Das ich mit Leib und Seele, beyde in leben und in sterben nicht mein, sondern meines getrewen Heilands Jesu Christi eigen bin” (Heidelberger Katechismus von 1563, ed. by Wilhelm H. Neuser, in: Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften, ed. by Andreas Mühling and Peter Opitz, Vol. 2/2: 1562 – 1569, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener 2009, 169 – 212.

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sense. However, although both were outstanding historians, this entailed a concept of Catholicism that stood somehow outside historical periods and was meant to be essentially the same for centuries. Even more, it included a concept of Catholicism as this was restored by the Council of Trent. This meant, however, that it was this modern Council that removed the casual reasons for the Reformation – and thereby made the consequences of the Reformation, namely, the Protestant churches, somehow needless. Seen like this, the sympathetic understanding of the Reformation had its clear confessional core, and Oberman was one of those who felt that it was both necessary and a scholarly possibility to work along these lines. While for Iserloh, William of Ockham had been the destroyer par excellence of real Catholicism (Iserloh: 1956), Oberman showed that Gabriel Biel, the most important heir of Ockham, had developed an impressive system of grace (Oberman: 1963). Both agreed that Luther had his roots in late medieval scholasticism, but what for Iserloh was a blemish, honored Luther in Oberman’s eyes. We should note that he was not the only Protestant scholar to reappraise the late Middle Ages. Another important contribution came from Bernd Moeller, who established the interpretation that the Late Middle Ages actually brought an intensification of piety (Moeller : 1991, 74). Scholarship thus arrived at a strange situation: The Middle Ages, blamed by the reformers as the darkest age of Christianity, had got a positive image in the eyes of Protestant researchers, while Catholics tended to see it in an even worse light than the Reformers had done. One need not be a Hegelian to see that this thesis and antithesis demands a new synthesis, and indeed this may been established in the research in recent years by Berndt Hamm and myself (Hamm: 2004; Leppin: 2005; Leppin: 2008, 178 – 228). The clue seems to be that we have to avoid one-sided pictures of the Late Middle Ages. It does not help to understand this time, if we see it just as a counter-image, positive or negative, for what happened in the Reformation. If there thus is no need to see the Late Middle Ages as either black or white, we must see this period as multicolored. There is not just one line of development in the late Middle Ages, but many. The Reformation was not the answer to just one tendency ; rather, but it could be the heir to a multifold religious world in which there were elements to reject and elements to adopt. Indeed, the late medieval world is characterizeded by differences which we can (for simplicity’s sake) order by polarities. We have the polarity of those who pleaded for strengthening the central function of the popes or councils, and those who saw the church mainly as a matter of local organization and governance, as can be seen in France, for example, where the king established his own rule over the national church. This polarity of centrality and polycentrality is not the only one to be seen in late medieval society. Another important polarity is that of laity and priesthood. In debates on Reformation history, the notion of

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“anticlericalism” played a major role for a long time (Goertz: 1995). Those who criticize this concept as too narrow to explain the Reformation (Moeller : 2001a) may be right – but there is no reason to deny the reality behind it completely. Indeed, there were harsh tensions between lay people and the priesthood, even if in particular matters it was mainly the higher clergy who were criticized by the people for their wrong behavior. What can be seen throughout the Middle Ages is a struggle between lay people who organized their religious life on their own and clerics who tried to keep them under control. The most famous case is the Beguines, where the status question clashes with the gender question. In their context, however, all those aspects of medieval life that Moeller has listed in his depiction of a vivid epoch, such as brotherhoods, preachers in the cities and other forms of civil participation (Moeller : 1966, 33 f), have to be seen as part of this broader tension. This social tension is sometimes quite directly connected with a more religious one, namely that of internal and external forms of piety. Again, the traditional, negative picture of late Medieval times is focused on special external forms of piety. “Indulgences” might be the keyword here to understand what is meant by this. In them is concentrated all the negative aspects of late medieval piety that can be identified: the quantification of deeds and punishment, as well as the financial reshaping of piety. But in reality, this is just one side of late medieval piety. The other branch of it is represented by mystics or the devotio moderna, both of which mean that there is a strong tendency in the late Middle Ages to locate internal aspects of spirituality at the center of the relation to God. There is no quantification or gradualism, but an attempt to reach and feel directly God’s contiguity to man, a contiguity that cannot be seen in any outer sign, but only in the center of the human heart. The deepest expression of this is the notion of God’s birth in our souls, which is found in Johann Tauler2 and others. However, the understanding of death has to be given its place in this general sketch of medieval piety. Indeed, there is a strong connection. Obviously, the concept of the topography of the world beyond, where the souls of the dead are, is strongly connected with the question of indulgences: after Pope Sixtus IV in his bull Salvator noster had made it possible to transfer indulgences per modum suffragii from earth to beyond (DH 1398), indulgences were the main link for the solidarity of dead and alive. However right or wrong his narration was: When Luther recalled his Rome experience, pointing out that he wanted his grandfather to be dead, in order to have the possibility to free him from purgatory, this 2 See his sermon about the threefold birth in eternity, in the stable of Bethlehem and in our souls: Die Predigten Taulers. Aus der Engelberger und der Freiburger handschrift sowie aus Schmidts Abschriften der ehemaligen Straßburger Handschriften ed. by Ferdinand Vetter, Berlin: Weidmann 1910, 7 – 12.

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gave expression to a common experience that believers were able to help their ancestors by means of indulgences. Since this is so clear, we are enabled to see death preparation as a part of the above-mentioned external piety. This can also quite explicitly be a part of the ars moriendi. In 1497, the Strasbourg preacher Geiler of Kaysersberg wrote “Ein ABC. Wie man sich o schicken sol zu einem kostlichen seligen Tod.”3. In this short text, he gave twentyseven rules one had to observe in preparation for one’s death. The seventh of these runs as follows: “Gnadrychen ablas Erlangen. Unser sünden ist vil on zal. dorumb wir pflichtig sind e o grosse pen zuleyden hie oder in dem fegfür. Die mogend wir ablegen/durch rechten o o ablas/der in krafft deß genugtuns unnsers lieben herren Jesu Christi und siner lieben heilgen würckt.”4

Whoever seeks for a confirmation of the strong relation between indulgences and death preparation, should read this passage in Geiler’s tract. And he will also find other hints of an externalized piety, namely, the stress Geiler laid on the reception of the Eucharist5. But this was not the only thing an ars moriendi had to offer. The first example of this genre, notably had the title: “La mŒdicine de l’{me”, written in French by John Gerson6. We can see the distance to those branches of outer purgatory when we look at Gerson’s note on purgatory, when he writes about the exhortations to be addressed to the dying: “Mon amy ou amie, advise que tu as fait plusieurs pechŒs en ta vie pour les quelx tu as desservi estre pugny ; si dois bien prendre la painne de ta maladie et la douleur de ta mort en bonne pacience, en priant Dieu que tout e tourne en la purgacion de ton ame et la remission de tes pechez ; que ce soit yci ton purgatoire, car tu dois mieulx aymer estre pugny en ce monde qu’en l’autre”7

This quotation shows impressively the shift within late medieval piety between internal and external forms of religion. Gerson, like Martin Luther one hundred years later, integrates purgatory into the spiritual life on earth. We encounter a completely different religious attitude here than in the sermons about indulgences, and this also means that we find a different attitude towards death. Man’s sorrow, caused by his sins, has somehow, in a very dialectic way, its goal in 3 Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Gerhard Bauer. I/1: Die zu Geilers Lebzeiten erschienenen Schriften. 1, Berlin/New York 1989, 99 – 110. 4 Geiler, Werke I/1/1,103, 21 – 25. 5 Geiler, Werke I/1/1,105, 8 – 13. 6 Jean Gerson, Oeuvres compl€tes, ed. by PalŒmon Glorieux, Vol. 7: L’œuvre FranÅaise (292 – 339), Paris et al. 1966, 404 – 407. For the circumstances in which Gerson wrote this tract, see Rädle, 2003. The most influential version was in fact the Latin one (see Akerboom: 2003, 215). For the broader context in Gerson’s theology, see Burger: 1986; Grosse: 1994; Burrows: 1991. 7 Gerson, Oeuvres 7/1, 405.

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itself. Punishment is awaited beyond our death, but the more we are afraid of it, the more it is anticipated in our life. In this way, that which lies beyond death becomes part of our earthly existence. Indeed, it becomes part of a widespread intensification of the spirituality of penitence. Many of the mystics, and Jean Gerson too, can be seen as teachers who preach the necessity of penitence as the real and right attitude of man towards God. This penitence is not the same as the sacrament of penace is, but it is, as in the quotation from Gerson, very much concentrated on inner contrition. This does not abolish all traditional forms of death preparation, but it gives another direction to them. And the most important point for our question is that Luther and other Reformers could directly continue this line of internal spirituality, when they attacked the external forms of death preparation. Seen in this perspective, the early Reformation continues an internal medieval struggle, although in the long term it found its own questions and answers.

The Lasting Impact of artes moriendi Obviously, the first shock of the Reformation was its attack on indulgences and thereby against the established system of solidarity between the living and the dead (cf. LeGoff: 1984, 22 f.). And this did not stop there: when the Reformers unanimously rejected the concept of the Eucharist as a sacrifice (cf. Simon: 2003), they simultaneously removed the possibility of allowing the dead to benefit from the Mass. The Requiem Masses, so long a hinge between the earthly world and beyond, became an atrocity in the eyes of the new theology! It is in fact astonishing that this change did not affect the Reformation’s success. The Reformation entailed a lack of possibilities of providing for one’s ancestors, and it made no efforts to compensate for this. The question of death did not give rise to deeper debates. When Melanchthon published his Loci communes in 1521, there was no treatment of De novissimis in this early textbook at all. Indeed, this gave some freedom for dealing with death, as we can see in Luther’s letter to his son Hans, written in 1530. Luther here compares paradise with a fair, where his four-year-old son would have joy with his friends8. He could use this very free metaphor, because there was so little defined by the biblical texts. The world beyond was free for speculation and free from any strict definition. In particular, it was free from any influence of the living on the dead. This made the necessity of good preparing for death even stronger: When Luther in 1519 wrote his tract “Von der Bereitung zum Sterben” (cf. Brunner : 1978; 8 WA.B 5,377 f [Nr. 1595].

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Hamm: 2010, 115 – 182), he did nothing else than write a new ars moriendi9, but as I have shown above, artes moriendi could have different places within the framework of late medieval piety. And Luther’s tract evidently belongs to the internalization of piety we could observe in an important strand of late medieval religion. In fact, his approach is not radical in this sense, as we can see in the way he deals with the sacraments. He does not deny the use of them, but he denies their absolute necessity : “Solch zu richten und bereytung auff diße fart steht darynne zum ersten, das mann sich mit lauterer beycht (…) und der heyligen Christenlichen sacrament des heiligen waren e leychnams Christi und der olung vorsorge, die selben andechtig begere und mit großer zuvorsicht empfahe, ßo man sie haben mag. Wo aber nit, soll nit deste weniger das vorlangen und begere der selben trostlich seyn und nit darob zu seher erschrecken. e Christus spricht, alle dingk sein muglich dem der do glaubt, Dan die sacrament auch anders nit seyn, dan zeychen, die zum glauben dienen und reytzen.”10

This is a quite subversive argument, typical of mystical texts in the Late Middle Ages: You should receive the sacraments, but never mind if you cannot receive them in reality. With this, man’s senses are led to his inner mind. So, the whole tract centers on this inner status, insight into our sinful nature, and on our savior Jesus Christ. All that we have and all that is in us should simply look at him hanging on the Cross and winning the battle against death, sin and hell11. For those who are interested in the evolution of Luther’s Reformation theology, it should be noted that this tract was written in the fall of 1519 – even those who plead for a late breakthrough of the Reformation insight in Luther would admit that this must have happened at this time. But Luther’s reasoning on death preparation cannot be read as a contrast to late medieval counsel. On the contrary, his tract is one of the profoundest exemplars of ars moriendi in late medieval theology. Its focus is set by the spiritual admonitions Luther got from his confessor John of Staupitz. It was he who had given Luther’s thinking the direction to Jesus Christ alone, and Luther now adopted this with an impressive 9 It is astonishing that Moeller : 2011b, 265 could take exactly this tract as a symbol for the “ganze reformatorische Umbruch”, whereas it is nothing more than a slight, but important transformation of late medieval dying culture, as one could show more in greater detail in a comparison with the ars moriendi of Johann Staupitz: Ein buchlein von j der nachfolgung des willigen sterj bens Christi/Geschriben durch den wolwirdigen vaj ter Joannen von Staupitz/ der heiligen j schrifft Doctorem der bruder einsid-j lerordens scti Augustini Vicarium. j, Leipzig: Melchior Lotter d.Ä. 1515. Luther himself was not as afraid as his interpreters to admit the continuity with late-medieval consolatory literature, when he recommended this Staupitz tract to Markus Schart, who had asked him for something like this (WA. B 1,381,17 f [Nr. 171]). 10 WA 2,686, 9 – 17. 11 WA 2,690, 37; 691, 12 – 15.

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consistency : Indeed, all is done in Jesus Christ. All comfort is given in the cross12. This provides us with all that we need, and prepared by Jesus Christ, we can stand firm, whatever may come. Even hell has lost its dread. What is so astonishing is that with this late medieval text of Martin Luther, we have one of his most successful publications in hand: The Weimar edition counts 22 printings up to 1525. The secret of Luther’s success lies in the combination of the familiar and the new. The same author who was known as an enemy of the hierarchical system of the church could here be read as a comforter who did not break with latemedieval expectations, but set them forth and gave them what Berndt Hamm calls a clear normative centering (Hamm: 1992). Death is not a field for experiments. So, there might be some reasons to see the question of death as one of those which needed some caution, when anything was to be changed. When we look at the ars moriendi tradition, we see that Luther is not alone in following a quite traditional path. At least at first sight, the anonymous “Evangelisch lere” printed by Wolfgang Stoeckelin 152213, one of the texts which Austra Reinis analyzed in her marvellous study of the ars moriendi in the Reformation period (Reinis: 2007, 143 – 159), appears to be very traditional. It contains not only an exhortation to receive the sacraments, but also counsel about how to say a prayer to Mary the mother of God, invoking her for help in our sins and desires. The preparation for death in this text is far more externalized than in Luther’s “Bereitung zum Sterben”, with a very interesting addition to traditional material: The author gives counsel about how to deal with a priest who asks the dying person if he is a Lutheran. Stöckel’s aid is the counsel not to answer directly : “ich wolt das ich gutt christisch wer/Luther ist far mich nitt crewtzigt/so bin ich in seym namen nit getawfft/ich glaub in gotvatter almechtigen etc.”14

In the author’s vision, the fictional dialogue does not end at this point. The priest insists more and more, but again and again, the dying person should evade this question by directing his senses to God and Christ. This text, printed in the still Catholic Albertine Saxony, gives a clear impression of the situation in which Lutherans found themselves, in a context where they could only have recourse to Catholic Priests for their spiritual needs. It does not need much fantasy to imagine that it is once again death that raises the question of right behavior, and what the author suggests is a kind of threefold assurance: One should first stand fast in the Protestant faith. Second, one should be conscious of receiving the 12 WA 2,607, 14 – 30. o 13 Euangelisch lere j vnd vermanung/eines sterjbenden menschen/zu den saj cramenten und letzten hinfart. (…), Leipzig: Wolfgang Stöckel 1522. 14 Evangelisch lere 3v.

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sacraments in order to participate in Christ’s salvation. But thirdly, one should avoid direct lying, in order not to commit new sins in the hour of dying. Together with Luther’s tract, this shows us the quite hesitating transforming of the ars moriendi in the Reformation era, and again I would like to recall Austra Reinis’ work on this process (Reins: 2007) that describes it in a far broader way than I can do here. We can see how deep and effective the afterlife of artes moriendi was in the testament of the young Johann Gerhard, edited by Johann Anselm Steiger some years ago (Steiger : 1997). Not surprisingly, Gerhard still adopts a mystical comfort to comfort himself. It was Johann Arndt who had inspired him and who was the most important author to transfer mystical theology into 17th-century Lutheranism. Thus, Gerhard was an heir of the same late medieval piety as Luther had been. The tradition went on. Nevertheless, the observation of a long lasting impact of ars moriendi in Protestant piety should not lead to a single-sided theory of continuity. We should not forget that this productive rewriting and further development of the ars moriendi accompanied a deep alteration in the understanding of death, as I have mentioned: The abolition of indulgences and, with it, the rejection of purgatory had broken the deepest ties between here and beyond. The impressive effort of the Protestant artes moriendi was to compensate for this new lack of death preparation and care for death. The argument of comfort in Jesus Christ must have been felt quite strongly among the believers as some kind of substitute for what had been lost. However, we also have to admit that we see not only the continued existence of the ars moriendi , but also a cessation of its relevance. It is not easy to explain why the success of Luther’s “Bereitung zum Sterben” ended in 1525, with no more prints in the 16th century after this year. Indeed, in general, Luther’s early spiritual writings lost their importance for the book market in these years, and the “Bereitung zum Sterben” is one of those printed over the longest period. Nevertheless, this also came to an end (cp. Schottroff: 2012, 29), and we have to ask what took their place.

The Funeral Sermons as Individualized ars moriendi This is the point where the funeral sermons come in. It is impossible to understand what happened in Lutheran piety without bearing in mind that there was one person who provided an example for every stage of life. Although he was not the first to get married, Luther provided the image for married pastors, and this should be understood literally : The portrait of Martin and Catherine made it obvious that there was a way of life for pastors within the bounds of civil matrimony. And in the same way Luther’s death became an exemplum teaching Lutherans how to die. The medium for this was not primarily pictorial, but

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textual. To put it more precisely : There were two kinds of texts that propagated Luther’s death as exemplary. The first was the careful report of Justus Jonas about Luther’s death, the second were the funeral sermons, with Bugenhagen’s the most important. Both can be seen as transformations of the ars moriendi , but each under a special aspect. In the artes moriendi of the late Middle Ages, we see both moments of concentration on the last hours of life and counsels for leading the whole of one’s life under the sign of Jesus Christ, and the report and the sermon take up these aspects: The report gives insights into how a Christian has to behave in his last hour, while Bugenhagen interprets the Reformer’s life as a whole as fulfilling God’s plan. According to the report Jonas gave to the elector, there was no sacramental paving of the way. Everything was centered around praying and confessing. Luther himself laid his life before God, remembering his work for Jesus Christ and against the godless15. As in his “Bereitung zum Sterben,” it is Jesus Christ who stands in the center of this retrospection. Although we have here, as said before, counsel for the last hours of one’s life, Luther’s whole life and the moment of death come together at once: Christ was in the midst of Luther’s life, and Christ is the one to bring men near to the Father. This is also expressed by the following quotation from the Bible: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46; Ps 31:6). These words from Psalm 31 are very important as one of the words of Jesus hanging on the cross, according to Luke 23:46, and the dying Luther underlines this, adding: “For God so loved the world”16, an open allusion to John 3:16 and God Father giving his Son to death. Nor is this all: after Luther lost consciousness and then began to breathe again, the two witnesses, Michael Coelius and Justus Jonas, asked Luther about his faith, if he would confess Jesus Christ as his savior, and Luther answered clearly : Yes17. With this confession on his lips, he could die without saying any more. Thus Luther’s death became exemplary for how to die with and in Jesus Christ. Seen against the background of the ars moriendi , one could say : this was the performance of a good death. Indeed, here we may have the key to the shift in the reasoning about death and death preparation in Protestantism. The ars moriendi had always been a common, general form of preparing for death. The texts showed how everyone had to die18. Indeed, this was one of the most impressive experiences in the late Middle 15 Die Berichte über Luthers Tod und Begräbnis. Texte und Untersuchungen, ed. by Christof Schubart, Weimar 1917. 16 Schubart, Berichte über Luthers Tod (cf. n. 15), 5. 17 Schubart, Berichte über Luthers Tod (cf. n. 15), 5. 18 See Gerson, Oeuvres 7,405: “ Mon amy ou amye, pense la grace que Dieu te faist. Nous sommes tous et toutes en sa main. N’est homme, roy ou prince ne aultre, qui ne doye passer par ce pas (…)” ; Geiler, Werke 1,6 : “Lieber frundt nym war das wir all underworffen sind

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Ages: the fact that death would not spare anyone. Those who could not imagine this, saw it depicted in the dances of death, which were widespread throughout Europe and were connected by one theme: that death took everyone, whether Pope, Emperor or beggar. This common tendency still marked Luther’s “Bereitung zum Sterben” and other Reformed texts. But with the exemplary death of Luther, one had an individual death in which the general should be seen. Even if the setting had a feeling of hagiography, the focus was not (or not only) on presenting Luther as a holy man. Indeed, there was something quite personal in these forms of report: Luther’s followers wanted to protect their hero against any defamation. To state that his death had been calm and pious was meant to show that he had lived and died in God. But of even more importance was the exemplary aspect. Describing Luther’s death was meant to show how a Lutheran could or should die. He should die praying to God and Jesus Christ, and he even could die without any sacrament, omitting not only the Last Rites, but also the Lord’s Supper. This behavior did not become a general rule in Lutheranism, nor was it meant to be. There was no need to quit the sacraments, but, Luther himself had to learn, there was no need to receive them in the last hour of one’s life. However general or individual this report on Luther’s death may have been – this was not the genre with a long-lasting impact. The most important medium to deal with death was the funeral sermon. Luther certainly was not the first to get a funeral sermon – he himself had held two sermons for the burial of Frederick the Wise in 152519 – but his sermon was exemplary and weighty. What we have to deal with here is not just one funeral sermon, but at least four them. The day after his death, February 19th 1546, Justus Jonas preached over Luther’s body in Eisleben, and one day later, Michael Cölius did the same. Both sermons were soon published together20 ; Jonas’ sermon was slightly altered, picking up the text he used on April 8th at Halle21. The most important celebration, obviously, was the one held ad Wittenberg four days after Luther’s death, with Bugenhagen and Melanchthon as preachers. Again, both sermons were printed within the same year22.

19 20 21 22

der gewaltigen hand gottes und sinem willen .das wir alle wie wir genant sind keyser . kunig und fursten . rich und arm muessend bezalen den zinß des todes”. This sentence is not part of the ABC, but of another text of Geiler, Wie man sich halten sol by eym sterbenden menschen of 1480/81, which is nearly a translation of Gerson’s ars moriendi. WA 17/1,196 – 227. Zwo Tröstliche j Predigt/Vber der Leich/j D.Doct: Martini j Luther/zu Eissleben den XIX. j vnd XX. Februarij gethan j Durch D. Doct: Justum Jonam. j M. Michaelem Celium j ANNO 1546.j, Wittenberg: Georg Rau 1546. Schubart, Berichte über Luthers Tod (cf. n. 15), 17. Eine christliche j Predigt/vber der Leich vnd be-j grebnis/des Ehrwirdigen D.j Martini Luthers/durch Ern Jo-j han Bugenhagen Pomern/(…) gethan, Wittenberg: Georg Rau 1546; ORATIO IN j FVNERE REVEREN/j di viri D. Martini Lutheri j recitata a Philippo

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This is not the place to recall the reflections of both preachers, which are quite interesting for the development of a special Luther memory, something I have elsewhere called monumentalization. The point here is that the genre of funeral sermon had an impressive success in Lutheranism from that time onwards. But research is mainly focused on the prosopographical impact of the data collected here. From a theological point of view it seems to be interesting to look at what these funeral sermons might stand for, at what actually happened with a funeral sermon. It is widely known, that funeral sermons had two parts which occupied separate places in the liturgy. On the one hand, the life of the deceased person had to be recalled, honoring his deeds and showing God’s effects in his life. The second part was the sermon in a stricter sense, interpreting the life in the light of a biblical verse. This was the theological part. Both parts had their place at the grave of the dead person, accompanying him to eternal life and keeping him present in the community and among the bereaved. There might also be sociological factors determining the type of remembrance. In this sense, the funeral sermons are part of a culture of memory, as can be seen in the case of Martin Luther, mentioned above. Many people, adherents as well as enemies, wanted to know how the hero of the Reformation had died. There might also have been an interest to know how a prince had died and how his life could be seen in the light of God. To a certain extent, this might explain the medium of funeral sermons in a perspective of cultural history. Indeed, in this context, we can point out the special function funeral sermons had in the culture of memory : when printed, they spread the memory of the dead. They produced a monument with no local or chronological borders. While the burial itself, including the orally spoken funeral sermon, was effective at a special moment to a special group of men and women at a certain place, the printed sermon came to an anonymous public in the whole world that shared the language used in the sermon. This was also an advantage over gravestones and epitaphs. Both of these were bound to a special place, while the sermon could be read elsewhere and by everybody. From the point of the authors who felt responsible for the memory of the deceased person, it therefore made sense to publish these sermons. In the case of someone like Luther, this also made sense from the perspective of a printer who already had to think about a public interest keen enough to prompt people to buy funeral sermons on people they had never heard of. What, for example, gives such a public interest to Johann Balthasar Geymann (ca. 1573 – 1590), a student who died at the age of 16 years at Jena and was buried there in the parish church? Me/j lanthone.j, Wittenberg: Josef Klug 1546; the text of Melanchthon’s speech is edited in: CR 11,726 – 734.

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He had not had the time to become famous in any respect, nor was he a member of a famous family. Nevertheless, there must have been some reason that made the printer expect to sell the funeral sermon23. One of those reasons might have been the preacher, Samuel Fischer. As a superintendent and professor of theology, he was not unknown, but he was not a celebrity in his own days. And it is he himself who suggests another reason for printing and for the public interest: in a long preface, addressed to the father of the deceased, he points out that young Johann Balthasar was an example to others who died young, and even more, to other parents who saw their children dying so young24. So this case is different from Martin Luther’s and nevertheless similar : The interesting factor here was not, as in Luther’s case, celebrity, but just as Luther’s death had shown how to die as a Protestant, so too anyone could learn from Johann Balthasar Geymann’s case, how to endure the fate of losing a child. This meant: What made his case interesting, was not his person, but a special situation of dying. Because his case is so peculiar, this can be seen here quite clearly. But we also can draw further conclusions from this. The question, what makes a funeral sermon interesting, can be asked in many cases. And we have a range of answers for this, starting from the argument of celebrity and also including the simple phenomenon of curiosity. But one has to ask if this is enough to explain the overwhelming popularity of the funeral sermons in Early modern Times, as we see in the many printings of the well-known collections of funeral sermons. Regarding this, before making funeral sermons the forerunner of the modern yellow press, we can see in Geymann’s case another, theological reason: The individual death showed in an exemplary manner universal aspects of death. By reading about another’s death and mourning and, even more, the theological interpretation of both, people could identify in the individual story the grounding story of man being prepared for death. And they could relate their own life to what they read about others, if not directly imitating them, at any rate learning from them what death meant for the person mentioned in the funeral sermon, for man in general and for the reader in particular. Here, we have the context of the Lutheran funeral sermons. Obviously, reading a funeral sermon could serve the same needs as the artes moriendi had 23 Leichpredigt j BEy dem Begreb=j nuss/des weiland Gestrengen/Edlen vnd j Erhnvesten D. Iohannis Balthasari Geymans/j Des auch j Gestrengen/Edlen/vnd Ehrnvesten/Herrn j Johann Christophori Geymans/zu Galsbach/vnnd j Traetteneck/auff Wahlen/der Roemischen Keyserlichen … j … maiestet/etc. Forneh=j men/vnnd des Ertzhertzogthumbs Osterreich/ob der j Enss/Landt Raths/Hertzliebsten Sons: j Welcher den 30. Septembris … j … in … j Jena/ ent-j schlaffen/vnd den 1. Octobris/in die Pfarrkir=j chen daselbs gelegt ist/j Gethan durch j Samuelem Fischerum, der heiligen Schrifft Docto =j rem/Professorem, Pastorem vnd Superintendenten j daselbsten.j, Jena: Tobias Steinman 1590. See also Leppin: 2011. 24 Fischer, Leichpredigt Balthasar Geymann (cf. n. 23), Fiiiv.

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done before, and still did in some contexts. But it did it in another way. The ars moriendi had provided general rules, which each individual life could adopt,25 trusting that a Christian life had to have a certain structure, even if the artes moriendi in themselves did not absolutely agree on the form this would take, and were oriented more to internal reasoning or more to such external means as sacraments. Both aspects continued into the Protestant funeral sermons, but the stronger accent was laid on what had been the part of internal reasoning before: on the individual relation to God that could take a different form in each individual life. Taking up the internal aspects of late-medieval death preparation, the funeral sermons integrated the modern individualization. Preparing for death no longer meant fulfilling general rules, but looking at the pluriformity of possibilities for a life that made its way towards death. In this sense, it could replace the ars moriendi as the most popular literal medium for death preparation, but at the same time, it translated what the artes moriendi had given to the believers into a new context.

Bibliography Akerboom, Dick (2003), “… only the Image of Christ in Us”. Continuity and Discontinuity between the Late medieval ars moriendi and Luther’s Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben, in: Hein Blommestijn/Charles Caspers/Rijcklof Hofman (Ed.), Spirituality Renewed. Studies on Significant Representatives of the modern Devotion, Leuven et al.: Peeters, 209 – 272. Brunner, Peter (1978), Luthers Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben. Ausgelegt in einer textnahen Paraphrase mit einigen Erläuterungen, in Zeitenwende 49, 214 – 228. Burger, Christoph (1986), Aedificatio, Fructus, Utilitas. Johannes Gerson als Professor der Theologie und Kanzler der Universität Paris, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (BHTh 70). Burrows, Mark Stephen (1991), Jean Gerson and De Consolatione Theologiae (1418). The Consolation of a Biblical and Reforming Theology for a Disordered Age, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (BHTh 78). Goertz, Hans-Jürgen (1995), Antiklerikalismus und Reformation, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht. Grosse, Sven (1994), Heilsungewißheit und Scrupulositas im späten Mittelalter. Studien zu Johannes Gerson und Gattungen der Frömmigkeitstheologie seiner Zeit, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (BHTh 85). Hamm, Berndt (1992), Reformation als normative Zentrierung von Religion und Gesellschaft, JBTh 7, 241 – 279. 25 For the quite general scheme of late medieval artes moriendi , see Wicks: 1998, 346 – 354, working mainly on the artes moriendi of Gerson, Peuntner, Geiler and Paltz.

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Hamm, Berndt (2004), The Reformation of Faith in the Context of Late medieval Theology and Piety. Essays. Ed. by Robert J. Bast, Leiden et al: Brill (SHCT 110). Hamm, Berndt (2010), Der frühe Luther. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Iserloh, Erwin (1956), Gnade und Eucharistie in der philosophischen Theologie des Wilhelm von Ockham. Ihre Bedeutung für die Ursachen der Reformation, Wiesbaden: Steiner. Iserloh, Erwin (1967), Martin Luther und der Aufbruch der Reformation (1517 – 1525), in: HKG(J) 4, Freiburg et al.: Herder, 3 – 114. LeGoff, Jacques (1984), Die Geburt des Fegefeuers, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 22. Leppin, Volker (2005), Von der Polarität zur Vereindeutigung. Zu den Wandlungen in Kirche und Frömmigkeit zwischen spätem Mittelalter und Reformation, in: Gudrun Litz/Heidrun Munzert/Roland Liebenberg (Ed.), Frömmigkeit – Theologie – Frömmigkeitstheologie. Contributions to European Church History. Festschrift Berndt Hamm, Leiden/Boston: Brill (Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 124), 299 – 315. Leppin, Volker (2008), 4.–6. Kapitel: Theologie im späten Mittelalter, Frömmigkeit im späten Mittelalter, Humanismus, in: Thomas Kaufmann/Raymund Kottje (Ed.), Ökumenische Kirchengeschichte, Vol. 2, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 178 – 228. Leppin, Volker (2011), Medien lutherischer Memorialkultur. Eine exemplarische Studie zur Jenaer Stadtkirche, in: Berndt Hamm/Volker Leppin/Gury Schneider-Ludorff (Ed.), Media Salutis. Gnaden- und Heilsmedien in der abendländischen Religiosität des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation 58), 205 – 225. Lortz, Joseph (1939/40), Die Reformation in Deutschland, Freiburg: Herder. Moeller, Bernd (1966), Spätmittelalter, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht (Die Kirche in ihrer Geschichte 2H). Moeller, Bernd (1991), Frömmigkeit in Deutschland um 1500, in: ibid., Die Reformation und das Mittelalter. Kirchenhistorische Aufsätze, ed. by Johannes Schilling, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht, 73 – 85. Moeller, Bernd (2001a), Klerus und Antiklerikalismus in Luthers Schrift ‘An den Christlichen Adel deutscher Nation’ von 1520 in ibid., Luther Rezeption. Kirchenhistorische Aufsätze zur Reformationsgeschichte, ed. by Johannes Schilling, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht, 108 – 120 (Moeller : 2001a). Moeller, Bernd (2001b), Sterbekunst in der Reformation. Der ‘köstliche, gute, notwendige Sermon vom Sterben’ des Augustiner-Eremiten Stefan Kastenbauer, in: ibid. LutherRezeption. Kirchenhistorische Aufsätze zur Reformationsgeschichte, ed. by Johannes Schilling, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht, 245 – 269. Oberman, Heiko Augustinus (1963), The Harvest of Medieval Theology, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rädle, Fidel (2003), Johannes Gerson, De arte moriendi, Lateinisch ediert, kommentiert und Deutsch übersetzt, in: Nine Miedema/Rudolf Suntrup (ed.), Literatur – Geschichte – Literaturgeschichte. Beiträge zur mediävistischen Literaturwissenschaft. FS Honemann, Berlin et al.: Lang, 721 – 738.

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Reinis, Austra (2007), Reforming the Art of Dying. The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519 – 1528), Aldershot: Ashgate. Schottroff, Luise (2012), Die Bereitung zum Sterben. Studien zu den frühen reformatorischen Sterbebüchern, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht (Refo500 Academic Studies 5). Simon, Wolfgang (2003), Die Messopfertheologie Martin Luthers. Voraussetzungen, Genese, Gestalt und Rezeption, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (SuR.NR 22). Steiger, Johann Anselm (1997), Das Testament und das Glaubensbekenntnis des todkranken 21–jährigen Johann Gerhard (1603), in: ibid., Johann Gerhard (1582 – 1637). Studien zu Theologie und Frömmigkeit des Kirchenvaters der lutherischen Orthodoxie, Stuttgart – Bad Cannstatt: Fromann und Holzboog (Doctrina et Pietas 1), 159 – 227. Wicks, Jared (1998), Applied Theology at the Deathbed. Luther and the Late-Medieval Tradition of the “Ars moriendi”, in: Gregorianum 79, 345 – 368.

Peter Marshall

After Purgatory: Death and Remembrance in the Reformation World

Wherever it took hold, the Reformation changed the meaning and experience of death. More specifically, it picked apart a rich, complex cultural grammar of commendation and commemoration of the dead. This grammar involved ritual, doctrine, liturgy, material objects, as well as deeply ingrained habits of thought, language and gesture. What bound it together was the conviction that the dead were in a dynamic condition of change and improvement in the next life, something which kept them connected in intimate ways with the motives and actions of those left behind in the world. The living had responsibilities towards the dead, to remember them in specific ways and in specific contexts. The aim was not to bind, but to release them, to help see them safely to journey’s end and to their final heavenly home. To pray for the dead was to partake in the process of their redemption, and in so far as society was geared up and equipped for this task, it collectively volunteered itself to support the salvific work of Christ. The great strength of the medieval scheme of commemoration was that it aligned an emotional impulse to do right by the dead with a cosmological explanation of their condition and location. Purgatory – that crowning achievement of the medieval social imaginary – was at once a place of confinement, a state of being, and a clarion call for acknowledgement and response. Death, paradoxically, served to affirm the claims and character of common humanity, exemplified in the ubiquitous medieval legend of the three kings who encounter a trio of animated rotting corpses: “What you are, so once were we; what we are, so you shall be.” (Daniell: 1997, 69). Such imagery, in addition to its memento mori function, pointed towards the powerful unwritten contract between generations past and present. Precisely because the living would come to share the fate of the dead and their condition of need, they must not forget them, but stir themselves to action to alleviate their plight. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But right across Europe in the course of the sixteenth century, that contract was challenged, tested at law and found to be invalid. Purgatory – so the reformers taught their congregations – was a lie, a fiction, and an invention.

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Moreover, Europe’s disparate reform movements were remarkably unanimous in this conclusion from an early date. Unlike the eucharist, baptism or predestination, the question of purgatory was hardly ever a cause of doctrinal dissension among Protestants. It may have taken Luther more than a decade from the time of his protest over indulgences in 1517 to finally and explicitly deny the possibility of any middle state for souls in his Widerruf vom Fegefeuer (Repeal of Purgatory) of 1530. But already in 1521 he was denouncing masses for the dead, and soon came to regard all forms of post-mortem intercession as Gaukelwerke, works of trickery (cf. Koslofsky : 2000). Other early reformers were still less hesitant. In the preaching and polemic of English evangelicals like William Tyndale or Hugh Latimer, purgatory was simply “purgatory pickpurse” (Marshall: 2002, 55 – 6). In a still more resonant phrase, the early Swiss reformers Pamphilius Gengenbach and Nicholas Manuel denounced traditional teaching about the afterlife by the Catholic clergy as Totenfresserei, feasting, or rather guzzling, upon the dead (cf. Ozment: 1975, 111 – 16). The ferocity of such assaults has perhaps never been thoroughly accounted for. It is often pointed out that Purgatory had uncertain scriptural foundations, but then so did other doctrines largely uncontentious within magisterial Protestantism, such as Infant Baptism and the Trinity. The rage seems to come from a deeper place – a sense of anger and betrayal at being hoodwinked by the clergy, certainly. Or was the revulsion in any way fuelled by ambivalent feelings towards the dead themselves, that fear and resentment which can accompany the grief of bereavement? Whatever the psychological imperatives in play, wherever Protestantism came to power, it was agreed that the dead had no right to demand the prayers of the living, and the living had no obligation to supply them. In the space of a few years, the doctrinal rationale for a plethora of ritual observances and material constructions was entirely swept away, and the whole basis on which the dead were to be honoured and remembered was open for renegotiation. For Catholic observers, this was frequently an occasion of bewilderment, shock and trauma. Johann Leyp, the last remaining Catholic pastor in Chemnitz in Lutheran Saxony, looked around him in 1534 and saw how “the dead are buried without a cross or candles in silence, like senseless beasts, like dogs” (Koslofsky : 2000, 90 – 1). Similarly, in France in 1556, a Catholic writer caustically observed how Huguenots would “throw the body into the grave without saying anything or making any more ceremony than for a dog or a horse.” (Benedict: 2002, 494). Another French Catholic considered the heretics’ “miserable treatment of the dead […] tearful to see” (Roussel: 2002, 200). The Elizabethan English Catholic, William Allen, looked across the channel from exile in 1565 and lamented that “nowe there is no blessing of mannes memorie at all” (Marshall: 2002, 265). Towards the end of the century, the Dutch humanist Arnoldus Buchelius bewailed the fact that Protestants “neglect the monuments

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of the ancients, and do not attend to the memorial masses of our ancestors, saying that their names have already been written in heaven, so that some of them seem more barbaric than the Goths themselves.” (Pollmann: 1999, 86). Such statements suggest an immediate reaction to sacrilegious transgression, in the setting aside of familiar and valued rituals, but they also point to a wider unease about a kind of social amnesia, an abandonment of the crucial symbolic connections between current and past tenants of the earth. Modern scholarship does not in the main share the spiritual anxieties and regrets of sixteenth-century Catholics, but it has been inclined to echo the perception that in this area, even more than in others, the Reformation initiated dramatic and long-lasting patterns of change, with implications far beyond the bounded world of ecclesiastical ritual and doctrine. It is commonly asserted, for example, that the Protestant reformers effected a profound redefinition of human community, severing all connections between the living and the dead, and casting out the latter from the position they had enjoyed as an honorary “age group” in medieval society (cf. Cressy : 1997; Duffy : 1992; Karant-Nunn, 1997). The dead were not just dead; they were dead and gone. This did not necessarily mean that they were forgotten, but rather that they were remembered in profoundly new ways, ones which effected far-reaching changes in the meaning of memory itself. Medieval concepts of memory were profoundly structured by what, in a classic discussion, the German historian Otto Gerhard Oexle (1983) called “Die Gegenwart der Toten” – the presence of the dead. Subsequent scholarship has done much to elaborate the concept of memoria as an organising principle of medieval social and cultural life, noting how it was constituted through a multitude of gift exchanges, and a ritualised refiguring – literally remembering – of the dead through recital of their names in a variety of liturgical and quasi-liturgical contexts (cf. Van Bueren/van Leerdam: 2005; Weijert/Ragetli/Bijsterveld/van Arenthals: 2001).1 Medieval memoria, it is argued, served to collapse the gap between past and present which is central to modern ideas of memory. The Reformation, however, by ejecting the dead from a ritual and intercessionary “present”, demarcated the past more clearly and endowed it with a new ontological status. “The rejection of memoria”, suggests Craig Koslofsky, “was essential to the modern order of memory based on linear, directional time and a past of dead individuals, absent, with whom the living could have only the most disturbing contact.” (2002, 31; cf. Sherlock: 2010). Thus, it would seem, the origins of the modern discipline of history itself turn out to be closely entwined with the eschatological concerns of the Reformation. Such models of explanation are based in part upon developments in twen1 See also the website of the project on culture of commemoration in the Netherlands, “Medieval Memoria Online”: http://memo.hum.uu.nl/.

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tieth-century art-historical theory, particularly around the interpretation of tombs and monuments. A seminal study of Tomb Sculpture by the German art historian Erwin Panofsky argued that post-Reformation monuments were fundamentally “retrospective”, seeking to enumerate and commemorate the achievements of the dead person during a life now terminated; quite unlike the “prospective” monuments of the middle ages, with their evident concern for the still mutable condition of the deceased in the afterlife (1964, 62 – 76). This, then, was a new idiom of commemoration with potentially far-reaching social and cultural consequences. One line of development scholars have spotted leads towards a greater emphasis on the lived identity of the dead person, and connects with the rise of modern individualism (cf. Gittings: 1984; Finch: 2003; Eire: 2010, 151 – 2).2 Here, attention to the greater biographical emphasis in commemorative forms comes together with a perception of the abandonment of collective rituals for the achievement of a good death, and a successful navigation of the shoals of the afterlife. For had not Luther preached in a sermon of 1522 that “everyone must fight his own battle with death by himself, alone”? (Koslofsky : 2002, 29). A second and related argument sees the retrospective and this-worldly character of Protestant memorial culture as a symptom of a larger process of conceptual reorientation, one of desacralization or secularization. Funerary monuments in churches came to be much more about celebrating honour and lineage, and articulating the social and political order, than about providing symbols of Christian hope (cf. Llewellyn: 2000; Meys: 2009; Brinkmann, 2010). It is not hard to find examples to support the thesis, whether in the apparently excessive concern with heraldic display that can be found on elite monuments across northern Europe, or in seemingly merely naturalistic and unspiritualised representations of the recumbent form. It was of such sepulchres that the English playwright John Webster was thinking when he has a character in The Duchess of Malfi exclaim: “Princes images on their tombes / Do not lie, as they were wont, seeming to pray / Up to heaven: but with their hands under their cheekes, (As if they died of the tooth-ache) […] not carved / With their eies fix”d upon the starres; but as Their mindes were wholly bent upon the world / The self-same way they seeme to turne their faces.” (cited in Marshall: 2002, 276). It has seemed, moreover, to some modern commentators that in promoting a stronger sense of the finality of judgement at death, the Reformation sharpened a contrast between worldly achievements to be celebrated and conserved, and the dark oblivion that awaited beyond (cf. Attreed: 1982, 65; Somerville: 1992, 88; Neil: 1997, 3, 38 – 40, 48, 306). In his brilliant and provocative recent Very Brief History 2 See also the broader comments on connections between modern sense of individualism, and the Reformation’s rejection of communal strategies of salvation in Taylor : 1989, 215 – 30.

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of Eternity, Carlos Eire suggests that the abrogation of purgatory and what followed from it was no less than “a significant first step toward the elevation of this world as the ultimate reality and towards the extinction of the soul.” (2010, 153). It should be clear, then, that the Reformation’s rethinking of the meaning of commemoration, in the light of the unmasking of purgatory, has been asked to do a lot of historical work. As an important foundational component, both of a modern sense of individual selfhood, and of a profoundly secularizing impulse, it seems as if the abolition of purgatory is being made into one of defining conditions of modernity itself. It is of course the task and responsibility of historians to construct explanatory models of historical development, to suggest connections between disparate synchronous phenomena, and to identify the processes and dynamics at work in effecting changes we might well want to regard as epochal. But, attractive though they are, grand theories about the relationship between the assault on purgatory and the emergence of the modern world pose some significant problems, as grand theories always do. In the first place, there is the need to consider the existence of the very different patterns of funerary ritual and commemorative culture to be found in different parts of the Protestant world. Secondly, and still more pertinently, such theories have a convenient tendency to forget that most parts of western Europe did not abandon purgatory, because they did not ultimately adopt the Reformation. In much of Catholic Europe, as several studies have noted, interest in post-mortem intercession and the cult of the holy souls actually intensified in the post-Reformation era (cf. Eire: 1995, 168 – 231; Nalle: 1992, 202 – 5; Tingle: 2009). So if radical reform of the afterlife is made the condition of modernity, then Catholicism is by definition excluded from a role in the making of modernity, which seems not so much discriminatory, as deeply implausible. Thirdly, now that historians have caught up with sociologists of religion in becoming sceptical about the secularization thesis itself, and as it has become increasingly evident that secularity is hardly the most prominent feature of the world we collectively inhabit, a need to identify so emphatically its putative historical roots is arguably a less pressing task. In the rest of this chapter, I want to probe some of these concepts a little further, asking what patterns of mortuary and commemorative practice in the post-Reformation world can tell us about the priorities of different reform movements, about the interplay of social and spiritual motives in the continuing response to the biological imperative of death, and about the sometimes remarkable plasticity and adaptability of reforming initiatives in particular cultural and geographical settings. The story, without doubt, is a much untidier and more perplexing one than any simple “before” and “after” binary might suggest. Let us then return to the headline suggestion of historical interpretation: that

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the Reformation acted to sever connections between the living and the dead. There are some senses in which that is obviously true. Reformed doctrine insisted that the dead had no awareness of what was transpiring in the world, that they were insensible of, as well as unable to respond to or benefit from, the prayers or devotions of the living (cf. Marshall: 2002, 210 – 15). The motive here was in fact a desire to undercut the cult of the saints, as much as it was to prevent people making representations to or for the more ordinary dead. Yet in other ways and contexts the metaphor of the severed connection begs some serious questions. Was, for example, this separation of the dead from the living purely metaphysical and conceptual, or did it have a physical, spatial component? For Germany, the case has been strongly made that it did, for example, by Koslofsky and Susan Karant-Nunn. They note that in many parts of Germany and Switzerland through the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, the traditional graveyards encompassing the parish church were being closed down and relocated outside town and city walls (cf. Koslofsy : 2000, 40 – 78; Karant-Nunn: 1997, 178 – 9). Here, the removal of cemeteries is symbolic of a spiritual shift, a parallel distancing of the bodies and the souls of the dead from the habitats and habitus of the living. But as these authors are compelled to admit, the story is a little more complicated than that. Although Luther was in favour of extramural burial on the basis of both scriptural mandate and decent pious practice (cf. Leroux: 2007, 259 – 65), the stated reasons for closing traditional graveyards always involved public health arguments rather than theological ones – graves were believed to exude foul and dangerous miasmas – and it was a process that had begun already in the fifteenth century. Moreover, it was patchily implemented, and sometimes fiercely resisted (cf Beyer, 1996). Even in Germany, the relocation of burial sites was an exclusively urban phenomenon, and it was far from normative for the wider Protestant world: Carlos Eire exaggerates when he states that the removal of bodies to suburban churchyards was a composite “spiritual apartheid and physical apartheid”, which “came into existence rapidly and thoroughly wherever Protestantism took root” (2010, 123). Burial in traditional medieval churchyards continued, for example, in both Lutheran Sweden and Calvinist Scotland, though here individual grave markers were becoming more common in the seventeenth century than they had been before the Reformation (cf. Gonz~lez: 2005, 209; Todd: 2002, 338 – 9). In Protestant England too, even in towns, burial in the ancient churchyards remained the clear pattern throughout the sixteenth century. In London, as Vanessa Harding (2003) has shown, some new suburban parish cemeteries were established, but they were largely shunned by parishioners of status, and became repositories for the marginal dead: strangers, paupers, and victims of the plague. Social status had of course always been a prime determinant of burial loca-

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tion, and across Europe the pattern here seems to be one of broad continuity, rather than of innovation. In medieval times, the most desirable location was inside the parish church itself, preferably in the chancel near to where the sacrifice of the mass was offered (cf. Daniell: 1997, 87 – 115). Burial within the church continued to be the aspiration for local social elites in Protestant England, Lutheran Germany, the Reformed Netherlands, even some Swiss cities like Basel (cf Marshall: 2002, 295 – 6; Zerbe: 2007, 118; Spicer : 1997, 174 – 8; Burnett: 2006, 247). As Diarmaid MacCulloch has put it, “far from tombs disappearing from church buildings, in most European settings the protestant dead made their presence felt ever more stridently and in greater numbers.” (2003, 579). Yet this was neither an inevitable nor an uncontentious development. The case of Scotland is instructive here. Leaders of the Kirk took the line that the dead had no place among the worshipping community of the living. Since kirk-burial originated from a desire for proximity to saints’ relics, and for benefitting from masses and prayers, its continuation was a dangerous invitation to popish relapse. Prohibitions of the practice were passed at General Assemblies in 1588, 1597, 1638 and 1643 (cf. Colvin: 1981, 296 – 303; Spicer : 2000). Serial prohibitions, of course, are usually an indication that a policy isn’t working, and so it proved in Scotland. There was an official and legitimate way of circumventing the ban: the construction of aisles or small transepts on the side of churches as the site of often very elaborate family mausolea. These were not technically part of the church, but allowed landowners to continue to reap the prestige associated with burial at the heart of the worshipping community (cf. Spicer : 2000; Brown: 2000, 269). There was also much simple defiance of the ban. In response to popular demand, and in return for an appropriate fee, local kirk elders regularly allowed the placing of bodies and monuments within the building itself. Such monuments were not invariably modest and discreet, as can be seen, for example, from the imposing figural tomb placed by Sir George Bruce in the former monastic church turned parish kirk at Culross in Fife (cf Todd: 2002, 336). Commenting on the burial ban, the American historian of Scottish Protestantism, Margo Todd, remarks that “there is surely no louder testimony to continued lay reverence for sacred space […] than the utter failure of this effort in the face of popular insistence on kirk burial, and its eventual transformation into yet another fundraising device.” More speculatively, she adds that the annual payments of so-called “burial silver”, required to keep the body in its place, seem “reminiscent of the expense of those pre-Reformation commemorative masses, the “months minds” and obits on the anniversary of a death.” (2002, 333 – 4). This raises the key question of cultural meanings, both those explicitly declared and those implicitly assumed. The continuities in physical patterns of burial need not imply or require the persistence of pre-Reformation habits of religious thought. It is here indeed that advocates of a secularised concept of

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commemoration anchor their case, supposing that tombs and monuments assumed overwhelmingly social and political functions, entirely divorced from their original spiritual rationale. To what extent, however, does it make sense to characterise Protestant memorial culture as fundamentally secular in intention and expression? Commemoration of the dead began, of course, with the funeral, just as it had before the Reformation. Here, diversity and disagreement within the Protestant camp about the permissible extent of religious ceremonial was at its most marked. German Lutheranism, predictably, was at one end of the spectrum, building on Luther’s own understanding of the honourable burial of the dead as a required act of Christian piety (cf. Koslofsky : 2000, 93 – 4). As it developed in the Empire, Lutheran funeral ritual retained numerous ceremonial elements of a traditional stamp, most evidently in the solemnity of a communal procession to the graveside led by the clergy (cf. Koslofsky : 2000, 90 – 4); Karant-Nunn: 1997, 181 – 4). The burial service of the Church of England similarly had discernible roots in the medieval services. In both England and Germany, patterns of ritualised almsgiving to the poor remained a notable feature of funerary practice (cf. Gittings: 1984, 161 – 4; Karant-Nunn: 1997, 181). To Calvinist observers, much of this looked unacceptably popish still. Within the English church, there were persistent tensions around the form of the burial service, with puritans taking particular exception to the phrase appearing to offer all the recently deceased “sure and certain hope of the resurrection” (cf. Marshall: 2002, 151 – 3). When English Puritanism enjoyed a short moment of political triumph during the mid-seventeenth-century civil wars, the Directory of Public Worship which replaced the Anglican Book of Common Prayer mandated that corpses were to be “decently” attended to interment, but without any prayers, readings or singing (Houlbrooke: 1998, 277 – 8). This was the ideal of Reformed practice. When Calvin himself was laid to rest in Geneva in 1564 it was without pomp, and by his own request in an unmarked grave (cf. Gordon: 2009, 336 – 7). Reformed burial rites, suggests Philip Benedict, were performed with “breathtaking restraint”. In France, ministers might take part, but only as private individuals. Both here and in Scotland, set readings and singing of hymns were prohibited because of the fear that, as the Scots First Book of Discipline put it, “some superstitious think that singing and reading of the living may profit the dead” (Roussel: 2002; Benedict: 2002, 506 – 7). Yet the ultimate logic of burial as an entirely civil and secular occasion was virtually nowhere observed, outside of a few small separatist and sectarian groups. And there seems to have been an almost universal tendency for ritual elements to seep back through the cracks of Reformed doctrinal rectitude. Ringing was a case in point. Protestant orthodoxy was usually suspicious of bellringing because of its historical legacy as a Catholic sacramental, and as a tra-

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ditional form of intercessory action. Ecclesiastical authorities thus sought to regulate its practice and extent, but without much effect. In England, parish performance stretched to breaking-point, and several hours beyond, the episcopal directives that there should be only a “short” peal of bells after the funeral. Reformed synods in France found themselves unable to prevent the ringing of church bells during the funeral procession, while in Scotland, and in defiance of ministerial opinion, local kirk sessions set about pragmatically establishing fee structures for different levels of tolling(cf. Marshall: 2002, 162 – 8; Benedict: 2002, 507; Todd: 2002, 340). The clergy were more directly implicated in another concession to lay expectation with links to the pre-reformed past: the preaching of funeral sermons. It was of course unlikely that the Reformed ministers would willingly forgo any opportunity to expound the Word of God to an audience. In some churches formalised funeral sermons were discouraged for seeming in their timing and function uncomfortably close to Catholic invocations. This was the case in Zurich and Geneva, in France and Scotland, and in England under the regime of the 1645 Directory. But in all these places ministers were still permitted to make an “exhortation” or “remonstrance”, putting people in mind of their Christian duties. (cf. Benedict: 2002, 507; Todd: 2002, 340 – 1; Houlbrooke: 1998, 277). Puritan anxieties about funeral sermons being “put in the place of trentals” signally failed to dampen growing enthusiasm for them in later sixteenth century England (Houlbrooke: 1998, 295 – 330). Even in Scotland, the distinction between an impromptu exhortation and the fully-fledged funeral sermon was far from rigidly observed, and John Knox himself preached at the funeral of the Earl of Moray in 1570, just as Luther had preached at the funerals of those earlier political patrons of reform, Frederick the Wise and John the Constant (cf. Todd: 2002, 341; Burnett: 2005, 38). It was above all in Lutheran Germany that the Protestant funeral sermon established its definitive form, and a secure place in the ritual management of death. Pastors were in fact generally required by the authorities to preach at the funerals of parishioners, and literally hundreds of thousands of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century funeral sermons have survived in printed form. Unsurprisingly, this genre has attracted considerable scholarly attention (cf. Karant-Nunn: 1997, 156 – 62; Winkler ; 1967; Moore: 2006; Haemig and Kolb: 2008). Much of the interest has been occasioned by funeral sermons’ utility as a source for social, cultural and gender history, with much close reading of the biographical and obituary elements of the texts. But these were not in intention eulogies, and a recounting of the life and character of the deceased was usually only one element of a larger scheme which sought to expound doctrinal messages about death and the hope of resurrection. It thus seems quite safe to assert that virtually nowhere in the Protestant world around the turn of the seventeenth

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century can the experience of attending a funeral be usefully characterised as a notably secular one. The same can surely be said of the experience of anyone contemplating a funeral monument or other type of commemorative epitaph in a post-Reformation parish church or cathedral. It seems scarcely contentious to assert this for those parts of Lutheran Germany and the Baltic world where textual or heraldic commemorative cues were regularly included on elaborate votive altarpieces (cf. Boettcher : 2009; Rast: 2011). In the Reformed churches there was much greater anxiety about all forms of imagery and representation, and about the possible dangers of idolatry. A consequence was that carved or painted likenesses of the human form on funerary monuments were sometimes the only form of directly representational imagery to be found in the church. This could in itself represent a source of anxiety, and invite the attention of over-scrupulous iconoclasts. It was to head off this possibility that Elizabeth I of England issued a proclamation in the 1560s asserting that monuments to dead persons in churches were a matter solely of civil honour and respect: they had been “set up for the only memory of them to their posterity […] and not for any religious honour” (Marshall: 2002, 278). But the medieval tombs and brasses found in countless English parish churches, and protected from damage under the terms of the proclamation, often had inscriptions asking bystanders for prayers to ease their passage through purgatory. Nor was the survival of large numbers of medieval Catholic monuments in Protestant churches by any means an exclusively English phenomenon (cf. Marshall: 2002, 174 – 5; Staecker : 2003, 419). New monuments placed in churches did not ask for prayers, or only very rarely. Neither – in Reformed settings – did they include representations of Christ or the saints, though there is some evidence of angels finding their way back onto memorials in Calvinist settings (Marshall: 2002, 277; Tarlow: 1999, 187). PostReformation monuments were, like their late medieval predecessors, often freighted with statements about family and lineage. But this in itself hardly renders them deracinated of religious meaning. In the first place, we might well suspect that the messages about virtue and honour with which early modern tombs are imbued are really inexplicable without reference to the biblical and Christian humanist culture within which they were formed (cf. Bartram: 2007). Moreover, it seems simply unlikely that any culturally complex artefact, situated within the spatial relationships of a church building, and endlessly washed over with the utterance of prayer and the mimetic codes of ritual performance, could remain entirely innocent of religious meaning (cf. Deiters: 2012). Here we might reflect on how new and emerging forms of commemorative media – epitaph paintings, and half-length effigies in relief, for example – were being placed in churches in positions from which earlier religious imagery had been removed or

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obscured: frequently on the white-washed walls of the nave (cf. Ekroll: 2012, 295 – 6; Pounds: 2000, 496). In any case, the textual and iconographic features to be found on post-Reformation funerary monuments do not generally require much deep or counterintuitive interpretation to establish that these were in quite evident ways still sacral objects, with important religious messages to impart. Panofsky’s influential notion that Protestant tombs were typically “retrospective” constructions, overwhelmingly concerned with the record of an historical past rather than with the prospect of an eschatological future is hard to reconcile with a trope which emerges with great clarity from a wide variety of commemorative media: an expression of faith in the resurrection and a concern with the ultimate destiny of the resurrected body. Studies by myself and by Peter Sherlock identifying this as a pre-eminent theme of English monumental inscription are paralleled by Jörn Staecker’s analysis of sixteenth-century Danish grave slabs, Joseph Gonz~lez’s work on sixteenth-century Swedish memorial inscriptions, and Doreen Zerbe’s reading of Lutheran memorial art in Germany (cf. Marshall: 2002, 229 – 30; Sherlock: 2008, 110 – 11; Staecker : 2003, 421 – 2; Gonz~lez: 2005, 206 – 7; Zerbe: 2007, 140). The resurrection was hardly a doctrinal discovery of the Reformation, of course. But it does seem that this was often a relatively subordinate theme in the material culture of commemoration in the late middle ages, when so much emphasis was placed on intercession for the intermediate period. However, it asserted itself with greater confidence in the post-Reformation decades. The resurrection, unsurprisingly, was also a central theme of funeral sermons (cf. Haemig and Kolb: 2008, 131). Closely linked to this was the growing tendency to employ the metaphor of sleep to characterise the condition of the body over the period between death and resurrection. Soul-sleeping, the idea that the dead had no consciousness of any kind before the Last Judgement, was widely regarded in later sixteenthcentury Europe as an Anabaptist heresy, despite the fact that Luther himself had been drawn to the notion. But any anxieties that using the language of sleep might undermine the idea of an individual judgement on souls at the point of death seem to have dissipated fairly quickly, in the Reformed as well as Lutheran churches. It was certainly ubiquitous in English memorial culture, and by one recent calculation the comforting term “avsomnat”, fallen asleep, had replaced “died” on a quarter of Swedish gravestones before the end of the seventeenth century (cf. Cressy : 1997, 385 – 6; Gonz~lez: 2005, 217). As well as being pastorally reassuring for the dying and the survivors, the imagery of death-as-sleep had the advantage of being able to draw on strong scriptural precedents: both Old and New Testaments are full of references to the dead sleeping in the Lord.3 It 3 For example, Deut. 31:16; 1 Kings 2:10, 11:43, 15:8; Ps. 4:8; Isaiah 28:20; Daniel 12:2;

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also constituted an ongoing argument against the existence of purgatory, for the dead could hardly be resting in the Lord if they were being tormented with purgatory fire. The awakening which came after sleep, so the clergy taught, was to a wrapt contemplation of the Godhead through all the senses of a resurrected and perfected body. But quite possibly this was not what all laypeople were looking forward to most. A striking feature of Protestant memorial discourse is the interest which many monuments and funeral sermons display in the prospect of the reunion of spouses, parents and children in the next life. The poignant question “shall we know one another in heaven?” was generally answered in the affirmative by preachers and pastors in the early modern era (cf. Marshall: 2000; Lang: 2011). This surely makes further nonsense of the idea that the postmortem gaze of the post-Reformation was solely retrospective, or that it contemplated the land beyond death as a vista of darkness and annihilation. It also argues against the notion of the key signature of Protestant commemoration being a heightened individualism, at least in its strictest sense. For family – in either lineage or nuclear forms – was almost everywhere a dominant motif of monumental sculpture and epitaph paintings.4 The families in question, moreover, were not historically correct and chronologically ordered ones, but composite and reconstituted families, in which dead as well as living children have their place, and serial wives sit or kneel patiently alongside each other together with their common husband. Perhaps the aim was to draw attention to the fruitfulness of a successful patriarch (cf. Sherlock: 2008, 63). But it is hard to think that we are not looking on scenes in which enduring human relationships are at once celebrated, idealised and projected forwards onto an imagined future. Just how the donors envisaged the domestic arrangements in heaven working out is a question on which, alas, our sources are generally silent. All of this should, I think, remove any lingering suspicion that the commemorative culture of Protestant Europe was a simply residual one, its structure and logic determined solely by the fact of a purgatory-shaped hole. There were distinct, and distinctively Protestant, repertoires of mortuary and memorial practice, responding to a variety of social, psychological and religious needs. Perennial spiritual questions were addressed in new ways, and new patterns of iconography were pressed into service. Naturally, there was a complex blend of continuity and innovation in all of this, as there was in virtually all aspects of the Reformation’s impact on society. The point which is often made – that postReformation commemoration of the dead was deeply concerned with status display, and with articulating the social and political order – seems likely be John 11:11; Acts 7:60; 1 Cor. 15:6; 1 Thess. 4.13; Rev. 14:13. 4 Very many of the works listed in the bibliography will attest to this.

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rather one of the key continuities than otherwise. Questions of the location of the burial site, of the style and scale of funeral obsequies, and of the size of tomb or monument were all matters of more than purely spiritual significance, before the Reformation, as after it. The spiritual continuities are harder to discern, amidst the sound and fury of a doctrinal revolution. But they are surely there. It is hard to believe that the earlier associations of holiness attaching themselves to processional routes to churchyards, to patterns of commensality and charity, or to specific locations in the churchyard and places of interment within the church were simply obliterated from people’s minds. So far, this chapter has been discussing the development of Protestant commemorative culture without much reference to the ongoing confessional rivalries of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe. In conclusion, we might then turn to consider, not just what the Reformation did for the memory of the dead, but what the memorialising of the dead did for the Reformation. I have already mentioned that Catholic Europe responded to the attack on purgatory by flamboyantly reasserting the importance of prayer for the dead. Local studies of Spain and France show that real-term spending on intercessory masses rose dramatically in some places from the latter part of the sixteenth century (Eire: 2005; Tingle: 2009). The condition of the holy souls became a more common motif for new altarpieces in the Counter-Reformation Church than it had been in the middle ages (Go¨ ttler : 1996). It is possible to track the progress of CounterReformation teaching in Ireland in the later sixteenth century through the inclusion of more emphatically Tridentine sentiments in memorial inscriptions (Cockerham and Harris: (2001), 168 – 9). Protestant memorial iconography meanwhile, even in the visually rich Lutheran tradition, was confessionally and assertively distinctive, demoting and historicising saints and martyrs, and promoting the image of Christ the divine redeemer over Jesus the suffering man of sorrows (Zerbe: 2007, 127 – 35). Danish Lutherans might even record on their tombs that they died in the “true religion” (Staecker : 2003, 421). As Catholics and Protestants attacked each others’ funerary practices as superstitious or impious, death itself acquired an explicitly confessional face. But as historians of the Reformation are very well aware, confessionalization was seldom swift, complete, or unidirectional in origin and impetus. Because the dead belonged in one sense to the past, their role might be to complicate the delineation of confessional identities in the present, asking searching questions about the boundaries of community and the role of the church in defining them. Protestant laypeople seem often to have pondered a poignant family-focused dilemma, though one heavy with theological implications: are all our ancestors damned? In the main, the Protestant clergy answered “no” in response to this, thus implicitly conceding that the medieval church contained within it some means of salvation (Marshall: 2002, 205 – 10).

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The importance of maintaining the connection to one’s ancestors – with all the social, cultural and political capital that carried with it in deeply conservative societies – lay at the root of one of the most characteristic problems of coexistence to be found in bi- or multi-confessional areas of Europe: disputes over places of burial. The right to burial in consecrated ground, preferably in a place of honour, was a longstanding marker of full membership of the community. Those who were excluded under medieval canon law – Jews, heretics, suicides, the unbaptised and the excommunicated – constituted a roll-call of marginals and deviants. Where separate minority confessional communities formed in the sixteenth century, their almost invariable instinct was not to seek separate places of burial, but to continue to assert a right to interment in the traditional cemetery or churchyard, irrespective of what Protestants were supposed to believe about there being nothing intrinsically special about so-called consecrated ground. Huguenots in France, Calvinists in the Lutheran territories of Saxony and Brandenburg, and Catholics in the Dutch Republic, England and Ireland all wished to be buried with their ancestors, and presumably hoped to rise in their company on the Last Day (cf. Kaplan: 2007, 94 – 6; Eurich: 2009). Local practical arrangements often allowed this to take place. English ministers and churchwardens frequently turned a conveniently blind eye to the burial in their churchyards of officially excommunicate Catholic recusants (cf. Marshall: 2012). Catholics in Ireland not only managed to be buried within the now-officially Protestant churches, but often included overtly Catholic inscriptions and iconography on their monuments, indicative of some degree of accommodation with their Protestant neighbours (cf. Gillespie: 2006, 184 – 5; Tait: 2002, 81). In the politically Catholic but confessionally mixed German diocese of Münster, Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists were buried together in churchyards throughout the middle decades of the sixteenth century with little apparent difficulty or protest (cf. Hsia: 1984, 129 – 36; Luebke: 2010). Even in France, where the issue was at its most fraught, local solutions could be found well into the seventeenth century, which, as Keith Luria has demonstrated, might involve the partitioning of the parish cemetery (2005, 106 – 18). Burial practice, then, might seem to represent an area of potential cross-confessionalism or counter-confessionalization, where religious distinctions could become blurred in the interests of avoiding damaging conflict. Perhaps it went even beyond this, to become a forum for respecting the claims of common humanity, and for exercising what Willem Frijhoff has famously termed “the ecumenicity of everyday life” (2002, 140). Benjamin Kaplan has argued that because, unlike weddings and baptisms, in no confession were funerals a sacrament, church authorities tended to police participation in them less strictly. There is evidence, particularly from the Dutch Republic, of neighbours joining in funeral processions without much regard for confessional allegiances (2007, 93 – 4).

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Yet these matters were far from immune to the wider pressures of the confessional era. In late sixteenth-century northern Germany, popular Lutheran hostility to perceived crypto-Calvinism led to mob attacks on funerals and dishonouring of corpses (cf. Koslofsky : 2000, 115 – 32). In Münster, the election in 1585 of a counter-reforming bishop, in the person of Ernst of Bavaria, signalled a drive to reassert control over sacred space, and an era of intensified burial disputes with lay Catholic opinion slowly beginning to shift in clericallyapproved directions (cf. Luebke: 2010). The Dutch and English Catholics who continued to request burial in Protestant cemeteries meanwhile were not necessarily allowing social considerations to trump spiritual ones, still less affirming some wider sense that neighbourhood and community should transcend confessional difference. Completely shunning the burial rites of the religious establishment, they wanted to be buried in or near its churches precisely because they considered them to be their churches, temporarily in the hands of the heretics. They wanted and expected to get them back (cf Marshall: 2012; Pollmann: 2009). As the Dutch priest Petrus den Hollander exclaimed from his deathbed, “My dry bones will shout out that the Church occupied by the uncatholic belongs to the Catholic.” (Walsham: 2009, 112). Tensions around burial were at their most acute in France, fuelled by a growing sense on the part of many Catholics that their places of burial had been “polluted” by the presence of heretics’ corpses. The widespread disinterment and ritual humiliation of corpses that accompanied the progress of the Wars of Religion is well known, and was brought to a ragged end only by the establishment of separate Protestant burial sites under the terms of the edicts of pacification (cf. Roberts: 2000; Eurich: 2009). Violence against the dead was always a possibility when community and confessional tensions were sufficiently inflamed. During the Irish Rebellion of 1641,the bodies of Protestant victims were denied burial and disposed of shamefully – left “lying in ditches”, as Protestant atrocity propaganda took care to announce (Cope: 2009, cover ill.) Protestant remains, moreover, were exhumed from churchyards where the Catholic forces took control. At Waterford in 1642, the corpses of a Protestant minister, his wife and four others were dug up and boiled to make saltpetre for improvised gunpowder (cf Tait: 2002, 82 – 3; Canny : 2001, 514 – 15). The ritual punishment of corpses, inverting all codes of civility due to the dead, was designed to make the loudest and most aggressive of statements, expelling the deceased from membership of the community of honour and respect, as well as from symbolic expectation of resurrection. And, lest we forget, such metanarratives of dishonour were almost everywhere codified under the law, in the treatment of the bodies of traitors and suicides, as well as of heretics. In summary, then, the cultural responses to the dead that emerged out of the upheavals of the Reformation are far too complex and multi-layered to lend

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themselves convincingly to any programmatic thesis about individualism, secularization, confessionalization, or the historicization of memory. Examining this theme is a salutary reminder that what we for convenience call “the Reformation” was in fact a swollen agglomeration of social, cultural, political and spiritual imperatives, interacting in unique ways in radically different settings, and not easily reducible to bullet-pointed exemplifications. But at the same time, the fact that death and remembrance were, and are, universal and irreducible facets of human experience, invests them with potential as exceptionally useful tools of comparative historical analysis. There is an interesting paradox, though not necessarily an inexplicable or nonsensical one, that commemoration of the dead in post-Reformation Europe encompassed some of the extremes of continuity and discontinuity, of compassion and intolerance, of inclusion and exclusion.

Bibliography Attreed, L.C. (1982), Preparation for Death in Sixteenth-Century Northern England, Sixteenth Century Journal 13, 37 – 66. Bartram, Claire (2007), “Some Tomb for a Remembraunce”: Representations of Piety in Post-Reformation Gentry Funeral Monuments, in: Robert Lutton/Elisabeth Salter (ed.), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400 – 1640, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 129 – 43. Benedict, Philip (2002), Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism, New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Beyer, Jürgen (1996), A Lübeck Prophet in Local and Lutheran Context, in Bob Scribner/ Trevor Johnson (ed.), Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400 – 1800, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 166 – 82. Boettcher, Susan R. (2009), Late Sixteenth-Century Lutherans: A Community of Memory?, in: Michael Halvorson/Karen Spierling, (ed.), Defining Community in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 121 – 41. Brinkmann, Inga (2010), Grabdenkmäler, Grablegen und Begräbniswesen des lutherischen Adels, Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag. Brown, Keith M. (2000), Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture from Reformation to Revolution, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Burnett, Amy Nelson (2005), “To Oblige My Brethren”: The Reformed Funeral Sermons of Johann Brandmuller”, Sixteenth Century Journal 36, 37 – 54. Burnett, Amy Nelson. (2006), Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and their Message in Basel, 1529 – 1629, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Canny, Nicholas (2001), Making Ireland British 1580 – 1650, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cockerham, Paul/Harris, Amy Louise (2001), Kilkenny Funeral Monuments 1500 – 1600: a

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Statistical and Analytical Account, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C 101 (2001), 135 – 88. Colvin, Howard (1981), Architecture and the Afterlife, New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Cope, Joseph (2009), England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion, Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Cressy, David (1997), Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycke in Tudor and Stuart England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Daniell, Chrisopher (1997), Death and Burial in Medieval England, London/New York: Routledge. Deiters, Maria (2012), Epitaphs in Dialogue with Sacred Space: Post-Reformation Furnishings in the Parish Churches of St Nikolai and St Marien in Berlin, in: Andrew Spicer (ed.), Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 63 – 98. Duffy, Eamon (2002), The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400 – 1580, New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Ekroll, Øystein (2012), State Church and Church state: Churches and their Interiors in post-Reformation Norway, 1537 – 1705, in: Andrew Spicer (ed.), Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 277 – 310. Eire, Carlos (1995), From Madrid to Purgatory : The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth Century Spain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eire, Carlos (2010), AVery Brief History of Eternity, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Eurich, S. Amanda (2009), Between the Living and the Dead: Preserving Confessional Identity and Community in Early Modern France, in: Michael Halvorson/Karen Spierling (ed.), Defining Community in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 43 – 62. Finch, Jonathan (2003), A Reformation of Meaning: Commemoration and the Parish Church c.1450–c.1550, in: David Gaimster/Roberta Gilchrist (ed.), The Archaeology of Reformation c.1480 – 1580, Oxford: Oxbow, 437 – 49. Frijhoff, Willem (2002), Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History, Hilversum: Verloren. Gillespie, Raymond (2006), Godly Order: Enforcing Peace in the Irish Reformation, in Elizabethanne Boran/Crawford Gribben (ed.), Enforcing Reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550 – 1700, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 184 – 201. Gititngs, Clare (1984), Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England, London: Croom Helm. Gonz~lez, Joseph M. (2005), Sleeping Bodies, Jubilant Souls: The Fate of the Dead in Sweden 1400 – 1700, Canadian Journal of History 40, 199 – 227. Gordon, Bruce (2009), Calvin, New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Göttler, Christine (1996), Die Kunst des Fegefeuers nach der Reformation: kirchliche Schenkungen, Ablass und Almosen in Antwerpen und Bologna um 1600, Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. Haemig, Mary Jane/Kolb, Robert (2008), “Preaching in Lutheran Pulpits in the Age of Confessionalization”, in: Robert Kolb (ed.), Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture, 1550 – 1675, Leiden: Brill, 117 – 58. Harding, Vanessa (2003), Choices and Changes: Death, Burial and the English Reforma-

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tion, in: David Gaimster/Roberta Gilchrist (ed.), The Archaeology of Reformation c.1480 – 1580, Oxford: Oxbow, 386 – 98. Hsia, R. Po-Chia (1984), Society and Religion in Münster, 1535 – 1618, New Haven: Yale University Press. Houlbrooke, Ralph (1998), Death, Religion and the Family in England, 1480 – 1750, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kaplan, Benjamin (2007), Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Karant-Nunn, Susan C. (1997), The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany, London/New York: Routledge. Koslofsky, Craig M. (2000), The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450 – 1700, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Koslofsky, Craig M. (2002), From Presence to Remembrance: The Transformation of Memory in the German Reformation, in: Alon Confino/Peter Fritzsche (ed.) Work of Memory : New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Lang, Bernhard (2011), Meeting in Heaven: Modernising the Christian Afterlife 1600 – 2000, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Leroux, Neil R. (2007), Martin Luther as Comforter : Writings on Death, Leiden: Brill. Llewellyn, Nigel (2000), Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luebke, David (2010), Confessions of the Dead: Interpreting Burial Practice in the Late Reformation, Archive for Reformation History 101, 55 – 79. Luria, Keith P. (2005), Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in EarlyModern France, Washington: The Catholic University of America Press. Macculloch, Diarmaid. (2003), Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, London: Penguin. Marshall, Peter (2000), The Company of Heaven: Identity and Sociability in the English Protestant Afterlife, c. 1560 – 1630, Historical Reflections / RŒflexions Historiques 26, 311 – 33. Marshall, Peter (2002), Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marshall, Peter (2012), Confessionalization and Community in the Burial of English Catholics, c. 1570 – 1700, in Nadine Lewycky/Adam Morton (ed.), Getting Along? Religious Identities and Confessional Relations in Early Modern England, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 57 – 75. Meys, Oliver (2009), Memoria und Bekenntnis. Die Grabdenkmäler evangelischer Landesherren im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung, Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner. Moore, Cornelia Niekus (2006), Patterned Lives. The Lutheran Funeral Biography in Early Modern Germany,Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Nalle, Sarah (1992), God in La Mancha: Religious Reform and the people of Cuenca, 1500 – 1650, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Neill, Michael (1997), Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oexle, Otto Gerhard (1983), Die Gegenwart der Toten, in: Herman Braet/Werner Verbecke (ed.), Death in the Middle Ages, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 19 – 77.

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Ozment, Steven E. (1975), The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism in Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland, New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Panofsky, Erwin (1964), Tomb Sculpture. Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini , London: Thames and Hudson. Pollmann, Judith (1999), Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic. The Reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius, 1565 – 1641, Manchester : Manchester University Press. Pollmann, Judith (2009), “Burying the dead; reliving the past: ritual, resentment and sacred space in the Dutch Republic”, in B. Kaplan/B. Moore/H. Van Nierop/J. Pollmann (ed.), Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands, c. 1570 – 1720, Manchester : Manchester University Press, 84 – 102. Pounds, Norman (2000), A History of the English Parish: The Culture of Religion from Augustine to Victoria, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rast, Reet (2011), Animo grato vovit. Early Modern Epitaph Altars in Estonia, Studies on Art and Architecture 20, 159 – 185. Roberts, Penny (2000), Contesting Sacred Space: Burial Disputes in Sixteenth Century France, in: Bruce Gordon/Peter Marshall (ed), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 131 – 48. Roussel, Bernard (2002), “Ensevelir hinnestement les corps”: Funeral Corteges and Huguenot Culture, in: Raymond A. Mentzer/Andrew Spicer (ed.), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559 – 1685, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 193 – 208. Sherlock, Peter (2008), Monuments and Memory in Early Modern England, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Sherlock, Peter (2010), The Reformation of Memory in Early Modern Europe, in: Susannah Radstone/Bill Schwarz (ed.), Memory : Histories, Theories, Debates, New York: Fordham University Press, 30 – 40. Somerville, C.J. (1992), The Secularization of Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spicer, Andrew (1997), “Rest of their Bones”: Fear of Death and Reformed Burial Practices, in: William G. Naphy/Penny Roberts (ed.), Fear in Early Modern Society, Manchester : Manchester University Press, 167 – 83. Spicer, Andrew ( 2000), “Defyle not Christ’s Kirk with your Carrion”: Burial and the Development of Burial Aisles in Post-Reformation Scotland, in: Bruce Gordon/Peter Marshall (ed), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 149 – 69. Staecker, Jörn (2003), A Protestant Habitus: 16th-Century Danish Graveslabs as an Expression of Changes in Belief, in: David Gaimster/Roberta Gilchrist (ed.), The Archaeology of Reformation c.1480 – 1580, Oxford: Oxbow, 415 – 36. Tait, Clodagh (2002), Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550 – 1650. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tarlow, Sarah (1999), Wormie Clay and Blessed Sleep: Death and Disgust in Later Historical Britain, in: Sarah Tarlow/Susie West (ed.), The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain, London: Routledge: 183 – 98 Taylor, Charles (1989), Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ruth, Judith, Artemisia – Models for the Early Modern Widow

A widow is a woman who is defined by husband’s death and whose social position is thereafter determined by her loss. Britta-Juliana Kruse sets this out clearly in her cultural history of widows: Nachdem mit ihrem Ehemann die formal wichtigste Bezugsperson gestorben war […], wurde eine Witwe nicht als Individuum, sondern als Teil einer gesellschaftlichen Gruppe betrachtet, für die spezifische, präskriptive Entwürfe gelten sollten (Kruse: 2007, 1). [After her husband as the relative with the greatest formal importance in her life had died […]. a widow was not regarded as an individual but as a member of a social group to whom specific prescriptive models applied.]

Paul’s first letter to Timothy, chapter V, was the basis for many of these prescriptions. He describes the widow’s life after her husband’s death. If she has children to look after, either her own or other young family members, then her role is clear : “But if any widow haue children or nephewes, let them learne first to shew pietie at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God” (1 Tim 5:4). However, if she is childless, then she “is a widow in deed, and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day” (1 Tim 5:5). The 1545 edition of Luther’s Bible translates “desolate” as “einsam” and explains in a gloss that this means a woman “who has no one to look after and who is alone” (“Das ist / Die niemand zu versorgen hat / vnd allein ist”, Luther :1972, II, 2394). In this case, her role is to mourn and pray, for any independent life that she herself might live is finished. While grief is the natural emotion of an affectionate wife in a happy marriage who has lost a good husband, grief and mourning are not optional for a widow. She is required to mourn her late husband, whether she loved him or not, not just because mourning in most societies in most periods is women’s work but because the widow is still connected to her dead husband, even beyond the grave. However, if the widow is defined by death, Paul’s next sentence in the letter to Timothy recognises that she is also defined by something else and that is sexual

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experience. Because she no longer has a man to keep that sexuality under control, there is always the danger that she will give in to her carnal desires, as Paul goes on to say : “But she that liueth in pleasure, is dead while she liueth” (1 Tim 5, vi) or as Luther translates it: “Welche aber in wollüsten lebet / Die ist lebendig tod” (Luther :1972, II, 2394). A widow must live a retired life, she must withdraw from the pleasures she enjoyed as a girl and as a wife. Widowhood does not mean freedom from control, but that control is exercised by society rather than by a husband.

Fig. 1: Leandro Bassano, Widow at her Devotions. Private collection. Oil on canvas.

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This painting by Leandro Bassano (1557 – 1662), “The Widow at her Devotions”, exemplifies this (Fig. 1). A mournful elderly widow, whose wedding ring is clearly visible, is shown alone with her beads and with her prayer book, which is on a prie-dieu next to her. On the wall behind her is a painting which depicts a much younger woman whose new-born baby is being bathed in a scene of great bustle and who is being tended by no fewer than six other women. The picture may depict a religious scene such as the birth of the Virgin Mary, but it also functions like a window onto the widow’s own past life as a wife and mother, a life she has left behind her. The widow’s liminal status on the boundary between life and death is made very clear ; her life is over and she is waiting prayerfully for death. If a widow has children, as Paul writes in his letter to Timothy, she is more connected to life, but her dead husband is still a dominant figure in her life, even from beyond the grave. In his depiction of a forty-year-old widow, Cornelis Visscher (1520 – 86) paints her dressed in widow’s weeds and wearing a widow’s cap, with her young daughter at her knee (Fig. 2). To her right and left are flowers and fruit, emblems of vanitas. Looming over the two figures is a tondo of the widow’s late husband, from which he looks out watchfully and as if he were still alive.

Fig. 2: Cornelis Visscher, Widow at the Age of Forty. Louvre, Paris. Reproduced by kind permission. Oil on canvas.

In their historical surveys of widows’ lives in the early modern period, Kruse (2007) and Ingendahl (2006) discuss regulations and laws relating to widows, as well as the sermons, consolatory writings and mirrors for widows that were designed to inculcate morally and socially acceptable behaviour in them. Just as there were models for the good wife – Esther and Susanna –, so there were models for the virtuous widow. This article looks at three of them – Judith, Ruth and Artemisia –, showing how they were used in funeral sermons for widows. It

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will then discuss some examples of how early modern German women themselves took these tropes and treated them from a different perspective in their own writing. This is particularly illuminating when the writer is a widow herself and even more so if her intended readers are other widows.

Judith When the eponymous heroine of the apocryphal Book of Judith appears for the first time in chapter 8, v.1, she is expressly presented as “Judith a widow”. The next two verses tell us about her husband’s death, before informing us of the length of her widowhood – 3 years and 6 months – and of her retired life of prayer and fasting. In addition she is said to be beautiful, god-fearing and rich, eloquent and courageous: Judith, therefore, is presented from the outset as the perfect widow. She is trapped in the Israelite city of Bethulia where the Assyrian general Holofernes has cut off the water supply. The inhabitants can only hold out for five more days, so they begin to bargain with God and are thinking of surrendering to Holofernes. Judith is horrified at their cowardice, and, having prayed to the Lord and with the agreement of the elders of the city, she dresses herself seductively, takes her maid Abra with her, puts some food into a bag, and leaves the city for the enemy camp. She is captured and taken to Holofernes, who is immediately smitten with her beauty. She deceives him, telling him, for instance, that she has come to betray her people. She also manipulates him into allowing her to leave his camp unchallenged whenever she wants, by saying she has to go out into the desert to pray. On the fourth evening, Holofernes can wait no longer. He invites her to dine alone with him in his tent. He drinks too much and falls into a deep sleep, whereupon Judith prays for strength, cuts his head off with his own sword with two strokes and brings the head to Abra. They put it into a bag and leave the camp. When Judith arrives at Bethulia, she shows the Israelites Holofernes’ head and this enables them to defeat their enemy and liberate their city. Judith remains a chaste widow for the rest of her life. The figure of Judith has some obviously ambivalent aspects (Watanabe-O’Kelly : 2010, 112 – 44). She lies to Holofernes, she sets out deliberately to arouse his desire and she manipulates him into letting her leave the camp whenever she likes. There is also the question of what exactly went on in the tent between these two people. Judith, therefore, has elements of Eve, of Delilah and of Salome in her make-up. However, when held up as a model for widows, as she was in many funeral sermons, Judith was always presented as an exemplar of courage, resolution, trust in God, chastity and humility. She also stood for God’s providence and his care for his Chosen People, and she demonstrated that God could even use a weak woman as his instrument, thus making her the female counterpart of

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David. This is stressed in the caption to an engraving by Hans Sebald Beham after a work by his brother Barthel Beham (Fig. 3, 1547).

Fig. 3: Hans Sebald Beham after a work by his brother Barthel Beham (1547), Judith. Engraving.

In 1623 Friedrich Balduin published Juditha Saxonica (the Saxon Judith), a funeral sermon for Sophia of Brandenburg, the widowed Electress of Saxony, on the occasion of her burial in the Electoral Burial Chapel in Freiberg (Balduin: 1623). In Dresden in 1640 Michael Eder wrote Judith Lychnuchus Mosaicus. Oder Judith Der güldene Leuchter Mosis (Judith, Moses’ Golden Candelabra) for the aristocratic widow Magdalena von Looß, nŒe von Zedlitz (Eder : 1640). In 1682 in Leipzig Benedict Carpzov’s Die herzthafte Judith (the courageous Judith) celebrated the life of the widow Judith Göring, nŒe Conrad (Carpzov : 1682), just as Andreas Schubart’s Die Tugend-belobte Judith (Judith praised for her virtue) published in Halle in 1684 celebrated the twice-widowed Frau Anna Catharina Wachsmuth, nŒe Zeis (Schubart: 1684). All of these funeral sermons stress the virtue and the God-fearing courage of the deceased widow, the qualities that link her to the biblical heroine. Modern readers may see Judith’s eloquence and her

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daring as qualities that make her different from the submissive woman promoted by patriarchy, but for these early modern Lutheran divines it was Judith’s extended mourning for her late husband and her long and chaste life after Holofernes and his army had been vanquished that made her a suitable model for contemporary widows. Something else strikes a modern reader forcibly when she reads these funeral booklets and that is the amount of detail given about the widow’s late husband and his profession and standing. In the case of Anna Catharina Wachsmuth, the reader is informed about both her husbands, Daniel Wachsmuth and Johann Kosten. Even in works that commemorate the widow, therefore, she remains connected to each of her deceased husbands, she derives her status from them, and she functions as a monument to them. When a woman writes about Judith in a book designed to comfort other widows, however, she takes a different angle to that of the Lutheran pastors. Elisabeth, Duchess of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1510 – 1558), often also referred to as Elisabeth von Calenberg, published a book of consolation for widows in 1556 with the title: Ejn anzeigung vnd trost aus Goettlicher Schrifft gezogen/ wo von Witwen gehandelt wird/ beide im Alten vnd Neuen Testament [A demonstration and comfort taken from the Divine Scriptures, both from the Old and the New Testament, where widows are discussed]. It was dedicated to her two widowed sisters-in-law, Katharina von Schwarzburg (1509 – 1567) and Elisabeth von Schwarzburg (d. 1572). The book was reprinted five times between 1556 and 1609, changing its title in the process, for the edition of 1598 was given the title: Der Widwen Handbüchlein, Durch eine Hocherleuchte Fürstliche Widwe/ vor vielen Jahren selbst beschreiben vnd verfasset. Jetzo aber widerumb auffs newe gedruckt/ Allen Christlichen Widwen/ hohes vnd nieder Standes/ zu besonderm Trost [A little manual for widows, written and composed many years ago by a distinguished noble widow. Now reprinted for the special comfort of all Christian widows of high and low degree.] Elisabeth married at 14 a widower 40 years her senior, was widowed herself in 1540 and then reigned as regent for her underage son for 5 years, during which time she introduced the Reformation into her territory. To her distress, her son re-catholicised the territory when he succeeded to the dukedom and, from her point of view, thwarted many of her endeavours. Elisabeth married Count Poppo of Henneberg (1513 – 74) in 1546 but was able at first to keep the territory of Calenberg for herself. She was driven out of it, however, after the Battle of Sievershausen in 1553 and spent the last 5 years of her life in Henneberg, impoverished and dispossessed. It has been shown that the Widwen Handbüchlein was probably written in 1545, therefore before her second marriage when Elisabeth was a widow in her thirties (Mager :1994, 215; Kruse: 2007, 123). What is striking about the text, and may be the result of her own sad history, is Elisabeth’s presentation of widows as being constantly in danger of exploitation

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and mistreatment and therefore in need of protection and support. Part I of her book deals with the world’s views of widows and orphans, part II with the promises that God has made to them to protect them, part III to the warnings that God has given to all those who oppress them and part V to the punishments that God will mete out to these oppressors. Part IV is the antidote to this unrelievedly gloomy picture, for here Elisabeth relates how God protects widows when they are in danger. One of the examples she gives is the story of Judith. In a perspective that could only be a woman’s she reduces the whole of Judith’s story to that moment when she is alone in his tent with Holofernes the drunken soldier, the sexual predator and potential rapist. Elisabeth is clearly of the view that for some men widows were fair game and she indignantly tells her readers about Holofernes’s “unzüchtige wort” (unchaste words) (Elisabeth von Braunschweig: 1598, Fiiii): “do er zu der züchtigen / keuschen Widwen Judith saget/ dencke leg dich zu mir in frewden / du hast gnade bey mir erfunden” (he says to the virtuous chaste widow Judith “lie down gladly with me, you have found favour in my eyes”). God punished him, says Elisabeth, and allowed him to be massacred (“erwürget”) by the womanly defenceless girl Judith – Elisabeth actually uses the word ‘Fräwlein’, even though Judith is a widow, and leaves out all mention of Judith’s efficient use of Holofernes’s sword. God then allowed Holofernes’s army to be decimated: “So sol es auch allen den gehen / die der ehre der Widwen nachsetzen / und dieselbigen beleidigen” (Elisabeth von Braunschweig: 1598, Fiiii v) (this is what should happen to all those who impugn the honour of widows and disrespect them). The Widwen Handbüchlein is also full of prayers for the use of widows as well as words of comfort for them, based very closely on biblical passages with a commentary by Elisabeth. The thrust of the work, however, is not on how widows should behave but on how the world should behave towards widows. The presentation of Judith as the heroine of a possible rape attempt who uses violence to protect her virtue is Elisabeth’s own take on a story that was told and retold in the early modern period in a whole range of different genres. Elisabeth takes for granted that a widow will mourn her dead husband. She is more concerned to comfort the widow who is suffering from the lamentable social effects of her diminished status and to help her to get through her difficulties.

Ruth The Book of Ruth tells a very different tale to that of the Book of Judith. Naomi is a Jewish woman living in Moab, whose husband and two sons die. Both of these sons had married Moabite women, one of whom is Ruth. When the widowed Naomi decides to return home to her own people, of her two Moabite daughters-

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in-law only the widowed Ruth accompanies her. When Naomi tries to get her to turn back, Ruth replies: Intreate mee not to leaue thee, or to returne from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will goe; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God (Ruth 1:16).

Ruth is therefore an exemplar of faithfulness and of steadfast courage. She is willing to leave her own people and go into a foreign land to assist and care for her mother-in-law; she is even prepared to become a Jew – “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God”. In Israel she comes to the notice of the landowner Boaz when she goes into the fields to glean in order to collect enough food for Naomi and for herself. Instructed by Naomi how to approach Boaz, Ruth finds favour with him and he marries her, honouring her for her courage, selflessness, steadfastness, and submissiveness. The union of Ruth and Boaz was sometimes used to celebrate the remarriage of a widow, as in Michael Franck’s poem Boas und Ruth, composed for the wedding in Coburg of a widower and a widow in 1650 (Franck: 1650). It was more often employed, however, in funeral sermons, particularly for widows who were being buried far from home. One example is the sermon preached in 1602 when Princess Hedwig, the Danish wife of Elector Christian II of Saxony, was buried in Meissen (Strigenicius: 1602). She and Christian are compared to Ruth and Boaz, for she is the bride who has come from afar. Another example is Florentius Schilling’s Catholic sermon composed in 1667 for the burial of Dorothea Catharina Heinrichsohn, nŒe Christallinger, whom he calls the “Austrian Ruth” (Schilling: 1667). Dorothea was born in Baden and died in Vienna and was, like Ruth, “ein starckes Weib / ein Tugendliebende Haußhalterin” (a strong woman, a virtuous housekeeper), who “ihren Mann geliebt / die Kinder beobacht / die Haußhaltung mit Witz / Verstandt / unnd Häußlichkeit also verwaltet / daß sie ein starckes Weib / Tugendtreiche Ruth genent kan werden” (Schilling: 1667, 21b) (She loved her husband, kept an eye on their children, ran her household with intelligence, understanding and by keeping to the house so that she can be called a strong woman, a virtous Ruth.). In other words, she was the ideal wife, housekeeper and mother, even in exile from her own people. Her quiet housebound lifestyle, says Schilling, is symbolised by the fact that it was her slippers, not her shoes, that were hung up in the church on her death, showing that she rarely left home (Schilling: 1667, 23b). In 1632 the Schleswig-Holstein writer and widow Anna Ovena Hoyers (1584 – 1655) retold the Book of Ruth in verse. Hoyers, a rich heiress, had married the Gottorp official Hermann Hoyers in 1599. When she was widowed in 1622, she not only had difficulty in getting hold of her inheritance which brought her into financial difficulties and eventually reduced her to poverty, but her unorthodox

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religious views got her into severe trouble with the Lutheran authorities (Hoyers: 1986, 33 – 66). Mother of nine children, of whom eight survived into adulthood, she had to go into exile in Sweden in 1632 (Niekus Moore: 2000, 72). In 1632 Gustavus II Adolphus, King of Sweden, was killed at the Battle of Lützen. His widow, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg (1599 – 1655), who had accompanied him to Germany, was inconsolable at his death. She travelled back to Sweden with his corpse, insisting on staying close to it at all times. On the journey, she hung his embalmed heart in its golden casket above her bed each night and, even after she had reached Stockholm, tried to put off the burial as long as possible, in a paroxysm of excessive grief (Bepler : 2003, 312). Hoyers dedicates her retelling of the story to Ruth to Maria Eleonora, widow to widow, consoling her for her loss, urging her to accept God’s will, to see that God gives and God takes away and that He is the protector, indeed the spouse, of widows (Hoyers 1986: 77 – 144). She also admonishes the queen to moderate her grief (Bepler : 2003, 313). Hoyers makes sure that the widowed queen, alone like Ruth in a foreign land, is aware of Hoyers’s own impoverished situation and the fact that she too is a widow in a foreign land, for she signs herself – uniquely for her – at the end of the dedicatory poem “Herman Hoyers Witwe Anna Ovena” (Herman Hoyers’ widow Anna Ovena, Hoyers: 1986:84). The poem is divided into two halves: the first is a straightforward verse retelling of the story of Ruth; the second half is Hoyers’s commentary on it, emphasising faith in God’s providence, even in adversity, and advocating patience in suffering like that of Ruth, and kindness and magnanimity, like that of Boaz. So far, so conventional. The unusual element is the extent to which Hoyers uses the work to showcase herself. Immediately after the dedication and the mention of her own widowhood comes an acrostic poem containing her name: A llen Guthertzigen Boas Brüdern/ N aemi Schwestern/ Christi Gliedern/ A uch allen die Gott vest vertrawen O fferir ich diß Büchlein; V iel trost bringts ein/ lasts euch lieb sein. E rkennt daß Gott alles in allen/ N ach seinem guten Wolgefallen/ A lso wie Ers von Ewigkeit H at versehn/ regiert in der zeit. O ffnet ewr Augen / seht umbher/ I hr habt kein Leiden ohn gefähr. I a/ wisset/ alles muß den Frommen/ E ndlich zu ihrem besten kommen/ R ühmt Gott dafür wie sichs gebührt/ S agt Danck dem/ der all Ding regiert. (Hoyers: 1986, 85).

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[To all good-hearted brothers of Boas, to all the sisters of Naomi, members of Christ. To all of those who trust fast in God I offer this little book. If it brings much comfort, be glad. Recognise that God reigns over everything and in all things here below according to what pleases Him as He has planned it from eternity. Open your eyes, look around, you have no suffering that is unplanned. Yes, know that everything must be for the best for those who believe, praise God for it as is seemly, give thanks to Him who directs all things.]

After the main poem there comes another acrostic poem, this time of 33 lines, entitled “Vale mammon” (Hoyers: 1986, 123 – 4), followed on the next page by a reminder of her name again: “Trost in Trawren. Gestelt durch Annam Ovenam Hoyers” (Comfort in grief. Composed by Anna Ovena Hoyers, Hoyers: 1986, 135), then, on pp. 128 – 9, by another acrostic poem spelling out her name and on p. 130 by her initials. This is a widow who, having lost her worldly position and status, creates a position and a status for herself in her text, aligning herself both with the widowed Queen and with the exiled Ruth (Niekus Moore: 2000, 73). Widows were meant to be self-effacing, to have one foot in the grave – their husband’s grave –, their identity subsumed under the memory of their late husbands. Hoyers circumvents this to a remarkable degree and brings herself to the notice of the widowed queen. This certainly paid off, for Hoyers spent the last years of her life living in what is now Djurgzrden in Stockholm, on land which belonged to Maria Eleonora.

Artemisia The final model for the early modern widow to be discussed here is that of Artemisia II of Caria, who died in 350 BCE. She was the sister, wife and successor of Prince Mausolos. Her grief at the death of her husband was so intense that she slowly pined away during the two years she survived him. This grief found expression in two other equally impressive ways. First, she mixed the ashes of Mausolos into her daily drink, so that she imbibed the mortal remains of her dead husband and so became one with him, in effect, turning herself into his living grave. There are, therefore, many depictions of Artemisia with a cup. Second, Artemisia found an outlet for her grief in memorialising Mausolos in two different ways: she got the most eminent Greek rhetoricians to praise him; and to perpetuate his memory she built a splendid monument to him at Halicarnassus, the so-called mausoleum. Surprisingly for a non-biblical motif, the story of Artemisia was so well known in the early modern period that it even makes an appearance in a funeral sermon for a young widow who had lost her 24year-old husband Andreas Georg Paumgartner in 1694 after only four months of marriage (Faber : 1694). The author calls the young widow “Artemisia. Die

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Klagende Beklagens-Würdige Wittwe”, (the lamenting and lamentable widow). In Faber’s words, she “verehret die kalte Asche Ihres geliebtesten Mausoli” (she reveres the cold ashes of her most beloved Mausolos). The title page, incidentally, does not name the widow but only gives her husband’s name and his standing. Margaretha Susanna von Kuntsch (1672 – 1720), the author of a considerable body of highly accomplished poetry, including a large number of funeral poems, many of them first published in funeral booklets, builds a sonnet around the theme of Artemisia to mark the death of Susanna Maria Förster, nŒe Wolffrum (1644 – 1702), the widow of Kuntsch’s uncle (Carrdus: 2004, 366 – 7): Als Frau Susanna Maria Försterin/ gebohrne Wolffrumin/ Herrn D. Johann Georg Försters/ Fürstl. Shs. Cammer=Raths in Altenburg/ hinterlassene Frau Witbe verstarb den 22. Juni 1702. Sonnet. Artemisia fault schon längst/ aber Ihr Andencken nicht/ Die/ daß Sie mit dem Gemahl auch im Tod vereinigt bliebe/ Mischt mit seiner Asch den Tranck/ zu Erweisung ihrer Liebe/ Und ein überkostbar Grabmahl/ Ihm zu Ehren/ aufgericht. Uns’re Seel’ge Cammer=Räthin zeigt noch besser Ihre Pflicht Als des Vaters Treflichkeit in der Kinder Hertz Sie schriebe/ Und durch eig’nen Tugend=Glantz reitzte ihre guten Triebe/ Daß nunmehr in Sohn und Tochter blinckt der Eltern edles Licht. Durch die Zeit ists Mausoleum längst versenckt in Staub und Grauß/ Försters lebend’ Ehren=Seulen hebt der letzte Tag erst aus! Jetzo will SIE gar im Grab ihre Asch mit seiner mischen/ Daß SIE’S Artemisien gleich/ ja noch gar zuvor mag thun; Nun/ Ihr werthesten zwei Cörper/ JESUS laß euch sanffte ruhn/ Biß er Euch am End der Zeit die Verwesung wird abwischen! (Carrdus: 2004, 165) (When Frau Susanna Maria Förster, nŒe Wolffrum, widow of Dr. Johann Georg Förster, Ducal Saxon Councillor in Altenburg, died on 22 June 1702. Artemisia has rotted away long since but not her memory, she, who in order to remain united in death with her husband, mixed his ashes in a drink as a proof of her love and erected a most splendid tomb to honour him. Our deceased Frau Förster showed her duty better when she inscribed their father’s excellent qualities onto his children’s hearts and through the light of her own virtue

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stimulated their good tendencies, so that now in son and daughter the noble light of their parents shines out. Through the passage of time the mausoleum has descended into dust and decay but Försters’ living obelisks will only be excavated on the last day! Now she wants to mix her ash with his in the grave so that she can be like, yes even better than Artemisia. Now let Jesus let their two dear bodies rest in peace until, at the end of time, He will wipe the decay from them.)

Kuntsch highlights the fact that, though Artemisia is dead and gone, her memory is alive because she memorialised Mausolos, erecting a monument to him. Susanna Maria Förster, says Kuntsch, went one better than Artemisia because her monument to Georg Förster is a living one, for it is their children, on whose hearts she has inscribed their father’s virtues. In doing so, however, she has also created a monument to herself, for their children reflect the virtues of both parents. They will be raised up on the Last Day, as will the Förster parents, when Jesus wipes all decay from these monuments to a happy marriage. In a further twist, we realise that Kuntsch’s sonnet is itself yet another kind of monument to both Susanna Maria and to her dead husband. My final example is a much more extensive and impressive textual monument based on the motif of Artemisia. It was created by Sophia Eleonora, Margravine of Hessen-Darmstadt, nŒe Duchess of Saxony (1609 – 1671). In 1661 her husband Georg II, Margrave of Hessen-Darmstadt, died suddenly. Georg’s son and heir organised an official funerary publication in his honour, a substantial illustrated work is entitled Vita post vitam. It is a deliberately learned work of some 400 pages with 34 plates and is introduced by a four-page Latin inscription and contains a series of sermons, Latin orations, Latin and German poems. At the very same time as her son was planning this publication, Sophia Eleonora, the grieving widow, was organising her own quite separate and equally impressive publication which she called Mausolaeum (Sophia Eleonora von HessenDarmstadt:1661), commissioning and paying for it herself (Bepler, Kümmel, Meise: 1998). (The database of German seventeenth-century imprints VD17 inexplicably catalogues this work as Unverweslicher Cederbaum, which is the merely the title of the funeral sermon by Johann Tacke, the Count’s personal doctor, reprinted towards the end of Mausolaeum (Tacke:1661). Mausolaeum is a large folio consisting of 82 plates in addition to Tacke’s sermon. Each plate consists of an elaborate copper engraving combining illustration and text. The frontispiece of the work presents Sophia Eleonore as though on a stage set (Fig. 4). Wearing widow’s weeds she stands at the front of the stage to the right of the picture in front of the mausoleum at Halicarnassos, which the artist, Johann Schweizer, clearly based on Maerten van Heemskerck’s well-known representation of it (Bepler/Kümmel/Meise: 1998, 457). Five obelisks are set down

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Fig. 4: Johann Schweizer, Frontispiece from Sophia Eleonore von Hessen-Darmstadt, Mausolaeum, (Darmstadt 1661). Reproduced by kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.

each side of the “stage”, closing in towards the back behind the mausoleum. Sophia Eleonora is pointing down into the open grave, positioned at the very front of the picture. In the grave can be seen a carved slab bearing a poem. This expressly refers to her as Artemisia and explains that the book is intended as a monument to Georg. It is, however, equally, if not more so, a monument to its progenitor Sophia Eleonore. The 82 plates comprise several different genres. There are 36 family trees, beginning with those of Saxony – Sophia Eleonore’s

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Fig. 5: Johann Schweizer, Plate 3 from Sophia Eleonore von Hessen-Darmstadt, Mausolaeum, (Darmstadt 1661). Reproduced by kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.

dynasty – and Hessen-Darmstadt, and encompassing all the related dynasties and their side-branches, including the royal houses of Denmark and Sweden. Each tree is depicted in front of the ducal or royal residence of that branch of the dynasty. Another big group of 30 plates consists of poems, engraved in cursive script as though written by hand, and framed in a range of different ways. These poems are by the learned men, doctors and pastors of Giessen and Darmstadt with some aristocrats among them, but one of them is by Sophia Eleonore

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Fig. 6: Johann Schweizer, Plate 62 (detail) from Sophia Eleonore von Hessen-Darmstadt, Mausolaeum, (Darmstadt 1661). Reproduced by kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.

herself, another by the heir and yet a third by one of his sisters. The work is, therefore, not a monument to an individual but to a representative of a dynasty and to his offspring. Another group of plates consists of portraits of the deceased with Sophia Eleonore and of their adult children with their families. Sophia Eleonore does not just appear as a wife, however. She is depicted far more often as a grieving widow and furthermore as a widow who, like Artemisia, uses rhetorical means to commemorate the dead. She appears in person on no fewer than 12 of the 82 plates, often presenting herself as writer and chronicler. She begins the work with a “captatio benevolentiae” addressed “An den Tadler” (to the critic, pl.3). Here she is depicted in the heavens, sitting at her desk composing the work (Fig. 5). In plate 62 we see her holding Artemisia’s cup and drying her tears, while the Muses dance round a temple in a cypress grove and Fama flies overhead (Fig. 6). The implication here is that, through the arts as employed in this work organised by Sophia Eleonore, Georg’s fame and reputation will be maintained beyond the grave. The poem by Heinrich Herman von Geynhausen printed below this depiction refers to the widow’s grief, to her memorialising of the dead, calling her “Frau Fama”, and to her descent from the House of Saxony. Two plates later, on plate 64 (Fig. 7) we see her in her widow’s weeds, sitting writing at a large table next to her late husband’s tomb. Again, the

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Fig. 7: Johann Schweizer, Plate 64 (detail) from Sophia Eleonore von Hessen-Darmstadt, Mausolaeum, (Darmstadt 1661). Reproduced by kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.

poem under the picture, this time by Johan Melchior Geinhausen, praises her, calling her a heroine in her grief, mentioning her noble descent. On plate 79 she can be seen stoking her husband’s ashes and holding Artemisia’s cup (Fig. 8), while the poem on this plate by Reinhard Wilhelm Rencker refers to the depth of her love for her late husband and her desire to build him a monument. Plate 70 depicts the widow alone with an open book (Fig. 9) while the final plate of work, plate 82, represents her again at the lower left hand corner, holding a scroll with the word “aeternitas” on it. This time the poem is her own and it is one: “Worinnen die Durchleüchtigste Fürstin Fraw Wittib nochmals Ihr trewes hertz und ohnveränderliche Liebe gegen Ihren Seligsten Fürsten bezeuget, und Ihme solches alles zum Valet mit Thränen übergiebet” (in which the noble widowed princess affirms once more her faithful heart and unalterable love for her late prince and in farewell tearfully presents him with it all). As Bepler, Kümmel and Meise write (1998, 443), the weeping widow in her weeds bears witness to a personal sorrow which breaks through the conventions of ritualised mourning. In commemorating her husband, however, the widow gives herself a central role in the publication she commissions. Far from her loss turning her into an invisible reject, living out her life in a Dower House, her grief makes her visible and

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Fig. 8: Johann Schweizer, Plate 79 (detail) from Sophia Eleonore von Hessen-Darmstadt, Mausolaeum, (Darmstadt 1661). Reproduced by kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.

important. Artemisia’s name lives on because of her care to keep alive her husband’s name, both architecturally and rhetorically. We can say the same of Sophia Eleonora of Hessen-Darmstadt. Widows were expected to lead retired lives, educating their children, praying and mourning their dead husbands, “continuing in supplication and prayers day and night”, as in Paul write in his letter to Timothy. The funeral sermons praise them for their courage in adversity, their trust in God and their long-suffering. But some widows manage to bring themselves out of the shadows. Elisabeth of Braunschweig’s manual for widows was so popular that it was reprinted five times and as a regent she wrote a number of other important works (for further information see http://www.hab.de/bibliothek/ wdb/elisabeth/). Margarethe Susanne von Kuntsch commemorated her widowed relative, turning her childbearing and her role as her children’s educator into tasks as important in keeping her late husband’s memory alive as carving a monument or building a tomb. Anna Ovena Hoyers and Sophia Eleonora of Hessen-Darmstadt gave themselves a prominent place in the architecture of their texts. Though many texts by early modern women are lost to us and

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Fig. 9: Johann Schweizer, Plate 70 (detail) from Sophia Eleonore von Hessen-Darmstadt, Mausolaeum, (Darmstadt 1661). Reproduced by kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.

women’s voices have thereby often been effaced from the record, some widows – relicts, shadowy figures with a foot in someone else’s grave – found a way to make their voices heard.

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Bibliography Primary Literature Balduin, Friedrich (1623), Juditha Saxonica. Das ist/ Erklärung der Historien von der Judith heiligen Wandel/ unnd seligen Tode aus dem Buch Judith cap. 16. : Gethan in der Pfarrkirchen zu Wittenberg/ den 28. Januar. des 1623. Jahrs … wegen des Seligen hintrits Der weyland Durchläuchtigsten … Frawen/ Frawen Sophien Gebornen aus Churfürstlichen Stamme Brandenburg/ Hertzogin und Churfürstin zu Sachsen/ Wittib/ Landgräfin in Thürigen … den 17, Decemb. 1622. zu Dreßden im Herrn entschlaffen/ und obgedachten 28. Ian. 1623. zu Freyberg in Meissen … ist beygesetzet worden / Von Friderico Balduino der H. Schrifft Doctorn, und Professorn, Pfarrern und Superintendenten zu Wittenberg, Wittenberg: Gorman. Bible (1611), http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/ Accessed 23 July 2012. Carpzov, Benedict (1682), Die hertzhaffte Judith : nemblich die … Matron/ Frau Judith/ gebohrne Conradin/ des … Hn. Christian Görings/ fürnehmen des Raths/ und … Vorstehers des Hospitals zu S. Georgen/ wie auch … HandelsHerrns in Leipzig … Witwe / an ihrem begräbnistage/ war der 14. May 1682. in der S. Johannis-kirchen … in damahliger Leichpredigt auffgeführet von Jo. Benedicto Carpzov, der H. Schrifft D. Prof. P. und zu S. Thomas Pastore, Leipzig: Georg. Carrdus, Anna (2004), Das “weiblich Werck” in der Residenzstadt Altenburg (1672 – 1720), Hildesheim: Olms. Elisabeth Von Braunschweig (1556) Ejn anzeigung vnd trost aus Goettlicher Schrifft gezogen/ wo von Witwen gehandelt wird/ beide im Alten vnd Neuen Testament, n.p.: n.publ. Elisabeth Von Braunschweig (1598), Der Widwen Handbüchlein / Durch eine Hocherleuchte Fürstliche Widwe/ vor vielen Jahren selbst beschrieben und verfasset / Jetzo aber widerumb auffs newe gedruckt/ Allen Christlichen Widwen/ [Elisabeth/ geborne Marggräffin zu Brandeburg/ Frawen von Henneberg], Leipzig: Voigt. diglib.hab.de/ drucke/yj-130 – 8 f-helmst-2/start.htm. Eder, Michael (1640), Judith Lychnuchus Mosaicus. Oder Judith Der güldene Leuchter Mosis : Bey der vornehmen Leich-procession Der … Frawen Magdalenae Looßin/ Gebohrnen von Zedlitzin/ Frawen auff Grambschütz und Trebitz; Des … Herren Hansen von Looß und Simbsen … Nachgelassenen Frawen Wittibin: Welche zur Frawstad Anno Christi 1640. den 7. Iulii … seelig verschieden/ und folgenden 28. Tag Nov. mit Christ-Adelichen gewöhnlichen Trawr- und Begräbnüß-Ceremonien von dar abgeführet worden / Beschrieben … durch M. Michaelem Ederum, Prediger beym Kripplin Christi daselbst, n.p.: n.publ. Faber, Samuel (1694) Artemisia. Die Klagende Beklagens-Würdige Wittwe Schicket Ihrem verstorbenem Leben Dem Hoch-Edelgebornen Herrn Andreas Georg Paumgartnern Bey schmertzlicher Trennung Ihres nur 4. Monat-lang geführten Ehstandes Jedoch In der Hoffnung der künftig ewigen Vereinigung Diese Zeilen als Zeugen Ihrer innersten Wehmut nach Und verehret die kalte Asche Ihres geliebtesten Mausoli / Durch die Feder Samuelis Fabri, Nürnberg: Felsecker. Franck, Michael (1650), Boas und Ruth. Das ist Hochzeitliches Ehrengedicht Zu sonder-

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barem Wohlgefallen Dem EhrenVesten und VorAchtbarn Herrn David Schneidern Bürgern und Pröbsten-bedienten allhie zu Coburgk/ Wittbern/ als Bräutigam/ Und dann Der Erbarn Viel Ehr und Tugendsamen Frawen Anna Maria geborner Gönderin/ Weiland deß EhrenVesten und Großachtbarn Herrn Johann Georg Schwartzen … Wittiben/ als Braut/ Uff ehrenfreundliches ersuchen zu gutem Andencken und hertzlicher Glückwundschung verfertiget/ und an dem Tage ihrer Hochzeitlichen Freuden/ welcher war der 29. Octobr. dieses HeylJahrs MDCL. wohlmeynend übergeben / Durch Michael Francken von Schleusingen/ d.z. bey der StadtSchul zu Coburgk Mitarbeitern, [Coburg]: Eyrich. Hoyers, Anna Ovena (1986), Das Buch Ruth. In Teutsche Reimen gestellet und ans Liecht gebracht/ Durch Annam Ovenam Hoyers, In: Anna Ovena Hoyers, Geistliche und Weltliche Poemata 1650, ed. by Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Tübingen: Niemeyer. Kuntsch, Margaretha Susanna, see Carrdus. Luther, Martin (1972), Die Gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch. Wittenberg 1545, ed. Hans Volz with Heinz Blanke, 2 vols (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft). Schilling, Florentius (1667), Oesterreichische Ruth/ Das ist Wolverdiente Lob- und Ehrnpredig über das löbl: Leben und seel: Todt Weillandt der … Frawen Dorothea Catharina Heinrichsohnin Gebohrne Christallingerin/ Welche den 3. Maii Anno 1667. todes verblichen/ und den 5. bey St. Dorothea in dem Hochwürdigen Gottes Hauß/ der Regulirten Chorherrn St. Augustini bey gesetzt worden / Gehalten Durch … P. D. Florentium Schilling Cler. Reg. deß H. Pauli Barnabiten/ Ordinari Predigern bey der Käyserlichen Pfarr-Kirchen St. Michaelis allhie zu Wienn in Österreich, [Wien]: Rickes. Schubart, Andreas (1684), Das Unsterblich-Kostbare Witben-Lob und Ehren-Zeugnis : Welches Eine Exemplarische Nachfolgerin der Tugendbelobten Judith/ Nehmlich Die … Frau Anna Catharina/ geb. Zeisin/ Des … Herrn Johann Kostens/ Hochverdienten Raths-Meisters/ Kirch-Vaters zu St. Ulrich und Scholarchens allhier in Halle/ Nach dessen Hintrit aber und erfolgter anderweitigen Verehligung Deß … Herrn RathsMeisters Daniel Wachsmuths/ Nachgebliebene Frau Witbe Hintersich gelassen hatt/ Als sie im 74. Jahr ihres … Alters Dem 19. Februarii 1684. … verstorben/ und dem 21. darauff zur Leibes-Ruh gebracht worden / Vermittelst eines kurtzen … Leich-Sermons/ Eiligst eröffnet Von D. Andrea Christophoro Schubarten/ Der Kirchen zu St. Ulrich Pastorn und Scholarchen, Halle in Sachsen: Salfeld. Sophia Eleonora Von Hessen-Darmstadt (1661), Mausoleum, Darmstadt: n. pub. 1661. Strigenicius, Gregorius (1602), Votum Bethlehemiticum. Das ist/ Die Glückwündschung der Bürgerschafft und des Rahts zu Bethlehem/ dem Boas und der Ruth gethan : Zu Ehren Dem Durchlauchtigsten … Herrn Christiano II. Hertzogen zu Sachssen/ … Und … Fräwlein Hedwigen, Gebornen aus Königlichem Stam in Dennemarck/ Hertzogin zu Schloßwig/ Holstein … etc. Gethan/ Zu Meyssen/ in der Thumkirchen/ den 9. Septembris, … im 1602. Jahr/ als die Churfürstliche Braut des orts auffm Schlosse stille gelegen / Durch M. Gregorium Strigenicium …, Leipzig: Voigt. Tacke, Johann (1661), Unverweslicher Ceder-Baum zu ewigem Andencken und Namens Unsterblichkeit. Des Durchleuchtigsten Fürsten und Herrn, Herrn Georgen des Andern. Landgraffens zv Hessen, Fürstens zu Hersfeld, Graffens zu Catzenelnbogen, Dietz, Ziegenhain, Nidda, Schauenburg, Isenbvrg vnd Bvdingen, & c. Eines, als er noch lebte, höchst-belobten und an Tugenden, Verdienst und Ehren glorwürdigsten Fürstens, Im Namen der Gantzen Universität Gissen (sic), zwischen Seuffzen und Thränen,

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in einer offentlichen Lob- und Klag-Rede, Unterthänigst gesetzt und auffgerichtet durch Johan. Tacken, Der Philosophi und Medicin D. so dann der Medicin und Eloquentz Professorn daselbst, aush Fürstlichen Hessen-Darmbst. Leib-Medicum. Reprinted in Sophia Eleonore, Mausolaeum. Vita post vitam: Seneca, de brev. Vitae cap.7, vivere discendum est, Darmstadt: Abelius, 1662.

Secondary Literature Bepler, Jill (2003), “Zu meinem und aller dehrer die sichs gebrauchen wollen, nutzen, trost undt frommen.” Lektüre, Schrift und Gebet im Leben der fürstlichen Witwen in der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Martina Schattkowsky (ed.): Witwenschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit. Fürstliche und adlige Witwen zwischen Fremd- und Selbstbestimmung (= Schriften zur sächsischen Geschichte und Volkskunde. Bd. 6). Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2003, 303 – 319. Bepler, Jill (2009), Die fürstliche Witwe als Büchersammlerin: Spuren weiblicher Lektüre in der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Der wissenschaftliche Bibliothekar, Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek. Bepler, Jill (2010), Practicing Piety : Representations of Women’s Dying in German Funeral Sermons of the Early Modern Period, in: Women’s Representations of Death in German Culture since 1500, ed. by Clare Bielby and Anna Richards, Rochester, NY: Camden House, 12 – 30. Bepler, Jill/Kümmel, Birgit/Meise, Helga (1998), Weibliche Selbstdarstellung im 17. Jahrhundert. Das Funeralwerk der Landgräfin Sophia Eleonora von Hessen-Darmstadt, in: Geschlechterperspektiven. Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Heide Wunder and Gisela Engel, Königstein/Taunus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, pp. 441 – 468. Ingendahl, Gesa (2006), Witwen in der Frühen Neuzeit. Eine kulturhistorische Studie (= Geschichte und Geschlechter. Bd. 54). Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main u. A. Kruse, Britta-Juliane (2007), Witwen. Kulturgeschichte eines Standes im Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Berlin: De Gruyter. Mager, Inge (1994), “‘Wegert euch des lieben heiligen Creutzes nicht’: Das Witwentrostbuch der Herzogin Elisabeth von Calenberg-Göttingen.” Kirche und Gesellschaft im heiligen römischen Reich des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts. Hrsg. Hartmut Boockmann. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, Folge 3, 206. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 207 – 224. Niekus Moore, Cornelia (2000), “Anna Ovena Hoyers”, in: Kerstin Merkel and Heide Wunder (ed.), Deutsche Frauen der Frühen Neuzeit. Dichterinnen, Malerinnen, Mäzeninnen, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Schattkowsky, Martina (ed.) (2003), Witwenschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit. Fürstliche und adlige Witwen zwischen Fremd- und Selbstbestimmung (= Schriften zur sächsischen Geschichte und Volkskunde. Bd. 6). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag. Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen (2010), Beauty or Beast? The Woman Warrior in the German Imagination, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Philipp Zitzlsperger

A Change in Forms and the Migration of Bodies in Rome – from the Cardinal’s Tomb to the Cenotaph1

The following contribution examines the formal-typological development of Roman cardinals’ tombs during the 16th century. Various aspects of the genesis of architectonic design and depiction of portraits will be assembled and their common causes explored. Furthermore, and particularly after the decrees of the Council of Trent (1563) had been passed, the cenotaph appears with ever greater frequency. This indicates that the tombs, together with their portraits of the deceased, evolved to become the hostelry of a vicarious body, thereby transcending their function as memorials. Whereas they had originally been directly linked spatially with the mortal remains of the deceased, around this time a decisive change in art-historical paradigms took place, as the memorial and the body became specially separated from one another. A memorial devoid of a real body, i. e. devoid of mortal remains, was transformed into a cenotaph, thus filling a gap. The funerary monument as a site of representation was transformed into a site in which art was actually presented – functions and concepts that will be discussed in greater detail below. A monument was erected posthumously to Cardinal Paolo Camillo Sfondrato in the Roman Catholic Church of St. Ceclia in Trastevere (Fig. 1), having been commissioned by the executors of his will five years after his death.2 In his will, he made no provision for a tomb, but merely concerned himself with his burial place. The place where the cardinals mortal remains were buried is located in the choir of St. Cecilia close to St. Cecilia’s relics. Sfondrato was the titular cardinal of St. Cecilia, where he had discovered the relics of the saints, had buried them in the crypt beneath the Chor and donated the Cäcilienalter with the reclining marble figure of Stafano Maderno in the choir (Kämpf: 2004, 121 – 125). Sfondrato thus arranged for himself to be buried ad sanctos in his titular church; the 1 The basic content of the following article was originally published in German. See Zitzlsperger: 2010b. 2 Client of the Sfondrato wall tomb according to inscription: “TESTAMENTARI EXECUTORIS PP.” On the contract with the sculptor Clemente Gargioli Datex 23 May 1623 cf. Bertolotti: 1885, 192 – 193. See also Bruhns: 1940, 313.

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Fig. 1: Clemente Gargioli, the tomb of Cardinal Paolo Camillo Sfrontrato († 1618), 1623, diversely coloured marble, Rome S. Cecilia, narthex (photograph taken by the author).

precise location of his burial place is marked by a circular, red porphyry stone bearing an inscription and located directly in front of the St. Cecilia’s altar (Fig. 2). Sfondrato died in 1618. Five years later, in 1623, the funerary monument was added, donated – as mentioned above – by the executors of his will and

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Fig. 2: Floor slab over the burial place of Cardinal Paolo Camillo Sfondrato († 1618), 1618, porphyry, Rome, S. Cecillia, before the altar with Stefano Mademo’s sculpture of S. Cecilia (photograph taken by the author).

originally placed in the right aisle of St. Cecilia (now in the narthex). In other words, a tomb was endowed as a cenotaph – i. e. as an empty grave. Furthermore, it was clear from the start that, on its completion, it would be positioned at a certain distance from Sfondrato’s mortal remains. This discovery was not an isolated case in Rome, because with the dawning of the post-Tridentine age, cenotaphs became quite common, and the separation of the body and the tomb increasingly came to be the norm. On the one hand, from around 1570 on, memorials commemorating deceased persons not buried in Rome became increasingly frequent – as in the case of the cenotaph to Cardinal Ranuccio Farneses. Cardinal Farneses died in 1565. He was buried in Parma and received a monument in St. Giovanni in Laterano (Fig. 3)3 – a monument which, at first sight, is by no means identified as a cenotaph. On the other hand, however, there were ever more cases in Rome in which the deceased was laid to rest in one church and his/her tomb erected in another Roman Catholic Church, or – as exemplified in the case of Sfondrato – the body and the tomb were located in the same church but at different places. Cardinal Fabrizio Veralli, for instance, died in 1624, was interred in the family chapel in St. Agostino and was given a 3 On the burial of the mortal remans of Ranuccio Farneses in Parma and his subsequent relocation to the Isola Bisentina in the Lake Bolsena cf. Meluzzi: 1976, 392. On the cenotaph and its original erection in S. Giovanni in Laterano cf. Baglione:1639, 123 – 125.

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monumental tomb or rather a monumental cenotaph (Fig. 4) that did not stand in the family chapel but outside it in the right aisle.4 The situation was similar in the case of Benedetto Guistiniani.5 The cardinal died in 1621 and was buried in the family chapel in St. Maria sopra Minerva. The chapel is situated in the left aisle. The cardinal’s tomb, or cenotaph, is, however, located in the Cappella della SS. Annunziata in the aisle to the right. The monument was donated by the Arch-Brotherhood of SS. Annuziata; it would seem, however, that the exact whereabouts of the person being remembered were of no great importance. Benedetto Guistiniani was honoured with a tomb that did not conveyed any specific information about the cardinal’s missing corpse. The same was true of Cardinal Nicolo Maria Lercari, who died in 1575, was buried in St Pietro in Vincoli and whose cenotaph is to be found in the chapel of the baptistery of St. Giovanni in Laterano.6 Particularly instructive – to cite a final example – is the case of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pallavicino († 1524). He found his penultimate place of rest in St. Peter’s, probably not far from his cardinal uncle, Antoniotto. At the end of the 16th century, however, his mortal remains were moved to the cemetery of St. Maria del Popolo; it was at this very time that, in 1596, the monument with portrait busts – endowed by his relatives – was realised at the south-western crossing pillar of the same church, facing the aisle on the right (Fig. 5).7 The transferral of his mortal remains to the cemetery was reason enough to erect a cenotaph in the church itself, as if it were a substitute for the corpse that had been exiled from the church. The whereabouts of the cardinal’s corpse has not been conclusively established – at least not enough to cover all eventualities. Often, the written sources contain too little information, and in many cases they have not been examined. Nevertheless, random samples and the examples cited suggest that a separation of the tomb and the body would have been inconceivable before 1560. From about 1560 on, however, they were no longer seen to belong inextricably to4 “Ebbe sepoltura nella sua titolare di S. Agostino, nella cappella di sua famiglia, dove nel pilastro prossimo alla medesima si vede alla sua memoria un assai elegante e ben inteso avello, col busto del cardinale scolpito in fino marmo, sotto di cui leggesi un magnifico eleogio, ,Urbani VII consanguinei sui’”. Cited from Moroni: 1859, 226. 5 “Fu sepolto nella cappella dello zio [Cardinal Vincenzo Giustiniani] in S. Maria sopra Minerva, con onorevole iscrizione, altra leggendosene sotto il di lui marmoreo busto, che la nominata arciconfraternit| [della SS. Annunziata] gli eresse nella medesima chiesa, nella propria cappella della SS. Annunziata.” Cited from Moroni: 1845, 220. Illustration of the tomb in the Requiem-database (www.requiem-project.eu). 6 See the illustrations and further information in the Requiem-database (http://www2.huberlin.de/requiem/db/default.php?comeFrom=suchen). 7 On the dating and the cemetery burials see Bentivoglio/ Valtieri: 1976, 75. On the erroneously false dating of the tomb of Giovanni Battista Pallavicinos as 1524 in my most recent article see Zitzlsperger: 2010a, 40 and note 84.

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Fig. 3: Unknown artist, the tomb of Cardinal Ranuccio Famese († 1565), ca. 1565, marble, Rome, S. Giovanni in Laterano (photograph taken by the author).

gether. In the Tridentinian Age, during the reign of Pope Paul IV Carafa (1555 – 1559), a propaganda war was launched against the church as a burial place. Decrees drawn up by Pope Paul IV Carafa and his pro-reform successors, Pius IV. de’ Medici (1559 – 1565) and Pius V. Ghislieri (1566 – 1572) resulted in the re-

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Fig. 4: Unknown artist, the tomb of Cardinal Fabrizio Veralli († 1624), 1624, marble, Rome, S. Agostino † 1624), 1624 (photograph taken by the author).

moval of both the sarcophagi and the floor slabs in the nave. The entombment of corpses in wall tombs was repeatedly forbidden, and demands were repeatedly made to move the mortal remains kept there (Paschini: 1922). More suitable sites, such as cemeteries, were chosen, although these are not named more

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Fig. 5: Unknown artist, the tomb of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pallavicini († 1524), 1596, marble, Rome, S. Maria del Popolo (photograph taken by the author).

precisely in the sources. However, they do at least indicate that interment was supposed take place in church soil and “in luoghi piu confacenti riposti fossero” – i. e. in more suitable, becoming locations (Paschini: 1922, 188). Even though there were times when these reforms were rarely observed, they were never-

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theless so successful that Mornoni, in his Dizionario Storico Ecclesiastico (1853), generally refers to the Roman funeral monuments of the post-Tridentinian age as cenotaphs, because the societal elites were no longer buried in them (Moroni: 1853, 162). Hence, a change was evidently taking place in the Eternal City when, in the wake of the Council of Trent, the church decided to separate the tomb and the body. With the post-Tridentine discovery of the cenotaph, the question now arose as to whether its design referred to this separation. In order to answer this question, it is necessary to examine the formal-typological development of Roman tombs during the 16th century. It will provide clues that need to be discussed. For throughout the 16th century, a conspicuously linear development in the form and type of the memorial monument is discernible that may be causally related to the increasing appearance of the cenotaph. Hence, an attempt is to be made to consider the development of the Roman tomb up to the Baroque period in the light of the relationship between the tomb and the body. Throughout the Quattrocento, both the Papal and the Cardinals’ tombs in Rome adhered to the medieval model of the effigy. Both the Pope and the Cardinal were presented lying in state, their eyes closed, as corpses, in marked contrast to the Northern Alpine effigies, which had their eyes wide open.8 The first sensational change in paradigms occurred with the death of Pope Innocence VIII (Cibo) in 1492. Antonio del Pollaiuolo crafted a bronze effigy for the tomb of his predecessor, Pope Sixtus della Rovere (Fig. 6). During the 1490s, the same artist created, for the first time. a honorific statue for the Cibo pope, Pope Innocent VIII (1484 – 1492) in the tradition of the papal tombs (Fig. 7).9 The Pope now sat enthroned before the observer, giving a blessing. The effigy, which had, in this case, originally been located above the papal statue, had not yet been abandoned (Kusch: 1997). Subsequently, the papal effigy was abolished entirely. From then on, the honorific statue became the canon of the papal tomb. Exemplary in both cases were the two papal honorific statues in the choir apsis of St. Peter’s in Rome: one at the tomb of Paul III Farnese, completed in 1577 (Fig. 8) and the other at that of Urban VIII Baberini, finished seventy years later (1647; Fig. 9).10 The revival of figures on the tombs of the Roman cardinals occurred almost simultaneously, although with greater restraint at first. The decisive paradigmatic change can be seen in two of the cardinals’ tombs that were completed during the first decade of the 16th century. Whereas Givoanni de Castro († 1506) 8 A rare exception in the German-speaking regions is the bronze effigy – with closed eyes – of Bishop Wolfhart von Roth († 1302) in Augsburg Cathedral. 9 On the detailed preparation for a change in paradigms see Zitzlsperger: 2004b. 10 On Paul III see Gormans/ Zitzlsperger : 2004. For information on Urban VIII see Behrmann: 2004.

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Fig. 6: Antonio and Piro del Pollaiuolo, the tomb of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere († 1484), 1484 – 1492), bronze, Rome, S. Peter’s, Tesoro (photo: Joachim Poeschke), Skulptur der Renaissance in Italien. Donatello und Seine Zeit, Munich 1990, p. 182.

is still portrayed traditionally as a reclining figure (Fig. 10), cardinals Ascanio Maria Sforza († 1505; Fig. 11) and Girolamo Basso della Rovere († 1507) were portrayed for the first time as demi-gisants, which is still designed as a reclining figure, albeit one that is now in the throes of sitting up. It calls to mind an ancient reclining figure at a symposium; and is is possible that Etruscan tomb sculpture

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Fig. 7: Antonio del Pollaiuolo, the tomb of Pope Innocence VIII Cibo († 1492), 1492 – 1498, bronze, Rome, S. Peter’s (photograph taken by the author).

served as the model in this case (Panofsky : 1964, 89; Zitzlsperger : 2004a; Imorde: 2005, 375). However, the two cardinals represent, above all, a compromise between a living and a dying person, since they are still in a reclining pose: in Ascanio’s case, his head is supported by his hand; in Girolamo’s case, it is hanging heavily, and his eyes are closed, as if in sleep. The viewer is challenged to identify the sleeper : for the demi-gisant’s posture is not that of a dead person. During the first half of the 16th century, a few more examples of this type of demi-gisant may be found among the cardinals’ tombs – although not very

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Fig. 8: Guglielmo della Porta, the tomb of Pope Paul III Famese († 1549), 1549 – 1577, marble, statue of honour, bronze, Rome, S. Peter’s (photograph taken by the author).

many. Only nine cardinals’ tombs have been identified for 16th century Rome,11 and only three for the 18th century.12 Hence it may be concluded that the 11 Giovanni Michiel († 1503), Ascanio Maria Sforza († 1505), Girolamo Basso della Rovere († 1507), Francesco Armellino de’ Medici († 1528), Antonio Maria Ciocchi del Monte († 1533), Wilhelm van Enkenvoirt († 1534), Paolo Emilio Cesi († 1537), Federico Cesi († 1565), Michele Bonelli († 1598). 12 Giovanni Francesco Guidi di Bagno († 1641), Francesco Cennini de’ Salamandri († 1645), Girolamo Casanate († 1700). See the “Suchabfrage” [query] in the Requiem-database (http:/

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Fig. 9: Gianlorenzo Bernini, the tomb of Pope Urban VIII Barberini († 1644), 1627 – 1647, statue of honour, bronze, Rome, S. Peter’s (photograph: Rudolf Wittkower, Bernini, Lo scultore del Barocco romano, Milan 1990, p. 136).

www2.hu-berlin.de/requiem/db/default.php?/comeFrom=suchen), “Such-Auswahl”: “Porträt-Typus” and “Demigisant” [select – type of portrait – demi gisant].

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demigisant was not a great success in Rome. The decisive point here is, however, that – apart from its sitting upright – around 1600 the demigisant’s eyes are open and the figure, previously portrayed sleeping, now plays an increasingly active part in the design its own funerary monument. Exemplary here are the wideopen eyes on the funeral monument of Michell Bonelli (ca. 1600), in S. Maria sopra Minerva, and in the demigisant of Giovanni Francesco Guidi di Bagno, which was executed approximately fifty years later in St. Alessio on the Aventine by Domenico Guidi (Fig. 12).13

Fig. 10: Unknown artist, the tomb of Cardinal Giovanni de Castro († 1506), ca. 1506, marble, Rome, S. Maria del Populo (photograph taken by the author).

Most of the sepulchral cardinal portraits developed in a completely different direction. It was only in the middle of the Cinquecento that the second phase of reviving sepulchral cardinal portraits began, when people began to integrate portrait busts into funerary monuments. Portraits of cardinals were restricted to the upper body. The process of reanimating the person commemorated was now, on the one hand, complete; on the other hand, however, this process had to be satisfied with a fragment of the body. At the same time, however, the figure had to content itself with a bodily fragment. The earliest known example of a Cardinal’s 13 Cf. Requiem-database (www.requiem-project-eu).

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Fig. 11: Andrea Sansovono, the tomb of Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza († 1505), ca. 1505 – 1510, marble, Rome, S. Maria del Popolo (photograph taken by the author).

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Fig. 12: Demonico Guidi, the tomb of Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Guidi di Bagno († 1641), 1641, marble, Rome, S. Alessio (photograph taken by the author).

bust at a Roman tomb was that of Pietro Paolo Parisi (ca. 1545) in St Mria degli Angeli (Fig. 13).14 Outside the Eternal City, sepulchral portrait statues were portrayed standing, sitting, in the act of prayer, and as and demi-gisants as early as the 14th century. In this context, we shall merely mention the statues on Venetian tombs,15 the enthroned honorific statue at the Anjou tomb of Robert the Wise († 1343) in St. Chiara (Naples) (Michalsky : 2000; Dombrowski: 2002) and Cardinal Oliviero Carafa in prayer (1497 – 1508) at the Lower Church of Naples Cathedral (Bruhns: 1940, 273). The Roman ”delay” is all the more outstanding, however, because the sepulchral portrait bust was already very popular even in Rome around 1500 (famous example: Andrea Bregno, † 1503), although it was used only for laypersons: mostly humanists, and some women, too.16 It was not until the monument for Pietro Paolo Parisi was completed around 1550 in St. Maria degli Angeli that portrait busts became increasingly popular on cardinals’ and bishops’ tombs in Rome.17 In Parisis’ case, the bust is poly14 Cf. Requiem-Datenbank (www.requiem-project-eu). 15 For further information on Venetian tomb statues see Mehler : 2001; Gaier : 2004, 56 – 67. 16 On the early Roman sepulchral busts see Ladegast, 2010. On busts of women see, for instance, the tomb of Panatasilea Grypho († 1527) in St. Augustin. 17 See, for instance, the tomb of Bishop Odoard Cicadas 1545 in St Maria del Popolo. See

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Fig. 13: Unknown artist, the tomb of Cardinal Pietro Paolo Parisi († 1545), ca. 1545, marble, Rome, S. Maria deglie Angeli (photograph taken by the author).

Grisebach: 1936, 60 – 61. Cardinals’ busts on Roman tombs: Giovanni Battista Pallavicino

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chromatic (although it could also be monochromatic), whilst the upper body is composed of red porphpyry. Only the bare head is made of white marble. The bust distinctly shows that in addition to the colouring, a new style of dress was emerging. A vestimentary comparison with the effigy of Giovanni de Castro’ († 1506; Fig. 10) clearly shows the change in paradigms. Traditionally, the reclining figure dons a liturgical robe, which is not, however, cardinal-like. The gisant’s chasuble is not an insignia, but tends to be worn, even today, by priests who are celebrating. Now, however, with the appearance of cardinals’ busts around 1550, the extra-liturgical mozzetta – the short, purple hooded cape – came into use, which, as an insignia, unequivocally identifies the figure as the cardinal.18 However, the semantics of the mozzetta went much further, alluding not only to the office of cardinal since the Pope, too, wore mozzettas in his non-lithurgical everyday life. The similarity between the official clothing worn by the Pope and the cardinals prompted the masters of ceremonies to elaborate a highly differentiated dress code. The ceremonial literature provides extensive proof that enormous symbolic significance was attached to the mozzetta. In combination with the rochet, which was worn beneath it, the mozzetta took on the distinct semantics of judicial power after the schism had taken place. It was thenceforth designated the Signum Iurisdictionis,19 and distinguished the Pope on all extra-liturgical occasions as the highest spiritual and worldly judge. However, the bishops and cardinals, when seated, also wore the mozzetta over their rochet when they had to administer punishments in accordance with spiritual and secular law. Just how important clothing was as a symbol of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the early modern age was revealed by the dress regulations in cases in which a cardinal or bishop met the Pope or stayed at the archbishopric of Rome. The uniform significance of the mozzetta, worn over the rochet, would have raised some delicate issues regarding the dignities of office and their areas of competence had the supplementary regulation on differentiating the Pope from the cardinals and († 1524) in S. Maria del Popolo (tomb erected only in 1596), Pietro Paolo Parisi († 1545) in St. Maria degli Angeli, Girolamo Veralli († 1555) in S. Agostino, Rodolfo Pio da Carpi († 1564) in St. Trinit| dei Monti etc. 18 On the distinction between liturgical and non-liturgical literature clothing among the Roman Catholic Church clergy see Zitzlsperger: 2002, 49 – 55. 19 “Caeterum cum Rocchettum assumptum fuerit in signum Iurisdictionis, eo semper, & ubique utitur, gestatque Romanus Pontifex omnin‡ discooperto sub mozzetto, cum Iurisdictionem habeat in universo Mundo.” Cited by Marangoni: 1751, 92. See also Bonanni: 1720, 367: “poich€ il Sommo Pontefice solamente usa sempre la Mozzetta sopra il Rocchetto, e ci‡ in segno di Giurisdizione, […] Li Vescovi l’usano [Mozzetta] anche, […], sopra il Rocchetto senza il Mantelletto nelle Chiese delli titoli loro, nelle Congregazioni, che si tengono nelli proprii Palazzi, e nella Sede vacante, poich€ allora € segno di Giurisdizione”. On the significance of extra-liturgical clothing – for Roman portrait art, too – see Zitzlsperger : 2002, 49 – 55.

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priests not been issued. In the presence of the Pope and within the Archbishopric of Rome, the cardinals and the bishops had to conceal the rochet beneath a socalled mantelletta, a knee-length coat, which was open at the front. When the mozetta was worn above the mantelletta, it ceased to have any judicial connotations.20 Hence, the symbolism of the rochet and the mozzetta were thenceforth to be reserved solely for the Pope, as holder of the highest jurisdictional powers.21 With the emergence of portrait busts, however, only the mozzetta remains visible on cardinals’ tombs. The rochet, which was worn beneath it, was rarely visible below the abruptly cut-off bust.22 More important, however, is the fact that the cardinal now appears in the insignia of jurisdiction, indicating that he is more of a jurist than a theologian. When the sepulchral cardinal’s bust appeared around 1550, it remained, together with the mozzetta, the rule for the entire second half of the 16th century.23 One variation must not be ignored here, however, because sepulchral cardinals’ busts can be found that also display arms and hands. Only in a mere ten cases, however, do they display the “motif of eternal worship”.24 In these examples, the rochet is perfectly visible beneath the mozzetta, clearly showing that the man20 The mantelletta reached as far as the knees, had no sleeves – only openings – and was open at the front (see Bonanni: 1720, 427, ill. 112). See also Sestini (Maestro di Camera of the cardinals in Rome): 1653, 10: “L’habito, che hoggi usano i Cardinali [in Rome], € Sottana, Rocchetto, e Mantelletta, e Mozzetta, […] quasi in tutte le attioni, e funtioni publiche.” 21 “S.R.E. Cardinales nunquam discoopertum, sine mantelletto, praesente Summo Pontefice, illud deferunt. Aperto tamen eo utuntur, cum Mozzetta in Ecclesiis Titularibus propriae Iurisdictionis, ac in pluribus aliis functionibus: Episcopi ver‡ numquam in Urbe nisi cooperto cum Mantelletta; discooperto vero, sub Mozzetto, & in locis suae Iurisdictionis.” Cited by Marangoni :1751, 92. See also Bonanni:, 367; Bernini: 1717, 37 – 38. 22 An interesting exception is the sepulchral portrait bust of Enrico Caetanis († 1599) in the Cappella Caetani of St. Prudenziana (Rome), which was executed between 1600 and 1603 (Ferrari/ Serenita: 1999, 384). As it is an armless marble bust, a part of the rochet can be seen beneath the lower cut edge. See the illustrations in the Requiem-database. On the unique character of the rarely considered rochets on the busts of Cardinals see Zitzlsperger: 2002, 63. 23 The only exception of a sepulchral cardinal bust in liturgical vestment: Rodolfo Pio da Carpi († 1564) in SS. Trinit| dei Monti. For statistics on headdress see the Requiem-database: out of the 123 registered cardinal portraits (painted as well as sculpted) in the act of praying, sixty-two are not wearing any headdress, twenty-one are wearing an inconspicuous zucchetto, which is not part of their insignia, and only thirty-six are wearing a biretta; the remainder constitute four ‘special forms’ such as the cap of the cappa magna. On the iconology of the mozzetta cf. Zitzlsperger : 2002, 49 – 54. On the fundamental significance of clothing in art cf. Zitzlsperger: 2008, 118 – 155. Examples of this include the funerary monuments of the following cardinals, who can be seen in the Requiem-database: Giovanni Girolamo Albani († 1591), Giovanni Aldobrandini († 1573), Cristoforo Madruzzo († 1578), Stanislao Hosius († 1579), Prospero Santacroce († 1589), Enrico Caetani († 1599). 24 Giovanni Girolamo Albani († 1591), Giulio Antonio Santori († 1602), Paolo Camillo Sfondrato († 1618), Roberto Bellarmino († 1621), Ottavio Bandini († 1629), Gregorio Nari († 1634), Cristoforo Vidman († 1660), Giovanni Battista de Luca († 1683), Alderano Cibo († 1700) and Nicolo Maria Lercari († 1757).

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Fig. 14: Unknown artist, the tomb of Cardinal Lodovico Podocataro († 1504), ca. 1504, marble, Rome, S. Maria del Popolo (photograph taken by the author).

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Fig. 15: Andrea Bregno(?), the tomb of Cardinal Cristoforo della Rovere († 1478), ca. 1478, marble, Rome, S. Maria del Popolo (photograph taken by the author).

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telletta is missing and that the cardinal is presented here in his full judicial powers.25 The development of the sepulchral cardinal portrait sketched out here shall not be interpreted just yet. Before we examine the possible causes behind the growing tendency to enliven portraits of cardinals, even to the extent of using extra-liturgically clad busts, we must turn to the development of tomb architecture. For in this area, too, developments took an extremely linear course (see also Zitzlsperger : 2010a, 45 – 46): At the beginning of the 16th century, the most frequently used type of cardinal’s tomb was the niche tomb. It is characterised by a wall recess framed either by a pilaster aedicule, i. e. side pillars (Fig. 14) bearing a pediment, or by a round arch borne by pilasters (Fig. 15). It is important to note that the supports are always constructed as pilasters and that we are dealing here with niche graves, in which the architecture assumes the form a niche frame. As in the case of Ludovico Podocataro († 1504; Fig. 14), the pilasters often assume monumental proportions, so that their fronts provide plenty of space for sculpture niches and the corresponding saints. During the second half of the 16th century, depictions of saints on Roman tombs became increasingly superfluous, and sculptural decoration focused largely on portrait busts, which could also be painted or executed in mosaic. Famous in this context is the tomb architecture of Cardinal Guido Ascanio Sforza († 1564; Fig. 16), because it was constructed from plans by Michelangelo 1562 – 1582 (Satzinger : 2003/2004, 327 – 414). Girolamo Dandini’s tomb († 1559) is not to be underestimated, either (Fig. 17), because around 1560 it was considered one of the earliest Roman Cardinal’s tombs of this novel type. It was distinguished by the fact that its architectural framing was no longer modelled on the classical niche tomb; it was a far more autonomous in appearance, and stood as an independent architectural structure before a rear wall. Its second important feature lie in the fact that columns were used instead of pilasters. The belated use of this striking architectural motif, which was borrowed from Antiquity, is all the more surprising because in Rome, of all places, the prototype of the column aedicula – as is well known – is to be found in the Pantheon as an autonomous architectural body placed before the wall (Fig. 18). Here, aediculae alternate with segmental arch gables and triangular gables. As striking as this classical architectural motif may seem, it is surprising just how muted a response it received in Rome during the early modern period. In the first half of the 16th century, the number of architectural exemplars that still employed the aedicula can be counted on one hand. Among 16th century Roman secular architecture, exemplary works deserving mention include Raffael’s Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila (destroyed and handed down only in the form of drawings) and Sangallo’s window aediculae in the 25 Exemplary here is the tomb bust of Paolo Camillo Sfondratos († 1618) in S. Caecilia.

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Fig. 16: Michelangelo (architectural planning), Giacomo della Porta (tomb aedicula), the tomb of Cardinal Guido Scanio Sforza († 1564), ca. 1562 – 1582, marble, Rome, S. Maria Maggioire, Sforzakapella (photograph taken by the author).

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Fig. 17: Unknown artist, the tomb of Cardinal Girolamo Dandini († 1559), ca. 1559, marble, Rome, S. Marcello al Corso (photograph taken by the author).

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Fig. 18: Rome, Pantheon, aedicula on the interior (tomb of Raffael), ca. 118 – 125 (photograph taken by the author).

Palazzo Farnese. Also deserving mention in this context are Michelangelo’s Conservatory Palace and the Porta Pia. Apart from these few exceptions, window aediculae did not catch on in palaces and were later abandoned.26 Roman window frames generally consists of a simple atechtonic frame consisting of a cornice and, at best, a gable too – but without any columns. An example of this is provided by Baldassare Peruzzi’s Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, which was completed in 1536. As windows and door-frames aediculae evidently did not catch on so quickly. It was only on church faÅades, such as Giacomo della Porta’s Il Ges faÅade, that aediculae were used for the portals and windows. In general, aediculae were reserved for sacred Roman buildings, apparently to the disadvantage of the Roman palace faÅade. In her essay on the development of the

26 Some attempts to make aedicula window frames did not advance beyond the planning stage. See, for example, Antonios da Sangallo d. J. faÅade design UA 201 for the Palazzo Ferrari (1526). Cf. Frommel: 1973 (vol. 1, text), 48. On the migration of the Roman palace architectural styles to Northern Italy in the second third of the 16th century see Frommel: 1973, 50. On the widespread disappearance of the aedicula window frame in Roman palace architecture after the construction of the Palazzo Farnese see, above all, Wölfflin: 1926, 126 – 127 (= section 3, chap. II,2).

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aedicula in the Roman early modern period, Wiebke Windorf (Windorf: 2008)27 pointed out that the column aedicula was initially reserved for the Roman altar and underwent its most striking development when it was used to frame the altarpiece. The genesis of the Roman altar is the fourth line of development that we must now pursue.28 Here, we shall summarise the first three lines of development which the Roman Cardinal’s tomb underwent. The first concerns the tomb as a cenotaph; the second, the revival of the Cardinal’s portrait; the third, the origin of the tomb as an autonomous column aedicula; whilst the fourth and last deals with the development of the Roman altar, which shall be briefly sketched out here. Subsequently, these four distinct lines will be brought together and interpreted. Roman altar architecture evolved in a similar fashion to the Roman Cardinal’s tomb. Vasari’s version at the Cappella del Monte in S. Pietro in Montorio (ca. 1550, Fig. 19) deserves mention here as one of the earliest examples of the aedicula altar in its pure classical form, whilst Vasari’s version in the Capella del Monte in St. Pietro in Montorio (ca. 1550, Fig. 19) is exemplary for Rome (Windorf: 2008, 101). Although Vasari refers back to Jacopo Sansovino’s altar aedicula (completed in 1521), with its triangular gable of the Madonna del Parto in S. Agostino (Rome), he also takes its monumentality and plasticity even further (Ackermann: 2007, 16). What was so decisive for Vasari was the reception accorded the classical aedicula at the Pantheon, where it served as an altar frame. The moment Vasari provided the initial spark, it would be reserved for altar architecture right into the 17th century – and not only in Rome. In passing, it is worth examining Vasari’s new designs for the interior rooms of St. Maria Novella (1565 on) and St. Groce (1566 on) in Florence. Whereas the column aedicule at St. Maria Novella are composed solely of segmental arch gables, at St. Groce, they alternate, and can still be seen in the side aisles (Fig. 20) to this day. St. Groce in Florence provides a very good example for drawing attention yet again the altar aedicula as an autonomous building element. Here, one can clearly see how the columns and the pediments project some way from the walls, placed, in a sense, in front of the walls and not to be confused with a wall niche frame. Vasari – and this is the noteworthy result – transformed the column aedicula once and for all into symbol reserved for the altar alone. During the second half of the 16th century, the column aedicula generally came to be associated with the altar frame in Rome, too. The direct relationship between the new aedicula tombs and the architectural language of the post27 A concise survey of the development of Roman altar types from the early Renaissance on can be found in Ackermann: 2007, 15 – 31. 28 I am greatly indebted to Tobias Weißmann for his crucial research on this subject.

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Fig. 19: Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo, Bartolomeo Ammannati, funerary chapel of the Cardinal’s family Ciocci del Monte, ca. 1550, Rome, S. Pietro in Montorio (photograph taken by the author).

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Fig. 20: Giorgio Vasari, altar aediculae in S. Croce, 1566, Florence (photograph taken by the author).

Tridentine altar frame will become quite clear when we analyse a further detail in the following comparison: Examining Spinola’s tomb (Fig. 21), one can also see the reddish profiled frame, inside the column aedicula, which unites the Cardinal’s portrait field and the inscription plaques to form a single whole. The Cardinal and his inscribed biography really do resemble an altarpiece – as Carlo Maderno’s altar architecture (1603) (Ackermann: 2007, 26) at the Capppella Salviati in St. Gregorio Magno shows in such an exemplary manner (Fig. 22) – the altar paintings are also integrated, with the aid of typical profiled frames – into the aedicula architecture. In the 1580s, a second type of altar arose at the same time, which further developed the aedicula principle and was to become a model for Roman Baroque tombs. Essentially, the new development began with Giacomo della Porta’s high altar at the Cappella Gregoriana in New St. Peter’s, in 1578, and climaxed in the Cappella Paolina in St. Maria Maggiore in 1610 – 1615 (Fig. 23)29 : The closed aedicula form is now broken at the pediment and reveals a pictorial zone.30 An 29 For further examples see Ackermann: 2007, 17 – 19. 30 For further information on this first example of the aedicula type see Windorf: 2008, 96 – 97. The first examples of the broken pediment, based, however, on a triaxial architectural design,

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Fig. 21: Unknown artist, the tomb of Cardinal Filippo Spinola, († 1593) ca. 1593, marble, Rome, S. Sabina (photograph taken by the author).

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Fig. 22: Carlo Maderno, the altar of the Capella Salviati, 1603, Rome, S. Gregorio Magno (photo: Felix Ackermann, Das barocke Altarensemble im Spannungsfeld zwischen Tradition und Innovation, Petersburg 2007, p. 26).

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exemplary cardinals’ tomb displaying an upwardly surging core, which is contained by the altar’s “picture frame”, is the monument of Cardinal Lanfranco Margotti († 1611) in S. Pietro in Vincoli (Fig. 24).31 Alongside the classical closed aedicula, this new type of altar, with its interrupted gable, is the success story among the Baroque cardinals’ tombs. With its dynamized architecture, the tomb is seemingly being propelled upwards by a powerful thrust. It is here, too, that the portrait is located: it appears to be travelling upwards through the interrupted gable. The circle thus closes the circle with the Sfrondrato tomb in St. Cecilia (Fig. 1). As a Sfondrato type, the tomb has earned itself a permanent place in art historiography, despite the fact that the concept betrays nothing about its altar semantics. The emphasis placed here on the close typological relationship between the aedicule altar and the aedicule tomb during the second half of the 16th century was absent in the Quattrocento. In Rome, as explained above, it was primarily the round-arch niche tomb (humanist genre) and the aedicule niche tomb (often without a gable) – both types with pilasters – that were so widespread (Fig. 14, 15). With regard to the tombs of the Eternal City, it is almost impossible to establish an explicit and exclusive relationship with the Roman altar architecture of this period. There are two main reasons for this: firstly, the altar retable was barely promoted in Rome until the early years of the 16th century,32 and, secondly, the relatively few surviving examples do not indicate any a specific relationship to contemporaneous monuments. Although the round-arch retable was not unheard-of in Rome towards the end of the 15th century,33 the round arch had not yet exclusively become an altar form, for in the palace faÅades of the time round-arch windows with pilasters were quite common.34 Rectangular altar retables consisting of two pilasters bearing an entabulature hardly existed in

31 32

33 34

was executed on a cenotaph during the lifetime of Pope Pius’ V. Ghislieri (1566 – 1572) in Bosco Marengo (cf. Ieni: 1985, 31 – 48). For a further example see Giambologna’s “Altare della Libert|” (1577 – 1579) in Lucca Cathedral. According to sources it was completed in 1611. Cf. Requiem-database. Altar retables, such as those found in Old St. Peter’s by Giotto (Stefaneschi Retabel) and S. Maria Maggiore, jointly executed by Masaccio and Masolino, comprised three sections. Raffael’s “Madonna di Foligno” (1511 – 1512) for the main altar of S. Maria in Aracoeli displays the aforementioned round arch, a type widespread in 15th-century Rome. On the modest development of the Roman altar retable see the basic work on this subject by Blaauw: 1997, 83 – 110. See, for example, Pinturicchio’s Adoration of the Son of God in Santa Maria del Popolo (1490). See, for example, the Roman Palazzi della Cancellaria and Torlonia Giraud. Furthermore, the Casa de Vaca (Via in Lucina 23), the so-called Casa quattrocentesca (Piazza Sforza Cesarini 26) and the Casa del Burcardo (Via del Sudario 44), all dating from the late 15th century. See the survey and illustrations of both the aforementioned and the additional examples in Lombardi: 1992, 273, 518, 127, 208, 374 (Page numbers in the order of the above-mentioned Palazzi).

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Fig. 23: Girolamo Rainaldi, Pomeo Targone, the altar of the Cappella Paolina, 1610 – 1615, Rome, S. Maria Maggiore (photo: Felix Ackermann, Die Altäre des Gianlorenzo Bernini. Das barocke Altarenensemble im Spannungsfeld zwischen Tradition und Innovation, Petersberg 2007, p. 29).

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Fig. 24: Unknown artist, the tomb of Cardinal Lanfranco Margotti († 1611), ca. 1611, Rome, S. Pietro in Vincoli (photograph taken by the author).

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Rome at the time. Such exemplars are undoubtedly a north Italian and Tuscan speciality (Teuffel:1982; Locher : 1993, 487 – 507; Braun: 1924, 369). In Rome it is only to be found in the Cappella Carafa in St. Maria sopra Minerva (1489 – 1493), and clearly adopted from Florence. During the late Quattrocento, the model of the tavola quadrata, a marble retable with three equally sized marble saints’ niches, was found relatively often in Bregno’s circle (Blaauw: 1996, 86 – 87), without it ever being typologically related with contemporaneous funerary monuments – just like the most famous high altar retable in the Eternal City : Bregno’s retabel architecture for St. Maria del Popolo. The fact fact that a specific type of retable architecture did not appear on altars as classical aedicula in Roman churches in the mid16th century, but evolved in a very close reciprocal relationship with tomb architecture calls for an explanation. To this end, we must bring together the four reconstructed strands of development that Roman tombs experienced during the 16th century : 1) cardinals’ tombs were increasingly transformed into cenotaphs during the second half of the 16th century. 2) This development was accompanied by a revival of cardinals’ portraits, with the reclining figure ultimately being replaced by the portrait bust. 3) Furthermore, the post-Tridentine funerary monument evolved into the columned aedicula tomb – as a closed form first and, from the 1580s on – in an open form with an broken pediment. 4) And finally, it could be demonstrated that innovative altar architecture – i. e. the classical aedicula in Florence and Rome – served as its model. It is possible to interpret these four strands of development, which had been running parallel since the second half of the 16th century, as a coincidence. One can, however, try to find a different interpretation, related the “disturbed” relationship between the cenotaph and the body to the lively portrait of the cardinal at a tomb which – formally at least – claims to be an altar. The thought that the growing absence of mortal remains necessitated a tomb as an altar may not seem to make much sense at first sight. However, if we recall the notion, arising in the early modern age, of the presence of the dead (as elaborated by Otto Gerhard Oexle in 1982 (Oexle: 1982)) the semantic significance changes. For it is easy to forget that, in the pre-modern period, the cult of the dead and the cult of the saints became increasingly similar to one another, even to the point where all differences vanished. After their deaths, both saints and lesser mortals retained their status as legal subjects. Research into the handing down of memorials shows that until the late 18th century, the dead could appear as plaintiffs and the accused could be held capable of tortious liability. In this capacity, the dead – fully in line with the traditions of Antiquity – were therefore actually present in the perception of their contemporaries when it came to diverse ritualized social

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activities (e. g. funeral banquets) (Oexle: 1982, 48 – 65).35 Such popular religions attitudes may not correspond with the commemoration of the dead as envisaged under church canon law, but it was precisely theological responses of this nature regarding the relationship between the body and the soul after death – the poles of the souls brought to life and those that had died – that became the source of the most divergent interpretations, whereby it was the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine of the unity of the body and soul (anima forma corporis) which, in the late Middle Ages, won the day over the Platonic-dualistic view and was therefore able to continue spreading, finally culminating in the Thomistic Renaissance of the Jesuits, above all in the writings of Francisco Su~riz.36 In 1987, Georg Syamken metaphorically interpreted the sepulchral busts in post-Tridentine Rome as wax models – the Latin word cera means portrait/wax effigy – in the same way that Aristotle compares the relationship between the body and the soul with malleable wax (Syamken: 1987, 39 – 52). The unity of body and soul is like the unity of wax and its form. The portrait is not only an expression of the soul, but also of the reliquary, its home. In addition, there is a pictorial-anthropological constant – evident among the early visual cultures – to replace the transient body of the dead with a new, lasting body. The visual body, like the transient body upon its passing away, was also the Doppelgänger of a bodiless soul, and one that the visual body – as a substitute body – could offer as a new place of rest (Belting: 1996, 158 – 159). Isidor von Sevilla’s expositions on the human body in his 7th century encyclopedia are very important for understanding the form of the portrait bust, especially as Isidor’s Etimologiae was to remain one of the decisive sources of history and knowledge right down the 16th century. Isidor regarded not only the head, but also the thorax as one of the most important zones of the human body. Interestingly, he links the thorax etymologically with the altar. He writes: “The Greeks called the front of the torso from the neck to the stomach the thorax; this is what we call the chest (arca), because in that place is a hidden (arcanus), that is, a secret thing, from which other people are shut out (arcere). From this also a strong box (arca) and an altar (ara) derive their names, as if the words meant ‘secret things’.”37 The soul and the spirit, the “the holiest of all that human beings possess”, are located in the head and the ribcage. The human bust can therefore be viewed as a reliquary of the soul (Kohl: 2007, 18 – 19). 35 See also Thomas Morus Utopia, where he reaffirm the presence of the dead among the living (Oexle: 1982, 26). On the presence of the dead by announcing their names during liturgical rites or by making donations see Borgolte: 1988, 87 – 94. 36 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, I, 75,4 ad 2 and on the soul in its post-mortal state cf. ibid., I, 89,8. For information on the Thomistic Renaissance as represented by Su~rez see Pastor : 1927, 513 – 576. 37 Isidor of Seville, Etymologiae, Vol. XI, 73. See Seville: 2010, 236.

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Beyond all the theological interpretation of the dead body was the tradition of commemorating the dead, which – as Oexle impressively demonstrates – is based on the conviction that the dead are present and that there is a relationship between the body and the soul of the deceased.38 In this sense, nowhere is the “presence of the dead” more powerfully focussed than at the tomb itself.39 The portrait – not as the image of a dead person, but as one of the living – could not but intensify still further the impression created of the dead person being alive and present. And the need to intensify the presence of the dead, especially during the second half of the 16th century, might have been related to the fact that the mortal remains of the deceased were increasingly migrating. In this connection, the tomb as an altar might have been interpreted as a place of transubstantiation, whereby it was not the transubstantiation of the host that was being connoted but that of the “living” portrait. Furthermore, and in conclusion, a decree issued by Urban VIII Barberini in the 1630s deserves mention here, in which the Pope expressly forbids the cult veneration of the tombs of those not canonized (Moroni: 1853, 162). This prohibition reveals yet again the above-mentioned and frequently identical characteristic of the cult of the saints and the dead, which is confirmed by the typological relationship between tomb and retabel architecture. The altarpiece as the holiest of holies has its counterpart in uniting the portrait and the epitaph (inscription) within framework of the sepulchral aedicula, in which the deceased is not only present, but also appears to be genuinely present. The combination of portrait and inscription is the evocation of genuine presence, as confirmed in Ulrich Zwingli’s aforementioned second disputation (1523) by the pastor of Schaffhausen, who believed that he could recognise the presence of the depicted in the “abcontrafractur” because the signature representing his name guarantees that the person depicted “is there in reality”.40 The pastor’s argumentation, which Zwingli disputed, clearly shows that the real presence in the Eucharistic transformation (at the beginning of the 16th century at least) could be equated with the real metaphysical presence in the portrait. Initially, it is not the beholder’s imagination that is invited to grasp the real presence, but the beholder’s belief in transubstantiation. The latter becomes a factual certainty for the Schaffhauser pastor, because the portrait (in combi38 On the richly diversified body and soul anthropology see Angenendt: 2000, 14 – 16. On the difference between the Platonic body/soul dualism and Christian body/soul theology see the instructive work by Greshake: 2006. On the Thomasian identity of body and soul and its consequences up to the time of Luther see Haeffner: 1986, 132 – 144. In addition to the bodysoul problem cf. the different emphasis attached to the opposites: purgatory and the Day of Judgement: Borgolte: 2000, 306. 39 For all experiences with images, Belting saw an ontological connection between the image and the body in Plato’s shadow theory, which, in its rejection of the physical image, confirmed the original practise of thinking in images (Belting: 1996). 40 See the reference to this passage in Zwingli’s Disputation with a reference in Lentes: 2000, 28.

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nation with the naming of his name in writing) guarantees the presence of the person depicted or named in his portrait. The same applies to the liturgical death cult, where naming the deceased was a precondition for his or her real presence. Memoria does not simply mean remembrance, but social activity, which united the living and the dead as legal subjects (Oexle: 1982, 29 – 31). The adaptation of the sepulchral cardinal’s portrait to the “portrait of the saints” or the saints’ icons within the context of the aedicula evokes both the sacredness of the cardinal depicted and the iconic nature of his portrait. The iconic sepulchral portrait is both a representation and reincarnation or, expressed metaphysically, transubstantiation. This term was introduced by Heinrich Gomperz (1905, 92). The Roman cardinals’ tombs seem – by virtue of their architectural form and their use of animated portraits – to have both evoked and transcended death by applying this pictorial practice, i. e. the belief in transubstantiation: by fusing the presentation and that which is presented into a real corporeal presence in the picture or sculpture – derived from the cult of the saints. As long as the mortal remains were still to be found in the funerary monument, the effigy apparently sufficed as a symbolic “vicarious body”. Well into the late 15th century, portrait-like features were not very striking. It was, above all, the marble sculptures that displayed standardized facial features – with the exception of a few bronze effigies, for which one one may assume that death masks were used.41 The dead were physically present in the form of their mortal remains. As the number of cenotaphs increased during the Confessional Age, however, the sepulchral portrait was transformed from a symbolic to a real surrogate. The picture now no longer displayed a dead person, but someone living who, as the receptacle of the soul, appears to be inspirited (anima forma corporis) in the truest sense of the word. This does not mean to say that the cenotaph was the precondition for the sepulchral portrait bust to appear. Ever since the early 16th century – as already indicated above – busts had been used on the tombs of laypersons in Rome. It is, therefore, all the more interesting that it took the Roman clergy another generation to adopt this idea, too. It evidently 41 Bronze was used exclusively for tomb sculpture in the 15th and 16th centuries, and especially for sepulchral portraits. Only the tombs of Pope Sixtus’ IV della Rovere and Pope Innocence’ VIII Cibo, and the figures in the tombs of the three Roman cardinals Pietro Foscari († 1485), Paolo Emilio Cesi († 1537) and Federico Cesi († 1565) were presumed to be bronze effigies until the mid-16th century. There are isolated examples of statues honouring the popes, such as Guglielmo della Porta’s tomb for Paul III Farnese. And only isolated examples of bronze portraits can be found in Roman cardinals’ tombs in the 17th century : the portrait busts of the twin tombs at the Cappella dell’Annunziata in S. Maria sopra Minerva for Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani († 1621) and Cardinal Juan de Torquemada († 1468), as well as the clipeus executed as a bronze relief († 1676) in S. Maria sopra Minerva. On Foscari-Gisant and the sepulchral bronzes of the Quattrocento, see the recent work by Goldenbaum: 2010, 122 – 125.

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did not appreciate the portrait bust initially, even though one had, for instance, been inserted by the hand of Minos da F•esole in the town of Fiesole near Florence at the tomb of Bishop Leonardo Salutati († 1466). Developments in Rome, incidentally, differed from those in the rest of Italy. It took the clergy in the Eternal City quite some time – until the latter half of the 16th century – to adopt vitalized portrait busts for funerary monuments, and even then it framed them all the more decisively and effectively in aedicula architecture, thus ushering in the transformation of the tomb into the sepulchral altar or altar tomb. Some precursors to the altar tomb already existed which did not allude formally to the liturgical altar, but incorporated it instead. Well into the 16th century, however, the altar tomb – as a liturgical site – was a rare occurrence in Rome. A start was made by Pope Boniface VIII Caetani († 1303) with his tomb in Old St. Peter’s Basilica, which he integrated into the altar ciborium that he himself had donated, along with relics of St. Boniface IV. It was followed almost a century later by the Tomb of Cardinal Philippe d’AlenÅon († 1397) in St. Maria in Trastevere, and then that of Cardinal Antonio Martinez de Chiavez’ († 1447) in St. Giovanni in Laterano, and finally by the tomb of Pope Nikolaus V Perentucelli († 1454) in Old St. Peter’s Basilica.42 The rarity of the Roman altar tomb indicated that it was something special. And in the second half of the 16th century, a mass product for cardinals was born out of this rarity, distinguishing it from previous exemplars in that it dispensed with the liturgical function of the altar tomb, adopting instead the architectural form of the post-Tridentine columned aedicula tomb. The exclusive altar-tomb evolved in an age of confessions into an altar-like tomb with no liturgical functions. In the process, the clear reference of the aedicula variations to the altar’s dignified form was reinforced even more by the simultaneous appearance of the lively, vertical sepulchral portrait.

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Greshake, Gisbert (2006), Article “Seele”, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche 9, 2006, 375 – 376. Grisebach, August (1936), Römische Porträtbüsten der Gegenreformation, Leipzig: Keller. Haeffner, Gerd (1986), Vom Unzerstörbaren im Menschen. Versuch einer philosophischen Annäherung an ein problematisch gewordenes Theologoumenon, in: Wilhelm Breuning (ed.), Seele. Problembegriff christlicher Eschatologie, Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 159 – 191. Ieni, Giulio (1985), “Una superbissima sepoltura”: Il mausoleo di Pio V, in: Spantigati, Carlenrica/ Ieni, Giulio (ed.), Pio V e Santa Croce di Bosco. Aspetti di una comittenza papale, Alessandria, 31 – 48. Imorde, Joseph (2005), Träumende Prälaten. Zu einer “invenzione” Andrea Sansovinos, in: Die Jagiellonen: Kunst und Kultur einer europäischen Dynastie an der Wende zur Neuzeit, Nürnberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 375 – 383. Karsten, Arne (2010), Die Unsterblichkeit der Toten, in: Arne Karsten /Philipp Zitzlsperger (ed.), Vom Nachleben der Kardinäle. Römische Kardinalsgrabmäler der Frühen Neuzeit, Berlin: Mann, 11 – 22. Kämpf, Tobias (2004), Die Betrachter der Cäcilie: Kultbild und Rezeptionsvorgabe im nachtridentinischen Rom, in: David Ganz/Georg Henkel (ed.), Rahmen-Diskurse. Kultbilder im konfessionellen Zeitalter, Berlin: Reimer 2004, 99 – 141. Kohl, Jeanette (2007), Talking Heads. Reflexionen zu einer Phänomenologie der Büste, in: Rebecca Müller/Jeanette Kohl (ed.), Kopf und Bild. Die Büste in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 9 – 30. Kühlenthal, Michael (1976), Zwei Grabmäler des frühen Quattrocento in Rom: Kardinal Martinez de Chiavez und Papst Eugen IV, Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 16, 17 – 56. Kusch, Britta (1997), Zum Grabmal Innozenz’ VIII. in Alt-St. Peter zu Rom, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 41, 361 – 376. Ladegast, Anett (2010), Gesichter des Todes – Gesichter des Lebens. Zum Verhältnis von Körper und Porträt an römischen Grabmälern um 1500, in: Philipp Zitzlsperger (ed.), Grabmal und Körper – Zwischen Repräsentation und Realpräsenz in der Frühen Neuzeit. Tagungsband erschienen in kunsttexte.de 4 [www.kunsttexte.de]. Lentes, Thomas (2000), Auf der Suche nach dem Ort des Gedächtnisses. Thesen zur Umwertung der symbolischen Formen in Abendmahlslehre, Bildtheorie und Bildandacht des 14. –16. Jahrhunderts, in: Klaus Krüger/Alessandro Nova (ed.), Imagination und Wirklichkeit. Zum Verhältnis von mentalen und realen Bildern in der Kunst der frühen Neuzeit, Mainz: Von Zabern, 21 – 46. Locher, Hubert (1993), Das gerahmte Altarbild im Umkreis Brunelleschis. Zum Realitätscharakter des Renaissance-Retabels, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 56, 487 – 507. Lombardi, Ferruccio (1992), Roma. Palazzoi, Palazetti, Case. Progetto per un inventario 1200 – 1870, Rome: Edilstampa. Marangoni, Giovanni (1751), Chronologia Romanorum Pontificum superstes in pariete australi basilicae Sancti Pauli Apostoli viae Ostiensis, Rome: Rubeis. Mehler, Ursula (2001), Auferstanden in Stein: Venezianische Grabmäler des späten Quattrocento, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau. Meluzzi, Luciano (1976), I vescovi e gli arcivescovi di Bologna, Bologna: La Grafica Emiliana.

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Michalsky, Tanja (2000), Memoria und Repräsentation. Die Grabmäler des Königshauses Anjou in Italien, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Moroni, Gaetano (1845), Article “Giustiniani Benedetto”, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni 31, 1845, 219 – 220. Moroni, Gaetano (1853), Article “Sepoltura”, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni 64, 1853, 116 – 169. Moroni, Gaetano (1859), Article “Veralli, Fabrizio”, Dizionario di erudizione storicoecclesiastica da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni 93, 1859, 226 – 227. Oexle, Otto Gerhard (1982), Die Gegenwart der Toten, in: Herman Braet/Werner Verbeke (ed.), Death in the Middle Ages, Leuven, 19 – 77. Panofsky, Erwin (1964), Grabplastik. Vier Vorlesungen über ihren Bedeutungswandel von Alt-Ägypten bis Bernini, Köln: DuMont. Paschini, Pio (1922), La riforma del seppellire nelle chiese nel secolo XVI, La scuola cattolica 50, 1922, 179 – 200. Pastor, Ludwig Freiherr von (1927), Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Anfang des Mittelalters, Vol. 11, Freiburg: Herder. Satzinger, Georg (2003/2004), Michelangelos Cappella Sforza, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 35, 2003/2004, 327 – 414. Sestini, Francesco (1653), Il maestro di camera. Trattato di Francesco Sestini da Bibbena. Con l’aggionta dell’Habito Cardinalitio, di Michel Lonigo da Este, Rome: Il Moneta. Seville, Isidor of (2010), The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. and translated by Stephen A. Barney et. al. New York: Cambridge University Press. Syamken, Georg (1987), Hatte Luthers Unterscheidung zwischen Seele und Geist Einfluss auf die Grabbüsten der Gegenreformation in Rom, Idea 6, 1987, 39 – 52. Teuffel, Christa Gardner von (1982), Lorenzo Monaco, Filippo Lippi und Filippo Brunelleschi: die Erfindung der Renaissancepala, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 45, 1 – 30. Wassilowsky, Günther (2007), Päpstliches Zeremoniell in der Frühen Neuzeit. Das Diarium des Zeremonienmeisters Paolo Alaleone de Branca während des Pontifikats Gregors XV. (1621 – 1623), Münster : Rhema. Wassilowsky, Günther (2010), Die Konklavereform Gregors XV. (1621/22). Wertekonflikte, symbolische Inszenierung und Verfahrenswandel im posttridentinischen Papsttum. Stuttgart: Hiersemann. Windorf, Wiebke (2008), Giacomo della Porta und die Entwicklung des Ädikularahmens vom 16. bis zum mittleren 17. Jahrhundert, in: Hans Körner/Karl Möseneder (ed.), Format und Rahmen. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit, Berlin, pp. 95 – 125. Wölfflin, Heinrich (1926), Renaissance und Barock. Eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung des Barockstils in Italien, Munich: Bruckmann. Zitzlsperger, Philipp (2002), Gianlorenzo Bernini. Die Papst- und Herrscherporträts. Zum Verhältnis von Bildnis und Macht, Munich: Hirmer. Zitzlsperger, Philipp (2004a), Die Ursachen der Sansovino-Grabmäler im Chor von S. Maria del Popolo, in: Arne Karsten /Philipp Zitzlsperger (ed.), Tod und Verklärung. Grabmalskultur in der Frühen Neuzeit, Köln: Böhlau, 91 – 113. Zitzlsperger, Philipp (2004b), Von der Sehnsucht nach Unsterblichkeit. Das Grabmal Sixtus’ IV. della Rovere (1471 – 1484), in: Horst Bredekamp/Volker Reinhardt (ed.), Totenkult und Wille zur Macht. Die unruhigen Ruhestätten der Päpste in St. Peter, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 19 – 38.

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Zitzlsperger, Philipp (2008), Dürers Pelz und das Recht im Bild. Kleiderkunde als Methode der Kunstgeschichte, Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Zitzlsperger, Philipp (2010a), Requiem – Die römischen Papst- und Kardinalsgrabmäler der frühen Neuzeit. Ergebnisse, Theorien und Ausblicke des Forschungsprojekts, in: Arne Karsten /Philipp Zitzlsperger (ed.), Vom Nachleben der Kardinäle. Römische Kardinalsgrabmäler der Frühen Neuzeit, Berlin: Mann, 23 – 65. Zitzlsperger, Philipp (2010b), Formwandel und Körperwanderung in Rom – Vom Kardinalsgrabmal zum Kenotaph, in: Philipp Zitzlsperger (ed.), Grabmal und Körper – Zwischen Repräsentation und Realpräsenz in der Frühen Neuzeit. Tagungsband erschienen in kunsttexte.de 4 [www.kunsttexte.de].

Herman J. Selderhuis

Ars Moriendi in Early Modern Calvinism

Introduction According to the woodcut made in 1590 by Jacob Lederlein1 it must be awful to die like a Calvinist. The person on the bed – maybe John Calvin himself – represents all dying Calvinists and shows them as in despair because of the doctrine of predestination, while death is very near and a pastor unsuccessfully tries to give comfort. For a fruitful life of labor, a decent lifestyle and an orderly structured church Calvinism might be attractive, but when death has arrived it might be smarter to convert to Lutheranism. This at least is the message this picture seems to communicate as it gives a number of Bible quotations that should demonstrate the doctrine of predestination as unscriptural. The reformed doctrine of predestination therefore is especially in the hour of death more cause for despair than Lutheran tentationes or the Catholic fear of hell. This paper however does not deal with the way Calvinists died, but with how, according to the ars moriendi tracts in early modern Calvinism dealt with here, they were advised to prepare for death and how to die. Result is that if the advice given by these authors is followed, the death of a Calvinist can and should be less stressful than general opinion has it. In research on early modern ars moriendi literature, there has been a major concentration on the Lutheran tradition and to a lesser extent on works originating in the Swiss reformation such as Bullinger’s “Bericht der krancken”.2 Although the Swiss literature can be counted as an essential part of the reformed tradition, so far hardly any research has been done on literature from the second half of the sixteenth century, which can be qualified as Calvinistic. This in fact can be said of research not only on ars moriendi but on all aspects of dying, death and funerary rituals in early modern Calvinism. Remarkable is that when we 1 q Historical Museum of the Reformation. Exposed at the International Museum of the Reformation (Geneva). 2 See for an extensive bibliography : Reinis: 2007, 1 – 6; Schottroff: 2012.

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look at the pietistic and puritan period that comes soon after that, there is much larger number of publications on this topic.3 This means that in between these periods, as roughly the years 1550 – 1620 as the second generation of Calvinistic ars moriendi literature, there is a lacuna in research offering a multitude of topics for dissertations, book projects, conferences and exhibitions. This paper is an attempt to make a start on exploring this material and that’s being done by an analysis of three early modern Calvinist publications, that so far have been left nearly unnoticed, sharing this fate with many others. All three originate from Heidelberg and were published in the so called second Calvinistic period (1583 – 1622).4

Fig.: A Calvinist on his deathbed. Woodcut by Jakob Lederlein ( ca.1500–ca.1600) q Historical Museum of the Reformation. Exposed at the International Museum of the Reformation (Geneva).

3 See for example the literature mentioned in Cornelia Moore’s article: Moore: 1993, 9 – 18. 4 For literature on this period see: Wolgast: 1983; Selderhuis: 2006, 1 – 30.

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Simon Stenius: Calvinismus Heidelbergensis

Simon Stein (1540 – 1619)5 was born close to Meissen (Saxony) and studied in Leipzig and Wittenberg. In 1569 he got a job at the Lutheran Gymnasium in Bautzen, but in 1572 he was accused of Calvinistic viewpoints and was send away. After some wanderings he first taught at the famous Casimiranum in Neustadt an der Haardt (now known as Neustadt an der Weinstrasse), the place where most of the Heidelberg faculty temporarily were located after the Calvinists had been expelled by the Lutherans during the years 1576 – 1583. In 1584 Stein was appointed professor of ethics and Greek at the university of Heidelberg, and soon after he also taught rhetoric. In 1609 he became professor of history. Interesting to mention is that on November 5th 1617 at the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Reformation he recited a carmen heroicum in which he reported the victory over the Roman Catholic “doctrinal atrocities” in 361 Latin hexameters. For the theological faculty he had only minor significance, but quite famous became his anonymously published booklet called Calvinismus Heidelbergensis. In 1593 a first Latin version of this work appeared, soon followed by two German editions.6 Remarkable is the title of this work since the Heidelberg theologians and politicians carefully heeded to call themselves Calvinistic, and therefore this is the only publication from the side of the Heidelberg authors in which this name is used as self identification. Possibly this title was chosen to seduce especially a Lutheran audience outside of Heidelberg to buy and read this booklet. Although anonymously published, it is close to certain that Simon Stenius was the author of this fictive conversation intended to be an apology of Calvinism and more precise an apology of the reformed confessional policy in Heidelberg. In this publication the conversation is reported between two students named Nemesius and Agatho and their talk wants to make clear to the reader how Lutheran, orderly, normal and pleasant Calvinist Heidelberg and Calvinism in general is. Added to this apology of Calvinism is a short piece of no more than nine pages octavo discussing the anxieties (tentationes) on the deathbed and how to fight

5 ADB 36, 43 – 44; Drüll: 2002, 515 f. 6 Calvinismus jj HEIDELBERGENSIS.jj DIALOGVS jj Oder jj Von der Heydel=jjbergischen Calvinisten wandel/jj Ordnung/ Ceremonien vnd Lehrpuncten/jj Ein Gesprzch.jj Personen jj Nemesius vnd Agatho.jj Auß dem Latein in das Teutsch jj #[ue]bersetzt.jj Mit zuthuung/ wie die genandten Calvinisten jj jhre Krancke vnd Sterbends zu tr#[oe]sten pflegen.jj […] auffs new f#[ue]r augen gestellet.jj(vnd auß dem jj Latein verteutscht,jj) [Heidelberg] 1593. (VD16 S 8859) The edition that appeared in Hanau, also in 1593 has as title: Die Heydelbergische Calvinisterey/ in einem Lateinischen Gespräch erstlich außgangen: Nun aber den liebhabern der Warheit zu gutem/ in das Teutsch gebracht. (VD16 S 8860). See for an analyisis of this work also: Benrath: 1966, S. 49 – 82.

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these.7 This little tract starts with a presentation of the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism in which as a response to the question to what man’s only comfort in life and death is, reference is made to the comfort of being owned by Jesus Christ and to the certainty of eternal salvation and God’s everlasting care flowing out of that.8 After the content of this first Lord’s Day, as the 52 parts of the Heidelberg Catechism are called,9 has been underpinned with two pages full of Bible quotations, an overview of nine temptations of the devil is given, each directly followed by a response accompanied again by Bible quotations. These nine temptations are in fact listed as a conversation between Satan and the believer reaching a climax towards the end. Satan starts with stating that each sinner has deserved eternal death, to which the believer responds with pointing at the promise of the Gospel of forgiveness under condition of faith and repentance.10 “But aren’t your sins too many and too severe to receive forgiveness?”11 is the subsequent question which immediately is answered with the message that the grace of God is always greater and stronger than the power of sin. After that however Satan specifies his question by focusing on the issue of predestination and poses the question: “How do you know that the promises of the Gospel are valid for you?”12 The answer is a short and clear syllogism: God’s promises are for all believers and I am one of them, which to me has been confirmed in my baptism. According to the devil then this is not an argument for there are many hypocrites among those taking part in the sacraments. The believer replies to this and says he knows that this hypocrisy is a fact and once again states the necessity of faith if one wants to profit from the sacraments. But, thus continues the fifth temptation, if now your faith too is hypocritical? The believer answers only with quoting five passages from Scripture in which reference is made to the fruits of faith as proofs of that faith being true and real (syllogismus practicus). Next then is Satan’s observation that the faith of the dying believer is very weak, which the believer admits but he also adds that this is not a problem for the power of God will come to the rescue of the weak faith. “But what if still this weak faith disappears under the weight of the temptations?”, the devil asks.13 The believer answers with referring to the prayer of Jesus in which he 7 Typus oder Entwurff Etlicher der hefftigsten Anfechtungen/ mit welcher der Teufel Gottselige Hertzen? Sonderlich inn Todtsnöten zu erschrecken pfleget/ zu sampt angehefftem warhafftem und rechtchristlichem trost wider dieselbigen/ Allen Gottseligen zu lieb und dienst auß dem H. Evangelio beschrieben/ und auß dem Latein verteutscht. 8 Stenius: 1593, 93 ff. 9 Bierma: 2005. 10 ‘Gott verheisset mir vergebung und gnad/ umb Christi willen/ so ich der verheissungen des Evangelii glaube/ und buß thue’, Stenius: 1593, 95. 11 Stenius: 1593, 96. 12 ‘Wie weistu/ daß die verheissung des Evangelii auch dich angehören?’, Stenius: 1593, 96. 13 Stenius: 1593, 99.

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prays for all the elect. It is no surprise that the devil than again brings in predestination and asks the Calvinist believer how he knows that he is one of the elect. The answer is the confession that simply out of his faith he just knows to belong to the flock of Christ Jesus. When in a last attempt Satan asks if not the elect can be rejected, the response is fierce saying that the devil should get away immediately with his blasphemous lies, for Scripture makes it clear enough that no accusations whatever can be brought against the elect.14 With this answer – that apparently leaves Satan speechless – the discussion ends. This addendum fits to the content of the Calvinismus Heidelbergensis as this tract defends the Calvinist doctrine of predestination against attacks mainly from Lutheran theologians, that this doctrine would make believers desperate especially at death since no one could be sure about his or her eternal destiny. The nine extra-pages can be seen as a practical outline of what both students Nemesius and Agatho had been discussing, but the tract may as well have been intended as a guide to pastors and believers as it is structured similar as latemedieval and other protestant ars moriendi-literature.

3

Daniel Tossanus: Kurtzer Bericht

Daniel Toussain (1541 – 1602)15 as his name was before he Latinized it, originated from the French town MontbŒliard (region France-ComtŒ), where he became minister after having studied in Basel and Tübingen. After studies in Paris he was in 1560 appointed as teacher of Hebrew in Orleans, where two years later he became the pastor of the reformed congregation. Because of the situation in France after 1568 he regularly had to switch to other places and finally became in 1573 court preacher of Frederic III in Heidelberg. After the reintroduction of the reformed confession he in 1584 became preacher of the Heiliggeistkirche and additionally in 1586 was appointed to the chair of Greek that had become vacant after the departure of Johann Jakob Gryneaus. He started this position on March 15th with a treatment of the First Epistle of John and continued explaining the New Testament until his death in 1602. According to his posthumously published Opera Theologica he managed to comment on almost the whole New Testament in these years.16 Tossanus published a variety of pastoral works related to comfort in sit14 ‘Heb dich hinweg Satan/ mit dieser deiner überauß groben unnd Gottslästerlichen lügen’, Stenius: 1593, 101. 15 Cuno: 1898; BBKL XII., 353 – 358; Drüll: 2002, 530 f. 16 Cuno: 1898, 185.

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uations of death and loss.17 One of these was a booklet published in 1596 that was specifically meant for comfort in illness and as a preparation for death, both aspects closely linked to the pest that had hit Heidelberg in these years. The publication is called: “Kurtzer Bericht Wie man sich in sterbenden leufften der Zagheit erwehrren/ zu Gott schicken/ die seel erquicken/ und in todsnöten trösten sol”.18 It consists of four parts and the first part deals with the attitude of faith one should learn to take upon oneself while still healthy so that this faith can be of profit in times of disease or death. Remarkably the focus is here on the ars vivendi as training for the ars moriendi, or to put it even stronger : the ars moriendi is the ars vivendi. Who while still in health trains himself in prayer, in knowledge of Scripture and in knowing that God provides in every aspect of life – and here Tossanus uses frases similar to Lord’s day ten of the Heidelberg Catechism19 – knows where to find comfort and assurance of faith during times of trouble and affliction. Now what can be said of providence, also counts for predestination which is here described by Tossanus expressly as a source of comfort: Und die summa dises alles ist/ daß ein ieder Christenmensch gewiß sey/ daß er durch solche wahre erkantnis Gottes/ der durch Christum mit uns versöhnet/ und uns zu kindern angenommen hat/selig werde20 (And the sum of all this is, that every Christian may be certain that through such true knowledge of God who is reconciled with us through Christ and has adopted us as his children, will receive salvation.)

Tossanus continues his tract with elaborating on learning to live out of the promises of God’s covenant of grace, but states the necessity that from the side of the believers the demands of the covenant are met with.21 With this he means to 17 For example: Vier jj Trostpredigten:jj Vom waren grundt alles best#[ae]ndigen jj Trosts.jj Von den Himlischen Wonungen/ die vns jj Christus bereitet.jj Von dem richtigen/ gewissen Weg zum jj ewigen Leben.jj Ausz den letzten Worten vnsers ge=jjtrewen HERRN Jesu Christi: die da jj stehen Johannis am 14. Capitel/jj vers. 1.2.3.4.jj […] Geprediget/ durch jj Danielem Tossanum.jj, Neustadt/Haardt : Harnisch, Matthaeus, 1583 (VD16 T 1745). 18 Heidelberg 1596. ( VD16 T 1708) The edition printed in Oppenheim 1614 has a slightly different title: Kurtzer Bericht/ Wie man sich in Sterbensleufften verhalten/ zuforderst zu Gott schicken/ die Seel erquicken/ ein frischen frewdigen Muth behalten/ und endlich in Todesnöthen: Der Kleinmütigkeit wehren/ und wider allerley Feind/ das betrübte Gewissen trösten soll. ( VD17 23: 637362F). 19 “…nemlich/ daß dise Welt/ die lufft/ und unsere leiber/ ja alle element nicht also ungefehr/ sonder durch Gottes/ als des Schöpffers weißheit regirt werden/ daß er gute und böse lufft/ fruchtbare unnd unfruchtbare jar/ gesundheit und kranckheit/ nach dem er entweder straffen/ oder gnad anzeigen/ und uns zur busse und bekehrung auff mundern will/ sendet.” Tossanus: 1596, 10. 20 Tossanus: 1596, 14. 21 Tossanus: 1596, 15.

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describe the godly life as a life in faith, repentance, humility, prayer and sanctification, but also as a life in communion with other believers. Subsequently Tossanus states that a healthy spiritual life needs to be accompanied by a healthy body and this physical health can be attained by chastity and moderation. A healthy body and a healthy faith go together and it is this way of life that gives the believer enough resistance against the afflictions caused by illness and death. In the second part the afflictions, fears and anxieties that the believer has to face in illness or when death comes near are dealt with. Tossanus makes clear that here not the biblical fear of the Lord is meant for that fear comes forth out of repentance, humility and faith, but it is the sinful fear arising out of mistrust against God and out of a bad conscience.22 It is a fear that mainly can be found in those who in their life did not count with God or any of his commandments and then all of sudden get panicked when death is near. Still, believers sometimes also suffer from this fear and they too are confronted in times of need with fear and sorrows just as happened to Christ, but with them fear can not take root for it is fought off with hope and faith. In order to be able to do so, it is necessary to see where this fear comes from and Tossanus names three possible causes and directly adds to them three means to fight these. The first cause of fear is simply human weakness. In the first place it is primarily the assurance that results from baptism that helps against this weakness. The Christian should keep his eyes on baptism for this sacrament shows him that “he is no longer just a child of Adam and a weak creature, born out of weak parents, but that he is a child of God, baptized on the name of the holy trinity.”23 Next to baptism Tossanus sums up other means such as prayer, the communion of the saints, the reading of Scripture, trust on God’s providence and the conviction that fear does not bring anything but only arouses the wrath of God. The second cause of our fear is our guilty conscience that accuses us because of our sins and faults. Against these fears only confidence on God’s grace and the comfort that Christ is our advocate with the Father in heaven can help.24 As a third cause of fear Tossanus mentions the unbelief that such punishments as illness do not serve for our salvation and therefore would not be good for us. Although illness and death are the punishment of God upon the sins of us human beings, one should not fear these punishments as such but should repent and convert to God and should know that He as a father chastises his children and will turn all evil for the good.25 The almighty God does only what is good for his children. It would make no sense at 22 Tossanus: 1596, 23. 23 “nu mehr nicht ein blosses Adams kind/ unnd schwache creatur sey/ von schwachen eltern geboren/ sondern auch ein kind Gottes/ auff den namen der H. Dreyeinigkeit getaufft.” Tossanus: 1596, 25. 24 Tossanus: 1596, 27. 25 “daß er solches alles denen/ die ihn lieben/ zum besten wendet” Tossanus: 1596, 28.

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all to every day pray “Your will be done” and then resist God’s will when it comes to dying.26 Who believes in Christ has been incorporated in Him and does in no way need to fear death, for death now is, through the power of His death just a sweet sleep, a redemption out of the prison and hospital of this evil world, a trip home and the entrance into life eternal.27 It is a harmful lack of faith in God’s promises and plain foolishness if we are so attached to the things of life on earth and that we would not hasten to get to everlasting joy. Therefore, thus Tossanus ends this part of his publication, we as believers comfort ourselves with the certainty that our sins are forgiven and that the eternal kingdom has been given to us. That is why we happily depart from this life to go to the weddingfeast of the Lamb. We do not so much take notice of death but we focus on life eternal and we are happy that we can leave this life, in which everything squeaks and moans, behind us and can enter the heavenly Jerusalem. Here again Tossanus refers to the promise of the covenant. If we believe a human being when she or he promises us something, then we will certainly believe God.28 In the third part of his treatise Tossanus tells the reader that he or she can arm him-, and herself in the struggle of faith, especially at moments when strength fades away, by considering what God’s intentions might be with this suffering. Tossanus here concentrates on God’s providence. The sick person must be aware that his illness and suffering come from Him who is our heavenly Father with whom we are reconciled through Christ and who therefore simply can not want to harm us in any way but who constantly seeks the best for us, also He does this sometimes through these troubles. Next Tossanus lists a few goals God can have with sickness and suffering. God may want to exercise our faith by making it stronger through this struggle. He may want to purify it just as gold is purified through fire and thus is made more valuable. God may also let his children fall ill so they get enough of this life and thus he can arouse in them a longing for eternal life.29 The patient therefore must not only keep his eyes on his “bruises, blisters and boils” and with that just on his outward body, but should look at the Prince of Life living in his heart through faith. Life on this earth is no joy in itself, but it will be if one is constantly prepared for life eternal, for if that’s your attitude dying becomes a lot easier.30 In the fourth part of his tract Tossanus lines out what is to be expected of a believer when she or he has recovered from an illness or disease. This part is 26 Tossanus: 1596, 31. 27 “nun mehr durch die krafft seines tods/ ein sanffter schlaff/ ein erlösung auß dem kercker und spitel dieser schnöden welt/ und ein heimfahrt ist und eingang zum ewigen leben”, Tossanus: 1596, 29. 28 Tossanus: 1596, 32. 29 “eine begierde des ewigen lebens.” Tossanus: 1596, 36. 30 “so kompt uns der tod gar leicht an”, Tossanus: 1596, 38.

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according to Tossanus very necessary for usually we promise to God a lot when we are in need, but these promises are after recovery soon forgotten. However God can not be fooled and who does not improve his life after regaining health, in fact calls upon God to punish him or her again with some kind of illness.31 In order to prevent that this should happen Tossanus has added a help-list of Bible quotations on thankfulness and devotion to God. As a conclusion of his tract, Tossanus first adds a meditation on Psalm 91 in which all four elements are once again repeated as in a summary, followed by a number of quotations from the church father Cyprian, citing words Cyprian supposedly uttered when he was about to die.32 With this rather unexpected supplement out of Cyprian Tossanus ends his tract.

4

Zacharias Ursinus: Erinnerung/ Wessen sich ein/ Christ

Zacharias Ursinus (1534 – 1583) was born in Breslau (the present WrocŁaw) and studied at Wittenberg under Philipp Melanchthon from 1550 on.33 In the fall of 1558 he became professor at the Elisabethschool in Breslau but had to leave soon after because of his Calvinistic views on the Lord’s supper. After some wanderings he became professor of systematic theology in Heidelberg in 1562, a function in which he stayed until his death in 1583. He is best known for the fact that he was the main author of the Heidelberg Catechism. In 1563 Heidelberg was hit by the plague. The people at court and at the university fled the city, but Ursinus stayed since it was his obligation to preach and to take pastoral care of the sick in such times. On behalf of this pastoral task Ursinus wrote a little “commentary on mortality and on Christian ways of comfort”, as Melchior Adam calls it in his biography of Ursinus.34 Adam mentions also that it was first published in German35 and then translated into Latin.36 31 “daß er zum andern mal/ und zum dritten mal kompt/ mit desto schwereren straffen/ biß er uns in seinem zorn weggerafft habe”, Tossanus: 1596, 42. 32 “Etliche schöne tröstliche sprüch/ gezogen auß einer Schrifft/ des alten Märtyrers Cypriani/ die er in sterbens leufften gestelt hat.” Tossanus: 1596, 53 ff. 33 For Ursinus see: Drüll: 2002, 536 ff. 34 Anno sexagesimo tertio lues petsilens aulam, curiam Academiam, Collegiam Sapientiae dissipavit, ac locis disiunxit: Ursinus autem domi remansit, et commentariolum de mortalitate et consolationibus Christianis, in usum popularem, conscripsit’. Adam: 1620, 534. 35 Erinnerung/ Wessen sich ein/ Christ bey der absterbung/ und begräbnis seiner mitbrüder/ trösten/ und wie er sich selbst seli=/ lich zu sterben bereiten sol// Zu jederzeit/ sonderlich aber in/ sterbensläufften tröstlich und/ nützlich // Gestelt durch D. Zachariam/ Ursinum// etc. 36 ‘qui e Teutonico in Latinum sermonem est conversus’, o.c. 534. The Latin edition has some additions as compared to the German version and was published in 1612 in the Opera Theologica of Ursinus, edited by Quirinus Reuter under the title: Pia meditatio mortis/ et

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The first two German editions were published anonymously, one in Heidelberg37, the other in Zürich38. The editions of 1589, published in Herborn39, and of 1597 published in Siegen40, both also after Ursinus’s death, did bear his name on the title page. So far hardly any attention has been given to this interesting example of Calvinistic ars moriendi literature.41 The booklet deals with – in the first part – the comfort for the fellow believer when a dear one dies and in the second – and much longer part – with the reader’s own preparation on death. Remarkably there is no reference to the plague although it in fact was the occasion for writing this little commentary. In the first part Ursinus lists four arguments for a Christian funeral. The first argument he mentions is that through such a funeral we confess that we expect the resurrection of the body, since our bodies were not created for this temporal, but for eternal life. In the second place is such a funeral also a symbol of love towards the brother or sister that passed away. For through a funeral we demonstrate that such a fellow believer did not die in our hearts and that we suffer together as Christian community because now we have to miss this brother or sisters with his or her specific gifts of God. In the third place we come together at the funeral to jointly thank God for all the good He has given us in this brother or sister. Also we thank God for the fact that we ourselves may have communion with Christ and that our death too will be an entrance into life eternal. The fourth argument is at the same time the transition to the second and largest part of the booklet. A Christian funeral calls upon us to ponder upon our own death and to prepare for dying. This last argument, referring to the preparation of the death of the reader of this book, Ursinus then splits up into four aspects. Every human being should first be aware that he is constantly in danger of death. Every day there is an endless amount of dangers around us that can all of a sudden bring our life to an end and then eternal life or eternal death awaits us.42 He who wants to take part in eternal life must come to conversion,43 and must long for God’s grace, for anyone who is overtaken by death in a situation of being without repentance and unconverted, will be lost forever. Because after death

37 38 39 40 41 42 43

consolationum adver-/ sus eius horror, tum PAQA-/ sjeur pq|r eu¢amas_am. // Tractatus utilis et necessaries // a // D. Zach. Ursino // Scriptus idiomate Germanico Anno MDLXIV. // Quo tempore lues passim grassabatur in ora Rhenana: Nunc primum in Latinum sermonem conversus. In Ursinus: 1612, col. 910 – 922. VD 16 E 3772. VD 16 ZV 5351. VD 16 U 317. Quotations are from this edition. VD 16 U 318. G. den Hartogh published a Dutch translation with a brief introduction. Ursinus: 2003. Ursinus: 1563, 7. “Also daß wir in diesem leben müssen bekeret werden”, Ursinus: 1563, 7.

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there is nothing left to do for Satan, he tries to keep people away from Christ during our life on earth. Ursinus says that Satan tries to accomplish this especially on the deathbed where he makes use of all his tricks and power to bring believers in all kinds of anxieties (Anfechtungen) in order to try to let the believer fall, “in eternal doubt and blasphemy of God”.44 And even if Satan is not working himself, each believer has to wrestle enough with his own conscience that confronts us with our guilt and with God’s righteous judgment. Every human being has to deal with this and if it were only in the final end.45 Therefore should everyone be aware that there is no salvation outside of Christ and that dying without Him is horrible.46 The second aspect Ursinus deals with is that we just need to know what the cause is for us being threatened by temporal and eternal death. For the answer to this question Ursinus refers to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter five where sinning against God’s majesty is mentioned as this cause. Everyone therefore should humble himself for God and confess to have deserved suffering and death. Subsequently he describes in the same terminology as can be found in Lord’s day four and five of the Heidelberg Catechism the necessity of satisfaction for the guilt caused by sin which satisfaction can not be made by human beings but only by Christ. Ursinus ends this passage with once again noting the earnestness of dying.47 The third aspect is the comfort resulting from the afore mentioned, which is a comfort for the dying brother or sister in the faith as well as in one’s own death. Once again Ursinus stresses the necessity of conversion. “Through the preaching of the Gospel God lets redemption of sin and death being offered to all people, but commands us in all seriousness to accept these with a true faith, which means that in our hearts we take it for certain and trust God that for the sake of Jesus Christ He has accepted us again as his children and as heirs to eternal life and that forever He will be our merciful God and father.”48 God regularly repeats this promise in the Bible and confirms this in the holy sacraments baptism and the Lord’s supper, which Ursinus defines as “visible pledge and seal of this divine grace”.49 This all means that we do not need to fear death: “So hat der Todt an uns nicht mehr/ damit er uns köndte schrecken.”50 (So for us death has nothing more that he can scare us with.) What should be feared in death, namely the death of 44 “in ewiger verzweifflung und Gotteslesterung zu stürtzen”, Ursinus: 1563, 8. 45 “an irem letzten end.” Ursinus: 1563, 9. 46 “daß billich allen/ die ausserhalb Christo seind/ nichts also grausam und schrecklich ist als der todt/ und nicht also ein gering ding umb sterben sey”, 11. 47 Ursinus: 1563, 14 f. 48 Ursinus: 1563, 17 f. 49 “sichtbare pfand und warzeichen dieser göttlichen gnad.” Ursinus: 1563, 19. 50 Ursinus: 1563, 20.

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the soul, God’s wrath and judgment, the eternal pain in body and soul, has all come down on Christ and has been conquered by Him. And who has received part in Him through the Holy Spirit, will share in this victory. Thereupon Ursinus returns from dying back to life and describes how this certainty in death has its effects in a life in which sins dies off and a life pleasant to God. The fear of death radically changes in a longing to once be delivered of all sin and to be taken up in the heavenly communion with Christ and all the saints. In opposition to the fact that our body will turn into dust stands the certainty of the resurrection of the dead. The funeral then is a means through which the body “can lay off this sinful and mortal nature”51 in order to rise again at Christ’s return and to then be reunited with the soul. For that reason the Bible speaks about death as a sleep and about the grave as a bedroom.52 This all means that there is no reason to resist God’s will when the moment of death comes but that we can in faith and obedience commit ourselves to him. Nevertheless the assistance of the Holy Spirit is still needed because Satan can pretty much scare us with the physical pain of dying and the anxieties (Anfechtungen, tentationes) with which he assaults the elect.53 Finally Ursinus comes in a fourth part to the concluding question how, taking into account all of this, “we prepare ourselves for dying in such a way that we have this comfort in life and death not only in our hearts, but that we actually experience it as such also.”54 This according to Ursinus can only be accomplished through a true faith and confidence which by the way God himself wants to work out in us through his Holy Spirit. This preparation on death is demonstrated in a daily desire to serve God, to see and to confess our guilt more and more and to see and to praise God’s mercy. Gratitude and self-denial are the characteristics of Ursinus’s ars moriendi. “All of our life must be nothing else than a permanent school in which we, through zealously listen to God’s Word and meditate upon it, learn to die blessedly.”55 That is why self-examination is necessary, just as much as the daily prayer in which we ask God to strengthen our faith so that we do not get stuck in any anxiety and that we receive more and more of the Holy Spirit, which is also the reason why Ursinus ends his tract with a prayer for strength and trust.

51 Ursinus: 1563, 26. 52 “Darumb auch Gott an vielen orten in seinem wort den zeitlichen Todt der glüabigen einem schlaff/ und ihre gräber einem sanfften ruhebett oder schlaffkamer vergliecht”, 28. 53 Ursinus: 1563, 29. 54 Ursinus: 1563, 32. 55 Ursinus: 1563, 38.

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Theological analysis

Although, like said above, research into early modern reformed ars moriendi literature has only just started, and because of this it is too early to draw decisive conclusions and make comparisons, still a few peculiarities can be mentioned. 1) Remarkable in comparison to late medieval literature and in a more restricted way to Lutheran literature on the topic, is that ars moriendi becomes ars vivendi. The focus is not on dying but on dying off. Not the death of the sinner at the end but the death of sins during life stands at the focus. Out of the certainty that death has been conquered, a description of what this means for living is given. 2) Regarding the assurance of faith there is clear similarity with Lutheran literature in that there is a fundamental change from the late medieval uncertainty to a certainty of salvation in the Sterbebücher of the Reformation. Yet a difference is that Calvinist literature in addition to anxieties related to sin and guilt, there are those related to faith and predestination. 3) So, predestination is taken as a doctrine that might cause for Anfechtungen in sickness and death. The way the topic is dealt with shows that it was an issue for Calvinistic believers and their doubts. 4) The tracts treated here supply no basis for statements made in recent research where for example it is said that the affective spirituality of the late medieval period after the Reformation changes into “calm gratitude and unmoved obedience.”56 “Calm” and “unmoved” are qualities that do not fit with the state the suffering and dying reformed believers described in these tracts are in, however it is not as bad and frightening as the Lederlein-picture illustrates. Emotions are deep and many, but always related to the basis of the certainty of faith. 5) Different from the Lutheran literature is also the repeated call for conversion and sanctification of life. Especially Ursinus, the pupil of Melanchthon, stresses the need for a change of heart and lifestyle, and he too, speaks remarkably often about the work of the Holy Spirit. 6) Noteworthy also are the references to both sacraments baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sources of certainty, just as it can be found in the Sterbeliteratur of Luther and Bugenhagen.57 7) At first glance it seems that Calvinistic literature is more catechetical and doctrinal in the sense that it wants to teach on the causes of death and the goals of illness, and that it has more Bible references than the earlier protestant ars moriendi tracts and sermons. 56 E.g. Reinis: 2007, 255. 57 Reinis: 2007, 254

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8) Prominent is the notion of the covenant, which is regarding the place of the covenant in reformed theology not surprising, and yet is different from Lutheran and Catholic literature. This implies also that Calvinistic ars moriendi tracts focus less on referring to the sufferings of Christ and more to the content of the covenant as a source of consolation 9) Finally there is a remarkable attention for the value of a healthy body and the physical aspects of the resurrection. In order to return to the picture at the beginning. According to the tracts I dealt with, death for a Calvinist can’t be as horrible as shown there. But once again, these tracts deal with theory and further research of for example ego-documents could demonstrate if Calvinists did experience this theory as to work in practice.

Bibliography Adam, Melchior (1620), Vita Ursini, in: Vitae Germanorum Theologorum, Francofurti ad Moenum 1620, 534. Benrath, Gustav Adolf (1996), Das kirchliche Leben Heidelbergs in den Jahren 1593 bis 1595, Heidelberger Jahrbücher 10, S. 49 – 82. Bierma, Lyle (ed.) (2005), An Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism: Sources, History and Theology, Grand Rapids. Cuno, Friedrich Wilhelm (1898), Daniel Tossanus der Ältere, Professor der Theologie und Pastor (1541 – 1602), 2 vol., Amsterdam 1898. Drüll, Dagmar (2002), Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1386 – 1651, 515 – 516. Moore, Cornelia Niekus (1993), Praeparatio ad Mortem. Das Buch bei Vorbereitung und Begleitung des. Sterbens im protestantischen Deutschland des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, in: Pietismus und Neuzeit, vol. 19, 9 – 18. Reinis, Austra (2007), Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519 – 1528), Aldershot, 1 – 6. Schottroff, Luise (2012), Die Bereitung zum Sterben- Studien zu den frühen reformatorischen Sterbebüchern (R5AS, Volume 5), Göttingen. Selderhuis, Herman J. (2006), Eine attraktive Universität – Die Heidelberger Theologische Fakultät 1583 – 1622, in: Herman J. Selderhuis/Markus Wriedt (Ed.), Bildung und Konfession, Theologenausbildung im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung, Tübingen, 1 – 30. Stenius, Simon (1593), Calvinismus Heidelbergensis, Heidelberg, 93 – 95. Ursinus, Zacharias (2003), Stervenskunst, translated by dr. G. den Hartogh, Kampen: De Groot Goudriaan. Wolgast, Eike/Classen, Peter (1983), Kleine Geschichte der Universität Heidelberg, Berlin.

Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen

Spacing Death – Facing Death: Conceptualizing the Encounter With Death During the Early Modern Period Whatever we do with the dead they will not go away. Whether we entomb and isolate them or scatter their ashes, they remain as ghosts in our memories and faced with their continuing presence we have no option but to learn to live with them (Cox/Gilbert: 1989, 1).

In this way Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert introduce their selection of English ghost stories for an Oxford anthology from 1989. Their straightforward remark is appealing, since it immediately sparks the question: how are we to live with the dead or death at large? Different periods have found different means and ways to do so. In this paper I shall try to present some trends in the way early modern culture approached and handled death within the Lutheran tradition in Scandinavia. I wish to put particular emphasis on the spatial implications of death – the way in which the abstract notion of death became spatially manifest, taking up room and asserting its presence in the consciousness of the early modern beholder. This paper is an attempt to probe into the implications of the urge during this period to demonstrate and manifest death. Finally I shall examine the abandonment of what can be understood to be the early modern mentality concerning the representation of death. By doing so I hope to show the way in which death was approached and grasped, particularly in Scandinavia, but also in the Lutheran realm more generally from the sixteenth until the nineteenth centuries.1 The following pages represent a series of reflections on adjacent topics and phenomena, employing a novel approach to the study of mortuary culture. Since at least the 1990s the study of death has been firmly situated within a discourse on memorial practices.2 Other more specialized surveys have certainly been published, but the majority of studies on death culture seem to take their point of departure in the concepts of remembrance and commemoration. This per1 I am grateful to Mette Birkedal Bruun who read and commented on the first draft of this paper. 2 An impression of the questions and results accomplished by this line of research can be achieved by consulting volumes such as van Bueren/van Leerdam: 2005; Williams: 2006; Meys: 2009.

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spective has indeed given us valuable insights, and continues so to do, but it may for all that skew our view on the visual culture of death and offers, perhaps, too limited a range of explanations. What I attempt here is to discuss the fact that uninterruptedly from the late Middle Ages and throughout the early modern period, death and dying remain a topic of no little importance to visual and material culture. The reformations of the sixteenth century may have changed certain aspects of it, but the theme itself remained as vibrant as ever: death was to be found everywhere, especially in the churches. This changed with the onset of what we could call modernity with the eighteenth century ; but why do the representations of death then begin to disappear? Why this gradual loss of interest in depicting and showing death, culminating with the advent of the twentieth century? What changed? These questions cannot be answered solely from a memorial perspective, but need a wider approach. While not offering any complete system of analysis, I hope to offer a compass-point for such studies. My paper falls into three parts. The first section, The Visibility of Death, revolves around how death is made visible. The second part, Making Death Manifest, asks why death is made thus visible. The modes of representation in question here are shared across confessions, but their interpretations remain imbedded in particular confessional cultures, and my focus is first and foremost the Lutheran standpoint. The last part, entitled The Location of the Soul, discusses the relation between the body of the deceased and the space the soul was believed to occupy after death. This last theme is chosen in order to illustrate the close ties between the tangible, manifest space of the body and beliefs in the metaphysical space of the soul, in order to demonstrate how changes in this belief were instrumental in the transformation of early modern Lutheran death culture at the dawn of the modern period.

1

The Visibility of Death

If we are to discuss the visibility of death, it is of some relevance to ask what death is. The question may seem trite – or evoke a vast philosophical inquiry, which indeed I will not approach no nearer here. However, when discussing how the early modern period envisaged death and integrated it into everyday life and, specifically, into religious culture, we surely must define some fundamental elements, from which basis the question can be addressed and elaborated. Thus in this first part I hope to establish some basic outlines as to where and how death can be understood to be seen or encountered, and give a brief sketch of the structures at work, when dealing with the internal rationalization of the attempt to depict and explain death. This does not pertain specifically to the early

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modern period, but in the second and third parts I shall attempt to apply what is discussed here more firmly in this historical context. When referring to the idea or notion of death, we are mostly addressing the entropic force of slow decay, the gradual dissolution of matter, the deliberate disintegration which sets in at life’s beginning. In his influential essay The Free Man’s Worship of 1903, Bertrand Russell reflects on this basic condition of all existence, concluding: “Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built” (Russell: 1985, 67). What I would wish to draw from Russell’s words is the fact that when speaking of the visibility of death, and the cultural appropriation of death during the early modern period, we are basically dealing with an attempt to establish meaning in an existential experience shared by every living organism. It is thus, as Russell suggests, out of the acknowledgement of the ultimate end of everything that despair grows, but it is also from this sense of hopelessness that a fertile potential of explanation and rationalization is created, if not wrested, out of sheer necessity. Decay forces a conceptualizing into existence which sparks an artistic, material production that enables people, in our case early modern Lutheran people, to come to terms with death and disintegration, making life with the knowledge of this condition livable and perhaps even fruitful. On the one hand there is death as a force of nature, quite beyond the control of mankind. On the other hand there is death as something alluded to, interpreted and represented. It is this second layer, death as a thing interpreted and constructed, which is to occupy us here.

1.1

Death Made Comprehensible through the Body – the Dying Body as a Symbol

Death as an abstract idea is basically unapproachable and incomprehensible. However, it can be made to seem understandable and manageable through cultural processing, as for instance when we today define death as a clinical or biological condition. We insert death into a semantic system which allows us to comprehend the end-result of decay and departure. Thus it is the cultural interpretations and representations of this ‘great unknown’ which give it form, and even identify it as a condition or category in the first place. In order to achieve such understanding, death has to be interpreted in an iconographic sense, according to cultural commonplaces concerning specific signs and details, which are understood to demarcate death (i. e. old age, wrinkles, and sickness). Such a cultural system of interpretative conventions could, in a Blumenbergian sense (Blumenberg: 1966), be described as the answers, renewed over time, to ques-

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tions which remain the same. What is death? is the basic question, and each era, as Blumenberg would have it, has to find adequate answers. The early modern period had its own explanations, and communicated the answers in ways distinctly at variance with the modern way of doing so. There are two different modes of demonstrating or interpreting death, both located within the same system of representation; the body as carrier of death and the artistic representation of death. In the first mode, corporeal aging and ultimate end is a way to perceive or sense death (Fig. 1). Put bluntly, when it is accepted that aging and decay are linked with or point towards the abstract notion of death, they become vehicles by which death can be physically perceived.

Fig. 1: Stages in the Life of a Woman. Etching. Cologne, c. 1650.

Then there is the artistic allusion to death – be it pictorial, written or musical – which is able to convey the same meaning as the cadaver itself. The way that art does so is by mimetically substituting representations of decay for the beholder’s personal experience of it.3 The representation draws its contents from the dying body in order to show the dying body. Both the actual and the represented dead bodies give form to the abstract idea of death. The representation of death makes it understandable, graspable and tangible. One could even say that to represent death through art, or to identify a real, dead body with death, 3 Concerning the topic of mimesis and art see Gebauer & Wulf: 1996.

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makes death into a state of existence in the first place: it turns it into a condition which actually is in a continuum with the living body and community. By representing or creating death as a state which was not there in the first place, death is invented and shaped according to cultural conceptions of society and the self. To clarify : death as the notion of a thing nonfigurative and non-existing has to be mediated in order to become a state and be made understandable. One way to achieve this mediation is by reading aging and decay as representations of death. One can perceive the gradual wasting of the body as alluding to the state of death looming at some uncertain point in the future, but perhaps more clearly, death can be considered to be manifest if not indeed present through the actual corpse or corporeal remains (Fig. 2). Once certain bodily conditions and states are identified as expressions of death and dying, such conditions when encountered – whether in the mirror or in the interaction with others – will remind us of death and create an image of it. One has however to keep in mind that these perceived representations serve solely as symbols alluding to death. We see the consequences of death and dying, not death itself. The body is thus perhaps one of the strongest pointers to understanding not death itself, but its omnipresence and unavoidability.

Fig. 2: The dead body. Here a cat carcass. Photo: MWJ.

Images and depictions are illustrative in the same way as the body, but the image is able to do more. It can make apparent what the physical remains are not readily able to do or show, by adding complexities to the representation. This

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might be text or accompanying details and images, supporting the main motif for example (Fig. 3). In other words the artistic presentation is able to show more than what can be learned from the body alone, and enables complexities to be added to the meaning inferred. For instance it allows the rendering of metaphysical notions invested into death and makes it possible to present all that ensues from the point where, for example, the corpse reaches the limits of its obvious symbolic, communicative power.

Fig. 3: ‘Schau ich sterb / und erwerb/ Gotes Erb’. Etching. German, 1680.

The body can thus be understood as a representation of death. This could, for instance, be through corporeal fixation, which is to be the main example in what follows. Let us now turn to specific features in early modern Scandinavian culture. One of the traditionally strongest and most frequent experiences of death as a presence was, and probably still is, in the encounter with the one who is dying. During the early modern period the obit was perhaps the most poignant way in which death could be seen and sensed. The artistic production alone which

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sprang from this testifies to its importance as pivotal in the wish to make death palpably present and manifest. In his story The Last Day of 1852 Hans Christian Andersen was later to formulate poetically the charged nature of the deathbed: ‘The most holy among all days in life is the day on which we die; this is the final day, the day of the grand, holy transformation’ (Andersen: 197, 361). His words give a sense of the crucial, dire and ceremonious emotions which were invested in the time spent around the deathbed – still during the early modern period. In fact the ritualized behaviour surrounding the deathbed was built around a number of established stations, giving the entire proceeding an episodic quality, in which each consecutive ‘iconographic scene’ offered ways for those involved to sense and understand death. Thus it is no surprise that to the early modern Lutherans the act of dying was accompanied by closely observed, ritualized actions which were not only intended for the comfort of the dying, but also served a didactic purpose for those witnessing the last moments. Martin Luther touches upon this in his preface to a collection of funeral psalms published in 1542, a text to which I shall return more than once. There Luther addresses both the necessity to face death in order to understand salvation, as well as the need to look beyond the actual guise in which death is presented. In doing so he gives us an unequivocal pointer to the dualistic or paradoxical thinking embedded in his theology, and demonstrates to us why death needs to be seen. He states: Setzt aus den Augen alle hessliche Anblick des Todes in unserm sterbenden Leibe, und zeucht erfur eitel holdselige und fröliche Anblick des Lebens, da er spricht. Es wirt geseet verweslich, und wird aufferstehen unverweslich. Es wird geseet in unehre (das ist heslicher schendlicher gestalt) und wird aufferstehen in herrligkeit. Es wird geseet in schwacheit, und wird aufferstehen in krafft. Es wird geseet ein natürlicher Leib, und wird aufferstehen ein geistlicher Leib (Luther : 1883 – 2009, 478).

The deathbed, where friends and family gathered around the dying, was the first instance of such iconic scenes or situations, in which death or the idea of death was made present and spatially manifest. A space was here fully dedicated to the act of dying and consolation. Of course death itself did not become visible by this: but through the ritualized instigation of the proceedings at the deathbed, such as the singing of psalms, the praying together, or the dying holding a crucifix and praying alone, all were assured that they were in fact witnessing death. The invisible and incomprehensible was made present, tangible and understandable to all. Once dead, the deceased lying on show in the deathbed, to be seen, greeted, mourned and feasted over during the ensuing wake, was another iconic episode in which death was tangible and visible: again, not death itself, but its effect and its consequences blended with the idea of it and became the visible face of death. After days or weeks came the funeral, another step in the visualization and

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rationalization of death. The body was carried to the church, accompanied by the tolling of bells and a procession of family as well as friends. The corpse was brought into the church, where the funeral service was held. During this part of the ceremony, the deceased was carried from home and lifted or driven to the church and was thereby exposed to parish and community : death was paraded through the landscape. Finally, to complete the cycle, there is the grave marker, the epitaph or the memorial commemorating the departed (Fig. 4). In these we find yet another way in which death was made manifest. Here, by the grave, the memory of the deceased might become a symbol of the act of passing and a way in which death could linger and be given form through the remains of those passed away. It is noteworthy that from the moment someone began to die and the entire early modern ritual machinery was put to work in order to secure what was believed to be a successful death for the dying, a process was also set in motion, which transformed the dead from a person or individual into a potent didactic symbol. That is, some one, or rather some thing, that could serve the community as a reminder of its own eventual death and the dogma as to the afterlife. To the insiders, those who knew the deceased, the dying in the deathbed and all later stages of the funeral ritual were of course instances of mourning and bidding farewell. To the outsider, however, these ritual situations were a process which removed the deceased from society and through an aesthetization of the act of dying, altered the proceedings into actions which ultimately served to give form to the abstract, formless notion of death and showed the community what death was.

1.2

To Show Death and Interpret Death

As we have seen, at specific moments, such as the deathbed, death can be understood to reveal itself by itself, so to speak, but otherwise it has to be represented in order to become visible. This was at least the belief during the early modern period. We could thus say that during the late Middle Ages and early modern period, death had to be seen or addressed concretely in order to be understood. This trend has its roots in Antiquity, but the ancient models of death representation were developed tremendously during the Middle Ages (Binski: 1996). Especially the later Middle Ages established the foundations for the visual language applied to death and dying in the early modern period, in the Lutheran realm as elsewhere. In view of these observations the following, as regards the representation of death in the early modern period, should be stressed. Once visualized, death seems to take over the space in which it is manifested. Stated bluntly, death

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Fig. 4: Sandstone epitaph, 1750. Maria Magdalene Parish Church, East-Jutland (Denmark). Photo: MWJ.

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seems, once present, to draw attention. However, whose attention is aroused and who channels this attention? The answer to these questions rests with the prior question, whose message and authority are communicated through the depiction or visualization of death? This has already been touched upon above, where it was pointed out how funeral proceedings on the inside held one meaning, closely linked to the relations of the bereaved with the deceased, whereas the Church from the outside always strove to shift the emphasis away from the personal, insider view towards a broad understanding of death pertaining to the community at large. As for the control of the interpretation of the representations of death during such ceremonies as funerals, a great many different agents were at play. These agents ranged from the staging of death by the Church, in order to impress certain ideals on the congregation, to the individual commemorating a deceased friend or family member, targeting a strictly private audience. Within this span, death could be addressed very differently, but at the same time meanings could overlap and become the object of struggle and conflict, where opposed agencies laid claim to the same representation, but invested different interpretations in the subject of strife. At the outset we stated that the dead body and the artistic reproduction of death are ultimately linked and part of the same representational system (Fig. 5) – the lifeless body becomes an image and representations draw on it as a source. Returning to the case of the deathbed, death was here visualized through the individual. Lying on the deathbed the deceased became a dual representational glimpse of both that which he or she once was when alive, as well as a symbol or image of the idea of death. And later, when the body was carried to the churchyard to be buried, it continued to be this representation, but now transferring its visual acuity from the corpse to the grave. The grave and grave marker or epitaph now took on the same dual representational character, only as a further abstraction in representation of both individual and death.

Fig. 5: The real and represented skull. Photo: The National Museum of Denmark.

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So far I have discussed how death can be understood and interpreted via the mortal remains of an individual. Demonstrations taking their point of departure in a specific person or body, thus establish an understanding of death closely tied to that individual. He or she becomes a representative of death. But death can also be made visible from the opposite direction, aiming not to show death through a specific instance, but rather at depicting the idea of death in general. This is the memento mori tradition, seeking to inspire penitence, self-improvement and an awareness of life’s brevity. Here the generic motifs are not rooted in the individual, but seek to appeal to and target as many as possible through a non-specific content (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6: Memento mori. Detail on epitaph, 1578. Svindinge, island of Funen (Denmark). Photo: MWJ.

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While in many ways the memento mori tradition was founded on ancient motifs, ultimately the Church was the most influential shaping force behind these images and representations as they developed through the Middle Ages. For both Catholics and Lutherans it was of importance to employ death as an instrument for the improvement of mankind. Death was a heuristic tool and the emblematic representations of it were convenient short-hand symbols to be employed whenever possible. In the preface of 1542 quoted above, Luther confirms exactly this stance by first making a long list of appropriate lines from scripture to be incorporated into grave monuments, and then stating: Wenn man auch sonst die Greber wolt ehren, were es fein, an die Wende, wo sie da sind, gute Epitaphia oder Sprüche aus der Schrifft drüber zu malen oder zu schreiben, das sie fur augen weren denen, so zur Leiche oder auff den Kirchoff giengen, nemlich also, oder dergleichen (Luther : 1883 – 2009, 480).

However, the general qualities of the memento mori tradition were often extended, or perhaps rather an attempt was made by church authorities to extend them, into the preserve of the deceased individual, and representations of personal death. In other words a contest took place, in which the Church would try to claim the interpretation of the dead individual as well as his grave, and divert these representations from the specific and into the general (Jürgensen: 2009). That is to say, the Lutheran Church sought to employ the death of the individual for the betterment of the parish – through art, sermons etc., while the family and friends struggled to maintain the unique status of the deceased as a beloved individual. As, for instance, when the Lutheran minister Kaspar Teuder delivered a funeral sermon for Jeremias Saltzer, a member of the city council in Erfurt, who died in 1589. Teuder insists: Das wir also seinet wegen nicht zu trauren haben / præmisimus non amisimus eum, Wir haben in aus diesem Jamerthal vorhin geschickt / in den ewigen / himlischen / gewünschten Freudensaal. Wir sind und bleiben noch in diesem Weinethal / unter des mögen wir uns gefast machen / wie wir seliglich hernacher komen (Teuder : 1589, 14).

Teuder wastes little time on the deceased, who is soon turned into a convenient set-piece of his sermon. Typically for the genre, immediately after the quotation he turns to the subject of man’s sinful nature and how to prepare for death. In this the venerable Jeremias Saltzer is a mere proxy for the audience, a stepping stone from which to exhort the assembled faithful listening to the sermon and later, those who are to read the written text. This shows, broadly speaking, that we find two primary vehicles displaying and representing death in the early modern Lutheran Church (Fig. 7). On the one hand we have the personal ceremonial presentations of the dead and the depiction of individuals in funerary art, sponsored to commemorate the individual and support the family and friends. On the other hand we find abstract repre-

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sentations of death, to a large degree underpinned by dogmatic religious content. These two vehicles blend freely and are entwined to such a degree that in fact they are hard to keep separate as specific genres. The Church however never fails to appropriate private representations of death for the sake of illustrating and making death present. Mortuary art and grave markers often controvert this and address death from the private perspective of the lost individual, thus addressing not death as such, but the specific, individual death of the deceased who is commemorated. In practice this struggle is a fight for the right to interpret death, and over what form to give it.

Fig. 7: Forces competing over the interpretation of death.

2

Making Death Manifest

Under this heading, the manifestation of death is to be addressed somewhat more concretely in the light of the general ideas presented so far. Thus what I propose to discuss, is a number of ways in which death was made visible in the early modern period: and to introduce some of the physical articulations of this materialization. To demonstrate and make manifest that which otherwise could not be seen, was a part of early modern Lutheran culture (Jürgensen: 2012). This is true for a wide range of religious concerns and for death specifically. In this way the early modern approach to the handling and exposition of death is fundamentally different from modern practice. In his brief but influential essay The Pornography of Death of 1955, Geoffrey Gorer (Gorer: 1955) defined death as one of the great taboos of the twentieth century, and Philippe Ari€s saw the changes from the early modern to the modern period as a story of the repression of death, and a secularization of the act of dying (Ari€s: 1976; Ari€s: 1981). To my mind both conclusions are somewhat beside the point; it seems more appropriate to look at the ways death actually becomes manifest in a culture rather than see where it is not represented. Thus the next pages will first discuss how death was apparent in the Lutheran church interior, then continue with some reflections on death in the home, before returning to the subject of death and the body.

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Death in the Church

Death and eschatology, or care for the hereafter, were unquestionably among the driving forces behind a large share of all donations and investments made to parish churches. Other factors came into play as well, but ultimately the wish of parishioners at all social levels to care for their soul remains a constant from the early Middle Ages and far into the eighteenth century (Jürgensen: 2011, 494 – 504; see note 2 for further references). This fact had great implications for the adornment, refurnishing and rebuilding of churches; be that the small rural parish church, the private chapel or the cathedral. Throughout the Middle Ages burials inside churches were more or less limited to church dignitaries or secular notabilities with close ties to the church, such as donors. Burial within the walls of the edifice was thus more or less reserved for the upper strata of society. Nevertheless, during the late Middle Ages, the status of the parish church grew, as concern for pastoral care at the parochial level received rising attention from the Church.4 This made the local church interesting to well placed parishioners, who would previously have tended to favour the cathedral or monastery. An opportunity was created which made it possible for gentry and prosperous members of the parish to leave a lasting impact on their church building, influencing the church space to a much larger degree than was possible in the larger ecclesiastical buildings, where the space had to be shared with previous benefactors on a wholly different level. This budding late medieval trend of emphasizing the parish church as the place of burial for gentry and nobility continued throughout the Reformation, and was indeed much strengthened with the abolition of most monastic institutions. Town churches and cathedrals remained attractive, but the level of effort and money invested in grave monuments in village churches demonstrates that a burial in the local parish church was increasingly acceptable. Nevertheless funeral monuments were not installed without problems and opposition. To the church itself burials and epitaphs were a source of income. As with pews and seats, the parishioners rented a place for their epitaph and bought a place for the grave: the closer to the altar, the higher the price. Despite the statement often made on epitaphs, that the monument was erected not only in God’s honour and as a good example for fellow Christians, but also as an ornament to the church, the churchwardens were seldom willing to share the expenses connected with mortuary monuments.5 4 See Jürgensen: 2011, 199 – 205, for general introduction to the theme and further references. 5 An example of this is the ordering of the prices for burials with grave slabs and to hang epitaphs in Ribe Cathedral in Jutland, confirmed 11 November 1592 by Christian IV (1588 – 1648). See Rørdam: 1886, 504. See also Bayer: 2012.

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The mortuary culture of the late Middle Ages and the centuries following the Reformation has left very distinct traces in the village churches, proving itself perhaps the greatest influence on the transformation of the architecture and renewal of the furniture and decorations. Piety, pride, demarcation of status and a host of other agendas were tangled together when contemplating a funerary monument. The study of the motivation behind the display of grave monuments inside the church is thus complex and touches upon a wide register of motives, ranging from an ambition to create a lasting memorial to eschatological considerations. While differences in the shapes and symbols employed can help to interpret changes in the ideas about death, the basic reasons for erecting a funerary monument remained unchanged from the Middle Ages, through the Reformation and into the subsequent centuries. Even so, when we consider the post-Reformation Lutheran church edifice, we must keep in mind that the wish, if not need, to donate and decorate in memory of the late lamented, and in preparation for one’s own death, meant that death was omnipresent in the church. Every piece of the building’s fabric might be donated in memory of the dead – from the epitaphs to the candles, windows, and altarpieces, indeed to the wood of the door or the tiles on the roof. All of this could be invested with the dead and evoke the memory of both the deceased and the kin who lived on. A memorial perspective on representations of death seems nowhere as relevant as when dealing with the actual grave monuments in churches and cemeteries. The church was a storehouse for society’s accumulated dead, and was perhaps the most concentrated place in early modern culture for a visual encounter with death.

2.2

Death at Home

When death entered the home, the room of the dying was carefully altered in order to convey the gravity of the situation and ensure that everything went according to tradition: which traditions, it should be noted, were regional and changed over time. However, the idea that death literally entered the house or household as an alien presence was commonplace (Fig. 8). In this context death was thus rationalized and visualized as an invading force, an intruder penetrating the home. The abstract concept of death was given the shape and function of the merciless skeletal killer, appearing when least expected in the heart of the family. Once he had entered, he had to be contained and isolated. The space or room which death was to occupy and share with the dying during his stay was therefore to be dressed with selected plants or flowers, according to what was

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available at the season, along with objects and embellishments, all of which stressed the malevolent presence in the house:6 objects and paraphernalia which made it obvious and visible to all, that an outside force had crossed the threshold and resided among them. All of this could of course be elaborated or scaled down according to the financial means of the household, but no matter how rich or poor, if possible, some means to convey death’s presence would be installed.

Fig. 8: The Death of a Child. Hans Holbein the Younger, woodcut, 1538.

These fittings were largely temporary : once the corpse of the deceased had been carried from the house, death too would leave. This fact was concretely demonstrated by the removal of all the furnishings put up related to the process of dying. On the removal of these, the space of the deceased was thus purged. At its most basic this took the form of a washing of the bed and a change of bedstraw, but when possible, it included the burning of bedlinen, the destruction of the deathbed and so on. How these actions were explained might vary from the purely hygienic, through vague notions of bad luck being swept out, to evil spirits being chased away. However, they all revolved around the same notion of visually freeing a space from the presence of death. The home could also be used to preserve the memory of the deceased, and 6 Troels Troels-Lund’s study remains the best and most comprehensive study of death practices in early modern Denmark, Troels-Lund: 1914 – 15. See furthermore the most recent study on the subject from a Swedish perspective, Sundmark: 2008.

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extend their presence from the church or cemetery and into the home. This was done in different ways, for instance by the storing of wreaths and flowers from the funeral ceremony, flowers picked at the graveside or in fact anything kept, which related to the burial process. One of the more striking examples of this is the so-called epitaph letter, to be hung on the wall in commemoration of the dead. Such letters were also hung in churches, where most known copies, in Denmark at least, have been preserved (Fig. 9). An example of this could be one from Copenhagen, dated 1703, where a wreath with skull, cross-bones and hourglass are printed on paper, leaving space for a handwritten inscription. The text reads: For years of flowering [and] Eternal Spring, when blessed in the Lord the gracious child Berndt Feddeson fell asleep, whose body was honourably put to its chamber of rest in the herb garden that is the chancel of Holmens Church, Monday, November 20th, anno 1703. Put up by a mourning friend in Jesus… (Clausen: 1985, no. 572)

When epitaph letters such as this were hung at home, the grave site was as it were extended from the church and into the private sphere. Just as the church walls could be covered with the faces of the dead, the walls of the home could also be decorated in similar fashion, making manifest how death had previously visited the family and reminding those present that it would do so again. In other words it gave death a guise, a form in which it could be seen and understood in the home. Furthermore it made visible a controlled death, portraying it as a thing manageable, harnessed and controlled, albeit sad – which is to say, a very different form of death from the unruly, frightening leavetaking encountered by the deathbed.

2.3

Death and the Body

The spatial elaborations of the church and the household were perhaps the most comprehensible way to address death and give it form, but death could also be expressed much closer to the individual. The body, living as well as dead, might also be dressed to serve as a place from which death and death’s presence was communicated, not only to demonstrate individual thoughts and feelings, but also, and perhaps mostly, to show how others should feel and act in relation to death. Clothing, for instance, very directly expressed a link to death. To dress in mourning was first of all a wordless expression of loss. A more or less restricted period was observed for mourning, but, by retaining the mourning garb beyond the customary period a special attention to death and decay could be evoked around the individual. A similar preoccupation was expressed when jewelry was fashioned with skulls, cross-bones or other obvious symbols of mortality

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Fig. 9: Danish epitaph letter. Copenhagen, 1703.

(Fig. 10). In fact everything, all everyday items, could be fashioned to accommodate an awareness of death.7 Of course it is difficult to reach firm conclusions as to the intention of or

7 The diversity in post-medieval death symbols and iconography can be found exemplified in Hülsen-Esch/Westermann: 2006.

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Fig. 10: Memento mori again. Miniature ivory craniums to be carried on the person. Danish, c. 1625 – 50. Photo: The National Museum of Copenhagen.

meaning behind such dress accessories: nevertheless, earrings with tiny skulls or tobacco tins decorated with bones and gravedigger’s tools do demonstrate the need to materialize death and give it texture. Whether this should be understood as a ‘taming of death’, as Philippe Ari€s would have it, or represents a need to make death tangible and thus understandable, is a matter of discussion. However, in presenting trinkets such as those described here as harmless novelty items (Ari€s: 1976), as almost childish objects, and thereby turning death into something nugatory, is perhaps overstressing the point. Perhaps items such as pipes carved in the shape of death’s heads, for instance, represent a mode of living with death rather than mockery of it. Nor need death be a powerless or tame thing, but a presence to be cautiously aware of and consequently not surprised or overwhelmed by. In that sense death could be manifested through the body as readily as it could be given form in the church or at home. The popular saying ‘to live in the shadow of death’ expresses this attitude well enough. To make death present in everyday life was in the early modern period a way of showing to both oneself and one’s acquaintance that life was brief and death always looming. The sincerity behind such manifestations can naturally always be doubted. Yet the idea at least of

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dressing up for death and making it visible through one’s appearance in the world, made death manifest and gave it a tangible presence in daily life.

2.4

Death Materialized

Undoubtedly the materialization of death was of great importance in the early modern period. It was a force which took up space and filled every situation in which it was allowed to present itself. And death remained a factor which was constantly addressed in early modern Lutheran culture. At this point we are taken back to the initial statement of Bertrand Russell and the creative, aesthetic potential which rises from the acceptance of the despair growing out of the acknowledgement of death. To repeat: in early modern culture death had to be manifested in order to be understood. One could say that the manifestation of death was a prerequisite for the internalization of the act of dying. To see and sense death, was the first step to understanding or handling it – not death in its abstract form, but death as a uninterrupted process beginning at birth and continuing after the deceased was buried. While death could be a bugbear that the individual tried to push aside, ignore or forget, early modern culture ensured that all were reminded of death’s presence at all times – whether in church or at home. To materialize death was thus a means to understanding and grasping it. This rationalization was bound fast to early modern religious culture. Although a struggle took place as to the normative interpretation of these materializations, the means, methods and motifs employed were shared by church and secular society. It is furthermore possible to conclude that the early modern period saw a need to make these manifestations of death as tangible as possible. Not that the macabre art of the late Middle Ages (Binski: 1996) remained in vogue, but crass depiction and dramatic staging of death remained prominent cultural components of early modern daily existence. Without them, death would have been formless and incomprehensible.

3

The Location of the Soul

In this last part, I shall turn to the early modern views on the place of the soul after death, which had wide implications for the outlook on death and its materialization after the Reformation. Of the utmost importance in this connection was of course the Protestant rejection of Purgatory as a ‘papist’ invention (Le Goff: 1984). This rejection severed an important medieval Catholic element from the conceptualization of the soul’s place after death. With Purgatory as the

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intermediate state between the terrestrial and heavenly realms no one, in principle, could be in doubt as to the whereabouts of the soul after death (Fig. 11). However, with Purgatory abandoned, the soul no longer conceptually occupied a space from the moment of death until Judgement Day. This lack of place for the soul presented a problem, at least to some mid-sixteenth century Lutheran reformers.

Fig. 11: Souls in Purgatory and the intercessory prayer. The Mass of St Gregory. Woodcut. Augsburg(?), c. 1470 – 80.

During the early reformation period, the notion of the martyr became pressing once again, and led several theologians to claim that Protestants were taken straight into Heaven (Gregory : 2001). Throughout the later sixteenth century such self-assured opinions became fewer as the internal disagreements within the different Protestant camps grew more pronounced and were consolidated. The only fact on which general agreement could be reached, was that Hell awaited the enemies of Christ. This however did not help much when considering the fate of the many souls of ordinary, sinful parishioners and

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unbaptized children. Prior to the fully formulated idea of Purgatory, the lap of Abraham (Baschet: 2000; Aavitsland: 2011) (Fig. 12) had been the favoured metaphysical metaphor for the place of the soul after death. But this older concept centred on Abraham did not suit most Lutherans.

Fig. 12: Souls resting in Abraham’s lap. Mural in Fraugde Church, island of Funen (Denmark), c. 1180 – 1200. Photo: MWJ.

Yet it remained difficult to find a more appropriate description, and reformers in the circle around Martin Luther even warned against probing the problem too deeply, since, once posed, it would unavoidably lead to false teaching and fairy

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tales. With Purgatory thus pushed aside, the Classical metaphor of death as a sleep regained acceptance.8 Death was a long slumber from which mankind would awaken on the Final Day. To return once more to the preface to the collection of funeral sermons of 1542, Luther himself phrases this by stating: Wir Christen aber, so von dem allen durch das theure Blut des Sons Gottes erlöset sind, sollen uns uben und gewehnen im Glauben, Den Tod zuuerachten, und als einen tieffen, starcken, süssen Schlaff anzusehen. Den Sarck nicht anders denn als unsers HERRN Christi Schos oder Paradis, Das Grab nicht anders, denn als ein sanfft Faul oder Rugebette zuhalten (Luther : 1883 – 2009, 478).9

Initially this idea of sleep was used by Lutherans as a vague metaphor in order to avoid any strong stance on the soul’s place after death, but during the seventeenth century the notion gradually came to be taken more and more literally. This meant that the soul was believed to remain in the grave, not in the body per se, but in some mystical, undefined way occupying the same place as the corpse or skeleton. In consequence the church and the churchyard came to be inhabited by the dead in a quite new way. Prior to the Reformation, ghosts and spirits of folklore had lurked on the periphery of the cemetery, but the majority of all souls as such were to be found in Purgatory, a place semi-detached from terrestrial geography, and where prayer and intercession could reach and console the spirits of the dead.10 This was no longer possible after the Reformation, and the living were rendered unable to help or influence the dead directly. Nonetheless the dead were a growing presence in the church and the cemetery due to the fact that they were now believed to be actually sleeping underneath the floor tiles of the church and in the graves. The changes in the understanding of the place of the soul after death was thus perhaps nowhere so present as in the church, where the dead were amassed both inside and outside the edifice. When passing over the cemetery, family members could be understood to lie in the graves underneath the footpath waiting, and the parishioner would know that he or she also should one day join the sleeping kin. The Danish Lutheran theologian Peder Palladius (1503 – 1560) touches upon this in his handbook for visitation from the mid-sixteenth century, when he stresses the importance of keeping graves in good order, since our elders are to be treated with respect. He all but implies that the souls of the deceased can see or sense the state of things above ground: 8 A recent theological exploration of this notion can be found in Moltmann: 2000, 238 – 255. 9 A critical survey of Luther’s use of the metaphor of sleep will reveal a shifting emphasis on the notion of the soul as actually sleeping. Hence too much should not be read into Luther’s statements concerning this, since he evidently never formulated a clear view on this subject. 10 A selection of recent inquiries into the field of ghosts and wraiths can be found in Schmitt: 1998; Marshall: 2004; Conrad-O’Briain/Stevens: 2010.

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Above all else, make sure no cattle or creatures are allowed to shit, pardon me, on the cemetery and defile the place where your parents lie and rest their bones. You are also to lie and rest here one day. This is your place of sleep and the bed, where you are to rest until Judgement Day. Who would want his bed soiled and dirtied at home […]? (Palladius: 1925 – 26, 29 – 30)

Inside the church, graves would communicate the same sense, only here intensified by the presence of painted portraits of the deceased. The dead were omnipresent and surrounded the living. Nor were the dead by any means quiet. Texts and eye-catching iconography supported the mortuary monuments and epitaphs, giving voices to the deceased who addressed the living, reproaching their vanities and lack of piety and calling for improvement. Again Hans Christian Andersen put this into poetic form, when with romantic nostalgia he described this impression of the church being filled with the dead, watching and warning the living. About a girl with much too bright red shoes at communion he writes: ‘and when she went up the aisle to the choir door, she even felt the old pictures over the burials, these portraits of pastors and pastors’ wives with stiff collars and long black robes, had their eyes locked on her’(Andersen: 1997, 265). The dead stared out at the living and held their community under close scrutiny.

3.1

The early modern and the modern

From the second half of the sixteenth century new trends in the visualization or representation of death, and not the least the belief in death as a long sleep, were shaped and re-shaped. These trends lasted into the eighteenth century. However, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century the new rationalism began to challenge old notions. A radical and scientific approach to religious dogma scrutinized burial customs, burial practices and funeral ceremonies and along with this, all beliefs associated with these practices. In consequence new systems and ideals of hygiene filtered into the church: burial inside the building was banned, and there also began a process of systematizing the graves in the churchyards (Kragh: 2003; Jürgensen: 2010/11), sorting them into evenly distributed burial plots. Once in motion, this new, stern sense of orderliness came to inspire a kernel of sentimental longing for a past that doubtless never existed: nevertheless this yearning was tinged with a wish for spiritual qualities, thought to have been forgotten in the attempt to structure and regulate the churches and cemeteries. The tales of Hans Christian Andersen quoted above are perfect examples of this preoccupation with the old. During this development the idea of the dead actually sleeping in their graves slipped into oblivion, a process hastened by rational theologians. And thereby did a new difficulty as to the whereabouts of the soul become apparent. Here the

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belief in angels found a space into which it could grow, and the idea of all the dead turning into winged angels flocking in heaven gained tremendously in popularity (Fig. 13) – a popularity which lasted into the early twentieth century. The symbolism of death of the early modern period had great difficulty during the last decades of the eighteenth century and was drastically reduced over the next century. The skulls and cross-bones and other startling references to death and dying gradually disappeared or were reduced to small vignette-like motifs devoid of the previous crassness. Death became both sentimental and clinical.

Fig. 13: The Night, Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1815. One of the iconic depictions of the rapidly growing belief in angels of the nineteenth century. Here a copy used on a tombstone. Photo: MWJ.

However, the rapidly growing angel culture of the nineteenth century contributed as much to the change in the visualization of the early modern death paradigm as did the previous enlightenment and rationalism. The proliferating angels ultimately emptied the graveyards and churches of their ghostly population of dormant souls. Ancestors no longer slept under the church floors or in the graves, but flew to heaven and looked down from the sky in realms of song, joy and eternal sunshine. This at least is the impression obtained from the romantic conception of the angelic sphere. And with the church and graveyard vacated, emptiness seems to have crept in, on the one hand making the burial plots a place for mourners to visit the graveside of their lost ones, and on the other hand places shrouded in a sense of uncomfortable uncertainty, which was so eagerly accepted by the turn-of-the-century ghost story writers and spiritualists. The need to visualize or manifest death had lessened and shifted to a much more internal and private affair.

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Concluding Remarks

What characterizes this notion that, perhaps a little hesitantly, I would call the pre-modern paradigm of death representation: and how did it change? The need to express religious and metaphysical ideas through matter was strong in premodern thinking. Matter was believed to contain the ability to hint at and teach about deeper truths. To perform, to represent, to show, were ways in which to make the invisible visible and to give meaning to that which otherwise could not be grasped. The Church in all its confessional guises played a significant role in maintaining and controlling this notion. However, when we speak of death, the right to interpret the metaphysical framework was constantly challenged by the individual interpretation, focusing on the sorrow of the personal loss rather than the universal truth which death also could represent. Over the course of the seventeenth century the balance began to change in favour of greater individual freedom of expression and interpretation. The universal, all-embracing modes of rationalization soon lost their potency and ability to utilize this creative necessity, arising from the basic despair of death, to which I have referred more than once. And to return to Hans Blumenberg (Blumenberg: 1966), who was touched upon at the beginning, we could say that a new representation paradigm arose from this, filling the interpretative space gradually vacated by the Church and making room for a much more open approach to death, wherein the forms and beliefs in the state of the soul after death, and the shape of the abstract death, were freely negotiable. A modern paradigm rose, in which the individual and the Church stood as equals in the effort to define death, and the scales slowly tipped towards the individual as having the final say. From the late eighteenth century the early modern strategies of representation that I have discussed here had changed for good. The vacated graveyards became symptomatic of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the preoccupation with the souls’ abode after death and the need to address death was drastically limited. New means to include and embrace death were frequently offered to society, but it is symptomatic of these references that they seem preoccupied with neither death itself nor the afterlife, but solely with the horror of dying. It is thus interesting to see how, for instance, the interest in the supernatural of the fin-de-si€cle nineteenth century was gradually replaced by the horror of man’s inhumanity to man. Death became a niche in popular culture. Horror films and literature were now the place where death and dying was explored and repeatedly visualized in new forms (Daniels: 1975). The so-called exploitation cinema of the 1960s and 70s seems on the one hand to be the culmination of this trend and on the other hand, to deliver the blueprint for the representation of death in popular culture which still prevails today. The spaces however where death is allowed to manifest itself have been

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Fig. 14: Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled, 2004. Piazza XXIV Maggio, Milan. Mixed media, life size. Photo by : Attilio Maranzano. Courtesy : Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan.

radically limited throughout the twentieth century, and when death is actually depicted or encountered outside the framework in which we are accustomed to see and grasp it, it appears shocking and excessive. This, no doubt, is because of a lack of tools and training with which to understand death (Fig. 14). This is surely

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also what the inhabitants of Milan experienced when coming upon the installation of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan in 2004, when he placed lifelike latex dolls of children, hung by rope around the neck, in a tree on a central town square. After much public fury on the square the hanging dolls were pulled down by an angry spectator. There was no wish to see death in this form or in that place.

Bibliography Andersen, H. C. (1997), Samlede Eventyr og Historier, Copenhagen: Hans Reitzel. Ari€s, Philippe (1976), Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, London: Marion Boyars. Ari€s, Philippe (1981), The Hour of Our Death, London: Allen Lane. Baschet, JŒr…me (2000), Le sein du p€re: Abraham et la paternitŒ dans l’occident mŒdiŒval, Paris : Gallimard. Beyer, Jürgen (2012), Stiftung, Plazierung und Funktion von Wand- und Kronleuchtern in lutherischen Kirchen, Zeitschrift für Lübeckische Geschichte, vol. 92 , 101 – 150. Binski, Paul (1996), Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation, New York: Cornell University Press. Blumenberg, Hans (1966), Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. van Bueren, Truus and Andrea van Leerdam (ed.) (2005), Care for the here and the hereafter : Memoria, art and ritual in the Middle Ages, Turnhout: Brepols. Clausen, V. E. (1985), Det folkelige danske træsnit i etbladstryk 1565 – 1884, Copenhagen: Foreningen Danmarks Folkeminder. Conrad-O’Briain, H. and J. A Stevens (ed.) (2010), The Ghost Story from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, Dublin: Four Courts Press. Cox, Michael and R. A. Gilbert (ed.) (1989), The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Daniels, Les (1975), Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Gebauer, Gunter and Christoph Wulf (1996), Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. Le Goff, Jacques (1984), The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Gorer, geoffrey (1955), The Pornography of Death, Encounter, October 1955, 49 – 52. Gregory, Brad (2001), Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Hülsen-Esch, Andrea von and Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen (ed.) (2006), Zum Sterben schön! Alter, Totentanz und Sterbekunst von 1500 bis heute, 2 vols, Cologne: Schnell & Steiner. Jürgensen, Martin Wangsgaard, Grav og Gravminde – Sorg og Savn (2009), Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift 1, 23 – 44. Jürgensen, Martin Wangsgaard (2010/11), Among Angels and Teddy Bears: Some Re-

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flections on Contemporary Funerary Art, Transfiguration: Nordic Journal of Religion and the Arts, 269 – 300. Jürgensen, Martin Wangsgaard (2011), Changing Interiors: Danish village churches c. 1450 to 1600, Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen. Jürgensen, Martin Wangsgaard (2012), The Rhetoric of Splendour : Matter and the invisible in seventeenth-century church art, Transfiguration: Nordic Journal of Religion and the Arts [In the press]. Kragh, Birgitte (2003), Til jord skal du blive…: Dødens og begravelsens kulturhistorie i Danmark 1780 – 1990, Aabenraa: Museumsrzdet for Sønderjyllands Amt. Luther, Martin (1883 – 2009), Die Vorrede ze der Sammlung der Begräbnislieder 1542, in D. Martin Luthers Werke, Weimar : H. Böhlau Nachfolger, 478 – 483. Marshall, Peter (2004), Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Meys, Oliver (2009), Memoria und Bekenntnis: Die Grabdenkmäler evangelischer Landesherren im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung, Regensburg: Steiner & Schnell. Moltmann, Jürgens (2000), Is there life after death? in: J. Polkinghorne/M. Welker (ed.), The End of the World and the Ends of God: Science and Theology on Eschatology, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Palladius, Peder (1925 – 26), Visitatsbogen, in: Peder Palladius Danske Skrifter, vol. 5, Lis Jacobsen (ed.), Copenhagen: H. H. Thieles Bogtrykkeri. Russell, Bertrand (1985), The Free Man’s Worship, in: The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: vol. 12: Contemplation and Action 1902 – 14, London: Routledge, 59 – 72. Rørdam, Holger Fr. (1886), Danske Kirkelove, vol. 2, Copenhagen: Selskab for Danmarks Kirkehistorie. Schmitt, Jean-Claude (1998), Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Sundmark, Stina Fallberg (2008), Sjukbesök och Dödsberedelse: Sockenbudet i svensk medeltida och reformation tradition, Bibliotheca Theologiae Practicae 84, Uppsala: Artos. Teuder, Kaspar (1589), Leichpredigt von dem Christlichen Abschiede/Des Ehrenvhesten […] Herrn Ieremiae Saltzers/ Obersten des Raths zu Erffurd, Erfurt: Esaias Mechler. Troels-Lund, Troels (1914 – 15), Dagligt Liv i Norden i det sekstende Aarhundrede, 4. ed., vol. 14, Copenhagen/Kristiania: Gyldendals Forlag. Williams, Howard (2006), Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain, Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Aavitsland, Kristin B. (2011), ‘In sinum Abrahae. Romanske forestillinger om paradiset og sjelens vei dit’, in: Lena Liepe/Kristin Bliksrud Aavitsland (ed.), Memento Mori: Døden i Middelalderens Billedverden, Oslo: Novus Forlag 2011, 64 – 80.

Claudia Resch

Reforming Late Medieval ars moriendi: Changes and Compromises in Early Reformation Manuals for Use at the Deathbed

Ars moriendi is commonly translated as the “art of dying” (“Kunst des Sterbens”). In the late Middle Ages it referred to a clearly-outlined concept of dying “a good death”, which included advice and specific measures to help one acquire the ability to “die well” (cf. Rolfes: 1989, 17). Since the Middle Ages, ars moriendi has also denoted a body of religious literature (“Sterbebüchlein”) that imparts this knowledge and provides practical guidance for the dying and those attending them (cf. Falk: 1890, 1; Baumgartner : 1993, 1036).

1

Current State of Research

From the Middle Ages onwards, numerous texts about preparing for death were written in the Latin and German language; they made up a bestselling and widespread genre. Until recently, researchers such as Peter Neher (1989, 18) believed that the height of the success and popularity of ars moriendi literature was limited to the late Middle Ages and to the Baroque era.1 They assumed that there was a gap or at least a significant decrease in the number of ars moriendi works during the Reformation period. Based on this assumption Franz Falk’s study (1890) about German ars moriendi literature concentrated on late medieval texts and ended with the year 1520. Rainer Rudolf gave up investigating the genre after 1500, because he believed that later texts would not yield new results (1957, XVI). However, he was fiercely criticised by Mertens (1976, 270), who rightly emphasised that the history of ars moriendi can only be explained through its context and tradition. This distorted perspective of the history of ars moriendi works, which did not consider the 1 “die Blütezeiten liegen im 15. und im 17. Jahrhundert, im 16. Jahrhundert behauptet sich die AM [Ars moriendi] nur schwer”, was Peter Neher’s misestimation on this point. All translations from literature originally written in German language are the author’s. I thank Kristin Dill and Lara Pokorny for reading the manuscript and generously providing assistance with English language.

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oeuvre of later periods, can be attributed to the biased way the researchers approached the topic and presented their findings. The researchers suspected that the Reformers did not produce their own representations of the genre – or if they did, they were not meaningful enough to investigate. Today, this prevailing view needs to be thoroughly re-examined, especially when considering the current state of research, which documents that it is a rewarding and exciting task to follow Reformation aspects of the German ars moriendi literature evolving from the Lutheran movement. Luise Schottroff (formerly Klein) was the first to give an overview of the publications in this genre. In 1958 she created a bibliography listing 129 titles in the ars moriendi genre (cf. 107 – 135). She was forced to leave out another 100 titles due to inexact catalogue data. Although she saw her dissertation (which remained unpublished until it was recently edited by Herman J. Selderhuis) as a “first attempt” (cf. 107), her work drew attention to the Reformation genre of ars moriendi and has both qualitatively and quantitatively proven that this tradition neither was interrupted nor has found its end. By analyzing the works of the reformers and evaluating current literature, her contribution aims to show that the production of ars moriendi did not disappear or subside considerably during Reformation. In fact, she found the opposite to be true: the wide range of late medieval ars moriendi works did not decrease during the Reformation; the tradition continued on and was represented by an equally large number of writings, which were Reformation modifications of this well-known subject appearing under new theological conditions. More than ten years ago, Bernd Moeller noted that scientific research on preparing for death at the time of the Reformation was still only in its initial stages (cf. 1999, 759). As a result of the growing interest in the study of death during the last decade, however, the topic has attracted some scholarly attention in various disciplines (cf. Kümper : 2007, 38). Due to two recent doctoral theses which have dealt with this issue, the ars moriendi genre can now definitively be described as a core element of the German Reformation doctrine. Both of these in-depth studies have been carried out independently, but complement each other very well. Austra Reinis (“Reforming the Art of Dying – The ars moriendi in the German Reformation 1519 – 1528”, published 2007) focuses on the earliest of the Protestant ars moriendi, published until 1528, when the works were mostly sermons and reflections. In contrast, the author’s doctoral thesis (“Trost im Angesicht des Todes – Frühe reformatorische Anleitungen zur Seelsorge an Kranken und Sterbenden”, published 2006) examined a later group of Germanlanguage manuals concerned with death and dying, which were only published starting in the year 1527 and were considered not specifically as religious tracts or sermons about death and dying, but rather were especially intended for use in

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pastoral practice at the deathbed, either by the dying persons themselves or by those ministering to them.

2

The First Reformation Manuals for Use at the Deathbed

Although Martin Luther’s “Eyn Sermon von der bereytung zum sterben” (1519) can be considered the theological forerunner of all later representations of the genre (WA 2: 685 – 697, for a detailed analysis, see for example Goez: 1981, 97 – 114; Barth: 1989, 45 – 66; Jordahn: 2004, 1 – 22; Hamm: 2005, 311 – 362; Kolb: 2008, 26 f), these selected Reformation manuals on the subject of preparing for death had to fulfill another purpose. Whereas Luther’s sermon placed the art of dying within the broader category of the art of living and avoided paying much attention to the hour of death, it was the aim of these pastoral works to guide people through precisely this very last remaining stage at the end of life. Despite the fact that Luther wanted to place less emphasis on the deathbed and the role of the last hour, which he believed to be the responsibility of the dying and to be manageable even without2 pastoral care, these chosen works could show that, when it came to death and dying, there was still a high demand for such advice. The group of Reformation manuals analysed in this paper was meant to be read or spoken at the bedside of the sick and dying. These manuals were published with a significant time difference – several years after Luther’s sermon – and did not find their way into practice until 1527 at the earliest. Among the very first authors of these manuals for pastoral care were renowned Martin Luther supporters such as Johannes Bugenhagen (1527), Urban Rieger (1529), Wenzeslaus Linck (1529) as well as lesser known followers such as Johannes Odenbach (1528) or Thomas Venatorius (1527). Thomas Venatorius’ publication was provided with a supporting preface written by Luther and became a model for further pastoral ars moriendi books, namely those of Georg Spalatin (1531), Johannes Spangenberg (1542), and Veit Nuber (1544). Other manuals were written by Caspar Huber (1531), Leonhard Brunner (1531), Andreas Osiander (1538), Friedrich Myconius (1539), Nikolaus Hahn (1544), Caspar Kantz (1546) and Leonhard Culmann (1551). Nearly all of these authors saw their texts published in multiple editions. Two authors, however, recognised the need and 2 In his first sermon for Invocavit Sunday (1522) Luther clarifies his point of view as he writes: “WIr seindt allsampt zuo dem tod gefodert und wirt keyner für den andern sterben, Sonder ein yglicher in eygner person für sich mit dem todt kempffen […] ich würd den nit bey dir sein noch du bey mir.” (WA 10/3, 1 f – The challenge of death comes to us all, and no one can die for another. Each of us has to be prepared to meet death alone and to fight his own battle […] I will not be with you then, nor you with me.)

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potential to improve and enlarge their first editions. Huber completely revised his manual in 1542; Brunner published his second version around 1545.

Fig. 1: Thomas Venatorius’ “Vnderricht” (1527). Austrian National Library 77.M.67.

The analysis of the above-mentioned manuals and their forewords allows researchers to make conclusions concerning the actual manner of their usage. Comparisons of the two revised editions by Huber and Brunner are especially insightful, because they document developments in Reformation ars moriendi ideas within a few years (cf. Resch: 2006, 162 – 182). That these valuable sources only represent a desired ideal of ars moriendi which Reformers were trying to achieve must be taken into account. The manuals may provide further insight

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Fig. 2: Johann Odenbach’s “Trostbüchlein” (1530). Austrian National Library 78.J.112.

into the contemporary theory and practice of end-of-life spiritual care, but they cannot reveal how the recommendations were actually carried out. It is notable, though, that a number of books with a similar concern entered the market between 1527 and 1550; they were published in multiple editions and were likely to have reached a wide audience. The relatively large number of these texts in circulation during this period shows that Luther’s followers had at least a particular interest in adapting the traditional art of dying. This aspiration for reform

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Fig. 3: Leonhard Brunner’s “Christliche Berichtung” (1531). Austrian National Library 77.M. 64.

especially concerned the practical application of pastoral care at the deathbed, for which the desire existed to adapt the results of academic theology to the spiritual needs and intellectual capacity of the manuals’ intended readers and users. The authors of the Reformation ars moriendi manuals mentioned here were all actively engaged in pastoral work, which they saw as essential for providing comfort and consolation to the dying. At the same time they accepted the reworking of this genre as a challenge and found ways to reconcile this type of pastoral ministry with their new beliefs. While testing the value and effectiveness of ars moriendi in daily practice, the authors began to instruct others as well, so that many others, even non-clergy, could also minister at the deathbed. In

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Fig. 4: Caspar Huberinus’ “Krankentrost” (1542). Austrian National Library 78.X.48.

producing new handbooks on death and dying, these authors not only aimed to disseminate their experience of faith in the vernacular language, they also highly encouraged others to become multipliers of Reformation ideas and doctrines. The intended use of these works is often reflected in their title and design. Title words such as “vnterweisung”, “vnderricht” or “berichtung”, which all roughly translate as “instruction”, point to didactic functions and support the doctrinal character of the content.3 Adjectives such as “kurtz” (short) and 3 These terms are used for example in the following titles: “Ein kurtze vnd einfeltige vnter-

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Fig. 5: Caspar Kantz’ “Kranken- und Sterbetrost” (1546). Austrian National Library 78.J.110.

“einfeltig” (simple) characterise the type of pastoral care intended. At the same time, the concise form of the content allowed for a compact book format, so that weisung zum sterben nutzlich” (Nuber 1544); “Vnnderricht deren so in kranckheiten vnd e tods notten lig)” (Bugenhagen 1527), “Eyn kurtz vnderricht den sterbenden menschen gantz e trostlich” (Venatorius 1527), “Vnterricht an ein sterbenden menschen” (Osiander 1538), “Ein kurtzer vnterricht vnd trost fur die krancken / sterbenden” (Hahn 1544), and “Ein Christliche berichtung / wie man sich bey den kranck) vnd sterbenden halten sol” (Brunner 1531).

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Fig. 6: Leonhard Culmann’s “Trostschrift” (1551). Austrian National Library 19.M.41.

the manual could serve as a vade mecum and be conveniently held in the hand. As the days of illness provide an exceptional opportunity for exhortation and Christian instruction, these booklets needed to equip the caregiver appropriately for these circumstances. The situation of moribund patients might only allow the caregiver a short time to be able to instruct them in elementary doctrine; it therefore had to be available in an abridged form. That is the reason why most of the texts are short, to-the-point, and easy to understand.

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The manuals seem to be written in response to a widespread need for consolation. The fact that Reformers assumed responsibility for the sick and dying has been described as a major feature of the Reformation movement itself: “It is characteristic for the Protestant Church that its theologians spent the most loving and intense care in letting exactly this branch of practical and edifying literature, which concerns the writings for comforting the sick and dying, flourish.” (Althaus: 1927, 37)4 e

The Reformation ars moriendi includes such terms as “Trost”, “Trostung”, e e “trosten” or “trostlich”, which are also often found in the titles5 of these works. Indeed, to console, to soothe the conscience, and to make the dying feel confident in their faith were the main concerns of this type of text. One could even argue that these concerns were characteristic of these texts and distinguished them from other works on death and dying.

3

New Reformation Messages for the Dying

In composing their advice on preparing for death, the Reformation authors were continuing and at the same time reshaping an established genre of literature: they adopted and transformed well-known themes and motifs according to their new beliefs. On the one hand, they did not want to change the content of the new manuals too radically from the traditions and rituals surrounding the end of life which were then being practiced, so that continuity and stability could be guaranteed. On the other hand, Reformers had good reason to call well-established medieval beliefs into question, as the Reformation movement was urgently seeking a fundamental reorientation of current religious practices. Luther and his colleagues considered the traditional ars moriendi as no longer suitable6, but they obviously wanted to leave certain subjects and elements unchanged. There seems to be a certain amount of continuity between Reformation and medieval manuals (such as with Jean Gerson’s and Geiler von Kaysersberg’s ars moriendi), especially regarding advice on deathbed practice. August Hardeland 4 “Es ist für die evangelische Kirche charakteristisch, daß sie keinem anderen Zweige der praktisch-erbaulichen Literatur eine so intensive und liebevolle Pflege hat angedeihen lassen, wie den Trostschriften für Kranke und Sterbende.” 5 See for instance the titles of Brunner, Culmann, Hahn, Huberinus, Kantz, Linck, Odenbach, Spalatin, Spangenberg, and Venatorius. 6 It may be best to allow a contemporary, Jacob Otter, to express the Reformation concern o e regarding the late medieval ars moriendi: “Die kunst zu sterben ist v@ vilen mit grosser muhe o vnnd arbeit ersucht für geschrieben vnnd mit hübschen worten gelernt word) / aber leyder alles vergeben wie yetz vor augen ist.” (1528, lijr – The Art of Dying has been set down with great effort and trouble; it has been learned with pretty words; but now it is evident, unfortunately, that it all was in vain.)

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comes to the conclusion that there was a relatively high degree of unity in pastoral care for the dying between the Reformation and the late Middle Ages (1897, 199).7 It remains to be seen if this statement can be generally supported, it should however be examined in more detail. The key difference between medieval and Reformation ars moriendi revolved around the Lutheran doctrine of justification by grace through faith (Rom 3:28), which brought about far-reaching changes – in particular for dying people. Luther’s own central conviction was that human beings are justified by faith. This belief released the dying from the necessity of doing or having done “good works”, because human beings were no longer required to contribute to their own salvation. In the late Middle Ages the sick and dying had to merit salvation and were left between the two extremes of fear and hope, not knowing if they had “done enough”. For Luther and his followers, this uncertainty of redemption made it impossible for caregivers to console the dying and it led them to the conviction that late medieval pastoral care failed to provide comfort in the face of death. The Reformers and the caregivers instructed by them obviously sought a balance between admonishing and comforting – so that the dying would not be driven to despair. The new handbooks stringently followed Luther in communicating the central Reformation message of justification by faith. Caregivers were charged with reassuring their addressees of salvation and explaining the benefits of embracing this doctrine. “This constituted a radical break with traditional doctrine, according to which no one could presume to be certain of his or her eternal destiny” (Reinis: 2007, 1). The key to salvation was to follow the new convictions: “Protestant ars moriendi therefore meant: to know the doctrine of justification by faith and to apply it”8 (Mohr : 1979, 149). For sins to be forgiven, believers were told that they had to focus exclusively on the death of Christ on the cross, as he guarantees salvation to those who believe in him.9 Although medieval literature10 did not ignore the need to rely on Christ in the face of death, the Reformers absolutised the importance of belief in Christ at the deathbed, which was expressed in the key phrase of “solus Christus”, meaning that only faith (“sola fide”) in Christ on the cross could help in the 7 Hardeland is of the opinion, “dass grade in der an Sterbenden geübten Seelsorge die relativ grösseste Übereinstimmung zwischen der Kirche der Reformation und der vorreformatorischen Kirchen besteht.” 8 “Protestantische ars moriendi bedeutet demnach: Die Rechtfertigungslehre kennen und sie im Glauben anwenden.” 9 See for instance Nuber’s invitation: “Und kere dich allein zu Jesu Christo mit starckem glauben / Er ists / der dir allein helffen kan vnd wil.” (1544, Avjr – Turn to Jesus Christ with strong faith. He alone is the one who can and will certainly help you.) 10 Strong references to Christ are to be found in the Admonitio Anselmi, in the works of Gerson/ Geiler and in the illustrated “Ars moriendi”, see Resch: 2006, chapter B.II.2., 40 ff.

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last hour. The new manuals for use on the deathbed sought to assure the dying that they could be certain11 of their salvation on account of Christ’s death, even if they had not done good works, bought indulgences, given alms or endowed masses and vigils. Even suffering was no longer accepted as a meritorious good work.12 Instead, people were taught to believe that they might obtain salvation not because of their own assets, but that they have been made righteous through grace (“sola gratia”).13 As long as they kept the faith, nothing, not even temptations, could seriously harm them. In explaining how to cope with temptations the Reformation ars moriendi literature repeats the topic of struggling with the fear of sin, the fear of death, and the fear of hell (which Luther treated in this Sermon as well). It even expands upon the reasons to dread the dying experience, but always refutes temptations with the argument that Christ has already overcome them.14 Nevertheless, the authors seem to acknowledge possible difficulties in attaining a good death, and they recognise the emotional stress of the dying, who struggle with doubt, impatience or resentment. To comfort the dying, the authors also take up well-known motifs such as the Passion meditation (e. g. Huberinus, Osiander), the metaphor of the Christian knight (e. g. Huberinus, Odenbach), contemptus mundi-themes (e. g. Culmann, Odenbach) 11 Venatorius and Culmann summarise this Reformation message and its effect for the dying as follows: “O wie ein seyligs zusagen / wen¯ wir glauben an Christum den sun gottes / sollenn wir besitzen das ewig leben.” (1527, [Avj]r – O what a blessed promise! If we believe in Christ, the son of God, we will have eternal life.) and “DAs ist der erst trost / den du hast / der dich e trosten / stercken sol / das du gewiß wirst vnd glaubest / das Christus / den tod vber wunden hab / vnd das du gwiß durch Christum habst vergebung aller deiner sünd / gerechtigkeit vnd das ewig leben. (1555, [Hvj]rf – The main consolation you have (that will strengthen and comfort you) is that you can surely believe that Christ has overcome death, that in Christ you will have forgiveness of all your sins, obtain justice and have eternal life.) 12 Rhegius, for instance, warns his readers to be aware that the dying person should not rely on his/her good works, but should only believe in God’s grace and the merits of Christ (“das der sterbend mensch nichts bawe auf seine verdienst, sonder allain […] an der lautern Gotes gnade hange, sich allain derselbigen behelfe und auf den verdienst Christi bawe.”) 1529, 247. The instruction of Kantz clarifies in a similar way that sick persons should indeed stay calm and patient, but cannot expiate their sins by their suffering, which was no longer considered a meritorious work. (“nicht gedencken / das er mit seinem willigen leiden / wolt seine Sünd e bussen / oder etwas verdienen”) 1546, Aiiijv. 13 People should believe that they are justified not because of their own ability, but through grace and mercy alone (“auß lautter genad vnd barmhertzigkeit gots durch Jhesum Cristum seyn son vnsern Herrn”. Bugenhagen: 1529, [Aiiij]r). o o 14 “Wen dyn c@scientz dir dein manigfeltig sünd auffmutzen vnd dich zu gutten wercken wyset / So gedenck das Christus dein sünd am creütz bezalt hat.” (Odenbach: 1530, [Aiiij]r – If your conscience calls up your many sins and points you to good works, then think of Christ who has paid for your sins on the cross.) “Der halben gehabe dich nu wol / vnd sey getrost / den [!] alle deine sunde seind dir / vmb Christus willen / an den du glaubst / vergeben” (Nuber : 1544, Bijr – Therefore have faith, because your sins are forgiven through Christ in whom you believe.)

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or liturgical elements. The Reformation handbooks thereby retain certain medieval themes from the traditional ars moriendi, while at the same time reject others. Since believers were only required to place their hope for salvation in Christ, who has overcome sin, death and hell, there was no longer the need for intervention between God and the sinner – neither from angels (who had a function only in early versions of Luther’s Sermon and also in Spangenberg: 1542, Dijr), nor from saints, whose devotion the Reformers tried to eliminate. Whereas in late medieval ars moriendi people were urged to repent and were counselled to confess all of their sins at the time of death so they could receive communion and extreme unction, these recommendations lost their urgency in the Reformation. The importance of the three deathbed sacraments (penance, extreme unction and communion), which required the presence of a priest, therefore declined. Some books do not even mention the sacraments, others make no provision for receiving them even though they are generally described as comforting signs and Christ’s gift to those who believed in him regardless of whether the addressee had received the sacrament or not. Since the sacramental guidance of the dying no longer stood in the foreground, believers no longer had to worry whether or not a priest could be present at the time of death. Lutheran Reformers were convinced that Christian charity requires the dying to receive assistance on their deathbed and thus everyone was encouraged to become a caregiver and to minister to the terminally ill15 should it be necessary. In their adaptations of former rites for priests visiting the sick, Reformers sought to address laypersons as well; and they especially encouraged literate people16 who wished to comfort others. Their guidelines on how to o

o

o

o

15 “So wir nun demnach alle / die krancken bruderlich zu besuchen / vnnd mitt dem wort gottes e o o o zu trosten schuldig syn / han ich diß trostbulein [!] den sterbenden on eynigs ume o o bschweyffen auffs kürtzst vnnd trostlichst für zu sagen auß heyliger gotlicher schrifft zu gericht.” (Odenbach: 1530, Aijr – As all of us are responsible for visiting the sick and console them with the word of God; I wrote this booklet, so that we can console the dying in a very brief manner with passages of the Holy Scripture.) e “So aber due letst not / wen¯ der mensch mit dem tod übereylet würt: die grosseste ist / soll ein o yegklicher seinem nechsten zu springen / vn¯ nach dem er gnade v@ Gott empfangen hat / jn e e ermanen / trosten / vnd Gott für jhn bitten / wie inn disem Buchlin für die einfeltigen ein form gestelt ist.” (Kantz: 1546, Diijr – As the last need, when man is in danger of death, is the largest, everyone should help his neighbor, and if he might have received God’s grace, he should warn him, comfort him and pray for him, as this book shows in a simple form.) 16 “Dieweyl nun des volks vil ist und dye dyener des evangeliums nit an allen enden sein künden, hab ich diese klaine underricht geschriben für die ainfeltigen, damit ayn yeder so o lesen kan, den krancken auß dem wort Gotes zusprechen kann und inen trost geben in der nodt.” (Rhegius: 1529, 243 – As there are many people but only a few clergymen, I wrote this small instruction, so that any person who can read can visit and comfort the sick with the word of God in time of need.)

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provide pastoral care to the dying answered a growing demand for religious instruction and for aiding every Christian who was called to a dying person: neighbors, family members, nurses, etc. It was important for the Reformers to engage capable and suitable caregivers – and it did not matter if they were male or female, clerics or laypersons.17

4

Deathbed Forms and Phrases

The Reformation texts on preparing for death were meant to be read to the moribund person by the caregiver : “If the dying person had not heard or embraced Reformation teaching in his life, the deathbed became his last opportunity to do so.” (Reinis: 2007, 244) For this reason, the authors skillfully combined teaching and consolation in their works. In order to achieve both purposes, they presented varied content using a wide range of different formulaic examples with phrases which could be arranged and applied to different contexts. As there are many ways to comfort and uplift, some of the manuals contained individual and distinctive features (which would lead us to far afield), but there was also a variety of aspects common to many handbooks. The constituent parts of the handbooks are addresses, exhortations, instructions, and encouragements, as well as formulas of confession and prescribed prayers to be recited aloud to console the sick person. Basic consolation for the dying could be found in psalms and other bible verses, or in the explanation and interpretation of the meaning of the sacraments, the Lord’s Prayer or the Creed. The dying person was urged to forgive others and seek forgiveness, had to answer questions concerning his faith or at least give a sign of acceptance, and finally was encouraged to commend his or her spirit into God’s hands (Luke 23:46; Ps 31:6; Acts 7:59) with a passage commonly used in the late medieval ars moriendi. Whereas the first Reformation handbooks were much less comprehensive and were intended to be read in a linear fashion, second editions (such as those of Huberinus and Brunner) were organised by sections and required a table of contents as well as more detailed instructions to the caregiver. The inclusion of directories and content organization aids indicate that authors were continually aspiring to make their books better suited for practical use. Later additions contained new text material such as short speeches, various phrases for the confession of sins, psalms, texts of common Lutheran songs (e. g. Huberinus 1542 and Spangenberg 1542), and prayers. Furthermore, the authors interpreted 17 Otter describes the intended target group with the terms “nutzlich vnd tauglich”, they could be “weib oder mann / pfaffen oder leyen” (1528, niijv).

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and explained the meaning of the texts and prayers to the reader. Some passages are treated at greater length and were meant as additional material for bridging time at the deathbed in the case of a protracted death. Other segments had the purpose of recapitulating the given message in condensed form to save time.18 The structure of later editions allowed caregivers to remain flexible and to use any parts of the book they deemed appropriate, necessary or useful in consoling the dying person. As the authors were providing support for caregivers who were responding to the special needs of the dying, they drafted a variety of characterizations of the predicament at the end of life. The user could then select the most appropriate passage(s) for the situation at hand. Some texts are dedicated to those who are assaulted by the devil, sin and hell; some to those who are impatient or unwilling to die and do not want to leave their families behind; and others are addressed to those in despair, in a sinful condition or afraid of dying. Since the authors tried to take differences19 such as the emotional constitution of a person or the particular situation into account, each characterization presents the predicament of the dying in a different way and provides a corresponding solution, which, in most cases, involves invoking scripture.

5

Sola Scriptura – Nothing Else?

Underlying all the ways of ministering to the dying mentioned previously, the Holy Scripture provided the most important basis for comfort. The manuals contain numerous scriptural passages and quotations which were selected not 18 Particularly Huberinus’ second edition is characterised by many different shorter and longer text sections for those who did not know what to say at the deathbed. He conveys to his readers that even very weak dying people are able to listen and to comprehend the meaning of consoling words (“Dann ich es mermals gesehen hab / das etliche / ain zeitlang inn zügen gelegen seind / vnnd zuletst / widerumb angefangen haben zureden / vnnd bekandt / das sy e alle wort wol gehort vnnd verstanden haben”). At the same time he cautions his readers not to select too many passages and not to overwhelm the listener with permanent reading aloud e o o (“Dan¯ man muß dem krancken auch seine ru lassen / damit man jn nit mit vil vnnd stattigem schreyen oder leesen toll mach”) 1542, Fvr, Fvv, Cv and Cijr. Brunner has categorised his consolations according to their length, which were recommended to correspond with the condition of the dying person. Brunner composed a section for those persons who are not e too weak and are still able to listen carefully (“Das erst teil gehort zu brauchen bei den o wolverstendigen krancken / so sie noch nit zuvil schwach seind”); a second section which summarises the content of the first more briefly ; and a third section which should be used shortly before death occurs (“Das dritt teyl / ist ein fast kurtzer bericht den hinziehenden e krancken furzusprechen”) 1531, Aiijr. 19 Especially Huberinus draws attention to the fact that each person has to be treated on an individual basis, because people have a different knowledge of scripture, different experiences of faith, etc. (“ain Sterbender dem andern ungleich ist”, 1542, Aiijr).

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only for their value as references, but also to teach the dying the various ways in which God demonstrated his mercy. The user could select as much as deemed necessary and useful.20 Thus, the authors hoped that the word of God would unfold its comforting effects at the deathbed. According to the Reformation doctrine, the special significance and reliability of the word of God, shortened in the phrase “sola scriptura”, as well as in other “sola”-phrases, was to be applied in an exemplary manner. At the same time, if Reformation doctrine had been strictly followed to its logical conclusion, it would have meant the renunciation of many cherished rituals. It is evident that Reformers made a recognizable break with late medieval consolation for the dying and provided their own way of proceeding, but some quotations in manuals can still be read as small concessions to the believer’s need to follow familiar rituals. As it was an established practice to have images of saints at the deathbed or to hold the crucifix before the eyes of the dying so that they could grasp it, lay it on their breast or kiss it, reformers such as Veit Dietrich did not want to “forbid” the ritual practice of displaying the cross at this moment, but they tried to justify21 why believers could do without it. In addition some church orders22 did not break with this tradition, but clung to this ritual, which indicates that there was most likely a slight difference between Reformation theology and deathbed practice. Although it is not known if and how these books were actually used, we have to pay close attention to those phrases and wordings which give evidence of the difficulties theologians faced when they tried to reorder the previous, apparently indispensible practices associated with the art of dying. Especially in the situation of impending death, Reformers seem to be willing to compromise and we can gather that, for understandably delicate deathbed situations, a viable, appropriate middle ground between continuity and change was sought. Reformers also recognised a favourable opportunity to benefit from situations at deathbeds by spreading the message of Luther’s teachings, as described here: The need for religious instruction and spiritual care was most apparent at the occasion of disease or suffering with their heavy challenges. At the same time, the church was 20 “so vil dich duncket dem kranck not vnd nutz syn.” (Odenbach: 1530, Aijr) e 21 “Das man ein Crucifix bey den sterbenden hat / ist an jm selb nicht bos. Aber wer den trost im wort hat / der hat das best Cruzifix / welches nicht allein die augenn ansehenn / sonder die ohren fassen / vnd das hertz inn sich bilden kan.” (Dietrich: 1543, [Riiij]r – That we use the crucifix at the deathbed is in itself not bad. But he whose consolation is in the word of God has the best crucifix, which is not seen by the eyes alone, but which the ears can hear and which the heart can make its own.) 22 “Wir brauchen auch noch crucifix bei den kranken” (Sehling (ed.): Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen. Band 1/2, 584 – We still can use the crucifix when visiting the sick.)

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given the best opportunity to practice the Protestant function of consolation and to put the richness of the holy treasure entrusted to them in motion during sickness and at deathbeds.23 (Althaus: 1927, 37)

That caregivers could assume they would find a positive atmosphere (cf. Hardeland 1897, 189) for disseminating Reformation ideas is undisputed. Experience showed that a small group of grateful listeners would be present and possibly willing to embrace the new doctrine (cf. Wollgast: 1992, 34), which became easily credible and comprehensible when the fundamental principal of justification through faith was explained in connection with the concrete situation at the deathbed. At the same time, it was the right moment for advising attendants to consider their own preparation for death, which Reformers like Leonhard Culmann considered useful.24 The philosopher Jean-Pierre Wils pessimistically suggests that it is impossible to know if any of the ars moriendi ideas represent the true practice or if they are simply an ideal or a clichŒ which do not reflect accurately the real conditions (cf. Wils: 2007, 30). Even if the ars moriendi were only an ideal, these handbooks on ministering to the dying from the time of the Reformation still speak to their readers and can be used to analyze Reformers’ varied attempts to make the agony of dying manageable through their new, evangelical belief and practice. Finally, it has to be noted that these works on preparation for death are valuable historical documents. Not only did ars moriendi ideas become an essential part of the Reformation movement itself, but the Reformation also further developed the former notions of what it meant to “die well”.

Bibliography Primary Literature Brunner, Leonhard (1531), Ein Christliche berichtung / wie man sich bey den kranck) vnd e sterbenden halten sol / Sie zu ermanen vnd trosten / damit sie willig zum creutz vnd sterben seyen. (Nürnberg: Simon Tunckel). Brunner, Leonhard (s.l., s.a.), Eyn Christlicher vnderricht vnnd Agend / wie sich eyn jeder 23 “Bei keinem Anlasse machte sich das Bedürfnis nach religiöser Belehrung und geistlicher Zusprache dringender geltend, als in der Leidenslage der Krankheit und Todesnot mit ihren schweren Anfechtungen. Nirgends war zugleich der Kirche so sehr Gelegenheit gegeben, ihres evangelischen Trostamts zu warten und den ganzen Reichtum des ihr anvertrauten Heilsschatzes in Bewegung zu setzen, als an Kranken- und Sterbebetten.” e 24 “Vermanung an die so bey den sterbenden sein: Sehet lieben Christen wie nutz vnd gut es vns ist / das wir viel vnd offt bey den sterbenden sein” (Culmann: 1551, Kiiijr – Admonition to those who are with the dying person: See, you beloved Christians, how useful and good it is, that we spend much time with the dying.)

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bei den krancken vnd sterbenden / fürnemlich die Seelsorger / halten sollen […] vmb eyn treflichs gemert vnnd gebessert. e Bugenhagen, Johannes (1527), Vnnderricht deren so in kranckheiten vnd tods notten lig) o o von dem hailigen Sacrament des leybs vnnd bluts Christi […] seer gut vn¯ nutzlich allen Christ) zulesen, Wittenberg. e Culmann, Leonhard (1551), Wie man die krancken trosten / vn¯ den sterbenden vorbeten sol / auch wie man alle anfechtung des teuffels vberwinden sol / vnterrichtHg auß Gottes wort, (Nürnberg: Valentin Neuber). Dietrich, Veit (1543), Agend / Büchlein für die / Pfarrherrn auff / dem Land, in: Emil Sehling (ed.), Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts 11,1, (1961) Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 487 – 553. Hahn, Nicolaus (1544), Ein kurtzer vnterricht vnd trost fur die krancken / sterbenden / vnd fur schwangere / geberende frawen, Regensburg: Hans Khol. e e Huberinus, Caspar (1531), Trostung auß Gotlicher Geschrifft. An Die so in leibliche e kranckeyt gefallen. Vnd wie man¯ für den krancken bitten sol. Die so in Todts notten ligen. Vnnd wie man¯ ihnen den Glauben vorsprechen soll […], Frankfurt am Main: Christian Egenolff. (also published in: Gunther Franz (ed.), Huberinus – Rhegius – Holbein: Bibliographische und druckgeschichtliche Untersuchung der verbreitetsten Trost- und Erbauungsschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts, Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf 1973, 227 – 240.) e Huberinus, Caspar (1542), Wie man die krancken trosten soll, (Augsburg: Philipp Ulhart). e Kantz, Caspar (1546), Wie m$ den krancken vn¯ sterbenden menschen / ermanen / trosten / vnd Gott befelhen soll / das er von diser welt seligklich abscheyde, (Straßburg: Jacob e Frohlich). e e Linck, Wenzeslaus (1538), Wie man Christlich die krancken trosten moge / durchs Vater vnser / Zehen gebot / vnd Artickel des glaubens, (Magdeburg: M. Wolffgang Mertz). Myconius, Friedrich (1539), Wie man die einfeltigen / vnd sonderlich die Krancken im Christenthumb vnterrichten sol, Wittenberg: (Georg Rhaw). Nuber, Veit (1544), Ein kurtze vnd einfeltige vnterweisung zum sterben nutzlich vnd heilsam den krancken furzuhalten an irem letzten / aus der heiligen schrift zu samen gelesen, Regensburg: Hans Khol. Odenbach, Johann (1530), Eyn trost büchlein für die Sterbenden […] auß heyliger e o Gottlicher schrifft auffs kürtzst vn¯ trostlichst zu gericht, (Straßburg: Hans Preyßen). Osiander, Andreas (1538), Vnterricht an ein sterbenden menschen, Nürnberg: (Leonhart Milchthaler). (also published in: Gerhard Müller (ed.), Osiander, Andreas d. Ä. Schriften und Briefe 1535 bis 1538, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn 1985, 490 – 497.) Rhegius, Urbanus (1529), Seelenärtzney für die gesunden und kranken zu disen gefärlichen zeyten, Augsburg: Alexander Weissenhorn. (also published in: Gunther Franz (ed.), Huberinus – Rhegius – Holbein: Bibliographische und druckgeschichtliche Untersuchung der verbreitetsten Trost- und Erbauungsschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts, Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf 1973, 241 – 260.) e e Spalatin, Georg (1533), Trostung ynn tods noten / des mehrern teils aus Thome Venatorij o Buchlin / durch Georgium Spalatinum gezogen, Wittenberg. e Spangenberg, Johannes (1542), Ein new Trostbuchlin für die Krancken / Und Vom Christlichen Ritter, (Leipzig: Jacob Berwald).

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Venatorius, Thomas (1527), Eyn kurtz vnderricht den sterbenden menschen gantz e e e trostlich. / geschrib) an HartungH Gorell diener der arm) zu Nurmberg im Newen Spital, [Nürnberg: Jobst Gutknecht].

Secondary Literature Althaus, Paul (1927), Forschungen zur Evangelischen Gebetsliteratur, Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann. Barth, Hans-Martin (1989), Leben und sterben können: Brechungen der spätmittelalterlichen “ars moriendi” in der Theologie Martin Luthers, in: Harald Wagner/ Thorsten Kruse (ed.), Ars moriendi. Erwägungen zur Kunst des Sterbens, Freiburg/ Basel/Wien: Herder, 45 – 66. Baumgartner, Konrad (1993), Article “Ars moriendi, I. Begriff- und Wirkungsgeschichte”, in: Walter Kasper (ed.), Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche 1, 1993, 1035 – 1038. Ebeling, Gerhard (1987), Des Todes Tod: Luthers Theologie der Konfrontation mit dem Tode, in: Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 84 (1987), 162 – 194. Falk, Franz (1890), Die deutschen Sterbebüchlein von der ältesten Zeit des Buchdruckes bis zum Jahre 1520, Köln: J. P. Bachem. Goez, Werner (1981), Luthers “Ein Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben” und die spätmittelalterlicher ars moriendi, in: Lutherjahrbuch 48 (1981), 97 – 114. Hamm, Berndt (2005), Luthers Anleitung zum seligen Sterben vor dem Hintergrund der spätmittelalterlichen Ars moriendi, in: Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 19, 311 – 362. Hardeland, August (1897/1898), Geschichte der speciellen Seelsorge in der vorreformatorischen Kirche und der Kirche der Reformation, 2 vol., Berlin: Reuther & Reichard. Jordahn, Ottfried (2004), Sterbegleitung und Begräbnis bei Martin Luther, in: Hansjakob Becker/Dominik Fugger/Joachim Pritzkat/Katja Süß (ed.), Liturgie im Angesicht des Todes: Reformatorische und katholische Traditionen der Neuzeit, vol. 1, Tübingen/ Basel: A. Francke, 1 – 22. Klein, Luise (1958), Die Bereitung zum Sterben: Studien zu den frühen reformatorischen Trost- und Sterbebüchern, Göttingen: Theol. Diss. [Masch.], published as: Schottroff, Luise (2012), Die Bereitung zum Sterben: Studien zu den frühen reformatorischen Sterbebüchern, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Kolb, Robert (2008), “Life is King and Lord over Death”: Martin Luther’s View of Death and Dying, in: Marion Kobelt-Groch/Cornelia Niekus Moore (ed.), Tod und Jenseits in der Schriftkultur der Frühen Neuzeit, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 23 – 45. Kümper, Hiram (2007): Tod und Sterben, Lateinische und deutsche Sterbeliteratur des Spätmittelalters, Duisburg/Köln: WiKu-Verlag. Mertens, Dieter (1976), Iacobus Carthusiensis. Untersuchungen zur Rezeption der Werke des Karthäusers Jakob von Paradies (1381 – 1465), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Moeller, Bernd (1999), Sterbekunst in der Reformation: Der “köstliche, gute, notwendige Sermon vom Sterben” des Augustiner-Eremiten Stefan Kastenbauer, in: Franz J. Felten/ Nikolas Jaspert (ed.), Vita Religiosa im Mittelalter, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 739 – 765.

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Mohr, Rudolf (1979), Article “Ars moriendi / II. 16.–18. Jahrhundert”, in: Gerhard Krause/ Gerhard Müller (ed.), TRE 4, 149 – 154. Neher, Peter (1989), Ars moriendi – Sterbebeistand durch Laien: Eine historisch-pastoraltheologische Analyse, St. Ottilien: EOS. Reinis, Austra (2007), Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519 – 1528), Aldershot: Ashgate. Resch, Claudia (2006), Trost im Angesicht des Todes: Frühe reformatorische Anleitungen zur Seelsorge an Kranken und Sterbenden, Tübingen/Basel: A. Francke. Resch, Claudia (2011), Angst in Angesicht des Todes? – ferlich und nichts nutz! Vom Umgang mit Seelennöten in den Sterbebüchlein des 16. Jahrhunderts, in: Lisanne Ebert/Carola Gruber/Benjamin Meisnitzer/Sabine Rettinger (ed.), Emotionale Grenzgänge: Konzeptualisierungen von Liebe, Trauer und Angst in Sprache und Literatur, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 289 – 305. Helmuth Rolfes (1989), Ars moriendi – Eine Sterbekunst aus der Sorge um das ewige Heil, in: Harald Wagner/Torsten Kruse (ed.), Ars moriendi: Erwägungen zur Kunst des Sterbens, Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 15 – 44. Rudolf, Rainer (1957), Ars moriendi: Von der Kunst des heilsamen Lebens und Sterbens, Köln/Graz: Böhlau. Sehling, Emil (1904), Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts 1,2, Leipzig: O. R. Reisland. Wils, Jean-Pierre (2007), ars moriendi: Über das Sterben, Frankfurt am Main/Leipzig: Insel Verlag. Wollgast, Siegfried (1992), Zum Tod im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

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Preachers as Paul: Learning and Exemplarity in Lutheran Funeral Sermons. A Motif – Perspective on Faith and Works in Face of Death

Abstract In funeral sermons, learning is connected with the use of examples: The two main compositional elements in most funeral sermons are the sermon on a text from the Bible and a biography of the deceased, and these two elements are presented as having something to do with each other. In funeral sermons for preachers, this connection was especially obvious, since faith and work were seen as connected in a special way in their lives. This article investigates sermons for prominent preachers and discusses how the use of examples was a means for learning in Lutheran funeral sermons.

Death as Connected to a Sermon The Lutheran funeral sermon combined death with learning in a new way. Parting from a deceased person called for comfort in the form of preaching, but it was also an occasion for learning to meet death in the right way. By means of an analysis of funeral sermons for preachers, this article will discuss this form of learning. How did this form of preaching shape the Lutheran doctrine of salvation?

Death as an Exemplary Moment As the moment of transition to another form of existence, death had long been regarded as an exemplary moment which called for learning. Jean Gerson (1363 – 1429) had claimed that a good death could remove guilt and secure eternal salvation (Rudolf: 1979, 147; Hamm: 2010, 117). Gerson’s Ars moriendi described how the dying person, aided by good helpers, could prepare for a good

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death. The helpers could let the dying person answer rightly some crucial questions about life and faith, and they could help him or her pray well, or they themselves could pray on behalf of the dying. When the dying person was cared for according to the instruction, the priest could declare that in death the dying person would remain within a Christian caring community, receive all possible support from the merits of Christ and St. Mary, as well as from all indulgencies offered before and after his or her death, and be on the way to a blessed existence. (Gerson: 2009, 101.116). In Gerson’s instruction, the urgency of the moment of death had involved the need to maintain a community that could carry through death. Through faith and prayers, the dying person should be united with the prayers and merits of Christ and others to secure her progress towards eternal salvation (Rudolf: 1979, 147; Gerson: 2009, 103 – 108). Lutheran preaching perceived the moment of death differently and held that it inspired a different form of learning. In a sermon delivered during Lent in 1522, Luther described the urgency of this moment in a way that was to become characteristic of Lutheran piety in face of death: Everyone must die for himself and fight his own death, and therefore everyone needs to know that which is necessary for meeting death in a saving faith. With this knowledge, everything would be won, and without it everything would be lost, Luther stated (Mohr : 1979: 149 – 150; Luther : 1905, 1 – 2).1 Luther’s sermon emphasized death’s finality and urgency. Since one’s eternal destiny was decided solely by the faith one had met death with, nothing could be changed for the deceased after his or her death, neither by intercessions, nor by pious deeds on behalf of the deceased. This Lutheran view of death also changed the perception of a good death and thus the priorities and focus in the art of dying. The emphasis on faith in face of death was not new. Gerson had claimed that faith on the death bed could transform someone’s life into a life devoted to God and reconciled with God. In the good death, the dying person was humble and contrite, surrendering all worldly matters in a patient farewell. The prayer which Gerson recommended towards the end of his instruction expresses an understanding of faith not too different from that of Luther. Here the dying should express her faith with the following words: “I set all my trust and hope to the death of Jesus Christ and surrender myself to him; I put His death between me and Your severe judgment.” One notices, however, that this concluding prayer, in 1 “Wir sind alle zum tode gerfordert und wird keiner für den andern sterben, Sondern yglicher in eygner person für sich mit dem tod kempffen. In die oren Künden wir woll schreyen, Aber ein yeglicher muss für sich selber geschickt sein in der zeit des todts: ich würd denn nit bey dir seyn noch du bey mir. Hierinn so muss ein yedermann selber die haupstück so einen Christen belangen, wol wissen und gerüst sein, und seindt die, die ewer lieb vor vil tagen von mir gehört hat.”

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which the life of a sinner is devoted to Christ, was the conclusion of a death preparation which had aimed at uniting faith and works by letting the moment of death transform the life of the dying person (Gerson: 2009, 96 – 101). However, despite similarities, it is evident that Luther in 1522 presented faith differently. As he saw it, one could not be helped by friends or helpers in the moment of death as, and he prescribed for it a faith that did not transform life. Rather, in this faith, knowledge was given the central role at the expense of attitudes and virtues: One should be aware of God’s wrath towards us because of our sin and know the freedom one has from this judgment because of the Son (Luther : 1905, 2 – 4). It was a faith that rested in knowledge and which saw virtues and attitudes as secondary phenomena. This tendency can also be observed in Luther’s version of an ars moriendi, namely the Sermon vom bereitung zum Sterben from 1519. In all its recommendations, the goal is always to strengthen the faith which maintains salvation by grace alone against all scruples that “may contradict this knowledge” (Luther : 1884, 686.689; Rasmussen: 2009, 366 – 384; Hamm: 2010, 151; Mohr : 1979, 149). Luther’s concept of salvation as secured by faith alone emphasized both death’s finality and the role of knowledge in the face of death. Accordingly, death came to inspire a different form of learning. The faith needed in the face of death had less use for a good life with good works, but let the moment of death appear as almost decoupled from the preceding life. What was to be learnt was a faith that expressed a doctrine, and which could hardly be secured by helpers who led the dying person through the proper pious practices. The faith needed in face of death was rooted in teaching, and therefore death called for preaching.

Death and Learning: Ars moriendi and Ars bene vivendi According to this understanding of the moment of death, the same learning was necessary in face of death as in all other parts of life. One would therefore suspect that Protestants saw no need for a special form of preaching in face of death: The dying person needed to hear the same things preached as everyone else. However, despite this dogmatic logic, their practice was more complex. Rainer Rudolf has identified two major streams within the ars moriendi tradition. The most classical part consists of instructions to those who were to engage in pastoral care for the dying. A second and slightly different category was made up by death preparations primarily written as edifying literature to a wider audience, a form of ars moriendi that could just as well be called an ars bene vivendi. It aimed to teach its readers how to prepare for a good death by leading a good life. Here death represented an ascetic impulse to life, since death

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was best met when one had prepared for it by dying away from this world and its concerns (Rudolf: 1979, 144). Protestants continued the tradition of writing guides for pastoral care on death beds in the so called Sterbebüchlein, but with a slightly changed focus. The instructions could now appear as a short and simple dogmatics, as a form of preaching adjusted to the situation of dying. Luther employed the genre as a means to help the dying person know and make use of the doctrine of justification, and Bugenhagen employed it to help the dying person confess sins and believe God’s promises (Mohr : 1979, 149 – 150; Reinis: 2007, 248). On a textual level, there are some common features that connect the Sterbebüchlein to the funeral sermons: They often have references to the circumstances of a concrete death and references to a concrete deceased person for whom these instructions had come to be used in ways resembling funeral sermons (Mohr : 1979, 150 – 151). Through these references, the Sterbebüchlein were not merely guides for pastoral care, but also comfort for the bereaved as testimonies to the saving help the deceased person had received in her final moment. The instruction could work as a more general form of preaching by portraying the deceased person as an example of the faith that would also help others in their deaths. Preaching for the dying person could thus continue as a preaching for the living. Despite the similar references to concrete deaths, the differences between the Sterbebüchlein and the funeral sermon should not be understated. Lutheran funeral sermons were not written as instructions for pastoral care on death beds, but as sermons to be delivered at funerals. According to Lutheran church orders, the funeral sermon should meet two needs: Firstly, the sermon should bring comfort by reminding hearers of the resurrection and the hope of eternal life.2 Secondly, the church orders claimed that the funeral sermon should awaken faith and promote a Christian life (Sehling: 2004, 120). This second point emphasized a consequence of the shared situation: The deceased person confronted the congregants with their own death in a way that strengthened preaching. By the way they prescribed funeral sermons, church orders claimed that not only did death call for a sermon, but also that the sermon was strengthened by death. Therefore, to the extent the funeral sermons resembled ars moriendi, they shared an intention with the sub-genre labeled ars bene vivendi, since they presented a teaching on death intended to promote a life ready for death (Moore: 2006, 13). In the Catholic tradition, there had been an obvious connection between the 2 In 1539, the Saxon church order states explicitly that there is no need for a funeral sermon, whereas it recommends funeral sermons in 1580 (Sehling 1902: 274.371) Württemberg church orders recommend funeral sermons already in 1536 (Sehling 2004: 121).

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ars bene vivendi and the ars moriendi genres, since a blessed death was connected with a pious life. In a Lutheran context, the two were connected by the knowledge necessary in life as well as in death.

Examples in Funeral Sermons Nevertheless, examples had a function beyond that of a reminder of death. A main characteristic of the genre was that the funeral sermons were composed of two main elements, namely a teaching on a text from the Bible and a biography of the deceased (Moore: 2006, 27.97). The two elements were almost always connected by an affirmation that the deceased person had died in faith. Therefore the deceased were not only reminders of death urging learning of that which was preached, but just as much examples of the saving faith and an intrinsic part of the teaching by giving shape to the sermons’ message (Winkler : 1975, 57). Whereas the deceased in the Sterbebüchlein had reminded others of death and salvation and strengthened the text’s comforting message, they came to hold a different role as examples in funeral sermons, as part of the message. The sermons were composed in a way which let them point quite concretely to ways of living connected with a saving faith. This central characteristic was a major reason for the genre’s great success. It offered a potent rhetoric tool to the preacher, drawing on the listeners’ attention and offering possibilities for describing faith’s connection to life. However, it inevitably also posed the question of the limits and rules for descriptions of the deceased as testimonies of faith. How could it survive without jeopardizing the doctrine which had motivated it in the first place? How could the deceased remain examples of a saving faith without works, without becoming role models to be imitated and promoting a faith resting on works? To answer these questions, this investigation will focus on two aspects of the funeral sermon: Firstly, it will analyze how the teaching on a text from the Bible was combined with a biographical account, either by message or by motif. Secondly, it will investigate the outline of the biography. By studying the relationship between the death scene and other parts of the biographical account, one may see how faith and life were connected, and thus how the preacher saw the ars moriendi as connected with the ars bene vivendi in his message. We shall focus on funeral sermons that are especially well-suited for highlighting how faith and life, words and works, were combined in Lutheran preaching in the face of death. They are sermons for Lutheran preachers on texts by St. Paul.

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Preachers as Examples To employ the example of the deceased person in a way compatible with true doctrine was a particularly urgent concern for the preacher who was to preach at another preacher’s funeral. Preachers’ lives and offices should be dedicated to the preaching of the word; they were representatives of the faith and doctrine it had been their lives’ calling to promote. In their case, the work referred to in the biographical account would share the same purpose as the funeral sermon genre, namely the preaching of the faith without works which saves in death. A general rule of the genre was therefore most acute in funeral sermons for preachers: Their lives had to be described as examples in a way that served preaching. Compositional elements that are especially elaborate in funeral sermons for preachers testify to this concern. The biographical accounts contained descriptions of how the preachers had followed their calling and conducted their office as preachers in a faithful passing on of the word of God. Elaborate presentations of the preachers’ spiritual testaments were common. It was a part of the sermon combining the two elements of knowledge and life: a declaration given on the death bed, where the preacher maintained his teaching and summarized it and referred to his own works and to other authorities that he acknowledged. The spiritual testament primarily described words and knowledge, but it was also connected to the life that had testified this doctrine: a man who had maintained this doctrine in face of death, and who had done so with certain attitudes and values. Preachers were not the only ones who were described as confessing Christ on their death bed, but their confessions were far more elaborate than those of other estates and professions. They were almost always surrounded by colleagues who could witness their testimony. Being such well suited examples for funeral sermons, the preachers also made the problem at the core of the genre acute: How were such good examples to be described in a way that let them continue to promote the saving faith without works, that is; without transforming them into role models whose works were to be imitated? These prominent biographies become even more interesting by the fact that they were often combined with the perhaps most influential biblical figure in Lutheran theology, namely St. Paul, from whom Lutherans drew some of the most central statements about the relationship between faith and life.

The Example of St. Paul Lutheran funerals reduced the readings from the Bible to one text (cf. Sehling: 2004, 121). The choice of text seems to have followed some form of pattern,

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governed to some extent by gender, estate and profession: Rulers were commemorated with texts about Israelite kings, noblemen with texts from Job (Angel: 2011, 159 – 172). Texts by or about St. Paul were generally recommended for funerals, but in practice they seem to have been most frequent in funerals for preachers. This might be due to the tradition of seeing Paul as the patron of theologians (Voraigne: 1993, 351), or to the exceptional significance for doctrine that was ascribed to Paul in Lutheran piety, where he was regarded as the origin of the Reformation discovery. (Luther : 1928, 185 – 186 and Stolle: 2002, 79). The biblical texts were typically connected to the biography by some form of typology in which the two elements of the sermon could shed light on each other (Steiger : 2001, 329).

Luther and St. Paul For Luther, St. Paul was the most distinguished and important of all the apostles. The many sermons he gave on the day of St Paul’s conversion are signs of Luther’s great appreciation of St. Paul (Leppin: 2009, 152). The last of these was preached in January 1546, a few months before his death. It dealt with St. Paul’s authority and with the question of how to appreciate St. Paul as the most important apostle without idolizing his life and person. In the sermon Luther stressed that though St. Paul was the most distinguished of the apostles, he should not be idolized in the way papists worship the saints. Papists’ adoration of St. Paul’s body and bones was a misconception. St. Paul’s great authority rested on his office as an apostle to the heathens and on his outstanding message. He should therefore be appreciated for his words and his teaching, not for his bones and body as the last traces of his life. He should be honored in his own letters, where he was still present with his life, for in his letters one found his spirit which helped open up the whole of scripture. Luther therefore claimed the proper respect for St. Paul was shown in reading and accepting what he had written in his letters (Luther : 1914, 136 – 137). The contrast between appreciating St. Paul for his life and body or for his words was characteristic of Luther’s evaluation of St. Paul: The content of St. Paul’s letters lent them their great authority and confirmed them as apostolic writings. The criterion of what was to be regarded as apostolic was whether it preached Christ and the gospel, and St. Paul’s great authority rested on in the fact that he had done so better than anyone else. St. Paul was thus seen as a key figure for hermeneutic and doctrine, since the teaching in his letters was the one that opened the whole of scripture (Leppin: 2009, 152). However, Luther’s way of describing St. Paul’s authority is more complex than these principles suggest. It rests not simply on texts and letters, but also on his

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life. For Luther, St. Paul’s authority and apostolicity were guaranteed not only by the content of his words, but also by the way these words were part of his life. St. Paul was the most prominent of the apostles because of his office as an apostle to the heathens, but the primary reason for his authority lay in his calling, the dramatic conversion he had experienced on his way to Damascus when he was called by Christ’s own voice. Therefore his calling was from heaven and his authority as an apostle was rooted in God’s pure word. It was an ordination which had made St. Paul’s words the words of Christ and secured him in his doctrine when confronted with apostles who disagreed with him (Luther : 1914, 136.144 – 145). This event in St. Paul’s life had let him write heavenly words, words in which he was still present with his spirit. Luther’s sermon thus pointed to a connection between words and life which opened the door to a richer exemplarity for St. Paul. In accordance with how St. Paul had presented himself, Luther saw him as an example of someone who had been struck by God’s mercy, as an example for all others who believe in Christ to eternal life (Luther : 1914, 141 – 142). As such, St. Paul’s example was to be utilized not primarily as a role model, but as a type: It was not to be imitated, but rather to be seen as a pattern of how God acts and of how a believer may experience his or her life. By recognizing one’s own sinfulness in St. Paul prior to his conversion, one may hope that God, because of Christ, may show us the same mercy that he showed St. Paul. As a type, therefore, St. Paul was to be regarded as an example that brought comfort. Luther held that preachers were connected to St. Paul’s authority. In performing their offices, preachers lend their tongue and mouth to St. Paul, so that hearing St. Paul preached equals hearing St. Paul himself (Luther : 1914, 138). The balancing of these two aspects in the evaluation of St. Paul, authority as resting on words and words as connected to a life, was central to Luther’s way of describing his own relation to St. Paul: When Luther in 1545 looked back on what he came to regard as his Reformation discovery, namely, the new understanding of justitia Dei in Romans 1,17, he described it as a conversion and divine intervention similar to what St. Paul had experienced on his way to Damascus. His life had been changed in a similarly overwhelming and unexpected manner by his exegetical discovery (Stolle: 2002, 79). As he looked back, Luther saw that, prior to this discovery, he had nurtured a zeal for the old religion similar to the Pharisaic fanaticism of St. Paul as Saul. Here Luther obviously saw the text by St. Paul as connected to the life of St. Paul, and he saw St. Paul’s life as connected to his own. Luther saw the words of St. Paul as surrounded by a life which made them possible. St. Paul was a wondrous example of the doctrine of justification. He was an example not in the form of a role model, but rather as a type. The acts of mercy that befell St. Paul

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pointed to patterns of God’s actions; they were situations which Luther saw as having taken place in his own life too (Leppin: 2009, 155 – 156). The form of exemplarity Luther ascribed to St. Paul did not connect life and words in the form of an ideal to be imitated by successors. Instead, life and words met in a typology which offered insights into God’s way of acting and opened the eyes to God’s actions.

St. Paul in Humanist Piety Luther described his understanding of St. Paul’s words as a new discovery, but there was a long tradition of valuing St. Paul’s great significance in theology and piety for reasons like those of Luther. A good example is the description of St. Paul in the Golden Legend, the classical collection of stories of saints from the 13th century. Here he was remembered for his fruitful tongue, with which he had preached the Gospel to the heathens; for the way his virtuous love had found expression in his brilliant understanding; and his wondrous conversion was seen as confirming God’s choice of him as an organ for His communication (Voraigne: 1993, 350). The collection also emphasized other aspects of St. Paul’s life that had not been at the forefront of Luther’s argument, but which would recur as important in later Lutherans’ appreciation of St. Paul. Although he might have been of lesser dignity than St. Peter as a saint, the Legend claimed, he still surpassed St. Peter’s dignity when it came to preaching and persistence and industriousness in his service as an apostle to the heathens. He was especially remembered for the humility he had shown by providing for himself with the work of his own hands, as well as for his great contemplation, which had led to his elevation into the third heaven. It was underlined that the way he had sacrificed everything but Christ’s love in a suffering equal to that of Job should earn him the greatest respect (Voraigne: 1993, 350 – 351. 357 – 358). Helmut Feld writes in an article from 1982 about a renewed interest for St. Paul among humanists in the last centuries before Luther. In Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 – 1536), he finds an understanding of St. Paul’s letters as the sum of faith and theology and an evaluation of St. Paul as an authority above others because he presented the sum of theology. Erasmus shared these thoughts with several of his humanist predecessors. Faber Stapulensis (1455 – 1536) valued St. Paul as the one who had opened the gate to the literal sense of Scripture, giving the key to understanding the Old Testament and to drawing a distinction between spirit and letter. A common feature in humanist appreciation of St. Paul was the regard for his theologia crucis and his treatment of the themes penance and forgiveness (p. 325 – 326. 312).

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Characteristically, in this tradition, St. Paul’s significance stemmed from his virtues. His saving doctrine came to expression through learnedness and eloquence. In the writings of Marsilio Ficino (1433 – 1493), St. Paul’s authority as an apostle chosen by God was seen as linked to these virtues as personal qualities. He claimed that Paul owed his supernatural learnedness to his ascent into the third heaven which he reported in his Second Letter to the Corinthians. In the third heaven, he had been given insight to the third level of reason, superior to practical as well as physical reason, namely theological reason, and because of this reason, he was also able to lead others in contemplation. His learnedness was thus described as virtue rooted in an experience of God, and the inner truth of this learnedness was itself virtue, namely the faith, hope and love described as the sum of knowledge in his First Letter to the Corinthians (p. 296 – 299). Though humanists favored a more obvious coupling of word with life and teaching with virtues in their descriptions of St. Paul, they valued the same motifs as Luther. Because they anchored St. Paul’s teaching in personal qualities such as learnedness, insight and eloquence rather than in his unexpected conversion, they came to depict St. Paul not as a type, but as an example and a role model to be imitated.

St. Paul and Contemporary Preachers in Saxon Funeral Sermons How could the example of St. Paul be combined with the examples of contemporary preachers to preach a faith that saved in face of death? Some classic funeral sermons for preachers show how these two main motifs made possible different ways of presenting the relationship between faith and life. Our first case is perhaps the most classical of all Lutheran funeral sermons, namely, Johannes Bugenhagen’s funeral sermon for Martin Luther, delivered at Luther’s funeral in the Wittenberg Castle Church, February 22nd, 1546.

The Example of Martin Luther Bugenhagen based his sermon on the following text from the First Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 4, held to be written by St. Paul: “13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

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Already at the outset, Bugenhagen was clear about the reason for his choice of text. The words by St. Paul were chosen because of the situation. It was a situation of grief, for a better reason to grieve than the loss of Luther was hardly imaginable, a fact emphasized by Bugenhagen in his claim that he was so moved by grief that he could hardly keep himself from crying (Bugenhagen: 1996, Aii). As the congregation in Thessalonica had grieved and needed St. Paul’s comforting words, so the congregation in Wittenberg was now mourning and needed to hear the same words of comfort from St. Paul. The similar situations made the choice of text intuitively right. The way the situation guided the choice of text reveals how Bugenhagen combined the biblical text with the biography of the deceased. There were parallels on another level too, namely, that they had accomplished similar things which could comfort in similar ways. Luther’s greatness rested on the fact that he had passed on the Gospel about faith without works as it was to be found in the writings of St. Paul (p. Aiii and Bii). Therefore, although his death caused great sorrow, Luther was also, together with St. Paul, guaranteeing the comfort that life after death was real and better than this life. Bugenhagen was cautious when comparing Luther with St. Paul. He described them as united not by the similarity between their lives, but by the doctrine they had both preached. Bugenhagen also described Luther’s life, but not together with a description of St. Paul’s life. Instead another, somewhat unexpected example appeared. Over three pages, Bugenhagen told the story of his friend Ambrosius Bernardus, a believing Christian who had died in faith and confession and without fear. Approaching his life’s end, he had been surrounded by friends who had engaged him in conversations and made sure he had his pain relieved by medicine and had helped him suffer his sickness harmoniously until he could surrender his spirit to Christ (p. Biii – C). Bugenhagen claimed that Ambrosius Bernardus, on his own, could very well be a comforting example, but he soon revealed another intention behind the mentioning of his friend. Ambrosius Bernardus had also been Luther’s brotherin-law, whom Luther had visited frequently during his last days. By reporting Luther’s reflections and thoughts on Ambrosius and his death, Bugenhagen could transform the little anecdote into a story that negotiated Luther’s exemplarity. It turned out that Ambrosius during his illness had lost his clarity of thought. When Luther had visited him one of his last days, Ambrosius had concluded the visit with the following words: “Thank you so much for your visit, I shall soon return your favor and come over to your house for a pleasant evening!” Luther had later reported on this visit to Bugenhagen and had been certain that Ambrosius had been unaware of his condition and his approaching death, since Ambrosius in his illness had been obviously unable to go anywhere. To this observation, Luther had added a short prayer: “Dear God, lend also me

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such a happy and quiet way of dying. What else would I then miss on earth?” Bugenhagen reported that after Ambrosius had been buried, he had been walking in the churchyard with Luther. Luther had then led him to Ambrosius’ grave and pointed at it and said: “There he lies and knows still not that he is dead. Dear Lord Jesus Christ, take likewise me to you from this vale of tears!” (p. Cii) Towards the end of his sermon, Bugenhagen could describe Luther’s last hours as being in accordance with the wishes Luther had expressed in his reflections on Ambrosius’ death. Luther was described as having died according to a minimalist ars moriendi. He had had no use for receiving the Eucharist or the customary precursory absolution. Assured in his knowledge of God’s mercy, he had settled with a simple prayer and the traditional words of surrender to God (“In your hands, dear God, I commit my spirit”) before he had folded his hands and surrendered his spirit (p. Ciiii). This simple and trusting faith expressed the continuity in the life and death of Luther in a way that resisted exemplarity. Though Luther earlier in the sermon was honored as a great reformer of the church, this learnedness was not presented as part of his faith in face of death. Rather, his faith was characterized by a simplicity made possible by Reformation doctrine and his work as a theologian and reformer. In this indirect way, biography and sickbed were tied together. It was an account of faith intended, not to inspire imitation, but to be comforting in the face of death. Accordingly, Luther was not presented as exemplary to his listeners. His faith was simple and undeserved, and was not expressed in virtues. St. Paul was similarly present in Bugenhagen’s sermon, namely, with his doctrine and comfort, but not with his life or virtues. The exemplarity latent in the funeral sermon’s introductory praise of Luther’s merit as a reformer and theologian was therefore not connected to the account of Luther’s sickbed. No spiritual testament let Luther appear as an outstanding example of faith together with St. Paul. Instead, Bugenhagen let Luther himself counter this exemplarity by choosing a surprising example for himself, namely the slightly senile Ambrosius. The faith Luther saw as exemplary in Ambrosius was hardly virtuous or learned, since it was unclear and mixed with fantasizing, and since Ambrosius was unaware of his own death, it was not a courageous faith maintained in the face of the last fear. Thus Bugenhagen could present Luther as an example of a faith that resisted exemplarity. It was an exemplarity perfectly suited to illustrate the faith Luther was praised for having promoted; a faith which depended not on the precursory life, but on the word and the sermon. Read with an interest for the relationship between biblical text and biography and between the course of life and the death scene, one observes that in Bugenhagen’s sermon, the explicit connection between biblical text and biography is made up by abstracts: doctrine, faith and comfort, and that the lives of St. Paul

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and Luther are not presented as motifs, except as channels for true doctrine and saving knowledge. Though Luther and St. Paul implicitly function as similar motifs, they do so reluctantly. Luther’s death scene was connected to his course of life with a similar reluctance with regard to exemplarity. It described the last moment’s faith and trust in a way that expressed no need for reconciliation with Christ through rituals and confessions. Here too, however, there was an implicit connection between the course of life and the death scene, since the faith in God’s grace without works was so clearly connected to the knowledge Luther had promoted as a theologian and reformer. Thus the learning invoked by Bugenhagen’s sermon seems to agree with a Lutheran understanding of the ars moriendi genre. It sought to promote a faith resting on a knowledge based on proper preaching: It was the Gospel message that connected lives to salvation. A faith that could be expressed without works, could also be promoted without the description of a life, namely, as knowledge present in one’s last hour. The sermon therefore resembled a Lutheran ars moriendi by presenting the knowledge that gave comfort and strength in face of death. To a lesser extent, it taught how life should be lived in order to be prepared for death. Since preaching about death required the same preaching as was required in all other parts of life, the sermon contained an implicit instruction for life. In this way, faith without works was strengthened by the account of the death of an exemplary believer.

Saxon Traditions Bugenhagen’s sermon seems to have become a model for Saxon funeral sermons, though his subtle way of combining works and doctrine with biography and death scene would not have been easily prescribed in a church order. Still, the outline recommended in the church orders’ prescriptions for funeral sermons combine biblical teaching with biographical account in a similar way and resist presenting the biography as exemplary. While the church order from 1539 stated that it was not necessary to present sermons in funerals, the church order from 1580 prescribed funeral sermons and presented four model sermons (Sehling: 1902, 371 – 375). The first of them followed the same outline as Bugenhagen’s sermon for Luther and was based on the same text from 1 Thessalonians 4 and combined doctrine and biography according to the same principle: St. Paul guaranteed the doctrine of grace by faith without works which enabled trust in the hope of resurrection and eternal life. This faith was then indicated in biographical accounts, such as in the fact that the deceased had been baptized, had confessed faith or received the sac-

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rament of the Eucharist. These indications served to confirm that the deceased had part in the hope that was guaranteed by St. Paul. The connection between the life described and the faith present in the moment of death was secured by faith in the form of words and knowledge. This tendency in the use of examples may also be observed in Saxon funeral sermons for preachers, as in Sigrfried Saccus’ sermon for his colleague Peter Ulner, abbot in Magdeburg, on a text by St. Paul, namely 1 Corinthians 3. Here it was St. Paul’s message and not his life or example which together with accounts of the deceased’s faith confirmed Ulner’s salvation and made Ulner an example that could strengthen faith’s hope in face of death (Saccus: 1596). Though some prominent preachers in Saxony were commemorated with funeral sermons over texts by St. Paul, this was far from the case with all preachers. The custom of connecting bible text to biography by message and not by motif may be one of the reasons why texts by St. Paul were not as consequently chosen in funeral sermons for preachers in Saxony as was the case in Württemberg.

St. Paul and Preachers in Württemberg Funeral Sermons Already in 1536, the Protestant church order of Württemberg prescribed that in funerals the preacher ought to preach on a text by St. Paul, preferably 1 Thessalonians 4, the text which Bugenhagen later used in his funeral sermon for Luther (Sehling: 2004, 121). Württemberg funeral sermons show preference for texts that not only express hope and comfort in face of death, but which also thematize St. Paul’s life and testimony. Often, St. Paul’s words are not only presented as authoritative in themselves, but as important also by the way they are tied to St. Paul’s course of life.

The Example of Johannes Brenz This is very characteristically the case in Wilhelm Bidembach’s funeral sermon for Johannes Brenz from 1570. Johannes Brenz is probably the most influential of all Württemberg theologians as the mind behind the country’s church order and confession from 1552 and as author of the catechism which would shape religious upbringing in the country for generations (Confession Virtembergica 1999 and Weismann: 1990). From 1553 and until his death, he held the country’s highest clerical position as dean of Stuttgart (Estes: 1982). On his death, Brenz was honored with a funeral sermon by Bidembach, who succeeded him in the

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position as Dean of Stuttgart. The funeral sermon for Brenz seems to have become a model for later funeral sermons for Württemberg preachers. The funeral sermon was based on a text from Acts 20, where St. Paul gives his farewell speech to the elders of Ephesus before he goes on his journey to Jerusalem. In this farewell speech, St. Paul describes himself by a summary of his service for the Lord, a service he had endured in humbleness and with tears through temptations. Before his journey he declares himself willing to meet persecution and death, as long as he may fulfill his race and his service in testifying to the Gospel about God’s grace. He warns and admonishes his friends in the face of coming times and assignments with a reminder of his own example: As he had never cared for silver or gold, but had always provided for himself with the work of his own hands, so also they should work and care for the weak. At the end of his speech, St. Paul tells the elders that he may probably never see them again, and upon hearing this, they all break into tears, pray together, kiss him and throw themselves around his neck. The funeral sermon’s exposition of this text described an exemplarity which met the present situation on two levels: Firstly, the situation described in the biblical text was seen as a type for the situation of which the sermon was a part. Paul’s farewell to the elders in Ephesus and Johannes Brenz’ farewell to the church in Württemberg were seen as parallel. With an implicit reference to his addressees, who were church leaders, Bidembach explained that at the time of St. Paul, the elders in Ephesus were the equivalent to a church ministry or a consistory (Bidembach: 1570, 2). Secondly, the main character in the biblical text, St. Paul, was described as resembling the person being buried, Johannes Brenz. These two levels of exemplarity, situation and person, interacted in a way that laid the premises for the sermon’s communication: The sermon should be heard in the same way as the speech related in the biblical text was heard by its biblical audience, namely as the departing person’s message to the gathered congregation. Unlike Bugenhagen in his sermon for Luther, Bidembach did not base St. Paul’s and Brenz’s value as examples on their status as senders of an important message. Rather, it was based on their value as motifs. One should focus on these two examples and their lives’ endings and consider them as purposefully as one does a target when shooting with a crossbow, for by such a consideration one may follow these high teachers in their faith, Bidembach claimed, with reference to Hebrews 13 (p. 0). In particular, one should consider them with regard to their testament and the way they had fulfilled their office (p. 1 – 2). Bidembach described St. Paul’s farewell speech to the elders in Ephesus as such a testament, even though St. Paul had presented it fifteen years prior to his

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death. According to Bidembach, it was a testament in four parts, and he claimed that all Christians, and especially preachers, ought to take notice of these four parts, all of which he elaborately described in the sermon. In the first part, he described the faith, doctrine and confession St. Paul had promoted; in the second, his cross and suffering, and the ensuing resurrection which he expected; in the third, the life and conduct with which St. Paul had displayed his doctrine; the fourth concerned St. Paul’s farewell and death, in which he had confirmed his doctrine, completed his cross and ended his life to salvation and eternal bliss (p. 1 – 2). Seen as a testament, St. Paul’s speech appeared as words connecting the moment of farewell to the preceding life and its works and virtues. Thus interpreted, St. Paul was not only the sender of a message, but himself part of this message in a way that resembled how humanists had seen doctrine connected to person in St. Paul’s eloquence and learnedness. Bidembach let the four points in St. Paul’s words structure his account of the life of Johannes Brenz: “Even though I am well aware that the life of the holy apostle surpasses that of all others, I will still collate and compare the ministry and office of St. Paul with that of Brenz, in all its parts, and remember him truthfully and uprightly, without any form of hypocrisy or boasting. (p. 16)”3 There were clear parallels to the life of St. Paul in the life of Brenz. Under the first part which dealt with the doctrine promoted in their offices as preachers, Bidembach remarked that St. Paul had received this insight because of his ascent to heaven, the classical raptus Pauli, which among humanists had been an explanation of his celestial learnedness and eloquence, and which was a recurring motif among Württemberg theologians, also in funeral sermons. Because of it, St. Paul had promoted his doctrine solely according to God’s advice and without any thought of earthly pleasures. He had taught the doctrine about God’s mercy and kingdom, about penance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, which was the true doctrine presenting all that was needed for salvation. Bidembach claimed Brenz’ preaching had had a heavenly origin similar to St. Paul’s: He had made no human consideration in deciding what to preach, but had based his preaching solely on the writings of prophets and apostles. He had preached thoroughly and honestly and understandably about salvation without works and had thus continued the preaching of Luther (p. 16 – 17). Also under the second point, Bidembach saw obvious parallels. St. Paul had suffered cross and persecution as a sign of his true faith and confession in a way 3 “So ich dan jetzt S. Pauli vnd Brentij Predigampt vnd Ministerium durch alle Stuck hindurch / mit seiner gebürenden Mass vn Zil (dan ich wol weiss / dz ein Apostel weit weit alle andere Lehrer übertrifft) gegen einander halten vnd vergleichen sollte / wurde mir ehe am tag dan an warhafftiger vnnd bestendiger rede / ohn alles heuchlen vn meuchlen / zerinnen.”

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which ought to inspire all subsequent servants of the church. Brenz’ life had also been marked in a similar way by suffering and cross. He had been banned, had had confrontations with several groups and positions, and in all this suffering he had always comforted and strengthened others (p. 17). Under the third point, Bidembach made sure to emphasize that although it had not earned him salvation, St. Paul’s good conduct had nevertheless been a valuable testimony of a good conscience. One should live in good conduct for the sake of one’s neighbor, but thereby one would also testify to salvation instead of bringing shame to God’s name and Gospel, Bidembach added (p. 5 and 18). This was no minor point on an occasion when so many servants of the church were gathered to bid the country’s highest ranking cleric farewell. According to St. Paul, Bidembach explained, there were three vices that often occurred among servants of the church, namely pride, laziness and greed. Against these vices St. Paul had set the noble virtues of humility and diligence. Preachers should keep this in mind and imitate these virtues. Bidembach pointed to the example of Johannes Brenz, who had never boasted of his conduct, but had always presented himself as a fallible sinner. Free from arrogance and pride, Brenz could always be on good terms with people from lower estates and be a courageous supporter of the oppressed. He had rarely been angry, he was never lazy, but was the quickest and most laborious of writers. Greed had been a foreign vice to him. Though he received several magnificent offers from sovereigns in other countries, he had remained loyal to his country for a fair amount of gold, which, Bidembach did not fail to remark, was clearly permitted by Scripture. He continued to be grateful and content and kept an appropriate household; it was not costly or extravagant, but it was not sad either (p. 19). The fourth point described further resemblances to St. Paul in Brenz. St. Paul had said that he did not fear the approaching death. He had maintained that Christ was his life and death, and without doubting the resurrection, he had expressed a wish to depart in order to be with Christ. He had testified to his faith and encouraged his friends to hold on to the true doctrine. Brenz had made a similar farewell with a clear testimony. As would become customary in funeral sermons for Württemberg preachers, Bidembach could offer a comprehensive description of Brenz’ death bed; the way he had expressed his faith, his confession of sins, how he had received absolution and the Eucharist, and how he in all this had been surrounded by witnesses in the form of colleagues and leaders of the church. They were asked by Brenz to bear witness to his last hours and farewell and to communicate his testimony (p. 20 – 21). Unlike Bugenhagen’s, Bidembach’s examples are not presented as examples experiencing what others will later experience, explaining situations which others will find themselves in. He employs a classic exemplarity in which an example is presented in order to be imitated. First the example of St. Paul with his

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life and virtues is presented as a role model to the listeners, and then Brenz comes to function as a role model that enforces the relevance of Paul’s example to the listeners. Since salvation is given by God’s mercy and received in faith, it is not this imitation, which is encouraged, that in itself saves, as Bidembach cautiously points out. Nevertheless, the significance of these virtues and of the way of living that is described is very great, for they are signs of the faith and salvation which the funeral sermon wants to preach. They are lives benefitting one’s neighbor because they witness to faith and contribute to the salvation of others. As testimonies of the good conscience offered by faith, they are lives closely connected with faith (p. 5 – 6). Bidembach found it safe to make his main intention the promotion of this exemplarity and imitation and to conclude his sermon with a corresponding prayer that God might let him and all those gathered in church follow Brenz in the faith he had held and that they also might be given the accompanying virtues seen in the lives of Brenz and St. Paul (p. 22). The resistance to describing life and virtues in too close proximity to faith expressed in the funeral sermon for Luther is hardly traceable in the funeral sermon for Brenz. The connection between biography and deathbed is not restricted to knowledge. On the deathbed, it is important not only to die in confident faith, but also to maintain the testimony of faith which one’s life had been and to meet death united with the life one had lived. The clear connection between life and death was made possible by the fact that the biblical example and the deceased person were connected as motifs and not only by message. Bidembach’s way of connecting the death scene to the life let his sermon encourage a different form of learning. Bugenhagen’s sermon had promoted a faith that could bring comfort and confidence in face of death, and only secondarily teach how one should live to be prepared for death. In Bidembach’s sermon it was the other way around. The way the deceased brought his life with him in confessions and testimonies on his deathbed resembles the ars moriendi prescribed by Gerson. It was an ars moriendi which opened for a more direct connection to an ars bene vivendi. Here one could prepare for death by one’s way of living, and this preparation was prescribed quite concretely in the sermon. In a manner very different from the funeral sermon for Luther, Bidembach emphasized the connection between faith and virtue. Although faith was presented as different from virtue and as not resting on virtue, it was still seen as an important part of faith and as a sign of a good conscience. The sermon could therefore use the deceased more boldly as an example to be imitated. Brenz became a role model for how the listeners should live their lives in order to be prepared for a death as blessed as his. Although the sermon rhetoric of Bidembach let him connect the ars moriendi to an ars bene vivendi, one must ask how much ars moriendi there was in reality

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left in his sermon. Was his use of Brenz as an example for how servants of the church should lead their lives helpful for those facing death? Could it ease their anxieties and strengthen their faith? One suspects that the strengths of Bidembach’s rhetoric when it came to promoting a good life came at the expense of its ability to ease the conscience of the dying. If death was close at hand, it would be too late to do anything of that which his sermon urged. Presumably Bidembach never intended his sermon as a form of ars moriendi. His funeral sermon was not an occasion where preaching should help the dying, but rather an occasion where death strengthened a preaching directed at the living. Bidembach was aware that the learning intended in this funeral sermon also involved questions about theology. If his pedagogical task was to be meaningful, he had to present virtues as significant, but if his preaching was to be Lutheran, virtues had to be regarded as secondary to faith. How then could the ars moriendi described at the deathbed unite the dying person with his precursory life and at the same time express a Lutheran faith in face of death? How could this form of exemplarity teach listeners how to live and at the same time preach a faith without works? It would have been a challenge not easily resolved, and it seems to have been negotiated in funeral sermons for two generations of Württemberg clergy.

A Württemberg Tradition The exemplarity which described St. Paul and deceased preachers with parallel lives seems to have formed a pattern for funeral sermons for influential preachers in Württemberg. Jacob Andreae, the very influential University Chancellor and Dean of Tübingen, delivered such a funeral sermon for his colleague Primus Truber in 1586. In 1590, Lucas Osiander, Court Preacher in Stuttgart, presented a funeral sermon for Jacob Andreae according to the same concept, and in 1604 Johannes Magirus, Dean of Stuttgart, presented a similar funeral sermon for Lucas Osiander. In 1614 Johannes Magirus was similarly commemorated in a funeral sermon by Johannes Conradus. A change from the sermon for Brenz was that these sermons took another text as their point of departure. Instead of the text from Acts 20, they explained a text from 2 Timothy 4: “6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. ”

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This text too was regarded as a farewell speech by Paul, and it was given a very similar function in the sermons to that of the text from Acts in the sermon for Brenz. This text too presented the life of St. Paul as a motif favoring exemplarity, an exemplarity that operated on several levels: Firstly, St. Paul’s situation resembled the funeral, since it was a situation of departure and farewell. St. Paul was bidding his farewell to Timothy, and the deceased preacher was now bidding his farewell to his colleagues and congregation. This similarity spurred a similar mode of communication: As St. Paul in his words of farewell was instructing his younger colleague, so the deceased preacher was, through the funeral preacher, instructing his listeners (cf. Osiander : 1590, 4). Secondly, the biblical example and the deceased preacher’s farewells were presented as exemplary farewells. In the death scene, the preachers expressed the same attitude as St. Paul had: They stood by what they had done and accomplished in life and entered their last moments with all the proper rituals and confessions, surrounded by witnesses who could testify to their finished race and to the faith they had kept (e. g. Osiander : 1590, 25 – 27 and Magirus: 1604, 31). The way the preachers stood by what they had accomplished in their offices opened for a third and very traditional form of exemplarity. Just as St. Paul had summed up his life in his words of farewell, so also the lives of the preachers were summed up in their words of farewell. Here the lives of the deceased preachers were presented as main motifs in the sermon together with the life of St. Paul. The lives of St. Paul and the preachers were summed up according to the three themes indicated by the text from 2 Timothy 4: fighting a good fight, finishing the race and keeping faith. The sermons first recalled how these themes had taken place in the life of St. Paul. He had fought a good fight against Jews, heathens, heretics, his own flesh, bad weather, ferocious animals and all sorts of dangers. His race he had finished as the most laborious of the apostles, having travelled and written more than anyone else. Finally, the faith he had kept was proven by his own words of farewell. Because of this, he could also rest assured that in death, he would be awarded the crown of justice. The last third part of the funeral sermons turned to the deceased preachers’ examples to describe them under the same three headlines. This part was often introduced with a comment stating that, although the deceased preacher could not really be compared to the apostle, there were still some clear resemblances. If the preacher had not confronted ferocious animals, he had still fought, namely as a theologian, against the devil and for the divine truth in writings and in the spoken word against all forms of false doctrine. Also, the deceased preachers had fulfilled their races by being industrious in their offices, in writing, preaching and discussing. The preachers’ spiritual testaments were presented as a parallel

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to the way St. Paul had kept his faith. In them, the preachers referred to their writings and maintained what they had written in them and adhered to true doctrine as it was expressed in important confessional statements, such as the Augsburg Confession or the Book of Concord. In the first two thirds of the sermon explaining the text by St. Paul, the listeners were encouraged to follow the example of St. Paul in faith, life and virtues. When the sermons turned to the biographical accounts, the deceased preacher was included in the exemplarity of St. Paul, so that the life of the preacher too should guide how the listeners were to live their lives to be prepared for death. This happened according to the following logic: St. Paul’s statement was understood as a syllogism, in which St. Paul’s summary of his life led to the crown of justice as its conclusion. Since the lives of the preachers could be summed up similarly, they met the condition in St. Paul’s argument and their lives therefore had to be regarded as included in his conclusion. The way St. Paul’s example included the deceased preacher in salvation could also potentially include the listeners, and in this way, these sermons could preach the saving faith (f.ex. Magirus: 1604, 32). Since biblical text and the biographies were connected on a level of motifs and not primarily on a level of doctrine, the preachers were able to show how faith was connected with the life that lead up to this final moment’s expression of faith. Thereby they pointed to a connection between faith and works similar to that shown in Bidembach’s sermon for Brenz, but different from what Bugenhagen and later Saxon preachers had done in their sermons. The art of dying was connected to the art of living not only by the knowledge necessary for a saving faith, but also because certain lives were described as leading to good deaths. This was reflected also in the clear correspondence between the biography and the death scene in these sermons, as well as in the elaborate descriptions of death scenes. The art of dying described in these death scenes is not very different from the one prescribed in Gerson’s ars moriendi. The Württemberg preachers seem to have been aware of the challenge to traditional Lutheran doctrine on faith and works posed by their bold use of examples. Bidembach had argued that virtues testified to a good conscience, and that virtue as testimony to a merciful God gained one’s neighbor’s salvation. Jacob Andreae claimed in a funeral sermon for the preacher Primus Truber, praising him as an example in life and death, that there existed no contradiction between the doctrine of salvation by grace received in faith and the fact, attest in several places in Scripture, that God, after having made us our children, will reward our good deeds in life eternal (Andreae: 1586, 38 – 39).4 For Andreae, the

4 “Wider diese Lehr streittet aber gar nicht / dass nicht allein an disem / sondern auch andern

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true understanding of the doctrine of justification opened for a preaching which promoted a lived life as an example to be imitated. It was an understanding which respected justification by faith alone by an ordering of the sequences in salvation that gave priority to grace without diminishing the significance of the works that followed. Andreae may therefore not simply be classified as a synergist. He meant to stress the importance of human works after conversion, but not to promote the view that God and man cooperate in salvation. However, the Württemberg rhetoric of examples combined the art of dying with the art of living in a way that did not accentuate the difference between God’s work and the work of humans. Perhaps they were thereby anticipating Quenstedt’s distinction between the role and value of man’s works before and after his conversion (Kaufmann: 2001, 511 – 515)? Nevertheless, the fact remains that Württemberg rhetoric could hardly enforce comfort as strongly as Bugenhagen’s and its insistence that only a faith without works could bring proper comfort in face of death.

Different Exemplarities and Different Learning This article has analyzed the relationship between some main motifs in order to answer the question about what form of learning Lutheran funeral sermons induced. It has pointed out how different sermons combined an account of the deceased’s life with a description of his death scene, and it has investigated the relationship between the biography of the deceased person and the description of the biblical person mentioned in the text read in the funeral. In the sermons here treated, these persons were St. Paul and contemporary preachers. Funeral sermons from Saxony and Württemberg have presented two patterns for how this relationship could be arranged, two patterns that yielded different rhetorical impulses and promoted different forms of learning in face of death. The different ways of arranging the funeral sermons’ main motifs therefore revealed different ways of continuing the ars moriendi genre, whether the most important preparation for death concerned the moment of death or life prior to death. In Bugenhagen’s funeral sermon for Luther, knowledge was seen as basic for faith, in correspondence with the traditional Lutheran ars moriendi. The main sermon motifs were connected by abstracts, such as faith and doctrine. The biblical person and the deceased person were held together by a typology resembling the one Luther had employed when relating his own life to the life of St. mehr orten der heiligen Schrift / der heilig Geist offenbarlich bezeuget: Dass Gott die Werck auch in dem ewigen Leben belohnen wölle.”

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Paul. Similarities were not found in descriptions of actions and virtues, but in effects, namely in the way they had been made God’s tools in promoting the same faith. The biographical account and the death scene were similarly held together by the faith and doctrine that had been promoted in life and that enabled a firm trust in God on the deathbed. The descriptions of Luther could probably still be exemplary, but they explicitly rejected exemplarity in order to be more effective in promoting their basic intent, namely, the confident trust in God in the face of death. The sermons from Württemberg followed the opposite strategy and let exemplary virtues connect the different motifs; the biblical person with the deceased person, the course of life with the death scene. This form of exemplarity stands out as the intended message in these sermons. The listeners were encouraged to imitate the characteristics and the course of life of the persons described. Correspondingly, these sermons connected the death scene to the precursory life not by abstracts such as faith and doctrine, but by motifs, in the form of vividly described rituals and testaments in which the dying person was able to maintain his life and work in a faith ready for death. The intention at the forefront in Bugenhagen’s sermon, namely to communicate a firm trust in God, retreated to the background in these sermons. In this way, the analysis has pointed out that the different ways of employing sermon motifs served different intentions with regard to the sort of feelings the preachers intended to evoke and the form of learning they wanted to promote. One notices that in the testaments and death scenes described in the Württemberg sermons, the way of preparing for death prescribed by Gerson reappears. Similar rituals, prayers and confessions were employed with the similar intent, namely to meet death with a life united with faith. However, the new context gave this death preparation another function. In these Württemberg funeral sermons, this art of dying was presented primarily in order to teach the listeners and readers how to live. More than teaching a good way of dying, the testaments and the death scenes underlined how closely life and faith were connected in the faith that was ready to meet death. The different characteristics of Saxon and Württemberg funeral sermons are striking and puzzling. One notices how the rhetorical differences are connected with different ways of relating to St. Paul and how the Württemberg preachers seem to continue a tradition prior to Luther. It is as if St. Paul returns as the patron saint of theologians described by the Golden Legend. Because of his special significance for Protestant doctrine, St. Paul’s presence in the funeral sermons could help promote the preacher as exceptional role models. It has been suggested that an understanding of St. Paul can be observed among Upper German theologians, such as Oecolampadius, Bucer, Zwingli and

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Calvin, that was more inspired by humanist tradition than was the case with Luther (Vollenweider 2003: 1064). This seems to have been the case with Württemberg preachers too, even though they regarded themselves as Lutherans in opposition to Upper German theologians. In the material discussed in this article, it is remarkable how the Württemberg preachers emphasize the same motifs in St. Paul as the humanists had. This, combined with their preference for a sermon design that focused on parallel motifs between the biblical person and the deceased person, allowed them to present preachers as exemplary far more forcefully than was the case in Saxon sermons. These rhetorical differences resonated in the theology promoted by the sermons. For the Württemberg preachers, the preference for motif resemblance was connected with an explanation of the doctrine of justification which stressed the connection between faith and life. Jakob Andreae’s insistence that God rewarded good works done after conversion resonated with the way Johannes Brenz’ catechism described the progression of the life of a Christian (Angel: 2011, 203 – 204). It was a focus in consonance with the descriptions of death scenes and testaments that shared Gerson’s intentions for a death preparation that united faith with life. The preference for motif resemblances made possible biographical accounts that combined the edifying with the explicitly educational. They allowed for an estate-specific message in a genre that no longer primarily taught its listeners how to die, but rather how to live.

Bibliography Confessio Virtembergica. Das Württembergische Bekenntnis 1552 (1999), Holzgerlingen, Hänssler – Verlag. Andreae, Jacob (1586), Christliche Leichpredig bey der Begräbnis des Ehrwurdigen vnd Hochhgelehrten Herrn / Primus Trubern … pfarrer zu Derendingen / bey Tübingen, Tübingen. Angel, Sivert (2011), The Religious Pedagogic of Lucas Osiander (1534 – 1604). Ph.D, University of Oslo. Bidembach, Wilhelm (1570), Ein Christliche Leichpredigt / Bey der Begrebnuss weilundt des Ehrwirtigen vnd hochgelehreten Herrn / Johann Brentzen / Probsts zu Stuttgarten / gehalten in der Stiffts-kirchen allda/ den zwölfften Septembris / Anno 1570, Tübingen. Bugenhagen, Johannes (1546 /1996), Eine Christliche Predigt / vber der Leich vnd begrebnis / des Ehrwirdigen D. Martini Luthers. In: Freybe, Peter (ed.), ”Vom Christlichen abschied aus diesem tödlichen leben des Ehrwirdigen Herrn D. Martini Lutheri”. Stuttgart: Verlag Joachim W. Siener. Conradus, Johannes and Lotter, Tobias (1614), Zwo Christliche Leuch Predigten / Bey der Begräbnus / Weyland dess Ehrwurdigen Hochgelehrten / Herrn IOHANNIS MAGIRI,

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fürstl. Würtembergischen Raths / vnd Probst zu Stuttgardten. Gehalten Mittwochs den 6. Julij 1614. Die eine zu Stuttgarten / in der Stifftskirchen / da die Leuch zur Erden bestattet. Die ander zu Canstatt / als die Leuch von da auss nacher Stuttgardt geführt worden, Stuttgardt. Estes, James Martin (1982), Christian magistrate and state church : the reforming career of Johannes Brenz, Toronto, University of Toronto Press. Feld, Helmut (1982), Die Wiedergeburt des Paulinismus im europäischen Humanismus. Catholica. Vierteljahresschrift für ökumenische Theologie, 36, 294 – 327. Gerson, Jean (1514 / 2009), Översättning av Ars moriendi ved Per – Axel Wiktorson. In: Markus Hagberg (ed.) Jean Gersons Ars moriendi. Om konsten att dö. Värnamo. Hamm, Berndt (2010), Luthers Anleitung zum seligen Sterben vor dem Hintergrund der spätmittelalterlichen Ars moriendi. In: Berndt Hamm (ed.) Der frühe Luther. Etappen reformatorischer Neuorientierung. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Kaufmann, Thomas (2001), Synergismus I. In: Horst Robert Balz/Gerhard Krause/ Gerhard Müller (ed.) Theologische Realencyklopädie. Berlin: deGruyter. Leppin, Volker (2009), Lehrer, Typus, Exempal. Facetten von Martin Luthers Paulusbild. In: Communio. Internationale katholische Zeitschrift, 38, 149 – 157. Luther, Martin (1519 / 1884), Ein Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben. In: D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesammtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe). Weimar : Herman Böhlau. Luther, Martin (1522/1905), Predigten des Jahres 1522 In: D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe). Weimar : Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Luther, Martin (1545/1928), Vorrede Luthers zum ersten Bande der Gesamtausgabe seiner lateinischen Schriften, Wittenberg 1545, herausgegeben von D. Clemen. In: D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe). Weimar : Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Luther, Martin (1546/1914), Predigt in Halle gehalten, gedruckt als erste in: Zwo schöne und tröstliche predigt D. Martin Lutheri, die erste von der Taufe Christi etc. aus Matth. 3, Die andere von der Bekerung S. Pauli aus Act. 9. In: D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Geasamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe). Weimar : Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Magirus, Johannes (1604), Christliche Leichpredigt / Bey der Begrabnus des Ehrwurdigen / Hochgelehrten Herren Lucae Osiandri, der H. Schrifft Doctoris, so Montags den 17. Septembris, Anno 1604, in Christo seliglich entschlaffen / vnd Mittwochs / den 19. hernach zur Erden bestattet worden. Gehalten zu Stutgarten in der Stifftkirchen,, Tübingen, Georg Gruppenbach. Mohr, Rudolf (1979), Protestantische Ars moriendi. In: Horst Robert Balz/Gerhard Krause/Gerhard Müller (ed.) Theologische Realencyklopädie. Berlin: deGruyter. Moore, Cornelia Niekus (2006) Patterned Lives. The Lutheran Funeral Biography in Early Modern Germany. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Osiander, Lucas (1590), Ein Predig / Bey der Leych / des Ehrwürdigen vn Hochgelehrten Herrn / Jacobi Andrea / der heyligen Schrifft Doctorn / Probst vnd Cantzlers bey der Vniuersitet zu Tübingen., Tübingen, Alexander Hock. Rasmussen, Tarald (2009), Hell Disarmed? The function of Hell in Reformation Spirituality. In: Numen, 56, 366 – 384.

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Reinis, Austra (2007), Reforming the Art of Dying. The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519 – 1528), Hampshire / Burlington: Ashgate. Rudolf, Rainer (1979), Ars moriendi. Mittelalter. In: Horst Robert Balz/Gerhard Krause/ Gerhard Müller (ed.) Theologische Realencyklopädie. Berlin: deGruyter. Saccus, Sigfried (1596), Die dritte Leichpredigt. Auff dem Begrebnis Herrn Petri Ulneri Abten dess Keyserlichen freyen Stiffts zum Berge für Magdeburg welcher Anno 1595 … seliglich entschlaffen / vnd den zehenden eiusdem Christlich zur Erden bestettiget worden, Magdeburg. Sehling, Emil (ed.) (1902), Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts. Sachsen und Thüringen nebst angrenzenden Gebieten ; Hälfte 1. Die Ordnungen Luthers, die Ernestinischen und Albertinischen Gebiete, Leipzig. Sehling, Emil (ed.) (2004), Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts. Baden Württemberg; 2. Herzogtum Württemberg, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck. Steiger, Johann Anselm (2001), Nachwort. In: Johann Gerhard, Sämtliche Leichenpredigten nebst Johann Majors Leichenrede auf Gerhard. (ed.) Johann Anselm Steiger, Doctrina et Pietas I, 10. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog. Stolle, Volker (2002), Luther und Paulus, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. Vollenweider, Samuel (2003), Paulus. Von der Renaissance und Reformation bis zur Neuzeit. In: Hans Dieter Betz/Don Browning/Bernd Janowski /Eberhard Jüngel (ed.), Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Handbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft. Vierte völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Voraigne, Jacobus de (1993), The Golden Legend. Readings on the Saints. Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press. Weismann, Christoph (1990), Die Katechismen des Johannes Brenz. Berlin: de Gruyter. Winkler, Eberhard (1975), Zur Motivation und Situationsbezogenheit der klassischen Leichenpredigt. In: Rudolf Lenz (ed.), Leichenpredigten als Quelle Historischer Wissenschaften. Köln / Wien: Böhlau Verlag.

Bridget Heal

Commemoration and Consolation: Images in Lutheran Saxony, c.1550 – 1700

The notion that images could properly be used for commemoration (“Andencken”) was a commonplace amongst Germany’s Lutheran theologians. In his 1594 Adels-Spiegel Luther’s former pupil Cyriacus Spangenberg commended images that were intended “den verstorbenen zu danck / ehren vnd gedechtniß” (Spangenberg: 1594, 287).1 Spangenberg cited the case of the ancient Athenians, who had erected statues in honour of the heroic tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton.2 As Spangenberg’s historical example suggests, the desire for public commemoration through images was by no means new to the sixteenth century. And while the Reformation, with its attendant iconoclasm, may have brought about a caesura in the devotional use of images, it scarcely interrupted patrons’ (especially noble patrons’) determination to have themselves and their relatives represented “zu danck / ehren vnd gedechtniß.” From the tomb-stone of Luther himself, intended for Wittenberg’s Schloßkirche but installed eventually (after the traumas of the Schmalkaldic War) in Jena, to the magnificent burial chapel of the Wettin dynasty in the cathedral in Freiberg / Sachsen and beyond, visual commemoration of the dead was an important part of Lutheran culture.3 Like that other characteristically Lutheran commemorative genre, the funeral sermon, funerary monuments were often fairly formulaic in structure and content, especially with the rise of the wall epitaph during the second half of the 1 To thank, honour and remember the dead. For Luther epitaphs were a matter of Christian freedom; they could be of use in that they offered consolation, helped to strengthen faith in the resurrection and encouraged prayer (Stirm: 1977, 88 ff.). 2 Harmodius and Aristogeiton killed Hipparchus in 514 BC and came to be known as martyrs for the cause of Athenian freedom. 3 On Luther’s grave marker see Slenczka: 2010; on Freiberg see Meine-Schawe: 1989 and Meys: 2009, 419 – 443. Duke Heinrich was buried in a simple grave in Freiberg Cathedral in 1541; Elector Moritz followed in 1553. In 1555 Moritz’s brother August commissioned the large monument for Moritz that dominates the chapel today. Between 1585 and 1594 the whole choir was transformed at the behest of Electors August and Christian I by the Italian artist Giovanni Maria Nosseni.

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sixteenth century.4 Many of Germany’s Lutheran churches are still full of these Wandepitaphien. Each one bears a commemorative inscription and one or more coat of arms, and most also include portraits of the deceased. Many also show religious images, from simple representations of Christ on the cross to elaborate visualizations of the Law and Gospel or the story of salvation.5 Wandepitaphien served not only as statements about dynasty and lordship but also as visual Glaubensbekentnisse, testaments to the true Lutheran piety of the men and women they depicted. They provided, in some senses, substitutes for the side altars of the pre-Reformation period. Stripped of references to the mass and the cult of saints, they nevertheless, like pre-Reformation altars, glorified God, admonished and awakened piety in their viewers, adorned church interiors and satisfied their donors’ desires for public display. When we attempt to characterize the functions of these Lutheran funerary monuments we need, of course, to consider the changes in doctrine and devotional practices brought about by the Reformation. Medieval monuments were part of the cult of the dead that shaped the late-medieval church, linked to intercessory masses and prayer. With the abrogation of purgatory and intercession for the dead funerary monuments lost an important part of their raison d’etre. They no longer served to advance their subjects’ salvation. The Reformation therefore witnessed, scholars such as Oliver Meys and Inga Brinkmann have suggested, a shift away from epitaphs as pious performances to epitaphs as pure commemoration; funeral monuments were increasingly used primarily for “worldly – representative purposes” (Brinkmann: 2010, 11).6 This sits well, of course, with the broad assumption that the Reformation brought about a gradual secularization or naturalization of commemoration; that when Protestants remembered their dead they were concerned above all with reputation and fame and with presenting the deceased as examples of virtue and achievement. Reformation theology weakened the community of the living and the dead: henceforth the dead must make their journey into the beyond alone, without the help of intercessory prayers.7 Commemoration within the reformed confessions was therefore, as Doreen Zerbe has argued, “directed entirely towards the world of the living,” towards the bereaved and his or her community (Zerbe: 2007, 124).8 4 There is now a very extensive literature on funeral sermons as historical sources. See, for example, Lenz: 1975, 1979, 1984, 2004. For further references see also Karant-Nunn: 1997, 265 (fn. 76). 5 For a useful introductory discussion of the iconography of Lutheran epitaphs see Zerbe: 2007. 6 Oliver Meys also emphasizes above all the role that epitaphs played as expressions of territorial rulers’ and nobles’ desires for representation, Meys: 2009, e. g. 86. 7 For an overview see Gordon/Marshall: 2000. 8 See also Koerner : 2004, 388: “Whereas donor portraits express the idea that prayer and masses

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There is, of course, much truth in these broad generalizations, and I wish to start by considering one example drawn from my own research on memorials in electoral Saxony that seems to epitomize the notion of a shift towards pure commemoration. Figure 1 shows the pulpit from the church of St Afra in Meissen, commissioned in 1657 by Anna Felicitas von Schleinitz, widow of Hans Georg the Elder auf Graupzig.9 St Afra was Meissen’s main parish church, responsible for the pastoral care of both the inhabitants of Meissen’s castle and the local townspeople (Oertel: 1843; Gurlitt (ed.): 1917, 337 – 343). It had a long-standing connection to the von Schleinitz family : in 1408 Hugold von Schelinitz auf Seershausen built a burial chapel there, which continued to be used by members of the family throughout the sixteenth century (Pohl: 2010, 44 – 49; Gurlitt (ed): 1917, 379 – 388).10 Anna Felicitas’ pulpit was accompanied by a high altar and wall epitaph by the same artist, both of which had also been financed by members of the family (Werdemann: 1653; Gurlitt (ed.): 1917, 389 – 391).While all of the von Schleinitz family memorials are concerned with commemoration, the pre-Reformation ones cannot, of course, be separated from their donors’ quest for salvation: the inscription on that belonging to the chapel’s founder, Hugold von Schleinitz’s (d. 1422), ends, for example, with the instruction “ora pro eo.” By contrast, Anna Felicitas’ pulpit seems remarkably secular : indeed, to anyone familiar with Lutheran pulpits it is an extraordinary object. While it was by no means unheard of to give pulpits as epitaphs, and for those pulpits to include small portraits of the donor and his or her family, the dominant visual motifs were normally, as in a number of other examples from Lutheran Saxony, Evangelists or scenes from Christ’s life and passion.11 The conceit of the Meißen pulpit is therefore astonishing. Where you would usually find Christ and his evangelists, here you find instead members of the von Schleinitz family. Every time the pastor preached, members of his congregation were confronted by portraits of Anna Felicitas, her husband Hans Georg who died in said on behalf of the dead can shorten their stay in purgatory, evangelical epitaph portraits address only the living, offering them in the person of the deceased a representative confession of faith.” 9 On Anna Felicitas and her family see Anon: 1897, 379 – 383, 647. 10 The chapel contains a nice selection of pre- and post-Reformation epitaphs (members of the von Scheinitz family were amongst the earliest noble supporters of the Reformation in Saxony). 11 In Cannewitz near Grimma, for example, the pulpit was given explicitly “zum Gedechtniß an Stat eines Epitaphij” (Poscharsky : 1963, 210 ff.). In Finsterwalde in Lower Lusatia in 1615 Otto von Dieskau’s brothers installed inscription panels beside the pulpit that recorded that it had been given “in Ehrerbietung gegen die Eltern und schuldiger Dankbarkeit zum immerwährenden und seligen Angedenken und zum Schmucke dieses Gotteshauses” (Goecke (ed.): 1917, 157).

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Fig. 1: Afrakirche, Meissen, pulpit, (Valentin Otte, 1657). Photograph taken by the author.

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1635 and their children Hans Georg the Younger, Dietrich (d. 1614), Felicitas (d. 1649) and Anna Dorothea (d. 1652). Religious content was not entirely absent: the stairs show reliefs of the birth, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ and the depiction of Jonah and the whale beneath the pulpit also refers to Christ’s resurrection (Matt 12:39 – 40). Yet this is primarily a family monument. The only textual reference that I have found to it, from Anna Felicitas’ funeral sermon, suggests that the church’s clergy did not see it as inappropriate:12 the Afrakirche’s pastor Christoph Jäger commended Anna Felicitas for her compassion and good deeds as well as her patronage: Gegen Kirchen / Schulen / Geistliche / Arme und Nothleidende war sie mitleidig und Gutthätig / massen sie den diesen kostbaren Predig=Stul allhier / darauf ich stehe und ihr dieses zum guten Nachruhm gedencke / Anno 1657. am 15. Martii dieser Kirche zu Ehren und Zier und ihren gantzen HochAdelichen Freunschafft zum rühmlichen Gedächtnüs fertigen und mit nicht geringen Unkosten setzen lassen (Jäger : 1666, 50).13

Anna von Schleinitz’s appropriation of the Afrakirche’s pulpit, the item of church furnishing that was most central to the Lutheran liturgy and that visually dominated the city church, shows the extent of Lutheran patrons’ appetite for public commemoration.14 It is interesting to note here that this family monument was commissioned by a woman: as recent studies of widowhood have suggested, the duty of commemoration appropriate to a family’s status fell to noble women as well as to noble men (Bastl: 2003). Here the desire for dynastic representation serves, at first glance at least, to secularize the sacred space of the church. Yet we should not conclude on the basis of such monuments that the culture of visual commemoration within Lutheranism was concerned purely with this-worldly ends, with Andencken (commemoration) to the exclusion of Frömmigkeit (piety). In this context, I want in this article to devote more attention to one particular memorial that, I think, suggests that we need to refine our understanding of Lutheran visual commemoration. Figure 2 shows the interior of the village church in Prießnitz near Leipzig, extended and richly furnished in a style that is perhaps best described as 12 Anna Felicitas’ will, drawn up in 1666, survives in the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10548 Grundherrschaft Schelinitz, Nr. 64. It does not, however, say anything about the Meissen pulpit, only : “will ich daß mein seelig verstorbener Leichnam mit einem ehrlichen begängnus Adelichen Christlichen gebrauchen nach zur erden bestattet, und in die Kirche an dem Orth, da ich versterbe, beygeseczet werden solle.” 13 To paraphrase: She was compassionate and beneficent towards churches, schools, the clergy, the poor and suffering, she had made and installed at considerable cost this valuable pulpit, on which I stand, to her posthumous fame on 15th March 1657 to honour and adorn this church and in laudable commemoration of her whole noble family. 14 On pulpits see Poscharsky : 1963.

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Fig. 2: Prießnitz (Eulatal), village church, interior (1616). Photograph taken by the author.

Netherlandish late-Renaissance by its patron Hans von Einsiedel in honour of his beloved wife Anna, who had died aged 34 on 19th March 1616 (Anon. (1903), columns 943 – 958). Prießnitz was a feudal estate of the Gnandstein branch of the von Einsiedel family, one of Saxony’s leading noble dynasties. The family had a strong history of patronage: the castle chapel at their ancestral seat in Gnandstein was richly adorned with late-medieval images, and Haugold von Einsiedel, an early supporter of Luther, rebuilt the village church there that served as a burial place for the family (Winzeler : 1997, 2145; Winzeler/Stekovics: 1994).15 While the village church in Gnandstein testifies above all to its patron’s concern with dynasty and lordship, the Prießnitz church is a much more unusual monument.16 Anna von Einsiedel was buried in the crypt immediately below the altar, along with various other members of the family (parishioners were buried outside: as Spangenberg noted, nobles were not buried “amongst the common people”) (Spangenberg: 1594, 287).17 The author of the church’s rich visual and textual programme was Hans himself, who was, as a report enclosed in the Turmknopf (the ball on top of the church tower) in 1615 noted, a “gottesfürchtiger und 15 See also Richter : 2007. 16 The Gnandstein village church contains an epitaph altar for Heinrich Hildebrand from 1559 and a series of memorials in the choir from around 1640 that commemorate family members starting with Hildebrand who died in 1461. 17 Unter den gemeine Pöbel.

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gelehrter Mann und trefflicher Theologus” (Anon.: 1903, column 951).18 Hans certainly had help from his pastor Georg Thryllitzsch, who is depicted on the altarpiece as one of the twelve Apostles present at the Last Supper. But the only surviving archival source relating to Hans’ daily life, an inventory of his possessions drawn up after his death in 1639, confirms the report of his piety and learning: it mentions, for example, two hand-written prayer books, which the deceased von Einsiedel used each day, and lists numerous works of Protestant church history and theology.19 Let us start, then, by looking briefly at the various components of Hans’ refurbishment programme. The painted altarpiece, surrounded by Corinthian columns, shows in its central field the Last Supper, with Christ’s resurrection above and Christ as Saviour on the left and Moses on the right. Below, flanked by small scenes of the Annunciation and Birth, the donor’s family kneels in prayer. The most unusual element of this altar is its predella (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Prießnitz (Eulatal), village church, predella of altar (1616). Photograph taken by the author.

The front panel bears an inscription, to which I shall return, and can be opened to reveal two paintings of the sacrifice of Isaac and the raising of Laza-

18 God-fearing and learned man and an excellent theologian. 19 Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Leipzig, RG Prießnitz, 20523, Nr. 192 (Inventar nach dem Tod des Hans (Johann) von Einsiedel).

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rus.20 The pulpit shows on its door the Fall and Christ teaching in the Temple, on its staircase the Annunciation and Jacob’s dream of a ladder and on its main structure and the Evangelists and Christ triumphant over death. Hans would have looked down on both altar and pulpit from the Herrschaftsloge (patron’s gallery), painted inside with scenes from Christ’s life and Passion, bearing outside inscriptions relating to Anna’s death and adorned with over 90 painted glass panels (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Prießnitz (Eulatal), village church, patron’s gallery (1616). Photograph taken by the author.

So far, with the exception of the opening predella, the iconography of the church is fairly standard for a Lutheran church of this period. But its focal point was, until its dismantlement in 1840, a painted wooden monument to Anna. It was approximately 2 12 metres long and 1 metre wide and the base was a square box that supported a horizontal opening wooden panel (a Tischgrabmal), which today hangs on the wall to the side of the pulpit (Anon.: 1903, column 949). The interior of the panel shows an angel with the painter’s name (Johann de Perre Antwerp fecit) and an inscription and poem by Hans.21 The outside shows an 20 Both of these images draw on traditional typologies appropriate to the altar, the place where the Lutheran liturgy commemorated Christ’s death and resurrection. Issac’s obedience was a type of Christ’s sacrifice (Gen. 22:1 – 19); the raising of Lazarus was a type of the Resurrection (John 11:1 – 44). 21 On Johann de Perre see Wustmann: 1897, 57. Johann (Hans) was the oldest son of the

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approximately life-sized painting of Anna crowned by angels and lying in Christ’s lap (Fig. 5).22 Anna’s dying words were, according to the inscription on the predella of the altar, “Mein Hertz ist in Christi Hertz geschlossen”, and these are the words that adorn her neck on the monument.23 The monument was crowned by a domeshaped roof. Two smaller opening panels, probably always intended to be hung on the church’s walls (though we do not know exactly where), continued the celebration of Anna, representing her Lutheran virtues and her husband’s hopes for future happiness (Fig. 6). In one we see Anna praying with her children – a good Lutheran Hausmutter – and Hans and Anna’s marriage, blessed by Christ, with the Last Judgment outside (Fig. 7). The inscription reads: “eil rein kom balt herr jesu Christ, deine zukunfft mein erlosung ist, gibe mir mein allerliebste wieder, so singen wir vnser freuden lieder.”24 On the side of the saved are Hans and Anna and another couple, presumably his or her parents (Fig. 8). In the other panel we see Anna at prayer, her love of God’s word, and her body surrounded by angels. Outside is Jacob’s Ladder.25 How are we to understand this memorial church? What does it tell us about Lutheran commemorative culture, and the role of the visual within it? To describe this as part of a culture of pure commemoration, as intended largely or exclusively for “worldly – representative purposes,” as Protestant memorials are often described, seems to me to miss the point. Hans’ commission may not have served his deceased wife’s soul in the way that pre-Reformation memorials served the souls of those they depicted by advancing their passage through purgatory, but the Prießnitz church was certainly not concerned exclusively with Anna’s virtue and achievement. This is in no sense a secularized or naturalized monument. The church does, as we shall see, present Anna to the viewer as an

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Netherlandish painter Nicolaus de Perre, a refugee who fled to Leipzig from Antwerp in 1569. Johann acquired the status of citizen in Leipzig in 1595. Angels are a prominent feature of the decorative scheme of the church. For a general discussion of their significance see Soergel: 2006. My heart is united with Christ’s. Hurry in, come soon Lord Jesus Christ, your coming is my salvation, give back to me my dearest one, then we will sing our joyful songs. The inscriptions are recorded in Mai: 1989, 167 – 168. Around Anna and her children: “Wer bett zu Gott bei Tag vnd Nacht, auch in Glavben sein Wort betracht, vnnd seine Kinder fvhrt zv Gott, der blvht, und grvnet hie und dort”; beneath Jacob’s ladder : “Dv Gott Iacob biss avch mitt vnns, erzeig vns deine Hvld vnd Gvnst, Lass avch deine lieben Engelin, zv Tag vnd Nacht stets bei vns sein”; around Anna at prayer: “Selig bistv zv aller frist, weill Gottes Wort dein liebstes ist, den das Wort ist eine Gottes Kraft, so alle Glevbigen sehlig macht.” On Jacob’s ladder see Steinmetz: 1986. The use of the iconography both here and on the church’s pulpit suggests that it was particularly important to Hans. It emphasizes man’s connection to God through Christ, through the community of the church and through the preached word.

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Fig. 5: Prießnitz (Eulatal), village church, front panel from Anna von Einsiedel’s memorial (Johann / Hans de Perre, 1616). Photograph taken by the author.

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Fig. 6: Prießnitz (Eulatal), village church, winged panels commemorating Anna von Einsiedel. Photograph taken by the author.

exemplar, a model Lutheran Hausmutter, but it also does much more: it offers consolation to Anna’s grieving husband, consolation that derives above all from the promise of her resurrection and their eventual reunion in heaven. We can start, I think, by considering this as the visual equivalent of a funeral sermon – we know that such a sermon was preached for Anna and subsequently printed, though it does not seem to survive.26 Like a funeral sermon, with its sermon, biographical account and collection of speeches or poems, the memorial church is intended primarily to comfort the bereaved, as well as to promulgate Lutheran norms and to strengthen communal ties.27 Hans’ quest for consolation is immediately evident. The inscriptions that he composed give eloquent expression to his sorrow. The text on the predella of the altarpiece, for example, records that the epitaph was erected by Hans for his “hertzallerliebste Eheweibe… zu liebreichen und ewigen Gedechtnüß auch schuldigen Ehren und hertzlicher Liebe, jedoch mit ganz kümmerlichen und Hochbetrübten Hertzen.”28 Anna, it goes on to report, “schlieff … auff Jhesum

26 It is listed in the 1639 inventory of her husband’s possessions. Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Leipzig, RG Prießnitz, 20523, Nr. 192 (Inventar nach dem Tod des Hans (Johann) von Einsiedel). 27 See, for example, Linton: 2008, 5 – 9. 28 To paraphrase: Dearest wife… for loving and perpetual memory, also to give the honour owed and heart-felt love, but with very miserable and most sad hearts.

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Fig. 7: Prießnitz (Eulatal), village church, front panel from Anna von Einsiedel’s memorial (Johann / Hans de Perre, 1616). Photograph taken by the author.

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Fig. 8: Prießnitz (Eulatal), village church, detail of Last Judgement from exterior of winged panel. Photograph taken by the author.

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Christum … sanfft, seelig vnd im Glauben ein.”29 Anna’s death was accompanied by great grief, “wehemut” and “schweren herzeleit”, above all on the part of her “hertzlieben Junckern.” The series of rhymed inscriptions on the Herrschaftsloge, which open with a plea for peace in the land so that schools and churches can flourish and God’s word can be proclaimed, express Hans’ grief and provide solace drawn from Scripture (Fig. 4). Through the death of his beloved, God has clothed Hans with fear and sorrow, for “auf erden ist doch ihe kein leit, welches bringt so schwere traurigkeit, als wan man soll für augen sehn, sein libst ehehertz zu grabe legn.”30 In his hour of need, Hans depended on the daily consolation sent to him by God and on his heart being refreshed by God’s word. He (or Thryllitzsch) chose three biblical passages that promised that his grief would be assuaged, and that gave spiritual meaning to his suffering: Matt 5:4 (“Doch selig sind die tragen leit, Gott will sie tröstn in ewigkeit”); Luke 6:21 (“Ia selig sind die weinen hier, die sollen lachen für und für”); and Psalm 126:5 (“summa die hie mit trehnen seen, solln dort in ewigen freuden gehn”). “Freue dich, freue dich, du trenen saat / weils dein Gott selbst geredet hat,” concludes the series of inscriptions.31 The painted image of Christ embracing Anna, which originally occupied the most prominent place in the church, is key to understanding Hans’ commission (Fig. 5). The image shows Christ holding the sleeping Anna on his lap, while angels crown her and bring flowers and a palm branch. As an iconography this is, as far as I know, unique, though the sentiment that it visualizes is well documented. In his preface to a 1542 collection of Begräbnisliedern Luther wrote that the coffin was nothing other than “unseres Herrn Christi Schoß,” and some memorial texts, for example a Grabgedicht for the Wittenberg citizen Georg Niemeck who died in 1561, made use of this image of rest in Christ’s lap (Zerbe: 2007, 123).32 The Prießnitz panel emphasizes beyond this the prospect of salvation and resurrection. “Ich lebe und du sollst auch leben” promise two inscriptions, one centrally placed flanking Christ’s mouth and one above Anna’s shoulder.33 In the heavenly space framed by angels above we read another affirmation: “Anna von Einsiedel freue dich dein name ist in himmel und ins buch 29 Fell asleep in Jesus Christ gently, blessedly and in faith. As Peter Marshall points out in his contribution to this volume, the language of sleep, despite early anxieties about ‘soul-sleeping’, became a standard part of Protestant memorial culture. 30 “Gott bekleidet mich mit Angst vnd Not durch meiner allerliebsten Todt. Er zeihet mich mit Elend an, als wehr ein Rock mir ümbgethan.” There is no suffering on earth that brings as much sorrow as when one sees before one’s eyes one’s dear spouse lying in the grave. 31 Rejoice, rejoice, you who are filled with tears, because your God himself has spoken. 32 Our Lord Christ’s lap. Zerbe cites WA 35, 478, 15 f. Niemeck’s poem reads: “… Itzt bin ich ein verachte Leich, Führ mich in deines Vaters Reich, Mitler zeit laß mich ruhen fein, In deinem Schoß vnd Kämmerlein, Ein frolic Vrstend mir verley, Alln Gleubigen ihr Sünd verzeih.” 33 I live and you shall also live (John 14:19).

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des lebens geschrieben.”34 These sentiments are echoed in Hans’ poem, inscribed on the reverse of the panel: “Das schlaft hie süs in Christi Schos / Der es mit eignem Blut erlost.”35 The poem continues: Kein Grab noch stein sie halten kan / Weil sich ihr Glaub an Gott hielt an / Sondern mus sie zum ewigen Leben / Christo in kürtzen wiedergeben / Kom bald erweck sie Gottes Sohn / Und setzt ihr auf die Ehre chron / Mach auch der Ihren Hertzeleid / Zu ewiger Freud und Herrlichkeit.36

The hope for future happiness that Hans expresses here turns to a very confident assertion of its imminence in the depiction of Hans and Anna together on the side of the saved in the Last Judgement on the smaller wall panel (Fig. 8). In addition to Hans’ quest for consolation, his desire to celebrate and promulgate Anna’s Lutheran virtues is also immediately apparent. The iconographic scheme of the church testifies to its patron’s proper Lutheran beliefs, from the central image of the Last Supper on the altar, as recommended by Luther himself, to the biblical inscriptions on the pulpit and gallery and the series of theologians’ portraits on the wall.37 The Prießnitz church also does exactly what we would expect any Protestant funerary monument to do: it enumerates and celebrates the deceased’s achievements. Moreover, it does so in a very gender-specific way. The inscription on the altar’s predella records that Anna was the mother of six children, and that she “ihre lieben Kinder zum Gebet und aller Gottseigkeit getreulich ermahnet und mit guten und lebendigen Exempeln war fürgangen.”38 One of the two opening panels represents her in prayer with her children (Fig.7). The other shows her alone at prayer while Hans’ poem on her epitaph says: “Sie libt und lobte ihren Gott / Red früh und spat von seinem Wort / Negst Gott war ihres Hertze Freud / Erquicken arm und kranke Leut.”39 In her motherhood, her piety and her care for the poor and sick Anna was a model Lutheran wife, and all those who knew her, according to Hans’ predella, mourned her passing “mit vielen heißen liebestrehnen.” Of course the church, like any public memorial, is also a place for dynastic commemoration and representation: the quality of the painting, the gold leaf 34 Anna von Einsiedel rejoice; your name is written in heaven and in the book of life. 35 It [Anna, a member of the heavenly city of Zion] sleeps sweetly here in Christ’s lap / He has saved it [her] with his own blood. 36 No grave or stone can contain her, because she kept her faith in God. But Christ must soon give her back to eternal life. Come soon and awaken her Son of God, place on her the crown of honour. Transform her suffering into eternal joy and glory. 37 WA 31,1, S. 415, Der 111 Psalm ausgelegt (1530). For a description of the theologians‘ portraits see Steche (ed.): 1891, 98. 38 Truly admonished her dear children to prayer and all piety towards God and presented them with good and lively examples. 39 She loved and praised her God, spoke early and late of his Word. Beside God her joy was comforting poor and sick people.

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and in particular the opening epitaphs and predella (for which there is no possible liturgical justification as far as I know) give the ensemble some of the qualities of a Kunstkammer – this is a place where the patron could display his taste and erudition to visiting nobles. The rebuilding of the church was also, however, intended to strengthen communal ties, and presented an opportunity for Hans to fulfill his duties as Patronatsherr. A winged panel hung in the choir records that the building work was carried out in honour of God, to commemorate Anna and also “zu besern Raum und Bequemlichkeit aller dieses Orts Einwohnern, als auch eingepfarten” (Fig. 9).40 The cost of 4686 Gulden was, the inscription goes on to record, borne in part by the residents of Prießnitz and the surrounding villages (whose names and contributions are listed here), the Testamentskasten and the church. But mostly (4052 Gulden) by “ich Hans von Einsiedel, der Zeit Lehnherr allhier auch willig und gern hinzugethan, mit diesem hertzlichen Wunsch das Gott sein allein seligmachendes Wort bis am lieben jüngsten Tag in dieser Kirche lauter und rein hegen, erhalten und behalten.”41 This panel also, I think, points us to an additional function, one that relates specifically to patronage of churches and their furnishings and that does not, as far as I know, find a parallel in funeral sermons. On the front are a number of biblical quotations, including Paul’s second letter to the Corinithians, verse 7: “Einen fröhlichen Geber hat Gott lieb”;42 Exodus 34:20: “spricht Gott zu Mose: Das niemand für mir leer erschiene”;43 Sirach 17:18: “Der Herr behelt die Wohltthat des Menschen wie ein Siegelring und seine guten Werke wie ein Augapfel.”44 Though salvation cannot, of course, be bought through contributions such as those made by Prießnitz’s inhabitants, these texts at least promise that God will be pleased by their pious donations. The consecration sermons preached by Lutheran clergy for the taking-into-use of new churches, altars, pulpits and fonts often express similar sentiments: the belief that God cannot fail to reward those who employ their wealth in the service of the church. When, in 1653, Abraham Werdemann consecrated the new altar in the Afrakirche in Meißen, for example, he commented on the difficulties involved in 40 To improve the space and comfort for all the inhabitants of this place and the people of its attached parishes. 41 I myself, Hans von Einsiedel, at the time feudal lord here, willingly and gladly, with the heartfelt wish that God will look after, maintain and keep his Word, which alone makes us blessed, loud and pure in this church until the Last Judgement. 42 God loves a cheerful giver. 43 God said to Moses: none shall appear before me empty. 44 The Lord preserves the goodness of men as a seal and their good works as a treasure. The inscriptions are reproduced in Anon.: 1903, column 945. Another is from Exodus 36:3: “Die Kinder Israel brachten zu dem Werk des Heiligthumbs, das es gemacht wurde, alle Morgen ihre willigen Gaben.”

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Fig. 9: Prießnitz (Eulatal), village church, winged panel commemorating those who gave money to the rebuilding of the church. Photograph taken by the author.

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completing the commission. Three key patrons, amongst them Heinrich von Schleinitz, persisted: “Ebenso wie Nehemiah die Mauern Jerusalems gegen den Widerstand vieler Feinde wiederaufgebaut hatte, so hatten sie den Altar der Afrakirche allen Widrigkeiten zum Trotz neu erbaut.”45 “Der Herr wird euch zu seinen Eigenthum machen”, Werdemann promised, “Er wird euer schonen / wie ein Mann seines Sohnes schonet / der ihm dienet” (Werdemann: 1653, dedication).46 The Prießnitz church challenges the notion of Lutheran art as “an emotional blank” (Koerner : 2004, 218 – 9). What we see here may not be the “effervescent church decoration” of the early baroque, but it is certainly not dry and didactic, intended only “to teach the basic precepts of the faith” (Karant-Nunn: 2010, 5 – 6, 67). There is no sense of “emotional remoteness” here, no evidence of the use of “crude” style and excessive inscriptions to distance the viewer and discourage idolatry, phenomena that recent studies have identified as characteristic of earlier Lutheran imagery (Koerner : 2004; Karant-Nunn: 2010, 71). Indeed the staging of the Prießnitz church was intended to encourage intimacy and immediacy : its key images and texts can be fully appreciated only in close proximity, when revealed for contemplation by or for an individual viewer. The interplay of text and image in the Prießnitz ensemble also leaves us in no doubt as to its emotional content.47 Hans’ texts speak frequently of the heart, of fear, of suffering, of sorrow, of hope and help (“Trost”), of love, of tears (“Liebestrehnen”), of pain and finally of laughter and joy. The church’s images give visual expression not only to Hans’ proper Lutheran beliefs, but also to his heartfelt sorrow, to his quest for consolation and to his hope for future joy. The ensemble shows that by the early seventeenth century images could be used for the representation of feeling in Lutheran as well as in Catholic contexts. While Lutheran theological norms were only gradually, inspired by Johann Arndt’s Frömmigkeitsbewegung, according images any more than a didactic role, Lutheran patrons and their advisors were already allowing them to do much more (Heal: 2013).48 Let us finish, then, by considering whether this church is in any way representative of Lutheran commemorative culture; and whether the beliefs expressed in unusually rich visual form here require us to rethink the notion of a 45 Just as Nehemiah built anew the walls of Jerusalem despite the opposition of many enemies, so they built anew the altar of the Afrakirche despite all adversities. 46 The Lord will make you his own. He will look after you, as a man looks after a son who serves him. 47 For a useful discussion of the difficulties involved in analyzing the emotions described in historical sources see Rosenwein: 2002. 48 For a discussion of the heightened emotional inwardness of mourning during the later seventeenth century, which was expressed in images as well as texts, see Bepler : 2003.

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shift from funerary monuments as pious performances to funerary monuments as pure remembrance. The assertive placing of individual or family commemoration at the heart of Lutheran church space was not unusual. We have seen Anna von Schleinitz’s pulpit from Meissen; figure 10 shows a pulpit given to the Stadtkirche in Görlitz in 1691 by the merchant Augustin Kober and this commission even extended commemoration into the Lutheran liturgy. Kober gave the pulpit on condition that it bore his arms, that his family was granted a pew in the church and that the council promised that a commemorative Sterbelied would be sung annually on the 28th August, the day of his patron saint Augustine.49 But Prießnitz shows very clearly I think that, like other Lutheran images, epitaphs were not merely commemorative, “den verstorbenen zu danck / ehren vnd gedechtniß.” They were also instruments for private piety, and expressions of profoundly religious hopes and desires (Brinkmann: 2010, 78). Most do not achieve anything like the affective impact of the Prießnitz ensemble, but even seemingly formulaic epitaphs reflect, like contemporary funeral sermons, their donors’ quests for consolation. Figure 11 shows a wall memorial for Haug von Maxen, a member of the von Schleinitz dynasty, which was commissioned by his mother and three brothers when he died aged 18 in 1569. It shows Haug kneeling before Adam and Eve and a crucifix (an abbreviated Law and Gospel image and therefore a statement of Lutheran faith). The inscription speaks of him falling like a beautiful flower, and says that at the hour of death he turned to Christ. “Haug im Leben ein Gotteskind, / Im Himmel nun seine Ruhe find” (Gurlitt (ed.): 1917, 379 ff.).50 Lutheran epitaphs did not facilitate the salvation of the deceased, but they did certainly, in their frequent references (both textual and visual) to resurrection, concern themselves with the eschatological future. The admonition to pray for the deceased vanished, to be replaced by the hope that God would give him or her a joyful resurrection and grant him or her eternal life (Zerbe: 2007, 140).51 Even Anna von Schleinitz’s Meißen pulpit, which I cited here as an example of family commemoration, included prominent visual references to the resurrection (Fig. 1). Though unusual, indeed perhaps unique, in the richness of its visual and textual expressions, Prießnitz forms part of a much broader development: a memorial culture that sought, through the promise of resurrection and reunion, to console as well as to commemorate. It represents one more nail in the coffin

49 Bürger/Winzeler : 2006, 109 – 112 and Görlitz, Ratsarchiv, Varia 135, S. 3v ; Görlitz, Ratsarchiv, Akten Rep I, Seite 80, Nr. 66. 50 Haug, in life a child of God now finds his rest in heaven. 51 Zerbe gives the following examples: “Gott möge ihm / ihr eine fröhliche Auferstehung gewähren”; “Ein frölich Vrstend mir verley, Alln Gleubigen ihr Sünd verzeih”; “Christus erwecke ihn vnd alle die an ihn gleuben zum Ewigen Leben.”

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Fig. 10: Görlitz, city church of St Peter and Paul, pulpit (1693). Photograph taken by the author.

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Fig. 11: Afrakirche, Meissen, epitaph for Haug von Maxen (died 1569). Photograph taken by the author.

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for the notion of the Protestant epitaph as exclusively or even predominantly secular in intention and expression.

Works Cited Anon. (1897), Geschichte des Schleinitzschen Geschlechts von einem Mitgliede des Geschlechts, Berlin: Eisenschmidt. Anon. (1903), Neue sächsische Kirchengalerie. 11, Die Ephorie Borna, Leipzig: Arwed Strauch. Bastl, Beatrix (2003), Herrschaft und Gedächtnis, Zur “Inszinierung” der “Witwe”, in: Martina Schattkowsky (ed.), Witwenschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit. Fürstliche und adlige Witwen zwischen Fremd- und Selbstbestimmung, Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verl., 282 – 302. Bepler, Jill (2003), zu meinem und aller dehrer die sichs gebrauchen wollen, nutzen, trost undt frommen. Lectüre, Schrift und gebet im Leben der fürstlichen Witwen in der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Martina Schattkowsky (ed.), Witwenschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit. Fürstliche und adlige Witwen zwischen Fremd- und Selbstbestimmung, Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verl., 303 – 19. Brinkmann, Inga (2010), Grabdenkmäler, Grablegen und Begräbniswesen des lutherischen Adels, Berlin: Dt. Kunstverl. Bürger, Stefan/Winzeler, Marius (2006), Die Stadtkirche St. Peter und Paul in Görlitz, Dössel: Janos Stekovics, 2006. Goecke, Theodor (ed.) (1917), Die Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Brandenburg. 5/1, Kreis Luckau, Berlin. Gordon, Bruce/Marshall, Peter (ed.) (2000), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gurlitt, Cornelius (ed.) (1917), Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Königreichs Sachsen. 39, Meißen, Dresden, 1917. Heal, Bridget (2013), The Catholic Eye and the Protestant Ear : The Reformation as a Nonvisual Event? In: Peter Opitz (ed.), The Myth of the Reformation, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Jäger, Christoph (1666), Rechtschaffener Christen Lust= und Freuden=Tempel Aus dem schönen Macht=Spruche Im 3. Joh. Also hat GOtt die Welt geliebt etc. Bey dem Volckreicher und Christ=Adelicher Leich=Bestattung Der weiland HochEdelgebornen und so Viel=Ehr= als Tugend begabten Gottfürchtigen Matron, Frauen Annen Felicitas geborner und vermählter von Schleinitz… Bautzen: Christoph Baumann. Karant-Nunn, Susan (1997), The Reformation of ritual: an interpretation of early modern Germany, London and New York: Routledge. Karant-Nunn, Susan (2010), The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koerner, Joseph (2004), The Reformation of the Image, London: Reaktion. Lenz, Rudolf (1975, 1979, 1984, 2004), Leichenpredigten als Quelle historischer Wissen-

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schaften, vol. 1 Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, vols. 2 and 3 Marburg: Schwarz-verl., vol. 4 Stuttgart: Steiner. Linton, Anna (2008), Poetry and Parental Bereavement in Early Modern Germany, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mai, Hartmut (1989), Der Einfluß der Reformation auf Kirchenbau und kirchliche Kunst, in: Helmar Junghans (ed.), Das Jahrhundert der Reformation in Sachsen. Festgabe zum 450jährigen Bestehen der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Landeskirchen Sachsens, Berlin: Ev. Verl.-Anst. Meine-Schawe, Monika (1989), Die Grablege der Wettiner im Dom zu Freiberg. Die Umgestaltung des Domchores durch Giovanni Maria Nosseni 1585 – 1594, Göttingen: Univ., Diss. Meys, Oliver (2009), Memoria und Bekenntnis. Die Grabdenkmäler evangelischen Landesherren im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung, Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner. Oertel, Friedrich Maximilian (1843), Das Münster der Augustiner Chorherren zu St Afra in Meißen, Leipzig: C. H. Reclam. Pohl, Hans-Jürgen (2010), Aus der Geschichte der Familie von Schleinitz – ein Beitrag zur sächsischen Landesgeschichte Oschatz: Schmidt. Poscharsky, Peter (1963), Die Kanzel. Erscheinungsform im Protestantismus bis zum Ende des Barocks, Gütersloh: Mohn. Richter, Birgit (ed.) (2007), Die Familie von Einsiedel. Stand, Aufgaben und Perspektiven der Adelsforschung in Sachsen. Kolloquium des Sächsischen Staatsarchivs/Staatsarchiv Leipzig in Zusammenarbeit mit der Universität Leipzig 9. November 2005, Leipzig: Sächsisches Staatsarchiv. Rosenwein, Barbara H. (2002), Worrying about Emotions in History, The American Historical Review, 107/3, 821 – 845. Slenczka, Ruth (2010), Bemalte Bronze hinter Glas? Luthers Grabplatte in Jena 1571 als “protestantische Reliquie”, in: Philipp Zitzlsperger (Ed.), Grabmal und Körper – zwischen Repräsentation und Realpräsenz in der Frühen Neuzeit. Tagungsband erschienen in kunsttexte.de, Nr. 4, 2010, www.kunsttexte.de Soergel, Philip M. (2006), Luther on the angels, in: Peter Marshall/Alexandra Walsham (ed.), Angels in the Early Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 64 – 82. Spangenberg, Cyriacus (1594), Adels-Spiegel. Historischer Ausfühlicher Bericht Was Adel sey und heisse, Woher er kom[m]e, Wie mancherley er sey Und Was denselben ziere und erhalte… 2, Schmalkalden: Michel Schmück. Steche, R. (ed.) (1891), Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Königreichs Sachsen. 15, Amtshauptmannschaft Borna, Dresden, 1891 Steinmetz, David (1986), Luther and the Ascent of Jacob’s Ladder, Church History 55/2, 179 – 92. Stirm, Margarete (1977), Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation, Gütersloh: Mohn. Werdemann, Abraham (1653), Altar Afranum, Oder Schrifftmessige Einweihungs-Predigt des Neuen Altars / Welcher Anno 1653, den 18. Maij in der Kirchen zu S. Afra in Meissen gesetzt: und folgendes Tages … mit Christlichen Ceremonien dem Herrn des Friedens feyerlich geheiliget worden…, Dresden: Bergen. Winzeler, Marius (1997), Burgkapelle, Patronatskirche, Familiengrablege – Tradition und

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Wandel der Adelsfrömmigkeit und ihres künstlerischen Ausdrucks im 16. und 17. Jahhundert, in Katrin Keller/Josef Matzerath (ed.), Geschichte des sächsischen Adels, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau, 207 – 224. Winzeler, Marius/Stekovics, Janos (1994), Burg und Kirche. Christliche Kunst in Gnandstein, Halle an der Saale: Stekofoto. Wustmann, Gustav (1879), Beiträge zur Geschichte der Malerei in Leipzig vom 15. bis zum 17. Jahhundert, Leipzig: Seemann. Zerbe, Doreen (2007), Memorialkunst im Wandel. Die Ausbildung eines lutherischen Typus des Grab- und Gedächtnismals im 16. Jahrhundert, in Carola Jäggi/Jörn Staecker (ed.), Archäologie der Reformation. Studien zu den Auswirkungen des Konfessionswechsels auf die materielle Kultur, Berlin: de Gruyter, 117 – 163.

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Funeral Sermons and Lutheran Social Practices. An Example from 16th-century Denmark-Norway

Introduction The research into contents, functions, distribution and uses of Lutheran funeral sermons has been constantly growing during the last decades, mostly in Germany but also in the Scandinavian countries. Systematic work on surveys and catalogues of the total corpus of funeral sermons has recently also begun both in Scandinavia and elsewhere.1 According to these surveys, the number of funeral sermons2 printed in Denmark-Norway between 1550 and 1800 can be estimated to between 550 and 600.3 Most of these sermons – 74 % – were dedicated to deceased persons from the Danish-Norwegian nobility (Kirchmeier-Andersen: 1986, 21). In addition to presenting valuable bibliographic and book-historical information, these surveys and catalogues have to a large extent made the access to the relevant source material easier for researchers from various disciplines. Scholars in the field of cultural and social changes in the period of the European reformation have long since been aware of how funeral sermons might have both contributed to and been part of the changing of concepts and behaviour with regard to death and mourning in the Protestant parts of Europe.4 A very relevant example from Scandinavia is the Danish scholar Sabine Kirch1 A good example is the private, website-based survey of Danish funeral sermons from the period 1565 – 1850, http://www.degnehistorie.dk (last read June 2013) . 2 Sabine Kirchmeier-Andersen uses the following definition of funeral sermons included in her survey : The sermon was held at the funeral by a clergyman and consists of three parts – introduction, sermon and personal information about the deceased. This includes sermons given at funerals of members of the royal family, but not sermons printed on the occasion of such important deaths, Kirchmeier-Andersen: 1986, 18. 23. 3 Kirchmeier-Andersen has registered 557 printed sermons between 1565 and 1800, Kirchmeier-Andersen: 1986, 19. 4 In my own research, I have analysed Danish-Norwegian royal funeral sermons in the perspective of continuity and change, Amundsen: 1992, and sermons in Norway as exemplary deliberations on the topic of dying and death, Amundsen: 1991.

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meier-Andersen (1986), who has studied the changing interpretation of dying and death as expressed in printed funeral sermons in Denmark 1565 – 1800. Another recent Scandinavian example is the Norwegian research project Death in Early Protestant Tradition.5 In this project, of which the author is a member, funeral sermons are among the central sources investigated in order to analyse the complex relationship between continuity and change in early modern Norway. One of the perspectives employed in this project is the contribution that an analysis of different material and non-material sources can make to the implications and limitations of the Lutheran Reformation with regard to notions and values in the field of dying and death.

Denmark and Norway as a Lutheran State Although this specific project has taken the early Lutheran Norway as its point of departure, this should not be interpreted too restrictedly. In this respect, as in many others, Denmark and Norway have to be the object of a parallel analysis in the early modern period. This is not least due to the fact that with the Lutheran Reformation in the years 1536 – 1537, Norway lost what was left of its political and religious independence, and came – while still formally a separate kingdom – under the total control of the Danish kings and the authorities in Copenhagen. One element of this is that Denmark-Norway became one of the most extremely controlling and centralized monarchies of Europe.6 One of the central political aims of the monarchs – absolutist rulers after 1660 – was to establish a pure and unchallenged Lutheran culture in their realms. Another element was that Norway after the Reformation was more or less invaded by Danish noblemen and public servants, who found the country very interesting as an arena for building up a career as the King’s servants within the civil, military or ecclesiastical organisation (e. g. Imsen: 1982, 144ff). To individual representatives of the nobility and of the ecclesiastical elite, Denmark and Norway represented two geographical areas closely linked together biographically. In other words, and with respect to the field of funeral sermons, it is difficult to decide what the substantial difference is between Danish and Norwegian source material. A sermon held to honour a deceased nobleman who was born and died in Denmark, but with a shorter or longer royal service in Norway as an important part of his career, should not be defined as “Danish”. Likewise, a sermon held by a Norwegian-born clergyman with a long career in Denmark is not simply “Norwegian”. 5 http://www.tf.uio.no/english/research/projects/dp/index.html (last read June 2013). 6 An interesting, but somewhat one-sided analysis of this is Rian: 2003.

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Complex Textual References As I have mentioned, an important focus in the scholarship on funeral sermons has been their possible contribution to the changes in concepts and behaviour with regard to death and mourning. This is, however, a quite complicated focus. As printed texts, these sermons are impressive by their relatively high number, their quality and their temporal and geographical distribution. Still, they represent only a minor part of sermons held at funerals in the period and they honour a culturally and politically important, but demographically extremely small group of the population in the actual historical period. It is, accordingly, one thing to argue that the funeral sermons contributed to changing values and beliefs with regard to death and the after-life. It is quite another to specify in which ways and to what extent these printed texts might have communicated socially and culturally beyond the small groups of persons they seem to honour and commemorate. In this connection it is important to point out that as in 16th- and 17thcentury Germany, printed funeral sermons in Denmark and Norway were significantly connected not only to the new Lutheran ways of addressing the believers on questions related to dying, death and mourning, but also to new ways and ideals of reading and to the relationship between religious ideals and social status (e. g. Karant-Nunn: 1997). Accordingly, printed texts referring to and primarily addressing one specific group were not necessarily restricted in their intention, distribution or actual content. On the contrary, printed texts ordered by and explicitly addressing socially high-ranking readers were intended as exemplary and instructive to a wider public, either by being distributed more widely or by inspiring specific norms and behaviour. In this respect, the printed funeral sermons are relevantly interpreted not only as “instructive texts”, but as material objects with references to a number of social practices. These many references can only be analysed through a close reading of the texts that pays attention to the cultural, social and behavioural layers of meaning they contain.

A Printed Funeral Sermon from 1589 To illustrate the complex set of textual references in the funeral sermons, I will approach one singular text, more specifically, a funeral sermon printed in Copenhagen in 1589. Its author was a local clergyman, Christen Nielsen, Vicar of Næsby parish in Seeland. He delivered the funeral sermon the year before it was printed at the burial of the spouse of the most central nobleman in his parish, Sten Brahe (1547 – 1620). Sten Brahe was at the time one of Denmark’s most

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wealthy and influential noblemen. He belonged to an old and outstanding aristocratic family ; his brother was the internationally famous astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601), and he was for more than forty years a central member of the Danish State Council (riksrzd). Until the death of his father, Otte Brahe, in 1571, he was educated and trained in Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands. After his return to Denmark, he held for a couple of years positions at the royal household in Copenhagen, and was later appointed by King Frederik II to several important positions and feoffments. In 1578 he became a member of the Royal Council, a position he held for impressive forty-two years and which included a number of ceremonial, military, judicial, diplomatic and administrative tasks in Denmark, Norway and abroad. His high-ranking position is clearly indicated by the fact that, between 1593 and 1596, he was one of four members of the Royal Council who were in charge of Danish-Norwegian state affairs during the minority of King Christian IV (1577 – 1648) (Bricka 1888: 602 – 605). Steen Brahe’s wife, the deceased Birgitte Rosenkrantz, also belonged to one of the most central noble families in Denmark at the time. She was born in 1555, married the eight years older Sten Brahe in 1575, and then gave birth to seven children.7 The noble couple’s link to Næsby parish in Seeland was established through her. The local manor of Næsbygaard was Birgitte Rosenkrantz’ inheritance from her parents, Otte Ottesen Rosenkrantz (d. 1557) and Ide Mogensdatter Gøye (d. 1563). In 1585, the couple built a new and modern main building at the manor.8 Birgitte Rosenkrantz died at the age of thirty-three after having given birth to twins, one of whom was stillborn. Birgitte Rosenkrantz’ death was an unexpected and tragic one, leaving her many young children without a mother and a husband in grief and despair. How, then, is Christen Nielsen’s sermon to be regarded as a published text? Who were the intended readers and users of this text? Describing it as a printed funeral sermon does not in fact reveal its many and complex references to readers and audience – nor to its future use and users, for that matter.

The Author, Christen Nielsen, and His Position As with most 16th-century Lutheran clergy in Denmark and Norway, we do not know very much about the author of the sermon, Christen Nielsen, but on the title page of the printed version he positions himself as “The servant of the word 7 More details about the noble couple and their life, cf. Hase: 1886 – 1887. 8 This building was destroyed by fire in 1932. Details on the history of the manor in BobŒ et al.: 1922, 151 – 160.

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Fig. 1: The title page of Christen Nielsen’s funeral sermon from 1589.

of God in Næsby”.9 He also concludes the first part of the book by saying that it is “written in Næsby” (Nielssøn: 1589, Ci v). As an author, he places himself with authority but also with credibility as being in charge of the pastoral care of the deceased and her widower. This position is further demonstrated in various 9 See also the limited information on him in Wiberg: 1870, 498, where some doubt is raised about whether “Christen Nielsen Wallensved” actually was vicar in Næsby and Tyvelse Parish. Ehrencron-Müller : 1929, 81, says that Christen Nielsen was appointed vicar in Vallensved Parish in Sorø County in 1566, and in Næsby and Tyvelse around 1584, and that he died in 1591.

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parts of the printed text. Christen Nielsen speaks directly to those present in the funeral, to the widower and others who mourn the dead woman, and he also at numerous places describes himself as present and active at Birgitte Rosenkrantz’ deathbed. A closer look at the contents of the printed sermon reveals that it actually consists of substantially more than the funeral sermon as it originally was delivered at the funeral of Birgitte Rosenkrantz on 10 October 1588. Christen Nielsen has added a long introduction, where he directly addresses the widower, Sten Brahe, and explains that he has revised and extended the original sermon (Nielssøn: 1589, Ci r). As already mentioned, the author’s introduction is directly addressed to the widower, Sten Brahe, who also was the one who commissioned the printed version of the sermon. This makes the direct address from the vicar, Christen Nielsen, to Sten Brahe very relevant. The printed book was commissioned by the widower and probably even paid for by him (Nielssøn: 1589, Ci r). Accordingly, the preparation of the manuscript, the revision of the original sermon and the additions to it are done by Christen Nielsen as a duty to his noble master. In fact, Christen Nielsen uses much space and many words to explain to Sten Brahe and to all other readers that his printed sermon is an expression of obedience and obligingness towards “his gracious Lord and Patron” (Nielssøn: 1589, Aii r). In this perspective, Sten Brahe – the widower and the Patron of the author – is the primary reader of the book. Sten Brahe in a way “owns” the book, and he is free to use it according to his own purposes, e. g. to symbolically underline his high social position. Accordingly, there are no exact references to an authorship, but to patronage, in the text. The author is the “servant”; the widower is the “patron”. But at the same time, the “servant” positions himself as the adviser of his patron; the servant is the one with legitimized knowledge of the meaning of the Word of God, he is also the “servant of the word of God”. This makes Christen Nielsen more than an “author”; his role is the one of the comforter, of the specialist, of the one who speaks on behalf of God.

The Individual and the General The patron’s ownership of the book is also supported by the material dimension: On the first page is printed the impressive coat of arms of the Rosenkrantz family, which marks a “social ownership” of the book and corresponds with the use of the same symbol in the chapel built to house the earthly remains of Birgitte Rosenkrantz. In this respect, then, the printed funeral sermon is what the Danish book historian Charlotte Appel has called “a private print”, meant for a re-

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stricted circulation.10 It is, however, difficult to have exact knowledge of the distribution of this specific printed book. Charlotte Appel’s own investigations have brought to light many indications that the collection and reading of funeral sermons widely exceeded both social groups and generations.11 Under any circumstance, labeling the printed sermon “private” might cause the interpreter problems in understanding all the textual implications of the book.

Fig. 2: The Rosenkrantz coat of arms as printed in the funeral sermon from 1589.

10 Cf. Appel : 2001, ch. 13 on intended readers of early modern books in Denmark. 11 E.g. Appel : 2001,749, with reference to Aalborg citizens owning funeral sermons on both royal and noble persons.

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To support and sustain this argument, it could be pointed out that the long introduction which Christen Nielsen dedicated to his patron Sten Brahe also has what can be called an inner dimension. The overall theme of the introduction is to discuss the need for, the relevance of, and the legitimacy of Christians in general grieving the death of their beloved. Of course, Sten Brahe is again the most central person addressed here, but Christen Nielsen at several points also mentions “the many good friends of Your Highness” who share his grief and mourning (e. g. Nielssøn: 1589, Aii r). This corresponds with the many references in the text to persons present at Birgitte Rosenkrantz’ deathbed – noble men and women, relatives, children and servants. Formally, Christen Nielsen expresses his advice and support to the mourning Christian family and friends by referring to a number of Biblical and nonBiblical examples showing that moderate grief is a natural human reaction to death: “A Christian is known by his grief and mourning. […] Still, we should not exceedingly mourn at the death of others, as if all our help and support, comfort and joy, had died with them.” (Nielssøn: 1589, Dii v–Diii r) He also addresses Sten Brahe directly in the text, saying e. g. that he fully understands him and his reactions or that he has suggestions for prayers that might be of help in his present situation, i. e. several months after the death and funeral of his wife (e. g. Nielssøn: 1589, Cii rv. Dii r). And the comfort does not stop with the printed text. Christen Nielsen writes to Sten Brahe that what is said in the book is all that can be said to him thus far, hinting at further pastoral care from the Vicar in the time to come (Nielssøn: 1589, Div v). The introduction, then, has the form of a discussion with living people, giving them advice and support. In other words: the introduction is spiritual guidance from a minister to members of his congregation. The discussion is not limited to the actual situation and the actual persons involved, but expands to a more general listing of religious, social, historical and cultural arguments that far exceeds the concrete and contemporary. This means that the long introduction to the funeral sermon has a wider function: It widens the relevance and it widens the potential number of readers, which means that it textually and most likely even intentionally exceeds the circulation of a “private print”. This widening perspective is quite clear already on the title page, which does not immediately present the book as a specific funeral sermon, but as a general interpretation of the words of Moses in Psalm 90 with the motto: “How man can learn from meditating on the theme of death”. The title page also has another motto, taken from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:18): “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” In this way, the printed sermon presents itself as a book containing spiritual advice from a local minister to a reading public – albeit

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as presented at the occasion of a specific funeral in his own parish in 1588. This once again underlines that the book does not fulfill the requirement for being private or restricted to a specific noble family. Its future readers can be anyone in need of spiritual advice on the topic: The relevance of the Word of God is not limited to the specific occasion in the Brahe-Rosenkrantz family, and the comfort offered by Holy Scripture in the case of grief and mourning is accessible to all believers past and present.

The Exemplary Death and Memory The same complex relationship between the private, the restricted social circle and the more general public can be found in the way Christen Nielsen describes the deceased Birgitte Rosenkrantz and uses her death as an example. This starts already in the introductory part of the printed sermon. Of course – anything else would be unthinkable – Birgitte Rosenkrantz is “beyond doubt” declared “as a true Christian, who died justified by Christ, and now is a blessed child of God” (e. g. Nielssøn: 1589, Ciii r–v. Siv v). This was a conclusion meant to assure her closest family about her salvation. But then Christen Nielsen continues: Her body is now sleeping; it rests among her [dead] children until the Last Judgement. […] Her soul, on the other hand, has been separated from her body, and has been transferred to the heavenly kingdom by the help of God’s angels. Accordingly, her soul now is in God’s own hand, it is with Jesus Christ, and her soul is with the souls of her blessed parents, brothers and sisters, and all the Holy patriarchs, prophets and apostles – indeed with the souls of all blessed Christians.

Here, in Heaven, her soul has direct, friendly and generous communication with all Christians and with the Angels (Nielssøn: 1589, Civ r). This is the general perspective of the Lutheran Reformation: There is no purgatory ; those who die in Christ need no further care or prayers from the living (Amundsen: 2005, 168. 174ff). But this perspective also has another dimension. The soul of the deceased Birgitte Rosenkrantz had entered a new social arena, where communication was possible with all Christians, a communication with no restrictions or limits. She had left her family and friends, and also the congregation of which she was a high-ranked member. Christen Nielsen does not say directly that the social hierarchy of the congregation is not repeated in Heaven, but references to her having direct, friendly and generous communication with all Christians at least open the possibility of new organized social structures that are not directly commensurable with the contemporary ones. The main point here is that the introduction to the printed sermon includes a

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Fig. 3: Birgitte Ottesdatter Rosenkrantz, posthumous portrait by unknown artist 1594. (Det Nationalhistoriske Museum pz Frederiksborg Slot. Foto: Kit Weiss).

much wider perspective than the familiar or the private. As a prominent member of the local congregation, Birgitte Rosenkrantz had not left the group of true Christians. On the contrary, her soul had immediately joined the souls of all other Christians – and, accordingly, so would the souls of all other Christian readers of the sermon.

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Two other Parts of the Printed Book The principal parts of the printed book were written by the local vicar, Christen Nielsen. The book has, however, three additions or addenda. The first addition consists of small poems or verses in Danish written by Birgitte Rosenkrantz herself in different books in her possession. The verses concentrate on themes like the need for being permanently prepared for one’s own death, to do good to all men, and to long for eternal peace in Heaven (Nielssøn: 1589, Yiv r–v). The two other additions are in Latin. The first is an Epitaphivm Dominae Birgitæ Rosenkrantziæ written by Professor and Rector Christian Machabæus Alpinas (1541 – 1598), the second an Epicedium lectissimae matronæ D. Birgittæ Rosenkrantz by Dean Jon Jacobsen Venusinus (d. 1608) (Nielssøn: 1589, Zi r–Zii v).12 The Danish verses are obviously meant as demonstrations of the pious attitude of the deceased; what Christen Nielsen had written about how well she was prepared for her own death and how well she had acted towards all men, high and low (e. g. Nielssøn: 1589, Sii r. Siv r), were not hollow postmortal words of praise, but close to her actual life and mind. The two Latin texts demonstrate the widower’s close connections with representatives of humanistic and Latinist erudition in Denmark-Norway. These connections were not least established through his brother, the astronomer Tycho Brahe (Hase: 1886 – 1887, 639 f, cf. 628).

Funeral Sermon and Funeral Practices What is more difficult to identify for today’s readers of the sermon are the many direct references also to the specific circumstances in the local congregation and the local parish church of the 1580’s. In the vita part of the funeral sermon, Christen Nielsen mentions as one of the many virtues of Birgitte Rosenkrantz that she “often thought of her own funeral”. For example, she and her husband, Sten Brahe, had been working on the construction of a separate burial chapel to be built on the southern side of the nave of the parish church in Næsby. During the construction work, they had often visited the church, “discussing her last place of rest”. This place of rest “is now for us all to see”, Christen Nielsen proclaims with reference to those present at the funeral (Nielssøn: 1589, Sii v–Siii r). What he does not mention, but was also visible to the audience present in the church, were the two impressive epitaphs dedicated to Birgitte Rosenkrantz’ parents, erected in 1557. Both epitaphs had frames of terracotta. In the 12 On the two authors, cf. Ehrencron-Müller : 1927b, 268 – 270, and Ehrencron-Müller : 1932, 15 – 18.

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center of one of them was a painted portrait of the two deceased, the center of the other was a painted text in Latin verse (Epitaphium) on Otte Rosenkrantz (Jensen & Hermansen: 1933 – 1935, 680).13 Printed several months after the funeral, after Birgitte Rosenkrantz had been buried in the new chapel in the local church, the printed sermon of course also functioned as an interpretation of the history and message of this specific grave and funeral monument – and eventually also of the black and white marble and alabaster epitaph erected by Sten Brahe in the memory of his beloved wife (Jensen & Hermansen: 1933 – 1935, 681 f).14 In fact, this epitaph does not seem to have been finished until about the middle of the 1590’s, when Sten Brahe already had re-married. The plan obviously was to use the epitaph to commemorate Sten Brahe himself, his deceased wife, Birgitte Rosenkrantz, his new wife, Kirstine Holck (1558 – 1599), whom he married in September 1590, and three deceased daughters from Sten Brahe’s two marriages, including the stillborn baby of Birgitte Rosenkrantz (cf. Hase: 1886 – 1887, 651). The problem was, however, that his second wife died already in 1599. Sten Brahe then left Næsby and his manor Næsbyholm to stay at his other estates, married for the third time in 1602, with Sophie Rostrup (d. 1632), and did not die until 1620. He was then buried and had his own epitaph in Kzgerød parish church in Scania, then still part of the Kingdom of Denmark, where his parents, Otte Thygesen Brahe (1518 – 1571) and Beate Clausdatter Bille (1526 – 1605) from around 1571 had their gravestone and from 1613 their painted epitaph in a family chapel built around 1560. A funeral sermon on Sten Brahe was published in 1621 by the later Bishop of Stavanger in Norway, Thomas Cortsen Wegener (1588 – 1654) (Ehrencron-Müller : 1930, 451 f). That Sten Brahe shortly after his second wife’s death left Næsby parish to live elsewhere for the rest of his life explains why his part of the epitaph in Næsby church remained without any inscriptions or effigy. Birgitte Rosenkrantz’ part of the monument, however, has a text in Latin with her biographical details and “signed” by the widower,15 and the rather mysterious letters FGGRFDIPM, which according to tradition refers to her personal motto: “Frygter Gud, Gør ret, Forlad dig ikke paa menneskerne.” (“Fear God, act with righteousness, Do not trust or rely on human beings.”) I expect that posterity would mostly have forgotten the interpretation of these letters, but the printed sermon would still be able to interpret the Christian person and the pious motto behind them.

13 The two epitaphs do not longer exist, but they are known through a drawing from 1757. 14 This epitaph was also partly moved and destroyed, but was restored in 1895. 15 This text seems to have no connection with the Latin “Epitaphium” by Machabæus and was printed as an addition to her funeral sermon.

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Fig. 4: Sten Brahe, portrait by unknown artist 1594. (Det Nationalhistoriske Museum pz Frederiksborg Slot. Foto: Kit Weiss).

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Printed Funeral Sermons and Pastoral Exemplarity What, then, happened to the funeral sermon after it had been printed? In the 1580’s, the tradition of printed funeral sermons was not an old or extensive one in Denmark-Norway. So by its pure existence as a printed sermon it must have served as an exemplary sermon, for instance, to other clerics who were expected to give sermons at high-profile funerals. At this time, a new generation of clergy educated and trained as Lutheran ministers was developing in Denmark-Norway. Their main inspiration was the internationally renowned Professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, a theologian much inspired by Philipp Melanchthon (1497 – 1560) and Calvinist theology – Niels Hemmingsen (1513 – 1600). Hemmingsen himself published a number of funeral sermons that were treated as exemplary by his contemporaries (Ehrencron-Müller: 1927a, 6 – 17). But Hemmingsen was not alone in this business. Jens Nielsen (1538 – 1600), the most important 16th-century Lutheran Superintendent or Bishop in Oslo and Hamar diocese in Norway, brought his printed funeral sermons with him as gifts to noblemen and clergy he met during his many visitations (Nielsen: 1885, XCVff). This obviously widened the context of these printed sermons immensely ; they formally addressed the private, the few, the elites, but in reality they formed generations of Lutheran clergy and Lutheran funeral sermons in both countries. Seen in this context, Christen Nielsen’s sermon from 1589 contributed to a growing number of exemplary printed texts that were useful both to his future colleagues and to future commissioners of such texts: This was how a funeral sermon could and should be performed, styled and edited.

Funeral Sermons, Noble Genealogy and Noble Exemplarity This brings me to my last point, namely, genealogy and memory. Although the Lutheran perspective on death and the afterlife in many ways tried to put an end to any interaction between the living and the dead, the funeral sermons – not only with their vitae of the individual deceased but as monuments commemorating exemplary Christian lives – also contributed to a continued memory-based relationship between the dead and the living. With his printed funeral sermon on Birgitte Rosenkrantz, Christen Nielsen contributed to what she herself expressed in one of her verses on life and death: If you pursue not only your own happiness and welfare but also others’, through beneficent actions “your name will live not only in this life but in the afterlife, even after your body has been put into the grave” (Nielssøn: 1589, Yiv r). In Christen Nielsen’s words, the value of a good name and testimony refers to the individual status of the dead: “As the Holy Sirach says in chapter 42 – Have regard to thy name; for

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that shall continue with thee above a thousand great treasures of gold.”16 But the value of a good name and reputation also has relevance to others. It is useful for young people to hear how their own parents or other God-fearing persons are praised for their virtue and piety, so that they could be inspired to follow in the footsteps of their parents. If they are not able to reach the exact standards of their parents, they should still try the best they can in order to leave behind a good reputation and have a positive testimony at their own funeral (Nielssøn: 1589, Riii v–Riv r). In this way, it is made clear that noble and high-ranking persons have the responsibility to be good examples in life and in death. They are in a special position to be beneficent to their subordinates and all those who are dependent on them; with their upbringing and education comes the responsibility to act and speak in exemplary ways. The good reputation and memory also include knowledge about your forefathers. A standard element in the vitae of the funeral sermons is genealogical information. In the case of Birgitte Rosenkrantz, Christen Nielsen limits himself to naming her parents and grandparents. The rest of her ancestry is referred to on her epitaph. The 16th- and 17th-century nobility was obsessed with genealogy, and some noble families more than others, it seems. This obsession, of course, had to do with hereditary rights to privileges and status; it was absolutely necessary to be able to document one’s genealogical background, and the funeral sermons contributed heavily to this documentation (cf. Heck: 2002). But they also contributed more generally and outside the specific noble family to knowledge of history – understood as a field of memory and good examples for the present and for the future (cf. Angel: 2010). In this respect the funeral sermons were also works and comments on history as magistra vitae (cf. Eriksen: 2010. Eriksen, Krefting & Rønning: 2012, 17). Also in this context, Christen Nielsen’s funeral sermon is of high importance. His patron Sten Brahe was definitely not unimportant as an individual actor on behalf of his own family. Both the Brahe and the Rosenkrantz families took active and quite spectacular steps in the 16th and 17th centuries to create genealogical and historical monuments to themselves. A fascinating example is Hornslet church in Jutland, where the Rosenkrantz family systematically both collected and raised monuments, gravestones and epitaphs documenting the history of their ancestors (Horskjær : 1969, 62 – 66). Looking more closely into the matter, it quite astonishingly turns out that printed funeral sermons dedicated to members of the two families Brahe and Rosenkrantz amount to 12 % of all printed funeral sermons in Denmark and Norway between 1550 and 1800. The first of these sermons – printed in 1575 – was dedicated to Holger Ottesen Rosenkrantz, the last one to Friderich Rosen16 Chapter 41 in the English King James’ Version of 1611.

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krantz in 1758. Of the 58 sermons, 25 are dedicated to deceased men and 33 to deceased women. Most of the sermons – 38 in all – were printed between 1600 and 1650, 4 were printed in the period 1550 – 1600, 12 in the period 1650 – 1700, and 3 in the period 1700 – 1750.17 Of course, Brahe and Rosenkrantz were both very well-off families, but also families famous for their interest in science and letters, book and manuscript collection – and genealogy. The continuous project of having the funeral sermons of prominent family members printed also contributed heavily to the permanent genealogical and heraldic memory of the Rosenkrantz and the Brahe families. A significant expression of this is the famous book collection named after Karen Brahe (1657 – 1736), in fact the only Danish private book collection from the 17th century that has survived until today. A substantial part of the books in Karen Brahe’s collection consists of printed funeral sermons – both Danish and foreign. She both represented her own family’s long interest in such material and created a long-lasting monument to this very important element of the Lutheran culture.18

Some Conclusions To conclude, then, it seems reasonable to point out some more general aspects of the Danish and Norwegian printed funeral sermons – among which Christen Nielsen’s sermon is an early and quite typical example. These texts had multiple and quite complex references. The references of the funeral sermons were not only private or familiar, but pointed to both contemporary and future congregations and groups of readers and users. In a modern, secular perspective, some of these references might not be of a convincingly religious kind, but still – even the social hierarchy and the keen interest in genealogy had in the perspective of the 16th and 17th century theology and religious ideology religious dimensions, dimensions that also were of relevance to the Lutheran understanding of death and the afterlife. The most interesting references demonstrated by this specific case are constituted by the close and complex interpretative connections between the funeral sermon, the individual epitaphs, the local church, the funeral ritual and the memory strategies of the Brahe/Rosenkrantz family.19 These connections were both explicit and intended, and they had not only contemporary but also future 17 This agrees quite well with Kirchmeier-Andersen, who sets 1640 as a peak in the printing of funeral sermons dedicated to deceased persons among the Danish-Norwegian nobility, Kirchmeier-Andersen: 1986, 19. 18 The collection includes approximately 3,400 printed books and 1,150 manuscripts. On the history of this collection, cf. Riising: 1956, 7 ff. 19 Similar perspectives are discussed in Amundsen: 2010.

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relevance. As long as the funeral sermon was read and interpreted, it functioned as an interpretative key to how, why and by which means the local church and its monuments and material elements sustained the ideological relationship between the patrons and the subordinate members of the congregation. In this social and symbolical relationship, Birgitte Rosenkrantz and Sten Brahe were constituted as principal members of the local congregation, as exemplary and prototypical individuals of the new Lutheran culture of Denmark and Norway. This very wide set of references and the many sub- and supratexts of the printed funeral sermons may in fact have been one of the decisive factors behind the shift of mentalities that obviously took place in the Lutheran state churches in the centuries after the Reformation.

Bibliography Web References: http://www.degnehistorie.dk (last read June 2013). http://www.tf.uio.no/english/research/projects/dp/index.html (last read June 2013).

Printed References: Amundsen, Arne Bugge (1991), ‘Ærlig at leve og salig at dø’ – prekener ved livets slutt, in: Bibelen i Norge. Det Norske Bibelselskap 175 zr 1816 – 1991, Oslo: Det Norske Bibelselskap, 115 – 137. Amundsen, Arne Bugge (1992), Kongelig død i historisk perspektiv, Norveg. Tidsskrift for folkelivsgransking 35, 31 – 55. Amundsen, Arne Bugge (ed.) (2005), Norges religionshistorie, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Amundsen, Arne Bugge (2010), Churches and the Culture of Memory. A Study of Lutheran Church Interiors in Østfold, 1537 – 1700, Arv. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, vol. 66, 117 – 142. Angel, Sivert (2010), Den tyske likprekenens eksempler. Endringer i eksemplenes religiøse funksjon pz slutten av 1500-tallet, Tidsskrift for kulturforskning 2010/2, 5 – 17. Appel, Charlotte (2001), Læsning og bogmarked i 1600-tallets Danmark, (Danish humanist texts and studies, edited by the Royal Library, Copenhagen, vol. 23), København : Museum Tusculanum. BobŒ, Louis et al. (ed.) (1922), Danske Herregaarde ved 1920, vol. I, København: Henrik Koppels Forlag. Bricka, C. F. (ed.) (1888), Dansk biografisk Lexikon tillige omfattende Norge for Tidsrummet 1537 – 1814, vol. II, København: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag (F. Hegel & Søn). Jensen, Chr. Axel and Victor Hermansen (ed.) (1933 – 1935), Danmarks kirker udgivet af Nationalmuseet. Præstø Amt, 2. halvbind, København: G. E. C. Gads Forlag.

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Ehrencron-Müller, H. (1927a), Forfatterlexikon omfattende Danmark, Norge og Island indtil 1814, vol. IV, København: H. Aschehoug & Co. Dansk Forlag. Ehrencron-Müller, H. (1927b), Forfatterlexikon omfattende Danmark, Norge og Island indtil 1814, vol. V, København: H. Aschehoug & Co. Dansk Forlag. Ehrencron-Müller, H. (1929), Forfatterlexikon omfattende Danmark, Norge og Island indtil 1814, vol. VI, København: H. Aschehoug & Co. Dansk Forlag. Ehrencron-Müller, H. (1930), Forfatterlexikon omfattende Danmark, Norge og Island indtil 1814, vol. VIII, København: H. Aschehoug & Co. Dansk Forlag. Ehrencron-Müller, H. (1932), Forfatterlexikon omfattende Danmark, Norge og Island indtil 1814, vol. IX, København: H. Aschehoug & Co. Dansk Forlag. Eriksen, Anne, Ellen Krefting and Anne Birgitte Rønning (2012), Eksemplets makt, in: Anne Eriksen, Ellen Krefting and Anne Birgitte Rønning (ed.), Eksemplets makt. Kjønn, representasjon og autoritet fra antikken til i dag, Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press, 9 – 38. Eriksen, Anne (2010), Livets læremester. Eksemplarisk historieskriving, Tidsskrift for kulturforskning 2010/2, 30 – 54. Heck, Kilian (2002), Genealogie als Monument und Argument. Der Beitrag dynastischer Wappen zur politischen Raumbildung in der Neuzeit, München/Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag. Heise, A. (1886 – 1887), Bidrag til Familien Rosenkrantz’s Historie i det 16. Aarhundredes sidste Halvdel II. Otte Holgersen Rosenkrantz’s Børn, (Dansk) Historisk Tidsskrift, Femte Række, Sjette Bind, 615 – 654. Horskjær, Erik (ed.) (1969), De danske Kirker, vol. XIV, København: G. E. C. Gads Forlag. Imsen, Steinar (1982), Superintendenten. En studie i kirkepolitikk, kirkeadministrasjon og statsutvikling mellom reformasjonen og eneveldet, Oslo/Bergen/Tromsø: Universitetsforlaget. Karant-Nunn, Susan C. (1997), The Reformation of ritual. An interpretation of early modern Germany, London: Routledge. Kirchmeier-Andersen, Sabine (1986), Dødsopfattelsen i danske trykte ligprædikener 1565 – 1800, (Speciale. Institut for Nordisk Filologi, Københavns Universitet), København: Københavns Universitet. Nielsen, Yngvar (ed.) (1885), Biskop Jens Nilssøns Visitatsbøger og reiseoptegnelser 1574 – 1597, Kristiania: A. W Brøggers Bogtrykkeri. Nielssøn, Christen (1589), Mose GUds Mands Bøn/ i den XC. Psalme/ At betencke Døden/ Oc huad forstand Mennisken giffuis aff Dødzens betenckelse. Predicket vdj Erlige/ Velbyrdige/ Gudfryctige/ oc salige Frw Birgitte Rosenkrantzus Begraffuelse/ i Nesby Kircke/ den 10. Octob. Aar effter Guds Byrd/ 1588, København: Matz Vingaard. Rian, Øystein (2003), Maktens historie i dansketiden, (Makt- og demokratiutredningen 1998 – 2003, nr. 68/2003), Oslo: Makt- og demokratiutredningen. Riising, Anne (1956), Katalog over Karen Brahes bibliothek in Landsarkivet for Fyn, København: Ejnar Munksgaard. Wiberg, S.V. (1870), Personalhistoriske, statistiske og genealogiske Bidrag til en almindelig dansk Præstehistorie, vol. II, Odense: Hempelske Boghandel.

Kristin B. Aavitsland

Remembering Death in Denmark-Norway during the Period of Lutheran Orthodoxy

Introduction In Denmark-Norway, as in other Lutheran areas, the church interiors of the postReformation era came to be dominated by commemorative effigies. Painted, sculpted and inscribed epitaphs kept the memory alive of prominent members of local society, such as land-owning lords, well-to-do merchants, locally stationed army officers, civil servants of high rank – and, above all, vicars and ministers. Not only in the larger urban churches and cathedrals, but also in the small parish churches of rural districts, local dignitaries and their families remained present for generations after their death. This insistent memorial culture seems to have prospered particularly by the end of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth, as the Lutheran faith was consolidated in the Scandinavian realms (Gilgren: 1995; Bøggild Johannsen & Johannsen 2011; Ekroll: 2014).1 This paper aims to discuss some possible reasons for the epitaphs’ popularity in early modern Protestant culture, and it takes the largely unresearched body of Norwegian epitaphs as its point of departure. A few examples will be analyzed in greater detail to shed light on how early modern Protestants wanted posterity to remember them. As a commemorative genre, the epitaph is obviously very much older than the Protestant Reformation. It is known from classical antiquity, and it had a continuous afterlife throughout the Middle Ages in various forms, both epigraphic and pictorial (Handley : 2003; Kajanto: 1980). In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, features of the medieval donor portrait were incorporated in painted and sculpted epitaphs. This early form of portraiture, known from ecclesiastical 1 Research into early modern Scandinavian commemorative painting is scarce. For sixteenthand seventeenth-century epitaphs in Sweden, see Gilgren: 1995. For Danish epitaphs, see Honnens de Lichtenberg:1989 and Bøggild Johannsen/Johannsen: 2011. Apart from two recent master theses from Bergen University, Eide: 2006 and Holstad: 2008, the body of Norwegian epitaphs has barely been studied as such. Those of particularly high artistic quality are included in surveys of early modern art in Norway, like Christie: 1973 and Christie: 1982.

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art objects offered as votive gifts, depicts the donor in humble prayer (Hand: 2006). In this form, portraying the pious inclination of the persons that were to be commemorated, the epitaph genre spread across the confessional borders of early modern Europe. But notwithstanding its late medieval roots and its interconfessional distribution, the painted and inscribed epitaph came to enjoy particular popularity in the Lutheran areas of Northern Europe, where it developed as a pictorial genre with distinct iconographic conventions. The epitaphs eventually supplanted other types of images in the churches, apart from the altarpieces, and came to dominate the visual experience of the church interiors. The epitaphs doubtless competed for attention with paintings and sculptures that were already there, for medieval works of art were rarely eliminated from Danish and Norwegian parish churches (Wangsgaard Jürgensen: 2011). The authorities often let them remain in their old places, and conceived of them as harmless but decorative adiaphora.2 But unlike the old images, which were regarded as acceptable but superfluous, the new epitaphs had a distinct message to deliver about the life, death and salvation of good, evangelical Christians. In Denmark-Norway as elsewhere, the most characteristic feature of the Lutheran epitaph was the idealized portrait of a devout family or married couple – in keeping with the high valuing of marital life in Protestant doctrine. In its seventeenth-century form, the couple and their children are depicted in a conventionalized, decorous manner, always frontally posed, often kneeling and clasping their hands, soberly dressed in black and white, and mostly separated by gender : the husband and sons to the left, the wife and daughters to the right (Fig. 1). A crucifix, a representation of Christ’s resurrection, diverse Biblical figures or emblems of various kinds are sometimes included in the composition. The panel or assembly of panels are conventionally mounted in a heavy frame of architectural elements, foliage, garlands, masks, cartouches, candelabra and the whole decorative repertory of sixteenth-century grotteschi, living forth in the socalled cartilage baroque style (bruskbarokk) characteristic of Danish and Norwegian woodcarvings of the seventeenth century (Hauglid: 1950). A dedicatory inscription with the names and standing of the portrayed, often with a selection of Biblical quotations, seems to have been mandatory. Within these definite frames of pictorial and rhetorical conventions, the genre had, as we shall see, rich possibilities for individual adaption. The commemorative function of these 2 This was probably due to the slow, cautious approach of the Danish reformers, so as to avoid opposition. In Norway, where popular support for the new faith was almost non-existent, medieval devotional practices connected to reportedly miraculous images continued clandestinely at several places, cf. Blindheim: 2004.

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Fig. 1: Epitaph for bailiff Claus Bastianssøn Stabell and his wife Margrethe Olufsdatter Hoff, 1648, from Skedsmo church, Akershus, Norway. Photo: Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo.

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panels was often explicated verbally. ‘To the glory of God, the adornment of the church, and the memory of NN’ is the standard formulation inscribed on the panels to accentuate the donor’s honourable intentions. But how are we to interpret the visual rhetoric of these formalized, ceremonial self-representations of devout Scandinavian Protestants? What messages about life, death and remembrance do they communicate?

Personal Piety on Public Display To answer questions like these, attention should be paid to the religious and cultural context in which the epitaphs were made. In the Protestant twin kingdoms of Denmark-Norway, the heyday of painted epitaphs was the seventeenth century. This period can best be described as ‘one of Lutheran consolidation’ (Lyby/Grell: 1995, 135). In the theology taught at Copenhagen University, in the religious practices prescribed, in legislation and bureaucracy as well as in the literature and artistic genres flourishing across the kingdoms – in all these fields, a tendency towards uniformity and standardization can be observed. These were parallel and interdependent developments characteristic of the confessionalization processes in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. In Denmark-Norway, royal power was the executive force in the development towards a confessional culture. During his long reign, King Christian IV (1596 – 1648) pursued unity of state and church and rigorously avoided confessional conflicts through censorship, the prosecution of Catholics and Calvinists and the strict control of immigrants. This policy was initiated in the middle of the sixteenth century, and in 1569 Christian’s predecessor, Frederik II (1559 – 1588), had a creed of twenty-five articles drawn up to which all immigrants were to subscribe. If they refused, they were to leave the realms within three days (Danske kirkelove, II, 126 – 134; Lyby/Grell: 1995, 119). This merciless regimen inevitably challenged the mercantile interests of both countries, and consequently foreign tradesmen were occasionally allowed to stay in spite of their heterodoxy. Apart from such dispensations, the Lutheran faith remained the only tolerated doctrine in the realms. To maintain religious uniformity, Christian IV took several measures to secure the standards of ministers, supervise his subjects’ observance of a strict church discipline and introduce the more ambitious administration of penal justice (Lyby/Grell: 1995, 135 f; Rian: 1997, 351 – 382). His son and successor to the throne, King Frederik III (1648 – 1670), continued his father’s policy of the control and unity of state and church. This political line culminated in 1661, when Frederik III, supported by the Danish clergy, declared absolutism in Denmark-Norway ; the crown was thus made hereditary, and the king became supreme head of the church.

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The consolidated Lutheran state of Denmark-Norway secured its confession not only by suppressing heterodoxy, but also by requiring that its subjects openly, actively and sincerely led their lives as good evangelical Christians. During the course of the seventeenth century, detailed regulations of penitential ordinance were issued with the explicit aim of fostering devoutness in the population. The church law of 1629 admits that although the light of the Gospel shone brightly in both realms, the King’s subjects were, regrettably, not as pious as many people in other countries. People abroad might adhere to erroneous confessions, like Calvinism, but many of these heretics in foreign lands were exemplarily devout and more willing to change their ways than the subjects of the Danish king (Danske kirkelove, III, 141). The Danes and Norwegians were to improve. To this end, attending church services to sing hymns and receive the sacraments was not enough – the word of God ought also to inspire a devout and god-fearing life. The church law readily assisted to this end by prescribing penalties for swearing, neglecting holidays and so on. Furthermore, bishops and vicars were supposed to ensure that the head of every household gathered children and servants to perform daily prayers together.3 The reason for such meticulous regulation of conduct and strict supervision of religious practice was made explicit: an ungodly people will call down God’s anger, whereas the reward for general piety is prosperity, peace and progress for the king’s lands.4 Hence his motto and deep conviction that regna firmat pietas – piety strengthens the kingdoms. This royal requirement for common piety, first issued in 1629 and subsequently repeated in 1643 and 1683, may have prompted ambitious clergymen and other officials in the King’s service to demonstrate in public their pious disposition. To this end, the epitaph may have been considered a suitable means: displayed in the public space of the state-controlled church, the epitaph’s whole apparatus of conventionally approved gestures indicating devotion and fear of God was doubtless an appropriate medium for pious self-representation. Indeed, 3 ‘Vi bede Eder og naadigst ville, at I med Eders underhavende Geistlighed Menighederne over alt I sand Gudsfrygt og Paakaldelse undervise, saa og fremme, at hver Husfader og Moder dagligen med deres Børn og Tyende vilde samles og Gud den allerhøjeste takke og paakalde, foruden hvis Bønner hver for sig Aften, Morgen og ellers forretter’, issued January 28 1630. Danske kirkelove, III, p. 177. 4 ‘Wi Christian den Fierde (osv.) giøre alle witterligt, at effterdi den Allerhøyestis vise Vrede oc Heffn mod Lande oc Rijger retfærdigen optendis, naar hans Guddommelige Mayestet den retsinidge Gudsfryct, Ære oc Lydighed icke bevisis, som vdi hans Ord vdkreffuis, da haffuer mand saa vel I førrige som voris Regierings tijder Christilig, billig Forsorg dragit Vndersaatterne ved Ordinanzen saa vel som atskillige vdgangne Forordninger’, issued March 27 1627, Danske kirkelove, III, pp. 140 – 141. See also Christian IV’s decree on the observance of the national days of penance and prayer, issued November 9 1638, Danske kirkelove, III, pp. 272 – 273.

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the contemplative epitaph portraits offered a convenient solution to the early modern Protestant paradox of publically required inwardness (Koerner : 2008, 219).5 In Denmark-Norway, the epitaph portraits of kneeling, devout families with clasped hands suggest a situation similar to the daily household prayers prescribed by the King (Fig. 2). As mentioned above, the family portrait can be seen in late medieval epitaphs, and in post-Reformation Europe it is found across the confessional cultures. However, it increasingly gained in prominence and importance in Protestant epitaph iconography. The family portrait eventually superseded or dwarfed other imagery, even the image of the crucifix, and ended up as the epitaphs’ dominant pictorial focus by the middle of the seventeenth century. From the cathedrals in the urban centres to the most remote parishes, the intimacy of gathered families was insistently brought into the public sphere of the church and presented as exempla virtutis. In the twin kingdoms under Danish rule, these epitaphs may indeed have functioned as eloquent visualizations of the king’s family legislation, centred on the firm belief in Christ’s salvation. Furthermore, the epitaphs’ family portraits unambiguously propagated the Protestant conviction that marriage and the breeding of offspring were the best ways of realizing a true Christian life, and that the family was the ‘cradle of citizenship’ helping to secure the country’s social stability (Ozmant: 1983, 9). The epitaphs thus responded to the king’s motto of regna firmat pietas by confirming that piety in general, and the pious family in particular, helped to ‘strengthen the kingdoms’. The king’s lands benefited from the family life of good Christians – spiritually through their prayers, contemplation and good Christian conduct, and materially by their breeding of new citizens (Gilgren: 1995, 107). The numerous children in the epitaphs, depicted in rows ordered by gender and size, seem to be there as records of their parents’ God-fearing and productive lives rather than as individual beings. In the effigies of pious households displayed on the church walls, the categories of the secular and the religious, the temporal and the spiritual, were merged. This integration may be seen as a symptom of one of the driving forces of the Reformation: the urge to spiritualize the temporal. This urge was a path initiated by the various medieval movements of Christian reform. The zealous desire to ‘bring the religious life of perfection out of the monasteries into the secular world’ was intensified in the Late Middle Ages and radicalized by the Reformation (Casanova: 2014). One result was the exaltation of family life as a 5 King Christian IV explicitly commanded sincere heartiness from his subjects. They were to pray ‘to praise God Almighty to honour him not only with their mouths, but also in their hearts’; ‘paa det Gud den allermægtigste af dennem med Hjærtet saavel som med Munden kunde æres’, Danske kirkelove, III, p. 177.

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Fig. 2: Epitaph for bailiff Anders Lauritssøn and his family, 1630. From Dale church, Sogn, Norway. Photo: Unknown. q Riksantikvaren (Directorate for Cultural Heritage), Oslo.

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religious ideal in Protestant culture (Roper : 1989; Harrington: 1995). In Denmark-Norway, the first generations of Lutheran theologians published several edifying treatises and instruction books on the state of marriage, like Peter Palladius’ Om den hellige Ecteskabs Stat (1556), his brother Niels Palladius’ Det hellige Eckteskabs Ordens Regle (1557), and Niels Hemmingsen’s Om Ecteskab (1572). In these tracts, marriage was conceived of as the original state – meaning both condition and legitimate order – of mankind, assisted after the Fall by two additional and equally God-given states: the Holy Church and the political state of worldly rulers. Marriage, however, was conceived of as the primary human condition, whose purpose was procreation and the formation of pious and Godfearing citizens. The family thus became a principal locus for the cultivation of virtues and piety. The numerous epitaphs with their family portraits testify to the general acceptance of this idea by the class of civil servants in the twin kingdoms of Denmark-Norway. The imperatives of officially demonstrated piety were amplified during the course of the seventeenth century. This may help explain the pronounced increase in Danish and Norwegian epitaphs from the last half of the seventeenth century. But although these painted panels are designated epitaphs in the sources, they were not necessarily connected to any grave or burial place – in some cases, epitaphs were even set up in different churches to commemorate the same person(s) (Ketelsen-Volkhardt: 1989, 11; Troels-Lund: 1929 – 1931, vol. 4. 175 – 176). It is also worth noticing that many of the epitaphs from this period were produced and hung on the church walls while the individuals portrayed were still alive. This may indicate that the message of their pious self-representation was addressed not only to posterity, but also, and perhaps primarily, to their contemporaries. In the context of the absolutist Lutheran kingdoms of Denmark-Norway, the epitaphs seem to have served as certificates of a true, Protestant faith. The beholder was to be convinced not only of the portrayed family’s security of salvation in the Hereafter, but also of their obedience as the king’s trustworthy subjects. Within the mental frames of religious uniformity and political absolutism on the one hand, and iconographic and rhetoric genre conventions on the other, seventeenth-century Norwegian epitaphs are largely dominated by the standardized family portrait. Nevertheless, some of them display a surprising individualism and inventiveness as variations on a common pattern. In the following, two highly diverse but equally complex epitaphs will be examined to exemplify what may be regarded as individual responses to the king’s call for publically demonstrated piety. These epitaphs were both made and put on display in Norwegian churches in 1664, three years after the declaration of absolutism in Denmark-Norway.

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The Distaff of Fate: the Epitaph of Canon Jens Pedersen Hiermann The cathedral of Stavanger in south-western Norway houses a number of spectacular Baroque epitaphs expertly carved and painted by Anders (Andrew) Smith (c. 1620 – 1692). Smith was a Scottish immigrant who may have experienced that the market for elaborate church art was rather meagre under the Calvinist regime in his native country. Although information about his biography is scarce, he is known to have done his professional training in Bergen and possibly also in Flensburg in the duchy of Schleswig. Towards the middle of the century, Smith settled in Stavanger as contrafeier, a painter (Platou: 1927, 76 – 82). If the many prestigious commissions he had for the churches in this town and the surrounding areas are taken into account, Smith seemed to have accepted Lutheranism without any scruples, and his contribution to post-Reformation ecclesiastical art in Norway is considerable (Grevenor : 1928, 246 – 262; Christie: 1983, 207 – 213). One of Smith’s great Stavanger epitaphs commemorates Jens Pedersen Hiermann (1618 – 1671) and his family. Hiermann was a Danish priest, educated at King Christian IV’s academy at Sorø in Zealand, and subsequently at the university of OrlŒans. He became master of theology in 1647, and was appointed canon at the cathedral chapter in Stavanger one year later. As a well-educated theologian he held the office of lector theologiae at Stavanger cathedral school, living comfortably on the incomes from three prebends (Aas: 1925, 67). Belonging to the uppermost social stratum in the little town of Stavanger, he commissioned the most renowned craftsman in the district to carve and paint an epitaph for himself, his wife Anna Katharina Nielsdatter (1626 – 1690) and their five children (Fig. 3). All of them were still alive when Smith completed the task of perpetuating their memory. This may have been the first stage in a two-phased memorial strategy. The second stage was the family’s stately grave slab, which was prominently placed in the nave of the cathedral after Hiermann’s death in 1671 (Lexow: 1969, 10). By then his epitaph had been on display for seven years.6 Hiermann’s intention to donate the sizable epitaph to the cathedral is explicitly expressed in a predella inscription below the family portrait: Jens Hiermann, lector of theology and canon of this chapter, has placed this epitaph of his dear spouse Anna Katharina Nielsdatter and children of both sexes here in the year 1664, to ornament the temple and commemorate himself, when he was still living but not forgetting his death.7 6 Hiermann’s slab has been lost, but it is documented in a list of burials in Stavanger Cathedral from 1708. 7 The inscription reads thus: D: O: M: S: (Deo optimo maximo sacrum) HOC QVALECUNQ: EPITAPHIUM SIBI CONIUGI CHARIS SIMÆ ANNÆ CATHARINÆ NICOLAI F. ET LIBERIS

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Fig. 3: Epitaph for canon and lector theologiae Jens Peterssøn Hiermann and his wife Anna Katharina Nielsdatter, 1664, Stavanger Cathedral, Norway. q Terje Tveit, Arkeologisk museum, Stavanger.

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Notably, this statement emphasizes that it is the remembering of death – memento mori – that prompts the remembrance of self. As a manifestation of this declaration, the epitaph’s dominant picture is the portrait of the Hiermann family. Gathered in prayer as required by the king, the father and his four sons are kneeling to the left, with the mother and the one adolescent daughter to the right. Hands clasped, they all face the viewer with an air of earnestness and poised friendliness. The whole family is dressed in black, with white ruffs and collars but no wigs, according to Puritan clothing conventions in England and the Netherlands. The two women wear black gowns whose red linings neatly contrast with their white aprons and the white sleeves of their finely pleated undergarments. Hiermann’s attire has no ornamental finery apart from the brocade trimming of his black coat. Their general appearance is that of a sober, restrained and sincerely devout Evangelical family. Behind them, a green velvet curtain hangs from a pole. The curtain separates the family from an indefinite, symbolic landscape in which three reminders of death appear on barren ground: a scythe and a shovel by a skull, a coffin on a bier, and, in the middle of these, a spindle and distaff labelled parcarum colus, the distaff of the Fates (parcae). In classical mythology, the three Fates are goddesses ruling over men’s life course by spinning their life thread, measuring it and cutting it off when they please. A reference to this classical topos is not uncommon among early modern emblematists and poets writing in the consolatory and elegiac genres. An example from Norway is Jens Nilssøn’s (1538 – 1600) long, Latin poem Elegidion (1581). Here the author, the renowned bishop of Oslo and an erudite humanist, applies the image of the merciless Fates and their distaff in lamenting the death of his infant daughter (Markussen: 2012). Eighty years later, Hiermann provides a visual reference to the same topos by including the emblematic distaff in the iconography of his epitaph. But the epitaph also contains a literary allusion to the topos; above the skull is a text band with the first half of a couplet; the other half is found on an equivalent band above the coffin (Fig. 4). The whole couplet reads: Vive memor lethi quisquis coelstia curas sic lethi victor gaudia læta feres (Live with the memory of death, whoever you are who cares for the heavenly things. Thus will you gain joyful delight as a conqueror of death.)

These words, alluding to a locus classicus in one of Persius’ satires (‘vive memor leti, fugit hora’), form the closing lines of an anonymous sixteenth- or sevUTRIUSQ: SEXUS IN TEMPLI ORNAMENTUM ET SUI MEMORIAM DUM ADHUC ERAT IN VIVIS LETHI NON IMMEMOR POSUIT M. IOANNES HIERMANNUS. S:S: THEOLOG: LECT: ET HUIUS EXEDRÆ CANON: ANNO 1664.

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Fig. 4: Parcarum colus, the distaff of the Fates. Detail of the Hiermann epitaph (Fig. 3). q Terje Tveit, Arkeologisk museum, Stavanger.

enteenth-century poem on the brevity of life and certainty of death. This poem is listed in the prolific French Jesuit Philippe Labbe’s thesaurus epitaphiorum, printed in Paris in 1666 (228; pars VII, LII). Labbe’s collection documents tomb inscriptions and written epitaphs, mainly found in France and on the Italian peninsula, from Antiquity to his own day. As this collection appeared two years after Hiermann’s epitaph was made, the lector theologiae at Stavanger could hardly have had a copy of this particular book in his hands when he was planning the design of his epitaph. But it is likely that the poem Hiermann quoted was also included in other similar compendia of antique and modern tomb inscriptions. From the late sixteenth century and onwards, antiquarians and humanists, often motivated by confessional and apologetic ends, eagerly generated such compilations. Members of the Roman Curia and the Jesuit Order undertook vast documentary projects. This was clearly driven by an urge to strengthen their Catholic outlook, and their trusted history and antiquarianism to clarify, rather than challenge, Catholic orthodoxy (RubiŒs 2000, p. 373; Tschudi 2009). The circulation of these documentary works seems, however, to have crossed confessional borders and also inspired similar antiquarian undertakings in Protestant countries.8 Thus Hiermann, the Protestant canon at Stavanger, readily picked an inscription that presumably originated from a tomb somewhere in Catholic Italy when he was projecting his posthumous reputation. To well-

8 Also in Protestant states, such as Sweden and Denmark-Norway, a rising antiquarianism may be observed in the seventeenth century. Characteristically, the Swedish office of Keeper of National Antiquities (Riksantivariatet) was founded in 1630, and in 1638, the Danish historian and antiquarian Ole Worm published a catalogue of Runic inscriptions found on pre-Christian and medieval memorial stones in Scandinavia. Around 1680, the brothers Jens and Jacob Bircherod compiled a catalogue of inscriptions from churches and secular buildings in Odense at Funen, Monumenta et Inscriptiones Otthinienses Uberioribus Historicis et Genealogicis Illustratae Notis. I am grateful to Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen for this reference.

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educated men in Protestant areas, collections like Labbe’s were more than anything conceived of as handy catalogues from which one could choose a suitable and edifying epitaph inscription. Quite appropriately, the theme of the poem quoted on Hiermann’s epitaph is memento mori, and a constitutive metaphor is the Fates spinning men’s life threads.9 Thus Hiermann’s choice of inscription and Smith’s inclusion of the Fates’ distaff in the background of the portrait panel indicate a deliberate integration of text and image in the design of the epitaph. This connection was, however, apparent only to viewers who happened to know the poem already. Hiermann thus showed off his humanist erudition by appealing to an exclusive group of spectators and leaving the rest with awe. The ensemble of texts and symbols above the portrait of his family testifies that Hiermann was familiar with the symbolic language of emblematics cherished by the educated classes in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The distaff of fate is one of a wide range of memento mori symbols listed in the emblem books’ registers of rerum notabilium, and the couplet Hiermann chose to go with it, functions as his personal motto.10 Above this whole ensemble, Hiermann has inserted an interpolation not found in the poem: ‘Christo victori sacrum’ – ‘to the glory of Christ victorious’. It seems that Hiermann carefully selected and combined death symbols and verse lines from the huge corpus of available inscriptions and iconographic figures to create a personal device illustrating the statement about his humble state of mind when commissioning Anders Smith to craft his epitaph: ‘He was still living but not forgetting his death’. Anders Smith’s elaborate Baroque frame, teeming with colourful figures, lush foliage and gilded ornaments, forms a conspicuous visual contrast to the canvas’ soberly black-and white-dressed characters and grave memento mori symbols. The frame is designed as a multi-storied, quasi-architectonical structure, onto which cartilage-shaped relief panels are added on all sides (Fig. 3). Figures of angels standing or sitting on corbels accentuate each section, with the dragondefeating archangel Michael crowning the whole composition. This kind of framing structure, in which the architectonic elements dissolve into ornament and freestanding figures finish off the assembly, is characteristic of middle seventeenth-century epitaphs from the workshops in Southern Denmark and Northern Germany (Ketelsen-Volkhardt: 1989, 170 – 238). The composition may thus testify to Anders Smith’s presumed training in Flensburg. 9 “Aspicis humanae brevis ut sit linea vitæ/ ut dubias verset mors inopina vices/ Fata manent quemuis humilis seu stirpe parentum, sive sit a magnis nobilis ortus avis, etc.”, Labbe: 1666, 228. 10 See for instance Augustin Erath’s Mundus symbolicus in emblematum universitate formatus, Cologne 1681 (Latin translation of Filippo Picinelli’s Mondo simbolico, Milan 1653), lib. 2, nos 114 – 115.

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The frame abounds with figures from the Scripture, probably selected and arranged according to Hiermann’s instructions (Christie: 1973, vol. 1, 171). Centrally placed above the portrait of the Hiermann family is the rarely represented scene of the twelve-year-old Jesus among the Doctors in the Temple (Fig. 5). The child stands at a lectern facing the spectators and the audience of doctors sitting below him. His pious and caring parents appear at the sides, oddly echoing the parents of the Hiermann family below. In Lutheran edifying literature, the story of Jesus among the Doctors is used as a lesson in obedience – towards God and towards parents (Christie: 1973, vol. 1, 131; vol. 2, 63). The choice of this image may also readily be interpreted in light of Hiermann’s identity as a teacher, taking the young Jesus on the cathedra as the ultimate exemplar of the educator’s office. Furthermore, the image reflects an emphasis on Jesus Christ as the only source of true Christian doctrine, whose content unfolds in the numerous figure scenes spread all over the epitaph’s richly decorated frame. Here, Old and New Testament scenes are juxtaposed to visualize their typological liaisons. The solemn figures of Moses and St John the Baptist flank the central portrait panel. The Baptist points to the crucified Christ, hanging on the column to the right of the central image, whereas Moses points to the brazen serpent, the Old Testament’s prefiguration of the crucifixion, which appears on the corresponding column to the left. Below the inscription board of the predella, there is a vivid representation of Abraham’s meeting with the three angels prefiguring the Trinity, which is depicted in celestial glory and majesty in the uppermost section. Another typological compound is the Transfiguration of Christ (to the right of the figure of St John) and Jacob’s vision of the ladder to heaven (to the left of the figure of Moses). More surprising, perhaps, is the typological juxtaposition of the sacrifice of Isaac with the stoning of St Stephen (flanking the epigraphic field below the main panel) and the coupling of Jacob wrestling with God and the Baptism of Christ (in the storey above the main panel). These coupled scenes may reflect theological themes of special interest to the lector theologiae at Stavanger – such as submission to the will of God and ordination to God’s vocation (Christie: 1973, vol. 1, 171).11 Moreover, all the selected biblical scenes seem to thematize faith as such, be it the vision of God revealed to the eminently faithful (Abraham meeting the angels, Jacob beholding the ladder to heaven, the Baptist recognizing Christ as the Son of God, apostles beholding Christ transfigured) or the steadfast and persistent faith resisting trials and hardship (Jacob’s trial and St Stephen’s martyrdom). Despite its complexity and unique combination of pictorial elements, Hiermann’s epitaph at Stavanger is characteristic of Protestant epitaphs from the second half of the seventeenth century. Compared to the epitaphs from the 11 Cf. Jacob’s word to God: ‘I will not let thee go, except thou bless me’ (Gen. 32:26).

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Fig. 5. Jesus among the Doctors. Detail of the Hiermann epitaph (Fig. 3). q Terje Tveit, Arkeologisk museum, Stavanger.

preceding century, the emphasis has changed from the figure of Christ – crucified or resurrected – to the figures of the donors. There seems to be an intended wish to represent faith itself, rather than the object of faith. To achieve this end, the biblical events, even the atonement of the crucified Christ, are sidelined and located in the margins of the composition. The Hiermann epitaph thus appears as a devout and self-conscious Protestant humanist’s carefully designed memorial of himself, his family and his own orthodox belief. The Holy Scripture is, figuratively and literally, framing the lives – and the deaths – of Hiermann and the members of his family.

The Ladder of Faith: the Epitaph of Chaplain Christen Svenningsen In the same year as Canon Hiermann had his epitaph made for Stavanger cathedral, another large epitaph was hung on the wall of a more modest church, some 380 km eastwards. At Søndeled, a small village on the southeastern coast of Norway, Christen Svenningsen had commissioned an epitaph for the parish church where he served as a chaplain. The painter who received the commission is not known, but judging from his style, he seems to have had an affiliation to Anders Smith’s workshop at Stavanger (Grevenor 1928, p. 256). Like Hiermann, Svenningsen was Danish-born. He was educated in Copenhagen and had worked

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as a private tutor in the region of Søndeled before being appointed chaplain to the parish church. Despite his modest ecclesiastical office, Svenningsen was more than decently married. His wife was Johanne Nielsdatter Lem, daughter of the one of the most prosperous landowners in Norway and sister of a distinguished theologian in Bergen. Having served at Søndeled for some years, Svenningsen took his family to Copenhagen for an eight-year sojourn, before he returned in 1663 and recommenced as chaplain. The epitaph, dated 1664, was probably made for the occasion of the family’s return (Vevstad/ Hellerdal/ Masdalen: 2000, 120). Thus, like Hiermann’s in Stavanger Cathedral, the panel was not commissioned to commemorate any deceased person, and it does not seem to have had any connection to a tomb or burial place. After the panel was first hung in the church, Svenningsen lived on for about twenty years. His wife and children may very well have attended his services in Søndeled Church and may have sat in their pews below their own epitaph (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6: Epitaph for chaplain Christen Svenningsen and his wife Johanne Nielsdatter Lem, Søndeled church, Aust-Agder, Norway. Photo: NIKU (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research).

Death was, however, unequivocally present in the panel, whose explicit purpose was to remember the transitory nature of human bodies. An inscription running below the family portrait reminds the spectators of their own transience – and simultaneously makes a meta-comment about the value and purpose of commemorative panels in general:

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Pingitur in tabulis formæ peritura(e) venustas: vivat ut in tabulis qvod perit in facie (The beauty of transitory figures is painted on tablets so that what perishes lives forth when beholding the tablets)

To a modern viewer, Svenningsen’s epitaph appears as a large, rectangular canvas on a stretcher. But purportedly it was once mounted in a richly decorated framework, like most, if not all, seventeenth-century epitaphs. The selection of biblical or allegorical figures depicted on the alleged frame is of course left to conjecture. But even without its frame, the epitaph is dense with pictorial messages. It portrays Svenningsen himself, his wife Johanne, and their four young children, three sons and one daughter. All the family members were still alive when the epitaph was painted, their age given in golden letters by their individual portraits: the chaplain himself was 50 years old, Johanne was 46, their daughter Marie Magdalene Christensdatter 17 (inscription has faded) and the eldest son 14. For the two younger sons, the numbers that indicate their ages are so worn that they cannot be deciphered. All of the family are represented according to the conventions of the epitaph genre: frontally posed, austerely dressed in black and separated by gender, the husband to the left with his sons in front of him and the wife to the right behind the daughter. But unlike the Hiermann epitaph and the general scheme, the family is not performing any gestures of piety : their hands are not clasped, and instead of kneeling, they are standing upright. Nevertheless, the panel represents a seriously devout family and symbolic visual language abounds. The family is depicted in an undetermined space between two tables, each with an open New Testament on top. Svenningsen’s copy is open at St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians and his wife’s at the Book of the Apocalypse. An array of other books is stacked at the far end of the table to the left, close to the stately figure of the pater familias: this indicates that he is a man of letters. Each family member has a flower, and all four children hold small prayer books. Svenningsen’s right hand rests on a human skull lying on the table, with golden ears of grain growing out of the eye orbits and nostrils. The skull with ears of grain is an emblematic convention for mors vitae initium, death as the beginning of the new and real life: this is frequently applied in seventeenth-century memorial imagery (Henkel/Schöne: 1976, 1000). Contemporary examples of this symbolism from the immediate cultural surroundings may be found in Huldeborg Godtzen’s suspended epitaph in Stavanger Cathedral (Lexow: 1969), and in Godtfried Hendtzschel’s epitaph for the vicar Marcus Pedersen (1622 – 1668) in Jelsa Church, not far from Stavanger.12 12 In the last case, the skull is apposed with a quotation from Horace: “mors sceptra lignonibus aequat” – death makes sceptres and hoes equal.

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Juxtaposed with her husband, Johanne Nielsdatter rests her right hand on a small lamb reminiscent of the triumphant Lamb of God, which is the image of her personal coat-of-arms depicted in the upper right corner of the epitaph. Between the spouses, heaven stands open, visualized by a border of white clouds surrounding an area of golden light. From the ground, a ladder leads up to a wide open door in the middle of the chain of clouds. Inside the door, the name ‘Jesus Christ’ is written in red letters. The panel is dense with inscriptions, many of which quote the Danish edition of the orthodox Lutheran bible, sanctioned by King Christian IV in 1633. Thus, in texts and images, this epitaph reveals a complex fabric of ideas about faith, death and salvation that is more detailed and more specific than is usually seen in epitaphs from this period. In this dense ‘collage’ of Bible quotes interplaying with pictorial symbols, three main themes are communicated: the pious state of mind, the road to heaven and the resurrection of the dead. These themes are neatly intertwined and constitute a sort of visualized creed on the behalf of the portrayed. The anonymous painter of the Søndeled epitaph has not portrayed Svenningsen and his family with “normal” devotional gestures such as clasped hands or bent knees. Other means are chosen to represent their piety and meditative inclination. The children’s prayer books and the parents’ New Testaments indicate that the source of the family’s pious faith is reading. Their poised stances and dignified facial expressions signal their devout state of mind – as if they all ruminating on and contemplating the words just read. In addition, the flowers they hold, each of a distinctly different species, indicate their contemplative minds. Flower symbolism is not a common feature in Scandinavian epitaphs, but it is certainly related to the elaborate floral allegories favoured in seventeenth-century painting, especially in the Netherlands. Allegorical use of flowers was common in the devotional culture of medieval monasticism, and continued extensively in the visual language of the counter-Reformation. Apart from the fashionable tulip, introduced to Europe by the Ottomans only a few generations earlier, all the flowers in the Søndeled epitaph – lily of the valley, rose, campanula, peony and carnation occur in medieval devotional literature and pious legends about the passion of Christ and the sorrows of Mary. The general application of flowers in such contexts is to emphasize that the devout Christian may transform pain, sorrow and hardship into spiritual beauty (wounds and tears are transformed into flowers; flowers are used to focus meditation on Christ’s wounds). But like many other allegorical elements of the iconography of the Catholic Reformation, the flower symbolism was applied ‘trans-confessionally’.13 In Protestant culture, the flowers became emblems of 13 The heart symbolism of Anton Wierx is another example of seventeenth-century interconfessional symbolic iconography, see for instance von Achen: 2004.

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Christian virtues – humility, love, fidelity and so forth. More generally, flowers indicated an atmosphere of contemplation and spirituality. In portrait painting, the single, carefully selected flower could be read almost as a badge, signalizing that the person carrying the flower lived up to the required devotional standards (Gillgren: 1995, 131 – 134; TapiŒ / Joubert: 1987). The contemplative life course is represented behind this pious family (Fig. 7). The steps of the ladder leading up to heaven visualize how the sacrament of baptism (‘Daaben’) and the hearing of the word of God (‘Guds ord’) leads to knowledge (‘Guds Kundskab’), which prompts prayer (‘Boenen’). This enables growth of faith (‘Troen’) and subsequently the other Christian virtues – patience (‘Tolmodighed’), hope (‘Haabet’), and constancy (‘Bestandighed’). On top of the ladder, the door stands open to Christ, who is ‘the door of the sheep’ (John 10,7). Entry through this door to heaven is conditional, however. As stated in the quotation from Matt. 7:14, rendered in golden letters to the left and right of the ladder : “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (“Naar ind af den sneffre portt, thi den port er sneffuer, oc den veij er trang, som fører hen til Liffuit, oc de ere faa som hannem finde”). The visual rhetoric of the epitaph suggests that the contemplative, devotional minds of Svenningsen and his family have aided them in climbing all the stairs. Confident in their salvation, they expect to be accepted at the heavenly gate. The image of the ladder to heaven emphasizes the way to salvation as a gradual, spiritual process. This is another heritage from medieval monastic culture which is frequently employed in seventeenth-century devotional literature. One significant example is Johann Arndt’s prayer book Garden of Paradise (Paradiesgärtlein) from 1612, translated into Danish and distributed widely in Denmark and Norway in a number of editions throughout the century. In Protestant dogmatics, the image of the ladder was to develop into the notion of ordo salutis, the order of salvation: a systematic conception of the consecutive phases in which the grace of God, unaffected by human efforts, works to bring on redemption. In the Søndeled epitaph, however, the ladder’s steps seem to refer not only to God’s grace, but also to the praxis pietatis of the faithful individual (prayer and reading of the Holy Scripture). The conspicuous attributes of Christen Svenningsen and Johanne Nielsdatter – the skull with ears of grain and the lamb on the book – should be read as distinct emblems for the goal this devout family is pursuing through their reading, praying and cultivating of Christian virtues. Their destination is the new life after the resurrection, which gloriously grows out of their earthly, moribund bodies. The skull with the ears of grain is a visual allusion to the main text of the bodily resurrection, 1. Corinthians, chapter 15, about the grain that must die to give new life. In their new life, the contemplation they already practise will be perfected in the beholding of the Apocalyptic Lamb of God. Next

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Fig. 7: The ladder of faith. Detail of the Svenningsen epitaph (Fig. 6). Photo: NIKU (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research).

to the skull in the Svenningsen epitaph, an inscription in golden letters sums up the message communicated, quoting the funeral hymn of the Late antique Christian poet Prudentius: Mors haec reparatio vitae est – Death is the restitution of this life (Prudentius: 1961, vol. 1, 92). To keep this recognition in mind throughout one’s life was, according to Arndt and other seventeenth-century authors of devotional literature, to adorn oneself with the graciousness and beauty of Christian virtue. And it must be this kind of gracious beauty that Svenningsen and his family would have claimed to have lived on after them in their commemorative panel. If so, their epitaph served a double function: not only to remember the dead, but also to remember death.

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The Epitaph: Remembering the Dead or Remembering Death? These two painted and inscribed epitaphs from 1664, the one commemorating a Humanist theologian, the other a chaplain with an affinity for contemplative reading, exemplify how the genre became a locus of carefully composed selfrepresentation, mediating the religious ideals of the commissioner. If we return to the question I posed initially – how did early modern Protestants intend to be remembered? – we may conclude that these early modern Protestant vicars and their families wanted to promote themselves as religious exemplars whose minds never ceased to contemplate the transience of this life and the glory of the next. The constant remembrance of death was a prerequisite for a pious life. The epitaph’s memento mori symbols – the distaff of fate, the coffin of the bier, the skull with ears of grain – seem thus to be attributes of the minds of the individuals portrayed as much as a sign of their absence from this world. To posterity, the portraits commemorate dead individuals remembering death as if they were still living. In a third Norwegian epitaph, made one decade earlier than Hiermann’s and Svenningsen’s, the function of the memento mori explicitly ‘contends’ with the commemorative function. In his prime at the age of 35, the vicar Knud Jørgensson Winther commissioned a local carpenter to make him an epitaph to be hung in his parish church in the small mountain village of Rollag in the inland of southern Norway (Christie: 1981, 344 – 345). Above the central pictorial field, the epitaph carries a long inscription that explicitly addresses the spectator with a strong call for conversion, prompted by the recognition of death: It is certain, my dear reader, that we are all bound to die, but when, where, and how we do not know; and no one receives death joyfully except he who prepares for it in due time and with Christ. Thus I have on August 7th 1653, being 35 years of age, paid for the cost of this epitaph for myself, my dear wife and children, to remind us of a saintly life. No one dies in the Lord who does not already live in the Lord.14

Contrary to convention, and perhaps due to the local carpenter’s lack of sophisticated artistic skills, the vicar in Rollag did not want to have his and his family’s portrait made. Instead, the carpenter has reused relief figures from a late medieval Calvary group and inserted them as the focal point of Jørgensson’s epitaph (Christie: 1981, 342 – 344). Christ on the cross, flanked by St John and the Virgin Mary, is back in the centre, dominating the epitaph’s main panel (Fig. 8). 14 ‘Det er vist gode Lesser, at vi alle skal dø, men naar, huor oc huorledis ved vi icke, saa tage oc ingen mod døden med glæde uden den som i tide med Christo sig der til bereder. Der for hauffer ieg nu i min alder 35 Aar Anno Christi 1653 den 7 aug. dette EPITAPHIUM for mig, min K. hustru og børn bekostet, os til en paamindelse im it helligt leffnit. Ti ingen dør udi Herren uden den tilforn leuffer i Herren’, quoted after Christie: 1981, 344.

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Fig. 8: Epitaph for vicar Knud Jørgenssøn Winther, 1653, Rollag church, Buskerud, Norway. Photo: Arve Kjærsheim, q Riksantikvaren (Directorate for Cultural Heritage), Oslo.

From the sky, two coarsely painted angels crown the Saviour with victory garlands. Below the crucifix, a black coffin is represented.15 On top of it are crossed white ribbons, inscribed with the name ‘Jesus’. The panel visually communicates that the crucifix grows out of the coffin. Thus, in a bluntly straightforward way, this crude work of carpentry delivers a message of paramount importance to early Protestant culture – that what should be remembered is this: when death inevitably occurs, it is vital to die in Christ.

Bibliography Aas, Einar (1927), Stavanger katedralskoles historie 1243 – 1846, Stavanger: Johs. Floors forlag. Blindheim, Martin (2004). The Cult of Medieval Wooden Sculptures in Post-Reformation Norway, in: Søren Kaspersen/Ulla Haastrup (ed.), Images of Cult and Devotion. Funtion and Reception of Christian Images in Medieval and Post-Medieval Europe, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 47 – 59. Bøggild Johannsen, Birgitte/Johannsen, Hugo (2011), Re-forming the Confessional Space: Early Lutheran Churches in Denmark, c.1536 – 1660, in: Andrew Spicer (ed.), Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, Farnham: Ashgate, 241 – 276. Casanova, JosŒ (2014), The Two Dimensions, Temporal and Spatial, of the Secular : 15 Sigrid and Hzkon Christie misinterpret the coffin for an altar, Christie: 1981, 344. The two angels and the landscape background seem to be secondary additions from the eighteenth century.

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Comparative Reflections on the Nordic Protestant and Southern Catholic Patterns from a Global Perspective, in: Rosemarie van den Breemer, JosŒ Casanova, Trygve Wyller (eds.) Secular and Sacred? The Scandinavian Case of Religion in Human Rights, Law and Public Space, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 21 – 33. Christie, Sigrid (1973), Den lutherske ikonografi i Norge inntil 1800, Oslo: Forlaget Land og kirke/Riksantikvaren vol. 1 – 2. Christie, Sigrid (1983), ‘Maleri og skulptur 1536 – 1814’, in Knut Berg (ed.). Norges kunsthistorie, Oslo: Gyldendal 1983, vol. 3 (Nedgangstid og ny reisning), 121 – 246. Christie, Sigrid/Christie, Hzkon (1981), Norges kirker. Buskerud, Oslo: Gyldendal/Riksantikvaren, vol. 1. Coutts-Dohrenbusch, Maria Adele (1989), Untersuchungen zu Ikonographie und Gestaltung der Antwerpener Gemäldeepitaphien im 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Bonn: Rhenishen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn (doctoral dissertation). Danske Kirkelove samt Udvalg af andre Bestemmelser vedrørende Kirken, Skolen og de fattiges Forsørgelse fra Reformationen indtil Christian Vs Danske Lov, 1536 – 1683, H.F. Rørdam (ed.), Copenhagen 1889, vol. 1 – 3. Eide, Gjertrud (2006), ‘Ære, pryd og ihukommelse’: en empirisk studie av epitafier fra Vestlandet fra reformasjonen til sent 1600-tall. Bergen: University of Bergen (unpubsihed master thesis). Ekroll, Øystein (2011), State Church and Church State: Churches and their Interiors in Post-Reformation Norway, 1537 – 1705, in: Andrew Spicer (ed.), Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, Farnham: Ashgate, 277 – 310. Erath, Augustin (1681), Mundus symbolicus in emblematum universitate formatus, Cologne. Gillgren, Peter (1995), Gzva och själ. Epitafiemaleriet under stormaktstiden, Ars Suetica 17, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala. Grvenor, Henrik (1928), Norsk malerkunst under renessanse og barokk 1550 – 1700, Oslo: Steen. Hand, John Oliver et al. (2006). Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych. Yale: Yale University Press. Handley, Mark A. (2003), Death, society and culture: inscriptions and epitaphs in Gaul and Spain, AD 300 – 750, Oxford: Archaeopress. Harrington, Joel F. (1995), Reordering marriage and society in Reformation Germany, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.. Hauglid, Roar (1950), Akantus, Norske minnesmerker, Oslo: Mittet, vol. 1 – 2. Hemmingsen, Niels (1572), Om Ecteskab, Copenhagen. Henkel, Arthur /Schöne, Albrecht (1976). Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVII. und XVIII. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart. Holstad, Birgit (2008), Elias Fiigenschoug som portrettmaler : en studie av utvalgte epitafier, Bergen: University of Bergen (unpublished master thesis). Honnes de Lichtenberg, Hanne (1989), Tro, hzb og forfængelighed: kunstneriske udtryksformer i 1500-tallets Danmark, Renæssance-studier (3), Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Kajanto, Iiro (1980), Classical and Christian: studies in the Latin epitaphs of Medieval and Renaissance Rome, Annales Academiae scientiarum Fennicae, Ser. B (203), Helsinki.

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Ketelsen-Volkhardt, Anne-Dore (1983), Schleswig-Holsteinische Epitaphien des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Neumünster : Wachholtz. Koerner, Joseph Leo (2004), The reformation of the image, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Labbe, Philippe (1666), Thesaurus epitaphiorum veterum ac recentium, selectorum ex antiquis inscirptionibus omnique Scriptorum genere, Paris. Lexow, Jan Hendrich (1969), Gravminder fra Stavanger domkirke. Stavanger museums zrbok, 79, 5 – 31. Lyby, Thorkild/Grell, Ole Peter (1995), The consolidation of Lutheranism in Denmark and Norway, in: Ole Peter Grell (ed.), The Scandinavian Reformation: from evangelical movement to instituionalisation of reform, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 114 – 143. Markussen, Bjarne (2012), Døden som tyv. Sorg og mening hos Egil Skallagrimson og Jens Nilssøn’, in: Arr. IdŒhistorisk tidsskrift 2. Ozmant, steven (1983), When Fathers Ruled. Family Life in Reformation Europe, Cambridge (MA): Havard University Press. Palladius, Niels (1557), Det hellige Eckteskabs Ordens Regle, Copenhagen. Palladius, Peter (1556), Om den hellige Ecteskabs Stat, Copenhagen. Platou, Dorothea (1928), Anders L. Smith: en norsk billedskjærer fra 1600-zrene, Stavanger: Dreyer. Prudentius Clemens Aurelius (1961), Prudentius / with an English translation by H. J. Thomson. Loeb Classical Libray 387, London. Rian, Øystein (1997), Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten 1536 – 1648 (Danmark-Norge 1380 – 1814, vol. 3), Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Roper, Lyndal (1989), The holy household: Women and morals in Reformation Augsburg, Oxford: Clarendon Press. RubiŒs, Joan-Pau (2000), From antiquarianism to philosophical history : India, China and the world history of religion in European thought (1600 – 1770), in: Peter N. Miller/ FranÅois Louis (ed.), Antiquarianism and intellectual life in early modern Europe and China, 1500 – 1800, Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 313 – 367. TapiŒ, A./Joubert, C. (1987), Symbolique et botanique: les sens cachŒ des fleurs dans la peinture au XVIII si€cle, Caen. Troels-Lund, Troels (1929 – 1931), Dagligt liv i Norden i det sekstende aarhundrede, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske boghandel Nordisk forlag, vol. 1 – 4. Tschudi, Victor Plahte (2009), Tampering with Temples. Antiquity in the Catholic Reformation, in Roy Eriksen/Magne Malmanger (ed.). Imitation, representation and printing in the Italian Renaissance. Pisa: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 291 – 304. Vevstad, Andreas/Hellerdal, Kirsten/Masdalen, Kjell-Olav (2000), Sønderled kirke og kirkegzrd: 1000 zrs fellesskap i liv og død, Tvedestrand: Søndeled og Risør historielag. von Achen, Henrik (2004), The Sinner’s Contmeplation, in: Søren Kaspersen / Ulla Haastrup (ed.). Images of Cult and Devotion. Funtion and Reception of Christian Images in Medieval and Post-Medieval Europe, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004, 283 – 304. Wangsgaard Jürgensen, Martin (2011), Changing Interiors: Danish village churches, c. 1450 – 1600, Copenhagen: Copenhagen University.

Zsombor T†th

How to Comfort a Dying Family Member? The Practice of an Early Modern Hungarian Calvinist. A case study

1

Introduction

Michael Cserei de Nagyajta (1667 – 1756) was a Hungarian Calvinist and an ardent supporter of Puritanism. During his unusually long life he often found himself in a difficult situation of assisting his moribund family members, wives, kids or parents. While investigating his life and literary activity, I have found an impressive body of unpublished manuscripts, approximately 1500 pages of Hungarian and Latin texts, which preserved several ego-documents referring back to these doleful moments. Thus, the written accounts provide an excellent source for a study, in fact, a microhistorical case study centred upon this individual and his ritual efforts while “assisting” the death of his family members. One can hardly deny that the method promoted by microhistory and historical anthropology proves to be the optimal for the analysis of ego-documents (cf. Macfarlane: 1970; Seaver: 1985; Scribner : 1994; Muir : 1991; Peltonnen: 2001). Though Cserei was living in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, his ritual practices of reading, praying and, occasionally, examining the dying persons were related to sixteenth century Calvinist and seventeenth-century Puritan theological traditions and patterns of piety.1 Moreover, his predisposition of relying on literacy when performing religious conduct qualifies his own practice of piety as a genuine religious “self-fashioning” (Greenblatt: 1980, 3), comparable with the one prevailing in contemporary Puritan devotion (cf. Todd: 1992; McClendon: 1999). The aim of this microhistorical examination is to decipher the historical and anthropological features of dying as a ritual event, in order to interpret the religious conduct undertaken by early modern individuals assisting the passing of their family members from this mortal world. In addition, I will focus on two distinct perspectives. First, I shall reconstruct the individual practice of pre1 For further details about the life and writings of this Hungarian Puritan see my publications (T†th: 2007; T†th: 2008).

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paring for death as an intimate act resulting from the assimilation of a so called “pedagogy of death/la pŒdagogie | la mort” (Vovelle: 1983, 292). Then, I will endeavour to construe and exhibit the fashioning and perpetual constitution of the self during these processes of self-preparation for death, or the assistance of dying family members. Furthermore, I will argue that Calvinism and Puritanism brought about a different perception of death, causing relevant changes in attitude towards it reflected in the believers’ involvement, and the shared confessional and religious culture as well. I will conclude by claiming that even a single case can reveal notable conclusions about the specific way of how early modern Hungarian Calvinists behaved when confronted with their own, or their family members’ death.

2

Historical and Cultural Contexts

The particular historical and cultural background entangling this case demands the presentation of some relevant contexts reflecting the history and culture of the times that Cserei experienced. The principality of Transylvania underwent some major changes during the seventeenth century. While in the first half of the century the political stability, economic growth and cultural openness made contemporaries think of the principality as a Fairy Land, the second part of the century coincided with the loss of its independence. After the treaty of Bal~zsfalva (1687), and especially after the death of Mih~ly Apafi (1690), the last Prince of Transylvania, the little state, transformed into the so called Gubernium, was, in fact, incorporated in the Habsburg Empire. Due to the political efforts of Count Nicolaus Bethlen, the Emperor issued the Diploma Leopoldinum in 1691, which settled the constitutional status of Transylvania as a Habsburg dominion valid until 1848. Although the peace treaty of Karlowitze (1699) made the Habsburgs the absolute winners of the war against the Ottomans, they had to realize soon that the integration of the newly occupied territories with different cultural, historical and confessional traditions would be a difficult task. Thus, the rebellion led by Francis R~k†czi II (1703 – 1711) was the first major act of opposition that needed not only military intervention but a more elaborated political program in the long run (cf. Kontler : 1999). However, Transylvania at the end of the seventeenth century was, first of all, an important Protestant cultural centre. Excepting the Netherlands, it was the only European state where English Puritanism was accepted and incorporated into the spirituality of Calvinist communities. Although the political agenda and radicalism of English Puritanism could not be totally applied to a feudal state like the Principality, yet the cultural impact in terms of devotional literature and theology was, indeed, remarkable. The Hungarian Calvinist-Puritan religiosity,

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by the time Cserei had the chance to acquire it, had been the leading spiritual trend in Transylvania for forty years (cf. Bodonhelyi 1942; Makkai 1955; Moln~r 1992; Murdock 2000). Even though Puritanism has never become the official doctrine or policy of the Calvinist Church in the Principality of Transylvania, Presbyterian ideas about church organization, or patterns of Puritan practice of piety were fairly well promoted by the contemporary catechisms, sermons, prayers and Hungarian devotional literature. The first translation of Lewis Bayly’s Practice of Piety in 1636,2 was followed by a number of translations and compilations of English Puritan authors. The Latin works of William Perkins and William Ames were reedited by Hungarian and Transylvanian publishers (Perkinsius: 1608; Amesius: 1685). Furthermore, peregrinations made it possible not only to experience English Puritanism in its natural habitat, but often Hungarian students had the chance to take the courses of, for instance, William Ames at the University of Franeker. Perkins and Ames became very soon the main sources of Hungarian theological training.

The Csereis: Michael Cserei de Nagy Ajta (1667 – 1756) Having surveyed some of the relevant historical and cultural contexts pertinent to this case, the microhistorical approach imposes a new type of contextualization, that is, a repositioning of the main actor, Cserei, in the history of his family. Since all the generations before Michael Cserei were born in a feudal society, they were all proud representatives of the privileged “natio siculica” (T†th: 2005, 266 – 277); consequently, they were naturally inclined toward warfare and military service. None of them tried any other career because if they did not go to war, they would become so called “familiaris” (Koltai: 2001, 7), in the service of a high aristocrat. Cserei’s father, J~nos, provides a relevant example for this career pattern. First, he joined Prince “kos Barcsai’s court as a valet, and then he offered his services to the new Prince Mih~ly Apafi. After he had married, he was appointed the Captain of fortress Fogaras. Then, unfortunately, he was put in prison because of his alleged participation in a conspiracy against Prince Apafi. Although his complicity was never proved, he spent almost eight years in prison (1677 – 1685). These difficult times coincided with Michael Cserei’s childhood. After he was born in 1667 in Nagy Ajta, the family moved to Fogaras. This is where he spent his early childhood, and started his studies. While his father was in prison, his 2 Bayly’s book was translated by P~l Medgyesi, one of the leaders of Hungarian Puritanism. The translation proved to be a great success, since during the seventeenth century had seven further editions. Cserei also owned one item of this book (Medgyesi: 1641).

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Catholic mother, Judit Cserei, sent him to the Protestant College of Udvarhely. It is this College that led to the foundation of his extraordinary knowledge and transformed him into a professional reader and writer. He studied from 1678 to 1685 under the guidance of the Reformed professors Istv~n Letenyei and J~nos Rozgonyi, and he soon became a committed follower of Puritan practice of piety and theology. Though he wished to continue his studies abroad, his newly liberated and impoverished father had other plans for him in his mind. Consequently, following the tradition of the family, Cserei was sent to be a valet at Mih~ly Teleki’s court. After a year and a half, under the pretext of an illness, he left in 1687. He, again in the spirit of his ancestors, was oriented toward the army. Cserei’s military experiences (1687 – 1691) ended up in a most memorable way. After he had survived the battle of Zernyest (August of 1690), he decided to join Thököly’s army, but he would be soon disappointed by the famous kuruc army and their leader. Therefore, in January 1691 he surrendered to the Habsburgs. Then he became the secretarius of the Catholic Count Istv~n Apor, in 1692. After a period of six years he managed to consolidate his social status, accordingly, he decided to marry Ilona Kun in 1697. This must have been a happy marriage, in spite of the great difficulties they had to endure, especially during the rebellion led by Francis R~k†czi II from 1703 to 1711. Cserei resolved to remain faithful to the Habsburgs, thus all his values, estates and houses were plundered by the revengeful kuruc army. His father died in 1712, but worse was yet to come. His beloved wife died in childbirth in September 1719. During this marriage they had eight children, but only three of them survived. In 1720 he married again. This time he did not find that home felicity he used to share with his first wife. Susana Szeki was much younger than her husband, which might have been one of the main sources of conflict between them. However, they had two children together and many grandchildren. The calamities and disasters did not avoid him for the rest of his life. During the 1710s his worldly possessions were destroyed by fire on three separate occasions. After 1726 the ravages of the Black Death led to loss of livestock and serfs. After 1747, when he had ritually prepared himself for leaving this mortal world, which was testified by a number of texts he had produced on this special occasion, he was to receive a last painful blow. Although he lived some ten years more, he had to spend the last eight in bed. However, Cserei deserves the attention of the literary historian not only as a literate man, or the reader of an impressive number of Hungarian and Latin books but as a diligent author, who produced several important texts in both languages. For Cserei’s oeuvre consists of an impressive unpublished body of manuscripts, out of which only his history was published in 1852 along with

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some excerpts from his first theological treaty.3 In addition to this, he wrote 5 diaries in Hungarian, basically covering every year of his life, and many other texts dealing with legal, theological and political issues. He also had an impressive library ; according to the list of his books made in 1741, he owned 231 items, which represented an impressive library by that time. Nonetheless Cserei is important also for being a superb literate man with an unusual predisposition to rely on literacy. He was everyday using literacy, arguably, almost as natural as we do, for despite the loss of the family archive, he had produced a huge amount of manuscripts, sustained an impressive network of communication by letters, and, most importantly, added to almost all his books long and reflective Latin and Hungarian marginal notes. Besides all these, he was using calendars to put down everything related to his quotidian life. One can justly claim that Cserei, despite his outstanding unpublished oeuvre, remained an undiscovered author for Hungarian scholarship.

3

The Sad Case of Mrs. Cserei’s death (1719)

In Cserei’s life one of the most difficult moments was undisputably the loss of his first wife, Ilona Kun. The unusually warm and sentimental recalling of her person and character, Cserei dedicated a poem to the memory of his passed wife,4 convincingly illustrates the fact that his first marriage was a happy one. Ilona Kun may have proved to be a reliable and strong partner, supporting him in every possible sense. As Cserei’s second marriage was consuming its years, and the fights and misunderstandings frequently occurred, he produced several texts, in which he was referring back to his first wife, and first marriage as beyond all praise. In his greatest registry, around 1733, he movingly recalled the tragic moment of Ilona Kun’s passing away : Because of the ravaging plague, which broke out in October 1718, we had to flee from Ajta, first to Kal, and then to Also KöhŒr, still, despite our miserable condition we could not avoid the punishing hand of God, for my beloved, pious, and excellent wife possessing all virtues, Ilona Kun on the 6th of September 1719, being pregnant, had contracted the disease, and though he delivered a dead baby, a little girl, on the same

3 Cserei wrote during the summer of 1709 a theological and political treaty entitled Compendium (Cserei: 1709), and started working on his history (Cserei: 1712) published only in the nineteenth century (Cserei: 1852). 4 “My dear treasure and ornament, my brightest hope amongst my sorrow/you are the renovator of my soul/ but now only my dusking sun/ rest in heaven my dear Ilona Kun/for I shall mourn you until my death occurs, you are already enjoying happiness next to God, as distant beholder of my misery.” (Cserei: 1733, 233)

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day’s afternoon, after fine preparation passed away to my eternal sorrow. I buried them together up on the hill, in Kal (Cserei 1733, 10v).

It is worth noticing in Cserei’s account the suggestive construction of the “fine preparation”, alluding to the fact that after Mrs. Cserei had given birth to the dead baby in the morning, she was still alive for a couple of hours, during which someone somehow tried to prepare and encourage her to confront her imminent death. Relying solely on Cserei’s account it is difficult to figure out, and accurately point out, what Cserei might have referred to. Still, a comparative approach may shed some light upon this particular event, facilitating a plausible reconstruction of the case. The only extant source, which could allow such a comparative view, was written sometimes around 1708 – 1710 by Count Nicolaus Bethlen, former chancellor of Transylvania, while in prison in Vienna. Bethlen, in his autobiography5, also described the death of his wife (due to a strange coincidence also named Ilona Kun) mentioning one scene, during which he and a Calvinist priest tried to console the moribund woman, who was possessed by a terrible fear in front of death. Furthermore, she underwent a tormenting crisis during which she repeatedly expressed her doubts about her own salvation and redemption. The count with the help of the priest tried to calm her down: We reassured and comforted her : Not to be afraid, for she had been a good servant of God, how much she had read the Bible, always written out texts and taken note of the pastor’s instruction, examined the girls to see what they had learnt, taught them, been gracious, prayerful, almsgiving, in brief, she had been a rare wise and holy, good woman (Adams: 2004, 344).

These two cases might shed some light upon the process of fine preparation; still there are some relevant differences pointing to the particular features of Mrs Cserei’s case. As opposed to Count Bethlen, Michael Cserei could not rely on the help of a Calvinist priest. Thus, it seems plausible that he himself performed the duty of a priest.6 As a convinced Puritan and consistent practitioner of daily piety, he must have been not only predisposed but fairly trained, from a theological point of view, to do the job. For Puritan theology, especially William Ames and his Hungarian followers, according to Cserei’s own confession, exercised a deep impact upon him.7 He was not only reading Ames,8 but he was a passionate 5 This masterpiece of early modern Hungarian literature was translated to English by Bernard Adams (Adams: 2004). 6 In this particular respect, Cserei seems to follow the Puritan divines like William Baxter : “Every good Master and Father of a Family, is a good Preacher to his own family” (Baxter : 1654, 201). 7 Cserei was educated in the Reformed College of Udvarhely following the theological paradigm represented by William Ames. One of his Latin theological manuals, whose author was the Calvinist Istv~n EszŒki, strictly reproduces the theological system proposed by Ames in his

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student of the theological problem of predestination. Moreover, he was a committed supporter of the idea that redemption is not universal but individual. Furthermore, due to the theological training he had assimilated while a student in the Reformed College of Udvarhely, despite the lacking peregrinatio academica, he went on collecting theological books and acquired such knowledge that he himself wrote a theological treaty, entitled Compendium in 1709. We can conclude that in this particular context, it is quite plausible that Cserei himself encouraged and prepared his wife for the unavoidable end. In addition, there is a relevant episode in their intimate husband and wife relationship, which also sustains this claim. Ilon Kun was a Unitarian woman, while his husband an ardent Calvinist, and Ilona, only after 8 years of shared family life, was convinced to convert to Calvinism. It was the Christmas of 1715 when she converted and had Communion according to the Calvinist rite. Cserei recalled the event in his diary : A: 1715. 25. Xbris. My dear first wife, who used to be a stubborn Unitarian woman, in this day of Christmas, after having been enlightened by the Holy Spirit, was convinced in her conscience by Truth; consequently she converted to the solely true Reformed religion and had her first communion in our Church, in Kal (CSEREI 1733, 10v).

In the light of this antecedent, we have reasons to believe that Ilona Kun’s fine preparation for death, following the mentality and practice of early modern Hungarian reformed culture and society, was the last important moment to reaffirm her confessional identity. Thus, Cserei’s personal involvement of having his wife prepared, as opposed to Bethlen’s case, had at least two main targets: first, to ease the spiritual and bodily pain, terror, or fear, and then to secure his wife’s passing away as a Calvinist believer. We have a number of early modern examples illustrating the fact that vulnerable, moribund people on their deathbed were converted, or assisted in preserving their newly changed, confessional identity. The most famous one is the case of the Lutheran Emericus Thököly, former prince of Transylvania, who, in Ottoman exile, for political reasons converted to Catholicism, but on his deathbed, due to the insistence of his Calvinist man of trust, J~nos Kom~romi, prayed, made confession and died as a Lutheran (cf. Kom~romi: 1861, 79). Moreover, Cserei himself, who used to serve the richest man of Transylvania, the Catholic Count Istv~n Apor, also expressed his conviction that Count Apor on his dying bed should have been converted to Calvinism, for his immense fortune would have helped the Calvinist Church and its members (cf. Cserei: 1852, 281). Medulla Theologica, also available by that time in the Hungarian Kingdom and the Principality of Transylvania (cf. EszŒki: 1675; Amesius: 1685a). 8 Cserei was given Ames’s book against the Dutch Remonstrants (Amesius: 1683) as a gift in 1693.

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As for Mrs. Cserei’s fine preparation, there remains a further question to be asked, was his husband improvising or using a given text, hopefully a written one? As vague as it this question may seem, there is a plausible answer worth of being evaluated. Having studied Michael Cserei’s reading and writing habits, I dare to claim that there was at least one book which could or may have been used by him to comfort his wife. Among the remnants of his library, there is a 1641 edition of the Praxis Pietatis by P~l Medgyesi, that is the Hungarian translation of the well-known Puritan conduct book, The Practice of Piety, written by Lewis Bayly (Medgyesi: 1641). The volume came into Cserei’s possession on the 25th of March, 1712. Allhough it was surely one of the Puritan-minded Cserei’s favourite book, he, quite surprisingly, did not add marginal notes or commenting entries to this book, as opposed to other prepared items of his impressive library. Still, one can detect that special technique developed by Cserei’s during his youth, which consisted in underlining important passages or adding Nota bene! signs to the relevant fragments. It is curious that such an important book, so convenient to Cserei’s Puritan taste and piety, though bears the signs of repeated usage, it does not contain entries helping the potential readers to meditate on its content following Cserei’s guiding remarks.9 The likely explanation is that the book might have been used not for personal meditation or reading but as a conduct book, or as a manual to help someone to assimilate a conduct, or identify him/herself with a certain pattern of piety, or even dogmatic standpoint. Indeed, an attempt to recontextualize the history of Cserei’s ownership and usage of this book, with a special focus on the underlined passages, in the history of his family life, reveals interesting perspectives. One of the first important passages underlined in the Praxis Pietatis, sometimes after 25th of March, 1712, deals with the theological problem of the Trinity. Bayly, and in his translation Medgyesi, introduced the reader to the Calvinist view of the Holy Trinity, elaborating upon the dogmatic concept of name, order, persons, essence and attributes. Indeed, the chapter entitled A Plain Description of the Essence and Attributes of God, out of the Holy Scripture,10 due to its

9 Cserei fell into the habit of adding marginal notes to the books he had read, and then would expect his son or any potential reader to reflect on these entries. For instance, in one of his favorite Hungarian Puritan book (Keresztfflri: 1641), he added the following entry to the front-page of it: “I bought this book 60 years ago, while in College at Udvarhely, in the seventeenth year of my life; a most splendid book against Papists, read it several times, learnt from it several times, so I demand that my beloved son would read it several times, for the benefit, I do wish, of his soul and his redemption. Michael Cserei Senior de Nagy Ajta cui Deus Providebit Aetatis Sua Anno 77. I added a few entries to this book, for my Son so that he would learn from these. Nagy Ajta Anno Christiano 1744 24 Mensis Junii.” 10 Every time when quoting The Practice of Piety, I rely on an 1842 edition of Bayly’s work (Bayly : 1842), but I refer to the page numbers of the Hungarian translation as well, used by

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coherent structure, consisting of consequent definitions, it may have been read and used as a catechism by a potential reader, who needed to learn the Calvinist teaching of the Trinity. Since Mrs. Cserei used to be the member of the Antitrinitarian Church until the Christmas of 1715, she had some three years to peruse this book, follow the instructions of his Puritan husband and then, use the book as a catechism to assimilate the necessary theological knowledge in order to be apt for conversion. Whether they were reading it together or separately, in silence or aloud, it is impossible to answer. Still, the presumptive fact remains that either Michael Cserei used this book to teach his wife, or Mrs. Cserei herself read the book to acquire the necessary knowledge for her conversion. If we accept this realistic alternative concerning how this book was read and used in the Cserei family, we have to evaluate in this particular context of the family life the other underlined passages as well. The whole chapter entitled the Meditations for one that is like to die (Medgyesi: 1641, 833 – 874; Bayly : 1842, 283 – 311) constituted of three distinct sections: The first sort of Meditations are, to consider God’s favourable dealing with thee; The second sort of Meditations are, to consider from what evils Death will free thee; The third sort of Meditations are, to consider what good Death will bring unto thee; (Medgyesi: 1641, 833 – 841; Bayly : 1842, 290 – 301) are all underlined, suggesting that they were either read with loud voice by someone who was comforting a dying person, or it was used as a sketch whereby someone, freely associating ideas, tried to encourage a moribund. All these are complemented by a further accentuated coherent passage, for Cserei added an unmistakable NB (Nota bene) sign to the chapter entitled: SEVEN SANCTIFIED THOUGHTS AND MOURNFUL SIGHS OF A SICK MAN READY TO DIE. (Medgyesi: 1641, 876 – 880; Bayly : 1842, 312 – 314) Whereas these emphasized textual passages suggest that Bayly’s translation was used as a sort of manual, helping and assisting moribund people to confront their death, the special usage of this text in the Cserei family points to an intimate ritual, a veritable Puritan type of practice of piety. For it seems quite possible that Michael Cserei, as a convinced Puritan, used this classic text, in fact, applied it and adjusted it to this difficult situation, in order to assist his wife’s passing away. The character and the message of the underlined fragments extrapolate the relevant theological context of the “fine preparation.” The concept of the via salutis or gratiae gradus, favoured by the Puritan divines, including Perkins and Ames, envisaged human existence as a process, which strikingly resembles the anthropological concept of “rite of passages/ rite de passage,” (Van Gennep: 1992; Turner : 1991; Cressy : 1995; Levy : 1997), during which the elected inCserei. The English text is available online in pdf-format at: http://www.ccel.org/b/bayly/ piety/.

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dividual performed a ritual journey of his existence. While Ames envisaged this process as consisting of predestination, vocation, justification, adoption, sanctification and glorification (Ames: 1685, 330), Perkins put a special emphasis on the mystical experience of the Lord’s Supper and described this process as consisting of three major steps: election, justification and sanctification (Perkins: 1608, 655). This phenomenon during which the elect individual discovering his/her election could improve his person and character, it is, in fact, a certain rite de passage, for it is focused upon the last lifecycle event, death, and afterlife. The famous Puritan, Richard Baxter, gave a convincing description underpinned by the finest Puritan piety and religious enthusiasm: If thou find thy self renewed and sanctified indeed, Oh get this warm and close to thy heart. Bethink thy self, what a blessed state the Lord hath brought thee into! To be his child! His friend! To be pardoned, justified, and sure to be saved! Why what needest thou fear, but sinning against him? Come war, or Plague, or sicknesse, or death, thou art sure they can but thrust thee into Heaven. Thus follow these meditations till they have left their impression on thy heart (Baxter : 1654, 187).

Cserei was probably using a more or less similar discourse, for he shared an identical theological viewpoint, and tried to strengthen his wife’s hope that she had been elected, and then adopted, consequently, sanctification and glorification would await her. It is possible to conclude that Mrs. Cserei’s fine preparation anticipating her passing away may have consisted not only in common prayer, but the reading of a classical Puritan text. For the Puritan Cserei’s intention was not only to encourage and comfort the moribund but reinforce her confessional commitment and loyalty to the Calvinist Church as well.

4

Michael Cserei’s Death (1756)

There is no relevant source offering details about Cserei’s passing. The son, Georgius Cserei, mentioned briefly his father’s death, pointing out the fact that Michael Cserei spent his last 8 years in bed, without being able to get up. Unfortunately, the laconic son did not bother to dwell on whether his father was prepared in any way for death.11 However, Cserei, due to his unusually long life (89 years), around 1747, when he was only 80, had started to prepare for death. As a literate man, he produced a number of texts illustrating his ritual preparation for leaving this mortal world. Apart from the two testaments and his own epitaph, he also produced his swan-song entitled The Apology of Michael Cserei Anno 1747. 10 Aug. Aetatis Suae Anno 80. It is, perhaps, the last written message 11 Michael Cserei’s son, Georgius, also kept a diary (Cserei: 1756).

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of an extremely long and burdensome life. Cserei had two wives and ten children, most of them died before him. The Apology is a remarkable retrospection and evaluation of his life, but his preparation for death as well. Still, he did not know that he would live some 9 more years, or that he would spend the last eight of them in bed. As he, an eightyyear-old man, looked back upon his life, and this is truly impressive, he did not feel the need of retelling the major events; he mostly reduced his narration to comments upon human existence in general. His highly rhetorical discourse aimed at a moral evaluation, not towards a detailed account of events. This text shows his Puritan devotion and Calvinist confessionalism at its best. Maturity, genuine wisdom and a strong conviction about his elect status established the marrow of his Puritanism intertwined with the narrative of his life. For Cserei regarded his extraordinarily long life as the example of divine surveillance, a kind of theatrical performance, which after its end would deliver important messages to the audience, that is, the next generation of his family. His superb self-fashioning suggested that the only real stake of human existence was the afterlife, in terms of what would happen with a man after his death. According to Cserei’s creed, double predestination with the perspective of redemption or eternal damnation was the most serious consequence of human existence. Nonetheless, Cserei’s case was a typical expression of applied Puritan piety. He seemed to be convinced of his election, so he almost waited for his death in order to join the heavenly community of Puritan saints.12 He expressed his strongest conviction about his redemption, because he interpreted his long life as a series of trials and examinations which he had successfully passed. Thus, the old man waited with confidence for his death, because he had reconciled with this mortal world and all his enemies. He made it very clear : There does not remain anything else to do for me, but to wait confidently for the exit from this mortal world as soon as possible, or when the Holy God wants it, for his measureless mercy offers me eternal happiness in his holy country. Two kinds of Happiness nobody can have. In this mortal world or in the other one you can find it. This wicked world did not give me anything, so I wait for the happiness prepared for me, by God. Amen (Cserei: 1747, 4r).

12 Cserei’s awareness of death and his purposeful preparation to passing from this earthly existence can be traced back as early as 1719. When he managed to acquire P~pai P~riz’s Pax Sepulchri (P~pai: 1698), a classical piece of Hungarian Puritan devotional literature, he added the following entry to its frontpage: “Michaelis Cserei de Nagy Ajta Cui Deus Providebit In K~l A. 1719. My dear God allow me a peaceful and quiet passing away from this mortal world, and take into your divine custody my sinful soul, for the sake of your beloved Son.” Then he complemented before the Christmas of 1731: “I have read this splendid book several times, for the last time now in Anno 1731. 21st of Xber, to the greatest satisfaction and relief of my soul. ”

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Yet, the culminating image of Cserei’s self-fashioning was not added to this last prominent text but to a short entry in his favourite Amesius volume, which had been in his possession since 1693 (Amesius: 1683). He claimed in this short entry, executed around 1741, that if he was allowed, while waiting for resurrection, he would patiently read. Cserei’s preoccupations with death and his own otherworldly destination, a very important tenet of Reformed and Calvinist theology (Marshall: 2002; Koslofsky : 2000), illustrate again his dependency on mediality, his eagerness to use, apply or produce a written text when awaiting death or facing his own aging. Furthermore, Cserei’s deliberate choice of picturing himself reading instead sleeping, while awaiting resurrection, was not incidental at all, for he displayed, again, his exhaustive knowledge of Puritan theology. Perkins, reflecting upon this particular time of waiting, claimed that The death of the elect is but a sleep in Christ (Perkins: 1970, 246).

All the same, one can justly infer that the ritual passing in Cserei’s case was converted into a continuous self-fashioning, ensued by the emergence of several written or read texts as ego-imprints of a perpetually reconstituting religious self. While early modern communities were relying on death as a social phenomenon to reconstruct or represent the social order through ritual (Kolofsky : 2000, 5), Cserei, somehow similarly, found an original way to mediate, represent and record his evolution as a religious individual first of all, to his family members, and then, to all his potential readers. Cserei, rather ingeniously, reclined on human mortality so that he would gain immortality.

5

Conclusion

The case of the Cserei family illustrates how the medieval tradition of ars moriendi was adjusted to early modern theological, personal, and medial changes. The Puritan pattern of conduct, assimilated and performed by Michael Cserei, convincingly displays how Amesian and Perkinsian theology, within the nurturing context of Calvinism, transformed the attitude towards death. The active involvement of family members could easily replace the priest, for no sacrament had to be given to the moribund, thus, the priest was not the exclusive person in charge of easing the sufferings of the dying person. Moreover, the individual responsibility in front of death increased, since Puritan theology and practice of piety were hauntingly overemphasizing the daily preparation for death through ruthless examination of conscience (casus conscientiae / cases of conscience) and penitence.13 This theological practice fostered the use of literacy and, in 13 “Casus conscientae est questio practica, de qua conscientia potest dubitare (Amesius:

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general, the predisposition to use the medial technologies or means to help the preparation for death, even as an act of self-fashioning. As the Puritan Baxter was urging for it, preparation for death turned into a popular devotional subject for pious Puritans all over Europe, as an imposing body of English, Latin and Hungarian texts were reflecting upon it. Another major change, as opposed to mediaeval Catholic tradition, was surely the confessional stake(s) or issue(s) of the event. Preparation for imminent death represented the last chance to confirm or change one’s confessional identity and loyalty to a confessional community or church. As for Hungarian Puritan religiosity, the impressive number of extant devotional and literary texts clearly sustains the thesis that at the end of the seventeenth-century English Puritanism had a remarkable impact upon the spiritual life of Hungarian Calvinist intelligentsia. The development of a Puritan oriented devotional literature inspired by an ongoing vivid reception of Perkins and Ames, certainly brought about a different perception of death as well. The significant case of Michael Cserei, his general attitude towards death, and his particular self-fashioning, recorded in several texts or entries added to books, undisputedly testifies to this fact. It is worth recalling Cserei’s words about how he imagined his own waiting for resurrection. He claimed that instead of sleeping, he would rather read the Latin Bible, Amesius, and Augustine. It was an excellent choice, I believe, not even literary historians would deny that.

Bibliography Bayly, Lewis (1842), The Practice of Piety : Directing a Christian How to Walk, that He May Please God, London: Hamilton, Adam, and Co. Adams, Bernard (transl.), (2004), The Autobiography of Mikl†s Bethlen, London/New York-Bahrain: Kegan Paul Limited. Berg, P~l (1946), Angol hat~sok tizenhetedik sz~zadi irodalmunkban [English Influences on the Hungarian Literature during the Seventeenth Century], Budapest. Bodonhelyi, J†zsef (1942), Az angol puritanizmus lelki Œlete Œs magyar hat~sai [The Spirituality of English Puritanism and its Influences on Hungary]. Debrecen. Breward Ian (ed.) (1970), The Works of William Perkins, Appleford/Abingdon/Berkshire: The Sutton Courtney Press. Greenblatt, Stephen (1980), Renaissance Self-fashioning from More to Shakespeare, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Kazinczy, G~bor (ed.) (1852), Nagyajtai Cserei Mih~ly Hist†ri~ja [The History of Michael Cserei de Nagy Ajta], Pest: ‹jabb Nemzeti Könyvt~r.

1685b, 46 – 47).”

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Kontler, L~szl† (1999), Millennium in Central Europe, Budapest: Atlantisz Publishing House. Koslofsky, M. Craigh (2000), The Reformation of the Dead. Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450 – 1700, New York: Palgrave. Levi, Giovanni/Schmitt, Jean Claude (ed.) (1997), Ancient and Medieval Rites of Passages. A History of Youth People in the West. Cambridge Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Macfarlane, Alan. (1970), The Family Life of Ralph Josselin: an Essay in Historical Anthropology, Cambridge: University Press. Makkai, L~szl† (1952), A magyar purit~nusok harca a feudalizmus ellen [The Fight of the Hungarian Puritans against Feudalism], Budapest. Marshall, Peter (2002), Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England, Oxford: University Press. Macdonald, Michael/McClendon, Muriel/ Ward, Joseph, (ed.), (1999), Protestant Identities. Religion, Society, Self-Fashioning in Post-Reformation England, Stanford: Standford University Press. Moln~r, Attila (1994), A “protest~ns etika” Magyarorsz~gon [The “Protestant Ethic” in Hungary], Debrecen: Ethnica. Muir, Edward (1991), Microhistory and the Lost People of Europe, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Murdock, Graeme (2000), Calvinism on the Frontier 1600 – 1660: International Calvinism and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania, New York: Oxford University Press. Nagy, Iv~n (ed.) (1861), KŒsm~rki Thököly Imre secretarius~nak Kom~romi J~nosnak törökorsz~gi diariumja s experienti~ja [Kom~romi J~nos’s Turkish Experience Put Down in his Diary When a Secretary of Emericus Thököly de KŒsm~rk], Pest. Peltonnen, Matti (2001), Clues, Margins and Monads: The Micro-Macro Link in Historical Research, History and Theory, 40/ 3, 347 – 359. Scribner, R.W/Hsia, R–Po Chia (ed.) (1997), Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe,Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Seaver, S. Paul (1985), Wallington’s World. A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Todd, Margo (1992), Puritan Self-Fashioning: The Diary of Samuel Ward, Journal of British Studies 31/3, 236 – 264. T†th, Zsombor (2007), The Portrait of a Young Man as a Survivor : Mih~ly Cserei (1690 – 1698), Budapest: CEU, Budapest College. T†th, Zsombor (2008), From the Cradle to the Grave: Representations of Confessional Identity in Mih~ly Cserei’s Writings (1667 – 1647), Colloquia, 2008, XV, 44 – 71. Turner, Victor (1991), The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, New York: Ithaca. Van Gennep, Arnold (1992), Les Rites de Passage. vtude Systematique des Rites, 2nd ed., Paris: J. Picard. Vovelle, Michel (1983), La Mort et L’Occident de la 1300 | Nos Jours, Paris: Gallimard.

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Early Modern Prints Amesius, Guilielmus (1685a), Medulla Theologica, Debrecen. Amesius, Guilielmus (1685b), De Conscientia et ejus jure, vel Casibus libri quinque, Debrecen. Amesius, Guilielmus (1683), Anti-synodalia Scripta vel Animadversiones in Dogmatica illa, quae Remonstrantes in Synodo Dordracena, Exhibuerunt et postea Divulgarunt, Amsterdam. Baxter, Richard (1654), The Saints Everlasting Rest, London. EszŒki, Istv~n (1675), Diarium Theologicum. Sive Universa Theologia, Viginti Decadibus… Claudiopolis. Keresztfflri, P~l (1641), Fel Sördült KeresztŒny [The Christian Man as a Youngster], V~rad. Medgyei, P~l (1641), Praxis Pietatis, Lo˝cse. P~pai P~riz, Ferenc (1698), Pax sepulchri, Claudiopolis. Perkinsius, Guilielmus (1608), Operum Omnium Theologicorum qvae extant, Geneva.

Manuscripts Cserei, György (1756), Diarium Vitae Aerumnose Georgii Cserei Senioris de Nagy Ajta, (Ms. 345, The Library of University Babes-Bolyai, Cluj Napoca, Romania.) Cserei, Mih~ly (1709), Compendium Theologicum et Politicum, (Ms.U.1119, The Library of Romanian Academy, Cluj, Romania). Cserei, Mih~ly (1733), The Biggest Diary (1733 – 1748), (Ms. 2244. Quart. Hung., The Orsz~gos SzŒchŒnyi Library, Budapest, Hungary). Cserei, Mih~ly (1712), The History of Transylvania 1698 – 1714, (K.100, The Archive of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary Cserei, Mih~ly (1747), The Apology of Mih~ly Cserei, (Ms. 840, The Library of BabesBolyai University, Cluj Napoca, Romania).

Eivor Andersen Oftestad

“Let’s Kick the Devil in His Nose”. The Introduction of a Lutheran Art of Dying in 16th-century Denmark-Norway

1

Introduction: Reformation of Death

Death preparatory texts from the Lutheran areas of early modern Germany have been studied by several researchers (Schottroff: 2012; Resch: 2006; Reinis: 2007). There are however various texts in Danish which have largely escaped scholarly notice. Most of the booklets are translations from German, and their chronology differs from the chronology of the original editions (see appendix). Hence the interesting perspective is not a specific Danish art of dying, or the development of the theology within the Sterbebücher. On the other hand, the specific introductions, dedications and contexts of the booklets can tell us about the function and reception of these death preparatory texts within the DanishNorwegian reformation. In what way were the death preparatory texts put to a particular use in the cultural and political context of the Danish-Norwegian twin-realms? What was faith at the deathbed in this particular history? Several contexts conditioned the transmission of death preparatory texts. The development of the book market is fundamental (Riising: 1990; Appel: 2001). The earliest evangelical books were imported from Germany, in the context of a general north European market.1 No printers published evangelical books in Denmark until 1528, when Hans Weingarthener (Wiingaard) from Stuttgart settled in Viborg to serve the Danish Reformers, and Oluf Ulrikson established his press in Malmø.2 Viborg and Malmø became the western and eastern centers of Reformation publishing in Denmark-Norway. Around 1530, all the major towns of Denmark were affected by the reformation movement, if not already fully reformed (Schwarz Lausten: 1990; 1995; Lyby/Grell: 1995; Larson: 2010). 1 I prefer to use the term “evangelical”, which is in accordance with the intention in the 16th century sources, and which is also established in the research terminology, cf. e. g. “Evangelische Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts” (Universität Heidelberg). It is difficult to use the label “Protestant” at least before the Diet of Speyer in 1529. 2 To the biography of the Danish persons mentioned in this article, see Dansk biografisk Leksikon (1979 – 84).

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When the Reformation was constitutionally established in 1536, a strict regulation of the Danish book market shaped a common interpretative community based on approved books in a confessional homogenous culture (Appel: 2001, 381 – 403). The production of books was not, as in France, Germany or Switzerland, part of a polemical fight between different confessional authorities, but part of an undisputed religious and social disciplining of the Danish people. The Church Ordinance of 1537/39 distinguishes between wicked and good books in the service of the pure Gospel, and prescribes a censorship regarding new books, to be carried out by the university and the superintendents (KO: 1990, 106). The royal politics of religion is another condition. Christian III’s aim was to manifest and safeguard the pure evangelical teaching. His preface to the Church Ordinance in 1537 described how people had been led astray by the lies of the devil, which had prescribed duties and penance as amends for sin (KO: 1990, 29 – 30). But instead, says the king, we have the pure Gospel that preaches forgiveness because of Christ, and thus relieves the broken consciences (ibid, 29). The king proclaims that now, they will return all the lies of Antichrist back to the devil where they came from, they will give thanks to Christ and receive his true Gospel. They have the true faith and have become the children of God. This is also what has to be transmitted to the children, he says. In other words, the establishment of the contemporary Reformation identified the new church firmly on Christ’s side in the fight against Satan and the Antichrist. The king was chosen by God in a critical situation. It was his duty to uphold the pure Gospel and to punish those who opposed the ordinance. The royal attempt at uniformity and discipline was a characteristic throughout the period that was highly praised by the Reformers, not least by Philip Melanchthon, who described Denmark as a shelter for the true faith and the Protestant King Christian III as its eminent defender (Melanchthon’s preface to Laetus: 1560, see Skovgaard-Petersen: 1998, Melanchthon’s foreword to Operum Lutheri Germanicorum, tom. XII (1559), CR, vol. 9, nr. 6794). The characteristic of uniformity of faith came to restrict the confessionalization and to shape the theological development in 16th-century Denmark (Lyby : 1990; Lyby/Grell: 1995; Lockhart: 2004) When King Christian III died in 1559, he was followed by his son King Frederick II. By now, most of the theologians who had introduced the reformatory concept of faith, were dead, or died within few years, such as the Palladius brothers, Peder (b. 1503) and Niels (b. 1510), who both died in 1560. With the new generations, raised within a Lutheran faith, the frontiers were soon moved from Roman heresies to internal threats and to the consolidation of Lutheranism. After the death of Martin Luther himself in 1546, the Protestant societies in Germany had been disturbed by the various parties that put forward their Lutheran interpretations. The Danish King Christian III had followed a course of uniformity, conducted by the idea of a common Wittenbergian her-

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itage manifested in the Confessio Augustana, and kept these conflicts out of the kingdom (Lydby/Grell: 1995). King Frederick II consolidated this strategy with a strict regulation which kept non-Lutherans from entering the kingdom (The Strangers’ Articles 1569 (Rørdam II: 1886, 126 – 134)), and by refusing the Book of Concords in 1580 (Rørdam II: 1886, 322 – 323; Lockhart: 2004, 157 – 174). When the king received two beautiful presentation copies of the Book of Concord from his sister, the Electress Anne of Saxony, in 1581, he actually burned it to put a resolute end to the issue (Lockhart: 2004, 173). This later period became dominated by the famous Melanchthon pupil Niels Hemmingsen (1513 – 1600), who guided Danish theology into the golden days of “Philippism” (Grane (red.): 1980, 52 – 92; Schwarz Lausten: 2010, 351 – 362). Philippism dominated both the Church and the University and safeguarded the Wittenbergian heritage, until the doctrinal strife among the Wittenberg theologians reached Denmark, and political considerations forced the king to suspend Hemmingsen from his post at the University of Copenhagen in 1579. He was then accused of crypto-Calvinism.3 The true doctrine should be manifested and witnessed within the realm without any dark shadows of threatening heresy. A third important condition is the role of the nobility. From the Reformation in 1536 until the absolutism of 1660, the Danish nobility maintained a leading political and religious role in the Danish-Norwegian kingdom (Ingesmann/ Jensen: 2001). When the hierarchy and estates of the Roman Church were abolished at the Reformation, the nobility had taken over their roles as a new class of exemplary religious models. Why does death preparation have a role in these Danish political and religious contexts? This is because the moment of death gained a certain importance in the early Protestant cultures. Death was not only one among several occasions to employ the new evangelical knowledge. It was the terminal point, the occurrence where the human being could no longer strive for salvation. The terror of death, and the scruples experienced on one’s deathbed, could only be faced by faith. The evangelical consolation in the face of death was hence the ultimate experience of the pure Gospel and of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The instructions in the early Sterbebücher thus expressed the “Reformatorische[s] Selbstverständnis” (Schottroff: 2012, 13 – 16). Death preparation was hence inscribed in the fundamental fight between God and the devil which determined the self-understanding of the Reformers. This article presents and analyses the introduction of the evangelical death preparatory texts in the Danish book market. The survey includes texts, mostly translations from German, that were published in Danish, printed in either Denmark or Germany, during the two generations from the early reform 3 On Philipism and crypto Calvinism, see Crusius: 2008.

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movement (1529) on. I have chosen to end the survey with Joen Tursøn’s translation of Hieronimo Weller from 1577. While the first texts were introduced into a situation of religious reform that was not settled, Tursøn’s presentation clearly testifies to a new homogenous religious context dominated by new generations. The sources are listed in an appendix of the article. Several funeral sermons also treat Ars Moriendi, but they are not included in this survey, as I intend to present the genre of funeral sermons in a separate article. Nor have I listed the several books of consolation that pertained to the situation of death, since they addressed the surviving, not the particular situation of dying.

2

The Early Phase of the Reform Movement: the Knowledge of Faith

2.1

The Translation of Thomas Venatorius and Martin Luther

The first instruction for an evangelical death printed in the Danish tongue was the translation of Thomas Venatorius, Ein kurtz unterricht den Sterbenden menschen (1527) from 1529, with an additional foreword by Martin Luther. The text builds on Luthers Eyn Sermon von der bereytung zum sterben from 1519 (Reinis: 2007, 104 – 110). It is an example of how to console a dying person with the Word of God, so that the dying person receives faith and can put all his trust in the mercy of Christ alone. Venatorius’ treatise was one of the early Sterbebücher that was widely spread in several languages. Within two years it was also translated into Danish and printed in Rostock, a city that, along with Wittenberg, played a considerable role in the Protestant influence and education of the Scandinavian clergy (Schwarz Lausten, 2010; Czaika, 2002). It was edited by Ludwig Dietz together with a Danish psalm book, but apart from Luther’s foreword, there is no dedication or Danish introduction.4 It is reasonable to assume that the booklet was edited because of its popularity. The Danish book market hungered precisely for devotional evangelical literature, according to the contemporary Poul Helgesen (Helgesen: 1526). Luther presents Venatorius’ booklet as “concise and pure knowledge”, contrary to the darkened and blinded teachings of the papists. And he asks both preachers and listeners to lead and encourage what is the main part of this Christian teaching: Faith. When the evangelical art of dying was introduced in DenmarkNorway, this was exactly what the Danish reformers did. In their own eyes, the 4 The Danish version is edited with a short introduction in Chr. Bruun: 1865, and in facsimile, Andersen: 1972.

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evangelical instructions for the deathbed were based on a pure knowledge that had been revealed anew towards the end of time. A conspicuous characteristic, however, pertaining to this earliest phase of the Reformation movement, was that people, including the Reformers, still belonged to the one Roman church, and the emphasis on faith alone has to be understood as a central element within existing theology and pastoral practice. This is what Luther assures in his foreword to Venatorius, not least when he states that the booklet has been printed even by his enemies, who thereby have acknowledged the value of its content. Martin Luther’s own text, “Eyn Sermon von der bereytung zum sterben”, was also among the booklets that were translated and printed in Danish in this early phase of the reform. The earliest one is an anonymous translation, printed in Malmø in 1533 by Johan Hochstraten, who had recently moved to Malmø as the manager of the printing press of the famous Danish humanist Christiern Pedersen (1480 – 1554) (Brandt: 1882; Rørdam: 1898; Anker Jørgensen: 2007; Pedersen: 2007, 193 – 98). Neither the author nor the translator of the booklet is mentioned in print. While the secondary literature has concluded that Christiern Pedersen probably is the translator (Brandt: 1882, 300 f), the text itself has until now not been identified. It is however a translation of Luther’s sermon, and it appeared within the context of the early Reformers’ effort in Malmø to spread evangelical literature, not least from the reformers of Wittenberg (see Schwarz Lausten: 2010, 179 – 96). In the following year, 1534, Hochstraten also printed Luther’s letter to J. Hess in Breslau, written in 1527, on whether one should flee death and pestilence (Luther : 1534). The other Danish version of Luther’s text that is known was printed in Viborg in 1538 together with yet another translation of Venatorius’ text, and with a forceful poem that thematizes Memento Mori, “Death [speaks] to the reader” (Luther : 1538). Luther’s text was then translated by Christiern Clausen Skrok, “the reformer of Assens”, who preached the evangelical message together with other priests in the “Lutheran company” in the decade before the introduction of the Reformation in 1536.

2.2

Christern Pedersen and Jens Peerszøn: Translations of Urbanus Rhegius/Benedictus Gretzinger

Editions and Contexts While Venatorius’ translation was edited anonymously outside Denmark, the two translations of Rhegius and Gretzinger5, Ein trostliche disputation/ auff frag vn antwurt gestellet… (1524), both from 1531, show – in different ways – how the 5 The original treatise is actually an anonymous comment to previous cathecetical treatises by U. Rhegius and B. Gretzinger, cf. Brandt: 1882, 598; Peerszøn 1952, 17 – 23.

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printing press was an invaluable means in the Danish process of reform, and how the Reformation message was addressed to a Danish context. The printings are about 90 folios, and include, among other chapters, how to behave when present at a deathbed, followed by useful prayers for the one who is preparing to die, as well as a chapter treating the ideas about the dead and purgatory.6 One of the translations was made by the humanist Christiern Pedersen (see above). He brought a translated version with him to Malmø when he returned to Denmark in 1532. In the previous years, he had lived in exile in the Netherlands, as the chaplain of King Christian II. The king had been forced into exile by the Danish lay and ecclesiastical nobility in 1523, and Pedersen had followed him in 1526. Some years later, he had renounced what he called his previous misapprehensions, and confessed the evangelical faith, as he proclaims in the introduction to the translation of the New Testament in 1529: “I admit myself my great misapprehension which I previously embraced, during the time when I in Paris, in the other books, edited those miracles and fairy tales that men themselves had invented and dreamt, that one should live as those saints did, and consequently deserve Heaven with their own deeds, which is a lie and a delusion; because Christ alone has done satisfaction for our sins and merited for us the kingdom of heaven with his death and suffering” (Pedersen: 1529, f. 6). Pedersen worked during this period in Antwerp, where he translated and edited several Protestant treatises, which were intended to be spread in Denmark when the king returned. At least nine books, among them the translation of some Luther texts and the edition of Rhegius and Gretzinger, En Cristelig bogh Om merckelige spørsmaall och swar Om Troen och kerlighed, were ready in 1531. Despite the misfortune of Christian II’s return, Christern Pedersen returned and brought the books with him when he settled in Malmø with loyality to the next king, Frederick I, in 1532. Pedersen’s translation of Rhegius and Gretzinger does not have any specific introduction, but it differs slightly from the German versions, both through his vivid language, and by inserts that actualize the text for the Danish audience. The context of the edition was the religious program of the exiled king Christian II, but the introduction of the book nevertheless took place within the movement of reform that had become established in the Danish cities. The other Danish version of Ein trostliche disputation was translated by Jens Peerszøn and printed by Hans Weingarthener (Wiingaard) in Viborg. This 6 The chapters on death occurs on respectively ff. il v-lvii v (Peerszøn) and ff. 98 r-116 r(GiiHiii) (Pedersen). The chapters are named (in C. Pedersen): “huor gaar det till met skerssildz pine skal mand inted gøre effter de døde”, “Skal man sørge naar nogen dør eller lade ringe oc siunge oc bede for hannem”, “hielper icke vit vand till ath fordrive dieffvelen met/ Eller ath stencke paa de dødis graffuer”, “huorledis skal man haffue sig hos dem som ville dø”, “Nogre bønner som mue lesis for de siuge menniske”.

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version is equipped with an extended introduction which justifies a concentration on this version of Rhegius and Gretzinger in the following presentation. Peerszøn’s introduction provides a certain contextualization of the text. He claims that the book teaches how every Christian should behave and conduct himself in a good and Christian life, according to the Word of God and Christ’s evangelical knowledge. He adresses the book especially to clergymen. Perhaps it was intended for the Lutheran seminar in Viborg, established in 1526 with permission from King Frederick I. Nothing is known about the translator Jens Peerszøn, except what he writes himself in his introduction and what can be assumed from his Jutlandish language. He tells us that he translated the book from German when he was in Wittenberg. It is thus reasonable to assume that he has lived and perhaps studied for the priesthood at the University of Wittenberg. This was not an uncommon course among the Danish clergymen of the period, as there were more than 300 Danish-Norwegian students in Wittenberg between 1505 and 1559 (Schwarz Lausten: 2010, 107).7 Another possibility is that he was an assistant of the Reformers Hans Tausen or Jørgen Jensen Sandolin in Viborg, and perhaps travelled to Wittenberg at their request. It is however easy to imagine how a book sent from the city of Wittenberg appeared as sent from the very epicenter of evangelical Christendom. The Revelation of Faith What function did faith at the deathbed receive in this text? The main theme of Rhegius and Gretzinger’s book is Faith, and the title of the first chapter, “If only faith can make man pious or righteous”, refers to faith as the decisive insight and knowledge of salvation. In the treatise on death, the dying person is therefore instructed to put his hope, not in good deeds, but in Christ alone, when he is afflicted by his sins on his deathbed. He is instructed to proclaim in front of the devil: “I know I cannot merit salvation, Jesus Christ, my savior, has merited it for me”. Although faith alone is what saves, the treatise does not emphasize a confession of faith at the moment of death. On the other hand, the instruction has a consolatory message addressed to the present historical situation. It states how instructions for deathbeds usually teach the dying to be patient in their suffering and to meditate on their sins, the judgment, death and on hell, in order to fight in patience to merit eternal life. These instructions seem to match exactly the scruples suggested by the devil when he leads the dying person to despair by 7 While 301 Danish-Norwegian students are known in Wittenberg from the period 1505 – 59, only 44 of these delivered any exam. It is however not possible to find the name Jens Peerszøn/ Pedersen in these lists. Two were inscribed with this name in Cologne (Peerszøn: 1952, 62).

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pointing to his lack of good deeds. Rhegius and Gretzinger address this pastoral situation by emphasizing trust in Christ alone, in opposition to the practice of “unlearned monks and priests”. According to the instructions of the evangelical faith, one should rather exhort the dying not to think of one’s sins, but of the promise of Christ, attested by the sacraments. “When any man who is approaching death hears such a comforting assurance, then his consciousness becomes happy and comforted, he becomes willing and patient and free of fear, and he defeats the devil by faith” (fol. lv v). How was the message of Rhegius and Gretzinger interpreted in the specific Danish context? The Danish title page of the book proclaimed how the reception of the faith instruction had crucial consequences: “The ones who believe will be saved, the unbelievers will be damned”. But despite this distinction between the saved and the damned, the ecclesiological consequence of salvation by faith alone was not yet institutionally approved when Peerszøn wrote his introduction. The preface was written in a period when the Reformation message was welcomed both among the Danish lay nobility, by the king and within the cities as well, but several years before the Reformation was constitutionally established in 1536. Peerszøn addresses the contemporary situation, not according to an institutionalized reform, but as an opportunity to gratefully embrace the pure Word of God which had been revealed anew to the bewildered world. The situation is not unique, claims Peerszøn, but has to be understood along with similar situations throughout history of salvation. In this way, he conceptualizes history itself according to the revelation of the evangelical faith. Peerszøn describes the history of decay, punishment and reform in the Old Testament as a typos or mirror of the history of Christendom. The analogous event that makes this history of the Israelites a suitable mirror of the contemporary reform is the finding of the Book of the Law in the Temple during king Josiah’s reign (2 Kings 22) (fol. Ai v). The finding of the Law occurred before God punished his stubborn people. He let his Word once more be proclaimed, and in this way, according to Peerszøn, nobody had any excuse not to repent, to escape the wrath of God. With the description of King Josiah’s religious reform, based on the Law and the Word of God, Peerszøn turns to the parallel history of Christendom. In the time of Christ and the Apostles, the Church assembled around the Word of God, and was nourished, sustained and governed by this Word. But as time went on, people forgot about God and his Word. They paid no attention to sin, and the prophecy of 2 Thess 2 hence came true (“And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie,” 2 Thess 2:11). God sent severe delusion and heresies, so that people believed the lie. This, says Peerszøn, has been the situation for some centuries now. God has not provided them with the true knowledge of his Word, but rather sent them false teachers. And now the

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world is unmistakably facing the imminent penalty. Nevertheless, before this punishment, God has again let the true evangelical light, his Word, shine through. The typos of King Josiah, who had established the reform of the Israelites, was suitable to the secular rulers who embraced the various concepts of religious reform in the early modern Europe. The typos was used most intensely by the Calvinists, but also by Anglicans and Lutherans, as when Luther had employed the text of 2 Kings 22 in his funeral sermon to Elector Friedrich the Wise in 1525 (on this topic, see Murdock: 1998; Moore: 2006, 218ff; Angel: 2014, 93ff). Peerszøn probably implicitly refers to and encourages the role of the Danish King Frederick I, who favored preachers of what was conceived as the true doctrine. The king had recently invited evangelical preachers to defend their teaching at the Parliament (Herredagen) in Copenhagen (1530), and the following recession of July 14th 1530 assured them freedom to preach as long as it was done in accordance with the Holy Scripture. In 1529, he installed the reformer of Viborg, Hans Tausen, who had been under his protection since 1526, as a successful preacher in Copenhagen. The king, supported by a small and influential number of aristocrats, undoubtedly favored the evangelical party who worked to promote what they defined as the true knowledge according to the Word of God (Schwarz Lausten: 1995, 24). As a help to keep and understand this true Word of God, Peerszøn translated the whole book from German to Danish as an instruction for a Christian life. The consolatory message in the treatise of Rhegius and Gretzinger accords with Peerszøn’s analysis of the situation in the introduction. He does not define any continuum of the people of God according to a confession of faith alone, but uses rather the contemporary situation of reform, when the evangelical light has finally shone through the darkness of history, as a new opportunity to detect the true knowledge of the Word of God.

3

Reformation Established: The Confession of the True Faith

3.1

Peder Palladius: The Deathbed of a Nobleman

The significance of confession of faith on one’s the deathbed found a different emphasis when another text by Urbanus Rhegius was published in Denmark in 1544, Seelenertzney fur die gesunden vnd krancken, first printed in Augsburg 1529. It was translated by Mathias Parvus Rosaefontanum at the request of the reforming bishop Peder Palladius. The publication, Sjælens Lægedom /for de karske oc sywge / i disse farlige tider / oc i dødz nød, was dedicated to Eline Gøye,

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the widow of Henrik Gøye til Gisselfeld (d. 1533), a member the Council and of one of the most important Danish families. The book has two prefaces; a dedication by Mathias Parvus Rosaefontanum and a preface by Peder Palladius. Both testify to a new situation for the instruction on the deathbed. The book was printed some years after the institution of the Reformation (1536), and both prefaces refer to the contemporary historical situation as a God-given opportunity to receive the Word of God in the Danish language – through the media of printing and preaching. While Jenszøn’s version of Rhegius/Gretzinger from 1531 was an exhortation to all Christians and in particular to the clergy, a characteristic of this print from 1544 is that both prefaces address the nobility as a special target for the instructions. According to Palladius, Rhegius’ text is a precious treasure that is handed over to the nobility in particular. The publication is typical. An address to the nobility pertains to all the death preparatory texts commented on in what follows, as well as all the Danish funeral sermons from the sixteenth century (On the Danish nobility and funeral praxis, see Bay : 2001). This points to the important role of the nobility in the formation of the Danish Protestant culture. The nobility have received a special responsibility because of their privileged state, as Palladius puts it, those who expend redundant care on the poor body, which is only a piece of dug-up soil until it is dug down again, should also after the counsel of St. Peter, (1 Pet 3), expend some care on their soul (F. A v.). Palladius’ concern is here the preaching of the Gospel, and he addresses the nobility as good examples to their children, servants and domestics when they seek out the preached Gospel – and as wicked examples when they only read books and neglect the oral sermons. It was not only the common people who searched for Christ and were nourished by him, argues Palladius, but also noble people, such as the royal official Regulus, Centurio Jairus and even more.8 And now, he continues, the same Gospel as Christ taught is preached in the churches, and no one should find it too heavy to walk, sledge or ride over the field to their parish church as long as God grants them their health. When Palladius addresses the nobility as examples, he places the instructions within a certain political context that is defined by their special role. Because of their political position, the nobility of Denmark became edifying examples of the new religious practice. That this function also pertained when facing death is evident in the final example that boosts Palladius’ appeal. It reveals a contemporary ideal Lutheran deathbed: “I knew an excellent nobleman here in Zealand / with a blessed memory / even he was a long time seduced by the wicked people of the pope / of which no one absolve himself / 8 Cf. John 4 and Luke 8.

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the one who does must throw the first stone at his neighbor. But at his last, God led him with his blessed Word, to the proper path of salvation, on which he hence stayed firmly, as long as his life endured here at earth” (A iiii v).

Palladius continues by pointing out that he made “a just confession before he died”, brought about by a strong will to seek the parish church with all his children, servants and domestics. And he concludes with the hope that other noble people should be moved to follow this example, to God’s praise, their own salvation and to the edification of other people’s faith.9 The crucial event that makes the death of the nobleman an ideal example is his “just confession” at deathbed. This is what inscribed his memory among the saved and made him a forceful example to others. The confession has to be understood according to what was at stake in this historical phase of the Reformation, and it is here clearly understood according to the newly established Lutheran confessional church. Palladius places the example within a contemporary situation where practically everyone had the experience of previously having been trapped and “seduced by the wicked people of the pope”. The nobility seems to be invested with a certain responsibility, in keeping with their duty of being examples, to proclaim the new confession in this situation of a newly established shift of religious faith and practice. The account of the anonymous nobleman’s death thus resembles the exemplary function of biographies of deceased in other dedications and not least in the later funeral sermons. Two years after Palladius’ text, the most outstanding example of an evangelical death was promoted in the Protestant cultures when Martin Luther himself died in Eisleben on 18 February 1546. In contrast to Palladius’ friend from Zealand, Luther was no exemplary nobleman, but the prophet himself who embodied the decisive Christian knowledge.

3.2

Niels Palladius: The Deathbed of the Holy Prophet

The Reformation of Denmark-Norway had been accomplished by people with close relations to Wittenberg. The dominant theologians had studied beneath the lectern of Melanchthon and Luther, and the Reformation king, Christian III, had frequent contact with Luther (Schwarz Lausten: 2010). When Luther died, the description of his deathbed, written by Justus Jonas and Michael Coelius (Jonas/Coelius: 1546; Brecht: 1987, III, 368 – 70; Leppin: 2010, 345 – 46), was 9 F. B. “If not, it would be far better that Danish books were not printed, than that the ones who other look at, and mirrors themselves in, should use this opportunity [the printed books] to absent from the Christian congregation”. Ibid.

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immediately sent to the Danish king (Schubart: 1917, 73). And one month after the original German print, Niels Palladius translated and published an abbreviated Danish version of the story in which the Reformer’s confession on his deathbed was given a particular interpretation. The significance of Luther’s death is different here than in the German editions, and the text is hence relevant to a comprehension of the Protestant death in a Danish-Norwegian context.10 Niels Palladius was one of the central Reformers of Denmark-Norway who, together with his brother, Peder, had studied in Wittenberg (1534 – 43). They both had close ties to the Reformers, especially Melanchthon and Bugenhagen (Schwarz Lausten: 1968). When Luther died in 1546, Niels Palladius was vicesuperintendent beneath Jørgen Jensen Sandolin in Fyn, and had been sent to Wittenberg at his request. It was an important strategy in this early phase of establishing a new religious practice in Denmark-Norway to follow the example from Wittenberg, and one of his tasks was to translate and publish the church prayer as it was performed just there. The translation of the Church prayer was printed in Wittenberg, and his version of Luther’s deathbed occurred in the same publication, “On the prayer and confession that Doctor Martin Luther did in his last hour” (Palladius 1546; Some years later, Sandolin explained Luther’s last words as a psalm, cf. Sonnenstein Wendt: 1860 – 62, 601 – 604). In his edition, Palladius makes a selective adaption of Justus Jonas and Coelius’ text. He translates the prayer and confession on the deathbed, Luther’s last words, as well as some short conversations with Justus Jonas (f. B ii). It concerns Luther’s answer to the question if one is to recognize each other in heaven, and on the duty and benefit of bringing up children. The selection has probably an instructive pastoral intention, as it is included in the booklet addressed to bishop Sandolin and his pastors. Finally, Melanchthon’s prayer from Luther’s funeral is translated and attached to the edition (Melanchthon: 1546; cf. Schwarz Lausten: 1968, 58, n. 13). He omits, however, the longer biographical account of Luther’s illness and deathbed, as well as several conversations. Palladius frames his selection by his own introduction and an epilogue. In this frame, the Reformer’s exemplary death is interpreted according to the perception of the evangelical knowledge as the decisive revelation in salvation history. Luther is the holy prophet, according to Palladius, to whom the eternal Gospel has been revealed as predicted in Apoc. 14. He has received the knowledge of the distinction between Law and Gospel, and has stood against the falseness and trickery of the pope and the devil (Biii). The church lives by this true evangelical knowledge – the knowledge that was revealed to Luther, and which he confirmed by the confession on his own deathbed. When he was about to die, Justus Jonas 10 Cf. the analysis of the German versions in the articles of Sivert Angel and Volker Leppin in this present publication.

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cried loudly into Luther’s ear : “Reverend father, do you want to die in the just faith to our Lord Jesus Christ, and die steadily in the doctrine you have preached and taught?” Luther answered clearly, audible to everyone; “yes”, before he, according to Palladius’ version, folded his hands and left his spirit in the hands of Jesus Christ. Palladius describes the main purpose of the account according to the dualistic distinction of mankind. It should have an effect upon the two kinds of people; on all pious hearts, to be confirmed in the same true evangelical teaching; and on all the wicked, those who lied about the death of the prophet. In this way, Palladius inscribes the deathbed of Luther into the cosmic drama which constantly goes on between the reign of the devil and the reign of Christ. The brothers of Cain and Judas have no reason to rejoice at his death, Palladius asserts, because the pure knowledge is still present, and their honor will be put to shame even more than before (f. Aiiv). Palladius concludes the treatise with an invitation to pray that God will provide a double portion of Luther’s spirit in his successors, so that the pure knowledge he has taught could be spread in all countries and increasingly damn and devastate the kingdom of the pope and the devil. One should accordingly pray that God would fulfill Luther’s own epitaph; Pestis eram vivus, moriens tua mors ero Papa (Pope, when I lived I was your pestilence. When I die I will be your death). Palladius had already shown in the introduction how the fight between the reigns of Christ and the devil was a life-and-death struggle for his followers. One could just look to what recently happened in Innsbruck, he says, where a papist was put in prison for killing his own brother because of his Lutheran confession. According to Palladius, this showed how wicked the bloody papists were against the limbs of Christ. A reading of Palladius’ account provides several perspectives that affected the implementation of a Protestant death in a Danish context. The text has an apocalyptic perspective which accords with the Danish sources that over and over again confirm that mankind is soon approaching the end of time, and that God has sent Luther as a prophet, or as the angel of the Revelation of John, chap. 14, to preach the true Gospel against the Devil and Antichrist. At this time, the Jews have been blinded for fifteen hundred years, the Orient is condemned because of the terrible blasphemy of Muhammad, and Europe is in the grip of the tyrannical Antichrist. But, as Niels Palladius writes in his treatise on Doomsday, in the spread of the Lutheran religion, the true Gospel has reached the end of the world, as it was prophesized to happen in the last days (Palladius: 1558 (ed. 1575), fol. Biii v – Bv v.). The account of Luther’s confession and death also has an ecclesiological perspective in Melanchthon’s prayer at the funeral, quoted before Palladius’ epilogue. He prays to God, who has created and chosen an eternal church, and gives thanks that He sustains the holy office of preaching the Gospel, an office

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that is renewed in these days by his servant Martin Luther. He likewise prays that God will still sustain and govern his holy church and keep in us his spirit and pure teaching. The pure teaching of the Gospel, revealed anew in the 16th century is here defined as the continuum of the church (cf. CA 7). To steadily keep the true faith at deathbed, is here thus not only regarded as a consolation against the general scruples on one’s deathbed, but as an affirmation that one is among the chosen people of God in the drama of salvation, as also the example of Peder Palladius’ anonymous nobleman from 1544 had showed. In his forceful presentation of Luther’s deathbed, Niels Palladius had designated the true faith by emphasizing the distinction between Law and Gospel as a necessary premise. This was also the message of the Danish version of Luther’s text, How law and gospel is thoroughly to be understood and distinguished, published in 1547: “To all Christian people (that understand our Danish language), this little treatise is useful and most consolatory to learn and know to the salvation of their soul…” (Luther : 1547). A definition of faith according to Law and Gospel came to be decisive to the further tradition of death preparatory texts in Denmark-Norway.

3.3

Peder Tidemann: “in this dangerous time”

In 1552, another former student from Wittenberg, Peder Tidemann, edited a prayer book in which death preparation was an important part; A simple teaching on Our Father/ that Vitus Theodorus wrote to his good friend/ And about the reverend Sacrament/ And on how every Christian should prepare for death.11 It was a compilation that included several treatises concerning the evangelical consolation at deathbed: “A useful teaching to be applied among the sick according to the situation…” (F vii r – H iiii v), “A teaching on how D. M. Luther consoled a Christian man in such danger/ which teaching Veit Dietrich immediately after wrote down word by word” (H v– Kvi r), and “A thorough and remarkable consolation to the ones who are condemned to death” (Kvi v – L iii r). In addition to these texts, originally written by the German Reformer Veit Dietrich (1506 – 1549), the book includes yet another translation of Luther’s prayer and confession at his deathbed (Rvii v f. Some minor differences from N. Palladius’ translation from 1546). In the consolation at the deathbed, referred to after an example of Martin Luther, the premise is that the devil attacks not only at our weakest point, but also at the point that hurts the most, which is the outstanding article of faith. The 11 P. Tidemann matriculated in Wittenberg 1529, was later pastor in Copenhagen, and died between 1564 and 1577.

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example recalls a sick man who experienced scruples on his sickbed on behalf of his faith. The prescribed consolation is to insist and learn the right Theologiam Dialecticam, which was another way to describe and employ the evangelical knowledge that resembled the distinction between Law and Gospel. The dialectic distinguishes between the substance of salvation by faith in the merits of Christ alone, and the accidents, which are the circumstances of human life, suffering and death.12 According to the text, the devil as well as the Turks and the popes confuse this dialectic (I vii v f, K ii r). But the reader is reminded that he is neither like the pope, nor the Turks or the Jews, all of whom persecute the Word of God (I viii). The confidence in Christ’s mercy is the substance of faith, and Luther affirms, according to his consolation that is referred to, the ecclesiological significance of this. The confession of this substance should be a great mercy, as the sick person will not be separated from Christ and his Church (K ii). Dietrich’s descriptions of the sickbed, the deathbed, as well as the condemned cell within the compiled texts, are all in accordance with what is at stake in the Danish prefaces of the book. As in Palladius’ presentation of Luther’s deathbed, the perspective here is based on the understanding that one is in the middle of a battle between the kingdoms of Christ and the devil. On the title page of Tidemann’s publication, he describes the present situation as a “dangerous time”, and in the preface he characterizes it by the conflict between the clear light of the Gospel and its opponents. The opponents harden, the more they try to oppose the Word of God and the eternal truth. The enemies are driven by the Devil, which means that the faithful have no enemy of flesh and blood, but an enemy of spiritual wickedness. In this dangerous situation, Peder Tidemann wants to help the pious Christians with the right weapons, and has hence translated the texts in the present book, a simple teaching on the Our Father and the blessed teaching about how every man should behave at his last and in the danger of death, which is the final fight against the devil (A iii). In addition to Tidemann’s preface to all Christians, the edition is supplied with the bookbinder Pavel Knufflock’s dedication to the nobleman Falck Gøye and his wife. Knufflock analyses the situation in a way similar to Peder Tideman; “All Christians experience how sly the gruesome devil, the world and our own flesh and blood behave against us, and drag us away from God”. Especially in this last time, the devil is intensely active both in the world and in his limbs and faithful servants, to pull us away from the Word of God, and thus prevent our entry into His kingdom. Knufflock has ordered the compilation of the prayer book as a help to surrender this enemy. Both Knufflock and Tidemann specify the deathbed as everyman’s last fight 12 The context in the specific example of consolation of deathbed seems to be a perception of illness as a punishment because of sins.

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in the drama of the devil and Christ, that is, between the followers of the Gospel and its opponents, those who attempt to seduce the true believers into idolatry and blindness. The opponents are specified several places in the book, as in the last prayer which begs God to turn away Satan, who works through his willing servants, the Turks and the pope (V ii r – V iii v). According to what he says, Peder Tidemann presented these death preparatory and consolatory texts because of an awareness of a lack of such texts in Denmark. He described a contemporary situation where sick people had serious temptations because of their sins, so that the devil sought to drown them in despair. His translations were an attempt to meet their need of instruction (f. Hv). The most important and determined effort – in the Danish tongue – to teach people the art of dying in this period, was however Huorlunde it Christet Menniske skal/ paa sin soteseng/ beskicke sig til Døden by Niels Palladius, printed in 1558 when he was bishop in Lund. It became the first original Danish contribution to the Ars Moriendi literature in the Protestant tradition.

4

The Right Application of Law and Gospel in a Lutheran Pastoral Context

4.1

Niels Palladius: a Danish Contribution to Ars Moriendi

Form and Transformation While Tidemann some years before had targeted the historical situation as a “dangerous fight”, this fight between Christ and the devil’s servants is not the urgent matter of Palladius’ introduction. His death preparation was composed about twenty years after the establishment of the Lutheran confession, and it testifies to the situation in the confessional state where the question at stake is rather to hold on to the Lutheran faith and theology. As mentioned, the King insisted on this persistence, in order to preserve peace in his realm. At the same time, the Danish theologians were more influenced by Melanchthon than by Luther (Stolt: 1998; Schwarz Lausten: 2010), and this caused a shift within the theology that can be traced in the sources. Palladius’ booklet consists of about 30 folios, including two additions: Psalms to be read to the one in trial of death, and Consolation and relief in cross and adversity (C vi v – D ii r, Dii v – D vii r (1570)). It was reprinted six times from 1558 to 1580, and testifies to the importance of a ritualized deathbed in the Danish-Norwegian Protestant tradition – an importance which is also evident in the contemporary funeral sermons. The treatise depended on elements trans-

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mitted from early Protestant German treatises on death, such as Rhegius Gretzinger’s Eynn trostliche Disputation (1524) that had been translated in 1531, and in particular Johan Odebach’s Eyn trostbüchlein für die sterbenden (1530) (Gierow: 1948; Schwarz Lausten: 1968, 95 – 104). Palladius also refers to two prayers that were edited in Peder Tidemann’s compilation of Dietrich Veit (Gierow: 1948, 263). Schwarz Lausten concludes however that coincident elements do not necessarily mean a direct dependence, as elements of these books widely transfused into several pastoral books – which we have seen in the previous presentations. In its form, Palladius’ death preparation differs obviously from the previous translations in the Danish-Norwegian context. While these texts were books of consolation and advised about how to give consolation in the face of death, Palladius’ text, apart from the two last sections, is in all ways organized as a classical Ars Moriendi instruction and continued the path of late medieval practice.13 Most of the elements of death preparation were the same, except for the specific prayers of the priest as well as the last unction. The treatise can be organized as follows: 1. To put his house in order 2. To forgive those who trespassed against him, ask forgiveness 3. Confession, absolution, communion 4. To bid farewell to everyone/everything 5. To turn away from the world 6. The dangerous waiting period (patience in suffering) 7. To conquer the scruples It is obvious that Palladius uses the conventional elements of the genre. But what is also evident is that Palladius twists the genre according to the Wittenbergian distinction between Law and Gospel. The right distinction between Law and Gospel towards the end of time had been an important perspective not least in Palladius’ own presentation of Luther’s deathbed. The eschatological perspective on the Gospel and the approaching judgment day is strongly present in the context of Palladius’ treatise on death preparation, not least since he published his book on Doomsday ten days later (Palladius: 1558). But in the preface of the treatise itself, the dominant perspective is not how to confess the true Gospel against the realm of Antichrist, but is rather connected to the right understanding of Law and Gospel within an internal confessional Lutheranism. In his preface, a blissful death depends on a right religious practice. What is at stake is the definition of the relation between religious practice, deeds, and salvation by faith. Palladius defines penitence and good deeds according to “the new obe13 When compared to t.ex. Jean Gerson’s De arte moriendi (1408), published in Swedish in 1514.

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dience”, which has to be understood within the theological tradition of Philip Melanchthon, the reformer who influenced Palladius the most. This influenced also his art of dying, where penitence is a condition for salvation. In the introduction, Palladius defined the instruction for death as one of the two necessities for the eternal life; which are “right true god fear” and a “blessed and Christian departure from this world” (A ii v (1570)). He specifies how the fear of God is expressed in true repentance and contrition of the heart, and is shaped by two things, first by the Law of God, when man meditates on sin, judgment, hell and death (A ii v (1570)), and secondly by a true faith in the mercy of God, shaped by the preaching of the Gospel. In this description, the afflictions at deathbed seem to be identified as an experience of the Law of God. He also describes a third part of man’s fear of God which is a new obedience (cf. CAVI), the good deeds which everyone ought to practice, a demand that mirrors the contemporary theological discussion between orthodox Lutherans and Philippists (Schwarz Lausten: 2010, 156 – 61). If man lives according to this fear of God, he receives undoubtedly a “blessed and Christian departure from this world”. The two necessities for salvation; fear of God and a good death, thus follow one another. The Last Fight The right practice of Law and Gospel is the key to understanding Palladius’ adaptation of the Ars Moriendi genre. This comes most explicitly to the fore in the description of the scruples which arrive when the hour of death is delayed: Tunc accedit Tentator. Then the devil prompts the dying person to meditate on the multitude and greatness of his sins. In other words, he confronts the dying person with the Law, and he fells into despair and doubt (B v v (1570)).14 Palladius assures the readers that the Word of God is the only comfort and shield against the accusations of the devil, and the strategy is illustrated by a paradigmatic example from Freiburg in Germany (B v v–Bvi (1570)). An old couple is lying in their cottage, on their deathbeds, and the devil appears as a “blue man”. He carries a parchment and a pen, and is ready to list all their sins and lead them to hell. While the wife screams, the husband has learned the Word of God, and hence asks the devil to write “‘The seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent’. This is the Word of God and the first promise God gave mankind to release them from the power of the devil”. Hearing these words, the devil immediately disappears through the wall. The sick man protected himself with Holy Scripture when he was visited by the devil in visible shape. When people on sickbed today are visited by the devil 14 B v v (1570), cf also the description of the Law in the preface, f. A ii v, and in the description of the scruples C ii v.

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in an invisible shape, continues Palladius, they should protect themselves in exactly the same way. Then follow six paragraphs grouping different afflictions that are variations on the descriptions of sin, death and hell or the judgment which we know as the afflictions that overwhelmed the dying person in Luther’s death preparatory sermon from 1519. The scruples are probably common fears that Palladius had met in his practice as comforter at deathbeds; Remember that worms will eat up your putrescent body! Perhaps God does not know you because of your sins? Perhaps you are not among the elect? Perhaps God will not recognize you? Palladius shows by his use of Scripture how the perceptions brought about by the Law are to be overturned by the Gospel. He quotes consolation and strengthening words of Scripture, not only in the two separate last chapters of consolation, but to face every scruple. In this way he follows up the dynamics in the example of the old couple in Freiburg. As in the previous instructions presented in this article, Palladius does not directly thematize a deathbed confession. Rather than a right confession, Palladius emphasizes a firm confidence in the promises of God. The example from Freiburg is in this context in no way incidental. The old couple clung to the “protoevangelium” of Gen 3:15, the first promise given to sinful humankind. A specific Lutheran exegesis of the promised seed in Gen 3:15 was a central point in the early Protestant tradition. And Palladius points to the adherence to this promise as the very pattern in his application of Law and Gospel at a deathbed. Niels Palladius is here in accordance with a series of sermons held by his brother, Peder Palladius, in Copenhagen in 1553, published under the title “Sankt Peders Skib” in 1554 (Jacobsen: 1916 – 18, b. III, 1 – 134). Here, Peder Palladius had described the continuum of the Church as the history of a ship. It had been a victim to pirates, and almost become a wreck during the centuries of the papacy. But in the last thirty years it had again been restructured by the blessed man of God, Martin Luther (Ibid., 26). Just like the dying Christian described in Niels Palladius’ text, the ship is upheld by a holy word, grasped in faith, and is on its way to eternal life and bliss. Everyone must examine, according to Peder Palladius, whether he is on the right or the wrong ship. God called for and built the holy Christian church when he proclaimed his promise about his Son: “The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent”. With the confession of this proclamation he distinguishes the church from all the pagans. Peder Palladius’ understanding of the Church, built on the promise of Christ, strengthens a reading of Niels Palladius’ art of dying, where trust in the promise is what counts in the hour of death. Palladius’ Huorlunde it Christet Menniske from 1558 became the most important instruction for deathbed in the Danish tongue in the 16th century. It was conditioned both by the traditional ars moriendi and by the specific conditions

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of the Danish Reformation, where Palladius, as a leading theologian, sought to keep the confessional course clear of doctrinal disputes. It is however obvious that the art of dying, as it was presented in the Danish sources, related to the changing tendencies among the theologians, not least when it came to the role of penitence in the question of salvation.

4.2

Claus Førd: A Good Conscience at the Hour of Death

Iuone Barmschampe’s Sterbekunst (1561), translated into Danish in 1570 and reprinted several times, exhibits another theological tendency in the Danish Ars moriendi literature. Both Barmschampe’s text and the Danish introduction, written by the bookseller Claus Førd, differ significantly from Palladius’ death instruction. While it was a life in fear of God and the preparation of death during lifetime that was important in Palladius’ text, it is the moment of death that stands out as decisive in Førd’s introduction: “It matters a lot/ how we live here on earth/ But it matters far more/ how we die/ and what kind of final departure we receive from this deceitful and miserable world” (A ii v – A iii (1570)). One of the reasons for this focus on the moment of death lies in the significance that a good conscience had become in the Danish theology of the period. A good conscience became the proof of faith, because faith should be expressed through its fruits. This model was promoted not least by Niels Hemmingsen (Hemmingsen: 1577). Førd insists that the state of conscience in the hour of death is what decides the final destiny of the dying person (A iii – A iii v (1570)). The one who dies badly, with a wicked conscience and a wicked final departure, dies in this state, and there is no hope of improvement in any way. This is the reason why one has to pay attention to, and not neglect, how one dies. It regards life and soul, eternal happiness and salvation, or, on the other hand, eternal death and eternal damnation. Unlike Niels Palladius’ Ars Moriendi, Barschampe’s text does not give instruction about several steps of death preparation, but focuses only on the last trial of the soul. The text is structured as a play with three shifting scenes: a dialogue between the priest and the dying person, a dialogue between the devil and the dying person, and lastly eleven prayers to be prayed by the dying person. The text of Barmschampe is thus more an example and a demonstration of a good death than an instruction. What was explained as confidence in the promises of Christ in Palladius’ text, is demonstrated by questions and confessional statements in Barmshcampe’s text. Barmschampe’s death scene is introduced by the priest who tells the dying person that as he now has received the sacrament and is reconciled with God, he is armed against the death, the devil, the sin and hell. He encourages him not to

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give any opportunity or space to the devil, and reminds him that he has confessed the articles of faith to be true. The dialogue between the priest and the dying person continues to confirm his true repentance and his right faith through questions and answers. The final question is whether he believes that he gains salvation through the suffering of Christ, and not through his own good deeds. With the confirmation by the dying, the priest concludes that he surely is among the elect children of God. After the teaching by the priest, the devil enters the stage and tempts the dying by pointing to his manifold sins, to his weak faith and finally to his good deeds, to trick him into pride. But the dying person, who has been educated in the right faith, knows how to answer all the attacks by the devil. In the end he exclaims: “let me be, you damned devil / and get off from me to your company in the abyss of hell”, and concludes: “go away […] I will pray”. The dialogues are then followed by prayers, which also focus on the “right Christian belief” (C v v (1570)). When Barmschampe’s text was introduced by the bookseller Claus Førd in Copenhagen, a certain interpretation as well as a special audience was targeted. His translation was dedicated to Povel Povelsen, “Canon in Oslo/ and notary at Akershus Castle”, because Førd, according to the text, has heard how willingly and eager Povelsen promotes and upholds the pure Word of God and the true Religion in and around Oslo. It is thus reasonable to propose that the book is meant to assist Povel Povelsen in his effort to educate the people in Norway, as Claus Førd describes it, through pure preaching both in church and in schools. Claus Førd describes a situation where people still needed education in the new religious practice. And if this refers to an actual situation, it could be caused by the fact that Oslo and Norway belonged to the periphery where the Reformation in 1537 had been imposed by the king and was not rooted in the people in the same way as in Denmark. Normative literature for the new Lutheran Church in Norway was scarce until the beginning of the 17th century (Lydby/Grell: 1995, 123 – 126). It is hence reasonable to describe the translation of Barmschampe as an important contribution to the introduction of the Protestant deathbed in Norway.

4.3

Joen Tursøn: In the Time of Gods Revenge

With its address to the struggling Lutherans in Oslo, the translation of Barmschampe stands out as special in the late 16th century. With regard to most of the sources, however, it is characteristic that towards the last part of the 16th century, the evangelical art of dying, as well as consolation at the deathbed, was interpreted within a pastoral context in a Lutheran confessional culture. One such example is the edition of Hieronimo Weller, A spiritual prescription/

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preservative and remedy (1554), published in 1577, with its extensive preface by the translator Joen Tursøn. Joen Tursøn was an old man who died in the same year his translation of Weller was published. As a young man, more than forty years earlier in the 1530’s, he had studied theology in Leipzig, had experienced the Reformation of his country and in the 1540’s he had been in the middle of the confessional disputations at the university of Copenhagen. There is however no trace of this in his preface. He addresses on the other hand the contemporary pastoral situation in the city of Malmø in 1577. Because pestilence has governed Denmark the last years, he says, and it is feared that it will increase, he has translated this useful book that offers consolations from Scripture in this dangerous situation. He claims that the contemporary plague, like every crisis – high costs, war and hemorrhage – of the preceding years, has to be considered as God’s revenge and punishment because of sin. The threat of the devil, and hence of the wicked, is in this text not described as an outside enemy, but as something within the Danish people themselves – and within the heart of every man (A v v – A vi.). What Tursøn hence prescribes is penitence and conversion from the devil in time. In Tursøn’s perception of the contemporary situation, it seems as one has reached exactly what Peerszøn warned against nearly fifty years before, something that was always a constant threat: God’s punishment. This perception shaped Tursøn’s presentation of death preparation. The cosmic fight between Antichrist and the elect people of God is no longer the most relevant perspective on the contemporary situation. On the other hand, the dualistic model that Peerszøn had imposed on the society is more or less interiorized in Tursøn’s text, where it is described as a fight within everyone’s own heart. At the end of his preface, Tursøn summarizes how every Christian should prepare for death: One has to cry heartily because of one’s sins, regret them, and with a firm faith pray God for mercy and forgiveness because of the sufferings and death of Christ. And then one should fear and love God and show mercy and no evil against one’s fellow-Christians, lead a Christian life, and cling to the blessed Word of God and his holy promises, until the end ((a) iii v). In this way, one should be ready every moment and every single hour. Because, concludes Tursøn, “just as God finds you, he will also judge you”. Another text that also testifies to the new homogenous religious context is Bertel Jespersen’s Liffsens krone, also from 1577. It addresses the nobility, and encourages them to fight the good fight of faith. Jespersen specifies that the enemy is neither the Turk, nor the Moscovite, the pope nor the Spaniard, but the devil himself, the world, and our own flesh and blood. One of the last parts of his extensive work on the crown of life is a dialogue between Satan and a dying man, which to a great extent resembles the treatise of Barmschampe. The text enters directly into the trial between the dying man and Satan, and demonstrates how a

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man tormented by the devil’s questions can protect himself by the Protestant faith to reach the crown of life. The strategy is the same as in Niels Palladius’ death preparation, and Jespersøn refers to the story of the old couple in Freiburg, obviously taken from Palladius’ text. Jespersøn concludes: “Let us thus confront him with faith, and with the Word of God kick him in the nose” (77v–78). With this exhortation to confront the devil, Jespersen summarizes the Protestant instructions for the deathbed.

5

The Funeral Sermons of the Danish Nobility

The treatises described above were all important in the reform of the deathbed practice. But another genre that seems to have been just as important in the education of a Lutheran Ars moriendi in Denmark-Norway was the funeral sermon. The death scenes that were described in the Danish funeral sermons since the late 1560’s can be analyzed as a response to the contemporary death bed instructions. This was Philip Melanchthon’s perspective when he read the royal physician Jacob Bording’s description of the Danish King Christian III’s deathbed (Bording: 1559). Melanchthon was deeply moved. The dying regent had kept his faith firmly, despite the afflictions and despair that threatened this last period of his life. Melanchthon decided immediately to publish the oratio in Wittenberg, and throughout the following months he presented and sent Bording’s text to several friends (cf. Corpus Reformatorum (CR), vol. 9, nr. 6708, 6735, 6737, 6750). In an epistle dedicated to King Frederick II the same year, he describes the history of King Christian III as a model of a virtuous life and a proper preparation for a blissful departure from this world. The king’s peaceful death was in contrast to tyrants and godless people, such as John III of Portugal, who experienced gruesome anguish and fury on their deathbeds (foreword to Tom. XII Operum Lutheri Germanicorum (1559), cf: CR, vol. 9, nr. 6794). When we read the funeral sermons, it is striking that no one really undergoes severe scruples. They all maintain a steady faith on their deathbeds. This accords with the religious and sociological function of the funeral sermons in the early Protestant culture in Denmark-Norway, namely, to confirm the chosen children of God. The scruples that were described in details in the instructions for the deathbed had no place in the testimonies of faith, just as it had been stated in Peerzøn’s translation from 1531: ”When any man, that is approaching death, hears such a comforting assurance, then his consciousness becomes happy and comforted, he becomes willing and patient and free of fear, and he defeats the devil by faith” (Lv v). The description of the death scene demonstrated that the deceased person

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was prepared in the trial of death. His or her faith could hence be expressed demonstratively as a confession in a loud voice or, if the voice was gone, with a firm sign. In contrast to most of the death preparatory texts commented on above, the confession of faith in the hour of death was thus crucial to the Danish funeral sermons. In the funeral sermon on Holger Rosenkranz (1575), for example, the confession is formally related: “One of them asked him: ‘Dear Holger, do you totally believe that you have the merciful friendship with God and the forgiveness of all your sins because of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ?’ He answered with a loud voice, in the way that it was heard all over the house: ‘Yes, this is my Faith, as long as I live’” (Bertelssøn: 1874 – 75, 94). The same firm confession had characterized Peder Palladius’ description of the deathbed of the nobleman from Zealand in 1544. And it had characterized Barmschampe’s text translated in 1570. His description of the death scene, almost like a play, was however not a consolatory instruction, but a demonstration of an ideal and well prepared deathbed. The published Danish funeral sermons from this period (1560–ca. 1650) were all written for the nobility. And it is obvious that the funeral sermons established the nobility as a special group of exemplary Christians. The sermons testified that they were among the chosen ones, those who had clung to the secure knowledge revealed towards the end of time. And according to Philip Melanchthon’s description from 1557, the Danish nobility played a role not only as examples to their own households, but to all of Christendom. When Melanchthon wrote a preface to Peder Palladius’ catalogue on the contemporary heresies, a guide to define the boarders of the true doctrine, he dedicated the work to the admiral and nobleman Herluf Trolle (Palladius: 1557, f. A2–A6). In this way, claimed Melanchthon, people, both now and hereafter, could learn how outstanding families in Denmark steadily kept the true doctrine, invoked God in the right way and lived a pious life in harmony with the royal authority. He explained how the outstanding Danish nobility, who descended from Asian tribes and who now governed not only at the Arctic border, but also in other European regions, had acquired the knowledge about the true doctrine of God and his Son Jesus Christ, and added this knowledge to their other virtues.

6

Conclusion

The Protestant instruction in dying was the ultimate realization of justification by faith alone, and was hence important in the implementation of the Protestant knowledge in 16th-century Denmark-Norway. This article displays a transmission from Wittenberg to the north. The first generations of Lutherans related to Wittenberg as the place from which the spring of living water, Protestant

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Christendom, poured forth (Schwarz Lausten: 2010, 197), and this characteristic pertains also to the instructions for deathbeds, since several publications were written, translated or printed in Wittenberg. Apart from Niels Palladius’ death preparation from 1558, the instructions were all translations from German sources. The survey shows that a Lutheran art of dying was introduced by some central actors who lived through the crisis of the Reformation and on into the establishment of a confessional church within a homogenous culture. How were the death preparatory texts put in a particular use in this context? It is difficult to sketch any clear development, but it is possible to identify some characteristics. In the first part of the 16th century, the Protestant art of dying had been introduced as pure consolation within a late medieval pastoral context, as Luther’s introduction to Venatorius emphasized. The eschatological perspective on the crisis of the Reformation nevertheless gave the Protestant testimony of faith new ecclesiological consequences because it was what defined the true church. A reading of the Danish dedications and introductions exhibits how the material was understood and presented according to a dualistic and eschatological comprehension of the contemporary historical situation, as can be seen not least in Jens Peerszøn’s introduction from 1531. With the royal establishment of the Reformation in 1537, the Danish-Norwegian church institution had been defined as standing on Christ’s side in this fight, and it became most important to cement the dualistic worldview as the foundation of society. To be saved by faith alone at deathbed also meant that one clung to Christ in his fight against Antichrist and his servants in the Roman church, as Niels Palladius’ presentation of Luther’s deathbed most explicitly showed. The fight was actually at stake at every deathbed, as Peder Tidemann emphasized in his analysis of the dangerous times in 1552. This fact was even intensified with the new Lutheran arrangement of the afterlife, when purgatory was no longer an opportunity. Doomsday was approaching for all, but it also coincided with each and everyone’s own deathbed. The moment of death thus gained a decisive place. The theological discussions offered different strategies to cope with this fact when they negotiated the relations between faith, deeds, and the needs of a good conscience. The premises of the fight between the reigns of Christ and Satan were slightly changed when the crisis of the Reformation had given place to a confessional state and a homogenous religious culture embracing new generations. Instead of being applied to the external history, the fight was interiorized into everyman’s heart, as explained by Tursøn and Jespersen, and the Protestant art of dying turned out to be defined by the practices in a homogenous Lutheran culture. The royal policy of uniformity in faith and practice was meant to secure the Lutheran church, first against Roman heresies, and later primarily against in-

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ternal threats, as the regulations governing access by non-Lutherans explicitly stated (The Strangers’ Articles of 1569). The theologians were concerned to identify the practice of faith, also at the deathbed, according to the decisive Protestant distinction between Law and Gospel, as seen in Niels Palladius’ death preparation. The Danish theology was nevertheless influenced by different interpretative tendencies, not least through the leading theologian Niels Hemmingsen. This pertained also to the art of dying, where Hemmingsen was the most important contributor of funeral sermons. The emphasis on deeds as the visible fruit of faith and on a good conscience as the effective sign of belief, which Hemmingsen promoted, influenced the direction not only in the vitae of the funeral sermons, but also in the death instructions, as we see in the texts by Claus Förd, Tursøn and Jespersen. The article emphasizes a direction from Wittenberg to Denmark-Norway. At the same time, an opposite direction also becomes evident. In a Protestant, and “Melanchthonian” perspective, the central subject of history was the dissemination of the word of God. The church consisted of small groups who received the Protestant knowledge and kept the true faith throughout history. In this perspective, Denmark was inscribed, both by Melanchthon and by the Danish Protestant historians, into a broader history as the place that now provided the optimal conditions for the church of the true faithful (Skovgaard-Petersen: 1998). The exemplary implementation of the evangelical knowledge in the kingdom of Denmark-Norway was meant to shine forth from the north to the rest of Christendom. This was not least manifested through the funeral sermons for the Danish royalty and nobility from the second part of the 16th century. The nobility embodied the ideals of the evangelical faith, and were constantly inscribed among the blessed when they had confessed the pure knowledge on their deathbeds. In this way the Lutheran art of dying indicated and demonstrated who belonged to the true church. The practice at the deathbed was thus connected to the continuity of the true faithful through history. In a funeral sermon from 1630, Bishop Niels Paaske in Bergen expressed this connection when he answered the question “So what is it then to die well?” He specifies that to die well is to die in the Lord, which concerns those who end their pilgrimage of this life in our dear Lord’s and Savior’s true knowledge, imitation, confession and invocation. To legitimate this specific art of dying, he claims that all the children of God from the beginning of the world have learned and practiced this art and asked to receive it from God himself. This continuity, in turn, defines the people of God. They have learned and practiced the art of a good dying in such a way “that they could be counted and inscribed among God’s true children” (Paaske: 1630, C – Cv). But, in the end, who defined this art? What the knowledge, imitation and confession targeted differed according to the actual threats and scruples in the

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contemporary context. In this way, the art of dying to a certain extent changed according to the contemporary definition of what was true faith. The saved ones could only be described as those who had had the same faith as oneself. This was the perspective in the sermon held by the superintendent of Oslo, Jens Nilssøn, on 1 November 1582. He explained to the congregation of the cathedral why they should celebrate the Feast of all saints. This should be done to remember the pious and holy ones who had lived in this world, those who had had the same faith, the same confession, the same religious knowledge, the same Gospel and the same mediator, patron and spokesman, Jesus Christ, as they themselves had now, in other words, just as themselves, as the Lutheran congregation in the cathedral of Oslo (Nilssøn: 1917, 376).

Appendix The Art of Dying in Danish-Norwegian 16th-century Sources15 Venatorius, Thomas (1527), Ein kurtz unterricht den Sterbenden menschen ganz tröstlich, anon. transl. (1529), Een kort vnderwysning g~tske salig oc trostelig att forholde thennˆ som ligge y¨ theris helsot, Rostock: Ludowich Dietz. (Another translation was printed along with Luther : 1538). Anon./Rhegius, Urbanus/Gretzinger, Benedictus (1524),16 Ein trostliche disputation/ auff frag vn antwurt gestellet […], transl. by Christern Pedersen (1531), En Cristelig bogh Om merckelige spørsmaall och swar Om Troen och kerlighed och huorledis en cristen skal ræt lære och vnderwise den anden i mange gode artickle som alle menniske ere nøttelige ath vide til deris sielis salighed, Antwerp: Willem Vosterman. Ibid, transl. by Jens Peerszøn (1531) En merckelig grundfest disputatz giort Paa tiltale och gienswar/ troen oc kierligheten anrørindis hworledis ien Christen skal Christelig wndervisze en anden/ alle Christen nøttig och gaffuenlig och besynderlig prestmend til retforstand i Christelig lærdom aff then hellige Scrhifft et cetera, Viborg: Hans Wiingaard. 15 The selection of texts is based on dating before 1600. Some early 17th century texts could very well have been included as Martin Moller : Manuale de praeparatione ad mortem (1593), transl. by Hans Oldeland (1610), Copenhagen: Henrich Waldkirch, and Hans Hansen Skonning (1614), Memento Mori, d.e. Kom i Hue du skalt døe. Rostock. 16 Printed in several editions, both in High German (first time 1524) and Low German (first time 1525). It is difficult to tell which versions Pedersen and Peerszøn translated, cf discussion in Peerszøn: 1952, 17 ff.

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Luther, Martin (1519), Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben, transl. By Christiern Pedersen? (1533), Huorledis hwert Christet menniske skall berede sig mod døden Oc tage orloff aff denne verden Och haffue sig i sin leffuis tid oc døtzens nød / mod synden døden oc helffuede, Malmø: Hochstraten. Ibid, transl. by Christern Schrock (1538), Viborg: Hans Wiingaard. Rhegius, Urbanus (1529), Seelenertzney fur die gesunden vnd krancken, transl. by Mathias Parvus Rosaefontanum (1544), Sjælens Lægedom /for de karske oc sywge / i disse farlige tider / oc i dødz nød, Copenhagen: Hans Wiingaard.17 (Another version ca 1561 (translator not mentioned), and 1641). Dietrich, Veit Compilations transl. by Peder Tidemann (1552), En enfoldig undervisning paa Fader vor/ som Uitus Theodorus screff for sin gode Ven/ Oc om det høyverdige Sacrament/ Oc huorledis huer Christen skal skicke sig til døden, Wittenberg: Jurgen Rhaws arffuinge. Palladius, Niels (1558), Huorlunde ith Christet Menniske skal paa sin Soteseng beskicke sig til Døden, Copenhagen: Matz Wingaard. (reprinted -59, -62, -70, -75, -80). Barmschampe, Iuone (1561), Sterbenskunst. Disputatio und Gesprech zwischen einem Krancken Menschen und dem Versucher, transl. by Claus Føerd (1570), Kaanst Christelig oc vel at Døe. Disputatio oc en Samtale/ imellem it siugt Menniske oc Fristeren, Copenhagen: Matz Wingaard. (reprinted -75, -80, 1634). Weller, Hieronimo (1554), Antidotum. Oder Geistliche Ertzney / für die Christen / so Anfechtung vnnd geistliche trübsal haben, transl. by Joen Tursøn (1577), En Aandelig Recept/ Præservativa oc Lægedom / huorledis it christet Menniske skal skicke sig imod Døden / Oc besynderlige naar Pestilenze regerer, Copenhagen: Andrea Gutterwitz. (reprinted 1625). Ibid, transl. by Niels Jørgensøn (1585), Antidotum. Det er Lægedom/ Trøst oc gode Raad/ imod atskillige Fristelser/ aff huilcke Gudfryktige Mennisker pleyer at øffuis oc forsørgis, Copenhagen: Laurentz Benedicht.18 (reprinted 1624).

17 Preface by P. Palladius, cf Peder Palladius Danske Skrifter, I, p. 314 ff. 18 While Tursøn’s translation some years earlier was an excerpt chosen in the context of the plague, this version is a translation of the entire book.

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Borner, Johannes (1526), Anfangk eines rechten Christlichen lebens. Von der waren pus. Von der Beycht. Von der bereitung zum hochwirdigen Sacrament. Wie man ein sterbenden menschen troesten sol. Summa unser selickeyt, tranls. by Jacob Mattszøn (1592), It ret Christeligt Leffnitz Begyndelse. 1. Om en sand Penitenz. 2. Om Skrifftemaal. 3. Om Beredelse til det høyverdige Sacramente/ Met sine fem spørsmaal. 4. Huorledis mand skal Trøste it Menniske som skal dø. 5. Summen paa vor Salighed. Copenhagen: Matz Wingaard.19 (reprinted 1627). Werdmüller, Otto (1549), Der Tod: wie sich ein Christ in seinen und anderer todsnoeten halten, auch wie man die, denen jre geliebten verscheiden, aufrichten und troesten, transl. by Anders Mikkelsen Kolding (1595), Om en ret Beredelse til Døden / oc huorledis mand skal skicke sig imod dennom som ere Dødsiuge/ saa oc at Trøste dennom som ved døden haffue mistit deris gode Venner, Copenhagen: Matz Wingaard.20 (reprinted 1654). (For more extended bibliographical information, see Schottroff: 2012 and Nielsen: 1919/1931.)

Bibliography Andersen, Niels K. (1972), Ludwig Dietz’ Salmebog 1536, Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Angel, Sivert (2014), The Confessionalist Homiletics of Lucas Osiander (1534 – 1604), Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck. Anker Jørgensen, Jens (2007), Humanisten Christiern Pedersen: en Præsentation, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel. Appel, Charlotte (2001), Læsning og Bogmarked I 1600-tallets Danmark, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag. Bay, Ole (2001), Den Danske Adel og Kirken efter Reformationen (1536 – 1660), in: Per Ingesmann/Jens Villam Jensen (ed), Riget, Magten og Æren: den Danske Adel 1350 – 1660, xrhus: Aarhus Universitetsforl., 286 – 313. Bertelssøn, Lauritz (1874 – 75), Holger Ottesen Rosenkrands (1517 – 1575.) Vnderuisning om De tuende slags Opstandelser […], in C.F. Bricka/S. M. Gjellerup (ed.), Den Danske Adel i det 16de og 17de Aarhundrede. Samtidige Levnetsbeskrivelser Udragne af Trykte og Utrykte Ligprædikener, vol. I, Copenhagen: Rudolph Klein, 67 – 97.

19 The Danish version doesn’t contain any specific foreword by the translator, but seems to be a plain translation of a German original. 20 The title page informs that the translation is done from the German text. Dedicated to the nobleman Caspar Markdaner (1533 – 1618), edited as the second of “Two Christian Clenods”, together with “Om trøst oc hielp imod allehznde bedrøvelse”, also a translation of Werdmüller.

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Bording, Jacob (1559), Oratio de Obitu Serenis: Principis Christiani. III. Daniæ & Norvegiae Regis & c, Copenhagen: Christophorum Barth. Brandt, C.J. (1882), Om Lunde-kanniken Christiern Pedersen og Hans Skrifter, Copenhagen: Gad. Brecht, Martin (1987), Martin Luther, vol. I – III, Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag. Bruun, Chr. (1865), En kort Underviisning at forholde dem, som ligge i deres helsot af Thomas Venatorius. Med en fortale af M. Luther. Efter en udgave af 1529 paany optrykt, Kjøbenhavn. Corpus Reformatorum Vol. IX (1842), Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneider, Halle: Schwetsche. Crusius, Irene (2008), “Nicht Calvinisch, Nicht Lutherisch”: Zu Humanismus, Philippismus und Kryptocalvinismus in Sachsen am Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, Vol. 99, 139 – 74. Czaika, Otfried (2002), David Chyträus und die Universität Rostock in ihren Beziehungen zum Schwedischen Reich, Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Gesellschaft. Dansk biografisk leksikon (1979 – 84), 3. udgave, Svend Cedergreen Bech (ed.), København: Gyldendal. Fudge, John D. (2007), Commerce and Print in the Early Reformation, Leiden: Brill. Gierow, Krister (1948), Den Evangeliska Bönelitteraturen i Danmark 1526 – 1575, Lund: Gleerup. Grane, Leif (ed.) (1980), Københavns Universitet 1479 – 1979, Vol. V: Det teologiske Fakultet, København: G.E.C. Gads forlag. Hemmingsen, Niels (1577), It vist oc fast tegen/ huor paa huer kand kiende sig selff/ huad heller hand er Guds barn eller ey, Copenhagen: Laurentz Benedicht. Ingesmann, Per/Jensen, Jens Villam (ed.) (2001), Riget, Magten og Æren: den Danske Adel 1350 – 1660, xrhus: Aarhus Universitetsforl. Jonam Justum/Celium M. Michaelem (1546), Vom Christlichen Abschied aus diesem tödlichen Leben des Ehrwürdigen Herrn D.Martini Lutheri/ bericht/ durch D.Justum Jonam M.Michaelem Celium/ vnd ander die dabey gewesen/ kurtz zusamen gezogen, Wittenberg: Georg Rhaw. Kirkeordinansen av 1537: Reformasjonens Kirkelov (1990), (ed.) Terje Ellingsen, Oslo: Verbum. (KO) Larson, James L. (2010), Reforming the North: the Kingdoms and Churches of Scandinavia, 1520 – 1545, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laetus, Erasmus (1560), Bucolica, Wittenberg: Georg Rhaw. Leppin, Volker (2010), Martin Luther, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Lockhart, Paul D. (2004), Frederik II and the Protestant Cause: Denmark’s Role in the Wars of Religion, 1559 – 1596, Leiden: Brill. Luther, Martin (1526), Een cristelig Vnderwyszningh paa the thy Gudz Budord, transl. by Poul Helgesen, Rostock. Luther, Martin (1547), Hworledis Lowen och Evangelium skulle ræt gundelige athskillies och forstaas, Lübeck: Jørgen Richolff. Luther, Martin (1534), Om man maa fly for Døden og Pestilentse, en kristelig Undervising Martini Lutheri, Malmø: Hochstraten. Lyby, Thorkild C. (1990), Landsfyrstelig Statsreligion og Evangelisk-Luthersk Kristendom, in: Ingmar Brohed (ed.), Reformationens Konsolidering I de Nordiska Länderna 1540 – 1610, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 22 – 44.

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Lyby, Thorkild C./Grell, Ole Petter (1995), The Consolidation of Lutheranism in Denmark and Norway, in: Ole Petter Grell (ed.), The Scandinavian Reformation: from Evangelical Movement to Institutionalisation of Reform, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 114 – 78. Melanchthon, Filip. (1546), Oratio in Funere Reverendi Viri D. Martini Lutheri recitata a Philippo Melancthone, Wittenberg: J. Klug. Moore, Cornelia Niekus (2006), Patterned Lives: The Lutheran Funeral Biography in Early Modern Germany, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Murdock, G. (Winter, 1998), The Importance of Being Josiah: An Image of Calvinist Identity, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 29, No. 4, 1043 – 59. Nilssøn, Jens (1917), Conciuncula habita Asloiæ in templo cathedralj in Festo Omnium Sanctorum nempe die 4 primo Nouembris Anno 1582, in Andreas Branderud/Oluf Kolsrud (ed.), To og Tredive Prædikener holdt i Aarene 1578 – 1586 av M. Jens Nilssøn Fjerde Evangeliske Superintendent over Oslo og Hamar Stifter. Med en Innledning om Jens Nilssøns Liv og Virksomhet Ved Andreas Branderud og Oluf Kolsrud, Kristiania: Aschehoug & co, 376 – 94. Paaske, Niels (1630), De Arte bene moriendi: Om konst vel at døe. En Christelig LiigPrædicken […], Copenhagen: Salomon Sartor. Palladius, Niels (1575) (first ed. 1558), Om Dommedagen/ en nyttelige Tractat/ Til sammen screffuit oc fordansket aff Nicolao Palladius, Copenhagen: Laurentz Benedicht. Palladius, Niels (1546), En Almindelig form/ som bruges i Wittembergs kircke efter alle Predicken/ til at formane folcket at bede for alle aandelig oc legomlig Nøttørfftighedt /tilhobeset aff Nicolao Palladio. Der nest findes ocsaa her udi/ om Doctoris Martini Luthers bøn oc bekendelse/ som han giord i sin siste tidt, Wittenberg. Palladius, Peder (1916 – 18), Sankt Peders Skib (1554), in Lis Jacobsen (ed), Peder Palladius’ Danske Skrifter, b. III, Copenhagen, H. H Thieles Bogtykkeri, 1 – 134. Palladius, Peder (1557), Catalogvs aliqvot haeresivm hvivs aetatis, et earvm refvtatio, Wittenberg: ex officina Petri Seitzii. (Melanchthons preface in f. A 2–A 6.) Pedersen, Christiern (1529), Det Ny Tastamente [sic]: Jhesu Christi ord oc Euangelia som Han selff predickede oc lerde her paa Jorden, Antwerp: Willem Vosterman. Pedersen, Vibeke (et al.) (2007), 1100 – 1800, vol. I of Klaus P. Mortensen and May Schack (ed.), Dansk Litteraturs Historie, Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Peerszøn, Jens (1952), En merckelig grundfest disputatz […] med indledning ved Poul Andersen, Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard. Reinis, Austra (2006), Reforming the Art of Dying: The Ars Moriendi in the German Reformation (1519 – 1528), Aldershot: Ashgate. Resch, Claudia (2006), Trost im Angesicht des Todes. Frühe Reformatorische Anleitungen zur Seelsorge an Kranken und Sterbenden, Tübingen und Basel: A. Francke Verlag. Riising, Anne (1990), Le Livre et la RŒforme au Danemark et en NorvŒge 1523 – 40, in: J.F. Gilmont (ed.), La RŒforme et le Livre: l’Europe de l’ImprimŒ (1517–v.1570), Paris: Les vditions du Cerf, 441 – 58. Rørdam, H.F. (1883 – 1889), Danske Kirkelove 1536 – 1683 (3 b), Kjøbenhavn: Selskabet for Danmarks Kirkehistorie. Rørdam, H.F. (1898), Article “Christiern Pedersen”, in: C. F. Bricka (ed.), Dansk Biografisk Leksikon Tillige Omfattende Norge for Tidsrummet 1537 – 1814, b. XII, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 612 – 18.

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Sandolin, Jørgen J. (ca 1550), Den anden sang giort om Doctor Mortens Luthers siste Ord vnder de noder, In manus tuas sjunges met, Malmø. Schottroff, Luise (2012), Die Bereitung zum Sterben: Studien zu den Frühen Reformatorischen Sterbebüchern, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Schubart, Christof (1917), Die Berichte über Luthers Tod und Begräbnis. Texte und Untersuchungen, Weimar : Böhlau. Schwarz Lausten, Martin (1990), Weltliche Obrigkeit und Kirche bei König Christian III. von Dänemark (1536 – 1559). Hintergründe und Folgen, in: Leif Grane/Kai Hørby (ed.), Die Dänische Reformation vor ihrem Internationalen Hintergrund, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 91 – 107. Schwarz Lausten, Martin (1968), Biskop Niels Palladius: Et Bidrag til Den Danske Kirkes Historie 1550 – 60, Copenhagen: Gad. Schwarz Lausten, Martin (1995), The early Reformation in Denmark and Norway 1520 – 1559, in: Ole Petter Grell, The Scandinavian Reformation: from Evangelical Movement to Institutionalisation of Reform, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 12 – 41. Schwarz Lausten, Martin (2010), Die Heilige Stadt Wittenberg: Die Beziehungen des Dänischen Königshauses zu Wittenberg in der Reformationszeit, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. Schwarz Lausten, Martin (2010), Philipp Melanchton: Humanist og Luthersk reformator i Tyskland og Danmark, København: Forlaget ANIS. Skovgaard-Petersen, Karen (1998), A Safe Haven for the Church – on Melanchthon’s Influence on Historical Discourse in Sixteenth-Century Denmark, in: Birgit Stolt, Philipp Melanchthon und seine Rezeption in Skandinavien, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 113 – 35. Sonnenstein Wendt, C. (1860 – 62), To Psalmer fra Reformationstiden, in: Selskabet for Danmarks Kirkehistorie (ed.), Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, b. IV, Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 601 – 604.

Luca Baschera

Preparation for Death in Sixteenth-Century Zurich: Heinrich Bullinger and Otto Werdmüller

1

Introduction

Several prominent as well as less prominent sixteenth-century Protestant authors published pastoral works dedicated to the theme of preparing for death (cf. Schottroff: 2012, 107 – 135). On one hand, they carried on a tradition that began long before the Reformation and flourished especially in central Europe during the fifteenth century. As scholars in this field have shown, there is continuity between Protestant and earlier authors of ars moriendi booklets in terms of both genre and content (cf. Reinis: 2007). In fact, many topics, examples, and concepts encountered in these Protestant books were already an integral part of such literature. On the other hand, the theological framework had changed. Late medieval manuals of ars moriendi relied upon a soteriology according to which people cooperate to their own salvation through meritorious works, while salvation remains uncertain until the end of life. Against this background, physical death was depicted as the moment at which the decisive battle for eternal life or death takes place; in fact, depending on its outcome, the soul is saved or condemned. Moreover, this struggle can be won if two chief opposing temptations are resisted: despair and false security. Confidence in God’s grace without thought of reward is in some sense the extreme good work required of the Christian (Reinis: 2007, 17 – 22). As is well known, Reformation ideas questioned the very foundations of the late medieval doctrine of salvation. In particular, the two theses mentioned above were rejected. First, people do not cooperate in their salvation by meritorious works because redemption is an exclusive gift of God bestowed on humans by grace alone. This means, secondly, that salvation is certain for those who believe because it is based on Christ’s substitutionary atonement alone. Nonetheless, Protestant manuals on preparing for death often speak of the last hours of life as a moment of spiritual – not only physical or psychological – struggle. This leads us to ask: since salvation does not depend on human efforts, how should this last spiritual battle be conceived? Does the way in which a

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person behaves while dying bear in any way upon their eternal destiny? And if the answer to this question is yes, then how? In the following we will approach these questions through an analysis of two works on preparation for death, published in Zurich in the first half of the sixteenth century.

2

Heinrich Bullinger’s “Bericht der Krancken” and Otto Werdmüller’s “Der Tod”

Christoph Froschauer printed Heinrich Bullinger’s Bericht der Krancken in 1535 when Bullinger had already been at the head of the Reformed church in Zurich for four years. The book extended over 48 sheets in octavo and was divided into 15 chapters. Bullinger’s Bericht was reissued four times in Zurich and once in Augsburg (Staedtke: 1972, no. 74 – 78). In 1540, the Zurich pastor Diethelm Keller provided a Latin translation of the treatise (Staedtke: 1972, no. 80). In 2009, a critical edition of the German text was published as part of a volume in the series of Bullinger’s collected works (Bullinger : 2009). In contrast, the second work that we are going to examine as well as its author, Otto Werdmüller, remain quite unknown to Reformation scholars.1 A native of Zurich, Werdmüller spent nine years abroad for study purposes visiting the cities of Strasbourg, Wittenberg, Paris, and OrlŒans. After teaching at the faculty of liberal arts in Basel for about two years, he returned to Zurich in 1541. Although his first major work dealt with philosophy (Werdmüller : 1545; see Baschera 2014), after his ordination as deacon in 1543, he gradually abandoned his philosophical interests in order to completely dedicate himself to theology and preaching. In 1549, he published the treatise Der Tod: wie sich ein Christ in seinen und anderer todsnoeten halten, auch wie man die, denen jre geliebten verscheiden, aufrichten und troesten. The book, which extends over 110 sheets in duodecimo and is divided into 54 chapters, was reprinted twice in Zurich (1552, 1558). In contrast to Bullinger’s Bericht, it was never translated into Latin, but, interestingly enough, into English. In 1555 the former Bishop of Exeter, Miles Coverdale, provided an anonymous translation of Werdmüller’s Der Tod with the title, A moste frutefull, pithye and learned treatise, how a christen ma[n] ought to behave himself in the dau[n]ger of death (Wesel: Singleton). The English translation was reprinted twice in 1574 and 1595 (Pollard/Redgrave: 1976/1986, no. 25253 and 25254). Curiously enough, in the latter edition the printer attributed the text to Lady Jane Grey, the English noble woman and confessing 1 For an account of Otto Werdmüller’s life see Weisz: 1949, vol. 1, 60 – 72.

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Protestant, who had been designated by Edward VI as successor to the throne of England but was executed as a traitor in 1554 (cf. Werdmüller : 1595, A2v). The two treatises differ in length and in the disposition of their content: the two authors often deal with the same themes, but at differing points in their works. Beyond this, Werdmüller has more references to authors from classical antiquity, which is something that bears witness to his earlier interest in philology and philosophy. However, the overall structures of the two writings are quite similar. Both can be divided into roughly three parts: (1) an introduction in which the inevitability of death and its benefits are dealt with; (2) a central section dealing with preparation for death proper ; (3) a final part dealing with burial of the dead and consolation of the bereaved.

2.1

The Inevitability and Benefit of Death

Bullinger devotes the first five chapters of his treatise to the inevitability and benefit of death. In Werdmüller’s book it is dealt with in chapters 1 through 18. This section constitutes in both treatises a sort of introduction to the central part in which the spiritual struggles accompanying the last hours of life are dealt with. In fact both Bullinger and Werdmüller are convinced that, before addressing the main problem and the remedies thereto, it is necessary to undertake a negative preparation, namely, it is necessary to diminish the – otherwise natural – fear of death. This can be done, for example, by showing the readers that death – like everything that happens to humans – does not occur outside of God’s will (Bullinger : 2009, 194,13 – 16; Werdmüller : 1549, B2r–v). In illness and other extreme dangers, Christians should therefore commit themselves to God and rest in the confidence that he rules over their lives as a good father does. Furthermore, death should not be feared too much because it actually entails quite a few advantages. Death is indeed a punishment for sin, but it also frees us from many troubles, both physical and spiritual, such as sinful inclinations and temptation (Bullinger : 2009, 202; Werdmüller : 1549, [C8]v) as well as from illness and all sorts of pain (Bullinger : 2009, 201 f). Moreover, we should avoid excessive concern about the future loss of our belongings or anxiety for our surviving relatives. For, on one hand, what are even the most precious worldly goods in comparison with the heavenly and everlasting ones that await us after this life? (Bullinger : 2009, 203 f) On the other hand, concerning our relatives, it is of course necessary to make all necessary arrangements in due course, such as writing a testament and disposing the partition of one’s estate (Bullinger : 2009, 205; Werdmüller : 1549, H1r and M3v).2 2 Both Bullinger and Werdmüller advise also to refund whatever has been acquired unlawfully ;

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At the same time, we should not be overconcerned about them, but, after having done all we can, we should entrust everything else to God (Bullinger : 2009, 205,7 – 9; 207,19 – 22). In spite of the general similarity between Werdmüller’s and Bullinger’s argumentation, there are also a few differences, which testify to Werdmüller’s greater indebtedness to classical philosophy. So, for example, he opens his work in a quite scholarly manner by providing in the first chapter definitions of what physical and spiritual death are and distinguishing for both between a temporal and an eternal death (Werdmüller : 1549, [A7]v–[A8]v). Physical temporal death – which is the theme of his treatise – is then defined as “separation of the soul from the body,” (Werdmüller : 1549, B1r) an implicit quotation from Plato’s Gorgias.3 Moreover, Werdmüller insists already in the first part of his treatise on the immortality of the soul, a theme Bullinger will address only in chapter 8 of his Bericht der Krancken (Bullinger : 2009, 216). Although both retain this doctrine, Werdmüller seems to derive consolation more than Bullinger does from the idea that at death our soul is purified from all sins (Werdmüller : 1549, E4r–v) and freed from the “prison of the body,” ([E6]r) an expression also very much reminiscent of Platonic philosophy (cf. Plato: 1900, 400b–c; Plato: 1903, 493a).

2.2

Bullinger and Werdmüller on Preparing to Die

After the introductory section, Bullinger and Werdmüller turn to what can be considered the bulk of their treatises. In spite of the many similarities in terms of content, the structure of their argumentation in this second section is quite different so that it is preferable to look at Bullinger and Werdmüller separately. At the beginning of chapter 6, Bullinger announces the theme of what follows. Whereas chapters 1 through 5 had the purpose of freeing readers from immoderate concerns about earthly matters, the following section is designed to take away any anxiety concerning their eternal destiny. What is required in order to achieve this purpose is an “exhaustive instruction on that salvation which Jesus Christ purchased for us.” (Bullinger : 2009, 208,8 f) According to Bullinger, instruction in the Christian faith is indeed of the most practical relevance, since only through faith in Jesus Christ as our savior are we able to overcome the fear of death (208 f). In order for his readers to experience the benefit of consolation

those who are able to do so could additionally donate part of their possessions to the poor or entrust them to the church, cf. Bullinger: 2009, 206 f; Werdmüller : 1549, M3v–[M4]r. 3 Plato: 1903, 524b: “b h\mator tucw\mei ¥m, ¢r 1lo· doje?, oqd³m %kko C duo?m pqacl\toim di\kusir, t/r xuw/r ja· toO s~lator, !p’ !kk^koim.”

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derived from Christian faith, Bullinger goes through the main stations of Christ’s life: the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension (ch. 6 – 8). First, by uniting divine and human nature in the incarnate Word, God proclaims his will to “embrace humanity, to preserve and exalt it, as he preserved and exalted the man Jesus Christ.” (Bullinger : 2009, 210,10 – 13) Secondly, the passion of Christ shows us by which means God achieves this purpose: not by requiring human works of satisfaction, which we are in any case not able to fulfill, but by purifying us through the sacrifice of his Son, “atonement for our sins, eternally valid and pleasing to God.” (212,5 f) Those who trust in Jesus Christ are therefore reassured that “neither punishment, nor fire, nor pain will befall them,” (212,32 f) because “forgiveness of sin derives not from our suffering, but from the suffering of Christ, and is imparted to us through faith.” (213,14 f) However, Christ came to earth not only to liberate us from sin, but also to grant us eternal life. The third and fourth stations in Christ’s life – resurrection and ascension to heaven – make this clear. It is very appropriate to call Christ’s resurrection the foundation of Christian faith as Paul does (1 Cor 15:14). If Christ did not rise from the dead, we could think either that he did not overcome sin completely – since death is the wager of sin – or that death is the end of life altogether, there being nothing expecting us after the death of the body (Bullinger : 2009, 216). Christ’s resurrection is therefore a pledge to us that our body will rise again from the earth and unite with our soul in order to live eternally at the end of this present age (217,31 – 34).4 The ascension of Christ to heaven, for its part, clearly shows us where the souls and – after the final resurrection – also the bodies of the faithful will go, namely, “to the place of eternal joy and bliss.” (218,30) So far Bullinger explained the benefits and consolation derived from faith in Christ as Lord and savior. This should already be enough to give people hope and consolation and to alleviate their sorrow and fear of death. Since someone could nevertheless misinterpret the appeal to faith as something that deprives good works of any relevance, Bullinger dedicates the next four chapters (9 – 11) to an analysis of the fruits of faith. Such an analysis is necessary in order to show that

4 As already noted, Bullinger holds to the traditional doctrine of the immortality of the soul, maintaining that at the moment of death it departs from the body and attains immediately either bliss or damnation (Bullinger : 2009, 216,20 – 22: “Die seel laebt allweg, und so sy schon von dem lychnam scheydet, hoert sy nitt uff, sunder sy kumpt ylends zur saeligkeit oder zur verdamnuß.”). This is also the main reason why he rejects the practice of praying on behalf of the dead, cf. ibid., 227.

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Christian faith is not a mere feeling and even less a “dazzling babbling about the kingdom of heaven,” but a “power and vital force.”5 The first fruit that faith bears is regeneration. This has, in turn, two sides, namely, repentance for the sins committed and the determination to avoid evil as well as to strive for good. Thus, regeneration brings forth good works in the faithful, which – as Bullinger is eager to emphasize – are not done because one expects a reward for them, but as a sign of gratitude towards our gracious God (Bullinger : 2009, 220,12 – 16). Moreover, speaking of repentance, Bullinger takes the opportunity to briefly discuss the issue of penance. Although he does not altogether reject the possibility of confessing sins to a minister, for those who wish to do so, he also insists that only God can forgive, so that the so-called auricular confession is not mandatory in order to obtain absolution (220). Just as the confession of sins before a minister is not the condition to obtain pardon, receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion before dying is also unnecessary. Sick and dying people should content themselves with the memory of past participation in the sacrament in the community of believers and be consoled by the certitude – testified by the sacrament – of belonging to the body of Christ, the church (221 f). The second fruit of faith is love, which is also double-edged, directed towards both God and our neighbors. Love of our neighbor becomes explicit above all in our readiness to forgive those who offend us. Sick people should be exhorted to forgive their enemies and to pray God that he also forgives them (222 f). The faithful’s love towards God, for its part, brings about patience in times of trouble and illness. Only by being patient and steadfast in true faith are believers able to resist the temptations of the devil, who tries to lead them astray especially in such times of deep crisis. Relying on the long tradition of illustrated ars moriendi, Bullinger identifies despair and spiritual pride as the two main pitfalls into which the devil seeks to lure the faithful. Here Bullinger also outlines a kind of dialogue between the devil and the soul, which reminds of Jesus’ temptations (Matt 4:1 – 11) and imparts important pastoral advice to the reader in a lively and impressive manner (Bullinger : 2009, 224). Finally, Bullinger refers to prayer as the third and last fruit or effect of faith. Prayer is indeed a powerful tool, since the Lord Jesus promised to grant the faithful whatever they ask for in his name (cf. John 16:23). Christians should pray both for themselves and for others, without forgetting to always give praise and thanks to God for creating, preserving, and redeeming them in Jesus Christ. When praying for others, they should pray for both friends and enemies, also interceding for Christ’s church. Bullinger was indeed convinced of the power of 5 Bullinger : 2009, 220,7 f: “der gloub ein krafft und laebende würckung Gottes im menschen ist und nit nun ein glatts gschwaetz vom himmelrych.”

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intercession, admonishing his readers not to scorn, but rather to require that others pray for them in times of trouble (Bullinger : 2009, 227). Besides this advice on how to pray, Bullinger also wanted to give his readers an example of how a “good” prayer should look and produced for this purpose a prayer sample, a sort of ready-to-use prayer that contains all requisites mentioned above (226). The main section of Bullinger’s treatise finishes with chapter 12 in which all that was said so far is reviewed on the basis of the passion of Christ. Bullinger, who also at this point draws on tradition while modifying it, distinguishes between seven stations of the passion: the celebration of the last supper, the footwashing, Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, the arrest, the derision of Christ, the crucifixion, and the entombment (228 – 232). The ill person should meditate on each of the stations of Christ’s passion in order to draw consolation and assurance. Another traditional piece of devotion that Bullinger includes in this context is a section on the crucifixion, which is enlarged with a meditation on each of the so-called “seven last words of Jesus on the cross.” (230 f; cf. LThK3, vol. 6, 457 f) On the whole, we can say that Bullinger drew on the traditional celebration of the “way of the cross,” which also counted seven stations in its oldest version (cf. LThK3, vol. 6, 466 – 468), purging it from any extra-biblical references and combining it with the tradition of the “last seven words.” Now turning to Werdmüller, we see that he also opens the second section of his treatise by presenting faith in Christ as the only efficacious aid to contrast fear of death. Like Bullinger, he goes through all of the main stations of Christ’s life (incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension) explaining which type of consolation derives from each. However, in contrast to Bullinger’s three chapters, Werdmüller treats this theme in one single chapter (20). He writes that it is by faith that Christ is recognized as “our hope, our salvation, our triumph, our crown.” (Werdmüller : 1549, G2v) Still, Werdmüller insists that serious training is necessary in order for Christians to experience the deep consolation which arises from the knowledge of Christ as their savior. Chapters 26 – 38 are devoted to describing this training. The two exhortations to take spiritual training seriously that frame this subsection are witness to the importance of the practice of piety in Werdmüller’s eyes. He repeatedly urges his readers that in this respect they are to act like a good father, who provides his family in due course with what they need ([G8]r–v), or even as a good soldier, who never sleeps on watch, but waits prepared and armed for the enemies ([L8]r–v). Werdmüller points out that first of all one must realize that the fear of death can only be overcome through concentration on Christ alone as mediator and redeemer ; peace of mind is only possible if we look at death in light of Christ’s work of redemption. Otherwise, separated from Christ and God’s Word, disbelief and despair take control of us (ch. 26). However, such total concentration on and surrender to Christ is something in

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which we have to be schooled. This happens through repentance and confession of sin (ch. 27), and by turning away from creatures and orienting ourselves toward Christ. In this context, Werdmüller recommends meditating especially the four final articles of the Apostles Creed (Werdmüller : 1549, J2r). He also gives practical instruction on how to resist despair in the form of a dialogue between death and the human soul (J5r–v ; cf. [J8]r–v). Such instruction is of the utmost importance, since those who do not persevere in faith, but turn away from Christ in the last hour, bring “eternal disgrace” (ewige schand) upon themselves ([J7]r). Besides confession of sin and meditation on the concluding articles of the Apostles Creed, Werdmüller also advises to recall the meaning of the sacraments, which the sick person received in the past, both baptism and the Holy Supper being signs of God’s promise to join us to himself through Christ and thus to save us. However, like Bullinger, Werdmüller excludes the possibility to administer the sacrament of Holy Communion to ill people at their home in the conviction that this would be contrary to the nature of the Holy Supper, which is a communal meal ([J7]v–[J8]r). As we have seen, Werdmüller insists on the necessity of serious preparation for death. At the same time, he admonishes his readers always to bear in mind that nobody would be able to do such exercises without God’s help. Therefore, everything should be done in prayer. In chapter 31, he states what Christians should pray for ([J8]v–K2r). First of all, we should ask God for spiritual goods, such as right understanding of his Word, remission of sins, and an increase in faith. It is also allowed to pray for material goods like physical health and a long life, yet only upon the condition that we always commit ourselves to the will of God. Finally, prayer would not be well shaped, if we would not intercede before God for our friends and our enemies alike, always giving praise and thanks to God for all he bestows on us. In the next two chapters (32 and 33) – similar to what Bullinger did in his treatise – Werdmüller gives two examples of well shaped prayers, one being petitionary and the other focusing on praise and thanksgiving. Both have an explicitly Trinitarian structure in which all three persons of the Trinity are addressed separately, one after the other. Thus, in the second prayer, God the Father is praised and thanked for creation, conservation, and salvation; God the Son for his willingness to suffer on our behalf; God the Holy Spirit for all that he bestows on us, such as understanding, faith, consolation, and patience (Werdmüller : 1549, L1r–L2r). Concluding the excursus on prayer, he recommends frequent use of the Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer, and advises his readers – as Bullinger did – to ask others to pray on their behalf (L2r–v). Finally, after having reminded his readers not to neglect the frequent reading of Scripture (ch. 35), he draws the second section of his treatise to a conclusion with an exhortation to patience, which can only arise from complete surrender

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to Christ (ch. 38). Werdmüller sets the suffering Christ before his readers as an example to be imitated, and he explicitly points to Bullinger’s meditation on the last seven words of Jesus on the cross (Werdmüller : 1549, L5r–v), just as we find it in the Bericht der Krancken. This explicit reference to Bullinger bears witness to the fact that Werdmüller indeed knew and esteemed Bullinger’s work, something also confirmed by the numerous similarities between the two tracts. However, immediately after the section on preparing to die, Werdmüller inserted in his treatise something that cannot be found in Bullinger’s text: a complete liturgy for the visitation of the sick. If the preceding section was directed to any believer, this one is explicitly presented as a guide for the caregiver. It could be that by providing this deathbed-liturgy Werdmüller wanted to fill a gap in the official collection of prayers and liturgies of the Zurich church, the so-called Christennlich Ordnung (1535; ed. in Zwingli: 1927, 695 – 706). This collection, contrary to its counterpart in Basel (Oecolampadius: 1526, [C6]r–[D7]v), did not include any advice concerning the visitation of the sick. Therefore, it seems probable that Werdmüller conceived this text as a sort of handout to support pastors in their ministry to dying people. Werdmüller’s liturgy contains questions and prayers to be read by the ministers as well as more general instructions, which serve as guidelines for pastors. It is interesting to note that in this relatively short text most of the themes Werdmüller discussed so far are addressed and made concrete in praxis. After having exhorted the dying to commit herself to God, the pastor should lead her in confessing her sins, also reassuring her that her trespasses are forgiven in Jesus Christ (Werdmüller : 1549, N4r–[N6]v). This is the only part with a dialogical form in Werdmüller’s liturgy. It follows a recitation and explanation of the Creed, an admonition to recall the sacraments received in the past and their meaning, as well as an exhortation to ask God in prayer for all spiritual goods ([N6]v–[N7]r). A recitation and explanation of the Lord’s Prayer serves as an introduction to a prayer of the dying herself. After having exhorted the other people present at the deathbed to pray for their dying relative or friend, the pastor reads several biblical texts from the Old and the New Testament and admonishes the dying to give thanks to God for all she received in her life, to pardon her offenders, and to be patient in her pains. To this effect the pastor finally points to the example of Christ, who also patiently carried his cross ([N7]r–[N8]v). Werdmüller provides as well a shorter form of this liturgy, to be used when dying people are no more able to speak. In this case, the pastor should exhort the suffering person to face death bravely, reassuring her that Christ will not abandon her. After having asked for a sign confirming that the dying has understood what was said, the pastor finally exhorts her to commit herself to God,

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repeating in her heart the words of Christ on the cross: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). In the case that the dying had not only lost her speech, but also her understanding, Werdmüller suggests not to address her directly, but only to pray for her silently (Werdmüller : 1549, [N8]v–O1r).

2.3

Burial of the Dead and Consolation of the Bereaved

Concerning burial rituals, both Bullinger and Werdmüller touch on three topics: prayers for the dead, the necessity of a dignified interment, and the place of burial.6 Prayers for the dead are clearly rejected as something unnecessary and useless (Bullinger) or even scandalous (Werdmüller). They are superfluous, because Christian doctrine teaches that after the death of the body the soul achieves immediately – and definitely – the place where it is going to dwell in eternity (Bullinger : 2009, 227,16 – 18; Werdmüller : 1549, O1v); they are, from a Reformed point of view, scandalous because the practice of praying for the souls of the departed implies faith in some sort of Purgatory (Werdmüller : 1549, O1v). Bullinger and Werdmüller agree furthermore in their emphasis about the necessity of handling corpses with care and respect, since the human body is an instrument of God and has been appointed to life eternal (Bullinger : 2009, 233,10 – 12). A dignified burial is the last service we can do to our dead and has a symbolic meaning: just as the seed has to be buried in order to germ and become a plant, also the corpse must be buried in order to resurrect in the last day to eternal life (Werdmüller : 1549, O1v). In harmony with their emphasis on the necessity of burying dead people in a dignified manner, Bullinger and Werdmüller argue that as a general rule corpses should be interred in a cemetery. However, if for any reason such a “normal” burial turns out to be impossible – as when someone dies by fire or drowns – this should not matter too much. For, in view of the eternal destiny of the dead, it is in the end irrelevant how and where someone finds his final resting place (Bullinger : 2009, 232,18 – 22). A peculiarity of Werdmüller’s treatment of burial has to do with the question of the proper placement of cemeteries. Unlike Bullinger – who does not devote special attention to this issue – Werdmüller endorses the relocation of cemeteries outside the walls of cities for hygienic reasons (Werdmüller : 1549, O2v). Of the utmost pastoral relevance is the last issue Bullinger and Werdmüller discuss in their treatises, that is, how the bereaved can find consolation. First of all, it has to be emphasized that neither of them advocates any form of stoic, passionless detachment in the face of the death of our beloved ones. In fact, 6 A brief description of how funerals were accomplished in Zurich in the sixteenth century can be found in Bullinger : 2004, vol. 4, 523 (Decade 5,10).

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sorrow is “natural” (Werdmüller : 1549, [O4]v) and Scripture does not condemn it at all (Bullinger : 2009, 233,20 f). However, both Bullinger and Werdmüller insist on the importance of being moderate when mourning the dead (Bullinger : 2009, 233,13 – 15.23 f; Werdmüller : 1549, P1r). In support of this view, Bullinger quotes a passage from Cyprian’s treatise De mortalitate and refers to David’s reply to his servants, who asked why he did not mourn for his dead son: “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept […] But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?” (2 Sam 12:22 – 23; Bullinger : 2009, 234). In accordance with his general tendency to rely more often than Bullinger did on sources from classical antiquity, Werdmüller cites several examples of famous Greeks and Romans, who showed great patience when their relatives or friends died (Werdmüller : 1549, R1v–R5r). Moreover, it is the same Werdmüller who encapsulates the whole issue of moderation when mourning the dead in this concise formula: “We should love our children and friends in such a way that we are always ready to depart from them.” ([R6]v) In other words, preparation is necessary not only in view of personal death, but also in view of the death of our relatives and friends.

3

Traditional Themes

If we consider Bullinger and Werdmüller’s treatises against the background of late medieval manuals on dying well, a few similarities between the work of these two Reformed authors and their Roman Catholic predecessors emerge. First of all, just as with Bullinger and Werdmüller, most of the popular booklets of ars moriendi circulating on the eve of the Reformation addressed both clerics and laity (Rudolf: 1957, 2 and 113; Reinis: 2007, 143). Secondly, several themes and patterns present in both Bullinger and Werdmüller were part of the tradition. This is the case, for example, with the demonic assaults that Bullinger describes in a dialogue between the devil and the dying soul in chapter 10 of the Bericht der Krancken. This theme had been at the center of the so-called Illustrated ars moriendi (Bilderars) (cf. Appel: 1938, 75 – 85; Rudolf: 1957, 69 – 74) and was drawn upon also by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his treatise De praeparatione ad mortem (1533).7 Moreover, both Bullinger and Werdmüller conclude the main sections of their treatises with an exhortation to meditate on Christ’s passion, and they present Christ as an example to be imitated by the dying person. This was also a traditional pattern found in several works in7 Because of this and other similarities between Bullinger’s and Erasmus’ treatises Luise Schottroff (2012, 86 f) did not hesitate to regard Erasmus’ De praeparatione ad mortem as the main source Bullinger relied upon.

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cluding the popular treatise Speculum artis bene moriendi attributed to Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl (ca. 1360 – 1433) (cf. Rudolf: 1957, 75 f). Finally, most of the late medieval manuals contained prayers for sick or dying people to recite, exhorting them to patience and pardoning, even encouraging them to pay off their debts, and redact a testament (Rudolf: 1957, 107). Both Bullinger and Werdmüller discuss in their works all of these themes. At the same time, in spite of their evident reliance on late medieval models, the two men remained true to their Protestant convictions, dissociating themselves from such practices as the invocation of saints or prayers to the Virgin Mary. However, probably the most striking similarity between the writings of the two theologians from Zurich and those of their medieval predecessors has to do, so to speak, with the atmosphere of their treatises. I refer here to the emphasis with which the moment of death is described as a struggle or battle that can only be won if Christians duly prepare for it. Bullinger writes that only upon this condition “will we attain eternal life after death.” (Bullinger : 2009, 192,30 f) He also describes salvation as something we have to “pursue” (nachjagend) (214,18), bravely resisting the temptations of the devil, who seeks to make us renounce our faith (224,1 – 3). Werdmüller echoes Bullinger’s exhortations when he asks rhetorically : “Those who in mortal danger abandon their heavenly Lord Jesus Christ, are they not to bring eternal disgrace upon themselves?” (Werdmüller : 1549, [J7]r) Werdmüller also often uses military imagery to describe the situation of Christians facing death. He compares them to besieged cities, surrounded by an entire army of devils (C2v ; F2r), and labels what awaits them as the “biggest and most dangerous struggle and battle.”8 How should we understand such expressions? Do they mean perhaps that salvation does depend after all in some sense on human action, at least negatively, in that humans cannot obtain it through their own efforts, but indeed can loose it because of their frailty? Is this the reason why Bullinger and Werdmüller so vehemently exhort their readers to prepare for this final, most critical moment in their lives? More generally, the question at stake here is: how can such statements about the spiritual dangers connected to death and the necessity to prepare for the final struggle be reconciled with the Reformed doctrine of salvation by grace apart from human works?

8 Werdmüller : 1549, M3r : “den allerhoechsten und gfaarlichesten kampff unnd streit.”

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325

The Final Struggle: a Reformed View

In her study of Reformed manuals on preparation for death, Marianne Carbonnier-Burkard denies that Reformed authors saw any soteriological relevance in the final struggle before death. According to this view, since salvation depends entirely on God’s grace and is a certainty for believers, the final hours are indeed emotionally, but not soteriologically challenging. Nevertheless, the emotional challenge is so massive that it can only be faced with proper training. Preparation for death appears to be a type of prophylactic pastoral care. Its purpose as well as the purpose of all pastoral care at the end of life is consolatory (Carbonnier-Burkard: 2000, 379). This interpretation, however, does not seem to do justice to such passages – as mentioned above – which confirm the soteriological relevance of the spiritual struggle at the end of life even to the effect of adumbrating the possible loss of salvation. Therefore, an alternative interpretation of Bullinger and Werdmüller’s views on preparation for death seems to be required. According to Reformed theology, salvation is certain when we persevere in faith in the triune God – faith itself being a gift of God. To those whom God calls by grace to salvation, he also gives faith. Therefore, if faith can by no means be regarded as a meritorious work or cause of salvation, it is nonetheless a sign of God’s election. Moreover, both Scripture (cf. Matt 13:18 – 23) and experience9 taught the Reformed theologians that many people, who claim to believe in God, often deny their faith later. Some of those who behave like this never really believed, but were only hypocrites; others did in fact believe, but their faith was too weak to resist intense temptations or persecution. Now, the moment in which our faith is tested more than in any other situation is when we die; therefore, the spiritual struggle at the deathbed does not only have emotional but also soteriological relevance. Not in the sense that our salvation depends on the result of this struggle, but because the result (whether we persevere in faith or despair) is interpreted as a sign distinguishing whether we belong to the company of the elect or of the reprobate. Within this perspective, despairing in the last hour would mean that we never believed. However, despair is only one of the two temptations that assail the soul at the deathbed. The second one is spiritual pride, i. e., an over-confidence in one’s spiritual strength. In order to avoid this second danger, it is necessary – as Bullinger and Werdmüller emphasize – to always remember that the outcome of 9 Perhaps the most famous case of a Protestant “apostate” was that of the Italian lawyer Francesco Spiera, who died in despair in 1549, believing that by renouncing his belief in salvation by faith he had betrayed Christ. In the following decades the “Spiera affaire” was often quoted in Protestant literature as a warning to those tempted to give up their beliefs, cf. Overell: 1995.

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the final struggle, exactly as our being saved, depends on God alone. Only by grace are we saved, and only by grace can we overcome the last enemy – death – without falling into despair. This is the reason why prayer is the most important aspect in the lifelong process of preparing for death. Both Bullinger and Werdmüller insist, on the one hand, on the importance of prayer, and therefore, they supply their readers with prayer samples for private use. On the other hand, their emphasis on prayer goes even further by contending that for them the practice of prayer is an expression of a more fundamental attitude, an attitude of total surrender to the Lord in every respect, in every moment, and situation. In conclusion, we can say that the emphasis of Reformed authors such as Bullinger and Werdmüller on the necessity of proper preparation for death, as well as their description of the moment of physical death as a final “struggle” or “battle” appears to have the same theological foundation as their emphasis on sanctification. In Reformed theology, sanctification is something to which believers are seriously called and committed.10 At the same time, sanctification is a process that is initiated by grace and is never complete during this life, remaining instead inchoative.11 Therefore, on one hand, although Christians are confronted with their sinfulness every day, they will trust in God who saves them, not on account of any alleged merit, but only by grace. On the other hand, seeing that they always remain “beginners” on the path of sanctification, they will beware of overconfidence and be compassionate towards their erring brothers and sisters. The same is true of the preparation for death that Bullinger and Werdmüller encourage. Preparation for death is indeed a lifelong process with soteriological relevance. Believers are called to prepare and should practice in order to win the final struggle. At the same time, they must practice in the firm conviction that their victory does not depend on their efforts, but only on God. Only in this way will they avoid both of the pitfalls into which the devil tries to lure them: despair and spiritual pride. 10 Cf. Bullinger : 2004, vol. 2, 335 (Decade 3,9): “The same Holy Spirit which giveth faith doth therewithal also regenerate the understanding and will, so that the faithful doth ardently desire, and do his endeavour in all things, to do service to God his maker”; Calvin: 1949, vol. 1, 510 (Institutes 3,3,1): “It is certain that no man can embrace the grace of the Gospel without betaking himself from the errors of his former life into the right path and making it his whole study to practise repentance.” 11 Cf. Bullinger : 2004, vol. 3, 107 (Decade 4,2): “They that are regenerate by the Holy Spirit of God are never so purged that they feel no motions of the flesh, of sin, and of carnal affections. … Whereupon it cometh that in the saints there is a perpetual and very sharp battle”; Calvin: 1980, 149: “Regeneration only begins [inchoatur] in this life. The remnants of the flesh that remain always follow their corrupt affections, and thus arouse the struggle against the Spirit.”

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Bibliography Primary Literature Bullinger, Heinrich (2004), Decades, transl. by Thomas Harding, 4 vols in 2 tomes, Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books (reprint). Bullinger, Heinrich (2009), Bericht der Krancken, in: Heinrich Bullinger, Pastoraltheologische Schriften, ed. by Detlef Roth, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 191 – 237. Calvin, Jean (1949), Institutes of Christian Religion, transl. by Henry Beveridge, 2 vols, London: Clarke. Calvin, Jean (1980), Commentary on Romans, in: Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 8, transl. by Roos MacKenzie, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1 – 328. Oecolampadius, Johannes (1526), Form und gstalt wie der kinder tauff, des herren Nachtmal und der Krancken heymsuochung, jetz zuo Basel von etlichen Predicanten gehalten werden, Basel: Thomas Wolff. Plato (1900), Plato, Cratylus, in: Platonis opera, vol. 1, ed. by John Burnet, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Plato (1903), Plato, Gorgias, in: Platonis opera, vol. 3, ed. by John Burnet, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Werdmüller, Otto (1545), De dignitate, usu et methodo philosophiae moralis, Basel: Hieronymus Curio. Werdmüller, Otto (1549), Der Tod: wie sich ein Christ in seinen und anderer todsnoeten halten, auch wie man die, denen jre geliebten verscheiden, aufrichten und troesten, Zurich: Augustin Frieß. Werdmüller, Otto (1595), A moste fruitfull, pithie, and learned treatyse, how a Christian man ought to behaue himselfe in the danger of death, London: William Blackwall. Zwingli, Huldrych (1927), Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4, ed. by Walther Köhler and Oskar Farner, Leipzig: Heinsius.

Secondary Literature Appel, Helmut (1938), Anfechtung und Trost im Spätmittelalter und bei Luther, Leipzig: Heinsius. Baschera, Luca (2014), Shaping reformed Aristotelianism: Otto Werdmüller’s evaluation of the Nicomachean Ethics in De dignitate/usu et methodo philosophiae moralis (1545), in: Following Zwingli: Applying the Past in Reformation Zürich, ed. Luca Baschera, Bruce Gordon and Christian Moser, Farnham: Ashgate, 209 – 31. Carbonnier-Burkard, Marianne (2000), Les manuels rŒformŒs de prŒparation | la mort, RHR 217/3, 363 – 380. Overell, Anne (1995), The Exploitation of Francesco Spiera, SCJ 26/3, 619 – 637. Pollard, Alfred W./Redgrave, Gilbert R. (1976/1986), A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475 – 1640, 2 vol., London: Bibliographical Society.

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Reinis, Austra (2007), Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519 – 1528), Aldershot: Ashgate. Rudolf, Rainer (1957), Ars moriendi: Von der Kunst des heilsamen Lebens und Sterbens, Köln/Graz: Böhlau. Schottroff, Luise (2012), Die Bereitung zum Sterben: Studien zu den frühen reformatorischen Sterbebüchern, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Staedtke, Joachim (1972), Heinrich Bullinger : Bibliographie, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. Weisz, Leo (1949), Die Werdmüller : Schicksale eines alten Zürcher Geschlechtes, 3 vols, Zurich: Schulthess.

Herman A. Speelman

Melanchthon and Calvin on Confession, Contrition, and Penitence

Daily Practices of Life and Death The Reformers on the whole considered the pastor to be responsible for the fate or salvation of the members of his congregation through the administration of the Word and the sacraments. The reform of the church was of great impact for the first generations of evangelical Christians in the sixteenth century, especially in matters pertaining to the certainty of forgiveness and eternal life. In the beginning in particular, the existing state was one of chaos, confusion, and even crisis. How should one now live and die? Where should one confess and meet God? In the medieval period, the Church had been the micro-manager for each person’s life from birth to death; in the Reformation period, however, people were thrown back on themselves, and placed directly “before God’s throne of judgment (coram Dei tribunali)” (OS 1, 469). And because human beings never completely fulfil their duty towards God, “we all deserve his curse, judgment, in short, eternal death” (OS 1, 37 – 40). It was only through the grace of God in Christ that someone could gain eternal life.1 But how does someone receive reconciliation and peace with God for both time and eternity? The Reformers attempted to explain the new doctrines to the people, translating theory into daily practices. In 1524, for example, Luther translated into German a well known medieval hymn2 entitled Media vita in morte sumus (“In 1 The foundation of our life and salvation is: “that by his death we are redeemed from the condemnation of death (a mortis damnatione) and freed from ruin, that we have been adopted unto him as sons and heirs by the Father (adoptati a patre), that we have been reconciled to the Father through his blood (reconciliati), that, by the Father given unto his protection, we may never perish or fall, that thus engrafted into him (inserti) we are already, in a manner, partakers of eternal life (vita aeterna), having entered the Kingdom of God (in regnum Dei) through hope.” OS 1 (Inst. 1536), 63 = CO 1, 51. 2 Media vita in morte sumus; quem quaerimus adjutorem, nisi te Domine, qui pro peccatis nostris juste irasceris? Sancte Deus, sancte fortis, sancte et misericors Salvator, amarae morti ne tradas nos. (“In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased? Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty,

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the midst of life we are in death”), a plea to God which sings of death, human misery (hominis de miseria), and the compassion of the Saviour (misericors Salvator). Three years later, in The Instructions for preachers (UdV, art. 15), Melanchthon stipulated that this Lutheran hymn on life and death should be taken up in funeral services. Furthermore, the Dutch poet Muus Jacobse went on to adapt this song for the mystery of Holy Communion: Surrounded by death/ we are alive/ because Someone breaks the bread/ to live with us/ in death. Death is in our blood/ death facing us/ but He gives us courage/ that we might live/ with death in our blood. That from death/ we might rise to live/ eating from the bread/ that He gave us/ in death. Lamp for our feet/ light for our eyes/ give us courage/ with death facing us/ with death in our blood. Jesus, from death/ you rose to live/ be our bread/ that we might live in you/ surrounded by death. Be our wine/ that we might drink of you/ Be our pain/ that we might fall into you/ that we might be in you.3

In this article, I would like to draw your attention to two issues related to the theme for this conference: “preparing for death”. These two issues were crucial in the Reformations initiated in Wittenberg and Geneva: the role and experience of penance and the Eucharist in the daily religious practices connected to the new teachings. The “continuous penance” with which Luther initiated the Reformation in 1517 was repeated by Calvin, who described the resurrection of the Lord as a daily “dying of the old” and simultaneously as the “revival of the new” in every O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.”). For Luther’s version see note 301 below. 3 “Midden in de dood/ zijn wij in het leven,/ want EŒn breekt het brood/ om met ons te leven/ midden in de dood. Dood is in ons bloed,/ dood voor onze ogen,/ maar Hij geeft ons moed,/ dat wij leven mogen/ met de dood in ’t bloed. Dat wij uit de dood/ opstaan om te leven,/ etend van het brood/ dat Hij heeft gegeven/ midden in de dood. Lamp voor onze voet,/ licht voor onze ogen,/ geef ons levensmoed/ met de dood voor ogen,/ met de dood in ’t bloed. Jezus, uit de dood/ opgestaan tot leven,/ wees voor ons het brood,/ dat wij in U leven/ midden in de dood. Wees voor ons de wijn,/ dat wij van U drinken./ Wees voor ons de pijn,/ dat wij in U zinken,/ dat wij in U zijn.” in: LvdK 359; a Dutch translation of Luther’s version of Mitten wir im Leben sind is printed in the same book as hymn 272.

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person.4 Calvin drew a distinction between the two medieval definitions of penitential confession: on the one hand, ecclesiastical confession and penitential practices, which included an element of strict social control; and, on the other hand, the preaching of the forgiveness of sins. I will come back to the former aspect of penance in Part II below. But as for the latter, more spiritual and internal side of penance, Calvin described it as a lifelong process, “a veritable conversion of our life to God. On this account, in my judgment, repentance is mortification of our flesh and of the old man, which true and pure fear of God brings about in us” (OS 1, 171).5 Calvin understood the same to be true in regard to the Spirit’s work to make the new man alive. Luther sings: 1. Mitten wir im Leben sind Mit dem Tod umfangen. Wen such’n wir, der Hilfe tu’, Daß; wir Gnad’ erlangen? Das bist du, Herr, alleine! Uns reuet unsre Missetat, Die dich, Herr, erzürnet hat. Refrain:6 1. In the midst of earthly life Snares of death surround us; Who shall help us in the strife Lest the Foe confound us? Thou only, Lord, Thou only. We mourn that we have greatly erred, That our sins Thy wrath have stirred. Chorus:

4 See for example Inst. 3.2.8, Inst. 3.3.3, Inst. 3.11.1 and Inst. 4.1.1, 9 – 10. 5 Cf. OS 4 (Inst. 3.3.5), 60. 6 Heiliger Herre Gott, Heiliger, starker Gott, Heiliger, barmherziger Heiland, Du ewiger Gott, Laß uns nicht versinken In des bittern Todes Not! Kyrieleison! Holy and righteous God! Holy and mighty God! Holy and all-merciful Saviour! Eternal Lord God! Save us lest we perish In the bitter pangs of death. Have mercy, O Lord!

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As a movement, the Reformation set itself against the externalization of religion. Luther introduced his theology of the cross (theologia crucis) for the sake of an internal and external penance encompassing all of life. Penitence was a program for entering life and death. This is evident, for example, from the very outset of his 95 theses of 1517. According to Luther, Jesus in Matt 4:17 “does not purpose only inner repentance; indeed, the innermost repentance is nothing, unless it results in diverse outward mortifications of the flesh. And so the penalty remains as long as hatred of self (odium sui) – that is, true penitence within; penitentia vera intus – remains”, that is to say a man’s whole life “until such a time as he enters into the kingdom of heaven” (the third and fourth proposition). At the end of the disputation, Luther makes the connection with the practice of the imitatio Christi. A true Christian enters into the kingdom of heaven “through penalties, death and hell”, through much tribulation, and not through the security of falsely preached peace. The Existing Law of Confession The Reformers resisted the papal law of confession because of its take on the significance of evil. As the famous first sentence of the confessional decree of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 put it: “All the faithful of either sex, after they have reached the age of discernment, should individually confess all their sins in a faithful manner to their own priest at least once a year (…) Let them reverently receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist at least at Easter” (Tanner : 1990, vol.1, 245).7 However, time and again the complaint was raised that it was impossible “to list all sins”. In 1527 Melanchthon summed up the recurring complaint when he wrote the following words: “We do not need to abide by the pope’s decree to list all sins.” As we can read in Psalm 19, it is impossible to obey this law: “Who can detect his own failings? Wash out my hidden faults.” Still, Melanchthon, like Calvin would do after him, argues in his first church order that there are many reasons to encourage confession, especially when people are lost and “are in need of counselling” (UdV, art. 8). Of course, the Church’s law of confession could have been interpreted less literally by, for example, understanding the confession of all sins to refer to what could be called a “complete confession”, that is, a confession that includes all the essential elements of the sins committed. Throughout the 1540s, and even in the last edition of Calvin’s Institutes as it was composed in the late 1550s, this issue continued to be a point of discussion. Like Melanchthon, Calvin bases his argument on the Book of Prayers in the Bible, in which he finds evidence for his position that it is impossible for him to 7 Cf. Mansi: 1960 f, vol.22, 1010. For a comparison between Canon 21 (1215) and Calvin’s penitential system, see Speelman 2010.

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list all his sins. “From the depths of his evil deeds David cried out to the Lord: “I am overwhelmed, I am buried, I am choked, the gates of hell have encompassed me.” I am sunk down into the deep pit, may thy hand draw me out, weak and dying.” David understood “how great the abyss of our sins is (quanta esset peccatorum nostrorum abyssus),” and, referring to the apocalyptic beast of Revelation, “how many heads this snake has and how long a tail it drags behind it (quot capita ferret et quam longam caudam traheret haec hydra)” (OS 1, 182). According to Calvin, this shows us what Scripture means when it speaks of “death.” As he understood it, “to die” and “to descend into hell” also included “alienation from God” and “depression caused by the judgment of God.” Such remedies as the enumeration of all one’s sins and the attempt to attain salvation through good works will not suffice. The result was a crisis for eternity, as the Reformation taught that even every good work is in fact a cardinal or mortal sin. On their own, humans are entirely incapable of doing any good and inclined to all kinds of evil. Spiritually dead and abandoned by God, we are lost without any hope of saving ourselves.8 As Paul depicts our dire situation in Romans 7: “Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?” 2. Mitten in dem Tod anficht Uns der Hölle Rachen. Wer will uns aus solcher Frei und ledig machen? Das tust du, Herr, alleine! Es jammert dein’ Barmherzigkeit Unsre Sünd’ und großes Leid. Refrain: 2. In the midst of death’s dark vale Powers of hell o’ertake us. Who will help when they assail, Who secure will make us? Thou only, Lord, Thou only Thy heart is moved with tenderness, Pities us in our distress. Chorus:

8 Cf. OS 4 (Inst. 3.4.16), 104 = CO 2, 469. Oberman: 1991, 22 and 24. WA 1, Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute 1518, 608; WA 8, Rationis Latomianae confutatio 1521, 93; WA 7, Grund und Ursach aller Artikel D. Martin Luthers so durch römische Bulle unrechtlich verdammt sind 1521, 438 and 433.

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Penance and the Daily Practices of Life and Death

Within the stronghold of the Reformed camp, the big themes were the views on penance and communion, with competing visions at times colliding with each other. How could these new teachings be translated into daily religious practices (for life and death)? A constant attitude of repentance, in which one prepares for death, simultaneously served as the starting point for a new kind of life. In these reforms, then, the precise content of Christian penance was of great importance. In what follows, I will provide two examples.

1.1

Melanchthon and the New Practice

In his 1527 Articles and in the Instructions for the Visitors of Parish Pastors in Electoral Saxony which followed soon after, Melanchthon draws attention to the issue of penance in an innovative manner. Just like Christ preached penitence and the forgiveness of sins, the Articles claim, so “shepherds of souls should pass on knowledge of these things to the congregations. Now we preach a lot about faith. Faith, however, cannot be understood without penitence.” If there is no preceding penitence, if there is no fear of God and the law, so Melanchthon thought, then faith will be like pouring new wine into old wineskins, so that people grow used to “fleshly certainties (carnal security)”. For Melanchthon, a major goal of preaching was to consider what God says to us and sends our way. In the visitation documents he sharply condemns onesided preaching. Also the law and the temporary and eternal punishment with which God threatens sinners should be preached. When God in this way “scares the heart and brings someone to fear judgment”, he produces fertile ground for receiving the subsequent comfort of the gospel. Here penitence precedes faith, just like the preaching of the law precedes the preaching of the gospel (AV, art. 1: Primum quid sit fides). For those who preach both law and gospel, penitence in the sense of “killing the flesh” and “mortification of the old man” remains a vital part of their faith, as a Christian is simultaneously both righteous (or acquitted) and a sinner (simul iustus et peccator). The suffering which Christians experience in their lives also serves a purpose in moving them towards penance, so that the oppression that is part of “the teaching of the law” can serve as a punishment for their sins (AV, art. 2: De cruce).9 However, in spite of the emphasis he puts on 9 The Heidelberg Catechism (32, 88) confesses that the two main parts of the Christian life (die wahrhaftige busz oder bekerung des menschen) are the mortification of the old man and the vivification of the new. For the influence of Melanchthon on the Heidelberg Catechism, see Visser : 1997, 373 – 389.

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fear for the judgment and punishment of God, Melanchthon does not teach a medieval attritionism. Accordingly, in the part devoted to “the fear of God,” he distinguishes between “the fear of a slave” (timor servilis) that he finds in James 2:19, which only fears judgment but does not believe in forgiveness, and “the fear of a son” (timor filialis), which combines (time and again) a fear of God with faith in the forgiveness he offers (AV, art. 6: De timore Dei).10 This last point (i. e. the dialectics between law and gospel) is key – both in the “first penitence,” which prepares the outsider to receive the gospel, as well as in the “second penitence,” which will continue to be a part of the Christian’s existence for the rest of his life. Melanchthon juxtaposes the sacramental system of the late medieval period, with its focus on the sacrament of penance, with what he terms “true penitence,” that is, the inner conversion to a life in the service of God. And the sign and seal of this conversion is baptism. Baptism is a penitential sacrament. Just like we are immersed in water, so we have to drown our old self. That is why the gospel preaches penitence: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.” (Matt 4:17). Melanchthon urged the pastors with an apocalyptic sense of urgency to preach what Jesus taught us, namely, that “the time has come” and that “the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Gospel.” (Mark 1:14 – 15)11 Baptism also contains the promise connected to this command: “He who believes and is baptised will be saved” (Mark 16:16). So those who believe will have to learn that baptism is a lifelong process of doing penitence and, at the same time, of believing in God’s forgiveness (AV art. 7: De Sacramentis). With regard to Holy Communion, the 1528 polity compiled by Melanchthon and others states that believers should confess their sins and believe that the true body of Christ is in the bread and the true blood of Christ is in the wine. For thus reads the word of Christ in the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke: “This is my body”; “Drink of it all of you”; “This is my blood of the new testament, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”. So also Paul declares in 1 Cor 10: “The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” Were this now taken to mean not the true body, but only the Word of God, as some interpret this passage, it would not be a participation in the body of Christ but in the Word and the Spirit alone. In this same epistle Paul also declares that

10 See also CR (Loci 1535), vol.21, 409 – 491. Melanchthon does not mean a purely physical fear, but “a fear that God himself was working in us”, that is, “out of love for righteousness”. To receive the real timor filialis is usually a life-long process. See Speelman: 2013 in which I examine Melanchthon’s Instructions for pastors. 11 A key text in Melanchthon’s new vision on justification is Luke 24:47, that in the name of Christ who has risen from the dead, “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” would be preached to all the nations.

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this meal is not to be regarded as ordinary food, but as the body of Christ, and he judges those guilty who carelessly receive it as ordinary food (UdV, art. 6). Preachers should warn their parishioners against the profanation or other abuses of the sacrament of Holy Communion: “For Paul says in 1 Cor. 11: “You are guilty of profaning the body and blood of Christ,” and “You receive it to judgment upon yourself.” Also, “many of you are ill and many among the Christians have died.” For God declared in the second commandment: Whoever dishonours his name, he will not hold guiltless. Undoubtedly also this dishonour to the body and blood of Christ will not go unpunished” (UdV, art. 6). During the Holy Supper, we remember the death of Christ (UdV, art. 10). Remembering his sacrifice makes us afraid of God’s anger against sin (UdV, art. 6, 7 and 9). True penitence exists not only in “sincere repentance and sorrow over committed sins,” but also in “true fear of God’s anger and judgment.” Fear of God’s anger results in a realization of one’s guilt, repentance, and the killing of the flesh (UdV, art. 7). Melanchthon threatens preachers with God’s judgment if they deviate from the proper ways of teaching the Gospel and the sacraments. “Now we have already shown that it is necessary to preach penance, and to punish the fearless behaviour which is now in the world and has its origin, at least in part, in a wrong understanding of the Faith. For many who hear that they should believe, so that all their sins will be forgiven, fashion their own faith and think they are pure. Thus they become secure and arrogant. Such carnal security is worse than all the errors hitherto prevailing. Therefore, in preaching the gospel it is necessary in every way to instruct the people where faith may be found and how one attains it. For true faith cannot exist where there is not true contrition and true fear and terror before God. This is most important in teaching the people. For where there is not contrition and sorrow for sin, there also is no true faith. Thus we read in Psalm 147: “The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.” God himself also says in Ezekiel 3 that if the preacher does not condemn the error and sin of those whom he teaches, God will lay the loss of their souls to his account. Such a verdict God pronounced upon that kind of preacher who comforts the people and says much about faith and the forgiveness of sins but nothing about penitence or the fear and judgment of God” (UdV, art. 7).12 3. Mitten in der Hölle Angst Unsre Sünd’n uns treiben. Wo soll’n wir denn fliehen hin, Da wir mögen bleiben? 12 Cf. AV: Introduction. See for Calvin his public letters of 1537 in COR 4/4, 74 – 78.

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Zu dir, Herr Christ, alleine! Vergoßen ist dein teures Blut, Das g’nug für die Sünde tut. Chorus: 3. In the midst of utter woe All our sins oppress us, Where shall we for refuge go, Where for grace to bless us? To Thee, Lord Jesus, only. Thy precious blood was shed to win Full atonement for our sin. Refrain:

1.2

Calvin and the New Practice

Like Melanchthon did in his first church polity (which doubled as a confession), so Calvin too maintained the connection between penitence and the Eucharist. Calvin believed that excommunication or church-imposed penitence could not be seen considered apart from the Lord’s Supper or Communion. Neither was to be isolated from the other. He thus saw a need for a new, evangelical form of penitence and confession. In Calvin’s eyes, no one should participate in holy communion without preparing himself. One of Calvin’s lifelong projects was to establish measures regarding this sensitive issue, for as he wrote in 1541: “Now to pollute and contaminate what God has so sanctified is intolerable sacrilege. It is, then, not without reason that Paul passes such grave condemnation on those who receive it unworthily (indignement).” Nothing in heaven or on earth is of greater value and worth (dignitq) than the body and blood of our Lord. Therefore, it is “no small fault to take it inconsiderately and without being well prepared” (OS 1, 511 = CS 1/2, 456 – 458). Both Rome and the Reformation called congregants who participate in Holy Communion to “be present in holiness and awe” (OS 1, 369 – 370 = COR 6/1, 157 – 158). In the sixteenth century, many churches of the Reformation took over part of the existing practices connecting Eucharist, confession, and penitence. Calvin, however, unlike Luther (and his followers), propagated a form of ecclesiastical pressure or discipline that could be imposed upon the members. It was not just up to the churchgoers themselves to decide whether or not they could participate in the Eucharist, and the parishioners were frequently questioned in a private confession at home or in church. In the course of my research, it became increasingly clear to me that it is

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impossible to give a clear description of Calvin’s vision on confession without simultaneously discussing the Lord’s Supper. The close connection between the most holy mystery of Communion and what he called “Christian confession” consumed his thinking, like the two foci of an ellipse, fused together in an inseparable bond. And both had to do with the maintenance of and preparation for life and death.

2

The Eucharist and Daily Practices of Life and Death

Because of the bold connection Calvin drew, he worked over the course of twenty-five years to develop a new penitential and confessional system in five stages. His new penitential and confessional system has to do with a fear of God in life and death. Five stages are to be distinguished in this process, where Calvin aligned himself with medieval practices of penitence and confession. In the first period or phase, Calvin linked the Lord’s Supper to supervision and discipline, argued for weekly communion, and proposed a deliberate emphasis on the obligatory gospel teaching with a view to admission to the table of the Lord. In the second phase, Calvin advocated a compulsory, private confession in the parsonage that was to precede every celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The third stage consisted in the introduction of the lay ministry of elders and the establishment of a Reformed alternative to the medieval consistory, that is, a semi-ecclesiastical organ where public sins were sanctioned and corrected by barring perpetrators from the Lord’s Supper table and later granting them admission to it again upon repentance. In the subsequent phase, Calvin attempted to place the power of excommunication, which was traditionally the highest form of church discipline, in the hands of the consistory and to create the necessary ancillary system for the new system of confession. After several turbulent years and after threatening to resign, in the mid-1550s he at last succeeded in winning the right of excommunication for the consistory. This ushered in the fifth and definitive phase. Here the system of penance and confession had to be adjusted, so that those who were excluded from the Lord’s Table on account of their sins – and during this phase such exclusions were imposed hundreds of times per year – were legally obligated to practice confession in the “new style”: i. e. to confess after they had completed their penance for their sins (confesser et recognoistre sa faute), to publicly demonstrate their contrition (s’humilier l repentance), to receive absolution (pardonner and ab-

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soudre), thus obtaining reconciliation with God and the Church, and officially to be admitted to the Lord’s Table again as a contrite penitent.13 This last step completed Calvin’s confessional system, and he was proud of the end result. Late in 1561 he expressed the desire that his system of penitence and confession might become a shining example for the churches of the Reformation, and a testimony to the churches abroad (CO 10a, 92 = CO 21, 766).

2.1

Calvin’s First Attempt to Reshape Confession: Geneva (as of Fall 1536)

In the opening article of Calvin’s first Ordonnances Ecclesiastiques, he follows Luther in advocating a weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, arguing for its role in becoming one with our Lord in life and death: “It would be well to require that the communion of the Holy Supper of Jesus Christ (que la communication de la saincte cene de Jesucrist) be held every Sunday at least as a rule.” This will pay off, first of all because of the promise that “we truly become part of the body and blood of Jesus Christ and share in both his death (de sa mort) and life (de sa vie)” (OS 1, 370 = COR 6/1, ep. 31,160). In his article on Calvin’s vision on pastoral care, Hans Scholl rightly notes that “three quarters of the 1537 church polity deals with the Lord’s Supper (‘3/4 der Kirchenordnung von 1537 vom Abendmahl handeln’).”14 In the introduction to his 1537 church polity, Calvin asks the council to pay attention to ecclesiastical penitence as it relates to Holy Communion: “Right Honourable Gentlemen: it is certain that a Church cannot be said to be well ordered and regulated unless in it the Holy Supper (Cene) of our Lord is always being celebrated and frequented, and this under such good supervision that no one dare presume to present him self unless devoutly, and with genuine reverence for it. For this reason, in order to maintain the Church in its integrity (integrite), the discipline (discipline) of excommunication is necessary, by which it is possible to correct those (par laquelle soyent corrigez) that do not wish to submit courteously (amyablement) and with all obedience to the holy Word of God” (OS 1, 369). One of the proposals was for the council to elect several deputies, virtuous men “of good name,” who were to be divided over all the quarters of the city, who would have oversight “of the life and government of each of them; and if they see any vice worthy of note to find fault with in any person, that they communicate about it with some of the ministers” (OS 1, 373 = CS 1/1, 120). 13 Meticulously recorded consistory reports show in detail how this process played out on a case-by-case basis. 14 Scholl: 1995, 119.

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In his evaluation of the first phase, Calvin states that he was especially concerned with the preachers’ problem of their conscience because they could share in the guilt of the profanation of the holy sacrament and, by extension, of the honour of God (CO 10a, 8 = OS 1, 371): “This is why we have been unable to secure peace and rest for our conscience, as this is only possible when those considered part of Christ’s people who want to gain access to the spiritual and holy meal, give Him their word” (CO 5, 319 = OS 1, 429).15 There was thus a separation, or distinction between people, that took place around the Eucharist or, more accurately, during the preparation for Holy Communion.

2.2

Calvin’s Second Take on Christian Confession: Strasbourg (as of spring 1540)

For Calvin, it was absolutely necessary that a confessional investigation into the believer’s life and convictions be held prior to participation in the Holy Supper. He considered many students in the French refugee congregation in Strasbourg to be overconfident and arrogant. In the spring of 1540, Calvin therefore decided that it was irresponsible to celebrate Holy Communion without a prior confessional conversation with each and every member of the church. At Easter he explained that “no one will be admitted by me without first being submitted to an investigation” (CO 11, no. 214, 31).16 As the first pastor to this new evangelical church, Calvin compiled an ordre ecclesiastique which he “wished to follow closely” (CO 11, no. 265, 130).17 The new polity stipulated that the pastor of the church was to check each member, and that the participant was to submit willingly to a confessional investigation of his conscience (l’examen de conscience des communiants) (CO 11, no. 260, 121).18

15 16 17 18

Rilliet/Dufour : 1878, 133. Cf. Herminjard: 1965 – 1966, vol.6, no. 857, Calvin to Farel; 29 March 1540, 200. Cf. Herminjard, vol.6, no. 925, 397. Cf. Herminjard, vol. 6, no. 917, Calvin to Parent; 26 November 1540, 376. ‘Que les pasteurs une fois l’an en chascune Eglise oyent leurs parroissiens par ordre, principalement les plus rudes et ignorans, les examinans de leur foy, et que cela se face au temple. […] Lors le pasteur doit admonester en prudence et gravitq, mesme un chascun particulierement des choses qui sont requises, selon l’eage et conditions d’un chascun, enseignans les ignorans, de foy, des bonnes meurs et de l’usage des Sacremens. Et l celle fin que le peuple puisse venir l la Cene en bonne et paisible conscience. […] Car nul ayant en soy mauvaise conscience ne peult invoquer Dieu.’ CO 5 (Actes de Ratisbonne), 621 – 622.

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The Young Calvin’s Third Attempt to Articulate His View of Christian Confession (as of September 1541)

In 1541, Calvin turned the former ecclesiastical court, which had become an organism of the state devoted to matters pertaining to marriage and morals (Ehegericht en Sittengericht), into an institution that would still be a state organism in the Protestant sense, and yet be endowed with greater power and authority in matters of penitence than its equivalent in the surrounding churches had. The consistory was composed of twelve assistants or elders, together with one of the four Genevan mayors (i. e. syndics) who chaired the meetings. The consistory met on a weekly basis, on Thursday mornings. For executing its visitation decisions, the consistory sometimes called upon a large number of the city’s supervisors (dizeniers) and police officers (officiers). The ministers were listened to in the consistory, and would go on to play an increasingly important role in the decision-making process. Due to this combination of measures, the consistory turned into an institution with a broad base of authority that was heard even in the often sensitive issues related to supervision and penitence. The serious manner in which the admonitions and judgments took place was reminiscent of medieval confession practices. The actual supervision of each citizen by a local elder grew into an effective mechanism of social control, especially in the way in which it was combined with a system of door-to-door visitations systematically covering the entire city within the frame of a single year.19 The visitations took place in the weeks leading up to Easter, “so that the meal of the Lord would not be defiled (affin que la Cene du Seigneur ne fut profanee), and to encourage every person to fulfil his duty to God and to go and hear his holy Word.” During these visitations, all kinds of issues and sins would come to the surface, and they often resulted in people receiving further instructions as to how to account for these sins. Often, these issues would be framed in terms of the approaching celebration of Holy Communion. The issues that surfaced included: domestic conflicts, conflicts between family members or neighbours, marriage, superstition, persistence in erroneous or Catholic ways, a lack of understanding of the evangelical doctrines and lifestyle, not knowing the Lord’s Prayer, prayer to Mary, drinking, gambling, dancing etc. In addition to these visits, every inhabitant, whether an official or a citizen, 19 RCP 2, 66. Andreas Ryff, who lived in Geneva from 1560 to 1563, reported: “It is the custom of the ministers of Geneva to go to each house every three months. They assemble the residents, young and old, from about six or eight houses, to interrogate them, to examine them, to make them give an account of their faith and to catechise them before they partake of the Lord’s Supper.” Ryff: 1872, 415.

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was required to keep an eye on the others and to report on any immoral behaviour he observed, as well as on blasphemy, theft, adultery, participation in Holy Supper without the consent of the consistory, failure in or infrequent church attendance, defilement of the day of Holy Communion etc. This accumulation of devices and measures resulted in the Genevan consistory growing out to become one of the most noteworthy aspects of Calvin’s approach to church life. The first chapter of Calvin’s church polity of September 1541 may be called a handbook for pastors, or more specifically, a catalogue of sins reminiscent of a medieval book of confession for ministers to measure themselves as well as others.20 As a whole, Calvin’s 1541 polity is concerned with establishing a new system of penitence and confession. Many people found it difficult to get used to the new situation, and struggled with the religious laws.21 Of course, one could come for voluntary confession in the parsonage. However, the confession of one’s sin and expression of remorse in the consistory, as well as the following process of restoration, all became mandatory. In the context of this conference, I would especially like to stress the central position of Holy Communion, and, with that, the communal and personal union with the death and resurrection of Christ. The preparation for life and death, as well as the on-going reception of union with Christ’s life and death, has an especially significant place at the beginning of the third book of the Institutes, which narrates how the life of Christians can receive mercy through faith, self-denial (abnegatio nostri), carrying the cross (tolerantia crucis), and meditating on the future life (meditatio futurae vitae). Although Calvin places greater emphasis on the element of mortification than vivification, his aim is clearly a forward-looking attitude directed to life and prayer in which the daily, earthly life should be “despised (contemptus).” After all, dying is like “moving out of this world […] into the true life,” but by nature people tend to “forget about death and mortality.” The special blessings we 20 CO 10a (1541), 18 – 19 = RCP 1, 3. OS 2, 333 = CS 2, 246 = Niesel, 45 – 46, art. 23; OS 2, 333 = CS 2, 246 = Niesel, 46, art. 24; OS 2, 333 – 334 = CS 2, 247 – 248. 21 To name a few examples: Collette Maillet, wife of the first secretary to the consistory, was accused in 1546 of saying that the new Law was not like the other “and that since this Law came, we have had nothing but bad times” (que cest loy n’est pas semblables a l’austre, et que despuys que cest loys est venue l’on n’astz heu que mal). Summoned before the consistory, Maillet declared that she had no objections to the Reformation, but that it was quite likely that several years ago, during the plague of 1543, she had said that “when the priests were in this city, the plague didn’t last as long as it does now” (quant les prebstres estient en caste ville la peste ne duroyt pas tant que maintenant). RC 2 (22 April 1546), f.53 f. In 1548 Jaquema Lonnan was summoned before the consistory because she had reportedly said: “Back in the time of the Mass, we were as well off as in the time of the Gospel” (au temps de la messe l’on avoit bien autant de biens que aujourdhuy du temps de l’evangelie). RC 4 (23 August 1548), f. 53.

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receive from Him daily are as many confirmations of his fatherly care and love. By giving us a taste of “God’s goodness,” he prepares us for “the glory of the heavenly Kingdom” (OS 4, Inst. 3.9.1 – 4, 171 – 174).

2.4

The Fourth Stage and its Focus on Excommunication Law (as of Fall 1553)

Calvin translated “several very important chapters (summa quaedam capita)” out of the Genevan church’s penitential law and confessional code (i. e. the disciplinae ecclesiasticae), which by then was already twelve years old, into the international Latin language with the purpose of informing the ministers of Zürich and the members of that city’s council about the regulations which applied in Geneva (CO 14, no. 1859, 678). His correspondence pertaining to these texts focused on the question as to whether the consistory was sufficiently qualified to exercise a power of excommunication. As Calvin put it: “This is the core issue: to whom does the right and the authority to excommunicate (ius et autoritas excommunicandi) apply? (CO 14, no. 1859, 680) In his translation, Calvin supplied further explanations for some issues, such as in article 155, where he replaced the nonspecific pronoun on (“one”) with le consistoire (“the consistory”). That same article states that the stubborn sinner should not be “separated from the Church,” (qu’on le separe de l’Eglise), but be denied access to the Eucharist (ab usu coenae) (CO 14, no. 1859, 678 f).22 It would take several years for the right of excommunication to be allocated to the consistory, but over the course of those years there was a steady increase in the number of people who were summoned to appear before it, and in the number of cases which it tried.23

2.5

The Definitive Stage (as of fall 1557)

We may well call Calvin’s Ordonnances ecclesiastiques an Eucharistic church polity. His consistent focus throughout was on the Lord’s Supper and on the preparations for it. On November 12, 1557, the council adopted several new clauses which pertained to attendance at the Eucharist, because “some had decided on their own not to attend the Holy Communion”. If that behaviour were to go unpunished, the penitential value of being denied 22 Cf. Niesel, 61 = OS 2, 358 f= CS 2, 268. 23 In 1555, as many as 1233 people had to come to Geneva’s consistory, and a year later there even were 1518 who appeared before it. In the 1150 cases that were dealt with during these two years, excommunication was exacted as a punishment on 219 occasions. RCP 2, 68.

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access to the sacrament would, of course, diminish. Those who “separated themselves from the holy communion of believers (la saincte Communion des fideles)” were to be exhorted (exhortez) by the consistory. If that person’s absence from the table had to do with feelings of enmity, “he would be admonished to reconcile with his adversary (se reconcilier l sa partie).” If no change was shown after six months of consideration or reflection (pour mieux penser l soy), he would be sent to the city council “to see whether he will ask for forgiveness for his sin and will be prepared to make amends for it (demande pardon de sa faute, et soit prest de l’amender),” or whether he would have to be banished from the city for a year. If he confessed his sin, he would be “punished according to the judgment of the council members” for previously neglecting the consistory’s orders, and be sent back to make good the trouble (pour reparer le scandale) which his rebellion had caused (OS 2, 359 – 360).24 Another typical example from this last stage in Calvin’s penitential and confessional polity comes from article 163. In practice, most of the congregants who had been denied access to Holy Supper for one or more celebrations did not voluntarily return to the consistory to confess their sins, to promise change for the better, to receive forgiveness, and to engage in reconciliation with the church community, etc. “If someone is kept from participating in Holy Communion because of disobedience or persistent transgression and does not humble himself, but rather shows contempt for the church law, or if he does not voluntarily confess his sins in the consistory, he ought to be kept from the table for a period of six months. After that, he ought to be summoned, admonished, and forced to return. If he persists without correcting himself until the end of the year, he shall be exiled (or banished) for a year, unless he asks the council for forgiveness, confesses his sins in the consistory, and thus returns to Holy Communion.”25 There was thus no better preparation for death than the preparation for and participation in the Holy Supper. From the moment he joined the evangelical reform movement, Calvin tried, in very creative ways and with a constant focus on one’s mystical and holy communion with God (unio mystica), to help those who were burdened by their conscience and in danger of perishing, to attain true, Christian freedom and peace in life and death. 1. Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas; Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit, Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

24 Cf. CS 2, 270 = Niesel, 61 – 62, art. 160. 25 OS 2, 360 = CS 2, 272 = Niesel, 62 (art. 163).

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5. O memoriale mortis Domini! Panis vivus, vitam præstans homini! Præsta meæ menti de te v•vere, Et te illi semper dulce sapere. 7. Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, Oro, fiat illud quod tam sitio: Ut te revelata cernens facie, Visu sim be~tus tuæ gloriæ. Amen.26

3

The Heidelberg Catechism and the Daily Practices of Life and Death

The Heidelberg Catechism provides us with an example from the third generation of the sixteenth-century church reform. In Lord’s Day 31, answer 84, for example, the Catechism connects preaching and penitence in a special way : “When according to the command of Christ, it is declared and publicly testified to all and every believer, that, whenever they receive the promise of the Gospel by a true faith, all their sins are really forgiven them of God, for the sake of Christ’s merits”. Those who have not sincerely repented, the unrepentant “who are not truly sorry,” as well as the unbelievers, do not receive forgiveness, but are told that they stand under the wrath of God and are subject to eternal condemnation as long as they do not convert, “according to which testimony of the gospel, God will judge them, both in this, and in the life to come.” In answer 84 we thus read about the elements of confession (i. e. repentance, conversion, and mercy), but now not in connection with receiving absolution from the priest (who acts in the role of a confessor) but in connection with the true reception of the “promises of the Gospel” from the preacher. The unrepentant, who do not feel remorse and refuse to repent, cannot be saved (answer 87). The true repentance or conversion of man exists in “the dying of the old nature and the coming to life of the new”, says answer 88. There are thus two parts: “the mortification of the old, and the resurrection (vivification) of the new man.” According to the Catechism, the gates of heaven open and close depending on the way in which people hear, accept, and live God’s Word and receive absolution. The kingdom of heaven is also opened and closed by a second key : the ecclesiastical penance of excommunication. 26 This Eucharistic hymn to which the name of Thomas Aquinas is connected breathes a Reformed spirituality.

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Here the administration of the Word is, as it were, the new sacrament of absolution. This involves a very dynamic process, because every time – literally : “as often as” – the hearer accepts the Gospel as true, the kingdom of heaven opens and – as absolution is now described – all sins are forgiven in Christ. This sacral act did not just happen by itself, ex opere operato. A condition is attached; it only takes place when the promise of God is accepted in true faith.27 Exclusion from the Eucharist meant that people were also “excluded from the Christian church” (durch verbietung der heiligen Sacrament ausz der christlichen gemein)”. And answer 85 even continues by observing: “They are separated from God himself and from Christ’s Kingdom” until “they promise and show repentance or amendment,” which in confessional terms is called “contrition,” “penitence,” and “conversion.” The Reformation emphasised that the Church is where the Gospel and the sacraments are rightly administered. It was considered important for both to be prepared for and received in a proper way. The congregation is also divided upon participating in Holy Communion.28 The entrance into God’s kingdom is connected to a continuous, faithful, and obedient unity with the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ in the administration of Word and sacrament. For this purpose, a penitential preparation was of crucial importance. Without repentance, the sinner would not be relieved from “God’s wrath and eternal judgment,” a judgment that would last both “in this as well as in the coming life.”29 In the administration of the Word of God and the holy sacrament, heaven opens its gates to humble, receptive believers, but not to those who continue to close their heart. The faithful are framed in an apocalyptic narrative in which they deal directly with God himself. Readily accepting and obeying is connected to entrance into the heavenly kingdom. This repeated existential confrontation with God is part of a continual preparation for death. Penitence was no longer a purely casuistic matter, but instead functioned as an integral part of life on earth. This article offers no more than an overview of the daily practices of life and death as they were established by the early Reformers and discussed in the documents issued by the Protestant communities. Examples of Lutheran, Melanchthonian and Calvinist perspectives were presented in order to demonstrate 27 Calvin emphasised that God speaks in the Scriptures to the people who were willing and prepared to listen. OS 3, 68. De Kroon: 2004, 81. 28 HC 30, 82 speaks about “the duty of the Christian church, according to the appointment of Christ and his apostles, to exclude, by the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” a sinful person until he should show amendment of life, because God could otherwise punish the whole congregation and because the covenant might otherwise be profaned. 29 HC 31, 84.

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how these practices were introduced in the early stage of the Reformation, and why they were so pivotal in the context of the practices of pre-Reformation Catholicism. In what follows, I will by way of summary offer some final conclusions.

Some Concluding Remarks The medicinally intended penitential system of the late medieval and early modern period aimed to direct believers towards an unceasing awareness of the solemnity of God’s ubiquity. The Reformation had placed the role of individual believers in the foreground of this process. Daily church life was no longer reserved for the clergy alone. According to their view, every Christian ought to be a “spiritual person” (homo spiritualis) who obeyed the gospel out of his personal faith and with “evangelical freedom” (libertas evangelica).30 From the first half of the sixteenth century onwards, every believer’s regular participation in the sacraments, including a faithful, penitential preparation for them, became characteristic of this new set-up for Protestant church life. In doing so, every Christian shared in Christ’s death and resurrection. The more frequent administration and reception of the sacraments became a part of the rhythm of the life of lay believers, comparable to the rhythm of the liturgy of the hours as it had existed in the established church. Being strengthened in one’s penitence by God and thus sharing in eternal life so characterized daily life that it could be compared to the very act of breathing. For this reason, the church in Wittenberg and Geneva held dozens of assemblies per week.31 These were organized around a transcendent worldview and an aim to communicate openly with God. We saw that as Luther set the stage early on, in 1517, he meant that the believer’s entire life is one great act of repentance. His pupils, Melanchthon and 30 To the disappointment of the leading Reformers, however, this ideal proved to be too much for the majority of the people. Most appeared to fall short considerably in their Christian walk of life and in their personal faith. Due to their negative evaluation of what they saw around them, the Reformers could not resist externalizing the system of penitence to some degree, which earned them accusations of attempting to reintroduce Roman Catholic practices. See the anguished cry of Melanchthon in his 1528 Instructions, art. 1 = Speelman: 2013, 330, and of Calvin in the preface to his 1538 Instructions, OS 1, 428. 31 In the Wittenberg of the 1520s, communion was being administered on a daily basis. In his 1529 Great Catechism (part 5: The sacrament of the altar), Luther discusses the “daily administration and dividing” of “such a great treasure”. BSLK, 715. Beginning in 1536, Calvin refers to Acts 2:42 to argue that every assembly should be characterized by Scripture, prayer, communion and almsgiving. OS 1,149. See also answer 363 in Calvin’s 1542 Large or Great Catechism on the necessity of participating in the sacrament (and of the desire to do so).

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Calvin, built on this statement. Traditionally, the sacrament of penance had had three basic elements in addition to absolution: repentance, confession, and atonement. In Melanchthon’s handbook of 1527, these were reduced to two elements: repentance from sin, and faith in the salvation wrought by Christ.32 Fear of God (timor filialis) and faith in God’s mercy were the crucial elements. In Luther’s life, the word ‘repentance’ became a delectable keyword, sweet and fruitful. In the theology of Melanchthon, a continual repentance preceded true faith. In the thought of Calvin, repentance was from the very beginning in 1537 something that preceded the Holy Communion, which he thought should be celebrated as often as possible, in every service, which at that time meant almost on a daily basis, in a search to find unity with eternal life in Christ every day again. And also for the Heidelberg Catechism, entrance into the kingdom of heaven had to do with a frequent reception of God’s Word and Sacrament in a contrite and faithful manner. Because the present is in an existential way of speaking and in its entirety aimed towards the coming future, living in harmony with God through the Holy Spirit is of the greatest possible importance.33 It is a way of life for sharing in eternal life. It is the task of the church and of its officers to help people to live and die in a Christian way. Man comes to Church to be united with the Holy One and to be fed and sanctified by Him. There is, as we saw, a lot at stake: entrance into God’s kingdom and eternal life. The aforementioned Lutheran-Calvinistic Heidelberg Catechism speaks of the opening and closing of the heavenly kingdom “as often as” a human soul comes to Christ and accepted in faith the promises of the gospel. The Christian life is a process of falling and being lifted up again, of dying and being resurrected – it is a rhythm that comes with “intense joy in God” and an increasing “desire for and love of living according to His will” (HC 31 and 33). The people of God look to him for the provision of all things, because no one in heaven and on earth loves us more and can teach us better how to die and live than our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Belgic Confession expresses it so powerfully for us (article 26). This makes them fully dependent on his administration. There is no better preparation for life and death than the preparation for and antici32 Confession and absolution took place within that framework, Melanchthon believed. By connecting them in this way, he integrated the elements of a repentant life (poenitentia), that is, knowledge of the self, sorrow and grief, remorse and contrition (contritio), the confession of sins (confessio), and faith in God’s complete atonement (satisfactio). 33 Compare the central question: “What must I absolutely know to live and die in the joy of (in German: seliglich; in Latin: beate) this mysterious comfort?” (HC 1, 2). At that time, more than now, one’s present daily life stood in the context of the eternal life of salvation. The basis for all comfort and assurance, the ground of all being, was elsewhere, in the heavenly realm in which Christians live because they belong to their “faithful Saviour (in Dutch: Salichmaker) Jesus Christ” (HC 1, 1).

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pation of the holy communion in the administration of Word and sacrament. This is both frightening and joyous news, because in Him we stand – even when surrounded by death – in the midst of an abounding and eternal life. This new type of “soul care” equipped the Christian with a spiritual peace with God for both time and eternity. It was experienced as a continuous holy reunion with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the most important preparation for death and life everlasting.

Literature Bergier, Jean-FranÅois/Kingdon, Robert M. (ed.) (1964 and1962), Registres de la Compagnie des pasteurs de Gen€ve au temps de Calvin, vol. 1: 1546 – 1553, vol. 2: 1553 – 1564, Gene`ve: Droz [RCP]. Calvin, Jean (1863 – 1900), Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, Johann W. Baum/ August E. Cunitz/ Eduard W.E. Reuss (ed.), 59 vol., Brunsvigae etc.: Schwetschke [CO 1 – 59 = CR 29 – 87]. Calvin, Jean, Christianae Religionis Institutio 1536 [CO 1 = Inst. 1536] and Institutio Religionis Christianae 1559 [CO 2 = Inst.]. Calvin, Jean (1926 – 1936), Joannis Calvini Opera selecta, Peter Barth/ Wilhelm Niesel (ed.), 5 vol., Munich: Kaiser [OS]. Calvin, Jean (2005), Ioannis Calvini opera omnia denuo recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata, Series VI: Epistolae, vol. 1: 1530–sept.1538, Cornelis Augustijn/ Frans P. van Stam (ed.), Geneva: Droz [COR 6/1]. Calvin, Jean (2009), Ioannis Calvini opera omnia. Denuo recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Series IV Scripta didactica et polemica, vol. 4: Epistolae duae (1537) Deux discourse (Oct. 1536), Erik A. de Boer/ Frans P. van Stam (ed.), Gen€ve: Droz [COR 4/4]. Calvin, Jean (1994 f), Calvin-Studienausgabe, Eberhard Busch (ed.), Neukirchen/Vluyn [CS]. Dutch Psalter Hymnal (Liedboek voor de Kerken) [LvdK]. Heidelberg Catechism (1563) [HC]. Herminjard, AimŒ-Louis (1866 – 1897; reprint 1965 – 1966), Correspondance des rŒformateurs dans les pays de langue franÅaise, 9 vol., Gen€ve/Paris: Georg /Levy, reprint Nieuwkoop: De Graaf. Kingdon, Robert M. (ed.) (1996 f), Registres du Consistoire de Gen€ve au temps de Calvin, vol.2 (2001): 1545 – 1546, vol.4 (2007): 1548, Gen€ve: Droz [RC]. Kroon, Marijn de (2004), Augustinus’ Epistula fundamenti in de uitleg van Johannes Calvijn, in: Bram van de Beek, Wout M. van Laar (ed.), Sola Gratia: Bron voor de Reformatie en uitdaging voor nu, Zoetermeer : Boekencentrum, 70 – 86. Lietzmann, Hans (ed.) (1930), Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, herausgegeben im Gedenkjahr der Augsburgischen Konfession 1930, 2 vol., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht [BSLK].

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Luther, Martin (1883 ff = reprint 1964 ff), D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 61 vol., Weimar : Böhlau [WA]. Mansi, Joannis D. (1e ed. 1748 – 1752, 1901 – 1927 = reprint 1960 – 1962), Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 53 vol., Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. Melanchthon, Philippus (1527), Articuli de quibus egerunt per Visitatores in Regione Saxoniae, Wittembergae: Nic. Schirlentz, in: Karl G. Bretschneider (ed.) (1858; reprint Graz 1964 f), Corpus Reformatorum, Brunsvigae vol. 26, 7 – 28 = Speelman: 2013, chapter 9, 329 – 384 [AV]. Melanchthon, Philippus (1528), Unterricht der visitatoren an die pfarrherrn im kurfürstenthum zu Sachsen, in: Karl G. Bretschneider (ed.) (1858; reprint Graz 1964v.), Corpus Reformatorum, Brunsvigae vol. 26, 415 – 462 = Hans-Ulrich Delius (ed.) (1979 – 1999), Studienausgabe Martin Luther, 6 vol., Leipzig/Berlin: Evangelische Verlangsanstalt, vol. 3 (1983), 415 – 462 = Speelman: 2013, chapter 11, 297 – 322 [UdV]. Melanchthon, Philippus (1535), Loci Communes, in: Corpus Reformatorum 21, 229 – 559 = Melanchthonis Opera Database (2008), Herman J. Selderhuis and William den Boer (ed.), Apeldoorn: Instituut voor Reformatieonderzoek. Niesel, Wilhelm (1938), Bekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen der nach Gottes Wort reformierten Kirche. Zollikon/Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag. Oberman, Heiko A. (1991), Initia Calvini: The matrix of Calvin’s Reformation. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. Rilliet, Albert/Dufour, ThŒophile (1878), Le cate´chisme franÅais de Calvin: publie´ en 1537: Re´imprimŒ pour la premie`re fois d’apre`s un exemplaire nouvellement retrouve´, et suivi de la plus ancienne confession de foi de l’e´glise de Gene`ve avec deux notices, Gene`ve/ Paris: H. Georg. Ryff, Andreas (1560 – 1563), Un jeune B{lois | Gen€ve au XVIme si€cle, in: Jean-Antoine Gautier (ed.), MŒmoires et documents publiŒs par la SociŒtŒ d’Histoire et d’ArchŒologie de Gen€ve 17 (1872), 412 – 416. Scholl, Hans (1995), Johannes Calvin, in: Christian Möller (ed.), Geschichte der Seelsorge in Einzelporträts: Von Martin Luther bis Matthias Claudius, vol. 2, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 103 – 126. Speelman, Herman A. (2010), Biechten bij Calvijn: Over het geheim van heilig communiceren, Heerenveen: Groen. Speelman, Herman A./Korteweg, Theo (2013), Hoe overleeft de kerk?: Melanchthons Onderricht aan predikanten, Heerenveen: Groen. Tanner, Norman P. (ed.) (1990), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: From Nicaea I to Vatican II, 2 vol., Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Visser, Dirk (1997), Zacharias Ursinus (1534 – 1583): Melanchthons Geist im Heidelberger Katechismus, in: Heinz Scheible (ed.), Melanchthon in seinen Schülern, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 373 – 389.

Konrad Küster

Death and the Lutheran Idea of Becoming a Heavenly Musician

In the late sixteenth century, the Electoral court in Saxony rebuilt the cathedral in Freiberg as its burial chapel. After an interruption of several years, the court administration could begin the final phase in 1591 (Kunde: 2008, 32). This was the time immediately after the death of Elector Christian I, who had been much in favour of Calvinistic theology. His successor, Christian II, was only eight years old; his mother, Sophie of Brandenburg, an ardent Lutheran, let the Calvinistic period come to an end. As we shall show here, the furnishing of the burial chapel bears witness to this confessional change. The ceiling shows Christ as a victor ; it is a depiction of his appearance in the Last Judgment. A number of angels look down on those who visit the church, establishing a direct connection between heaven and earth. Other angels are posted upon the pillars; they are fully formed as statues and hold musical instruments in their hands. In the words of the architect, Giovanni Maria Nosseni, these angels were intended as parts of the Judgment scene.1 This fact had been known for decades, but it was only during a recent restoration project of the church, in the years 1998 – 2002, that the instruments could be taken down and scrutinized (Bethge: 2003, 206 f; Fontana und Heller : 2008). Then it emerged that most of the instruments were not mere artistic imitations, but original violins, lutes, harps, shawms and mute cornets from the 1580s, built by Saxon music instrument makers of the time; as far as the string instruments are concerned, the names of their makers are recorded on the small pieces of paper that were normally glued into the wooden instrument chests. The discovery of original and unaltered instruments from the late sixteenth century (including original strings from that time) attracted much attention among musicians and musicologists. But the meaning the instruments had has not yet been discussed in detail: Is this music making really related to the Judgment scenery, which is literally surrounded by these angel musicians? 1 Kunde: 2008, 34: “zu Oberst auf den seulen under dem gewelbe sollen Engel stehen mit allerley Seitenspiel und Instrumenten, zu ermelten Jungsten Gericht gehörigk” (1 December 1591).

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An answer can be found in special music-related sermons, especially for funerals or the consecration of organs. Apparently, no such sermon can be found from that period itself, but rather from the seventeenth century, when it became necessary to give an explanation for something that had been taken for granted in earlier times. Lutheran culture had inherited organ music, together with music making with instruments in general, from the liturgy of the late middle ages; in the time around 1600, both were put under pressure, at least in the light of the Calvinistic practice with its reduction of liturgical music to nothing more than the unaccompanied singing of psalms from (or in the tradition of) the Genevan Psalter. But this pressure was a typical feature of the Central German situation, and it developed in its own specific way during the Thirty Years’ War. A different situation prevailed in North-Western Germany, where the normality of former times was maintained much longer. It was especially after the war decades that a number of North German Lutheran theologians became conscious of the difference that had emerged between these two traditions, and discussed their own positions in printed exegetical texts. Accordingly, it seems possible to ‘read’ the Heaven in Freiberg Cathedral with the help of slightly later texts from a different region.

Fig. 1: Freiberg Cathedral, Funeral Chapel. Foto taken from Fontana (ed.), p. [2] (detail).

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We focus on three texts here. The first was written by Christoph Frick as a dedication sermon for the organ at Burgdorf near Hanover in 1615; it was printed with a short introduction by Johann Arndt and enlarged later as a compendium of ‘theology on music’ (Frick: 1976). The second, partly depending on Frick, was written by Joseph Pipping, pastor at the church of Altenbruch near Cuxhaven in Lower Saxony, for the funeral of the local teacher, Johannes Hoch, in 1653; in his lifetime, Hoch had been responsible for music making in the village church, together with the player of the impressive local organ. In view of this purpose, Pipping’s sermon can be regarded as a culmination in the discussions of the role music had in contemporary Lutheran theology, precisely because Pipping widely follows the principles of ‘copy and paste’ using texts written by others (Pipping: 1653; Küster : 2007). Furthermore, both texts precede the third, the impressive statement about music and theology by Hector Mithobius (Mithobius: 1665; Bunners: 1966), written as a defence against the views put forward by Theophil Großgebauer in his Wächterstimme aus dem verwüsteten Zion of 1661. His study, which is of the utmost importance for the understanding of the ‘great’ church music of the time (and, likewise, the time of Johann Sebastian Bach), likewise consists of a number of sermons, not only by himself, but also by his local colleagues Johann Münstermann and Henricus Henrici. Pipping’s general subject was to comfort the people in the parish, who had lost their respected teacher and chief church musician. That is why he linked these comforting purposes to the importance of music making in Lutheran theology, a subject that was well prepared by Frick and others. Finally, he dedicated the printed sermon not only to the teacher’s widow, but also to the local organist, the choir boys, and a number of people from the village, who had served the deceased as soloist co-musicians (‘Adjuvanten’) in the services. But, clearly, the sermon is originally addressed to the parish audience as a whole. This audience was accustomed to hear high-quality music making, as we see in the demands formulated in an organ building contract some years before: In 1647, Hans Christoph Fritzsche from Hamburg had enlarged and rebuilt the organ, so that it provided the music making with a great diversity of musical instruments that were used by the local ‘Adjuvanten’ (Böcker : 2004, 28). Further indications of the quality of music making can be gleaned from the sermon itself. The central feature of Pipping’s ‘musical comfort’ is that the deceased man will immediately take part in the heavenly music making. According to Pipping, this was not because of Hoch’s musical profession on earth; on the contrary, this is meant to be the perspective of any believing Lutheran.2 All those who hope to 2 Pipping: 1653, 27: “[Wir] Sehen also, daß alle Gläubige Gottes Knechte, die den HErrn ihren GOTT fürchten, wenn sie aus diesem Leben abscheiden, einen herrlichen Tausch und seligen Wechsel treffen. Denn durch den Tod dringen sie hindurch zu dem ewigen Leben, da sie eine

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be redeemed in heaven (sinners as they are) should prepare themselves for the music making there, because this is the central feature of eternity. Thus, all music making on earth anticipates the eternal music making in heaven; and therefore, it will be the duty of the believers constantly to make beautiful music in the praise of God already on earth, in order to prepare themselves for their duties in Eternity.3 Those, however, who refuse to take part in music making, could easily be ensnared by Satan and his power.4 In order to stimulate this music making, Pipping refers to a number of pieces which he ranks among the best music of his time, since he assumes that this music could be understood as an anticipation of heavenly beauty (Pipping: 1653, 24 f). This makes it clear that a number of people in his audience would also have known those pieces. Pipping’s choice is by no means arbitrary. The first of the three pieces is a hymn arrangement, Heinrich Grimm’s Wie bin ich doch so herzlich froh, a composition for two sopranos and continuo; according to Pipping, this piece had been sung by the local schoolboys (sopranos!) under the direction of the deceased teacher at numerous local funeral services. The second is based upon a text from the Old Testament and written for the ambitious double-choir technique of the earlier seventeenth century : Andreas Hammerschmidt’s “Ich will den Herren loben allezeit” (Psalm 34), referring to Pipping’s purpose of eternal music making, both on earth and in Heaven. The last piece mentioned by Pipping takes its text from the Gospel and is composed as a selige Herrligkeit und eine herrliche Seligkeit erlangen, und zu einer freudenreichen Gesellschaft kommen, die von keinem Trawren und Klagen mehr wissen, sondern alles Leids vergessen haben, und lauter Halleluja singen. Denn wenn der HERR seine Gläubigen von allem Ubel erlöset, aus diesem müheseligen Leben, als aus einem Gefängnüß ausführen wird, so werden sie sein wie die Träumenden. Alsdenn word ihr Mund voll lachens und ihre Zunge voll rühmens seyn: Da werden sie sagen: Der HErr hat grosses an uns gethan, deß sind wir frölich, und loben GOtt mit frewdigem Hertzen. Psal. 126. Wer wolte denn nun seinen lieben Freunden solche Seligkeit mißgönnen? Wer wolte sich zu Tode trawren, wenn er höret, daß die im HERRN verstorbene zu solcher frewdenreichen Herrligkeit geführet und gebracht werden? welche ebenmässig zu erlangen alle Gläubige Christen ungezweiffelte Hoffnung haben.” 3 Cf. Psalm 104,33; Pipping: 1653, 7: “Ich wil dem HERRN singen mein Lebenlang, (das ist: in diesem Leben,) und meinen GOTT loben, so lang ich BIN. (das ist: nicht allein alhie auff Erden, sondern auch weil ich in meines GOttes Himlischen Hause bin und bleibe in Ewigkeit.” As a direct explanation of the title of the sermon, Pipping writes at the end of the introduction: “Die Himlische Frewden-Music der seligen Kinder GOttes im ewigen Leben. Wie lieblich und anmuhtig GOtt der werthe heilige Geist dieselbige Himmel-Music allen Christgläubigen Herten einbilde und vorklingele, welche sie im Reich der Herrligkeit GOttes anhören und zugleich mit anstimmen und singen werden.” 4 Pipping: 1653, 30: “Die aber, welche die Music und geistliche liebe Lieder verachten, […] die setzen sich selbsten in grosse Gefahr. Denn der böse Geist, der sonst durch die liebliche Music wird vertrieben, wie an Saul zu sehen […], der bleibet bey solchen Musicverächtern unvertrieben. Ja es erfrewet sich der höllische Geist über einen solchen Menschen und spricht: Wolan, ich hab dich von Gottes Lob abgezogen, harr ich will dir nun leichtlich den Samen des Göttlichen Worts aus dem Hertzen hinweg reissen.”

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concerted dialogue composition for solo voices (Thomas Selle, Vater Abraham, erbarme dich mein), once again related to the relationship between faith, death and eternity. Clearly, Pipping could have chosen fewer musical or fewer text genres, or compositions written for other occasions than funerals. This means that he had a large variety of compositions at his disposal from which to choose; accordingly, he could refer to the most appropriate pieces in his sermon. And the musical demands accorded perfectly with the ideas formulated in the local organ building contract of 1647. Notwithstanding the impressiveness of pieces such as those Pipping refers to, the perspective is restricted by earthly means. As Pipping points out, nobody could have a precise idea of the unsurpassable beauty of that heavenly music in which the local teacher now was taking part as a believing Lutheran; humans could only guess how this music would sound.5 The consequences of this were formulated by one of Pipping’s regional colleagues, Henricus Henrici, slightly later ; participation in heavenly music making does not require earthly professional training. Whilst some people are able to present music on a virtuoso level on earth, others should be content with the singing of hymns (Henrici, cf. Mithobius: 1665, 412 f). So everyone should try hard to do his best, because the music making of the (Lutheran) believers is the key to eternity – notwithstanding its earthly quality. In the same way, Frick had already pointed out the relation between the eternal music making and its anticipation on earth.6 This is a verbal explanation of the situation in Freiberg. The epitaphs of the dead are placed on the walls, guarded by Christ as a victor, who is surrounded by the eternal heavenly music. Interpreting the scenery with the help of Pipping and his contemporaries, the visitor to the cathedral could grasp the relation between the monuments for the humans on earth and heaven, where the redeemed souls join the music making of the angels. Clearly, a believing monarch should prepare himself for participation in the heavenly music, just like any other faithful Lutheran; thus, the deceased members of the Electoral family served as examples in the same manner as the teacher Johannes Hoch did for Pipping’s audience in 1653. Pipping has numerous predecessors, one of the most important of whom was 5 Pipping: 1653, 25: “Aber wie viel tausend und unzählich tausendmal lieblicher, anmutiger und beweglicher wird es lauten und klingen, wenn man der Himmlischen Frewden-Music im ewigen Leben wird beywohnen?” 6 Frick: 1976, 220: “Totum nostrum negotium erit Halleluja: All vnser Arbeit wird seyn, daß wir ohne Ende vnnd Auffhören Halleluja, Halleluja, Lobet den HErren, singen vnd klingen werden. Daß also die Vbung Christlicher Singe-Kunst allhie ein intoniren, ein Anstimmen vnd Vorschmack ist der Himmel-Music, die wir dort in der helleuchtenden Himmels-Kirch des ewigen Lebens in alle Ewigkeit (wie davon hernechst in dem Troste zu melden seyn wird) continuiren werden.”

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Luther’s musical collaborator Johann Walter (Walter : 1938: fol. iijv ; Küster : 2011). In his poem Lob und preis der löblichen Kunst Musica of 1538, he brought together a number of ideas about the Last Judgment and eternity. With the former, all knowledge would become dispensable, because only God’s wisdom would survive; accordingly, the seven ‘Artes Liberales’ would come to their end. But music would be excluded from this fundamental change: It would survive, because music cannot be renounced in the eternal praise of God, which continues in eternity after the Last Judgment even more than before. With respect to the musical splendour, Walter (like later writers who refer to him) was convinced that this music could by no means be arranged without instruments, at least because they are talked about in the Old Testament with regard to Salomon and David (especially in the Book of Psalms). Therefore, any idea of ‘reducing’ the musical demands to a mere singing of ‘psalms’ after the Calvinistic manner would never fit this concept; in short, if earthly musical beauty could be extended with the use of musical instruments (as a diversification of the means to make music with voices alone), it was inconceivable that the heavenly music could be a reduction to mere vocal music. Notwithstanding the splendour, Luther himself described the believing Christians’ answer to God’s Word as praying and singing [= Lobgesang], pointing to the importance of music making of any kind whatsoever (Luther : 1913, 588). This makes clear the message of the Freiberg ceiling. People who visit the sepulchral monuments of the Saxon Electors are reminded of the Last Judgement, which forms the centre of the whole presentation. The Judgment itself is surrounded by the final destination of the Christian existence, namely, the eternal heavenly music. The combination of the Freiberg ceiling with the sermons from the mid-seventeenth century shows that any depiction of musical instruments in theological context should be categorized into two distinct groups. When angels are depicted playing trumpets, this means Judgment; when other musical instruments are portrayed, the meaning is the music making that characterizes Eternity. Even more strongly, the painting on the ceiling of the village church in Møgeltønder (Southern Denmark) from 1740 refers to this concept. It is divided into four sections, viewed from the altar: the Fall of Man (the cause of all future evil), the redemption of Christ dying on the Cross, the Last Judgement (where the deceased are examined on whether they had believed in Justification – if not, they will be sent to hell) and, finally, heaven with angels playing music. And it is remarkable that this depiction of heaven has been designed around the organ which was already in place when the ceiling was rebuilt and painted. An extra hole and extra ceiling was formed over the top of the organ, where two angels display the inscription ‘Soli Deo Gloria’. In this way, music making appears as a fourth and concluding part of a Lutheran concept of grace.

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As far as the theological consequences are concerned, the heavenly music should be divided into different groups. Until now, it is not clear whether a Catholic concept of heavenly music, where the redeemed may join in the music of the angels, was ever formulated; it seems, rather, that the music scenes, e. g. on baroque frescos, refer to an exclusive music making by those who from the very beginning had acted as angels. In the same manner, Central German theologians, from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, denied that a believing Lutheran would get access to the heavenly music ensemble; he/she would be admitted as a listener at best, if the person in question was not trained as a musician already on Earth (Renner : 1690, 75; Meißner : 1664, fol. Fv ; Küster : 2011, 78 f). It may be that North German writers began to express the old ideas of heavenly music more distinctly because these ideas had recently been called into question in Central Germany. Similarly, the concept of adiaphora was reorganized, again mostly in Central Germany : Initially, adiaphora had been meant as something immaterial to faith; those Mitteldinge could either be used or omitted (for example, the service itself). But, now in the mid-seventeenth century, most of the Mitteldinge acquired a negative connotation (apart from the service, which became a central part of Faith), and this change of view affected church music to a high degree: As soon as a more recent concept of adiaphora was supported (with the potential renunciation of all matters marked as such), the traditional function of music in services could be questioned; music making became a matter of aesthetical discussion (Henrici, cf. Mithobius: 1665, 413).7 If the older concept was maintained (i. e., adiaphora as something neutral in Faith), the situation of music was excellent: In this case, music was the only adiaphoron within the theological theory that had a significance with regard to eternity and redemption, and that was thus a central matter in theological praxis. Apart from the ‘music-related’ reminder that could be given by pictures like the one in Freiberg or by sermons, the two concepts help us to understand any music making at funerals. Singing at a grave would be the last musical greeting on earth before a deceased believer joined in the heavenly music. Similarly, the musical extravagance at princely funeral services is explained in a new manner : It was not mere pomp to have those biblical texts set to music that a prince himself had chosen for his own funeral service, or to perform them with the greatest possible abundance of musical means that a court had as its disposal; it was rather the hope of (musical) redemption, if the typical funeral texts and the best musical means were used at this very last occasion on earth that a prince 7 Henricus Henrici (cf. Mithobius: 1665, 413): “Mancher ist in den irrigen Gedancken ersoffen, es sey res adiaphora, ein Mittel-Ding Gott zu loben, Er möge es thun oder lassen. Solchen Gesellen zubegegnen und ihnen ihren hochschädlichsten Irrthum zu benehmen, müssen wir uns wohl bekannt machen, daß es nicht in unserer freyen Willkühr stehe, sondern wir sollen und müssen Gott loben, es geschehe nun mit schlechten oder mit Kunst-Stimmen.”

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could arrange for himself or for a member of his family. This is an explanation of the Musicalische Exequien by Heinrich Schütz (for Heinrich Reuß the Younger, 1636), or the most ambitious funeral music O Herr, ich bin dein Knecht for Duke Ernst Ludwig of Saxe-Meiningen of 1724 (Feld und Leisinger : 2003), composed by Bach’s cousin Johann Ludwig Bach on a text compiled by the duke himself: Besides referring to numerous biblical and hymn texts, the duke had written a poem, Ich suche nur das Himmelleben, in which he distinctly expresses the wish of redemption – without any hint of personal merits on earth, but simply reflecting a believer’s general perspective, and thus differing from later, more absolutistic funeral texts in praise of the sovereign.8 But here, the final strophe of this text refers to that ‘old’ Lutheran theology of music: “Dann werd ich Halleluja singen, gelobet sei der große Gott, stets Halleluja soll erklingen dem großen Gott, der reißt aus Not. Stimmt alle an: Halleluja, Halleluja, Halleluja.”9

Thus, any music making in Lutheran services at least during the first two centuries after the Reformation (hymn singing, organ playing, ensemble music with voices and instruments) should be regarded as an anticipation of the heavenly music in which it was promised that Lutherans would join – provided only that they consented to the idea of justification and, furthermore, supported the proper basis of eternal life already on earth: making music.

Bibliography Bethge, Philip (2003), Orchester der Himmelsboten, Der Spiegel 2003, Heft 47, 206 f (online: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-29212941.html). Böcker, Martin (2004), Geschichte der historischen Orgel zu Altenbruch, in: Ingo Du8 E.g. Johann Sebastian Bach’s memorial composition for Electress Christiane Eberhardine of Saxony (1727, text by Johann Christoph Gottsched, or the funeral of (the Reformed) Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Köthen (1729, text by Christian Friedrich Henrici), facs. reproductions in Neumann: 1974, 396 f, 398 – 401 (both in praise of the deceased only, without any hint of musical duties in heaven). Nor does the text to Joseph Martin Kraus’s Sorgemusik over Gustav III of 1792 (Ruden: 1979) reflect the earlier theological practice, although the murdered king had been extremely interested in earthly music (likewise Leopold of Köthen). 9 In the concluding third part of the work, which is dominated by rejoicing major modes, this idea is confirmed in several instances, e. g. in the final chorus (No. 26): “… In dir [i. e. the heavenly Jerusalem] will ich hinfort j Nun Freudenopfer bringen j Und mit entbundner Zung j Nebst Mahanaim singen: j Lob, Ehr, Preis, j Herrlichkeit und Ruhm. j Halleluja, Amen, Halleluja.”

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wensee (ed.), Festschrift zur Wiedereinweihung der historischen Orgel in CuxhavenAltenbruch, Cuxhaven: Kirchengemeinde Altenbruch, 23 – 45. Bunners, Christian (1966), Kirchenmusik und Seelenmusik: Studien zu Frömmigkeit und Musik im Luthertum des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 1966. Feld, Ulrike, and Ulrich Leisinger (ed., 2003), Musik am Meininger Hofe, Leipzig: Hofmeister. Fontana, Eszter, and Veit Heller (2008), “Musikinstrumente in Engelshand,” in: Eszter Fontana (ed.), Wenn Engel musizieren: Musikinstrumente von 1594 im Freiberger Dom, Leipzig and Dößel: Stekovics (2nd ed.), 77 – 90. Frick, Christoph (1976), Music-Büchlein oder nützlicher Bericht von dem Ursprung, Gebrauch und Erhaltung Christlicher Music (Lüneburg 1631), repr. Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der DDR. Kraus, Joseph Martin (1979), Sorgemusik över Gustav III., ed. Jan Olof RudŒn, Stockholm: Reimers (Monumenta Musicae Sveciae, 9). Kunde, Claudia (2008), “Die Begräbniskapelle der albertinischen Wettiner im Freiberger Dom,” in: Eszter Fontana (ed.), Wenn Engel musizieren: Musikinstrumente von 1594 im Freiberger Dom, Leipzig and Dößel: Stekovics (2nd ed.), 25 – 35. Küster, Konrad (2007), Wolbestimmete Musica … nach Davids Manier und Gebrauch: Eine Altenbrucher Trauerpredigt von 1653 als Schlüssel zu norddeutscher Musikkultur, Stader Jahrbuch 2007, 55 – 92 (online: http://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/volltexte/ 4668). Küster, Konrad (2011), ‘Mein Schall aufs Ewig weist’: Das Jenseits und die Kirchenmusik der lutherischen Orthodoxie, Schütz-Jahrbuch 33, 75 – 90. Luther, Martin (1913): Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimaraner Ausgabe), vol. 49, Weimar : Böhlau. Meißner [Meisner], Johann (1664): Musica Christiana, Daß ist, Der Christen Singe-Kunst, Wittenberg: Borckardt (online: http://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv :3:1–83806). Mithobius, Hector (1665), Psalmodia Christiana […] Das ist Gründliche Gewissens-Belehrung, was von der Christen Musica, so wol Vocali als Instrumentali, zu halten?, Bremen/Jena: Berger. Neumann, Werner (1974), Sämtliche von Johann Sebastian Bach vertonte Texte, Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik. Pipping, Joseph (1653), Musica Filiorum DEI in Coelis svavissima. Das ist: Himmlische Frewden-Music Der seligen Kinder GOttes im ewigen Leben. Hamburg: Rebenlein. Renner, Johann (1690): Geistliche Wohlklingende Davids-Moteta, Oder Musicalisches Kunst-Stück, Arnstadt: Meurer. Walter, Johann (1938), Lob und preis der löblichen Kunst Musica, facsimile edition, ed. Wilibald Gurlitt, Kassel: Bärenreiter.

Leon van den Broeke

No Funeral Sermons: Dutch or Calvinistic Prohibition?

Introduction Margriet van Heyden, the mother of nobleman Unico Ripperda at Weldam, died in 1620.1 Johannes Puttmanus was required to preach at her funeral.2 He asked the permission of the Classis Deventer on June 8. Many of his colleagues who actually held funeral sermons had not requested the approval of their classes. The classis decided that Puttmanus was not allowed to preach, because at the previous meeting it had decided to abolish such sermons (cf. April 25, 1620; Bouterse: 1995, 78). This is one of the many cases I came across when studying the acts of classes, provincial synods and general synods of the Dutch Reformed Church. Funeral sermons were prohibited by the Dortian Church Order of 1619.3 It appears nonetheless that ecclesiastical practice often differed from the official rules. Was this prohibition a typical Dutch or an Calvinistic issue (until 1795, the beginning of the Batavian-French period)? First I will describe the funeral situation in the Roman-Catholic Church. Then I will present the opinion of Calvin. Third, I will deal with church orders and other documents outside the (Northern) Netherlands, because they had influence on the Dutch Reformed Church. I also include Dutch church orders, ecclesiastical practice and published sermons. 1 I like to thank my colleagues of the section Church History/Church Polity, Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam. I am also indebted to my American colleague Allan J. Janssen for his help with my English. Molhuysen: 1924, 1191 f; van Gelderen: 2000, 84; http://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboomhensen-nanninga/I5259.php. 2 Johannes Puttmannus, (ca. 1580 – 1656/7), minister Goor 1612 – 1656/7; van Lieburg: 1996, 198. 3 Afterwards there was no attention in liturgical books. Even a twentieth-century book of Abraham Kuyper included neither a chapter nor a paragraph on funeral sermons. They did not officially exist. As a reformed minister I had to hold even in the 2000s a few funeral services in the house of the deceased or in a room in the church (Province of Zeeland). In orthodox reformed churches such funeral services are still on the periphery.

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I focus on the funeral sermon. I have to leave out such related items as the ringing of bells,4 epitaphs,5 the Lords Supper, singing, collection of money,6 funeral meals (including beer and wine), decoration of the coffins,7 crosses8 and burning of candles9 that could have shed more light on our topic.10

The Papistic Funeral To understand why Roman-Catholic funerals were obnoxious to Calvin and some of his followers it helps to understand the Roman-Catholic funeral liturgy and rituals of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century (cf. van Bueren: 1999, 50 – 64; Boge: 1999; Volp: 1992, 671 – 672). The person who had died was immediately put into a shroud. The quality of this piece of cloth depended on the financial situation of the deceased and/or the surviving relatives. The poor were buried in a shroud of jute. If the deceased was a layman, an evening song was sung in his house. This was followed by the wake in the church and the funeral service. The bells were rung. The length depended on the price the surviving relatives had paid. The deceased was put on a litter or in a permanent used coffin before he was placed in the grave or a common grave. This did not take place until the priest gave absolution, the forgiveness of all the sins of the deceased. Those who could afford it were buried in the church. Sometimes there was a family grave or family tomb. Members of a fellowship or 4 The Kirchenordnung der Kurpfalz of 1563 did not prohibit the ringing of bells and did not assign it as the sign to pray for the dead, but to gather for the funeral. While using the bells, no distinction should be made between rich and poor ; Sehling: 1969, 406 (Faulenbach: 2009 does not contain the Kirchenordnung der Kurpflaz of 1563); Gerobulus mentioned that after the death and the funeral, the bells rang for an hour; Gerobulus: 1603, 82. The Synod of Dordrecht of 1574 stated that bells were not to be rung, art. 52. 5 The PS Doesburg decided that epitaph’s in churches were also prohibited. Before God the dead are equal. Besides, in the Reformed Church the Word of God was in the centre of the worship. Reformed congregants were in this way protected from distraction while worshipping God; Provincial Synod of Doesburg, May 28 – 31, 1583; Reitsma: 1895, 29; De Jong: 1985, 165. 6 PS IJselstein 1626; Knuttel 1908, 190; van Deursen: 1998, 111. 7 Spaans: 1989, 122; Schotel: 1905, 401. 8 Karant-Nun: 1997, 13, 45, 47, 109. 9 Karant-Nun: 1997, passim. 10 From a gravamen that was discussed in the Classis of Deventer on July 6, 1619 it appeared that people also ate and drank at funeral meals in the houses of the deceased; Bouterse: 1995, 61; PS Gelderland 1583; Reitsma: 1895, 29; PS Vriesland; Knuttel: 1909, 1634, 36; PS Delft 1638; Knuttel: 1909, 178; PS Over Isel 1650, 1651, 1652; Knuttel: 1910, 226, 283, 338; PS Vriesland 1654; Knuttel: 1910, 418; PS Gelderland 1655; Knuttel: 1910, 535; PS Delft 1667, Leiden 1668, Schoonhoven 1669, Schiedam 1670, Gorinchem 1671; Knuttel: 1912, 423 – 424, 461, 500, 538, 576; Hirsch: 1921, 124 – 125; Schotel: 1905, 411 – 413.

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guild were buried in special graves close to altar of the guild. The people who could not afford it were buried at the cemetery, either in a personal or a common grave. After the burial, the prayer for the souls of the dead took place. The living interceded for the dead. They tried to soften the suffering of the souls in the purgatory and tried to help them to receive a place in heaven as soon as possible.

“Sed recta in coemeterium” To get a clear picture of the Dutch and foreign, but familiar, church orders, the opinion of John Calvin is indispensable. Although more Reformed theologians of the 16 century would have been interesting, I have to restrict myself. I begin with a few lines on Luther, because he was the first who held a protestant funeral sermon at the burial of Friedrich the Wise (1463 – 1525), published in 1525 (cf. Luther : 1907, 196 – 227). He elaborated on the meaning of the funeral sermon in the preface of his funeral sermon for Duke “Johans zu Sachsen” Mein lieben freunde, weil sich der fall ißt also mit unserm lieben Landsfürsten zugetragen, und die gewonheit und weise mit den Seelmessen und Begengnissen, wenn man sie zur erden bestetiget hat, abgangen ist, Wollen wir dennoch diesen Gottes dienst nicht lassen nach bleiben, das wir Gottes wort predigen, Dar inn Gott gepreiset, und die leute gebessert werden (Luther : 1909, 237 – 270).

The early modern funeral sermon used in Protestantism comes from the proceedings of the medieval hagiography (cf. van Manen: 2011, 268; Exalto: 2005, 56; van Manen: 2001, 165 – 166; van Dooren: 1979, 397 – 410). Calvin (CO 2, book III.XX.23 – 25) rejected the intercession for the dead. The living could not do anything for the dead, except to lay them in the womb of the earth. The sacrifice Christ had made was once-only. Calvin did not have a liturgy for funerals. The Ordonannces Ecclqsiastiques of 1561 contained regulations regarding the time of the funeral, the vow the men who had to carry the coffin had to make, and the procession, but nothing about the sermon (cf. Opitz: 2006, 270). So it just did not, in fact, exist. Calvin wrote the ministers of MontbŒliard on October 7, 1543 that the coffin was not to be transported to the church, but immediately to the cemetery (“sed recta in coemeterium,” CO 11, 625). If necessary a minister could speak, but he was of the opinion that his presence was not necessary. Human sacrifices and ecclesiastical ceremonies could set free neither the faithful nor the dead (cf. CO 2, book III.VII.10 and book III.IX.1 – 6).

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Foreign Funeral Sermons Four church orders, one liturgical book and one synodical document outside the (Northern) Netherlands have been important for the Dutch Reformed Church. I had to make a selection. Besides, I also wanted to include the Discipline Ecclqsiastique of 1559 and the Ordonnances Ecclqsiastiques of 1561, because they had been important for the Dutch situation as well. However, they do not include any reference to funeral sermons. Apparently, preaching at funerals was not a duty for the Reformed church. This is in agreement with the Dutch declination, although the Discipline Ecclqsiastique of 1559 (France) and the Ordonnances Ecclqsiastiques of 1561 (Geneva) did not mention a prohibition. Was this also the case in London, Scotland, Kurpfalz and the Southern Netherlands?

Liturgia Sacra 1551 – 1554 Valerandus Pollanus11 included in his Liturgia Sacra a small paragraph ‘In funere’. Anyone who wanted to participate in the funeral gathered in the house of the deceased. A funeral procession to the church or cemetery was tolerated in this order : first the minister, then the family, followed by other participants. The procession was sustained under the conditions of: in good order, modesty and silence. The corpse rested near the grave. The minister preached. The content was fixed: 1. the exhortation and admonition, death and resurrection; 2. the edification of the church: to glorify God for the virtues of the deceased, especially when he or she died in the true faith of Jesus Christ. The sermon was followed by a prayer. This had to have as its content: 1. thanksgiving to God who liberated the deceased from this miserable life; 2. everyone had to be convinced of his own death; 3. everyone avoided the temptations of the world, the devil and the flesh and may die in the true faith; 4. that God grant his grace to everyone. So too, Pollanus gave space for funeral sermons and also explained why they could play an important role in the congregation. And again, the homily was held before the burial took place.

11 Verandus Pollanus/VallŒrand Poullain ("1520 – 1558), minister French congregation Straatsburg, superintendent congregation Glastonbury, minister Frankfurt am Main; Nauta: 1960, 480.

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The Forma ac Ratio of 1554/5 Johannes | Lasco stated that no theatrics, no pagan nor papal device, should be employed and preferred the utmost simplicity for the edification of the church (cf. 1554/5, 634 – 647). The funeral was an opportunity to teach the laity. The homily should include three key lessons. First, the minister should preach that the funeral was not instituted in the Ancient Church for the benefit of the soul of the deceased congregant, but rather for the witnesses of the funeral rite. Second, the minister should preach that death begins with original sin and that Christ sacrificed himself so that all others might have eternal life. Third, the minister preached that through faith in God the congregants could enjoy the benefits of Christ’s gifts. When the minister finished his sermon, the body was buried and the entire congregation sang Psalm 103. The minister led a public prayer for the dead. So, funeral sermons were not banished. p Lasco encouraged preaching at funerals seeing it as a chance to edify the congregation. However such sermons had to take place in all simplicity. It again becomes clear that the sermon was held before the burial.

The Christian Ordinances of 1554 Micron’s Christian Ordinances of 1554 are a summary of Johannes | Lasco’s Forma ac Ratio. Micron stated that anybody should be buried in all simplicity (cf. Dankbaar : 1983, 327 – 330). During a funeral service the corpse was in the church building. The minister held a short sermon. He had to 1. explain how the death through Adam came into the world and how Christ conquered the death; 2. preach the resurrection of the body and eternal life and 3. preach the uncertainty of life and how the day of the Lord would come as a thief in the night. The minister was allowed to tell about the virtues of the dead, however because of the glory of the Lord and the call to the congregants to imitate these virtues. Hereafter the funeral took place. In the meantime, the congregation sung Psalm 103. Afterwards a prayer and the benediction were said. The deacons gathered the alms for the poor. The Acts of the Dutch congregation (1573) show nonetheless that members who required a funeral sermon had to contact the ministers of the English congregation, because “our ministers are busy with studying and writing” (Jelsma, 1993, 1319). Apparently, preaching at funerals had no priority for the ministers of the Dutch congregation. Yet, the Christian Ordinances of 1554 did not banish funeral sermons. Even more, it did give some regulations for the preachers. And it becomes clear that the homily was held before the burial.

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The Scottish Book of Discipline of 1561 The ninth chapter – ‘Of Burial’ – of the Scottish Book of Discipline 156112 made clear that superstition and idolatry was to be avoided. This implied that singing of Mass, dirge, and all other prayers over or for the dead, were condemned as being not only superfluous and vain, but also were idolatrous, and repugnant to the Scripture. It was considered most expedient that the dead be conveyed to the place of burial with some honest company of the church, without singing, reading, or ceremony other than that the dead be committed to the grave, with such gravity and sobriety, as those that were present seemed to fear the judgments of God, and to hate sin, which is the cause of death. The church order understood that some people required a sermon or some Biblical texts to be read to remind the living that they too were mortal. However, it pointed out that the daily sermons were also given for this purpose. Besides, it warned or the practice or ministers not refusing the rich and neglecting the poor. Despite the prohibition, it becomes clear that church orders do not always match ecclesiastical practice. Even John Knox ("1514 – 1572) (cf. Bonting: 2005, 1033 – 1034) held a sermon at the funeral service of the on February 14, 1570 in Linlithgow for the assassinated Lord James Stewart, Earl of Moray, Regent of Scotland.13 This confirms that despite church orders the prohibition was not valid for important people. This was not only the case in Scotland, but in other countries as well. Although officially the church order banished funeral sermons – in Scotland and the Netherlands, as we will see in the next paragraph – it could not prevent many ministers and theologians, just like princes, Lords, kings etc., from becoming objects of veneration in funeral sermons.14 It was not without reason that the church order warned of neglecting the poor.

The Kirchenordnung der Kurpfalz of 1563 The Kirchenordnung der Kurpfalz of 1563 did not prohibit a funeral sermon, on the contrary. After the dead body was carried to the funeral, the minister read John 11 or 1 Thess 4 or a similar biblical text and the preface, Lieben freund, wir haben jetzt, wie wir tröstlicher zuversicht und hoffnung sein, ein mitglied unsers herrn Jesu Christi aus christlicher lieb zur begrebnus beleitet. Damit 12 http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/bod_ch03.htm. 13 http://www.scotsindependent.org/dates1-d.htm. 14 Gordon: 2000, 294.

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wir nun nicht one underricht und trost abtreten, wöllen wir hören die wort des heiligen apostels Pauli (vel) des heiligen evangelisten N., also lautendt: Wir wöllen euch, lieben brüder etc. [1 Thess 4:13 – 18] oder : Martha sagt zu Jesus: Herr, werstu hie gewesen, mein bruder wer nit gestorben etc. [John 11:21 – 45] oder : Christus ist auferstanden von den todten und der erstling worden under denen, die da schlafen etc. [1 Cor 15:20 – 28] (Sehling: 1969, 406).

Hereafter the minister held a short sermon. He ended the funeral with a prayer. Apparently afterwards the burial took place.

The Synods in the Southern Netherlands 1563 – 1566 Three synods of the Reformed Church sub cruce in the Southern Netherlands made decisions regarding funerals. The Synod of de la Palme (Tournai) decided on April 26, 1563 that Reformed people could attend the gathering under the condition that there would be no idolatry (cf. Hooijer : 1865, 11). The synod of la Vigne (Antwerp) | la St. Jean 1563 shared this opinion (cf. Hooijer : 1865, 14). Yet, a year later the Synod of la Vigne (Antwerp) decided – on May 1, 1564 – that there would be no funeral prayers or sermons, out of fear for idolatry, On ne fera priers ni predications | l’enterrement des morts pour obrier | toutes superstition. Quant aux convois que l’on peut faire et pa”s qui sont la tyrannie de l’Antichrist, ils se peuvent garder selon le contenu en l’article 8 du Synode, tenu | la Vigne, a la St. Jean 1563 (Hooijer : 1865, 19).

Synods and Church Orders in the (Northern) Netherlands The Synod of Emden of 1571 was the first synod for the Dutch Reformed Church, even though it did not gather on Dutch soil, but in Emden because of the political situation in the Netherlands.15 The young and vulnerable church was seeking its identity in dangerous and uncertain times. It does not come as a surprise that it was not acts of Emden, but that of the next synod, held on Dutch soil in Dordrecht in 1574, that contained references to the funeral sermon. This synod had two important characteristics. One, it was a liturgical synod: it made decisions regarding liturgy, including funerals. Apparently there had been a fixed prayer that accompanied the funeral sermons. Johannes Ens affirmed this in his Kort historisch berigt (1733, 189).16 Furthermore, the synod decided that the funeral 15 I leave out the regulations of the Convent of Wesel. It is usually dated in 1568; however this is controversial; Boersma: 1994, 197 – 206. 16 Johannes Ens (1684 – 1732), full professor Utrecht 1723; van Asselt: 2001, 172 – 173.

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sermon was not meant to be established. However, it was careful in its choice of words. There were two reasons not to promote such sermons: 1. the prayers for the person who had passed away could be seen as Roman-Catholic superstition, because of the declination of intercession; 2. the sermon could easily lead to the appraisal of the dead instead of the Lord. And also, this might easy lead to fear that flattery might take place. The funeral was not an ecclesiastical task, but a duty of the family who could invite an elder or a minister to speak words of comfort, (art. 23 Dortian Church Order of 1619). Two, it was more a provincial synod. Because of the political situation only “representatives” of the church in Holland and Zeeland could gather. This again demonstrates the difficult context of the young Reformed church. The Synod of Dordrecht of 1578 (art. 59) considered that funeral sermons – as long as they could not be abolished, but were sustained for the time being – had to be a special kind of sermon, more unpremeditated (cf. Rutgers: 1980, 249). The phrase “for the time being” of the synod’s decision had also to do with elders who were of the opinion that funeral sermons were not without benefit (1980, 249). At the Synod of Middelburg of 1581 it was asked to refrain from the prayer for the dead in future editions of the Heidelberger Catechism.17 The synod decided to leave out this prayer. Yet it was published in the editions of the New Testament by the Leiden publisher Jan Paedts Jacobszoon in 1587 and 1590. Afterwards it was left out. During the last quarter of the sixteenth century the governments also designed draft church orders, in 1576 (cf. Hooijer : 1865, 121 – 131), 1583 (cf. Hooijer : 1856, 233 – 246), and 1591 (cf. Hooijer : 1856, 338 – 350). They contained a responsibility for the magistrates to safeguard the health care and the dignity in the area and to restrain from superstition. In 1583 (art. 41, cf. Hooijer : 1856, 243) and in 1591 (art. 27, cf. Hooijer : 1856, 346) the governments prescribed that funerals had to take place during the day.18 This implies that there were funerals at night to impress others and to show how important and wealthy the deceased was (cf. Boon: 1987, 187 – 192; Schotel: 1905, 403; Wagenaar : 1765). It was so common practice that the city council of Amsterdam in 1679 sustained such funerals (cf. van der Haar: 1964, 25).

17 Part. question 81; Rutgers: 1980, 446. This prayer was included in the back of published editions of the Heidelberger Catechism. 18 This had also been the case in England and France; Lecture ‘Personal and Political: Burial in Early Modern England and France by Vanessa Harding, 2nd conference RefoRC ‘Death and Reformation,’ Oslo, Norway, May 10, 2012.

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Regional Differences and Ecclesiastical Practice The landscape of Dutch church orders is not one of uniformity. Only three provinces – Overijssel, Gelderland and Utrecht – adopted the Dortian Church Order of 1619 and then with changes. The others maintained the decisions of the sixteenth-century synods or had their own church order. With regard to the political situation in the Netherlands, the ecclesiastical developments in the different regions did not proceed simultaneously, also not with regard to our topic. The Provincial Synods of North-Holland,19 South-Holland (abolition of funeral sermons with great cautiousness or no introduction of funeral sermons),20 Zeeland, Friesland,21 Groningen,22 Utrecht23 and Overijssel24 prohibited funeral sermons. Every provincial synod and/or classis had its own struggle with regard to the prohibition of funeral sermons and tried to convince the people and to discipline ministers who did preach at funerals, for example: Johannes van Eijck (March 7, 1589; cf. van Dooren: 1980, 256),25 Johannes Martinus (May 25, 1591; cf. Bouterse: 1991, 139)26 Johannes Simonsz. (November 17, 1597 and March 31, 1598; cf. van Dooren: 1980, 478, 485)27 and Johannes Iserman (March 18 and April 15 – 16, 1602; cf. Bouterse: 1991, 237, 242),28 were warned or disciplined by the classis. Even more, the PS South-Holland appointed the influential minister Herman Corputius29 on May 3, 1588 to preach in the congregation (Papendrecht) of Godefridus Allendorp (cf. Van Dooren: 1980, 248).30 Corputius had to explain why the prohibition was so important, because Allendorp 19 PS Alkmaar, March 31, 1573; PS Edam, June 2, 1586; Reitsma: 1892, 7 and 137. 20 August, 6, 1573; Van Dooren: 1980, 6. PS Zuid-Holland, June 15, 1574; Reitsma: 1893, 133 – 134. 21 PS Harlingen, June 16 – 20, 1590; PS Leeuwarden, June 6 – 9, 1592; PS Harlingen, February 23 – 24, 1603; Reitsma: 1897, 54, 69 and 136. 22 PS Groningen, April 5, 1597; PS Appingedam, April 25 – 29, 1608; PS Groningen, May 3 – 8, 1613; Reitsma: 1898, 13, 150 and Reitsma: 1895, 228. 23 4 november 1620; Kok: 1996, 414; Van Lieburg: 1996, 20; PS Utrecht, July 8 – 10, 1606; Reitsma: 1897, 310. The prohibition in Utrecht was affirmed by Gerobulus: 1603, 84. 24 PS Campen, June 27 – 30, 1603; PS Campen, September 14 – 15, 1612; PS Vollenhoven, September 29-October 3, 1618; Reitsma: 1896, 263, 291, 309; van Gelderen: 2000, 5. 25 Johannes van Eijck, (….–1599), minister Zwijndrecht/chaplain hospital Dordrecht 1578, emeritus 1598; Van Lieburg: 1996, 63. 26 Johannes Martinus (….–1603), minister Bleiswijk 1588; Van Lieburg: 1996, 159. 27 Johannes Simonsz. (….–1600), minister Giessen-Oudekerk 1586 and Giessen-Nieuwkerk until 1592; Van Lieburg: 1996. 28 Johannes Iserman (ca. 1540 – 1613), minister Charlois 1592, removed 1605; Van Lieburg: 1996, 111. 29 Hermannus Corputius (1536 – 1601), lawyer Breda 1562, minister Hochum (Paltz) 1574 – 1576, Dordrecht 1578; Van Lieburg: 1996, 134; van Dooren: 1980, 248. 30 Godefridus Allendorp (….–1606), minister Papendrecht 1593 – 1606; Van Doorn: 1980, XXVI.

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preached at funerals. It also appears that general assemblies held mutual supervision with regard to the prohibition of funeral sermons. For instance, the PS ’s Gravenhage in 1591 assigned classes and church visitors to supervise the practice of the funeral sermons.31 And the PS Campen decided on June 23, 1620 to request the PS Drenthe to stop funeral sermons.32 Another type of struggle was mentioned by Isaac Wassenburg.33 He let his provincial synod in 1619 know that he did hold funeral sermons because his Lutheran colleagues also did preach.34 Apparently, another reason not to obey the ecclesiastical rule was confessional rivalry. This was not only the case with Lutherans. The Reformed people did not want the popish think that they would bury their dead as dogs. Besides, it was an opportunity for them to hear a Reformed sermon. This appears from the situation in Haarlem. Nonetheless, the PS ’s Gravenhage requested this congregation in 1591 to abolish the funeral sermons.35 The mayors of the city wanted to keep the confessional peace. It appears that pre-Calvinistic traditions were respected in this city. The confessional differences appeared more from the ars moriendi and the comforting of the people who were dying than from the memento mori. That was more important than the burial of the dead. Also the Classis of Dordrecht noticed that the church benefited from funeral sermons, especially in the country (April 26, 1583; cf. van Dooren: 1980, 148 f.). This was also a consideration for the churches of the (former) isle of Tholen in the PS Zeeland in 1610. With the possible growth of the Reformed church in view, they wrote a gravamen to the PS Zeeland without success.36 According to them funeral sermons could lead people to conversion and to Jesus Christ. Yet, the general rule in Zeeland remained a prohibition. Also the PS Utrecht considered the growth of the church. Yet in 1629 it maintained the prohibition of such homilies.37 The situation in Friesland was the same: no funeral sermon. This did not imply that all the ministers rejoiced over the synodical decisions. Balthasar Bekker38 is a fine example of a minister who not only opposed the ecclesiastical agreements and who not only hold funeral sermons, but he even wrote a booklet on our topic (cf. 1666). He had met criticism in 1664 when his first wife, Elske 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

PS Gravenhage, October 22, 1591; Reitsma: 1893, 405. PS Campen, June 23, 1620; Reitsma: 1896, 354. Wassenburg (….–1653), minister Bodegraven 1619; Van Lieburg: 1996, 274. PS Zuid-Holland, July 23-August 17, 1619; Reitsma: 1898, 400. PS Gravenhage, October 22, 1591; Reitsma: 1893, 405. Van Gelderen: 2000, 168 – 170. PS Veere, May 17 – 27, 1610; Reitsma: 1896, 99. PS Utrecht, September 5, 1620; Reitsma: 1897, 459. Bekker (1634 – 1698), rector school Franeker 1655, minister Oosterlittens 1657, Franeker 1666, Loenen 1674, Weesp 1676, removed 1692; Knuttel: 1911, 277 – 279.

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Walkens, was buried. Bekker had requested a colleague to preach at her funeral. He defended the right to hold sermons at funerals. He referred to Isa 40 and Rev 14 and he wondered why professors did hold funeral sermons and ministers were not allowed to preach. Besides, he was of the opinion that people at funerals were more open to the proclamation of the Word of God. And he also showed that funeral sermons were not superstitious (Roman-Catholic), but were already status quo before the Roman-Catholic era (cf. 1666: 669). The general rule in the Province of Groningen after 1595 was the prohibition of funeral sermons. Ministers who had held a funeral sermon were warned or disciplined, as, e. g., Hermannus Bunicerus.39 The confusing part is that the PS Groningen in both 1602 and in 1612 decided not to hold funeral sermons before the funeral took place. This implies that sermons after the funeral were apparently possible and/or sustained.40 This would be in agreement with the Groningen church order of 1595 that banished funeral sermons unless they would be edifying (art. 29; cf. Hooijer : 1865, 367). Yet, the acts of the PS of Groningen show that it rejected the funeral sermons in 1601 (cf. Kok: 1990, 230 – 231) and 1640 (cf. Wagenaar : 1964, 53). The Classis of Zuid-Beveland in the Province of Zeeland decided in 1579 that ministers were not supposed to hold a sermon at the funeral of a congregant if he had visited this ill person before his or her death (May 4, 1579; cf. van Gelderen: 2000, 376). This demonstrates that the ars moriendi in this early reformed church was more important than an ecclesiastical funeral. When ministers preached it not only took place in the church, or at the cemetery, but also in the house of the deceased. The minister then held a short speech, comforted those who mourned and confronted those who were present with the memento mori. He ended his contribution with a prayer. Afterwards the funeral took place. Sometimes ministers tried to avoid the prohibition of funeral sermons by having the burial taken place on Sunday in the church. The Province of Utrecht prohibited this practice as from April 20, 1654 (cf. Hirsch: 1921, 25). Despite the prohibition the Reformed church benefited from funerals. People, including those from other denominations, had to pay for the burial, for cleaning and lifting the tomb stone. The minister was paid for his work, just like the pastor before the Reformation (cf. Schotel; 1905, 405). Some things just did not change despite the Reformation. There was not only discontinuity, but also continuity. This does not only appear from the extra salary the clergy received, but also from the situation in the city of Enkhuizen in the Province of Holland. Women prayed even in 1621 for the souls of the deceased (cf. Schotel: 1905, 408). 39 Bunicerus (" 1535 – 1614), minister Leens 1600; Van Lieburg: 1996, 42. 40 PS Groningen, May, 31-June 5 and June 14 – 17, 1602; PS Appingedam, May 4 – 8, 1612; Reitsma: 1898, 54 and Reitsma: 1895, 202.

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And in many places a procession around the cemetery – once or twice – took place in order to mislead the evil ghosts and that the soul of the deceased could not find his way home (cf. Schotel: 1905, 407).41 Two provincial synods, Gelderland and Drenthe, had a different perspective. The PS Gelderland was cautious when it in 1579 advised to consideration of its benefit for edifying the church (cf. Reitsma: 1895, 2). But in 1583 it also decided to banish the funeral homilies (cf. Reitsma: 1895, 29). So, only the PS Drenthe allowed them in places where they were common practice. Before it adopted its own church order (cf. Hooijer 1865, 463 – 486) in 1638, it had decided already in 1612 that ministers were not supposed to preach before the burial took place.42 Art. 81 of the church order stated that where the funeral sermons were used, they could be continued. It did however not say that funeral sermons were supposed to be introduced and instituted.

Published Sermons Some funeral sermons were published, although not so many as in the Lutheran tradition. Besides, a new theological genre emerged. That was only possible, however, for rich families and because of prominent persons who had died. The opportunity for the rich to have such sermons published again created a distinction between rich and poor. There were also advantages: such manuscripts had a pastoral and catechetical function for the living. It was a tool for the preaching of Reformed doctrine. The dead could be remembered and brought the living into memory that every person has to die someday. Besides, the dead were the examples for the living. One fine example was the Abraham Hellenbroek,43 of the Further or Second Reformation. He wrote an in memoriam on the occasion of the death of Willem | Brakel.44

41 Although these are connected items that should not be in this article, they affirm that the preCalvinistic traditions were very strong, despite official prohibitions. 42 Classis Generalis of Assen, September 7, 1612; Reitsma: 1899, 149. 43 Hellenbroek (1658 – 1735) minister Zwammerdam 1682, Zwijndrecht 1691, Zaltbommel 1694, Rotterdam 1695 – 1728; Bisschop: 2001, 237 – 238. 44 p Brakel (1635 – 1711), minister Exmorra/Allingawier 1662, Stavoren 1665, Harlingen 1670, Leeuwarden 1673 and Rotterdam 1683; Nauta: 1998, 47 – 51.

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Conclusions The official Dutch attitude regarding funeral sermons was a prohibition as is stated as from the Synod of Dordrecht of 1574 through the Synod of Dordrecht of 1619, although the early synods were cautious. A fixed prayer after the Heidelberger Catechism was already obnoxious. There were two reasons for such a prohibition: the denial of both the papistic intercession and appraisal of men at funerals. Despite the Dutch official prohibition or effort to have the funeral sermons abolished, the ecclesiastical practice did not always match this rule. However, only the Province of Drenthe did not have such prohibition. There were reasons to keep on preaching at funerals. They were 1. an instrument to lead people to Christ and a tool to preach the Reformed belief; 2. beneficial for the growth of the church in rural regions, and so an instrument for building up and edifying the church. Elders particularly found them not without benefit; 3. beneficial for the poor ; 4. needful in the process of confessional rivalry at the religious market and 5. ministers received presents and/or extra salary. Some of these homilies were published and as a consequence they received a pastoral and a catechetical function. They comforted those who mourned and taught them with regard to the soteriology. So, they were also an important tool for preaching Reformed doctrine, prohibition or not. Not only did some ministers keep on preaching funeral sermons, but it was exceptional to demonstrate one’s disagreement with the prohibition by publishing pro funeral sermons, like Balthasar Bekker did. Nonetheless, the synods and the classes of the young Dutch Reformed Church warned and disciplined ministers who kept on preaching at funerals. But we also see that they were patient with such ministers. However, the Calvinistic doctrine was clear and decisive: the living could not do anything for the dead, despite the confession of the fellowship of the living and the dead. Besides, the fear that human persons instead of God were praised was manifest. This shows also that the pre-Calvinistic tradition was strong, not only with regard to our topic, but also concerning related funeral aspects. The prohibition was not only something typical for the Northern Netherlands. Both the Scottish Book of Discipline of 1561 and the Synod of La Vigne (Antwerp) of 1564 in the Southern-Netherlands prohibited funeral homilies. It was in agreement with Calvin’s opinion on this matter : no funeral sermon, but immediately to the cemetery. Both the Discipline Ecclqsiastique of 1559 and the Ordonnances Ecclqsiastiques of 1561 did not refer to our topic. Such a homily just did not exist. Yet, the situation in London and Pfalz was different. In London, these sermons were sustained and directions were even given with regard to their content. However, funeral preaching around 1573 had no priority for the ministers of the Dutch congregation in London. This

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was the other way around: the ministers were allowed to preach at funerals, but they did not see it as belonging to their core business. Johannes Puttmannus would not have had a problem with permission to preach at the funeral of Margriet van Hyden. However, his classis did not approve funeral sermons, just as synods in the Northern and Southern Netherlands, and Scotland prescribed. So, the Genevean and French model was adopted. Funeral sermons were not officially an ecclesiastical task. They disappeared from sight of the Dutch and Scottish church. Unofficially ministers kept on preaching in the house of the deceased.

Bibliography p Lasco, Johannes (1554/5), Forma ac ratio tota ecclesiastici ministerii, in peregrinorum, potissimum vero Germanorum ecclesia: instituta Londini in Anglia, per pientissimum regem Angliae & c. Eduardum etc.: 1550, Frankfurt/Emden, C. Egenolff/E. van der Erve. Bekker, Balthasar, (1666), Kort Beright van ’t gebruik of misbruik der Lyk-reden en Lykpredicatien Met een aanhangsel van eenighe Synodale Resoluytien: aengaande het prediken metten aankleeve, Franeker : Jan Wellens. Bisschop, Roelof (2001), Article “Abraham Hellenbroek”, BLGNP 5. Boersma, Owe (1994), Vluchtig voorbeeld: De nederlandse, franse en italiaanse vluchtelingenkerken in londen, 1568 – 1585, S.l., s.n. Boge, Birgit/Bogner, Ralf G. (ed.) (1999), Oratio Funebris: Die katholische Leichenpredigt der frühen Neuzeit. Zwölf Studien. Mit einem Katalog deutschsprachiger katholischer Leichenpredigten in Einzeldrucken 1576 – 1799 aus den Beständen der Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg und der Universitätsbibliothek Eichstätt, Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, Chloe: Beihefte zum Daphnis 30. Bonting, Sjoerd L. (2005), Article “John Knox”, CE 2. Boon, Rudolf (1987) De ‘Laatste eer’ in gereformeerd-protestants milieu: Een geschiedenis van verwerping en eerherstel, Eredienstvaardig 3/5. Bouterse, Johannes (ed.) (1991), Classicale Acta 1573 – 1620 vol. 3:Particuliere synode Zuid-Holland, ’s Gravenhage: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, RGP kl.s. 69. Bouterse, Johannes (ed.), (1995), Classicale Acta 1573 – 1620 vol. 4:Provinciale synode Zeeland, Den Haag: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, RGP kl.s. 79. Brienen, Teunis (1987), De liturgie bij Johannes Calvijn: Zijn publicaties en zijn visie, Kampen: De Groot Goudriaan. Calvijn, Johannes (1956), Institutie of onderwijzing in de christelijke godsdienst, uit het Latijn vertaald door A. Sizoo, vol. 2, Delft: W. D. Meinema, 3rd ed. Calvin, John (1864), Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia vol. 2, Guilielmus Baum/ Eduardus Cunitz/Eduardus Reuss (ed.) Brunsvigae: C.A. Schwetschke et filium (M. Bruhn). Calvin, John (1873), Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia vol. 11, Guilielmus Baum/Eduardus Cunitz/Eduardus Reuss (ed.) Brunsvigae: C.A. Schwetschke et filium (M. Bruhn).

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Abbrevations BLGNP

Biografisch Lexicon voor de Geschiedenis van het Nederlands Protestantisme CE Christelijke Encyclopedie CO Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt Omnia JMRS The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies NNBW Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek PS Provincial Synod RGP kl.s. Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatin kleine serie