The European Reformations E-Book

Carter Lindberg

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 983

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Combining seamless synthesis of original material with updated scholarship, The European Reformations 2nd edition, provides the most comprehensive and engaging textbook available on the origins and impacts of Europe's Reformations - and the consequences that continue to resonate today. * A fully revised and comprehensive edition of this popular introduction to the Reformations of the sixteenth century * Includes new sections on the Catholic Reformation, the Counter Reformation, the role of women, and the Reformation in Britain * Sets the origins of the movements in the context of late medieval social, economic and religious crises, carefully tracing its trajectories through the different religious groups * Succeeds in weaving together religion, politics, social forces, and the influential personalities of the time, in to one compelling story * Provides a variety of supplementary materials, including end-of-chapter suggestions for further reading, along with maps, illustrations, a glossary, and chronologies

Leseprobe

Contents

List of Figures

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

List of Abbreviations

Chapter 1 History, Historiography, and Interpretations of the Reformations

History and Historiography

Interpretations of the Reformations

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 2 The Late Middle Ages: Threshold and Foothold of the Reformations

Agrarian Crisis, Famine, and Plague

Towns and Cities: Loci of Ideas and Change

The Printing Press

Of Mines and Militancy

Social Tensions

The Crisis of Values

Anticlericalism and the Renaissance Papacy

Suggestions for Further Reading

Electronic resources

Chapter 3 The Dawn of a New Era

Martin Luther (1483–1546)

Theological and Pastoral Responses to Insecurity

Theological Implications

Indulgences: The Purchase of Paradise

The Squeaky Mouse

Politics and Piety

From the Diet of Worms to the Land of the Birds

Suggestions for Further Reading

Electronic resources

Chapter 4 Wait for No One: Implementation of Reforms in Wittenberg

In the Land of the Birds

Melanchthon: Teacher of Germany

Karlstadt and Proto-Puritanism

Bishops, Clerical Marriage, and Strategies for Reform

The Gospel and Social Order

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 5 Fruits of the Fig Tree: Social Welfare and Education

Late Medieval Poor Relief

Beyond Charity

The Institutionalization of Social Welfare

Bugenhagen and the Spread of Evangelical Social Welfare

Education for Service to God and Service to the Neighbor

The Catechisms and Christian Vocation

Was the Early Reformation a Failure?

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 6 The Reformation of the Common Man

“Brother Andy”

Thomas Müntzer

The Revolution of the Common Man, 1524–1526

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 7 The Swiss Connection: Zwingli and the Reformation

The Affair of the Sausages

Zwingli’s Beginnings

Magistracy and Church in Zurich

Zwingli’s Reform Program

Excursus: Medieval Sacramental Theology

The Marburg Colloquy, 1529

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 8 The Sheep against the Shepherds: The Radical Reformations

The Anabaptists

Excursus: Reformation Understandings of Baptism

Zurich Beginnings

Anabaptist Multiplicity

The Münster Debacle

The Subversive Piety of the Spiritualists

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 9 Augsburg 1530 to Augsburg 1555: Reforms and Politics

The Trail of Worms

The Diet of Worms

The Diet of Speyer, 1526

The Diet of Speyer, 1529

The Diet of Augsburg, 1530, and the Augsburg Confession

The Right of Resistance to the Emperor

Reformation Ecumenism, War, and the Peace of Augsburg

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 10 “The Most Perfect School of Christ”: The Genevan Reformation

John Calvin (1509–1564)

Journey to Geneva

The Reformation in Geneva

Sojourn in Strasbourg

Geneva under Calvin, 1541–1564

Calvin’s Consolidation of his Authority

The Servetus Case

Protestant Mission and Evangelism: The “International Conspiracy”

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 11 Refuge in the Shadow of God’s Wings: The Reformation in France

The Shield of Humanism

Evangelical Progress and Persecution

Calvin’s Influence in France

The Colloquy of Poissy, 1561

The Wars of Religion, 1562–1598

The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

“Paris is Worth a Mass”

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 12 The Blood of the Martyrs: The Reformation in the Netherlands

“La secte Lutheriane”

Dissident Movements

The Rise of Calvinism and the Spanish Reaction

A Godly Society?

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 13 The Reformations in England and Scotland

Anticlericalism and Lutheran Beginnings

The King’s Great Matter

Passions, Politics, and Piety

Edward VI and Protestant Progress

Mary Tudor and Protestant Regress

Elizabeth I and the Via Media

Mary Stuart (1542–1587) and the Reformation in Scotland

Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 14 Catholic Renewal and the Counter-Reformation

Late Medieval Renewal Movements

The Index and the Inquisition

Loyola and the Society of Jesus

The Council of Trent, 1545–1563

Suggestions for Further Reading

Electronic resources

Chapter 15 Legacies of the Reformations

Confessionalization

Politics

Culture

The Reformations and Women

Toleration and the “Other”

Economics, Education, and Science

Literature and the Arts

Back to the Future: The Reformations and Modernity

Suggestions for Further Reading

Electronic resources

Chronology

Genealogies

Maps

Glossary

Appendix: Aids to Reformation Studies

Bibliography

Index

Praise for The European Reformations

“Derived from a lifetime of engagement with issues in Early Modern European history and written in an eminently readable style, Professor Lindberg’s TheEuropean Reformations will open up to student and scholar alike the fascinating world of the sixteenth century. Not only does Lindberg place the religious movements of the time in their political and, especially, social context, but his knowledge of the theological debates provides the reader with succinct, clear explanations of the theological substance that gave rise to the great variety of the age’s ‘Reformations’.”

Timothy J. Wengert, The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

“Carter Lindberg has written a compelling narrative regarding the emergence and development of the various ‘Reformations’ of the sixteenth century. Lindberg gives a fascinating view of the Reformations primarily from a theological and religious perspective, in concert with others like Heiko Oberman and Brad Gregory, even as he enriches this perspective with the contributions of social historians. Lindberg does especially well in focusing on the reform of the liturgy from “the cult of the living in the service of the dead” designed to free departed loved ones from Purgatory, to a form of worship that led directly to the service of the living, especially the sick, the poor, and the needy. He also shows how the reform movements were strengthened and spread by the singing of hymns and psalms by the women and men who joined these movements. This is an insightful and cogent analysis of the complex of movements we call the ‘Reformations’ of the sixteenth century.”

Randall Zachman at University of Notre Dame

To Rod, Tina, and Gary

This Second edition first published 2010

© 2010 Carter Lindberg

First published 1996 by Blackwell Publishing

Reprinted 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 (twice) 2001, 2002 (twice), 2004 (twice)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lindberg, Carter, 1937–

The European Reformations/Carter Lindberg. – 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-8068-9 (hardcover: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-8067-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Reformation. 2. Church history–15th century. 3. Counter-Reformation. 4. Reformation–Great Britain.

I. Title.

BR305.3.L54 2010

274′.06–dc22

2009000000

List of Figures

1.1“Dr Martin Luther’s Glorification,” by Johann E. Hummel, 18061.2Phrases from Müntzer’s “Princes’ Sermon” and the Constitution of the German Democratic Republic, Allstedt Castle2.1“Pilgrimage to the ‘Beautiful Mary’ in Regensburg,” by Michael Ostendorfer, 15202.2“Death and the Maiden,” Heidelberg Dance of Death2.3“The Big Fish Eat the Little Fish,” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder2.4“Passional Christi et Antichristi,” by Lucas Cranach the Elder3.1Christ as judge, Wittenberg parish church3.2“A Question to a Minter,” by Jörg Breu, ca. 15303.3“The Fuhrwagon,” by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 15194.1(a) “Lament of the Poor Persecuted Idols,” ca. 1530; (b) Fall of Lenin5.1“All Kinds of Beggars’ Tricks,” by Hieronymus Bosch5.2The Wittenberg common chest6.1“Ständebaum,” ca. 15207.1“The Godly Mill,” 15218.1“The World Turned Upside Down,” 152211.1“St Bartholomew’s Night,” by François Dubois d’Amiens14.1“Ignatius of Loyola,” by Claude Mellan, ca. 164015.1“Liberae Religionis Typus,” ca. 159015.2(a) “Jew Sow”; (b) Holocaust memorial15.3“The Law and the Gospel,” by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 153015.4“The Light of the Gospel Rekindled by the Reformers,” ca. 1630

Preface to the Second Edition

It is both a privilege and a great challenge to revise this textbook. It is a privilege to thank all who have contributed to keeping the text in print far longer than I ever expected – all you students and colleagues who by choice or assignment bought the book. The revision, however, has turned out to be a great challenge. With Robin Leaver (2007: ix), I now more fully appreciate Luther’s comment: “He who does not know writing thinks it requires no effort. Three fingers write, but the entire body is at work” (WA TR No. 6438). When I wrote the preface to the first edition, I cited A. G. Dickens’ words to the effect that writing synthetic texts “must form challenges to write better ones.” I had no idea at the time that so many “better ones” would appear! In English alone, we now have a range of perspectives from such scholars as Scott Hendrix (2004a), Hans J. Hillerbrand (2007), R. Po-chia Hsia (2004), Diarmaid MacCulloch (2003), Peter Matheson (2007), Andrew Pettegree (2000; 2002a), Alec Ryrie (2006a), and Merry Wiesner-Hanks (2006). Obviously, Reformation studies is alive and well! It will be obvious that I do not have enough space, let alone time and expertise, to carry on an extended conversation with these many fine scholars, not to mention the explosion of scholarly studies on the sixteenth century.

Revision is perhaps too strong a word for what follows, because I am not “re-visioning” the narrative of my text. I remain convinced of the “truism” expressed so succinctly by Heiko Oberman (1994b: 8): “[W]ithout the reformers, no Reformation. Social and political factors guided, accelerated and likewise hindered the spread and public effects of Protestant preaching. However, in a survey of the age as a whole they must not be overestimated and seen as causes of the Reformation, nor as its fundamental preconditions.” So, while my rewrite begins with the original preface, my narrative remains basically the same. What I have done is more supplementary in the sense of expanding the narrative to include more material on the British Isles, Roman Catholic reforms, and women. The following expansion is very modest, for the field of Reformation studies has exploded in the decade and a half since the first edition. Merry Wiesner-Hanks (2008: 397) notes that just in the field of women and the Reformation: “It is now nearly impossible to even know about all the new scholarship, to say nothing of reading it.” Add in the resources available on the World Wide Web and there is more than enough material for a lifetime let alone a semester course! The massive growth in scholarship on the Reformations is a cause for excitement, but at the same time the growing concentration on microstudies threatens to replace the forest with detailed studies of every tree in it. “How is one to teach a subject that finds itself in that condition? If Reformation Studies are to enjoy any continuing vitality, there must be more to them than the ever-closer scrutiny of the religious entrails and financial dealings of the weighty parishioners of MuchBinding-in-the-Marsh” (Collinson 1997: 354). Yet, as noted above, there are a number of texts to guide us through this forest of new growth, as well as summaries of the state of the field such as the splendid volume edited by David M. Whitford, Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research (2008) that includes web resources along with bibliography. Additional material that follows and supplements the narrative of my text is available in my edited volumes The European ReformationsSourcebook (primary sources, 2000a) and The Reformation Theologians (chapters on Humanist, Lutheran, Reformed, Roman Catholic, and “Radical” theologians, 2002).

The title of this text again speaks of “Reformations.” As far as I know, my use of the plural “Reformations” was unique when my text first appeared. Some recent texts continue this usage (Ryrie, 2006a; Matheson, 2007: 7 (subtitle: “Reformations, Not Reformation”)) while others take sharp issue with it. Hillerbrand (2003: 547) judges it “quite wrong;” but in his later volume (2007: 407) states: “Neither historically nor theologically was there ever a single Reformation movement; rather, there were several, prompting recent scholars to speak pointedly of plural ‘Reformations.’” Hendrix (2000: 558; 2004a: xv, xviii, 1) also thinks my title is less than helpful for it obscures the coherent Reformation movement “to Christianize Europe.” While this discussion may seem like so much antics with semantics, it has occupied a number of historians in recent years. For example, in the mid-1990s, the leading church historians, Berndt Hamm, Bernd Moeller, and Dorothea Wendebourg debated the issue. Wendebourg (Hamm, et al., 1995: 31–2; Lindberg 2002a: 4–9) referred to an early seventeenth-century engraving titled “The Light of the Gospel Rekindled by the Reformers” (see figure 15.4). She commented that while it is a beautiful image of unity and harmony, the reality was conflict, especially in light of the so-called “Left Wing” reformers who are not included in the engraving. Wendebourg’s point is echoed more recently by Brian Cummings. His summary of Reformation scholarship (2002: 13) merits extensive quotation: “[I]t is significant that one of the main efforts in such scholarship in recent years has been to argue the ‘Reformation’ out of existence. Some historians have attempted to avoid historical determinism by emphasizing continuities in a longer sequence. Others have deflected it by distinguishing a plurality of reformations, catholic as much as protestant, in a larger process of religious culture. As in other areas of academic study, an artful use of the plural form has been used to settle the case. Yet whatever revision of historiography is thought necessary, it must respect the fundamental dissentiousness of sixteenthcentury religion. The religious culture of this period, catholic as well as protestant, identified itself through division.” While the debate is ongoing, I continue to view the Reformation era as a period encompassing plural reform movements.

As always, I am grateful for the support given by the editors at Blackwell, not least Rebecca Harkin who encouraged me to undertake this revision. On a personal note, I am delighted to add that the original dedicatees have given us five grandchildren – Emma, Caleb, Nathan, Teddy, and Claudia. Their parents are thankful that their gestation was far briefer than that of this revision.

Preface to the First Edition

Human life without knowledge of history is nothing other than a perpetual childhood, nay, a permanent obscurity and darkness.

Philip Melanchthon

I hope that this textbook will contribute to the perennial discovery of who we are and how we got this way. The “we” here is meant globally. Such a goal of course smacks of delusions of grandeur or at least an overestimation of the influence of the Reformations of the sixteenth century. But no historian of whatever persuasion thinks he or she is an antiquarian studying the past “for its own sake” as if understanding it did not contribute to understanding ourselves. This is illustrated by citing just two major Reformation historians. Steven Ozment (1992: 217) concludes one of his books on the Reformation: “To people of all nationalities the first Protestants bequeathed in spite of themselves a heritage of spiritual freedom and equality, the consequences of which are still working themselves out in the world today.” And William Bouwsma (1988: 1) begins his study of Calvin with a litany of his influences: “Calvinism has been widely credited – or blamed – for much that is thought to characterize the modern world: for capitalism and modern science, for the discipline and rationalization of the complex societies of the West, for the revolutionary spirit and democracy, for secularization and social activism, for individualism, utilitarianism, and empiricism.” If Ozment and Bouwsma are anywhere near the mark, it behooves us to reflect on our roots.

The influence of the Reformations has extended beyond Euro-American cultures to the wider world. Scholars have pursued the influences of Calvinism on social conditions in the Republic of South Africa and of Lutheranism on modern developments in Germany and the course of Judaism; the once Eurocentric International Congress for Luther Research now includes participants from the so-called “Third World” who are concerned not only about the ecclesial applicability of Luther’s theology but its relevance to liberation and human rights. The global nature of Reformation research is evident in the translation of writings of the Reformers into various Asian languages and the existence of scholarly endeavors everywhere, including the People’s Republic of China; not to mention the impact on ecumenical dialogues among Christians and with disciples of other world religions. The Reformations continue to be seen as too important to contemporary life to be left to antiquarians and those whom Carlyle termed “dryasdust” historians.

Why one more textbook on the Reformations? There is of course the personal factor: I suspect that nearly every teacher wishes to tell the story his or her own way. I am no different; and have been stimulated in this endeavor by the occasional student question, “Why don’t you write your own text?” Such obviously brilliant and insightful students wise to the utilitarian value of such a question should not however be blamed for this project. Rather, the rationale for sacrificing more trees to the textbook trade is to incorporate aspects of the burgeoning field of Reformation studies into a text that interprets these contributions from a historical–theological perspective. Hence major attention will be directed to what the Reformers and those who received their messages believed to be at stake – literally as well as figuratively – for their salvation. The thread – with all its kinks and knots – running throughout this story is their struggle to understand and to apply to society the freedom and authority of the gospel.

What will this orientation bring to this text? I have already suggested the global impact of the Reformations on contemporary identities. Scholarly fascination with the influences of the Reformations has grown to the point where major historiographical studies are devoted to it. The initial chapter on history and historiography will illustrate that it is not only church historians and theologians who have commitments. All historians are also interpreters; thus any and all suggestions that if you can only shed theological (or political, or Marxist, et al.) convictions you will be scientifically “objective” or “value free” are suspect.

I view the Reformation era as a time of plural reform movements. This approach has significance for interpretation and definition that will be explored throughout the text. For now, the use of the plural reminds us that even commonly used terms such as “Reformation” carry within them subtle or not so subtle value judgments.

I will also attempt to incorporate into this text the research that has mushroomed so recently under the general rubric of social history. Here there is specific attention to the marginalized (the poor, women), minorities, popular culture in terms of context and reception, the development of modern traits (individualism, rationality, the secular), and the modern state-building process called confessionalization. Every work of synthesis inevitably carries within it seeds (and sometimes full-grown weeds!) of misunderstandings and all too many omissions. I hope the chronology, maps, genealogical tables, bibliography, and suggestions for further reading will ameliorate to some extent the disjointedness of this synthetic narrative and its lack of discussion of the Reformations in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Textbook authors have the temerity angels eschew. This being the case, I take heart from Luther’s dictum to “sin boldly” as well as from the words of a great English Reformation scholar, A. G. Dickens (1974: 210): “In short, synthesis must involve writing books which form challenges to write better ones, books which will inevitably be replaced, attacked and patronized by others which climb upon their shoulders.”

I am pleased to dedicate these efforts to our new sons and daughter who, even after marrying our children, still listen patiently to dinner discourses on the Reformations and provide wry comments. I wish to thank the many students of my “Reformations” course whose lively questions and arguments over the years have frequently redeemed what began as “dryasdust” lectures. My “thorn-in-the-flesh” colleague, J. Paul Sampley, has rendered a similar service in and out of the classroom. Finally, my thanks to Alison Mudditt, Senior Commissioning Editor of Blackwell Publishers, who initiated and shepherded this project to conclusion, to Gillian Bromley, Desk Editor, whose sharp eye caught many an error, and to Sarah McKean, Picture Researcher at Blackwell, for obtaining the illustrations.

Chapter 1

History, Historiography, and Interpretations of the Reformations

We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants; thanks to them, we see farther than they. Busying ourselves with the treatises written by the ancients, we take their choice thoughts, buried by age and human neglect, and we raise them, as it were from death to renewed life.

Peter of Blois (d. 1212)

History and Historiography

Peter of Blois penned this famous aphorism almost exactly three centuries before Luther’s “Ninety-Five Theses” rocked Europe. A major study of the historiography of the Reformation (Dickens and Tonkin 1985: 323) concludes that it is “a window on the West, a major point of access to the developing Western mind through the last five centuries. … By any reckoning, the Reformation has proved a giant among the great international movements of modern times.” On its shoulders we can look farther and deeper in both directions; that is, we can peer into both the medieval and contemporary worlds.

History provides a horizon for viewing not only the past but also the present and the future. The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975: 269, 272) argued that a person without a horizon will overvalue what is immediately present, whereas the horizon enables us to sense the relative significance of what is near or far, great or small. “A horizon means that one learns to look beyond what is close at hand – not in order to look away from it, but to see it better within a larger whole and in truer proportion.” In other words, “far away facts – in history as in navigation – are more effective than near ones in giving us true bearings” (Murray 1974: 285). Even novice sailors know it is foolish to navigate by sighting your prow rather than by sighting the stars or land.

Historical distance, by providing a focus beyond what we take for granted, can be a surprising component of contemporary comprehension. The analogy of living in a foreign city illustrates this. If you live in a foreign city for a year, you will not learn a great deal about that city. But when you return home you will be surprised by your increasing comprehension of some of the most profound and individual characteristics of your homeland. You did not previously “see” these characteristics because you were too close to them; you knew them too well. Likewise, a visit to the past provides distance and a vantage point from which to comprehend the present (Braudel 1972; Nygren 1948). So, L. P. Hartley began his novel The Go-Between with the memorable sentence: “The past is another country; they do things differently there.”

Memory also illustrates perspective. “Memory is the thread of personal identity, history of public identity” (Hofstadter 1968: 3; Leff 1971: 115). Memory and historical identity are inseparable. Have you ever been asked to introduce someone and suddenly forgotten his or her name? At worst this common human experience is a temporary embarrassment. But think what life would be like if you had no memory at all. We all have heard how terribly difficult life is for amnesiacs, and about the tragic effects of Alzheimer’s disease upon its victims and their families. The loss of memory is not just the absence of “facts;” it is the loss of personal identity, family, friends, indeed, the whole complex of life’s meaning. It is very difficult if not impossible to function in society if we do not know who we are and how we got this way. Our memory is the thread of our personal identity; our memory liberates us from what Melanchthon, Luther’s colleague, called perpetual childhood. Without our past we have no present and no future.

What about our national and religious community identities? Are we amnesiacs, are we children, when it comes to identifying who we are in relation to our communities? What if we had to identify ourselves as an American or a Christian? Suppose someone asked why we are Protestant or Roman Catholic. Beyond referring to our parents or a move to a new neighborhood, could we explain why we belong to Grace Lutheran by the gas station instead of St Mary’s by the grocery store?

I once asked a French friend to explain German–French relations. He began by referring to the ninth-century division of Charlemagne’s empire! Most of us do not go that far back to answer contemporary questions, but his response illustrates that if memory is the thread of personal identity, history is the thread of community identity. These tenacious threads of community identity also have a dark side when they are not critically examined. This is painfully evident in the eruption of historical ethnic conflicts such as those in the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union as well as in the Middle East. If we do not know our personal and community histories we are like children who are easily manipulated by those who would use the past for their own purposes.

Memory and history are crucial to our identity, but they are not easily conceptualized in relation to their origins and goals. Here I take comfort in the comment of the great African theologian, St Augustine (354–430), who in discussing time wrote: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one that asks, I know not” (Confessions, Book XI). This most influential Western theologian was struggling to relate to his Hellenistic–Roman culture the Christian conviction that the identity of the community is rooted in history rather than in philosophy and ethics. This conviction had already been clearly stated in the historical shorthand of the Christian creeds, which confess faith in the historical person of Jesus who was born, suffered, and died. Christians put a unique spin on history when they also confess that this Jesus was raised from the dead and will return to bring history to completion. Thus, from an insider’s perspective, the Christian community’s identity is formed by both the historical past and the historical future. Without sensitivity to this theological claim, it will be difficult for us to fully realize the power in the Reformations of apocalyptic views of history or such works as John Foxe’s Acts andMonuments. This sense of the historical past, present, and future identity of the church, expressed in the third article of the creeds by the phrase “communion of saints,” was so palpable to the medieval that the English Roman Catholic historian John Bossy (1985) makes it the theme of his study of the Reformation. As we shall see, the historical identity of the communion of saints became a central controversial issue in the Reformation era.

Sociologists of knowledge make a similar point about historical identity rooted in community. Historical identity is passed on to us through our conversations with the mothers and fathers who have gone before us. In this sense, church historians take seriously the fourth commandment of the Decalogue: “Honor your father and mother.” We know, of course, from even limited family experience that when we no longer talk to our parents and children we begin to forget who we are. This is not to say that conversation between generations is always pleasant, but to say that it is important for learning how we got this way. Without such conversation we are condemned to “presentism,” a fancy term to describe the solipsism of a continuous “me generation.” Thus the postwar German phrase Welt ohne Vater is shorthand for the loss of roots and the authority crises suffered by the generation whose fathers fell in the war. Lord Acton stated this elegantly: “History must be our deliverer not only from the undue influence of other times, but from the undue influence of our own, from the tyranny of environment and the pressure of the air we breathe. It requires all historic forces to produce their record and submit it to judgment, and it promotes the faculty of resistance to contemporary surroundings by familiarity with other ages and orbits of thought” (Pelikan 1971: 150).

Until recently the collectors and tellers of the family conversations of Christianity were nearly all insiders. Thus the subject matter and the discipline of its telling fell under the rubric of “church history.” For a variety of reasons today, persons outside the Christian churches are also interested in presenting the history of Christianity. There is, to paraphrase an old maxim, the sense that the telling of the story of Christian contributions to contemporary identity is too important to be left to the Christians. The field of Reformation studies is a marked example of this recent development.

Awareness of the distinct perspectives of church historians and historians of Christianity will be useful in terms of reading both contemporary textbooks and the historical sources. We shall get to other perspectives later, but for now we may remind ourselves that interpretations of the past are not value free. Indeed, Heisenberg’s“indeterminacy principle” applies as much to historical studies as it does to subatomic physics: what is observed is influenced by the observer. “It is paradoxical, in fact, that nature seems more unambiguously susceptible to human understanding and control than is history which man makes and in which he is personally and intimately involved” (Spitz 1962: vii). In the words of the late English historian, G. R. Elton (1967: 13): “In truth, historians, like other people, tend to judge their world from their own experiences and practice, and it is disturbing to see how narrow in their sympathies even eminent men can be.”

Some of the presuppositions which govern an author’s collection and interpretation of events leap right off the page at us; others are more subtle. This is exemplified by the work of Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–ca. 340), the “Father of Church History.” In the introduction to his The History of the Church, Eusebius begins with a “truth in advertising” statement, the candor of which is all too rare in modern historical works. “From the scattered hints dropped by my predecessors I have picked out whatever seems relevant to the task I have undertaken, plucking like flowers in literary pastures the helpful contributions of earlier writers to be embodied in the continuous narrative I have in mind.”

Historians are selective in choosing data. Until very recently this selection has been governed by religious and theological commitments. This is not surprising since church historians traditionally work with a double perspective: the history of the church and the contemporizing of the past as a critical measure of the church’s faithfulness. The latter critical point means that the focus of the church historian’s work is a community that is already existing but not yet completed. In theological terms, there is an eschatological dimension to church historical work because the community being studied believes it lives between the “now” of the historical activity and promise of Jesus, and the “not yet” of the full realization of the Jesus movement. The problem this poses for modern historical method is how to write a history of that which claims to occur in history but also claims to be the end to history. Such metahistorical claims to privileged insight into the course and goal of history are of course not limited to theologians; they may be seen in such disparate modern expressions as Hegel’s idealist conviction of the self-realization of the absolute world spirit, Marx’s materialist conviction of the realization of the classless society, and the American belief in the triumph of democracy, to name but a few.

The hegemony of theological and church historical studies of the Reformations of the sixteenth century has only recently been critically questioned, and the implications of this questioning are beginning to find their way into textbooks. How radical this change is may be seen by a review of the long predominance of the Eusebian model of historical writing, which normed the “true” church by the community of the first centuries of the Christian era. The norm of the first centuries led to the rationalization of historical change and development as expressions of the unchanging essence of early Christianity, and idealized the apostolic age, the time of origins. This norm was operative in all parties of the Reformation era, and is easily seen in the various Reformers’appeals to Scripture and the apostolic faith to support their respective claims to be the continuation of the early church. Thus in the Leipzig debate (1519) over papal authority, Luther stated that papal claims to superiority are relatively recent. “Against them stand the history of eleven hundred years, the text of divine Scripture, and the decreeof the Council of Nicea [325], the most sacred of all councils” (LW 31: 318).

Even though the Reformations of the sixteenth century split the church, all parties continued to hold to the Eusebian model of church history by claiming to be the faithful recovery or continuation of the early church, and by accusing other churches of innovation (i.e. heresy). The Reformers urged people to judge all doctrines by Scripture; and all the churches turned to history to legitimate and bolster their individual claims to be the faithful community. Those convinced that the medieval church was a total corruption of the early church developed martyrologies to support their view that in spite of corruption there continued to be faithful witnesses to the Jesus movement in history.

The ground for the Reformers’ critique of the recent past as degenerate was prepared by the prior generation of humanists. The term “Middle Ages” (media aetas, medium tempus, medium aevum) is first encountered in scattered references by fifteenth-century humanists. They considered this segment of time an intermediate period between what they perceived as the ideal and glorified classical period (à la Eusebius) and their own time, which they termed “modern.” The humanists aspired and strove for a rebirth (Renaissance) of ancient and classical language, education, science, art, and the church. Humanists regarded the Middle Ages as barbaric; so, for example, its art was called “gothic.” This humanist characterization was driven not just by aesthetic and philological criteria but by theological and religious criteria as well. The men and women of the Renaissance projected back into history their own reactions to what they regarded as the superstitious and narrow-minded orthodoxyand authoritarianism of the church of their day. The influence of this humanist perspective continues to be evident in our use of pejorative labels such as “Dark Ages” and “scholastic.”

While it is sometimes said that contemporary culture is fascinated with innovation and the new, the motto of Renaissance culture was ad fontes, back to the sources. The Reformers, most of whom were strongly influenced by humanism, echoed this with regard to Scripture and the early church. Melanchthon characterized the Reformation as the age “in which God recalled the church to its origins” (in qua Deus Ecclesiamiterum ad fontes revocavit: Ferguson 1948: 52). The sense that “older is better” characterized histories of the church stemming from the Reformations. Under the leadership of the Lutheran Matthew Flacius Illyricus (1520–75), a group of scholarsdeveloped a history of the church from its beginning down to 1400, titled HistoriaEcclesiae Christi. Since this work divided the history of the church into centuries and was begun in the city of Magdeburg, it is also known as the “Magdeburg Centuries.” The Eusebian model remains effective in the “Centuries,” for Flacius argued that the Reformation was the restoration of the original purity of the early church. Not surprisingly for a Lutheran apologist, the key to the faithfulness of the church was seen tobe the doctrine of justification by grace alone. The original purity of the church lasted to about 300, and with some reservations even up to 600, but then there was a fall away from the faith due to the expansion of the papacy. In terms of periodization, the “Magdeburg Centuries” present the three periods now familiar to us: the ancient church or time of origins up to the fourth century, the medieval period of decay up to the fifteenth century, and the new period of recovery of the gospel. The historical reality of this tripartite division into ancient, medieval, and modern was little questionedand passed into the schema of universal history by the end of the seventeenth century as exemplified by the title of Christoph Cellarius’s work, Historia tripartita (1685).

Not to be outdone, the Roman Catholic church responded to the “Magdeburg Centuries” with the Herculean efforts of Caesar Baronius (1538–1607). After years of work in the Vatican archives, Baronius began publishing his study of the history of the church. Baronius proceeded year by year, and hence the title of his work is Annales Ecclesiastici. By the time of his death it had reached the year 1198. No less partisan than Flacius, and equally subject to the Eusebian model, Baronius focused his study on the institution of the papacy rather than the doctrine of justification. These two works illustrate the different understandings of Reformation by the Lutheran and Roman Catholic reform movements. The former focused on the reformation of dogma; the latter focused on renewal of the church as institution.

The dissident movements of the Reformation era were more interested in personal renewal than in either dogma or institution. In terms of church historical writing this tendency came to the fore in the so-called “impartial” history by Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714): Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie (the full title translates as “The Impartial History of the Church and of Heretics from the Beginnings of the New Testament to the Year of Christ 1688”). To Arnold, the essence of the Christian faith was not dogmatic, ecclesiastical, juridical, or cultic, but rather the personal piety of individuals. From this point of view those whom the churches (Protestant and Catholic) had persecuted as heretics were now seen as the true Christians who had faithfully followed Jesus in opposing the “Babel” of both the established church and the world. The key to the critical reading of the history of the church was seen to be the “rebirth” of individuals. While Arnold’s concept of a “nonpartisan” or “impartial” reading of history should not be equated with more modern attempts at “objectivity,” it is sometimes seen as foreshadowing this effort. Furthermore, the concern with individuals and their conversion experiences foreshadows later interest in biographical and psychological studies of historical figures, such as Erik H. Erikson’s Young Man Luther (1958).

But even with these contributions, Arnold and the dissident reform movements before him remained in debt to the Eusebian model of church history. For them the consummate epoch of the church was the first three centuries, which they saw as filled with the spirit of freedom, living faith, and holy living. The corruption and decay of the early church began under the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great (d. 337), with the legitimizing of the church in the Roman empire and its consequent participation in Roman power and wealth. Here, too, the Middle Ages were seen as a long period of decline.

The Eusebian model of church history set the stage for the various Reformers’ understandings of their own contexts, and it also illustrates that reflections on history are colored by value judgments. It is all too easy for us today as we stand upon the shoulders of those who went before us to criticize them for being unaware of what now appears self-evident to us. But every age is marked by what it takes to be selfevident, and hence uncritically takes for granted. This is equally true of us. Thus a recent study of twentieth-century medievalists is titled Inventing the Middle Ages. The author writes that our own anxieties, hopes, loves, and disappointments interact with our reading and writing of history. “The ideas of the Middle Ages articulated by the master medievalists vary substantially one from another. The libretto and score they are working from – the data of historical fact – are the same. The truth, therefore, is ultimately not in the textual details but in the interpretations” (Cantor 1991: 45).

Interpretations of the Reformations

To cite Cantor (1991: 367) again: “We tend to discover the past we set out to find. This is not because the past is a willfully imagined fiction but because it is such a complicated and multifaceted reality.” Without a perspective, without a horizon, the selection, arrangement, and interpretation of historical data would be helter-skelter. The multiplicity of interpretations may contribute to our understanding as well as to our confusion. Given the existence of varying horizons among historians, it is helpful to both the historian and his or her audience when the horizon is indicated. Mine is that religion and theology are central to understanding the Reformations. I hasten to add that they must be seen in their cultural contexts.

An initial move to control the complicated and multifaceted reality of the Reformation is to define the terms used for it and the era it covers. Until recently that was briefly and simply done. The widely used textbook for undergraduate “Renaissance–Reformation” history courses of the prior generation in America, Harold J. Grimm’s The Reformation Era 1500–1650, quickly disposed of the temporal parameters and the problem of definition: “In these pages the word Reformation is used in its conventional sense, that is, involving the rise of an evangelical Christianity, called Protestantism, that could not accommodate itself to the old theology and ecclesiastical institutions” (Grimm 1973: 2; cf. Cameron 1991: 2).

In more recent scholarship this “conventional sense” of the Reformation has given way to recognition that there was a plurality of Reformations which interacted with each other: Lutheran, Catholic, Reformed, and dissident movements. These multiple reforming movements are not fully understood if explained only in terms of religious reform without account being taken of their historical, political, social, and economic contexts and influences. If we lose sight of the Reformations’ complex network of historical relationships we may oversimplify our conception and evaluation of Reformation theology itself. “After all, this theology had such a great impact in history precisely because it was intricately interwoven into history” (Moeller 1982: 7).

The word “Reformation” has a long, involved history that on the one hand goes back to classical times (cf. Strauss 1995: 1–28) and on the other hand in contemporary undergraduate curricula is almost always associated with the “Renaissance,” as in “Ren–Ref” courses. The medieval use of reformatio may generally be understood in terms of the Eusebian rubric that older is better. Technically, the term was used in relation to the re-establishing of universities in their original condition (e.g., reformatio in pristinum statum. The fourteenth-century conciliar movement used the phrase “reformation of the church in head and members” (reformatio ecclesiae incapite et in membris), meaning by this an ethical appeal to self-reform by individuals. Thus ethical renewal appeared more important than the reform of the church as an institution. This theme is continued in the widely circulated The Reformation of theEmperor Sigismund (ca. 1438), which calls for the restoration of the lost proper order of things through ethical renewal and the re-establishment of God’s order. Similarly, the “Prophecy of Johann Lichtenberger” (1488) spoke of a new reformation, a newlaw, a new kingdom, and a change among the clergy and the common people. The observance of the law of Christ and of the natural law were to return church and society to their original God-willed condition. In the sixteenth century, “reformation” developed further meanings of improvement and renewal in both ecclesiastical and profane usage.

It is of interest that Luther himself seldom used the term “reformation” apart from his successful effort to create a new curriculum at his own university. The English translation of his significant outline for reform, Address to the ChristianNobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate (1520), suggests Luther’s use of the term, but the title in German denotes “improvement” (Besserung). When Luther does use the term “reformation,” he gives it a new sense: he ties it to doctrine rather than ethical renewal. The crux of genuine reform, he said in an early sermon, is the proclamation of the gospel of grace alone. This requires the reform of theology and preaching but is ultimately the work of God alone. Here Luther differs from all the so-called “forerunners” of the Reformation. “For Luther man could not be reformed – that is, restored to an earlier condition – but only forgiven” (Bouwsma 1980: 239).

It was not until the end of the seventeenth century, in Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff’s Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de Lutheranismo sive de reformatione religionis ductu D. Martini Lutheri in magna Germaniae parte aliisque regionibus (1694), that the concept Reformation was applied to the history of the church. Seckendorff understood “Reformation” as the key word for the clarification of events in Germany in the first half of the sixteenth century. His work is not a history of the Reformation in a comprehensive sense, for it is limited to religion and ends with Luther’s death; nevertheless, with his work, Reformation as a concept for an era or epoch entered the vocabulary and concepts of historical studies.

The early characterization of the Reformation as an era or epoch linked it to the career of Luther. The dictionaries and encyclopedias of the eighteenth century characterized the Reformation as an epoch defined by Luther’s divinely motivated work of cleansing the church of abuses and doctrinal errors. For all practical purposes the Reformation was identified with Luther. This illustrates Protestantism’s paradoxical tendency to make saints of those who rejected the veneration of saints (Bouwsma 1988: 2). Hence the Reformation as an epoch was bracketed by the date of the “Ninety-Five Theses” (1517) as the beginning and the Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) as the end. “The whole period 1517–1555 was canonized as a self-sufficient phase of history, which tended to make people overlook the Bohemian Reformation of the fifteenth century and to undervalue not only the radical sects, but also the Reformed churches of Switzerland, France, and England” (Dickens and Tonkin 1985: 9). Such periodization also neglects the reforming movements within Catholicism as well as non-ecclesiastical events.

A comprehensive cultural sense of this era was first expressed in Leopold von Ranke’s Deutscher Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (1839–), which presented church, historical, and political events as inseparable and mutually interactive. The “Epoch of the Reformation” (Zeitalter der Reformation) is paradigmatically expressed in the title of the second half of his study, “Die Anfänge Luthers und Karls V,” which juxtaposes Luther and the Emperor Charles V.

Ranke also popularized the term “Counter-Reformation.” He initially used this term in the plural (Gegenreformationen, Counter-Reformations). Roman Catholic historians took umbrage because this implied – and frequently stated – the historical and theological priority of the Protestant Reformation to which Catholicism then reacted. “The expression seemed to interpret the recovery of the Catholic Church merely as a counteraction to the schism and seemed to imply the use of force in religious matters” (Iserloh et al. 1986: 431). The Catholic scholar John Bossy (1985: 91) would just as soon drop the term Reformation altogether because “it goes along too easily with the notion that a bad form of Christianity was being replaced by a good one.” Indeed, earlier Roman Catholic historians generally used the term “religious schism” (Glaubensspaltung) rather than Reformation to designate this period. In short, terms are not always innocent of values and problems. Yet without terms and periodizations it would be impossible to provide a coherent drama of complex changes.

More recent terminology, sensitive to contemporary ecumenical relationships as well as to historical accuracy, focuses on “Catholic Reformation” or “Catholic Reform” to indicate that Catholic reform or renewal movements pre- as well as postdated Luther and were not merely reactive. Nevertheless, confessional commitments aside, it is a historical mistake to ignore the reality of a “Catholic CounterReformation, which, springing from a preexistent, theologically conservative reformism, arose in force well within Luther’s lifetime and set bounds to Protestant expansion” (Dickens and Tonkin 1985: 2; Jedin 1973: 46–81). “Counter-Reformation” thus locates and characterizes much of the Catholic Church’s reaction to Protestantism. “But the term Reformation for Catholicism … unwittingly implies a substantive reformation of doctrine, which was, in fact, programmatically resisted by the Council of Trent” (Williams 1992: 3, 5). The Jesuit Reformation scholar, John O’Malley (1991: 177–93), argues however that there was far more to Catholicism in this period than the council of Trent. Although “Catholic Reform” and “CounterReformation” are coextensive in this period the terms may divert our attention from the more comprehensive reality of sixteenth-century Catholicism concerned with the care of souls beyond reform of abuses and institutions. In a substantive review of this historiography, O’Malley (2000) cogently argues that the phrase “early modern Catholicism” better designates both change and continuity than the older terms. In addition it is a phrase that encompasses the varieties of Catholicism of the time and thereby helps to liberate us from the long-standing bias that medieval and early modern Catholicism was a monolithic, authoritarian, papal institution. “‘Early Modern Catholicism,’ as a more open term, has space for the new roles played by Catholic women, lay and religious. Because it is not as susceptible to reductionism as the others [i.e. terms], it more easily allows that important influences on religious institutions and mentalities were at work in early modern culture that did not originate with religion and church as such but that nonetheless helped refashion them” (O’Malley 2000: 142). A recent Festschrift in O’Malley’s honor furthers this perspective (Comerford and Pabel 2001). Yet, the debates continue as Hillerbrand (2007: 461 n. 5) states: “The reason for such preference [“Early Modern Catholicism”] would seem rather obvious; it is to disconnect the history of sixteenth-century Catholicism from the Protestant Reformation.” I shall use the shorthand label “Roman Catholicism,” although it is anachronistic for this time period, because phrases such as “adherents of the old faith,” “adherents of the new faith,” “sixteenthcentury Catholicism,” and “early modern Catholicism” are awkward. Also, the Reformers believed they were faithfully representing the Catholic church. Technically, the modification of “Catholic” by “Roman” is appropriate only after the council of Trent (1545–63).

The term “Reformation” is frequently modified by “magisterial” and “radical.” Magisterial Reformation denotes the evangelical reform movements that were supported and enabled by magistrates, whether on the level of kings, princes, or town councils. Thus, for example, Luther won the support of the prince of Electoral Saxony, Zwingli the support of the town council of Zurich, and Calvin that of the councils of Geneva. Magisterial also refers to the authority of a teacher (magister);hence the teaching authority in the Roman Catholic Church, located in the pope and bishops in council, is termed the Magisterium. Among Protestants the teaching authority of Luther and Calvin was so great that reforming movements used their names, Lutheranism and Calvinism. “Thus the classical Magisterial Reformation was ‘magisterial’ not only in the primary sense that it allowed for a large role on the part of the state in implementing Reformation and even in assessing doctrinal, liturgical, and ecclesiological issues but also in the subsidiary sense that it accorded extraordinary authority to an individual teacher” (Williams 1992: 1281).

Those reforming movements which dissented from the so-called magisterial Reformers and stressed autonomy from political authorities have been labeled the “left wing” of the Reformation or, more recently, the “radical Reformation.” Althoughthe latter term has been widely used in Reformation studies since George H. Williams’s major study, The Radical Reformation, “there has prevailed considerable uncertainty about its precise definition” (Hillerbrand 1986: 26). At the very least, it is clear that Luther was “left” of the Catholic establishment, and there is a consensus that Luther’s position was “radical” up to the early 1520s. Thus “radical Reformation” is a problematic term associated with theological value judgments which “cannot beadjudicated by scholarly criteria” (Hillerbrand 1993: 416–17). Alternative terms for the so-called radicals are nonconformists and dissidents.

Indeed, it may be argued that “radical” in its fundamental sense of going to the roots (radix) equally applies to Luther’s conviction that Scripture alone is the norm of Christian faith. This is a sober argument when it is realized that it was the medieval clergy who were custodians of the predominant social myth and hence the legitimators of social structure and political organization, not to mention controllers of a good deal of property and wealth. “A challenge to the clergy thus had to be a radical challenge, calling for a revolutionary change in European society … the Protestant Reformation was such a challenge” (Kingdon 1974: 57). “Together with the Italian Renaissance, the German Reformation has traditionally been viewed as the first of the great revolutions that created the modern world” (Ozment 1992: xiv). But, as with the other terms mentioned above, there are also many nuances and outright differences in how “revolution” is understood, including the Marxist view of the Reformation as an “early bourgeois revolution.” In so far as the Reformation “can fairly be called … an anticlerical revolution” one may speak of “the people’s Reformation” or “the Reformation of the common people” (Kingdon 1974: 60; Abray 1985; Blickle 1992).

In this brief survey of the definitions and periodization of the Reformation we have moved from a theological norm that judged sixteenth-century movements in relation to Luther (right – Catholicism; left – radicals) to social history. This latter, recent historiographical development does not necessarily conflict with the earlier approaches of intellectual historians concerned with biography and theology. “Rather, it asserts that the religious changes of the sixteenth century were fundamentally important in shaping the history of Europe and the wider world up to the modern age, and it defines as territory for exploration that area in which religious ideas and rituals impinged upon the structures of everyday life” (Hsia 1988: 8). The period has been extended back into the Middle Ages through increased awareness of the role of Catholic reforming movements and stretched into the eighteenth century in relation to its confessional, economic, and social effects. Some scholars refer heuristically to these centuries as “the long sixteenth century” or the “early modern” period to distinguish it from the modern period associated with the American, French, and Industrial Revolutions. Recent titles suggest this fluidity in characterizing the Reformation (e.g. Ozment 1971, 1980; Bossy 1985; MacCulloch 2003; Wiesner-Hanks 2006). The editors of the Handbook of European History (Brady, Oberman, and Tracy, 1994–5, 2: XIX; cf. also 1: XIII–XXIV) provide another reason: “The very choice of the chronological perimeters 1400–1600 raises a significant barrier to the confessional canonization of one isolated phase, privileging either the Late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Reformation.” In short, the definitions various scholars give to the word Reformation and its periodization are endeavors to clarify and sort out the presuppositions and value judgments that create a kaleidoscope of views of the Reformation, coloring one’s perspective according to the turns one makes. It remains for us now to survey the history of these turns.

Interpretations of the Reformations of the sixteenth century are so legion that there are numerous large studies of the history of these interpretations. For the sake of simplicity, interpretations of the Reformation may be grouped under two basic headings: intellectual history and social history. The players in the former are mainly church historians and theologians, whereas the players in the latter are social historians and secular historians.

Until very recently the predominant interpretive position was located in terms of intellectual or cultural history, what the Germans call Geistesgeschichte. The major concern in this orientation is with the ideas of the Reformation. In some cases, the pursuit of these ideas was narrowly conceived in terms of Reformation theologies; in other cases the interpretations broadened to biography, psychohistory, political ideology, and, especially after the second Vatican council, ecumenicaltheology.

The predominant figure in the church historical and theological interpretations of the Reformation continues to be Martin Luther, about whom, it is said, more has been written than about any other figure in the history of the church. Even today in Germany, Luther looms larger than life. A recent German public television survey of the most famous Germans ranked Luther behind the post-war chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, but ahead of Karl Marx; in 2003 Luther appeared on the cover of Spiegel