Doctrinal Controversy and Lay Religiosity in Late Reformation Germany

The Case of Mansfeld
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-90-04-21565-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 157, 304 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 658 g

Reihe: Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions

In recent years, historians have questioned the notion that belief was central to the Reformation’s success, arguing rather for a variety of social, political, economic, and psychological forces. This study examines one of the intra-Lutheran doctrinal debates, the Flacian controversy over original sin, as means to analyze lay religiosity in the late Reformation. It focuses on the German territory of Mansfeld, where the conflict had miners brawling in the streets, and where a wealth of sources from the laity have survived. This extraordinary evidence demonstrates that although diverse forces were at work, by the late sixteenth century many commoners had developed a complex understanding of Lutheran doctrines, and these beliefs had become informing factors in the laity’s lives.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Christman, Robert J

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Kirchengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte Deutsche Geschichte: Regional- & Stadtgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction Doctrinal Controversy as a Window onto Lay Religiosity

Chapter 1 A Portrait of Mansfeld in the Sixteenth Century

Chapter 2 Competing Views of Original Sin and Associated Arguments and Meanings

Chapter 3 The Pastors and their Parishioners

Chapter 4 The Counts and the Controversy

Chapter 5 The “Heretics” of Mansfeld

Chapter 6 Extra-doctrinal Forces Affecting the Laity

Chapter 7 Lay Understandings of Original Sin and Lutheran Theology

Chapter 8 Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Hans Ötzen, Ein schon christliches und warhafftiges gebett von gesetze und evangelinis gestellt durch Hans Oetz ein leye imm Thall Mansfelt gegewen im ihar unsers Herren Jhesu Christi anno 1575, Landeshauptarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Abteilung Magdeburg, Standort Wernigerode.

Matthäus Merian, Mansfeldt c. 1650. Copperplate.

Tables

Table 1. The Occupations of the Mansfelder Laity

Table 2. The Mansfelder Laity

Table 3. Luther Citations Found in the Lay Confessions

Leseproben

Introduction: Doctrinal Controversy as a Window onto Lay Religiosity

On New Year’s Eve, 1574, five hundred cavalry and foot soldiers, drums thumping and trumpets blaring, descended on the small central German city of Tal Mansfeld, the second most important city in the territory of Mansfeld. There in Martin Luther’s childhood hometown, they began shooting their weapons and destroying the houses and belongings of the so-called “heretics,” most of whom had already fled the city. Cyriakus Spangenberg, the city and court preacher, leader of the “heretical” faction, barely had time to slip out of town disguised as a midwife. The next day, New Year’s Day, contrary to tradition, no church services were held. Rather the citizens were required to gather in the central square and surrender their weapons. On Sunday, January 2, when a newly arrived “orthodox” pastor preached in the city church, two citizens stood and sang loudly Luther’s Reformation anthem, “Lord Keep Us Steadfast in Thy Word,” an act of defiance for which they were immediately imprisoned. On January 3, in the presence of “orthodox” churchmen, each adult citizen of Tal Mansfeld was interrogated as to his or her beliefs regarding original sin, the point of doctrine for which they were suspected of heresy. A contemporary describes the scene:
When the poor people there assembled understood the gravity of the situation, that all followers of Spangenberg were being threatened with execution, and that the [invaders] had a sack full of ropes and many soldiers and such folk present to carry out these threats, they began to tremble. In the end, of the entire citizenry only thirteen council members and twenty-six or twenty-eight citizens along with them declared themselves faithful to their pastors’ teachings, which are entirely in line with the Augsburg Confession.

Those laymen who sided with Spangenberg and his colleagues were immediately seized. On January 4, most of the soldiers departed leaving behind a small occupying force, but they took with them thirty-five prisoners including the entire city council and eighteen burghers marching two by two. After a month-long incarceration, the majority of the prisoners were released but a minority refused to recant their beliefs and were expelled from the territory.
What began as an ivory tower debate over Lutheran doctrine had moved onto the street. In the weeks and months surrounding the New Year’s Eve invasion, one third of the approximately one hundred clerics in the territory of Mansfeld were banished. But among the laity, a sizable group of “heretics” was just beginning its ordeal. During the following decade, they established an underground oppositional church, rumors of which persisted for the next thirty-five years. This shadow church, of which I have been able to identify 154 members by name, was kept alive primarily by lay efforts, with occasional encouragement from expelled pastors. Rather than return to the territory’s official state church, members of this group chose to suffer harassments that included repeated citations before the consistory, refusal of the comforts of the church including burial (many were forced to bury their deceased loved ones in their own gardens), forced business closings, imprisonments, beatings, and expulsions from the territory. Even the miners, a sizable proportion of the population, are said to have greeted one another in the streets and taverns with the question, “Are you an accidenter or a substantioser?,” referring to the two sides in the debate. Shouting matches and fistfights ensued when the “wrong” answer was given. Through an analysis of this event and its fallout, this study opens a new window onto the character and intensity of laymen’s and –women’s religious beliefs and convictions fifty years after Luther’s ideas first penetrated the territory.
The precise doctrinal point in question was the rather esoteric issue of how Lutherans should define

Über Autor(innen)

Christman, Robert J
Robert J. Christman, Ph.D. (2004) in early modern history, University of Arizona, is an Assistant Professor of History at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He has published a variety of articles on the impact of the Reformation in early modern Germany.

Robert J. Christman, Ph.D. (2004) in early modern history, University of Arizona, is an Assistant Professor of History at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He has published a variety of articles on the impact of the Reformation in early modern Germany.