The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe

The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe Edited by C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte The Protestant Clergy o...

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The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe Edited by C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe

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The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe Edited by

C. Scott Dixon The Queen’s University of Belfast

and

Luise Schorn-Schütte Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

Editorial Selection and Introduction © C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte 2003; Other chapters © Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–91776–6 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Protestant clergy of early modern Europe / edited by C. Scott Dixon, Luise Schorn-Schütte. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–91776–6 (cloth) 1. Protestant churches–Europe–Clergy–History. 2. Clergy–Office–History. 3. Reformation–Europe. 4. Europe–Church history–16th century. 5. Europe–Church history–17th century. I. Dixon, C. Scott. II. Schorn-Schütte, Luise. BR307.P75 2003 262’.14–dc21 2003051971

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Contents List of Tables

vii

Notes on the Contributors

viii

Introduction: The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

1

1. Before the Protestant Clergy: The Construction and Deconstruction of Medieval Priesthood R.N. Swanson

39

2. The Making of the Protestant Pastor: The Theological Foundations of a Clerical Estate R. Emmet McLaughlin

60

3. The Emergence of the Pastoral Family in the German Reformation: The Parsonage as a Site of Socio-religious Change Susan C. Karant-Nunn

79

4. The Clergyman between the Cultures of State and Parish: Contestation and Compromise in Reformation Saxony Jay Goodale

100

5. The Clergy and the Theological Culture of the Age: The Education of Lutheran Pastors in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Thomas Kaufmann

120

6. The Protestant Ministry and the Cultures of Rule: The Reformed Zurich Clergy of the Sixteenth Century Bruce Gordon

137

7. Teaching the Reformation: The Clergy as Preachers, Catechists, Authors and Teachers Ian Green

156

8. The French Pastorate: Confessional Identity and Confessionalization in the Huguenot Minority, 1559–1685 Mark Greengrass

176

Notes

196

Index

240 v

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List of Tables 1. Social origins of the clergy of Hildesheim, Danzig and Basel sixteenth–eighteenth centuries 2. Locations of study of the clergy of Hildesheim, Danzig and Basel sixteenth–eighteenth centuries 3. Career stages of the clergy of Hildesheim, Danzig and Basel sixteenth–eighteenth centuries 4. Age of clergy at commencement of ﬁrst ofﬁce of Hildesheim, Danzig and Basel sixteenth–eighteenth centuries

vii

7 12 25 27

Notes on the Contributors C. Scott Dixon is Senior Lecturer in European Studies at the Queen’s University of Belfast and lectures on British History at the University of Vienna. His publications include The Reformation and Rural Society. The Parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, 1528–1603 (Cambridge, 1996), (editor) The German Reformation: The Essential Readings (Oxford, 1999), and The Reformation in Germany (Oxford, 2002). He is presently completing a book on the historiography of the European Reformation. Jay Goodale is Assistant Professor of History at Bucknell University. He has held visiting appointments at UCLA, the Max Planck Institute for History and the University of Erfurt. Professor Goodale has published several articles on the rural Reformation in journals and edited volumes, and is completing a book on how clerical–lay relations affected the reception and development of the Reformation in Saxony and Thuringia. Bruce Gordon is Reader in Modern History and Deputy Director of the Reformation Studies Institute at the University of St Andrews. His publications include The Swiss Reformation (Manchester, 2002); The Place of the Dead (with Peter Marshall) (Cambridge, 2000); and (editor) Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Aldershot, 1996). Ian Green is Professor of Early Modern History in the School of History at the Queen’s University of Belfast. He is the author of many articles on the early modern English clergy and church, and of ‘The Christian’s ABC’: Catechisms and Catechizing in England c. 1530–1730 (Oxford, 1996) and Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000). He is currently working on the last part of this trilogy, entitled Word, Image, and Ritual in Early Modern English Protestantism. Mark Greengrass works on the history of France in the Renaissance and Reformation. He has published on the French Reformation, the French wars of religion and the reign of Henri IV. He is currently completing a monograph on ‘Governing Passions: the Reformation of the Kingdom of France, 1576–1586’, which explores the yearning for fundamental change generated by the religious wars of the later sixteenth viii

Notes on the Contributors ix

century. He is the executive director of the ‘John Foxe Project’, which aims to produce a scholarly edition of his famous Elizabethan martyrology and holds a personal chair in the Department of History at the University of Shefﬁeld. Susan C. Karant-Nunn is Director of the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies as well as Professor of History at the University of Arizona. Her monograph, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London, 1997), won the 1998 Roland H. Bainton Prize of the Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference. With Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks she has edited Luther on Women: A Sourcebook (Cambridge, 2003). She is writing a book on the Reformations and the emotions. Thomas Kaufmann is Professor of Church History in the Faculty of Theology at the Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany. Prior to this appointment he held a chair in the Faculty of Evangelical Theology at the Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich (1996–2000). His publications include: Die Abendmahlstheologie der Straßburger Reformatoren bis 1529 (Tübingen, 1992); Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung (Gütersloh, 1997); Dreißigjähriger Krieg und Westfälischer Friede. Kirchengeschichtliche Studien zur lutherischer Konfessionskultur (Tübingen, 1998); Reformatoren (Göttingen, 1998); (editor) Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Gütersloh, 2002); and Das Ende der Reformation. Magdeburgs ‘Herrgottskanzlei’ 1548–1551/2 (Tübingen, in press). His research interests lie in the area of church history and theology of the early modern period. R. Emmet McLaughlin is Associate Professor of History at Villanova University (USA). He is the author of Caspar Schwenckfeld, Reluctant Radical: His Life to 1540 (New Haven, 1986) and The Freedom of Spirit, Social Privilege, and Religious Dissent: Caspar Schwenckfeld and the Schwenckfelders (Baden-Baden, 1996). He has also published on the Radical Reformation generally and the intellectual roots of the Reformation. Luise Schorn-Schütte is Professor of Modern History at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her publications include Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Frühneuzeit. Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung frühmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft (Gütersloh, 1996); Die Reformation: Vorgeschichte – Verlauf – Wirkung (München, 1996); and (editor with W. Sparn) Evangelische Pfarrer: zur sozialen und politischen Rolle einer bürgerlichen Gruppe in der deutschen Gesellschaft des

x Notes on the Contributors

18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1997). Her research interests lie in the area of political thought in the early modern period, Reformation history and theories of history. R.N. Swanson is Professor of Medieval Ecclesiastical History at the University of Birmingham, and has worked extensively on assorted aspects of European church history from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, with a concentration on England after the Black Death. His books include Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215–c.1515 (Cambridge, 1995) and The Twelfth Century Renaissance (Manchester, 1999). He is currently completing a book on indulgences in pre-Reformation England.

Introduction: The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

The Reformation was a European event. It brought an end to the unity of European Christianity, thus effecting a lasting divide, but it also led to a renewed intensiﬁcation of the fusion of politics and religion, if from that point forward in a landscape distinguished by confessional and cultural disparity. In all of this, throughout the lands of Reformation Europe, the ﬁgure at the heart of this development was the Protestant clergyman. In those regions that turned to Protestantism, the Reformation meant the displacement of the existing clerical estate and the emergence of a new social group – the evangelical clergy. Clerical marriage, now legitimate, led very quickly to the establishment of a completely new matrix of familial relations within which the pastor and his family were able to work their way into the ranks of the educated middle classes of early modern Europe. In many Protestant lands this happened within the ﬁrst few generations. Beyond this rather vague commonality, however, the social and confessional discrepancies within the new group were shaped in different regions in widely different ways. National and regional variants of the evangelical parsonage or the pastoral family exist in abundance. Proof of this resides in how recent research has approached the theme: alongside the socio-historical studies devoted to career developments, social interrelations, economic conditions and educational backgrounds, new issues have emerged, including questions relating to the clergyman’s room for manoeuvre once in ofﬁce and how he stood in relation to the ruling elite, secular and spiritual alike, and the commune. In all of this, the developing sense of a unique clerical self-awareness assumed great importance.1 1

2 C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

In the study of the Protestant clergy, new concerns have been pushed into the foreground. Career strategies, family structures in the parsonage, the position of the pastor’s wife in the parish, and the tensions and conﬂicts that emerged between theologians and parishioners over the elementary expectations of piety in the communes – all have become matters of interest. At the same time, excessively sharp points of opposition have been tempered by a dialogue of contrasts and comparisons, while former assertions of methodological purity with exclusive claims to truth and wisdom have faded from view.2 It is thus a propitious time to present a survey of the state of current knowledge, and that is what the following collection of essays sets out to do. Gathered together in this volume are eight contributions by leading scholars of medieval and early modern Europe on different aspects of the rise and development of the Protestant clergy. Each contribution deals with separate issues and approaches the theme from a different perspective, but taken together the eight essays provide a wide-ranging survey of the emergence of the Protestant clergy in the confessional age, from the construction of the clerical estate and its divergence from the medieval priesthood to the patterns and particulars of development and their implications for interpreting and understanding the confessional era. Many of the essays address a broad theme within a distinct national or territorial framework; the issues are general, the questions universal, but the details which animate the analyses are particular and precise. Using this approach, the volume is able to speak to the general concerns of Reformation historiography, while drawing on the crucial details made possible by research expertise. The end result is a comprehensive overview of a subject at the very heart of early modern history, viewed from a range of perspectives which provides an essential understanding of the age.

Medieval traditions Whatever the degree of differentiation in confessional Europe, an important constant for the historian remains the need to situate the new Protestant clergy in the context of medieval traditions. Both the economic structures and the expectations of the commune, for instance, managed to outlast the fundamental upheavals that the Reformation brought in its train. As a consequence, historians have approached the new social group ‘clergy’ by placing different weight on different aspects: while, on the one hand, there is clear indication of a process of professionalization which must be given serious consid-

Introduction 3

eration, on the other, there is a counter-argument, equally serious in nature, that emphasizes the durability of the traditional estates, particularly with reference to the new social groups. The original intent of the Reformation movement was the secularization of the sacral or, to put it another way, the sacralization of the earthly realm. It followed from this that a clerical estate with a unique or elevated status had no need to exist. But this rather abstract condition was difﬁcult to realize in practice, especially in the early years of the movement. Social historians have demonstrated that the ﬁrst few generations of Protestant clergy were recruited predominantly from among the former monks and priests of Catholic Europe. Similarly, the numerous pastors’ wives were either formerly illegitimate companions of the parish priests or, as in the famous case of Katharina von Bora, were themselves former nuns. This trend is fairly easy to understand, for a complete exchange of the clerical personnel would have resulted in the collapse of the pastoral care of the parishioners. Given the state of affairs, it was never a possibility. In many lands of Europe, from the middle of the sixteenth century onward, we can get a glimpse of the state of reform and the evolution of the new Church in the visitation reports. These speak of the urgent need for improvement. The theological education of the clergy leaves just as much to be desired as their preaching and pastoral abilities, while their personal conduct often caused offence to parishioners and authorities alike. Many of these abuses also contradicted the vision of the clerical ideal in the medieval church; and yet, as R.N. Swanson makes clear in his study of the precursor to the clerical paradigm (to borrow his phrase) that surfaced with the English Reformation, marked theological competence and preaching ability were not among the requirements which made up the ‘job speciﬁcations’ of the medieval priesthood: ‘The priest’s function was essentially practical, not intellectual: to get people to heaven by practical pastoral care rather than intense doctrinal instruction.’3 The need for a well-grounded theological education for the mass of the medieval Catholic clergy simply did not exist; their charge of providing assistance to the parishioners in the quest (via good works) for salvation required technical and practical ability, rather than a gift for the speculative or abstract. Theoretically, the competence required could be acquired in schools, priestly seminaries and theological faculties; practically, however, this type of education (if acquired) rarely sufﬁced. Moreover, the gift of a priestly ofﬁce was very closely connected to the assumption of a beneﬁce, and this was only in the rarest of circumstances made conditional on clerical

4 C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

ability. At the close of the Middle Ages, personal strategies of patronage and provision were more decisive than theological competence. Indeed, as Swanson observes, even when criticism did surface, only very rarely did it concern the substance of the priesthood; instead, ‘the contentious issues remained accidents, focusing on property and poverty, stability and movement’. All pre-Reformation movements directed at the reform of these abuses sought the realization of the clerical ideal. Strictly speaking, they were not anticlerical, but rather characterized by a singular esteem of the ofﬁce of priest and his badge of sacrality. Yet it was exactly this that was undermined by Martin Luther and his doctrine of justiﬁcation. As a consequence of this theological principle, the need for a technically competent attendant in the quest for salvation by way of good works had become superﬂuous. The theological basis for this shift in understanding is examined in the contribution by R. Emmet McLaughlin, as are the consequences of this shift for the clerical estate. In place of a Catholic priest distinguished by his sacerdotal status and viewed as a point of contact between the profane and the sacred (that is, as a source or a channel of grace), the Protestant clergyman emerged, no longer a participant of the divine essence, but rather of faith and forgiveness. As McLaughlin observes: ‘The Protestant minister, in so far as he was a mediator, offered meaning not presence, signiﬁcation not participation, God’s good will not God himself.’4 The principles of this ‘sacerdotal realignment’ were ﬁrmly rooted in Reformation theology, from sola ﬁde and sola scriptura to Luther’s explicit rejection of the medieval ministry in the idea of the priesthood of all believers and Jean Calvin’s sophisticated structures of church rule. With the Reformation the clergy were no longer mediators or manipulators of God’s grace and the church was no longer a repository of the sacred. Indeed, in some instances it became little more than a ‘desacralized bureaucracy’, a branch of governance in the evolving state.

The character of the social group: estate or profession? For the clergy, the Reformation brought with it the loss of the sacral character of the clerical ofﬁce. Yet the ofﬁce still maintained its own unique place of worth. The foundations for a theological understanding of the ministry were prepared in the works of Luther, ﬁrst given articulation and formulation in his lectures on Genesis (1535–45). In this work, Luther detailed the proof behind the institution of the three

Introduction 5

estates at the act of creation: ﬁrst came the Church (ecclesia) as the community of human kind in paradise; next came the creation of a companion for man and thus the foundation of marriage (oeconomia); and ﬁnally, as an external means of control made necessary by the Fall of Man, systems of rule and governance were established (politia, die Obrigkeit) to maintain order on earth (the latter not necessary in paradise, of course, a sphere free of worldly sovereignty).5 With this characterization, Luther endeavoured to overcome the late medieval theory of estates rooted in a sacral notion of ofﬁce. But it was not a blueprint for the structure of social relations. ‘Luther … leaves no doubt that in his view of a commonwealth all members belonged simultaneously to all three estates or orders. These estates are not mutually exclusive sectors of the population but deﬁnitions of three relationships into which all individuals enter when they became members of a society.’6 Within Lutheranism, this view ultimately came to place considerable stress on the importance of the church ofﬁce, and in particular on the pastor’s function as a shepherd or a sentinel over the other two estates. Grounded in a unique sense of clerical selfawareness, a social and political dynamic evolved (rooted in theological thought), which had a lasting impact on developments in European Lutheranism at the close of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth.7 And with the teaching of the fourfold ministry of the Church developed within Calvinism, yet another vision of clerical vocation and duty evolved in the Protestant lands. This unique sense of self-awareness accentuated and intensiﬁed the range of social and economic transformations confronting the evangelical clergyman, particularly those brought about by the frequency of marriage and the fact that he was now placed on an equal economic and tax footing with the laity. As McLaughlin demonstrates in his survey of the theological framework, there was no warrant for the medieval separation of the secular and the spiritual estates. The way was open for the clergy’s integration into the educated bourgeoisie of early modern Europe. Many of the sons of parish clergymen (who were now, of course, recognized as legitimate offspring) went on to practise in professions such as law or medicine, while others simply married into these ranks of the learned middle classes. Recent analysis of the socio-historical data concerning origins, employment, university education, career paths and material conditions has revealed how much variety of experience there was; but even when we keep the diversity and the many regional differences in view, it is possible to make out a general model of development.8

6 C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

Social and regional mobility The ﬁrst generation of Protestant clergy came from the medieval priesthood, and indeed from all levels of the hierarchy. The visitation reports from territories in the Holy Roman Empire show this readily enough, as do the historical records in England and Scandinavia.9 Very little is known, however, about the social or regional origins of this ﬁrst generation of Protestant men. Only in those cases where the clergyman was in a position of prominence or leadership do details come to light. (See Table 1, Social origins of the clergy). Some facts, however, are known. The number of clergy from noble backgrounds was relatively small, as was the proportion of candidates from the peasantry. The vast majority emerged from among the educated middle classes in the towns and cities, and over the course of the sixteenth century, at least in the German lands, this type of social provenance remained dominant. As the decades passed, new concentrations became evident: in addition to a growing number of pastors’ sons (who themselves went on to become ministers), there was a marked degree of intermingling with the legally trained ofﬁce-holders in the territories and the larger cities. And it was not just the professional orders; even in the proportion of craftsmen among the passing generations of fathers, sons and sons-in-law we can see, despite the regional variety, that there is little cause to speak of the building of dynasties or of a general ‘hereditary character’ of the clerical ofﬁce.10 Indeed, in many regions, the ministry worked as a stepping stone for advancement, beginning with the clerical ofﬁce (which might include a teaching post as well) and occasionally leading to a rise in social standing within one or two generations.11 Both this degree of social mobility and the rapid integration of the clergy into the ranks of the educated and afﬂuent middle classes (which, in the English setting, might include a closer union with sections of the gentry) were greatly facilitated by the institution of clerical marriage, that is, by utilizing the social network of the pastors’ wives. For the ﬁrst few generations, regional mobility was particularly pronounced. Given the initial need for educated Protestant clergymen (not just parish pastors but church leaders as well), the reason for this mobility is clear. From the beginning of the seventeenth century onward, however, regional mobility started to wane. Place of study is a good indicator of this. Until the establishment of Protestant educational establishments in other regions of Europe, the University of Wittenberg was the centre of attraction for potential clergymen in

Table 1

Social origins of the clergy of Hildesheim, Danzig and Basel sixteenth–eighteenth centuries Period

Occupation of Father 16th Century Farmer/Peasant

Craftsman

Clergyman

Court

Doctor/Apothecary

Merchant/Publisher

Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % of the Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number

2.0 50.0 3.0 0.4 20.0 21.5 30.3 3.7 25.0 9.4 37.9 4.7

3.0 15.0 4.5 0.6 2.0 5.7 3.0 0.4

17th Century 1.0 25.0 0.4 0.2 40.0 43.0 15.6 7.4 133.0 49.8 51.8 24.8 1.0 100.0 0.4 0.2 11.0 55.0 4.3 2.0 20.0 57.1 7.8 3.7

18th Century 1.0 25.0 0.5 0.2 33.0 35.5 15.4 6.1 109.0 40.8 50.9 20.3

6.0 30.0 2.8 1.1 13.0 37.1 6.1 2.4

Total 4.0 100.0 0.7 0.7 93.0 100.0 17.3 17.3 267.0 100.0 49.7 49.7 1.0 100.0 0.2 0.2 20.0 100.0 3.7 3.7 35.0 100.0 6.5 6.5 7

continued

8

Table 1

Period Occupation of Father Lawyer

Teacher

Military

Higher Administration

Middling Administration

City Administration

16th Century Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number

2.0 11.8 3.0 0.4 1.0 14.3 1.5 0.2 1.0 7.7 1.5 0.2 1.0 12.5 1.5 0.2 6.0 12.2 9.1 1.1

17th Century 2.0 100.0 0.8 0.4 9.0 52.9 3.5 1.7 3.0 42.9 1.2 0.6 4.0 30.8 1.6 0.7 5.0 62.5 1.9 0.9 21.0 42.9 8.2 3.9

18th Century

6.0 35.3 2.8 1.1 3.0 42.9 1.4 0.6 8.0 61.5 3.7 1.5 2.0 25.0 0.9 0.4 22.0 44.9 10.3 4.1

Total 2.0 100.0 0.4 0.4 17.0 100.0 3.2 3.2 7.0 100.0 1.3 1.3 13 100.0 2 2.4 8.0 100.0 1.5 1.5 49.0 100.0 9.1 9.1

Table 1

continued Period

Occupation of Father University Lecturer

Other

Day Labourer/Servant

Artists

Total

16th Century Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number Frequency % Occupation of Father % Period % Total Number

17th Century

1.0 10.0 1.5 0.2 2.0 25.0 3.0 0.4

3.0 30.0 1.2 0.6 3.0 37.5 1.2 0.6 1.0 50.0 0.4 0.2

66.0 12.3 100.0 12.3

257.0 47.9 100.0 47.9

18th Century 6.0 60.0 2.8 1.1 3.0 37.5 1.4 0.6 1.0 50.0 0.5 0.2 1.0 100.0 0.5 0.2 214.0 39.9 100.0 39.9

Total 10.0 100.0 1.9 1.9 8.0 100.0 1.5 1.5 2.0 100.0 0.4 0.4 1.0 100.0 0.2 0.2 537.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

9

10

Table 1

continued

Occupation of Father Farmer/Peasant Craftsman Clergyman Court Doctor/Apothecary Merchant/Publisher Lawyer Teacher Military Higher Administration Middling Administration City Administration University Lecturer Other Day Labourer/Servant Artists

16th Century 2 20 25 3 2 2 1 1 1 6 1 2

Period 17th Century 1 40 133 1 11 20 2 9 3 4 5 21 3 3 1

18th Century 1 33 109 6 13 6 3 8 2 22 6 3 1 1

Introduction 11

Lutheran Germany. (In the world of Calvinism, Heidelberg and Basel played a similar role.) Not until the beginning of the seventeenth century, as a consequence of the theological controversies, did other Lutheran universities such as Jena, Leipzig and Rostock emerge as serious alternatives to the former home of Martin Luther. (See Table 2 Locations of study of the clergy.) Matriculation lists testify to the extent to which regional centres of education began to establish themselves over the course of the century. In the end, practical concerns often dictated the place of study. Quite frequently the average Protestant clergyman studied at the local university for reasons of expense, and in an ever-increasing number of cases ended up serving the territory of his birth.12 In England, however, unlike continental Europe, the concentration of the places of learning available to the clergy was more pronounced, while study at a college of theology was not necessarily bound up with a university education.

Education and career development The Reformation was a creation of the German university, a point Thomas Kaufmann makes at the outset of his study on the educational backgrounds of the Lutheran clergy in Germany. It is an essential observation and reveals a fundamentally important feature about the Reformation Church. For the Protestant clergyman, the central duty of ofﬁce was not the facilitation of ritual performance, but rather the ability to preach and interpret the Word of God. That is why the education and training of the clergy became a principal concern of the reformers, as it would become a concern of the Protestant authorities once the Reformation had been introduced. From the middle of the sixteenth century onward, the foundation, provision and maintenance of parish schools, grammar schools and universities became nothing less than a political obligation. Moreover, once the institutional foundations were in place, it soon proved necessary to establish a theological curriculum that could provide the aspiring pastor with an appropriate grounding in the required ﬁelds of study (languages, philosophy, theology), followed by the practical knowledge and guidelines to help him write sermons and counsel the parishioners once in ofﬁce. For it was never just a question of acquired knowledge; the Protestant clergyman had to translate his learning into the proper fulﬁlment of pastoral care. As Kaufmann notes, ‘The value of a theological education was thus decisive in the concrete encounters with people – from the pulpit, in confession, in the cure of souls, in casual praxis, and in apologetic debates.’13

Locations of study of the clergy of Hildesheim, Danzig and Basel sixteenth–eighteenth centuries

12

Table 2

Period Location of Study Altdorf

Basel

Bologna

Breslau

Erfurt

Erlangen

16th Century Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency %Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number

19.0 86.4 17.6 2.7 1.0 100.0 0.9 0.1

3.0 37.5 2.8 0.4

17th Century 2.0 50.0 0.5 0.3 2.0 9.1 0.5 0.3

1.0 100.0 0.3 0.1 4.0 50.0 1.1 0.6

18th Century 2.0 50.0 0.9 0.3 1.0 4.5 0.4 0.1

1.0 12.5 0.4 0.1 2.0 100.0 0.9 0.3

Total 4.0 100.0 0.6 0.6 22 .0 100. 3.1 3.1 1.0 100.0 0.1 0.1 1.0 100.0 0.1 0.1 8.0 100.0 1.1 1.1 2.0 100.0 0.3 0.3

Table 2

continued Period

Location of Study Franeker

Frankfurt a.O.

Freiburg

Gießen

Göttingen

Graz

16th Century

3.0 25.0 2.8 0.4 3.0 100.0 2.8 0.4

1.0 100.0 0.3 0.1 5.0 41.7 1.4 0.7

11.0 91.7 3.0 1.6

2.0 100.0 0.5 0.3

18th Century

4.0 33.3 1.8 0.6

1.0 8.3 0.4 0.1 4.0 100.0 1.8 0.6

Total 1.0 100.0 0.1 0.1 12.0 100.0 1.7 1.7 3.0 100.0 0.4 0.4 12.0 100.0 1.7 1.7 4.0 100.0 0.6 0.6 2.0 100.0 0.3 0.3

13

Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number

17th Century

14

Table 2

continued Period

Location of Study Greifswald

Groningen

Halle

Heidelberg

Helmstedt

Herborn

16th Century Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number

1.0 9.1 0.9 0.1

4.0 40.0 3.7 0.6 6.0 8.3 5.6 0.9

17th Century 7.0 63.6 1.9 1.0 4.0 100.0 1.1 0.6 2.0 25.0 0.5 0.3 6.0 60.0 1.6 0.9 55.0 76.4 15.1 7.9 1.0 100.0 0.3 0.1

18th Century 3.0 27.3 1.3 0.4

6.0 75.0 2.6 0.9

11.0 15.3 4.8 1.6

Total 11.0 100.0 1.6 1.6 4.0 100.0 0.6 0.6 8.0 100.0 1.1 1.1 10.0 100.0 1.4 1.4 72.0 100.0 10.3 10.3 1.0 100.0 0.1 0.1

Table 2

continued Period

Location of Study Jena

Kassel

Kiel

Cologne

Königsberg

Krakau

16th Century 1.0 1.5 0.9 0.1

30.0 45.5 8.2 4.3 1.0 100.0 0.3 0.1

18th Century

Total

35.0 53.0 15.4 5.0

66.0 100.0 9.4 9.4 1.0 100.0 0.1 0.1 1.0 100.0 0.1 0.1 2.0 100.0 0.3 0.3 54.0 100.0 7.7 7.7 2.0 100.0 0.3 0.3

1.0 100.0 0.4 0.1 1.0 50.0 0.9 0.1 6.0 11.1 5.6 0.9

1.0 50.0 0.3 0.1 35.0 64.8 9.6 5.0 1.0 50.0 0.3 0.1

13.0 24.1 5.7 1.9 1.0 50.0 0.4 0.1

15

Frequency % Location of Study % of the Period % of the Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number

17th Century

16

Table 2

continued Period

Location of Study Leiden

Leipzig

Marburg

Oxford

Paris

Prague

16th Century Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number

4.0 6.8 3.7 0.6

17th Century 7.0 77.8 1.9 1.0 25.0 42.4 6.9 3.6 7.0 100.0 1.9 1.0 1.0 100.0 0.3 0.1

18th Century 2.0 22.2 0.9 0.3 30.0 50.8 13.2 4.3

2.0 100.0 0.9 0.3 1.0 100.0 0.3 0.1

Total 9.0 100.0 1.3 1.3 59.0 100.0 8.4 8.4 7.0 100.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 100.0 0.1 0.1 2.0 100.0 0.3 0.3 1.0 100.0 0.1 0.1

Table 2

continued Period

Location of Study Rinteln

Rostock

Strasbourg

Tübingen

Utrecht

Vienna

16th Century

3.0 5.0 2.8 0.4 2.0 20.0 1.9 0.3 4.0 80.0 3.7 0.6

2.0 66.7 1.9 0.3

4.0 80.0 1.1 0.6 33.0 55.0 9.1 0.7 8.0 80.0 2.2 1.1 1.0 20.0 0.3 0.1 2.0 100.0 0.5 0.3 1.0 33.3 0.3 0.1

18th Century 1.0 20.0 0.4 0.1 24.0 40.0 10.6 3.4

Total 5.0 100.0 0.7 0.7 60.0 100.0 8.6 8.6 10.0 100.0 1.4 1.4 5.0 100.0 0.7 0.7 2.0 100.0 0.3 0.3 3.0 100.0 0.4 0.4

17

Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number

17th Century

18

Table 2

continued Period

Location of Study Wittenberg

Würzburg

Other

Braunsberg Ps.

Rome

Total

16th Century Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number Frequency % Location of Study % Period % Total Number

31.0 22.3 28.7 4.4

3.0 11.5 2.8 0.4 8.0 13.8 7.4 1.1 3.0 42.9 2.8 0.4 108 15.5 100.0 15.5

17th Century 70.0 50.4 19.2 10.0 1.0 100.0 0.3 0.1 16.0 61.5 4.4 2.3 15.0 25.9 4.1 2.1 1.0 14.3 0.3 0.1 364 52.1 100.0 52.1

18th Century 38.0 27.3 16.7 5.4

7.0 26.9 3.1 1.0 35.0 60.3 15.4 5.0 3.0 42.9 1.3 0.4 227 32.5 100.0 32.5

Total 139 100.0 19.9 19.9 1.0 100.0 0.1 0.1 26.0 100.0 3.7 3.7 58.0 100.0 8.3 8.3 7.0 100.0 1.0 1.0 699 100.0 100.0 100.0

Table 2

continued Period

Location of Study

19 1 3

3 3

17th Century 2 2 1 4 1 5 11

1

4 6 1

2 7 4 2 6 55 1 30 1

18th Century 2 1

1 2 4 1 4 3 6 11 35 1

1 6

1 35 1

13 1

19

Altdorf Basel Bologna Breslau Erfurt Erlangen Franeker Frankfurt a.O. Freiburg Gießen Göttingen Graz Greifswald Groningen Halle Heidelberg Helmstedt Herborn Jena Kassel Kiel Cologne Königsberg Krakau

16th Century

20

Table 2

continued Period

Location of Study Leiden Leipzig Marburg Oxford Paris Prague Rinteln Rostock Strasbourg Tübingen Utrecht Vienna Wittenberg Würzburg Other Braunsberg Ps. Rome

16th Century 4

17th Century 7 25 7 1

18th Century 2 30

2

3 2 4 2 31 3 8 3

1 4 33 8 1 2 1 70 1 16 15 1

1 24

38 7 35 3

Table 2

continued

Location of Study

4 22 1 1 8 2 1 12 3 12 4 2 11 4 8 10 72 1 66 1 1 2 54 2 9 59

21

Altdorf Basel Bologna Breslau Erfurt Erlangen Franeker Frankfurt a.O. Freiburg Gießen Göttingen Graz Greifswald Groningen Halle Heidelberg Helmstedt Herborn Jena Kassel Kiel Cologne Königsberg Krakau Leiden Leipzig

Total

22

Table 2

continued

Location of Study

Total

Marburg Oxford Paris Prague Rinteln Rostock Strasbourg Tübingen Utrecht Vienna Wittenberg Würzburg Other Braunsberg Ps. Rome

7 1 2 1 5 60 10 5 2 3 139 1 26 58 7

Introduction 23

In this sphere, as in others, the passage of a few generations was required before the desired educational model could be established and the contents of learning effectively communicated. And it was longer still before the effects of the process could be discerned. In contrast to the claims of traditional research, it was not at all inevitable that the prospective evangelical pastor would acquire a university degree in theology. On the contrary, the only constant seems to have been that all clergymen studied in the faculty of arts, though it was certainly not the case that they all ended their time at a university by taking a degree. As Kaufmann illustrates, this state of affairs lasted until the early decades of the seventeenth century. Many prospective clergymen were likely to have heard a few lectures in theology along the way; but until well into the seventeenth century, an academic qualiﬁcation or degree in theology was almost exclusively the preserve of the men who held the highest ofﬁces in the newly created Protestant Church.14 In a similar vein, little is known about the content of what was actually taught. The assumption that the ﬁelds of knowledge prescribed in the programmes of study were faithfully taught and effectively internalized is mistaken. Well into the early decades of the seventeenth century, the general level of learning among Protestant pastors consistently remained much lower than has been previously assumed.15 That is why historians have ascribed such an importance to the range of educational institutions that evolved at the level of local or regional church organization (i.e. preaching synods, prophesyings, borough lectureships, exercises) and accompanied the efforts at educating the Protestant clergy. A variety of historical sources lets us catch a glimpse of these institutions on occasion, and it is clear to see that the issues facing the clergyman in situ stood at the centre of the agenda – not only the practical concerns relating to preaching, but the improvement of theological understanding and the ﬁne points of pastoral activity as well.16 The appointment to ofﬁce had both a spiritual and an economic side; indeed, the two were closely bound together. In this, the Protestant practice more or less picked up the thread of preReformation developments. The suitability of the candidate, in both a spiritual and a professional sense, was determined by evidence of university education as well as – much more importantly – an examination (which included a trial sermon) set by the ruling body of the Church.17 Set in motion by the proposal of the patrons of the local church (and this might include communes with the right of election), the church authorities then conﬁrmed the selection of an appropriately qualiﬁed candidate. This pronounced the new calling of the candidate and invested him with his parish beneﬁce (though only for

24

those posts that did not have a noble or communal patron).18 The assumption of the various economic rights and obligations was followed by the ceremonial investment of the clerical ofﬁce, which was brought to a close with a church service and an inaugural sermon in the presence of the local parishioners and the secular authorities. This combination of traditional parish provision and a selection process oriented round functional and qualitative criteria is characteristic of the standing of the clerical ofﬁce in Protestantism between ‘estate’ and ‘profession’. This ambiguous status, underscored by the combination of traditional ‘beneﬁce management’ with a type of ‘career planning’, impacted on the daily lives of the Protestant clergy until the end of the eighteenth century.19 It was a precarious balance. For example, as a very close connection with the commune inhered in the clerical understanding of ofﬁce, any career consideration that countenanced a change from one post to another for an increase in salary was anathema. The reality, however, was markedly different, and it is easy to understand why when we take into account both the many impoverished parishes and the new idea of ofﬁce, growing stronger over time, that was devoted exclusively to spiritual matters – that is, free from the burdens of handiwork and husbandry.20 In fact, career planning and increased mobility can be identiﬁed in most of Protestant Europe in the seventeenth century; they are revealed in an economic hierarchy of the parish posts, for instance, which allowed for a certain degree of predictability to form in the stages of career advancement. (See Table 3, Career stages of clergy.) Movement along this scale, however, was not simply made possible by applying for a vacant parish. Complex networks of patrons and mentors evolved, branching throughout the Protestant lands, within which family ties, friendships and professional associations played the decisive role. In the process of appointment to a parish, intercession and recommendation proved just as important as the personal aptitude of the candidate. Equally, the age of the candidate and his familial relations might count for just as much as academic qualiﬁcations, however faithfully and diligently the latter may have been acquired (see Table 4 Age of clergy at commencement of ﬁrst ofﬁce). It is through this type of ‘beneﬁce management’ that we can best characterize the clerical ofﬁce of Protestantism. It belongs to an understanding of profession familiar to old Europe, one that does indeed show the ﬁrst signs of forms of functional mechanisms of provision, but was nevertheless not yet strictly equivalent to a ‘profession’ in the modern sense of the term and would not become so until well into the eighteenth century.21

Table 3

Career stages of the clergy of Hildesheim, Danzig and Basel sixteenth–eighteenth centuries Sequence of Ofﬁces

Category of Ofﬁce

Total

1

2

3

4

5

89.0

28.0

7.0

1.0

1

1

127

1.9

0.6

0.1

0.0

0.0

0.0

2.7

368.0

231.0

84.0

33.0

16

6

1

1

1

% Total Number

7.8

4.9

1.8

0.7

0.3

0.1

0.0

0.0

0.0

Minister 3.

Frequency % Total Number

1.0 0.0

Rector/Teacher (Gymnasium/ Grammar School)

Frequency

Teacher (School/ Private Tutor)

Frequency % Total Number

Adjunct/Vicar/Deacon/ Precentor/Chaplain

Frequency

% Total Number Minister 1./2./Priest/ Pastor/Regular Clergy

Frequency % Total Number

Vice Senior

Frequency % Total Number

6

7

8

9

741 15.7 1 0.0

65.0

23.0

7.0

4.0

2

1

102

1.4

0.5

0.1

0.1

0.0

0.0

2.2

1,813.0

890.0

501.0

202.0

76

33

15

6

3,536

38.4

18.9

10.6

4.3

1.6

0.7

0.3

0.1

75.0

2 0.0

1 0.0

3 0.1 25

26

Table 3

continued

Career Stages of the Clergy of Hildesheim, Danzig and Basel 16th–18th Centuries Sequence of Ofﬁces

Category of Ofﬁce Superintendent/1. Minister/Antistes/ Senior/Abbot/ Prior/Dean

Frequency

% Total Number General Superintendent/ Bishop Total

Frequency % Total Number Frequency % Total Number

Total

1 31.0

2 50.0

3 42

4 35

0.7

1.1

0.9

0.7

2.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 1,224.0 642.0 26.0 13.6

5.0 0.1 280.0 5.9

2,367.0 50.2

8

9

5 20

6 11

7 2

0.4

0.2

0.0

4.1

4 0.1 121 2.6

3 0.1 55 1.2

18 0.4

15 0.3 4,716 100.0

191

8 0.2

1 0.0

Table 4

Age at commencement of ﬁrst ofﬁce of the clergy of Hildesheim, Danzig and Basel sixteenth–eighteenth centuries Period

Age at Commencement up to 19 years

20-29 years

30-39 years

40-49 years

50-59 years

60 years and over

7.0 31.8 6.7 0.7 65.0 12.3 62.5 6.9 22 7.1 21.2 2.3 7 12.7 6.7 0.7 2 15.4 1.9 0.2 1 20.0 1.0 0.1

17th Century 10.0 45.5 2.5 1.1 238.0 44.9 59.6 25.4 125 40.1 31.3 13.3 17 30.9 4.3 1.8 7 53.8 1.8 0.7 2 40.0 0.5 0.2

18th Century 5.0 22.7 1.2 0.5 227.0 42.8 52.3 24.2 165 52.9 38.0 17.6 31 56.4 7.1 3.3 4 30.8 0.9 0.4 2 40.0 0.5 0.2

Total 22.0 100.0 2.3 2.3 530.0 100.0 56.6 56.6 312 100.0 33.3 33.3 55 100.0 5.9 5.9 13 100.0 1.4 1.4 5 100.0 0.5 0.5

27

Frequency % Age at Commencement % Period % Total Number Frequency % Age at Commencement % Period % Total Number Frequency % Age at Commencement % Period % Total Number Frequency % Age at Commencement % Period % Total Number Frequency % of the Age at Commencement % of the Period % of the Total Number Frequency % of the Age at Commencement % of the Period % of the Total Number

16th Century

28

Table 4

continued Period

Age at Commencement Total

Frequency % of the Age at Commencement % of the Period % of the Total Number

16th Century 104 11.1 100.0 11.1

17th Century 399 42.6 100.0 42.6

18th Century 434 46.3 100.0 46.3

Period Age at Commencement up to 19 years 20 to 29 years 30-39 years 40-49 years 50-59 years 60 years and over

16th Century 7 65 22 7 2 1

17th Century 10 238 125 17 7 2

18th Century 5 227 165 31 4 2

Total 937 100.0 100.0 100.0

Introduction 29

The pastor and his family The parsonage as a locus of morality and Christian conduct, a proverbial assumption of later ages, draws its substance from the exceptionally strong involvement of the pastor’s wife and children in the spiritual ofﬁce of the Protestant clergyman. Susan C. Karant-Nunn makes this essential point in her survey of the rise of the Protestant parsonage in Saxony: ‘Within Lutheranism the burden of serving as an exemplum of domestic propriety fell upon the clergy, their spouses, children, and servants.’22 The existence of a legitimate clerical family was a particularly palpable break with pre-Reformation tradition, and it altered life in the commune in a twofold fashion. On the one hand, the standing of the woman as wife, and indeed the wife of the clergyman, became one of esteem; on the other, now that the pastor assumed his role as shepherd of souls in the guise of a family man, his familial obligations became part of his spiritual calling. With the Reformation, the order of the household acquired a special signiﬁcance in European Protestantism, for the paterfamilias was now viewed as a model of good (that is, Christian) guidance and control. In the estimation of Karant-Nunn, ‘The home of the pastor and his wife became a symbol of active spirituality second only to the church itself.’ Having said this, however, even though the parsonage was meant to be the exemplary household in the parish, it was at the same time just one house among many others in the commune, if in a sense primum inter pares. This fact reveals a distinctive feature about the association between the evangelical clergy and the communes: it was not the sacral legitimation and clerical functions that characterized the relationship, but rather the exemplary worldliness, the sheer everyday quality of clerical life. That this could lead to difﬁculties in the execution of ofﬁce is frequently suggested by the source materials, and it is relatively easy to understand. With the Reformation, the ontological distance between the medieval priest and his parishioners had been removed. The neighbourhood was now very close at hand, and in particular when it touched on the economic sphere or the trials of family life in the village. KarantNunn’s close study of the villages of Saxony reveals the many problems that arose, from the sheer size and cost of the household to the uncertain status of the pastor and his family. In some instances, conﬂicts between clerical families and communes were unavoidable, in particular those inﬂamed by disagreements over the functions of the pastor’s wife (a common cause, as she still had to ﬁnd her place in the towns and villages). There were areas of parish life where she might be integrated successfully;23 but in general it was a touchy issue, especially in light of the

30 C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

fact that it was the wives of the clergymen who had to gather together the annual dues in kind owed by the parishioners, just as it was the wives who had to admonish the parishioners when they did not pay. In the context of early modern agrarian conditions, where uncertain yields were always a cause of tension and concern, any new demand could quickly become a point of friction, especially for a population whose economic values and standards of social reputation did not always accord with those of the clergy. This conﬂict of values did not arise because of the Reformation; nevertheless, due to the increased economic burdens placed on the parish now that the clergyman had to care for an entire family, there surfaced in many parishes a new type of scepticism, not only about the pastor’s wife, but about the pastor himself, whose ‘useful contribution’ appeared more and more difﬁcult to identify. With this, a problem is revealed that was common to the Protestant pastor but completely different in nature from anything facing his Catholic counterpart. The tasks expected of a Protestant clergyman were lacking in sacerdotal legitimation; instead of serving as an earthly channel to the divine, he preached the Word of God and fulﬁlled his pastoral responsibilities. But it was often difﬁcult to bring home the elevated meaning of this new proﬁle to the parishioners, especially in the rural setting. Again and again, the source materials speak of the conﬂicts triggered by the demands and expectations of the pastors and the lack of obedience among the parishioners. There was thus anticlericalism after the Reformation, though it would be mistaken to think of it as simply a reaction to the teaching of the Church or the ﬁscal demands of its clergy. Communal expectations of the pastor were not only grounded in the demand for moral deportment and the need for economic moderation. There was also the widespread expectation that the clergy would preserve local and regional traditions, some of which, for generations after the Reformation, were held in the same esteem as religious customs. Protestant pastors, in ever-increasing harmony, railed against the preservation of such traditions, claiming they were heathen and unbiblical and against the truths of the evangelical faith.24 But the pastor remained a voice in the wilderness unless he could secure the support of the local secular authorities, and he could only do this with the assistance of the state.

The Protestant clergyman and the confessional state The Protestant clergyman was a creation of the confessional age; he emerged at a time in history when religious belief played a fundamen-

Introduction 31

tal role in the shaping of social and political relations. With the rise of the Reformation, Church and state formed a closer union, as many of the theological barriers that had once preserved the medieval distinction between the secular and the spiritual were weakened and in some cases demolished outright. Religious ideas could thus serve as a ‘heuristic indicator’ for broader patterns of social, intellectual, cultural and political change, as the ofﬁcial confession, as fashioned and mediated by the sovereign authorities, helped to facilitate order in the public sphere.25 It was always an uneasy alliance, but there can be little doubt that the rise of the modern state, Protestant and Catholic alike, owed much to the ideas and the institutions of power, formerly the preserve of the Church, that devolved to the secular rulers in the wake of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation movements. Domestically, as the confessional state evolved, this closer union brought with it more exclusive and absolute claims to sovereignty and more effective and intrusive systems of governance. Even in lands where a degree of confessional heterogeneity remained, the state was strengthened in its association with the national Church.26 At the very fulcrum of this secular development was the Protestant clergyman. With the rise of the Reformation movement the churches of evangelical Europe became subordinate to the state; the self-governing hierarchy of the medieval Catholic Church more or less disappeared (save the remnants in England and Sweden) and there was little to separate the clergyman from the other subalternate administrators of early modern government. ‘Ministers of religion virtually became civil servants, responsible for a particular sector of the commonweal.’27 Of course, in one sense, there was nothing new in this, for the clerical elite of medieval Europe had often been at the very forefront of earthly affairs. But this was different: no longer set apart from the secular world, and no longer inhabiting the highest levels of governance (in Scandinavia, for instance, the Lutheran bishops were excluded from the rigsråd), the clergyman became in effect yet another middleranking ofﬁcial. The reality was complex, for the Protestant clergymen were more than just wholly obedient agents of the state; yet there is truth in the claim that both the Church and its ministers were instrumental for the extension of secular power. In terms of the practical exercise of rule, the clergy became key agents in the enforcement and the maintenance of sovereignty. They served as a functional elite in the parishes, receiving the mandates and orders, communicating the state injunctions to the subject population, and, where applicable, putting the demands in force.28 No other ofﬁcial could match the pastor’s potential

32 C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

as a proselytizer for the governing elite, a fact not lost on the princes of the German lands, for instance, who often made sure the published church orders were prefaced with a common prayer for the welfare of the realm and the secular elite.29 But the Protestant clergyman was much more than an agent or servant of the secular authorities. Many of the most inﬂuential political dissidents of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries were churchmen. In Reformation England, for instance, some towns were crowded with clergymen tub-thumping from the pulpit, the most renowned being the puritan divines who took aim at the state of affairs during the reign of Elizabeth I.30 Armed with the authority of the Word of God, Protestant preachers cast doubt on the claims of the secular elite, just as they drew on the Word to fashion and legitimate their own standing in the social and political order. By the end of the sixteenth century, a clear idea of calling had developed, a sense of self-perception formed by the pastor’s role as guardian and censor, rooted in the standing of the preaching ofﬁce and given a theoretical framework in the doctrine of the three estates. This development fashioned a very powerful conviction that there were necessary divisions between the secular and the spiritual realms, with the Protestant clergy claiming more and more autonomy against the encroachments of the secular arm.31 Bound up with this was a concept of political association which considered the secular authority as only one part (if the pre-eminent part) of the commune; its far-reaching political postulate was the right of political participation – including the right to elect the pastor.32 In the face of the ever-increasing efforts of the secular authorities in sixteenth-century Europe to concentrate the powers of rule, it is not surprising that this concept of commune frequently lay behind the emergence of coalitions between communes and Protestant clergymen aimed at balancing the state’s claims to sovereignty against the counterweight of the estates. Even in Geneva, traditionally held as one of the most organic of godly communities, the secular and the spiritual authorities were often at odds.33 The uneasy alliance between the secular and the spiritual worlds is the theme of the contribution by Bruce Gordon, in this case the tensions between the authorities of Church and council in the Swiss city of Zurich. For leading Protestant clergymen such as Heinrich Bullinger, men who believed they had been called to ofﬁce to proclaim and preserve the Word of God, the failure of the secular authorities to recognize the urgency of the Church’s mission was cause for concern. To an extent, it must be said, the Zurich Church was in a dilemma of its own making, for the Reformation had consented to a

Introduction 33

compromise with the secular realm from the very outset. As Gordon puts it: ‘At its root it was the Faustian bargain struck by the reformers which proved so vexatious, the essential support of the civil governments had been bought at a high price.’34 Bullinger’s vision of the proper church order was often at odds with the vision of the councillors, especially when it concerned the material conditions of the faith, such as church goods, clerical maintenance or the care of the poor. It was a fragile state of affairs, with the clergy often caught in the middle: dependent on the support of the secular arm, but beholden to the teachings of the Church, the Protestant pastor was necessarily an uneasy conscience in the community. Ministers had an extremely difﬁcult task laid upon them by Church and state, as Gordon illustrates and they could simply avert their eyes from what they saw. But in the end, for Protestant clergymen such as Heinrich Bullinger, the only way to cure an uneasy conscience was to turn to the Word of God.

The origins of a profession One of the reasons why the Protestant clergyman became such an inﬂuential ﬁgure in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (whether working for or against the state) was due to the rise in clerical standards. In general, the clerical estate became more professional – better educated, more rigorously prepared, more conscious of a vocational credo and sense of election and more attune to the responsibilities of ofﬁce.35 Unlike his medieval predecessor, who was primarily measured against the mysterious authority of his facultas, the Protestant clergyman was judged by a similar set of values and standards as that which held sway in the secular world. In order to legitimize the clerical estate and give it a sense of meaning and purpose in the hierarchy of social relations, it was necessary to organize it in a ‘professional way’, which meant in essence establishing in the Protestant ministry all of the features that distinguished any other profession in the early modern world. The main function of the clergyman – preaching the Word – remained a unique monopoly, but now the other components of an early modern profession began to mark out the clerical estate as well, including a specialized education and uniform training, a sense of belonging to an occupational community (with its own codes of conduct and vocational symbols), a degree of autonomy and self-regulation within the profession, and a clearly deﬁned sense of the services that it offered the commonwealth.36

34 C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

One method of tracing the rise of the profession is to compare the educational standards of the average incumbents. Much of the early work has been done on the state of affairs in England under the Tudors and the Stuarts, but we now have a fairly comprehensive picture of general trends and it does seem clear that there were substantial developments throughout Protestant Europe, including the lands of Germany surveyed by Thomas Kaufmann. Educational requirements intensiﬁed, learning improved and expectations rose, with the result that by the end of the sixteenth century the majority of Protestant clergymen had acquired a speciﬁc type of training.37 Of course, there is more to a profession than the schooling of its members; we must also consider the level and uniformity of standards and the ways in which the community itself was maintained (means of income, patronage, powers of self-regulation). Having said this, however, there is little doubt that the Protestant clergymen were better prepared for ofﬁce than their Catholic medieval predecessors had been. By the end of the century, they were more akin to what the modern world would term a professional elite. Whatever range of skills he might have, the principal duty of the Protestant clergyman was to preach the Word of God. With the sacerdotal aspects of the clerical ofﬁce diminished by Reformation theology, ‘prevalent religious values virtually reduced the ministry to a pulpit function’.38 Other clerical duties derived from this, from teaching and exhortation to ministering the sacraments, but preaching was paramount. The other aspect of the ofﬁce was the pastoral dimension, which included overseeing the spiritual welfare of the community, mediating in social disagreements, establishing godly rules of conduct, and enforcing the disciplinary requirements of church and state. These two aspects of the ofﬁce – preacher and shepherd – were at the heart of the Protestant ministry.39 As the consistory of Nîmes put it, the ideal clergyman was not only a faithful minister of Christ and provider of the mysteries of God, preaching orthodox doctrine and clarifying the Word of God according to Holy Writ, but a shepherd of souls, visiting the sick, meting out discipline, opposing false doctrine, consoling the weak, bringing the parishioners to the true faith and living a life ‘without reproach’ in the service of the greater glory of God.40 This was the ideal, of course, not always the reality; some clergymen were lax or ineffectual, and not all pastors limited their range of activities to what was speciﬁed in the church orders. But for the majority of Protestant clergymen, these were the crucial duties of the ofﬁce, and they were taken seriously.

Introduction 35

To an extent unequalled in the medieval world, the Protestant clergyman assumed a powerful public role as the ‘arbiter or middleman’ (in the words of an English Puritan) of the Word of God. Teaching the essentials of the faith became one of the prime responsibilities of the pastor. Indeed, as the Puritans recognized, without an effective dialogue between the clergy and the parishioners there could be no Reformation. The full implications of this development are examined in the contribution by Ian Green, whose study of the teaching of the faith in Protestant England reveals that it was not only a matter of the media and the message behind the campaign (thought it was certainly this), but the character and the quality of the clergymen entrusted with the duty of indoctrination. It was a difﬁcult charge, with each parish throwing up a unique set of circumstances, and each pastor drawing on his unique set of strengths. As Green remarks, ‘The parish clergy were the interface between the doctrine and ritual of the magisterial reformation and congregations whose reaction was usually a mixture of selective acquiescence, encouragement, appropriation, and passive or active resistance.’41 Stirred by the conviction that the pastor served as a ‘middleman’ between God’s Word and the parishioners, the Protestant clergy developed a range of methods for teaching the faith. Preaching remained paramount. The Reformation has been termed a preaching revival, and there is no doubt that the pulpit was essential to the spread of the faith. But now the printed word became central as well. The new medium quickly became a handmaid for the faith. Green surveys the range of publications called into service – postils, prescriptive guidebooks, sermon collections, catechisms, homiletic works and preaching manuals – all of which were conceived and written with the same purpose in mind: to provide assistance to the parish clergyman on how scripture should be understood and how it should be presented to the local congregations. In many ways, this was the most fateful dialogue shaped by the Reformation: the correspondence between print and perception. And it changed over the course of the century as the conditions facing the Protestant pastors changed. As Green observes in his discussion of the catechists, aims and perspectives shifted with the fortunes of reform from confronting the complaints made in the ﬁrst decades of the Reformation that the laity did not know the basics of the new faith to those made by later generations that the laity did not appear to understand them fully, and from an early focus on doctrine to a later

36 C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

one on inculcating a distinct model of social and political behaviour and confessional conformity as well. For teaching the faith was one thing; turning parishioners into Protestants was quite another.

Pastors and parishioners Standing ‘in God’s stead’ in the parish (to use the words of a Puritan) also required the Protestant pastor to act as a shepherd of souls, and that meant not only preaching the Word and administering the sacraments but watching over the conduct of the Christian commune. As one reformer put it, the local clergyman was ‘the deputy of Christ for the reducing of Man to the Obedience of God’, and in this ofﬁce a degree of discipline and control was required.42 This was the other dimension of the Protestant ministry, and it was this aspect that often proved most difﬁcult for the local incumbents. It was inherently problematical. To begin with, despite the apparent union of interests that surfaced with the early Reformation, there was no agreement between the secular and spiritual authorities over how much power the clergy might legitimately claim. In the German cities, for instance, where the issue ﬁrst surfaced, decades would pass before systems of rule evolved that satisﬁed both the ruling elite and the reformers. In most instances, the city council exercised powers of church discipline, with the local clergy assuming little more than an advisory role. Even in the churches of the Reformed tradition, the success of clerical discipline often relied more on the strength of individual personality than on the formal structures of rule.43 For the vast majority of Protestant clergymen, however, the essential concern was not the system of discipline in place, but the possibilities of enforcement at the local level. At this level, the main problem facing the pastors was how any degree of control could be imposed on a parish population distant from the centres of government, bound together by local systems of rule, and guided by long-held norms, customs and beliefs. In most instances, ‘the reducing of Man to the Obedience of God’ was possible only when the pastor found a way to penetrate the complex matrix of social relations and systems of rule that existed at the parish level. This is what Jay Goodale illustrates in his analysis of the process of reform in the rural parishes of Saxony. In his role as a ﬁgure of authority, the Protestant pastor was forced to negotiate between the cultures of the state and the parish. In Saxony, for instance, the pastor had to move between ‘the culture of rule and the culture of the ruled’, thereby

Introduction 37

forcing him to come to terms with both the ever-increasing injunctions of the state (which were essentially prescriptive and inﬂexible) and the traditional dynamics of local parish culture (which were essentially pragmatic and adaptable). At this level of experience, religious belief was less a ‘heuristic indicator’ for broader patterns of change than the language at the heart of a complex and evolving dialogue between cultural worlds. In the end, the most effective Protestant pastors were those that were best able to adapt to both contexts. ‘Successful ministries,’ as Goodale observes, ‘were dependent on the pastors’ ability to appreciate the basis for local cultural attitudes and practices before they selected a course of action that would be appropriate solely to their duties as the on-site representatives of state culture.’44 We have encountered a similar dynamic in the Swiss context, where the ‘Faustian bargain’ identiﬁed by Bruce Gordon forced the Zurich clergy to walk a ﬁne line between the secular and the spiritual. Sitting at the centre of complex and antagonistic social and political systems made it difﬁcult for the clergyman to satisfy either side. If he was too harsh in the enforcement of the norms of the Protestant authorities, he alienated the parishioners; if he was too close to his congregation and too ﬂexible in his approach to local religious culture, he fell foul of the state. That there should have been conﬂicts of interest was inevitable, for in essence the vital tasks of the Protestant clergyman could only be realized by living as one of the ruled. Moreover, in an age characterized by the ﬂux and transformation of social and cultural norms, the clergyman represented a ﬁxed corpus of beliefs, tied to the sacrosanct Word of God. For many, it was the sheer solemnity of the task that provided them with a sense of mission. As the English divine John Rogers proclaimed: ‘The Ofﬁce and Calling of the Ministry is of all others the most needful and necessary … The souls of the people depend on the Ministry; and where the Prophesie faileth, the people perish.’45 This was the sense of calling that inspired the Puritan ministers of the seventeenth century to translate the demands of the faith into the features of daily life: services on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays and holy days; preaching, catechizing, confession, absolution and regular communion; the exercising of discipline and the admonishing of the weak; preaching in dark corners and listening to the uncertainties of the uncertain of faith.46 Yet it was this same sense of purpose that led some of them to despair, for it was certainly not beyond their notice that despite their best efforts, the general run of improvement in the parishes was rather modest. The same English clergymen who set out to fashion a parish of true Christians often noted how ineffective their efforts had been, how the ‘hinderers of religion’ still had the upper hand and how the customs and pastimes

38 C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte

they worked so hard to eradicate (from gluttony and adultery to cardplaying and bear-baiting) remained as popular as ever. In the view of the Puritan William Harrison, ‘most of their hearers … receive little or no proﬁt at all, but still remain, after many years’ teaching, as ignorant, as popish and profane as they were at the ﬁrst’. He added that the ministers should not be troubled, for ‘it was Christ’s own case; the fault is in the hearers, not the teachers’.47 But this would have been little compensation in the face of the general lack of progress that had been made, and not just in Harrison’s England but throughout the lands of Protestant Europe.48 In the end, life as a Protestant clergyman could prove a lonely calling, balanced as it was between the demands of the state, the expectations of the Church and the practice and experience of life in the parishes. Little wonder historians have spoken about the rise of a shared identity among the clergy, for their ofﬁce necessarily distinguished them from the other professions of the day. Over time, bound together by education, family networks, shared notions of secular and spiritual order, and even common objects, from books to clothing to hairstyles, the Protestant clergy fashioned a sense of corporate identity.49 And it is this sense of identity, as Mark Greengrass demonstrates in his study of the French pastorate, that brings us closest to the essence of the Reformation. It is at this level, the level of individual experience, that the conceptual models fall short. Equating the rise of clerical identity with broader notions of confessional change overlooks the vital character of the movement, especially in France, where the Reformation was not introduced in collusion with the state but against its better interests. In France, the Reformation was negotiated by the clergy themselves, by way of the structures of church rule, the common stock of religious ideas and the shared training, and the same sense of mission and purpose which inspired them to take the faith to the parishes. And it was in the parishes, in the encounters with the faithful and the myriad exigencies of local life, that confessional ideas became a historical force. As Greengrass observes, ‘Confessional identity, in short, was always linked in the French churches to other identities: to locality, to community and to senses of moral rectitude and decorum.’50 Solidarity, he writes, was ‘a matter of acculturation, an amalgam of personal experience, family background, professional training, and friendship networks’. That is why the history of the Protestant clergy is so central to an understanding of the Reformation in Europe. It is not so much what set them apart that deserves our attention, but what bound them so closely to the age.

1 Before the Protestant Clergy: The Construction and Deconstruction of Medieval Priesthood R.N. Swanson

The Reformation signals a crux in the history of the western clergy. As medieval Catholicism dissolved, confessionalization generated new ministries, and a major shift in appreciations produced new conceptions of clerical roles and functions. The clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, became more professional and self-consciously elite cadres.1 To understand the emergence of a Protestant clergy requires some consideration of their medieval precursors. If the Reformation was a response to failure (a questionable presumption), the new priesthood sought to remedy the perceived failings of pre-Reformation clerics. This chapter accordingly considers attitudes to priesthood in the medieval centuries. English evidence dominates, but the wider context and broader perspective of medieval Catholicism underlie the discussion as a whole.

Expectations and tensions The basic demands on the medieval clergy were succinctly but unhelpfully identiﬁed in ordination liturgies as ‘to offer [that is, to celebrate the mass], to bless, to preside, to preach, and to baptise’.2 This ‘job description’ was universal, appearing in the pontiﬁcal developed at the papal court in the thirteenth century and in a York pontiﬁcal of the sixteenth.3 It makes few demands, yet offers opportunities. Key features affecting late medieval attitudes to priesthood were a widening gap between priest and laity, and the perception of priesthood as a range of powers committed to a person rather than duties as a minister. Especially formative was the emphasis on the mass as sacriﬁce, which reduced the laity’s status while stressing the priest’s role as representative of, and indeed virtual replacement for, Christ.4 39

40 R.N. Swanson

The briefest summary of priestly functions derives from Pope Gregory the Great, whose Pastoral Care commented that ‘the cure of souls is the art of arts’, a tag that subsequently became a commonplace.5 However, the formal deﬁnition of ‘priesthood’ remained vague. Relevant statements often catalogue what a priest should not do rather than what he should. Some precision appears in decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), but even these are often imprecise. The Council legislated to establish cathedral schools with masters ‘to teach [clerics] grammar and other branches of study’, with metropolitan churches employing a theologian ‘to teach scripture to priests and others and especially to instruct them in matters which are recognized as pertaining to the cure of souls’ – whatever they might be. Clergy should ‘strive to live in a continent and chaste way, especially those in holy orders’ and undertake their ministry ‘with a pure heart and an unsullied body’. Clerical drunkenness and gluttony were condemned, and involvement in hunting or fowling banned. Clergy should avoid legal matters involving bloodshed, including writing relevant letters; they should not command mercenaries or crossbowmen; or be surgeons. One decree banned the assumption of secular ofﬁces, ‘especially those that are dishonourable’, and prohibited attendance at spectacles and taverns, dicing and other games of chance, required the tonsure and regulated clothing. 6 It also instructed them to ‘apply themselves diligently to the divine services and other good pursuits’. Confessional duties are outlined: ‘The priest shall be discerning and prudent, so that like a skilled doctor he may pour wine and oil over the wounds of the injured one’, and ensure that the proposed remedy was appropriate. As for actual clerical performance, priesthood was treated as a craft. Ordinands should be instructed ‘in the divine services and the sacraments of the Church, so that they may be able to celebrate them correctly’. The ‘ignorant and unformed [ignaros et rudes]’ should not be ordained, ‘For it is preferable, especially in the ordination of priests, to have a few good ministers than many bad ones, for if a blind man leads another blind man, both will fall into the pit’ [Luke 6: 39]. Other qualities also counted: prelates should not promote ‘unworthy men who lack both learning and honesty of behaviour and who follow the urgings of the ﬂesh rather than the judgement of reason’. Priests’ sons should not succeed their fathers. Clergy should receive proper payment, without the patron taking the revenues and leaving the incumbent a mere pittance. Money-grubbing clerics who demanded payment for doing their duty were also condemned.7

Before the Protestant Clergy 41

These decrees provided the basic framework for priestly activity and expectations in subsequent centuries. The product of ‘the medieval Reformation’,8 with other evolutions they created the ecclesiastical structures against which the sixteenth-century reformers rebelled. Later stipulations reinforced the demands, notably in England the constitutions issued by the papal legates Otto and Ottobono under Henry III.9 Alongside, the awesomeness of what priests actually did – especially in celebrating the mass – raised their theoretical status above that of angels, to become Christ-substitutes. This view of priesthood permeates many tracts on the mass; it also appears in Reginald Pole’s De unitate (1535–36).10 *** The ideal medieval priest was a construct. Fundamental was his sacramental duty of celebrating mass and thereby confecting the Body and Blood of Christ. The deﬁnitive advocacy of transubstantiation at Lateran IV gave the consecrated species new signiﬁcance, reﬂected in increasing eucharistic devotion and the cult of Corpus Christi.11 Priests, the sole authorized performers of the eucharistic rite, entrapped divinity in wafer and wine; they handled – manhandled – God. By association, a strange divinity would hedge a priest, validating expectations of his personal behaviour and qualities. Priests should be pure, the moral expectations being closely linked to their sacramental functions. The most obvious purity was sexual. In the twelfth century, after a major struggle over clerical sexuality fought out between clergy rather than against the laity, the Gregorian reformers had imposed chastity on clerics entering the higher orders of subdeacon, deacon and priest. Chastity also meant celibacy, the prohibition of clerical marriage being embedded in canon law.12 Celibacy, non-marriage, was more easily enforced than chastity, asexuality. Clerics remained biologically male and culturally masculine.13 To take holy orders was an act of rejection, which brought tensions. Some found it difﬁcult to repress their maleness, to tame their masculinity. Even if successful, they remained physically, outwardly, male and latently sexual rivals to lay males. Moreover, the kudos claimed for clerics who renounced masculinity to become more perfect than mere males also rebuffed and challenged contemporary social constructs. Clerics faced personal tensions caused by the demand that they remain asexual, and by male fears of their conspiracy with women to undermine aspects of male social status, if not actually cuckold their

42 R.N. Swanson

husbands. The fragility of the priest’s angelic status also made him vulnerable to malicious rape accusations.14 Church leaders, haranguing to maintain the priestly ideal, added to the pressures. The relatively common charge that polluted priests handled God after handling their concubines undermined notions of purity. Yet some recognized the problems caused by enforced chastity and celibacy, and debate continued during the late Middle Ages. For some the priest-as-Christ had to renounce sexuality; for others the priest-as-human should be treated humanely by allowing sex within marriage. The reality was that clerics, despite claims to crypto-angelic status, were unavoidably human – and male; were intricately entwined in the realities of human existence. Overt maleness sometimes caused problems and complaints. Criticism of clerical concubinage was common, and clergy repeatedly appeared before church courts for fornication with prostitutes or with long-term mistresses.15 Away from the spotlight and the polemic, pragmatism sometimes ruled. Parochial visitation returns complain about clerical sexual behaviour, yet there are signs that concubinage was widely tolerated. Indeed, some parishes insisted that their priests be married de facto, presumably reasoning that such sexual stability would ensure parochial social stability by removing the threat posed by an unattached priest to other men’s wives.16 Such practices are not recorded in England, yet many English priests did have long-term sexual relationships, their sexuality being also attested by the many dispensations from illegitimacy sought by their sons. In Wales, what was effectively clerical marriage was seemingly tolerated, while Ireland had a virtually hereditary priesthood.17 *** The priestly ‘person speciﬁcation’ had other requirements. Some were essentially legalistic – ordinands should be freeborn (or manumitted), legitimate (or appropriately dispensed), unmarried (or, if a widower, not have married twice, or have married a widow), not homicides, and so on. Also demanded was lack of physical deformity, notional economic security and proof of basic educational attainment.18 Precisely what the educational attainments and theological knowledge of ‘ordinary’ priests should be is one of the vaguer aspects of medieval clerical careers. Testing occurred at ordination and possibly on appointment to a beneﬁce, but standards were low and poorly enforced.19 Reformation complaints about clerical educational attainments reﬂect different demands, making their judgements invalid for

Before the Protestant Clergy 43

earlier periods.20 The educational requirements for a sacramental clergy, concerned with works and rituals, differed from those needed for a preaching and instructing clergy, required to instil a cerebral theology of salvation. Standards probably differed with rank within the pre-Reformation Church. University graduates increased their hold on the Church’s highest positions in the late Middle Ages; but such posts had the least immediate pastoral contact and probably least impact on parish religion. Lower down, more parish incumbents were graduates by 1500, although in England the pattern was highly regionalized. Again, such graduates would often be non-resident, making little positive personal contribution to the realities of parochial pastoral care.21 The clergy’s formation was critical, yet before the Reformation quality could not be assured. With no formal seminaries,22 properly structured clerical formation was limited. Nevertheless, there was some training. Most aspiring priests probably learned through a system tantamount to apprenticeship, working alongside parish priests to acquire the basics.23 Some learning was needed, grammatical rather than theological. Clerics needed basic Latin, if only to deal with liturgical texts and to participate in the Church’s documentary and administrative culture.24 Abstruse theological learning was unnecessary: the priest’s function was essentially practical, not intellectual: to get people to heaven by practical pastoral care rather than intense doctrinal instruction. Confession, the imposition of penance and granting of absolution, exhortation to a moral life, the rites of passage of birth and death (particularly the latter, from the lay perspective) and celebration of the mass and other liturgical rites, were the essentials: actions, not thoughts. This made pastoral training particularly important. Lateran IV sought to establish teaching posts in cathedrals for clerical instruction, but the effects were variable and limited.25 Yet, after 1215, a ‘pastoral revolution’ did see concerted efforts – not always successful – to instil the basics of pastoral care into the clergy, and through them into the laity. This was to be achieved through regular diocesan synods, supplemented by appropriate diocesan legislation and reinforced by a ﬂood of texts instructing the clergy in dealing with their parishioners.26 The programme’s effectiveness is hard to assess; evidence on synods is limited, especially in late medieval England, but they were being held.27 The legislation certainly remained in force, at least in theory. Instructional texts were also produced (for clergy and laity), through to the Reformation.28 Some educational arrangements were more structured. The mendicant orders, founded in the thirteenth century, established their own

44 R.N. Swanson

schools speciﬁcally to train preachers and confessors and to ensure that friars active in the world had the theological and technical skills needed for their mission.29 While these schools were often open to non-mendicants,30 their existence possibly exacerbated mendicant–secular tensions: the friars claimed to be better guardians of souls than the seculars, and therefore were more entitled to lay offerings.31 The growth of universities and their constituent colleges also impacted on clerical education, although most students acquired any theological learning as a side-effect of the arts curriculum. Theology faculties were rare, spreading only from the mid-fourteenth century (although they existed at both Oxford and Cambridge), and real theology was only for the elite.32 Some Oxbridge colleges did function as proto-seminaries, requiring their fellows to receive ordination in due course.33 *** The priest’s sacramental functions impacted on debates about the sacraments themselves. Were they effected ex opere operato (simply by virtue of being properly celebrated) or ex opere operantis (making their validity contingent on the personal qualities of the celebrant)? If sacraments were invalidated by a priest’s human failings, that potentially undermined the whole sacramental system. Such challenges dated back to the ﬁfth-century Donatists, having been energetically rebutted by Saint Augustine himself. Thereafter, sacraments were considered valid ex opere operato, yet remained vulnerable to quasi-Donatist ideas, which might even be encouraged by clerics. The Gregorian campaign for clerical reform, reinforced by decrees urging lay people to withhold tithes from unsuitable priests, was implicitly Donatist – yet the texts entered canon law, implicitly invoked by the parishioners of Saltash against their vicar in c.1405, and explicitly in the tract Dives and Pauper of c.1410.34 Friars also expressed quasi-Donatist views against the secular clergy, as Thomas Richmond did at York in c.1427.35 The persistence of such ideas among lay people (although possibly then also inﬂuenced by ‘Lollardy’) is suggested by the reassertion of orthodoxy in one of John Mirk’s sermons – an advocacy that equally implicitly disseminated the opposing view.36 In an avowedly sacramental religion, education and intellectualism were relatively unimportant: what mattered was correct performance. This implicitly subverted the priestly monopoly of sacramental performance. Some rites were indeed non-exclusive: lay people could baptize;

Before the Protestant Clergy 45

in extremis they could even hear confession (although absolution remained a priestly prerogative). The most subversive challenge was to priestly monopoly of eucharistic consecration. Technically, although rarely overtly, it was conceded that transubstantiation would occur if a lay person said the words correctly: hence the priest’s subdued voice at the moment of consecration.37 Late medieval eucharistic piety could only enhance the priest’s status as ‘God maker’. It also made his status more contentious. Despite the consecration being valid ex opere operato, the awesomeness of the mass actually increased demands for a moral clergy, one worthy of handling God and sufﬁciently holy and pure to reassure the laity that their sacraments were valid. Quasi-Donatism encouraged demands for greater priestly purity, or that some be boycotted until they reformed. *** Similar difﬁculties affected another major area of priestly pastoral care, confession and penance. The Church’s mission, its encouragement of individual and personal perfection, was central to the cure of souls. For Jean Gerson, a prominent French clerical reformer, this meant a fundamental division among Christians between the status perfectionis acquirende and the status perfectionis exercende – between those seeking perfection (lay people and members of religious orders) and those giving guidance on its achievement (clerics with cure of souls, however exercised).38 Without institutional training facilities, the clergy required instruction by other means, mainly after appointment. To make the untrained, the unprepared, responsible (and accountable to God) for the souls in their charge was a fraught situation. As Lateran IV had noted,39 when the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch ... and if the clergy remained blind, lay people with vision would complain. Reformation pamphleteers applied the Biblical epithet to scriptural knowledge;40 medieval citations established a different context. In John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests (c.1400), the text applies to the priest’s ability to instruct, especially in preparation for confession.41 The priest’s role as soul-cleanser was primarily sacramental, with absolution the culmination of the confessional process. It again made moral demands, which overlapped with those required for consecration. For the author of the fourteenth-century Fasciculus morum the priest had to be ‘pure, discreet, pious, and just’. Although these qualities were required for celebrating mass, their individual

46 R.N. Swanson

deﬁnitions carried disciplinary considerations. The priest should be ‘pure from the sins which he is to judge in others ... discreet, so that he can judge matters that concern this sacrament [of the mass] and understands what belongs to it, how it is celebrated, to whom it is given, and to whom it is refused’. He should also be discreet in judging confessional matters; ‘pious, especially in confession’; just and discriminating when dealing with sin and assigning penance.42 Unsurprisingly, much medieval instructional literature for clerics is precisely confessional, examining sins and their relevance to different social groups.43 This emphasis sometimes appears in handbooks owned by priests, which reﬂect the reality of parochial experience. That owned by one ﬁfteenth-century curate makes the point. Confession dominates its contents: questions for single women, husbandmen and others; a sermon stressing the importance of confession to be delivered prior to Easter communion; even (as a formulaic model) a certiﬁcate of hearing a confession.44 Other parochial evidence suggests wider instruction and a broader awareness of the faith and the sacraments, which reduces the confessional emphasis. However, that emphasis is still detectable, especially for instruction delivered during Lent, preparatory to the catechizing of the annual confession. Typical – in England archetypical – was the decree Ignorantia sacerdotum issued by Archbishop Pecham of Canterbury at the council of Lambeth (1281). This required priests to teach their parishioners the basic elements of the faith: the Ten Commandments, Seven Deadly Sins, Corporal Acts of Mercy, Creed and details of the vices and virtues.45 The emphasis on sin and its remedy is strong, but the text underpins a practical religion, active and communal rather than cerebral and secretive, a religion that emphasized communal harmony rather than (or as well as) personal salvation. Equally signiﬁcant was the Layfolks’ Catechism, authorized by Archbishop Thoresby of York in 1357, in Latin and English versions. The latter, with its derivatives, became independently available for lay self-instruction – an important development, which released the laity from direct clerical oversight and provided a template to judge for themselves the clerical instruction on offer.46 Rather different in origin, and occasionally in interpretation, are signs of similar activity by particular clerics. John Drury’s short tract, ﬁrmly tied to Lenten confessional preparation, ﬁts into this context. So do notes in a handbook owned by a ﬁfteenth-century York priest, which repeat mnemonics used by Drury to help his readers recall the sacraments, commandments, and so on.47

Before the Protestant Clergy 47

This penitential literature can be variously interpreted. From a priestly and spiritual perspective, it aimed to eliminate sin, encourage contrition and stimulate confession. However, as penance manifested ecclesiastical authority, and as ‘sin’ included challenging the Church’s rights and powers, penitential texts also supported clerical interests against the laity. The discussion of sacrilege in Robert Manning’s Handling Synne highlights offences against the parish and the priest. ‘Pay tithes, respect church property, obey the priest ... It is a blatantly self-serving deﬁnition of holiness.’48 *** As so far discussed, the clergy’s active role might be limited by their job description. Gerson had a minimalist appreciation of their functions, advancing little beyond the outline in the ordination liturgy. He recognized divisions among the clergy (especially between prelates and their subjects) and ascribed a speciﬁc teaching and interpretative role to theologians. The general clergy, with whom the laity had most contact, had only a limited role: their main functions were sacramental and disciplinary, not doctrinal. Most clergy needed to know only brieﬂy and generally the precepts of the faith with an overall explanation, to understand the articles of the faith, to perform the sacraments and to know the minimum necessary to administer penance and celebrate the liturgy.49 Indeed, Gerson’s attitude to most clergy appears as patronizing as his extremely limited expectations of lay theological understanding. The clergy were to communicate the faith to the laity, but not make it too complex. Nevertheless, clerics had an educative role. Its primary emphasis, revealed in manuals for pastoral care and instruction, was on imparting doctrine and the faith’s moral content, not on exegesis and theology. The clergy’s instructional and preaching role, given the limited expectations of their educational attainment,50 was essentially to channel doctrinal information transmitted from bishops and synods. This was sufﬁcient for the kind of religion they sought to convey. The emphasis on practical pastoral care to aid access to heaven through works reduced the need for ‘theological’ instruction – one paradox of medieval Catholicism is that its theology was far too abstruse for parochial needs. Preaching, therefore, dealt with practice rather than doctrinal analysis; exegesis was for the experts. For the laity, exhortation, recrimination, castigation and encouragement were enough. Much medieval English preaching concentrated on the pastoralia of the

48 R.N. Swanson

instructional manuals. Yet there clearly was theological preaching, as a specialist task often assumed by the friars. Whatever its content, preaching was popular: audiences could be huge, the impact immense. Continental star turns like Bernardino of Siena and Savonarola produced moral reformation (even if short-lived); Savonarola’s sermons also underpinned political revolution. Their forte was exhortation to penance, renunciation of sin and personal reform, sometimes dramatically accompanied by bonﬁres of vanities.51 This teaching role further separated clergy and laity, giving them contrasting relationships with God. For the early fourteenth-century author of the English Northern Homilies, the clergy showed their love of God through their teaching, the laity through their behaviour. Clerics demonstrated their devotion by maintaining worship; the laity acted through righteousness.52 The clergy, having knowledge of God’s law, were to instruct the laity and thereby guide them to heaven. This was a speciﬁcally oral/aural process: while transmitting book learning, including the Biblical message, it also justiﬁed sermons, the explication of the gospel at the Sunday mass.53 The practical focus of pastoral care and the sacramental core of medieval Catholicism limited the role of the Bible and the evangelical, but did not eliminate it. The Bible provided the texts to be considered in sermons, although such discussion was often moralistic rather than theological.54 While direct access was limited and full texts of the Bible scarce, indirect access was widespread. Translations, full or partial, existed in most major vernaculars by 1500.55 Even in England, where legislation in 1407–9 limited access to the translated text, almost the whole New Testament existed in English before 1380, the complete Bible being made available shortly afterwards in the ‘Wyclifﬁte’ versions.56

Ambivalences and antagonisms A valid criticism of any emphasis on a Christ-like status of priesthood is that ‘We risk losing from view the aim of the ministry, which is the pastoral service of the people entrusted to the charge of the minister, and not just the service of worship.’57 The medieval laity shared that aim, but redeﬁned it to ﬁt their own demands and to realize their own perception of priestly functions. In this, their frequent ﬁnancial control was critical: the priesthood did not always bring a parochial cure of souls; unbeneﬁced priests needed employment, usually with ﬁnancial dependence on the laity.

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Lay people revealed their anxieties about clerical standards in visitation complaints, in insistent demands for ‘good’ and ‘honest’ priests to provide post-mortem prayers and in chantry regulations barring priests from taverns and cards and other immoral pursuits. Such demands carry the implicit quasi-Donatist assumption that the masses of a good priest were worth more than those of a bad one.58 Yet despite those concerns, patrons regularly resisted controls on how they abused ecclesiastical patronage for their own ends, clearly demonstrated in the many provisos to the 1529 Act against Pluralism.59 As those provisos indicated, lay patronage was often driven by non-ecclesiastical interests: a constantly signiﬁcant issue was the balance of lay and clerical interests in clerical appointments. Patrons used the Church to secure power, ﬁnancial stability, family interest and security. Clerics, quite simply, might be promoted for the wrong reasons. No matter what the proclaimed ideal, patronage replaced vocation. The tensions are manifest in texts like William Melton’s sermon to ordinands at York c.1510, urging them to examine their consciences and their motivations for taking orders.60 This placed clerics in a dilemma: beneﬁces were rewards from patrons, but patrons did not necessarily reward spiritual or pastoral worth. Patronage was commodiﬁed; provided there was no overt simony, it had to be tolerated. Indeed, in England, legal complexities severely limited how far the ecclesiastical authorities could intervene effectively in the appointment process.61 Patronage issues were just one component of the relationship between clergy and laity, a relationship necessarily complex and much theorized. Jean Gerson’s commitment to the Dionysian triad of purgation, illumination and perfection led him to identify three corresponding orders within the Church. The highest order (the prelates) ‘purges, illumines, and perfects, and not the opposite; the lowest [the laity] is to be purged, illuminated and perfected, and not the opposite. The middle [rank – the clergy] shares in both [sets of processes]’.62 For Gerson, priesthood was multifunctional, yet unidirectional, the threefold mission of purgation, illumination and perfection marking stages of a pseudo-Dionysian route to salvation which reﬂected his mystical understanding of the Church. In Gerson’s scheme, purgation and perfection were essentially achieved through sacramental acts, via the priesthood. Purgation through preaching and teaching provided a role for the clergy, but one less exclusively clerical than their sacramental actions. Gerson’s views on preaching, which have been identiﬁed as essentially apostolic, divorced that particular ministerial function from sacerdotal status. While he sometimes stressed that hierarchs had to

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ensure adequate preaching and doctrinal instruction, he elsewhere envisaged a preaching role for some laity much like that which the Church had earlier denied to the Waldensians.63 Gerson’s structure was explicitly clericalist; its vision of the perfecting force permeating downwards might not be universally accepted. The piggy-in-the-middle status of the ordinary priest was important, whichever the direction of the ﬂow. From a laicist standpoint, the laity might in their own interests demand certain qualities of the clergy and might themselves assume powers to purge and perfect. Indeed, lay people might act jointly with prelates, urging the latter to fulﬁl their supervisory obligations. Such an alliance (initiated from the opposite direction) had existed during the eleventh-century Reform, when the papacy sought lay help to implement its programme of reconstructing clerical identities.64 By 1500, the balance favoured the laity. Assumptions that the clergy would be more learned than lay people were no longer valid. A minority of clerics were highly educated, but most were relatively ill-instructed in theological and doctrinal matters. That would not matter if neither laity nor clergy were expected to be theologically aware. Yet as lay literacy expanded (perhaps particularly among those controlling ecclesiastical patronage), theological awareness increased and attitudes changed. These new lay amateur theologians, equipped to enquire about their faith, sought a clergy able to satisfy their desires for more doctrinal instruction – aspirations reﬂected in the frequent endowment of preacherships in the ﬁfteenth century.65 This created another tension. It has been claimed that ‘The Reformation’s most effective criticism, among all its criticisms, was the ignorance of the clergy. The drive for an educated clergy was much more potent and was part of something bigger, a drive for an educated everybody.’66 This validated the alliance between reformist clerics and the laity to secure clerical improvement, but the ‘drive for an educated everybody’ was potentially problematic. The ‘educated everybody’ might gain more theological awareness, but not necessarily an acceptable awareness. The lay–clerical alliance was necessarily one of convenience; its endurance would depend on how much their programmes overlapped.67 *** The medieval clergy often faced personal criticism from the laity, but antagonisms were exacerbated by more institutional disputes at the interface between ‘church’ and ‘society’. A major cause of popular

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hostility towards the medieval clergy was the latter’s determination to defend their jurisdictional and economic status on varying levels. In the parishes the laity supported the incumbent primarily by paying tithes and other dues. If the revenues went to a resident priest who provided satisfactory service (as deﬁned by the parishioners, if not by the prelates), there would be little conﬂict. Frequently, however, the rewards went to an absentee, or to institutions including cathedral chapters, university colleges and monasteries. In England after the Black Death, such beneﬁces were frequently leased out, often to laymen determined to exact the full dues. In the period’s complex economic contexts this almost guaranteed conﬂict. In rural parishes, recurrent plague reduced populations, land values and agricultural production, lowering tithe receipts and therewith clerical incomes. In towns, falling personal incomes, lower rents and population decline had a similar effect, as receipts from personal tithes dropped.68 This crisis of clerical incomes was not easily resolved: some clerics became more grasping or tried to cut corners. Meanwhile their parishioners resented novel impositions and reacted accordingly. People did not normally reject the basic liability, but they did resent being exploited. Such disputes were essentially ad hominem, but could easily be generalized into wider attacks on the clergy, as in Simon Fish’s Supplication of the Beggars (1529).69 Other clerical privileges also stirred hostility over immediate local issues. While there were arguments over rights of sanctuary and beneﬁt of clergy, seen as impediments to the proper functioning of secular authority, the most signiﬁcant disputes were over lordship and economic privileges. The Church’s rights, privileges and possessions were inalienable, especially making clerical landlords appear extremely conservative. Their rural seigneurialism was repeatedly challenged – although the fact that lords were clerics was often accidental, with conﬂict between lay lords and their peasants also being endemic.70 Conﬂicts over jurisdictional and economic privileges were most explosive in towns. Many towns were under direct clerical lordship – of bishops, cathedral chapters or abbeys (including papal lordship in Rome and the papal states). Claims of clerical lords often clashed with burghers’ aspirations to autonomy, leading to riots and sometimes war. Jurisdictional tensions surrounded English cathedrals, while disputes were endemic (and sometimes violent) in towns under monastic lordship.71 Crises often revealed the complexities and ambiguities in relationships between clerics and laity, especially in continental regions where fragmented political control permitted more intense rivalry than was possible in more centralized monarchies like England. Conﬂicts

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occurred regularly in German towns, the ecclesiastical authorities often responding by imposing an interdict, banning church services and so depriving the townspeople of their route to salvation.72 In response, the laity sometimes resisted the authorities that imposed the ban, while admitting their need for priestly ministrations by seeking to ensure their continuance. Clashes of this kind occurred in Constance in the 1330s, and again in 1343; ﬂorentine experience was equally fraught.73 Yet while church authorities defended their privileges and control, local lay initiatives usurped ecclesiastical functions, including supervision of the clergy.74 This was a practical clash of authorities, implementing an alternative set of priorities which in reality valued rather than undermined priestly power. *** The Reformation sits against this background of tension as the culmination of developing antagonisms, usually summed up as ‘anticlericalism’. The term is problematic – a nineteenth-century coinage imposed anachronistically on earlier centuries, and with its own cultural baggage.75 In the polarizations which it provokes and assumes, ‘anticlericalism’ opposes ‘clericalism’, a shorthand for ‘the Church’. As A.G. Dickens has commented, the term is now ‘unduly capacious’, its usage potentially encompassing any challenge to ecclesiastical or spiritual structures and personnel from almost any direction.76 As so portmanteau a term, its utility for speciﬁc contexts is increasingly dubious. Attempts to impose precision, treating anticlericalism as precisely economic, ideological or pragmatic/practical,77 merely increase the complexity, without necessarily enlightening. Such labels privilege words and immediate actions, rather than the ultimate aims. Terminological difﬁculties are unavoidable if the idea of anticlericalism is invoked without clear deﬁnition. For example, it has been argued that Piers Plowman reﬂects a ‘new anticlericalism’ in the late fourteenth century.78 Yet what ‘anticlericalism’ means here is not clear: it seems to cover any assertive criticism of the clergy, regardless of source. Agreed, the late 1300s seemingly marked a new phase in debates about clerical status, notably in the three-cornered contest between monks, mendicants and secular priests; but whether this was really anticlerical is questionable. Much of the debate occurred in relatively rareﬁed atmospheres: Oxford University or the papal curia.79 Some leached outwards, especially through sermons;80 yet that this criticism actually challenged the clergy’s very existence is debatable.

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Calls to reform or redeﬁne clerical status which advocated one or other of the available varieties of clerical identity were not necessarily calls for the clergy’s abolition. Arguably only such extreme opposition, true anti-sacerdotalism, was real ‘anticlericalism’.81 Even if there was a ‘new anticlericalism’ (at least in England) in the late 1300s, the complaint literature remained traditional in a crucial way. Little of it attacked the substance of priesthood; the contentious issues remained accidents, focusing on property and poverty, stability and movement. 82 Accordingly, to agglomerate all criticism of clerics as anticlericalism is too simplistic. The purposes and speciﬁc contexts of each attack must be appreciated. It is equally dangerous to equate ‘anticlerical’ outbursts with ‘reform’. Certainly much criticism sought reform, but reform can have many goals, which must be differentiated. Again, the assumption that all church criticism is anticlerical must be challenged: much, originating among clergy seeking to restore and even enhance clerical status, to make them angels rather than men, should probably be considered proclerical.83 As H.A. Oberman has commented, ‘the negative connotation of the preﬁx “anti” has distorted and disguised the underlying programmatic call for renewal of institutions in church and society’. 84 This sought not priesthood’s abolition, but its regeneration. To label material with so positive an intent ‘anticlerical’ is misguided. Indeed, the terminology contains a basic problem. If anticlericalism ‘proper’ is a post-Reformation phenomenon, it reﬂects tensions created by the clerical transformation in the sixteenth century. The postReformation struggle over the clergy’s role has been bluntly summarized: ‘The anticlericals wanted a more secularized clergy, yet the clergy could offer them only a more spiritualized one.’85 That agenda is inapplicable to the medieval period, when it was arguably the ‘anticlericals’ who sought a more spiritualized clergy, while worldly reality meant that the clergy were always threatened by secularization. Arguably, also, ‘anticlericalism’ – perhaps especially literary anticlericalism – reﬂects not antagonism but the tensions of symbiosis. It has been argued that medieval Italian literary anticlericalism ‘should not be considered as an expression of a real need for change, nor as a sign of crisis, but rather as an almost instinctive reaction to intimate familiarity with the clergy and the Curia – a healthy blowing off of steam that served to reinforce the system which it claimed to challenge’. This makes it ‘a control mechanism that drew attention to excesses and ensured that collective ethical sensibilities were not seriously violated … a stabilizing factor, a safety valve that guaranteed the equilibrium of

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the system and helped to perpetuate it for centuries’.86 Maybe English literary anticlericalism (and other criticism of the clergy) has an equivalent role, especially in urban contexts, given the size of the clerical population and the Church’s close integration with society. Such an assessment is reinforced by comparing the twelfth-century Gregorian assault on simony and married clergy with the attacks on Catholic clergy in the sixteenth. Both were reformist; their vehemence against perceived abuses among the clergy might in imprecise usage be considered ‘anticlerical’. Both movements were also essentially intraclerical disputes, which went public. The tendency for arguments between clergy over their status to gain a public airing – indeed, for those involved to appeal for lay support – certainly complicates the issues. This is shown by the case of friar Thomas Richmond at York.87 His quasi-Donatist comments occurred in a sermon preached under the auspices of the civic authorities. Despite its content, the sermon is not anticlerical, merely a skirmish in the long-running contest between the friars and the ordinary clergy. *** In general, pre-Reformation criticism of the clergy was rarely real anticlericalism. There were indeed demarcation disputes, to deﬁne spheres of action for clerical and secular authorities, and clerical claims to privileged status were often and heartily resented. But those disputes were balancing powers, not priestliness and sacramental functions. Most people appear content – even if not happy – with the clergy they had. If they performed the required functions, were reasonably moral and posed no threat, they were acceptable. Clergy who did not perform were castigated, without implying fundamental rejection of priesthood. Catholicism remained thoroughly sacramental, and as such required its ofﬁciants. Yet that rather mechanistic understanding of priesthood may have been becoming less acceptable by 1500. The ﬁfteenth century suggests increasing anxiety for reform and for instruction. There was more stress on the word, and so on preaching. However, late medieval Catholicism remained essentially incarnational, rooted in the gospel narrative rather than exegesis of the epistles. It was a religion of deeds more than thoughts, yet it remained vital and centred on the priest’s sacramental role as eucharistic consecrator and contact with the divine. Only if that emphasis was abandoned would the medieval priesthood face a direct challenge, in a paradigm shift to evangelical ministers rather than Christ-substitutes.

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Prelude to Reformation Despite widespread and repeated challenges to aspects of Catholic priesthood between 1300 and 1500 and a vocal reformist tradition, hints presaging the fundamental changes of the century of Reformations are rare. Indeed, the tenacity of traditional views on priesthood is notable even among heretics. They berated the Catholic clergy, yet often failed to develop their own ministries. The Wyclifﬁtes and Lollards of pre-Reformation England are the most notable cases. They advocated a form of priesthood of all believers, but were not formally anti-sacerdotal. Rather, like later reformers, they sought a redeﬁned priesthood with an emphatically Bible-based preaching ministry, eliminating the sacramental emphasis on mass and confession.88 More radical were the Waldensians, whose Donatism and preaching emphasis encouraged a separate tradition of ministry while concurrently recognizing Catholic priesthood.89 The Hussite case in ﬁfteenth-century Bohemia was only slightly different. Even for John Huss, priestly dignity exceeded that of the king, at least in spiritual matters.90 The moderates sustained Catholic notions of priesthood, while advocating ‘utraquism’ and offering communion in both kinds. The determined retention of Catholic ideas and apostolic succession proved a fundamental weakness. After the Hussites’ reintegration into Catholicism in 1436, traditional Catholicism undermined them by refusing to appoint Bohemian bishops. This threatened Hussite continuity: unable to maintain normal ordination practices, the Hussite Church depended on chance ordinations by wandering bishops.91 One Hussite faction did move to create its own ministry. The extremist Taborites appointed their own bishop, though whether he was expected to ordain priests is unclear. Despite the revolutionary changes in Taborite practices, their concept of priesthood did not reject Catholic ideals, but replaced existing mechanisms en route to a new clericalism.92 When the Unitas fratrum seceded from the Utraquist church in the 1460s, it developed its own ministry. Again, this was not rejecting priesthood, but seeking the renewed purity the existing structures were no longer felt to provide.93 *** Despite such tenacity, the paradigm shift did happen in the sixteenth century. Exactly why it occurred then still needs convincing explanation. Demographics may have contributed: there were proportionately

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more priests in 1500 than in 1400. That was certainly true in England, where a drop in clerical recruitment after the Black Death reversed around 1450, with ordination ﬁgures rising rapidly thereafter. The reasons for this recovery may lie in contemporary economic changes. As the population rose, young males joined the clergy regardless of suitability simply to secure a livelihood, serving the apparently insatiable demand for prayers for souls. By the 1520s, English clerical recruitment had reached the heights of the pre-Black Death years, in a population little more than half that of 1348.94 This, however, is not an adequate explanation. The laity still needed the clergy – indeed, clerical recruitment was responding to lay demand. Possibly more signiﬁcant was that churchmen themselves were calling for change and criticizing their fellow clerics. This, of course, was no novelty: the debates associated with Gregorian reform reﬂected disputes between clerics over the priestly paradigm, as the monastic view was imposed on the secular clergy.95 However, the formalization of the status and role of the parish clergy in the thirteenth century ensured that they retained their own rationale and defended it vigorously against the claims of the friars. A particularly virulent anti-mendicant polemic originated among the secular clergy of thirteenth-century Paris, creating stereotypes that lasted for centuries. These fed into literary works and also into attacks from Wycliffe and his followers.96 Continuity into the sixteenth century is shown in John Heywood’s plays and the vitriol of Simon Fish.97 Yet despite the competitive slanders between clerics in that and other debates, neither side sought to undermine priesthood. The attacks were partisan, not anticlerical. The fact that much of the criticism of the clergy was made by clerics certainly complicates the picture. Generally, it was driven by a concern to maintain clerical standards, an essentially disciplinary issue. There was a strong tradition of such top-down criticism, to which local synodal legislation, instructional tracts and admonitory sermons all contributed, as the hierarchs sought to make their clergy ﬁt for their allotted tasks. The rarity of praise and the constancy of complaint were perhaps equally corrosive.98 This general tradition of reformist criticism and aspiration was ﬁrmly entrenched. An English surge of the early ﬁfteenth century created a momentum which arguably lasted into the 1500s. 99 At the Council of Constance (1414–18) a full-scale programme of clerical reform was formulated, but not enacted. 100 Other schemes did succeed: the reform of St. Antoninus in Florence was protoTridentine. 101 Characteristic among individual reformers was the

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French writer Nicholas de Clamanges (1363/4–1437). He lambasted his contemporary Church, demanding a properly educated clergy, able to instruct the laity and assure their spiritual development. For Clamanges, preaching – which equated to teaching – was an essential element of the priestly task.102 In England, John Colet’s sermon to the Canterbury convocation of 1510 revealed an equal commitment to reform.103 He perhaps wished to unite hierarchs and laity in urging the clergy to meet their obligations – a variant of the traditional complicity between bishops and laity at parochial visitations to enforce clerical standards. Especially noticeable in Colet’s sermon is his insistence that reform required no radical change, except in behaviour. The insistent refrain ‘Let the laws be rehearsed ...’ makes his stand clear: there were already more than enough regulations; they simply needed to be enforced. Also signiﬁcant is Colet’s long-term strategy: ﬁrst reform the clergy, and reformation of the laity will naturally follow.104 As a programme, it is close to that sought by Luther up to 1520.105 Besides being practical, Colet’s stance was informed by a mystical and sacramental appreciation of priesthood, applying the Dionysian triad so that priests ‘purge through penance, illumine through baptism and conﬁrmation, and perfect through the Eucharist and extreme unction’.106 Colet would doubtless have endorsed the canons issued by the Canterbury convocation in 1529–32;107 the three reformist Parliamentary Acts of 1529 appear almost complementary.108 Similar aspirations appear in the draft canonical code prepared in England in 1535.109 However, legislation, and aspirations, could be circumvented and negated. Indeed, whether Colet’s programme could work is questionable. The 1529 Act restricting pluralism and non-residence was brazenly undermined by a host of exceptions mainly to satisfy lay patrons.110 This encapsulates the problem with legislative reform: the laity might demand action, but when it threatened their interests they backed away and added provisos. The laity’s unwillingness to reform, their responsibility for the abuses which they themselves condemned, was the Catch–22 of the late medieval Church.

Conclusion By the early 1500s accumulated tensions within medieval Catholicism were pulling – or pushing – in varied directions. For present purposes, the most important were those explicitly affecting priestly functions and status. Some were theoretical, some practical, especially as the

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laity sought to impose and exact their own models of priestly behaviour. This was when the actual status and function of the clergy became debatable, and the latent divisions of preceding centuries became a separation of traditions. The pre-existing validations of priesthood aggravated the problem. Their emphasis on sacrament and sacriﬁce enhanced the priests’ powers, without necessarily enhancing their authority. Indeed, such emphasis could reduce the priest to an automaton: while necessary, and gloriﬁed by association with Christ and the angels, priesthood was merely catalytic. The laity, as employers, as commandeers, were in charge, treating the clergy literally as mass-producers to get them through Purgatory. In short, the clergy were on the defensive, probably more so than ever before, and in a weak position. The situation was not helped by the Lutheran doctrine of the priesthood of all believers which, if pushed to extremes by the laity (as it was, for instance, by Clement Armstrong in the 1530s), was truly anticlerical.111 To re-establish priestly authoritative dominance would require the overthrow of the medieval model and reassessment of the sacramental system. The clergy could only recapture the high ground by asserting their educational and theological supremacy, as interpreters of the gospel with a speciﬁc mission for the cure of souls in the broader disciplinary sense. This need not mean a formal break with the past and rejection of the Catholic heritage: it could be portrayed as a revitalization of Catholicism. What would matter would be perceptions of the agenda and its implementation. In considering the tensions and the process of change, recent work by Berndt Hamm appears highly pertinent. He has suggested the concept of ‘normative centring’ (‘the alignment of both religion and society towards a standardizing, authoritative, regulating and legitimizing focal point’) as a tool for understanding late medieval religion.112 For the medieval priesthood, such an approach certainly appears appropriate – while accepting (as Hamm does) that any focus will be one of many, multidimensional and ﬂuid.113 However, that ﬂuidity can produce a fundamental interpretative shift, a realignment of the paradigm, as arguably happened at the Reformation, especially in the Protestant tradition. Fortuitously, Hamm identiﬁes two of the potential ‘normativizing center[s]’ as ‘a concentration on the redemptive power of Christ’s Passion’ and ‘the reduction of authoritative theological texts to the Scriptures alone’. Arguably, precisely that shift of centre between these two aspects of medieval Christianity – mass and gospel – with speciﬁc reference to perceptions of priestly functions, was essential in

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the emergence of a primarily evangelical understanding of the clergy’s mission among Protestants in the sixteenth century.114 *** The transformation of perceptions of priesthood and ministry was a central and crucial strand of the Reformation, a process both long and traumatic. In England, its importance is evident in extensive tractarian debates, notably that on clerical marriage, whose ramiﬁcations extended beyond the issue of enforced celibacy to touch most other aspects of pre-Reformation priesthood.115 The debate surrounding priesthood also permeates the Act of Six Articles of 1539.116 The arguments were hectic, yet were mainly between rival clerics, even if addressing a wider lay audience. In that respect, the Reformation crisis over priesthood and ministry was not a conﬂict between clericalists and anticlericalists, but essentially a conﬂict of clericalisms, battling to impose rival deﬁnitions of priesthood and ministry on a still subject and inferior laity. Reformers advocated wider access to the (vernacular) Bible, but assumed that they would provide its interpretation: the clerical magisterium was not to be renounced. When they realized that wider access allowed people to develop their own Christianities, beyond the reformers’ control, there was hasty backtracking.117 On both sides the debate had to be controlled, conﬁned to the nature of priesthood, not its necessity. For reformist clerics, constructing a new clerical paradigm yet determined to retain their superiority over the laity,118 attacks on the Catholic priesthood had a double advantage. One way to limit the lay threat to priesthood while apparently meeting lay demands to prune its powers was to reduce the number of sacraments and change the emphasis from ritual to doctrine, from action to thought. Arguably, a cerebral religion was a less demanding religion, for both clergy and laity. Yet a cerebral religion still needed an interpretative caste, provided by a newly emergent professionalized clergy – Catholic and Protestant. Across Europe the result was confessionalization and a new polarization. In England and much of northern Europe it meant a radically revised ministry, a Protestant priesthood.

2 The Making of the Protestant Pastor: The Theological Foundations of a Clerical Estate R. Emmet McLaughlin

Among the many changes ushered in by the Reformation in the sixteenth century, none was more extensive and enduring than the Protestant remaking of the clergy.1 The transformation of the medieval Catholic priest into the early modern Protestant minister caused remarkable religious, social, economic and political dislocations for the clergy. Beyond the impact on the clergy themselves, the ever-diminishing sacrality of the Protestant clergy contributed to the larger intellectual and cultural evolution resulting in the modern age. The resulting ministerial model remains one of the most important markers distinguishing the Protestant confessions from earlier and contemporary Catholicism. This essay begins with Martin Luther, the architect of the Protestant clergy. He provided the principles and a blueprint that others would follow even as they made alterations and additions. John Calvin is next. His system of four clerical ofﬁces and his emphasis on discipline would be determinative for Reformed Protestants. The essay ends with a discussion of Radical movements. Anabaptism offered what may have been the most consistent application of many principles that guided both Luther and Calvin. Spiritualism, on the other hand, although it developed out of Protestantism, was a new departure, which left the Protestant clergy behind.

Martin Luther: faith, preaching and scripture2 The Protestant Reformation was at its root a profound ideological revolution. Martin Luther’s teaching of justiﬁcation by faith alone challenged Catholic doctrine in an unprecedented fashion.3 The medieval Church had insisted that individual Christians strive for, 60

The Making of the Protestant Pastor 61

though not actually achieve, perfection as a necessary precondition for salvation. Given the damage inﬂicted on all humans by Adam and Eve’s fall, divine assistance usually in the form of sacramental grace was indispensable. But in the ﬁnal analysis human effort to please and appease God determined an individual’s fate. Medieval heresies had never challenged this underlying assumption. Their normal complaint was that the Catholic Church was not rigorous enough in its expectations for human holiness.4 By contrast, sola ﬁde justiﬁcation as Luther deﬁned it rejected such human presumption. It insisted that Original Sin had so devastated the soul that humans not only could not contribute to their own salvation, but the effort was itself extremely sinful. Instead, the Christian was to rely exclusively on Christ’s atonement on the Cross and the mercy of God. The burden of the Gospel was therefore faith in God’s promise to save all those who put their complete trust in Christ. That faith was itself a gift of God, moreover, since such trust lay beyond the reach of fallen humankind. To be sure, Christians were urged to sanctify their lives out of love of God and gratitude, but such effort played no role in justiﬁcation. Rather, any improvement was itself an effect of justiﬁcation. Sola ﬁde cut Catholicism at its root. It also changed the function of the Catholic priest from one centred on the sacraments to one in which clergy were deﬁned by the preaching of the Good News. The medieval priest was primarily a specialist in sacred ritual, above all the Mass.5 True, preaching assumed ever greater importance in the high and later Middle Ages in a way that paved the way for the Protestant emphasis on the Word. But the sermon formed no necessary part of the Mass. 6 Most Masses, in fact, lacked a homily. Further, sacerdotal ordination did not in itself confer the right to preach. Only bishops possessed that responsibility by reason of their ofﬁce. By the later Middle Ages, permission to preach had been annexed to the position of parish priest. All other priests required a special episcopal licence, however, and that faculty could always be withdrawn or lost. By contrast, for Luther a nonpreaching Protestant minister was simply a contradiction in terms: whoever does not preach the Word, though he was called by the Church to do this very thing, is no priest at all [for] … the sacrament of ordination can be nothing else than a certain rite by which the church chooses its preachers.7 The combining of preaching with the second fundamental Protestant doctrine, Scripture alone, dramatically elevated the educa-

62 R. Emmet McLaughlin

tional requirements for the Christian clergy.8 Although the educated elite of the late medieval Church had sought to raise the educational level of the priesthood,9 it was quite possible for an illiterate priest to perform the essential sacerdotal duties. Most pastors learned their craft by apprenticeship to a more experienced cleric. A good memory could make up for an inability to read the liturgical texts. The Protestant minister, however, was of necessity an educated professional. He needed skills to preach effectively and to plumb the text of Scripture, the exclusive authority for doctrine and practice. The medieval Church had looked not only to Scripture for authoritative doctrine, but also to extra biblical traditions contained in theological writings, conciliar and papal decisions, liturgical rites and the faithful’s age-old practices.10 The Protestant appeal to the sole authority of the Bible struck a blow at the Catholic hierarchy’s authority and transferred that authority to the scriptural text, normally as interpreted by an educated clergy. The ability to master the Bible (increasingly in the original Hebrew and Greek) replaced the sacramental power that had constituted the medieval priesthood. The Protestant ministry joined law and medicine as the third of the learned professions. This had profound results for Western culture. In succeeding centuries, ministers and their children would play an essential role in literature, philosophy, the sciences and all the other intellectual pursuits.11 Visually expressing the educational expectations for the Protestant clergy, many ministers followed Luther and replaced the sacred vestments worn during the Mass with robes that resembled or derived from the gowns worn by university students and professors.12 The establishment of Catholic seminaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by contrast, segregated priests from the universities and the larger intellectual community. While many exceptional priests, especially in the religious orders, made invaluable contributions in the same areas, most priests were limited to a diet of practical pastoral skills and rigorously censored theological handbooks.

Martin Luther: priesthood of all believers Luther’s focus on preaching the Word desacralized the Protestant ministry. His sacramental theology reinforced that desacralization.13 Luther reduced the seven Catholic sacraments to three and ﬁnally to two. He denied sacramental status to conﬁrmation, marriage, ordination and extreme unction since he found no warrant for them in Scripture. Conﬁrmation had been an episcopal prerogative and rarely dispensed.14

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The ministers of marriage in the medieval Church were the marrying couples themselves.15 It was the only sacrament a priest by deﬁnition could not administer. Extreme Unction (anointing of the sick and dying), however, was one of the most important sacral services that priests provided.16 When combined in Last Rites with confession and the Eucharist, it was considered essential for a safe passage to heaven. Luther’s critique of ordination (the sacrament of Holy Orders) attacked the very foundations of the Catholic priesthood. According to the scholastic theologians, the bishop conferred in ordination an ‘indelible character’ on the priest that gave him the sacred power to perform the other sacraments.17 The ‘character’ was a structure added to the soul that made the priest ‘holy’ in an objective sense like the Ark of the Covenant or the Eucharist. And like them, it possessed a supernatural power that was not dependent on the ethical goodness of the priest, nor could it ever be lost or removed – hence it was ‘indelible’. Into eternity the priestly soul would be objectively distinguished from that of a layman. This difference provided the rationale for the peculiar legal privileges known as clerical immunity.18 Medieval church law had denied the competence of secular courts to sit in judgment on clerics in civil suits or criminal processes. Instead, church courts, staffed and administered by the clergy themselves, would handle all cases brought against the clergy. This judicial immunity was not universally recognized by the secular state. Everywhere, though, it was a stone of offence to the laity who rightly believed the church courts either incapable or uninterested in imposing condign punishment on errant priests. The separate and superior sacral status of the clergy also justiﬁed the ﬁscal immunity of the clergy.19 Again according to church law, the Church and the clergy enjoyed an exemption from all secular taxes, even though they enjoyed the beneﬁts that secular government provided. The conspicuous consumption of the wealthier clergy only exacerbated lay unhappiness with this exemption. Even worse were clergy who competed with the laity in business while enjoying protection from both judicial and ﬁnancial regulation. Luther replaced the separate religious, legal and economic status of the clergy with the ‘priesthood of all believers’.20 All Christians were priests by virtue of their baptism. Any baptized Christian could potentially administer the Lord’s Supper, baptize and preach. To maintain order, however, certain individuals were given the public commission to ﬁll the ofﬁce of pastor. By contrast to the Catholic clergy, that appointment simply conveyed an ofﬁce, not any supernatural faculties

64 R. Emmet McLaughlin

or status. When an individual ceased to hold that ofﬁce, he ceased to be distinguishable from all the other laity. Therefore, a priest in Christendom is nothing else but an ofﬁceholder. As long as he holds ofﬁce he takes precedence, where he is deposed, he is a peasant or a townsman like anybody else.21 In practical terms, Luther’s teaching made the clergy subject to the secular state.22 They were answerable to secular law. It follows from this argument that there is no true, basic difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, between religious and secular, except for the sake of ofﬁce and work … I say therefore that since the temporal power is ordained of God to punish the wicked and protect the good, it should be left free to perform its ofﬁce in the whole of Christendom without restriction and without respect to persons, whether it affects pope, bishops, priests, monks, nuns, or anyone else.23 Lutheran clergy also paid secular taxes and were subject to all the other duties expected of citizens and subjects.

Martin Luther: clerical marriage and desacralization The requirement of celibacy imposed on Western priests by the papacy in the fourth century had been more honoured in the breach during the early Middle Ages.24 Clerical marriages were quite common; sons often followed their fathers into the priesthood just as in any other craft. Clerical ‘dynasties’ ﬁlled the same church ofﬁces for generations.25 The Gregorian Reform of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had sought to eliminate such marriages, labelling them mere ‘concubinage’ and decreeing that marriage was simply impossible (rather than merely illicit) for priests. The priestly soul was impervious to the sacramental union effected in lay marriages. Clerical liaisons remained a problem for the Church in succeeding centuries.26 In some regions, the majority of priests were implicated.27 Bishops sometimes levied ﬁnes on the offending priests without, however, insisting that they terminate the concubinal relationship. In effect, this was a ‘marriage tax’. Nor was the papacy innocent of involvement. Since illegitimate birth was a bar to ordination, sons who wished to follow their fathers into the priesthood had to petition the

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papacy for a dispensation.28 Thousands were granted, so many that a regular fee schedule was published. Luther was not the ﬁrst to argue against clerical celibacy. Even defenders of the requirement conceded that it had no Biblical warrant and was not a part of divine law. Nor was it inherent to the sacrament of Holy Orders. It was merely a disciplinary measure imposed by papal authority for the good of the Church. Priests were required to take an oath of celibacy in order to be ordained. Presumably a pope could remove the requirement on his sole authority, since its imposition had been based on that authority. In fact, it was rumoured that Pius II was interested in the notion. Reform proposals produced in the ﬁfteenth century regularly suggested either the revision or removal of the requirement.29 Luther continued many medieval criticisms of celibacy: that it was nowhere enjoined in the New Testament; that it was a tyrannous burden on consciences; that it was impossible for all but a few to maintain; and that it was impractical since male priests could not be expected to keep house, a traditional female responsibility for which men were unprepared. Luther went even further by questioning the underlying assumptions that lent value to sexual abstinence. While conceding that a few men might be called to celibacy by God, that calling did not make them superior or holier than husbands and fathers. As an ordinance of nature, marriage was the normal and natural state for both men and women.30 Matrimonial sex was not sinful, but rather a gift of God to be used responsibly and enjoyed. Luther even half-jestingly argued that marital sexual intercourse incensed and expelled the devil since he could not bear the innocent pleasure and happiness that it brought. A former monk and a priest himself, Luther had resisted the calls for him to marry as his own teaching urged.31 When he ﬁnally wed Katharina von Bora, a former nun, he did so out of neither love nor desire. However, he soon sung a different tune. His letters are ﬁlled with expressions of love and uxorious lust. The abolition of clerical celibacy and the preference for clerical marriage completed the transformation of the Lutheran minister into a bourgeois professional. According to the institution of Christ and the apostles, every city should have a priest or a bishop, as Paul clearly says in Titus 1[:5]. And this priest shall not be compelled to live without a wedded wife, but should be permitted to have one, as St. Paul writes in

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I Timothy 3 [2:4] and Titus 1 [: 6–7] saying, ‘A bishop shall be a man who is blameless, and the husband of one wife, whose children are obedient and well behaved.’ etc … So then, we clearly learn from the Apostle it should be the custom of every town to choose from among the congregation a learned and pious citizen, entrust to him the ofﬁce of the ministry and support him at the expense of the congregation. He should be free to marry or not.32 In denying a peculiar sacral status to sexual purity, Luther both deprived clerical celibacy of an important rationale and further dismantled the objective holiness that enveloped the Catholic priesthood. Luther had effectively banished the holy from the earthly sphere. He did make an exception for the Lord’s Supper, something few other Protestant Reformers followed. For them all, God alone was truly holy. The Catholic priest, the sacraments, saints’ relics, churches and vestments had all been lightening rods of sacrality and divine power present in this world serving as mediators of an ontological participation in the holy and ultimately in the divine essence itself. Justiﬁcation was the result of the substantive transformation of the sinful human into a vessel of divinity in imitation of the God/Man Christ. The Church and the priest were sources of the transformative grace that made a sinner worthy of entering fully into the divine presence. For Luther, justiﬁcation was simply God’s acceptance of the sinner and that acceptance was announced (not caused) by the Word, understood not as the Johannine logos but as the Good News. The result was not participation in the divine essence, but faith and forgiveness.33 The Protestant minister, in so far as he was a mediator, offered meaning not presence, signiﬁcation not participation, God’s good will not God himself. While other reformers would further pursue this desacralization of the priest, the Church and the World, Luther already anticipates the dead material universe of Descartes and modern science. It does not help the soul if the body is adorned with the sacred robes of priests or dwells in sacred places or is occupied with sacred duties or prays, fasts, abstains from certain kinds of food, or does any work that can be done by the body and in the body … it will not harm the soul if the body is clothed in secular dress, dwells in unconsecrated places, eats and drinks as others do, does not pray aloud, and neglects to do all the above mentioned things … 34

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Its effects on the Christian ministry were no less profound. For a Protestant, the supernatural powers and ritual acts of the Catholic priest could be nothing else but magic – and satanic magic at that.

Martin Luther: the sacraments The two sacraments that Luther ultimately did retain make this very clear. Baptism remained essential.35 As we have seen, it made all Christians priests. Its primary function was as a visible Word. It was a sign that converted the audible Word of preaching or the literate Word of Scripture into a visual symbol or symbolic action that simply reiterated the Good News of sola ﬁde justiﬁcation. Anxious Christians could always ﬁnd consolation in the memory of their baptism. Luther retained infant baptism, as did most of the Reformers, but in defending it he could appeal only to the possibility that it might in some mysterious way work on the uncomprehending child. Luther’s position on baptism simply made clear the remarkable transformation that his theology had worked on Catholic practice and belief. While the Catholic Church agreed that baptism and the other sacraments were symbolic, the Church also made clear that the water of baptism contained a grace that worked ex opere operato to literally cleanse the soul of all sin and impose a supernatural character much like the one conveyed in ordination. For a Catholic, infant baptism made perfect sense and failure to baptize a newborn was criminal negligence. In fact, its importance was so great that the Church conceded to laity, including women, the power to administer it in emergencies. Midwives were specially commanded to baptize infants if their survival was in doubt.36 Luther was still Catholic enough to retain infant baptism and insist on its necessity, even though his theology deprived the practice of its raison d’être. Calvin, while also retaining infant baptism, would deny with greater consistency both the absolute necessity of baptism and the right of the laity, women in particular, to administer it.37 The impact of desacralization and the challenges it presented to Luther is best seen, however, in his treatment of the Lord’s Supper.38 The Eucharist, the sacriﬁce of the Mass and Holy Communion constituted the very heart of Catholicism and in large measure deﬁned the Catholic priesthood.39 As explained by the scholastics, when the priest uttered the words of consecration (‘This is my body … This is my blood’) over the bread and wine, the ‘substance’ of the bread and wine was destroyed and replaced by the ‘substance’ of the risen Christ. Only the ‘accidents’ – the appearance, taste, weight, shape, etc. – of the

68 R. Emmet McLaughlin

bread and wine remained. Priests could achieve this real presence of Christ by virtue of the power conveyed in ordination. The transformation of the bread and wine unfailingly occurred whenever any priest, even a manifestly sinful one, said the proper words with the intention of confecting the Eucharist. Christ’s real presence made possible the sacriﬁce of the Mass, the offering of Christ to his Father. This repeated, not merely commemorated, Calvary. This sacriﬁce was the most powerful weapon in the Church’s arsenal. It could be applied to sin, alleviate suffering in purgatory and protect in this world. The sacriﬁce of the Mass also explains the origin of the Catholic ‘priesthood’. And as in the sacerdotal model presented in the Old Testament, the sacral status of the Catholic priests allowed them to handle the Eucharist with impunity. Constant contact with the holy required and reinforced the sacrality deﬁning the person and function of the priest. Although Luther, unlike most of the Reformers, retained a real presence in the bread and wine, he demolished the rest of Catholic Eucharistic doctrine.40 The Catholic sacriﬁce was the most blasphemous example of works righteousness, that is, the belief that one’s own efforts – in this instance, the offering of Christ to his father – were necessary or useful for salvation. For Luther, in this as in all else, God was the giver and humans the receiver. The sacriﬁcial priesthood also infringed on the High Priesthood of Christ (Hebrews 4: 14–15:10), his unique sacriﬁce and his sole mediatorship between God and humans. Instead of offering sacriﬁce to God, the Lord’s Supper, as a visible Word, offered salvation to those who ‘heard’ and accepted the promise of redemption. And as with verbal preaching, all baptized Christians possessed the ability to effect Christ’s presence, though for the sake of order and decorum only a publicly called minister normally did so. For Luther, Christ’s ﬂesh in union with the divine essence was universally present (ubiquity), but Christ’s promise made him present bodily to both believers and unbelievers. Faith received the beneﬁts of that presence while for those who lacked faith Christ’s body proved a spiritual poison. Again as with preaching, conducting the Lord’s Supper in the absence of a congregation, as was done in the Catholic private Mass, made no sense. Luther also criticized the Catholic practice of denying the laity the cup. For him, it exceeded the Church’s authority and contributed to the separate and superior status of the clergy. Many other Protestant Reformers considered Luther’s retention of a real presence, despite his philosophical and theological objections to Catholic transubstantiation, as unfortunate Catholic baggage. And while the rest of Luther’s theology presented no contradiction or

The Making of the Protestant Pastor 69

inconsistency with the real presence, that theology did render it fairly superﬂuous. It could enhance the emotive force of the visible Word, but it added nothing essential. And, as with baptism, though Luther acknowledged the possibility of some supernatural impact, it clearly did not foster a sacral priesthood. One other Catholic rite, penance or confession, was so prized by Luther that he initially retained it as a sacrament.41 But even during that period, he radically reconceived it. Catholic penance had been second only to the Mass as a source of sacerdotal identity and authority. Individual, private, repeatable confession had developed in the early Middle Ages under the impact of monastic practice and in response to the decline of the public penance of the ancient Church. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) had regulated it by imposing an annual duty to confess and receive the Eucharist. In the confessional, the priest acted as a judge over sins. He imposed penances (for example, fasting), and granted forgiveness of sins by virtue, again, of a sacramental power conveyed in ordination. Among some Catholic thinkers, however, emphasis was also placed on the pastoral opportunities for instruction, exhortation and consolation. Luther continued that tradition, but changed it in accordance with the rest of his teaching. In keeping with the priesthood of all believers, any Christian could serve as a confessor, although Luther expected that normally it would be a minister. The confessor lacked both judicial authority and the sacramental power to forgive sins. Instead, the confessor reminded the sinner of the promise of forgiveness and salvation written in Scripture, preached from the pulpit and made manifest by the sacraments. As was also true of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, confession was a service of the Word, a form of preaching the Gospel. For we teach with the Word, we consecrate with the Word, we bind and absolve sins by the Word, we baptize with the Word, we sacriﬁce with the Word, we judge all things by the Word.42

Martin Luther: decline in numbers and dependence on the state The diminished sacramental reach of the Protestant clergy and the compensating extension of preaching reduced the demand for clerical services and hence for the clergy itself. The Protestant preachers in German cities represented only a small fraction of the number of Catholic priests found there during the later Middle Ages. 43

70 R. Emmet McLaughlin

Elimination of private Masses, primarily for the dead, rendered unnecessary the army of mass priests whose only duty had been to say the Mass. The abolition of religious orders and the suppression of non-parochial shrines and pilgrimage churches released their attendant clergy. The elimination of minor orders – subdeacons, acolytes, exorcists, doorkeeper – contributed to the decline, as did the dismantling of the higher ranks of bishop and archbishop.44 The numerous clergy who had staffed episcopal courts and ofﬁces disappeared as well. In fact, the enormous bureaucratic structure, developed in the Catholic Church during its long history, simply disappeared. Catholic bishops had been the source of all clerical power and authority, the only complete priest in a sense.45 In the primitive Church, bishops had performed most of the sacraments personally, especially baptism and the Eucharist. Even before the Edict of Milan (313), the bishops in major cities had had to delegate many duties and rights to the priests and deacons. The explosive growth of the Church after Constantine made this a common phenomenon throughout the empire. In effect, the medieval clerical orders were an unfolding of the powers that bishops initially had held alone. The Protestants elimination of the primal Catholic clerical ofﬁce underscores the extent of the changes Luther’s theology brought. Although some bishops remained in Lutheran Scandinavia, they were replaced in Lutheran Germany by superintendents appointed by the prince and lacking all of the episcopal sacramental and jurisdictional powers.46 The princes and other rulers of Lutheran Germany replaced the governance structure of the Catholic Church with one of their own. Although Luther resisted this secular intrusion into the spiritual realm of the Church, he eventually accepted the rulers as temporary ‘emergency bishops’ needed to defend the Reformation against both the Catholic Church and more radical Protestants.47 The secular state was also needed to enforce the collection of tithes to support the new Church. The result was state churches that continued in many cases until the First World War. The Electoral Saxon Church, the model for Lutheran states, comprised four institutions staffed in part by clergy and intended primarily to govern them.48 The ﬁrst, as we have seen, were the superintendents. The second was the visitation, the ﬁrst conducted in 1528.49 The Elector appointed clerics and lay administrators as ‘visitors’ to inspect all of the parishes in the Electorate concerning their ﬁnances, the state of church buildings, the performance of the clergy and the state of the laity. On the basis of these reports, the Electoral

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administration could impose the proper measures for improvement. Though the medieval Catholic Church had developed the visitation, Protestant Churches made it a truly effective instrument for the ﬁrst time. Never had the clergy been subjected to such consistent scrutiny. Discipline was also administered by the consistory, a governing council that oversaw the superintendents and the ministers.50 The consistory was also a court for the marriage cases that the Catholic Church courts had handled until the Reformation. The ﬁnal branch of the state church was the University of Wittenberg. Founded and funded by the Elector, it acted, as did a medieval university, to educate the clergy and to maintain doctrinal orthodoxy, though to be sure it was now Lutheran orthodoxy. Lacking any sacramental character and staffed by both clerics and laity, the state church was a desacralized bureaucracy, a special branch of government, but a branch none the less. Of course, the co-optation of the Church by the Elector and other secular rulers could lend them some religious aura. In general, however, this did not occur. Instead, the Church came to resemble the efﬁcient, though profane secular state, as later reformers and Pietists would complain. The new church structures, however, were doubtlessly much more effective than their predecessors in the formation and disciplining of the clergy. In large measure, the new Protestant clergy was its product. And that clergy offered the Gospel in Word and Sacrament to the population in general with tireless effort and passion. The shrinkage in clerical numbers, combined with adoption of everyday clothing indistinguishable from that of the rest of the professional classes, made the Protestant clergy much less visible than the Catholic priesthood. Less visible, but not invisible, since the pastor and that novelty, the pastor’s wife and family, were immediately the cynosure of all parochial eyes.51 The medieval clergy were supposed to model the perfect Christian life for the laity – their failure to do so was the laity’s chief complaint. So too the new Protestant ministry and their wives were expected to be exemplars of Protestant piety and praxis, a work in progress. Since many pastors and their wives were former clerics, monks and nuns, they were quite conscious of this function. Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora became the template, but every other clerical couple played the same role on the local level.52 Clerical celibacy certainly had its burdens, but clerical marriage was no less freighted. The pastor’s wife was in a particularly unenviable position, since so many of the faithful still harboured reservations about the legitimacy of clerical sexuality and marriage. But because the biblically-

72 R. Emmet McLaughlin

based patriarchalism of early modern Protestantism precluded women from holding clerical ofﬁce or publicly preaching, the pastor’s wife often became the pastor’s delegate to the women of the congregation. In effect, these women occupied a new church ofﬁce without precedent, but with the potential for remarkable inﬂuence and impact. They certainly lacked both tradition and any theological foundation beyond the priesthood of all believers. But the pastors’ wives were free, within the narrow constraints imposed on all women, to create a place within the Church with no equivalent in the Catholic Church. In effect they nearly doubled the clerical ranks. By Luther’s death in 1546, the blueprint for the new Lutheran clergy had been drawn, even if only the foundations had been laid. Recruiting, training and paying for a university-educated middle-class paterfamilias would require time and the support of the state. However, even during Luther’s lifetime, John Calvin had begun work on a second-generation prototype. This would further curtail the sacramental component of the clerical ofﬁce, although it would recoup some of the lost juridical competence.

John Calvin: stripping the altars53 Concurrent with the Lutheran Reformation in northern Germany, the cities of southern Germany and Switzerland experienced sweeping reforms that quite dismantled the structure and theology of the Catholic Church. Reformed Protestantism possessed from the beginning a distinctive character.54 Beginning with Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich, followed closely by Johannes Oecolampadius in Basel, Martin Bucer in Strasbourg and other urban reformers, it reached its most inﬂuential form in John Calvin. Although the southern theologians agreed with Luther on the core Protestant doctrines – sola ﬁde, sola scriptura, priesthood of all believers, for example – they placed their emphases differently and on some important points they supplemented Lutheran teachings; on others they rejected them altogether. In general, Luther left ‘adiaphora’ (things neither commanded nor forbidden) to the freedom of the Christian as long as they did not clash with the Gospel. By contrast, the Reformed reading of Scripture excluded any ofﬁce or practice not expressly commanded in the Scriptures. The result was a movement that saw itself as logically culminating an incomplete Reformation coming from Wittenberg. With regard to the clergy, two theological loci were of particular importance: the sacraments and church discipline.

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The unity of early Protestantism foundered on the sacraments. We have already seen the challenges that they posed for Luther. The Reformed overcame what seemed to them inconsistencies in Luther’s teaching on the Lord’s Supper by rejecting the real bodily presence of Christ in, under or with the bread and wine. While Zwingli initially argued that the meal was a purely symbolic commemoration, both he and other southern Reformers eventually proposed a redeﬁned ‘real presence’. In Calvin, for example, that would result in a real participation in Christ in heaven through the lifting of the believer’s heart (sursum corda).55 Luther’s response was to break with the ‘Sacramentarians’, whom he would lump together with other ‘fanatics’ like Thomas Müntzer and Andreas Karlstadt. Reformed sacramentology fuelled a pitiless attack on Catholic ‘magic’, ‘superstition’ and ‘idolatry’ that carried the process of desacralization far beyond what Luther had sought. Catholic controversialists lumped Lutherans and the Reformed together for polemical purposes. At the same time, the hierarchy recognized in the Reformed, and especially in the Calvinists, the deadliest enemies of the church and its sacramental vision of the world. Reformed worship, in turn, became one of the most visible differences from both Catholicism and Lutheranism. Systematic iconoclasm stripped the churches of their paintings, statues and altars.56 Gone were the incense, vestments and aura of mystery. Church music was chastened and reduced to congregational hymn singing. Church organs suffered the same fate as the religious plastic arts. While Catholic worship appealed to all the senses, the Reformed retained only seeing and hearing, and reduced their objects further to the written and spoken word. In place of the stone altar there was a wooden table. In place of the rich and elaborate liturgy, developed over the centuries, there was a simple puriﬁed service based on, and limited, to what little the New Testament revealed about primitive church practice. Praising the new reformed worship of Geneva, Calvin complained that Catholic ceremonialism served to draw the eyes of the common people to wonderment by a new spectacle, rather than to instruct their minds in sound religion. I ask all who are in the least affected by a zeal for piety whether they do not clearly see both how much more brightly God’s glory shines here, and how much richer sweetness of spiritual consolation comes to believers, than in these lifeless and theatrical triﬂes, which serve no other purpose than to deceive the sense of a people stupeﬁed.

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They call this the holding of the people by religion when they lead them at will – dulled and befooled by superstition.57 The contrast to Catholicism, and to the role of the Catholic priesthood, could not have been greater. What remained of the medieval clerical ofﬁce were its prophetic, educative and disciplinary elements.

John Calvin: the four ofﬁces and discipline Calvin’s ‘Ecclesiastical Ordinance’ (1542) for Geneva provided for the Reformed tradition the classic description of the clerical ofﬁces.58 In his examination of the New Testament and the primitive Church, Calvin discerned four: teacher, minister, deacon and elder. Calvin’s inclusion of the teacher made even more manifest the centrality of education already seen in Luther. The ministry was to be a learned profession rather than a sacral priesthood. Geneva quickly established an Academy, which trained a new Reformed clerical corps for both the city and a good deal of France.59 The ministers were, of course, primarily preachers of the Word, but also pastors who consoled the grieving and disciplined the erring. The emphasis on discipline distinguished the Reformed confession.60 Luther had taught that there were two marks of the Church: the Word rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly understood and administered. Reformed Protestantism added a third: discipline. For Calvin, mutual admonition and punishment, including exclusion from the Church, were fundamental to the Church as described in the New Testament and hence as prescribed for the Reformed Churches of the sixteenth century. Although ordinary Christians were expected to exercise this ofﬁce within the limits of their private lives, church discipline in practice remained the province of the clergy. Ministers preached generally against doctrinal error and behavior unbecoming a Christian, but they also advised the weak and upbraided the miscreant.61 Failure to reform brought the manifest sinner before a disciplinary council, the consistory, which could impose excommunication. Where the secular government was Reformed it could even impose imprisonment and corporal punishment.62 The elders, an innovative ofﬁce peculiar to the Reformed Churches, were ‘laymen’ of upright character and unquestioned orthodoxy who administered discipline. The efforts to desacralize the clergy reached a logical, if incomplete, conclusion in the ofﬁce of elder. Although they held one of the four clerical ofﬁces, they were still distinguished and

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distinguishable from the ‘real’ clergy who preached the Word and administered the sacraments. The same forces that had created the original Catholic hierarchy were once again in play. A full-time corps of religious specialists with a life-long calling constituted a challenge to the priesthood of all believers. Individuals remained in practice clerics when in transition between posts or without a post altogether. Ordination may not have imposed an indelible mark, but education and exercise of the ministerial ofﬁce created an enduring ‘character’ and a separate estate. A forceful pastor could often exercise a preponderant inﬂuence over the elders and his congregation which rivalled, if it did not exceed, that of the contemporary parish priest. Protestant opponents of clericalism were not slow to descry a new Papacy. The sometimes uneasy relationship between the secular state and the Reformed church reinforced these suspicions. Early urban reformers such as Zwingli accorded town councils considerably more authority in church matters than would Calvin. In Calvinist territories this led to tensions. But in Catholic lands (for example, France) or even non-Calvinist Protestant ones (for example, England), the result was an independent Church that organized itself from the ground up and recognized a higher authority in regional or national consistories. The resulting disciplined hierarchy proved a capable opponent throughout Europe to the reformed traditional structures of the CounterReformation Catholic Church. The ﬁnal ofﬁce was the deaconate. The Reformed deaconate gave institutional expression to the charitable mission all confessions associated with the Church.63 Like the elders a ‘lay’ position, the two ofﬁces sometimes combined since they drew on the same pool of reliable and inﬂuential laymen. Dual membership also effectively coordinated the Church’s extensive charity with its disciplinary function. Support could be curtailed or denied to those not members in good standing. The remarkable generosity of the Calvinist churches is sometimes overlooked or under-appreciated. Given the extent of the Church’s charity and its importance for those who depended on it, the deaconate could easily stand comparison with the other three orders.

Anabaptism and spiritualism: the limits of the Protestant paradigm The Radicals challenged the Protestant reconceptualization of the clerical ofﬁce. In some regards, this was theological. The Radicals pushed Protestant principles further than the Reformers found acceptable, or

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even moved beyond those principles. In other regards, this resulted from social or political circumstance. Anabaptism followed much the same path as the Reformed, for example, though its failure to become a state church or even to attain legal status in most places allowed it to adhere even more closely to the model of the New Testament Church.64 Direct literal imitation of the biblical Church, without concession to the passage of time or the evolution of a Christian society, marked Anabaptism in all that it was and did. In the early years of the movement, leadership was often provided by apostles or preachers with a charismatic warrant and itinerant ministry.65 As congregations formed, a local resident clergy soon developed which adopted a threefold ofﬁce of elder, preacher and deacon, under a variety of titles. 66 Unlike the Reformed Churches, however, the elders were the central ruling ofﬁce, much like the presbyter-bishops of the earliest Churches. The elders administered the sacraments, ordained all church ofﬁcers, maintained discipline, taught and preached. The preachers, by contrast, were limited to the service of the Word. The third ofﬁce, that of deacon, was devoted to the charity for which the Anabaptists were justly famous. Deaconesses seem also to have been chosen from very early on and continue to be a mainstay of Mennonite congregational life. That the Anabaptists, despite their stringent patriarchalism, could recognize a female ministry is indicative of the extent to which they had carried the Protestant programme of desacralization. Sharing a denial of the Real Presence with the Reformed, the Anabaptist went further by requiring Believer’s Baptism. The importance of the disciplinary function, the Ban, pointed in the same direction. Reserving both the sacraments and discipline to the higher ofﬁce reﬂects the importance of Baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the Ban in forming Anabaptist institutional character and constitution. The relative inferiority of the preachers attests to lack of a learned clergy and its conscious avoidance. An unlearned ministry served the Anabaptists well because they accepted at face value the Protestant claim that Scripture was clear and needed no external interpreter. Both preachers and elders were drawn from the local congregation by the other ministers. There was no salaried clergy such as staffed the state churches. Although some may have received ﬁnancial support to cover lost income, they remained in their secular callings. And the absence of a professional clergy prevented the development of a new ‘altar rail’ of education. This did not produce a more ‘democratic’ church order, however, since the selection and ordination of new ministers was by co-optation, and the governance provided by the lay ministry could be

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just as authoritarian as that of either a learned clergy or a sacral priesthood. A purely lay ministry remained the norm for Anabaptism until the eighteenth century when special seminaries began to train a professional full-time clerical ministry. The Protestant clergy in all its branches was deﬁned ultimately by service of the Word in preaching and the sacraments. The Anabaptists differed only in the literalness of their interpretation and the Word’s accessibility to the uneducated. By contrast, Spiritualists such as Sebastian Franck and Caspar Schwenckfeld undermined the Protestant clergy altogether. They did so by using the New Testament to devalue or bypass the external Word of Scripture and preaching. Instead, they appealed to the internal Word communicated directly by the Holy Spirit.67 The Christians of the New Testament regularly appealed to the Holy Spirit as a supplement or replacement for the dead word of their Jewish opponents. The entire New Testament is a grievous contravention of the Old Testament command (Deut. 4: 2), much cited by the Reformed: ‘You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it.’ The sacraments fared no better at the hands of the Spiritualists. Inner Baptism and the Inner Supper made the outward rite, however cleansed and simpliﬁed, otiose. As a result, the Church had evaporated for the Spiritualists, leaving only individual Christians. They might gather to pray or console, but such gatherings did not constitute a church. In the Protestant assault on the Catholic priesthood, the Reformers had consistently appealed to Christ’s High Priesthood to argue that Christ had made the unique salviﬁc offering and was the sole mediator between God and humanity. The priesthood of all believers, from whom the clergy were drawn, was a levitical priesthood that simply assisted Christ to convey the beneﬁts of His sacriﬁce and to be His earthly voice. Here too the Spiritualists pushed the argument a step further. In effect, they argued that Christ was not merely the High Priest; he was the only priest. ‘Christ alone’ had consumed ‘Scripture alone’ and left only individual ‘faith alone’. The Spiritualists dismissed as either in abeyance or rendered obsolete not only the Catholic priesthood and the Protestant ministry, but also the ofﬁces described in the New Testament itself. The belief, however, that Scripture had been surpassed and the Apostolic Church transcended moves us beyond the doctrinal borders of Reformation Protestantism. It presages that current in modern Christianity that uses the Bible as an aid to spirituality, ignores any inconvenient Scriptural elements merely as expressions

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of the primitive society that had written it, and views churches as pious social clubs. Spiritualism also rounded out the religious desacralization of the universe and of humanity. Sebastian Franck collapsed the Holy Spirit itself into the human spirit, thereby contributing to the apotheosis of reason in following centuries. With Franck, therefore, the last mediator, the last priest, disappears. The reconceptualization of the clergy set in motion by Martin Luther could go no further.

3 The Emergence of the Pastoral Family in the German Reformation: The Parsonage as a Site of Socio-religious Change Susan C. Karant-Nunn

An innovative historiographic trend over the last two generations has been to display the continuities between the late Middle Ages and the Reformation era.1 Even though the year 1500 still stands as a dividing line between the pre-modern and modern periods in the European past, its fragility is increasingly visible to all. Little more than the entrenched departmentalization of academic institutions throughout the West holds this chronological marker in place. The reliance of Martin Luther’s theology on the thought of various predecessors is plain, as is, among much else, the encroachment of the state on the ecclesiastical sphere. Even efforts to impose greater moral discipline upon the laity began not later than the ﬁfteenth century, along with more stringent regulations and rhetoric concerning the place of women in home and workforce. Yet the Reformation was a break with traditional religion – we sense it on every side. The time has come for a renewed critical reﬂection on the posited similarities between early Lutheranism and the Catholicism out of which it startlingly emerged. The purpose of this essay is to argue that the construction of the Lutheran pastoral family during the sixteenth century and its elevation everywhere to a model of piety and decorum marked a radical break with the prevailing Catholic practice of concubinage. Priests living with their ‘cooks’ and ‘housekeepers’ and raising children with them was widespread as the Reformation began.2 The earliest Lutheran reconnaissance visitation, in the Ernestine administrative district (Amt) of Tenneberg in March 1526, makes this clear.3 In the dozen villages, two of which contained two parishes, ten of the fourteen clergymen either still had questionable women in their homes or professed to 79

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have recently married them. The men’s uncertainty about committing themselves to a condition from which they could not free themselves even if the Catholic Church were to recover from the Reformation challenge is demonstrated by the case of Herr Vincentius, pastor in Ulleben: He has his cook. A year ago, when the peasants revolted, they said that they were going to marry and had the banns declared in Gotha. But after the peasants were paciﬁed, he did not take her to church [for the wedding ceremony]. The people still regard her as a whore; but he says that he wants to marry her soon after Easter. [Hat seyn kochin, vor eyn iar do die pauern auf stunde vorgeben sie zu ehlichen, lis sich zu gotha auf piten, do aber der pauern gestillt wurden, hat er sie bis her noch nit zu kirchen gefuret. Helt es das volck noch fur hurnbalk, doch wil ers bald noch ostern ehlichen.] With the exception of the parish priesthood, monks, friars and nuns – all of whom took vows of celibacy – late medieval society was oriented towards and structured around marriage. For most purposes, the laity did not agree with St. Jerome that virginity was superior to marriage or even that a commitment to widowhood was better than remarrying. To be a fully participatory citizen, one was expected to have been respectably wed even if currently widowed. No man could become a guild master without ﬁrst giving written proof of his having been born within wedlock and without having married as soon as he gave formal evidence of his artisanal skills. The wedded pair together with their children and servants were the units out of which society saw itself as being constructed.4 Yet, in order to be approved of, bonds between women and men had to be established by means of ceremonies. These were far more social than ecclesiastical, for on the eve of the Reformation weddings did not absolutely require even priestly blessing, much less a longer ritual within a church. The couple’s betrothal bespoke their and their families’ consent, on mutually agreed terms, and this was already binding. Ordinarily, brides and grooms of whatever rank acted in keeping with their immediate relatives’ strategies as well as their own personal tastes. Priestly concubinage violated the dominant mores. It was hypocritical in an age that took oaths very seriously. Clergymen’s failure to conform to prescribed patterns of negotiation and troth-plighting reminded the laity once again not only of the vulnerability of their

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womenfolk, but also that priests operated outside the societal norm. They were indeed not – to adapt a term early used by William S. Stafford – domesticated.5 Lay people were, however, realistic and pragmatic. They apparently did not seethe as they witnessed their curates’ taking up with the women who cooked and kept house for them. Sexual desire was, by common masculine consent, irresistible, and the chaste adherence to celibacy was for saints alone. Further, priests’ intimate ties were often stable, and this quality recommended them to the public; stability contributed to the much-touted common good. Even so, one of Friedrich Myconius’s sources in Ulleben may well have used the word Hurenbalk to describe the pastor’s concubine. More revelatory of popular attitudes is the fact that most concubines were from a humble social class, one not on a par with the pastors’ own. Priests’ live-in women derived from a condition lowly enough that entering into a dishonorable liaison represented advancement. Their neighbours had more to lose from some clerics’ continually roving eyes and hands, whether in or out of the confessional role, than from long-term ties.6 Considerations of gain and loss inﬂuenced attitudes. This latter principle very likely obtained, too, when parishioners did not immediately welcome the pastor’s bride into their midst, whatever her station. The historian cannot always distinguish in the archival records between reactions that were personal and those that reﬂected difﬁculty in adjusting to the suddenly imposed clerical marriage. Concubines elevated to the new dignity of pastor’s spouse may have invited calumny – but we cannot be certain. Bob Scribner uncovered conﬂict between parishioners and the pastor’s wife in Württemberg parishes at mid-century, in the still early phase of that land’s Reformation.7 In inspecting rural Württemberg parishes in 1552, just being compelled to become Protestant, Johannes Brenz uses immoderate language in describing many priests’ concubines, and indeed the ‘Mass-priests’ (Meßpfaffen) themselves. He depicts one such housemate as ‘a whore, an old, drunken, shameless, shameful woman who on account of her words and gestures (and especially when she drinks wine) should not be endured by honorable people. In addition, she is disloyal [to the priest], does away with what the pastor has.’8 This woman may have been guilty as accused, but Brenz’s remarks characteristically run along these lines. Whatever the state of their own conscience – of their own level of devotion to the ideal of priestly chastity – late medieval preachers advocated the wedded estate for the masses. They did not entertain sexual abstinence as a desirable way of life for the laity. Every year on

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the second Sunday after Epiphany, those who were able to preach at all chose as their text either the Wedding at Cana or some other biblical story that lent itself to the advocacy of marriage. The sermons that survive reveal a willingness to guide ordinary men and women towards marriage and to help them in living uprightly in that bond.9 PostReformation wedding sermons derive many of their fundamental messages from this category of their predecessors.10

The Reformation and clerical marriage From an early date, Luther repudiated vows of celibacy on several grounds. Foremost, he regarded them as rooted in a theology of works: adhering to the chastity that was meant to accompany the unmarried state made one better in God’s eyes than a person who ‘indulged’. Second, Luther considered that God had elevated marriage from the moment he created Eve from Adam’s rib and presented her to him. The events of the Creation provided a model that was supposed to be followed by all subsequent generations.11 Quite apart from the lust that arose as a consequence of the Fall, without mating as part of a condoned relationship the human race would die out. Most compelling, however, was the result of Eve’s and Adam’s disobedience. They were completely overcome by desire, Luther says, and could not keep their hands off one another. This is the condition in which men and women ﬁnd themselves. Without the marriage bed as the site of approved erotic outlet, the sickness of the libido would run rampant through the streets, threatening human polity.12 By the time of Myconius’s preliminary visitation, Luther and Katharina von Bora had been married for nine months. Luther was by no means the ﬁrst Reformer to marry. Huldrych Zwingli had taken up residence with his betrothed, Anna Reinhart, in 1522; in a possible effort at concealment the couple did not undergo a formal marriage rite until two years later, on 2 April 1524.13 Luther’s and Katharina’s nuptials were anything but secret or hedged. The interested world raged, proclaiming that the union of renegade monk (or friar!) and nun was a sign of the impending apocalypse.14 Their marriage unintentionally became that paragon towards which Lutheran clergymen aspired. By his very irrepressible nature, and as a result of the broad circle of friends and boarders who passed through their dining room, Luther publicized his devotion to his wife throughout the German Protestant sphere. When he wrote to friends, he included news of her and her greetings. When they enter-

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tained – which they did perpetually – his enthralled followers wrote down his every word, including his offhand criticism of or terms of endearment to his wife, affectionate comments to his young children, frank statements of his love of and longing for his family, and assertions of principles that ought to guide every Hausvater. At the table as in his treatises, he attacked celibacy and the promiscuity that in his opinion almost inevitably proceeded from it. 15 His example and his marital bliss bore far more weight than his theoretical tracts on the subject alone. Luther fully approved of the necessity of propelling into wedlock virtually every ex-Catholic clergyman who was attempting to gain acceptance from evangelical authorities. To be sure, Luther approved of the ongoing celibacy of his close friends, Nicholas Hausmann and Nicholas von Amsdorf. These men, he was sure, were among the one in a thousand or one in a hundred thousand who were able to be celibate and completely abstemious. One could hardly expect to ﬁnd this gift among rural Pfaffen. All ordinary men and women ought to marry. With the Saxon visitations of 1528–29 and 1533–34, the willingness to take a wife served as a prominent criterion of a man’s sincerity in espousing, too, the new faith.16 In 1529, the visitors of the hamlets around Zwickau had their scribe record: ‘The pastor in Ober Albersdorf is commanded either to set aside or to marry the suspicious person between now and Carnival … Similarly, the pastor in Langen Hessen is ordered to dismiss the suspicious person, which he has agreed to do.’17 By the next visitation, every pastor was ensconced in a legitimate marriage and parsonage.18 Before the appearance of the great Württemberg church ordinance of 1559, Saxony provided guidance throughout Protestant Germany. Even after the rise of independent Lutheran territories elsewhere, the ecclesiastical provisions of Saxon Duke Heinrich and the later expanded ones of his son Elector August were often consulted. In other lands that in time turned to the evangelical creed, the taking of wives served as a strong indication of pastors’ sincerity of conversion.19 When Catholicism was restored in Braunschweig by means of a visitation in 1551, after the Protestant interlude which had begun in 1542, the papist authorities appointed by Duke Heinrich the Younger found that of 77 priests interviewed, 40 reported having been forced to wed by the previous administration.20 In a backward manner this, too, reveals that marriage became practically obligatory. Nevertheless, in 1577, in Newstatt uff der Heide, a village near Coburg, which as an Ernestine territory had been Lutheran since the 1520s, the aged pastor was a ‘ﬁne, learned man’ but had never taken a wife.21 In

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1625 it was still possible to encounter a rural pastor in CalenbergGöttingen, a former priest, who was reluctant to give up concubinage: ‘He could not exist without a woman because he had livestock, and it was not possible to support oneself in the village without animals; and he had never been willing to commit himself to the married estate …’22

The nature of change As long as clergy remained minimally educated, trained largely as famuli in sanctuaries presided over by older priests, their socioeconomic position remained lowly as a rule. Before the Reformation as after, the prestigious urban churches were provided with more learned and rhetorically gifted men than the countryside. With the elimination of many side-altars and their chantry-priests after 1526, a consolidation of each parish’s material possession enabled administrators to offer prominent clergymen a multi-roomed abode and a salary that, while not lordly, placed them at a noticeable remove from their village colleagues. But what should be done about the primitive conditions in the hinterlands? During visitations, the parish inspectors often paid as close attention to the incomes and inventories that were attached to pastorates as to the incumbent’s doctrinal preparedness and personal morality.23 Rural communities provided abysmally for their pastors, and this deprivation would persist well beyond the Reformation’s arrival. Orders given for the immediate repair of a leaking roof were often ignored for years, for they constituted a ﬁnancial assessment on and a demand for labour service from impoverished peasants, some of whom had recently violently expressed their rejection of serfdom. It took decades for even dedicated Lutheran princes to organize sequestration committees for inspecting, recording and conﬁscating or redistributing monastic holdings. Rural pastors and their wives sometimes lived at the edge of a precipice, supporting themselves by farming the hides of land that came with their posts. They were hard to distinguish from the rustic congregations they served. Their parsonages were often no more than one all-purpose room, the Stube. As they were able, parish visitors urged the peasants to provide a Kammer so that their souls’ shepherds might withdraw from the now legitimate hubbub of family life in order to pray, study and prepare their next sermon. This degree of material improvement, they thought, was the bare minimum that must be added if they were to require a higher

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level of performance from the clergymen. In the meantime, parishes might have, in addition to a hovel, a barn or shed, a garden, an orchard, a manure fork and two or three cows for the family’s use. Inside the house might be mentioned a Spannbett for the pater- and materfamilias, a featherbed, a lockable chest for items of value, occasionally a set of bed-linens or a pillow, a kettle, candlesticks, knives and possibly some of the equipment for brewing beer.24 The evangelical sequence of church ofﬁces often began with a young man’s serving as schoolmaster or deacon in a village. Thus the housing and goods provided by the parish would be even more modest than that designated for the pastor. A deeper level of penury afﬂicted young families in the early years of their professional service. With satisfactory performance, and owing to the great dearth of suitable men for the pastorate, promotion followed promptly. Some town schoolmasters became deacons, and deacons were elevated to the pastorate – at ﬁrst in a village or lesser city, and then in a better situation. But those who were neither especially educated nor gifted had to accept the rustic setting as their lot. Their compensation remained meagre. Bernard Vogler has explored the privations of clergymen in the Rhineland from mid-century in convincing detail.25 Under Catholicism, when it was ofﬁcially illicit to have a wife and children, priests with concubines could hardly complain. After being compelled to marry, they could publicly regret their penury. Before the Reformation, ‘cooks’ had hardly been able to bring with them the accoutrements of years of preparation which, under more positive circumstances, are called a trousseau. No doubt, they brought what they could in order to relieve their misery. After the Reformation, as cooks gave way to upstanding wives, we may imagine that in keeping with the customs of the time, the brides’ families helped to equip what was now to be a legitimate household. The provenance of the pastors’ wives rose rapidly until it was comparable to their husbands’. Gerritdina Justitz has recently told the amusing story of an abbot in Naumburg, stemming from the nobility, who promised marriage to his humble concubine and then realized that his loftier descent entitled him to a wife of comparable station. With the assistance of members of the patriciate, he eluded Luther’s coercion – he had, after all, promised marriage to his concubine – and managed to wed his socially more suitable bride within Albertine Saxony, where as yet Luther’s will was not decisive.26 This scenario must have recurred widely. Luise Schorn-Schütte has noted that, for the city of Braunschweig, by the last third of the sixteenth century,

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half of all pastors’ wives derived from the families of urban bureaucrats, merchants and craftsmen with political functions; a quarter from the offspring of merchants and artisans without governmental duties; and another quarter from the households of pastors themselves.27 As a result, pastors’ wives were increasingly likely to be able to bring goods to their unions that, while not appearing in parish inventories, considerably improved their day-to-day lives. Whatever their background, in these early years those wives had no choice but to labour incessantly to provide food and clothing for their families. Not even Katharina von Bora, Luther’s wife, was immune to this need. In 1542 she possessed three gardens and a ﬁeld in or just outside Wittenberg and a Gut in Zölsdorf near Torgau, where she often sojourned to oversee, plant and harvest. In Saxony, it was precisely the wives of pastors who rejected church administrators’ suggestion that parishes sell the parish ﬁelds and use the money to improve clergymen’s lot. The women could feel secure only if they were certain of land on which to grow their daily bread.28 The poverty of the sixteenth-century rural pastorate deﬁed easy solutions. A century after the introduction of Reform in Germany, in Calenberg-Göttingen, the parish inspectors reported that ‘preachers’ (by which they mean clergymen in general) were moving away ‘out of hunger’, ‘which is greatly to be regretted’.29 The men’s economic plight became increasingly inconsonant with other, elevating tendencies. The new pastoral class emerged initially from the craftsman class within the towns. Later in the century, clerical families themselves were a major source of new entrants into the ministry. Their afﬁliation with towns oriented them towards a somewhat higher standard of living than they were likely to enjoy in their ﬁrst postings – and than many probably ever achieved. They may have regarded their personal sacriﬁces as made in the service of Christ himself and the Word of God – as a kind of daily martyrdom. But over time, as their material circumstances improved, the distance and the tensions between them and their peasant charges may have grown.30 Princes increased the contributions of measures of grain, money, labour service and fees (Stolgebühren) owed for clerical services. This caused resentment. The pastors in the countryside had steadily to mediate between highranking governors of the territorial church and the local community; and between village judges, nearby knights and the tillers of the soil.31 They had to conﬁne their material demands to the relief of visible and compelling hardships. Their position was not enviable but required shrewdness, commitment to their profession, energy and forbearance.

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Simultaneously, pastors were to be better educated than before. Even on the eve of the Reformation, most priests, though not all, had at least a minimal literacy. Henceforth, not only was the ability to read well required, but also a dedication to study of the Bible or other edifying books such as sermons. The Saxon and Thuringian pastors’ primer was the 1528 Unterricht der Visitatoren an die Pfarrherrn im Kurfürstentum zu Sachsen, which was a handbook of correct Lutheran belief and practice.32 This was frequently reprinted, sometimes in modiﬁed form, and distributed widely in Germany. Handbooks for pastors were an additional aid. Only gradually was it possible for rulers and superintendents to attain their greater goal of requiring young men wishing to enter the ministry to undergo at least minimal training in theology at a university. Luise Schorn-Schütte has closely examined the course of developments in Braunschweig and part of Hesse.33 In Saxony, the advance to some university preparation is ﬁrst visible on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War, a full century after the introduction of reform.34 In the vicinity of Magdeburg, the visitors of 1583–84 expressed some impatience with pastors who could respond to their queries only in German and not Latin.35 In the southwest, followers of Zwingli instituted from a much earlier date the salutary Prophezei, where clergymen and teenage boys mastered the Bible in its various languages and also heard sermons by experienced men.36 Amy Nelson Burnett has found that ‘by 1589 all 28 of Basel’s rural pastors had at least some university education’.37 Clerical seminaries were available earlier in the southwest than in the east.38 The better education of the pastorate and the equal socioeconomic provenance of clerical wives brought literacy as a model into the rural landscape. While the female ability to read lagged far behind the male in town as well as country, the upwardly aspiring parents of girls were often willing to pay for the higher tuition for their daughters. Literacy skills may have made them more attractive as brides to a higher class of young men. This was the case throughout German cities, independent of the Reformation advocacy of schooling, for from the revival of city life in Europe beginning in the late eleventh century, ambitious fathers found compelling practical reasons for educating their sons. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther’s hortatory promotion of schools reﬂected an already established value and added to it the more pointed argument that a greater supply of literate (and pious) boys was needed to ﬁll the pressing needs of the pastorate and the state bureaucracy.39 The rising alphabetic competency of the master and mistress of the parsonage did not always endear them to the laity. The entire

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conﬁguration of ‘improvements’ – economic wellbeing, social provenance, urban orientation, probity and education – may help us to understand the enduring problem of peasant hostility towards men of the cloth. Even in the middle of the seventeenth century, among the questions that Thuringian visitors were to put to residents and pastor of each village was: ‘Do they hold their pastor in honour, or with gestures, words, or deeds express contempt?’40 Conﬂict among individuals could arise at any time; but as the sixteenth century wore on, the local articulators and enforcers of God’s Word were no longer virtually indistinguishable from the souls they tended, and this may have fuelled antipathy on both sides. For their part, the governors desired a clear distinction. Pastors and deacons were not to engage in the pastimes of ordinary men and were strictly to avoid excessive drinking, gambling and ‘similar frivolity’. If they could not abstain, they were told, they would be removed from their posts.41 Others were told that they should never set foot in a public tavern or drink wine or beer with the peasants.42 Such admonitions are a constant theme in visitation ordinances and acts. With whom could they and their families socialize? Deacons and pastors, including those from neighbouring parishes, were thrown into each other’s company. Yet, if they lived up to the strictures imposed on them from above, they could become somewhat isolated. Occasionally, pastors dined with the local knight, and yet that knight’s contumely could be palpable.43 Knights considered themselves far above a mere clergyman no matter how learned he was, and they strenuously objected to the pastoral criticism levelled at their peccadilloes – especially promiscuity, gambling and drinking to excess – and material self-indulgence. In practice and by intention, pastors, their wives and their children were to set themselves apart from and above their neighbours. One may well wonder how the minister’s children could have been kept separate from the children of the community. If there was a local school, all the children were to attend; except for the most obviously gifted boys, there was no other choice. Furthermore, pastors’, preachers’, deacons’ and schoolmasters’ offspring had to labour in the glebe ﬁelds and gardens, if their families were fortunate enough to possess these. Maintaining a distinction in status was thus nearly impossible. The Saxon visitors grumbled about the curate of Prettin in 1579: ‘The pastor has a poor way of rearing his children: because of his poverty he has to have them perform coarse peasant labour, and so they accustom themselves to such habits and vices.’44

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Conﬂicts were many. In 1583 in the Swabian village of Lichtschuss, the pastor’s wife was ﬁghting, evidently physically, with a neighbour. The pastor himself took a rake and struck his wife twice and then the peasant woman once, on the head. Her head ‘began to sweat’. She and her husband reported this to the superintendent in Stuttgart, who imposed the following penalty on the cleric: payment of the woman’s medical expenses, a donation of ten schock to the community chest for the poor and reconciliation with the peasant housewife by means of shaking hands and promising her that he would be a good neighbour.45 Such violent encounters were probably infrequent and disagreements were acted out on a psychological plane. Neither pastors nor their wives were ideally to be at extreme odds with the simple people among whom they lived. To be so made the smooth performance of their duties impracticable.

The pastor’s wife In keeping with the neo-monastic burgher ideal of women’s proper retirement into the household and submission to their husbands, pastors’ and deacons’ spouses have left behind a lamentably sparse record of their perspectives.46 Katharina Luther, despite her habitual aggressive concern for her family’s wellbeing, addressed her husband within the hearing of others as ‘Dr. Luther’. No letter from her very literate hand has survived, and indeed we possess – or did possess – only one original signature.47 Our common sense forces us to imagine that these women did have individual personalities, as did their husbands, and thus that they got along with their spouses in a range of degrees and ways. Similarly, they must have interacted with their children and servants across the whole spectrum of possibilities. They increasingly knew that a spectrum of virtues was expected of them even more than of their sisters, and doubtless some women, like Katharina, came close to public conformity.48 But some clerical marriages were unhappy, and this fact would have been known to many of the people around such couples. In 1531, the city council of Zwickau dismissed preacher Lorenz Soranus because, as they wrote to the Elector, he was allegedly unchaste and beat and abused his wife. In his wife’s presence, he had invited another woman into the couple’s bedroom, and he frequented an area outside the city wall known as the Whores’ Ditch.49 Two generations later, in Ottenhausen near Tübingen, the visitors in Württemberg noted that the pastor’s wife was so bad that ‘she has to be beaten, which is annoying’. The couple were summoned to the

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synod, but owing to illness the wife did not appear. Her husband was told that this violence did not beﬁt a pastor. The board admonished him to behave with dignity, as a servant of the Church should, cultivate gentleness and patience, and thereby spare the ministry any illrepute. The cleric informed his interrogators that his wife was a poor housekeeper and that the previous summer she had publicly ridiculed him and other ministers. The decision did not go in his favour, however, and both partners were warned by the district superintendent.50 Disapproval of wife-beating by clergymen emerges here as elsewhere.51 Luther himself averred, concerning all wives, ‘Unbeaten is best’ (Ungeschlagen ist am besten).52 A man should strike his wife only if he has no other choice. Increasingly in their wedding sermons, from the middle of the sixteenth century, preachers advised husbands not to resort to corporal violence in dealing with their spouses. A hundred years later, Harmann Creide declared categorically, What does a husband do when he strikes his wife or behaves like a Tartar toward those who share his home? He who commits such a heathen act prostitutes himself, and he should not brag about it but on the contrary should be ashamed. No one who is able to use his reason behaves in this way …53 They were implicitly obliged to manifest in their own lives the restraint that they advocated in the pulpit.54 Whatever their background, young wives doubtless had their hands full raising children and marshalling sufﬁcient resources to feed their households. We rarely hear about these women inasmuch as their husbands were supposed to represent them to the public. Occasionally, a literate wife is identiﬁed as a teacher of girls. A schoolmaster’s wife taught ‘reading, praying, and other’ to the little girls of Dornstetten near Stuttgart.55 Desperate residents made their plight known to the adult residents of the parsonage, and the wife must have played a part in offering relief. When Anna Hillig, a serving maid, in Langenau near Freiberg in Saxony, was incapacitated by an allergic reaction to an insect bite and could not work, the pastor’s wife gave her a black pudding and a loaf of bread.56 However modest their means, ministerial households were, after all, the recipients of taxes rather than taxpayers; when times were hard, their less fortunate neighbours naturally turned to them for help. The mistresses of parsonages also could keep their ears to the ground as part of the process of rooting out ‘superstitious’ and ‘papist’ practices among the women of the congregation. In

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Langenbrandt, a village near Stuttgart, the wife of the pastor attended a birth and overheard the midwife using idolatrous language, including invoking the Virgin, using a belt and making the sign of the cross three times over it. The pastor’s wife drove her out when she defended calling on the Virgin Mary. The other women regarded the banning of the midwife as wrong and were not against invoking the Virgin for help.57 In those parts of the southwest where women elected the communal midwives, clerical wives would have been on an equal footing with the peasants and could have stood as guarantors in the birthing-room of the new Protestant propriety. Luise Schorn-Schütte has even found that in the Hanseatic cities, some pastors’ wives and widows themselves served as midwives.58 In the village of Einberg near Coburg, in 1577, the peasants complained to the visitation committee that the pastor’s wife tittle-tattled to her husband about their misdeeds, which he then denounced from the chancel, naming them at the same time.59 Pastors and deacons who performed weddings and baptisms were, with regional differences, entitled, along with their wives, to join the feasts held afterwards.60 In Saxony in 1574, discussion arose as to whether this entitlement included beer for either husband or wife.61 Here, as in the birthing-chambers, the clerics’ presence became part of the effort to introduce greater oversight and restraint in such festivities; or, alternatively, when restraint failed, clergymen were ordered to absent themselves from the revelry and accept a fee as a substitute for the meal. Like every family, the occupants of the new parsonage made up a fragile unit. Disease, disability through ageing, displacement through warfare and death sat like grifﬁns on the door posts. Minister’s wives and children could be made widows and orphans at a stroke. We are most familiar with Katharina von Bora’s plight when, already deeply affected by the Schmalkaldic War, she and her children experienced an immediate loss in status and stability after Luther’s death in 1546. Initially, there was little provision for clerical widows. They were generally permitted to remain in the parsonage with all incomes and dues for a period of at least a quarter, at most a year. Gradually, and again with regional variation, widows’ funds were established from which a woman might draw a meagre sum toward sustaining herself after leaving the rectory.62 In Ernestine Saxony, desperate widows petitioned the Elector and might be given a small, one-time sum, out of mercy. Occasionally, pastors’ gifted sons received assistance so that they could attend a Latin school or receive a university education. Others were

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helped to an apprenticeship. Daughters were expected to marry soon after reaching sexual maturity (Mannbarkeit). Similarly, ailing and retired pastors were hard-pressed to survive, and this problem was not resolved during the sixteenth century.63 A pastor in Bliederhausen, a village near Stuttgart, was becoming palsied ‘although he is only 50’. He had eight children, the youngest three years of age. His right hand shook so badly ‘that in distributing the Lord’s Supper he causes annoyance, [and] pregnant women are upset about him’. The visitors wanted the villagers to do everything possible for this man, including allowing him to be seated when he was preaching and getting help from the closest deacon. He had been a ﬁne pastor, who ‘made sure that every peasant got a Bible’, an astonishing feat.64 Ordinarily, a cleric at the end of a long career who could no longer perform his ofﬁces had no choice but to draw a small pension in cash and kind from his successor, in exchange for occasional professional assistance. This could engender resentment from the successor and his wife, but life expectancy being low, few retirees survived long. Their children probably left home as soon as they reached adulthood. In the prestigious urban postings, clergymen in the prime of life were often able to purchase a residence and gardens as a hedge against old age. In a town, a couple’s children might be on the spot and in a position to assist them. Slowly but perceptibly, in the course of the sixteenth century, more and more clerical families, sojourning in the countryside, oriented themselves towards the towns from which they had come.65

The pastoral couple’s personal relationship A revolutionary aspect of the emerging Lutheran parsonage was the affective tie that bound the master and mistress, the Hausvater and Hausmutter. This is not to say that priests and their long-time concubines did not care for one another. But such affection, the sexual acts that they engaged in, their very cohabitation and their offspring were all illegitimate. Whereas under Catholicism priests could dwell with women, they could never be wholeheartedly, positively involved with them. The Church asked them, whatever their private transgressions, psychically to hold their concubines at arm’s length. A parsonage occupied by celibate priest and his concubine could never provide a model for lay emulation. From the Reformation onward, clergymen were asked not only to marry, but also, at the very least, to esteem, assist, comfort and provide for their spouses in a life-time partnership. The

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residents of the Lutheran parsonage were expected to epitomize the truly Christian family. In the Catholic world, the Holy Family, by means of increasing attention to Joseph and his daily, non-erotic relations with Mary, and his paternal interaction with Jesus in their imagined menage in Nazareth, served as the vehicle of popular indoctrination. Within Lutheranism the burden of serving as an exemplum of domestic propriety fell on the clergy, their spouses, children and servants. Doubtless, this was not always easy to live up to. Every misdemeanour on the part of a pastor’s child or servant, every perceptible disagreement between the parents, reﬂected badly on the whole household, for it tarnished the model. Throughout the early modern period, visitors inquired about each pastor’s life style and whether he properly controlled his wife, children and servants. They sometimes received frank answers. The peasants informed the parish inspectors in Bischofsroda near Coburg in 1577 that the pastor’s wife was disobedient and quarrelled with him concerning the children from her ﬁrst marriage. This was an annoyance to the community. Both were to appear before the superintendent for admonition.66 Their demeanour had to set a high standard for all. In 1613, in the same region, the peasants complained, ‘When the parishioners think about the pastor and his wife or children, it is not any different than if they were a priest, a priest’s woman, and priests’ children.’ Although no further explanation is given, this remark clearly constitutes disparagement. The scribe notes, ‘He is reminded.’67 As observed, Martin Luther left us a fulsome record of his ‘bridal love’ for his wife. Although this was inﬂuential, it cannot be taken as evidence of the aspirations, much less the reality, of successive generations of ordinary clerical husbands and their life-mates. Other than anecdotes, what traces have they left? From the middle of the sixteenth century, Lutheran preachers were expected to deliver a wedding sermon at practically every celebration of nuptials. In many lands, these became obligatory. In others, they were encouraged, and the care that a pastor put into their preparation may have been conditioned by the imposition upon the laity of a gratuity to the preacher for this service. Whereas in Calvinist lands, such homilies were forbidden – with exceptions for princes and other eminent grooms and brides – and celebrants sufﬁced with the reading of selections from Genesis and other books of the Bible, Lutheran clergymen expatiated at length and sometimes creatively in depicting the proper conduct of one spouse to the other. Thousands of these wedding sermons have survived, although they have never been studied as closely as the even more

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numerous funeral sermons. Can these edifying writings not be seen as ‘ego documents’? Must they not in some degree be regarded as embodying the perspectives of the emergent pastoral class? These questions are difﬁcult to answer categorically. Many of these sermons are highly stereotyped – presenting to the point of tedium the same texts, the same admonitions, the same exhortations. In large measure they are directed more towards brides than to grooms: Eve bore the primary responsibility for the fall of humankind and consequently the harsher punishment. As an aspect of her punishment, wives, the ‘daughters of Eve’, must obey their husbands in all things godly; they must shun the public eye and apply themselves assiduously to housekeeping and the raising of Christian children. They must never seek to dominate their husbands, not even within the domestic sphere, over which they preside by virtue of their mates’ delegation of this privilege to them. None the less, the obverse of these formulations to women is the simultaneous shaping of men’s behaviour; at least by implication, both genders are the targets of these standards.68 In formulating these principles at the simplest level, ministers and deacons do not reveal themselves to us. However, when leading clerics elaborated on these lessons and occasionally even revealed creativity and enthusiasm in their prescriptions, we may judge that they have taken what were becoming Protestant shibboleths to heart and attempted to live these out in their own marriages. Distinguishing between strictly formulaic and convinced presentations is admittedly hard for the modern critic, yet especially at both ends of a hypothetical spectrum that ranges from the altogether stereotyped to fanciful originality, we may feel more certain of our interpretation. There is little reason to doubt that, as a group, the clergy accepted the prevailing outlook of their day on the nature and deportment of women. Here we are examining ofﬁcially sponsored and promoted mentalities and not individual relations as expressed in the privacy of the home. Women were indispensable in theory and in practice, but the dangers they were thought to pose to society by their very nature dictated that they be kept under masculine control within the residential milieu. Their salvation lay in the bearing and rearing of offspring. We possess, by means of a wedding sermon given a century after his death, Philip Melanchthon’s appreciation of a clerical wife’s fulﬁlment of this role: One day Philip Melanchthon was on his way to Torgau, where the learned men were holding a synod. He travelled past the house of a

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deacon, whose wife sat before the door. She had a nursing infant at her breast. Two other children stood before her, to whom she said the morning blessing. With her right hand she cut bread with which to make the children a pabulum or soup. This pleased Herr Philip so much that he watched for a long time. Afterward, when he reached the [other] learned men, he praised this and said, ‘I have just seen three holy works being carried out by a mother at the same time. O sanctos laboures, & preces nubes coeli penetrantes! O sacred work! O powerful prayer that penetrates the clouds!’69 Here Melanchthon expresses his ideal for all women, not just for those who occupied parsonages. The corpus of one Saxon preacher and proliﬁc author provides an opportunity to compare the public spiritual shepherd with the private husband and father. In the dozens of wedding sermons that he left, Johannes Mathesius (1504–65) conveys in full force the residual misogyny that he has inherited from Catholic ecclesiastical tradition. A skilled homiletician, he embroiders every old-fashioned theme with homely analogies, compelling his audience to pay attention and to adopt his views.70 Not only had Mathesius sat at the Luthers’ dining table and provided one portion of the Table Talk, but he was true to his hero in writing early on about the intense love of spouses for one another. Mathesius’s wife Sibille (née Richter) died of puerperal fever on 23 February 1555, leaving seven children whom she had borne in eleven years. The widower never remarried and he mourned his wife with reverence. In poetry written in her memory, he recorded: She departed during her six-week conﬁnement, Left four sons and three daughters, all young, At Carnival-time she died in Joachimsthal, The River MVLDA gives the number of the year, At which time for twelve years and eleven weeks She had been honourably married. *** Oh, what a pious wife she was! Her heart all faith, modesty, truth, and love; Like a vineyard she was fruitful, To her husband she was truthful, And never with his views disputeful.

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The Psalter was her favourite book, To church it with her always took. A gentle spirit who could understand, She had a truthful tongue, a generous hand. Tended child and kitchen, ran her house, She told her husband before she went out. A humble woman and constantly patient, She hated show, shunned ostentation. Reticent, obedient, upright, and mild, With everyone in peace she dealt. Ever conciliatory, harsh with none, She never differed with her husband. *** It is a great pity in this world When a faithful wife departs. But upright love is never severed: An honorable relationship knows no end. The ﬂame of love comes down from God; He created it in the soul; it feels no death. *** A godless and unmarried man Can know nothing of the ﬁdelity of Christ, For he despises married love and [God’s] Word. Unchaste lust makes a bad conscience. The greatest chastity is in the wedded state. A cold heart soon forgets his wife. Proper married love is fresh every day, Like the heart of a father and the faithfulness of a mother.71 Mathesius, in closing, vows to remain true to his wife. After her death, this dedicated father preached, he says, six funeral sermons to his assembled children.72 Because he too will die soon, he wants to leave his paternal thoughts and concerns with them, ‘so that you will not be robbed by false teaching or led astray by evil examples’. He invokes their mother frequently, especially in the ﬁrst sermon. He lays down what he considers to be indispensable textbooks for each sex: for the boys, many classics, the Bible, Martin Luther’s [commentaries] on Genesis and the Psalms, Caspar Cruciger’s work on the Book

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of John, Johannes Bugenhagen on Saint Jerome, Philip Melanchthon’s Loci communes, ‘both confessions’, and Johann Camerarius’s catechism. They should also read good history books. For the girls he recommends devotional works: the New Testament, Justus Menius’s book on the instruction of children and Oeconomia. ‘And comfort yourselves,’ he tells his daughters, ‘with the resurrection of the dead from this little book, and keep your dear mother’s pretty little books.’73 This pious father refers to his and the children’s visits together to decorate their mother’s grave.74 He himself continued to visit it.75 He recites to them every detail of their mother’s passing, which, in sixteenth-century style, they witnessed themselves in the dyingchamber. However, he wishes to point out the blessed aspects of her death, which might have escaped their awareness at the time.76 In his opinion, the girls will particularly miss their mother: You dear little children, miss your truest and best friend in this world, above all you poor little girls. Sons still have their father, and wherever they go, God gives them friends … But poor little girls are far less able to dispense with their faithful mother, as the dear Alcestis very ﬁnely puts it, ‘When a daughter is ill, the hand of the mother is the best and gentlest remedy …’77 As far as I know, no other sixteenth-century pastor has admitted the public so far into the heart of his marriage. Mathesius was profoundly attached to his wife, and just as deeply grieved at her premature demise. Nevertheless, a rich vein of misogyny runs through the body of his sermons. Men must ever be on their guard against ‘bad women’.78 This seeming contradiction between his devotion to Sibille and his frequent hostile comments about women from the pulpit warns against drawing facile parallels between the warmth or coldness of preachers’ relevant sermons or other writings and their private feelings. If this were not so, we could conclude that Paul Rebhun had a miserable wedded life and Johannes Freder a happy one.79 The homiletic evidence, however, is ultimately unreliable.

Conclusions Change in social behaviour is immensely slow. None the less, the emergence of the Lutheran parsonage together with its inhabitants as approved objects of imitation represents a radical break with Catholic celibacy and its companion, the elevation of virginity and sexual absti-

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nence over marriage and marital chastity. Within Protestantism, the true Christian was both pious and sexually active with his or her spouse. The marriage bed became the new locus of chastity, and it could be soiled only by lascivious invention. The pastor who bestrode the pulpit was himself a husband and paterfamilias, the progenitor of offspring whom he, like other parents, struggled to raise and keep in line. Although as a domesticated man he was now more like his parishioners than his priestly predecessors, he had to endure the new pressure to be a paragon of wedded and domestic harmony. His failures made him vulnerable to harsh public critique as a hypocrite who attempted to discipline the souls in his charge when the mote in his own eye was huge. No longer able to transubstantiate the Host and Chalice as a kind of supernatural compensation for his shortcomings, he was but a mortal like his fellows. The characteristics that increasingly set him apart from his neighbours in the countryside – city origins, his own and his wife and children’s literacy, his better economic situation – challenged him to invent means of peaceful yet uplifting interaction. Under increasing pressure from the governing bodies of both Church and state to produce results in the ‘Christianization’ of his ﬂocks, the pastor and his household straddled the potential social fault-line that, at the least existential tremor, could open wide. He had to ﬁnd a working balance between the needs of his congregation and the increasingly disciplinary demands of those who supervised him. If he were ambitious for promotion, he would know which side to choose. At the same time, pastoral families lived openly, transparently among their neighbours. If they themselves scrutinized their neighbours, no ﬂaw of their own went undetected. The concept of privacy, when it arose, could hardly ﬂourish in the rural setting; only in larger cities could one hope to withdraw, periodically and partially, from the unrelenting public gaze. In the early modern period, however, privacy for the occupants of the Pfarrei was the last thing their overseers desired. Instead, the parsonage was meant to serve as an outpost of rectitude amid the all too unregenerate, impenitent societal mass. By their doctrinal persuasion, their biblical learning, their marital harmony, their fulﬁlment of duty, their moral uprightness and their willingness to endure the same hardships as their neighbours they were to help bring Christ at last to the rude populace. The home of the pastor and his wife became a symbol of active spirituality second only to the church itself. Over half a century ago, the great Reformation historian, Roland H. Bainton, declared, ‘The Luther who got married in order to testify to

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his faith actually founded a home and did more than any other person to determine the tone of German domestic relations for the next four centuries.’80 In its sweep and inclusiveness, this is a mystifying statement, representative of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century divines who saw modernity as introduced by the Reformation. In the end, however, it is possible that the Reformation, in producing the parsonage, in its literal and ﬁgurative senses, did establish a Protestant institution that has substantially weakened only after Bainton wrote these words. In the eyes of authorities, German domestic relations ought to measure themselves by the parsonage. That within the rectory and without, this ideal never prevailed is another story, vividly retold in surviving archival sources. Yet, a major, enduring shift in ideology is a revolution of its own.

4 The Clergyman between the Cultures of State and Parish: Contestation and Compromise in Reformation Saxony1 Jay Goodale

In 1577 the pastor of parish Schmerkendorf in Electoral Saxony, Johannes Juchenhöfer, ran afoul of two local feudal lords, Alex von Hohendorf and his son Georg, after having served without recorded incident since his appointment in 1558.2 Though the 1577 visitation committee labelled Juchenhöfer ‘a bit hasty and irascible’ (etwas geschwind und cholerisch), he impressed them as a conservativeLutheran at a time when crypto-Calvinists and moderate Philippists were coming under attack, and the historian (if not the visitors themselves) can appreciate his desire to seek compromise with his laity. He cancelled the mandatory weekday catechism lesson in each of the three parish villages during the harvest season so his parishioners could work uninterruptedly. And on those occasions when many of the 450 adult parishioners chose to receive communion at the morning service – thus extending its normal length – he cancelled the succeeding catechism lesson so the villagers would not have to spend a good part of their Sunday in the church.3 He served all ﬁve villages of the parish, and responded promptly to a request (in 1577) of the four outlying villages that he come more often in winter. In 1577, however, Juchenhöfer denounced the two Hohendorfs for sexual and moral transgression. Although Alex was still married, he had taken up with a ‘slut’ (Vettel). He had been to church only three times since 1570 and had refused to receive communion for approximately twenty years – a period which coincided precisely with Juchenhöfer’s ministry. Juchenhöfer cited his poor example as the reason so many of the villagers of Schmerkendorf absented themselves from services. The visitors recommended that secular authorities ﬁne 100

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Alex von Hohendorf the punitive sum of 1,000 ﬂorins.4 Georg, his son, feudal lord over the village of Falkenberg, lived in sin with a maid; Juchenhöfer accused him of morally destroying her and reported him, after which the visitors ordered the resident secular authority (Schösser) to compel Georg to leave his concubine. Visitors noted in 1578 that both men had ended the relationships. None the less, in late spring and autumn 1579, the pastor accused Georg of having fathered a bastard in Falkenberg and of refusing to acknowledge his paternity. The pastor claimed to have found two witnesses willing to testify if given the chance. Not surprisingly, visitors noted that Alex von Hohendorf now lived in enmity with the pastor. The pastor’s conﬂict with the Hohendorfs affected life in the parish. Juchenhöfer informed various visitation committees that villagers under the Hohendorfs’ vassalage were not punished for missing services or for working on Sundays.5 The visitors noted that his home and the churches in Schmerkendorf and Falkenberg needed repair, but no one was working on them. The villagers withheld from Juchenhöfer his due in cash and kind. Licentious dances occurred on Sundays and lasted into the night, and the villagers, particularly those in Falkenberg, were cited for heavy drinking, at ﬁnancially ruinous levels. Revelry, loaﬁng about and blasphemous behaviour were increasing, and, in Falkenberg, parishioners went to the tavern during Juchenhöfer’s sermon. Signiﬁcantly, all problems in this parish seem to have been conﬁned to the two villages under the Hohendorfs’ vassalage: there are no complaints regarding the three other villages. In late 1579 the Wittenberg Consistory removed Juchenhöfer from the parish.6 Interestingly, his successor, Caspar Hanisius, could not be invested, as Alex von Hohendorf contested the Elector’s right to investiture and claimed that prerogative for himself, thereby resisting the expansion of the territorial state in his domain. Pastor Juchenhöfer functioned appropriately, but only in so far as his duty to his ecclesiastical superiors and the territorial state was concerned: he informed his superiors of the local lords’ moral outrages and religious lapses, and noted the deleterious effect their example had on the laity. But because the Hohendorfs were not the ﬁrst petty nobles to take local girls as mistresses, they must have regarded the Church’s and the secular authority’s severe reaction to their dalliances with incredulity and resentment. They focused their attack on the pastor, the only man who represented both the territorial state and Church within the parish, the two institutions that sought to disturb time-honoured convention. Perhaps Juchenhöfer failed to appreciate how threatening

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the expansion of the territorial state was to local elites, and how they might cling to traditional privilege, such as the ﬂaunting of a mistress, as a way of symbolically reafﬁrming their superior status, even as it was declining in reality. Had he better understood the dynamics of local culture, the situation might not have escalated into a full-blown crisis. Years later, in 1598, Elizabeth von Hohendorf, who appears to have been Alex’s widow, accused Pastor Bartholomaeus Faber of frequently leaving the parish.7 Because of these trips he allegedly failed to hold confession on Saturday evenings, a requisite for those who intended to receive communion on Sunday, neglected the study necessary to prepare sermons, left the sexton alone to attend to burials, and baptized ‘often while drunk’. Faber, she concluded, ‘led an impious life’. The pastor, forced to submit afﬁdavits in response to these charges, maintained that his numerous trips were the consequence of having to serve the ﬁve dispersed villages in the parish. He admitted performing one baptism in a ‘less than sober state’ (nicht nüchtern vollzogen habe), but explained that he had performed two weddings on the day in question in Marxdorf, and, as a good pastor, had attended the wedding celebrations and, in neighbourly fashion, he drank at them.8 That evening he was summoned unexpectedly to perform an emergency baptism. Faber claimed to live a life beyond reproach and was conﬁdent that the laity would agree, though the visitors observed that ‘something had happened between him and the nobles’. None the less, he had to swear before the visitors ‘with hand and mouth’ to improve himself. Faber, caught between the obligation of being a good neighbour – that is, of attending a couple’s wedding feast and celebrating with other villagers the consequent alliance of two households – and the responsibility of performing clerical functions at any time for hundreds of parishioners residing in ﬁve scattered villages, was unable to negotiate these conﬂicting demands successfully, which nearly cost him his position. He was, however, able to convince the visitors that extenuating circumstances had led to his peccadillo and to demonstrate the contrition necessary for institutional absolution. These two incidents from Schmerkendorf in the ﬁnal quarter of the sixteenth century could suggest a failed Reformation.9 A cursory examination of the evidence reveals one pastor discharged amid a breakdown of moral authority within the parish, another accused of unthinkable dereliction and forced to plead to keep his post. The details are speciﬁc – to paraphrase Tolstoy, each problematic parish was problematic in its own way – but the experience of this parish was far from exceptional.

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In this essay I argue that Lutheran pastors’ participation within two cultures in sixteenth-century Electoral Saxony – the culture of rule and the culture of the ruled – placed inherently complex requirements and expectations on their ministries, particularly if they served in rural parishes. As a result, unforeseen conﬂicts could emerge at any time, no matter how responsibly the pastors acted. At times, as the two examples above attest, the requirements of the institutional Church as well as those of the rapidly expanding territorial state – religious demands, disciplinary responsibilities and ﬁnancial claims – were difﬁcult to impose at the parish level due to often conﬂicting local customs. Successful ministries were dependent on the pastors’ ability to appreciate the basis for local cultural attitudes and practices before they selected a course of action that would be appropriate solely to their duties as the on-site representatives of state culture.10 To succeed in both realms, pastors had to demonstrate ﬂexibility, a willingness to compromise, and maintain a professional, but far from haughty, disposition. In the ﬁrst section I brieﬂy outline the ambiguities intrinsic to the pastors’ position, as this theme has been well discussed.11 I provide examples of how the pastors’ ambiguous status constrained their actions and created numerous and usually unexpected antagonisms. In the second section I present a detailed case-study of the events surrounding the ﬂight of pastor Martin Jedocus from parish Lebusa in 1581, an unusual case, but one that highlights how difﬁcult – but not impossible – it was for pastors to negotiate successfully the contradictory demands placed on them by the state, the Church and the laity. Jedocus’ failed ministry provides an example of just how crucial compromise was for an auspicious tenure and how chaotic intra-parish relations could become when pastors missed opportunities to fashion it. I intersperse this extended narrative with concise examples that reveal how other pastors, in somewhat similar circumstances, were able to resolve, with some degree of accomplishment, the ordeals Jedocus was unable to overcome. My aim in comparing incidents within one ministry over nine years with isolated incidents of achievement culled from other pastors’ experiences is not to reify the categories of success and failure. Indeed, the ambiguities inherent to the pastors’ position make these terms difﬁcult to deﬁne and deploy in advance. I assess the pastors’ responses to events in parish life by the degree to which they enabled the pastors to satisfy simultaneously the demands of state culture and village culture, a matter that can be ascertained only through an examination of the minutiae of parish life. Thus the inter-

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spersed examples are not intended to afﬁrm the overall success of these other pastors (one would have to investigate their ministries over time to establish such judgements) or to suggest that serving a rural parish was an easy matter. By introducing such examples, I hope to demonstrate that the trials occasioned by membership in two often inimical cultures were difﬁcult, though far from insurmountable.12 Jedocus had many opportunities to orchestrate compromises between the villagers, Church and secular authorities; he merely failed to realize them.

Contexts of rural reform The small world of the rural Saxon parish was not spared the disruptions of the sixteenth century. Its residents witnessed a steady growth in population, a growing shortage of arable land and the erosion of real wages. Food prices inﬂated, mass poverty existed and increasing economic stratiﬁcation occurred within the villages. Villagers experienced famine, outbreaks of plague, pressures from the emerging territorial state and turmoil caused by religious wars and peasant rebellions. Conﬂicts arose in the parishes over (to list but a few examples) the manipulation of inheritance customs, the maintenance of common pastures, the expansion of feudal obligation, the exploitation of local woods, the desire to promote literacy and the development of new poor relief systems.13 Inside the parishes, peasants, local petty lords, pastors, ofﬁcials in town and village government, members of visitation committees and intruding ofﬁcials of the territorial state schemed, both in inter- and intra-factional rivalries. The manner in which these debates were resolved inﬂuenced the course of the Reformation in any particular parish. As a result, the meaning of concepts such as authority, custom, morality, criminality, neighbourliness, superstition and religious orthodoxy was constantly being redeﬁned, at the parish level, through a dialogic process, as individual visions competed and compromised with one another in a process that was anything but standard, predictable or unidirectional.14 Rural parishioners viewed the Reformation not as an integrated system of thought to be completely embraced or abandoned, but rather as a collection of ideas, only some of which were acceptable.15 At times they opposed or ignored the directives and requests of the state church, and even appropriated and drastically transformed ofﬁcial dogma to accommodate their traditional socio-religious practices or theological perspectives.16 Many groups within the community could articulate an agenda that momentarily coincided with the goals of the state-building and social disciplining

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processes, or conversely, these same groups could, at any given point, ﬁnd their interests at odds with them.17 It was within this already volatile landscape that the clergyman, at the heart of all these negotiations and central to their resolutions, acted. A participant in the culture of rule as well as of the ruled, his position was always ambiguous and his actions often ambivalent. In Electoral Saxony he was almost always an outsider to the parish, as church ofﬁcials did not want local kinship ties or economic interests to bias him when he addressed the grievances of his neighbours. 18 His education and a cultural disposition shaped by years in school or university also separated him from the members of his laity; though rarely of noble or even upper-class origin, he was rightly perceived as belonging to a distinct social class. 19 Even his dialect could create tension and serve to isolate him from his ﬂock: pastors appointed throughout the century to parish Hohenleipisch struggled to fulﬁl the needs of their Wendish parishioners, many of whom did not fully understand German.20 But the Lutheran pastor was expected to overcome these liabilities, and become an integral member of the community. As confessor and counsellor he was privy to the innermost reaches of parish life. In the sacred realm he learned of his neighbours’ darkest secrets when he heard their confession (requisite for communion), and outside the spiritual sphere he served as a moral guide and mediator who discussed intimate matters with them and used this knowledge to resolve conﬂicts before scandals and feuds developed.21 Although parishioners counted on his mediation to prevent the involvement of external authorities in parish affairs, the pastor, himself a representative of state authority in the parish, was in the difﬁcult position of having to report lay members who violated the moral or legal standards imposed from above. The tension resulting from this ambiguous position explains why the pastors of Liebenwerda and Wahrenbrück requested guidance from members of the 1579 visitation committee after they discovered that deserters from the Spanish Wars had returned to resume lives with their families.22 Pastor Sandaw of Plossig faced a similar dilemma when two women in his parish left their husbands to live more satisfying lives alone, violating social practice, if not the law.23 A pastor could not use knowledge of intimate circumstances against his neighbours, even if he, as a fellow villager, were in conﬂict with them. This required a level of restraint not all could achieve. Pastor Reichknecht of Gorsdorf ran foul of his laity after threatening to reveal the secrets they made in confession to the secular authorities,

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and, ﬁve years later, for using the pulpit to chastise them and to defend his position in a squabble against them.24 The role the rural pastor played as comforter to the sick and elderly, especially when disease or famine struck, was also one marked by ambiguity and tension. It was vitally important for pastors to provide succour to parishioners whose fears might lead them to lose faith. Firstgeneration reformers never tired of stressing the supportive aspect of the evangelical clergy when differentiating it from its late medieval Catholic counterpart. To ensure that pastors fulﬁlled this duty, Luther published a treatise on how they should serve during plagues, and Friedrich Myconius wrote a book instructing them in the care of scared and sick parishioners.25 Throughout the century, visitation committees remained concerned with how well the pastors comforted the sick and dying.26 Carlson’s suggestion that the Protestant pastor ﬁlled the void left by the elimination of the medieval exorcist and, as such, had to provide strength to those whose faith had weakened in a time of crisis explains this ﬁxation.27 But despite being charged with the crucial obligation of supporting troubled parishioners, the pastor had to defend a behavioural paradigm based on a new conception of the sacred, and was, consequently, responsible for keeping cunning folk and traditional healers away from his parishioners, even as the laity desperately sought them.28 The pastor, while striving to participate within village tradition, was there to eradicate those local customs the territorial state and Church deemed inappropriate, regardless of whether they comforted the parishioners. Thus Pastors Lormann of Wiederau (1577), Rüben of Kleinrössen (1598) and Adelsbachius of Züllsdorf (1602) were instructed to administer communion to the sick who were conﬁned at home, even though their parishioners regarded this service as a portent of imminent death and feared it.29 The Lutheran clergyman was expected to be the villagers’ guide as they constructed a new community. He was to encourage charity to the poor, help the church fathers maintain the community chest and give expression, through his example, to the new moral order that would replenish spiritual life and enrich community life.30 What has been written of sixteenth-century English Protestant pastors holds true for their Saxon counterparts: in an era when the intercessory, intermediary and sacramental functions of the Church were being eliminated, the ecclesiastical hierarchy as well as the parishioners regarded the morality, humility and charity of the pastor as crucial for salvation.31 Thus Philip Melanchthon, when standardizing the visitation format, insisted that the pastor was ‘to exemplify a good life so that the people

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take no offence but better their own lives’.32 As the Christian role model for the laity, his behaviour could either inspire them to embrace the Gospel – the indispensable Word – or to develop an anticlericalism similar to that prevalent on the eve of the Reformation, one that might generate a disgust which would keep the message of the Gospel from them.33 Visitation committees in Electoral Saxony always asked about, and themselves observed, the pastor’s comportment and morality. One committee in 1575 demanded that Pastor Schuricht of Großthiemig sell the tavern he had inherited from his father, even though he had invested money in its operation, because his proprietorship was creating scandal: an episode that also reveals why pastors were not to serve the parish of their birth.34 These pastoral responsibilities were linked to Luther’s conviction that imbuing men and women ‘with the sum and gist of Scripture’ would result in ‘a rightly ordered individual conscience’ and ‘a human collectivity living in peace and virtue’.35 But ironically, despite this emphasis on charity and neighbourliness, pastors in Saxony, following the example Luther himself so (in)famously provided during the Peasants’ War, were instructed to guard against Anabaptists and any sect that favoured social levelling or the communal holding of property.36 They were to provide a moral and religious ideology that would help the state protect the property rights of the rich.37 Other such ironies can be found. The pastor was to ﬁght usury, speculation, work on the Sabbath and the sale of alcohol outside of taverns. He also was to defend constituted secular authority, although it was almost always the feudal lords or magistrates who loaned money, hired cottagers to work on Sundays and sold liquor.38 Concerning drinking, pastors were caught between two moral/cultural realms, which made any action they took questionable. Parishioners in Holzdorf ridiculed Pastor Alberti in 1578 for refusing to enter the village tavern, while parishioners in Beyersdorf in 1555 used Pastor Queller’s frequent presence in the tavern to imply he was a drunkard in an effort to have him dismissed after he informed against a popular healing woman.39 Queller’s case conﬁrms what Luther had admitted 17 years earlier: the ‘untamed people’ did not want correction, and, precisely because it was the duty of pastors ‘to accuse them’ of wrongdoing, laymen looked for faults in their pastors. Thus, Luther concluded, being a pastor was ‘an extremely burdensome and dangerous business’, a statement Queller might have understood.40 The pastor was, moreover, to oversee education by monitoring the schoolteacher, making sure children went to secular school and enforc-

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ing attendance at catechism. Luther believed that the catechism clariﬁed, for peasants, ‘matters pertaining to the political commonwealth and the management of household affairs’.41 Learning the catechism therefore had political as well as religious beneﬁts, and both the state and Curch had a vested interest in ‘indoctrinating’ the young.42 Despite the importance of schooling, the rural pastor, himself a local farmer, had to realize that in communities based on near subsistencelevel agriculture, absenteeism would occur during the planting and harvesting seasons, as well as during the summer months, when most parents hired out their children as ﬁeld hands to supplement meagre household incomes. As a farmer in the community, the pastor had to share communal ﬁelds and ploughs, arrange his schedule with fellow farmers so that his ﬁeld work did not interfere with theirs, contribute to the pay of the community shepherds and make sure his animals did not damage others’ crops. Some pastors even had to pay rent on the church-owned properties provided for them, and would have been unwise to refuse the church its due. It was a rare pastor in sixteenth-century Electoral Saxony who was able to meet all of these demands while fulﬁlling his ministerial responsibilities: in either realm he was bound to slip.43 For example, Pastor Steinbrecher of Hohenbucko had studied six years at the University of Leipzig, and visitors in May 1579 praised his abilities. But the villagers complained that he could not farm (as he admitted) and predicted that he would destroy the ﬁelds on which he toiled. In August 1580 visitors found him ‘rather drunk’ and noted he had given up working his land; they commented that it was ‘a shame that his natural talents were corrupted by rural life’.44 He accepted a deaconry in another parish – a demotion in rank, but a position that would not require farming.45 It was probably for reasons such as these that clerics like Schuricht, above, sought to supplement their inadequate incomes by brewing and selling beer. Although rural pastors were allowed to farm, visitation ordinances instructed committees to make certain that they did not engage in worldly (artisanal) trade.46 The state compounded the potential for tension by requiring the villagers to provide pastors with grain, eggs, crops and ﬁrewood; to rebuild their houses, fences and barns when necessary; and, in many parishes, even to perform labour on their ﬁelds. Thus visitors admonished farmers in Plossig in 1555 for not rendering such services to the pastor because he ‘cared for their souls’.47 Sometimes theological duty clashed with neighbourliness, creating difﬁculties. Provost Schwabe of Klöden upset his parishioners in 1575 when he denied them access to his pasture

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land on Walpurgis night, a traditional right. While his motivation was to combat paganism, they scorned him as miserly.48 At times, when pastors’ clerical duties obliged them to be out of the village in which they resided, attending to business either in Wittenberg or in any number of other parish villages, their animals might stray and damage the property of neighbours. The conﬂict that began around 1575 in Wahrenbrück is typical. A cow and calf belonging to Pastor Göbel disappeared. Göbel, who had served the city since 1543 as, in succession, a schoolteacher, deacon and pastor, blamed the cowherd for dereliction, and demanded that the Gemein (an ambiguous term for the members of the community and congregation, and not necessarily coterminus) reimburse him. Its members in turn accused the pastor of negligence and of having insisted on grazing his cows separately to avoid contributing to the communal fund from which the cowherd was paid.49 Pastors were expected to study and keep abreast of changes in church ordinances, especially at those times when doctrine was challenged, such as the 1560s and 1570s, when Gnesio-Lutherans and Philippists hotly debated the Majoristic, synergist and Osiandrist doctrines, and the late 1580s and early 1590s, when the controversy over exorcism ﬂared, and they were chastized by visitation committees if they did not.50 This expectation made it difﬁcult for pastors to fashion happy relations with neighbours who performed obligatory work for them, while they sat, studying theology. If villagers resisted, pastors were to inform secular authorities. As pastors often linked ofﬁcial criticisms that they were not studying enough with demands for housing improvements, conﬂicts escalated. Pastor Gilbert quarrelled with his parishioners in Liebenwerda and argued before church ofﬁcials in 1555 that his laity had to build a study for him, as he could not adequately prepare sermons or read in his house.51 In 1578 a visitation committee admonished Pastor Hasert of Kröbeln for not fully understanding the doctrinal issues then under debate; in 1579 he urged authorities to assign parishioners to work his ﬁelds, claiming agricultural work prevented him from study.52 The clash between state and parish culture created additional problems pertaining to the building and structural repair of pastors’ homes. While the villagers’ notion of the ‘common good’ included the elimination of superﬂuous building, many pastors – particularly those serving later in the century – had either grown accustomed to certain standards of living while studying in cities or expected superior accommodations as a way of emphasizing their superior status.53 Wrangling ensued when

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pastors demanded work that the villagers considered immoderate: Pastor Sturm of Niemegk was in conﬂict with his parishioners when they delayed repairing his roof after a destructive ﬁre destroyed much of the town.54 Such conﬂicts developed, in part, because the clergyman was ideally to eschew wealth and tolerate others’ foibles, such as inconsiderateness and irresponsibility, traits usually displayed when the pastor’s pay was due. When pastors behaved as non-materialistic paragons of patience, their parishioners took advantage of them, with what church ofﬁcials regarded as disastrous consequences for the laity’s own moral development.55 At the same time, parishioners resented pastors who fought for housing improvements or who schemed to make extra money. Pastor Göbel of Wahrenbrück upset his parishioners when they discovered he charged wealthier villages a higher fee for providing a funeral sermon.56 Parishioners in Löben fought with Pastor Funck when he took advantage of his exemption from paying the communal cowherds.57 Even church ofﬁcials could be riled when pastors seemed too materialistic: visitors scolded Pastor Grefe of Battin for ‘unbecomingly’ hiring his children out as ‘coarse ﬁeld hands’.58 Such ambiguities were compounded by other factors. Misunderstandings inherent to a theological system as sophisticated as Luther’s presented pastors with difﬁculties. The villagers sometimes recognized them merely as fellow parishioners in the ‘priesthood of all believers’, though the territorial church demanded that they impose religious reform from above. And frequently the territorial church initiated policies that, while making sense to administrators on a regional level, none the less upset the villagers at ground-level: throughout the century parishes were combined or dissolved; pastors were relocated from the villages to which they were assigned to rival villages; and valued parish possessions, such as chalices and clocks, were sequestered, either for sale or reallocation. In such cases the pastors were forced to defend the territorial church’s policies to irate parishioners. Pastor Neander’s tacit support of the Wittenberg Consistory’s decision to move a clock from the church in village Thalheim to another parish so angered his parishioners that they delayed rebuilding the pastor’s home, with nearly fatal consequences for the Neanders.59 Finally, petty nobles, such as the Hohendorfs, often resisted the centralizing pressures of the expanding territorial state by instigating local resistance to the Lutheran Reformation, a movement identiﬁed with all but one of the sixteenth-century Electors of Saxony. Local lords whose status was declining, like the Hohendorfs, tolerated social practices the

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territorial state and Church sought to forbid to demonstrate their defence of ‘old culture’, and desire to maintain a society based on hierarchy, unity and co-operation – traits emphasized by the holding of village fests.60 It is thus not surprising that Luther told friends in 1533, ‘if I were to write about the burdens of the preacher as I have experienced them and as I know them, I would scare everybody off’.61

The pastor and his parishioners Such were the realities and challenges facing Martin Jedocus when he became pastor for Lebusa parish following his ordination in 1572 at the age of 25, after having ‘studied in Wittenberg from his youth’. Despite his educational preparation, he would not be able to manage the ambiguities of the position. In the 1570s the parish consisted of the village of Lebusa, site of the main church and home of the pastor, and the two ﬁlial villages, Körba and Striesa, and had an adult population of about 250.62 Jedocus was married (no mention of children) and was described by a visitation committee in May 1579 as a ‘simple man’, but one who performed all his duties and who maintained appropriate levels of diligence and morality. Soon after his arrival, Jedocus purchased theological books with parish funds, speciﬁcally, a vernacular Bible and a copy of the Augsburg Confession. The 1577 visitation committee praised his commitment to further study, noting approvingly that he was progressing well through Luther’s writings on Genesis. As mentioned above, the mid-1570s was a time of particularly heated theological dispute within the Lutheran sphere, and the struggle to deﬁne ‘orthodoxy’ between the Philippists and Gnesio-Lutherans, which would culminate with the Formula of Concord, was reaching a climax. Visitation committees at this time urged pastors to study the issues under debate; indeed, the ﬁrst item of the ‘Instructions to the Visitors’ (1577) directed them to make sure pastors were familiar with the disputed articles.63 And as the catechism for both the adults and youth had been poorly attended, Jedocus and his superiors undoubtedly hoped that a vernacular Bible would provide refreshing pedagogical opportunities, ones that might make the lessons more appealing.64 Jedocus was not content with building his library. In 1575 he urged secular and ecclesiastical authorities to compel the parishioners to repair the bell tower of the church in Lebusa, as well as his own home, and, two years later, to restore the church in Körba. The books would not have appeared as outlandish purchases to the pastor; they represented fair and not luxuriant expenditures necessary for his studies.

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Nor did his superiors think it unreasonable when he insisted that his house, as well as the churches in Lebusa and Körba, be maintained, for the sake of safety and decorum, in proper condition. But the visitation committees were not the only ones judging the pastor. During the ﬁrst three years of his ministry (1572–75), Jedocus displayed, from his parishioners’ perspective, an unfortunate tendency to spend other people’s money. In addition to the requests and purchases already mentioned, Jedocus had, through his repeated complaints, obtained the support of the district superintendent in an effort to force his parishioners to procure a young cow for him, as he was dissatisﬁed with the one that had been provided for his household needs.65 While Jedocus’ acquisitions and (unfulﬁlled) demands were consonant with the discharge of his clerical duties, one can only imagine how these requests were perceived by his parishioners, many of whom were impoverished cottagers who owned neither cows nor well-built homes. They were now to surrender either their limited free time or time spent in their ﬁelds to perform labour for the pastor. They must also have resented having to contribute towards purchasing of a theology book, if not a German Bible; the parish of Lebusa, as the visitors and local lords noted on more than one occasion, was impoverished, even relative to others in rural Saxony. In May 1579 Jedocus accused the cottagers of having withheld payments in coin for three years. The visitation committee seems – very atypically – to have accepted the cottagers’ defence that they had not paid him because they simply could not afford to, and because such payments were not traditional in the parish. Despite their destitution, the villagers agreed, as the visitors recorded, ‘to do something out of good will towards him’ when Jedocus’ cow died in 1577, even though he had pestered them for ﬁve years to buy him a new one. The 1578 visitation committee noted that the parishioners had begun repair work on Jedocus’ house, labour that had been, from the pastor’s view, delayed without warrant for three years. Based on their actions, the villagers seem to have operated under a ‘moral economy’; they provided for him, but only when they deemed his needs genuine.66 Yet Jedocus chose to reject this system: when they ﬁxed his house he complained that he had built a cow stall at his own expense and had not received reimbursement from the parish funds. While the visitors’ intervention enabled him to obtain 30 groschen from the community chest, his actions emphasized conﬂict over cooperation. In these matters it is probable that Jedocus genuinely believed he was being shortchanged, but the parishioners, themselves strapped,

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must have resented the work they were forced to do for him, given Jedocus’ annual complaining and reporting against them.67 One senses that Jedocus was less patient than other rural Saxon pastors in pursuing his objectives. Perhaps he felt it necessary to accentuate his status, or maybe he truly believed that tolerating the peasants’ delays was at odds with the Wittenberg reformers’ desire to inculcate a work ethic, one fundamental to the moral and disciplinary reformations they and the state sought to inculcate.68 Though he initially impressed his ecclesiastical superiors, the ﬁrst years of his ministry were marked by demands that could only be realized at the villagers’ expense and that ran counter to their expectations.69 He also demonstrated an eagerness, unbecoming for a pastor, to supplement his income. Jedocus assumed, in addition to his ministerial and household agricultural duties, the role of clerk for the local feudal lords. It was standard practice throughout Electoral Saxony for the parish sexton, who often, beside the pastor, was the only literate member of the parish, to fulﬁl this task.70 While there is no evidence that clerking impeded Jedocus’ pastoral duties, it was without question inappropriate, and the parishioners would have regarded it as such. At any rate, the visitation committee of November 1577 ordered him to resign the position immediately. Jedocus tried to regain the trust and respect of his ecclesiastical superiors. During their interviews, the visitors learned that the feudal lords, the Löser brothers, violated the fourth commandment by holding hunting parties on Sundays, a sin compounded by the fact that the peasants in village Lebusa were also kept out of church, as they were required to help in the hunt. Clearly it was the pastor’s duty to report such activities. If the visitors learned of them through conversations with the peasants, it was his duty to conﬁrm their account – he would have been remiss to do otherwise. But Jedocus might have had an additional, but hardly exclusive, motive for wanting to see the Löser brothers reprimanded and threatened.71 Two years earlier, in 1575, one of the Lösers had volunteered to provide at his own expense the wine necessary for communion if he were granted sole possession of the fruit tree in the churchyard, depriving Jedocus of this traditional right.72 Jedocus likewise castigated the old lord of Striesa, Eustachius von Drahnsdorf, for ageing locally produced wine in the church there, and for constructing an addition onto the church that he used as a granary. Here Jedocus was caught between his professional duty and willingness to please his ecclesiastical superiors, and the circumspection that being

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a ‘good neighbour’ within the parish required. In performing his duty in an unbending way, Jedocus pleased the visitors, representatives of state culture, men external to the parish community. But he concurrently severed ties with the local lords, powerful neighbours and potential allies, whose support might have made his life in the community more tranquil. Jedocus’ criticism must have been especially frustrating to Eustachius, as the latter had recently installed a new pulpit and baptismal font in the church at Striesa. These donations suggest that Eustachius regarded the proper upkeep of his village’s church seriously, as both items were of fundamental importance for Lutheran liturgical practice.73 The visitors even conceded that the lord had been careful to ensure that his wares in no way interfered with church services. As this incident reveals, the right to deﬁne ‘sacred space’ and determine how it could be used was a source of much conﬂict within the parish, and the pastors found their attempts to introduce orthodox theology, refashion ritual practice and inculcate social discipline were often at odds with the villagers’ time-honoured beliefs as well as their (mis)understanding of Lutheran doctrine. Luther’s theology had, after all, eliminated the sanctity of the clerical estate and maintained that the true church was an invisible one. Given these fundamental tenets of Lutheranism, it is not altogether surprising that Eustachius and others could ﬁnd secular uses for church buildings while continuing to regard themselves as good Christians. Perhaps the visitors to Poppenhausen during the winter of 1528–29 should not have been so astonished when the pastor there answered the question ‘What ought the true church to be?’ with the response ‘A building made of stone’.74 Many outside the system of church rule held such a view. For example, in 1581 Tzschop Hans, a personal hunter of the Elector, turned the church in Dobra into a kennel, where, after seizing the keys from the church fathers, he kept nine foxes locked up and into which he threw chunks of ﬂesh.75 Likewise, in 1598, the repeated ﬂooding of the Elbe induced the feudal lord of Martinskirchen, Caspar von Korbitz, to demolish a church wall in order to build a dam that would protect the cemetery.76 Clearly local lords and agents of the Elector did not always aid the territorial Church in its effort to repress ‘parish culture’: Caspar von Korbitz, Tzschop Hans and Eustachius von Drahnsdorf acted in ways at odds with the religious and social disciplining that the pastors sent from Wittenberg sought to instil. But pastors could exercise patience and seek compromise, especially in those situations where the line between the culture of rule and of the

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ruled was so blurred. In Dobra, Pastor Beuther reported the abuse, but wisely did not create a commotion, and the matter seems to have ended soon enough. In Martinskirchen Pastor Zochius worked with the visitation committee, Caspar and a local secular ofﬁcial to develop a schedule for the wall to be repaired. In Lebusa, Jedocus appears merely to have alienated Eustachius. Jedocus criticized not only the lords, but the villagers as well. He attacked the parishioners for working on Sundays, although the local lords did not deem it necessary to punish them for this. In the parish of Kleinrössen, by contrast, Pastor Lehmann made exceptions for ‘poor men who owned not even a horse’ and who were in ‘great need’, and allowed them to work on Sunday without recrimination.77 Pastor Knuppius of Uebigau permitted certain parishioners to work on Sunday and made sure the secular authorities did not punish them.78 Likewise Pastor Rachius of Hohenleipisch overlooked Sunday working when done by ‘those in need’ and who had received permission from the local judge.79 Jedocus also criticized his parishioners for drinking beer too heavily at Christmas and Pentecost celebrations. Here as well a little toleration might have served him better. Pastor Starck of Langennaundorf, for instance, reported in 1577 that his parishioners had violated the drinking ordinances at Christmas and Pentecost, but he charitably defended them, explaining their situation – the local ﬁelds ‘were being wasted’ after two years of bad weather. His defence of them suggests sympathy for their plight, a feeling that led to leniency. In fact, his parishioners did not drink at all during the 1578 Pentecost holidays, nor did they drink on Sundays until after the service had ended.80 In contrast, Jedocus reported that his laity indulged in ‘epicurean, wanton boozing’ on Sundays in all three villages, and that, more scandalously, those who had received communion that day took part. Unlike Jedocus, Pastor Knuppius of Uebigau sought to reconcile church and state ordinances with time-honoured peasant cultural practice as they pertained to drinking. He initiated a compromise between the villagers and authorities: the two taverns could sell beer on Sundays, but only after church services.81 Jedocus further reproached the parishioners for absenting themselves from church, for holding spinning bees, for participating in licentious night-dances and for engaging in non-marital sex. It should not have been surprising to Jedocus, considering the villagers’ reported economic situation, that some of them would occasionally absent themselves from Sunday services to supplement their incomes, or that they would

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ﬁnd comfort in drinking at the tavern. And it was far from unusual for peasants to enjoy a summer dance or the telling of tales around the ﬁre of a winter evening’s spinning bee. These were activities inherent to peasant culture, especially in poor villages.82 Indeed, parishioners in Rade told church authorities in 1577 that if spinning bees were banned there, the maids and apprentices would go to another village.83 The servants in Wiederau openly issued this threat in 1579 when authorities, determined to uphold church ordinances, sought to forbid all dances, save at weddings.84 More ﬂexible pastors, such as Mochius in Wiederau and Rhidius in Stolzenhain, settled differences between village culture and state culture. In Wiederau, Mochius and the secular authorities permitted daytime dances, but with stipulations regarding the style of dance and clothes.85 Rhidius fashioned a compromise between church and state ofﬁcials on the one hand and his parishioners on the other: old ladies and children could attend regularly held bees, but men and sexually active women could not.86 Although Jedocus was not native to Lebusa, his parishioners would have expected him to learn and adhere to local customs, or at least to try to understand them. But Jedocus seems to have found it difﬁcult to negotiate the often conﬂicting obligations imposed upon his various personae. Jedocus dealt with these incidents as the church ordinances instructed him to do; the villagers, however, failed to regard their activities with a similar aversion, and conﬂicts escalated. Jedocus’ disputes with individual parishioners made matters worse. The miller of Körba, who had given the pastor grain from the mill every year, had recently purchased a hide of land in the village itself. He informed Jedocus that he would henceforth give him grain each year from the hide, rather than from the mill, though the dues levied on the hide were lower by a third. Jedocus brought this matter to external authorities for resolution, further signifying his inability to confront members of his laity in a neighbourly fashion. The local potters, meanwhile, paid the feudal lord one Reichstaler annually for the right to take clay from the lord’s ﬁelds. They also removed clay from the parish-owned ﬁelds that had been assigned to Jedocus, but did not deem it necessary to pay him.87 Similar to the conﬂict over how space in the church at Striesa could be used, this dispute centred on who would control parish property and deﬁne its legitimate utilization, Jedocus or the parishioners. In both instances the parishioners appear to have acted in the belief that the property in question could serve various needs as long as the pastor’s interests were not violated.88 As noted above, the storage space did not disrupt church services, and

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Jedocus certainly did not need his clay in order to tend his crops. From his perspective, however, the dispute with the potters was not a matter of material exigency, but one of expectation. The ﬁelds had been allocated to him because he was the pastor, and common courtesy, not to mention respect for his position, required some token remuneration. The pastor brought this matter before external authorities as well. Jedocus violated other local customs. One parishioner, Adam Krüger, had invited a cunning woman from the village of Rietdorf to attend to his failing son, whose ultimate death Jedocus attributed to the woman’s medical malpractice and sinful behaviour. While the villagers evidently considered Krüger’s efforts to save his son neither blasphemous nor scandalous, Jedocus enforced the statutes pertaining to magic-based healing by reporting Krüger to the visitors, and the grieving father was sentenced to a week in prison.89 Jedocus’ unnecessarily rigid response contrasts sharply with that of more understanding pastors. When Pastor Lormann of Wiederau learned that a parishioner carried a bundle of bread and cabbages under her right arm while invoking the Trinity in order to secure justice and patronage from the secular authorities, he ‘spoke to her in a friendly way’ and explained to her why this was sinful.90 Pastor Cornicaelius in Koßdorf also reacted more patiently when facing parish culture. In 1602 he discovered that villagers employed a woman who supposedly made cattle safe from worms by ‘speaking certain names’. Rather than turn her over to secular authorities, he spoke to the woman’s husband and relied on his inﬂuence to curtail his wife’s practice.91 Jedocus’ parishioners were also offended when he and the sexton quarrelled at a wedding, a squabble that culminated with their wives striking one another. The pastor must have been under a great deal of stress, but he did not help to relieve matters that day, revealing himself unable to control the two ﬁgures professionally and culturally subordinate to him, the sexton and Frau Jedocus. Some time after this ﬁght the villagers started absenting themselves from Sunday sermons, and began withholding from Jedocus his allotted share of the common wood. The pastor responded to the latter affront by reporting them to the Synod in August 1579. In early 1580 he informed against the potters who had to travel on Sundays to sell their pottery in the town of Dahme, the only day they, and their prospective buyers, were free from agricultural labour. Other pastors demonstrated neighbourliness by recognizing the importance of markets to the peasants and by adjusting their schedule accordingly. In 1528 the pastor of Schweinitz agreed to travel to outlying villages to teach the peasants catechism,

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and not on the days necessarily convenient for him, but on those days when the peasants did not attend the regional market.92 In 1578–79 Pastor Roth of Seyda and Pastor Lehmann of Jessen helped arrange a compromise between the villagers, Church and secular authorities in Jessen. The adults could continue going to a large market on Mondays and would be free from church obligations that day; but their children, whom they traditionally took with them to carry beer, would, by the order of the town council, henceforth attend school.93 Jedocus also refocused his attention on suppressing the evening spinning bees, whose participants began to incorporate aspects of the charivari into their gatherings. Masqueraders had recently started to attend and expand the evening’s activities; in the midst of his efforts to end the bees, the pastor seems to have become the target of the villagers’ ridicule. Within a year, Pastor Jedocus ﬂed the parish leaving his post vacant, without saying where he was going.94 This parish provides an example of what could go wrong when the pastor was unable to fashion compromise between ofﬁcial culture and parish culture. Jedocus had made a nuisance of himself over ﬁnancial matters in an impoverished area, had alienated the local nobles through his criticisms and had attempted to quell what Bakhtin might call the life-sustaining affairs of peasant culture.95 Not surprisingly, he became the object of the parishioners’ resistance to the social-disciplining policies whose essential view of the Reformation differed considerably from their own. A telling exempliﬁcation occurred in 1579. Jedocus reported that November that the head of the village court in Striesa had given him a large sausage to eat, allowing him to believe it was venison. When he had ﬁnished it, the pastor discovered it was fox meat, and he became a ‘laughing-stock in the community’ (ein Gelächter daraus gemacht). Because the concepts of nourishment and oral pleasure were intricately tied to feelings of envy, injury and terror in early modern Germany, the deliberate violation of normal avenues of food exchange represented, in its least threatening idiom, a complete rupture of neighbourly relations.96 The pastor had transgressed the villagers’ values, and they consequently undermined his moral authority by damaging his reputation and social prestige.97 With this attack, Jedocus’ reputation had become subordinate to the authority of popular opinion. His retribution, ironically, was likely a blessing to them. He deprived them of his Sunday afternoon catechism lecture, a response for which the following year’s visitation committee admonished him. As always, his prescribed role in one realm constrained his agency in the other.

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Conclusion In conclusion, because rural pastors functioned as both fellow villagers and agents of the state, they could ﬁnd themselves trapped between two often inimical cultures, in situations where actions appropriate to one were unsuitable to the other. Their duties could not be fully integrated, and as a result, the pastors’ obligations in any particular case remained ambiguous, causing them to experience the burdens of judgement. To avoid failure in either of their capacities, pastors had to fashion settlements that, if not fully pleasing to parishioners and authorities, were at least acceptable to both parties. Luther, from coarse stock himself, recognized the value of ministerial adaptability in 1532 when he stated: ‘A preacher is like a carpenter ... Because the materials on which he works vary, he ought not always pursue the same course ...’98 Relatively successful pastors did not abjectly obey church ordinances, although their initiative sometimes brought censure from church authorities. Correspondingly, they did not permit the villagers free rein. Compounding the difﬁculties of pleasing both the culture of rule and of the ruled was the fact that the visitation was a structurally ﬂawed process, in that it enabled everyone in the parish to fashion a self-serving depiction of daily life. Throughout the century, villagers used the visitation to further their own agendas and to initiate negotiations that aimed to alter relations of power within the parish. The visitation was a chance for the parishioners to exact economic or social concessions such as securing the privileges and exemptions they had failed to obtain either at the dawn of the Reformation or during the Peasants’ War. The key to a successful ministry was to appreciate this before having to turn to the secular authorities for support, a realization that eluded Jedocus. While pastors, too, used the visitation as a means to achieve their objectives as agents of the state, the more successful among them seem to have understood, even as they were discouraged by that awareness, that what the common man sought from the ‘Reformation’ was more often a release from additional labour and expenses than membership in a community free from sinful dancing. These pastors tempered their demands accordingly, realizing that the alternative would have been untenable, for themselves socially and for the Reformation as a movement. Almost ﬁfty years before Jedocus assumed his post, Melanchthon had written: ‘Many pastors quarrel with their people over unnecessary and childish things ... In such matters the pastors may well show themselves as sensible and for the sake of peace yield to the people.’99 What Jedocus failed to realize, others had, and, throughout the century, did.

5 The Clergy and the Theological Culture of the Age: The Education of Lutheran Pastors in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Thomas Kaufmann

The Lutheran Reformation originated from a new university, the territorial University of Wittenberg, founded in Electoral Saxony in 1502.1 It would be difﬁcult to overestimate the signiﬁcance of this basic historical fact. The faculty was predominantly made up of younger academics, most of whom were ready and willing to see their university make its mark against the traditional centres of learning in the Holy Roman Empire. Moreover, both the still relatively ﬂexible institutional structures and the programme of theological studies allowed for a degree of innovation (such as that inspired by the Humanist agenda of educational reform) which would have been much more difﬁcult to establish anywhere else. Indeed, the fact that the Lutheran Reformation found its point of origin in a university reveals a fundamental fact about its nature which distinguishes it to a signiﬁcant degree from the Reformation movements in Switzerland and southern Germany. Whereas the most important protagonists of the new faith in Zurich (Huldrych Zwingli), Basel (Johannes Oecolampadius) and Strasbourg (Martin Bucer) were pastors, the most inﬂuential ﬁgures of the Wittenberg Reformation (Martin Luther, Andreas Karlstadt and Philip Melanchthon) were university professors. While the Reformation in Switzerland and southern Germany was characterized from the outset by a degree of polycentrism and led by several ‘leaders’ roughly similar in inﬂuence, the Lutheran Reformation had both the University of Wittenberg as a central institutional authority and Martin Luther as an unchallenged and massively inﬂuential personal point of reference for development. And while at ﬁrst the evangelical pastors in Zurich and Strasbourg had to rely on collegial instructions for their theological 120

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schooling, the pastors active in the Lutheran sphere of inﬂuence received guidance in theology that was, as a rule, closely oriented around the university. Not until the foundation of the Geneva Academy did Reformed Protestantism have an educational institution comparable in many respects to Wittenberg in terms of international prestige and inﬂuence.2 The intellectual and cultural orientation of Lutheran Protestantism around the University of Wittenberg, the very place where the ‘rise of the Gospel’ found its origin, also had a negative effect, as the long sequence of Lutheran controversies of the later 1540s made apparent. For those Lutheran thinkers who were sharply critical of Melanchthon and other theologians in Albertine Saxony due to their position vis-à-vis the Interim, it was critical that they viewed Wittenberg as the bastion of evangelical orthodoxy, now threatened by destruction due to the ‘unclear’ conciliatory stance of the professors who were then teaching there.3 Later theological conﬂicts as well, those that would turn Lutheranism into the Empire’s most troubled confession in the following decades, either originated for the most part in the universities or were in essence orchestrated by university academics. Both the culture of learning and the matrix of conﬂict in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Lutheran Protestantism were shaped to a similar degree by the university. Indeed, it was in large measure due to the contribution of the cultural sphere ‘university’ that precise questions relating to the teaching of the faith became ever more subtly discussed, and more controversially handled, than had been the case before the Reformation. Moreover, because of the pre-eminent social and ecclesiastical standing of the theology professors in the Lutheran territorial states, debates concerning the teaching of the faith now found a public echo and – with respect to structural relations – exercised society to a much greater degree than in the pre-Reformation age. The unique role played by the university in German Lutheranism is also revealed in a headcount of the Lutheran universities in the Empire. In 1600 there were eleven Lutheran universities with approximately 2,500 matriculated students. In comparison, the Reformed faith could claim only two institutions – Heidelberg and Herborn (the latter ‘Hohe Schule’) – with about 280 students, while the Catholics had six universities with about 400.4 In Lutheranism, the universities were the decisive institutional vehicle of the implementation and realization of the territorial Reformation and the consequential process of confessionalization. It would not be appropriate to draw conclusions about the relative standards of education and learning between the three

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confessions from statistical ﬁndings of this sort, since in the Reformed tradition a stint at one of the foreign universities, especially in the Netherlands, played a considerable role in the educational process, while it was not uncommon for Catholic clergy to receive all their training in a series of diocesan seminaries. Yet the details do make it clear that in the world of late sixteenth-century Lutheranism, the universities were unchallenged as the most important and indeed the only institution for the training and education of the clerical estate. Leaving aside for a moment the legal and historical problems of detail associated with cases of civic co-patronage, we can say that the Lutheran universities were institutions of the territorial states of the day. The process of territorialization of the German university, though already evident in late medieval times, and which distinguished the legal and institutional character of German universities from developments in other European states, was intensiﬁed during the course of the Reformation. Indeed, to a certain extent it brought the process to a close. For the universities born under the star of the Reformation, such as Marburg (1527), Königsberg (1544), Jena (1548/1558) and Helmstedt (1576) and the older universities in the individual territories reorganized during the process of Reformation, such as Rostock, Greifswald, Heidelberg and Frankfurt an der Oder, the style of learning developed by Wittenberg left a deep and lasting impression. When Albrecht of Prussia justiﬁed the establishment of the University of Königsberg by referring to the duty of the prince to promote vera Dei notitia, and subsequently listed the fundamental purpose of the institution as that of propagating true knowledge of God as the basis for all social order, while at the same time producing learned shepherds (eruditi pastores) with the ability to present true Christian doctrine in a comprehensible manner, to distinguish between teaching what is true from what is false and to instruct pious souls on the proper road to just prayer and true consolation, he was drawing on the primary objectives of the Lutheran universities.5 Through the endeavours of all the faculties, and the faculties of theology and philosophy in particular, universities should serve as both seedbeds of the Word of God and socially effective laboratories of a virtuous lifestyle. As such, they were a type of ‘heavenly growth’, indeed God’s paradise on earth.6 The ‘close association between the content of teachings and career applicability’,7 which characterized a general tendency of the early modern territorial university, became especially urgent during the Reformation, particularly in light of the growing need for a professionally trained clergy.8 In the Protestant universities, beginning with

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Wittenberg, this had a tangible historical effect, as the organization of the university faculties (which were an inheritance from the medieval period) experienced in one respect a fundamental transformation. In spite of repeated recommendations in favour of a solid grounding in the artes liberales, a degree from the ‘lower’ arts faculty was no longer a prerequisite for study in the higher faculties, including the faculty of theology.9 Depending, of course, on the individual pre-university educational background in the arts, the actual conditions of study were such that the student might take simultaneous courses in theology and the artes liberales, or, depending on the duration of study, might undertake a gradual progression from the elementary subjects of learning to the higher ﬁelds of study, even if as a rule this was not marked or regulated by stages of graduation. The statutes written by Philip Melanchthon for the theological faculty at the University of Wittenberg, and in particular the 1545 revised version of the statutes (despite the occasional modiﬁcation of individual points),10 served as a model for the basic structure of the teaching of theology in the most important Lutheran universities of the Empire. Given the importance of the statutes, certain conclusions might thus be drawn from them about the normative core concepts of a basic university education in theology. For even though prescriptive sources of this kind cannot be taken as a lucid account of the actual conditions of study, they do nevertheless delineate a certain context in which the conditions of study, both in theory and praxis, took form. Characteristic of the programme of study at the Lutheran universities was that the college of the faculty of theology was regarded as part of the ministerium evangelii and that the studia doctrinae coelestis might be understood as a special way of serving God (praecipuus cultus dei). The objects of study in the ﬁeld of theology, on which pre-eminent importance was bestowed, included the Bible and the ‘Symbola’ of the old Church (the Apostles and the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds); their content in the sense of the catholicae ecclesiae dei consensus could be seen in the Confession of Augsburg of 1530. At any one time, two theology professors in Wittenberg were to give lectures interpreting the Old and the New Testaments. St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, St. John’s Gospel, the Psalms, Genesis and Isaiah were viewed as especially signiﬁcant and were to be studied on a regular basis. As a way of synthesizing the integra doctrina, a course of study was scheduled devoted to the interpretation of the Nicene Creed.11 In addition to this, in order to make it clear to the students that the teaching of the evangelical church was in harmony with ‘the purer antiquity’ (purioris antiquitatis)

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and the True Church, regular courses on Augustine’s work De spiritu et litera were to be offered as well. Without exception, lectures were to be presented in an understandable manner, always addressing directly the heart of the matter at issue. The regulations drawn up for the Wittenberg theology faculty also invested the college with the duty to construct and maintain a library for the students, prescribed the courses that were to be held in the study of Greek and Hebrew, and made the teaching faculty responsible for the moral and intellectual development of the student body.

Teaching the faith As soon as the term of study began, the evangelical theology student entered a sphere of authoritatively established truth, focused on the interpretation of Scripture, conﬁrmed by the traditions of the vera ecclesia and oriented towards the application of the vera doctrina in life and thought. If we turn to the prescribed course of lectures and programmes of study of the Lutheran faculties that have survived, it becomes clear that education in theology placed precedence on Bible exegesis. Quite often the essential dogmatic foundations were imparted by means of Melanchthon’s Loci communes.12 Luther’s Small Catechism might be used as well on occasion, but even more signiﬁcant was the Confession of Augsburg, which served as a compendium of doctrine for the summary treatment of theological subject matter. In the actual praxis of learning, dogmatics did not become the dominant discipline in Lutheran faculties until the middle of the seventeenth century, and then primarily in the wake of the intra-Lutheran disagreements concerning the ‘syncretism’ of the Helmstedt theologian Georg Calixt, 13 which appeared to level the confessio-theological differences between Lutheranism, Calvinism and Roman Catholicism.14 The widespread and inﬂuential image of the orthodox Lutheran theology of the universities (made familiar during the age of Pietism and Enlightenment) characterized it as a system of thought that relied on the logic of Aristotle for its methodology, distant from the actual teaching of the Bible, mired in polemics and theological controversy, and no longer in touch with the realities of life. This image, notwithstanding undoubted exaggeration, might be seen chieﬂy to apply to the realities of study in the later seventeenth century. Indeed, in some theological faculties in the sixteenth century, courses that dealt with the preaching theology students would undertake later in their careers or that provided exem-

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plary interpretations of the short passages of the Scriptures, along with practical exercises (including trial sermons), were quite common. As reﬂected in the faculty statutes, programmes of study and the course of lectures, the canon of knowledge at the heart of Lutheran theology in the universities was relatively clearly deﬁned. And yet even where this was the case, there were no ﬁxed qualiﬁcations for admittance to the university, nor was the duration of the course stipulated. As a consequence, appointment to a pastoral ofﬁce was not normally dependent on gaining a university degree; more important was the Church’s own entrance examination. Some students were already quite knowledgeable when they arrived at the university, indeed some could boast of an excellent education, especially in the study of Latin and the artes liberales. As a rule these candidates would move on quite quickly to study theology, normally taking a selection of other related courses in the faculty of arts as well. Others might require a basic grounding in the very disciplines that were indispensable to the actual course of study. Similarly, while some students, helped perhaps by the high social standing of their family or the beneﬁts of a scholarship,15 might spend many years studying at university, perhaps spending time at a number of different universities along the way, others, especially in the sixteenth century, would spend little more than a year or just a few months at a university before taking up a clerical post. Even in the closing decades of the sixteenth century numerous examples can be found of Lutheran pastors who became preachers without ever having attended a university. The academic standard of the clerical estate could thus vary from place to place. One ﬁnds variations as one moves through the Protestant territories of the Empire; but even more signiﬁcant were the differences between the urban and rural contexts. While some students could devote themselves to study over a period of years, others moved between a ‘vocational’ and a ‘student’ life, either pursuing their studies over the long term and relying on their autodidactic skills or, when possible, returning to their studies after a long break. In short, the actual conditions of study were highly diverse; they were subject to the most extreme individual dispositions and circumstances, and there were no normative regulations, whether for entry qualiﬁcation or for ﬁnal stage of study, which might offer direction. Lutheran professors of theology, therefore, by way of a speciﬁc genre of literature (the ‘guide for the study of theology’), attempted to devise procedures that would not only help the reader get to grips with the material, but also ensure that the essential issues of evangelical theology were kept within the bounds of these few regulated guidelines –

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whether the reader was a university student or studying at home, many miles from the nearest university. The most inﬂuential guide to the study of theology in early modern Lutheranism stemmed from the Rostock theology professor David Chytraeus,16 the most important Protestant university lecturer of the generation after Melanchthon. Taking up the thread of a rather small but relevant work by Melanchthon on the one hand,17 and following on from Luther’s preface to the German edition of his complete works on the other,18 the guide brought together in a fragile unity an existential, deeply personal understanding of theology, centred on the concepts of oratio, meditatio and tentatio (thus following Luther), with a strongly didactic approach to the communication of knowledge of vera doctrina which was more reminiscent of Melanchthon. The actual recommendations for study were devised in the form of ten compulsory rules, a type of Decalogue for theology students,19 which, in addition to more general references to pietas, also contained very detailed and substantial advice on speciﬁc ﬁelds of knowledge as well as aidemémoires for getting to grips with the subject matter. At the beginning of every day of theological study, as well as at the end, there should be prayer and Bible reading. Chytraeus reckoned on two chapters a day, a rate that would work through the 1,360 chapters in two years. The original Greek and Hebrew text should form the basis of the readings, with Luther’s Bible, a Latin translation and a grammar as interpretative aids, if help were needed. In addition, every day theology students should spend time with the theological and dogmatic subjects of knowledge, examining the issues and committing them to memory, an undertaking best facilitated, as Chytraeus suggested, with the use of Melanchthon’s Loci. This subject material was not the preserve only of future pastors and ‘professional’ theologians, but there for every student to learn. Bearing in mind the climate of theological controversy, each student had to acquire a special competence that qualiﬁed him for the profession. To this end a solid schooling in rhetoric and dialectics, best taught by using suitable texts from Melanchthon, was indispensable. (The actual ‘Sitz im Leben’ of the exercise itself was the academic disputation.) Special importance was placed on exegetical study; in addition to the interpreters of the old Church, the commentaries of Luther and Melanchthon were particularly important. This did not exhaust the range of subjects. Church history, philosophy, mathematics, geography and natural history were included, usually as part of the teaching offered by the faculty of arts. These ﬁelds of study were considered

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useful and desirable as well, particularly as they could beneﬁt an understanding of Holy Writ; but when set against the intensive preoccupation with the Bible and the interpretations of the Wittenberg reformers, all other subjects were of lesser importance. The benchmark and measure of all intellectual endeavour should be determined by the experientia christiana, for this ﬁnds its critical point of reference in its focus on the Cross as the locus of consolation. The fact that Philipp Jakob Spener, the ‘father of Lutheran Pietism’, was so receptive to this programme of theological study in his Pia desideria (1675)20 shows clearly that both the strong orientation on the Bible and the praxis pietatis of the students corresponded to conceptual notions that both Pietism and Lutheran orthodoxy could consider valuable, even though the two movements moved in ecclesiological and theological directions that are generally held to be antagonistic.

Lutheran pastors and the state of learning These normative core concepts relating to the study of theology do not allow direct conclusions to be drawn about what the students actually studied or what the state of their knowledge was at the end of the period of study. And yet it should be stressed that prescriptive sources, such as faculty statutes, study guidelines and church orders, leave no room for doubt that the primary purpose of university theology was the education and preparation of pastors, and that as a rule future pastors had to acquire a theological foundation, and not simply a basic grounding in the arts, before they could take up a clerical post. In the examination before the superintendent, which in many instances was a precondition for an appointment to a clerical post, the candidate was examined in order to demonstrate that he could show sufﬁcient knowledge ‘of the summa of Christian teaching from Holy Writ’.21 This examination also assessed whether the candidate had a practical capacity for preaching (usually in the form of a trial sermon) and looked closely at the applicant’s moral standing. For the most part, how the candidates prepared themselves for the church examinations was not closely regimented, though in a number of places the faculty of theology also functioned as a type of examination committee. As a rule it served in this capacity whenever it was requested to do so by a noble patron or higher church authority, or if the theology professors themselves were personally associated with the rule of the Church. Using the evidence offered by the Mecklenburg Church Order, which speciﬁed that if the candidate were found wanting he should be

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granted ‘one, two, or three weeks’22 of further instruction, it seems reasonable to conclude that these examinations were not especially rigorous. However, it must also be kept in mind that the degree of theological knowledge was not supposed to fall short of what was offered by Melanchthon’s Examen ordinandorum. This was read in Rostock, for example, and designated as obligatory by the Church Order. Of course, matters of this kind were dependent on the trends of the profession. In other Lutheran territorial churches – as in Württemberg, for instance – a three-year period of theological study with a faculty examination at the end was a common condition of entry to pastoral ofﬁce in the sixteenth century.23 In Mecklenburg, however, a ﬁnal university examination of this kind, bound with a ‘Testimonium’ of ‘good conduct and acquired erudition’,24 did not become a condition for pastoral ofﬁce until after the Thirty Years’ War. An evangelical pastor with a university education did not become the rule overnight; it was a process that evolved over several decades. After the Reformation, many former Catholic priests or monks had been recruited as pastors. In Electoral Saxony, for instance, it has been calculated that among the ﬁrst generation of pastors in ofﬁce after the Reformation, 20–32 per cent had gone to university (with some degree of difference between city and countryside).25 In Franconia, the proportion appears to have been somewhat higher at about 50 per cent;26 but values higher than this for the ﬁrst generation, especially if both the urban and the rural clergy are taken into account, hardly apply.27 In a territory such as Mecklenburg, where the Reformation was introduced in 1549,28 more than half the pastors had not been to university as late as 1580. Not until 1600 did non-academics become the clear minority (about 25 per cent) there. Similar relations can be observed elsewhere.29 The professionalization of the evangelical clergy was a slow process; shaped in fundamental ways by the structures of university education, the process would require more than half a century of development before it attained any sort of consolidation. The Thirty Years’ War, while it would prove especially severe for those evangelical pastors in the war zones,30 did very little on the whole to change the general trend towards improving academic standards among the clerical estate. Precise details on the length of study of the evangelical pastors are relatively difﬁcult to come by. As a rule, the best we can do is offer estimates based on the period of time from the date of matriculation to the ﬁrst veriﬁed appointment in ofﬁce. However, estimates of this kind

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are subject to distortion in light of variations caused by trends in the profession or other crisis conditions, and they tend to vary considerably from territory to territory as well. In Heidelberg, a 5–6-year period of study was considered appropriate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Tübingen, probably because of Württemberg’s developed educational infrastructure, three years was the rule – a period of time that would become the norm in the eighteenth century, as students now arrived at the universities with basic requirements that previous generations did not have. In general, the increasing stress placed on confessional precision, a phenomenon that had fundamentally shaped the theology of the universities in the ﬁnal third of the century, prolonged the period of study. Quite often future pastors spent several years after they completed their studies as personal tutors in households or as local schoolteachers. Indeed, the increase in the number of clergymen who spent time at a university made competition for posts much keener, with the result that the period between starting a course of study and appointment to ofﬁce tended to increase. With reference to the social origins of the evangelical clergy it can be said with certainty that, on the whole, the evangelical clerical estate represented an opportunity for men from the middling rank of the urban milieu (primarily non-academic in nature – craftsmen, merchants, ofﬁcials of local government) to rise in the professional ranks. Over the course of time, a marked tendency for self-recruitment becomes evident. In the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries, in the majority of German territories for which we have reliable ﬁgures, over one-third of the pastors were the sons of pastors. And yet it must be pointed out that the great majority of the pastors did not spring from a parsonage. The generally accepted idea of an extensive network of self-recruitment at the core of the evangelical clerical estate needs to be put in perspective. Even if evangelical clergymen form the most important vocational group among the fathers of future pastors, the social stratum that bore the clerical estate remained the pious, education-friendly urban middle classes. An evangelical pastor from the nobility or the peasantry was now an exception, in stark contrast to the pattern of social recruitment of the higher and lower clergy among the Catholics. The mounting importance of the territorial state in Germany, which became even more central in the wake of the Reformation, had an impact on the education of the pastors to the effect that a large number of the future clergymen spent time at the territorial university. Just as Heidelberg was important for the Palatinate, Tübingen for

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Württemberg, Helmstedt for Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and Greifswald for Pomerania, a university such as Rostock served as the fundamental academic focal point for Mecklenburg and the neighbouring Hanseatic cities. The proportion of pastors from other regions tended to vary considerably from territory to territory: in Mecklenburg, for instance, the ﬁgure is 25 per cent on average, similar to the Palatinate; in Brandenburg it was approximately 15 per cent, in Württemberg-Franconia around 20 per cent. Among Mecklenburg’s pastors, the proportion of men who had studied exclusively outside the principality was a mere 1 per cent. About onetenth had studied at a university in addition to Rostock, with Greifswald, Wittenberg, Frankfurt an der Oder, Helmstedt, Königsberg and Jena the most predominant, and the number of Mecklenburg clergymen who gained an adademic degree remained more or less constant from the middle of the sixteenth century onward: about one-ﬁfth had a masters or a doctorate. Among the rural clergy, a pastor with a master’s degree was a rarity; an urban post was a much more likely location for such a candidate. Only in Württemberg, it seems, was the attainment of a master’s degree more widespread – indeed, among the scholars of the Tübingen Stift it was quite common.31 In the Palatinate, Electoral Saxony and Brandenburg, the number of master’s graduates was scarcely above 10 per cent.32 The doctorate was primarily a mark of status shared by the ruling elite of the Church; outside the universities, it was most likely to be found among superintendents or court preachers. In general, a clerical post was more likely to require academic qualiﬁcations in the urban context than in the countryside. In the rural setting, noble patrons often relied on criteria other than the academic standing of the candidate.33 The very fact that a master’s degree was frequently not a precondition for appointment, but acquired once the candidate was in ofﬁce, makes it clear that an academic degree should above all underscore the dignity of a commensurate church appointment. In Mecklenburg, until the ﬁnal years of the seventeenth century, one occasionally comes across examples of appointments by rural patrons in which only those candidates without a university education were considered. The probable explanation for this is that such a pastor would be more dependent on the patron and more likely to lack the opportunities for relative mobility made available to the evangelical clergy through academic training. As a rule, the relationship between the rural communes and academically trained pastors was characterized by ambivalence. As the representative of an urban culture, he was

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a foreigner, a stranger in their midst, a man who might evoke admiration and mistrust, reverence and resistance, and who might be perceived as a helper and counsellor, yet also an agent of rule and an intruder. That the pastor’s wife34 and the family relations of the clerical couple were afforded a key role in the establishment and maintenance of communal integration should be evident. The educational background of a clergyman could give rise to conﬂicts between pastor and parishioners when it was bound up with concrete or material demands, such as when the commune was required to help construct or repair a study. In Electoral Saxony, with the second generation of pastors (1555–75), they could (or would) ‘no longer do without … a study’.35 That this could provoke accusations of idleness in the commune is readily attested. Indeed, the fact that Johannes Mathesius, evangelical pastor of Joachimstal in the Erzgebirge, should describe study as ‘work with the head’ (and thereby create the ‘Kopfarbeiter’, translated literally as the ‘brain worker’),36 perhaps in an effort to justify the duties of his clerical ofﬁce to the hard-working miners of his commune, corresponds to the cultural incongruity of placing a pastor among manual labourers. In 1624 a Mecklenburg pastor complained to his prince about the terrible state of his own and other parsonages; if nothing was done soon, he claimed, it would reach the point where ‘many preachers will have to put their books aside and make a living with their own hands, as it once was in the days of Nehemiah [Neh. 3]’.37 Although the need to earn part of their living through agricultural labour remained a constraint throughout the early modern period, especially in the countryside, there was a clear awareness among the learned pastors that they were part of a unique estate which set them apart as ‘Kopfarbeiter’ and obliged them to serve in that capacity. Similar in kind to the emphasis which the pre-Reformation Catholic service placed on the dispensation of the sacraments was the Protestant emphasis on the Word. Indeed, the vocation of the evangelical pastor derived its focus and plausibility from its service to the Word of God – for service to the Word, as manifest in the sermon, required its own concentrated mental and spiritual preparation. The occupational ‘otherness’ of the pastor was consistent with his labours for the salvation of the whole. Whenever material need forced a pastor to sell some of his books, this was a crisis that threatened his functions to the very core. As an oasis of education in the middle of the parish, the parsonage not only served as an elementary school for local girls, taught by local women, and select Latin students, taught by the pastors; it was also a household where books played an important role. Book ownership was

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an indispensable feature of clerical employment, even among pastors of limited intellectual capacity. With the visitations that served to introduce the Reformation, care was taken that certain obligatory core texts were made available in every parish church, including a copy of the Bible and Luther’s postils or his Large Catechism. Later booklists drawn up in association with the visitations also provided for Luther’s works (as well as Augustine’s and other Christian theologians), and there is evidence of rising educational expectations; but more than this, there is also a neue Unübersichtlichkeit effected by the process of confessionalization, which brought with it an increased need for intellectual orientation. Some examples of extensive parish libraries (even in the countryside), and in particular those established by clerical ‘dynasties’ which grew in size over the generations, testify to vital intellectual interests that went far beyond basic study. Other examples of parish libraries, however, those that contained primarily or exclusively catechetical and pastoral/theological specialist literature, conﬁrm that in many cases pastors would read (or could read) hardly anything beyond that which seemed strictly necessary for the observation of their duties. In 1588 a parish chronicle noted how the son of a pastor with little or no academic training followed his father into the parish ofﬁce: ‘He has not studied theology; rather, he read to the congregation from the postil, to the complete satisfaction of the people.’38 An example such as this might be designated the intellectual baseline of the evangelical pastors at the end of the sixteenth century.

Lutheran pastors and the confessional age In its normative and substantial aspects, the professional training of Lutheran pastors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (i.e. in the interlocking of the artes liberales with catechetical, dogmatic and exegetical studies, as well as the homiletic exercises) corresponded to the principal social and theological notions of the pastoral ofﬁce. The central function of the ministry was to ‘gather’ God’s ‘eternal Church’ in ‘public and praiseworthy assemblies’, with the people chosen for the task (namely the pastors) ‘to preach the Word of God and provide the sacraments’.39 The appointment to ofﬁce was effected through the ‘limbs of the Church’,40 which for the most part meant the involvement of the three estates – status ecclesiasticus, status oeconomicus, status politicus.41 Usually the person who was appointed had to undergo an examination and a trial sermon before the congregation, and once in ofﬁce he was explicitly reminded that he had been entrusted with an

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ofﬁce ‘in which Christ himself was at work’ and that ‘human wisdom and strength’ were ‘not sufﬁcient’ for the execution of the ofﬁce.42 These stipulations applied to all the hierarchical grades of the ministerium ecclesiasticum; continental Protestantism did not elaborate a detailed theological theory concerning the higher ofﬁces of the Church. The function of the ofﬁce, conferred with appeals to God, was to observe those tasks vital for salvation – namely, preaching the Word and dispensing the sacraments (Confessio Augustana 7) – in accordance with the principles of Lutheran theology. And yet it was precisely in these tasks that the incumbent should be aware of the fundamental limitations of his own abilities. He should be learned and experienced, and yet he could not begin to exercise his ofﬁce without the intercession of his commune. His ofﬁce elevated him above the commune, and yet pastoral reliance on communal assistance bound him to it at the same time. It provoked and created the conditions for conﬂicts with the commune, and yet it imposed an endless sense of concern for the salvation of the parishioners – for in the end, each incumbent would render an account of his time in ofﬁce before the Seat of Judgement. Two simultaneous developments were fundamental in the shaping of the professional life of the evangelical clergy: on the one hand, the process of social integration in the commune (family life alone necessitated a degree of integration beyond that of the Catholic priest), and, on the other hand, structural disintegration, that is the vocational ‘otherness’ necessitated by the job. This simultaneity of integration and disintegration distinguished the social position of the Protestant pastor from other occupations and had a lasting effect on the actual exercise of ofﬁce. This holds true to the same extent for the Reformed as for the Lutheran pastors, from the so-called Gnesiolutherans to the followers of Melanchthon. As a university graduate, the pastor had to be learned; clergy who merely read the model sermons written by leading theologians (Postillenreiter) were disdained in equal measure by leading clergymen and university theologians. Indeed, as a rule the elaborate postils of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries offered such thorough and detailed commentaries and interpretations that they were completely inappropriate for reading to the congregation and went well beyond the hour normally expected of a sermon. The learned pastor was expected to conduct himself in the parish in such a way that his learning did not disrupt or unsettle relations between him and the parishioners. He should not talk unintelligibly or

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be too rhetorically affected; rather, in order to touch the hearts of the congregation, he had to be easy to understand. His learning had to be of the kind that was practical in nature and was able to overcome the cultural barriers between the preacher and his ﬂock. Indeed, the great efforts made in early modern Protestant theology devoted to the theoretical and practical aspects of the sermon are what bind the theological proprium of the evangelical understanding of ofﬁce with its pastoral realization. In Testimonia drawn up by Rostock theology professors for their students (and which, for the most part, were viewed as the preconditions for appointment in the seventeenth century), sermon exercises usually played a major role. Note was made of how the candidate delivered a sermon and with what success. In addition, the response of the congregation was recorded. The aptitude a candidate had for preaching was one of the most important criteria for deciding whether he was suitable for ofﬁce. Even among the literary activities of the university theologians, some of whom not only had a teaching post but served as parish pastors or superintendents as well, sermons and postils played an important, indeed an extraordinary, role. Almost every theologian of note that belonged to so-called Lutheran Orthodoxy43 left behind copies of sermons, sermon collections and postils, all of which might be taken as the literary manifestation of a distinguished praxisrelated understanding of theology. The sermon was not just the concern of theological schooling; the sermon would adjudge the very truth of the theology. An integral component of a theological education, and one that was especially important vis-à-vis the charge of preaching, was the need for the clergyman to be fully immersed in the teachings of his own confession, the need for precise knowledge of the differences between the conﬂicting schools of interpretation within Christianity, and the criteria behind judgement that has been informed by the Bible. For whatever was proclaimed from the puplit had to be in harmony with the sanctioned confession, and the commune had to be protected from ‘false teaching’ that might spread from the margins of their own confession and inﬁltrate the faith. The ‘ofﬁce of guardian’ exercised by the pastor did not just apply to the punishment of impenitence and moral misconduct; it was also meant in the sense of a guardian against any doctrinal deviance that might pose a threat to the confession’s own credo on salvation. Latin-language catechisms, which performed an important function in Lutheran regions from the late sixteenth century onward (including their role in teaching the foundations of dogma to the pastors), served the clergy as a means of orientation for

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their own confessio-theological position as well as a guide for the theological disputes with other confessions, and in particular with the Reformed, the Socinian and the Roman Catholic systems of thought. According to the leading opinion of the day, a clergyman without a background in the theological controversies was not suited for ofﬁce. Specially organized disputations, both public and private, cultivated dialogue and debate with confessional opponents and had a ﬁxed place in theological studies. The ‘pledge to orthodoxy’, in the sense of the enforcement, maintenance and theological reﬁnement of the content of teaching exclusive to a confession, was consistent with the claim to practise a type of theology that was aware of the responsibilities of the present (also evidenced in the emphasis Lutheran theology put on the sermon). For the world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was shaped by the presence of rival claims to truth, and this in turn necessitated argumentation and debate, and expertise in apologetics. Assemblies of pastors, not yet adequately researched by historians, seem to have been crucial for the task of debating the actual positions and strategies of defence. In the early modern period, visitations and synods appear to have formed the most important institutional link between learned, academic theology and the pastor immersed in the praxis of parish life. This was the context in which the expectations placed on the pastor by the territorial summus episcopus and the governing institutions of the Church became concrete. Of course, the claim that the ‘individual Lutheran pastor’ was little more than ‘an outpost of state authority’44 might not only underestimate the degree of independence from secular authority, a factor that inhered in the very understanding of the ofﬁce; it might also be based on a far too schematic model of ofﬁcial injunction and pastoral obedience. In the ﬁnal application of his ofﬁce, the pastor was bound to his conscience. He had to apply the truth of the Gospel to situations faced by real people in their daily lives and remove the obstacles to salvation put in place by an unwillingness to be penitent; but he was not to execute the moral and sumptuary control of norms. The programmatic works of guidance written for the study of theology contained reﬂections throughout relating to the pietas and the character formation of the young theologian. One could become a pastor only when the personal relationship with the substance of the Gospel, for which one had to engage personally, had been clariﬁed, cultivated and put to the test in real life. To this extent an education in theology was always in its essence the formation of personality. The value of a

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theological education was thus decisive in the concrete encounters with people – from the pulpit, in confession, in the cure of souls, in casual praxis, and in apologetic debates. It is, however, precisely this aspect of the phenomenon that has largely escaped the attention of historical analysis.

6 The Protestant Ministry and the Cultures of Rule: The Reformed Zurich Clergy of the Sixteenth Century Bruce Gordon

Early in the morning of 10 December 1555, Rudolf Hüsli, the minister of Töss, near Winterthur, was hauled from his bed and taken to the Wellenberg, a tower that stood in the middle of the Limmat river in Zurich. His offence, according to the ofﬁcials, was to have traduced the position of the Zurich council in the matters of poor relief and the use of church goods.1 Although Hüsli’s imprisonment was brief, lasting only two days, the case became something of a lightning rod for the growing tensions between the Church and the civil authorities, particularly in the matter of provision for the rural clergy. Heinrich Bullinger held one of his regular interventions (Fürträge) before the Zurich council on 16 December addressing this very point,2 reminding the magistrates that it was their responsibility to ensure that each parish be provided with sufﬁcient resources to maintain the church, a minister with the necessary tools of learning, the parish house, the school and the minister’s family.3 Bullinger’s speech to the small council in Zurich was full of angry words, reﬂecting years of frustration and disappointment. Rudolf Hüsli, Bullinger opened, was a good and honest man who had done nothing contrary to the authority of the Zurich council, and his offence – if that is what it was – was to speak the Word of God concerning the treatment of the poor. Anticipating the concern of the magistrates that such unbridled preaching could stir unrest, Bullinger argued that the effect in the community had been nothing other than to enhance the esteem in which the minister was held. In contrast, Hüsli’s harsh arrest, imprisonment and subsequent release had been the source of greater outrage to the community than if twenty such sermons had 137

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been held.4 By turning to the central issue of the proper use of church goods, Bullinger asked the magistrates to understand that there was nothing unjust in Hüsli’s actions. He then set about doing what only Bullinger had the status to pull off – the simultaneous defence of a parish minister and a virulent attack on the political leaders of the city. Few had more experience in the realities of establishing a church order according to the theological grammar of Protestantism than Heinrich Bullinger, and his Fürtrag revealed the depth of the problems encountered by the Reformed order in Zurich.5 At its root it was the Faustian bargain struck by the reformers which proved so vexatious, the essential support of the civil governments had been bought at a high price. Bullinger was fully aware that church issues constituted but one element in the political calculations of the rulers of Zurich, and when push came to shove the magistrates had no hesitation about warning the church leaders that their role was to preach and cultivate true religion, not to meddle in other matters. Historically, the magistrates had a strong hand, for Zwingli’s legacy had deeply problematized the role of the Church in politics.6 The Zurich council’s misappropriation of the church goods, in Bullinger’s view, could be likened to a cancer destroying the young Reformed Church from within. And in his Fürtrag of December 1555, he intended to remind the political leaders of some fundamental principles, which he believed had been lost. Citing a range of Old Testament texts (principally from Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), he stressed that church goods were from God, given to sustain the teaching of the faith and care of the poor.7 In his usual style, the New Testament texts were offered as the fulﬁlment of the Old, and Bullinger in particular drew attention to references in John and Acts to make his point that true disciples of Christ were required to care for the poor.8 Having marshalled the biblical evidence, Bullinger had an even sharper lesson from church history for the magistrates. He referred to the legend of St Lawrence, who refused to obey the imperial edict placing church goods in the service of the state. Taking the story from Prudentius, Bullinger reminded the magistrates that the emperor’s denuding of the Church had resulted in the deaths of many innocent poor people as well as in the witness of martyrs such as Lawrence.9 This reference to a thirdcentury martyrdom in the face of a pagan authority would have resonated strongly in Zurich, where the cult of Felix and Regula, two Christian Roman soldiers martyred for their refusal to pray to pagan gods, gave the city its religious identity; their day (11 September) was celebrated in the city even after the Reformation.10

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From this Bullinger concluded: church goods were to be distributed in different parts: one part for the minister and his house, or was further divided to support those studying, colleges, and schools. Another part, and not the least, for the poor, another for the building of churches, temples, parish houses, schools, graveyards, and what belongs to the temples for baptism, the Lord’s Supper, utensils, lights books and the like. This is also the view of Gregory to Augustine, bishop of the Angles.11 Should the Church have more than was required to meet these needs, any surplus, Bullinger continued, was not to be redirected to another purpose. This was a clear reference to the frequent demand of the magistrates for money for the rebuilding of the civic fortiﬁcations on account of the tense political situation in the Swiss Confederation. A more godly and prudent use of the resources, Bullinger argued, was to hold them in reserve for times of plague, war and starvation. Bullinger continued his history lesson to the Zurich council with his critique of religious houses, which, he commented, had been originally founded to care for the poor but which had degenerated into selfserving corporations dedicated to the making of money and the ownership of property.12 The decline of the principles behind religious houses was consonant with the growing convergence of the Church with worldly interests, and the primary victims of this unhappy alliance were the clergy and the poor. The Reformation, which was the re-emergence of the Word of God, had as one of its principal goals the restitution of church goods to their proper use, and Bullinger cited evidence from Zurich itself that this was God’s intention. He argued that many of the ﬁrst leaders of the reform movement in Zurich had served in religious houses – men such as Heinrich Brennwald from Embrach – and that it was God’s will that these houses be dissolved in order that their resources be used for their true biblical purpose.13 Reference was also made to the peasants’ revolt and the demands of the people that church goods be placed in their hands to ensure the establishment of good religion. Bullinger reminded the council that the decision had been made at that time that the magistrates should retain control of the church goods, but only use them for their intended purposes of sustaining the parishes, providing schools, and caring for the poor.14 Bullinger then turned to speciﬁc complaints about the state of the rural churches. He spoke ﬁrst of how ministers, on account of their poverty, were being forced to abandon their parishes in order to

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support their families. This disturbing phenomenon had two causes, both of which Bullinger claimed were endemic: ﬁrst, the income generated by the parish was insufﬁcient to sustain a minister and his family, and, second, the house in which the clerical family was supposed to live was often in such a state of dilapidation that it was uninhabitable.15 Inadequate parish incomes led to vacant parishes, forcing the people to go elsewhere to worship and ﬁnd pastoral care. However, Bullinger was quick to add, the real consequence of a vacant church was that the people simply did not attend services at all, as few were willing to make the arduous journey through woods and over hills to a neighbouring church.16 Bullinger understood full well that the Zurich council was unlikely to be moved by a plea from the Church for more money, for the council faced economic deprivation and social unrest across its lands. The church leader’s strategy to gain the ear of the magistrates was to make the case that proper religion was essential to social stability, a subject which he knew the council regarded as a higher priority.17 Bullinger’s description of the situation was not merely a rhetorical strategy. The Zurich Church, the ﬁrst of the Reformed Churches, was by the middle of the sixteenth century struggling to ﬁnd ministers willing to serve in poorly appointed parishes. At the same time it had to deal with many ministers who were long-serving incumbents unwilling to resign their livings with the prospect of no income after they left work. These elderly pastors, generally alone in their churches, sought to hold on to their parish income until death, for in retirement they had no means to support themselves. Despite its impressive organization, almost thirty years of Reformed polity in Zurich was still bedevilled by systemic problems which were greatly retarding Bullinger’s desire to produce a well-trained clergy able to cultivate true religion in the parishes. The issue of church ﬁnances was brought into high relief for Bullinger in situations where a parish had formerly belonged to wealthy patrons, such as religious houses like the former house of the Knights of St John in Küsnacht, but was now in dire straits because the resources from the religious house had not been transferred to the parish, but into the hands of the magistrates. In Küsnacht on Lake Zurich, Bullinger opined, the minister did not have sufﬁcient milk for his numerous children.18 From this Bullinger made several observations: ﬁrst, that upon retirement after twenty or thirty years of service a minister received virtually nothing and was expected to make his own way at an advanced age. Second, when a

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minister died there was absolutely no provision for his wife and children, who were frequently reduced to beggary. The matter, Bullinger recognized, lay not simply with the parsimony of the council, but with the ministers themselves, for he had observed that many ministers would rather accept poverty than raise the issue of money and suffer the humiliation of public scorn.19 The problems extended to schools in both the city and land. The cost of sending students to the Latin schools was part of the broader issue of why many Zurich burghers demurred from having their sons trained as ministers. The crisis in church ﬁnances meant that becoming a minister was hardly a lucrative career choice for an ambitious family, and the shortage of schools meant that it was left to the Grossmünster to produce enough candidates for the 140 parish and school positions. 20 The question of schools was a particularly bitter one for Bullinger, who had seen his own school at Kappel closed and his plans for a new school in the former monastery at Rüti fail after an initially positive response from the magistrates.21 While there was some improvement in the Latin schools in the city, which were augmented by the founding of the so-called German schools, the situation in the countryside was lamentable, as Bullinger pointed out in the Fürtrag. Bullinger revisited the situation of the clergy in the parishes, this time to comment on the state of their houses and of the church buildings themselves. Having previously argued that ministers did not have sufﬁcient income, he now offered examples of the miserable conditions in which the ministers were forced to live, such as, pointedly, the house in Töss occupied by the infamous Rudolf Hüsli. The parish house in Töss was so dilapidated (‘buwfellig’), according to Bullinger, that no one would want to be inside it during a strong wind.22 Bullinger even showed a rare sign of mordant humour, pointing out that when a man attempted to install windows in the churches he found rather that he needed to build walls. In the case of the poor Bullinger employed a different strategy. His point was that poor people were still gathering near the old religious houses seeking alms, much to the irritation of the locals. Bullinger reminded the magistrates that the Reformation had begun with ordinances aimed at reorganizing poor relief in Zurich, but that now the people were murmuring that the situation had been much better under the old Church, when monasteries cared for the poor and homeless. 23 All of these points concerning the desperate state of the rural clergy were for Bullinger essential to understanding the

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predicament of Rudolf Hüsli, who had preached against the council’s policy towards the poor. Bullinger could not be more direct in his rebuke: We understand that many are of the opinion that we, the servants and preachers, should not speak from the pulpit on poor relief, church goods, and their use and misuse, for this might stir unrest and ill will among the common man. However, honourable, dear lords, if one had provided appropriately for poor relief, and employed the church goods properly according to the Reformation ordinance, then there would be no concern.24 Bullinger reinforced this point by arguing that if the ministers did not raise these issues from the pulpit, where they could be treated with discretion, poor relief and church goods would be left for discussion among the people in the streets and taverns, where the council could expect a good deal less respect. Further, the people would say to themselves that if the council was not bothered about the desperate plight of those begging in the streets and marketplaces, then why should they be? The consequence, according to Bullinger, would be the spread of disorder. At the centre was the role of the minister. ‘It would be easier,’ Bullinger muted, ‘never to punish blasphemy from the pulpit’, as the ministers of Zurich were required to do, but the consequences in the communities would be ill will, hatred, and jealousy.25 His point went straight to heart of the matter: ministers had an extremely difﬁcult task laid upon them by Church and state, and they could simply avert their eyes from what they saw. If, however, they were to do what was required of them, then the council would have to face more Rudolf Hüslis. The minister was required by God to admonish both peasants and guild masters – referred to by Bullinger as the ‘obren alls den undern’ – when they transgressed the divine commandments. Experience had shown that this could not be done without the minister making enemies in the community who would seek to land him in trouble by lodging complaints against his preaching or conduct. One of the obligations of cooperation with the magistrates was that the clergy were to form an important ﬂank in the assault by the urban rulers on rural autonomy in the sixteenth century. No one in the rural parishes was in any doubt that the ministers of the Church were ofﬁcials of the state, all the important rituals, such as ordination, were designed to reinforce that message. After ordination in the parish

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the minister had to swear an oath in the synod in which the hierarchy of authority was clearly delineated: Further I shall be responsible and obedient to the most high lords of the councils, government, and senate of the city of Zurich, as they are the legitimate magistrates of God. These I shall support. I will promote their purposes to the best of my abilities and I shall also prevent all harm from coming to them. I shall submit myself to their ofﬁcers and their mandates in all things pious and honest …26 In the end Bullinger’s intervention did not save Rudolf Hüsli from being dismissed from the parish of Töss, but the minister’s fate was indicative of how the council and Church functioned. Soon after his removal from Töss he was appointed minister in the parish of Weiach, where he served without incident. By dismissing Hüsli the council had delivered Bullinger and the Church a stark reminder of who was in control; Bullinger’s inﬂuence in the city had its limits. Yet, the resolution was undramatic; Hüsli was quietly moved to another parish and both parties saved face. Nothing more was heard of the minister, who disappeared into the anonymity of rural church life, but the issues raised by his case went to the heart of the Reformed ministry in Zurich. Let us turn to how that ministry took shape.

The Zurich clergy One of the most striking aspects of the parochial clergy in Zurich during the sixteenth century was its relative stability. This owed much to the manner in which the Reformation was introduced in 1525, which, although it led to a diminished number of clerics, particularly in the city, saw no radical change in the clerical body. Of approximately 170 parish priests in Zurich between 1523 and 1531 we have accounts of only twelve who voiced opposition to the new order and of these only four were removed from ofﬁce. Two of these ministers were removed on account of Catholic sympathies, while the others were well-known Anabaptists, Johannes Brötli and Wilhelm Rueblin. While it must be remembered that the new Protestant order did not possess the institutional means (the synod) to discipline clergy until 1528, it cannot escape our notice that the rural clergy were, for the most part, passive agents in the Zurich reformation. They neither led the movement nor did they oppose it in any signiﬁcant manner, even during the height of the Anabaptist unrest. Of the approximately

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170 clergy in post during Zwingli’s tenure as head of the Zurich Church, 75 per cent had been ordained as Catholic priests. The clerical body in Zurich also had a strong non-native element as nearly a quarter (41) of the 170 clergy came from outside Zurich territory. The process of reform in Zurich necessarily involved conﬂicting aims and consequences. Structurally, the parish system was retained, as was the grouping of parishes into rural chapters presided over by a dean. In many ways reform under Zwingli, and more directly under Bullinger, was based on a pre-Reformation model drawn from the reform legislation of the Council of Basel.27 The goal was a well-run diocese with a bishop presiding over regular meetings of the clergy, who in turn were expected to reside in their parishes providing the care of souls. Theologically, of course, there had been a profound revolution, but the essential model was of the educated, spiritually enlightened, moral pastor both providing for his sheep and answering for them to his bishop. Bullinger, as has often been remarked, saw himself in the tradition of Augustine and Chrysostom, and this marked the structural forms of the Church in Zurich. The decision, which was hardly debated, to retain the parishes and their system of patronage reﬂected both the position of the Zurich reformers that such structures were of divine origin and their canny arrangement with the political leaders to cause as little upheaval in the rural areas as possible. It was not lost on anyone that while Zurich’s extensive rural territories had not risen in revolt, opposition to many aspects of the Reformation, such as war against the Catholics, ran most deeply among the villagers and farmers. The rural communities proved a reluctant bride, and following the disastrous Kappel War of 1531 they made known their opposition to what was perceived as urban arrogance in the Meilen Articles.28 Here, on the shore of Lake Zurich, the leaders of the rural communities presented a petition demanding that the civil authorities prevent the clergy from inﬂammatory preaching, that ministers be removed from the disciplinary bodies, that foreign clergy be excluded from Zurich lands and that the city not lead the countryside into a war without prior consultation. Although these leaders professed allegiance to the new religion, it was a damning critique of Zwingli’s Reformation.29 The most signiﬁcant consequence of the Meilen Articles was the demand on the Reformed Church in Zurich to balance preaching the Gospel with political and social circumspection. The Zurich magistrates would not tolerate any further political preaching, as their response in the Hüsli case demonstrated, and the rural population

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were unwilling to have the pulpit used against them for the purpose of moral excoriation. Opposition from both sides framed the Zurich ministry in the sixteenth century. Bullinger and others had to produce a body of clergy who were to meet diverse expectations. The principles of the Reformed Church required that ministers should be well educated and able to expound the Bible, drawing from scripture a pastoral message, both comforting and admonitory, which was applicable to the lives of the people. From the council came the expectation that the ministers should preach the Gospel without treading on contentious political ground and admonish the people to be good subjects. The parishioners, as we shall see, had a very different perspective. They interested themselves little in political affairs or in distant governments. They wanted pastoral care to be provided by ministers without the intrusive or ﬁnancially burdensome aspects of the established religion. But who were the Reformed clergy of the sixteenth century? The sources in Zurich for such an overview are rich, as most of the parochial records, the minutes of the synod, the recommendations of the Examinatorkonvent,30 and the matriculation records of the Grossmünster School in the city remain extant.31 There are lacunae aplenty, but it is possible to obtain a clear, if general, picture of the men who formed the pastorate. The Zurich Church consisted of ﬁve urban and 115 rural parishes, and during the period from 1525 until the ﬁrst decade of the seventeenth century it was served by approximately 670 ministers, not including those who served as assistants or apprentices before taking over a parish. From this list of clergy it is possible to discern just under 400 family names, although that number drops by 42 if we remove the names of those clergy who had been Catholic priests and did not remain long in Zurich after the introduction of the Reformation. While it is likely that many of those ﬁrst-generation ministers were the sons of Catholic clergy, it is difﬁcult, and beyond the scope of this essay, to trace their family backgrounds. It can, however, be said with certainty that by the middle of the century the trend towards clerical families producing sons who went into the Church was evident, and after 1540 approximately 175 of the parochial ministers were the sons of ministers of the Zurich Church, culminating with the extraordinary calculation that by the 1590s over 60 per cent of the ministers in the parishes were the offspring of native clerical families. The trend towards the establishment of a clerical class is reinforced when we take again our ﬁgure of 356 family names for the Zurich ministry of the sixteenth century and ﬁnd that 140 of these

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families produced more than one minister. In the decades directly following the introduction of the Reformation the clergy were a fairly diverse body, but by the end of the century we ﬁnd the predominance of certain family names. The information available on the Zurich ministers allows us to give the following picture. During the Reformation most of the Catholic clergy remained in post.32 There was, however, an important generational change in the early 1530s as many of these men died or retired. In addition, a considerable number of ministers, more importantly strong supporters of the Reformation, were killed at the Battle of Kappel. During the 1530s and 1540s the Zurich Church suffered from an acute shortage of ministers in the parishes and incidents of vacant churches were high. It was during this time that provision for clerical education was being established with the founding of the Lectorium in the city. There was signiﬁcant shift in the background of the clergy from the 1530s through to the middle decades of the century. Many of the clergy in the ﬁrst twenty years of the Reformed Church in Zurich, despite the Meilen Articles, continued to be ‘foreigners’ from outside Zurich territory. Overall, 136 of the 670 ministers in Zurich were nonnative, though the vast majority of these outsiders were from the Swiss Confederation, with most coming from St Gall, Schaffhausen, Graubünden and the lands bordering Zurich, such as the Thurgau, Arau and Freiamt. A mere eighteen came from the Empire and ten from Alsace, with most of these arriving during the 1530s. The numbers are equally low if we look for ministers from either of the other major Reformed Swiss cities (Berne and Basel) or the Catholic states such as Schwyz, Zug and Lucerne. There were a handful of ministers who came to Zurich from these lands, and some clearly settled and started families, which produced sons who became ministers, but it was not a signiﬁcant trend. What does clearly emerge is that the fairly hybrid clergy which existed on the eve of the Reformation gave way during the period 1525-50 to a native clerical body. Approximately 80 per cent of the ministers came from families rooted in the city, and if we add in those from Winterthur, Embrach and Elgg, all of which had Latin schools, the ﬁgure rises to well over 90 per cent. The trend in Zurich through the sixteenth century was clear: increasing numbers of ministers came from a small number of urban, burgher families. It is precipitant to speak of a professional clerical class in the sixteenth century until, perhaps, the ﬁnal decades, but the pattern of clerical families is evident.

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The major obstacles facing the Church were those outlined by Bullinger in his Fürtrag on the Hüsli case: poor incomes, the low esteem in which the clerical profession was held and the high cost of education. Karin Maag has examined in detail the provision for students studying for the ministry in Zurich and has shown how a twotiered system emerged during the sixteenth century.33 For the majority of students four to ﬁve years of study at a Latin school was followed by three years at the Lectorium, where they would be instructed in theology and biblical languages, as well as the humanist arts of rhetoric. For a few – Maag places the ﬁgure at 112 for the period 1559–1620 – the city provided scholarships to study for up to two years at one of the other Reformed institutions of higher education, such as Geneva, Heidelberg or Leiden.34 For the sixteenth century it is possible to identify 48 ministers who studied at universities. Naturally, most went to Basel (21), followed by Heidelberg (10) and Marburg (7). Such an education, however, was the preserve of the few and the Lectorium in Zurich was neither the intellectual equivalent of university nor very well endowed. Educating ministers remained a struggle for families and Church alike; there were attempts to alleviate the ﬁnancial burden for students from poorer backgrounds with scholarships, but, for the most part, the ministry was open only to those whose families could afford the cost of both Latin schools and the Lectorium. To this we might add that the drain on family resources may well have continued after the minister was appointed to a parish. In the face of insufﬁcient parish livings many of the clergy had to rely on family resources to supplement their incomes. The records of the sixteenth-century Zurich Church give us a clear idea of how the clergy were managed.35 The nature of church discipline in Zurich was such that ministers were rarely dismissed from their post for any offence; rather, at worst they were suspended for a period of time until they made an adequate confession before the synod. Most frequently, however, the church leaders in Zurich sought to control the clergy by shifting them from parish to parish. If we look at the ministers of the sixteenth century we ﬁnd no clear pattern for how long a minister might remain in a particular parish. In some cases a minister might remain in the community for thirty years, while in other parishes we ﬁnd a new minister being appointed every couple of years. This was the result of the programme of pastoral training begun under the auspices of Heinrich Bullinger, who presided over the committee (Examinatorkonvent) responsible for proposing to the council who should be appointed to which parish. Certain rural parishes, such as

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Weiach, were used as training grounds for recent graduates, with the result that over the period from 1542 to 1609, 63 ministers served the parish. The training of ministers was augmented by the system of apprenticeship, which became possible by the mid-1550s when for the ﬁrst time Zurich had a surfeit of candidates for parishes. Where money would allow, parish ministers began to receive young men who had recently completed their studies at the Lectorium, known as the Expectanten, as assistants. These men would serve in various parishes before assuming one of their own. The administration of the rural churches in Zurich was dependent on an effective ﬂow of information into the city. By the 1550s, the time of the infamous Hüsli case, the church leaders had developed a system in which they attempted to match candidates with suitable parishes. The level of information about individual ministers is revealed in the ‘Büch der Fürschlägen und Expectanten’, kept by Wolfgang Haller from 1552 until 1590.36 In Haller’s records the recommendations of the Examinatorkonvent are to be found alongside comments on the state of the parish, revealing the pastoral interests of Bullinger and his colleagues. The matters raised are generally commonplace and often prosaic, but they constituted the daily business of the Church. In August 1552 Konrad Klauser from Wädenswyl was removed on account of ongoing, but unspeciﬁed, disputes with his community. He was paid 2 schillings and it was recommended that he return to school teaching, his earlier career.37 In 1567 in the parish of Otelﬁngen, which was linked to the church at Würenlos, the minister Benedikt Finsler was seriously ill and although his son Joshua was also a minister and able to relieve his father, he had no desire to look after both churches. The Examinatorkonvent determined that there was 40 schillings income in the parish, and that the father should be given 20, with the rest being used to pay for the son to replace him. The records of the Examinatorkonvent, which detail the discussions of the Zurich church leadership of events in the parishes, enable us to follow the lives of rural ministers in the sixteenth century. They also throw light on how Bullinger and his colleagues sought to deal with the myriad of problems which arose out of the vexed relations between the clergy and laity. In 1559 a report came to the committee from the parish of Birmensdorf in which the local bailiffs and civil ofﬁcials gave witness that the minister, Ulrich Tubbruner, was causing dissent with his preaching. From the pulpit he had denounced Catholics as heretics – Birmensdorf lay near the border with Catholic territory – and told his parishioners that it was better to deal with the devil than with

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someone of the Roman faith.38 In itself, the incident is neither unusual nor especially interesting. What makes the case worthy of attention is that we are well informed as to how Bullinger dealt with the matter. In 1561, two years after the ﬁrst complaint, the Examinatorkonvent reported to the council that it had summoned Tubbruner and submitted him to an examination.39 The report details the nature of the examination, which took the form of Bullinger asking the minister questions about the Christian faith and how one should conduct worship. Bullinger was satisﬁed with the answers he received. He then asked Tubbruner to preach (likely in the Grossmünster) on the ﬁrst chapter of I Peter. Tubbruner responded that he preferred to preach on the second chapter. No reason was offered for the preference, although one could imagine that the second chapter, with its emphasis on submission to political authorities, afforded Tubbruner the opportunity to impress his superiors. Bullinger reported that apart from some problems with pronunciation (ußsprachen) and some minor errors, Tubbruner had satisﬁed his examiners, who patiently explained to him those things he had misunderstood and admonished him to greater diligence (ﬂyß). Crucially, the committee reported that it believed that the accusations against Tubbruner’s preaching were unfounded. The vignette not only offers us a rare glimpse of how Bullinger personally examined ministers, but it demonstrated the church leader’s scepticism about reports which came from the parish communities. He rejected the complaints of the parishioners, though he used a private meeting with the minister to instruct and admonish him. This is the pattern evident in the Hüsli case; in public Bullinger was a ﬁerce defender of his clergy against the laity, preferring to keep all disciplinary matters and their resolution behind closed doors.

Parish life Although the disciplinary records of the Zurich Church, with their necessary emphasis on miscreants, present a skewed image of the ministers who laboured in the parishes, the reports which ﬂowed into the synod from the rural deans offer us an invaluable source of information on the range of daily issues which animated the relationship between clergy and laity. It must be remembered that over two-thirds of the sixteenth-century clergy were never mentioned in the disciplinary records. The Zurich Church was not particularly rigorous in the exercise of clerical discipline, conﬁning itself for the most part to verbal admonitions and exhortations.40 The reasons for this were both

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theological and pragmatic. For Bullinger, church discipline was inclusive in that it was to hold the Church together and not drive out offenders. Excommunication was not practised and reconciliation was the key word. From a practical perspective, the Zurich church leaders knew they could not rigorously enforce the morals mandates. It was extremely difﬁcult for ofﬁcials to gather reliable evidence from the farﬂung parishes of Zurich’s rural territories and they felt it more proﬁtable to issue a general warning than to go into the speciﬁcs of a case which might stir up dissention in a community. Further, the leaders of the Zurich Church made the canny decision to pursue only certain forms of abuse and to turn a blind eye to other issues, such as doctrinal correctness. One can count on one hand the number of accusations of heresy or false teaching made in sixteenth-century Zurich against members of the clergy; the church hierarchy did not inquire too closely into what was being preached unless it was causing scandal in the community. There are virtually no cases of ministers being disciplined for ‘Lutheran’ or any other unacceptable form of teaching, though we know from the records that many of the ministers were woefully ignorant of ofﬁcial theology. The reigning assumption, not unreasonably, seems to have been that the Church would have to wait until the fruits of the educational system had ripened. The church leaders, however, were intensely interested in all matters pertaining to clerical–lay relations. This was clearly articulated in Bullinger’s Fürtrag in the Hüsli case, when he spoke of the untold damage done to the life of the parish by the inadequate provision for the incumbent minister. But in looking at the records for the whole of the sixteenth century we ﬁnd there were certain subjects which continued to occupy the thoughts of the deans who reported to synod on the state of the rural clergy: language, drinking and violence. A brief examination of these subjects throws light on the crucial issues facing the clergy in Zurich. Language encompassed many aspects of the church life and in many ways it lay at the heart of the Zurich reformation itself, with its pride in the philological exactitude of its biblical exegesis.41 In particular language was an issue of the foremost importance because of the contentious issue of what should be preached.42 This had boiled over in the aftermath of Zwingli’s death and was named by the rural communities in the Meilen Articles, discussed above, as a matter of the greatest importance. The Hüsli case was contentious because it was part of an ongoing battle between the Church and the magistrates over control of the pulpit that went back to the earliest days of the

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Reformation. This matter was never really resolved in Zurich, with the consequence that both sides remained extraordinarily sensitive to the use and abuse of language. The Hüsli case was distinguished by the vehemence with which the council prosecuted the minister, but in parishes across the land ministers found themselves in trouble for using the pulpit against those they disliked. In a case from the same year as Hüsli’s, Balthasar Kuchimeister, minister in Flaach, was said in the course of a sermon to have called the local Landvogt a ‘los’ or sow, apparently referring to his appearance.43 The complaint about the sermon arose not from the congregation, but from another Vogt (bailiff) who had overheard the story recounted in the tavern. The case was pursued and, in November, sixteen members of Kuchimeister’s parish were examined, but all denied having heard their minister use the offensive analogy.44 None of the parishioners doubted that the minister was capable of such an inﬂammatory remark, but they simply had not heard it. Ulrich Bryßer, for example, claimed that he was hard of hearing and rarely understood what was preached. Johannes Gumprecht – interestingly, the former minister in the parish – replied that he had been unwell and was not in church on the day of the sermon. In fact, once given the opportunity, most of the sixteen interviewed used this opportunity to air complaints about the local ofﬁcials of the state, and were little interested in talking about their minister. They seem to have enjoyed the squabble between the minister and the Vogt. On occasion we gain glimpses of the manner in which the sermons of ministers could lead to the discussion of religious ideas among the laity in which private beliefs somewhat at variance with the ofﬁcial religion were expressed. An arresting example of the manner in which theological questions could reach the tavern was provided by Abraham Geßner and Isaac Hartmann, who, in 1573, discussed the Easter sermon of Rudolf Gwalther, in which he rejected intercessory prayers for the dead on the grounds that God had already helped them. Hartmann commented that he did not think it wrong when he said that with prayer ‘God helps my dear father towards salvation’.45 The pulpit was not the only focal point. The sixteenth century formed part of a long campaign by both state and Church against unacceptable forms of language, and the ministers found themselves once again caught in the middle. The Reformation morals mandates of the 1520s and 1530s condemned blasphemy as well as cursing and swearing. The case of Rudolf Hüsli stood in a tradition of verbal attacks on the ruling authorities for which the perpetrators were severely

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punished. As Francisca Loetz has shown, the blasphemous language for which numerous rural subjects were hauled before the disciplinary bodies articulated aspects of social and political protest.46 An example is Peter Schufelberg, who was found guilty on 1 September 1599 of being a traitor for declaring himself on the side of Zurich’s opponents by stating that, as God’s friend, he believed the rulers of Zurich to belong to the devil.47 The Church viewed swearing, cursing and blasphemy as ungodly acts which both spoiled the ground for true religion and would bring divine retribution. A crucial plank in the campaign to make men and women better Christians was to root out foul language in all its forms, and Bullinger expected the magistrates to play their part. In 1563 a rural dean in Freiamt reported to the synod on the ubiquity of swearing, commenting: ‘see how in the parishes swearing rapidly increases, so that young and old swear, and also that a disruptive, evil Anabaptist bumpkin called Andreas Guot from Ottenbach causes much trouble’.48 The Zurich council, however, seems at best to have paid only lip-service to the mandates governing blasphemy. Only occasionally were those found guilty ﬁned. Much more serious in the eyes of the magistrates was offensive language directed against the council or its representatives in the rural areas. Most of the swearing was directed against the parish ofﬁcials, such as the Vogt (bailiff) or Ehegaumer (church warden), though ministers frequently found themselves caught in the verbal crossﬁre. On the whole, the Church was not very successful in moving the magistrates to punish those who blasphemed against God; generally, they were either admonished from the pulpit or hauled before the local morals tribunal to be corrected. But, as Loetz has shown, those who used language against the civil rulers could expect to be punished. Most were ﬁned, some imprisoned, but Loetz has shown that after the Reformation at least 100 were executed in Zurich in the sixteenth century.49 The distinction between the political and religious misuse of language was evident in the Hüsli case, where draconian action was taken in response to what was interpreted as political criticism. The issue of swearing, cursing and blaspheming underscores the problems of gathering evidence in rural communities. In rural areas the reporting of blasphemous or slanderous language depended on the worth of a witness’s account and this explains why the people were so reluctant to make accusations. It was extremely difﬁcult to prove the verity of an accusation, and witnesses faced the unpleasant prospect of making an accusation which did not stick. The Untervogt of Küsnacht

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recorded that he did not report the blasphemous utterings of one Michel Degenharts because he had received the information secondhand (hör sagen und gemeiner gassen) through his wife. Both the minister and the Untervogt seem to have looked into the case, but in the absence of ﬁrsthand information, they preferred to let the case drop than to risk stirring up trouble with an uncertain result.50 The recurring pattern is that ministers and ofﬁcials stayed away from anything that could not be absolutely proved. Rumour and innuendo were never considered sufﬁcient grounds to risk a complaint. Bullinger had touched on this issue in his Hüsli Fürtrag, when he argued that it was crucial that when the magistrates received a complaint against a minister they should ﬁrst hear the minister before acting. Not to do so would constitute a failure to recognize the difﬁcult position occupied by the minister in the community.51 Bullinger’s advice to the council was that it should interview witnesses independently in order to ascertain whether the anonymous complaint against the preacher was legitimate or simply a personal vendetta. When the evidence from the community is consistent, the grounds were sufﬁcient for action, but in the absence of such evidence allegations should be treated with the utmost scepticism. Among the most problematical of the parishioners that the minister had to deal with were representatives of the Zurich council. The Zwinglian polity envisaged the minister and ofﬁcial working side by side in the parish, but in reality there was little doubt as to who had the upper hand. In 1554 the minister of Elgau found himself dealing with the Vogt Uolmann, who was well known for his drinking and blasphemy, yet he had never been punished or appeared in church. Uolmann seemed to enjoy ﬂaunting his authority and could not resist swearing and cursing in the presence of the minister. The minister sought in return to limit his discipline to an admonishment until in 1554 when someone made a complaint to the Obervogt. It may have been the minister himself, after Uolmann had injured his wife.52 Clearly the minister was intimidated by the Vogt and felt that he had no effective means to use against him; to have crossed the Vogt unsuccessfully would have fatally compromised the minister’s position in the community. Such intimidation and threats formed a central, if invisible, part of Zurich church discipline. An all too common aspect of life for ministers was drunkenness. Alcohol, it was widely understood, lay at the heart of much blasphemy and violence.53 In the records of Zurich disciplinary courts the connection was readily made; in 1592 the Kilian Häderli mentioned above

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was told that when he was full of wine or was drunk he swore.54 Peter Sarius acknowledged in 1592 that when he drank he swore dreadfully.55 For the most part the blasphemies were treated as the excesses of drinking. The extent of alcohol-related problems in Zurich reﬂected the wider European situation, but the subject was continually raised in the sixteenth century. The examples are legion, from Peter Grebel the minister of Wetzikon, who was running a tavern from his home, to the minister Matthias Bodmer, who scandalized the parish of Wädenswil in 1551 by ruining a marriage service with his drunken behaviour. Bodmer was drunk by the time the people had gathered in the church for the wedding, and then during the subsequent celebrations he began to abuse the people at the table and generally act like a fool.56 Bodmer was moved to the parish of Rafz, but old habits died hard and he was reported again in 1566 by the rural dean on account of persistent drinking, with the recommendation that he be removed.57 Taverns were most often the scenes of conﬂict between ministers and laity.58 The Zurich church leaders frequently demanded that their ministers refrain from entering taverns, but to little effect, as in the case of Markus Sulzer, the assistant minister in Wald, who was reported to prefer the company of farmers in the tavern to that of his fellow ministers.59 Sulzer compounded his situation by making a habit of drinking with Catholics, whom he met in Rapperswil. His situation as minister, however, was typical of what was happening in Zurich. Although he was moved from Wald to Hinwil in 1567, from where he was dismissed on account of drunkenness in 1572, he was then placed in the parish of Lipperswil in the Thurgau. Even ministers who were repeatedly found guilty of offences such as drinking were never completely removed from the body of the clergy. The Church preferred a strategy of moving them around, in an attempt to limit the damage. Violence in both the community and the household was common, reﬂecting a range of tensions. Felix Mülli of Bonstetten was well known for his drinking and inﬂammatory temper and in 1579, on his way home from the tavern at Christmas time, he began to ﬁght with some locals. Once home, in a drunken stupor, he began to beat his wife, who the synod heard was in a very bad way.60 When investigated Mülli denied the accusations and the Vogt commented that it was too difﬁcult to gather reliable information against him. The result was that he received only an admonition from the synod. The miserable situation of the rural clergy described by Heinrich Bullinger in 1555 is conﬁrmed by the church records of the sixteenth century, which describe lives in which families lived in ramshackle

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housing in communities in which they were outsiders. The exercise of the pastoral ofﬁce was fraught with trouble on all sides; as Hüsli and Bullinger learned to their cost, the magistrates would tolerate no dissention and were not prepared to follow the agenda of the Church. At the same time ministers had to be extraordinarily circumspect in the exercise of their authority in the parish, for they could not count on the loyalty of the people if the interests of the ofﬁcial religion conﬂicted with local or traditional practices and beliefs. For the most part, the clergy upheld an authority which for most people was remote and outside their interests. Religion was deeply rooted in the lives of the rural population, but they cared little for the Church’s theology or its moral intrusiveness. The minister walked a ﬁne line between providing the desired worship and pastoral care and alienating himself by either entering too far into the world of the rural communities or by staying too aloof. The invisible line between a minister and his parish put enormous pressures on the clergy and their families, with drinking, violence and adultery the consequence. For all its organization, the Reformed Church in Zurich had a better sense of what it did not want its ministers to be than what they should be. This ambiguity, combined with the hostility of civil government and the privations of the age, make it all the more remarkable that the evidence from silence remains that most ministers simply got on with their job in whatever way they could.

7 Teaching the Reformation: The Clergy as Preachers, Catechists, Authors and Teachers Ian Green

During the last half-century, historians of Western Europe in the early modern period have regularly and rightly attributed a key role to the clergy in inculcating the ideas of both Protestant and Catholic Reformations.1 This role was crucial not just because of the struggle for supremacy between old and new Churches, but also because of the challenges posed by an increasingly literate and critical laity. As a result, much more attention was paid to the education and training of the clergy and to preaching, there was a much greater and more sophisticated use of catechizing and of the printing press, and in many regions the clergy became increasingly involved, directly or indirectly, in the education of the laity on weekdays as well as Sundays. A few caveats are needed. Few of these developments were thoroughly planned, and later generations of clergy would learn from earlier mistakes. Moreover, even within different Protestant Churches, instruction could vary considerably, for example between urban and rural parishes, and even between villages and hamlets. Furthermore, teaching materials reveal a multi-layered pattern of instruction: from techniques and texts clearly aimed at the best educated minds of the day, through an increasing array of intermediate versions, to those targeted at the barely literate or completely illiterate.2 Protestant clergies usually faced competition for the laity’s attention, from the old Church and from dissenting Protestants, but also increasingly, in England at least, from printers and publishers with less orthodox views of what the laity should read. For much of the sixteenth century, and increasingly in the next two centuries, clerical orthodoxy was also in constructive tension with the ideals inculcated by the humanistinspired stress on the classics – ideals which leading reformers had enthusiastically endorsed, but which over time encouraged the 156

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educated elite to view whatever the clergy said in a more critical light. The clergy also regularly encountered strong opinions from all ranks of the laity on many aspects of ritual, music, church ﬁttings and furniture, and memorials in churches and churchyards, which all had a didactic element and on which the clergy could not always ensure that the ofﬁcial line was toed, or indeed secretly agreed with the laity. The parish clergy were the interface between the doctrine and ritual of the magisterial reformation and congregations whose reaction was usually a mixture of selective acquiescence, encouragement, appropriation and passive or active resistance. And the more local studies that are done, the more we see how the clergy on the ground adjusted their teaching to this state of affairs.3 One further caveat: though English Protestants learned an enormous amount from mainland Protestantism in the half century from 1520 to 1570, and then engaged in a two-way exchange of ideas and texts for the next two centuries, the experience of the English Church was typical of neither Lutheran nor Calvinist countries. Its idiosyncratic theology and old-fashioned structure marked it out from most other Churches, while the patchy strengths and many weaknesses of its educational development and vibrant but quirky print trade were also not mirrored exactly in other Protestant countries. That said, we will ﬁnd enough parallels at different points to justify taking English instruction as an exemplar of Protestant indoctrination in general.

Preaching Preaching the Word was widely stated to be one of the marks of the True Church: in the Augsburg and Helvetic Confessions, and the nineteenth of the English Church’s Thirty-Nine Articles. Preaching in the vernacular had actually been increasing in the pre-Reformation Church, especially in the major cities and universities, and the areas through which itinerant friars passed. But in Protestant eyes, such preaching was not only too infrequent and preoccupied with an allegorical and eschatological rather than a literal interpretation, but also too concerned with morality and examples of virtue culled from the saints’ lives, rather than focusing on the essentials of salvation – the Law, the Gospel, faith, justiﬁcation and obedience.4 For many Protestant clergy, to preach was to act as the divinely appointed channel through which, with the help of the Holy Ghost, the Word was expounded and the faithful called to salvation. As Hugh Latimer put it to the young King Edward VI in 1549: ‘And how shall they hear

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without a preacher? I tell you it is the footstep of the ladder of heaven, of our salvation. There must be preachers if we look to be saved.’5 The pulpit was also used in the ﬁrst stages of the Reformation to challenge the teachings and structure of the old Church and to offer radical alternatives. It was no coincidence that the ﬁrst major centres of reform all had a powerful, well-educated preacher, convinced that the Catholic Church had betrayed the faithful and with a burning sense of urgency about the need for change: Martin Luther in Wittenberg, Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich, Martin Bucer in Strasbourg, Andreas Osiander in Nuremberg, Guillaume Farel and Jean Calvin in Geneva, and Hugh Latimer in London. In countries where Protestantism remained on the defensive, such as late sixteenthcentury France and the Netherlands, the pulpit continued to be used in this polemical way for some time, whereas in more stable areas the political role of the pulpit became increasingly conﬁned to defending the modus vivendi worked out with the state.6 Leading reformers continued to press for preaching in every parish as a top priority, and to set the highest standards for the preparation of sermons through treatises on the art of preaching, such as those of Philip Melanchthon, Andreas Hyperius and Niels Hemmingsen, and in England William Perkins and John Wilkins – works that distilled the wisdom of Cicero and Quintilian on the art of rhetoric, and urged preachers to learn Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin, and consult the best translations of the Bible and a wide range of sciptural commentaries.7 But beyond the pulpits used by the major preachers, there was for some time a desperate shortage of qualiﬁed preachers, and various short-term expedients had to be adopted, such as co-operation with reform-friendly priests, peripatetic preachers and outdoor preaching. These soon raised other problems: the risk of disunity in doctrine and the need for central control over the content of sermons.8 Three solutions quite widely adopted were the holding of conferences at which the better educated clergy showed the less educated the proper way to expound a text; the dissemination of catechisms aimed as much at ignorant pastors as at ignorant parishioners, such as Luther’s Large and Small Catechisms; and the publication of postils – short explanations and expositions of the biblical lessons which each church had assigned to services on speciﬁed Sundays throughout the year. Just as the less educated priests of the late medieval Church had been provided with manuals containing homiletic material and ready-made sermons, such as Mirk’s Festial in England and the Dormi secure in Spain, so the less competent Protestant preachers were soon being offered postils

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compiled by Luther, Spangenberg, Brenz, Fröschel, Hemmingsen, Corvinus and Bullinger, to read out loud to their congregations or use as the raw materials for efforts of their own devising. At a more advanced level, Calvin’s daily sermons in Geneva were transcribed, and by 1563, 21 volumes of them were available in print.9 As the parish clergy became better educated, so they became less reliant on aids such as these, but by then new problems had emerged as the laity’s early enthusiasm for sermons, perhaps ignited by the excitement they generated and a sense of being ﬂattered by the early reformers’ appeal to their judgement over the future of the Church, gave way to a reluctance to master new teachings and change longestablished practices. By the time most of the clergy were able to preach good sermons, they were faced not just by the question ‘what should we preach?’ but also by the question ‘to what is the laity prepared to listen?’10 The evolution of preaching in Protestant England ﬁts into this pattern. At the outset, reformers used the pulpit in London and major provincial cities to press the case for reformation, and in the next two or three generations in these and additional pulpits in towns and rural parishes dominated by zealous gentry, carefully honed sermons by strongly motivated, well-educated preachers set a benchmark for the rest of the clergy to follow. Throughout the period 1560–1660, many committed Calvinists gave preaching clear pre-eminence over their other priestly functions, since for them the effectual calling of the foreordained elect and helping the regenerate along the rocky road to gloriﬁcation remained the highest possible achievements of their ministry.11 But in other parishes, short-term solutions were needed, and the ‘godly’, the most zealous English Protestants, roundly condemned not only the ‘dumb’ priests left over from the old order who did not preach, but also the new ‘hirelings’ who took the congregation’s money but could not or would not preach the Word of Life. For the ‘godly’ the solution was for the learned clergy to supervise the further education of substandard clergy through ‘exercises’ and ‘prophesyings’, and later ‘clergy councels’ and ‘lectures by combination’. But Queen Elizabeth and the more conservative bishops became worried about possible criticisms and even subversion being aired at these meetings, and preferred a different strategy: use catechizing and homilies to educate the laity and prepare them for communion until enough preaching clergy were available.12 Two sets of ofﬁcially approved homilies, written by the leading clergy of the day, were issued to be read out loud by clergy not yet

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qualiﬁed to preach. Certaine sermons, or homilies passed through 36 editions between 1547 and 1640, and The second tome of homilies through 20 editions between 1563 and 1640. Even thereafter, there was still a steady demand for these two volumes from less well endowed parishes and from inexperienced curates called on to preach when the rector or vicar was away. These homilies may have lacked the topicality and the elaborate expositions and applications found in sermons preached in the best pulpits of the day, and were more like the homilies of the Fathers in using simple language and scriptural material above all else to explain a basic topic, such as faith, good works, sacraments or one of the major festivals of the Church. Most were also divided into two, three or four parts, each taking perhaps ten minutes to read, so that a reader could either read the whole at one time, as on Easter Day, or at separate services on the same day or on consecutive Sundays. Shakespeare clearly heard them often enough in his youth for his blotting-paper memory to absorb many of their cadences, and moderate dissenters like Richard Baxter and John Wesley as well as more conformable clergy continued to praise their sound, simple doctrine.13 The better qualiﬁed English clergy also sought to help less experienced or less conﬁdent preachers in other ways. An English version of Niels Hemmingsen’s Postill passed through ﬁve editions between 1569 and 1585, and became required reading for less educated clergy in the northerly diocese of Durham in the 1570s and 1580s. Other helps included providing sets of notes on the Bible concordances to help ﬁnd cognate passages, and lists of suitable ‘heads’ for sermons; and many of the new catechetical works discussed below also had an element of exposition.14 Fortunately, due to a rapid expansion of the universities and sterling efforts by some bishops to recruit graduates into the ministry, the proportion of clergy in England who were graduates and therefore expected and licensed to preach soon rose from between a ﬁfth and two-ﬁfths in 1560 to as high as three-quarters or more in most areas by 1640. Certainly, by 1600, probably more than half of the parish clergy had preaching licences, and those still without a licence were told to engage the services of a preacher once a month for their parish. The positive returns to episcopal and archidiaconal enquiries about clerical performance, and evidence from other sources such as clerical diaries, leave no doubt that the number of sermons preached in England each week had increased dramatically from a low (albeit rising) level in the early sixteenth century to a much higher level a century later, and often two a day on Sundays.15

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Quantity did not guarantee the quality the enthusiasts hoped for, and what evidence we have points in contrasting directions. On the one hand, there is evidence of both quantity and quality, and of demand for printed sermons; on the other, there are indications of more modest expectations and of sermons fulﬁlling a rather different function to that the ﬁrst reformers and zealots had imagined. By the 1620s some leading ﬁgures in England had become inordinately proud of the learning of its clergy. ‘Stupor mundi clerus Brittanicus, “The wonder of the world is the clergy of Britain”’, proclaimed a bishop in 1624; and Francis Bacon boasted in his Advancement of learning that if the best points made in English sermons were placed together in due order, it would make the best work of divinity written since the time of the apostles. The rapidly expanding English print trade was also immediately harnessed to ensure that the best Protestant sermons of the day had an impact not just on the congregation that ﬁrst heard them, but also on the readers who could peruse them repeatedly thereafter.16 Estimates of the number of sermons printed in England rise from 1,000 for the period 1558–1603, and 2,000 for 1603–40, to well over 24,000 for 1660–1783, which even allowing for the much longer period represents a massive increase in the second century after the Reformation. There can be no denying the impact of many of these printed sermons, and historians and literary scholars have homed in on them, especially those with a whiff of controversy or polemic.17 Sermons which, for one reason or another, caught the mood of the moment – a political or military crisis, a bad outbreak of plague or other natural catastrophe – could pass through several editions in the space of a year or two; a few provocative sermons managed to sell steadily for some years after the occasion of their delivery.18 Less combative, more evangelical sermons also sold well, but over a longer span of years, and usually in the form of the collected sermons of well-known preachers. Thus over twenty editions of the collected sermons of Henry Smith (dubbed ‘Silver-tongued’ for the affective quality of his preaching) were published in England between 1592 and 1675, and were ‘used as a handmaid to prayer bedward in some families’ according to a church historian of the day. The collected sermons of John Tillotson (for the copyright of which his wife received the princely sum of £2,500 from a publisher who knew he was on to a winner) were also read regularly by pious laymen, as well as admired by many clergy.19 But the sermons of Smith and Tillotson were printed in the more expensive formats of the day – fat quartos or imposing folios – which,

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together with a decent binding, put them well beyond the reach of many Protestants. Indeed, analysis of the sermons that went through repeated editions suggests they were mostly given by the top 10 or 20 per cent of the clergy of the day, to a congregation in a cathedral, university or major church which contained a number of well-informed and discerning listeners, and not on a regular Sunday, but on a special occasion such as a major calendar festival, a commemorative day (the Queen’s birthday, Gunpowder Day, the return of Charles II), a society wedding or eminent person’s funeral. Moreover, many printed sermons were considerably augmented for publication, and carefully polished, and festooned with references to learned authors and citations in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and an epistle dedicatory to an existing or prospective patron. An increasing proportion of printed sermons may, in fact, have had an element of vanity or ambition or familial devotion about their publication, and most did not get past their ﬁrst edition, which leaves their typicality and impact unclear.20 In fact, preaching became even more diverse than these printed works would suggest. By the 1630s the clergy was predominantly graduate, but the authorities were concerned that many adults still needed reinforcing in the basics of the faith, and so decreed that one of the Sunday sermons should be replaced by public catechizing during the service when both children and parents were present. The short catechetical homilies that resulted became a regular feature of Sunday afternoon services in many churches in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Moreover, when Richard Baxter in the 1650s drew a distinction between the ‘plain country divinity’ which he thought his West Midlands parishioners needed to hear and the ‘more curious stomachs’ of the London congregation to whom he sometimes preached, he was echoing a quite widely held assumption.21 Thousands of manuscript sermons and sermon notes have survived for England in the period c. 1600–1780, and preliminary analysis suggests that a high proportion were devoted to simple exegesis of the basics of the faith: God’s power, wisdom and all-seeing providential care; Christ’s sacriﬁce for sinful man and intercession for believers; the role of the Holy Spirit and the need for grace; the necessity not just of faith, but also of repentance and genuine piety. The function of these sermons was not just didactic but also exhortatory: urging the congregation to identify and be contrite for their sins, to pray to God for grace to help them live better lives, and to take advantage of the means available in the Church through collective worship and the sacraments; and warning them of the incalculable dangers of putting off

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repentance a moment longer. A signiﬁcant proportion were linked either to speciﬁc festivals or seasons, such as Christmas and Easter, Lent and Advent, or to regularly recurring situations – the need to prepare for communion, or for the living to draw lessons from the death of a family member or neighbour. Manuscript sermons also appear to have been shorter than printed ones (in the forms in which the two survive), and many, like the ofﬁcial homilies, were divided into sections which could be given morning and evening on the same day or in successive weeks. It is also clear from the annotations on them that a high proportion of manuscript sermons were given more than once – either in different parishes or in the same parish again after a decent interval had elapsed. In short, what we have in these manuscript sermons of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are texts viewed primarily as a means of regular oral instruction and exhortation, and as part of a package that included catechizing, regular reading of the Word, worship and the use of the sacraments and the rites of passage.22 Had the nature and function of preaching changed considerably since the high hopes of the ﬁrst reformers and the top priority given preaching by the high Calvinists in Elizabethan and early Stuart England? Or did preaching in the average rural parish demonstrate both a degree of continuity with the simple doctrinal teaching and repeated exhortations found in late medieval sermons and in the ofﬁcial homilies of the new Church in 1547 and 1563, and a growing recognition by many preachers of the need for them constantly to address the increasing moralism of more educated parishioners and the persistent semi-Pelagianism and rites of passage-centred faith of less educated ones? In the absence of many manuscript sermons for the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century, it is hard to be certain, but further research is needed before we can establish what was the norm at parish level.23

Catechizing A second major element in Protestant instruction consisted of catechizing, deﬁned by one English catechist in 1613 as ‘a divine ordinance from old times used in God’s church to inform the ruder sort summarily by questions and answers in the principles of religion’. As this acknowledged, adult converts being prepared for baptism in the early Church had been referred to as katechumenoi and given oral instruction in the rudiments such as the Creed, Lord’s Prayer and sacraments. By

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the late Middle Ages, religious instruction such as the ‘Layfolks’ catechism’ in England and Gerson’s Tractatus de parvulis and L’ABC des simples gens in France was being offered to adolescents and adults who had been baptized as children, to teach them the basics of the faith and prepare them for a perfect confession of their sins. But where Catholic teachers often used Latin for formulae such as the Credo and Pater Noster, Protestants would insist on using the vernacular; where Catholics included material such as the seven works of mercy, seven deadly sins, seven cardinal virtues and seven sacraments, Protestants rejected these and substituted the Ten Commandments and the shortened list of sacraments which they felt had scriptural warrant; and where Catholics used visual aids as supplements, Protestants were strongly opposed to this. Moreover, whereas a Catholic ‘catechyzon’ like the one that Dean Colet drew up for the students at St Paul’s in London consisted of a series of statements that together comprised a declaration of faith, Protestant catechisms from the 1520s in Germany and later elsewhere adopted a system of questions and answers designed to provide knowledge and increase comprehension. With the addition of conversational elements borrowed from the dialogues then fashionable in humanist circles, we ﬁnd a hybrid catechism like Calvin’s of 1541, which would prove more typical of Protestant catechetics: this handled the same material as Luther’s, but with greater ﬂuidity and a more personal tone which stood a better chance of keeping catechumens’ attention.24 In Germany Luther placed the responsibility for catechizing ﬁrst on the heads of households, but then, ﬁnding little support, switched the focus to government-run schools. When the system was fully organized, pastors were supposed to expound the Short Catechism or at least read a part of it ‘in a loud voice and distinctly’ every Sunday; teachers had the lion’s share of responsibility for drilling boys and girls of all grades; and parents were supposed to reinforce and test their children’s progress.25 But in England, where there was no state system of schooling, the main thrust of elementary catechizing always took place in church, on Sunday afternoons during Lent or the summer, with the minister or his curate taking the lead. The catechizing of the young in church regularly faced resistance from older catechumens – the adolescents and domestic servants required to attend alongside children aged six to ten – and sometimes a lack of co-operation from their parents and masters as well. But gradually it seems to have secured acceptance, perhaps due to the relative stability of political and ecclesiastical conditions in England, at ﬁrst in the more prosperous and literate

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South-East, and later increasingly in the Midlands and further North and West. The parish clergy probably secured more co-operation in medium-sized towns and villages than in very large or very small communities, and certainly did better where the social or educated elite supported catechizing actively.26 Catechizing at elementary level was reinforced in the wide variety of primary schools that evolved in early modern England, and to a lesser extent in the home (especially if a chaplain or neighbouring minister was present); while catechizing at intermediate and advanced levels took place more in grammar schools and universities than church or home. For what seems to have happened in England was that a divide emerged along educational lines. Through exposure to a limited amount of basic instruction in church for a few weeks each year, a large number of catechumens with little formal education mastered the staple formulae and the few basic answers built round them. But the minority who attended school for any length of time formed a captive group that was exposed to regular weekly bouts of catechizing throughout the academic year. The longer they stayed in secondary or tertiary education, the more they were expected to learn and understand. The returns from diocesan visitations and enquiries, combined with the ﬁgures for new forms and repeat editions of existing forms discussed below, suggest a steady upward curve in elementary catechizing to a moderately high level by the early eighteenth century; and grammar and public school records conﬁrm consistent weekly catechizing at intermediate and advanced levels during term time.27 The most frequently used elementary catechism in England was the ofﬁcial short catechism of 1549, which came to be known as the Prayer Book catechism from its inclusion in successive versions of the new Church’s liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer. It was so basic that a section on the sacraments had to be added in the early 1570s and, although reproduced literally millions of times in three locations – in the Book of Common Prayer, with the alphabet in The ABC with the catechisme, and with alphabet and prayers in The primer and catechisme – it was soon felt by many catechists that it needed supplementing, in various ways. There was a need for forms to put ﬂesh on the bare bones of the Prayer Book catechism, and help catechumens understand its more difﬁcult doctrines; for intermediate forms – for those children who had quickly mastered the Prayer Book form but were not old enough for the conﬁrmation and ﬁrst communion which followed in its wake; for forms better suited to use in school and the home; for advanced forms, for those senior grammar school boys and under-

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graduates who had mastered intermediate forms, especially if they were destined for the ministry; and for adults who had been never been taught or had forgotten their catechisms. For catechizing was seen by Protestants in England, as elsewhere, not just as a means of teaching children the basic religious knowledge without which salvation was impossible, but of ensuring that as adults they would be capable of understanding the Bible and the liturgy as well as sermons, and of distinguishing true doctrine from false, making a profession of their faith and playing a full role in church life, including participation in the Lord’s Supper.28 The number of supplementary catechetical forms written in England was astonishing. A few survive in manuscript alone, but at least 800 new forms were published by Protestants in England between the 1530s and the 1730s. Just under 30 appeared between the 1530s and the 1560s, when English catechists came under strong Continental inﬂuence but were also writing native versions, some of which (such as the different forms associated with Alexander Nowell) proved very long-lived. Well over 250 new forms appeared between the 1570s and the early 1640s, a period characterized by greater diversity of forms and targets, greater sophistication of technique and greater degree of independence from Continental models. And the remaining 500 date from the late 1640s to the mid-eighteenth century, a period that witnessed continuing experiments with techniques and a wider range of doctrine and higher proportion of polemic than before, as presbyterians and sects developed their own forms of teaching.29 Nor are these ﬁgures the end of the story, for many supplementary catechisms passed through a few repeat editions, and a small number of them proved to be best-sellers or steady sellers. Between the 1570s and the early 1640s perhaps 250,000 copies were printed of the ﬁve most popular titles (all by ‘godly’ authors), on top of perhaps half a million copies of the remaining new titles of that phase. During the third phase, the 30 works that offered supplements to or modiﬁed versions of the presbyterians’ Westminster Shorter Catechism passed through seventy editions in England alone, while the eight most popular supplements to or expositions of the Prayer Book catechism account for well over 200 repeat editions, or perhaps half a million copies, and this on top of the sales of millions of the original form. These ﬁgures for printed forms (as opposed to manuscript ones) appear high compared to other Protestant countries that actively practised catechizing and reﬂect the alliance forged between a dedicated core of catechists, anxious to improve new techniques of instruction to

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compensate for the loss of older techniques, and a growing number of publishers and printers who were prepared to experiment with new texts that might sell like hot cakes and who faced little interference from the authorities in doing so.30 It has been suggested that catechizing on the mainland of Europe was a failure in increasing knowledge and commitment to the Protestant Church, and it certainly cannot be argued that in England catechizing by itself produced the results for which generations of idealists hoped – an informed, committed, pious Christian community. But it may be suggested that catechizing left a distinct impression on those who spent time in grammar schools and universities, which included virtually all the next generation of clergy and most magistrates, and that cumulatively it provided a growing proportion of the rest of the population with a set of terms and concepts, and a standard of knowledge and understanding, that was not contemptible by today’s standards. Moreover, that basic vocabulary of words and ideas was reinforced by what the laity heard and said in the liturgy of any church services attended, and what they heard in the sermons and catechetical homilies delivered when parents, children, and servants were all present.31 Any effort to gauge the success or failure of catechizing – as of preaching – in Europe as a whole should rely not just on the criticisms of highly educated, strongly motivated idealists, but also on the realities of the situation in different countries, areas and periods. Clergy who made realistic demands on their parishioners were more likely to achieve a degree of co-operation and unspectacular orthodoxy than those who sought to impose a new standard of knowledge and behaviour with little regard to their wishes or capabilities. In addition, shorter, simpler forms were more likely to be mastered than longer ones, though longer ones such as the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Larger Catechism were deemed valuable by the authorities as benchmarks of orthodoxy for the better educated laity and future clergy of a Church. Catechists’ aims also shifted, for example, from confronting the complaints made in the ﬁrst decades of the Reformation that the laity did not know the basics of the new faith to those made by later generations that the laity did not appear to understand them fully, and from an early focus on doctrine to a later one on inculcating a distinct model of social and political behaviour and confessional conformity as well. The results of catechizing – as of preaching – should also be viewed in the context of other forms of religious instruction and ediﬁcation, and of lay beliefs and practices in general, rather than treated in isolation.32

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The writing of improving works We have already encountered a few of the instructive works prepared by the clergy for the press. However, there was perhaps more variation in the character of Protestant printing than in Protestant preaching or catechizing. Printing presses had mushroomed all over Western Europe in the decades before the Reformation began, and although many printers’ wares were designed for an educated elite who could read Latin, or to provide the laity with printed versions of the devotional or improving works previously owned in manuscript, printers had begun to use the medium for polemical ends as well. In Germany, Luther and his followers used the new medium not only in novel ways but also to much greater advantage than their opponents, at least for a while. Between 1518 and 1544, Luther oversaw the publication of well over 2,500 editions of sermons, polemical defences, bibles, devotional works and catechisms, all in German. Except for special works such as the German New Testament and Bible, formats shifted to smaller sizes, such as quarto and octavo: by 1530 there were perhaps six million Flugschriften circulating in Germany – pamphlets of 8, 16 or 32 pages, often violently attacking the traditions of the old Church, and decorated with striking woodcuts of some quality. Luther’s allies also used illustrated broadsheets to great effect to make contact with ‘simple folk’ who could not read or afford books.33 As the Catholic Church fought back, however, publishing became riskier, and many authors and printers had to resort to disguising their identity or even moving into exile, for example in Geneva and Emden, both of which experienced dramatic increases in printing, and then smuggling copies of their works to co-religionaries back home. Some Protestant countries, such as Sweden and Scotland, did not have a fully developed press for many years and had to rely on copies printed elsewhere, whereas others which had developed them at an early stage, including parts of Germany, witnessed a relative decline after the early burst of activity. Bible production, for example, did not peak again there until the Pietist movement took hold over a century later.34 England presents another variant: a relatively slow start from the 1530s to the 1560s, then a rapid expansion reaching an initial peak in the early seventeenth century, and ﬁnally a levelling off and a partial loss of control to publishers at the very time that the Evangelical Revival was starting. In the catalogues produced by English booksellers from the 1590s to the 1660s, works of ‘divinity’ comprised at least half

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the titles on sale, and about half or easily the largest single category for the next century. Richard Baxter, the model pastor of Kidderminster already mentioned, welcomed this development: ‘Great store of all sorts of good books through the great mercy of God are common among us,’ he wrote in the early 1680s; ‘no nation ... in their own tongue hath the like.’ He himself had contributed mightily to this state of affairs: seeing himself as a ‘pen in God’s hand’, he published 140 titles and wrote the preface for dozens of others. And if we focus on those works published in early modern England of which the main purpose was either instruction – imparting doctrinal wisdom or ecclesiastical information of a Protestant kind – or exhortation – trying to help others live a Christian life – we ﬁnd that the great majority were written or produced by clergymen like Baxter, usually acting on their own initiative but occasionally on others.35 Thus successive translations of the Bible into English might all owe a great deal to a layman, William Tyndale, but it was bishops like Thomas Cranmer and Matthew Parker who added the prefatory material, saw ofﬁcially approved versions such as the ‘Great’ and the ‘Bishops’ through the press, and ensured that sufﬁcient numbers of folio copies were printed at a price that enabled each parish to afford a copy for its lectern. It was exiled churchmen who undertook and ﬁrst published the Geneva translation, and on their return to England supported its publication there also. And it was a committee of eminent churchmen and academics in holy orders who produced the Authorized Version of 1611 which replaced the Geneva Bible as the norm even for presbyterians in England and Scotland. As many as 129 editions of the Great, Bishops’ and Geneva translations may have been printed between 1539 and 1616, but perhaps four times as many editions of the Authorized Version appeared between the 1610s and the 1730s – the vast majority of those in the newer, smaller formats such as octavo and duodecimo which were destined not for lecterns but for the homes of the literate laity and for schools.36 In addition, well over 500 editions of the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer (a revised version of Cranmer’s Edwardian liturgies, and itself revised in 1604 and 1662) were published between 1559 and the 1730s; and perhaps 790 editions of Sternhold and Hopkins’s The whole book of psalmes collected into English meter appeared in the same period, in a variety of formats and typeface to match the bibles and prayer books bought by the more prosperous laity at the same time, so that they could be bound and taken conveniently to church – a move that the clergy did not initiate but certainly condoned.37

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The clergy were deﬁnitely the leading spirit in the production of various other categories of published work, including devotional works, handbooks on how to prepare for communion, and a broad category of ‘treatises’. The clergy were soon aware that many of the laity lacked the conﬁdence or the skill to compose their own prayers and meditations, and with the willing co-operation of publishers were soon trying to supply the need that had once been ﬁlled by Catholic primers, by using a mixture of old and new materials, and of current Catholic and Protestant prayers and meditations. Some of the devotional aids prepared by the clergy achieved wide dissemination: over 40 editions of Thomas Sorocold’s Supplications of saints were printed between 1612 and 1723, and over 20 of Samuel Hieron’s A helpe unto devotion (c. 1612–50). But this was an area where laymen joined in, and did as well if not better in identifying and satisfying the laity’s needs, though in subtly different ways.38 The same was true of manuals designed to help the laity prepare mentally and spiritually to receive communion. There was a sprinkling of such works by clergy throughout the Stuart period. But the presbyterian Thomas Doolittle’s Treatise concerning the Lords supper (27 editions between 1667 and 1726) and the episcopalian John Tillotson’s Persuasive to frequent communion (priced at 6d bound, 24 editions between 1683 and 1771) faced stiff competition from less orthodox works probably sponsored by publishers, such as G.B.’s A weeks preparation toward the worthy receiving of the Lords Supper, which passed through over forty editions between 1678 and 1725.39 Treatises constituted another publishing phenomenon. There were treatises expounding particular books of the Bible, including translations of works by Luther, Calvin and others; studies of church history; works providing a systematic account of a wide range of Protestant doctrines; discourses on more speciﬁc aspects such as the life of faith, the nature of repentance and cases of conscience; and handbooks on how to live a godly life, and how to prepare for death. The most popular broad surveys of the life of faith were of Catholic origin, suitably modiﬁed for Protestant readers: Thomas Rogers’ translation of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi passed through 17 English editions between 1580 and 1640, while Edmund Bunny’s modiﬁcation of the Jesuit Robert Parsons’s First booke of the Christian exercise sold at least 30 editions between 1584 and 1630. Others works on the life of faith were narrower in focus, such as the high Calvinists’ stress on introspective searching for the marks of election and advice on coping with the trials God sent His children; less doctrinaire, more reassuring works by

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moderate Calvinists, such as Richard Baxter’s Call to the unconverted and Richard Alleine’s Alarme to the unconverted, proved much better sellers.40 Some handbooks providing detailed advice on godly living and dying sold even better. Bishop Lewis Bayly’s The practise of pietie, directing a Christian how to walke that he may please God passed through nearly 90 editions in the century after its ﬁrst appearance in 1612, and was also translated into Welsh, German, French, Hungarian, Romanian and Italian, and may have had some inﬂuence in the rise of Pietism in Holland and in Germany, where nearly 70 editions of a German version had been published by 1750.41 Then there were treatises of a polemical kind, both ofﬁcial or semiofﬁcial and unofﬁcial, highlighting the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, and between different forms of Protestantism; but these may best be considered elsewhere.42 What may be noted here, and is as true of polemical as well as other forms of treatise, and indeed of devotional works, bibles, catechisms and sermons, is the trend away from a relatively narrow range of larger, expensive works aimed at the educated clerical and lay elites in the ﬁrst 50 years after the Reformation, towards a much greater variety of intermediate forms aimed at poorer clergy and committed laity, of shorter, cheaper works targeted at the many more people who by then were able to read and to afford ‘good books’, and of specialist works designed for readerships not yet catered for, such as female readers and children who could read but did not attend school. Publishers played their part by ensuring that these newer works were presented in a more attractive guise than the earliest ones, by using better layout, paper and typeface, and adding a catchy title and a specially commissioned engraving for the title-page.43 The same combination of authors’ ﬂexibility and publishers’ commercial instincts can be seen at work in other genres which were not in origin edifying but could be turned to that end, for example, dialogues, verse, epigrams, ‘characters’, allegories and essays. A clerical author like George Herbert hoped to catch the laity’s attention in this less conventional way: ‘A verse may ﬁnd him who a sermon ﬂies, / And turn delight into a sacriﬁce.’ Similar genres combining entertainment and ediﬁcation became the province of the lay author and the eager publisher as much as the clergy, for example, uplifting biographies, cautionary tales, bible stories for children with cheap woodcuts, and ‘histories of the Bible’ for adults with expensive engravings. At the cheapest end of the market there were also hundreds of ‘godly’ chapbooks and ballads, though historians currently disagree on the

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extent to which the English clergy were involved in penning these forms of popular literature and of the orthodoxy of the works that resulted.44 Ballads are a good example of the interface between literate society and semi-literate or illiterate society. But so also are the two main forms of oral indoctrination examined earlier in this chapter – preaching and catechizing – and some of the most frequently reprinted works just discussed – the large bibles placed on lecterns, the regular services and rites of passage in the Book of Common Prayer, the ofﬁcial homilies, and Sternhold and Hopkins’s metrical psalms. Long after the age of print had arrived, and its products multiplied and modiﬁed to meet the diversiﬁcation of English readerships, the dissemination of the Word, especially in rural areas, still owed much to the spoken word, and the clergy were the most regular speakers as well as writers of the age. The full impact of print, in England, as elsewhere, would not be felt until the nineteenth century.

Teaching in schools and universities The schooling of the laity was another phenomenon that had been on the increase long before the Reformation: Latin schools taught boys grammar and some practical skills such as arithmetic and the Latin liturgy (to sing as a chorister), while vernacular schools taught boys and girls literacy and simple vernacular prayers. But here too we ﬁnd rapid expansion and change in the sixteenth century, in both the curriculum and the patronage and control of schools; and here too, the English pattern was in part the same, in part different. It was much the same at the lowest level, where thousands of unauthorized vernacular schools – ‘dame schools’, ‘petty’ or ‘small schools’ like the German Winkelschulen – sprouted up to provide those children whose parents could afford it with basic literacy, a practical skill and mastery of the basic approved catechism. At secondary and tertiary levels, there were also parallels in the inﬂuence of Christian humanism on the curricula and style of education, and in the closer relationship that emerged between the state and the universities.45 But in other ways the English pattern was atypical. Whereas in many Lutheran and Calvinist states the government stepped in to regulate and standardize elementary and secondary education in a highly centralized manner, in England government intervention was spasmodic, regulation of teachers was left to the Church, and a wide degree of latitude was allowed on the school curriculum. Whereas in

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Saxony under Melanchthon, Strasbourg under Jean Sturm, and Geneva under Calvin, Latin schools and academies were created with the aim, as the Genevan ordinances put it, of ‘instructing children to prepare them for the ministry as well as for civil government’, in England there was no such overt aim. The best schools – Winchester, Eton, St. Paul’s and Westminster – could provide a classical education comparable to the best found on the Continent, but most of their students from noble or gentry backgrounds entered neither the Church nor civil ofﬁce; and the same was true of the many of the sons of the lesser gentry, yeomanry and urban elites who attended the hundreds of grammar schools refounded or created in early modern England. Also, whereas on the Continent the tertiary level in Protestant states was closely controlled by civil authorities, and its curriculum modiﬁed to suit the needs of Church and state, in England there was sufﬁcient autonomy in the running of the universities and colleges, and sufﬁcient ﬂexibility in the curriculum, for much of the old scholastic framework to be retained, at the same time as permitting a ﬂirtation with Ramism and a more serious engagement with Cartesianism and other new ideas. And here too, as we shall see, a high proportion of students entered neither the Church nor secular government.46 The role of the clergy in English education was both indirect – as key ﬁgures in the setting up of schools and writing of curricula, and as visitors or governors in subsequent decades – and direct – as teachers or lecturers in schools and universities. We ﬁnd bishops, deans and richer parish clergy setting up some grammar schools, alongside the local gentry and magistrates who set up many more; we ﬁnd the curricula developed in the best half dozen schools, usually dominated by teachers in holy orders, acting as the model for those set up in county towns; and we see the local incumbent regularly being nominated as a governor and visitor of the local endowed school, sometimes dropping in to test students’ progress for himself or volunteering to take the catechism class. The clergy also exerted much inﬂuence directly because there was as yet no separate teaching profession. Thus we ﬁnd many curates acted as usher to the ‘petties’ in the local grammar school to help make ends meet, and many incumbents either dividing their time between parish duties and acting as master of a school in their own house, or acting as full-time schoolmasters in endowed schools and only occasionally fulﬁlling their other pastoral functions.47 Attending an endowed school in England involved the younger pupils in frequent attendance at church, regular catechizing, learning and singing psalms, reading the Bible and copying improving texts to

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improve their handwriting; and, if they proceeded further, in the translation of catechisms such as Nowell’s into and out of Latin and Greek. But even where the masters were in orders, they seem to have been primarily concerned with technique rather than piety or spiritual development, for the curricula remained stubbornly dominated by Lily’s grammar, and texts by Cato, Cicero, Terence, Ovid, Justin and many others, designed to help students develop and polish their Latin prose style and rhetorical and poetic skills, and their knowledge of ancient history.48 Similarly those talented enough to proceed to university, where most of the fellows were in holy orders, found that the seven-year arts courses consisted of grammar, rhetoric, logic or dialectic, natural, moral and metaphysical philosophy, astronomy, arithmetic and geometry or drawing. Attending chapel and listening to catechetical lectures given by a fellow or being catechized by an older student were compulsory (in theory), but making notes of the sermons heard or reading some of the titles on the carefully chosen lists of ‘good books’ offered by tutors were extras, not integral to the course. A small but growing minority of aspiring ordinands opted to proceed to a further degree in theology, but even then practical pastoral skills, such as preaching a sermon or baptizing a baby, mostly had to be learnt ‘on the job’.49 The two English universities changed in terms both of organization and function. Increasingly, the old halls were closed as the colleges expanded and took on a much greater role in teaching undergraduates. In part this was due to a massive inﬂux of sons of the aristocracy and gentry into the universities – a rise that can be quantiﬁed for the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, but may well may have pre-dated that. These students, entrusted to the colleges by well-connected parents, attended university for a short period only, because it conferred some social cachet, helped them make new contacts and perhaps added an extra gloss to their learning. However, their arrival not only upset the social mix (until the gentry deserted the universities in 1642), but also meant that fellows and tutors had to improvise more generalist, humanist-inspired education for these students, at the same time as preparing growing numbers of sons of middling and plebeian parents for the arts degree as usual. The typical product of the universities remained the graduate ordinand, but less than 10 per cent of students took up posts in government or professions such as the law and medicine, and the rest simply went back to their estates and acted occasionally as Member of Parliament or Justice of the Peace. In many, perhaps most, such cases the opportunity to deepen their religious knowledge or spiritual awareness was missed.50

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Christian humanism certainly contributed to the development of the Reformation, through the liberating effect on theology of its emphasis on rhetoric and its philological techniques and the wider credibility this gave to new ideas, and also through the many school and university textbooks written by reformers like Melanchthon and Sturm. But the Catholic Church (apart from its repudiation of Erasmian biblical scholarship) was also much inﬂuenced by humanism in the education offered in its schools and universities, and in its theology and historiography. Moreover, in the longer term, humanism proved to be a doubled-edged sword. It was exclusive and elitist – accessible to only a small minority of men and women who read Latin ﬂuently – and, with the unwitting help of reformers who adopted it enthusiastically for other reasons, it reinforced the classicizing and secularizing tendencies of the lay elite of early modern Europe: towards a stress on defending law and order, maintaining hierarchy, performing one’s duty in the sphere to which one was called, and arguing that good deeds should be rewarded in this life or the next, and that every man should use his rational faculties to test everything he was told. But none of these was speciﬁcally Christian, let alone Protestant, and in the longer term they could mutate into moralism, rationalism and anticlericalism. Certainly some of the lay elite were expressing doubts about Christianity along these lines by the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries.51 There is an irony here. Successive generations of parish clergy had painstakingly sought to teach the Reformation through preaching, catechizing, writing and schooling, as well as through their pastoral ministry and way of life – a case of teaching by example. And where conditions were helpful, as in some towns and many rural areas of England, and the clergy were practical and sensible, they appear to have had some effect in the medium to long term in coaxing a ‘degree of unspectacular orthodoxy’ and ‘undogmatic Protestantism’ from a majority of their parishioners.52 But by the eighteenth century, some of the clergy’s earliest and strongest allies, from among the educated elite, were beginning to desert them.

8 The French Pastorate: Confessional Identity and Confessionalization in the Huguenot Minority, 1559–1685 Mark Greengrass

Historians can hardly avoid fashioning and deploying conceptual models to understand the past. They are part and parcel of the way in which we shape the grand narrative of human history, map its contours, frame its periods and delineate how they relate to one another. The ideas they encapsulate gradually become part of the landscape, difﬁcult to avoid, comforting signposts that tell us where we are; the inner voices, too, that speak to us as we read and seek to interpret the surviving primary evidence. Yet there are hidden hazards with all conceptual models, and historians are rightly on their guard against inadvertently ‘telescoping’ the past by offering plausible explanatory long-term frameworks that caricature historical developments rather than contextualizing them. ‘Confessional construction’ (‘Konfessionsbildung’) and ‘confessionalization’ (‘Konfessionalisierung’) are two complementary ‘terms of art’ coined by German early modern historians to delineate the fundamental processes at work in the fragmentation of western Christianity in the post-Reformation. Drawing on the strong Weberian traditions in German historiography to explain an emerging modernity by means of dynamic ‘ideal-types’, Ernst Walter Zeeden was the ﬁrst to coin them to explain the complementary and gradual evolution of self-conscious Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed Protestant religious identities from the explosive forces of the early Reformation.1 Concentrating on the ‘long reformation’ and especially in a local context (his initial research was on the Rhineland), he presented the dynamics of the process of confessionalization as mainly occurring through their mutual rivalry and emulation and he stressed the importance of the clerical forces in 176

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shaping the theological and ecclesiastical orthodoxies that resulted. This has been recently helpfully deﬁned as the ‘weak theory of confessionalization’ by Philip Benedict.2 He contrasts this with the ‘strong theory of confessionalization’ that was formulated by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling in a sequence of brilliantly articulated books, articles and edited conference papers 20 years later, from 1980 onwards.3 They linked (in Catholic and Protestant environments respectively) two parallel historical discussions into the underlying dynamics of confessionalization. The ﬁrst was that of ‘social disciplining’ (Sozialdisziplinierung) and the second that of ‘state-building’ (Staatsbildung). Both constituted building-blocks of Weber’s theories of modernization. Confessionalization becomes the distinctive early modern form of social discipline, drawing on and contributing to the particular characteristics of the strengthened early modern state. So rulers and magistrates willingly accepted their obligations to enforce religious conformity in their states and oversee the activities of their clergy, at the same time requiring their subjects to attend church services, see to the religious education of their children and obey the ordinances of Church and state on all sorts of moral and policing issues that affected private and public life. Churches willingly collaborated in the effort by overseeing the activities and beliefs of their congregations by newly strengthened institutional means – inquisitions, visitations, consistory courts and their overseers. The result was far more than the forming of a confessional identity. It was the moulding of more conformist, more disciplined subjects, more regulated states, more obedient lesser magistrates, more compliant clerical régimes. The difﬁculty is that there are many varieties of Reformation in the early modern period. Like a chameleon, religious change quickly took on the colours of the local environment. The larger the semantic neologisms that we deploy, the less likely they are to delineate accurately the processes at work, the more likely we are not to hear other, dissenting voices of religious change. The German Reformation had its particular dynamics but these are not shared by, to move to the particular casestudy of this chapter, the French Reformation. France did not have an equivalent to the initial, chaotic, empowering decade of religious change, comparable to the initial impact of the Lutheran affair in Germany. Nor is there much of a parallel for the emerging patchwork of confessionally distinct but territorially coherent churches that would provide the basis for the longer German Reformation in its local context. The French Reformation grew slowly and often unobtrusively in a huge kingdom whose identity and institutional fabric were inextricably linked

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to the traditional religion, even though they left plenty of latitude over where orthodoxy might lie, how best to protect it and who had the best claims to do so.4 The French Reformation was most in the public eye to 1559 when it was being repressed, even though we have overestimated the efﬁciency of the judicial mechanisms employed to undertake that repression, and also the heterodoxy (the ‘nicodemites’, as Calvin would call those who refused to choose between Rome and Geneva) that gave early Protestantism its Lebensraum.5 But all that is another way of saying that Calvin forced his adherents to make a choice. The French Reformation, coalescing under the impact of exiles and refugees from France in Strasbourg, Basel and, most notably Geneva, became demonstrably self-aware and willing to take risks. The massive quasi-ofﬁcial compilation, published in Geneva in 1580 under the title The Ecclesiastical History of the French Reformed Churches (l’Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées de France) was written on the basis of locally generated histories of what had gone on, province by province and region by region. It documented – no doubt glossing over many of the difﬁculties involved in the process – how the churches in France were gradually ‘properly constituted’ (dressée) in the reign of Henri II. This meant that a congregation that had previously gathered ‘to pray together whenever the opportunity presented itself, without having any proper preachers other than the martyrs’ was transformed into a ‘church’ around a Genevan-trained and accredited preacher. That church’s wellbeing was overseen by locally instituted church ofﬁcials meeting together with the minister as a ‘consistory’ in conformity with Genevan practice. The Ecclesiastical History delineated the chrysalis of a distinctive confessional identity among France’s Protestants. It took shape rapidly. It did not happen in coalescence with the state, or even in overt conjunction with its lesser magistrates, but illegally and against them.6 So the history of French Protestant confessionalization begins with a distinctive chronology and a different dynamic from that in Germany. Its subsequent evolution is distinctive in its internal dynamics, its relationships to political power and its sense of its own identity. Each had an impact on the confessional identity that developed among the French pastorate, ministering to a religious minority in the state.

‘Synodico-consistorialism’: a clergy under authority Using the informal network of communication and contact around the underground Churches, at least 20 pastors from 12 churches managed

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to convene in Paris for three days in secret at the end of May 1559 for what would become the ﬁrst of the 29 national synods of the Reformed Churches of France between 1559 and 1659, held more or less every three years.7 Their ﬁrst task was to agree a common ‘confession of faith’ to which all their congregations would adhere. Geneva encouraged the process, just as it had urged the earliest ‘Calvinist’ churches among the stranger communities of the Rhineland to draw up their own confessions of faith.8 Calvin was particularly concerned that circumstances prevented his playing a larger part in the drafting of the document. Circulating in two different versions until the national synod of La Rochelle in 1571 when a deﬁnitive text was issued, the Huguenot confession was widely diffused, its basic clauses reﬂecting the Genevan catechism (1542: ﬁrst known edition, 1545) which was utilized by deacons in the French churches thereafter to educate young people to make their confession, prior to receiving communion.9 Although the constitutional standing of the national synods was never made explicit, and French Protestantism managed to survive without them for a generation after 1660, they acted as guarantor of the movement’s confessional integrity. There would be doctrinal divisions within the French churches but it is a signiﬁcant fact that no defecting pastor was ever followed by his congregation. There would be no congregational basis for confessional dissent. The other task facing the national synod in 1559 was to draw the emerging, local institutional fabric of the churches into a more national framework. That meant making fundamental ecclesiological decisions about how local churches related to one another, what role was to be accorded to ministers in the French churches locally and nationally, and taking the ﬁrst steps to replace canonical legislation in respect of marriage. The ﬁrst two were issues for which Geneva had no blueprint and the French churches forged their own path. Some of them from the west of France had already attempted to draft a document two years earlier, but the one known as the ‘discipline’ dates from 1559.10 In fact, however, we have no surviving text of exactly what was agreed in 1559 and we must reconstitute it from slightly later versions since it was subject to various modiﬁcations through to the synod of La Rochelle in 1571.11 Although copies of the ‘discipline’ were kept by churches for their own use, it was not a ‘public’ document in the same way as the ‘confession’. The drafters of the ﬁrst ‘discipline’ struggled hard to translate their understandings of what constituted a godly church, interpreted in Biblical terms, into a practical and workable ecclesiastical model. Each

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church was a surrogate family, a ﬂock that was congregated by baptismal community, shared fellowship and commemorative supper. No church could, as the ﬁrst clause of the discipline roundly declared, ‘claim primacy or dominion over another’. Within this surrogate family, no authority was immanent in the ofﬁce that an individual held, exercised simply by virtue of the fact that they had the ofﬁce and the title. Instead, it was invested in them implicitly by the community. It could therefore always be divested from them if the community judged it necessary. In the case of pastors, they were chosen to lead their ﬂocks by the elders and deacons of the local church. But they had no sacral power to mediate salvation to others and so their clerical role was a limited one, determined by their function as preachers, moral leaders of their ﬂock and ministers of baptism and communion. Their public and moral conduct was governed by the ‘discipline’ and the enforcement of the latter was vested in the consistory rather than in the hands of pastors. The latter acted as the consistory’s presiding ofﬁcer, one member among many, albeit a voice to be heard (especially on the most serious issues that involved the exclusion, or excommunication, of an individual from the congregation), respected and, in some instances, feared. Congregations notionally had the right to criticize the choice of pastor made on their behalf by the consistorial ‘senate’ of elders and deacons, and to have their objections heard before a ‘provincial council’ or local synod. Once chosen, the pastor had to sign the confession and be conﬁrmed by prayers and the ‘laying on’ of hands by other pastors from neighbouring churches – a literal ‘investment’ of authority upon them. Pastors carried responsibilities to serve their church and not to abandon it except in exceptional circumstances of persecution. They could be deposed by their local consistory (calling on the assistance of neighbouring pastors for the occasion) for preaching ‘bad doctrine’ or leading a ‘scandalous life’ with offences that would be punishable in the royal courts. Lesser offences among the pastors were censored appropriately by provincial synods. Pastors joined the rest of the congregation in having to submit anything that they wanted to print upon matters of religion to being read beforehand by ‘two or three non-suspect Ministers of the Word’. Responsible to their consistories, but also to the provincial and national synods (where elders also attended and had an important voice), the French pastorate offered the moral and intellectual leadership which was what was expected of it. But it did so in a synodico-consistorial framework that accorded it limited powers. It was always ’under authority’ to the confessing community it sought to represent and defend.

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The framers of the French ‘discipline’ were concerned to preserve local ecclesiastical autonomy. Yet there was always the danger that the pastor might become beholden to the local laity. A signiﬁcant number of Huguenot churches, especially in northern France, were dependent on nobles for providing a place of worship (a reality that was enshrined in the royal edicts of paciﬁcation). These nobles also protected and paid local Protestant ministers. What was to stop their creating seigneurially dependent churches? Jean Morély, sieur de Villiers, a minor nobleman writing from Geneva, raised the possibility that authority for the choice and oversight of pastors as well as other matters of church government should reside directly with congregations rather than consistories. His Treatise on Christian Discipline and Police (1562) created a storm of hostile comment from the French pastorate over the remainder of the 1560s and the author eventually sought exile in England.12 Morély’s opponents could point to the danger of self-proclaimed preachers of unorthodox views gaining a hearing from local congregations or being patronized by nobles at the expense of church unity and risk of scandal. The national synods of the 1560s were, in fact, preoccupied by the problem of unauthorized ‘coureurs’ (‘hedge’ preachers) who were accepted by communities in desperate need of a minister. In a kingdom the size of France it was not easy to verify that people were who they claimed to be, especially at a time when sectarian troubles encouraged pastors to adopt the camouﬂage of pseudonyms or, alternatively, multiple names in order to protect themselves from popular violence and recrimination.13 It was all too easy to exploit the chaos of the civil wars. So, for example, the provincial synod at Ploermel in Brittany on February 1565 was confronted with the case of René Chamviry, who had been enthusiastically accepted by the consistory as a minister at Vieillevigne. He had told them he had served as a pastor at Condom in Gascony but that he had been separated from his church as a result of the ﬁrst civil war. His story seemed plausible, but it subsequently turned out that, in reality, he had a murkier past, having been excommunicated and deposed by another province.14 Although there may have been a few other churches like that at La Rochelle which continued to afford its congregation a role in major issues of church government into the 1570s and 1580s, they were eventually brought into line. The authority of consistories and synods over the pastorate was far from theoretical. Especially in the formative years of the French Church, before a more discreet process had evolved, elders were quite capable of rejecting the minister sent them from Geneva. Archambaud

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Colomiez was despatched from Geneva in 1561 and preached before the consistory several times before they decided that he simply would not do for their community. Their companions in Montauban were so dissatisﬁed with Gaspard La Faverge that they promptly returned him to Geneva. A suprising number of pastors were deposed or censored. Sixty-four depositions were recorded in the proceedings of the national synods from 1559 to 1601. A rather smaller number were also censored – amounting together with the deposed to an estimated 10 per cent of the pastorate of that period.15 In the period 1615–1660, 74 more pastors were deposed.16 The synods were as keen to provide descriptions, tinged with confessional disapproval, of the individuals concerned as they were coy about the reasons for their deposition. The national synod at Tonneins, for example, in 1614 recorded the deposition of pastor Merlette from Champagne who, having been dismissed for his ‘incapacity’ had ‘thrown himself into Popery’, describing him as ‘someone tall in stature with chestnut hair and hardly any beard’.17 Jacques Mestayer, pastor at Lusignan in Poitou and 35 years old, shocked his church by announcing his abjuration on 28 March 1617. At the succeeding provincial synod of Thouars he was formally deposed. The national synod of Vitré advertised his apostasy, describing him as: ‘of medium height and with a little black beard and hair the same colour. His gaze is almost always cast down towards the ground.’18 The reasons for these exclusions are alluded to and do not do justice to the underlying complexity of each case. Censures were generally issued for problems in their personal lives. Léonard Augustanus, for example, found himself being censured by the provincial synod of Sauve in 1584 for his intransigeant attitude towards his son and the bad blood it had caused in his family. Pastor de Montcassin was moved from one church to another by the provincial synod of Montpellier in 1591 as a result of his marital difﬁculties. Pastor Bousquet [var: Bosco] was reprimanded by the provincial synod of Montauban for his standard of dress while Pastor Ricotier was suspended for two months by the provincial synod of Bergerac in 1596 for having allowed dancing to take place in his house. Several pastors were criticized by provincial synods for acting as local medical practitioners alongside their responsibilities to the Church.19 More important offences leading to deposition were alluded to euphemistically as ‘vices’, ‘negligence’ (‘négligences’), ‘dissolute words’ (‘paroles dissolues’), ‘bad doctrine’ (‘mauvaise doctrine’), ‘bad conduct’ (‘mauvaise conduite’) or ‘serious crimes’ (‘crimes énormes’). About half those ministers deposed in the

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seventeenth century were divested of their ofﬁce for abjuring the faith. But their apostasy reﬂected, in many instances, broader disagreements with the Church. Such were the difﬁculties encountered in imposing an exclusive confessional allegiance in a pluralistic religious environment; but they were the obverse the coin of a confessionalized pastorate of which exceptional standards of moral discipline and integrity were expected.

The French pastors: image and reality French congregations knew what they wanted from their pastor. When their elders wrote to Geneva on their behalf they described the qualities they were looking for. The candidate needed to be literate – ‘trained in good letters’ as the church of Condom put it.20 The quality and training of the prospective pastor would reﬂect well on the locality: ‘if our minister is not sufﬁcient and profound in learning, it will be to the shame and confusion’ of the notables of the small town of Montfrin in Languedoc, said its elders. The minister must also be able to communicate his learning in a local environment, equipped with a gift for public speaking, ‘endowed with a singular grace in preaching’ wrote the elders of Nîmes, able to reply smartly to ‘adversarial disputers’ as another church put it. It doubtless helped to have someone who had the right regional accent, even though French (rather than the local patois) was the language of the Protestant Churches, even in the independent Pyrenees principality of Béarn, where Béarnais was the written language of choice and of the state until 1620.21 Modest communities sought a minister with ‘good conversation’ and ‘good living’ to serve their localities. Confessional identity, in short, was always linked in the French churches to other identities: to locality, to community and to senses of moral rectitude and decorum. French preachers reﬂected some of these loyalties when they began their sermons: ‘My Brethren’, ‘My beloved Brethren in Christ Jesus our Lord’, ‘Faithful and religious souls’. They consciously deployed the associative and vocative pronouns ‘nous’ (‘we’) and ‘tu’ ( ’thou’) to identify themselves with their listening congregation as one element of the rhetorical constructions that enabled them to establish the right rapport of moral leadership with their ﬂock. The image of the French pastor is even more clearly delineated in the sermons, surviving in quantity from the late sixteenth century onwards in manuscript and in print, especially those preached at services for the inception of a new minister.22 Pastors are ‘labourers in

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the vineyard’, the ‘scatterers of good seed upon the land’. Theirs is a doubly blessed calling since they represent God and his holy word to the faithful and they have been chosen by God to deliver the people from ignorance and corruption. They are ‘living lights’, the ‘salt of the earth’, ‘the ﬁnger of God’, a ‘Moses to the people of the Promised Land’ said a pastor from Fons-sur-Gardon. They were often reminded that it was a holy calling. One young minister was told in around 1673 that ‘in all his discourse, private and public, he must speak of God’.23 Implicit in these sermons was the sense that, since the Protestants were a minority faith, it was important that their pastors live exemplary lives as superior models for their Catholic counterparts. Given that the authority of the French pastorate was mainly a moral and intellectual one, it was also vital that local congregations were encouraged to accord them the necessary respect. ‘Nothing under Heaven is more excellent that the ministry of the Word,’ declared Pierre Dumoulin in a sermon on Colossians 4:17, published in 1645. The pastor ‘must be a living model upon which the faithful can form their ways of living,’ added Charles Drelincourt in 1658, ‘a saint in words and action,’ said René Bertheau. These were high ideals and the reality was inevitably more complex and mundane. French pastors were a large, growing and disparate group spread around a vast kingdom. It is not easy, in fact, to determine exactly how many French pastors there were since the lists drawn up by national synods did not include chaplains to the nobility and other associated posts. They probably recorded vacancies and those discharged from duties in different, not strictly comparable ways. But from the initial 141 that were recorded as despatched to France from Geneva in 1561–2, the number had grown to at least 519 by the national synod of Gap in 1603.24 This rose still further to 626 in 1637, by which time there were 49 vacancies in churches and eight unplaced ministers, presumably mainly those that had recently been qualiﬁed.25 In 1660, there were 712 pastors with 22 unﬁlled vacancies.26 By the time of the Revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, there was a total of 870 pastors, of whom over 75 per cent chose to take up exile rather than remain in France and convert to Catholicism.27 The educational formation of the French pastorate was based on an academic curriculum designed for a confessional vocation, followed by a period of practical initiation. It was available at only a limited number of institutions.28 Within France, the Huguenot academies at Saumur and Montauban established their reputations in the seventeenth century; those at Die and Nîmes appear to have been less well

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regarded. Many pastors attended more than one academy in the course of their studies; of the 104 students in theology at Montauban between 1645 and 1655, over half (57) had been to Saumur before commencing their studies there.29 Charles Drelincourt, Pierre Allix and Pierre Jurieu, leading lights among the French pastorate of the mid- to late seventeenth century, all went to Sedan and then to Saumur as part of their cursus studiorum. The majority of the French pastorate, however, experienced at least part of their training outside France. Initially, almost all the French pastorate were trained in Geneva and the connection was maintained by bursaries from some of the wealthier French churches to maintain for trainee ministers at the Genevan academy.30 Of a sample of 288 pastors serving the Church in 1660, 128 of them had completed their studies at Geneva, and 11 more had done so at Leiden. Still more, although how many is not known, went to Sedan. Of the pastors known to have served the Church at La Rochelle, over half had spent part of their academic cursus abroad in Geneva, Leiden, Sedan, Heidelberg and Oxford.31 The pastors serving the important Normandy church of Le Havre were overwhelmingly from Geneva, with Leiden (up to around 1610) and Sedan (from around 1621) providing the main alternatives.32 Historians have stressed the importance of ‘international Calvinism’, emphasizing the political, diplomatic and dynastic contacts that linked the ‘Reformed’ in Europe across political boundaries.33 Many of those serving as pastors in France came to regard themselves as part of a scholarly ‘international Calvinism’ that had been imprinted on their consciousness during their training. Some pastors forged enduring, cross-national networks of cultural contact and exchange. Samuel Loumeau, a physician turned pastor at La Rochelle, used his contacts with the great Huguenot scholar-statesman, Philippe Duplessis-Mornay to exchange news about recent publications, political events and his great passion in life, botany, with Protestant friends in the Netherlands and England.34 The religious contacts between Philippe DuplessisMornay, Pierre Dumoulin, Isaac Casauban and other leading lights of the French Huguenot movement of the early seventeenth century readily looked outwards to the Netherlands, the Rhine Palatinate and England. James VI and I of England became the champion of their abortive efforts to reunite Christianity in the 1610s; Leiden and Heidelberg the focus of their religious debates.35 Such connections raised the political suspicions of those at the French court, which did its best to dissuade the leading lights of French Protestantism from participating in such endeavours, culminating in the celebrated refusal

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to let the three pastors chosen to represent the French churches from attending the synod of Dordrecht in the Netherlands in 1618. These cross-national confessional identities cut across the link between the French absolute monarchy and its Huguenot subjects and, at least in the eyes of successive French régimes as well as virulent Catholic critics, compromised them. It was tempting for a pastor not merely to lead an impeccable life but to seek to enforce particular patterns of living upon others through the consistory. In fact, however, such efforts often led to mutual recrimination between pastor and congregation. Pastors were not expected to bring cases involving individuals in the congregation before the consistory. If anything, they were discouraged from entering into such questions, not least because it compromised them in the necessary tasks of mediation and patient reconciling of opposing parties within a community that was also an essential a part of consistorial activity. During the civil wars, some pastors, it is true, were inclined to be moral activists. Pierre Galiouste, for example, found himself alone, separated from his wife and family and ministering in the Huguenot stronghold town of Mas-Grenier at a crossing of the river Garonne near Montauban in the early 1590s.36 Although in the midst of the wars of the League, he set about a campaign of his own against gaming, denouncing the soldiers who had (he claimed) introduced the vice to the neighbourhood. He snooped about, knocking on people’s doors unannounced. There was evidently bad blood between the soldiers and some of the Protestant notables of the town and that fed into the emerging quarrel between the pastor and his ﬂock. In February 1592, a woman was summoned before the consistory for grossly defamatory statements against him, symptomatic of local disquiet. In March, some soldiers were arraigned for having called him a hypocrite, an atheist and a fomenter of sedition. For his part, Galiouste complained to the local colloquy about the lack of cooperation from his congregation and his miserable lodgings. Eventually, in 1594, he asked to be relieved of his pastoral duties. ‘Social discipline’ of the congregation by a pastor, when pursued with a heavy hand, could be counter-productive and was generally best left to the elders. Yet, when it came to leading a delegation to require the consuls of Montauban to control their printing press more effectively and prevent the publication of materials ‘contrary to the truth and full of recriminations against people of authority and quality’, Galiouste was the man chosen by the colloquy in 1592 for the task. A puritan pastor who spoke his mind had his uses.

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Pastor Galiouste was not unique as a ‘great reformer of morals’ among the pastorate. In lower Languedoc, pastor Jacques Veyrieu served the small congregation at Saint-André-de-Sangonis not far from Montpellier from 1577 until his death in 1601. Not afraid of confrontation, he set about the half-disbanded soldiery as he went visiting the dispersed members of his ﬂock in neighbouring villages, criticising their drinking, gaming and licentiousness. The elders of his consistory found themselves being invited to spill the beans on the misdemeanours of fellow notables. When they demurred, he criticized them for their lack of zeal and upbraided them for failing to pay his salary. They eventually remonstrated with him for his harshness and begged to be treated with greater charity. By the seventeenth century, it is difﬁcult to ﬁnd any pastor so actively engaged in any campaign for moral reformation as Veyrieu or Galiouste. It is probably signiﬁcant that there is no French Protestant equivalent to the abundant ‘cases of conscience’ literature that we ﬁnd as characteristic of English seventeenth-century practical divinity. It is not that they did not arise in the French context, but such questions were dealt with in private by the consistories and synods. Pastors did not need to offer their advice in print or even commit it to writing; indeed, was there not a risk that, if they did so, it would become seized on by their critics and turned in some way polemically against the Protestant Churches? By the seventeenth century, however, it is difﬁcult to document much by way of an anticlericalism in the French churches, registering more, that is to say, than the occasional mild disdain for their embourgeoisement and intellectual snobbery. That said, given the apparent reluctance of many of the laity in early-modern France to have their beliefs confessionally pigeon-holed or their personal and domestic lives dovetailed to ﬁt exclusively within their worshipping community, the gap between what was required of a pastor and what was expected of the laity must have, in most communities, been and remained considerable.37 The confessional solidarity of the Huguenot pastorate was, in reality, a matter of acculturation, an amalgam of personal experience, family background, professional training and friendship networks. If we had more than ﬂeeting glimpses of their correspondence, their private libraries, or their wills, we might be able to substantiate more accurately the particular inner fraternities that enabled them to sustain one another, or to enter into their mental world, that private acculturation which was an important component in the formation of their confessional identity. Three wills, chosen at random, must serve brieﬂy to illustrate some features of the inner sociability that sustained French pastors.

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The ﬁrst is that of Jacques Tourtelon, pastor at St-Pierre de Lasalle in the Cévennes.38 He was from an old Cévenol family, one branch of which had acquired nobility. He himself was the son of a notarial family whose Protestantism had been learnt at the hands of the local schoolmaster. Already in 1551, he had proudly inscribed on the last page of his notarial register, the Genevan device: ‘Post Tenebras Lux’. In March 1553, under the pressure of judicial investigations, he and his family made their way to Geneva. By 1561, however, Jacques was back in the Cévennes at Lasalle, writing in the consistorial register there in his own hand that he had been ‘to these ends sent from Geneva to exercise there the ministry of the word of God’. His congregation included many of the communities scattered up the Gardon valley until they, in their turn, were provided with ministers from Geneva – Barthélemy Marion at Soudorgues, Guillaume Bouvillar at Saumane and Guillaume Boyssin at St-Germain-de-Calberte, at least two of whom Jacques had known back in Geneva. Olivier Tardieu, the pastor at St-Jean de Gardonnenque was a particular friend of the family, baptizing one of his daughters (Marie) whilst another (Sara) was baptized by Pierre de La Place, the pastor from Montpellier. With Lasalle acting as a Protestant refuge from the civil wars on the plain in 1568–9 and with his eldest son ﬁghting in the Protestant armies of Condé, Jacques Tourtelon prepared to make his will on 7 February 1569. The preamble was a jewel of Protestant consciousness, impregnated with an intense Biblicism. The ‘way of all ﬂesh’ is but a ‘worldly pilgrimage’ towards ‘heaven, wherein is our conversation’. Given ‘the malice of the turbulent times in which we are now, the land being disturbed [and] the church of the Lord afﬂicted and agitated by marvellous troubles and great storms of war and persecution’ he prepared to make his will. He wanted to ‘live and die in the union of the faith which is conceived by the word of God and to persevere in the hope of eternal life which has been acquired for us by Jesus Christ …’. He asked for his congregation to be present at his funeral and then disposed of his remaining estate. He had no great wealth since it had been dissipated ‘by his departure from his country with his family to Geneva …’ as well as by ‘the plundering of his wealth by the enemies of the Word, the ransoms that he has been required to sustain and other expenses’. His wife, Guillemette, was charged with paying off all his debts by selling all his furnishings, including his books, except for a dozen of the latter that he bequeathed to his son Pierre ‘in case he studies theology to become a minister of the word of God, which is the desire and request of the said testator …’. In fact, Jacques Tourtelon went on to live through the

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death of his ﬁrst wife and a remarriage, making a further will on 16 April 1581, not long after which he died. His son Pierre was encouraged by the provincial synod to study theology at Montpellier and he became a minister at Sumène in the Cévennes in 1592, one of the many signs of a growing endogamy that contributed to the collective consciousness of the French pastorate towards the end of the sixteenth century. Our second testator is Pierre Fornelet, pastor in the Reformed church of Sedan, who made his will on 7 February 1604. He had been a pastor for 50 years and was approaching 80 years of age, ill in bed when he came to dictate it. He began by recalling the ‘inestimable graces that God had shown’ him by having ‘drawn him away from the superstitious abuses and damnable errors of the papacy’ in his boyhood in France. He remembered something approaching a conversion experience about the age of 17 when ‘he began to taste the doctrine of the Word’ which had led him to Geneva, and then on to Basel and Strasbourg. In his will, he summarised his peripatetic life, ﬁrst as one of the early Genevan underground proselytizers in France, being sent to Lyons to ‘draw up the church there’ before spending 12 years as pastor at Neuchâtel with Guillaume Farel. In 1561, however, he was assigned to the young church of Châlons-sur-Marne. His will does not dwell on why he left there abruptly less than a year later in July 1562, although we know from other sources that he was expelled on the personal orders of Catherine de Médici for his apparently seditious preaching in the surrounding villages. It was then that he made his way via the Rhineland to Sedan where he spent the rest of his life. His will recommended his soul to God his creator ‘that it may please him to receive and place it with the fortunate spirits in the realm of his dear Son our Lord, Redeemer and only Saviour, Jesus Christ’. His body was to be buried to await the general resurrection, ‘of both the fortunate elect in Christ Jesus … and the unfortunate damned, abandoned in their inﬁdelity, rebellion and just condemnation’. He was concerned to distribute his modest wealth fairly among those of his six sons and eight daughters who were still living, with a gift of 10 écus to the poor of the Reformed church at Sedan. His eldest daughter Anne had married Me Vital Massin, a pastor at the church in Vitry. She had predeceased him and he was anxious to provide for his Massin grandchildren as well. He dictated his will to Antoine Drelincourt, father of Charles Drelincourt, the indefatigable French pastor of the mid-seventeenth century. Here was confessional identity as an inherited memory of a heroic past that his will wanted to be passed on to his successors in the faith.

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Our ﬁnal will is taken from the later seventeenth century. Jean Bonafous was unusual among French pastors in that he never married.39 He was from a dynasty of pastors and his younger brother David, ‘whom I have always regarded as my spiritual son and my production, God having enabled me to urge him towards the responsibility of holy ministry’, had served as a pastor at the nearby church of Revel. When he came to make his will on 20 May 1670, he was 69 years of age and had served the church at Puylaurens in the Lauraguais for all but six of his 44 years of ministry (‘not withstanding many opportunities presented to him to exercise his ministry elsewhere, in celebrated and important Churches’). He had been a stalwart of its provincial synods and gained the respect of his colleagues for his single-minded dedication. His congregation was already feeling the multiple legal restrictions placed upon it by Louis XIV’s intendants. After a homilectic preamble on the educative value of contemplating death, he expressed his thanks to God for his many mercies. He had been born into a ‘century of enlightenment and understanding’ and had the good fortune not to have been born into ‘Paganism, Islam, Judaism or false Christianity’. But he knew that this world was a vale of tears in comparison with the land of Canaan, which was only to be found in Heaven. ‘At the closing moments of the centuries’, Christ would deliver his ‘great and ﬁnal judgements’, at which moment he fervently prayed to be with Jesus Christ. He had enjoyed the beneﬁts of God-fearing parents and a good education, ‘having been directed by His Providence to the study of holy theology with great men who are already hallowed in his sanctuary’. The hand of God had directed him towards the ministry and he had devoted his life to exercising that ‘great burden’. He thanked God for his health and prepared his soul in penitence for the life to come. He then gave directions for the burial of his body, which was the moment for a disquisition on martyrdom. The subject was one on which his descendants would ﬁnd a prayer among his papers which he had written in the wake of the execution ‘for the religion’ of one of his fellow ministers, a friend who had been received into the ministry with him. To his church, and despite ‘all the arrears [of salary] due to me over so many years up to the day of my death’, he bequeathed 200 livres, half to be deployed in the salary of his successor and half to the beneﬁt of the poor. He made a similar bequest of 100 livres to the church at Brassac, where he had received ‘the sacred symbol of my inauguration’ as a minister, and to the church at Castelnau, where he was born. He left money gifts to his married sisters, before ﬁnally

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bequeathing his library. To David Damalvy, minister of the church of Négrepelisse, ‘my dear temporal and spiritual godson’ (he had been a ‘proposant’ or trainee minister at Puylaurens with him), he singled out a prized possession of his library, the collected works of the professor of theology who had taught him at Montauban, Daniel Chamier, along with Johann Heinrich Alsted’s refutation of Bellarmine. He also invited him to choose 100 of the sermons that Damalvy had copied out for him at his dictation as a trainee minister to serve as keepsakes. Two other nephews, now acting in churches in the region, had also acted as scribes for him and were invited to choose selections of his sermons (100 each) that they had copied. A third and younger nephew, Abel Bonafous, still a trainee, was given a further 200 manuscript sermons ‘to assist him in the beginning of his ministry’. His library (‘composed of choice books and of great use’) and the house of his birth he left to David Bonafous the younger, the son of his brother, who had become minister of the church at Castres. The remaining 100 or so sermons were left to the trainee minister, Jean France, who also acted as the scribe for the will. Jean Bonafous’ will gives the ﬂavour of pastoral confessional identity on the eve of the Revocation; a Levitic tribe, literate, stoic, upright, austere and inspiring. The most substantial evidence that survives for the French pastorate is, of course, their sermons. In a recent study, Françoise Chevalier looked at over 1,000 of published and unpublished French sermons from the seventeenth century and selected about 300 of them for detailed scrutiny.40 Polemic and controversy with religious opponents were, of course, not excluded from the pulpit, although it was more evident in the atmosphere of the civil wars and their long afermath than in the years following the peace of Alais in 1629. Pierre de l’Estoile recalled the ﬁre and brimstone that was preached from the Paris church at Charenton in Lent 1609, where preachers, ‘declaiming against the abuses and superstitions of the Roman Church, declare (like the Catholics do upon Calvin) war on the Pope, whom they plainly declare to be the Antichrist and treat in such a cavalier manner … that they destroy more than they edify’.41 It was, as Jacques Solé has said, ‘a continuation of the civil wars by others means’.42 The public debates in which Protestant pastors participated, organized by Jesuit colleges and municipalities as well as, most famously, at court in the famous Fontainebleau conference of 1600, were intellectual wrestling matches, confessional spectator-sports, notable in years of heightened sectarian tension – 1600, 1609, 1618, 1624.43 Their successors, the great Protestant controversialists of the next generation – Pierre Dumoulin,

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Jean Daillé and Pierre Allix – could hardly have been expected to ignore the great religious issues that divided Protestant from Catholic when they entered the pulpit. They still sought to convert their opponents but, to do so, they developed arguments and rhetorical techniques that sought the high ground of moderation and sweet reason.44 Pierre Dumoulin reminded his congregation at Charenton that they should pray for their adversaries and seek to win them over by strong arguments, fairly presented. ‘Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand’ became a text to be deployed in the confessional debates of the age. Their adversaries might treat them disrespectfully but they should turn the other cheek. In a world ruled by idolatry and superstition, the Reformed must show themselves to be models of piety and virtue and it was by their example that they would convert people to the true faith. Charles Drelincourt reminded his congregation of the puritan values of the preceding century that the present generation of Protestants was in danger of forgetting.45 Pastor Michel Lefaucheur put the same thought rhetorically before his congregation: ‘What would it serve you to have the doctrine of the Reformed, and the moral habits of their adversaries? To have quit the idolatries of Babylon, and yet retained its vices? To have left Sodom behind only to soil yourselves in the mountains?’46 But it would be wrong to overemphasize the controversial and polemic aspects of Protestant sermonizing. Françoise Chevalier demonstrates that they were, as one might expect, scripturally saturated, confessionally coherent expositions of Reformed Protestantism. The preachers urged their congregations to daily, private reading of the Bible as containing all the teaching necessary for living a good life. The Psalms, Isaiah, the Gospels of Matthew and John and the Pauline epistles were the preferred Biblical points of reference. Psalm 51, the call to repentance, and Psalm 41, the faithful who live by the spirit but in the world of the ungodly, were favourite commonplaces, revealing an implicit Huguenot consciousness which put a high value on self-abnegation and created a sense of being distinct from, albeit living alongside, the rest of the world. God is not an avenger but merciful to all those who believe in his justice. Christ is the Saviour, a liberator whose double nature, as man and God, offers redemption to mankind and the chance to become ‘the child of God’. The Huguenot faithful are repeatedly presented with a picture of the ‘world’ as depraved, corrupt and vicious. The faithful are invited to put on the armour of the ‘new man’ of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, sanctiﬁed by the Holy Spirit and regenerated through grace. The life of the Reformed Christian is

Identity and Confessionalization in the Huguenot Minority 193

presented as a perpetual combat against vice, that ‘serpent’s egg’ that breeds monsters. The ‘godly man’ (‘l’homme de bien’), said Pierre Dumoulin, ‘burns with zeal for the house of the Lord, does to others as he would be done by, and lives his life as a continual preparation for death’. In short, the French pastors, like most Protestant preachers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, would have ﬁrmly rejected the notion that religion was a matter of social discipline. They would have agreed with John Foxe when he said that, to make ‘our Christian religion’ simply ‘a Moral Doctrine of framing the Life, according to the right Rules of Living’ was to ignore ‘deeper Mysteries … concerning the Heavenly Judgment of God, his Will, his Engagement by Covenant, concerning the Son of God, and our Eternal Redemption by Christ, Peace, Justiﬁcation, Faith, the Hope of our Calling, the largeness of the Mercy and Grace of God, Salvation and the Crown of Immortality’.47 These were the subjects that preoccupied the sermons of the French Protestant pastors. Subjected to the moral imperatives of the ‘discipline’ themselves, their private and public lives undoubtedly moulded by it, their sermons set a theological context for their congregations such that the conduct of an upright life had meaning and purpose.

Ministering to a minority The argument that confessionalization was a key component of early modern state-building should not detain us long since it manifestly does not ﬁt the French experience. The relationship of French Protestantism to political authority was dominated by the fact that it never managed to be anything other than a minority religion in the state. Far from collaborating in the process of state-building, it became associated with periods of crisis and royal weakness. The religious violence of the civil wars of the later sixteenth century demonstrated how destructive confessionalization could become to political authority when transfused into sectarian tensions. Protestant ministers were implicated in that religious violence, although the Ecclesiastical History did its best to cover their tracks. They had preached against the pollution of the Roman Church and when, especially in 1561–2, their congregations acted forcibly to remove the idolatry in their midst, the pastors were powerless to prevent the manifestations of popular insurrection that followed.48 In addition, French Protestantism forged a politico-military wing that, from 1562 through to 1628, was able to mobilize resources at home and abroad against the French state. But the role of the pastorate in the corridors of power in the political wing

194 Mark Greengrass

of the Huguenot movement was, on the whole, not very signiﬁcant, and they were readily isolated when it came to making peace with the crown. To preserve its authority and territorial integrity, the French monarchy prudently disassociated itself from confessional exclusivity. The religious pluralism of the edicts of paciﬁcation was underpinned, instead, by an ‘autonomization’ of political authority.49 The revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 was the most ‘confessional’ act of state of the Bourbon monarchy, but it created enduring opponents of the French state abroad and, coming when it did, the mercantilist state-builders of the day readily appreciated that the measure had its drawbacks. More signiﬁcant, therefore, in the French context, is the link between confessionalization and identity. The French sociologist Serge Muscovici has a useful paradigm to offer us.50 Minorities, he says, have an inevitable desire to create for themselves a strong and independent identity. Denied the continuities with the past that exist for the majority, their desire for ‘social visibility’ – for political and social acceptance – becomes linked to the need to deﬁne who they are and what they stand for. Foundation myths become intensely important to minorities, part of the narrative identity that feeds into the collective iterations of their history, their collective memory. Even when they have acquired the social visibility which they seek, their collective myths become the means by which the leading lights of a minority patrol and deﬁne its continuing existence, typically by actualizing the past in the present by commemorations, feasts, toasts, ﬂags and living traditions of one sort or another. It is helpful to regard the confessionalization of French Protestantism as illustrative of this process. The French pastors were guardians of the Protestant collective memory. They created and articulated for the Huguenots an amalgam of the spiritual heritage of Israel, the suffering of the early Church, the persecution of the medieval heretics and the martyrs of the sixteenth century and enveloped it in a powerful theology that contained a foundation myth.51 Inevitably, they looked back to the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century, and especially to Calvin himself, creating of him a disembodied and distant ﬁgure of heroic proportions, stiff with Protestant purpose. The construction of this collective memory of the Huguenot minority initially took place in the circumstances of religious conﬂict. Local traumatic events, individual tragedies, family displacements, national catastrophe (the massacre of St. Bartholomew) and the misfortunes of war fed into the foundation myth of the Huguenot minority in its individual and collective experience, imprinting it on

Identity and Confessionalization in the Huguenot Minority 195

their consciousness. But, once the minority had achieved a measure of political and social recognition after the edict of Nantes, the situation was more complicated. The ﬁrst clause of the edict of Nantes had imposed an ofﬁcial ‘amnesia’ on the troubled events of the recent past. It was neither prudent politics nor good polemic to remind contemporaries of what increasingly seemed the strange barbarism of the recent past. In addition, there was a latent ritual-phobia in French Protestantism. Commemoration was therefore a somewhat disembodied affair, shorn of ceremony, deprived of place. There were no celebrations in France of the nailing of the theses to the door of the Wittenberg church in 1617 such as there would be in Lutheran Strasbourg. Nothing happened on the centenary of Calvin’s birth at Noyon (the house had been partially ransacked) in 1609, still less to commemorate the centenary of his death in 1664. Instead, the pastorate turned their attentions to proving that they were indeed the ‘true church’, a debate that enabled them to assert their religious, moral and intellectual superiority over the superstitions and polluted rituals of the Roman Church, their gigantic claim to purity and an intellectually sweeping rejection of the ignorance and corruption of their adversaries. The privileges that had been accorded the Protestants by the monarchy were precious, and became ever more so as the ‘pernicious anaemia’ of the apostasy of the Protestant notability began to take its toll on the fortunes of the Huguenots in the seventeenth century. The Huguenot pastorate shared the rest of France’s love affair with the absolute monarchy in the seventeenth century. 52 Even when faced with an avalanche of royal decisions after 1661 that pointed in only one direction, they continued resolutely to deny the catastrophe that, in fact, awaited them in 1685. The exile of the majority of the pastors was not what Louis XIV had expected or intended. But it enabled them to refashion parts of the foundation myths of French Protestantism that had become ocluded and turn the Huguenots into the most confessionalized and dispossessed minority in late seventeenth-century Europe.

Notes Introduction 1 The origins of this concept as a method of characterizing developments in German Protestantism can be found in L. Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Frühneuzeit. Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung frühmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft (Gütersloh, 1996), p. 393. 2 Previous discussions about the range of activity available to the clergyman in his dealings with the commune and the authorities were in general extremely sharp as the debates raged between a strict socio-historical analysis and a series of new approaches. The results brought with them an expansion of knowledge, especially as the new approaches made it easier to call into question the extremely one-sided concentration on questions dealing with modernization theory. 3 See the contribution by R.N. Swanson in this volume. 4 See the contribution by R. Emmet McLaughlin in this volume. 5 B. Lohse, Luthers Theologie in ihrer historischen Entwicklung und in ihrem systematischen Zusammenhang (Göttingen, 1996), pp. 343–5. 6 G.R. Elton, ‘Luther and Society’, Luther Jahrbuch, 54 (1985), pp. 213–19, here p. 216. Elton’s views emerged in the context of a debate with the thesis of Thomas A. Brady on the same theme on the occasion of the quincentenary of Luther’s birth. 7 See Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 390–433. 8 The data and associated arguments are based on Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit; L. Schorn-Schütte, ‘Priest, Preacher, Pastor: Research on Clerical Ofﬁce in Early Modern Europe’, Central European History, 33 (2000), 1–39, with additional references to the European literature on the theme; E. Riegg, Konﬂiktbereitschaft und Mobilität. Die protestantischen Geistlichen zwölf süddeutscher Reichsstädte zwischen Passauer Vertrag und Restitutionsedikt (Leinfelden, 2002); J. Wahl, Lebensplanung und Alltagserfahrung. Württembergische Pfarrfamilien im 17. Jahrhundert (Mainz, 2000). At present a comprehensive database is being drawn up as part of a research project sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation under the direction of Luise Schorn-Schütte. Tables 1–4 are based on these results. 9 See Schorn-Schütte, ‘Priest, Preacher, Pastor’, pp. 12–15. For example (details taken from Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, p. 168): of the incumbents of 25 clerical posts of a general superintendancy in northern Germany (Gandersheim near Braunschweig), soon after the (rather late) introduction of the Reformation in 1569, three were dismissed immediately, while ﬁve were allowed to stay in ofﬁce initially, only to be removed after renewed examination or as a consequence of the results of the visitations introduced in the 1570s. Two parishes remained vacant. As a consequence of these measures, in the 1570s, twelve new pastors (less than half) were required for the region. The other clerical ofﬁces were looked after by the former Catholic clergy. 196

Notes 197 10 Riegg, Konﬂiktbereitschaft und Mobilität, pp. 104ff; for references to similar arguments for other regions, see among others Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit and B. Vogler, Le clergé protestant rhénan au siècle de la réforme, 1555–1619 (Paris, 1976), pp. 182ff; Wahl, Lebensplanung und Alltagserfahrung, pp. 50ff. 11 Wolfgang Reinhard has thus characterized the clerical ofﬁce in Protestantism and Catholicism as a ‘channel of mobility’. See W. Reinhard, ‘Kirche als Mobilitätskanal der frühneuzeitlichen Gesellschaft’, in W. Schulze (ed.), Ständische Gesellschaft und soziale Mobilität (München, 1988), pp. 334–51. 12 In many parts of the Holy Roman Empire and other regions of Europe the education of the Protestant clergyman was carried out with the help of scholarships set aside speciﬁcally in order to support the younger generations of clergymen. Acceptance of such a scholarship obliged the student to return to the territory or city that had sponsored him. On this compare Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 178ff. and Riegg, Konﬂiktbereitschaft und Mobilität, pp. 76ff. 13 See the contribution by Thomas Kaufmann in this volume. 14 Kaufmann also draws attention to the downward trend in educational affairs as one moves from city to countryside. 15 This fact is important for any comparison with the situation facing the Catholic clergy of the time; it leads to the revision of the traditional picture (still in place) of the educational superiority of the evangelical clergy. Cf. Schorn-Schütte, ‘Priest, Preacher, Pastor’, pp. 15–21. 16 For details, see Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 159ff; Riegg, Konﬂiktbereitschaft und Mobilität, pp. 49ff. 17 In the German context such institutions included consistories, preaching ministries and inspectorates. 18 The participation of the nobility and the urban and rural communes in the appointment and the dismissal of the pastor was as widespread in Germanspeaking territories as it was in England and some regions of France. In light of this fact, we should speak of the centralization of church governance with a degree of reservation. For a good example of local conditions where the commune had a considerable say in church affairs, see I.S. Hippenmeyer, ‘Der Pfarrer im Dienste seiner Gemeinde. Ein kommunales Kirchenmodell: Graubünden 1400–1600’, in N. Haag, S. Holtz and W. Zimmermann (eds), Ländliche Frömmigkeit. Konfessionskulturen und Lebenswelten 1500–1850 (Stuttgart, 2002), pp. 143–57. 19 Recent research offers important results. See Wahl, Lebensplanung und Alltagserfahrung, pp. 58–82; Riegg, Konﬂiktbereitschaft und Mobilität, pp. 111–209. 20 Until the end of the eighteenth century, the major part of a pastor’s income in the parishes of Europe was comprised of dues from the parishioners for clerical services (baptism, confession, burial), annual church taxes and income from the leasing or cultivation of the land at the clergyman’s disposal. Only in the very large parishes (primarily urban) was there the possibility of yearly tribute in cash. Thus the annual income was closely bound to the natural economy of old Europe; the pastor had to earn a certain part of his income either through his own handiwork or through the exploitation of the natural resources like the vast majority of his own parishioners.

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22 23

24

25

26

27 28 29

30

31

(It was in this aspect of life that the economic value of the pastor’s wife becomes clear.) From the middle of the seventeenth century onward, the number of complaints coming from the evangelical clergy increase, as they claim they are being diverted from their pastoral responsibilities by the range of agrarian tasks – and were thus ‘becoming countriﬁed’. See SchornSchütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 227–86. For the Swiss Confederation: D. Gugerli, Zwischen Pfrund und Predigt. Die protestantische Pfarrfamilie auf der Zürcher Landschaft im 18. Jahrhundert (Zurich, 1988). See the contribution by Susan C. Karant-Nunn in this volume. There are reports in the second half of the sixteenth century of pastor’s wives working as midwives and teachers at the village girls’ schools. For individual references: L. Schorn-Schütte, ‘“Gefährtin” und “Mitregentin”. Zur Sozialgeschichte der Pfarrfrau in der frühen Neuzeit’, in H. Wunder and C. Vanja (eds), Wandel der Geschlechterbeziehungen zu Beginn der Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 1991), pp. 109–53. Cf. on this theme, including additional literature: Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, 1978); C.S. Dixon, The Reformation and Rural Society. The Parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, 1528–1603 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 102–202; J. Wahl, ‘Kulturelle Distanz und alltägliches Handeln. Ökonomie und Predigt im Spannungsfeld von Pfarrfamilie und Laien’, in Haag, Holtz and Zimmermann (eds), Ländliche Frömmigkeit, pp. 43–58. The expression ‘heuristic indicator’ comes from H. Schilling, ‘Confessional Europe’, in T.A. Brady, H. Oberman and J.D. Tracy (eds), Handbook of European History, 1400–1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation (Leiden, 1995), Vol. 2, p. 643. M.J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 287–334; 289–90: ‘political power was legitimated with reference to a particular (though variable) set of doctrinal beliefs and liturgical practices and … this had administrative consequences …’; W. Reinhard, ‘Die lateinische Variante von Religion und ihre Bedeutung für die politische Kultur Europas. Ein Versuch in historischer Anthropologie’, Saeculum, 43 (1992), 231–55; P. Hersche, ‘“Klassizistischer” Katholizismus. Der konfessionsgeschichtliche Sonderfall Frankreich’, Historische Zeitschrift, 262 (1996), pp. 357–89. H. Millet and P. Moraw, ‘Clerics in the State’, in W. Reinhard (ed.), Power Elites and State Building (Oxford, 1996), p. 175. R. O’Day, The English Clergy. The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester, 1979), pp. 190–209. See the common prayer attached to the 1556 church order in the Electoral Palatinate: M. Hanisch, ‘Zwischen Fürbitte und Obrigkeitsvergottung. Politische Gebete von 1500–1918’, Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung, 48 (1988), pp. 55, 122. P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967), pp. 21–155, 291–382; A.N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth 1558–1585 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 105–33. Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, S. 390–433; Riegg, Konﬂiktbereitschaft und Mobilität, pp. 256–98; N. Haag, Predigt und Gesellschaft. Die

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33

34 35

36

37

38

lutherische Orthodoxie in Ulm 1640–1740 (Stuttgart 1992), pp. 36–44; on the broad framework: John Witte, Jr, Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge, 2002). This conception of the clerical ofﬁce, common throughout Europe, belongs to a vision of the relationship between church and state characterized as politica christiana. On this, see H. Dreitzel, Monarchiebegriffe in der Fürstengesellschaft (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 1991), Vol. 2. W.G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation (Manchester, 1994); Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 390–433; Haag, Predigt und Gesellschaft, pp. 185–216. See the contribution by Bruce Gordon in this volume. A. Pettegree, ‘The Clergy and the Reformation: from “Devilish Priesthood” to New Professional Elite’, in A. Pettegree (ed.), The Reformation of the Parishes (Manchester, 1993), p. 1: ‘[the] end of the Reformation century saw the emergence in several parts of Europe of a new sort of clergy, characterised by a professional esprit de corps and elitism, and conﬁdent in the possession of a unique expertise’. H. de Ridder Symoens, ‘Training and Professionalization’, in Reinhard (ed.), Power Elites, pp. 149–72; R. O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450–1800: Servants of the Commonwealth (London, 2000), pp. 45–107; U. Pﬁster, ‘Pastors and Priests in the Early Modern Grisons: Organized Profession or Side Activity’, Central European History, 33 (2000), 41–65; for a critical view of the ‘professionalization’ idea: M. Hawkins, ‘Ambiguity and Contradiction in “the Rise of Professionalism”: the English Clergy, 1570–1730’, in A.L. Beier, D. Cannadine and J.M. Rosenheim (eds), The ﬁrst Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 241–69. P. Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, 2002), pp. 435–59; V. Barrie-Curien and M. Venard, ‘Les clergés’, in M. Venard, Le Temps des Confessions (1530–1620/30) (Paris, 1992), pp. 889–95, 913–14; Schorn-Schütte, ‘Priest, Preacher, Pastor’, pp. 15–26; A. Nelson Burnett, ‘Basel’s Rural Pastors as Mediators of Confessional and Social Discipline’, Central European History, 33 (2000), 70–3; B. Vogler, ‘Recrutment et carrière des Pasteurs strasbourgeois au XVIe siècle’, Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses, 48 (1968), 151–73; Pﬁster, ‘Pastors and Priests’, pp. 41–6; O’Day, The English Clergy, pp. 126–71; P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 92–140; C. Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1991), pp. 268–84; V. Barrie-Curien, ‘The English Clergy, 1560–1620: Recruitment and Social Status’, History of European Ideas, 9 (1988), 451–63. After the Council of Trent the same developments took hold in the lands of Catholic Europe. See J. Bergin, ‘Between Estate and Profession: The Catholic Clergy of Early Modern Western Europe’, in M.L. Bush (ed.), Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe since 1500: Studies in Social Stratiﬁcation (London, 1992), pp. 66–85; M.R. Forster, The Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750 (Cambridge, 2001). Collinson, The Religion of Protestants, p. 96. On the importance of preaching, see B. Moeller and K. Stackmann, Städtische Predigt in der Frühzeit der

200 Notes

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40 41 42

43

44 45 46 47 48

49

50

Reformation. Eine Untersuchung deutscher Flugschriften der Jahre 1522 bis 1529 (Göttingen, 1996), passim; Haigh, English Reformations, pp. 188–91, 268–84; T. Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement c. 1620–1643 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 95–122; for a recent collection of articles on the early modern sermon, see L. Taylor (ed.), Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period (Leiden, 2001). On the post-Tridentine Catholic sermon: R. Dürr, ‘Priesthood Images. Analysis of Catholic Sermons from the Late Seventeenth Century, Central European History, 33 (2000), 87–107. N. Enssle, ‘Patterns of Godly Life: The Ideal Parish Minister in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century English Thought’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 28 (1997), 3–28; Pﬁster, ‘Pastors and Priests’, pp. 44–5. Barrie-Curien and Venard, ‘Les clergés’, p. 876. See the contribution by Ian Green in this volume. The phrase comes from the Puritan George Herbert. Citation in I. Green, ‘Career Prospects and Clerical Conformity in the Early Stuart Church’, Past and Present, 90 (1981), 89. W. Dobras, Ratsregiment, Sittenpolizei und Kirchenzucht in der Reichsstadt Konstanz 1531–1548. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der oberdeutsch-schweizerischen Reformation (Gütersloh, 1993), pp. 274–366; Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed, pp. 467–9. See the contribution by Jay Goodale in this volume. Citation in Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 95. O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, pp. 92–9. Cited in C. Haigh, ‘Puritan Evangelism in the Reign of Elizabeth’, English Historical Review, 92 (1977), 47. For the similar difﬁculties facing the Lutheran clergy in the parishes of Germany see Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning; Dixon, The Reformation and Rural Society, pp. 102–202. O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, pp. 80–90; H.-C. Rublack, ‘“Der wohlgeplagte Priester.” Vom Selbstverständnis lutherischer Geistlichkeit im Zeitalter der Orthodoxie’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 16 (1989), 1–30. See the contribution by Mark Greengrass in this volume.

Chapter 1 1 J.F. Puglisi, The Process of Admission to Ordained Ministry: a Comparative Study, 3 vols (Collegeville, MI, 1996–, in progress), 2, ch. 5. For general comment on the transformation, see I. Green, ‘“Reformed Pastors” and Bons Curés: the Changing Role of the Parish Clergy in Early Modern Europe’, Studies in Church History, 26 (1989), 251–2. For Protestant experience, A. Pettegree, ‘The Clergy and the Reformation: from “Devilish Priesthood” to New Professional Elite’, in A. Pettegree (ed.), The Reformation of the Parishes: the Ministry and the Reformation in Town and Country (Manchester, 1993), pp. 1–21; R. O’Day, The English Clergy: the Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession, 1558–1642 (Leicester, 1979); R. O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450–1800: Servants of the

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4

5

6 7 8

9 10

11 12 13 14

15 16

17

Commonweal (Harlow, 2000), pt. 2. For Catholics – a more tentative process – O. Chadwick, ‘The Seminary’, Studies in Church History, 26 (1989), 3–17, 26. Puglisi, Admission to Ordained Ministry, 1, p. 189. M. Andrieu, Le Pontiﬁcal romain au moyen-a ˆge, tome II: le pontiﬁcal de la curie romaine au XIIIe siècle (Vatican City, 1940), p. 341; Liber pontiﬁcalis Chr. Bainbridge, archiepiscopi Eboracensis, Surtees Society Publications, 61 (1873), p. 34. See comments of Puglisi, Admission to Ordained Ministry, 1, pp. 180–3, 189, 210–11. Although historical these are not historicized, yet ﬁt evolutions visible in the later Middle Ages. Gregory, Pastoral Care, 1.1: J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, 77 (Paris, 1896), col. 14. For citations, N.P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols (London and Washington DC, 1990), 1, p. 248; F.M. Powicke and C.R. Cheney (eds), Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, II: A.D. 1205–1313, 2 vols (Oxford, 1964), 1, p. 250. Tanner, Decrees, 1, p. 243. Ibid., pp. 240, 242–5, 248–50, 265. The phrase is Brenda Bolton’s: The Medieval Reformation (London, 1983); see also Giles Constable, The Twelfth-Century Reformation (Cambridge, 1997). Powicke and Cheney, Councils and Synods, 1, pp. 245–59; 2, pp. 747–92. R.N. Swanson, ‘Angels Incarnate: Clergy and Masculinity from Gregorian Reform to Reformation’, in D.M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe (Harlow, 1999), pp. 163–4; H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy, and Practice (Aldershot, Burlington, Singapore and Sydney, 2000), p. 166; T.F. Mayer, Reginald Pole, Prince and Prophet (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 18–19, 23. In general, M. Rubin, Corpus Christi: the Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991). J.A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago and London, 1987), pp. 214–23, 251–2. For broader discussion of the issues in this paragraph, Swanson, ‘Angels Incarnate’, pp. 160–77. R.L. Storey, ‘Malicious Indictments of Clergy in the Fifteenth Century’, in M.J. Franklin and C. Harper-Bill (eds), Medieval Ecclesiastical Studies in Honour of Dorothy M. Owen (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 222–4, 228–30, 233. Cases also appear in royal courts: Storey, ‘Malicious Indictments’, pp. 230–2. B. Moeller, ‘Religious Life in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation’, in G. Strauss (ed.), Pre-Reformation Germany (London and Basingstoke, 1972), p. 25; Swanson, ‘Angels Incarnate’, pp. 173–4; A.-J.A. Bijsterveld, ‘Reform in the Parishes of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century North Brabant’, in B.A. Kümin (ed.), Reformations Old and New: Essays on the Socio-Economic Impact of Religious Change, c.1470–1630 (Aldershot and Brookﬁeld, VT, 1996), pp. 30–1. G. Williams, The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation (Cardiff, 1962), pp. 337–43; J. Watt, The Church in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1972), pp. 185–7.

202 Notes 18 R.N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England, rev. edn (Oxford, 1993), pp. 58–9; R.N. Swanson, ‘Chaucer’s Parson and other Priests’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 13 (1991), 50–2, and refs; D. Hay, The Church in Italy in the ﬁfteenth Century (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 51–2. On ‘digamy’, Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 252–3. 19 Swanson, ‘Chaucer’s Parson’, pp. 53–4; R.N. Swanson, ‘Problems of the Priesthood in pre-Reformation England’, English Historical Review, 105 (1990), 851–2; C.M. Bellitto, Nicolas de Clamanges: Spirituality, Personal Reform, and Pastoral Renewal on the Eve of the Reformations (Washington, D.C., 2001), pp. 116–17. 20 Swanson, Church and Society, pp. 59–60. See the comment on one set of sources traditionally used to demonstrate the poor quality of English clergy at the time of the Reformation in D.G. Newcombe, ‘John Hooper’s Visitation and Examination of the Clergy in the Diocese of Gloucester, 1551’, in Kümin, Reformations Old and New, pp. 61, 66–70: the problem is as much one of commentators’ interpretations as of the primary evidence. 21 J. Verger, Men of Learning in Europe at the End of the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN, 1997), pp. 90–3; V. Davis, ‘The Contribution of Universityeducated Secular Clerics to the Pastoral Life of the English Church’, in C. Barron and J. Stratford (eds), The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of R.B. Dobson; Proceedings of the 1999 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington, 2002), pp. 255–72; Swanson, Church and Society, pp. 66–7; Bijsterveld, ‘Reform in the Parishes’, pp. 26–9. 22 But with moves towards their creation in ﬁfteenth-century Italy: Hay, Church in Italy, pp. 81–2. 23 Williams, Welsh Church, p. 343, suggests that a quasi-hereditary priesthood was a solution to this problem. 24 Verger, Men of Learning, pp. 12–13. 25 Tanner, Decrees, 1, pp. 239–40. For a positive assessment of the effects in England, K. Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Manchester and New York, 1967), pp. 192–205. 26 On this early synodal activity, M. Gibbs and J. Lang, Bishops and Reform 1215–1272, with Special Reference to the Lateran Council of 1215 (Oxford, 1934), pt. 3; C.R. Cheney, English Synodalia of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1968). On statutes in general, O. Pontal, Les Statuts synodaux, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, fasc. 11 (Turnhout, 1975). For pastoral manuals, L.E. Boyle, ‘The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology’, in T.J. Heffernan (ed.), The Popular Literature of Medieval England, Tennessee Studies in Literature, 28 (Knoxville, TN, 1985), pp. 30–44. For synods and pastoral formation, O. Pontal, ‘Le rôle du synode diocésain et des statuts synodaux dans la formation du clergé’, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 7 (1972), pp. 339–59 (although focusing on thirteenth-century southern France, the comments are transferable to other places and centuries). I have not been able to consult O. Pontal, Clercs et laïcs au moyen âge d’après les statuts synodaux (Paris, 1990). 27 R.N. Swanson, ‘Speculum ecclesie? Sources for the Administrative History of the Late Medieval English Church’, Richerche di storia sociale e religiosa, n.s. 48 (July–December 1995), 23–4.

Notes 203 28 P.A. Dykema, ‘Handbooks for Pastors: Late Medieval Manuals for Parish Priests and Conrad Porta’s Pastorale Lutheri (1582)’, in R.J. Bast and A.C. Gow (eds), Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late-Medieval and Reformation History. Essays presented to Heiko A. Oberman on his 70th birthday (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne, 2000), pp. 144–51. For an indication of production in England, R.R. Raymo, ‘Works of Religious and Philosophical Instruction’, in A.E. Hartung (ed.), A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, 7 (New Haven CT, 1986), pp. 2255–372, 2470–577. 29 H. Martin, Le Métier de prédicateur en France septentrionale à la ﬁn du moyen âge (1350–1520) (Paris, 1988), pp. 105–6; B. Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne, 2000), esp. pp. 65–87, 91–6, 105–6, 123–33, 136–7, 139, 146–7, 167, 283–9; J. Verger, ‘Studia et universités’, in Le scuole degli ordini mendicanti (secoli XIII–XIV) (Todi, 1978), pp. 175–203. 30 Roest, History, p. 81; Verger, ‘Studia et universités’, pp. 188–9. 31 R.N. Swanson, ‘The “Mendicant Problem” in the Later Middle Ages’, in P. Biller and B. Dobson (eds), The Medieval Church: Universities, Heresy, and the Religious Life (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 224–5. 32 Roest, History, p. 49. 33 R.N. Swanson, ‘Godliness and Good Learning: Ideals and Imagination in Medieval University and College Foundations’, in R. Horrox and S. ReesJones (eds), Pragmatic Utopias: Ideals and Communities, 1200–1630 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 50–1. 34 R.N. Swanson (ed.), Catholic England: Faith, Religion, and Observance before the Reformation (Manchester, 1993), p. 261; P.H. Barnum, Dives and Pauper, 1/i–ii, Early English Text Society, o.s. 275, 280 (1976–80), 2, pp. 168–71. See also Swanson, ‘Problems’, p. 850. 35 The Records of the Northern Convocation, Surtees Society Publications, 113 (1907), pp. 146–72. Cf. attitudes of the fraticelli in Italy: R.C. Trexler, The Spiritual Power: Republican Florence under Interdict (Leiden, 1974), p. 139. 36 T. Erbe (ed.), Mirk’s Festial: a Collection of Homelies by Johannes Mirkus (John Mirk), Early English Text Society, e.s. 96 (1905), p. 169. Even though the unworthy priest’s sacraments remained valid, he remained a sinner and would eventually incur due punishment. Discussion of late medieval Donatism usually homes in on heresy, but the weakness was systemic. See discussions in F. Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London, 1979), pp. 159–61, 207–9; J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300–1700) (Chicago and London, 1984), pp. 92–7. 37 See the exemplum (recorded by both Innocent III and William Durand) cited in J. Ayre (ed.), The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, Parker Society Publications, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1845–50), 2, p. 705. 38 G. Hasenohr, ‘La Société ecclésiale selon le chancelier Gerson: typologies et vocabulaire’, in E.C. Lutz and E. Tremp (eds), Pfaffen und Laien – ein mittelalterlicher Antagonismus? Freiburger Colloquium 1996 (Freiburg, 1999), pp. 217–18. 39 See note 7 above.

204 Notes 40 H.-C. Rublack, ‘Anticlericalism in German Reformation pamphlets’, in P.A. Dykema and H.A. Oberman (eds), Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1993), p. 471. 41 G. Kristensson (ed.), John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests, Edited from MS Cotton Claudius A II and Six Other Manuscripts, with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary (Lund, 1974), p. 67. 42 S. Wenzel (ed.), Fasciculus morum: a Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook (University Park, PA, and London, 1989), pp. 405–7. 43 For example, M.J. Haren, Sin and Society in Fourteenth-Century England: a Study of the Memoriale Presiterorum (Oxford, 2000); Wenzel, Fasciculus morum; Barnum, Dives and Pauper. 44 London, British Library, MS Sloane 1584. 45 Powicke and Cheney, Councils and Synods, 2/ii, pp. 900–5. For continued ﬁfteenth-century inﬂuence, P. Hodgson, ‘Ignorantia sacerdotum: a Fifteenth Century Discourse on the Lambeth Constitutions’, Review of English Studies, 24 (1948), pp. 1–11. 46 T.F. Simmons and H.E. Nolloth (eds), The Lay Folks’ Catechism, Early English Text Society, o.s. 118 (1901); S. Powell, ‘The Transmission and Circulation of The Lay Folks’ Catechism’, in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Late-Medieval Religious Texts and Their Transmission: Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 73–84. 47 Swanson, Catholic England, pp. 15–16; S.B. Meech, ‘John Drury and his English Writings’, Speculum, 9 (1934), 70–83; R.M. Haines, Ecclesia Anglicana: Studies in the English Church of the Later Middle Ages (Toronto, Buffalo and London 1989), pp. 160–2, 169–70, 174–5. 48 T. Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford, 1996), p. 52. 49 Hasenohr, ‘La Société ecclésiale’, pp. 224–6. 50 See above, pp. 43–4. 51 For the early development of pastoralia, see J. Goering, William de Montibus (c.1140–1213): the Schools and the Literature of Pastoral Care (Toronto, 1992), pp. 58–99. For later preaching, H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 1993), ch. 5; Martin, Métier de prédicateur; L. Taylor, Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France (Oxford and New York, 1992); C.L. Polecritti, Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy: Bernardino of Siena and His Audience (Washington, DC, 2000), ch. 1; R.C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York, London, etc., 1980), pp. 462, 468–90; F. Schevill, History of Florence from the Founding of the City through the Renaissance (New York, 1936), pp. 440–2, 444–7; T.M. Izbicki, ‘Pyres of Vanities: Mendicant Preaching on the Vanity of Women and its Lay Audience’, in T.L. Amos, E.A. Green and B.M. Kienzle (eds), De ore domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, MI, 1989), pp. 211–34. See also comment in Moeller, ‘Religious Life’, pp. 28–9. 52 J. Small (ed.), English Metrical Homilies from Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1862), p. 2; Turville-Petre, England, p. 32. 53 Small, English Metrical Homilies, pp. 2–3, 5; Turville-Petre, England, pp. 32–3. 54 See comment of J.W. Dahmus, ‘Dormi secure: the Lazy Preacher’s Model of Holiness for his Flock’, in B.M. Kienzle, E.W. Dolnikowski, R.D. Hale,

Notes 205

55 56

57 58

59 60

61

62

63 64

65

D. Pryds and A.T. Thayer (eds), Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1996), pp. 304–5. G.W.H. Lampe (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 2: the West from the Fathers to the Reformation (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 362–491. J.H. Morey, Book and Verse: a Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature (Urbana and Chicago, 2000), p. 331. M. Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions (Cambridge, 1920), ch. 13–14; H. Hargreaves, ‘The Wyclifﬁte Versions’, in Lampe, Cambridge History, 2, pp. 387–415. Puglisi, Admission to Ordained Ministry, 1, p. 210. Swanson, ‘Problems’, pp. 847–9; P. Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), pp. 51–6. The quasi-Donatism is implicit, but may need further nuancing. In discussion, Eamon Duffy has suggested that such concerns centre not on the priests’ sacramental actions, automatically accepted as valid ex opere operato, but on the effectiveness of their other intercessory activities. Such prayers, technically non-sacramental, were not covered by the doctrine, so that those of an ‘unworthy’ priest might legitimately be considered less effective than those of a ‘good’ or ‘honest’ priest. For precisely such a view, see A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wyclifﬁte Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), p. 317. However, the possible weakness of lay differentiation between the sacraments and the ancillary sacramentals may have allowed the transfer of Donatist concerns to the latter. On sacramentals, see R.W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London and Ronceverte, 1987), pp. 5–12, 31–40, 260–2. Statutes of the Realm, 3 (London, 1817), pp. 293–4, 296. P. Heath, The English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation (London and Toronto, 1969), pp. 70–2; William de Melton, Sermo exhortatorius cancellarii Eboracensis hii qui ad sacros ordines petunt promoveri (London, c.1510). W.R. Jones, ‘Relations of the Two Jurisdictions: Conﬂict and Cooperation in England during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 7 (1970), 109–12, 119–23; for the complexities see also S.E. Thorne (ed.), Readings and Moots at the Inns of Court in the Fifteenth Century, volume I, Selden Society Publications, 71 (1952), pp. 113–28. P. Glorieux (ed.), Jean Gerson: Œuvres complètes, 10 (Paris, 1973), p. 135. For Gerson’s views on the ranking, Hasenohr, ‘La Société ecclésiale’, pp. 213–17. J.J. Ryan, The Apostolic Conciliarism of Jean Gerson (Atlanta, GA, 1998), pp. 43–5. U.R. Blumenthal, ‘Pope Gregory VII and the Prohibition of Nicolaitism’, in M. Frasseto (ed.), Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform (New York and London, 1998), pp. 242, 244, 248–53. Moeller, ‘Religious Life’, p. 25; W. Scase, Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 45–6. John Mirk had offered responses to such sparring (dealing with practicalities rather than doctrine) c.1400: Erbe, Mirk’s Festial, pp. 124–5.

206 Notes 66 Chadwick, ‘The Seminary’, p. 3. 67 A tension succinctly summarized in E.H. Shagan’s vignette of Clement Armstrong: ‘He was that most dangerous of creatures, a literate layman, amateur preacher and theological omnivore, the sort of instinctive radical whom the magisterial reformers at ﬁrst embraced, then feared, and eventually sought to destroy’: E.H. Sagan, ‘Clement Armstrong and the Godly Commonwealth: Radical Religion in early Tudor England’, in P. Marshall and A. Ryrie (eds), The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge, 2002), p. 73. 68 R.N. Swanson, ‘Urban Rectories and Urban Fortunes in Late Medieval England: the Evidence from King’s Lynn’, in T.R. Slater and G. Rosser (eds), The Church in the Medieval Town (Aldershot and Brookﬁeld, 1998), pp. 100–30; idem, ‘Economic Change and Spiritual Proﬁts: Receipts from the Peculiar Jurisdiction of the Peak District in the Fourteenth Century’, in N. Rogers (ed.), Harlaxton Medieval Studies, III: England in the Fourteenth Century, Proceedings of the 1991 Colloquium (Stamford, 1993), pp. 171–95; idem, ‘An Appropriate Anomaly: Topcliffe Parish and the Fabric Fund of York Minster in the Later Middle Ages’, in Diana Wood (ed.), Life and Thought in the Northern Church, c. 1100–c. 1700: Essays in Honour of Claire Cross (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 105–21; idem, ‘Standards of Livings: Parochial Revenues in pre-Reformation England’, in C. Harper-Bill (ed.), Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 151–96. 69 F. Manley, G. Marc’hadour, R. Marius and C.H. Miller (eds), The Complete Works of St Thomas More, vol. 7 (New Haven and London, 1990), pp. 412–22. 70 Swanson, Church and Society, pp. 198–204. 71 Swanson, Church and Society, pp. 135, 204–5; G. Rosser, ‘Conﬂict and Political Community in the Medieval Town: Disputes between Clergy and Laity in Hereford’, in Slater and Rosser, Church in the Medieval Town, pp. 20–42. 72 D.A. Eltis, ‘Tensions between Clergy and Laity in some Western German Cities in the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43 (1992), 231–48; Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements, pp. 249–50. 73 J.J. Tyler, Lord of the Sacred City: the Episcopus exclusus in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Leiden and Boston, 1998), p. 53; Trexler, Spiritual Power, pp. 117–65, 169–85; D.S. Peterson, ‘State-building, Church Reform and the Politics of Legitimacy in Florence, 1375–1460’, in W.J. Connell and A. Zorzi (eds), Florentine Tuscany: Structures and Practices of Power (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 129–30. 74 Tyler, Lord of the Sacred City, pp. 64–5; Peterson, ‘State-building’, pp. 132–3. 75 H. Plard, ‘Anticlérical, anticléricalisme: évolution de ces termes’, in J. Marx (ed.), Aspects de l’anticléricalisme du moyen âge à nos jours: homage à Robert Joly. Colloque de Bruxelles – juin 1988 (Brussels, 1988), pp. 15–22. 76 A.G. Dickens, ‘The Shape of Anticlericalism and the English Reformation’, in E.I. Kouri and T. Scott (eds), Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Sixty-ﬁfth Birthday (Basingstoke and London, 1987), p. 379. Cf. A. Dierkens, ‘En guise de conclusion ...’, in

Notes 207

77

78

79 80

81

82 83 84 85 86 87 88

89

Marx, Aspects, p. 133: ‘L’anticléricalisme du moyen âge doit donc être compris dans un sens plus large, celui du refus, total ou partiel, des structures cléricales ou de la hiérarchie religieuse en place.’ J. Sánchez, Anticlericalism: a Brief History (Notre Dame, IN, and London, 1972), pp. 7–11. His imposition of this schema on the pre-Reformation period (ibid., pp. 13–46) is not convincing. Better is the terminology of power-relations which ‘provoked an anticlerical response’ in Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements, pp. 244–50, although some of the heads are merely variants of categories of power-relations which provoked conﬂict between other social groups as well. Scase, Piers Plowman, esp. pp. ix–x. I am not challenging the general claim that attitudes towards the clergy changed at this point, just the speciﬁc historiographical label of ‘anticlericalism’. For a brief survey, Scase, Piers Plowman, pp. 7–13. For example, V. Edden, ‘The debate between Richard Maidstone and the Lollard Ashwardby’, Carmelus, 34 (1987), 114–34; S. Forde, ‘Nicholas Hereford’s Ascension Day Sermon’, Mediaeval Studies, 51 (1989), 205–41. Sánchez, Anticlericalism, p. 10, considers the two as distinct phenomena. The debate about the nature and meaning of anticlericalism, especially in the context of the English Reformation, is ongoing. A major reassessment is provided in P. Marshall, ‘Anticlericalism Revested? Expressions of Discontent in early Tudor England’, a paper presented at the Harlaxton Symposium in July 2002, and to appear in the resulting volume. I am grateful to Dr Marshall for providing a copy of the paper. Scase, Piers Plowman, passim. Swanson, ‘Problems’, p. 868. H.A. Oberman, ‘Anticlericalism as an Agent of Change’, in Dykema and Oberman, Anticlericalism, p. ix. Sánchez, Anticlericalism, p. 55. S. Seidel Menchi, ‘Characteristics of Italian Anticlericalism’, in Dykema and Oberman, Anticlericalism, p. 274. See note 35 above. Hudson, Premature Reformation, pp. 351–8; E.L. Dolnikowski, ‘The Encouragement of Lay Preaching as an Ecclesiastical Critique in Wyclif’s Latin Sermons’, in Kienzle et al., Models of Holiness, pp. 193–209. Despite the ministerial role allowed to the laity, and its development as the Wyclifﬁte movement evolved in the ﬁfteenth century, the clergy retained a dominant preaching voice in the ﬁrst generations: see A. Hudson, ‘“Springing cockel in our clene corn”: Lollard Preaching in England around 1400’, in S.L. Waugh and P.D. Diehl (eds), Christendom and its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 139–40. See also the views on priesthood in the ‘Lollard Sermon Cycle’: P. Gradon and A. Hudson (eds), English Wyclifﬁte Sermons, 5 vols (Oxford, 1983–96), 4, pp. 79–84, 111–20, 165–72. G. Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c. 1170– c. 1570 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 50–5, 115–28; cf. E. Cameron, The Reformation of the Heretics: the Waldenses of the Alps, 1480–1580 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 77–9.

208 Notes 90 F. Smahel, ‘The Hussite Critique of the Clergy’s Civil Dominion’, in Dykema and Oberman, Anticlericalism, p. 85. 91 M. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford, 1992), pp. 346, 356, 358. 92 H. Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), pp. 387–8 (and n.12), with the Taborite religious development discussed at ch. 10. 93 Lambert, Medieval Heresy, p. 354. 94 Swanson, Church and Society, pp. 35–6; for Germany, Moeller, ‘Religious Life’, p. 29. 95 A.L. Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: the Eleventh-Century Debates (New York and Toronto, 1982), pp. 175–7 (see also 190–1). 96 P.R. Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton, N.J., 1986); Hudson, Premature Reformation, pp. 348–51. 97 W. Carew Hazlitt (ed.), A Select Collection of Old English Plays, I (4th edn, London, 1874), pp. 199–238. For Fish, see note 69 above. 98 Cf. P.H. Stump, The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414–1418) (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1994), p. 139. 99 Usefully summarized in D. Lepine, ‘“A long way from university”: Cathedral Canons and Learning at Hereford in the Fifteenth Century’, in Barron and Stratford, Church and Learning, pp. 180–2, see also 190, 195. 100 Stump, Reforms, ch. 6. 101 Peterson, ‘State-building’, pp. 141–3. 102 Bellitto, Nicolas de Clamanges, esp. pp. 115–16, 118–26. 103 J.H. Lupton, A Life of John Colet, D.D. (London, 1887), pp. 293–303 (the text is a translation printed c.1530; the sermon was originally published – and probably delivered – in Latin); for date and some comment, J.P. Gleason, John Colet (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1989), pp. 181–4. The validity of the criticisms assessed in C. Harper-Bill, ‘Dean Colet’s Convocation Sermon and the pre-Reformation Church in England’, History, 73 (1988), 191–210. It is important that criticism of clerics ran alongside criticism of laity, notably in ‘three estates’ sermons, for example, A.J. Fletcher, ‘“The Unity of the State Exists in the Agreement of its Minds”: a Fifteenth Century Sermon on the Three Estates’, Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 22 (1991), 117–22; Swanson, Catholic England, pp. 67–77. 104 Lupset, Life of Colet, p. 302. 105 Rublack, ‘Anticlericalism’, p. 481. 106 Gleason, Colet, pp. 304–5. 107 G. Bray (ed.), The Anglican Canons, 1529–1947 (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 1998), pp. 3–67. 108 On the Acts, C. Haigh, ‘Anticlericalism in the English Reformation’, History, 68 (1983), pp. 394–6. The narrative in S.E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament, 1529–36 (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 81–94, 99–101, maintains the traditional reading of ‘anticlericalism’ and a complacent Convocation which, I would argue, now needs considerable revision and nuancing in response to Bray’s edition cited in the preceding note.

Notes 209 109 G. Bray, Tudor Church Reform: the Henrician Canons of 1535 and the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, Church of England Record Society, 8 (2000), pp. 16–21, 32–5, 56–9, 72–93, 106–119, 124–7, 134–7. 110 See note 59 above. 111 Sagan, ‘Clement Armstrong’, pp. 64–5. The doctrine’s implications had already appeared among earlier ‘Lollards’, developing similar Wyclifﬁte ideas: N.P. Tanner (ed.), Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31, Camden society, 4th series, 20 (1977), pp. 42, 52, 57, 61, 67, 86, 142, 147, 153, 166, 179, 205. A similar formulaic accusation appears in Kentish heresy trials in 1511–12: N.P. Tanner (ed.), Kent Heresy Proceedings, 1511–12, Kent Records, 26 (1997), pp. 2, 9, 17, 44, 51 (see also abjurations at 27–8, 30, 34, 37, 41, 117). 112 B. Hamm, ‘Normative Centering in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Observations on Religiosity, Theology, and Iconology’, Journal of Early Modern History, 3 (1999), 307–54, deﬁnition at p. 311. This has resonances with my own suggestion on the role of ‘discourse communities’ in R.N. Swanson, ‘Unity and Diversity, Rhetoric and Reality: Modelling “the Church”’, Journal of Religious History, 20 (1996), 156–74. Although formulating the concepts differently, both articles deal with the balancing act between what are essentially centrifugal and centripetal forces within religion. 113 Hamm, ‘Normative Centering’, p. 311. 114 For the examples, ibid., p. 311. He cites them just as examples, not to advocate an evolutionary transformation. Indeed, much of the article seeks to demonstrate that both aspects existed concurrently within the late medieval church, which I would not dispute. Hamm aims to demonstrate a general principle or theory, without focussing on clerical functions, although changing balances in interpretations of ministerial responsibilities can be read into and alongside much of his discussion. 115 Parish, Clerical Marriage, esp. chs. 6–7; see also Swanson, ‘Angels Incarnate’, p. 176. 116 Statutes, 3, pp. 739–40. 117 Statutes, 3, pp. 894–6; B. Scribner, ‘Heterodoxy, Literacy and Print in the Early German Reformation’, in P. Biller and A. Hudson (eds), Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 275–8; Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements, p. 254 (with the development of Protestant ‘neo-clericalism’ and the lay response at pp. 255–6). 118 Crystallized in the battle between lay ‘freewillers’ and clericalist predestinarians in Edwardine England: T. Freeman, ‘Dissenters from the Dissenting Church: the Challenge of the Freewillers, 1550–1558’, in Marshall and Ryrie, Beginnings, esp. pp. 147–9, 156.

Chapter 2 Abbreviations Institutio = John Calvin, Institutio christianae religionis (Geneva, 1559) LW = Martin Luther, Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, 55 vols. (St. Louis, 1958–86). WA = Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 82 vols. (Weimar, 1883–)

210 Notes 1 For an overview, see J. von Allmen, Le saint ministère selon la conviction et volonté des Réformés des XVIe siècle (Neuchatel and Paris, 1968). 2 W. Brunotte, Das geistliche Amt bei Luther (Berlin, 1959); H. Lieberg, Amt und Ordination bei Luther und Melanchthon (Berlin, 1956); W. Stein, Das kirchliche Amt bei Luther (Wiesbaden, 1974). 3 G. Rupp, The Righteousness of God (London, 1953); O.H. Pesch, Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin (Mainz, 1967). 4 H. Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, 2nd expanded edn (Hildesheim, 1961). M. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford, 1992). 5 R.E. McLaughlin, ‘The Word Eclipsed? Preaching in the Early Middle Ages’, Traditio, 48 (1991), 77–122. For the later Middle Ages, F. Falk (ed.), Die pfarramtlichen Aufzeichnungen (Liber consuetudinum) des Forentinus Diel zu St. Christoph in Mainz (1491–1518) (Freiburg, 1904); A. Schilling (ed.), ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Einführung der Reformation in Biberach. 1) Zeitgenössische Aufzeichnungen des Weltpriesters Heinrich von Pﬂummern’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 9 (1875), 141–238; idem, ‘Die religiösen und kirchlichen Zustände der ehemaligen Reichsstadt Biberach unmittelbar vor Einführung der Reformation’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 19 (1887), 1–191. 6 See McLaughlin, ‘The Word Eclipsed?’; idem, ‘Universities, Scholasticism, and the Origins of the German Reformation’, History of Universities, 9 (1990), 1–43; F.R. Albert, Die Geschichte der Predigt in Deutschland bis Luther (Gütersloh, 1892–96); J. Longere, La predication mediévale (Paris, 1983). 7 LW 36, 113; WA 6, 564. 8 G. Ebeling, ‘“Sola Scriptura” und das Problem der Tradition’, in his Wort Gottes und Tradition (Göttingen, 1964), pp. 91–143; H. Liebing, ‘Sola Scriptura – die reformatorische Antwort auf das Problem der Tradition’, in C. Ratschow (ed.), Sola Scriptura (Marburg, 1977), pp. 81–95; W. Mostert, ‘Scriptura sacra sui interpres’, Luther Jahrbuch, 46 (1979), 60–96. 9 McLaughlin, ‘Universities, Scholasticism, and the Origins of the German Reformation’, passim. 10 See H. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1967), pp. 361–412. 11 R. Friedenthal, ‘Das Evangelische Pfarrhaus im deutschen Kulturleben’, Luther, 42 (1971), 1–15. 12 P. Graff, Geschichte der Auﬂösung der alten gottesdienstlichen Form in der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands (Göttingen, 1921); A.C. Piepkorn, Die liturgischen Gewänder in der lutherischen Kirche seit 1555 (Marburg, 1965). 13 W. Schwab, Entwicklung und Gestalt der Sakramentstheologie bei Martin Luther (Frankfurt and Bern, 1977). 14 F. Gillmann, Zur Lehre der Scholastik vom Spender der Firmung und des Weihesakraments (Paderborn, 1924). 15 K. Stevenson, Nuptial Blessing. A Study in Christian Marriage Rites (New York, 1983); F. Falk, Die Ehe am Ausgang des Mittelalters (Freiburg, 1908); L. Godefroy, G. Le Bras and M. Jugie, ‘Mariage’, Dictionnaire du Théologie Catholique (Paris, 1927) vol. 9, part 2, cols. 2044–2355. 16 B. Poschmann, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick (New York, 1951); P. Browe, ‘Die letzte Oelung in der abendländischen Kirche des Mittelalters’,

Notes 211

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18

19 20

21 22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29

Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, 55 (1931), 515–61; idem, ‘Die Sterbekommunion im Altertum und Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, 60 (1936), 1–54, 211–49; B. Fischer, ‘Die Reihenfolge der Sakramente beim Versehgang’, Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift, 60 (1951), 54–6. J. Hödl, ‘Die kirchlichen Ämter, Dienste und Gewalten im Verständnis der scholastischen Theologie’, Franziskanische Studien, 43 (1961), 1–21; J. Lécuyer, Le Sacrement de l’Ordination (Paris, 1983); H. Lennerz, De sacramento ordinis, 2nd edn (Rome, 1953); L. Ott, Das Weihesakrament (Freiburg, 1969). J.E. Downs, The Concept of Clerical Immunity (Washington DC, 1941); J. Hashagen, ‘Zur Characteristik der geistlichen Gerichtsbarkeit vornehmlich im späteren Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonische Abteilung, 6 (1916), 205–90; R. Genestal, Le Privilegium Fori en France du décret de Gratien a la ﬁn du xive siècle 2 vols (Paris, 1921–24). E. Mack, Die kirchliche Steuerfreiheit in Deutschland seit der Dekretalengesetzgebung (Stuttgart, 1916). On the priesthood and ordination, see ‘De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae’, WA 6, pp. 560–7; ‘De instituendis ministris ecclesiae’, WA 12, pp. 160–95; ‘Das eyn Christliche versamlung odder gemeyne recht und macht habe, alle lere tzu urteylen und lerer zu beruffen, eyn und abzusetzen, Grund und ursach aus der schrifft’, WA 11, pp. 408–16. R. Bäumer, ‘Luthers Ansichten über das Priestertum’, in Luther und die Folgen für die Geistesgeschichte (Weilheim-Bierbronnen, 1992), pp. 9–30; H. Behm, Der Begriff des allgemeinen Priestertums (Schwerin, 1912); J. Freiwald, ‘Das Verhältnis von allgemeinem Preistertum und besonderem Amt bei Luther’ (Diss. Theol. Heidelberg 1993); G. Rietschel, Luther und die Ordination 2nd edn (Wittenberg, 1889). LW 44, 129; WA 6, p. 408. B. Moeller, Pfarrer als Bürger (Göttingen, 1972). LW 44, 129–130; WA 6, pp. 408–9. M. Dortel-Claudot, ‘Le prêtre et la mariage. Évolution de la législation canonique des origines au xiie siècle’, L’année canonique, 17 (1973), 314–44.; R. Gryson, Les origines du célibat ecclesiastique du premier au septieme siècle (Gembloux 1970); G. Rossetti, ‘Il matrimonio del clero nella societa altomedievale’, Il matrimonio nella societa altomedievale (Spoleto, 1977), vol. 1, pp. 473–567. G. Fornasari, Celibato sacerdotale e ‘autocoscienza’ ecclesiale. Per la storia della ‘Nicolaica haeresis’ nel occidente medievale (Trieste, 1981). H. Hashagen, ‘Zur Sittengeschichte des westfälischen Klerus im späteren Mittelalter, Westdeutsche’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst, 23 (1904), 102–4; O. Vasella, ‘Über das Konkubinat des Klerus im Spätmittelalter’, Mélanges d’histoire et de litterature offerts à monsieur Charles Gilliard (Lausanne, 1944), pp. 269–83. B. Schimmelpfennig, ‘Zölibat und Lage der Priestersöhne vom 11. bis 14. Jahrhundert’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 227 (1978), 1–44. L. Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren. Päpstliche Dispense von der unehelichen Geburt im Spätmittelalter (Zurich, 1995). H. Lea, The History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church (New York, 1957) pp. 343–7, on Pius II, p. 345.

212 Notes 30 O. Lähteenmäki, Sexus und Ehe bei Luther (Turku, 1955); K. Suppan, Die Ehelehre Martin Luthers (Salzburg, 1971). R. Seeberg, ‘Luthers Anschauung von dem Geschlechtsleben und der Ehe und ihre geschichtliche Stellung’, Luther Jahrbuch, 7 (1925), 77–122. 31 H. Böhmer, ‘Luthers Ehe’, Luther Jahrbuch, 7 (1925), 40–76; W. von Loewenich, ‘Luthers Heirat’, Luther, 47 (1976) 47–60. 32 LW 44, 175; WA 6, p. 440. 33 However, on theosis in Luther, see S. Peura, Mehr als ein Mensch. Die Vergöttlichung als Thema der Theologie Martin Luthers von 1513 bis 1519 (Mainz, 1994); R. Saarinen, Gottes Wirken auf uns. Die transzendentale Deutung des Gegenwart-Christi-Motivs in der Lutherforschung (Stuttgart, 1989). 34 LW 31, 345; WA 7, p. 23. 35 ‘Von der Widdertauffe’, WA 26, 144–74. K. Brinkel, Die Lehre Luthers von der ﬁdes infantium bei der Kindertaufe (Berlin, 1958); L. Grönvik, Die Taufe in der Theologie Martin Luthers (Zurich, 1968). 36 Luther remarks upon this in ‘Von der Widdertauffe,’ WA 26, p. 146. 37 Institutio 4.15.21–22. L.G.M. Alting von Geusau, Die Lehre von der Kindertaufe bei Calvin (Bilthoven and Mainz, 1963). 38 See ‘De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae,’ WA 6, pp. 502–26; ‘Vom abendmal Christi Bekendnis’ (1528), WA 26, pp. 262–509. E. Bizer, Studien zur Geschichte des Abendmahlstreits im 16. Jahrhundert (Gütersloh, 1940); W. Köhler, Zwingli und Luther. Ihr Streit über das Abendmahl nach seinen politischen und religiösen Beziehungen, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1924, 1953); A.C.F. Wiløf, Abendmahl und Messe. Die Kritik Luthers am Meßopfer (Berlin, 1969). 39 A. Franz, Die Messe im deutschen Mittelalter (Freiburg, 1902); G. Macy, The Theology of the Eucharist in the Early Scholastic Period (Oxford, 1984); R. Schulte, Die Messe als Opfer der Kirche (Münster, 1959). 40 See ‘De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae’, WA 6, pp. 502–26. 41 B. Lohse, ‘Die Privatbeichte bei Luther’, Kerygma und Dogma, 14 (1968), 207–28; J. Vercruysse, ‘Schlüsselgewalt und Beichte bei Luther’, in H. Junghans (ed.), Leben und Werk Martin Luthers von 1526 bis 1546 (Berlin/Göttingen, 1983), I, pp. 153–69, II, pp. 775–81. E. Roth, Die Privatbeichte und Schlüsselgewalt in der Theologie der Reformatoren (Gütersloh, 1952). B. Poschmann, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick (New York, 1951); T.N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977). D. Myers, ‘Poor Sinning Folk.’ Confession and Conscience in Counter-Reformation Germany (Ithaca, New York, 1996). 42 LW 40, 21; WA 12, p. 180. 43 For example, Geneva had hundreds of clergy before the Reformation and only nine after it, R.M. Kingdon, ‘Was the Protestant Reformation a Revolution?’ Transition and Revolution: Problems and Issues of European Renaissance and Reformation History (Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1974) p. 70. In Biberach, there were 36 beneﬁced clergy, an unknown number of unbeneﬁced secular clerics, and also regular clergy before the Reformation. Afterward there were only twelve Protestant preachers, Schilling, ‘Einführung der Reformation’, pp. 189, 232. The comparison is not quite accurate since the number of Protestant preachers includes the immediate surrounding countryside. 44 F. Wieland, Die genetische Entwicklung der sogenannten ordines minores (Rome, 1897).

Notes 213 45 F. Gillmann, Zur Lehre der Scholastik vom Spender der Firmung und des Weihesakraments (Paderborn, 1920). 46 M. Brecht (ed.), Luther und das Bischofsamt (Stuttgart, 1990). 47 U. Bubenheimer, ‘Luthers Stellung zum Aufruhr in Wittenberg 1520–1522 und die frühreformatorischen Wurzeln des landesherrlichen Kirchenregiments’, Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonische Abteilung, 71 (1985), 147–214; K. Holl, ‘Luther und das landeskirchliche Kirchenregiment’, in his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte 6th edn (Tübingen, 1932) vol. I, pp. 326–80. 48 H.W. Krumwiede, Zur Entstehung des landesherrlichen Kirchenregiments in Kursachsen und Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (Göttingen, 1967). 49 K.A.H. Burkhardt, Geschichte der sächsischen Kirchen- und Schulvisitationen von 1524–1545 (Leipzig, 1879). 50 Otto Mejer, ‘Anfänge des Wittenberger Konsistoriums’, Zeitschrift für Kirchenrecht, 13 (1876), pp. 28–123; K. Müller, ‘Die Anfänge der Konsistorialverfassung im lutherischen Deutschland’, Historische Zeitschrift, 102 (1909), 1–30. 51 See W. Jannasch, ‘Pfarrfrau’, Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart 3rd edn (Tübingen, 1961) vol. 5, pp. 301–3; L. Schorn-Schütte, ‘“Gefährtin” und “Mitregentin.” Zur Sozialgeschichte der evangelischen Pfarrfrau in der Frühen Neuzeit’, in H. Wunder and C. Vanja (eds), Wandel der Geschlechterbeziehungen zu Beginn der Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1991) pp. 109–53; E. Winkler, ‘Das evangelische Pfarrhaus im Spiegel der Pastoraltheologie’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift. Gesellschafts- und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe, Martin-LutherUniversität Halle-Wittenberg, 37 (1988) 105–13. 52 See M. Treu (ed.), Katharina von Bora, die Lutherin. Aufsätze anlässlich ihres 500. Geburtstages (Wittenberg, 1999). 53 E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400– c. 1580 (New Haven, Connecticut, 1992). 54 J.L. Ainslie, The Doctrines of Ministerial Order in the Reformed church of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Edinburgh, 1940). A. Bauer, ‘Zwinglis Lehre vom geistlichen Amte’, Arbeiten zur praktischen Theologie, 10 (1888), pp. 193–220; J. Weerda, ‘Ordnung zur Lehre. Zur Theologie der Kirchenordnung bei Calvin’, in J. Moltmann (ed.), Calvin-Studien (Neukirchen 1960), pp. 144–71. 55 J. Beckmann, Vom Sakrament bei Calvin (Tübingen, 1926); K. McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church and the Eucharist (Princeton, New Jersey, 1967); W. Niesel, Calvins Lehre vom Abendmahl (Munich, 1935); R.S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament (Edinburgh and London, 1953). 56 H.-D. Altendorf and P. Jezler (eds), Bilderstreit. Kulturwandel in Zwinglis Reformation (Zürich, 1984); R. Bornert, La réforme protestante du culte à Strasbourg au XVIe siècle (1523–1598) (Leiden, 1981); C. Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan, 1979); C.M.N. Eire, War against the Idols. The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge, 1986). 57 J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed.) J.T. McNeil, (trans.) F.L. Battles (Philadelphia 1960) vol. 2, 1420–1; Institutio, 4, 17, p. 43. 58 J.F. Bergier and R.M. Kingdon, Registres de la Compagnie des pasteurs de Geneve au temps de Calvin, 2 vols. (n. p., 1962–4), Registres I, pp. 1–13. A. Ganoczy, Calvin théologien de l’église et du ministère (Paris, 1964); L.

214 Notes

59 60

61 62

63 64

65

66

67

Gomaz, Timothée, ou le ministère evangélique d’après Clavin et ses commentaries sur le Nouveau Testament (Lausanne, 1948). C. Borgeaud, L’Académie de Calvin, 1559–1789 (Geneva, 1900). R. Ley, Kirchenzucht bei Zwingli (Zurich, 1948); P. Münch, Zucht und Ordnung. Reformatorische Kirchenverfassungen im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Nassau-Dillenburg, Kurpfalz, Hessen-Kassel) (Stuttgart, 1978). See J.F. Bergier and R.M. Kingdon, Registres de la Compagnie des pasteurs de Geneve au temps de Calvin, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1962–4). See, however, Judith Pollmann, ‘Off the Record: Problems in the Quantiﬁcation of Calvinist Church Discipline’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 33 (2002), 423–38. E.A. McKee, John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving (Geneva, 1984). W.E. Keeney, The Development of Dutch Anabaptist Thought and Practice from 1539–1564 (Nieuwkoop, 1968); R. Friedmann, The Theology of AnaBaptism (Scottdale, Pennsylvania 1973). H.-J. Goertz, Die Täufer. Geschichte und Deutung (München, 1988). L. Gross, The Golden Years of the Hutterities. The Witness and Thought of the Communal Moravian Anabaptists during the Walpot Era, 1565–1578 (Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, 1980); C. Krahn, Dutch AnaBaptism. Origin, Spread, Life and Thought (‘s-Gravenhage, 1968); J. Stayer, The German Peasant’s War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal, 1991); idem, Anabaptists and the Sword (Lawrence, Kansas, 1976). G.H. Williams, Radical Reformation 3rd edn (Kirksville Missouri, 1992) provides a detailed narrative. On one early apostle, W.O. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings. Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation (Baltimore, Maryland, 1995). C. Krahn, ‘The Ofﬁce of the Elder in Anabaptist Mennonite History’, Mennonite Quarterly Review, 30 (1956), 120–35; H.S. Bender, ‘The Historical Background of Our Present Ministerial Ofﬁces’, Gospel Herald, XLII (25 October 1949), 1051, 1061; N. Van der Zipp, ‘Ministry (Netherlands)’, Mennonite Encyclopedia vol. 3, pp. 699–701; C. Krahn, ‘Ministry (German, Diener am Wort, Lehrer, Dutch, dienaar, leraar) of Mennonites of PrussoRussian Background,’ Mennonite Encyclopedia 3, pp. 701–3; H.S. Bender, ‘Ministry in Switzerland, South Germany, France, and North American Groups of this General Background,’ Mennonite Encyclopedia 3, pp. 703–4. Williams, Radical Reformation; R.E. McLaughlin,’Reformation Spiritualism: Typology, Sources and Signiﬁcance,’ Collected Papers the Joint Colloquium of the Gesellschaft für Reformationsgeschichte and the Society for Reformation Research on Sixteenth-Century Dissent, Wittenberg 19–23 August 1999, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, Beiheft 27, pp. 127–40; idem, Caspar Schwenckfeld, Reluctant Radical (New Haven Connecticut, 1986); idem, ‘Sebastian Franck and Caspar Schwenckfeld: Two Spiritualist Viae’, in Jan-Dirk Müller (ed.), Sebastian Franck (1499–1542) (Wiesbaden, 1993) pp. 71–86.

Chapter 3 1 The pertinent literature is too vast to cite. None the less, I would particularly mention the opus of my late esteemed colleague Heiko A. Oberman,

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4

5

which, although regarding Luther as a distinct individual and innovator, none the less brought to the world’s attention the strands of existing theology that the Reformer drew upon in weaving his own. An assumption of continuity underlies Steven Ozment’s The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven, 1980). Ludwig Schmugge has demonstrated this in Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren: Päpstliche Dispense von der unehelichen Geburt im Spätmittelalter (Zurich, 1995), esp. ch. 6, ‘Kirche und Illegitime im Deutschen Reich’, pp. 247–318. Late medieval efforts to reduce this abuse were unsuccessful. Bruce Gordon provides an example of this in Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Zürich, 1532–1580 (Bern, Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1992), pp. 28–9, 33. Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer is ﬁnishing a book manuscript on the subject of clerical concubinage and the transition to marriage in Germany, which at this writing I have not read. See also E. Labouvie, ‘Geistliche Konkubinate auf dem Land. Zum Wandel von Ökonomie, Spiritualität und religiöser Vermittlung’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Zeitschrift für historische Sozialwissenschaft, 26, 1 (2000), 105–27. The not yet superintendent but trusted Lutheran partisan Friedrich Myconius carried out this preliminary exploration. His detailed ﬁndings can be found in the Thüringisches Staatsarchiv Gotha under Oberkonsistorium Generalia, Loc. 19, No. 1: ‘Acta der ersten Visitation der Prediger im Amte Tenneberg, durch den Superintendenten Friedrich Myconius 1526.’ The sixteenth-century title, in Myconius’s own hand, is ‘Acta Von der Examination Vnd Verhorung der Pfarner In der Tennebergischen Pﬂege Von Yren leben verstand lehr vnd gelegenheyt, etc.’ This document is unpaginated. It was published by P. Drews, ‘Der Bericht des Mykonius über die Visitation des Amtes Tenneberg im März 1526’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 3 (1905/1906), 1–17. I made this point in ‘The Transmission of Luther’s Teachings on Women and Matrimony: The Case of Zwickau’, Archive for Reformation History, 77 (1986), 45. W.S. Stafford, Domesticating the Clergy: The Inception of the Reformation in Strasbourg 1522–1524 (Missoula, Montana, 1976). I am, however, extending Stafford’s meaning of the term, which he uses to designate the incorporation of the Catholic clergy into the urban collectivity – making them fully citizens. I mean domestication as bringing them into a personal, committed, ongoing living relationship with a woman and their housekeeping and possibly childrearing as complementary partners. Far more research has been carried out on clerical marriage in England than in Germany. See E. Carlson, Marriage and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994); and H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy and Practice (Aldershot, 2000), including their notes, for an introduction to this topic. For a range of approaches to the larger question of anticlerical attitudes, see the essays in P.A. Dykema and H.A. Oberman (eds), Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 1993); and E.A. Eltis, ‘Tensions between Clergy and Laity in Some Western German Cities in the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43, 2 (1992), 231–48. Still indispensable is R.W. Scribner, ‘Anticlericalism and the Reformation in

216 Notes

6

7 8 9

10

11

12 13 14

15

16

Germany’, in idem, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London and Ronceverte, 1987), pp. 243–56. See S.E. Ozment’s treatment of the abuse of the confessional in The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven, 1975), pp. 49–56, 59. Cf. S. Haliczer’s much-discussed book, Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned (Oxford, 1996), apropos of early modern Spain. Scribner, ‘Anticlericalism and the Reformation’, p. 253. Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A63 Bü 10, ‘Religions- u. Kirchensachen’, p. 82. More work needs to be done on this genre before the Reformation. C. Braun, Die katholische Predigt während der Jahre 1450 bis 1650 über Ehe und Familie, Erziehung, Unterricht und Berufswahl (Würzburg, 1904), contains a bibliography of such brevity that I am certain that far more exists on this subject. The sizable homiletic corpus on the Virgin Mary doubtless contains much on the subject of hers and Joseph’s domestic life even if they were alleged to have been sexually inactive. This was also true of Puritan teaching on marriage. See K.M. Davies, ‘Continuity and Change in Literary Advice on Marriage’, in R.B. Outhwaite (ed.), Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (New York, 1982), pp. 58–80. Apart from specially prepared wedding homilies, Lutheran pastors continued, evidently for generations, to observe the custom of preaching on marriage every January to the congregation as a whole. See, for example, Landeskirchenarchiv Braunschweig, V 470, ‘Predigten verschiedener Pastoren von Januar und Februar 1573, z. T. nur in Konzepten’, fol. 18r–v. D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar, 1883–), hereafter WA for Weimarer Ausgabe, by convention: ‘Eyn Sermon von dem Elichen Standt’, WA II, pp. 166–71; ‘Vom ehelichen Leben. 1522’, WA X/2, pp. 275–304; ‘Eine predigt vom Ehestand’, 15 January 1525, WA XVII/1, pp. 12–29; ‘Vorlesungen über 1. Mose von 1535–45’, WA XLII; and many other places. For an English translation of key portions, see S.C. Karant-Nunn and M.E. Wiesner-Hanks (trans. and eds.), Luther on Women, a Sourcebook (Cambridge, 2003). ‘Ein Sermon von dem ehelichen Stand’, WA II, pp. 168–9. G.R. Potter, Zwingli (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 79–80. One Catholic writer whom this marriage especially inspired was Johannes Cochlaeus. See M. Spahn, Johannes Cochlaeus: Ein Lebensbild aus der Zeit der Kirchenspaltung (Berlin, 1898), pp. 133–6, reissued (Nieuwkoop, 1964); and more recently G. Wiedermann, ‘Cochlaeus as a Polemicist’, in P.N. Brooks (ed.), Seven-Headed Luther: Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentennary 1483–1983 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 195–205, here at pp. 197–8. My own treatment of the Luthers’ marriage is forthcoming as ‘“Mihi reliquerit animum paene muliebrem”: Martin Luthers Männlichkeit’, in H. Medick and P. Schmidt (eds), Luther zwischen den Kulturen (Göttingen, 2003). The list of questions that the visitors were to ask the pastors in the Ernestine Ortsland Franconia in 1528 included, ‘Whether they lead a chaste life [within matrimony] or keep house with a [female] scamp [Bubin].’ Bayerisches Staatsarchiv Coburg, LA B 2438.

Notes 217 17 G. Buchwald, ‘Die Protokolle der Kirchenvisitationen in den Aemtern: Zwickau, Crimmitzschau und Werdau vom 12. bis zum 31. Januar 1529’, Allerlei aus Drei Jahrhunderten, 1 (1888), p. 4. 18 E. Fabian, ‘Die Protokolle der zweiten Kirchenvisitation zu Zwickau 1533 und der ersten Kirchenvisitation zu Schneeberg 1534’, Mitteilungen des Altertumsvereins für Zwickau und Umgegend, 7 (1902), pp. 33–147. The emphasis of this document is the clergymen’s doctrinal suitability and their material (in)sufﬁciency – but moral failings would have been noted here had they existed. Certain behavioural shortcomings are suggested, as in Reimsdorf, where the scribe laconically remarks, ‘Die eingepfarrten sollen auch jre prister in eren halten.’ The change between 1529 and 1533 is especially clear in J. Müller, ‘Die Protokolle der Kirchenvisitationen in den Ämtern Vogtsberg und Plauen vom 15. Febr.–6. März 1529 und vom 23. März–13. April 1533, bezhtl. in Elsterberg vom 19.–20. Sept. 1533’, Mitteilungen des Altertumsvereins zu Plauen im Vogtland, 6 (1886–87), pp. I–LXXXIV. 19 For another regional example, see documents pertaining to the introduction of the Reformation into the County of Nassau-Dillenberg, Senior Line, in 1538: Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden, Abt. 171 Nr. S. 303, pp. 28–35. At this time, priests with concubines were removed from their posts rather than being forced to marry. Some complained of this treatment and hinted that they would be willing to take wives. 20 F. Spanuth, ‘Quellen zur Durchführung der Reformation im BraunschweigWolffenbüttelschen Lande 1551 bis 1568’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für niedersächsische Kirchengeschichte, 42 (1937), 241–64. 21 Bayerisches Staatsarchiv Coburg, LA B 2468, ‘Visitatio Superintentur [sic] Coburg. Et Adiunctur, 1577’, fol. 54r. 22 Landeskirchenarchiv Braunschweig, V 1924, ‘Die kirchlichen und sittlichen Verhältnisse vornehmlich in den Fürstentümern Calenberg und Göttingen (1543) 1625–1630’, fol. 132r. 23 E.g., Thüringisches Staatsarchiv Gotha, Oberkonsistorium Generalia, Loc. 19, No. 3, dated 1542 for the whole of Amt Gotha. This category of document constitutes a huge subgenre in the overall visitation literature, one that has received little attention. 24 S.C. Karant-Nunn, Luther’s Pastors: The Reformation in the Ernestine Countryside (Philadelphia, 1979), especially ‘The Pastors’ Daily Lives’, pp. 31–8, and ‘The Economic Position of the Ministers’, pp. 38–52. 25 Vie religieuse en Pays Rhenan dans la seconde moitie du XVIe siècle (1556–1619) (Lille, 1974), pp. 191–261. See also his chapter 4, ‘Une famille nombreuse dans un presbytère souvent inconfortable’, pp. 263–314, including a section, ‘La famille pastorale’, 287–314. 26 ‘The Abbot and the Concubine: Piety and Politics in Sixteenth-Century Naumburg’, Archive for Reformation History, 92 (2001), 138–64. 27 ‘Pfarrfrauen in der hansestädtischen Gesellschaft der Frühen Neuzeit’, in B. Vogel and U. Weckels (eds), Frauen in der Ständegesellschaft: Leben und Arbeiten in der Stadt vom späten Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit (Hamburg, 1991), pp. 201–25, here at p. 211. 28 Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, Reg. Ii 75, fol. 62, 1556. 29 Landeskirchenarchiv Braunschweig, V 1924, ‘Die kirchlichen und sittlichen Verhältnisse vornehmlich in den Fürstentümern Calenberg und Göttingen (1543) 1625–1630’, fol. 5r.

218 Notes 30 Bruce Gordon has noticed the same phenomenon in the countryside around Zurich: Clerical Discipline, p. 118. 31 S.C. Karant-Nunn, ‘Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism in Saxony, 1555–1675’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 24, 4 (1994), 615–37; R. Pochia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (London, 1989), p. 19; which draws on the evidence of M. Brecht, ‘Herkunft und Ausbildung der protestantischen Geistlichen des Herzogtum Württembergs im 16. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 80 (1969), 163–75. 32 WA 26, pp. 175–240. 33 Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 159–226. 34 K. Pallas (comp. and ed.), Die Registraturen der Kirchenvisitationen im ehemals sächsischen Kurkreise, 7 vols. (Halle, 1906–1918), the visitations of the early seventeenth century. 35 Landeshauptarchiv Magdeburg, Rep. A12, Gener. 2440, ‘Kirchenvisitation 1583/84, Jerichow’scher Kreis’, passim. The visitors desired an ability to use Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but were especially disappointed when even Latin was missing, as it often was. A sufﬁcient level of Latin could have been acquired in grammar school. 36 U. Gäbler, Huldrych Zwingli: Eine Einführung in sein Leben und sein Werk (Berlin, 1985), pp. 92–3; Potter, Zwingli, pp. 221–4. 37 ‘Basel’s Rural Pastors as Mediators of Confessional and Social Discipline’, Central European History, 33, 1 (2000), 67–85, here at p. 73. 38 B. Tolley, Pastors and Parishioners in Württemberg during the Late Reformation, 1581–1621 (Stanford, 1995), ch. 2. 39 ‘An die Ratherren aller Städte deutschen Lands, daß sie christliche Schulen aufrichten und halten sollen, 1524’, WA 15, 6–37. S.C. Karant-Nunn, ‘The Reality of Early Lutheran Education: The Electoral District of Saxony – a Case Study’, Lutherjahrbuch, 57 (1990), pp. 128–46. 40 Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, B. 2892, ‘Kirchen- vnd SchulVisitations-Acta 1650’, fol. 15r. 41 Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, Reg. Ii 2667, ‘1557. Schriften betr. die von dem Pfarrer, Schosser und Rath zu Altenburg erstattete allgemeine Anzeige der verschiedenen Mangel und Gebrechen’, fol. 19r. 42 Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, Reg. Ii 23–26, ‘Registration der visitation welche Anno 1554 gehaldenn’, fol. 11v. 43 Karant-Nunn, ‘Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism’, pp. 631–4. 44 Pallas, Die Registraturen, 3: p. 95. For similar efforts to separate Catholic priests from peasant conviviality, see U. Pﬁster, ‘Pastors and Priests in the Early Modern Grisons: Organized Profession or Side Activity’, Central European History, 33, 1 (2000), 41–65, here at p. 51. 45 Evangelisches Lutherisches Kirchenarchiv Stuttgart, A1 Nr 1 1583, no title, vol. 1, pp. 93–4. 46 As far as I know, Bernd Moeller has played the major part in publicizing the concept of the Reformation as a revival of monastic ideals: ‘Die frühe Reformation in Deutschland als neues Mönchtum’, in idem (ed.), Die frühe Reformation in Deutschland als Umbruch (Gütersloh, 1997), pp. 76–91. I think that it is appropriate to extend the usefulness of this idea beyond merely the early phase of the Reformation. Heide Wunder discusses the ideal of ‘middle class’ women’s withdrawal into the home without reference to

Notes 219

47

48

49

50 51

52 53

54

55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62

monasticism: ‘Er ist die Sonn’, sie ist der Mond’: Frauen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1992), pp. 116–17. J.C. Smith, ‘Katharina von Bora through Five Centuries: A Historiography’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 30 (1999), 745–74, esp. p. 755. Her formal widow’s letters of petition to potential patrons were penned by scribes. See photographs of two of these in M. Treu, ‘Lieber Herr Käthe–Katharina von Bora, die Lutherin (Wittenberg, 1999), pp. 86–7. The modern literature concerning expectations of women in general has become vast. I shall mention here only a convenient summary, U. Hörauf–Erﬂe, Wesen und Rolle der Frau in der moralisch-didaktischen Literatur des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im Heiligen Römischen Reich deutscher Nation (Frankfurt/Main, Bern, New York, 1991). The council to Elector Johann, 3 April 1531, reprinted in E. Fabian, ‘Der Streit Luthers mit dem Zwickauer Rate im Jahre 1531’, Mitteilungen des Altertumsvereins für Zwickau und Umgegend, 8 (1905), 75–176, here at pp. 149–52. Evangelisches Lutherisches Kirchenarchiv Stuttgart, A1 Nr 1 1582, p. 153. Gordon observes, apropos of Zurich and its imposition of discipline upon the pastors of its hinterland, ‘Criticism of a minister’s preaching was often accompanied by accusations of drinking, swearing or of violence in the home.’ Clerical Discipline, p. 110. ‘Predigten des Jahres 1525, Nr. 8 [15. Januar]’, WA XVII/1: 27. Creide, Nuptialia Continuata Oder Christlicher Hochzeit Sermonen, Ander Theyl, sive Debitum Coniugale, Das ist, Schuldige Pﬂicht der Eheleut (Frankfurt/Main, 1670), sermon 28, p. 294. Pﬁster, ‘Pastors and Priests in the Early Modern Grisons’, discusses Reformed efforts in the late sixteenth century to compel pastors to bring their private lives into near-conformity with the ideal, pp. 48–9. Evangelisches Landeskirchliches Archiv Stuttgart, A1 Nr. 1 1581, p. 20. Sächsisches Landeskirchenarchiv [Dresden], Matrikel Freiberg 1617 [sic], fol. 665r. Evangelisches Lutherisches Kirchenarchiv Stuttgart, A1 Nr. 1 1581, pp. 158–9. ‘Pfarrfrauen’, p. 222. Bayerisches Staatsarchiv Coburg, LA B 2468, ‘Visitatio Superintentur [sic] Coburg. Et Adiunctur, 1577’, fol. 68r. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, Loc. 1986, ‘Registratur der Visitation, so uff empfangenen Churfürstlichen Sächsischen beuehlich … in der Superintendentz Pegau gehalten … anno 1574’, e.g., village of Behlen, fol. 125r; Storkewitz, fol. 188r. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, Loc. 1992, ‘Visitation der Superintendentur Borna 1574’, fol. 85v. This issue comes up in Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, Reg. Ii 2487, ‘1555. Bericht der Visitatoren über die in der abgehaltenen Visitation gemachten Wahrnehmungen’, fol. 4r–v [lands of the three sons of Elector Johann Friedrich]: how to provide for those who retire as many are about to do; widows and orphans. Widows could stay on for a period – usually half a year – with all entitlements. It is also mentioned as one of the pervasive shortcomings in the mid-seventeenth century, admittedly after the tremendous disturbances of the Thirty Years’ War: Landeshauptarchiv Magdeburg,

220 Notes

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64 65

66 67 68

69

70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80

Rep. A12 Gen. 2445, ‘Kirchenvisitation 1650/51, Jerichow’scher Kreis’, item 7, fol. 38v. Landeshauptarchiv Magdeburg, Reg. A12 Gen. 2445, ‘Kirchenvisitation 1650/51, Jerichow’scher Kreis’, item 21, fol. 139v: no certain support for old, verlebte clergymen. Evangelisches Lutherisches Kirchenarchiv Stuttgart, A1 Nr. 1 1581, pp. 81–2. Luise Schorn-Schütte notes the sociological shift between the origins of the Catholic priesthood and those of the mature Lutheran pastorate: Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Frühneuzeit: Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung frühmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft, dargestellt am Beispiel des Fürstentums Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, der Landgrafschaft Hessen-Kassel und der Stadt Braunschweig (Gütersloh, 1996), p. 32. Bayerisches Staatsarchiv Coburg, LA B 2468, ‘Visitatio Superintentur Coburg. Et Adiunctur, 1577’, fol. 154v. Bayerisches Staatsarchiv Coburg, LA B 2540, ‘Acta Visitationis de ao. 1613’, Streisenhausen, fol. 89r. S.C. Karant-Nunn, ‘“Fragrant Wedding Roses”: Lutheran Wedding Sermons and Gender Deﬁnition in Early Modern Germany’, German History, 17, 1 (1999), 25–40. Hartmann Creide, Nuptialia Oder Fünfftzig Christliche Hochzeit-Sermonen, Vber unterschiedliche Biblische Sprüch gehalten in der Evangelischen PfarrKirchen bey St. Anna in Augspurg (Frankfurt/Main, 1661), Predigt 2, p. Biiii. I have provided a fuller description of Mathesius’s salient collections in my ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche: Social Ideology in the Sermons of Johannes Mathesius’, in A.C. Fix and S.C. Karant-Nunn (eds.), Germania Illustrata: Essays on Early Modern Germany Presented to Gerald Strauss (Kirksville, Missouri, 1992), pp. 121–40. Johannes Mathesius, Ausgewählte Werke, 4 vols., ed. G. Loesche (Prague and Vienna: F. Tempsky; Leipzig: G. Freytag, 1896), 1: Leichenreden, pp. 66–9. Ausgewählte Werke, 1: pp. 73–243. Ausgewählte Werke, 1: pp. 79–80. Ausgewählte Werke 1: pp. 91–2. K.F. Ledderhose, Das Leben des M. Johann Mathesius (Heidelberg, 1849), p. 160. Ausgewählte Werke 1: pp. 96–7. Ausgewählte Werke, 1: p. 102. Karant–Nunn, ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche’, passim. Rebhun, Hausfried (Wittenberg, 1546); Rebhun supported wife–beating (Qvii–Rii). Freder alias Ireneus, Lob und unschuldt der Ehefrawen. Und widerlegung der Sprüch, damit die Weibsbilder, durch die Philosophos oder Weltweise Heyden, und etliche vermeynte Christen geschmehet werden. Gott und dem heyligen Ehestande zu ehren geschrieben (Frankfurt am Main, 1569), written to counter Sebastian Franck’s Sprichwörter. On Freder, see S.H. Hendrix, ‘Christianizing Domestic Relations: Women and Marriage in Johann Freder’s Dialogus dem Ehestand zu Ehren’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 23, 2 (1992), 251–66. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville, 1950), p. 233.

Notes 221

Chapter 4 1 I thank Ann Tlusty and Amy McCready for reading drafts of this essay and offering useful criticisms. 2 For source material I used K. Pallas (ed.), Die Registraturen der Kirchenvisitation im ehemals sächsischen Kurkreise (hereafter RKVSK), 6 vols. (Halle, 1906–18). In some instances I have been able to supplement the material which comprises Pallas’s collection with additional visitation protocols he did not include. The events and direct quotes pertaining to Pastor Juchenhöfer’s ministry in Schmerkendorf are found in RKVSK 5: 111–17; and Landesarchiv Magdeburg, Landeshauptarchiv Außenstelle Wernigerode (hereafter LHAWgd), Rep. A 29b II No. 11, 183–183a; Rep A 29b II No. 5, 538a-542a and 554aa. 3 In contrast, Luther wanted Melanchthon to preach in Wittenberg after supper on holidays to keep people in church, away from drinking and gambling. Martin Luther, ‘Letter to Spalatin’ (9 September 1521) in Luther’s Works (hereafter LW) vols. 48 and 49 (G. Krodel, trans. and ed.), (Philadelphia, 1963, 1972), here at vol. 48, p. 308. 4 The ﬁne provides an example of what Heinz Schilling has labelled the ‘criminalization of sin’ caused by the ‘structural interlocking’ of church discipline and state discipline in early modern Europe. ‘ “History of Crime” or “History of Sin”? – Some Reﬂections on the Social History of Early Modern Church Discipline’, in E.I. Kouri and T. Scott (eds), Politics and Society in Reformation Europe (New York, 1987), pp. 289–310. 5 Alex gave his villagers permission to work their ﬁelds on Sundays. Georg’s villagers worked on Sunday, too, but, as it was obligatory labour on Georg’s ﬁelds, they complained to the visitors, expressing a sudden desire not to be kept from church. 6 I assume he was transferred; the records for this parish do not indicate what happened to him. 7 She had proprietorship over Schmerkendorf, and was aided by her brother, Georg von Radestock. Georg von Hohendorf is still listed as the feudal lord over Falkenberg. The events and direct quotes pertaining to Pastor Faber’s ministry in Schmerkendorf are found in RKVSK 5: 117–19. 8 For the importance of wedding feasts to the community and membership within it, see L. Roper, ‘“Going to Church and Street”: Weddings in Reformation Augsburg’, Past and Present, 106 (1985), 62–101, and S.C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual. An Interpretation of Early Modern German Culture (New York, 1997), pp. 6–42. For communal drinking, see B.A. Tlusty, Bacchus and Civic Order: the Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany (Charlottesville, 2001). 9 For the notion of ‘failed Reformation’, see G. Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, 1978). For the rejoinder, J. Kittelson, ‘Successes and Failures in the German Reformation: The Report from Strasbourg’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 73 (1982), 153–74. 10 I have argued along somewhat related lines in ‘Pfarrer als Außenseiter. Landpfarrer und religiöses Leben in Sachsen zur Reformationszeit’,

222 Notes

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12

13

14

15

16

17 18

Historische Anthropologie: Kultur, Gesellschaft, Alltag, 7 (1999), 191–211. That essay explores how compromise with lay members could help non-native pastors overcome problems they inadvertently caused as a result of their unfamiliarity with local customs. The literature is vast. For Germany: H.-C. Rublack, ‘“Der Wohlgeplagte Priester”. Vom Selbstverständnis lutherischer Geistlichkeit im Zeitalter der Orthodoxie’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 16 (1989), 1–30; L. SchornSchütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Frühneuzeit. Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung frühmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft. Dargestellt am Beispiel des Fürstentums Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, der Landgrafschaft Hessen-Kassel und der Stadt Braunschweig (Gütersloh, 1996); idem, ‘The Christian Clergy in the Early Modern Holy Roman Empire: A Comparative Social Study’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 29 (1998), 717–31; S.C. Karant-Nunn, Luther’s Pastors. The Reformation in the Ernestine Countryside (Philadelphia, 1979); C.S. Dixon, The Reformation and Rural Society. The Parishes of BrandenburgAnsbach-Kulmbach, 1528–1603 (Cambridge, 1996); D.W. Sabean, Power in the Blood. Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 113–73; J. Whaley, ‘Obedient Servants? Lutheran Attitudes to Authority and Society in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century’, Historical Journal, 35 (1992), 27–42. For England: N. Enssle, ‘Patterns of Godly Life: The Ideal Parish Minister in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Thought’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 28 (1997), 3–28; E. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath. Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven, 2001); E.J. Carlson,’”Practical Divinity”: Richard Greenham’s Ministry in Elizabethan England’, in E.J. Carlson (ed.), Religion and the English People 1500–1640 (Kirksville, 1998), pp. 147–200; L.J. Abray, The People’s Reformation. Magistrates, Clergy, and Commons in Strasbourg 1500–1598 (Oxford, 1985). For the concept of ‘popular culture’ and a study of the rupture which separated elites from ‘the people’, see P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978). Similar crises occurred in other parts of Germany as well. See T. Robisheaux, Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1989). R.W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987); and P. Matheson, The Imaginative World of the Reformation (Edinburgh, 2000). Here my thinking has been informed by Thomas Robisheaux, particularly his ‘Peasants and Pastors: Rural Youth Control and the Reformation in Hohenlohe, 1540–1680’, Social History, 6 (1981), 281–300. For a case where ofﬁcial dogma became intertwined with subjective theological perspectives, see C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms. The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (trans. J. and A. Tedeschi) (Baltimore, 1980). J. Theibault, ‘Community and Herrschaft in the Seventeenth-Century German Village’, Journal of Modern History, 64 (1992), 1–21. M. O’Neil, ‘Sacerdote ovvero strione: Ecclesiastical and Superstitious Remedies in 16th Century Italy’, in S.L. Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin, 1984), pp. 53–83; Goodale, ‘Pfarrer als Außenseiter.’

Notes 223 19 Karant-Nunn, Luther’s Pastors, pp. 8–13; M. Brecht, ‘Herkunft und Ausbildung der protestantischen Geistlichen des Herzogtums Württemberg im 16. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 80 (1969), 163–75. 20 RKVSK 5: 365–73; Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dresden (hereafter HSADres) Loc. 10598, 120; and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 20, 106a-109; No. 11, 181a-182; No. 5, 554a. 21 In 1578 visitors reminded the clerics at Jessen: ‘Culpantes alios tribunal iudicis audit/Culpantes sese pastoris sella receptat.’ RKVSK 3: 278. 22 RKVSK 5: 35 and 174. 23 RKVSK 3: 287. 24 RKVSK 3: 171–3. The squabble (1583) involved assessing the damage his cows and geese made when left unattended. 25 Martin Luther, ‘Table Talk’ (hereafter TT), in Luther’s Works, vol. 54 (T. Tappert, trans. and ed.) (Philadelphia, 1967), nos. 3754 and 3799, pp. 268 and 276–7; and ‘Ob man vor dem sterben ﬂiehen möge’ (1527) in D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe 23 (Weimar, 1883–), pp. 338–79. Friedrich Mecum [Myconius], wie man die einfeltigen und sonderlich die kranken im Christenthumb unterrichten sol (Wittenberg, 1539). 26 For example: ‘Gemeine verordnung und artikel der visitation in Meissen und der Voigtland ...’ (1533); ‘General-Artikel und gemeiner Bericht ...’ (1557); and ‘herrn Augusten, herzogen zu Sachsen, Ordnung’ (1580) in E. Sehling (ed.), Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, Erste Abtheilung. Sachsen und Thüringen, nebst angrenzenden Gebieten (hereafter KO), (Leipzig, 1902), pp. 192, 323–4 and 370. 27 Carlson, ‘Practical Divinity’, p. 175. 28 See H.C.E. Midelfort, Witch-hunting in Southwestern Gemany, 1562–1684. The Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford, 1972), and R. Briggs, Witches and Neighbors. The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York, 1996), pp. 97–134 and 169–218. 29 RKVSK 3: 592 and 673, and 5: 207; and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 532a536, and no. 31, 371–73. The sick in Kleinrössen would receive at home on Sunday, but never on a weekday. 30 Duffy, Voices of Morebath, p. 45. 31 Enssle, ‘Patterns of Godly Life’, 7. 32 Philip Melanchthon, ‘Instructions for the Visitors of Parish Pastors in Electoral Saxony’ (1528), in Luther’s Works, vol. 40 (C. Bergendoff, trans. and ed.) (Philadelphia, 1958), pp. 265–320, here at p. 313. 33 Enssle, ‘Patterns of Godly Life’, 5–9. 34 RKVSK 5: 472–7. 35 G. Strauss, ‘The Reformation and Its Public in an Age of Orthodoxy’, in R. Po-Chia Hsia (ed.), The German People and the Reformation (Ithaca, 1988), pp. 194–214, here at p. 199. 36 See ‘Instruction und befelch dorauf die visitatores abgefertiget sein’ (1527, for Electoral Saxony) and ‘Instruction Johans Friderichen des mittlern ...’ (1554, for Ernestine Saxony) in KO, pp. 144 and 223. 37 Abray, People’s Reformation, p. 35. 38 The pastor in Plossig complained (1582) that a leading secular ofﬁcial owned a tavern and encouraged, rather than punished, drinking parties. RKVSK 3: 289.

224 Notes 39 RKVSK 2: 344–7, 3: 199, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 19, 395–399a. 40 TT (no. 4143), p. 323. 41 LW 49, ‘Letter to Löscher’ (26 August 1529), p. 233. Cf. Martin Luther, ‘To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools’, in Luther’s Works, vol. 45 (W. Brandt, trans. and ed.) (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 339–78. 42 To use Strauss’s phrase. 43 The events and direct quotes pertaining to Pastor Steinbrecher’s ministry in Hohenbucko, 1575–80 are found in RKVSK 6: 74–78, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 559–562a. 44 ‘Auch sei es schade, daß sein gutes Ingenium allda auf dem Dorfe also verderbe.’ RKVSK 6: 78. 45 He was presumably transferred to a city. Cities alone had populations that warranted deacons. Also, the visitors stated he would be guaranteed ‘a speciﬁc income’, suggesting he would not be farming. RKVSK 6: 78. 46 For example, see ‘General-Artikel und gemeiner Bericht ...’ (1557) in KO, p. 322. Deacon Schade of Schmeideberg upset his laity when, at the age of 60, and presumably unable to farm very well, he began to brew and sell beer, aided by his wife and daughter, to supplement his meager income. RKVSK 1: 309–10, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 19, 75–75a, 82, 88–89. 47 RKVSK 3: 284. 48 RKVSK 3: 138. 49 RKVSK 5: 166–9. 50 For the controversies, see H. Scheible, Melanchthon (Munich, 1997), pp. 192–205; T. Klein, Der Kampf um die zweite Reformation in Kursachsen (Cologne, 1962); H. Schilling (ed.), Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland – Das Problem der ‘Zweiten Reformation’ (Gütersloh, 1986). 51 RKVSK 5: 23, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 20, 76–83a. 52 RKVSK 5: 71–8 The debate surrounded disputes resolved with the publication of the Book of Concord in 1580. 53 For notions of ‘common good’, see R.W. Scribner, ‘Police and Territorial State in Sixteenth-century Württemberg’, in Kouri and Scott (eds), Politics and Society, pp. 103–20. For notions of ‘superior status’, see S.C. KarantNunn, ‘Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism in Saxony, 1575–1675’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 24 (1994), 615–37. 54 RKVSK 2: 173, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 11, 79a–80. 55 Enssle argues that pastors whose behaviour was too exemplary could be seen as non-human, and thus irrelevant. ‘Patterns of Godly Life’, pp. 9–10. 56 (In 1579) RKVSK 5: 175. 57 (In 1578) RKVSK 3: 273, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 596–599a. 58 (In 1579) RKVSK 3: 95. 59 J. Goodale, ‘Pastors, Privation, and the Process of Reformation in Saxony’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 33 (2002), 76–82. 60 D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion. Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603–30 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 63–8. 61 TT (no. 453), pp. 73–4. 62 The events and direct quotes pertaining to Pastor Jedocus’s ministry in Lebusa are found in RKVSK 6: 97–102 and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 562a–564 and 566–568. In 1577 the number of communicants was

Notes 225

63

64

65 66

67 68 69

70

71 72 73

74

recorded: Lebusa- 120, Körba – 66, Striesa – 60. The Junkers Georg and Wolf Löser of Lebusa possessed feudal rights over Lebusa and Körba. Eustachius von Drahnsdorf possessed feudal rights over Striesa until his death in 1577, at which time his heirs, who lived in Belgern, put the village under the trusteeship of two extra-parish nobles. The University of Wittenberg possessed the right to appoint pastors to the parish. A ﬁlial village had its own church but no resident pastor. The pastor gave regular sermons in the ﬁlial churches, but the parishioners would have to come to the main church for communion. ‘Instruktion welchergestalt ...’ (June 1577), KO, pp. 346–7. The Augsburg Confession, though written by Melanchthon, continued to be highly regarded, even as Philippists came under attack. The visitors of 1577 noted that pastor Jedocus had already instituted a catechism exam in the parish. The lessons were usually based on the week’s gospel and epistle readings, particularly during Advent and Holy Week. The parishioners did not buy a new cow for him until the one assigned him died in 1577. E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 50 (1971), 76–136. Their reluctance to buy him a new cow in 1572 was vindicated: his ‘old’ cow continued to provide him with milk until its death in 1577. The visitors of 1579 ordered him to stop writing to the local lords. On the perceived dangers of indolence, see R. Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994). It is noteworthy that many pastors were criticized for not having crucial theology books at hand, and were repeatedly ordered to purchase them with parish funds, suggesting that they might have been reluctant to do so. I believe the sexton was not fully literate, a supposition which would explain why Jedocus realized this position. During the 1578 visitation, Sexton Bostorff claimed to have worked as a sexton since 1565, but the visitors could not determine where. The peasants of Körba and Striesa used the 1577 visitation as an opportunity to request ofﬁcially that Jedocus teach their children the catechism; the visitors were themselves unhappy with the sexton, whose job it was. Throughout his tenure the sexton was repeatedly cited for failing to teach catechism and day school, and he was dismissed in 1583. His forced resignation as clerk might have freed Jedocus from whatever deference he had given his former employers. Jedocus had to pay 5 groschen annually as rent for the use of the churchyard and yet he was denied the tree! Jedocus preached in Striesa every other Sunday morning, and on the second and third days of the three major holidays. (Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost each had three days of religious service.) Between Advent and the start of Lent he went one day each week, either Wednesday or Friday, to lecture on the catechism. For Lutheran baptismal practice, Karant-Nunn, Reformation, pp. 43–71. They dismissed him for holding Catholic rites and for theological ignorance. G. Berbig (ed.), ‘Die erste Kursächsische Visitation im Ortsland Franken’, in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 3 (1905/6), 375.

226 Notes 75 (Parish Liebenwerda) RKVSK 5: 38. 76 RKVSK 5: 234. 77 (In 1577) RKVSK 3: 591, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 508/58a–60 and 508/95a. 78 (In 1577) RKVSK 5: 144; and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 524a–530 and 554aa. 79 (In 1578) RKVSK 5: 371. 80 RKVSK 5: 91–2, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 544a–547 and 554a. 81 (In 1577) RKVSK 5: 144; and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 524a–530 and 554aa. 82 See H. Medick, ‘Village Spinning Bees: Sexual Culture and Free Time among Rural Youth in Early Modern Germany’, in H. Medick and D. Sabean (eds), Interest and Emotion: Essays in the Study of Family and Kinship (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 317–39. 83 RKVSK 3:305, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 149–152. 84 RKVSK 5: 209. 85 (In 1598) RKVSK 5: 211–12. 86 (In 1602) RKVSK 3: 367. 87 Jedocus wanted 1 groschen each time they took clay. There were 42 groschen in a Reichstaler. 88 Even secular authorities could hold this view. The Schösser in Stolzenhain (1555) built storage bins in the pastor’s unused yard. RKVSK 3: 360. 89 Examples of similar healers in other parishes are legion. In Uebigau, the pastor’s own maid hired a cunning woman who recited spells over blownout candles to cure a ‘swollen mouth’. RKVSK 5: 144. The cures of healing women were often better than those proposed by university trained physicians. See H.C.E. Midelfort, Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany (Charlottesville, 1994). 90 RKVSK 5: 210, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 11, 183a–184a. 91 RKVSK 5: 292. 92 RKVSK 3: 319, and HSADres Loc. 10598, 2–6. He also agreed to meet them anywhere they wanted, except in a tavern. 93 RKVSK 3: 226–31 and 1: 573, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 114–125a. Roth was a district superintendent. He initiated the compromise in February 1578, when Jessen was without a pastor, as pastor Greiffenhagen had died from plague while attending its victims. 94 I have examined 132 Electoral Saxon parishes between 1528 and 1602, and Jedocus is the only pastor to have ﬂed his parish, other than to escape plague. He was replaced by Martin Jesawitz, aged 29, who had been schoolmaster in Schweinitz. RKVSK 3: 333, and LHAWgd Rep A 29b II No. 5, 127a. 95 M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (trans. H. Iswolsky) (Bloomington, 1984). 96 Sabean, Power, pp. 94–112; and L. Roper, Oedipus and the Devil. Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early-Modern Europe (New York, 1994), pp. 199–225. 97 J.C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985) and idem, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven, 1990). 98 TT (no. 234), p. 31. 99 Melanchthon, ‘Instructions for the Visitors’ (1528), in LW 40, p. 311.

Notes 227

Chapter 5 1 For the relationship between the Reformation and the university, see T. Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung. Die Rostocker Theologieprofessoren und ihr Beitrag zur theologischen Bildung und kirchlichen Gestaltung im Herzogtum Mecklenburg zwischen 1500 und 1675 (Gütersloh, 1997); N. Hammerstein, ‘Universitäten und Reformation’, Historische Zeitschrift, 258 (1994), 339-58; idem. (ed.), Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte Vol. 1: 15.–17. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1996); for the later period, A. Schindling, Bildung und Wissenschaft in der frühen Neuzeit 1650–1800 (München, 1994); for Wittenberg, see S. Oehmig, 700 Jahre Wittenberg. Stadt Universität Reformation (Weimar at. al., 1995); H. Lück (ed.), Martin und seine Universität (Cologne et. al., 1998); H.-J. Rupieper (ed.), Beiträge zur Geschichte der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg 1502–2002 (Halle, 2002); G. Berg (ed.), Emporium: 500 Jahre Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Landesausstellung Sachsen-Anhalt, Katalog zur Ausstellung (Halle, 2002); for the signiﬁcance of the University of Wittenberg in the initial phase of the Reformation, see the recent works by J.-M. Kruse, Universitätstheologie und Kirchenreform. Die Anfänge der Reformation in Wittenberg 1516–1522 (Mainz, 2002); I. Dingel and G. Wartenberg (eds.) Die Theologische Fakultät Wittenberg 1502–1602 (Leipzig, 2002) Since many of the theses and results in this contribution have been incorporated from my Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung, I have kept the references to a minimum. The interested reader is referred to this text for an extensive list of related literature and source materials. For all questions touching on the early modern clergy, see the pioneering study by L. Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Frühneuzeit. Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung frühmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft (Gütersloh, 1996) and my analytical remarks and considerations in ‘Frühneuzeitliche Religion und Evangelische Geistlichkeit’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 26 (1999), 381–91. 2 Cf. G. Lewis, ‘The Geneva Academy’, in A. Pettegree, A. Duke and G. Lewis (eds), Calvinism in Europe 1540–1620 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 35–63. 3 See T. Kaufmann, Das Ende der Reformation. Magdeburgs ‘Herrgotts Kanzlei’ 1548–1551/2 (Tübingen, 2003). 4 Fundamental and still unsurpassed in all statistical matters relating to the early modern university in Germany: F. Eulenburg, Die Frequenz der deutschen Universitäten von ihrer Gründung bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1904). 5 References to source materials in T. Kaufmann, ‘Theologische Auseinandersetzungen an der Universität Königsberg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’, in K. Garber, M. Komorowski and A.E. Walter (eds), Kulturgeschichte Ostpreußens in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 2001), pp. 243–318, here pp. 247ff.; on the founding of the University of Königsberg, now, see B. Moeller, ‘Die Universität Königsberg als Gründung der Reformation’, in idem (edited by J. Schilling) Luther-Rezeption. Kirchenhistorische Aufsätze zur Reformationsgeschichte (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 182–91; cf. my article on Königsberg, in RGG4, Vol. 4, 2001, Col. 1584–86. 6 Characteristic, for instance, is the following phrase from the Rostock theologian Simon Pauli: ‘Sunt Academiae, puram Evangelii doctrinam, ho-

228 Notes

7 8 9

10

11 12

13

14

nestas leges, artem medicam, Philosophiam & linguam propagantes, quasi Paradisus DEI, unde coelestes plantae, semen verbi divini, virtutis, honestatis, & publici commodi spargantes & disseminantes, in diversa & quidem multa loca, transferuntur.’ Simon Pauli, Dispositio in partes orationis rhetoricae, et brevis textus enarratio evangeliorum, … Nunc denuo … recognita et locupleta (Magdeburg, 1575); VD 16 P 992; Ex. UB Rostock Fl 3358, S. 7 v–8r. R.A. Müller, Universität und Adel. Eine soziostrukturelle Studie zur Geschichte der bayrischen Landesuniversität Ingolstadt 1472–1648 (Berlin, 1974), pp. 38ff. Eulenburg, Frequenz, p. 191. L. Grane, ‘Studia humanitatis und Theologie an den Universitäten Wittenberg und Kopenhagen im 16. Jahrhundert: Komparative Überlegungen’, in G. Keil, B. Moeller and W. Trusen (eds), Der Humanismus und die oberen Fakultäten (Weinheim, 1987), pp. 65–114, esp. 85; also instructive is Grane’s ‘Teaching the People – the Education of the Clergy and the Instruction of the People in the Danish Reformation Church’, in L. Grane and K. Hørby (eds), Die dänische Reformation vor ihrem internationalen Hintergrund (Göttingen, 1990), pp. 164–89; in adopting the relationship between the various medieval faculties to one another, some recent accounts have arrived at consequences that are problematical with regard to evangelical pastors. See my critical comments in Universität, pp. 88f, no. 230; H. Kathe, Die Wittenberger Philosophische Facultät 1502–1817 (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2002), pp. 47–161. Ed. in: W. Friedensburg (ed.), Urkundenbuch der Universität Wittenberg Vol. 1: (1502–1611) (Magdeburg, 1926), pp. 261–5; vgl. CR 10, Sp. 1001–8; the details in the main text refer to this source. Cf. H.-P. Hasse (ed.), Philipp Melanchthon. Enaratio secundae tertiaeque partis Symboli Nicaeni (1550) (Gütersloh, 1996). On the role of the loci as reﬂected in the order of lessons and teaching schedules in Lutheran faculties, see the compilation in T. Kaufmann, ‘Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586). Zur Wirkungsgeschichte der theologischen Loci’, in H. Scheible (ed.), Melanchthon in seinen Schülern (Wiesbaden, 1997), pp. 183–254, esp. pp. 185–90 (no. 4). Cf. H. Staemmler, ‘Der Kampf der kursächsischen Theologen gegen den Helmstedter Synkretismus’, Diss. Theol., Halle Wittenberg 1963; O. Ritschl, Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus Vol. IV (Göttingen, 1927); C. Böttigheimer, Zwischen Polemik und Irenik. Die Theologie der einen Kirche bei Georg Calixt (Münster, 1996), pp. 53–68; with reference to Königsberg: T. Kaufmann, ‘Königsberger Theologieprofessoren im 17. Jahrhundert’, in D. Rauschning and D. von Nerée (eds), Die Albertus-Universität zu Königsberg und ihre Professoren (Berlin, 1995), pp. 49–86. Cf. T. Moldaenke, Christian Dreier und der synkretistische Streit im Herzogtum Preußen (Königsberg, 1909), p. 65; on the teaching in orthodox Lutheran faculties, see the account by August Tholuck, which, despite its occasional lapses into caricature, still has an unsurpassed wealth of material: A Tholuck, Das akademische Leben des 17. Jahrhunderts (Vorgeschichte des Rationalismus, First Part), 1. Abt. (Halle, 1853), pp. 85ff; on the extent to which contemporary theologico-political debates inﬂuenced Tholuck’s historiographical concept, cf. T. Kaufmann, ‘Tholucks Sicht auf den

Notes 229

15

16 17

18

19

20 21

22

23 24

Rationalismus und seine “Vorgeschichte”’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 99 (2002), 45–75. On the nature of scholarships and the composition of the student body in Rostock, see M. Asche, Von der reichen hansischen Bürgeruniversität zur armen mecklenburgischen Landeshochschule: das regionale und soziale Besucherproﬁl der Universitäten Rostock und Bützow in der frühen Neuzeit (1500–1800) (Stuttgart, 2000); On the Scandinavian students in Rostock: O. Czaika, David Chytraeus und die Universität Rostock in ihren Beziehungen zum schwedischen Reich (Helsinki, 2002); on Wittenberg in the second half of the sixteenth century: A. Gößner, ‘Die Studentenschaft an der Universität Wittenberg. Studien zur Kulturgeschichte des studentischen Alltags und zum Stipendienwesen in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jhs’, Diss. phil. Leipzig 2002 (forthcoming: Leipzig, 2003). For a short account: Art. Chytraeus, David, in: RGGe, Bd. 2, 1999, Sp. 37f. (Lit.). Cf. P. Melanchthon, Brevis discendae theologiae ratio (1529/30), CR 2, Sp. 456–61; MBW 854; H. Scheible, ‘Melanchthons Bildungsprogramm,’ in idem, (edited by G. May and R. Decot), Melanchthon und die Reformation. Forschungsbeiträge (Mainz, 1996), pp. 98–114, esp. 110ff; recently: O. Bayer, ‘Melanchthons Theologiebegriff’, in G. Frank (ed.), Der Theologe Melanchthon (Stuttgart, 2000), pp. 25–48. WA 50, S. 654–61; cf. O. Bayer, ‘Theologie’, Handbuch für Systematische Theologie Vol. 1, (Gütersloh, 1994), pp. 35ff; for the historical context: M. Brecht, Martin Luther Vol.3: Die Erhaltung der Kirche 1532–1546 (Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 144–8. David Chytraeus, Oratio de studio theologiae recte inchoando (1560), ﬁrst printing, used in the following: Ad Regulas studiorum Davidis Chytraei Appendix (Jena, 1595); Ex. SUB Göttingen 8 Didact 192/29, here: 9–41, esp. 18r ff; for an interpretation of the speech, see T. Kaufmann, ‘Die Wittenberger Theologie in Rostock in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Pietismus und Neuzeit, 24 (1998), pp. 65–94, esp. 71ff; on the genre of guidance literature cf. Kaufmann, Universität, pp. 253ff; on tentatio in particular: M. Nieden, ‘Anfechtung als Thema lutherischer Anweisungsschriften zum Theologiestudium’, in M. Nieden and H.-J. Nieden (eds), Praxis Pietatis. Beiträge zu Theologie und Frömmigkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit, Festschrift Wolfgang Sommer zum 60. Geburtstag (Stuttgart, 1999), pp. 83–102. Philipp Jakob Spener (edited by K. Aland), Pia desideria, 3rd edn (Berlin, 1964), p. 21, esp. pp. 5–10. As in the Mecklenburg Church Order of 1522, for instance. Cited in E. Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts, Vol. 5 (Leipzig, 1913), (Reproduction Aalen, 1970), p. 248. Sehling, Evangelische Kirchenordnungen, p. 192. This regulation also appeared in the revised Church Order of 1622. Cf. Kaufmann, Universität, p. 328 with no. 365. Urkunden zur Geschichte der Universität Tübingen aus den Jahren 1486 bis 1550 (Tübingen, 1877), p. 271. Edict of Duke Gustav Adolf to the Superintendent of the RostockGüstrowschen and the Stargardischen Kreise, Güstrow (24 November 1659),

230 Notes

25 26 27

28 29

30

31

32

citation in O.K. Krabbe, Heinrich Müller und seine Zeit (Rostock, 1866), p. 146; on the context of the reform efforts after the Thirty Years’ War, see J. Strom, Orthodoxy and Reform: The Clergy in Seventeenth Century Rostock (Tübingen, 1999). S. Karant-Nunn, Luther’s Pastors. The Reformation in the Ernestine Countryside (Philadelphia, 1979), p. 15. M.-A. Cramer, Die ersten evangelischen Pfarrer in Badisch und Württembergisch Franken (Karlsruhe, 1990), pp. 25ff. The representativeness of the sample of individuals utilized by Scribner (a sample which led him to claim that three-quarters of the preachers active during the early Reformation had attended a university) might be seen as problematical when considered in view of average relations, and especially with reference to the rural pastor. See R.W. Scribner, ‘Preachers and People in the German Towns’, in idem, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987), pp. 123–43, esp. p. 129. Cf. E. Wolgast, Die Reformation in Mecklenburg (Rostock, 1995). In the Palatinate, Bernard Vogler was able to identify the following percentages of pastors with a university education: 85 per cent in 1590, 90 per cent in 1605, and 94 per cent in 1619. See B. Vogler, Le clergé protestant rhénan au siècle de la réforme 1555–1619 (Paris, 1976), p. 57. In Zweibrücken in the years between 1555 and 1580 the proportion of educated pastors climbed from 30 per cent to 70 per cent, in Sponheim from 22 per cent to 80 per cent, op. cit., S. 78. In Kitzingen the share of academically educated pastors during the entire sixteenth century did not climb beyond 75 per cent, cf. E. Weyrauch, ‘Informationen zum Sozialproﬁl der evangelischen Geistlichen Kitzingens im 16. Jahrhundert,’ in I. Batori and E. Weyrauch (eds), Die bürgerliche Elite der Stadt Kitzingen (Stuttgart, 1982), pp. 291–312, here 296; the percentage then climbs around 1600, when it can be demonstrated that 97 per cent of the clergy were university graduates, op. cit., p. 300. In England as well, substantial changes in the educational makeup of the clergy did not really make an impact until 1600. See R. O’Day, The English Clergy. The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (London, 1979), pp. 2ff. Cf. T. Kaufmann, Dreißigjähriger Krieg und Westfälischer Friede. Kirchengeschichtliche Studien zur lutherischen Konfessionskultur (Tübingen, 1998), pp. 102ff; important biographical materials, including the numerous works of evangelical clergymen, in B. von Krusenstjern, Selbstzeugnisse der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis (Berlin, 1997); also compare the edition by B. Autenrieth, Samuel Gerlach, Feldprediger, Hofprediger, Prälat (1609–1683). Ein schwäbischer Pfarrer zwischen Mecklenburg, Holstein, Danzig und Württemberg (Stuttgart, 2000). M. Hasselhorn, Der altwürttembergische Pfarrstand im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1958), p. 43; M. Brecht, ‘Herkunft und Ausbildung der protestantischen Geistlichen des Herzogtums Württemberg im 16. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 80 (1969), pp. 163–75, here p. 169. On the Palatinate, cf: Vogler, Le clergé protestant, pp. 55ff; on Electoral Saxony, Karant-Nunn, Luther’s Pastors, p. 16; on Brandenburg, B. Fröhner, ‘Der evangelische Pfarrstand in der Mark Brandenburg 1540–1600’, Wichmann-Jahrbuch, 19/20 (1965/66), 5-46, here p. 12.

Notes 231 33 Cf. H.-C. Rublack, ‘“Der wolgeplagte Priester”. Zum Selbstverständnis lutherischer Geistlichkeit im Zeitalter der Orthodoxie’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 16 (1989), 1–30. 34 Essential: L. Schorn-Schütte, ‘“Gefährtin”, und “Mitregentin”. Zur Sozialgeschichte der evangelischen Pfarrfrau in der frühen Neuzeit’, H. Wunder and C. Vanja (eds), Wandel der Geschlechterbeziehung zu Beginn der Neuzeit (Frankfurt/M, 1991), pp. 109–53. 35 G. Tietz, ‘Das Erscheinungsbild von Pfarrstand und Pfarrgemeinde des sächsischen Kurkreises im Spiegel der Visitationsberichte des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Diss. phil. Tübingen 1971, p. 73; on the comparable situation in England, cf. O’Day, The English Clergy, p. 186. 36 ‘Denn wer ﬂeissig studieret / lernet / lehret / regieret / der arbeitet mit dem Kopff / Munde vnd Henden / vnd wird jhm offt viel sewrer / denn einem Handwercksmanne oder Bergmann.’ Citation in P. Münch, Lebensformen in der Frühen Neuzeit 1500 bis 1800 (Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1992), p. 359. 37 Cf. Kaufmann, Universität, p. 345; for the following reference as well, ibid., 345ff; on parish libraries see Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 216ff. 38 Kaufmann, Universität, p. 346. 39 Sehling, Evangelische Kirchenordnungen, Vol. 5, p. 161. 40 Op. cit., p. 191. 41 Recently, the theme of the doctrine of the three estates has been the subject of intensive consideration by Luise Schorn-Schütte. See ‘Die Drei-StändeLehre im reformatorischen Umbruch’, B. Moeller (ed.), Die frühe Reformation in Deutschland als Umbruch (Gütersloh, 1998), pp. 435–61. 42 Sehling, Evangelische Kirchenordnungen, Vol. 5, p. 392. 43 On conceptual questions relating to ‘Lutheran Orthodoxy’, along with the ideas associated with this concept, including systematic coherence, dominance of the theologia polemica, doctrinal inﬂexibility, etc., see: T. Kaufmann, ‘Proches étrangers. Aspects de la perception des “Schwärmer” par la première orthodoxie Lutherienne’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 148 (2002), pp. 47–79; an extended version of this contribution will appear in a volume edited by myself and others entitled Interkonfessionalität – Transkonfessionalität – binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität (Gütersloh, forthcoming), scheduled to appear in 2003. 44 R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (London and New York, 1989), p. 18.

Chapter 6 1 The Hüsli case is to be found in the Staatsarchiv Zürich (StAZ) E.II.102.72 2 Bullinger’s Fürtrag is found in StAZ E.II.440, 328–41. The text is printed in H.U. Bächtold, Heinrich Bullinger vor dem Rat. Zur Gestaltung und Verwaltung des Zürcher Staatswesens in den Jahren 1531 bis 1575 (Berne, 1982), pp. 283–94. 3 ‘Den templen, kylchenhüsern, schuolen, begrepnussen, was in und zuo den tempel hoert alls touff, tisch des herren, geschirr, liechter, buecher und was der glychen ist’, Bächtold, Bullinger, p. 283.

232 Notes 4 ‘Nun aber is offenbar, dae soeliche sin gefaengnus in statt und land, ouch an der froembde, vil mee red und gechreys wider u[wer] w[yßheit] erweckt hat, dann haette er diser siner predigen zwentzig und noch me gethan.’ Bächtold, Bullinger, p. 284. 5 On the Church under Heinrich Bullinger, see Bächtold, Bullinger; P. Biel, Doorkeepers at the House of Righteousness. Heinrich Bullinger and the Zurich Clergy 1535–1575 (Berne, 1991); B. Gordon, Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation. The Synod in Zurich, 1532–1580 (Berne, 1992). 6 On Zwingli’s legacy, B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester, 2002), pp. 142–4; W. Baker, ‘Church, State and Dissent: The Crisis of the Swiss Reformation 1531–1536’, Church History LVII (1988), pp. 135–52. 7 Bächtold, Bullinger, p. 284. 8 Ibid. In particular Bullinger cites John 12: 1–8, Acts 4: 32–7 and a variety of texts from the Pauline and Petrine epistles. 9 Bullinger is referring to the account of Lawrence found in Prudentius’ (348–405?) Peristaphanon 2.15. 10 F.W. Bautz, ‘Felix und Regula’, Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, II (1990), Spalte 12–13. 11 Bächtold, Bullinger, p. 285. 12 Ibid., p. 286 13 The reform of the Grossmünster was dealt with by Bullinger in his Reformationsgeschichte ed. J. Hottinger and H.H. Vögeli (Frauenfeld, 1838, rpt. Zurich, 1984), I, pp. 115–19. 14 On the poor mandate in Zurich, Bullinger’s views are found in his Reformationsgeschichte, I, pp. 235–7. 15 Bächtold, Bullinger, p. 286. 16 Ibid., p. 287. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., p. 288. On the Knights of St John House in Küsnacht, see ‘Küsnacht ZH, Johanniter (1358–1531)’, Helvetia Sacra IV/7 (forthcoming). 19 ‘Wnn haette man aber ouch denen lydenlosen pfaffen gnuog gaben?’ 20 Bächtold, Bullinger, pp. 194–5. 21 See the forthcoming article, K.J. Ruetschi, ‘Bullinger and Education’, in B. Gordon (ed.) Heinrich Bullinger (Grand Rapids, 2004). 22 Bächtold, Bullinger, p. 289. 23 For a discussion of attitudes towards the poor, see L. Wandel, Always Among Us. Images of the Poor in Zwingli’s Zurich (Cambridge, 1990). 24 Bächtold, Bullinger, p. 290. 25 Ibid. 26 Zentralbibliothek Zürich msc. S410. 27 On the medieval background to the Zurich Reformation, see Gordon, Clerical Discipline, pp. 23–36. On the pre-Reformation clergy in Zurich, see G. Dörner, Kirche, Klerus und kirchliches Leben in Zürich von der Brunschen Revolution (1336) bis zur Reformation (1523) (Würzburg, 1996). 28 The articles are printed in E. Egli (ed), Actensammlung zur Geschichte der Zürcher Reformation in den Jahren 1519–1533 (Zurich, 1879), 1797, pp. 769–70. See also Biel, Doorkeepers at the House of Righteousness, pp. 52–3, Gordon, Clerical Discipline, p. 77.

Notes 233 29 H. Meyer, ‘Stadt und Landschaft nach dem Zweiten Kappelkrieg’, U. Gäbler and F. Herkenrath (eds), Heinrich Bullinger 1504–1575. Gesammelte Aufsätze zum 400. Todestag, (Zurich, 1975), I. 30 This was the executive of the Church, consisting of Bullinger, several of the Theological professors and representatives of the Zurich council. It was responsible for examining candidates and making recommendations on who should be appointed to which parish. See Gordon, Clerical Discipline, pp. 93–4. The records of the Examinatorkonvent are found in StAZ E.I.30. 31 The principal sources for this information are the records of the Zurich synod (StAZ E.II.I and E.II.Ia), the matriculation record of Lectorium (StAZ EII.479), and a detailed record of appointments to parishes kept by Wolfgang Haller (StAZ E.II.108). Also of great value is E. Dejung and W. Wuhrmann (eds), Zürcher Pfarrerbuch (Zurich, 1953), although it must be used with care as there are numerous errors. 32 On the transition from priesthood to Reformed ministry, see B. Gordon, ‘Preaching and the Reform of the Clergy in the Swiss Reformation’, in A.D.M. Pettegree (ed.), The Reformation of the Parishes (Manchester, 1993), pp. 63–84. 33 K. Maag, Seminary or University? The Genevan Academy and Reformed Higher Education, 1560–1620 (Aldershot, 1995), esp. pp. 129–39. 34 Ibid., p. 139. 35 Gordon, Clerical Discipline, pp. 47–53. 36 StAZ EII.108 37 StAZ EII 108.1v. 38 StAZ E.I.30.15-16.8 Birmensdorf. 1559. 39 StAZ E.I.30.15-16.11 Birmensdorf 1561. 40 Gordon, Clerical Discipline, pp. 209–13 offers a summary of discipline in the Bullinger church. Also, B. Gordon, ‘Die Entwicklung der Kirchenzucht in Zürich am Beginn der Reformation’, in H. Schilling (ed.), Kirchenzucht und Socialdisziplinierung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa (Berlin, 1994), pp. 65–90. 41 C.A. Snyder, ‘Word and Power in Reformation Zurich’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, LXXXI (1990), pp. 263–85; also, I.L. Snavely, ‘Huldrych Zwingli and the Preaching Ofﬁce in Reformation Switzerland’, Fides et Historia XXV (1993), pp. 33–45. 42 See Gordon, ‘Preaching and the Reform of the Ministry in the Swiss Reformation’. 43 StAZ E.II.I435, 22 October 1555. 44 The interviews with the parishioners are found in StAZ E.I.1,3b. 45 StAZ A.27.30. ‘Es dunke inn nit unrecht, ob schon einer sage, Gott helfe mynen lieben vatter seligen und derglychen.’ 46 F. Loetz, Mitt Gott handeln. Von der Zürcher Gotteslästerern der Frühen Neuzeit. Zu einer Kulturgeschichte der Religiösen. (Göttingen, 2002), p. 143. 47 StAZ B.VI.259, fol. 137-138. Discussed in Loetz, p. 106. 48 StAZ E. II.I 526 19 October 1565. 49 Loetz, Mitt Gott, p. 162. 50 Ibid., p. 147. 51 Bächtold, Bullinger, p. 291. 52 Loetz, Mitt Gott, p.147. 53 See R. Kaiser, Trunkenheit und Gewalt im Mittelalter. (Cologne, 2002).

234 Notes 54 ‘Das er vilmaln, wann er voll wyns ald sonsst erzürnet worden, geﬂuchtet, dass Gott einen sche’nden, Ouch geschworen habe.’ StAZ B.VI.259 fol. 54 Loetz, Mitt Gott, p. 230. 55 StAZ A.27.43.Also, Loetz, Mitt Gott, p. 230. 56 StAZ E.II.I 373/4. 57 Ibid., 453. 22 October 1566. 58 On taverns, see B. Kümin, ‘Useful to Have, but Difﬁcult to Govern: Inns and Taverns in Early-modern Bern and Vaud’, Journal of Early Modern History, III (1999), pp. 153–75. 59 Ibid., 526, October 1563. 60 StAZ E.II.Ia 705/6 October 1579.

Chapter 7 1 I. Green, ‘“Reformed Pastors” and Bons Curés: the Changing Role of the Parish Clergy in Early Modern Europe’, in W.J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds), Studies in Church History. Vol. 26 The Ministry: Clerical and Lay (Oxford, 1989), pp. 261–2 and 249–86 passim. 2 Ibid., p. 273; I. Green, ‘The Christian’s ABC’: Catechisms and Catechizing in England c. 1530–1740 (Oxford, 1996), part 1; I. Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000), chs. 1, 2, 4, 10 and passim; C.S. Dixon, The Reformation and Rural Society: The Parishes of Brandenburg–Ansbach–Kulmbach, 1528–1603 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 159. 3 Ibid., chs. 3–5; Green, ‘“Reformed Pastors”’, pp. 274–81, 284–5 (in England nonconformist ministers performed a similar or complementary role to that of the established clergy on the didactic side, and on many other functions too); Green, Christian’s ABC, chs. 2–5; Green, Print and Protestantism, passim; C. Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England: Holding their Peace (Basingstoke, 1998); and I. Green, Word, Image, and Ritual: Protestant Instruction in Early Modern England (forthcoming). 4 Green, Christan’s ABC, p. 329; Green, ‘“Reformed Pastors”’, p. 252; for good introductions and recent bibliographies, see the entries under ‘Preaching and Sermons’ in in H.J. Hillerbrand (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 4 vols. (New York and Oxford, 1991), iii. 323–30; and L. Taylor (ed.), Preachers and People in the Reformations and early Modern Period (Leiden, 2001). 5 Hillerbrand, Encyclopaedia of Reformation, iii. 328. 6 E. Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991), pp. 106–9, 229–32; C.S. Dixon, The Reformation in Germany (Oxford, 2002), pp. 60–2, 100; A. Pettegree (ed.), The Reformation World (London, 2000), chs. 19–20; L.J.Taylor, ‘Preaching and Sermons: France’, in Hillerbrand, Encyclopedia of Reformation, iii. 326–8 and references there. 7 U. Nembach, ‘Preaching and Sermons: Germany’, in ibid., iii. 323–5; Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 109, 147. 8 Taylor, ‘Preaching’, iii. 327; Dixon, Reformation, pp. 61–2; R.W. Scribner, ‘Oral Culture and the Transmission of Reformation Ideas’, in H. Robinson–Hammerstein (ed.), The Transmission of Ideas in the Lutheran Reformation (Dublin, 1989), pp. 83–7.

Notes 235 9 D.R. Janz, ‘Catechisms’, in Hillerbrand, Encyclopedia of Reformation, i. 276–7; M. Christian, ‘Preaching and Sermons: England’, in ibid., iii. 328; H.S.D. Smith, ‘Preaching and Sermons: Spain and Portugal’, in ibid., iii. 331; Nembach, ‘Preaching’, in ibid., iii. 324. 10 Cameron, European Reformation, pp. 311–13, 389–413; Dixon, Reformation and Rural Society, pp. 160–2. 11 Christian, ‘Preaching’, 328–30 and references there; Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 311–18; and see below n. 17. 12 P. Collinson, ‘Shepherds, Sheepdogs, and Hirelings: the Pastoral Ministry in Post-Reformation England’, in Sheils and Wood (eds), Studies in Church History Vol. 26, pp. 185–220; P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 128–39; P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967), part 4. 13 Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 184, 209–10, 630. 14 Ibid., pp. 112–15, 120, 124–9, 139–40, and ch. 3 passim; and Green, Christian’s ABC, ch. 3. 15 I. Green, ‘Career Prospects and Clerical Conformity in the Early Stuart Church’, Past and Present, 90 (1981), p. 72; Christian, ‘Preaching’, iii. 329–30; Collinson, Religion of Protestants, p. 48. 16 Ibid., p. 92; Green, Print and Protestantism, p. 92. 17 Ibid., p. 194; W. Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1957); C. Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London, 1966), chs. 2–3; P. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Religion and Politics in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, 1998); L.A. Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603–1625 (Stanford, 1998). For a recent critique of older works and offers of new directions, see L.A. Ferrell and P. McCullough, ‘Revising the Study of the English sermon’, in Ferrell and McCullough (eds.), The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750 (Manchester, 2000), pp. 5–17 and passim. 18 For some examples, see Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 174–5, 207–8, 212, 613, 621. 19 Ibid., pp. 196–9, 658, 664–5. 20 Ibid., pp. 199–209, 212, 214–15. In New England, it has been calculated that 85 per cent of the sermons printed represented less than 10 per cent of the total sermons preached, and were very different in character: H.S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York, 1986), pp. 4–5. 21 Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 208–9; Green, Christian’s ABC, pp. 107–8 and ch. 3 passim. 22 These themes are explored in Green, ‘“Plain country divinity”: Preaching in Rural England c. 1580–1740’ (forthcoming). 23 Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 197–8; K. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven and London, 1992), pp. 387–9; F. DeconninckBrossard, ‘Eighteenth-Century Sermons and the Age’, in W.M. Jacob and N. Yates (eds), Crown and Mitre: Religion and Society in Northern Europe since the Reformation (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1993), pp. 107–11. 24 Janz, ‘Catechisms’, i. 275–8; Green, Christian’s ABC, pp. 13–20. 25 G. Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, 1978), pp. 155–68, 189; Green, Christian’s ABC, pp. 2–3.

236 Notes 26 27 28 29 30 31

32

33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46

47

48

Ibid., ch. 3, and pp. 558–9. Ibid., ch. 4, and pp. 559–61. Ibid., pp. 20–44, 173–8, 557–8. Ibid., pp. 50–9, 82–3, 88–9, and ch. 2 passim; Green, Print, pp. 182–4. Ibid., pp. 12–24, 589–90; Green, Christian’s ABC, ch. 5. Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning, pt. 3; and G. Parker, ‘Success and Failure during the First Century of the Reformation’, Past and Present, 136 (1992), pp. 43–51; Green, Christian’s ABC, pp. 561–3, and passim. Cameron, European Reformation, pp. 413–14; Janz, ‘Catechisms’, i. 280; Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning, pp. 166–9; Green, Christian’s ABC, pp. 274–6. A. Pettegree, ‘Books, Pamphlets and Polemic’, in Pettegree, Reformation World, p. 111 and 109–26 passim; J.-F.Gilmont (ed.), The Reformation and the Book (Aldershot, 1998); see also J.-F.Gilmont, ‘Printing’, and H.J. Köhler and H.J. Hillerbrand, ‘Pamphlets’, in Hillerbrand, Encyclopedia of Reformation, iii. 342–8 and 201–3; and R.W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981). Pettegree, ‘Books’, pp. 117–23; Gilmont, Reformation and the Book, p. 47 and chs. 15–16; Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 80–2, 96–8. Ibid., chs. 2, 4; N.H. Keeble, Richard Baxter: Puritan Man of Letters (Oxford, 1982), pp. 2–21, 156–72. Green, Print and Protestantism, ch. 2. Ibid., pp. 182–3, 247–50, 506–23. Ibid., pp. 239–88. Ibid., pp. 288–304. Ibid., pp. 216–25, 305–39. Ibid., pp. 348–9 and 346–68 passim. See above Chapter 6 and below Chapter 8; Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 184, 217, 223, 225–34, 555 and passim. Ibid., chs. 2, 5, 6, 9 and passim. Ibid., chs. 7 and 8; in addition to the works by Watt, Spufford, Duffy and Lake cited ibid., pp. 427–8 and 445–7, see A. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), and P. Lake with M. Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven and London, 2002). J.A.H. Moran (Cruz), ‘Education’, in Hillerbrand, Encyclopedia of Reformation, ii. 19–28; Green, Christian’s ABC, pp. 170–98. Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning; Moran, ‘Education’, ii. 21–3; T.H.L. Parker, John Calvin (London, 1977), p. 152; R. O’Day, Education and Society 1500–1800: The Social Foundations of Education in Early Modern Britain (London, 1982), chs. 3–6; History of the University of Oxford. Vol. IV. Seventeenth-Century Oxford, ed. N. Tyacke (Oxford, 1997), ch. 5. K. Charlton, Education in Renaissance England (London, 1965); T.W. Baldwin, William Shakespere’s ‘Small Latine and Lesse Greeke’, 2 vols. (Urbana, Ill., 1944); P. K. Orpen, ‘Schoolmastering as a Profession in the Seventeenth Century: the Career Patterns of the Grammar Schoolmaster’, History of Education, 6, 3 (1977), pp. 183–94; O’Day, Education and Society, ch. 9. As previous note, and Green, Word, Image, and Ritual (forthcoming).

Notes 237 49 O’Day, Education and Society, chs. 5–7; Green, Christian’s ABC, pp. 196–204. 50 O’Day, Education and Society, p. 95, and chs. 5–6 passim. 51 R. Rex, ‘Humanism’, in Pettegree, Reformation World, pp. 51–70, especially 62–5, 69; J. M. Weiss, ‘Humanism’, in Hillerbrand, Encyclopedia of Reformation, ii. 264–72; J.A.I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: the Church of England and its Enemies (Cambridge, 1992); Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 570–5. 52 The phrases are Martin Ingram’s and Reg Ward’s: cited ibid., p. viii.

Chapter 8 1 E.W. Zeeden, Die Entstehung der Konfessionen. Grundlagen und Formen der Konfessionsbildung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskämpfe (Munich and Vienna, 1965); his collected articles from 1958 onwards provide a clear picture of the trajectory of his reﬂections on the subject: Konfessionsbildung. Studien zur Reformation, Gegenreformation und katholischen Reform (Stuttgart, 1985). 2 P. Benedict, ‘Confessionalisation in France? Critical Reﬂections and New Evidence’, in The Faith and Fortunes of France’s Huguenots, 1600–85 (Aldershot, 2001), p. 313. 3 The main bibliography in German is indicated in ibid., p. 312 (note 10). Clear statements of the position in English are available in W. Reinhard, ‘Pressures towards Confessionalization ? Prolegomena to a Theory of the Confessional Age’, in C.S. Dixon (ed.), The German Reformation (Oxford, 1999), pp. 172–92; H. Schilling, ‘Confessional Europe’, in T.A. Brady Jr, H.A. Oberman and J.D. Tracy (eds), Handbook of European History, 1400–1600 (‘Visions, Programs and Outcomes’) (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1999), pp. 641–75. 4 For an up-to-date analysis of what used to be called the ‘religious anarchy’ of the early French reformation, see D. Crouzet, La genèse de la réforme française, 1520–1562 (Paris, 1996). 5 W. Monter, Judging the French Reformation. Heresy Trials by Sixteenth-Century Parlements (Cambridge, Mass., 1999); T. Wanegffelen, Ni Rome ni Genève. Des ﬁdèles entre deux chaires en France au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1997). 6 The point is forcefully made in ibid., p. 147 ; but it had already been argued in D.R. Kelley, The Beginning of Ideology (Cambridge, 1981), esp. pp. 80–95. 7 The synodical acta enable us to identify 20 pastors from 12 churches in attendance, the majority from churches that owed their institution to Geneva. But another contemporary said that 72 churches were, in fact, represented. That may have been so, although it seems clear that some churches, even in the north of France, were not asked to send a delegation – see B. Roussel, ‘La “Discipline” des Eglises réformées de France en 1559: un royaume sans clergé?’ in M. Magdelaine, M.-C. Pitassi, R. Whelan and A. McKenna (eds), De l’Humanisme aux Lumières, Bayle et le protestantisme. Mélanges en l’honneur d’Elisabeth Labrousse (Paris and Oxford, 1996), p. 169. 8 See the confession drawn up by the French ‘stranger’ church at SainteMarie-aux-Mines in Alsace, edited and studied in M. Magdelaine, ‘La confession de foi de la communauté française de Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines’, Bulletin de la société de l’histoire du protestantisme français (henceforth: BSHPF), 126 (1980), pp. 327–46.

238 Notes 9 For the genesis and signiﬁcance of Calvin’s catechism, see J. Courvoisier, ‘Les catéchismes de Genève et de Strasbourg’, BSHPF, 84 (1935), pp. 105–21. For a modern edition of the Geneva confession, see O. Fatio (ed.), Confessions et catûéchismes de la foi réformée (Geneva, 1986), pp. 111–27. 10 E. Arnaud, Documents protestants inédits du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1872), doc. No. 1 (‘Articles polytiques pour l’eglise reformee selon le S. Evangile, faict a Poictiers 1557’). 11 See Roussel, ‘La “Discipline” des Eglises réformées de France en 1559’; cf. G.S. Sunshine, ‘French Protestantism on the Eve of St-Bartholomew: the Ecclesiastical Discipline of the French Reformed Churches, 1571–2’, French History, 4 (1990), pp. 340–77. 12 J. Morely, Traicté de la discipline et police chrestienne. (From the edition at Lyon, J. de Tournes, 1562) (Geneva, 1968); R.M. Kingdon, Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1564–1572 (Geneva, 1967); P. Denis and J. Rott, Jean Morély (c. 1524–c. 1594) et l’utopie d’une démocratie dans l’Eglise (Geneva, 1993). 13 J. Garrisson-Estèbe, Protestants du midi, 1559–1598 (Toulouse, 1980), p. 124. 14 J.-Y. Carluer, ‘Deux synodes provinciaux bretons au XVIe siècle’, BSHPF, 135 (1989), p. 346. 15 J. Garrisson, Les Protestants au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1988), p. 82. 16 D. Ligou (edited by V.L. Tapié), Le protestantisme en France de 1598 à 1715. Regards sur l’Histoire (Paris, 1968), p. 168. 17 J. Aymon, Tous les synodes nationaux des Eglises réformées de France, 2 vols (The Hague, 1710), 2, p. 49. 18 Ibid., 2, p. 136. 19 Examples cited from the list in Garrisson-Estèbe, Protestants du midi, 1559–1598, pp. 146–7. 20 Ibid., p. 125. 21 Ibid., pp. 129–31. 22 See the analysis in F. Chevalier, Prêcher sous l’édit de Nantes. La prédication réformée au XVIIe siècle en France (Paris, 1994), pp. 35–46. 23 Ibid., p. 34, citing René Bertheau’s exhortation to pastor Pérol in a sermon, published that year. 24 P. Wilcox, ‘L’envoi de pasteurs aux Eglises de France. Trois listes établies par Colladon (1561–1562)’, BSHPF, 139 (1993), pp. 347–74; ﬁgures from the national synod of Gap calculated from Eugene and Emile Haag (eds), La France Protestante, 10 vols (Paris, 1846–58), 10, pp. 269–73. 25 Ibid., pp. 343–50. 26 T. Claparède, ‘Liste des églises et des pasteurs réformés de France en 1660’, BSHPF, 15 (1866), pp. 511–26, 577–82. 27 H. Bots, ‘Les pasteurs français au refuge des Provinces-Unies: un groupe socio-professionnel tout particulier, 1680–1710’, in J. Häseler and A. McKenna (eds), La vie intellectuelle aux refuges protestants (Paris, 1999), pp. 9–68, esp. pp. 9–10. 28 The curriculum is outlined in J.-P. Pittion, ‘Les académies réformées de l’Edit de Nantes à la Révocation’, R. Zuber and L. Theis (eds), in La Révocation de l’édit de Nantes et le protestantisme français en 1685 (Paris, 1986), pp. 187–207, esp. pp. 188–90.

Notes 239 29 Pittion, ‘Les académies réformées de l’Edit de Nantes à la Révocation’, p. 197. 30 K. Maag, Seminary or University? The Genevan Academy and Reformed Higher Education, 1560–1620 (Aldershot, 1995). 31 See E. Forlacroix, ‘L’Eglise Réformée de La Rochelle face à la Révocation’ (Doctoral Thesis. Université de Montpellier III, 1996), ch. 1. 32 R. Richard and D. Vatinel, “Le Consistoire de l’Eglise réformée du Havre au XVIIe siècle: les pasteurs’, BSHPF, 127 (1981), pp. 1–77, esp. pp. 72–3. 33 See, in particular, the contributions by G. Lewis, H. Cohn, M. Prestwich and E. Labrousse to M. Prestwich (ed.), International Calvinism, 1541–1715 (Oxford, 1985). 34 See his diary in Archives historiques de Saintonge et Aunis 15 (1898), pp. 32–97. 35 See W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the reunion of Christendom (Cambridge, 1997), esp. ch. 5; but the scholarly contacts among the Reformed in pre-Thirty Year War Europe deserve further attention. 36 The case is examined at length in Garrisson-Estèbe, Protestants du midi, pp. 148–9. 37 The rejection of confessional identities among the laity is explored in Wanegffelen, Ni Rome ni Genève; G. Hanlon, Confession and Community in Seventeenth-Century France. Catholic and Protestant Coexistence in Aquitaine (Philadelphia, 1993). 38 C. Bost, ‘Les pasteurs d’une église des Cévennes’, BSHPF, 49 (1900), pp. 561–81, 617–35, esp. pp. 563–81. 39 [M.] Nicolas, ‘Le testament de Jean Bonafous ministre de l’église de Puylaurens’, BSHPF, 11 and 12 (1862), pp. 471–9, 57–70, 158–69. 40 Chevalier, Prêcher sous l’édit de Nantes, esp. ch. 12. 41 Pierre de l’Estoile (André Martin, ed.), Journal … pour le règne de Henri IV (Paris, 1958), p. 443. 42 J. Solé, Le débat entre protestants et catholiques français de 1598 à 1685, 4 vols (Paris, 1985), part 1, pp. 12ff. 43 E. Kappler, ‘Conférences théologiques entre catholiques et protestants en France au XVIIe siècle’ (Thesis; Université de Clermont-Ferrand II, 1980). 44 Solé, Le débat entre protestants et catholiques français, 1, pp. 62–91. 45 Chevalier, Prêcher sous l’édit de Nantes , p. 199 – Dumoulin’s sermon on Daniel 9: 1–9. 46 bid., citing Michel Lefaucheur’s sermon on Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians 4: 1 (‘stand fast in the Lord’). 47 John Foxe, Of Free Justiﬁcation … against Osorius (London, 1604), epistle, A4. 48 D. Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu: la violence au temps des troubles de religion vers 1525 – vers 1610. 2 vols (Paris, 1990), 1, esp. pp. 501–53; O. Christin, Une révolution symbolique. L’iconoclasme huguenot et la reconstruction catholique (Paris, 1991), chs 1 and 2. 49 O. Christin, La paix de religion. L’autonomisation de la raison politique au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1997). 50 S. Muscovici, La psychologie des minorités actives (Paris, 1979). 51 See E. Labrousse, ‘Mythes huguenots au XVIIe siècle’, in Conscience et conviction. Etudes sur le XVIIe siècle, (Paris and Oxford, 1996), pp. 71–80. 52 E. Labrousse, ‘Les stratégies huguenots face à Louis XIV, 1629–1685’, in ibid., pp. 89–95.

Index Act of Six Articles (1539), 59 Albrecht of Prussia, 122 Alleine, Richard, 171 Allix, Pierre, 185–92 Alsted, Johann Heinrich, 191 Amsdorf, Nicholas von, 83 Anabaptism, 75–8, 107, 143 anticlericalism, 50–5, 107, 187 Antoninus, Saint, 56 Armstrong, Clement, 58 Augsburg, Confession of, 111, 123, 124, 157 Augustanus, Léonard, 182 Augustine, Saint, 44, 124

Brandenburg, 130 Braunschweig, 83, 87 city of, 85–6 Brennwald, Heinrich, 139 Brenz, Johannes, 81, 159 Brötli, Johannes, 143 Bucer, Martin, 72, 120, 157 Bugenhagen, Johannes, 97 Bullinger, Heinrich, 32–3, 72, 137–55, 159 Bunny, Edmund, 170 Burnett, Amy Nelson, 87

Bacon, Francis, 161 Bainton, Roland H., 98–9 ballads, 172–1 baptism, 63, 67–8, 76–7, 102 Basel, 11, 72, 87, 120, 146, 147, 178, 189 council of, 144 Battin, 110 Baxter, Richard, 160, 162, 169, 171 Bayly, Lewis, 171 Béarn, 183 Benedict, Philip, 177 Bergerac, 182 Bernardino of Siena, 48 Berne, 146 Bertheau, René, 184 Beyersdorf, 107 bibles, 48, 62, 169 Birmensdorf, 148 Bishofsroda, 93 bishops, ofﬁce of, 70 blasphemy, 151–3 Bliederhausen, 93 Bodmer, Matthias, 154 Bonafous, Jean, 190–1 Book of Common Prayer, 165, 169, 172 Bora, Katharina von, 3, 65, 71, 82, 86, 89, 91

Calenburg-Göttingen, 84, 86 Calixt, Georg, 124 Calvin, Jean, 4, 5, 60, 72, 158, 159, 164, 178, 195 on the church, 72–5 Cambridge, 44, 174 Camerarius, Johann, 97 Carlson, Eric, 106 Casauban, Isaac, 185 catechisms, 108, 124–5, 134–5, 158, 163–7 Catholic Church, 61 celibacy, 41–2, 64–6, 80–1; see also clergy, marriage of censures, of clergy, 182–3, see also clergy, reform of Cévennes, 188–9 Châlons-sur-Marne, 189 Chamviry, René, 181 Chevalier, Françoise, 191–2 Christian humanism, 175 church goods, 137–9, 142 Chrysostrom, 144 Chytraeus, David, 126 Clamanges, Nicholas de, 57 clergy decline in numbers, 69–71, 146, 158 education of, 11–24, 40, 42–5, 87, 120–36, 143–9, 184–5, 160

240

Index 241 expectations of, 39–48, 63–72, 104–11, 142, 168–72, 180 incomes, 51–2, 84–5, 86, 108, 111–19, 140–1 marriage of, 29–30, 64–7, 71, 79–99, 133, 140 medieval, 2–4, 39–59, 62 professionalization of, 2–3, 33–6, 107, 122–3, 127–32, 143–9, 160 reform of, 55–7, 94, 107, 182 relationship to laity, 48–52, 56, 58, 88–92, 100–19, 131–4, 142, 145, 148–9, 149–55, 180–1, 186–7 relationship to state, 30–3, 49–50, 74–5, 101–2, 105, 113–16, 137–55, 180–1, 194–5 sacerdotal status, 4, 49–50, 54, 61, 63, 68–9, 106 sense of identity, 176–95 social standing, 4–11, 50, 51–3, 63, 71–2, 86, 105, 129–30, 146, 187 clerical abuses, 49–52 clerical immunity, 63 Colet, John, 57, 164 Colomiez, Archambaud, 181–2 common good, 109–10, 137–9, 142 commune, 104–5, 109 concubinage, 41–2, 64, 79–81, 85; see also clergy, marriage of Condom, 183 conferences, 158 confession, 43, 45–7, 69, 105 confessionalization, 31, 132, 176–8, 193–4 confessions, rise of, 132–6 consistories, 71, 74, 178, 181–2, 186 Constance, 52 council of, 56 Corpus Christi, 41 Corvinus, 159 Cranmer, Thomas, 169 Creide, Harmann, 90 Cruciger, Caspar, 96 Daillé, Jean, 192 Damalvy, David, 191 deacon, ofﬁce of, 74–6, 85, 180 desacralization, 65–8, 71, 73–4, 76, 106

Descartes, René, 66, 173 devotional aids, 170 Dickens, A.G., 52 Die, 184 discipline, 36–7, 71, 74–5, 147, 149–50, 152–4, 186–7, 177 discipline of French Church, 179–80 disputations, 191–2 Dobra, 114–15 Donatism, 44–5, 49, 54, 55 Doolittle, Thomas, 170 Dordrecht, synod of (1618), 186 Dornstetten, 90 Drahnsdorf, Eustachius von, 113–14 Drelincourt, Charles, 184, 185, 189, 192 drunkenness, 40, 107, 115, 153–4 Drury, John, 46 Dumoulin, Pierre, 184–5, 191–2, 193 Duplessis-Mornay, Philippe, 185 Durham, 160 Ecclesiastical Ordinance of Geneva (1541), 74, 173 Edict of Nantes, 184, 194, 195 Edward VI, King of England, 157 Einberg, 91 elders, 74–5, 76, 180 Elgg, 146 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 159 England, Reformation in, 156–75 Embrach, 146 Emden, 168 Eton, 173 eucharist, 41, 44–5, 61–3, 67–8, 69, 73; see also Mass Faber, Bartholomaeus, 102 Falkenberg, 101–2 family life, 89–99, 140, 164; see also clergy, marriage of Farel, Guillaume, 158, 189 Finsler, Benedikt, 148 Fish, Simon, 51, 56 Formula of Concord (1577), 111 Fornelet, Pierre, 189 Fouth Lateran Council, 40, 69 Foxe, John, 193 France, Reformation in, 176–95

242 Index Franck, Sebastian, 77, 78 Franconia, 128, 130 Frankfurt an der Oder, 122, 130 Freder, Johannes, 97 Fröschel, Sebastian, 159 Galiouste, Pierre, 186 Gap, 184 Geneva, 32, 74–5, 121, 147, 158, 159, 168, 173, 178, 185, 188–9 Genevan Academy, 74, 121 Germany, Reformation in, 79–99, 100–19, 120–36, 168 Gerson, Jean, 45, 47, 49–50, 164 Gorsdorf, 105 Gotha, 80 Graubünden, 146 Gregory the Great, 40, 44 Greifswald, 122, 130 Grossthiemig, 107 Gwalther, Rudolf, 151 Haller, Wolfgang, 148 Hamm, Berndt, 58–9 handbooks for clergy, 46, 87; see also improving works Hanisius, Caspar, 101 Harrison, William, 38 Hausmann, Nicholas, 83 Heidelberg, university of, 11, 121, 122, 129, 147, 185 Catechism, 166–7 Helmstedt, university of, 122, 130 Helvetic confession, 157 Hemmingsen, Niels, 158–9 Henri II, King of France, 179 Herbert, Georg, 171 Herborn, 121 heresy, 44, 50, 55, 61, 150 Hesse, 87 Hieron, Samuel, 170 Hillig, Anna, 90 Hohenbucko, 108 Hohendorf, Alex von, 100–2 Hohendorf, Elizabeth von, 102 Hohendorf, Georg von, 100–2 Hohenleipisch, 105 Holzdorf, 107 homilies, 159–60

Hüsli, Rudolf, 137–8, 141–2, 143, 151 Huss, John, 55 Hussites, 55 Hyperius, Andreas, 158 iconoclasm, 73, 193 improving works, 46, 47, 125–6, 168–72 international Calvinism, 185–6 Ireland, clergy of, 42 James VI and I, King of England, 185 Jedocus, Martin, 103, 111–19 Jena, 11, 122, 130 Juchenhöfer, Johannes, 100–2 Jurieu, Pierre, 185 jurisdictional conﬂicts, 50–2 justiﬁcation, theory of, 4, 60–1, 66 Justitz, Gerritdina, 85 Kappel War (1531), 144, 146 Karlstadt, Andreas, 73, 120 Kempis, Thomas à, 170 Klauser, Konrad, 148 Klöden, 108 Königsberg, university of, 122, 130 Korbitz, Martin von, 114 Kröbeln, 109 Kuchimeister, Balthasar, 151 Küsnacht, 140, 152 La Faverge, Gaspard, 182 Lambeth, council of, 46 Langenbrandt, 91 language, use of, 150–2; see also blasphemy La Rochelle, 181, 185 synod of, 179 Lasalle, 188 Latimer, Hugh, 157, 158 Lebusa, 111–19 Lefaucheur, Michel, 192 Le Havre, 185 Leipzig, 11, 108 libraries, 111, 132, 191 Lichtschuss, 89 Liebenwerda, 105, 109 literacy, 87, 172 Löben, 110

Index 243 Loetz, Francisca, 152 Lollardy, 44, 55 London, 159, 162 Löser, noble family, 113 Louis XIV, King of France, 195 Loumeau, Samuel, 185 Lucerne, 146 Luther, Martin, 4–5, 73, 79, 87, 90, 106, 107–8, 110, 120, 158, 159, 164, 168 on clergy, 62–7 on marriage, 82–3, 93–4 theology of, 60–73 Maag, Karin, 147 Magdeburg, 87 Manning, Robert, 47 Marburg, university of, 122, 147 marriage law, 80, 82–4; see also clergy, marriage of martyrdom, 190 Mass, 39, 41, 61 Mathesius, Johannes, 95–7, 131 Mathesius, Sibille (née Richter), 95–7 Mecklenburg, 128, 130–1 Medici, Catherine de, 189 Meilen Articles, 144, 150 Melanchthon, Philip, 94–6, 97, 106, 119, 120–6, 158, 173, 175 Melton, William, 49 Menius, Justus, 97 Mennonites, 76 Mestayer, Jacques, 182 midwives, 91 Mirk, John, 44, 45, 139, 158 modernization, 177; see also secularization monastic orders, 43–4, 139 monks, 3 Montauban, 184–6 Montfrin, 183 Montpellier, 182, 189 Morély, Jean, 181 Mucovici, Serge, 194 Mülli, Felix, 154 Müntzer, Thomas, 73 Myconius, Friedrich, 81, 82, 106 Naumburg, 85 Négrepelisse, 191

Neuchâtel, 189 Niemegk, 110 Nîmes, 34, 183, 184 nobility, relation to clergy, 100–4, 110–11, 113–19, 130, 181 Nowell, Alexander, 166, 174 Oberman, Heiko, 53 Oecolampadius, Johannes, 72, 120 ordination, 40, 62, 63, 68 Osiander, Andreas, 158 Ottenhausen, 89 Oxford, 44, 52, 174, 185 pamphlets, 168 Parker, Mathew, 169 parsonage, 29–30, 87–99 Parsons, Robert, 170 patronage, 3–4, 23–4, 49, 101, 122, 144 Peasants War, German (1525), 107, 119, 139 Pecham, John, 46 penance, 45–6, 69; see also confession Perkins, William, 158 Pius II, pope, 65 Ploermel, 181 Plossig, 108 pluralism, 49, 51 Pole, Reginald, 41 poor relief, 141–2 Poppenhausen, 114 popular culture, reform of, 90–1, 101–2, 106–7, 115–16, 117–18, 167, 186–7 postils, 35, 133, 158 Prayer Book Catechism, 165–6 preacherships, 50 preaching, 34–5, 47–8, 61, 77, 131–2, 134, 144–5, 150–2, 157–63; see also sermons Prettin, 88 priesthood of all believers, 62–4, 69, 77, 110 ideas of, 39–40, 41, 49–50, 54–5, 58–9, 61–2, 63, 66, 77; see also clergy, expectations of printing, 35, 161–2, 163—72 Protestant Church, 5, 70–1, 72–5, 85, 133, 138–40, 144, 145–6, 178–83

244 Index Puylaurens, 190–1 Rade, 116 Rebhun, Paul, 97 Reinhard, Wolfgang, 177 Reinhart, Anna, 82 religion of the laity, 46, 167 medieval, 46, 61 resistance, theories of, 32 Reublin, Wilhelm, 143 Richmond, Thomas, 44, 54 Rogers, John, 37 Rogers, Thomas, 170 Rostock, 11, 122, 130, 134 rural reform, 104–19 sacraments, 43–6, 62–3, 67–9, 73–4, 77 St Gall, 146 Saltash, 44 Saumur, 184 Sauve, 182 Savanarola, Girolamo, 48 Saxony, 29, 36–7, 70–1, 79–99, 100–19, 128, 131 Schaffhausen, 146 Schilling, Heinz, 177 Schmalkaldic War, 91 Schmerkendorf, 100–2 schooling, 141, 147, 164–5, 172–5; see also clergy, education of Schorn-Schütte, Luise, 85–6, 87, 91 Schwenckfeld, Caspar, 77 Schwyz, 146 Scotland, Reformation in, 168 Scribner, R.W., 81 scripture, centrality of, 61–2, 72, 124, 127, 131–2, 192 secularization, 3, 66, 177 Sedan, 185, 189 sermons, 134, 151–2, 157–63, 183–4, 191–2; see also preaching sexuality, of clergy, 41–2 Shakespeare, William, 160 Smith, Henry, 161 Solé, Jacques, 191 Soranus, Lorenz, 89 Sorocold, Thomas, 170

Spangenberg, Cyriakus, 159 Spener, Philipp Jakob, 127 spinning bees, 115–16, 118 Spiritualists, 76–8 Stafford, William, 81 state, rise of, 31–2, 101–2, 129–30, 177, 193 Strasbourg, 72, 120, 178, 189, 195 Sturm, Jean, 173, 175 Stuttgart, 89 Sulzer, Markus, 154 superintendents, 70–1, 127 Sweden, Reformation in, 168 Switzerland, Reformation in, 137–55 synods, in France, 179, 181–2 Taborites, 55 taverns, 40, 154 Tenneburg, 79 Thalheim, 110 Thirty-Nine Articles, 157 Thouars, 182 three estates, theories of, 5–6 Tillotson, John, 161, 170 tithes, 51, 116–17 Tonneins, 182 Tourtelon, Jacques, 188–9 transubstantiation, 45, 67–8, 98; see also eucharist treatises, 170–1 Tubbruner, Ulrich, 148–9 Tübingen, university of, 129, 130 Tyndale, William, 169 universities, 6–7, 11–24, 44, 120–36, 160, 172–5 Veyrieu, Jacques, 187 violence, 154 visitations, 3–4, 42, 49, 70, 71, 79, 83, 84, 101, 119 Vogler, Bernard, 85 Wahrenbrück, 105, 109, 110 Waldensians, 50, 55 Wales, clergy of, 42 Wars of Religion, in France, 186, 191, 192 Weber, Max, 176–7

Index 245 wedding sermons, 93–4 Weiach, 143, 148 Wesley, John, 160 Westminster, 173 catechisms, 166–7 widows, 91–2, 141 Wiederaus, 116–17 Wilkins, John, 158 Winchester, 173 Winterthur, 146 Wittenberg, university of, 6, 71, 120–4, 130

wives, of pastors, 29–30, 81, 85–6, 88–99, 117, 131, 154 women, standing of, 94–7 Württemberg, 81, 83, 89, 128 Zeeden, Ernst Walter, 176 Zug, 146 Zurich, 32–3, 37, 72, 120, 137–55, 158 Zwickau, 83, 89 Zwingli, Huldrych, 72, 73, 75, 82, 87, 120, 144, 158