Anthropological Reformations - Anthropology in the Era of Reformation 9783666550584, 9783525550588

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Refo500 Academic Studies Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis In Co-operation with Günter Frank (Bretten), Bruce Gordon, (New Haven), Ute Lotz-Heumann (Tucson), Mathijs Lamberigts (Leuven), Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Bern), Tarald Rasmussen (Oslo), Johannes Schilling (Kiel), Günther Wassilowsky (Linz), Siegrid Westphal (Osnabrück), David M. Whitford (Trotwood).

Volume 28

Anne Eusterschulte / Hannah Wälzholz (ed.)

Anthropological Reformations – Anthropology in the Era of Reformation

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

With 7 colour and 12 b/w-Fig. Gefördert mit Mitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISSN 2198-3089 ISBN 978-3-525-55058-8 You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our Website: www.v-r.de © 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, 37073 Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Printed in Germany. Typesetting by Konrad Triltsch Print und digitale Medien GmbH, Ochsenfurt Printed and bound by Hubert & Co, GmbH & Co. KG, Robert-Bosch-Breite 6, 37079 Göttingen Printed on aging-resistant paper.

Contents

Introduction: Anthropological Reformations – Anthropology in the Era of Reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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I. Dimensions of Anthropological Reformations: Keynote-Lectures Risto Saarinen Weakness of Will: Reformation Anthropology between Aristotle and the Stoa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Johan Verberckmoes Loud voices. Emotions in the Reformation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Notger Slenczka ‘Theologiae proprium subiectum est homo …’ (Luther). Shifts in the Structure of Theological Systems in the Wake of Reformation . . . . . . .

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Anna Vind The Human Being according to Luther . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69

Wolfgang Fuhrmann Heart and Voice – A Musical Anthropology in the Age of Reformation

87

.

Jutta Eming Body Imagery and Knowledge in Historia von D. Johann Fausten . . . . . 113 Klaus Bergdolt German Medicine and Italian Humanism in the Times of Reformation . . 129

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Elke Anna Werner Pictorial Concepts of Law and Grace: Relations between the Lutheran Reformation and the Anthropology of the Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

II. Reformations of Body and Soul Kyle J. Dieleman Body and Resurrection in Calvin’s Commentaries

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Barbara Pitkin Human Nature in Calvin’s Commentary on Seneca . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Sini Mikkola Female as the Other in Martin Luther’s Anthropology in the Early 1520s . 175 Tom Bervoets ‘Embodying’ the Catholic Reform. Mathias Bossemius and the Defence of Clerical Celibacy in his De clericorum cum foeminis cohabitatione (1586) 187 Renske van Nie Mystical Anthropology in a Sixteenth-Century Textual Witness of the Catholic Reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

III. Images of Reformation and Religious Imaginations Marion Deschamp An Embodied Theology. Body, Images and the Imagination of God by Luther . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Sasja Emilie Mathiasen Stopa Soli Deo honor et gloria – the Concepts of Honour and Glory in the Theology of the Young Martin Luther . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Maria Lucia Weigel Light as a Metaphor in Protestant Prints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Frank Jasper Noll „Caron mit den abgeschidnen geisten“. Antike Mythologie und christliche Imagination bei Hans Sachs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

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IV. Subjectivity, Freedom of Will and Faith: Ethical Questions Svein Aage Christoffersen Subjectivity and Self-Understanding – Some Considerations Concerning Luther and Caravaggio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Gregory B. Graybill Dialectics as Catalyst: The Role of Aristotelian Logic in the Development of Melanchthon’s Doctrine of the Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Bettina Noak Concepts of Illness and Health in the Zedekunst dat is Wellevenskunste (Ethics, or the Art of Living Well, 1586) by Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert (1522–1590) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Ine Kiekens From Vanden twaelf dogheden to Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten. The Rewriting of a Medieval Spiritual Text in the Counter-Reformation . . . . . . . . . . 305

V. Reformation of Church and Religious Practices Herman A. Speelman Man, Freedom, and the Church: Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin on How to Serve God Freely, within or outside the Power of the Church . . . 319 Konrad Küster Protestant Church Cantata: Poetical and Musical Challenges Around 1700 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Anna Michalska Churches for People. Protestant Search for the New Liturgical Space in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Joanna Kaz´mierczak The Sixteenth-Century Pictorial Epitaph in Central Europe: Between ‘Reform’ and ‘Reformation’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 Jennifer Crangle Why did England Change its Mind? Perceptions Regarding Human Remains Before, During, and After the Reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

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Gioia Filocamo Through the mala notte: The Anthropology of Assisting Those Condemned to Die in Italy in the 15th and 16th Centuries . . . . . . . . . 383

VI. Political Theology and Anthropological Reforms of Pedagogy Matthew J. Tuininga Calvin as Two Kingdoms Theologian: in Theology, in Church, and in State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 Niranjan Goswami Peter Ramus, William Ames and the New England Way: Investigations into Theologia Timocratica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 Zsombor Tóth ‘Calvinian Anthropology’ and the Early Modern Hungarian Devotion: The Case of István Nagy Szo˝nyi, the First Hungarian Martyrologist . . . . 415 Kristian Mejrup Halle Pietism: Acrobats Buying Time

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

VII. Exemplary Studies: The Self-understanding of Reformation BonSeung Koo You Can Have Faith but You Cannot Assemble: The Problem of Conscience under the 17th-Century Dutch Reformed Regime – On Simon Oomius’s Theologico-Politica Dissertatio (1662) – . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 Thomas Klöckner Heinrich Alting (1583–1644) – erste Einblicke in eine Biografie (zugleich ein Beitrag zur Netzwerktätigkeit der Reformierten im ausgehenden 16. Jahrhundert) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459

VIII. Reforms in the Art of Writing: Literary approaches Antje Wittstock Dem Selbst auf der Spur: Heterologes Schreiben und Sebstthematisierung in Ulrich von Huttens Traktat De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico. . . . 481

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Daniela Kohler The Anthropological Concept in Jakob Ruf ’s Political Plays Etter Heini and Wilhelm Tell in the Light of the Prevalent Opinions of the Swiss Reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501 Sukanya Dasgupta ‘This Hidden Knowledge Have I Learned of Thee’: Anne Vaughan Lock and the ‘Invisible Church’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 Hicham Merzouki Islam in Renaissance English Literature: Between Intolerance and Exoticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525

IX. Ethnology in the Light of Reformation Erin Lambert New Worlds, New Images: Picturing the Resurrection of the Body in Sixteenth-Century Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533 Michael Harrigan The Navigations of Nicolas de Nicolay and the Economics of Ethnology in the Early Modern Mediterranean Basin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 Images in Colour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565 About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571

Introduction: Anthropological Reformations – Anthropology in the Era of Reformation

The present volume is comprised of papers submitted to the third annual RefoRC conference, which took place in Berlin in 2013. The general topic of this conference “Anthropological Reformations – Anthropology in the Era of Reformation” marks the cardinal point of interdisciplinary discussions on the state of anthropological questions. It was our aim to ask for the (pre)conditions of the reformatory process, its historical embedment and transformative dynamics with regard to the establishment and the debates on anthropological concepts and their changes in the age of Reformation. To analyse these developments and the different areas of conflict in a comprehensive way, we intended to confront features of special research fields (Medicine, Musicology, History, Literature, Art History, Politics, Ethics, Theology and History of Religion) enabling us to compare the conceptualizations of the conditio humana according i. e. to the relation of body and soul, definitions of self-consciousness, knowledge or the understanding of free will, to concepts of body and theories of passions or emotions. How did theologians reflect on the scientific explanation of man’s affective nature and the role of emotions? In which way did contemporary scientific knowledge on the one side, the humanistic reception of ancient sources, pagan literature and philosophy on the other side influence the theological issue of humans’ godlikeness, the comprehension of virtues, guilty pleasures or sin? How were anthropological concepts, based on philosophical discourses, founded by the explorations of the contemporary empirical sciences or on travelling records with regard to the so-called new worlds received by theologians? And how did anthropological questions touch the interrelation of law and grace, justification and salvation? To which degree does the influence of reformatory theological debates (i. e. the interpretation of Christ’s passion, death, redemption, resurrection) modify the conception of man’s state? Looking into the relevance of anthropological reformations in a broader sense, we not only examine shifts in the structure of theological systems, the strategies to legitimize the true church or to substantiate the reformatory understanding of faith. Analyzing the theological approaches and appropriations of contemporary thought

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as well as the wisdom of rediscovered traditions, we also want to investigate to what extent and in which way theological debates on human nature have found resonance in works of art, poetry, literature, music, scientific knowledge etc. Is it possible to describe a reformation of aesthetic concepts, that means a shift in theories and practices of art (literature, music, architecture, the art of painting, up to performative arts)? And what does this mean for religious and liturgical practices? How can we describe the interrelation or the reciprocal transfer of concepts and ideas in the wake of Reformation and in the long run with regard to the period of confessionalization? This perspective also focuses on political and social changes, for example the review of monastic life, the criticisms of the papal church and the emergence of religious movements. The impact of the Reformation and the later Counterreformation manifests the influence of religious thought on political as well as social theories and had a practical impact on social life, on debates focusing the true Christian conduct of life and their ethical implications. But it also leads to legitimation strategies to confirm the theological substantiation of political governments. On the whole, all these questions concentrate on the complexity of anthropological reformations. The conference papers combined in this volume attempt to give answers to these questions. But first and foremost they explore the deeper dimensions of anthropological changes and open our mind for different perspectives on anthropology in the era of Reformation. The volume combines selected papers of relevant experts with the research work of young graduate or postgraduate scholars. It tries to encourage a transdisciplinary, international discussion focused on exemplary case studies as well as systematic points of view. Thanks to the outstanding commitment of all participants of the conference, we are able to present the results of this discussion, a rich and comprehensive spectrum of research work, which will encourage further research. First of all we have to thank the contributors of this volume for their inspiring papers, shedding light on anthropology in the era of Reformation. They lead to a deeper understanding of the transformative forces, historical changes and sociopolitical developments which characterize the role of anthropological debates within the process of Reformation and may initiate a continuing research with regard to a plurality of consequences and conflicts concerning not only theological or confessional conceptualizations of the conditio humana but, as the transdisciplinary conference has shown, taking into consideration anthropological Reformations in a comprehensive way. It is this exchange across disciplinary borders that allows us to see how anthropology in the era of Reformation spreads out in all fields of sciences and arts, politics, ethics or human self-

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conception and substantiates claims of the only true church as well as apprehensions of resurrection and the promised afterlife in Christian thought. We are deeply grateful that the Bundesbeauftragte für Kultur und Medien supported the international conference generously and made a prompt publication of the conference papers possible. We also thank the publishing house Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht for accepting the volume as part of a series of RefoRCconference-paper-editions and we especially thank Jörg Persch and Christoph Spill for supporting the publication of this volume. Last but not least we want to thank Pawel Kaliszewski, who assisted the editors in preparing all the manuscripts so unfailingly and reliably. Sincere thanks are given to them all. Berlin, December 2014

Anne Eusterschulte/Hannah Wälzholz

I. Dimensions of Anthropological Reformations: Keynote-Lectures

Risto Saarinen

Weakness of Will: Reformation Anthropology between Aristotle and the Stoa

The so-called weakness of will, sometimes called with the Greek term akrasia or the Latin term incontinentia, belongs to those perennial topics of Western philosophy that each new generation wants to elaborate and discuss. Akrasia means acting against better judgment, that is, the situation in which one knows what good one ought to do but nevertheless does something else.1 The theme of akrasia is usually considered to have its origins in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, (EN, Book VII), in which Aristotle discusses the phenomenon of acting against one’s own better judgment. Since knowledge is stronger than opinions or emotions, and since better judgments represent this knowledge, no rational person should act against what he or she considers best. Aristotle is, however, not only intellectualist but also realist; therefore, he remarks that often people nevertheless seem to act akratically. How can this phenomenon be explained? Aristotle presents a lengthy elaboration and explanation. Later philosophers and theologians have debated what Aristotle is actually saying and whether he is right in saying what he says.2

Akrasia in Aristotle and the Stoa As one crucial part of his explanation, Aristotle launches the practical syllogism, a calculative model of the emergence of human action. The practical syllogism consists of a major premise that expresses a general principle and a minor premise that states a particular observation. Given the intellectualist framework, rational beings should follow the conclusion implied by the two premises. Aristotle’s famous example in EN VII concerns eating: ‘Sweet things are to be 1 Tobias Hoffmann, ed., Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present, Washington 2008. Jörn Müller, Willensschwäche in Antike und Mittelalter, Leuven 2009. Risto Saarinen, Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought, Oxford 2011. 2 Müller, Willensschwäche (see n. 1), pp. 109–151; Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 8–12.

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avoided’ (major); ‘this is sweet’ (minor); ‘this should be avoided’ (conclusion). The conclusion is not only propositional, but also functional and in some sense the action itself. Hence, a person’s acts result from his or her calculative deliberations in terms of practical syllogism. (EN VII, 1145a – 1147b). The standard Aristotelian answer to the problem of akrasia is that the akratic person knows the good in a universal sense but his grasp of the minor premise is impeded or imperfect. Thus, the akratic person eats the sweets, knowing that sweet things should generally be avoided, but cheating himself to ignore the particular case at hand. (EN VII, 1147a – b). Obviously, the next thing to ask is whether the ignorance in question is voluntary or not. A great range of different answers has been presented, and sometimes the same author has presented many answers. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, says that philosophically such behavior is like involuntary forgetting, but theologically it is voluntary.3 In addition to Aristotle, there is a Stoic tradition of akrasia of which the scholars have become better aware during the last fifteen years.4 The Stoic tradition is quite fragmentary; we have some texts of Chrysippus and Galen, and uncertain mentions from Plutarch, Epictetus and Origen. I am also arguing in my new book that Augustine is in some ways connected to this tradition.5 The Stoic tradition survives in some examples, of which the two most popular are, first, ‘the runner who cannot stop running’ and, second, the literary figure of Medea who falls in love and kills her children against her better judgment. Both Medea’s love and her rage are used as example of akrasia. The Stoics introduced the concept of assent to their anthropology. This assent was no free will in the modern sense, but something that is immediately attached to the judgment of the mind. According to the Stoics, our emotions are assented judgments. When we feel an emotion, we have already judged to assent to it. Emotions are no innocent desires but assented judgments. Thus the Stoics are in some sense even more intellectualist that the Aristotelians who taught that the emotions stem from the lower parts of the soul, being in themselves no rational judgment or voluntary consent of higher mental powers.6 As strict intellectualists, the Stoics are unwilling to admit that there exists something like akrasia. Motivational mental conflicts only mean that the assented judgment oscillates and changes in both directions so rapidly that we cannot notice the individual instances of this rapid change. However, in each individual instance of this very rapid oscillation there is a coherence of assent, judgment and the emotion representing them.7 3 4 5 6 7

So Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 28–30. More discussion about Aquinas is listed here. Müller, Willensschwäche (see n. 1), pp. 155–193 offers a broad overview. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 19–27. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 12–17. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 15 and Müller, Willensschwäche (see n. 1), p. 167–171.

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However, the Stoics discuss two possible options of akrasia. First, there may be so-called prepassions, which emerge already before judgment. If I see a box of sweets in the shop window, this impression may cause tiny physical changes within me before the judgment, assent and emotion are fully formed in the soul. Such tiny changes could be labeled as akratic, and we may have them for a very brief time before the conscious judgment emerges. Although the doctrine of prepassions became prominent in later Christian monastic spirituality, the other option is more interesting for the purposes of this paper. In some cases, the agent may be so strongly predetermined by some earlier habits that the new information cannot change his or her course of action immediately but only after delay. This is what the example of the ‘runner who cannot stop running’ illustrates. After the assented judgment to stop running, the runner proceeds at least for some meters. This proceeding might be called akrasia, acting against one’s own better judgment.8 This was also how Medea’s love and her rage came to be interpreted. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses Medea claims to ‘see the better and approve it, but follow the worse’. This means, according to the Stoic view, that she saw that it was better to stay at her father’s home, but her love nevertheless caused her to continue with Jason. Although she intellectually decided to stay with her father, her earlier course of life was still so predominant that in her love she actually followed Jason.9 Jörn Müller has meticulously analyzed the Stoic tradition of akrasia; he also discusses its relationship to some early Christian mental conflicts, for instance, Paul’s introspection in Romans 7. In my own book, I present two new arguments concerning Augustine’s very complex role in this story. First, I claim that Augustine’s famous conversion story in Confessions 8 displays similarities with the example of the ‘runner who cannot stop running’. Here Augustine wonders why the commandment of the mind to will does not bring about a will-act, calling this powerless will a monstrosity. He explains the phenomenon by saying that, though the mind is lifted up by truth, it is also weighed down heavily by habit, and it is this old habit which causes the person to act against his better will and judgment.10 Second, I interpret the late Augustine’s pessimistic lines of the remaining sinfulness of Christians as saying that Augustine there regards concupiscence not only as irrational emotion but also in terms of an assented judgment. Because we feel concupiscence, we have somehow already assented to it; therefore, the awareness of one’s feeling concupiscence is already in itself sinful, involving preceding consent in some sense. In fact, the case of Augustine is very complex. 8 Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 16 and Müller, Willensschwäche (see n. 1), pp. 171–179. 9 Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 16–17; Müller, Willensschwäche (see n. 1), pp.173–176. 10 Müller, Willensschwäche (see n. 1), pp. 211–241 (Paul); Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 17–26 (Augustine).

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His doctrine of desire, consent and free will cannot be reduced to Stoicism but it also exemplifies new developments. At the same time, the notion of consent/ assent stems from Stoicism and we may ask to what extent this shapes Augustine’s thinking. Timo Nisula discusses Augustine in detail, without fully agreeing with my views regarding his Stoicism.11 For my purposes, it is sufficient to show that Augustine can be read in somewhat Stoic terms. This is relevant in the reception history irrespectively of whether this was the case with the historical Augustine.

Other Introductory Perspectives Some introductory perspectives need to be stated clearly, before I can enter the topic. First, it is evident that since Melanchthon the Reformation authors knew much more about Stoicism than was the case in late medieval scholasticism. Several Reformation authors knew well the non-religious Greek sources and could thus compare their theology competently with the classical heritage. Thus, we have not only Aristotelianism but also a kind of Neo-Stoicism as an available option in the Reformation era. Second, I will not claim that the Reformation authors were either Aristotelians or Stoics. They differed from both in many important respects. However, some of them are Aristotelian in their explanation of akrasia, whereas others employ distinctly Neo-Stoic features. While they all remain somewhere between Aristotle and the Stoa, it is worthwhile to discover the individual affinities and differences. Third, to verify such discoveries we need a clear framework of relevant comparisons. For this purpose, I will employ a categorization of the different models of akrasia as being either Aristotelian or Stoic. The use of practical syllogism as explanatory model is typical of Aristotelianism. Within this model, one may have slightly different explanations as to how the syllogism can go wrong, but I will not address them in the following. The Stoic models are characterized by the use of the concepts of assent/consent/free will. They proceed from strictly Stoic intellectualism towards Augustinianism, and further from Augustinianism towards voluntarism. While the full-fledged free will models are no longer Stoic, the Augustinian models that employ the interplay of desire and consent still display some Stoic features.12 Fourth, the role of Martin Luther in this history needs to be explained. In some sense, he does not belong to it, since he did not write anything on akrasia. In my 11 Timo Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, Leiden 2012, esp. pp. 259–262. 12 A detailed categorization is presented in Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 42, 217.

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new book, I ask the inevitable question: why not, given that he knew Aristotle well and was so interested in the so-called bondage of the will. My answer is that, for Luther, akrasia was not a conceptual option in the first place.13 Why is this so? For Aristotle, akrasia and enkrateia, the strength of will, are imperfect stages of virtue and vice. Imperfectly good people act virtuously but have temptations to do otherwise. They are called enkratic or (in Latin) continent. Imperfectly evil people commit sins but they act against their better judgment, being akratic. In Aristotle, we thus have four moral states, virtue, continence, akrasia, and vice. For Luther, however, all people without grace are wholeheartedly evil and sinful; there are no alleviating factors. For this reason, people who claim to be akratic are just normally evil and maybe hypocrites. When people are justified and live a Christian life, they act rightly but their ruled sin nevertheless tempts them all the time. They are righteous and sinner at the same time. In Aristotelian terms, they are continent rather than virtuous. If Christians lapse from the good course of life, they re-enter the state of normal sinners. When they return to the path of faith and Christianity, they become righteous sinners or continent in Aristotelian terms. Only in heaven can they become really good and virtuous. The four Aristotelian moral states are thus reduced to two in Luther, namely, vice and continence. Given this, Luther need not write anything concerning people who without grace nevertheless have good judgment: there are no such people.

Early Lutheranism We can also bluntly say that Luther kicked Aristotle out of the door. The philosopher starts to creep back from one window opened by Melanchthon and another opened by Calvin. Melanchthon does not write much thematically on akrasia. For the most part, he shares Luther’s view that only sinfulness and continence are the real Christian options. Melanchthon’s portrayal of the human will is Lutheran rather than Erasmian or Humanist.14 In the second aetas of the Loci communes, however, Melanchthon undertakes some moderations to Luther’s teaching concerning the natural powers of humanity without grace. He considers that people can have a remnant of judgment with which they can proceed to externally good works. The weakness of our nature frequently overcomes any good judgment, so that we follow evil affects. Medea’s words: I see the better and approve it, but follow the worse, exemplify this situation.15 13 See Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 115–132. 14 So Timothy Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness, Oxford 1998. 15 Melanchthon, Corpus Reformatorum (CR, Halle, 1834–1860) v. 21, p. 374: ‘Hanc ipsam

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Medea’s words are not used in medieval theology and philosophy, but they are reintroduced by Josse Clichtove in his influential ethics textbook around 1500 as an illustration of akrasia. After Clichtove and Melanchthon, they are used by practically all later writers.16 More importantly, they were used as an example of weakness of will, not as any example whatsoever. Melanchthon is very fond of Medea’s example; he interprets Medea’s love and her rage in several different works throughout his later career as Reformer.17 Let us keep in mind that Medea’s words are non-Aristotelian: if Medea really saw the better, without any ignorance or forgetting, she, according to Aristotle’s intellectualist theory, should have followed this course. Medea exemplifies something that is called clear-eyed akrasia in philosophical literature. We know today how the example of Medea was employed in the Stoic discussion on akrasia.18 Therefore, we need to ask whether the reintroduction of this example by Clichtove and Melanchthon implies the reintroduction of Stoicism into the discussion on weakness of will. Several qualifications are here needed, as Medea’s example can be understood as being simply voluntarist. In some respects, Melanchthon’s interpretation resembles Aristotelianism: the akratic Medea ignores the good judgment at the very moment of her sinful action. Melanchthon sometimes says that the devil causes this ignorance of particulars.19 On the other hand, Melanchthon knew the Greek sources so well that he probably realized that the example of Medea manifests Stoic rather than Aristotelian action theory. The frequent use of this example turns, I think, his action theory to some extent towards the Stoa. Melanchthon’s significance in the interpretation history of akrasia lies, however, primarily in his ability to reconnect the classical discussion with the emerging Lutheran theology. His use of the relevant examples is eclectic and rhetorical rather than fully consistent. The first Lutheran to develop a sophisticated, original and highly traditionconscious notion of akrasia is Melanchthon’s pupil Joachim Camerarius. He is clearly a major figure not only in Lutheranism, but also in the entire interpretation history of akrasia in Western philosophy. His insights radiate far and

16 17 18 19

libertatem efficiendae civilis iustitiae saepe vinci naturali imbecillitate, saepe impediri a Diabolo. Nam cum natura sit plena malorum affectuum, saepe obtemperant homines pravis cupiditatibus, non recto iudicio. Sicut inquit apud Poetam Medea: Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. Praeterea Diabolus captivam naturam impellit ad varia flagitia etiam externa, sicut videmus summos viros, qui tamen conati sunt honeste vivere, lapsus turpissimos habere. Sed tamen inter has difficultates, utcunque reliqua est aliqua libertas efficiendae iustitiae civilis.’ Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 79–83 (Clichtove). Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 132–142. Müller, Willensschwäche (see n. 1), pp. 165–179. See above n. 15.

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deep, up to such founding fathers of modernity as Spinoza and Leibniz.20 Here I can only very briefly sketch some basic features of Camerarius’s Exposition of Nicomachean Ethics. Camerarius knows well the Platonic and Stoic traditions, but he adheres to Aristotelianism, which he attempts to harmonize with Melanchthon’s theological and philosophical insights. He keeps the structure of the practical syllogism and argues, in keeping with the Aristotelian tradition, that the particular facts of the minor premise are not grasped properly in the akratic deliberation. Thus, some ignorance precedes akratic acts. Unlike the former Aristotelians, however, Camerarius considers that the uncertainty related to our perception of empirical particular is nothing less than ‘the cause of all evil’.21 He gives three new and non-Aristotelian examples of akrasia, which signify this circumstance in a very broad manner. A medical doctor knows well the general regularities regarding how to treat fever. However, it is very difficult to know which general principle applies to this particular case of fever. Therefore, he often fails to heal, as the medical knowledge concerning particulars is not certain. The second example concerns political leadership, in which even wise men often fail for the same reason: they know the general rules, but they cannot foresee whether they work properly in this particular case. A third example concerns the composition of literary texts: even very skillful authors make all kinds of blunders, as the procedure from general stylistic and rhetorical rules to concrete cases of writing convincingly is so hard to accomplish.22 The error of the akratic person thus concerns the particular circumstances: the devil is in the details. In some sense, this is close to the Aristotelian syllogistic model, but Camerarius is so focused on the uncertainty of particulars that we cannot call him Aristotelian.23 The neglect of the particulars is also voluntary, as the following quote shows: The [akratic] argument goes as follows: this desire is harmful. Harmful things are to be avoided. Therefore, one should not be seized by this desire. But covetousness carries the person away, so that he is ordered by this last proposition concerning perception: this is pleasant and joyful. Therefore, I enjoy the present pleasure. The person does not want to hear or follow the knowledge-based truth, which argues that such deeds are wicked and blameworthy. In the same manner, one can explain other cases in which one acts against true knowledge and right reason.24

20 Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 142–151 (Camerarius), pp. 225–229 (Spinoza, Leibniz). 21 Joachim Camerarius, Explicatio librorum Ethicorum ad Nicomachum, Frankfurt 1578, p. 325. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 147–148. 22 Camerarius, Explicatio (see n. 21), pp. 325–326; Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 148. 23 Camerarius, Explicatio (see n. 21), p. 326; Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 148. 24 Camerarius, Explicatio (see n. 21), p. 326; Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 149–150.

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These considerations of Camerarius advance significantly from the schematic treatments of Luther and Melanchthon. At the same time, they differ from the earlier Aristotelian tradition. The weight of empirical particulars and the uneasiness provided by small changes is something that we encounter later in Leibniz, for instance, but it is not a main theme before Camerarius. Because of the voluntary nature of the neglect of details, Camerarius is closer to late medieval voluntarism than to either Aristotle or the Stoa. It is worthwhile to note that while Luther denies akrasia completely and Melanchthon offers it a minor role in our external behavior, Camerarius makes akrasia the cause of all evil. The topic that has no conceptual place in Luther thus soon becomes prominent in Lutheranism and receives new significance as a ground of empirical observation. After Camerarius, Lutherans start to write extensively on akrasia. They often return to the Aristotelian and even Thomistic doctrines and do not display much originality. They aim to make Aristotelianism compatible with the theological doctrines of the Reformation, sometimes even managing to do some creative work towards this goal. Theophilus Golius of Strasbourg and Wolfgang Heider of Jena can be mentioned as examples of this development. They return to the Aristotelian anthropology, although they continue to use the example of Medea and stress the sinful nature of all human beings. In reality, however, their Aristotelian anthropology is clearly distinct from Luther’s reductionist doctrine of all humans being either wicked or enkratic.25

Early Calvinism The Calvinist interpretation history of weakness of will is fascinating for many reasons. First, Calvin himself launches this history through discussing akrasia already in the 1539 edition of his Institutio. Second, Lambert Daneau undertakes an original systematic interpretation of akrasia and enkrateia in his Ethices Christianae. Third, the Neo-Stoic influence on this discussion seems to be stronger in Calvinism than in the Catholic and Lutheran interpretation history. Calvin’s treatment shows familiarity with the basic Reformation ideas of Luther and Melanchthon. Calvin discusses akrasia in the context of the so-called theological use of the law. This use brings the knowledge of sin. He emphasizes the role of conscience as an instance that exercises some influence even in corrupted human minds. Calvin concludes therefore, in keeping with Melanchthon, that although sinners try to evade their inner power of judgment, the mind at least sometimes opens itself to the judgment of conscience. This means that we do not only sin from ignorance and that genuine acting against better judgment is 25 Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 151–163 (Golius and Heider).

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possible because of the remaining power of conscience to produce such jugdments.26 This leads Calvin to present an Aristotelian solution to the problem of akrasia in terms of practical syllogism. Although he attributes this model to Aristotle’s pupil Themistius, it can be found in the standard Aristotelian commentaries, for instance, in Thomas Aquinas or Calvin’s contemporary John Mair.27 Calvin says: Themistius more correctly teaches that the intellect is very rarely deceived in general definition or in the essence of the thing; but that it is illusory when it goes farther, that is, applies the principle to particular cases. In reply to the general question, every man will affirm that murder is evil. But he who is plotting the death of an enemy contemplates murder as something good. The adulterer will condemn adultery in general, but will privately flatter himself in his own adultery. Herein is man’s ignorance: when he comes to a particular case, he forgets the general principle that he has just laid down.28

In this manner, the conscience illuminates the major premises but not the minor ones and the sin is indeed to some extent due to ignorance. However, Calvin adds another perspective to this discussion as follows: Themistius’ rule, however, is not without exception. Sometimes the shamefulness of evil-doing presses upon the conscience so that one, imposing upon himself no false image of the good, knowingly and willingly rushes headlong into wickedness. Out of such a disposition of mind come statements like this: ‘I see what is better and approve it, but I follow the worse.’ To my mind Aristotle has made a very keen distinction between incontinence and intemperance: where incontinence reigns, he says, the disturbed mental state or passion so deprives the mind of particular knowledge that it cannot mark the evil in its own misdeed, which it generally discerns in like instances; when the perturbation subsides, repentance straightway returns. Intemperance, however, is not extinguished or shattered by the awareness of sin, but on the contrary, stubbornly persists in choosing its habitual evil.29 Calvin now employs the favorite example of Melanchthon, namely, Medea’s love. As clear-eyed wrongdoing, Medea is for Calvin not a case of akrasia but of intemperance, which in the Aristotelian scale is a standard vice. The passage is somewhat idiosyncratic or at least non-Aristotelian, as for Aristotle, people performing such wrongdoing are not conscious of the better alternative but their mind is entirely fixed on wrongdoing. For our interpretation history it is nevertheless significant that the topic of akrasia is discussed by Calvin and that he 26 Institutio christianae religionis, 2, 2, 22. The following English quotes are from Institutes of the Christian Religion (ICR, Louisville 2006). In Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 164–174 I pay detailed attention to the different editions of Institutio. 27 For Mair, see Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 83–95. 28 Inst. 2, 2, 23 (ICR, p. 282). 29 Inst. 2, 2, 23 (ICR, p. 282). Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 166.

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attempts to keep both the Aristotelian practical syllogism and the non-Aristotelian example of Medea. His strong doctrine of conscience comes to some extent from Luther and Melanchthon. Interestingly, some Catholic authors, for instance, John Mair, also employ a strong concept of conscience in their discussion of akrasia.30 Among the early Calvinist authors on akrasia, Lambert Daneau is particularly interesting for several reasons. He is often considered the first author who launches a Christian ethics, understanding ethics no longer as a philosophical but a theological discipline. At the same time, he continues both the Aristotelian and the Stoic traditions, as Christoph Strohm’s study shows in great detail.31 There is yet another reason why Daneau is particularly significant. Daneau is the first author who takes very seriously Martin Luther’s view of the Christian as ‘righteous and sinner at the same time’ and consistently applies it to ethics. While Melanchthon and Calvin also take over this idea from Luther, they do not work it out in detail and do not fully grasp its significance for the analysis of the human condition. The Reformation anthropology that has its origins in Luther receives its first fully elaborated moralphilosophical expression in Daneau’s Christian ethics. Let me explain briefly what I mean by this claim. Daneau makes a distinction between philosophical and Christian ethics. He says that philosophical ethics cannot understand the struggle between reason and the appetitive powers properly. Philosophers claim that this struggle can be successfully mastered through the repeated practice of good actions, but they do not grasp the real cause of appetitive powers, that is, sin. Their view also wrongly ascribes the merit of good actions to people, not to God. Only Christian ethics can see that people without God cannot do any good. When God’s spirit has renewed them, they can cooperate with the Spirit. Even then, humans cannot achieve a perfect virtue in this life. Their Christian virtue remains an enkratic/continent state in which the subjects are not in autonomous control of their actions.32 When Daneau launches his doctrine of perfect and imperfect virtue, he deviates from the Aristotelian tradition already in the number of pages devoted to both. While virtue is defined in seven pages, the definition of imperfect virtue, that is, of continence and akrasia, takes eighteen pages.33 Moreover, Daneau undertakes this division with a reference to Stoicism: he says that the Stoics teach that the wise can operate at the stage of perfect virtue or duty, whereas common people practice the middle level of imperfect virtue. A fully virtuous person has extinguished all affects which go contrary to the Holy Spirit, but in the common 30 31 32 33

So Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 86. Christoph Strohm, Ethik im frühen Calvinismus, Berlin 1996. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 188–200. Lambert Daneau, Ethices Christianae libri tres, Geneva 1583, Book 1, chs. 22–23. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 190.

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people the harmful passions still struggle against virtue. The virtue of such a person can be characterized as wrestling and struggle.34 While Daneau consciously thinks about Stoicism, we must also keep in mind that the distinction between the moral states of virtue and continence comes from Aristotle. Already Melanchthon uses the picture of wrestling to illustrate the Christian existence and the struggle of people like Medea. But Daneau establishes this picture to become a core doctrine of ethics: Christian ethics is concerned with virtus luctans, the virtue which continuously wrestles with harmful affects. The results of this struggle manifest themselves as continence and, in case of failure, as akrasia. Through various references to church fathers, especially Augustine, Daneau points out that no human being can achieve true virtue in this life because the power and tinder of sin are active in us. Even the apostle Paul could not achieve perfect virtue, as Romans 7 shows. Romans 7 is an example of Paul’s continence, not of his virtue nor of his weakness of will. This was, by the way, the standard exegetical view shared also by Luther.35 This means for Daneau that continence is the best stage that Christians can achieve in this life. It further means that a textbook on Christian ethics has to focus on the so-called wrestling virtue, as it is the option which we really encounter. In this sense Daneau systematizes Luther’s view of simul iustus et peccator: he takes seriously the remaining sinfulness and claims therefore that full virtue is not the concrete option in ethics, but rather the wrestling virtue to achieve strength of will, or continence. And even this imperfect virtue is a Christian and not a philosophical virtue.36 It is a virtue that acts in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Concerning akrasia, weakness of will, Daneau differs from Luther insofar as he admits it as a distinct possibility. He says, for instance, that when the bad will of the mind overcomes the virtue and the desire to act rightly, this state is called akrateia. In this state virtue, fights and struggles with vice, and vice with virtue. We then clearly perceive as if two persons and two wills were active in us.37

He also uses the example of Medea as an illustration of akrasia as follows: When the virtue and the holy desire to do good, which the Spirit of God gives, prevail in this wrestling, the will remaining repugnant, it is called continence. Such is the case of

34 Daneau, Ethices (see n. 33), pp. 99v–100r. 35 Daneau, Ethices (see n. 33), p. 101r. I discuss the various stages of the reception history of Romans 7 in Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1). 36 Daneau, Ethices (see n. 33), p. 107r: “Ergo non animus hominis per se, sed animus hominis iam renovatus huius gradus virtutis, quem Continentiam et Luctam appellamus, quique solus in nobis hic degentibus esse potest, est capax, illiusque sedes, et (ut loquuntur in scholis) verum subiectum.” 37 Daneau, Ethices (see n. 33), p. 104v.

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Jacob wrestling with the angel. But when our harmful desire overcomes reason, it is called incontinence. Such is the case of Medea in Ovid: ‘I see the better and approve it, but follow the worse.’38

Although the Holy Spirit will help the believer so that he or she prevails in the wrestling, temporary lapses to akrasia may thus occur. The picture of akrasia and wrestling virtue is somewhat complicated in Daneau, because he also applies the Calvinist distinction between the elect and the non-elect. The experience of wrestling is basically an experience of the elect, as it shows that the Holy Spirit is operative in the person. Therefore they will also prevail, being enkratic rather than akratic in the long run (although temporary akrasia may occur). The non-elect do not experience a similar wrestling, since they remain merely carnal. However, Daneau shares Calvin’s strong notion of natural conscience in the sense that even some non-elect feel the pangs of conscience and attempt therefore to resist evil. Because they are not elect and do not possess the Holy Spirit, their struggle remains akratic: [These akratic people] have not renounced their sense of conscience. Because they are non-elect, however, they do not possess the renewing Spirit of God, and their conscience wrestles alone, bravely resisting the harmful passions; but their conscience is overcome by the harmful passions. These people can retain their sound mind and produce better fruits more easily [than the vicious] 39

Some brave heathens may nevertheless look like the continent wrestlers; they possess something like ‘shadows’ of continence.40 But in reality they cannot possess this Christian virtue reserved for the elect. Daneau is highly original in that he works out the Reformation anthropology so that it can be consistently applied to the framework of Aristotelian ethics. Obviously, the discipline of ethics changes dramatically in this application and becomes Christian rather than philosophical ethics. Daneau is one of the major figures of the entire interpretation history of weakness of will, since he is the first author to make enkrateia and akrasia the main topics of ethics in its entirety. The idea that humans are not capable of virtue but only something like the strength of will in cooperation with God becomes a prominent Protestant doctrine. It continues to shape the Protestant mentality even today. Therefore, Daneau may be regarded a more faithful follower of Luther than the Lutheran ethicists of 16th and 17th century.

38 Daneau, Ethices (see n. 33), p. 105r. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 194. 39 Daneau, Ethices (see n. 33), p. 105v. 40 Daneau, Ethices (see n. 33), p. 107r: ‘Ex quo fit ut in caeteris hominibus, qui hoc Dei beneficio carent, non insit vera continentia, sed verae tantum continentiae et luctae umbra quaedam …’

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How do these results relate to the groundbreaking study of Christoph Strohm? I do not make Daneau as Stoic as Strohm, who mistakenly thinks that the distinction between imperfect and perfect virtue is of Stoic origin.41 Although Daneau mentions Stoicism in this context, the distinction itself is formulated in EN VII and discussed in the entire Aristotelian tradition of ethics. I nevertheless agree with Strohm in that the very idea of struggle and wrestling with perturbations contains something which could be labeled Stoarenaissance in a loose sense. Strohm also considers Daneau as very different from Luther, whereas I connect Daneau strongly with Luther’s idea of permanent sinfulness.42 In addition to this, we may ask whether the anti-Aristotelian criticism of virtue ethics in both Luther and Daneau has in itself something that could be labeled as Neo-Stoic. The loose concepts of wrestling and perturbations belong to this intellectual current, but one may ask whether the emerging Protestantism develops something like a concept of emotions as already assented judgments. The Lutheran view that concupiscence is in itself sinful lends some support to this idea, as it contains a view of emotion that is culpable in itself. On the other hand, the Reformers I discuss do not want to be identified as Stoics and their concept of passion and perturbation remains in many ways Aristotelian. The new Reformation anthropology thus remains somewhere between Aristotle and the Stoa. There are nevertheless some indications that especially the second generation of Calvinists adopts consciously some elements of the Stoic theory of emotions as judgments, without explicitly subscribing to this theory. Lambert Daneau has a fascinating theory of inner mental training in which the person looks at the immediate pleasure and pain he or she feels in the pursuit of virtuous renewal. The mental powers have a unity in which one can train something so that the pain felt first may transform into pleasure. Daneau says, for instance: The pleasure and pain which we feel in the practice of virtue or vice is strongly indicative of their progress and perfection. Those who enjoy the most in doing good progress the most. Those who rejoice only slightly know that that they have progressed only slightly in the pursuit of virtue and true renewal. Those who enjoy doing evil the most are more gravely incontinent.43

This doctrine is so rudimentary that it is difficult to evaluate it in detail. The idea of mentoring oneself seems to ascribe some cognitive content to the very concept of emotion. With the mentored change of this content the emotion itself changes; therefore the emotion can be trained. There is another early Calvinist who is more Neo-Stoic than Luther or Daneau. This is the Ramist scholar Theodor Zwinger. While he claims to be Aristotelian he 41 Strohm, Ethik (see n. 31), p. 111; Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 199. 42 Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp. 199–200. 43 Daneau, Ethices (see n. 33), p. 111r. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), p. 198.

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also considers that the appetite performs some reasoning. For instance, he can describe the struggle of the akratic mind as follows: A struggle between reason and appetite emerges, reason concluding one way, appetite another. Both employ a mode of reasoning: reason truthfully, appetite in a false manner. We can understand this when we investigate the matter further.44 One could in principle say that Zwinger does not really mean the appetite to perform reasoning or that he is just a bad Aristotelian. However, Zwinger speaks repeatedly of perturbations as cognitive power. He is a trained physician who defends a unified anthropology of body and soul, for instance in the following: The affect can move the person forcefully so that the judgment of reason is obscured. This can happen with regard to the anger-related perturbations (emerging from anger), but also with regard to the perturbations related to concupiscence (emerging from venereal appetite). These desires manifestly affect the external body of some people (so that one can read their faces like a mirror of the soul). When the inner organs of the mind suffer, the mind itself seems to suffer.45 This quote can be read in a Neo-Stoic manner, saying that the mind is one. When a perturbation takes over, it also rules the mind with its cognitive capacities. At least Zwinger deviates from Aristotelianism and takes very seriously the motif of continuous struggle. The picture of struggle and wrestling could be interpreted in terms of Aristotelian or Platonic tradition as a conflict between reason and desire. However, this picture becomes so dominant in early Calvinism that it breaks the context of traditional Aristotelianism.

Some Conclusions Given this evidence, we may ask whether we can distinguish the Stoic concept of mental struggle from its Aristotelian and Platonic counterparts. In answering this question, I return to the old example of the runner who cannot stop running. This example is not found in the early modern texts, but it may be argued that the idea of remaining sinfulness and the picture of Medea so frequently employed by the authors are similar to the example of the runner. The decision to stop running or to reach for a better life is already made and it is not forgotten. The body nevertheless follows its old course, at least for a while.

44 Theodor Zwinger, Aristotelis Stagiritae de moribus ad Nicomachum libri decem, tabulis perpetuis, quae Commentarium loce esse quaenant, explicati et illustrate, Basel 1566, p. 212. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), pp.178–179. 45 Zwinger, De moribus (see n. 44), 211. Saarinen, Weakness (see n. 1), 177.

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For good Lutherans and Calvinists, this ‘while’ lasts the rest of their life; the runner stops running only in death. The Christian ethics of this life describes the procedure of trying to stop running, that is, behaving decently in a situation in which the old course still exercises its effects. While I admit that this does not sound quite Stoic, I claim that Luther’s simul iustus et peccator and Daneau’s Christian ethics contain features that resemble the Stoic example of the runner who cannot stop running. When the Reformers steer their course away from Aristotle, they thus approach the Stoa at least to an extent. Let me conclude through highlighting some overall developments in the Reformation discussions on weakness of will. Luther denies that carnal people could have a good judgment; he further teaches that all Christians continue to struggle with sin. Akrasia and full virtue are thus no real options. Melanchthon moderates this teaching, allowing some good judgment even in natural reason. However, it is only Camerarius who really launches the discussion on akrasia in Lutheranism. While Luther minimizes akrasia, Camerarius maximizes it, calling it the source of all evil. Camerarius is closer to early modern empiricism than either to Luther or the Aristotelians. After Camerarius, Lutheran ethicists return to the Aristotelian tradition. The Calvinist Reformation receives Luther more fully on this point than the Lutherans. Calvin himself is close to Melanchthon, the difference being mainly his strong doctrine of innate conscience which makes akrasia a real phenomenon. Lambert Daneau takes over Luther’s idea that humans move between vice and continence, wrestling with sin through their entire life. While Luther does not work out the ethical implications of this idea, Daneau does this and develops a full-fledged Christian ethics which has the wrestling virtue of continence as its main feature. For this reason, he is also quite interested in akrasia. Daneau further attaches a strong doctrine of election to his ethical doctrine. Lutherans threw Aristotle out of the door but he crept back from the window. Before that, however, Lutherans had some brilliant new ideas on akrasia, especially Camerarius who came to be influential until the times of Leibniz. The Calvinists kept Aristotle out more consistently, since they took over the Lutheran idea of permanent sinfulness and made it their core ethical doctrine. The outcome of this process, the new discipline of Christian ethics, or the ethics of wrestling virtue, resembles the old Stoic idea of the runner who cannot stop running. This example was not used in the discussion, but the other prominent example advocating the same idea, that of Medea, was constantly referred to. Obviously, the Christian idea of remaining sinfulness cannot be reduced to Stoicism. Its roots can rather be found in late Augustine. The discussion whether Augustine’s view of emotions and human action can be interpreted in a Stoic fashion is thus intimately connected with the issues of Neo-Stoicism in the Reformation.

Johan Verberckmoes

Loud voices. Emotions in the Reformation.1

In July 1543, twenty-eight Leuven citizens were brought to trial suspected of being heretics. On the account of Pierre du Fief, procurer-general of the Council of Brabant, soldiers had taken these people prisoner in their homes at night, when they were asleep. Several of the accused were husband and wife. According to the testimony of the humanist Francisco de Enzinas (1520–1552), their children wept and cried loudly when their parents were lifted from their beds. ‘Although the poor children did not know what was happening, they filled the house with tears, crying for their parents and shouting at the top of their voice following a natural instinct rather than a balanced judgment’.2 This reading of the children’s emotions is how early modern people understood the working of the passions. For grown-up men, even in terse circumstances reason controlled the body and in this case the voice. Contemporary notions of the emotions implied, in an Aristotelian sense, that metriopatheia or keeping the middle was considered imperative. In a Stoic sense, reason was to exercise a balanced judgment. That children would need to be educated to gain that faculty of reason and learn to be moderate in their emotions was a common understanding. From this perspective, Enzinas’ description of the children’s despair makes perfect sense. But there is another side to the unsettling loudly voiced desperation of the children. It happens in a context of persecution because of the suspected reli1 I thank Jane C. Judge for her thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this paper and the discussants at the Berlin conference of RefoRC in May 2013 for their helpful suggestions. 2 Francisco de Enzinas, Mémoires. Texte latin inédit avec la traduction française du XVIe siècle en regard 1543–1545, ed. Charles A. Campan, Collection de mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de Belgique, Brussels, Leipzig and Ghent 1862–1863, vol. I, p. 15. On Enzinas (1520, Burgos – 1552, Strasbourg), a protégé of Melanchton at Wittenberg and from 1543 to 1545 imprisoned in Brussels, see Jorge Bergua Caverno, Francisco de Enzinas: un humanista reformado en la Europa de Carlos V, Madrid 2006 and Alastair Duke, Dissident Identities in the Early Modern Low Countries, ed. Judith Pollmann and Andrew Spicer, Farnham 2009, pp. 126–128. For a Dutch translation of his ‘memoirs’ see Francisco De Enzinas, Bericht over de toestand in de Nederlanden en de godsdienst bij de Spanjaarden, ed. Ton Osinga and Chris Heesakkers, Hilversum 2002.

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gious difference, yet the children ‘did not know what was happening’. This failure to understand what is happening causes a bodily disruption in the children. This is the clue I want to take up in this contribution. A loud voice is a liminal expression of the body. It signals that the body is shaken to its foundations. The transgressive power of the children’s crying voices was for Enzinas a decisively forceful way to question and denounce the persecution of their parents.3 From a religious point of view the loud voice was the marker of the intrusion of secular power in the guise of fierce soldiers into the realm of the peace of the household. The persecution at the orders of procurer du Fief was therefore twice liminal: it violated the threshold of the house as well as the bodily integrity of the occupants of the house. For Enzinas, the loud voices of the children therefore inverted the accusation. Not the Reformed parents transgressed and broke the harmony in the individual and in society, but the procurer and his soldiers. In this essay I will be concerned with loud voices that reflect religious ideas. I will read examples of loud voices in memoirs, letters, chronicles and the genre of martyrologia against the background of contemporary treatises on the emotions or passions. For the loud voice as a liminal reaction of the body is a marker of emotions. However, the process of identifying the underlying emotion or passion is never straightforward, and in that uncertainty lies the tension between secular and religious interpretations that go along with the Christian views on loudness. My examples pertain to the Southern Netherlands, the territories ruled by the Spanish Habsburgs between 1515 and 1700. Although the authors of the treatises on the passions are all related to the Southern Netherlands (having lived there and their books having been printed there), they all operate distinctly transregionally, and that does not seem a coincidence. Religious issues functioned across many borders.4 Formed as Burgundian possessions, the Low Countries were a thriving urban hub in Northern Europe where religious ideas circulated fast. The Protestant and the Catholic Reformation vied for public attention in the sixteenth century, although the Habsburg rulers Charles V and Philip II were adamant that there was only one true religion. In the seventeenth century the Catholic Reformation enjoyed a monopoly in the Spanish Netherlands. Both from a perspective of religious persecution and one of religious conversion, loud voices were liminal and transmitted a huge emotional impact of religion. The two genres of my sources provide contemporary views on when and why loud voices were emotionally charged. The method to capture both felt emotions (as in egodocuments) and regimes and representations of emotions (as in the martyrologia 3 The classic study on the early Protestant Reformation in the Spanish Habsburg Netherlands is Johan Decavele, De dageraad van de reformatie in Vlaanderen (1520–1565), Brussels 1975. 4 Heinz Schilling and Istvan Gyorgy Toth, ed., Religion and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, Cambridge 2007.

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and the treatises) is in line with the recent historiography on the history of emotions.5 By focusing on shrieking, loud voices I try to analyse how the secular instance of the body appropriated a world concerned with religious salvation and destination. The main thrust of my argument is that loud voices as liminal expressions plead for a multiple religious world.

Loud Theology But first there was silence. According to John’s Gospel, God was silent until the Reincarnation when Jesus became the Word of God ( John 1:1). Accordingly, Christian liturgy is full of words and the sound of voices, while at set times it returns to silence. For a theology of sound a crucial issue is that during the Passion Christ often keeps silent. Silence has therefore been a major instrument of Christian contemplation and a tool to appreciate the nature of Jesus, both God and man.6 Keeping silent is at times emotionally more powerful than uttering words.7 But silence also has its pitfalls. On the farthest extreme of the sound scale stands melancholy as a form of deep silence. In the early modern period melancholy was a prime emotion. It was closely modeled on religious concepts of providing comfort and compassion, but also on secular views about the interaction between the microcosm of the body and the macrocosm of the stars, planets and sun.8 The silence of melancholy was quite literally dark, in the sense 5 Until recently research on the history of emotions was haphazard, see Peter Burke, “Is There a Cultural History of the Emotions?” in Representing Emotions: New Connections in the Histories of Art, Music and Medicine, ed. Penelope Gouk and Helen Hills, Aldershot 2005, pp. 35–47. The term ‘emotional regimes’ was coined by William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling. A Framework for the History of Emotions, Cambridge and New York 2001. A major recent contribution to the field is Barbara Rosenwein, “Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions,” Passions in Context: Journal of the History and Philosophy of the Emotions 1–1 (2010), online at http://www.passionsincontext.de/, last accessed 26 December 2013. See also Barbara Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ithaca, N.Y. 2006. For a recent collection of essays see Jonas Liliequist, ed., A History of Emotions, 1200–1800, Studies for the International Society for Cultural History: 2, London 2012, in which attention is amongst others given to emotions in early modern conversion narratives. Most studies on early modern emotions deal with literature, music and art, see e. g. Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe and Mary Floyd-Wilson, ed., Reading the Early Modern Passions. Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, Philadelphia 2004. 6 Diarmaid macCulloch, Silence in Christian History, London 2013. 7 Claudia Benthien, “Schweigen als Pathosformel in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Passion, Affekt und Leidenschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Johann Anselm Steiger, Wiesbaden 2005, vol. 1, pp. 109–144; see Christina Luckyj, ‘A moving Rhetoricke’. Gender and Silence in Early Modern England, Manchester and New York 2002, pp. 26–28 on silence as a spiritual experience. 8 Johan Anselm Steiger, Melancholie, Diätetik und Trost. Konzepte der Melancholie-Therapie

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that black bile was the bodily fluid considered to be at the basis of melancholy. Thus, also in religious terms, silence was a possible source of chaos.9 Spreading the Word of God was the first imperative of Christians. A clear sound and loudness are necessary for a religion to exist.10 When it comes to the functions of the voice to promote Christianity, preaching and vocal music have been major avenues throughout history.11 Preachers modulated their voice as to tune and strength, and their bodily movements followed suit – all with the purpose of convincing an audience.12 Preaching involved a certain affection between he who spoke and those who listened.13 Ultimately, the purpose of a sermon was salvation. Sermons were therefore more than mere exercises of rhetoric, although they were closely modeled on the prescriptions of rhetoric. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, rhetoric was a major instrument of emotional interaction.14 Since the Church Fathers, religious authorities had emphasized the activation of the sense of hearing for the successful transfer of spirituality and its subsequent impact on the body.15 According to authors such as the Jesuit Nicolas Caussin (1583–1651), the voice had a major role in movere, moving the Christian to express his soul and spirituality. The modulations of the voice brought to the surface the passions that affected the Christian, whether gentle (mollis), earnest (curate), rough (rudis), harsh (vasta) or cold (frigida).16 The rhetor expressed passion so that a similar passion was aroused in the auditor.17 Similarly, vocal music aroused strong emotions.18 These topics have

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Heidelberg 1996; Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art, London 1964. Luckyj, ‘A moving Rhetoricke’ (see n. 7), pp. 36–39. Isaac Weiner, Religion Out Loud. Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism, New York 2013. For a discussion of the polyphonic music and preaching see Wietse de Boer and christine göttler, ed., Religion and the senses in early modern Europe, Leiden 2012. Herman Roodenburg, The Eloquence of the Body. Perspectives on gestures in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle 2004, pp. 165–176. Bryan Crockett, “Thomas Playfere’s poetics of preaching,” in The English Sermon Revised. Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750, ed. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough, Manchester and New York 2000, pp. 59–83. For rhetoric in the seventeenth century and the use of emotions for persuasion, a.o. in preaching see Thomas Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, Chicago 1990, pp. 151– 182. Paul l. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, ed., The Spiritual Senses. Perceiving God in Western Christianity, Cambridge 2011. Erec R. Koch, The Aesthetic Body: Passion, Sensibility, and Corporeality in SeventeenthCentury France, Cranbury, NJ 2008, pp. 131–178 (pp. 137–138). Philippe Joseph Salazar, Le culte de la voix au XVIIe siècle: formes esthétiques de la parole à l’âge de l’imprimé, Paris 1995. On the comforting effects of the singing of psalms by a Puritan in a context of captivity by Indians and French Catholics see for instance Glenda Goodman, “Psalms and Silence: The

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been studied for a long time in the historiography and are now part of what is being called aural history.19 Sound is a continuum.20 ‘Weak’ and ‘loud’ are appreciations that are socially and culturally constructed.21 An entire theology of sound exists that crisscrosses with the emotional sphere. Heaven and hell, for instance, are imagined spaces full of sounds, sights and feelings, and this imagination had everyday repercussions.22 In theatre plays and during Catholic processions loud devils instilled the prominence of sin. Too much talking was considered the work of the devil. Likewise, disorderly voices and undisciplined noise have been the target of Church leaders since the days of Paul.23 Rough churchgoers were a perennial concern. When in 1630 a preacher in Essex talked ‘about Adam and Eve making themselves coats of fig-leaves, one loud-mouthed parishioner demanded to know where they got the thread to sew them with’.24 In these examples loudness is the sign that the threshold between profane concerns of everyday life and issues of doctrine is transgressed, with the risk of the former obliterating the latter. For clerics of all churches it was a kind of loudness that needed to be tuned down if not silenced. Noise was a major concern in the churches. It threatened worship; it ventilated satire. But, when celebrating Pentecost, it was life-giving. Another major and age-old concern in the Christian church was the disorderly voice of doctrinal dissent. To illustrate this, I return to the memoir of Francisco

19

20 21 22 23 24

Soundtrack of John Williams’s Captivity,” The Appendix. A new journal of narrative and experimental history, thematic issue Out Loud, vol. 1 no. 3 (2013); and Glenda Goodman, “‘The Tears I Shed at the Songs of Thy Church’: Seventeenth-Century Musical Piety in the English Atlantic World,” Journal of the American Musicological Society vol. 65 no. 3 (2012): pp. 691–726. On church music in the Reformation see for instance the substantial essays in Johann Anselm Steiger, ed., Passion, Affekt und Leidenschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 2005. Bruce Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor, Chicago 1999; Mark M. Smith, ed., Hearing History: A Reader, Athens, Georgia 2004; Richard Cullen Rath, How Early America Sounded, Ithaca, New York 2003; Michael Bull and Les Back, ed., The Auditory Culture Reader, Oxford 2003; Veit Erlmann, Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality, New York 2010. Jonathan Sterne, ed., The Sound Studies Reader, London 2012; Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, Oxford 2012. Hillel Schwartz, Making Noise.From Babel to the Big Bang and Beyond, New York 2011. Hartmut Böhme, “Himmel und Hölle als Gefühlsräume,” in Emotionalität. Zur Geschichte der Gefühle, ed. Claudia Benthien, Anne Fleig and Ingrid Kasten, Köln, Weimar and Wien 2000, pp. 60–81. Laura Feitzinger, “Brawling in Church: Noise and the Rhetoric of Lay Behavior in Early Modern England,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 34 (2003): pp. 955–972; Mike Goldsmith, Discord. The Story of Noise, Oxford 2012. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Harmondsworth 1978, pp. 191–192. For some examples in Germany see Robert W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany, chap. 3 “Oral Culture and the Diffusion of Reformation Ideas,” London and Ronceverte 1987, pp. 49–69.

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de Enzinas. In September 1541, a few weeks before he left Leuven for Wittenberg, Enzinas had been a witness to the maltreatment of Stephen Gardiner (c. 1482– 1555), bishop of Winchester, by the Leuven theologians, led by the diehard Jacobus Latomus (1475–1544). First the theologians had honoured Gardiner with some wine and housed him well. But soon the Leuven rector accompanied by four or five theologians arrived at the house where Gardiner stayed and asked him questions about his book De vera obedientia, in which Gardiner defended the supremacy of the English king and abolished the authority of the bishop of Rome. Gardiner defended his arguments with a loud voice.25 The Leuven theologians turned ugly, Enzinas alleged. When the bishop wanted to say Mass in St Peter’s Church, he was refused the necessary ornaments to do so. In a hurry and offended, Gardiner left the University city. Loudness thus brings us to contested ground in the age of the Reformation.

Gentle Laughter In order to retrieve the connections between emotions, loud voices and religion, humanist authors are a good starting point. The protestant theologian Francisco de Enzinas or Francis Dryander matriculated at Leuven University in 1539, and learned of protestant ideas from people in Leuven and Antwerp, including Oxford scholars, before studying in Wittenberg and attracting the attention of Philip Melanchton. Enzinas emphasized the significance of ‘iucundae consuetudinis inter dulces sodales et fideles fratres,’ the pleasant company of sweet friends and loyal brothers.26 This fraternal Leuven connection was all the more important for Enzinas, because it confirmed the bonding of Christian virtue. Throughout his memoirs Enzinas regretted that disputation because of religious issues led to discordant reactions. To give just one example, with respect to mockery during a preaching, Enzinas brought up a familiar trope: ‘et totam concionem ad risum, seu potius ad dolorem atque indignationem provocabat,’ ‘he made the whole congregation laugh, but he had better stirred them to pain and indignation.’27 Enzinas mentions mocking laughter with a specific purpose. As a long line of

25 According to the testimony of William Medowe, chaplain of Gardiner, in John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1563), see Ignacio J. Garcia Pinilla and Jonathan Lort Nelson, “Una carta de Francisco de Enzinas (Dryander) en el martirologio de John Foxe,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 61 (1999): pp. 515–528 (here p. 524). 26 Pinilla and Nelson, Una carta (see n. 25), p. 520. 27 Enzinas, Mémoires (see n. 1), vol. I, p. 68.

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commentaries since the Church Fathers had endorsed, the bodily convulsion of laughter ought to be probed with suspicion.28 Laughter is a very specific liminal reaction of the body as it involves an involuntary, often irrepressible hiccup. For laughter to be Christian it ought to be subdued, though. Standard Christian commentaries in the Middle Ages promoted gentle smiling. One reason for this is that benevolent laughter creates a community, for instance a community of believers. This is exactly what Enzinas was nostalgic about when he remembered the pleasant company of his co-religionists. Enzinas was no exception, for in times of dissidence and persecution bonding was a strategy of survival and stress relief. Consider for instance the witness statements of the trial of Leuven Protestants in 1543, which so enflamed Francisco de Enzinas. Some female witnesses emphasized the joyfulness of Protestants who secretly met each other in the town. Catharina Sclercx, wife of Jacob Rogiers, both well-to-do Leuven citizens, as well as their maid Margriet Verhoeven recounted in some detail that Gooris Stocx was always telling little stories and singing funny songs. He always made the company laugh.29 Stocx was a rhetorician and he loved beer.30 Paulus de Roovere, chaplain at St Peter’s Church in Leuven, was equally fun loving. These statements suggest that reactions beyond a norm of moderation were intrinsic to situations of confinement and secrecy. For the interrogators, the testimonies about laughter probably confirmed the presumed transgressive behaviour of the arrestants. For the Leuven Protestants it was a community creating a form of (a certain) loudness. A contemporary of the Leuven protestants and Enzinas and somebody with similar experiences of their plight was Juan Luis Vives (c. 1492–1540). Vives was born in Valencia from Jewish parents who were both persecuted during the Inquisition. Having first studied in Paris, Vives was from about 1514 onwards preceptor for Spanish Jewish exiles in Bruges, and he befriended Erasmus at the University of Leuven, later taking a divergent path from the famous humanist in emphasizing individual education and self-knowledge rather than biblical piety. Having taught at Oxford and mainly living in Bruges, Vives absorbed the religious and political tensions of his age, and this was reflected in his writings on the passions, to which he attributed great power in steering individuals. His treatise De anima et vita (Bruges 1538) is therefore rightly hailed as a major early contribution to psychology. 28 Albrecht Classen, ed., Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, Berlin and New York 2010. 29 Enzinas, Mémoires (see n. 1), vol. I, pp. 466–486. 30 For the social background of the 1543 group of Leuven protestants see Raymond Van Uytven, “Bijdrage tot de sociale geschiedenis van de protestanten te Leuven in de eerste helft der XVIde eeuw?” Mededelingen van de Geschied- en Oudheidkundige Kring voor Leuven en omgeving 3 (1963): pp. 3–38.

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In the third book of De anima, Vives discusses the passions. In a long section on laughter he makes clear that laughter originates in physiological processes in the body: Laugher is always natural rather than willed, but it can be controlled by habit and reason to prevent excessive outbursts that shake the entire body. Such are the convulsions of the ignorant, the peasants, children, and women, when they lose their self-control as they are overcome by laughter of this kind.31

Vives makes clear that ‘laughter is not an emotion, but an external action proceeding from within and caused by joy and pleasure’. Laughter is a bodily feature and, when excessive, it produces noise. In a common reference to Aristotle’s distinction that man is the only animal who laughs, Vives only once refers to noise in his section on laughter. He argues that animals do no laugh but ‘give signals that play the role of laughter, such as gestures of delight and sounds that are strange even for their species’. This ‘strange even for their species’ is an apt formula to describe the hiccups of laughter, that later theoreticians would categorize as ha, ha, ha, hi, hi, hi, ho, ho, ho, he, he, he. Laurent Joubert, a Renaissance doctor of medicine in Montpelliers, compared laughing voices to the sounds that animals make: Some men sound like geese hissing when they laugh and others, like grumbling goslings. Some recall the sigh of woodland pigeons, or doves in their widowhood and others, the hoot-owl. One might be like an Indian rooster and another, like a peacock. Others give out a peep-peep, like chicks. From others comes a sound like a horse neighing, an ass heehawing, a hog snorting, or a dog yapping or choking. Some people call to mind the sound of dry-axled carts and still others, gravel in a pail, and others yet, a boiling pot of cabbage.32

Laughter,Vives argues, is a bursting out reaction of the body, which can nevertheless be controlled by means of habit and reason, in particular by wise and prudent people. Social, gender and age distinction are crucial to understand how control works, so Vives tells us, and in that perspective it is illustrative that female protestants in Leuven testified about the laughing reactions in the friendly circle of coreligionists and not the male participants. Francisco de Enzinas had wisely restricted himself to a ‘iucundae consuetudinis’. This seems to suggest that when the Reformation formed bonds between people, their emotional reaction of friendship conformed to the gender categories that prevailed among humanists. Loud laughter was considered womanlike, a smile male. But the men in Leuven 31 Juan Luis Vives, The Passions of the Soul. The Third Book of De Anima et Vita, ed. Carlos G. Noreña, Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter 1990, pp. 57–59 (quote on p. 58). 32 Laurent Joubert, Traité du Ris suivi d’un dialogue sur la cacographie française (1579), Paris 1579, reprint Genève 1973, p. 211; the English translation is taken from Gregory de Rocher, Rabelais’s Laughers and Joubert’s Traité du Ris, Alabama 1979, p. 97.

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were the instigators of laughter. In the eyes of the interrogators this might have singled them out as not being wise men, yet fools. On the other hand, the Leuven protestants confirmed their religious identity in this bodily reaction. If laughter was natural rather than willed, as Vives alleged, this implies that their laughing bodies had found autonomous ways of expressing religious allegiance. Notwithstanding Vives’ claim of a gender difference, religious allegiance was a factor in its own right in the emotional balance of the body. If Christian virtue is celebrated by laughter, it also comes into focus when angry voices are raised. Anger is the opposite of good humour but as crucial for understanding religious change. When it comes to emotional reactions, Vives’ theory makes it perfectly clear that the outward bodily signs of such emotions are perceptible and therefore create the tensions that come with religious change. For Vives emotions are raised from within the body and culminate in visual and auditive signals of the face. The effects of anger, for instance, are that the voice quivers and speaking becomes difficult. As a consequence, man resembles a beast when he is overcome by such violent passion as anger. In this Vives reflects Seneca’s ideas in De ira. The opposition between man and beast, civilized or uncivilized, as epitomized in voiced emotions, is central to Vives as it is to virtually every early modern theoretician on the emotions. But also apart from the textbook case of anger as an illustration of not using one’s reasonable judgment, Vives finds emotional states in which the voice changes. ‘The consequences of sadness are weeping, wailing and groaning’. Fear causes ‘the stammering of the tongue’. In these assessments Vives combines sensitive psychological observation with the traditional Galenic theory of the humours and their effects in the body. ‘When we fear, our voice becomes weak because heat descends from the heart and the upper body; when we are angry, the voice is deeper because the same heat goes up.’33 In other words, when it comes to the subtleties of human voices, the distinction is blurred between brute animal passions, which may overtake humans, and sensitive, civilized human interaction. Vives is not rejecting the passions as dangerous threats to rational human-like behaviour, but he is calling for their moderation. A proper reading of the auditory signals the body sent out was in line with the religious pluralism of Vives’ age and favoured the individual to adequately interpret his emotional response to religious change. With his background of both parents having been

33 Vives, The Passions of the Soul (see n. 31), pp. 68, 96, 103; for a discussion see Carlos G. Noreña, Juan Luis Vives and the Emotions, Carbondale and Edwardsville 1989, pp. 153–154. On Vives and his sources see Simone de Angelis, “Zur Galen-Rezeption in der Renaissance mit Blick auf die Anthropologie von Juan Luis Vives. Überlegungen zu der Konfiguration einer ‘Wissenschaft vom Menschen’ in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Tradita et Inventa. Beiträge zur Rezeption der Antike, ed. Manuel Baumbach, Heidelberg 2000, pp. 91–109.

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sought by the Inquisition, Vives was definitely attuned to such forms of emotional management.

Fearsome Noise The tension between speaking out and speaking too loud has been disputed throughout Christian history. The Protestant Reformation thrived on the sound of sermons and hymns. When Protestants in the Low Countries were hiding in the countryside to escape judicial persecution they learned to dim their voices when singing psalms, or, inversely, their loud psalm singing was considered provocative by Catholics.34 When Calvinist city councils were established in the Low Countries in the late 1570s, the practice of singing hymns aloud was a sign of confidence. For many Christians, loud voices denoted spiritual depth. This was also true of images. Of course, visual imagery lacks the loudness of the voice. The sense of hearing is visually displayed via musical instruments or with the open mouth of a visionary in spiritual ecstasy. Therefore, early modern viewers of sculptures, paintings and engravings echoed the topos of vox sola deest. The sculpture, painting or engraving was considered so skillfully done and so seemingly alive that only the voice was lacking.35 In contrast to loud voices, noise was nearly always suspect. It could trigger fright and fear in the hearer, in particular in times of anxiety and persecution, such as during the Dutch Revolt. Consider the following story by the freshly appointed procurer-general of the city of Tournai, Pasquier de le Barre, on the events of July 1566 taking place at the eve of the iconoclastic breakout in the Low Countries: On Saturday 27 July 1566 a Jesuit was preaching in the Church of Our Lady. He declared himself willing to die in the Catholic faith of his audience. But suddenly a banging occurred on the church door. The Jesuit was so afraid that he hid first in the confessional and then in a chapel. His audience also startled and ran way. They were all scared of Protestant actions and the Jesuit was not eager to become a martyr. But it all was nothing. A boy had been swimming in the river with his friends and when he came out with two pig’s bladders that he used as a swimming aid he had slapped the two bladders dry against the church door.36 34 See for instance Marcus van Vaernewijck, Van die beroerlicke tijden in de Nederlanden en voornamelijk in Ghendt 1566–1568, ed. Ferdinand Vanderhaeghen, Ghent 1872–1881, vol. 1, pp. 66–67. For Germany see Scribner, Oral Culture (see n. 24), pp. 60–62. 35 Heinrich F. Plett, Enargeia in Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age. The Aesthetics of Evidence? Leiden and Boston 2012, pp. 161–162; For examples of artists praised as such, following the example of Zeuxis see Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment, New Haven 1979. 36 Alexander Pinchart, ed., Mémoires de Pasquier de le Barre et de Nicolas Soldoyer pour

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Obviously this account is rhetoric aimed at denouncing the presumed Jesuit hypocrisy on behalf of a supporter of the protestant Reformation. What may have been a sound of revolt proved to be literally void of meaning, an inflated pig’s bladder being a typical instrument of Carnival which symbolized nonsensical sound and excess.37 What de le Barre unequivocally declares is that the Jesuit is lacking in sound judgment. He takes an act of frivolity for revolt. In other words, the sound of the slapped pig bladders caused a perturbation and fear in the Jesuit, but if he had listened well he would have measured his emotional response in a much more positive vein. As a result of political tensions and attempts at reform, in 1566, under Philips II, a Revolt broke out that after a few decades split the Low Countries in two, a northern Dutch Republic and a Southern Netherlands remaining part of the Spanish kingdom.38 Affiliation to Catholic or Protestant denominations was hotly contested during the Revolt in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Fear was everywhere, and in the contemporary chronicles loud voices and noise were its signs. Threatening passions received much closer scrutiny in the second half of the sixteenth century. Beside moral evaluations, medical explanations gained ground. A good example is Levinus Lemnius and his treatise on the passions. Levinus Lemnius (1505–1568) was born in Zierikzee in Zeeland in the Low Countries and he studied medicine at the University of Leuven and under Andreas Vesalius in Padua. He became a cleric and gained fame for some handbooks on plants as mentioned in the Bible and on their wondrous workings. In 1561 in Antwerp, he published a Latin work De habitu et constitutione corporis, translated into English by Thomas Newton and published in London in 1576 as The touchstone of complexions. The book was republished in 1581 and 1633. The Touchstone was a book of advice for good health. The idea was to get to know one’s body and read its signs. For a doctor of medicine, later becoming a Catholic cleric, his book was medical as well religious and moral. Levinus Lemnius gave extensive attention to the working of the passions. As Vives and other Renaissance writers, Lemnius left no doubt that the emotions had a huge impact on a person and that the working of the fantasy of an individual was imperative. One got to know oneself by scrutinizing the impact of the emotions, or, what Lemnius calls on the title page of his treatise on the passions, ‘the inclinations, affections, motions, & desires of his mynd’. Writing in the mid-sixteenth century, Lemnius summarized a whole body of humanist servir à l’histoire de Tournai 1565–1570, Brussels 1859–1865, vol. I, pp. 109–110 (English translation by the author). 37 Werner Mezger, Narrenidee und Fastnachtsbrauch, Konstanz 1991. 38 The classic study is Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt, London 1977.

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knowledge about the perturbations that overcame people and their sensory perceptions.39 Being a doctor and a priest, he embodied the sixteenth century belief that body and soul were intimately related in their functions. Consider how, according to Lemnius, one’s constitution changed under the effects of one of the most probed passions in the Reformation, ira or anger: Angre (which is a passion to lyke [resemble] to fury and madnesse, as nothing in the world more) what force it hath, and how much it altereth the state and outward shewe of the body, appeareth chiefly by countenance, colour, grymme visage, cruell and fierye eyes, puffinge and wrynkled nosethrilles, byting lyppes, enraged mouth, trembling and shaking lymmes [limbs], unsteady gaze, stammerynge and fearefull voice.40

In another section Lemnius explains in more detail what makes the voice loud (‘bigge’) when the affections get hold of it. It is a mixture of physiology and bodily humours on the one hand and (a lack of) education on the other. The thing that maketh the voyce bigge, is partlye the wideness of the breast and vocall Artery, and partly the inward or internall heate, from whence proceedeth the earnest affections, vehemente motions, and fervent desyers of the mynde. But if civil and vertuous education be lacking they many tymes become cogging chifters, crafty cosoners, slye makeshifts, nymble conveighersand foystinge stitchers [slang, meaning charlatans and quacksalvers], troublesome and seditiously natured, unconstante, waueryng, fraudulent, untrusty and factious.41

In other words, a big voice was to be distrusted if its owner was uncivilized. But when the person in question was emotionally boiling (‘internall heate’) and civilized, he stood for earnest affections and demonstrated a fervent desire of the mind. Therefore, it was all dependent on the body’s owner. If he let himself be guided by the passions or perturbations of the mind, in the final analysis it all came down to the civil and virtuous education he had received to estimate whether that person was honest and earnest or troublesome and factious. It is no coincidence that Lemnius, writing as he did in the times of religious wars in Europe, gives the humoral balance or complexion in the body the leading role in inflaming passions. As religious frictions were rife in the last decades of the

39 This has mainly been studied through the five senses, see Corine Schleif and Richard Newhauser, ed., “Pleasure and Danger in Perception: The Five Senses in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” The Senses and Society, vol. 5 no. 1, London 2010; Matthew Milner, The Senses and the English Reformation, London 2011. 40 Levinus Lemnius, The Touchstone of Complexions, English translation Thomas Newton, London 1576, p. 59.v°. See Manfred Horstmanshoff, Helen King and Claus Zittel, ed., Blood, Sweat and Tears. The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe, Leiden 2012. 41 Lemnius, The Touchstone (see n. 40), p. 45 v°.

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sixteenth century, unbridled passions were everywhere.42 There was a need to understand loud voices.

Shrieking Hags Arguably the most comprehensive genre in which loud voices are retrieved in a religious context are the martyrologia.43 In visual media, the loudest voices seem to be those of the torturers. Consider for instance the wide-eyed, nude-torso torturer with a prominent pink cap and the wide open mouth, occupying a central position on the huge panel The Martyrdom of Crispinus and Crispinianus painted in the early years of the seventeenth century for the altar of the Shoemakers’ Chapel in the Church of Our Lady in Antwerp.44 In line with the story of the Legenda Aurea the torturer gets the alder with which he was torturing the two brothers in his check, and he cries out loud in deep horror. Martyr stories were a staple of Christian culture that had received new emotional pertinence with the Reformation. On all sides martyrs encapsulated the strains and animosities of permeable religious ideas and the ensuing uncertainties. In the midst of all this, the silent martyr was the embodiment of the steadfastness of the believer. I have selected some examples of martyrs in Japan and Brazil. This is to make the further point that after the Revolt the Catholic religion of the Southern Netherlands was not only transregional but also transoceanic and global in perspective. This brought new challenges to the very definition of what Catholic identity was. Additionally, martyr stories situated in overseas territories in some ways functioned as martyr stories from Antiquity or the Middle Ages. They confronted the public at home with situations in which a passionate defence of one’s own religion served as an example. In this particular case, I have selected some stories from Cornelius Hazart’s Ecclesiastical History of the Entire World.45 42 On the French situation see Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu. La violence au temps des troubles de religion (vers 1525 – vers 1610), Champs Vallon 1990; Mack P. Holt, “Religious Violence in Sixteenth-Century France: Moving Beyond Pollution and Purification,” Past & Present 214 (2012): pp. 52–74. 43 Diana Wood, ed., Martyrs and martyrologies, Oxford 1993; Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, MA 1999; Peter Burschel, Sterben und Unsterblichkeit. Zur Kultur des Martyriums in der frühen Neuzeit, Munich 2004. 44 Ambrosius Francken I, The Martyrdom of Crispinus and Crispinianus, oil on panel, 269 x 217 cm, Antwerp, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. nr. 145, see Van Bruegel tot Rubens. De Antwerpse schilderschool 1550–1650, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp 1992, pp. 62–63. 45 Cornelius Hazart, Kerckelycke historie van de gheheele werelt, 4 vols, Antwerp 1667–1671. See also Johan Verberckomes, “Overseas Passions and the Self. Japanese Martyrs in the Ecclesiastical History of the Entire World by Cornelius Hazart,” in Steiger, Passion, Affekt (see n. 7), vol. 2, pp. 917–928.

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In four huge tomes Hazart wrote down a good number of stories of about all known territories in the world where Catholicism had been under strain in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The Jesuit Hazart was for decades a successful preacher in the Jesuit church in Antwerp and presumably had used a good number of these stories for his preaching before he collected them in his history book published between 1667 and 1671. Moreover, in the fifth and sixth grades in the colleges (poetica and retorica respectively) similar martyr stories as the ones stored in Hazart’s book nurtured the pupils in their Latin-skilled religious education. Thousands of pieces of Latin theatre have been played in the Jesuit colleges, all based on legends of good Christians, whether in Antiquity or, rarely, in contemporary overseas missions.46 Martyr narratives therefore spread widely in the Catholic Spanish Netherlands. Oral culture (preaching, narration during dinner, theatre), printed culture (history books, martyrologia, poetry) and visual culture (paintings, engravings, sculpture) all contributed to disseminating a pedadogy of imitation. Except for the relatively few Jesuits who actually went to overseas missions and got killed during conversion campaigns, the imitation was an exercise in imagination and inner spirituality for those at home. It helped one to premeditate what could happen if one was in a dangerous situation for the soul. The Japan example comes from the late sixteenth century period of severe persecutions of Christians on the islands.47 Across Catholic Europe, the Japanese martyrs were a major reference for campaigns of Christianization well into the eighteenth century. In the night of 24 July 1587, Takayama Ukon or Justus Ucondonus, a highly respected army general of shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi and a Christian since the age of thirteen, was put before a choice by the shogun: renouncing Christianity or going into exile as a Christian and losing all his goods. The shogun had decided to act like this after the advice of a bonze who had informed him about presumed misconduct of the general. Half-drunk with Portuguese wine, the shogun got furious when he heard what the bonze had to say: ‘he [shogun Hideyoshi] jumps up from behind the table, runs through the room as a mad man, shouts and yells so that it was shameful to hear’. Ukon, on the other hand, when informed by messengers of the choice the shogun put before him, answered them ‘with a laughing face and a noble heart’. Needless to say, Ukon did not hesitate to remain a Christian. But his own captains were misled by the cheerfulness of their general. Unaware of the sudden change of 46 Goran Proot, Het schooltoneel van de jezuïeten in de provincia Flandro-Belgica tijdens het Ancien Régime (1575–1773), Antwerp 2008 (unpublished doctoral dissertation); Walter Michels, “Die Darstellung der Affekte auf der Jesuitenbühne,” in Theaterwesen und dramatische Literatur: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Theaters, ed. Günter Holtus, Tübingen 1987, pp. 233–251. 47 Ikuo Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan. Kirishitan Practice, Leiden 2001.

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temper of the shogun, the captains assumed that Ukon’s joy was caused by some good decisions. When Ukon announced to his captains that he would go into exile as a Christian of his own free will, he was interrupted by the ‘abundant tears and sighs’ of his captains. Tears and sighs are instruments of Christian compassion and in that sense permitted behaviour in this context. Amidst all this Ukon was constant in his determination and did not betray any emotion. When children appear in martyr stories, the dialectic between the impassionate stance of the Christian martyr and the emotional eruption of those close to him are even more striking. In the martyrologies of Christian Japan, children die as happily as adults for their faith. When, in early seventeenth-century Japan, the seven-year-old Ludovicus wanted to be crucified alongside his mother ‘without a tear or a sigh,’ one of the executioners, who tied the ropes to the cross, had to stop ‘because he was so moved that he could not refrain from weeping.’ Overtaken by pity, the executioner neglects his trade, or, in other words, his passions overtake him and he is not capable of brideling them. Brazil was another scene of martyrdom. There, since the middle of the sixteenth century, a Jesuit mission from Bahia had started to Christianize local Indians. The focus of the Brazil martyrologies is radically different, however. In Japan a sizeable number of Japanese Christians had arisen, and their martyrdom captured the European imagination. By contrast, in Brazil and, by extension, across the Americas, the missionaries were the martyrs. One example talks about the Indians having taken one of their enemies and preparing pots to cook and eat him. The Jesuits lay their hands upon the dead man’s body and want to take it away. The Indian men do not stop them from doing so, but some old women – ‘who are most fond of eating human flesh,’ as Hazart alleges – begin to shout with great anger. They incite the young men to take action against the Fathers. But the young men do not intervene, because they see the determination and lack of fear of the Jesuits. When the Fathers nevertheless try to steal the dead body back during the night, they take it back with their bare hands. This angers the Indians so much that the governor sends the Jesuits to the city for safety purposes. They have to stay there until the Brazilian fury has waned. This is a clear case of unbridled, dangerous emotions. The cannibalistic yelling old women exemplify the passions by which mankind has lost self-control or has not been sufficiently trained to master self-control. As a result the hags are the uncorrectable sinners. The implication is that in the eyes of the Jesuits, Brazilian Indian men were easier to convert than Brazilian women. In order to analyze these examples, in the next two sections I will present two models of interpretation based on two views on the passions that were radically opposed.

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Humoural Passions That the passions took over and actually steered man is an idea put forward among others by a ferocious polemicist of early modern religion, the English Jesuit Thomas Wright (c. 1561–1623). For Wright, vehement passions were remnants of the fall of man and original sin. Wright was born in a recusant family. As a sixteen-year-old he left his native York for the English college in Douai and later moved to the English college in Rome. First a Jesuit and a priest in Italy, he became a prefect of studies in the English college in Valladolid. In 1595 he was back in England and, after dismissal from the Society of Jesus, he was for some time active at court, before being taken to prison as a Catholic, from which he also escaped. He hoped for tolerance towards Catholics under James I and pleaded for the participation of Catholics in the Anglican Church. In 1601, Wright published Passions of the minde in general, which was re-edited several times. In 1610, Thomas Wright was expelled from England with some other priests and then worked among English, Scottish and Irish soldiers in Antwerp. He remained a polemicist all his life. In his Passions of the minde in general Wright argued that when affected by a passion, the heart either goes along with it or fights it, and in the process other passions or humours are stimulated. When there is pleasure other pure spirits concur, when there is sadness melancholy follows.48 In his life, Wright had known many tribulations and expulsions and leaves no doubt that when there is pleasure melancholy is never far away. In this, he echoes the famous dictum of the Renaissance on Heraclitus and Democritus, the weeping and the laughing philosopher whose reactions are always coalescing. ‘Universally, after much pleasure and laughter, men feele themselves both to languish, and to be melancholy,’ Wright argues, quoting Proverbs 17:22 and Ecclesiasticus 30:23.49 Thomas Wright represents the theories that plead for a moral evaluation of the emotions. As the emotions cause imbalances in the body, it is imperative for the Christian to take decisions. For Wright, the passions are virtuous when brideled. He therefore follows the tradition of the Peripathetic Greek philosophers in emphasizing metriopatheia, the moderation of the passions. In his view, the passions are rational in themselves and thus open to willful decisions. At the same time, Wright is echoing the medical and scientific interests of the period and attaches 48 Marion E. Wells, “‘Full of rapture’. Maternal vocality and melancholy in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi,” in Horstmanshoff, Blood, Sweat and Tears (see n. 40), pp. 685–712 (p. 689). For a general overview see Susan James, Passion and Action. The Emotions in seventeenth century philosophy, Oxford 1997. 49 Thomas Wright, The Passions of the minde in general, London 1604, pp. 61–64; See also Jeremy Schmidt, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul. Religion, Moral Philosophy And Madness in Early Modern England, Aldershot 2007, pp. 29–32.

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great importance to physiological explanations of the passions based on the Galenic humoural theory.50 The strategy by which Thomas Wright tries to convince fellow Christians to get to know themselves consists of accumulating examples and physiological analyses of how the passions work. Wright is in that perspective writing in the same vein as his much more famous compatriot Robert Burton (1577–1640), whose Anatomy of melancholy (1621) was arguably the most lasting monument of early modern emotionology.51 The Passions of the minde in general is a generous book. For instance, Wright spends a long section on the benefits of music for the passions. In his fourth book on how the passions may be discovered, Wright has more space for issues pertaining to the sense of hearing than most other authors on the passions. Besides talking much or being taciturn, the variations in speech attract his attention. Wright’s advice is to study closely what people under emotional stress say, do and look like in order to trace the passions that traverse them. For the always named passion of anger Wright alleges: ‘men in ire and wrath shew, by their pronuntiation, the flame which lodgeth in their breasts’.52 The warmth of the bodily humours was widely considered responsible for the passion of ira. But there is more. Wright also prescribes how the voice has to sound when certain passions are evoked or acted out, for instance on the stage or by an orator. ‘Hatred and ire exact a vehement voice, and much gesture, a pronuntiation sharpe, often falling with patheticall repetitions, iterated interrogations, prouing, confirming, and urging reasons’. The rage of the above mentioned Japanese shogun Hideyoshi might be described in these terms. The shrieking cannibalistic Brazilian women seem an even more pertinent example of the kind of bodily mechanism of voiced anger Wright has in mind: the manner of this action wee may best discouer in wittie women when they chide [reprove]; because although their excesse be vitious and not to be imitated, yet for that they let nature worke in her kind, their furious fashion will serue for a good meane to perceiue the externall manage of this passion. Their voyce is loud and sharpe, and consequently apte to cut, which is proper to ire and hatred, which wish ill, and intend reuenge: their gestures are frequent, their faces inflamed, their eyes glowing, their reasons hurry one in the necke of another, they with their fingers number the wrongs offered them, the harmes, iniuries, disgraces, and what not thought sayd and done against them.53

50 Jill Kraye, “Apatheia and Propatheiai in Early Modern Discussions of the Passions: Stoicism, Christianity and Natural History,” Early Science and Medicine 17 (2012): pp. 230–253, here pp. 245–252. 51 Mary Ann Lund, Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England. Reading ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy,’ Cambridge 2010. 52 Wright, The Passions (see n. 49), pp. 132–133. 53 Wright, The Passions (see n. 49), pp. 180–181.

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Reading Wright, there is nothing peculiar about the enraged shogun or the furious Brazilian women. They conform to the humanist prescriptions which, since Vives, argue for a moderation of the passions. Women are less prone to master this. If men are carried away by their passions, this behaviour is in accordance with the Renaissance view that the passions are natural expressions of the body and thus in themselves rational. It all seems a matter of choosing virtue, and, in a context of overseas missionaries virtue is Christian, and lack of it the natural state of the uncivilized other.54 Yet, the oppositions – Japanese Christian versus pagan shogun and Jesuit versus cannibal – in the above mentioned missionary stories are not fully explained by conceptions of metriopatheia. To do that we need Stoicism.

Ictus and Loudness Arguably, a more comprehensive early modern theory of the passions which can be applied to understand the martyr stories was Stoicism.55 One of its most perceptive commentators was Justus Lipsius (1547–1606). Lipsius, professor at Leiden and Leuven universities, was the promoter of Stoicism in such influential books as De Constantia (1584), Manuductio ad Stoicam philosophiam (1604), Physiologia Stoicorum (1604) and an edition of the works of Seneca (1605). Lipsius was born in 1547 and died in Leuven in 1606. Fifteen years old, he became a novice of the Jesuits in Köln, but soon moved to Leuven to study the classics. Cardinal Granvelle then took him with him as a secretary to Rome, but in the early 1570s Lipsius was teaching in Jena and was influenced by Lutheran ideas. After another stay in Leuven he moved to Leiden in 1578 and became a much respected professor at the newly founded Calvinist University. In 1591 Lipsius travelled via Germany to the Southern Netherlands and converted back to Roman Catholicism. He taught at Leuven for the remaining fifteen years of his life. His book De Constantia was translated into Dutch, French and Polish in his own lifetime and, a few years after his death, into Spanish, thus assuring it of a widespread audience. Contrary to an often false perception, emotions are not strictly banned by the Stoics.56 Following Seneca, Lipsius gave attention to the concept of ictus, the violent first strike of something – motus in the language of Seneca – that suddenly 54 Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man. The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, Cambridge 1986. 55 Kraye, Apatheia (see n. 50). 56 Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, Cambridge 2003.

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happens to man and that seems destructive and threatening.57 According to Stoic philosophy, ictus is not an emotion, but the raw and very first impact of an event or message, and as such it is not controlled by the human will. The ictus or propatheia is a spontaneous reaction. Only when the ictus is taken up by man’s will and rational mind in a second movement or motus it becomes an emotion or passion. When in a third motus this passion triumphs over reason, man loses control over himself. If the passions, as for instance friendship, are correlated with the nature of man, understand his virtue, they are praiseworthy. But when the emotions are unnatural or oppose man’s nature, as for instance glory, the passions are to be avoided. Avoidance of an ictus is impossible in the Stoic logic, because it overcomes man. Nevertheless, he can learn to apprehend it. The method is premeditation: simulating in one’s mind situations of ictus and the ways in which these are controlled by the will helps to prepare the Stoic for a future ictus. In that sense fantasy is a major tool for a Stoic control of the passions. Seneca himself promoted theatre and drama as useful instruments. This sequence suggests that for Stoics the emotions and passions are very much part of a process of human cognition in which body and mind are one. This is in contrast with other theories such as those of Vives, Lemnius or Wright, who assume autonomous bodily reactions as passions. Returning to the above mentioned martyr stories and their interpretation, I would suggest that these stories demonstrate a Stoic worldview and therefore serve as examples of premeditation. The liminal reactions expressed in the loud voices of the bystanders in the martyr stories seem to follow a Stoic logic. For instance, when Ukon’s captains hear that their leader has fallen from grace with the shogun without having shown this himself, they begin to weep and cry abundantly. This is an ictus that in a second movement becomes a good emotion, in the sense that the captains are showing their full humanity in the face of the fateful, yet from the martyrologist’s point of view righteous decision of Ukon. The sudden rage of the shogun, on the other hand, is an ictus that turns (in a third movement) to a blind passion, and that is expressed in his shouting and yelling voice shameful to hear. Amidst this, Ukon is the one trained in Christian virtue as well as in Stoic apatheia or constancy in his emotions.58 As a Christian he is joyful because heavens awaits him. As a Stoic he is not shaken by the sudden events that befall him. The martyr has practiced in the palaestra affectuum because he has been witness throughout his life to scenes of torture and martyrdom among his fellow Christians in Japan. He has learned to see which emotions were natural 57 Ulrich Heinen, “Emotionales Bild-Erleben in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Anthropologie der Literatur. Poetogene Strukturen und ästhetisch-soziale Handlungsfelder, ed. Rüdiger Zymner and Manfred Engel, Paderborn 2004, pp. 356–383; Kraye, Apatheia (see n. 50). 58 Jan Papy, “Lipsius’ (Neo-)Stoicism: Constancy between Christian Faith and Stoic virtue,” in Grotius and the Stoa, ed. Hans W. Blum and Laurens C. Winkel, Assen 2004, pp. 47–72.

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and which unnatural in the light of the truth of God. In the story about the Jesuits trying to prevent a dead man’s body of becoming the prey of cannibals in Brazil, the shouting and anger of the Indians and in particular of women is due to its persistence over time as a case of an ictus becoming an unnatural passion. As the object of this passion involves cannibalism, it is presented as the epitome of a bad emotion. A man cannot fall much deeper.

Loud Theologians But it is time to return to the collisions of secular disturbance and loud religious voices. I will do this by introducing another example, this time concerning a company of presumed Jansenists on the basis of a letter to a Carmelite in Rome. The Jansenist priests Jacques De Beer, Aegidius De Witte and Martin Steyaertare were documented to have caused unrest in the village of Ouwegem near Oudenaarde, where De Beer was village priest. in those days [in September 1679], in Ouwegem, a village near Oudenaarde, a pleasant and very true thing happened. Some Jansenists lived there. To strengthen their influence a theologian from Leuven was sent to them by the name of De Wit. The people of the village are absolutely opposed to these people [says the letter writer, the Ghent Carmelite Jacques de la Passion]. Some of the Jansenists wanted to discuss among each other and others not, they therefore decided to go into a nearby wood. In the surroundings an old woman was guarding her cow. It happened that a dog chased the cow to the forest. She followed her cow, but when she heard the noise of these people who were debating ferociously she thought some thieves wanted to take her cow. She ran to the village. To surround and catch the thieves people came running with their weapons. When the people came closer they heard the shouts of the debaters who were animated by their discussions. The village people shouted aux armes, les voici and found only the Jansenists. Everybody laughed at this in the entire country.59

The anecdote offers a fine paradox. The ordinary village people and in particular the old woman mistake the loud voices of people who hold a theological dispute for the evil-intending sound of thieves. On the other hand, the disputing Jansenists are ridiculed because they cause strong tensions in ordinary people who are not trained in ‘civil and virtuous education,’ to use the words of Lemnius. The letter was written by an anti-Jansenist and the Jansenist priests are clearly ridiculed in it. But their loud voices are not liminal emotional reactions. The Jansenist have a reason for their loudness.

59 Lucien Ceyssens, “Le séjour de Pierre Nicole à Ouwegem en 1681,” XVIIe siècle 154 (1987): pp. 53–58 (English translation by the author).

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To understand why theologians discussed in loud voices, classical and biblical references abounded. Lipsius referred to a Renaissance topos: ‘let dark clouds loom around you, and lightning and storms: you will proclaim with a loud, true voice: “tranquil amid the surges”.’60 The Jesuit orator Nicolas Caussin valued the loudness of God: ‘The Holy Ghost spake with the voice of thunder to the heart of Clodovaeus in the middest of battles.’ Consequently, good Christians demonstrating their virtue are allowed to speak loud. Theodosia ‘redoubled her voice so loudly, and so solemn a profession, that it was impossible for him to dissemble it.’ The heroic character of a big voice also transpires in what Caussin says about Goliath: ‘all their hearts are frozen at the sound of his terrible voice.’61 To conclude, Affektkontrolle or control over the passions was in the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century joined with thorough investigations into the working of the passions and in particular into the interplay between bodily autonomy and ideas generated by the mind. If such ideas were religious or connected to the situations in which religious issues prevailed, loud voices seemed to create confusion. This perplexity arose because in the early modern conceptions the loudness of the voice was often attributed to the humoral composition of the body and the mechanics of certain passions, in particular anger and envy. As these were undesirable emotions in the Christian, this situation confronted listeners with sharp choices. The result was a common distrust of loud voices. The true Christian was smiling and content, but not audibly shaken in new situations. On the other hand, the Christian tradition of loudly proclaiming God and Christ was an accepted practice from a religious point of view. Ultimately, the loud voice was the liminal experience of spiritual depth and spiritual void existing side by side.

60 Justus Lipsius, Concerning Constancy, ed. and trans. R.V. Young, Tempe, Arizona 2011, p. 35. 61 Nicolas Caussin, The Holy Court, London 1678, pp. 314, 368, 668. On Caussin see Sophie Conte, ed., Nicolas Caussin: rhétorique et spiritualité à l’époque de Louis XIII, Berlin 2007.

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‘Theologiae proprium subiectum est homo …’ (Luther). Shifts in the Structure of Theological Systems in the Wake of Reformation1

0.

Introduction.

In many ways, the Reformation marks a radical change; for me as a systematic theologian, those results in particular are of interest, which the Reformation had for the structure of the sorts of theological works in which theologians presented the entire content of theological knowledge as a unit – as they still do today: The sententiae works, the theological summae, and dogmatics works. I will attempt to show that from the very beginning, Reformation theologians share a concern for a systematically ordered depiction of theology. Therein, however, they give the systematic summary of the content of theology a different function than most medieval authors, and they define the subject of theology differently compared to their predecessors.2 To initially formulate it in a memorable thesis: I will show in the first section that, for medieval authors, God is the subject of theology, and that it is the task of theology to mediate knowledge about God. But for the Reformation and post-Reformation theologians, I will show in the second section that man is the subject of theology, and that it is the task of theology to mediate knowledge of self. And in a final section, I will briefly demonstrate how this subject definition was picked up in modern theology, particularly by Schleiermacher, and how with its help, theology proves itself to be relevant also in the modern era.

1 For the translation I am indebted to Jacob Corzine, doctorate student of mine, now serving as a student’s pastor in Pretoria/SA. A significantly extended German version of the insights presented in the following are published in: N. Slenczka, “Cognitio hominis et Dei. Die Neubestimmung des Gegenstandes und der Aufgabe der Theologie in der Reformation,” in Der Reformator Martin Luther 2017 – eine wissenschaftliche und gedenkpolitische Bestandsaufnahme, ed. H. Schilling, Munich 2014, pp. 205–29. 2 I should note that throughout, when I speak of the ‘subject of theology’, I mean the content, the ‘object’ of theological inquiry, and not the person actively ‘theologizing’.

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1.

The theological summae of the pre-Reformation era

– you all know this – grew at the end of the high middle ages out of thematically arranged anthologies (‘florilegia’).

1.1

The origin of complete systematic presentations.

Since the beginning of the 12th century, these anthologies or collections served the purpose of identifying the single unified voice of the church within the diversity of the normative tradition of the fathers: My good will and my efforts are aimed at nothing but collecting the words of the Lord and His saints from where these sparks [scintillae] are picked…3

Peter Abelard’s work published in 1122, ‘Sic et Non,’4 for example, is such a collection, but one that goes beyond earlier ones: Abelard sees that the church fathers and also the biblical writings contradict each other in many questions. He therefore does not just collect the voices of the scripture and the church fathers, but in fact gathers the contradictory positions of the scripture and the fathers on all important issues: the ‘Yes and No’ of the authorities on a particular question. The scholastic theologian, then, has the task of determining the truth in the face of this contradiction among the authorities. As the 12-year-old Jesus in the temple before the teachers of the law – such is Abelard’s description in the hermeneutical introduction to his work – so also the scholastic theologian stands before the many-voiced, contradictory tradition and decides their struggle on the basis of reason.5 Also Peter Lombard’s sentences work, which defined the theology of the Middle Ages for centuries, stands in the tradition of this ‘Concordia discordantium autoritatum’.6 Different than many earlier sentence collections, Peter Lombard’s sentences have a structure that is based on a definition of the subject of theology: He takes up Augustine’s thesis that all science deals either 3 E.g. Doctrina patrum: F. Diekamp, Doctrina patrum de incarnatione verbi. Ein griechisches Florilegium aus der Wende des 7. und 8. Jahrhundert, Münster 1907; Defensor, Liber Scintillarum, CChL 117, pp. 1–34, quote taken from prologue [without p.]. From the school of Isidorus of Sevilla: Sententiae Divinitatis: B. Geyer, Die Sententiae Divinitatis, BGPhThM 7,2– 3, Münster 1967 (repr. of the 1909 ed.), p. 1*–3*. 4 E.L.Th. Henke/G.St. Lindenkohl, ed., Petri Abaelardi Sic et Non, Marburg 1851. For the following, cf. the prologus, op. cit. pp. 1–17. 5 Henke/Lindenkohl, Petri Abaelardi (see n. 4), p. 17. 6 Cf. ‘We, aiming at removing the apparent contradiction of authorities,’ Petrus Lombardus, Sententiae in 4 libros distinctae, 2 vol., SpicBon 4 and 5, Grottaferrata 31971, I dist 1 chap. 3 [9.].

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with things or with signs;7 and out of this thesis he draws his guideline for sorting the entire content of theology according to this basis: Theology deals with things and with signs: The only thing that is not also a sign of something else is God; everything else finally points to God. The subject of theology is therefore God – and everything else, as signs, points toward him. In the end, the knowledge of the truth about God in the midst of the dispute of opinions about him remains the goal of theology.

1.2

God as the subject of theology – Thomas Aquinas.

The liberation of theological systematization from the template of the sentences works is presented in its completed form by Thomas Aquinas and his ‘Summa Theologiae.’ A theological Summa that no longer lines up quotes from church fathers, but rather connects the teachings of the church in a coherent systematic relationship, is faced with the task of defining a center that can rule all the teachings of the Christian faith and from which they can all be bound together into a systematic whole. Also Thomas bases the unity of the many teachings of theology in a definition of the main subject of theology, which he offers at the beginning of the Summa Theologiae.8 At first, he writes, it seems obvious to define God as this subject, since the name is ‘Theology – language about God’; but the objection remains that theology is not a science focused through a single unified subject: The subjects of theology, for example as they are listed in the creed, are manifold – they reach from creation over Christology to the church and the ‘last things’; apparently theology has no unified material subject. In the responsio [answer], Thomas opposes this objectio [objection] with a formal definition of the subject9 of the science of theology. For clarification: in the context of an Aristotelian concept of science, the subject of a science is formally defined. This is done through the declaration of the perspective, out of which the whole of reality is to be observed in a certain science; so the subject of physics is movement and thus everything that is, so long as it is moved or as moved; the subject of metaphysics is everything that is, so long as it ‘is’ or: as being. A formal perspective – movement, being – and not a certain set of beings or else determines the boundaries of the different sciences. It is only by this formal perspective that a certain set of beings turns out to be the subject of a science. For 7 Augustinus, De doctrina Christiana I, I,1. 8 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [STh], for the following cf. [part] I q [quaestio/question] 1 a [articulus/article] 7resp [responsio/answer – the main argument]. All modern editions provide these subdivisions. 9 See above footnote 2.

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instance: the perspective of physics is movement, so the material entities are subject of this science, but not mathematical entities or God, the unmoved mover. The formal perspective, out of which theology observes all reality – according to Thomas – is God.10 Theology has to do with what is, in as far as it either is God or has to do with God – has to do with him, meaning that it is dependent on him as its source and goal. It follows then, that theology has frankly to do with everything that is, because everything that is is either God himself or is dependent on God as its source and its goal. And it is on the basis of this subject determination that the basic idea of the Summa is structured, which then holds together and structures all the sections and quaestiones and articles:11 the three parts of the Summa describe a broad movement:12 The first section deals with God and all reality originating from God: the doctrine of God and creation – God and being which originates from him as source (pars I). The second section deals with the return of every creature, in particular those equipped with a mind and will, to God: The reality related to God as its goal – ethics (pars II). And the third section deals with Christ as the path upon which the return of man to God is actually carried out (pars III). I am passing over much of what could still be said here; to summarize, one could say that God and the dependency on God of reasonable beings that have their origin in him and strive to return to him are in the center of theology. But this subject determination has its center and its point of origin in the doctrine of God; the task of theology is the mediation of knowledge of God; everything else depends on this.

1.3.

Further historical consequences.

This thesis, that God is the main subject of theology, is undisputed in scholastic university theology; one might cite here Bonaventura’s commentary on the sentences, Albertus Magnus’s Summa, or Gabriel Biel’s Commentary in Lombard’s Sententiae, from which Luther learned.13 God and knowledge of God are at the center. Further subjects handled by theology are related to this central and 10 Op. cit. I q 1 a 7resp. Cf. Notger Slenczka, art. “Gotteslehre” [doctrine of God], in ThomasHandbuch (due for publication Tübingen 2015). 11 Op. cit. I q 2prooem [prooemium/prologue]. 12 STh I q 2prooem. cf. The prologues of the parts II – I, II – II and III. 13 Bonaventura, Commentaria in IV Libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi [Opera theological selecta I – IV, ed. L.M. Bello, Florence 1934–1949] I, proemii q 1resp; Gabriel Biel, Collectorium circa quattuor libros Sententiarum I, ed. W. Werbeck/U. Hofmann, Tübingen 1973, Prologus q 9; Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae lib I tract I q 3 cap 1 solutio (Alberti Magni Opera Omnia 34/1, ed. D. Siedler et al., Münster 1978 [10f]).

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main subject: They all stand in a relationship to God – for Peter Lombard in a relationship of symbolized thing and symbol; for Duns Scotus in one of cause and effect, and for Thomas Aquinas in one of goal and striving. That also other things besides God are the subject of theology, is clear – but only in their relationship to that main subject, God.

2.

The new definition in the Reformation.

Everything changed with the Reformation. The first Reformation dogmatics did not come from a theologian, but – in modern terms – from a philologian – Philip Melanchthon.14 A look at the origin of the text makes the genre recognizable, with which we are dealing here, and demonstrates that with the Reformation, the presentation of the entire material of theology acquires a perspective which is entirely different than that found in the medieval Summae.

2.1.

Melanchthon’s Loci.

The history of the text, which Melanchthon describes in a dedication, allows one to grasp the intention of the author and the original character of the Loci: The Loci are finally based on a lecture on Romans held in 1519. For the students in the lecture, Melanchthon had prepared an outline of the content and the argument in Romans; this outline was – apparently without his permission – printed by his students in 1520 as ‘night-time labours’ (‘Lucubratiuncula’). 2.1.1. Distinction from scholastic theology. The Loci communes of 1521 are – as Melanchthon describes in the dedication15 – intended to replace this premature publication; they are expressly intended as a reworked and improved version of the Lucubratiuncula. It thus becomes apparent that this first dogmatics of Protestantism from the very beginning is part of the interpretation of scripture. This attribution is underlined by the intention which Melanchthon follows with the Loci: Further, as far as the entirety of the argument is concerned, the chief areas of Christian doctrine are indicated here, so that the youth may understand what chiefly should be 14 Ph. Melanchthon, Loci communes theologici [1521], Latin-German, ed. H.-G. Pöhlmann, Gütersloh 1993 – in the following I will provide after the page number in [square brackets] the numbering of sentences in this edition. 15 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), pp. 12–15.

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sought in the scripture, as well as how horribly in all theological questions those have phantasized, who have put for us the subtleties of Aristotle in the place of the teaching of Christ.16

The Loci, then, are a book for beginners; the addressees are the ‘iuventes,’ the (studying) youth. Melanchthon’s loci are usefully related to the reading of the scripture: they do not seek, as Thomas in his summa, to present a systematic and structured unfolding of the teaching of the church; they want instead to introduce an unpracticed reader of the bible to the contents of the scripture. In other words, they are an aid for beginners to understand the bible – Melanchthon gives a perspective on the bible, he indicates ‘what should be sought in the scripture’.17 Melanchthon distinguishes himself in the last quote from the phantasies of the scholastics (supposedly) influenced by Aristotle, which, in his estimation, place the reading of the scriptures under the hermeneutical perspective of Aristotle; he, Melanchthon, seeks instead to lead into the proper manner of inquiry which alone can guide successful reading of scripture. A line of questioning, a perspective, is being communicated to the students, through which scripture opens itself and becomes comprehensible. The goal of the Loci is to guide the reader to his own reading of the scriptures. 2.1.2. The Loci and the Reformation Scripture Principle. It follows, then, that Melanchthon recommends a return from churchly authorities to reading the scriptures oneself; he is guided therein by the thesis that the scriptures begin to interpret themselves if they are read without the mixing in of other authorities: The spirit namely – or, as John says, the anointing – will teach much when you work with the scriptures which the efforts of human understanding cannot attain.18

More closely understood, this means that the scriptures have a formative power; as you can see in the following quote, Melanchthon holds that the scriptures change the person who engages them into their own kind of essence and thus transform the reader into the image of God: Indeed, I would want nothing so much as that all Christians – if that were possible, would move around in the freest manner within the scriptures and be completely changed by their innate character. Because Divinity expressed His perfect image in the

16 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 12 [4.]. 17 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 12 [4.]. 18 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 16 [11.].

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scriptures, God cannot be recognized with more certainty and in a more proper way than in the scriptures.19

The Loci stand – in summary – in the service of the Reformation Scripture Principle, which shows itself here in a particularly clear manner: It is borne by the thesis that the scriptures in themselves have the ability to influence the reader, to impress on him the ‘image of God,’ which they bear in themselves – in order thus to correct the sinful human being. In opposition to this formative power of the scriptures stand the individual attempts of a reader who places the words of the scriptures under the mark of his own opinions – those are for Melanchthon the concepts of philosophy and the ‘judgment of the [mere] human spirit.’ These Loci seek to guide the reader to a free reading of the scriptures – free from human opinions, that is. They would do this by opening up the basic concepts of the scriptures and leading the reader into the perspective, out of which the scriptures are comprehensible.

2.2.

The introduction – title and subject of the ‘Loci’

2.2.1. The selection of the subjects of theology. The term ‘locus,’ which makes its home in theology in the wake of Melanchthon’s work, is best translated fairly literally with ‘area’ – it has to do with topical areas in theology, with ‘communes,’ i. e. basic concepts. According to Melanchthon, all sciences deal with particular topical areas, in which the whole of the particular science is encompassed; theology proceeds no differently, and so the central teaching works – Melanchthon mentions John of Damascus and Peter Lombard – present main contents, which Melanchthon lists: God – the One – trinity – creation – man, the powers of man – sin – the fruits of sin, the vices – punishments – the law – the promises – renewal through Christ – grace – the fruit of grace – faith – hope – love – predestination – the sacramental signs – the estates of men – secular authority – bishops – damnation – salvation.20

Melanchthon lists these contents with the intention of distinguishing: He determines that there are concepts and contents that are beyond human understanding and which bring those who attempt to grasp them into danger – among these Melanchthon counts the doctrines of the essence of God, the trinity, the incarnation, and others:

19 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 14 [7.]. 20 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 18 [4].

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Even as among these [articles] some are incomprehensible, so there are others among them which Christ desired all people of Christianity to know in the most exact possible manner. We are better off worshipping the mysteries of God than investigating them – indeed, they cannot be investigated without great danger, as holy men have often experienced. And God, the best and greatest, hid his son in the flesh, in order to lead us from the contemplation of his majesty to the contemplation of the flesh and thus of our fragility.21

This basic rule is a unique mix of humanist and mystic elements with basic insights of the Reformation; the reference to the mysteries of God which are better worshipped than investigated follows the principle of Erasmus of Rotterdam22 and can be found in similar form in the scholastic mystic Gerson;23 the reference to the incarnation picks up on the ‘theologia crucis’ of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation from 1518, according to which God does not open himself to the speculation that begins with the works of creation, but is rather to be found in the suffering of man.24 2.2.2. Knowledge of self as the goal of theology. The last sentence in the quote is decisive, because with it, we have a redefinition of the subject of theology: Theology is not concerned with the essence and qualities of God, but with the incarnate God; the theologian, though, does not simply seek knowledge of God by means of Christology, but rather through the contemplation of the humility of Christ he is directed toward his own human humility and decrepit nature: God wants to invite man ‘to the contemplation of the flesh, and thus of our fragility.’ The contemplation of Christ is thus relevant not as a path to knowledge of God but as a path to a person’s knowledge of self. With this, the basic topic of all first generation dogmatics works of the Reformation is brought to light: According to them, theology does not have to do with the knowledge of God, but with the knowledge of the human being – and this in such a manner, that one is to deduce from the last passage quoted out of the introduction to the Loci that the knowledge of God in Christ is also an insight into the basic constitution of being a human. 21 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 18 [4], italics are mine. 22 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Laus stultitiae [in Erasmus von Rotterdam, Ausgewählte Schriften, Latin-German, ed. W. Welzig, 8 vol., Darmstadt 32006, vol. 2, 211] Nr. 53, pp. 131– 143; cf. later [1524]: De libero arbitrio diatribe I a 7 [in Erasmus von Rotterdam, Schriften vol. 4, p. 1–195, see p. 10–19]. 23 Johannes Gerson, “Considerationes de mystica theologia,” in Opera Omnia, ed. L.E. Du Pin, III, 362–428, cf. e. g. pars sexta principalis [383 sqq.]: de acquisitione mysticae theologiae et de eius … differentiis ad theologiam speculativam. 24 Martin Luther, “Disputatio Heidelbergae habita” [1518], WA 1, [p. 350–] 352–74; theses 20–24 (p. 354).

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2.2.3. The Reformation’s path of reduction: The human being’s knowledge of self as task and center of theology. This concentration of theological knowledge in Christology and thus anthropology is motivated by God’s incomprehensibility (incomprehensibilitas), which is beyond the potential of human knowing. This is a classic basic topic even in other pre-Reformation dogmatics, in which the limitations of the knowledge of God are grounded in the weakness of human beings. But here, in Melanchthon and the other reformers, the tip of the thought is exactly this, that the weakness and dependency of man is not only considered as a hindrance to knowledge, but is in fact the actual true insight of theology; and thus the actual knowledge of God rests in the insight into the weaknesses and dependency of man. I intend to show that this insight represents the actual theological progress made in the Reformation. Melanchthon concludes in the following passages of the introduction to his Loci that the ‘chief areas’ mentioned above – namely the doctrine of God, of his unity and trinity, of the mystery of creation and of the means of the incarnation – are not the subject of meaningful investigation and thus cannot be the subject of theology. He rejects the investigations of pre-Reformation scholasticism: These theologians – thus Melanchthon – engaged in meaningless term-cobbling and beyond that have ‘darkened the gospel and the salutary deeds of Christ.’25 The ‘danger’ of researching the mysteries of the divinity that Melanchthon identifies in the last quote rests therefore not or not only in the human being coming too close to the mystery of the divine, but rather in that through interest in the unsearchable mysteries, the knowledge of the ‘beneficia Christi – the salutary deeds of Christ,’ and thus of the proclamation of the gospel, is darkened. Therefore, according to Melanchthon, theology is not ‘teaching about God,’ as Thomas had defined it; rather, the entire doctrine of God, creation, and beyond that significant parts of Christology fall away from the subject area of theology. Expressly: the doctrines of God and the trinity are not the subject of theology: Therefore there is no reason why we should expend great effort on these exalted investigations into God, the unity and trinity of God, the mystery of creation, the means and mode of the incarnation. I ask you: what have the scholastic theologians achieved in all the years which they invested in only these topic areas? 26

Reformation dogmatics begins therefore with a gigantic reduction program. The main areas of pre-Reformation theology are simply discarded from the curriculum: Theology has neither to do with God nor with the doctrine of the trinity, and also not with Christ in the sense of the classic doctrine of the two natures. The 25 See quote above. 26 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 20 [8–9].

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‘salutary deeds of Christ’ are now the decisive and famous keyword, with which Melanchthon summarizes the topical areas which theology has rightly to engage: But if someone does not know of the other topical areas, namely the power of sin, the law, grace – I do now know how I can call him a Christian. For it is therein that Christ is truly recognized, for to recognize Christ means: to recognize his salutary deeds [hoc est Christum cognoscere, beneficia eius cognoscere], and not what they teach: the contemplation of his natures, the means and mode of the incarnation. For if you do not know to what end Christ has taken on flesh and was nailed to the cross – what does it help, to know the history of his life [quid proderit eius historiam novisse]? 27

The ‘beneficia – salutary deeds’ of Christ are the subject of theology, that means: Christ – but not in himself or in his two natures, but only in as far as he has a usefulness and effect for man. Christ is considered in view of the salutary effects of his person and his life on people. These effects become the hermeneutical center of Christology, which is then formulated from the perspective of this center. And this means that all Christological topical areas, which do not have Christ as the origin of ‘beneficia – salutary deeds’ as their subject, are simply not the subject of theology. For exactly this reason, Melanchthon determines that the true subject of theology is ‘the power of sin, the law, grace’ (see quote above): These topics are entirely anthropologically focused and name those concepts, under which, according to a Reformation understanding, human existence before and after the work of Christ come to word: This finally is Christian knowledge: to know what the law demands, whence one can attain the power to fulfill the law and grace for sin, how one can support the faltering soul against the devil, the flesh, and the world, how one can comfort the troubled conscience.28

When Melanchthon calls ‘the power of sin, the law, grace’ and (related to these) the salutary deeds of Christ the subject of theology, the entire content of theology is concentrated on the existentially relevant subjects and the description of human existence itself. Only that can be the subject of theology, which is existentially relevant, i. e. relevant for the person’s knowledge of self. The entirety of the theological subject areas is focused and reduced. The selection criterion among the many topical areas that are handled in pre-Reformation theology is no longer God as origin and end of all reality. Instead, a doctrine is a subject of theology if and only if it has a function in the description and conquering of the situation of the individual between Anfechtung – spiritual struggle or tribulation – and comfort.

27 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 22 [12–14]. 28 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 22–24 [16].

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In comparison to Melanchthon’s extensive list of the topical areas of preReformation theology I quoted before, a massive reductive shift is present here – a reduction to that which was existentially relevant. The basic selection criterion of content is in the question of whether they have to do with the individual and his salvation in the situation of Anfechtung: Thus we will describe a system of topical areas which recommend Christ to you, which strengthen the conscience, which erect the soul against Satan.29

2.2.3. The human being as the subject of theology. Here, the definition of the subject of theology comes together with Luther’s famous definition in his interpretation of Psalm 51: The true subject of theology is the man, who stands under the accusation of sin, and God, who justifies and saves the sinful man. What is asked or disputed in theology aside from this subject is error and poison. The whole scripture aims toward this, that it may recommend to us the goodness of God. Thus this is the essential theological knowing – that the man knows himself, that is: that he knows, feels, and experiences that he stands under the accusation of sin and is doomed to death; and second, that he knows and recognizes the opposite: that God justifies and redeems the man who knows his own situation.30

The text must be read with care: Luther does not name as subject of theology God and then human being – this would be Thomas’s approach. Rather, Luther calls the human being the actual subject of theology: The actual subject of theology is the individual human being, in a particular situation, namely in the situation of Anfechtung. To be clear: The subject of theology is in the first case the human being and not God. God is only the subject of theology in as far as he and his actions have relevance for the basic situation of man: Anfechtung. The reductive movement which Melanchthon and Luther carry out here is, to be more specific, an anthropological reduction; in comparison to Thomas and the entirety of preReformation theology, the definition of the subject of Christian teaching changes and the assertion – thus far unheard of – is taken up, that the chief subject of theology is the human being, and that correspondingly the decisive goal of theology is not knowledge of God, but knowledge of self.31

29 Melanchthon, Loci (see n. 14), p. 24 [20f.]. 30 M. Luther, “Enarratio Psalmi 51” [1532/38] WA 40/II, p. 328, line 15–21.30–35. 31 Cf. N. Slenczka, “Anthropology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Luther’s Theology, ed. R. Kolb et al., Oxford 2014, pp. 212–232. Luther’s insight goes back to Bernhard Claravallensis – see Slenczka, Cognition (see n. 1).

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3.

History of influence.

3.1.

Later Lutheran dogmatics works.

One would have to follow this further. It would be pointed out that in later editions of his Loci, Melanchthon reintegrates the doctrinal content that he had discarded in his Loci communes; but he does this under the premiss that all of this content – from the doctrine of God to the doctrine of the two natures in Christ – has to do with this center, with the human being’s knowledge of self,32 – and accordingly, Melanchthon links his doctrine of Trinity to the doctrine of the Church33 and emphasizes the soteriological content of these doctrines.34 Similarly both, Zwingli and Calvin, define God and human being as the subject of theology – but, other than Luther, in this order (God first and then the human being), and Calvin explicitly derives self knowledge of man from his knowledge of God.35 Johann Gerhard, who writes his Loci theologici in the tradition of Melanchthon’s loci in the first decade of the 17th century, presents all the classical doctrines of theology starting with the doctrine of God all the way to the ‘last things’ but accompanies them with the constant question of the usus practicus – the use of the doctrines for human beings and their self-knowledge. Also the analytical dogmatical works of the 17th century36 do not define God as the subject of theology; rather they define theology as a ‘scientia practica – a science directed toward its execution,’ by which a future pastor is enabled to lead people to eternal salvation – also here it is not simply the knowledge of God but the knowledge that man is lost and the knowledge of his way to salvation that is the subject of theology: Q 1: What is theology? Theology is science directed in the highest manner towards execution, which teaches out of the revealed word of God what sinful man must know for the true faith in Christ and do for the sanctification of life so that he may attain to eternal salvation.37

32 Cf. e. g. the last edition published 1559: Ph. Melanchthon, Loci praecipui theologici, Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl II,1 and 2, Gütersloh 1952/3, which includes a full-fledged doctrine of God, of trinity, of Christ and a doctrine of creation (II,1, p. 172–224). 33 Cf. ibid. II,1, p. 179. 34 E.g. p. 174 line 17–32; p. 178; p. 204 line 15f; pp. 211–14. 35 Huldrych Zwingli, “De vera et falsa religione commentarius,” in Huldrych Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke III (CR 90), Leipzig 1914, [p. 590–]628–911, p. 640 line 20–26; cf. Johannes Calvin, Institutio Christianae religionis I cap 1 ( Johannis Calvini opera selecta II – V, ed. P. Barth et al. Munich 1928–1936). Cf. Gerhard Ebeling, “Cognitio Dei et hominis,” in Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien I, Tübingen 1971, pp. 221–272. 36 H.E. Weber, Die analytische Methode der lutherischen Orthodoxie, Naumburg 1907. 37 David Hollaz, Examen theologicum acroamaticum, Stargard 1707, Propaedia q 1.

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Due to that, David Hollaz, as well as most of the pre-modern ‘orthodox’ Lutheran theologians of the 17th century, uses that definition as the formative principle for his theological system and its order: God is not the principal subject of theology but he is the aim (finis) sinners are to be led to; creation and human sin are not a subject of speculation but the starting point of the way to God; the redemptive work of God, centered in Christ and distributed by the Holy Spirit, are the principles, and Word and sacraments are the means of distributing salvation. All the Christological doctrines are focused on this process of salvation. At the core of the theological system, therefore, lies the human being that is to be led to true faith and by that to God. All the traditional contents of theology are nothing but descriptions of this way (ordo salutis) and its steps and are descriptions of the means by which these steps are taken. But the perspective from which this process of salvation is seen is the theologian who knows what to do and how to lead the sinner towards God. The perspective is not, as it was with Luther, the selfawareness of the sinner himself – that is a step backwards from Luther and a step which is taken anew by the theologians in the 18th and 19th century.

3.2.

Consequences for the relevance of protestant theology in the modern era: Schleiermacher.

With Hollaz we find ourselves at the beginning of the 18th century, at the end of the age of post-Reformation orthodoxy, at the edge of the modern age. Precisely this concentration of theology on the human being’s knowledge of self, the knowledge of man as the task of theology, is what enabled one part of protestant theology to position itself in a positive relationship to modernity and its interest in human subjectivity. This positively defined relationship of Christian faith and modernity is carried out by – among others – Schleiermacher, who defines the task of theology as the interpretation of the self-understanding of Christian faith, and who does not define Christian faith primarily as knowledge of God, but as self-perception or self-awareness of man:38 Piety, according to Schleiermacher, is not knowledge about divine things and also not a particular ethical practice; piety is rather an unmediated, i. e. non-theoretical knowledge of oneself, a consciousness of absolute dependency. God is not the primary subject of theology. 38 For a more thorough analysis cf.: N. Slenczka, “Das Dogma als Ausdruck des religiösen Selbstverhältnisses. Trinitätslehre bei Schleiermacher, Troeltsch und Tillich,” in Aufgeklärte Religion und ihre Probleme. Schleiermacher – Troeltsch – Tillich, ed. U. Barth et al., TBT 165, Berlin 2013, p. 661–84; N. Slenczka, “Gott über die Religion wieder hoffähig machen – Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher und die Liberale Theologie,” in “Nimm und lies!” Theologische Quereinstiege für Neugierige, ed. R.K. Wüstenberg, et al., Gütersloh 2008, pp. 145–75.

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Rather, the meaning of the concept of God stems from this human self-awareness: knowing oneself to be dependent in an absolute way, i. e. without at the same time knowing oneself to be free – that is ‘schlechthinige Abhängigkeit’: absolute dependency, dependency without freedom. This dependency, however, is not a state of the human being but a state of self-awareness: seen from the perspective of the person who is not but knows himself to be free or dependent. This self-awareness is not a cognitive theoretical knowledge, but it is unmediated, it is an emotional self-awareness, ‘Selbstbewußtsein’ in the sense of ‘emotion’: not knowing but feeling oneself to be dependent. All apparently object-oriented statements of Christian faith – language about God, Christ, creation, sin – are nothing but the verbalization of this pre-theoretical (emotional) knowledge about oneself: The term ‘God’ e. g. derives its meaning from this self-awareness of being dependent: it is impossible to verbalize this self-awareness without talking about a ‘where from’ of this dependency; and knowing oneself to be dependent in an absolute way is the same as: knowing oneself in relation to God (cf. Glaubenslehre § 4, thesis). All the concepts of Christian doctrine – Christology as well as the doctrine of sin – are descriptions of the way this self-awareness as absolutely dependent being finds itself weakened and is reestablished by encountering the ‘Urbild’ – the archetype, the idea in the sense of ‘original and origin’ of this ‘relation to God’: Jesus Christ. By his teaching he establishes in his Church this ‘consciousness of dependency’. All the apparently object-oriented statements of the church are expressions – ‘Ausdruck’ – of the self-consciousness of the Christian. This is the insight from which Schleiermacher derives the principle of composition of his ‘dogmatics’ (‘Glaubenslehre’): Language of faith expresses the consciousness of redemption provided in the encounter with Christ, it therefore expresses the consciousness of sin and grace. This ‘de-objectification’ of Christian faith and this concentration of all doctrines of Christian faith on a knowledge of oneself is the consequence of the turn of Reformation dogmatics I have described, according to which man and his selfknowledge, and not simply God and knowledge of God, are the subject of theology. It is not without cause that Hegel sees Reformation as the origin of the modern concept of subjectivity, and therefore it is not unreasonable to say that coming to terms with this concept as Schleiermacher did, means coming to terms with the ‘original insight’ of Reformation as well.

Anna Vind

The Human Being according to Luther

Introduction When this article was commissioned, I was asked to write about Luther’s anthropology, a topic which is neither the smallest nor the easiest. How can one take up such a challenge with the considerable amount of secondary literature about the topic in mind? One may be in serious doubt as to whether it is possible to present anything that will enlighten the reader further on aspects of Luther’s view of the human being. It is nevertheless worth a try. A diligent reading of some of Luther’s texts might help us to trace the contours of his anthropology. In this connection it is necessary to emphasize two things: First of all, the focus of the readings lies in trying to capture the essence of Luther’s own thoughts and not to detect their roots. Of course, he was inspired by, and heavily dependent upon, the material handed down to him, but nevertheless he was still to a high degree a thinker of his own – a thinker with a very characteristic profile. This profile is what I am in search of, and will try to bring to light. And secondly: due to limitations of space, the secondary literature must to a large extent be passed over except in the form of a few references. Thus, the reader will not find here a discussion of Luther’s position in relation to the mystical and the apophatic tradition, his critical as well as constructive attitude towards scholastic thinking, his ambiguous affinity with humanism, his dependency on Aristotle or Aristotelianism nor of his incorporation of monastic theology, Augustine or, more broadly, the earlier tradition and the Patristics. Nor does this writer seek to place herself definitively among Luther researchers from different schools such as the German liberal, dialectical and hermeneutical interpretations, the Finnish Luther research or the Danish heritage of Luther exposition. By leaving these issues aside, the article at the same time gives an open invitation to critical comments and to illuminating contextual and scholarly discussion of the topic. The article falls into four parts: 1) The first deals briefly with philosophy and theology in Luther’s thinking, 2) then we will look at some concrete examples of

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how he describes the human being. 3) Thirdly, there will be a short mention of the simultaneity of sin and righteousness and 4) fourthly – and not the least importantly – we shall try to consider what kind of life experience Luther has in mind when he describes the believer in Christ.

Theology and philosophy: theology of the cross A crucial feature in Luther’s disputation De homine of 1536, which has been treated in depth in Gerhard Ebeling’s monumental three-volume work from the 1980s, is the division between a philosophical and a theological concept of man.1 The division between philosophy and theology stands as a key signature for Luther’s thoughts as they are presented there – and actually it seems that it stands as an over-all key signature to Luther’s thinking from the very beginning.2 Luther’s thoughts on the division between philosophy and theology influence his anthropology significantly since it deals with man and God and their mutual relation. What is at the forefront in the division is the concept of wisdom, sapientia. In the theses of 1536 he talks about philosophy alias human wisdom, philosophia = sapientia humana (thesis 1), versus theology as a wealth of wisdom, theologia = plenitudo sapientiae (thesis 20).3 But as has been indicated, the theme is expounded elsewhere. It is possible to trace it back in Luther’s writing to his earliest larger works such as his commentary on Peter Lombard and his first lecture on the Psalms.4 These very early examples should not be listed now, but we will move back in time to his texts around 1520 – the year in focus. Also there is a need to mention his in-depth treatment of the theme in the Heidelberg disputation of 1518 where he also gives it the famous name: the theology of the cross.5 1 Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien II, Disputatio de Homine, vol. I – III, Tübingen 1977/1982/ 1989. 2 Besides Ebeling, see for example Wilfried Joest, Ontologie der Person bei Luther, Göttingen 1967, pp. 89–111 and more recently Antti Raunio, “The Human Being” in Engaging Luther. A (New) Theological Assessment, ed. Olli-Pekka Vainio, Eugene 2010, pp. 27–58. 3 D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe [= WA], vol. 39I, p. 175,3; p. 176,5. See also Ebeling, Lutherstudien II, vol. 3 (see n. 1), p. 2ff. 4 Cf. the references in Ebeling, Lutherstudien II, vol. 2 (see n. 1), pp. 228–237. 5 See the general treatment of the theology of the cross in contemporary Lutheran theology in Michael Korthaus, Kreuzestheologie. Geschichte und Gehalt eines Programmbegriffs in der evangelischen Theologie, Tübingen 2007. The present article is dependent upon the 20th– century dialectical theological interpretations of Luther’s concept of the theology of the cross and the relation thereto of his anthropology. Scholars such as Walter von Loewenich and after him Hans Joachim Iwand, Gerhard Ebeling, Wilfried Joest, Walter Mostert and Pierre Bühler stand at the fore. These scholars have altogether, though in different ways, pointed to aspects that are crucial also to my interpretation. Centrally stands the concept of sin, spiritual doubt

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The main material here is taken from Luther’s second lecture on the Psalms of 1519–1521, his Operationes in Psalmos. Here, numerous examples can be found of his thought on the concept of wisdom and the theology of the cross – and let us look at one of them straight away. Quite often when the theme arises, the core Biblical reference texts for Luther are 1 Corinthians 1–2 and Romans 1–3, as we will also see it in the following. In his comment to Psalm 2, verse 11 which reads: ‘Serve ye the Lord with fear: and rejoice unto him with trembling,’ Luther begins by saying that this is a wonderful sentence and at the same time absurd in our eyes.6 How can men fear and serve that from which they want to flee as a result of their fear? And how is it possible to tremble and to rejoice at the same time? How, he asks, is this to be understood? In order to explain it, he quotes 1 Cor. 1:21: ‘For, seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe.’ Because we did not acknowledge and praise God in prosperity and peace, Luther explains, God has decided that we must know and praise him in loss and adversity. And because we did not serve him with joy in security, he has determined that we may serve him with joy in fear and rejoice in trembling. The fact is, he continues by paraphrasing Romans 1, that just as the world turned all things from God upside down, God turns all things of the world upside down. The creation was given to raise and enlighten man, but since man uses it to blind himself and to turn in upon himself, so does God use it for the same purpose: to blind and turn man back in on himself. And this, says Luther, ‘is the cross of Christ and that foolishness of preaching whereby he saves those who believe,’7 whereas those who use their senses, their reason, who are wise and understanding, are offended and destroyed. In his commentary on the preceding verse, chapter 2, verse 10, he further elaborates this complexity of turning things upside down, and explains in more detail what it means for the concept of wisdom. The point, he says, is that Christ did not lead the life of a king in the eyes of man. He was crucified, he died, (Anfechtung), the question of God’s hiddenness and the incapacity of human experience, the concept of faith and finally the key role of the god-forsakenness of Christ on the cross understood as the Word of God. How these interpretations are related to the present is still an open question; work in progress. 6 The following all refers to Archiv zur Weimarer Ausgabe der Werke Martin Luthers. Texte und Untersuchungen [= AWA] 2II, Operationes in psalmos. 1519–1521, ed. Gerhard Hammer and Manfred Biersack, Köln/Wien 1981, pp. 106–111. An English translation of Operationes in Psalmos can be found in The Select Works of Martin Luther, transl. by Henry Cole, London 1826, vol. III–IV. The English translations in the present article are inspired by but not always identical with Cole’s. 7 AWA 2II, 109,12–13: ‘Haec est crux Christi et praedicationis illa stultitia, qua salvos facit credentes.’

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was condemned and accursed. He died a desperate and ignominious death: and to acknowledge him a king is the most difficult thing, for, as Luther puts it, […] sense strongly resists it, reason flees it, common practice denies it and there is no example to refer to. This will be total foolishness to the gentiles, and a stumbling-block to the Jews (1 Cor. 1:23), unless you will raise your mind high above all these things.8

And just as Christ himself embodies this inversion, he also reigns in accordance with it. Christ tells man to despise what he hoped for by the law, to fear what he used to love, and he puts death and the cross in front of him. The aim – and here Luther refers to 1 Cor. 2:9, where Paul defines God’s wisdom – is to transport man to good things ‘that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard: neither hath it entered into the heart of man.’ And he continues his description of this new, divine or theological wisdom, which is not what the philosophers dispute about:9 For the prosperity or adversity of the present things totally destroy every human being who does not comprehend the invisible things in faith. For this comprehension comes through faith according to (Is 7,9): “Unless you believe, you will not understand”. This is the entrance into the darkness (Ex 20,22), where all that the senses, reason, mind and intellect of man can comprehend is swallowed up. For faith connects the soul to the invisible, ineffable, unnameable, eternal, unthinkable word of God and separates at the same time from all the visible things. And this is the cross and the transition of the Lord, where he preaches this kind of understanding as necessary.10

So what we see here is that when Luther speaks of the division between philosophy and theology, he deals – with reference to Paul – with the difficulties and, at the same time, possibilities in fallen man’s approach to, or comprehension of, the world and God. And this influences his concrete descriptions of the human being. When he talks about the human being, he gives a philosophical as well as a theological account – just as we saw in the beginning in his theses De Homine. And central to the distinction between these two ways of describing man is the question of comprehension, or what kind of knowledge or sapientia is in play: the human or the divine wisdom. As we saw in the sections quoted above from Operationes, human wisdom is inadequate when it comes to comprehending the 8 AWA 2II, 106,24–27: ‘Sensus fortiter repugnat, ratio abhorret, usus negat, exemplum deest, plane stultitia haec gentibus et Iudaeis scandalum erit (1Cor 1,23), nisi super haec omnia mentem elevaveritis.’ 9 AWA 2II, 107,20. 10 AWA 2II, 107,24–108,5: ‘Nam praesentium rerum prosperitas vel adversitas penitus subvertit omnem hominem, qui fide non intelligit invisibilia. Hic enim intellectus ex fide venit, iuxta illud [Is 7,9]: “Nisi credideritis, non intelligitis”, et est ingressus ille caliginis, in qua absorbetur, quicquid sensus, ratio, mens intellectusque hominis comprehendere potest. Coniungit enim fides animam cum invisibili, ineffabili, innominabili, aeterno, incogitabili verbo dei simulque separate ab omnibus visibilibus, et haec est crux et “phase” domini, in quo necessarium praedicat hunc intellectum.’

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divine truth. Luther said that to reach knowledge of the good things, the human senses, reason, mind and intellect – or what we could call the philosophical man – must be absorbed and swallowed up as he becomes a theological man who enters into the darkness of faith, sundered from visible things. Here, the soul will be connected to what Luther described as the invisible, ineffable, unnamable, eternal and unthinkable word of God.

Luther’s description of the human being Let us look more carefully into how this complexity is expressed in Luther’s anthropology. We find an account of it more than once in his early work: his comments to Tauler’s sermons, his lecture on the letter to the Hebrews, his lecture and commentary on Galatians, On the freedom of a Christian and finally his Magnificat are the most important.11 The way in which he explains and interprets the human being varies and changes in these texts, but it still seems possible to reach a quite consistent picture. Let us take the latest of the texts mentioned as our point of departure – Luther’s interpretation of Mary’s song of praise in Luke 1:46–55 written in 1521 – and then we will relate it to what he says in his commentary on Galatians two years earlier.12 In relation to Luke’s text, which speaks of spirit and soul as two separate things, Luther unfolds a tripartite anthropology in his Magnificat.13 This is different from the anthropological descriptions in several other texts, but to repeat, they can be combined. Luther himself seems to relate the picture given in Magnificat to those other descriptions. He begins by saying that Scripture treats of man in two ways, that is, by employing a twofold and a threefold division.14 Human nature is threefold – and here he refers to 1 Thessalonians 5:23 – and at the same time these three parts and the whole of man’s nature are separated into two – good and bad, spirit and flesh. This bipartite division, he continues, which 11 Cf. Marginal notes to Tauler’s sermons 1516 (WA 9, 99,36ff.); The lecture on the Epistle to the Hebrews 1517–18 (WA 57, 159,1ff.); On the freedom of a Christian (WA 7, 50,5ff.). I will refer to the commentary on Galatians and the Magnificat in the following. 12 Cf. my previous work on these texts: Anna Vind, “‘God’s peace exceeds the power of the senses, that is, it is incomprehensible except in faith’ – An Interpretation of Luther’s Concept of Sin and Faith,” Luther Bulletin.Tijdschrift voor interconfessioneel Lutheronderzoek 19 (2010): pp. 17–39; Anna Vind, “Luther’s Reflections on the Life of a Christian – Expounded on the Basis of his Interpretation of Magnificat, 1521,” Transfiguration. Nordic Journal of Religion and the Arts (2012/2013): pp. 7–27 ed. by Svein Aage Christoffersen / Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen / Nils Holger Petersen, Copenhagen 2014. 13 The summary of the Magnificat text over the next page is also to be found in Vind, Luther’s Reflections (see n. 12). 14 For the following see WA 7, 550,19–553,10.

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is not a division according to nature, but according to quality, ‘eygenschaff,’15 should nevertheless not be treated in the context of Magnificat – but we will of course come back to it. He continues by elaborating the threefold division. The spirit of man, he says, is his most noble part. This is the place where faith and the Word of God live and ‘the […] part of man [by which] he is enabled to lay hold on things incomprehensible, invisible and eternal.’16 The next part, the soul of man, is actually the same spirit but in a different function. The soul animates the body and works through it. The purpose of the soul is not to grasp the incomprehensible things but to operate through reason. What reason can acknowledge and evaluate is the target field of the soul – and these things are not the divine things. They lie beyond the range of reason and are only subject to faith. Scripture signifies the field of operation of spirit and soul respectively with the words wisdom, sapientia, and knowledge, scientia. Sapientia belongs to the spirit, scientia – and connected thereto feelings such as hatred, love, desire and aversion – belongs to the soul. The purpose of the third part of man, the body, is to be used and trained by the knowledge of the soul and the wisdom of the spirit. In order to describe this tripartite human being, Luther turns to the picture of the tabernacle in the Pentateuch. Tripartite man is like the three rooms of the tabernacle. In the first room lives God, and here there is no light. This room is equal to the spirit of man, the residence of God in the darkness of faith without any light, ‘for he believes that which he neither sees nor feels nor comprehends.’17 In the second room the seven-branched candlestick is placed, lighting up the space. This room is a picture of the many capacities of the soul such as knowledge of, distinction between and expertise on the corporal visible things. Finally there is the forecourt, which is a symbol of the body, whose deeds and life all can see. The main matter at issue, says Luther, is the question of the holiness of the spirit. If the spirit is holy, so are the soul and the body and vice versa: if it is not holy, neither is the rest of man. This is the reason, he explains, why Paul does not just say ‘your spirit, your soul’ etc. in 1 Thess. 5:23, but says ‘your whole spirit’ or ‘your spirit that possesses the whole inheritance.’18 And the holiness of the spirit consists in nothing but faith, that is, trust in the invisible grace of God promised to man. As he expresses it, ‘the believing spirit alone possesses all things.’19 15 WA 7, 550,26. 16 Luther’s Works [= LW] vol. 21, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, Saint Louis 1995, p. 303; WA 7, 550,28–30: ‘[…] das teil des menschen, damit er geschickt ist, unbegreiflich, unsichtige, ewige Dinge zu fassen.’ 17 LW 21, 304; WA 7, 551,20–21: ‘denn er glewbt, das er nit sihet, noch fulet, noch begreiffet.’ 18 LW 21, 305; WA 7, 552,29. 19 LW 21, 305; WA 7, 552,30–31: ‘der glewbige geist hats allein, gar und gantz.’

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Conversely, it is not possible to keep the soul and life right ‘when the spirit is without faith.’20 Here we see the bipartite anthropology in action, even though Luther does not say as much directly. The division between spirit and flesh – and please note that the meaning of the word ‘spirit’ is here different from the use of it in the tripartite division where it describes a part of man – is exactly a question of faith or lack of faith. Luther emphasized this in the 1519 Galatians commentary, where his focus was reversed: there he treated the twofold division, leaving the threefold aside (this treatment may even be that other context to which Luther referred at the beginning of the passage in Magnificat).21 In the commentary he explains that flesh is ‘everything which is outside of grace and the spirit of Christ.’22 Or expressed more directly: ‘everything then, that does not come from faith, is flesh.’23 He also emphasizes there that the bipartite division relates to the whole human being and not to parts of him24 – and that is congruent with what he says in Magnificat. This concept of wholeness, however, is more complicated than it might seem at a first glance. I will come back to that. Concluding upon the anthropological account in Magnificat, we observe that Luther here distinguishes again between the philosophical and the theological human being – even though he does not use these terms. He separates human epistemic and experiential capacities from faith – and this fits with what we saw in Operationes in the description of how human reason and senses must be swallowed up in order to reach comprehension in faith. In both texts he underlines that divine things conceived in faith in the spirit are incomprehensible and invisible. Man – and this is then the theological human being – believes them without seeing, feeling or understanding. And let us note: Luther deliberately puts the rational as well as the affective sides of man in the sphere of the soul – the philosophical human being – in relation to ‘der leiplichen, sichtlichen dinger.’25 On the other hand there is evidently no insuperable gap between the spirit on the one side and the activities of the soul and body on the other – and thus no insuperable gap between the theological and philosophical concepts of man. We have seen how he emphasized that the spiritual faith in God is absolutely crucial to the functions of the other parts of man.26

20 LW 21, 305; WA 7, 553,1–2: ‘wo der geist glawblosz ist.’ 21 See Vind, God’s peace (see n. 12), p. 23. 22 WA 2, 509,21–22: ‘[…] carnem […] accipi […] pro omni eo, quod extra gratiam et spiritum Christi est.’ 23 WA 2, 509,27: ‘Quicquid igitur ex fide non est, caro est.’ 24 WA 2, 585,32–33: ‘spiritum et carnem intelligo totum hominem, maxime ipsam animam.’ 25 WA 7, 551,21–22. 26 These conclusions are also drawn in Vind, Luther’s Reflections (see n. 12).

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The question is now – and this is what I will attempt to pursue in the second half of this discussion: how are we supposed to understand this complex of faith versus reason and senses on the one hand – the obvious distinction between the theological and philosophical human being – and then on the other hand the understanding of the word of God comprehended or caught in faith which affects the reason and the senses – the clear relation between the theological and philosophical human being? And finally: how does this simultaneous distinction and relation appear to the human being who is racked between such apparent contradictions?

Sin and righteousness It is clear that what we are given when we read about the philosophical and the theological human being in Luther is not a description of the human being before and after justification respectively. Luther is not talking about the philosophical man alias the fallen, sinful man, versus the theological man also known as the renewed and righteous man. What causes the division as well as the interdependence between the two kinds of men is the complex existence of the justified sinner. Luther’s anthropological accounts are fundamentally an attempt to describe the fact that if the human being believes in Christ, he is simul iustus et peccator. The simul is mirrored in Luther’s concept of the wholeness of the human being. As I have already mentioned, this wholeness is a quite complex matter. We have seen that the tripartite human being is also – as a whole – a bipartite human being split between spirit and flesh, good and bad. And this must be understood correctly: the fact is that this man is in grace and the spirit of Christ at the same time that he is not. Luther expresses this with great clarity in the Galatians commentary:27 Thus the same human being, the same soul, the same spirit in man – because he is united with and tainted by the affects of the flesh – is spirit inasmuch as he has knowledge of the things belonging to God, and flesh in so far as he is moved by the incentives of the flesh.28

Nor is there any question here of partly-partly or now this, now that. There is, Luther emphasizes, one whole man on both sides: ‘One whole man, totus homo, loves chastity and the same whole man is stirred by the incentives of lust. There 27 For the following, see Vind, God’s peace (see n. 12), p. 24. 28 WA 2, 586,4–7: ‘ita idem homo, eadem anima, idem spiritus hominis, quia affectu carnis mixtus et vitiatus est, quatenus sapit quae dei sunt, spiritus est, quatenus carnis movetur illecebris, caro est […].’

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are two whole men and one whole man, sunt duo toti homines et unus totus homo.’29 Thus man fights with and is against himself, ‘he will and he will not.’30 In the commentary on Galatians 5:19–21 Luther repeats what has just been explained, but now he adds the expressions inner/outer man and old and new man.31 He juxtaposes the inner, new and spiritual with the outer, old and carnal. Spiritual, inner and new man and carnal, outer and old man do not differ with respect to higher or lower parts of the human being, he insists (in the way that it characterized the tripartite human being divided as to spirit, soul, body): they differ with respect to their affectus, their aspirations or what affects them (compare the division between nature and quality in Magnificat). Man is governed by his life according to the spirit and to the flesh (compare again what we saw in Magnificat): The whole man with all his parts is spirit in so far as he knows what belongs to God, and the same whole man is flesh in so far as he is orientated towards himself – and again, let us remember that this does not mean that sometimes he is spirit, sometimes flesh. Both whole men, says Luther, are present at the same time in one whole man. Here one might object: if these two whole men are simultaneously present in the one whole man, what happens then to the effect or the reality of the justification in faith in Christ? Luther often says that in faith in Christ, sin, death and the devil are overcome, everything is free and allowed and the law is fulfilled32 – how does that go together with the continuing full presence of the old, outer and carnal man? In order to clarify this, two things can be said. The first answer entails an explanation of eschatology and the concepts of time and eternity in Luther’s thinking – and this we will not go into deeply, since it would take us too far to one side. What can briefly be said about it, is that Luther seems to take time as well as eternity into account in his concept of justification, by employing both a horizontal and a vertical aspect.33 Horizontal here means the expurgation of sin and the growth of righteousness, which the presence of Christ in faith commences, whereas vertical then describes the total righteousness in faith in Christ, which is present at the same time that man is still fully a sinner. The two words refer to diverse eschatological aspects of justification: justification is both totally real 29 WA 2, 586,15–17: ‘Totus homo est qui castitatem amat, idem totus homo illecebris libidinis titillatur. Sunt duo toti homines et unus totus homo.’ 30 WA 2, 586,17–18: ‘vult et non vult.’ 31 WA 2, 588,29–589,3. 32 WA 2, 490,27–33: ‘Iustificato autem sic corde per fidem, quae est in nomine eius, dat eis deus potestatem filios dei fieri, diffuse mox spiritu sancto in cordibus eorum, qui charitate dilatet eos ac pacatos hilaresque faciat, omnium bonorum operatores, omnium malorum victores, etiam mortis contemptores et inferni. Hic mox cessant omnes leges, omnium legum opera: omnia sunt iam libera, licita, et lex per fidem et charitatem est impleta.’ 33 See Vind, God’s peace (see n. 12), p. 22.

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here and now (and this is the background for the assertion about the freedom from sin in faith such as the one quoted a moment ago) and simultaneously absent (the vertical aspect), and it partially grows in a process which is completed after death (the horizontal aspect). This is a view of justification which seems to be inspired by biblical eschatology as it is sometimes expressed in an Already and a Not Yet.34 The other answer to the question of the becoming-real of justification, given that the whole man is both spirit and flesh, is to investigate Luther’s descriptions of the life of the holy man: the believer. This line of thought is more productive here and now, since it also leads us towards an answer to the other and last question posed: what kind of life experience falls to the share of the human being who is extended between the sharp distinction as well as the clear relation between the philosophical and the theological man? In the Operationes in Psalmos we find many texts illustrating this complexity. This is indeed in Luther’s eyes exactly the scope of the Psalter: to support and give practice to the believing sinner who must deal with the cross-theological existence.35

The life of the believer We have already to some extent glimpsed where we are being led. In the text from Psalm 2, Luther said that the human being must despise what he originally hoped for by the law, fear what he used to love and be confronted with death and the cross. He called it the cross and transition or phase of the Lord, and the keyword was faith. Through faith in Christ as God’s Word the human being must be separated from things visible and directed towards the invisible, ineffable and unthinkable good. It is a Janus-like existence in joy and servitude, trembling and rejoicing – to repeat what Luther captured in Psalm 2, verse 11. And the reason for its double-faced character is the simultaneous presence of sin and righteousness, a state which is not overcome in this life. The phase of simultaneity continues up to the physical death. 34 In an analysis of Luther and typology, I have argued for this interpretation, see Anna Vind, Latomus and Luther. The Discussion Whether Every Good Deed Is a Sin, Refo500 Academic Series, Göttingen 2016 (forthcoming). The article Anna Vind, “Latomus und Luther. Ein Streit um Worte,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 46 (2004): pp. 448–466 summarizes parts of the book. See also Anna Vind, “‘Christus factus est peccatum metaphorice’. Über die Theologische Verwendung Rhetorischer Figuren bei Luther unter Einbeziehung Quintilians,” in Creator est Creatura. Luthers Christologie als Lehre von der Idiomenkommunikation, ed. Oswald Bayer and Benjamin Gleede, Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann, Band 138, Berlin-New York 2007, pp. 109–113. 35 See for example AWA 2II, 14,21–15,15.

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When Luther develops further the deed of God exercised here, he refers to 1 Samuel 2,6–7 on killing to make alive and bringing down to raise up, and Isaiah 28:21 about God’s alien work serving his proper work, God’s opus alienum and opus proprium – entities whose presence in Luther’s thinking are very well known. In the midst of his explanation of Psalm 2, verse 9: ‘Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and shalt break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel,’ he says that this is an allegorical verse since it is of course not an invitation to literally kill and dismember the wicked. The kingdom of Christ, he emphasizes, consists of righteousness, truth and peace and is only ruled by the office of the word.36 Thus the destruction and killing is a spiritual destruction and killing, where the salvation, peace, life and grace of the flesh is crushed and driven out so that the Word of Christ, which is a spiritual word of salvation, peace, life and grace, may prosper. And to the carnal man this seems severe and cruel, since whenever he is curatively touched by the Word of God, one thing is felt, whereas another thing happens. In Psalm 3, in the comment to verse 3: ‘But thou, O Lord, art my protector, my glory, and the lifter up of my head,’ enounced after the Psalmist has complained that his many enemies all say that there is no salvation for him in God, Luther tries to account in greater detail for the situation of the one who speaks: Thus we see that the life of a righteous man following the example of Christ is accomplished through these three parts of the cross: that he is solitary, impotent and desperate inasmuch as thereby he is made worthy of the help, the glorification and the lifting up by God.37

And Luther goes on:38 this person is alone in the eyes of men and according to the senses (coram hominibus et iuxta sensum), but he is not at all alone in the eyes of God and in spirit (coram deo et in spiritu). He also seems weak and oppressed in the eyes of men, but in front of God and in the spirit he is the strongest and exclaims confidently with Paul in 2 Cor. 12:10 that ‘the weaker I am, the stronger.’ And finally, in the eyes of men and the sight of the unwise he is in despair and there is no salvation for him in God, but in the hiddenness of this storm he is heard and lifted up. Luther stresses the content of the expression ‘hiddenness of this storm,’ absconditum huius tempestatis, emphasizing that ‘this storm of tribulation so hides the being heard and the salvation, that anything but salvation is apparent, and not a listening, but only an angry God is sensed.’39 The point, 36 AWA 2II, 97,3–6. For the following, see AWA 2II, 97,12–98,2. 37 AWA 2II, 133,8–10: ‘Ita videmus oportere vitam iusti viri exemplo Christi his tribus partibus crucis consummari, ut sit solus, impotens et desperatus, quatenus ita dignus fiat deo susceptore, glorificatore, exaltatore.’ 38 See AWA 2II, 131,10–133,10. 39 AWA 2II, 131,26–132: ‘Vere, “in abscondito tempestatis”, quia tempestas ista tribulationis sic abscondit exauditionem et salutem, ut nihil minus quam salus appareat, et deus non exaudiens, sed indignans dumtaxat sentiatur.’

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Luther rounds off, is that the verse contains the word of grace and the strongest faith, which […] through the darkness of tempest, death and hell seeing God as an abandoner apprehends him as a sustainer, seeing him as a persecutor apprehends him as a helper and seeing him as a condemner apprehends him as a saviour. Because he [i. e. the believer] does not value things that are seen and felt, […] but he understands things that are not seen.40

And Luther ends by quoting Romans 8:24, that a hope, which is seen, is not a hope – for who can see what he hopes for? So seen from one perspective – that of God – Luther here describes a transition and a phase moving from negativity to positivity, where the key content of the relation between God’s opus alienum and his opus proprium is the triumph of the proper work, that is, of grace over sin, death and the devil. But seen from another perspective – from the perspective of the mortal coil – there is no development from what is negative to what is positive. Viewed with the eyes of the believer, his situation is marked by simultaneous negativity and positivity. This Luther concludes in the last part of his interpretation of Psalm 3:3.41 The psalm is written, he says, in order to teach and console the believer so that through patience he can have hope. ‘Because,’ as he continues, […] it is a difficult thing, and a work of divine grace, to believe in God as the lifter up of our head and the bestower of the crown in the midst of death and hell. For this lifting-up is hidden and what is seen is only desperation and no salvation in God. Thus we are taught to believe “in hope against hope” (Rom 4,18), which wisdom of the cross until this day is deeply hidden in a profound mystery. For there is no other way to heaven than the cross of Christ […]. The cross is the safest of all things. Blessed is he who perceives.42

At first sight, it seems that here we read only of the division between the philosophical and the theological man. The total concealment of the object of faith to our reason as well as the senses is strongly emphasized, and there seems to be no bridge between the two spheres. However we do also get an idea of the relation 40 AWA 2II, 132,10–15: ‘per caliginem tempestatis, mortis et inferni videns deum etiam derelictorem agnoscit susceptorem, deum persecutorem agnoscit auxiliatorem et deum damnatorem agnoscit salvatorem. Non enim, quae videntur et sentiuntur, aestimat […], sed ea, quae non videntur, intelligit. “Spes enim, quae videtur, non est spes. Quod enim quis videt, quid sperat?”’ 41 For this see AWA 2II, 136,12–137,4. 42 AWA 2II, 136,15–137,4: ‘Arduum est enim et divinae gratiae virtus deum credere exaltatorem capitis et coronatorem in media morte et inferis. Hic enim abscondita est exaltatio, et paret nonnisi desperatio et nulla salus in deo. Itaque contra spem in spem hic docemur credere, quae crucis sapientia nimis hodie est abscondita in mysterio profundo. Neque enim ad caelum alia via est quam ista crux Christi […] Crux autem res omnium tutissima. Beatus qui intelligit.’

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between the two spheres in the texts quoted above. Even though the object of faith is hidden to human sensory perception, Luther strongly claims that it is accessible to the same human being in faith and that it affects his reason and his senses. When he says that ‘blessed is he who perceives,’ he emphasizes that the believer apprehends the goodness of God through or despite its non-appearance. This does not mean that the believer merely translates hardship and adversity in the human world into luck and prosperity in relation to God. That would take the sting out of tribulation and make it of no consequence. It would also lead to yet another kind of false worship than the attempt to worship God through what seems good in the eyes of man since then we would immediately begin to speculate in hardship and adversity in order to secure ourselves in relation to God. So the apprehension or perception in faith means something else, something which influences human reason and the senses even though it is contrary to the very same. Let us look at how this should perhaps be understood – and let this be the last paragraph.

The experience of faith In Operationes – and in other texts – Luther very often stresses that justification cannot be grasped by any but the experienced.43 In Magnificat, he accentuates that what makes Mary special is exactly that she has experienced the deed of God.44 If we look yet again at Psalm 3 in Operationes, we see that here too he tries to explain this experience of faith. Again, he points to the fact that the being-heard by God is a being-heard in an unheard of and unthought of manner ‘so that nothing was less thought of than this help from and this being heard by the divine.’45 The believer nevertheless experiences the being-heard in faith: ‘I know that I was heard from above, but how I know not. He saved me from above and received me from on high […] but what this “above”, this “on high”, this hill is, I do not know.’46 This man is capable of saying with Job 13:15 that ‘though he slay me, yet I will trust in him.’ He has experienced that those who cry unto God and call upon him are heard and thus he can begin his eulogy by saying :

43 AWA 2II, 296,10–11: ‘Vivendo, immo moriendo et damnando fit theologus, non intelligendo, legendo aut speculando.’ 44 WA 7, 546,26–27; 550,13–14. 45 AWA 2II, 141,6–7: ‘ita ut nihil minus ibi sentiatur quam divinitatis auxilium seu exauditio.’ 46 AWA 2II, 140,11–13: ‘Desursum scio me exauditum, sed quo modo, ignoro. Eripuit me de alto et de summo accepit me […], sed non cognosco, quid sit hoc altum, hoc summum, hic mons.’

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I who have now experienced these things […], will so carry myself towards him henceforth, that I will flee unto him only with the greatest confidence. “I will not be afraid of several thousands of people” (Psalm 3,7), I am prepared to hope in him even though many more and greater things are to be borne.47

This experience of being heard in an unheard-of manner is not a vague and unspecific conviction or logical inference. It is communicated by one thing only, says Luther, and that is by Christ as the Word of God.48 By the death and resurrection of Christ, the greatest consolation is brought in and proclaimed to the human race, […] namely that death, the evil incident to all, is so overcome, so put under the feet of the believers, that it is compelled to work together for the enjoyment of that very life before anything else, which it seems to put an end to and swallow up (1 Cor. 15,54). Who here may not sing? Who may not rejoice with Christ? 49

Luther underlines that his reference here to singing, and more generally to music, is important, since ‘music itself has a natural power to stimulate and enliven minds.’50 Music, he says, is often used in the Bible as a tool for further emphasis and effect, as for example we see it in Elijah (4 Reg. 3:15) and Moses (Numbers 10:1–19). The spirit frequently employs music with reference to the joyous message of the virtue of Christ in order to prompt the believer to the crosstheological contempt for life and love for death. Luther’s interest in music has often been investigated.51 What we see here is a cross-theological side to it, which also shows itself explicitly in Luther’s interpretation of the little controversial Hebrew word selah in Psalm 3, a musical expression or indication often occurring in the Psalms.52 The example of the 47 AWA 2II, 138,2–7: ‘Ego, qui iam expertus sum […] talem me ergo eum habebo deinceps inaeternum, ut cum plenissima fiducia ad solum ipsu confugiam. “Non timebo etiam milia populi”, paratus sum in eum sperare, etiamsi multo plura et maiora ferenda sunt.’ 48 AWA 2II, 294,7–8: ‘quem solo verbo audivit sibi significari’; AWA 2II, 316,13–14 (16): ‘obiectum fidei et spei est deus promissor gratuitus, seu ipsum verbum promittentis atque aliud nihil.’ 49 AWA 2II, 143,30–144,3: ‘Scilicet commune malum omnium, mortem esse ita victam, ita credentibus subiectam, ut ad vitam (quam videtur absorbere (1 Cor 15,54)) cogatur plus ceteris omnibus cooperari. Quis hic non cantet? Quis non cum Christo exsultet?’ 50 AWA 2II, 144,6–7: ‘[…] quando muscia ipsa genuinam vim habet animos exacuendi et concitandi.’ 51 See the recent treatments in Johannes Block, Verstehen durch Musik: Das Gesungene Wort in der Theologie. Ein Hermeneutischer Beitrag zur Hymnologie am Beispiel Martin Luthers, Tübingen 2002; Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music. Principles and Implications, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2007 and Miika Anttila, Luther’s Theology of Music, Spiritual Beauty and Pleasure, Theologisches Bibliothek Töpelmann Band 161, Berlin/New York 2013. In Block, Verstehen durch Musik, p. 15–24, we find a presentation of previous work on the topic. 52 In the final concrete example of Luther’s appreciation of music in his article in the present

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selah goes even further than the above mentioned example referring to Elijah and Moses, since here there is not only a question of music serving as an improvement of understanding which might have come into existence anyway. In the example of the selah Luther calls attention to music as a fundamental vehicle for the workings of the spirit. Luther explains how the selah has been discussed by many interpreters, but in his eyes it has a very special meaning.53 It indicates a specific affect or emotion, insignis affectus, he says, by which the one who sings is for the time being influenced through the moving of the spirit. It only occurs when the spirit allows it, and it is thus wholly out of our hands. Exactly in order to indicate that this movement of the spirit is secret and unknown to man and cannot be foreseen, the little word selah is placed randomly all over the Psalter. Whenever the movement of the spirit appears, it requires the mind to be quiet and to pause, put aside the words of the Psalms and thus stand ready to receive the illumination or affection offered. And in this way the selah displays the difficulty and profundity of the divine message: […] when faith and hope are heard, they feel nothing, they experience nothing, they acknowledge nothing of the being heard, since these things are things that do not appear (Hebr. 11,1). This is what the word selah itself, at the end of this passage, particularly intimates, that is a deep subject and feeling which require a pause, and which ought not to be passed lightly over; so hard and difficult a thing is it to expect, and to wait for, salvation from the “holy hill” of God (cf. Psalm 3,5).54

Here Luther puts emphasis on the fact that it is impossible to cope with the angry God and the hiddenness of salvation without any help from the outside, and his reflections upon the selah are thus a description of what happens, when the human being comes to know the unknown, hear the unheard, see the unseen and comprehend the incomprehensible. In Psalm 5, verse 12, Luther describes the positive affects or emotions of the believer such as certainty and joy as rare and difficult feelings which need exercise and strengthening.55 They must be learned and experienced if they are to establish themselves. We also remember that in his comment on Psalm 3, verse 3 he has said that it was written in order to teach and console the believer so that through patience he can have hope. If we focus upon the words learning, experiencing and teaching, we may understand what happens in the selah as a part of book, see Wolfgang Fuhrmann, “Heart and voice – A Musical Anthropology in the Age of Reformation,” p. 106ff., Fuhrmann emphasizes a similar cross-theological interest in music (even though he does not use exactly this phrasing): an example where the dialectic between negativity and positivity is prominent. 53 For the following see AWA 2II, 130,26–131,9. 54 AWA 2II, 141,11–14. 55 AWA 2II, 281,5–6.

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an educational process, where the performed worship of Christ repeatedly but beyond human control illuminates and affects the hearer through the spirit despite the concealment of the object. The rareness and difficulty of the certainty and joy mentioned consist in the fact that the coming-into-existence of these affects takes the form of an occasional seeing through, or making sense of, the invisible despite the visible. So where does all this leave the believer who in this extrinsic and uncontrollable way is given to perceive what he cannot see, feel or understand? It seems to leave his own initiative to the outer confrontation with Christ, the Word of God as the place where he knows that this deed is present and can be sought. And this confrontation and deed does not at any time change the believer in his own eyes. Even though it changes him in the eyes of God, in his own eyes he remains a sinner leading a life in tribulation. What the Word of Christ does repeatedly, when it is heard through the spirit, is not to take away his cross, but to help him cope with it. Thus here we see how faith influences human reason and the senses (and this takes us back to the passage in the beginning of this paper, about philosophical man’s being absorbed and swallowed up as he becomes a theological man): The human perception is not transformed through faith, but is taken captive by the Word of God56 so that the failure of seeing, feeling and understanding may over time become less and less problematic – even though it will not ever disappear. This emphasis upon the repeated outer confrontation with the Word of God, with its impact on the formation and education (compare the German concept of Bildung) of the believer, brings into focus the importance of theological aesthetics or practical theology for Luther’s anthropology. We have seen how he chose to focus upon the effect of music for the formation of the believer and we find similar thoughts in other writings about the effects of images, catechesis, prayer and so on.57 56 AWA 2II, 141,17–19: ‘Adeo necesse est hic occidere et captivari “omnem intellectum in obsequium dei”’ (2 Cor. 10:5b). 57 Concerning his use of images, see for example his thoughts in Sermon on Preparing to Die 1519 (WA 2, 688,23–690,32) where he talks about holding up inner images of Christ, the saints and the cross in front of the eyes as protection against death, sin and hell. In his Foreword to the Large Catechism, Luther emphasizes that the Word of God is something to be studied over and over again. The reader can never assume that he possesses the content, on the contrary: he must become a child and stay so in order to receive the message. See Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche [=BSELK], 11. Aufl., Göttingen 1992, pp. 547–549. Finally with regard to prayer in his Auslegung Deutsch des Vater Unnser fuer dye Einfeltigen Leyen 1519, Luther repeats the thought of the selah. He reflects upon the difference between an outer recitation of prayer without worship (‘andacht’), which in itself is good and the even better case, in which the outer recitation becomes a servant to the inner truth. Here it is nevertheless still the case that pause and meditation are needed since there is no direct relation between the person’s understanding and the words: ‘Darumb seind sulch mundlich gebeth nit weyter

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Rounding off the discussion, we must conclude that central to the reading of Luther’s anthropology of the believer presented here is not a new self-understanding in the human being or a definable converted mind. According to the present interpretation, the believer does not experience himself as new or recreated but as old and sinful, wherefore he repeatedly takes refuge in Christ. Only if we choose to call this awareness of sin and the turn away from the self towards what comes from outside of the human being a new ‘self-understanding,’ could we tentatively apply the term. But since it is exactly a turn away from the self, I would prefer not to highlight the ‘self ’, but the performed worship of Christ, the external word, instead. The fact is that through the daily service to God in faith in Christ which is exercised in the believer, the latter learns to appreciate and praise that according to God’s promise he will be deeply – though, and this is important, invisibly, insensibly and incomprehensibly to himself, yet at the same time accessibly – affected by the presence of Christ and thus be set free from himself to serve his neighbour.

antzunemen, dan als eyn anreytzung und beweginge der selen, das sie dem sinne und begirdenn nach dencke, die die wort antzeygen […] Auch seind etlich psalmen mit dem wortleyn “Sela” (das ist “ruge”) unterscheyden und wirt nach gelesen, noch gesungen, tzy vormanen das, woe ein sunderlich stuck sich euget im gebet, das man da still halt und ruge, die meynung wol ztubetrachten und die wort so lange faren lasse,’ cf. WA 2, 82,12–21.

Wolfgang Fuhrmann

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The Polyphony of Law and Gospel

On 26 December 1538, the day of St. Stephen, a motet – that is, a polyphonic vocal composition on a devotional text – was sung at Martin Luther’s home; and Luther, who most probably participated in the performance, commented favourably upon the piece. This is related to us by one of his famous Tischreden: They sang the song: Haec dicit Dominus, for six voices, composed by Conrad Rupff, who wished that it should be sung to him in his death agony. It beautifully comprehends the difference between Law and Gospel, death and life. Two complaining voices lament Circumdederunt me gemitus mortis etc., against which four voices sing Haec dicit Dominus, de manu mortis liberabo populum meum etc. It is a very good and comforting composition.1

Luther’s table talk raises several interesting questions. Haec dicit Dominus consists indeed of six voices or vocal parts which perform two texts simultaneously.2

1 D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Weimar 1883ff (henceforth abbreviated: WA), Tischreden, 4. Band, Weimar 1916/R 1967 nr. 4316: pp. 215–216, here p. 215: ‘C a n t i l e n a : H a e c d i c i t D o m i n u s . 26. Decembris [1538]: canebant: Haec dicit Dominus, sex vocum, a Conrado Rupff compositum, qui cupiit in agone mortis hoc sibi decantari. Estque egregia muteta legem et evangelium, mortem et vitam comprehendens. Duo voces querulae lamentantur: Circumdederant [sic] me gemitus mortis etc., deinde quatuor uberschreien diese: Haec dicit Dominus, de manu mortis liberabo populum meum etc. Es ist sehr wol und trostlich componirt.’ Unless specified otherwise, all translations are mine. 2 For a modern edition of Haec dicit Dominus, see Hans Joachim Moser, ed., Die Kantorei der Spätgotik, Meistersätze deutscher Vielstimmigkeit, Berlin s.t. [c. 1928], nr. 5, pp. 22–23. The text goes: ‘Haec dicit dominus: de manu mortis liberabo populum meum, donec redimam eum. Ero mors tua o mors, morsus tuus ero inferne.’ (‘Thus speaketh the lord: I will liberate my people from Death’s hand; I will redeem it from death: O death, I will be thy death; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.’) With the exception of the first three words, this is taken directly from the Vulgate (where the last verse, however, reads ‘ero morsus tuus inferne,’ the reversal of the word order having taken place apparently for musical reasons (on which see further below). A recording of the motet can be found on Ein feste Burg ist unser

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Two inner voices in strict canon quote (textually as well as musically) a melody from Gregorian chant, the traditional music for the liturgy of the Catholic Church. The chant in question is the invitatory of the Office for the Dead, Circumdederunt me dolores mortis.3 This chant refers to the anxiety of near death, paraphrasing words from the psalms (Ps. 17:5–6, Ps 114:3), enhanced by a simple melodic reciting formula. The outer voices hold against that with a text from the prophet Hosea (13:14), saying that death is not the end, as the Lord keeps telling us. Fear and hope, or, as Luther put it, Law and Gospel are juxtaposed simultaneously in the music. Musical polyphony, technically the effect of a harmonic ordering of several voices singing different parts or melodies, translates into a polyphony of texts and meanings. And the liturgical chant of the Catholic Church, deeply engraved in Luther’s memory from his first life as an Augustinian monk, is opposed with a proclamation of the new faith (both texts, remarkably, being of biblical origin). Fear and hope were the feelings of any late-medieval Christian when it came to the last things, especially when one thought about one’s own hour of death, which is as uncertain as death is certain for all of us. The Art of Dying Well, the ars moriendi, was a subgenre of devotional literature flowering well before the Reformation as it did, later, in both Catholic and Lutheran territories (with the appropriate confessional modifications, to be sure).4 Conrad Rupsch, we learn from the comments in Luther’s Tischreden, had designated this piece to be his own dying motet, to be sung, presumably, at his death-bed while he would lay in agony. In fact, Rupsch had already been dead for eight years when Luther sang this motet,5 and Luther may well have known about the circumstances of Rupsch’s death. He had been acquainted with the composer; Rupsch had been chapel master to Luther’s patron, Frederick the Wise of Saxony, and he had collaborated with Luther and Johann Walther on the Deutsche Messe.

Gott – Musik der Reformation, Members of the Dresdner Kreuzchor and Capella Fidicinia under the direction of Hans Grüss (Berlin Classics 0091192BC). 3 The Office for the Dead, or Officium defunctorum, is a special prayer cycle in the Liturgy of the Hours. It is performed on All Soul’s Day (November 2), but it can also be said throughout the Church year, as part of the rite of the exequies or as a votive office in memory of a particular deceased. An invitatory is the introductory chant to Matins, the Hour sung at midnight as part of the Liturgy of the Hours. This Catholic rite was taken over by the Lutheran and the Anglican church in the 16th century, so Luther’s commensals would have been familiar with the ‘Circumdederunt me’ as well. 4 Among many specialized publications, see especially David William Atkinson, The English Ars Moriendi, New York/Berlin 1992, and the classic overview by Rainer Rudolf, Ars moriendi. Von der Kunst des heilsamen Lebens und Sterbens, Köln 1957. 5 Martin Just, “Rupsch, Conrad,” in Ludwig Finscher, ed., Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik (=MGG2), Kassel etc. 21994–2008, Personenteil 14 (2005), col. 689–690.

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Specifying music to accompany one’s own dying hours might seem a little bit eccentric today. But it was not an uncommon practice in the Middle Ages – for suitable chants or polyphonic pieces were regarded as a sort of musically enhanced prayer.6 During the sacrament of Extreme Unction, Monks would accompany a brother’s dying by reciting psalms and singing liturgical chant at his bed.7 Closer to the age of Reformation, one of the most astonishing pieces of fifteenth-century music deserves mention: Guillaume Du Fay’s setting of Ave regina celorum, called by musicologists Ave regina celorum III to distinguish it from two earlier settings of the same text by Du Fay.8 Not unlike Haec dicit Dominus, Du Fay’s Ave regina celorum III is based both in text and music on a liturgical melody, a chant in the praise of Mary, the Queen of Heaven. As one of the four Marian antiphons sung regularly during the Church Year, the monophonic melody would be well-known to all (Catholic) listeners in the 15th (or 16th) century, and Du Fay’s elegant paraphrase of it in his four-voice-setting would be instantly recognizable to his contemporaries, the same way we recognize a Jazz standard today, even if it is slightly varied in an actual performance by a Jazz musician. What distinguishes Du Fay’s piece from the dozens of other settings of this chant in the 15th (and 16th) centuries is that Du Fay involves a second text to interfere with the praise of Mary. Contrary to Haec dicit Dominus, this second text is not sung simultaneously with the first but in separate sections, which are inserted after each of the four rhyming couplets. This technique is reminiscent of the medieval technique of ‘troping’ a chant. In the ‘tropes’ to Ave regina celorum III, however, Du Fay does something quite out of the order: He names himself as dying and asks emphatically for Mary’s mercy. The third of these passages – setting the text ‘Miserere, miserere supplicanti Du Fay, sitque in conspectu tuo

6 ‘Bis orat qui cantat,’ he who sings prays twice, was an often-quoted, though apocryphal, sentence of St. Augustine. 7 This is documented as early as c. 750 in the so-called Gelasian Sacramentary; see Damien Sicard, “Christian Death,” in Aimé-Georges Martimort, ed., The Church at Prayer: An Introduction to the Liturgy, vol. 3: The Sacraments, Collegeville (Minnesota) 1987, pp. 221–240, here p. 224. 8 Heinrich Besseler, ed., Guilelmi Dufay Opera Omnia, Rome 1947–1966, vol. 5: Compositiones liturgicae minores, pp. 124–130. A more recent edition is Alejandro enrique Planchart, ed., Guillaume Du Fay Opera Omnia 01/06: Ave Regina caelorum 3, Santa Barbara 2008. An excellent recording can be found on Guillaume Dufay: Supremum est mortalibus bonum (Motets, Vol. 2), Cantica Symphonia under the direction of Giuseppe Maletto (Glossa GCD P31904). Concerning this much-discussed composition, see most recently Boris Voigt, “Musikalisierung des Sterbens – Guillaume Du Fays Ave regina caelorum III,” Die Musikforschung 64 (2011): pp. 321–334, with a review of the most important scholarly contributions. A note on spelling: The old reading ‘Dufay’ is now discarded by most scholars in favour of ‘Du Fay,’ which is regarded as the way the composer spelt his name.

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mors eius speciosa’9 – is the most famous, characterized by a sudden, even dramatic shift in texture and tonality – effectively a shift from, put in modern terms, C major to ‘c minor’.10 Du Fay’s testament tells us that he wished this motet to be sung at his deathbed by his fellow clerks at the cathedral of Cambrai, down to specifying exactly how many singers should take a part.11 Incidentally, we even know from the chapter acts of Cambrai cathedral that his wish could not be carried out: Time did not allow.12 But the motet was sung the other day at his funeral.13 The similarity between the dying-motets for Du Fay and Rupsch is evident, but there are also notable differences: Du Fay not only applies to the Queen of Heaven (regina celorum), but also begs for mercy in his own name. Both elements, the Marian devotion and the strongly personalized, perhaps even egocentric, approach, are entirely characteristic for late-medieval devotion. Rupsch, on the other hand, does not, in the text of the motet, refer to himself, but chooses two biblical passages instead, thereby exemplifying the typical protestant’s ‘objective’ confidence in scripture as well as demonstrating the central doctrine of Lutheranism – the difference between Law and Gospel, judgment and mercy, fear and hope. That Rupsch should choose Haec dicit Dominus/Circumdederunt me for the last moments of his life is all the more remarkable as, contrary to the claim in Luther’s Tischreden, it was not his composition at all, but by Josquin Desprez, the most renowned composer of the generation around 1500. Kaspar Khummer, who transmitted Luther’s dictum, probably got it wrong, or perhaps even Luther himself was confused (which is, however, unlikely).14 Luther and his fellow 9 ‘Have mercy, have mercy of the supplicant Du Fay; may his death be beautiful in gazing upon you.’ 10 Du Fay quoted this passage, although with the liturgically appropriate text, in the second Agnus dei of his mass on the same cantus firmus. It is even possible to establish an earlier version with a slightly curtailed quotation in a contemporary source, as shown by an ultraviolet investigation of the choirbook Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, MS 5557. See Rob C. Wegman, “Miserere supplicanti Dufay: The Creation and Transmission of Guillaume Dufay’s Missa Ave regina celorum,” The Journal of Musicology 13 (1995): pp. 18–54, esp. p. 33. 11 Jules Houdoy, Histoire artistique de la cathédrale de Cambrai ancienne église metropolitaine Notre-Dame: Comptes, inventaires et documents inédits, avec une vue et un plan de l’ancienne cathédrale, Lille 1880, p. 410. 12 Houdoy, Histoire artistique (see n. 11), p. 91; and Craig Wright, “Dufay in Cambrai: Discoveries and Revisions,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 28 (1975): pp. 175– 229, here p. 219. 13 Wright, Dufay in Cambrai (see n. 12), p. 219f. 14 If we can believe the report of Schlaginhaufen, Luther was well aware of Josquin’s authorship, having sung the motet already in 1532 (see WA Tischreden 2, nr. 1563: pp. 134–135). This is, however, far from certain. In Schlaginhaufen’s report, the heading is, mysteriously, ‘De cantilena Ein feste Burg,’ but then Schlaginhaufen proceeds with ‘Haec dicit Dominus. De haec cantilena dixit ad Doctorem Ionam […].’ What Luther said, however, does not help to

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singers most probably sang Haec dicit Dominus directly from the part-books of a recent music print, the Novvm et insigne opvs mvsicvm, published in Nuremberg in the preceding year.15 If they had referred to the index, they would have found the name of the true composer. In Josquin’s original version, however, the text of the other voices was the French secular poem ‘Nimphes, nappés,’ lamenting a state of utter melancholy at the brink of death, the chant ‘Circumdederunt me’ serving as a kind of commentary on that.16 Obviously it was Rupsch who provided the new biblical text identify the piece, and the relationship between the heading (referring of course to Luther’s famous song) and the motet (if it was indeed the same composition as the one sung in 1538) remains unclear. Aurifaber, in his German translation (printed conveniently at the same place in WA) identifies the motet with Josquin’s work in Rupsch’s adaptation, but Aurifaber was not present in Wittenberg when the piece was sung and is regarded as generally less reliable. The motet, however, must have surely existed in its contrafact version at this time, for Rupsch had died in 1530. In 1540 at the latest, Luther recognized the piece as genuine Josquin (completely disregarding Rupsch’s contribution) in his famous remark on ‘the master of the notes’: ‘Josquin, sagt er, ist der noten meister, die habens müssen machen, wie er wolt; die andern Sangmeister müssens machen, wie es die noten haben wöllen. Freylich hat der Componist auch sein guten geyst gehabt, wie Bezaleel [cf. Exodus 31, 1–6; 35, 30–35], sonderlich da er das: Haec dicit Dominus, und das Circumdederunt me gemitus mortis, wercklich und lieblich in einander richtet.’ See Johann Mathesius, Historien von des Ehrwirdigen in Gott seligen thewren Manns Gottes, Doctoris Martini Luthers […], Nuremberg 1566, p. 152, quoted after David Fallows, Josquin, Turnhout 2009, p. 399. See also Rob C. Wegman, ‘Luther’s Gospel of Music,’”, (https://www.academia.edu/8912457/Luthers_Gospel_of_ Music, last accessed 26. October 2014), a paper that deals more closely with this passage in the context of Luther’s theology of music. 15 Novvm et insigne opvs mvsicvm, sex, qvinqve, et qvatvor vocvm, cvivs in Germania hactenvs nihil simile vsqvam est editvm, Nuremberg 1537. In 1538, the publisher Hans Ott edited a second volume of what was obviously a successful endeavour. See Royston Robert Gustavson, Hans Ott, Hieronymus Formschneider, and the “Novum et insigne opus musicum” (Nuremberg 1537–1538), Diss. University of Melbourne. 16 Edition in Albert Smijers et al., ed., Werken van Josquin des Près, Amsterdam 1921–69, Vijfde Aflevering: Wereldlijke Werken. Bundel II, nr. 21, p. 54f. A beautiful recording of this version is provided by the King’s Singers, Renaissance: Josquin Desprez (RCA Victor Red Seal 09026618142). There has been some confusion concerning the original text of this piece (which was also transmitted with the text ‘Videte omnes populi’). Since Marcus van Crevel, Adrianus Petit Coclico: Leben und Beziehungen eines nach Deutschland emigrierten Josquinschülers, The Hague 1940, pp. 102–134, initiated the discussion, important contributions include: Bonnie J. Blackburn, “Josquin’s Chansons: Ignored and Lost Sources,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 29 (1976): pp. 30–76: here 50–53; John Milsom, “Circumdederunt: ‘a Favourite Cantus Firmus of Josquin’s’?” Soundings 9 (1982): pp. 2– 10; Martin Just, “Josquins Chanson Nymphes, Nappés als Bearbeitung des Invitatoriums Circumdederunt me und als Grundlage für Kontrafaktur, Zitat und Nachahmung,” Die Musikforschung 43 (1990): pp. 305–335. Fallows, Josquin (see n. 14), p. 299, also expresses some caution whether ‘Nimphes, nappés’ was the original text. On melancholy in late-medieval song, see Wolfgang Fuhrmann, “Tristre plaisir et douloureuse joie. Die Stimme der Melancholie in der französischen Chanson des 15. Jahrhunderts”, in Gestimmte Texte, ed. Christiane Ackermann and Hartmut Bleumer = LiLi. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 171 (2013): pp. 16–46, on ‘Nimphes, nappés’, see especially pp. 38–45.

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‘Haec dicit Dominus’ for the four of the six voices originally carrying the French lament. Such re-texting, usually transforming a (more or less) secular composition into a sacred one, was a common practice at the time (the result of which is called ‘parody’ or, less ambigously, contrafact by modern musicology). And Hans Ott, the publisher, placed Rupsch’s name in these four partbooks to give him credit for this; for fitting a new text to pre-existent musical phrases is a task which requires expert musicianship indeed. Naturally, the two canonic voices quoting the beginning of the Office of the Dead in text and melody were already part of Josquin’s composition. At this point, the readers may feel compelled to ask: What does this seemingly irrelevant episode of Luther’s domestic music-making tell us about musical anthropology in the age of the Reformation? Would it not be more appropriate to address the big issues of Reformation musical politics, the controversial discourse on the spiritual uses and abuses of music according to the three major Reformers, and some of the minor factions and splinter groups as well? In what follows, I will try to show that this event in Luther’s household tells us something very important not just about Luther’s musical taste, but of musical anthropology in the Age of the Reformation in general. But first, we indeed have to step back and look at the wider horizon of musical debate in the 16th century.

2.

Advocating Music in the Age of Reformation: Hans Ott and Johannes Zwick

There was considerable dissent between the various factions of the Reformation movement when it came to the use of singing and music during the service.17 To demonstrate this, we just have to turn to the already mentioned music print Luther most probably used in 1538, the Novum et insigne opus musicum, a 17 The literature on Reformation attitudes to music is vast. Among the most substantial publications I name the following that were particularly helpful in the preparation of this paper: H.P. Clive, “The Calvinistic Attitude to Music, and Its Literary Aspects and Sources,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance. Travaux et documents 19 (1957): pp. 80–102, 294– 319 and 20 (1958): pp. 79–107; Charles Garside, Jr., The Origins of Calvin’s Theology of Music: 1536–1543, Philadelphia 1979 (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 69, 4); Hubert Guicharrousse, Les Musiques de Luther, Genève 1995 (Historie et société 31); Markus Jenny, Zwinglis Stellung zur Musik im Gottesdienst, Zurich 1966 (Schriftenreihe des Arbeitskreises für evangelische Kirchenmusik H. 3); Oskar Söhngen, “Theologische Grundlagen der Kirchenmusik,” in Leiturgia. Handbuch des evangelischen Gottesdienstes. Vierter Band: Die Musik des evangelischen Gottesdienstes, ed. Karl Ferdinand Müller and Walter Blankenburg, Kassel 1961, pp. 1–266. Not exclusively devoted to theological debates and concentrating on the polemics against polyphony, but still very relevant to our matter and very comprehensively documented is Rob C. Wegman, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe 1470–1530, New York 2005.

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collection of sacred polyphony published in Nuremberg, 1537, and dedicated to Emperor Ferdinand. In his dedication preface, the publisher Hans Ott rallied against the ‘barbarism’ of banning the art of music from churches. He praised the Emperor for cultivating church music even after ‘the fatal case that some ignorant men in Church have raised the barbarism that some think it an impious deed to use music in churches, and therefore cast it away with barbaric hatred.’18 To make public the full nature of this abominable crime, Ott plunges himself into an encomium musicae, a laudatory speech on music, typical for a preface to a music print in the 16th century. Ott dutifully reels off the traditional topics: Music is a part of the seven liberal arts, it helps men to recreate themselves after strenuous work, its worth is attested to by both pagan and Christian authorities. After quoting Sirach (chapter 4) that ‘wine and music exhilarate the heart’ – an adage which also embellishes the title page of the Opus musicum – Ott notes that music is more helpful than both sleep and wine in that it does not incite to vices – at least not if it is wedded to sacred texts. It is for good reason, then, that during all centuries music has been used for sacred subjects, and not only for the reason that the vulgar crowd is attracted by its charms and flows together more often at the churches – but also because the souls, at this occasion relieved of other solicitudes, can with greater zeal understand the holy subjects. Therefore, the barbarism of those who exclude music from the churches is rightly censured.19

Ott goes on to conjure up the examples of great saints, prophets and kings (like David) against that barbarism, in his mind one of the great stupidities of the age. And he puts all his trust in the emperor, who provides probably the last refuge the art of music can find these days.20 Ott’s preface vividly evokes the conflicting opinions and politics on the subject of church music. How can we account for these differences? Certainly many 18 Novvm et insigne opvs mvsicvm, sex, qvinqve, et qvatvor vocvm, cvivs in Germania hactenvs nihil simile vsqvam est editvm, Nuremberg 1537, tenor partbook, preface, fol. A3–A3v: ‘Tanto ma|ior T.[uae] Maiestatis laus est, quod postqua[m] fatali quodam casu haec Barbaries ab hominibus indoctis in Ecclesiam invecta est, ut quidam nefas esse ducant, Musica in templis uti, ideoqu[e] eam Barbarico odio prosus abiecerint, Maiestas T.[ua] vere Regio studio, & vetere loco artem omniu[m] suavissimam habet, & insignes eius artifices, clementer & liberaliter fovet.’ For a full translation of Ott’s preface, see Gustavson, Hans Ott (see n. 15), II, pp. 562–567. 19 Opus musicum, fol A4: ‘Atqu[e] haec forte causa fuit, cur ad sacra omnibus seculis adhibita sit Musica, non eò solum, ut his ceu illecebris, profanum vulgus caperetur, ac frequentius ad templa conflueret. Sed ut animi ista occasione ab alijs curis abducti, sacra maiore studio cognosere[n]t. Quare merito exagitatur quorundam barbaries, qui Musicam templis exludunt.’ 20 He dedicates the volume to Ferdinand, not to attain any benefices, ‘sed quod per indoctos & barbaros homines ex templis & consuetudine hominum eiecta Musica, te fere vnum hoc tempore receptatorem & patronu[m] habet.’ Opus musicum, fol A4v.

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factors, not least of a political and economical nature, came into play here and nourished the dissent between Catholics, Lutherans, Zwinglians and Calvinists, to name only the main fractions. But I believe that basically this dissent can be reduced to a single problematic issue: the relation between heart and voice.21 This relation constitutes an anthropological model of theological origin which has deeply influenced the ways not only of thinking about music, but of making and experiencing music from Late Antiquity to Early Modern Times, and indeed to and beyond Enlightenment. It is at the bottom of the controversies surrounding the use, abuse or non-use of singing and music in the age of Reformation. In what follows, I will concentrate the discussion, rather conservatively, on the three major figures of the new religious movements, because they represent as different opinions on the subject as one could wish for: the institution or, rather, re-institution of congregational singing along with the conservation of art music which is connected with the person of Martin Luther, the restriction to (rhymed) psalms for the congregation which was enforced by Jean Calvin and the banishment of singing and music altogether, as contrived by Huldrych Zwingli. But first, let us have a look at a minor figure who nevertheless made an important contribution to the debate: the reformer at Constance, Johannes Zwick. In a text published probably in 1533 or 1534 as a foreword to the new hymnal of Constance, his ‘Preface to the protection and sustainment of regular singing at church,’ Zwick defends congregational singing against Zwingli’s measures in nearby Zurich. The central argument of his shrewd essay, certainly the one he dwells on most, is the question of the relation between heart and voice. Zwick refers here to a passage from the epistle to the Ephesians (5:18): ‘Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord,’ a locus classicus in the discussion. Zwick writes: Paul commands the Ephesians to speak to themselves in hymns and spiritual songs. If they shall speak of them, they may also sing them. […] Now someone says, he talks about “singing in your heart.” To answer: That one should sing in the heart and with the heart, does not imply that it is prohibited to do so with the voice and words; just as the saying “we must pray to God in spirit and in truth” does not imply that we must not pray with words.22

21 For a discussion of the trope ‘heart and voice,’ see Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Herz und Stimme. Innerlichkeit, Affekt und Gesang im Mittelalter, Kassel 2004 (Musiksoziologie 13). 22 Philipp Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied von Martin Luther bis auf Nicolaus Herman und Ambrosius Blaurer, Stuttgart 1841, p. 794–797. Zwick quotes another of Paul’s sayings here, ‘I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also’ (1 Corinthians 14:15), translating pneuma (spirit), perhaps not inappropriately, with ‘breath.’ Note also that here and throughout singing in the service (or in private devotion) is regarded only as a special form of prayer. This is another absolutely traditional conviction, see Fuhrmann, Herz und Stimme (see n. 21), pp. 12–14 and passim.

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And here Zwick really comes to the gist of the matter: To sing to God is a worthwhile task for a Christian only if his or her heart is with it, if one sings with ‘heart and voice’ at the same time. And if one doesn’t? Zwick has thought about that, too: Now they say, Yes, but the heart is not always with the matter. To which I answer: It does not follow that singing would be always against God and not allowed in the congregation. For we would have to abolish also collective prayer, the sermon and other things, and Christ should not have had the Last Supper for the heart of Judas. If it is true that singing is nothing without the heart participating, we must draw the necessary conclusion that singing is useful and good whenever the heart is participating. And some say the heart is enough and we need not add the voice. To which I answer: Just as one cannot pray well with words alone, and the heart not participating, one also cannot sing well with the voice alone, and the heart not participating. On the other hand, one can pray in the heart without words, and one can sing in the heart without voice. This is all true. But it does not follow that one should not pray with words, or sing with the voice. […] If heart, word and voice together act toward God, and man speaks or sings outwardly and inwardly to God, he prays and sings in the best possible manner. Because word and voice help the heart in many ways. They make it more ardent, and help that it does not forget itself. It protects itself against many other fantasies and occasional thoughts. For word and voice have their own manner, effect and quality, even their life just like the heart, be it in matters spiritual or in matters of the flesh.

Luther may have liked Zwick’s insistence on the spiritual effects of the words and the voice on the heart, although he probably would not have shared Zwick’s distance to artful polyphony which the latter considers (like many other Reformers) as popish abuse of music. But apart from that matter, Zwick very succinctly sums up the arguments pro and contra Christian singing, deciding in favour of music in the end. It must be emphasized that there is nothing particularly original in Zwick’s argument: Indeed, his way of reasoning is at times surprisingly close – even in the scholastic manner of objection and answer – to the manner in which St. Thomas Aquinas dealt with the same matter three centuries earlier in his Summa theologiae.23 But this need not imply a direct influence, only a rational analogy. Just as well, we may look at Martin Bucer’s way of advocating congregational singing in Strasbourg.24 There are different nuances, different angles, different ways to approach the problem, but these authors – and many others in the Early Church, the Middle Ages and the Age of Reformation – share, as their basic premise, the idea that the engagement of the heart is indispensable and superior to the activity of the voice when it comes to prayer in thought, speech, or song. 23 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II – II:91 = S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera, ed. Robert Busa S.J., Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1980ff (Indicis Thomistici supplementum), 2, p. 646. 24 Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17), pp. 10–13.

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The relation between heart and voice, then, is a hierarchical opposition; one term always outweighs the other. Even an advocate of singing in the church like Zwick does grant that it is tolerable to sing in the heart without using the voice but it is not helpful at all to sing with the voice without the heart. The harmony, or conflict, between heart and voice is, then, in some ways analogical to the distinction between inner and outer man, or between spirit and flesh, both hierarchical oppositions as well. It refers to a way of performing music, and at the same time of producing a – Christian – concordance between your way of living, thinking, feeling, acting and your way of singing. ‘Cantate oribus, cantate moribus,’ said Augustine: ‘Sing with your mouths, sing with your lives.’25 Defining the tension between heart and voice was a central point of the Reformation – not only in regard to music, but also to prayer and all forms of outward worship in general. Re-instituting the congregation of Christians into their old rights was only possible if they were given songs which they could sing with understanding, that is, from the heart. These songs therefore must stand, as a minimum requirement, in the vernacular. The Early Christians – model and exemplar of any church congregation – were ‘one heart and one soul,’ as the Acts of the Apostles tell us (Acts 4:32). It was only logical that they should also sing with ‘one voice,’ and indeed the early church fathers emphasize this singing una voce again and again.26 But the relationship between heart and voice also provided ample stuff for conflict. In fact, it had been a battlefield for at least thousand years or more before the eve of the Reformation, and though the whole story is far beyond the scope of this article, it is important to understand the roots of the conflict. As I tried to show in my Ph. D. thesis, the distinction between heart and voice goes back to an anthropological model first developed in the prophetic writings of Old Israel, in turn possibly influenced by Egyptian wisdom. ‘Heart,’ in the language of the prophets, refers to the total inner being of a person, thought and feeling alike, but also to the behaviour arising from that inner being. In the time of the prophets, a conflict between the inner conviction and the outward behaviour is often noted. This is working especially on a moral level: While the people of Israel do worship their God dutifully, they do not act in normal life according to His precepts. This insight leads into a criticism of ritualized behaviour which is immediately relevant to our subject. The most famous of these passages is Isaiah’s warning: ‘Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near 25 Augustinus, Sermo 34, 6, in Id., Sermonum classes quatuor, necnon sermones dubii = Patrologia latina 38, c. 211: ‘Cantate oribus, cantate moribus’ (a verbal translation would be ‘Sing with your mouths, sing with your manners’). 26 Ambrosius Dohmes, “Die Einstimmigkeit des Kultgesanges als Symbol der Einheit,” Liturgie und Mönchtum. Laacher Hefte 1 (1948): pp. 67–72; Fuhrmann, Herz und Stimme (see n. 21), p. 82f.

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me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: […]’ (Isaiah 29:13–14). Earlier – and even more explicit – is the prophet Amos when he thunders in the name of the Lord: ‘Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols’ (Amos 5:23). If I am not mistaken, such pronouncements do not constitute a criticism of ritual per se, but they do introduce the idea that ritual is worthless if it is not accompanied by the real inner conviction, a conviction or condition which also must result in a life according to the commandments of the Lord. The ‘heart’ – leb in Hebrew – is here the heart of a collective subject, the people of Ancient Israel. But in its origins, the metaphor of the heart is quite naturally derived from the individual human being with his or her very unmetaphorical, real beating heart – which is regarded, in this anthropological model, as the seat of feeling and thinking, we could say, of consciousness. The idea translated itself very easily into Christian terms. In fact, in chapter 15 of the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus quotes the Isaiah pronouncement quite appropriately in a conflict with scribes and Pharisees. But it was the rules laid down in the epistles of Saint Paul which gained canonical status in the debate about the use of singing in religious services. Some passages in the epistles by (or ascribed to) Paul would stress the interiority of worship to a point where it is left open to interpretation whether one should honour God with one’s voice as well as with one’s heart. All these passages are almost tantalizingly ambiguous; they can be interpreted one way or the other, in favour of singing as well as against it. Johannes Zwick had already quoted the passage from the epistle to the Ephesians. In almost the same words, this passage from the – probably authentically Pauline – epistle to the Colossians tells us, again, to admonish each other – or ourselves? (‘heautous’ can be translated both ways) in songs and to sing ‘in your hearts,’ or in the Greek original ‘en tais kardíais,’ is quite ambiguous.27 Until now I have insisted that the prophets did not criticize the ritual per se, but only participation in the ritual without inner conviction. But matters got more complicated when Jewish religious culture in late Antiquity was influenced by Greek philosophical theories. For instance, the doctrine of Neoplatonism, to put it very simply, would tend to distinguish between spiritual ideas and the material world, favouring, of course, the former. It is easy to read the famous sentence in St. John’s Gospel ‘God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth’ from a platonistic point of view (if it was not already written from such a point of view). The claim that we must worship in the 27 Oskar Söhngen calls this the ‘burning issue’ of this biblical passage (‘das heiße Eisen dieses Textwortes’); Söhngen, “Theologische Grundlagen” (see n. 17), p. 16. Even more problematic is another passage in Corinthians 14 (quoted above, n. 22).

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spirit suddenly becomes the claim that we could and should worship only in the spirit, in utter silence, without outer deeds, words or songs. Reading Paul’s pronouncements in such a way is also possible. Already in the first centuries of Christianity, such interpretations were brought forth. And the qualms many felt about outward ceremony became more outspoken after the big turnabout of Christendom’s official toleration in the fourth century, when big churches could be built and the singing of hymns or psalms was found to attract many to the new faith. So aggressively many argued against the use of song, that Niceta of Remesiana had to write, around the year 400, a treatise De utilitate hymnorum defending Christian singing in general, much in the manner Johannes Zwick would do more than a millennium later. Some of the religious dissenters in the twelfth and thirteenth century must have polemicised in a similar manner as well, which probably motivated Thomas Aquinas to argue afresh the case of singing in liturgy.28

3.

Dialectics 1: Heart versus voice (Zwingli)

The same conviction was carried out by some of the more radical, ‘leftist’ movements of the early Reformation such as the Anabaptists of Zurich. Their leader Conrad Grebel was totally opposed to congregational singing.29 As Markus Jenny has argued, such a negative position was not embraced by Zurich Reformer Huldrych Zwingli.30 According to Jenny’s interpretation, Zwingli was not at all opposed to congregational singing, at least, he never wrote or said anything to that effect; rather, he was forced by the spiritualist extremists to renounce congregational singing for political, not theological reasons – with the effect that any kind of music was totally banished from the churches of Zurich until 1598. Jenny’s interpretation seems hard to reconcile, however, with Zwingli’s ‘Interpretation and justification of the theses or articles’ (in his Zurich disputation 1523), especially concerning the articles 44–46. Here, in the context of a general discussion on prayer, Zwingli explicitly denies the possibility of conforming mouth and mind (read: heart) in singing.31 28 29 30 31

See Fuhrmann, Herz und Stimme (see n. 21), pp. 49–50, n. 33 on p. 76 and pp. 202–204. See Söhngen, Theologische Grundlagen (see n. 17), n. 38 on p. 20. Jenny, Zwinglis Stellung (see n. 17), esp. pp. 12–33. ‘Darnach pru˚lt der andacht nit vor den menschen, wie die unsinnigen bu˚ler thu˚nd, sunder er gadt an sin stille. Da kann er sich aller bast mit got ersprachen; denn inn zücht nitt gsicht, nit ghörd von der gu˚ten betrachtung ab. Es ist wider aller menschen vernunfft, das man in grossem gethös unnd gthön sinnig oder andächtig sye. [Cor 14:15] Will ich mit dem atem einen psalmen reden, so sol es mit dem gmu˚t geschehen, das ist: wiltu mit dem mund einen psalmen reden, lu˚g, das munnd und gmu˚t mit einandren ziehind. Nun ist mund und gmu˚t, so man bättet, nit lang uff eim weg; vil weniger gemu˚t und gsang.’ Huldreich Zwingli,

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Zwingli opens his discussion with the spiritualistic reading of John 4:24 mentioned above (‘God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth’): ‘Those who truly pray call upon God in spirit and in truth, without bellowing around before men.’32 And for those who have not yet drawn the right conclusion from this, Zwingli explains patiently: ‘Here St Paul teaches us not to blare or murmur in the temples, but he shows us the true singing that pleases God, that we should not sing the praise and glory of the Lord with the voice, as the singers of the Jews, but with the heart.’33 (In his exposition of the Canon of the Mass – written in the same year, 1523 – Zwingli drove the same point home: ‘In the hearts, he says, not in the voices. For the psalms and laudatory chants for God should be treated such that our minds sing to God […].’34) According to Zwingli, prayer can only be held in silence. Therefore the devout does not bellow like the mad lovers do, but goes into a quiet room. For he can much better talk to God there, for neither seeing nor listening distracts him from his good contemplation. It is against human reason that one would be contemplative and pious with great rumour and noise. […quoting Cor 14:15:] “I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also.” This means: if you wish to say a psalm with your mouth, so be careful that mouth and mind are together. But mouth and mind in prayer are not for a long while together; much less mind and singing.

After this observation, Zwingli quotes Amos 5:23. Jenny tries to explain these and similar comments by Zwingli as directed against the pre-reformatory use of music in the medieval church.35 He notes that Zwingli originally wanted to use the Graduale (i. e., the traditional liturgical book containing the mass chants) in the churches of Zurich. According to Jenny, it was only under Grebel’s pressure that Zwingli abolished chant and music in the churches altogether.36 But it means drawing a very fine distinction between the criticism of old practices and the advocation of new ones if we assume that Zwingli attempts just

32 33

34 35 36

“Auslegen und Gründe der Schlußreden (14. Juli 1523), Der sechs und viertzigst artickel,” in Huldreich Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke, ed. Emil Egli and Georg Finser, 2 (Corpus Reformatorum 89), Reprint: München 1981, pp. 1–457, here p. 351f. ‘Ware anbetter ru˚ffend Got imm geist und warlich an, on als geschrey vor den menschen,’ Zwingli, Auslegen und Gründe… Der vier und viertzigst artickel (see n.31), p. 348. ‘Hie leert uns Paulus nit das pru˚len und murmlen in den templen, sunder er zeigt das war gsang an, das gott gevellig ist, dass wir nit mit der stimm, als der Juden senger, sunder mit dem hertzen die lob und bryß (preis) gotes singind.’ Zwingli, Auslegen und Gründe… Der fünff und viertzigst artickel (see n.31), p. 350. ‘In cordibus enim inquit, non vocibus. Sic igitur psalmi laudesque dei tractandi sunt, ut mentes nostre˛ deo canant […].’ Huldreich Zwingli, De canone missae libelli apologia (1523), in: Huldreich Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke II, 617–625: 621. See n. 30. Jenny, Zwinglis Stellung (see n. 17), p. 13f.

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the former and not the latter task. He criticised the traditional church on the basis of his understanding of the Bible, so the criticism conveys his positive theological convictions as well; though the outlook is admittedly more oriented to the past than to the future. For instance, in his comment on Cor. 14:15 quoted above, Zwingli continues the sneering reference to traditional practice with a remark which gets as close to a prescription of future behaviour as possible: ‘Therefore, it would be my serious counsel not to murmur the psalms, but to read and interpret them and to see the beautiful meaning enclosed in them by the Holy Spirit.’37 Even if we do not accept this as a kind of normative prescription, the necessary conclusion is that Zwingli had nothing to say on singing in the Reformed church at all. The passage concerning the Graduale that was quoted by Jenny in order to prove Zwingli’s interest in church music, is, on closer inspection, not very convincing evidence. Zwingli – who was, we must not forget, in private life a very good musician himself 38 – sounds somewhat less than enthusiastic about mass chants: ‘The Anabathmicon which we call “Graduale,”39 shall be reduced to shorter note durations; for what is more disgustful than so many voices who blare on one vowel? And let the [texts of the] Graduale at least be taken from Holy Writ.’40 It is in any way hard to believe that Zwingli would have succumbed to the pressure of Grebel to abolish singing in the church if he had attributed any theological significance to that. Otherwise, there is silence in Zwingli’s writings on this subject. And this silence alone seems significant enough. It seems, then, that Zwingli’s abolition of singing in Zurich was not just a calculation of religious-political tactics, but rooted in his theological interpretation of the trope of ‘heart and voice’. We can only speculate whether Zwingli thought that these principles should be generally observed, and whether he would 37 ‘Darumb wäre min ernstlicher rat, das man anstatt des psalmenmurmlens die psalmen läs und sy uffschlusse und sähe den schönen sinn des heligen geists, der darinnen lyt,’ Zwingli, Auslegen und Gründe … Der fünff und viertzigst artickel (see n. 31), p. 350. 38 See below, n. 61. 39 ‘Graduale’ was, from the early Middle Ages onwards, the term for the liturgical book which contained the texts, and sometimes also notated music, of the chants sung at mass, while ‘anabathmicon’ seems to be Zwingli’s humanist fancy translation of the Latin word into Greek. Both mean more or less the same thing: a stair or steps to be climbed (the prefix “ana” in “anabathmicon” means “up”, so this is literally an “up-the-steps”-book). Why the book of mass chants should have been named ‘Graduale’ in the first place is not known, but in translating the early-medieval Zwingli obviously referred to the popular etymology that the word alludes to the steps (gradus) which the cantor during mass has to climb to sing certain solo chants. The first of these chants is very appropriately also called ‘Graduale’ in liturgical terminology. See, on the whole question, David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook, Oxford 1993, pp. 295f. 40 ‘Anabathmicon, quod nos ‘Graduale’ vocamus, ad breviorem mensuram notarum stringatur; quid enim fastidiosius audiri potest, quam tot voces sub una vocali boare? Sit autem et Graduale ex sacris tantummodo literis,’ Zwingli, De canone missae epichiresis, in Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke 2 (see n. 31), p. 602.

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have departed from his position in later years. But it is important to notice that such a way of thinking was rooted in the structure of the trope of ‘heart and voice’. This structure consists, as was noted above, in a hierarchical opposition, in which the heart is always dominant and can, in the extreme case, be self-sufficient, while the voice is always subservient and can, in the extreme case, be silenced. This is true for Zwingli, the young Calvin at least took a very near position,41 and even Luther once uttered similar thoughts.42 To sum up, it was certainly possible for extremely ascetic or spiritualistic factions throughout the history of Christendom to interpret the Pauline words as a virtual prohibition to sing outwardly, with the voice. But it was equally possible to argue for the opposite interpretation, just like Johannes Zwick did in Constance. In fact, this was the mainstream position of the church in the West and in the East prior to the Reformation. And it should stay the position of Jean Calvin and Martin Luther – though with significant differences.

4.

Dialectics 2: Emotion versus Understanding, Ethics versus Magic (Calvin)

Of all reformers, Calvin came probably next to the liturgical practice of Early Christianity in this regard, though his insistence on singing only biblical psalms (paraphrased in rhymed verses) was probably not so close to the practice of the Early Church, with its more informal repertoire of ‘psalms, hymns and spiritual songs,’ as he believed.43 In any case, Calvin insisted time and again that the psalms should be sung with mouth and heart.44 In a letter to the council of Geneva written early in 1537, he stated about the psalms: ‘We desire them to be sung in the 41 See Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17), p. 8f. 42 WA 7, p. 571: ‘Also lehret auch Christus Matth. 6, daß wir nit viel Wort sollen machen, wenn wir beten, denn solchs tun die Ungläubigen, die meinen , sie werden durch viel Wort erhöret, wie auch jetzt in allen Kirchen viel Läuten, Pfeifen, Singen, Schreien und Lesen ist, aber – ich besorg – gar wenig Gottes Lob, der da will im Geist und Wahrheit gelobt sein, wie er sagt Joh. 4.’ Here cited after Jenny, Zwinglis Stellung (see n. 17), p. 8. 43 For a (revisionist) review of the evidence, see James McKinnon, “On the Question of Psalmody in the Ancient Synagogue,” Early Music History 6 (1986): pp. 159–191; Id., “Desert Monasticism and the Later Fourth-Century Psalmodic Movement,” Music & Letters 75 (1994): pp. 505–521. 44 For a careful exposition of how Calvin’s thought about liturgical music developed, see Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17). I believe, however, that Garside over-emphasizes the change in Calvin’s thought between the relatively neutral attitude to sung prayer in the first edition of the Institutiones christiani (1536) and its more outspoken advocating in the Articles of 1537. It is more a shift of accent than a real change. Garside explains this shift, however, quite convincingly by referring to the influence of Martin Bucer on Calvin and Calvin’s experience of congregational singing in Strasbourg and Basel.

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church, as we have the example of that in the ancient church and even the testimony of St Paul, who says that it is good to sing in the congregation with mouth and heart.’45 In his commentary to the notorious passage on ‘singing in your hearts’ in Colossians, Calvin pleaded for the singing of psalms during the service more explicitly – and explains what ‘the heart’ is supposed to mean: Singing in your hearts [Col 3:16]. This pertains to the affect. For as we should incite others to do, so we ourselves must sing from the heart, so that there is not just an outward sound of the mouth. However, we should not understand it in such a way, as if [Paul] ordained everyone to sing inwardly. Instead, both ways should be conjoined, though the hearts should go forward and the tongues should follow.46

The same point is emphasized in his ‘Epistre au Lecteur’ preceding his La Forme des prieres et chantz ecclesiastiques (first edition 1542). But here he centres on the aspect of reception, stating categorically that the power of music is immense: ‘And in truth we know by experience that singing has a great force and power to move and inflame the heart of men, to invoke and laud God with more vehement and ardent zeal.’47 To Calvin, singing ‘has great force and vigour to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a more vehement and ardent zeal.’48

45 ‘L’aultre part est des pseaulmes, que nous désirons estre chantés en l’esglise comme nous en avons l’exemple en l’esglise ancienne et mesme le tesmoignage de s[ainct] Paul, qui dict estre bon de chanter en la congrégation de bouche et de cueur.’ Jean Calvin, “Letter to the Council of Geneva, shortly before 14 January 1537,” in Ioannis Calvini Epistolae volumen I (1530–sep. 1538), ed. Cornelis Augustijn, Frans Pieter van Stam, Genève 2005 (Ioannis Calvini Opera Omnia, Series VI: Epistolae), pp. 157–170, here p. 168. 46 ‘Canentes in cordibus. Hoc ad affectum pertinet. Nam sicuti alios incitare, ita etiam ex corde canere debemus, ne sit externus duntaxat oris sonus. Quanquam non ita accipiendum est, acsi unumquemque sibi intus canere iuberet, sed utrunque vult coniungi, modo corda linguas praeeant.’ Jean Calvin, “In Epistolam ad Colossenses Commentarius”, in: Ioannis Calvini Opera Exegetica volumen XVI: Commentarii in Pauli Epistolas ad Galatos ad Ephesios ad Philippenses ad Colossenses, ed. Helmut Feld, Genève 1992 (Ioannis Calvini Opera Omnia, Series II: Opera Exegetica Veteris et Novi Testamenti), pp. 387–464, here p. 453. 47 ‘Et mesmes sainct Paul ne parle pas seulement de prier de bouche, mais aussi de chanter. Et à la verité, nous congnoissons par experience, que le chant a grand force et vigueur d’esmouvoir et enflamber le cœur des hommes, pour invoquer et louer Dieu d’un zele plus vehement et ardent.’ Jean Calvin, “La Forme des prieres et chantz ecclesiastiques, avec la maniere d’administrer les Sacremens et consacrer le mariage, selon la coustume de l’Eglise ancienne” (1542), in Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt Omnia 6, ed. Wilhelm Baum, Eduard Cunitz, and Eduard Reuss, Braunschweig 1867, pp. 161–210, here p. 170. This passage was already in the first edition of the Genevan Psalter from 1542; translation by Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17), p. 32. This translation is also available in Garside’s earlier publication: Charles Garside, Jr., “Calvin’s Preface to the Psalter: A Re-Appraisal,” The Musical Quarterly 37 (1951): pp. 566–577, here p. 568, but all further references will be to the later article, where the – slightly improved – translation of the preface is printed on pp. 31–33. 48 Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17), p. 33.

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Indeed, he warns, music ‘has a secret and almost incredible power to move hearts in one way or another,’ it can also be used to arouse vile and pernicious passions. It is true that every evil word (as St. Paul says) perverts good manners, but when the melody is with it, it pierces the heart much more strongly, and enters into it; just as through a funnel the wine is poured into a container, so also venom and corruption are distilled to the depth of the heart by the melody.49

In a humanist vein, Calvin seems to suggest that music has an almost magical power to transport good and evil manners into the listeners. Indeed, he warns us that musical song engraving itself into the hearts of the listeners can be used to healthy spiritual effect but also to the contrary. Incidentally, we may note that Calvin seems here once more indebted to Martin Bucer, who complained about the devil’s success in abusing music: Accordingly it is horrible to contemplate what unpleasantness is stirred up among the young and others by devilish love songs, so that whatever without song is too charming and lies in the senses, is insinuated by song more charmingly and deeper into the senses and the heart.50

The fear of songs with indecent, obscene or otherwise harmful texts corrupting the hearts of their listeners ran through the age of Reformation51 as it has, indeed, run through the history of Christianity. At this point, we may note a certain tension in the thought of Calvin, Bucer and the others: On the one hand, the ethical autonomy of the singing individual is not only acknowledged, but it is also held necessary for the spiritual efficacy of the sung prayer. On the other hand, sung melody has an almost magical effect on the individual soul, therefore explicitly negating its ethical autonomy. Only a few lines later, another paradox unfolds, in what seems an afterthought added to the second edition a year later. Calvin emphasizes that it is necessary to remember that which St. Paul has said, the spiritual songs cannot be well sung save from the heart. But the heart requires the intelligence. And in that (says St. 49 Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17), p. 33. 50 Martin Bucer, ‘Vorrede zum Straßburger Gesangbuch’ (1541), in Schriften der Jahre 1538– 1539, ed. Robert Stupprich, Gütersloh – Paris 1964 (Martini Buceri Opera Omnia, Series I: Martin Bucers Deutsche Schriften 7), pp. 576–582: p. 579: ‘Daher es auch erschröcklich ist, zu˚ gedencken, was ergernis bei der juget und anderen durch die teufelischen bu˚llieder angestifftet wu˚rt, so das, welches on das zu˚ fil anmu˚tig und im sinne ligt, erst durchs gesang noch anmu˚tiger und tieffer in sinne und hertz gestecket wu˚rt.’ Translation by Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17), p. 30 (slightly modified). 51 See other examples in Jan Smelik, “Die Theologie der Musik bei Johannes Calvin als Hintergrund des Genfer Psalters,” in Der Genfer Psalter und seine Rezeption in Deutschland, der Schweiz und den Niederlanden. 16–18. Jahrhundert, ed. Eckhard Grunewald, Henning P. Jürgens and Jan R. Luth, Tübingen 2004, pp. 61–77, here p. 69f.

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Augustine) lies the difference between the singing of men and that of the birds. For a linnet, a nightingale, a parrot may sing well; but it will be without understanding. But the unique gift of man is to sing knowing that which he sings. After the intelligence must follow the heart and the affection, a thing which is unable to be except if we have the hymn imprinted on our memory, in order never to cease from singing.52

Indeed, rational and affective activity in the heart are far from being separated competences; only our proper understanding of the text in prayer or song can trigger our affect in the right direction (i. e., towards God),53 while birds’ music or instrumental music alone, independent of any text, is of notorious ambivalence. The Jesuit (!) Settembrini in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain famously discarded music as ‘politically suspicious’ – he might have called it just as well ‘theologically suspicious.’ Calvin’s thoughts seem somewhat confused on that matter. He tried to reconcile what he had learned from ancient myths about the power of music with the more ethical and restrained view on musical effects of the Judeo-Christian tradition. We also note that he equates, in 1537, the heart with the seat of the affects (a view still prevalent today in popular anthropology), while in 1543 he insisted on its intelligence and understanding. We may ascribe this to the development of his thoughts on that matter, in a manner similar to Charles Garside.54 But we may also note, with William Bouwsma, that Calvin is here caught between two different anthropologies, that of Classical Antiquity and that of the Bible. To quote Bouwsma: Calvin’s basic problem was that he had inherited what he took to be an objective and scientific description of personality but which was in fact an artifact of ancient culture loaded with cosmic reference and fundamentally antithetical to the anthropology of the Bible. Above all it left no room for that literally central element in biblical anthropology, the ‘heart.’55

52 ‘Au reste, il nous faut souvenir de ce que dit S. Paul, que les chansons spirituelles ne se peuvent bien chanter que de cueur. Or le cueur requiert l’intelligence. Et en cela (dit sainct Augustin) gist la difference entre le chant des hommes et celuy des oyseaux. Car une Linote, un Roussignol, un Papegay, chanteront bien, mais ce sera sans entendre. Or le propre don de l’homme est de chanter, sachant qu’il dit: apres l’intelligence doit suivre le cueur et l’affection, ce qui ne peut estre que nous n’ayons le cantique imprimé en nostre memoire pour ne iamais cesser de chanter.’ Calvin, La Forme des Prieres (addition from 1543) (see n. 47), p. 171. Calvin, Epistle (1543); translation by Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17), p. 33. 53 Out of this, almost needless to say, rises the consequence of celebrating the service in the language of the people as well as the active participation of the congregation in the service. 54 Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17), p. 26. 55 William Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait, New York 1988, p. 78, cf. p. 131. See also chapter 2.2: “Zwei anthropologische Modelle: Das Herz im Alten Israel und das Schichtenmodell der griechischen Philosophie”, and chapter 2.3: “Vom Kosmos zum Ethos” in Fuhrmann, Herz und Stimme (see n. 21), pp. 53–62, resp. 63–68.

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At least with respect to Calvin’s theory of singing, this apodictic statement should perhaps be carefully qualified; but undoubtedly Bouwsma touches on the heart (no pun intended) of the matter here. There is another aspect of the dualism between cause of singing (the disposition of the heart) and effect of singing (the affect effected on the heart) which is relevant here, and altogether typical for the history of the topos ‘heart and voice.’ On the one hand, the remarks on singing ‘in the heart’ in the Pauline letters, as read by Calvin, refer to what we have already called an ethics of musical performance. The successful performance of prayer crucially depends on the engagement of the heart – and this normally includes intelligence – to understand the meaning of the text, as well as emotional involvement. Ideally, the text of the prayer is taken to heart, in the truest sense of the word, and therefore forms the basis of a Christian way of living. ‘Cantate oribus, cantate moribus,’ to quote Augustine once again.56 On the other hand, the prayer not only comes from (or originates or even remains within) the heart, it also has an effect on the heart, especially if sung. Above we have quoted some sentences by Calvin which seem to border on a magical (today we would say: psychological) understanding of the reception process. But other statements of Calvin imply that the effect might be said to be rooted in an ethics as well as in an aesthetic of musical reception. In his letter to the Council of Geneva (1537), Calvin contrasts the psalm songs he wishes to be sung in church with the Catholic practice of clerical psalmody: The psalms can stimulate us to raise our hearts to God and arouse us to an ardour in invoking as well as in exalting with praises the glory of His name.57 Moreover, by this one will recognize of what advantage and consolation the pope and his creatures have deprived the church, for he has distorted the psalms, which should be true spiritual songs, into a murmuring among themselves without any understanding.58 56 Augustinus, Sermo 34, 6, (see n. 25). 57 This is a totally traditional formula in the discourse on church music in the Western Church; see, for instance, Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II–II:91, 1, Respondeo (see n. 23), p. 645: ‘Et ideo necessaria est laus oris, non quidem propter deum, sed propter ipsum laudantem, cuius affectus excitatur in deum ex laude ipsius.’ And: II–II:91, 2, Respondeo: ‘[S]icut dictum est, laus vocalis ad hoc necessaria est ut affectus hominis provocetur in deum. et ideo quaecumque ad hoc utilia esse possunt, in divinas laudes congruenter assumuntur. manifestum est autem quod secundum diversas melodias sonorum animi hominum diversimode disponuntur […]. Et ideo salubriter fuit institutum ut in divinas laudes cantus assumerentur, ut animi infirmorum magis provocarentur ad devotionem.’ 58 ‘Les pseaulmes nous porront inciter à eslever noz cueurs à Dieu et nous esmovoyr à ung ardeur tant de l’invocquer que de exalter par louanges la gloyre de son nom. Oultre, par cela on pourra cognoestre de quel bien et de quelle consolation le pape et les siens ont privé l’esglise, quant il ont applicqués les pseaulmes, qui doibvent estre vrays chants spirituels, à murmurer entre eux sa[ns] aulcune intelligence.’ Calvin, Letter to the Council of Geneva (see n. 45), p. 168; translation by Garside, Calvin’s Theology (see n. 17), p. 10.

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Indeed, the psalmody of the traditional church – the way of reciting the psalms with only very sparse melodic, rather monotonous inflection in the Liturgy of the Hours – was arguably the result of favouring the heart over the voice, while Calvin advocated a more tuneful way of delivery, as the Genevan Psalter should some years after demonstrate. In short, Calvin maintained (adhering once again firmly to medieval traditions in this point) that musical prayer should not only come from, but also go to the heart. It is by no means by chance that this formula, cultivated by Pietism in the 18th century, turns up at the beginning of Beethoven’s autograph score of the Missa solemnis.59

5.

Luther: Heart and Voice in Polyphony

To complete the reformatory triumvirate, we return to Luther. He is absolutely in accordance with Calvin in what regards the reading of St. Paul’s admonitions in rebus musicis: “Sing to the Lord in your hearts.” [Col. 3:16] St Paul does not mean here that the mouth should be still, but that the words of the mouth should come from heartily intention, earnestness and fervour. It should not be hypocrisy and one should not act like Isaiah says in chapter 28: “This people do honour me with their lips, but have removed their heart far from me.” [Isaiah 29:13–14] So St Paul wishes us to let the word of Christ dwell richly among the Christians, so that one speaks, sings and teaches about it. But all this in such a manner, that you proceed with reason and spiritual fruit and that you will be dear and beloved to everyone and that all sing in praise and gratefulness to the Lord from the bottom of their hearts.60

In his basic convictions, Luther shared the same premises with Calvin and favoured congregational singing accordingly (and of course chronologically prior to Calvin). But how do we account for the fact that Luther would still be fond of the artful polyphony by Josquin and other composers, which most of the other 59 See Birgit Lodes, “‘Von Herzen – möge es wieder – zu Herzen gehen!’ Zur Widmung von Beethovens Missa solemnis,” in Altes im Neuen. Festschrift Theodor Göllner zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Bernd Edelmann and Manfred Hermann Schmid, Tutzing 1995 (Münchner Veröffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte 51), pp. 295–306. 60 ‘“Singet dem Herrn ynn ewrem hertzen.” Nicht meynet das S. Paulus, das der mund solle stille schweygen, sondern das des munds wort sollen aus hertzlicher meynung, ernst und brunst eraus gehen, das nicht heuchel werck sey und gehe zu, Wie Jsajas 28. spricht: “Dis volck lobet mich mitt seynem munde, aber yhr hertz ist ferne von myr.” So wil nun S. Paulus das wort Gottis so gemeyn und reychlich wonend haben unter den Christen, das man allenthalben davon sage, singe und tichte, und doch das alles also, das es mit verstand und geystlicher frucht zu gehe und bey ydermann lieb und werd sey und aus hertzen grund dem Herren also zu lobe und danck gesungen werde.’ Martin Luther, “Epistel S. Pauli zu den Colossern auff den funfften Sontag nach Epiphania (Fastenpostille 1525),” WA 17 II, pp. 109–123, here p. 122.

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Reformers despised not for musical, but for theological reasons? Why did Luther not abandon this music in favour of artless but heartfelt congregational singing? To my mind, it will not do just to argue that Luther was fond of music. Calvin and Zwingli were also fond of it, Zwingli even being arguably the most musical of the three.61 Calvin held music in no less esteem than Luther: ‘Among other things fit to recreate man and give him pleasure, music is either first or one of the principal; and we must value it as a gift of God.’62 Both Calvin and Zwingli would happily engage in making artful music in a private context, but not in church. The reasons must lie not in an affinity to polyphonic music, but in attributing a certain theological and/or devotional value to polyphony. It is sometimes claimed that Luther developed a theology of music; but if he did, he never worked it out systematically. His most comprehensive statement, the preface to Georg Rhau’s music print Symphoniae iucundae of 1538, amounts to little more than a theologically informed specimen of the humanist genre of the encomium musices, the laudatory speech in praise of music. Instead, I want to suggest that Luther’s reasons for giving music, famously, only the second place after theology,63 were motivated by the music of his time. I argue that Luther was sensitive – perhaps more sensitive than others – to a theological message in music by Josquin and others, a message once more related to heart and voice. But to account for this, we must delve a little deeper into the history of the trope ‘heart and voice’ during the Middle Ages. Singing with the voice, but from the heart is, whatever else it may be, in practical matters a question of performing music – of performance practice, if you like. John Cassian, the father of Western monasticism, says of the singer of psalms, that he should receive all the affects of the various psalms in himself and should start to sing them in such way, that he should utter them not as written by the prophet, but as if he himself had made them, like a personal prayer from the deep contrition of his heart; or at least that he believes them to be directed to his own person, and that their sentences have not been fulfilled through or in the prophet, but that he understands they have to be realized in himself every day.64

61 See Beat Föllmi, Art. “Zwingli, Huldreich, Huldrych, Ulrich,” in MGG2, Personenteil 17, c. 1602–1605: here c. 1604. Cf. Walther Köhler, Huldrych Zwingli, Leipzig 21954, p. 13. 62 ‘Or entre les autres choses, qui sont propres pour recreer lhomme et luy donner volupté, la Musicque est, ou la premiere, ou l’une des principalles: et nous faut estimer que c’est un don de Dieu deputé à cest usaige.’ Calvin, La Forme des Prieres (addition from 1543), 170; translation by Garside, Calvin’s Preface (see n. 47), p. 570. 63 Cf. WA Tischreden nr. 968, 3815 and 7034, and Luther’s letter to the composer Ludwig Senfl, 1. (4.?) October 1530, WA Briefwechsel 5, p. 639. 64 Johannes Cassian, Conlationes X:11, ed. Michael Petschenig, Vienna 1886 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 13), p. 304–305.

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And this passage also suggests that liturgical singing is not at all the celebration of an impersonal, ‘objective’ mystery, as some twentieth-century scholars wanted to make us believe it was, but in a way the most personal and intimate thing you could do. It continued to be so during the many and diverse centuries we now lump together as the ‘Middle Ages.’ The church fathers, the rules of the monastic orders, the devotional literature and so on keep telling us that we should sing with understanding, with inner participation both intellectually and emotionally, that is, with voice and heart.65 This is repeated over and over again – and for good reason: Imagine the average monk having spent some decades in a monastery, rising for the umpteenth time at midnight to chant matins with his somewhat less than beloved brethren, filled to the brim with acedia, that monkish melancholy – and you will understand why such a poor little monk could not be reminded often enough not to rattle through the psalms but to chant them devoutly, with understanding, with inner participation. This rule applies of course in equal measure to prayer.66 But when it comes to singing, the matter becomes more complicated for the simple fact that there will always be singers who have good voices and are proud of them and want to make a show, and there will always be listeners who are more moved by musical beauty than by pious messages. In a famous passage of his Confessions, too long to quote here, Augustine deals at length with his own experiences in this matter.67 He feels that he is erring if he is more pleased with the voice of the singer – singing a psalm, for instance – than with the words that are sung, and yet even if he concentrates on the words, he is more moved by them if they are sung rather than read. Therefore, Augustine vacillates between the position of condemning the practice of singing in church as long as it gives sensual pleasure alone, and the position of approving it if it kindles the fire of one’s devotion. In the end, he approves of it, but only tentatively. Small wonder this passage could be used by later writers like a stone quarry for getting out arguments pro or con singing. From the 6th or 7th centuries onwards, three major trends transform the relationship between heart and voice in the Latin West. First, no one seems to be opposed to singing altogether. Some of the more austere reform orders from the 11th century onwards – such as the Carthusians – tend to cut any opportunity of displaying vocal pyrotechnics, but only religious dissenters – ‘heretics’ – try to 65 The following is, needless to say, a very short version of Fuhrmann, Herz und Stimme (see n. 21). 66 Fuhrmann, Herz und Stimme (see n. 21). 67 Augustine, Confessions X:33, 49–50. I used the bilingual edition Bekenntnisse, transl. Joseph Bernhart, Frankfurt/Main 1987, p. 562–566 (the Latin text of this edition was taken from Augustine, Confessions, ed. Pierre de Labriolle, Paris I 19505, II 1947³).

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abolish singing altogether. Second, singing during the opus Dei or liturgy is increasingly and almost totally restricted to members of the clergy or the monastic community. Around the same time, a repertoire of melodies is developed to ornate the ceremonies: the so-called Gregorian chant, to which many newly composed melodies are added during the Middle Ages. The lay people which formed, in the days of the Apostles, the congregation which was identical with the church, now fell silent, though not totally. Especially in the late Middle Ages, lay congregations sung songs in the vernacular tongue such as the German ‘Christ ist erstanden,’ that would later be taken over into Lutheran hymnals. But it was the clergy who was by now entirely entrusted with singing the service. Third, religious music (I deliberately choose this very vague term) in the Latin West is transformed into an art for specialists: By adapting ancient music theory to the repertoire of Gregorian and post-Gregorian chant, by developing increasingly sophisticated ways of musical notation – ways of writing music down – and by developing ways of blending several singing voices harmoniously together. Polyphony, which was in the 9th or 10th centuries only a rather simple practice of improvising mostly in parallel fifths or fourths, became during the Late Middle Ages a complex art producing notated musical texts – compositions. It almost goes without saying that all of these three developments – the general acceptance of singing, the confining of singing to churchmen and -women, and the use of complex, artful polyphony such as the motet we discussed at the beginning and to which we will now return – were heavily criticized and at least in some centres abolished during the Reformation. But not where Luther had the say. Martin Luther has often been called a conservative, especially concerning matters of liturgy and music, and a conservative – in the original meaning of that word – he certainly was. Indeed, Luther’s ‘conservative’ attitude to music laid the foundation to the cultivation of music on German territory in the centuries to come. Concerning his reaction to the motet Haec dicit Dominus, composed allegedly by Conrad Rupsch and in fact by Josquin Desprez, Luther shows a distinctly late-medieval point of view, but also a very forward-looking one. To elaborate on this, we have to entangle a little bit the meaning of the pieces discussed at the outset of this essay, the dying-motets by Du Fay and Josquin/ Rupsch. At the hour of one’s death, the Christian soul is never alone: angels and demons are, as any medieval reader of the more colourful artes moriendi must have been aware, fighting for one’s soul.68 The voices singing Ave regina celorum (in Du Fay’s piece) or Haec dicit dominus were part of one community, at least a community formed for this instance of singing together. But this community is 68 On the Ars moriendi, see n. 4.

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speaking, symbolically, with the voice of the composer, who is also a Christian appealing to the Lord or Mary for salvation in the hour of his death. Josquin incorporates a chant from the Office of the Dead, that is, a liturgical chant: one of the many melodies a cleric should sing with heart and voice. But obviously, this chant is not used in its appropriate liturgical context; that is, as the introductory chant (invitatory) to Matins.69 The chant is decontextualized and purposefully put in the context of either melancholy so deep that it verges on the brink of death (in the text of Josquin’s original version) or evangelical trust in faith renewed by meditating about the inevitable end of life (in Rupsch’s text). In both instances, the decontextualized chant is freshly appropriated; it becomes, so to speak, the voice of a personal experience, the voice of the imaginary subject speaking in the words and through their setting. Du Fay, in his Ave regina celorum, went so far as to name himself in the insertions; Rupsch, seeking refuge in a biblical quotation, wished to listen to this motet on his death-bed, thus also to appropriate this text and the chant personally. The confrontation between lex and evangelium, law and gospel, which is cast out in true polyphony as only music can do, is both deeply subjective and comfortingly objective at the same moment. Similarly, the community singing is transformed into the voice of the composer. There is a tension between the individual and the congregational here, between the disturbing personal realization that one’s life is not infinite and the comforting article of faith that God is death’s death. This tension is realized musically in the lamenting of the two complaining voices (as Luther would characterize them) in canon, contrasting with the more comforting message of the surrounding voices, which are, however, cast in a strongly melancholic mood – a musical affect which seems much more appropriate to the original text. Heart and voice are no longer aspects of performance practice alone, they now disclose a presence in compositions as well, a presence we might call the musical representation of subjectivity, or, to lend Edward T. Cone’s term, a musical persona.70 A paradox unfolds here. Polyphony, the art of several voices strung together, develops ways to transform itself into a unified voice or voices of a lyrical subject (or several subjects) speaking in and through the music. Instead of performing subjectivity in the act of singing with heart and voice, subjectivity is represented or staged in the polyphonic texture of a composition. This is an important turning-point in the musical anthropology not only in the age of Reformation, but for centuries to come. Luther may have sensed, however intuitively, that this was a path where music would not just be used in the service of a congregational community but might become a tool of reflecting, articulating and, probably, shaping modern subjectivity. His was certainly a theological 69 See n. 3. 70 Edward T. Cone, The Composer’s Voice, Berkeley 1974 (The Ernest Bloch Lectures).

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point of view, and indeed, early modern subjectivity could hardly develop without the religious practice of scrutinizing one’s own conscience. It is ironic that the only other religious culture that would in equal (though different) musical ways articulate representations of Early Modern subjectivity should be Roman Catholicism, mostly of Italian origin: in the madrigal of the sixteenth century, the monody around 1600 and, springing from it, the ‘invention’ of opera through the efforts of Monteverdi and his contemporaries – opera, in which subjectivity is represented musically and performed scenically at the same time. Concerning the contribution of Lutheran culture to the rise of musical subjectivity in Early Modern times, we have only to think of the insistent rhetoric of Heinrich Schütz’ music or of the intense self-reflection and meditations on one’s own consciousness in Bach’s cantatas and passions, and it will become obvious that the consequences of Martin Luther’s embracing of modern music were tremendous.

Jutta Eming

Body Imagery and Knowledge in Historia von D. Johann Fausten

In a well-known passage in the anonymous 1587 German Faust chapbook, known by the shortened title Historia von D. Johann Fausten, the hero of the story and some friends go for a walk outside the gate of the town of Gotha one evening. Having had more than a few drinks, they happen upon a peasant who is leading a large horse-drawn hay wagon. When the peasant asks Faust to step aside and make way, Faustus refuses, declaring that he would prefer to eat the wagon, the huge pile of hay, and even the horse rather than get out of the way. The peasant is unimpressed by this ludicrous claim until Faustus opens his suddenly monstrously huge mouth and does indeed devour the wagon, hay, and even the horse – leaving the peasant completely terrified. When the peasant turns to the mayor of Gotha for help, bringing him to the scene, the wagon, hay and horse appear untouched. Faustus, we learn, hatt ihn […] nur geblendet1 – Faustus had bewitched him with an illusion. As a consequence, the peasant suffers not only the indignity of being publicly frightened, but is also ridiculed. This episode presents Faustus as gaining the upper hand in a conflict through a surreal command of his body parts. It is less the supernatural quality of the metamorphosis itself that deserves particular attention – that aspect is consistent with the general disposal of magical power which Faustus has gained from his pact with the devil. More interesting is the episode’s potential to address a question that has been discussed in Faust scholarship for quite some time: how the rather trivial events of the third and most extensive part of the Faust book, in which the hay wagon episode is situated, relate to Faust’s struggle for knowledge and insight exposed in the earlier chapters of the book, if at all. In the following, I would like to take up this discussion with a particular focus on the fact that an overexposed and magnified mouth plays such a prominent 1 Historia von D. Johann Fausten: Text des Druckes von 1587. Kritische Ausgabe mit den Zusatztexten der Wolfenbütteler Handschrift und der zeitgenössischen Drucke, ed. Stephan Füssel/Hans Joachim Kreutzer, Stuttgart 1988, p. 81, l. 29f. From this point on, page and line numbers will be indicated parenthetically in the main text.

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part in it. This will lead to the question as to how the Faust book reflects concepts of late 16th-century knowledge, and how this knowledge has been transformed to suit its literary context. Further, I would like to examine body imagery within the larger context of 16th-century literature and culture, and, in doing so, touch on the overarching topic of anthropological aspects of the Reformation. As historical anthropology has shown, the significance different historical and cultural contexts bestow on the body, its parts and the varying processes and dynamics of symbolizations and representations with which the body has historically been involved provides key insights into historical conceptualizations of the conditio humana.2 In doing so, they also give access to different traditions of historical knowledge or episteme.3 Despite usually being characterized as remaining stable and consistent over centuries, we now submit that knowledge in premodern cultures was, in fact, subject to constant change on many different levels.4 Transfers and transformations of knowledge occur between, among others, different oral and scriptural cultures, languages, literary genres and media. It is particularly challenging to identify and trace such transfers and transformations in a time period that predates discrete genres such as historiography, natural philosophy, theology, and fictional literature. The Faust Book of 1587 represents an especially interesting case in this regard.

1.

Transformations of dangerous knowledge

In the third part of the Faust book containing the hay wagon episode Faustus takes on the role of a traveling magician, intent on impressing people with his tricks. In this context, he also acts as a doctor and Kalendermacher, an astrologer who sells horoscopes. The core of the episode – the theme of a man who devours a hay wagon – was well known before it first appeared in the Historia. The most 2 See Christian Kiening, “Anthropologische Zugänge zur mittelalterlichen Literatur: Konzepte, Ansätze, Perspektiven,” in Forschungsberichte zur Germanistischen Mediävistik 5/1, Bern et al. 1997, pp. 11–129, here pp. 64–76; Christoph Wulf, ed., Vom Menschen: Handbuch Historische Anthropologie, Weinheim 1997. 3 Understood in Michel Foucault’s sense as a ‘historical apriori,’ which organizes relations between objects. See Michel Foucault, Die Ordnung der Dinge. Eine Archäologie der Humanwissenschaften, Frankfurt a. M. 222012, here p. 27. See also Todd May, The Philosophy of Foucault, Montreal/Kingston 2006, p. 44: ‘The issue is not so much what is said, or better the truth or evidence for what is said, but rather how what is said arises from what can be said, or at least legitimately said, at a particular time and place.’ 4 As described in the research program of the collaborative research centre Episteme in Bewegung at the Freie Universität Berlin. See http://www.sfb-episteme.de/en/index.html (accessed 08. 04. 2014).

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famous source is Aurifaber’s compilation of Martin Luther’s Tischreden or short discussions. Luther supposedly narrates a similar event as an example of the devil performing magic, zauberey.5 Stephan Füssel has pointed to three additional possible sources,6 as well as to another, possibly completely independent line of transmission, Christoph Roßhirt’s Faustgeschichten (1575–1586), which also includes the story about the hay wagon.7 Roßhirt’s stories in particular suggest that a connection between the prototypical sorcerer and features of literary genres had been established before the anonymous author of the Faust book decided to incorporate it into his narrative. Apart from these obvious literary traditions, however, the episode is clearly informed by historical traditions of knowledge, albeit knowledge of a very special kind: at least in part a dangerous, tacit and forbidden knowledge. Historically, it was known as diabolic magic, magia daimoniaca, and practical magic, zauberey, which was to be performed either by a magician or by the devil himself. In this special case, the belief that a sorcerer is able to alter the bodies of others through the power of his soul is at play. This is a belief that was already in circulation in the High Middle Ages.8 It is informed by a negative concept of imagination, of fascinatio, as well as by reflections on complex relations between microcosm and macrocosm.9 They concern individuals ‘who, on account of the favorable constellation of their birth, possess faculties that elevate them above ordinary mortals.’10 In the Early Modern period, these notions are highly heterogenous in themselves and point to historical institutions and transmitters of knowledge, which preserved, discussed and often discredited them: university curricula and popular knowledge, as well as theological thought and legends. The status of these activities in relation to the 16th century’s learned tradition has long been discussed in Faust scholarship as well. 5 Aurifaber incorporated this story in a whole chapter on zauberey. See Aurifaber, Tischreden oder Colloqvia Doct. Mart. Luthers. Faksimiledruck der Originalausgabe 1566 aus dem Besitz der Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Leipzig 1983, 307r. 6 The exempla or stories in question were narrated by Hondorff, Büttner and Lercheimer, see Stephan Füssel, “Die literarischen Quellen der Historia von D. Johann Fausten,” in Das Faustbuch von 1587: Provokation und Wirkung, ed. Richard Auernheimer/Frank Baron, Munich/Vienna 1991, pp. 15–39, here p. 28. These sources have also been included in Füssel’s and Kreutzer’s critical edition of the Faust Book (see n. 1). On Lercheimer, see also below. 7 See Füssel, Die literarischen Quellen (see n. 6), p. 22 et passim. 8 According to Paola Zambelli, Albertus Magnus was greatly impressed with this concept, see Paola Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance: From Ficino, Pico, Della Porta to Trithemius, Agrippa, Bruno, Leiden/Boston 2007, p. 40. 9 See Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic (see n. 8), p. 40. 10 Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic (see n. 8), p. 41. The tricks and illusions they performed were also known as magia praestigiatrix, see Helmut Birkhan, Magie im Mittelalter, Munich 2010, pp. 37–39; on the hay wagon episode, see p. 102.

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Part of the difficulty of interpreting the nature of Faust’s activities in literature involves their comparison to the actual historical person of Faust, who served as a model for the hero of the Historia. As Dieter Harmening has shown, the historical Faust was severely discredited in his professional activities.11 Contemporaries, most famously the abbot Johannes Trithemius,12 described him as a man who declared himself a magus, but was nothing more than a fraud, a trickster, and a tramp, who tried – unsuccessfully – to impress people.13 Faustus was apparently not the only historical figure with such impulses. Augustin Lercheimer, the former disciple of Melanchton and professor of classical languages, literature, and mathematics (astronomy) in Heidelberg, discusses in his book Christlich bedencken und erjinnerung von Zauberey (1585) ‘the significance of the popular conjurers who go from town to town and from village to village, entertaining the people with tricks.’14 It is his concern ‘that such activities often go further and make use of the devil’s help in producing supernatural spectacles.’ In this context he also introduces Faust.15 However, as Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer has argued, connections drawn between the practice of astrology and pacts with the devil might well be the result of the reliance of contemporary scholars on sources, the Faust Book among others, that were actively engaged in an effort to disparage astrological scientia. She sees this urge as rooted in contemporary suspicions toward the general evolution of sciences such as astrology, physics, mathematics, and medicine, which posed a direct challenge to the traditional academic superiority of theology.16 In general, 11 Dieter Harmening, “Faust und die Renaissance-Magie: Zum ältesten Faustzeugnis ( Johannes Trithemius and Johannes Virdung, 1507),” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 55 (1973): pp. 56–79. 12 According to Jan-Dirk Müller, Trithemius was a dubios figure in itself, ‘ein etwas zweifelhaft beleumundeter Gelehrter.’ See Jan-Dirk Müller, “Faust – ein Mißverständnis wird zur Symbolfigur,” in Thomas Mann: Doktor Faustus 1947–1997, ed. Werner Röcke, Bern et al. 2001, pp. 167–186, here p. 170. On Trithemius’ own ‘passion for magic,’ see Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic (see n. 8), pp. 73–112, as well as her conclusion, pp. 95f: ‘Trithemius certainly ought not to be considered greatly as a philosopher, but his position is in the middle of the road which originates in Medieval, Chartrian and Cusanian Platonism and leads to Ficino, the alter Plato, and his school.’ 13 Harmening, Faust und die Renaissance-Magie (see n. 11), pp. 60–63. 14 Frank Baron, “The Faust Book’s Indebtedness to Augustin Lercheimer and Wittenberg Sources,” Daphnis 14 (1985): pp. 517–545, here p. 521. 15 Baron, The Faust Books’s Indebtedness (see n. 14), p. 521. 16 Barbara Bauer, “Wie hätte sich Dr. Johann Faust verteidigen können? Die Struktur der Selbstdarstellung in Autobiographien wissenschaftlicher Neuerer,” in Literatur und Naturkunde in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann/Wolf-Dieter Müller-Jahncke, Heidelberg 1999, pp. 41–74; according to J.-D. Müller, on the other hand, Faust’s activities, consisting of arts, were not generally held in high esteem by regular scholars: ‘die anspruchsvolle Gelehrte verachten – Kalendermacherei, Sterndeutung, Wetterprognose.’ See Müller, Faust – ein Mißverständnis wird zur Symbolfigur (see n.12), p. 176.

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these things have been in flux: attitudes towards magic were inconsistent during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, and had, some time before the publication of the Faust book, undergone a significant dynamic change with Renaissance New Platonism,17 thus betraying any notion of a gradual ‘disenchantment of the world.’18 Therefore, when one is interested in understanding the transformation of knowledge in literary contexts, the Faust Book of 1587 is a particularly complex and difficult, albeit not a unique case. Without a doubt, the hay wagon scene can serve as a resource for revealing contemporary knowledge about the devil, demons, and magic. The anonymous author of the Historia von D. Johann Fausten was obviously so intrigued by this particular episode that he created yet another variation (see chapter 40 and commentary) in which the mere swiftness with which Faustus swallows up the wagon, hay and horse frightens the peasant away. When it comes to nailing down exactly where extra-literary sources have been remodeled for literary intentions, however, things become extremely complicated and obscure. The fact that the historical Faust had already acquired a certain notoriety as a swindler and magician leads to the conclusion that he was a fictional character long before he became the hero of the Historia. This even holds when one takes into consideration that historically, the Faust Book was taken to be a biography, in other words, a true story.19 The Faust Book shares this characteristic with other tales of premodern heroes such as Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, or Joan of Arc. What makes the Faust Book particularly interesting with regard to different traditions of knowledge is the fact that the status of these traditions was highly contentious within the various learned and popular circles of the 16th century. The conceptualization of the Faust Book, therefore, is based on a highly complex blend of theological intention, scholarly and popular knowledge, history and legend, as well as factual and fictional truth, which makes it nearly impossible to clearly distinguish between literary and pragmatic traditions.

17 See Frank Fürbeth, “Zum Begriff und Gegenstand von Magie im Spätmittelalter. Ein Forschungsproblem oder ein Problem der Forschung?” Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolkenstein Gesellschaft 12 (2000), pp. 411–422. 18 For a brief discussion of Max Weber’s influential formula with regard to medieval literature, see Jutta Eming, Funktionswandel des Wunderbaren. Studien zum ‘Bel Inconnu’, zum ‘Wigalois’ und zum ‘Wigoleis vom Rade’, Trier 1999, pp. 38–43. See also Jan-Dirk Müller, “Rationalisierung und Mythisierung in Erzähltexten des Frühen Neuzeit,” in Reflexion und Inszenierung von Rationalität in der mittelalterlichen Literatur (Wolfram-Studien XX), ed. Klaus Ridder, Berlin 2008, pp. 435–456. 19 Jan-Dirk Müller, “Ausverkauf menschlichen Wissens. Zu den Faustbüchern des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Literatur, Artes und Philosophie, ed. Walter Haug/Burghart Wachinger, Tübingen 1992, pp. 163–194, here p. 166.

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For these reasons, when examining the literary status of selected episodes of the Historia more closely, I will not go into questions of originality on the part of the Faust Book’s author. Instead, I would like to look at these episodes in the context of literary traditions and the literary imaginary in general. I will argue that the body imagery that appears in the Historia is rooted in various literary and cultural traditions. There are multiple concepts of the body at play that, from a literary critic’s perspective, are not necessarily compatible. This hybrid status of the body in the Historia points to the plurality of body concepts in culture in general.

2.

Grotesque bodies and phallocentric interaction

In premodern culture the body served as an important tool for a variety of social functions: for gaining and exposing knowledge, status and wealth; for acting in and reacting to social conflicts; for transgressing boundaries; and for deciding power struggles, to name just a few. While bodies arguably take over at least some of these functions in modern societies as well, there can also be no doubt that they are in comparison marginalized and held in lower esteem than intellectual and rational human competencies.20 Early Modern society has long been considered to have introduced new body politics, especially measures for controlling and disciplining the body. Supposedly, this came about as a result of the Reformation.21 In Protestant contexts, however, the body (and not necessarily the disciplined body) stills plays an important role in social performances on all levels. Historian Lyndal Roper reflects in a recent essay on the physically massive body attributed to Luther in iconographic traditions – most importantly in the tradition established by Lukas Cranach.22 The oversized dimensions of his body seem to function as a metaphorical tool to demonstrate his oversized theological influence and general cultural prestige. In many images he is also curiously juxtaposed with Philipp Melanchton’s ascetic features, which point back to older traditions of spiritual bodies but nonetheless continue to serve as a signifier for 20 See also Maren Lorenz, Leibhaftige Vergangenheit. Einführung in die Körpergeschichte, Tübingen 2000, p. 104–115 et passim. 21 For a critical review of this assumption, see Lyndal Roper, “Drinking, whoring and gorging: brutish indiscipline and the formation of Protestant identity,” in Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, sexuality and religion in Europe, London/New York 1994, pp. 145–167. 22 Lyndal Roper, “Martin Luther’s Body: The ‘Stout Doctor’ and his Biographers,” The American Historical Review 115 (2010): pp. 350–84; German edition: Der feiste Doktor: Luther, sein Körper und seine Biographen, Göttingen 2012.

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theological sincerity.23 Luther’s writings also clearly indicate that he did not ignore, neglect, or try to transcend his body. Instead, he constantly emphasizes its functions and desires and the ways it generates lust, pain, and conflict.24 Roper also describes 16th-century culture as a phallic culture,25 and she is among those scholars who have insisted that the prominence of body imagery in Early Modern culture should not be misunderstood as a movement to suppress freer body politics in the Middle Ages. Instead, she understands it as being directly linked to contemporary efforts, especially from the Protestant side, to discipline and moralize the body: ‘The repressive literature and the literature of excess are two sides of the same coin […]. They are a single, related process, and not the operation of a repression on prior, natural drives.’26 Roper’s insights have been important to my own thoughts about body imagery in the Faust Book, to which I will now return. What is particularly striking and noteworthy about the hay wagon episode is the isolation and monstrous expansion of one specific body part – the mouth. Even more remarkable, of course, is the fact that Faust uses it to indiscriminately devour a wagon full of hay, horse and all. There is a prominent tradition in Early Modern literature and culture that celebrates the body and its parts in similarly specific ways, using fantastic imagery of magnified mouths, noses, bellies, and genitals. This is, of course, the grotesque. Taking Early Modern aesthetics into account, it can be said that Faust acquires a grotesque body.27 In Michail Bakhtin’s view of the grotesque, the body achieves gigantic importance through its gigantic proportions.28 The same holds for physical desires. For this reason, the grotesque body also has special connections to food. As such, the grotesque body often does not have clearly defined boundaries and rejects the notion of an individualized body. On the contrary, in depictions of excessive feasting and fighting, important features of grotesque aesthetics, body boundaries are constantly transgressed, through sharing food and drinks, or in the more extreme images through bodily fluids being transmitted from one individual to another. When Faust swallows up wagon, hay and horse he exemplifies the grotesque body’s tendency to unite with other beings and objects. 23 See Roper, Martin Luther’s Body (see n. 22), p. 352–353. 24 This fact is also stressed in a new biography by Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther: Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs, Munich 2012. 25 Lyndal Roper, “Stealing manhood: capitalism and magic in early modern Germany,” in Roper, Oedipus and the Devil (see n. 21), pp. 125–144, here p. 137f. 26 Roper, Drinking, whoring and gorging (see n. 21), p. 157. 27 This has already been noted by Werner Röcke, “Das verkehrte Fest: Soziale Normen und Karneval in der Literatur des Spätmittelalters,” Neohelicon XVII (1990): pp. 203–231, here p. 227. 28 See Michail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iswolsky, Indiana 1984.

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The grotesque mode is significant for the Faust Book on different levels. It exposes specific aspects of Faust’s sensuality as well as his curiosity, curiositas. It is apparent that the two are inseparable within the character of Faust. As Maria E. Müller and others have shown, Faust’s character is modeled after the contemporary concept of a melancholic constitution.29 With the evolution of Renaissance Neo-Platonism, this concept becomes fashionable in Europe,30 but it also points back to the traditional notion that magicians are born under specific constellations, thus being predisposed for extraordinary capacities (see above). As a melancholic, Faust has a tendency to speculate and to ruminate, a state of being he is not able to transcend. This manifests itself in his seeking sensual sensations such as tasting, chewing and eating.31 His thirst for knowledge is not merely a metaphor, nor is it limited to theological, cosmological and transcendent realms and orders. Faust is also keenly interested in all practices that can transgress or convert normal causalities of time, space, and reason. After all, this is one of the reasons why he is interested in magic. But in addition to that, I would argue that Faust would literally like to eat the whole world in order to experience it. In the episode, Faustus uses his monstrous physical distortion to impress his companions and to intimidate the peasant. In this respect, it is telling how the episode is adapted to literary traditions. As in most historien from the third part of the Faust Book, it takes place along the lines of the well-known medieval genre of comical short stories (schwankhafte Mären), a type of tale that usually involves a power struggle between two stereotypical figures. The hay wagon scene opens with a power struggle typical for schwankhafte Mären or Fabliaux, which the Faust Book’s author then amplifies to an extreme. Faust stands in the way of the peasant and refuses to budge: ‘D. Faustus / der bezecht war / antwort jm: Nun wil e e ich sehen / ob ich dir oder du mir weichen mussest. Horstu Bruder / hastu nicht e e gehort / daß einem vollen Mann / ein HauwWagen außweichen sol.’ (‘Dr. Faustus, who was drunk, replied to him: Let’s see which one of us will have to make way for the other. Listen, brother, haven’t you heard that a hay wagon must yield to a fullgrown man.’) (p. 81, l. 12–15).32

29 Maria E. Müller, “Der andere Faust. Melancholie und Individualität in der Historia von D. Johann Fausten,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literatur und Geistesgeschichte 60 (1986): pp. 572–608. See also, with a special emphasis on Luther’s thoughts on melancholy, Marina Münkler, Narrative Ambiguität: Die Faustbücher des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen 2011, pp. 294–326. 30 With regard to the literary reception in 16th-century Germany, see Antje Wittstock: Melancholia translata. Marsilio Ficinos Melancholie-Begriff im deutschsprachigen Raum des 16. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen 2011. 31 For a discussion of Faust’s sensuality, see Müller, Der andere Faust (see n. 29), passim. 32 Translations are mine.

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Faust claims to be ein voll man, a full-grown man, who can expect the deference of a lowly peasant. The semantics of this expression open up interpretations on social, situational and gender-based levels, revealing different facets of the ways Faust uses his body in social interaction. On a metaphorical level, Faust challenges the peasant by insinuating that he himself is a socially respectable person with the freedom to come and go as he pleases, whereas the peasant is clearly not, and is restricted in his routes and movements. On another, more comical level, Faust is completely inebriated – drunk on beer or wine, but still insists on being in control of the situation.33 On yet another level, the passage involves one man challenging another in a way that is at once clearly physical and invested with sexual allusion: who will be the strongest and more potent of the two? In this regard, the dispute can be interpreted as phallocentric.34 There are quite a few episodes in the Historia that portray Faust using his magical powers for dominating, intimidating, or suppressing other men. Chapter 42 presents a variant of the story which, again, is also known from other historical contexts.35 In this chapter, Faust spends the evening at an inn where he becomes annoyed by drunken peasants who sing and scream so loudly ‘daß e keiner sein eigen Wort darvor horen kundte,’ ‘that one could no longer hear himself speak’ (p. 88, 6f). This time, Faust uses his powers to freeze the peasants’ mouths when they are open the widest. As a result, no further word or sound can be uttered. The peasants are forced to remain in a freakish state, exhibiting their helplessness as well as silently mimicking their annoying habit of being loud and unruly. They are forced to foolishly look at each other as if seeing themselves in a mirror. Once more, grotesque body imagery is at play, this time to depict a state of complete helplessness and to illustrate disempowerment – a kind of symbolic castration, maybe even an attempt to effeminize the opponents by transforming their mouths into representations of female genitalia, ready to be penetrated.36 Roper, in her studies on masculinities in post-Reformation German culture, has noted an odd connection between capitalism and magic. The fashion of having one’s fortune told by crystal ball readers was especially popular among merchants like Fugger: ‘Magic, with its prospect of unrivalled information […] 33 In comparison with older versions of the story in Aurifaber’s Tischreden, through this expression, the use of magic is actually de-emphasized, while comical elements are stressed, as Füssel, Literarische Quellen (see n. 6), p. 29, has noted. 34 According to Müller, Der andere Faust (see n. 29), p. 607, ‘[…] sind die phallisch-aggressiven Triebkräfte der literarischen Faustfigur gar nicht zu übersehen.’ For an extensive discussion, see Bettina Mathes, Verhandlungen mit Faust: Geschlechterverhältnisse in der Kultur der Frühen Neuzeit, Königstein 2001. 35 See Füssel, Literarische Quellen (see n. 6), p. 23ff. 36 For a discussion of the obsessive representation of vaginas by mouths in Mären, or, in this respect, in the French equivalent of the Fabliaux, see Simon Gaunt, Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature, Cambridge 1995, pp. 234–285, here p. 267.

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and its promise of individual, personal control of all one’s subordinates, could […] offer immense attractions to the merchant […].’37 There is, however, no reason to believe that this wish to have power over competitors was in any way limited to ambitious merchants. Faust obviously derives exactly these results from his magic powers: dominating other men and gaining the advantage in power struggles, but without involving any sort of commercial transaction. For my first conclusion, I would argue that the historical concepts of magia daemoniaca commonly used by traveling conjurers of the period are presented with special characteristics in the Faust Book. The most important of these is the ability to transform one’s body in monstrous and grotesque ways. They enable Faustus to experience the world on different sensual levels and to help quench his thirst for knowledge by tasting, chewing and ultimately devouring everything the world has to offer: turning large objects and animals literally into ‘food for thought.’ The manner in which the tradition of the grotesque body is integrated in the Faust Book also reveals an impulse to intimidate and dominate other men. The extent to which the literary figure of Faust is also imbued with a considerable and ultimately fulfilled desire for power has long been discussed. For some scholars, this wish for power is even the main motif of the devil’s pact.38 An important textual hint for such a view would be the modification of the pact as negotiated by Faustus and Mephistopheles: In a first version, Faustus demands, among other things, to be granted answers to any question he poses, which Mephistopheles declines. In the second version of the pact, Faustus demands above all to have the same power as Mephistopheles (p. 20, l. 4–6). The wish for knowledge has been marginalized, or at least altered. However, I do not want to take up this discussion here – what I am interested in with regard to the episode is the very basic, phallocentric level on which a wish for power manifests itself. On this basic level ‘having the phallus’ means being in control of social interaction.39 It is signified in the episode not through Faust’s sexual activity, but through his language and his ways of disempowering the bodies of others. In other episodes of the Faust Book, this interaction is less abstract.

37 Roper, Stealing manhood (see n. 25), p. 133. 38 In her seminal article from 1967, Barbara Könneker holds that instead of searching for knowledge, Faust is primarily interested in power, and this interest is the sole reason for his seeking the devil’s art. Barbara Könneker, “Faust-Konzeption und Teufelspakt im Volksbuch von 1587,” in Festschrift Gottfried Weber, ed. Heinz Otto Burger/Klaus von See, Bad Homburg/Berlin/Zurich 1967, pp. 159–213, here p. 180. 39 See also the discussion in Mathes, Verhandlungen mit Faust (see n. 34), pp. 59–78.

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3.

Flying and feasting

In an earlier part of the Faust story, the hero has begun to travel. e

Doct. Faustus nimpt jm im 16. jar ein Reyß oder Pilgramfahrt fur / vnd befihlt also seinem e Geist Mephostophili / daß er jn / wohin er begerte / leyte vnd fuhre. Derhalben sich e e Mephostophiles zu einem Pferde verkehret vnnd veranderte / doch hatt er flugel wie ein e Dromedari / vnd fuhr also / wohin jn D. Faustus hin landete. In the 16th year Dr. Faustus goes on a journey or pilgrimage and orders his spirit Mephostophiles to guide and transport him wherever he wished to go. To do so Mephostophiles transforms himself into a horse with wings like a Dromedari, and flew in this way there where Dr. Faustus alighted (p. 60, l. 5–10).

Faustus wishes to travel, and, once again, the means to achieve this goal are a reflection of contemporary notions of magia daimoniaca or zouber. It has often been noted that in the Early Modern period the ability to fly is a characteristic primarily attributed to witches.40 The connection between contemporary discourses on magic and stereotypical accusations brought up in witch trials has also been pointed out – or repudiated – in the context of intellectual circles of Europe.41 Theological foundations for and empirical ‘proof ’ of flying is also discussed in the notorious Malleus Maleficarum.42 In fact, it had become a standard in witch trials and inquisitions to demand that the accused confess to the times and places of their previous flights. Of course, the ability to fly is also directly associated with the devil, depictions of which were often included among the accusations leveled against the supposed witches. The flying beast that transported them on their flights must have been none other than the devil himself in one form or other – an image laden with sexual overtones. That the flying animal depicted in the Faust book is a hybrid of a horse and a Dromedari (possibly an ostrich), similarly colors the whole endeavor with a hint of devilish perversion.43 40 See, for instance, Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany, New Haven/London/Munich 2004, pp. 104–108, German translation: Hexenwahn: Geschichte einer Verfolgung, Munich 2007. 41 Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic (see n. 8), notes that ‘[…] more than one Hermetic philosopher felt obliged to express his opinion on witchcraft, perhaps because of his own conscience and sensitivity to either religious or magic problems, or perhaps in response to the need of those turbulent times’ (p. 59). 42 See Heinrich Kramer (Institoris), Der Hexenhammer. Malleus Maleficarum. Kommentierte Neuübersetzung, Munich 112000, pp. 384–395 et passim. 43 See the commentary in Füssel and Kreutzer, ed., Historia von D. Johann Fausten (see n. 1), p. 197. Arguably, Faust already flies in earlier episodes more clearly related to intellectual curiositas. In one episode in particular his wagon is led by dragons, see chapter 25, p. 57, l. 15– 22. Detailed discussions of connections to witch trials are offered by Maria E. Müller, “Poiesis und Hexerei. Zur ‘Historia von D. Johann Fausten’,” in Die “Historia von D. Johann Fausten”

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Faust’s first flight takes him through much of Germany and Europe over a period of 25 days. As is noted in the text, this is not enough time to take in all that he had wanted to see. So he decides to start all over again, taking more time while visiting fewer places. His journey begins in the German town of Trier, followed by a stop in Paris: Darnach wendet er sich gen Pariß in Franckreich / vnd gefielen jm die Studia vnnd hohe e e Schul gar wol. Was nu dem Fausto fur Statt vnd Landschafften in Sinn fielen / die durchwandert er. Als vnter andern auch Meyntz / da der Mayn in Rhein fleußt / er saumpt sich aber da nicht lang / vnd kam in Campanien / in die Statt Neapolis / darinnen e e er vnsaglich viel Kloster vnd Kirchen gesehen / vnd so grosse hohe vnd herrliche gezierte e Hauser / daß er sich darob verwundert. Afterwards he turned toward Paris, France, where he especially liked the universities and schools. Faustus continued on, tramping through whichever city or place came to mind. Among them was Mainz, where the river Main flows into the river Rhine, but he did not stay there long. Then he arrived in Campania and the town of Naples, where he saw an incredible number of cloisters and churches, and such large and beautifullydecorated houses, that he marveled about it (p. 60, l. 28 – p. 61, l. 3).

And so on. This is just a very short excerpt from a much longer description of a sightseeing tour through Europe during which Faustus hops from one famous city to the next at a breathtakingly rapid pace. His stops include, for example, Venice, Rome, Florence, Cologne, Basel, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Vienna, Prague and Constantinople. Within each city he hastily visits one landmark after the next at the same heady pace. One exception is a longer passage, obviously influenced by the Protestant zeitgeist, in which Faust visits the Pope’s palace in Rome, criticizes the Pope’s lavishness, and decides to stay for a few days in order to play tricks on him. With regard to the episodes of flying, as well as others, no scholar has more vigorously contested the position that Faustus yearns primarily for knowledge and insight than Jan-Dirk Müller, calling the knowledge Faust gains and has at his disposal ‘alberne Zauberstückchen, Blendwerk […] läppischen Krimskrams,’ ‘silly magic tricks, illusions […], fiddling bits and pieces.’44

(1587): Ein wissenschaftliches Symposium anläßlich des 400jährigen Buchjubiläums, ed. Günther Mahal, Vaihingen 1988, pp. 52–73; Frank Baron, “Die Hexenprozesse und die Entstehung des Faustbuchs,” in Auernheimer/Baron, ed., Das Faustbuch von 1587 (see n. 6), pp. 59–73; Münkler, Narrative Ambiguität (see n. 29), pp. 193–228. 44 See Müller, Faust – ein Mißverständnis wird zur Symbolfigur (see n. 12), p. 176. See also Jan-Dirk Müller, “Curiositas und erfarung der Welt im frühen deutschen Prosaroman,” in Literatur und Laienbildung im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit, ed. Ludger Grenzmann/Karl Stackmann, Stuttgart 1984, pp. 252–271, here p. 257f; and Müller, Ausverkauf menschlichen Wissens (see n. 19).

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In particular, the passage about Faust’s excursion to European cities is, in Müller’s view, just a weak imitation of the much richer repository of knowledge to which it refers: the famous Weltchronik by Hartmann Schedel, which offers extensive descriptions of many European cities. According to Müller, Medieval and Early Modern traditions of accumulating and structuring knowledge are not in any way adequately represented in the Faust book, giving the impression that its author made only a perfunctory effort in compiling brief and superficial descriptions from his source. Further, Müller believes this shallow strategy goes beyond just the passages on traveling and is also employed elsewhere, for example in the chapters on cosmological and astrological knowledge. In his view, an enormous reduction of contemporary knowledge is at work in the Faust Book. Along these lines, Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer has argued that the type of knowledge to which Faust has access would not have been worth a devil’s pact, since it was already in circulation at the time the Faust Book was written.45 She holds that the Faust Book’s successor, the Wagner Book of 1593, which narrates the life story of Faust’s disciple, Wagner, including the story of his own pact with the devil, is the one which adequately reflects contemporary ‘dangerous’ knowledge: arts and sciences between natural philosophy and magic.46 However, Müller sees the ‘reduction’ of knowledge as being related to a valid literary purpose: by departing from the expectation that literature must inform or instruct its readers, it is already on its way towards achieving an autonomous status.47 I believe it is also possible to view these passages not just through the lens of knowledge reduction but also with an eye to the transformation of knowledge. Through this alternate lens the travel chronicles reveal new aspects about the nature of the hero and his ambitions. In the Faust book’s Städtekatalog (catalogue of cities), various descriptions from Schedel have doubtlessly been abbreviated, stripped of their original context, combined in a different itinerary, and possibly even misunderstood. For instance, a long passage on Florence is 45 Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer, “Magie und neue Wissenschaften im Wagnerbuch (1593),” in Religion und Naturwissenschaften im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Kaspar von Greyerz/ Thomas Kaufmann/Kim Siebenhüner/Roberto Zaugg, Heidelberg 2010, pp. 141–183, here p. 141–142: ‘Um nur dieses Wissen zu erlangen, hätte Faust sich nicht dem Teufel verschreiben müssen.’ See also andreas Krass, “Am Scheideweg. Poetik des Wissens in der Historia von D. Johann Fausten,” in Frankfurt im Schnittpunkt der Diskurse. Strategien und Institutionen literarischer Kommunikation im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Robert Seidel/Regina Toepfer, Frankfurt a. M. 2010, pp. 221–234, here p. 234: ‘Die alte Buchgelehrsamkeit wird noch einmal aufgerufen und mit dem Protagonisten zur Hölle gejagt.’ 46 Mahlmann-Bauer, Magie und neue Wissenschaften im Wagnerbuch (see n. 45), p. 184: ‘Das Wagnerbuch ist ein “update” der Faust-Historia, mit einer aktualisierten Version des Katalogs der Wissenschaften und Künste, deren Rang und Reputation eben umstritten war.’ 47 Müller, Ausverkauf menschlichen Wissens (see n. 19), p. 193f.

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boiled down to just two sentences. In the original, two exemplary sentences read as follows: e

In dieser statt sind außerhalb andrer vnglewplicher zierden ein berumbte thumbkirch. mit eim wunderwirdigen schwinbogen oder gewelb gezieret.vnd in der ere der hohgelobten gloriwirdigen iunckfrawen Marie geweyhet. In this city one finds aside from the unbelievable splendor, a famous cathedral decorated with marvelous arches or vaults, and dedicated to the honor of the exalted and glorious virgin Mary (Lxxxviv).

In the Faust Book, the passage reads: e

Florentz besichtiget er auch / er wunderte sich dieses Bisthumbs / der kunstlichen Zierde e e von den schonen Schwibbogen und Gewelben / deß schonen gezierten Baumgarten zu S. Maria. He visited Florence as well, and marveled about this bishopric, about the beautiful and elaborately adorned arches and vaults, and the splendidly decorated park of St. Mary’ (p. 63, l. 19–22).

The author has clearly adapted the original text to the literary conventions of contemporary travel literature, which provide brief illustrations of foreign cities and countries through the perspective of a traveling hero. ‘Er wunderte sich’ (he marveled) is the key expression in this context. The depiction of astonishing curiosities and marvels is a common technique for relaying knowledge in the premodern period. As Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park have explained, wonder as an emotion represents the dominant premodern attitude towards objects of curiosity.48 It is exactly this excitement that Faustus seeks.49 This introduction of a heightened emotional perspective into the description of European cities is the most important rhetorical deviation from Schedel. It points to the fact that for Faust, traveling is not about gathering precise factual information. Instead, he seeks visual sensations or objects of pleasure and wonders, which serve as mediators of knowledge. By connecting his visits with the magical concept of flying and other exotic attributes gained through his contract with the devil, the traveling episodes acquire even more new qualities. For instance, in some cities Faust is by no means merely an objective observer. In Würzburg, he steals food from the Bishop’s 48 Lorraine Daston/Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750, New York 1998. 49 Füssel, Die literarischen Quellen (see n. 6), p. 31f has already pointed out: ‘Die von der Forschung gelegentlich geäußerte Kritik an der oberflächlichen Art der Textübernahme, besonders bei den umfangreichen Partien aus Schedels Weltchronik, trifft nicht den Kern des Themas: mit der auch in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts angesehenen, überaus reich bebilderten Chronik, wird eine Erfahrungsmöglichkeit durch Reiseberichte geboten, die dem Leser einmalige neue Kenntnisse vermittelte.’

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palace at night (65, 22–24), in Regensburg he revels in a (wine?) cellar, an endeavor with strong symbolic undertones: ‘Raiding the lord’s cellar and drinking his best wine had long been a ritual of rebellion, often with disastrous consequences.’50 Despite moving through the cities primarily on foot, he sometimes suddenly changes perspectives: initially surveying Krakow from a nearby mountain top, then making himself invisible and flying around the city at night.51 As in the Pope’s palace in Rome, he stays for several days in the palace of Constantinople, fooling everyone with his magic tricks. He also manages to make love to every woman in the sultan’s harem.52 Such passages are informed by the phantasm of having the whole world at one’s disposal, of having unlimited access to all sensual and sexual resources, and by the sheer pleasure of experiencing the world. Once more, one can argue that this is yet another demonstration of Faustus’ desire for power. As in another contemporary and similarly popular prose novel, the anonymous Fortunatus (1509),53 in which the hero gets hold of a magic hat that has the power to transport its wearer anywhere he wishes, Faust’s adventures may embody man’s mythical wish to be able to fly.54 One might see in the recourse to such desires and motifs an attempt to adapt the heritage of a mythical worldview as a whole.55 With regard to aspects of knowledge and of historical anthropology, however, I believe there is as much historical as future orientation in it, even of a utopian variety: a wish to transcend the body’s limitations, its materiality and submission to the forces of gravity, in a time period in which the world becomes much wider and more open in every aspect. Faust’s wish to visit ‘whichever city or place came to mind,’ the high velocity with which he moves through the world and the almost intoxicating speed with which he changes his itinerary suggest a desire for the kind of knowledge that permits unlimited ubiquity – to be everywhere at once and to literally know it all. The experiments with changing perspectives and the occasional longer stays in selected locales demonstrate this sheer lust of being able to make such choices. 50 Roper, Witchcraze (see n. 40), p. 167. In this context, she also stresses symbolic and psychological meanings of this ritual. 51 The importance of perspective as an element of witch flights is also noted by Roper, Witchcraze (see n. 40), p. 107f: ‘Not every witch could execute the imaginative feat of seeing the village, the fields and hills from the air, an exercise all the more difficult in the era before powered flight. Part of the exhilaration of this fantasy must have lain in the sensation of sovereignty over distance […].’ 52 Mathes, Verhandlungen mit Faust (see n. 34), pp. 71f, discusses this episode with regard to aspects of cultural hegemony. 53 Hans-Gert Roloff, ed., Fortunatus. Studienausgabe nach der Editio Princeps von 1509, Stuttgart 1981. 54 This view is already expressed by Füssel, Die literarischen Quellen (see n. 6), p. 31. 55 Müller, Rationalisierung und Mythisierung (see n. 18), p. 455 et passim.

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Therefore, when examining knowledge traditions in the Faust Book, there is something to be gained by not limiting oneself to the identification of extraliterary sources. Faust’s flying is inspired by historical ‘knowledge’ which was likely derived from contemporary witch trials. The cities and sites in which Faust alights are certainly modeled after those mentioned in the Schedelsche Weltchronik, a compilation of contemporary, theological, geographical and political knowledge. In Historia von D. Johann Fausten these references have been transfered to a new level – a literary knowledge that redeploys them in fictional acts for new levels of experience, emotion and exploration. In the travel sequence Faust takes flight, having acquired a transformable body, unencumbered by its materiality: an instrument for boundless, extraordinary endeavors. In the earlier scene with the hay wagon, Faust’s body becomes grotesque, expanding and exposing its materiality, using its functions in order to taste and devour the world. The grotesque body is also informed by phallocentric aggressiveness, a tool in order to impress, intimidate and dominate other men. In deciphering this knowledge, body imagery plays a decisive role, involving the body being depicted in heterogenous forms. This new knowledge can be deciphered as an expression of venal desires, utopian longings, and a lust for extraordinary empowerment, in short, a historical imaginary.56

56 I wish to thank Bill C. Ray and Lydia Jones for translating this article into English.

Klaus Bergdolt

German Medicine and Italian Humanism in the Times of Reformation

In this paper ‘German medicine’ refers to medicine in the scientific world of German-speaking Europe in the first decades of the sixteenth century. The prestige of internationally respected universities in Heidelberg,1 Tübingen,2 Freiburg,3 Leipzig4 or Ingolstadt5 notwithstanding, Italians, not Germans, led medical research and theory at that time.6 Starting in the mid-fifteenth century, aspiring German physicians increasingly attended Italian universities, first of all Padua, Bologna and Ferrara.7 German princes awarded scholarships for this purpose, in order to improve their local medical faculties, whose scientific level was a matter of prestige. Quite a few of them were also spurred on by their own egoism – they hoped to improve the quality of their personal physicians. After their peregrinatio academica, a Renaissance practice in which students (and young nobles) wandered to famous universities or teachers in different locations,8 these men possessed a considerable humanist curriculum and once 1 Richard Benz, Heidelberg, Schicksal und Geist, Sigmaringen 21975, esp. pp. 72–83. 2 Walter Jens, Eine deutsche Universität. 500 Jahre Tübinger Gelehrtenrepublik, München 1977, pp. 44–71. 3 Eduard Seidler, Die Medizinische Fakultät der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau. Grundlagen und Entwicklungen, Heidelberg 1993, pp. 14–32. 4 Friedrich Zarncke, Die urkundlichen Quellen zur Geschichte der Universität Leipzig in den ersten 150 Jahren ihres Bestehens, Leipzig 1857. 5 Cf. Heinz Goerke, “I professori di medicina di Ingolstadt, i loro rapporti con l‘Italia e in particolare con l‘università di Padova,” in I secoli d‘oro della Medicina. 700 anni di scienza medica a Padova, ed. Loris Premuda, Modena 1986, pp. 37–42. 6 Cf. Rainer A. Müller, Geschichte der Universität. Von der mittelalterlichen Universitas zur deutschen Hochschule, München 1990, pp. 30–57; Gian Paolo Brizzi et alii, ed., L’università a Bologna. Maestri, student e luoghi dal XVI als XX secolo, Bologna 1988; Patrizia Castelli, ed., La rinascita del sapere. Libri e maestri dello studio ferrarese, Venezia 1991; Maria Boas, The scientific Renaissance. 1450–1630, London 1962; Premuda (see. n. 5). 7 Goerke, I professori di medicina (see n. 5); Paul F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, Baltimore 2002, for instance pp. 12, 48 (Bologna), pp. 191–93 (Padua), p. 128 (Parma), pp. 88, 92 (Pavia). 8 Stefanie Irrgang, Peregrinatio academica. Wanderungen und Karrieren von Gelehrten der Universitäten Rostock, Greifswald, Trier und Mainz im 15. Jahrhundert (=Beiträge zur Ge-

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back in German-speaking Europe demonstrated a remarkable corporate identity. Being a German alumnus of the Padua or Bologna medical school constituted, north of the Alps, participation in an important, elite network of colleagues. Graduates of these Italian medical programs uniformly retained a profound attraction to the new medical paradigm of their time: they wanted to be both excellent doctors and, starting in the fifteenth century, brilliant humanists and philologists.9 They held Plato in high esteem and were fascinated by the humanists’ interests in newly discovered classical texts. Moreover, these alumni were considered sterling examples of scientific quality and moral behavior, reluctantly even by their compatriot colleagues who had not been privileged students on the Apennine peninsula.10 Just as we see today when a new scientific paradigm becomes dominant,11 these men transferred their Italian academic experience directly and enthusiastically to German universities, where they were met with the opposition of conservative faculties. But the ‘Italians’ were not to be stopped, particularly as medical topics now became increasingly a component of general knowledge as did the ability to use Latin with stylistic brilliance and above all a more profound knowledge of authoritative Greek and Roman texts in general.12 In short order, it was no longer possible to rely on medieval encyclopaedists and commentators – especially those of Arab provenance (the ‘Arabism’ of the scholastic doctors had been criticized already in 1355 by Petrarch in the Invectivae in medicum quendam13). Now original Greek and Latin texts were put forward as proof, in philosophy as within the medical profession. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, elite students and physicians were no longer satisfied by ‘commentators’ such as Avicenna and Averroes,14 but scrutinized medical texts in search of a deeper analysis. So they

9 10 11 12

13 14

schichte der Universität Greifswald 4). Stuttgart 2002; furthermore Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch (= Kröners Taschenbuchausgabe 53), Stuttgart 1976, p. 196f. Cf. Roy Porter, Die Kunst des Heilens. Eine medizinische Geschichte der Menschheit von der Antike bis heute, trans. by Jorunn Wissmann. Heidelberg/Berlin 2000, pp. 170–173. One of those who had not had the privilege to study in Italy was Leonhart Fuchs at Tübingen, cf. Gert Brinkhus, ed., Leonhart Fuchs 1501–1566. Mediziner und Botaniker, (Catalogue), Tübingen 2001. Cf. Thomas Kuhn, The structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago 1962. On this point extensively Klaus Bergdolt, Zwischen “scientia” und “studia humanitatis”. Die Versöhnung von Medizin und Humanismus um 1500 (Vortrag 379, Klasse für Geisteswissenschaften Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften). Wiesbaden 2001. The treatise is the basis of this paper. It had been finished in 1355, cf. Klaus Bergdolt, Arzt, Krankheit und Therapie bei Petrarca. Die Kritik an Medizin und Naturwissenschaft im italienischen Frühhumanismus, Weinheim 1992, pp. 27f and 44f. Cf. Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Die Aristotelische Tradition,” in Paul Oskar Kristeller, Humanismus und Renaissance I, ed. Eckhard Kessler, trans. Renate Schweyen-Ott, Munich 1974, pp. 30–49

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became not only better doctors but also accepted members of the humanist movement. No wonder that intellectuals like Giovanni Tortelli († 1466) and physicians like Gian Giacomo Bertolotti († 1530?) could also present, for the first time, books on the history of medicine.15 They thought of the ancient authorities Hippocrates and Galen as contemporary ‘interlocutors’ or colleagues of sorts and were proud of being able to read them in their original language. One of the most brilliant physicians of this period, a scion of the little German town Wesel, was Vesalius (the ‘man of Wesel’). Born in Brussels, at the beginning of his career he was not least known as a great philologist, one of the first capable of critically analyzing Galen’s authoritative texts.16 As a young physician Vesalius had almost become a naturalized Italian, for he had taken to heart the new trend of no longer being content with passive learning.17 In sixteenth-century Italy, medical quality, as already mentioned, was equated with philological talent and linguistic meticulousness. Vesalius was an outstanding example of this. Young academics were taught not only to adore, but also to analyze Hippocrates, Galen and Theophrastus using critical, philological methods and to compare those results with what they saw on the dissection table. To translate and understand an ancient text meant comparing every assertion with one’s own anatomical knowledge and experience.18 This was a rather new idea; consciously or unconsciously medieval physicians consistently had confirmed Galen’s descriptions during post-mortem examinations. Their curriculum was based on lectures about specific books, ‘usually parts of the Articella and Avicenna’s Canon,’ supplemented by disputations on interesting casuistries.19 Comparing dissection results with medical texts constituted a new anatomical practice and was a logical consequence of the combination of philology and anatomy. It may be a bit surprising (but not at all illogical!) that in parallel with 15 Luigi Belloni, Dorothy M. Schullian, ed., Io. Tortelli De medicina et medicis. Io. Iac. Bartholoti De antiquitate medicinae. Due storie della medicina … Milano 1954, pp. XX – XXXII; Lynn Thorndike, “J.J. Bertolotti”, in Vatican Latin Manuscipts in the history of science and medicine, in: Isis XIII (1929), pp. 62f. 16 Charles D. O’Malley, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels 1514–1564, Berkeley 1965; John Bertrand de Saunders, Charles D. O’Malley, The illustrations from works of Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, New York 1973; Giuseppe Ongaro, La medicina nello studio di Padova e nel Veneto, in Storia della Cultura Veneta 3/III, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi/Manlio Pastore Stocchi, Vicenza 1981, pp. 75–134. 17 Gerhard Fichtner, “Riforma o rinascita della medicina?”, in Premuda (see n. 5), pp. 33– 36. 18 Reinhardt Hildebrandt, “Zum Bilde des Menschen in der Anatomie der Renaissance: Andreae Vesalii De humani corporis fabrica libri septem. Basel 1543,” Annals of Anatomy 178 (1996): pp. 375–84. 19 Cit. Vivian Nutton, “Medieval Western Europe, 1000–1500”, in The Western Medical Tradition. 800 B.C. to ad 1800, ed. Lawrence I. Conrad/Michael Neve/Vivian Nutton/Roy Porter/ Andrew Wear, Cambridge 1995, pp. 156f.

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the impact of philology we find among doctors a clear tendency toward practical medicine. Consequently, performing dissections became increasingly important for sixteenth-century physicians. It seemed to be the most respectable way to confirm or to refute the Ancient authorities. In earlier centuries, practical anatomy had generally been handled mainly by surgeons.20 For more than a century it now became the center of scientific attention. This anatomical revolution took place in Italy. In his 1528 critical Commentary on the anatomy of Mondino, the Bolognese anatomist Berengario da Carpi († c. 1530), ‘the first man not constantly overwhelmed by earlier authorities,’21 warned his readers not to follow authority ‘like cattle’.22 This relativization of tradition – a challenge of all scholastic methods – was printed eight years before Vesalius’ Anatomic Tables (1536) and fifteen years before his famous Fabrica corporis humani (1543), which was a turning point as concerns the medical view and value of the human body.23 Berengario adjured what he called ‘anatomia sensualis,’ the ‘anatomy of observable things.’ He castigated what he called ‘aggregators’ who only piled authority upon authority without testing their findings against reality. It gave him pleasure to put trust in his own vision. He denied the existence of a third ventricle of the heart (as posited by Aristotle) and cast doubt on the multicelled uterus because he couldn’t confirm it in dissection.24 ‘Medicine in the times of Reformation’ refers to this famous, often glorified explosion of new anatomical discoveries made by Vesalius and his successors.25 Less well known is the very close camaraderie that developed among the medical elite – first in Italy, as previously mentioned, and then, via alumni of the southern universities, also in Germany – with the intellectual world informed by studia humanitatis. First defined by the humanist Coluccio Salutati (†1406) at the end of the fourteenth century, studia humanitatis included the study of poetry, moral philosophy, ancient history, rhetoric and philological enthusiasm.26 The result was a medical anthropology based on a new, broad education initially south, but quickly thereafter also north of the Alps.27 20 Cf. Bergdolt, Zwischen “scientia” und “studia humanitatis” (see n. 12), pp. 42–45. 21 O’Malley, Andreas Vesalius (see n. 16), p. 19. 22 Gernot Rath, Andreas Vesal im Lichte neuerer Forschungen (= Beiträge zur Geschichte der Wissenschaften und Technik), Wiesbaden 1963, p. 9. 23 Cf. O’Malley, Andreas Vesalius (see n. 16), pp. 139–46; Bergdolt, Zwischen “scientia” und “studia humanitatis” (see n. 12), p. 6. 24 O’Malley, Andreas Vesalius (see n. 16), p. 19. 25 Moritz Roth, Andreas Vesalius Bruxellensis, Berlin 1892, pp. 19–24 26 Dieter Lebek, “Cicero in Europa und der Begriff der Studia humanitatis”, in Humanismus und Menschenbildung. Zu Geschichte und Gegenwart der bildenden Begegnung der Europäer mit der Kultur der Griechen und Römer (=Detmolder Hochschulschriften 4), ed. E. Wiersing, Essen 2001, pp. 130–170, esp. p. 156. 27 Bergdolt, Zwischen “scientia” und “studia humanitatis” (see n. 12), pp. 10f.

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This sober, scientific research based on philology and the new confidence in anatomy initially appeared to confirm Petrarch’s old prejudice against physicians. This ‘first modern man’28 had suspected a conceited pompousness which should compensate for doctor’s failures and dubious behaviors at the patient’s bedside. Yet this reproach – in Vesalius’ time Petrarch (†1374) still cast long shadows! 29 – did not prevent young physicians from enthusiastically reading the latest essay on humanist topics. Maybe they wanted to refute demonstratively the old humanists’ verdict against their profession! As physicians they thought as scientists, dedicated to ratio and logics; as intellectuals they felt a strong bond with the humanists who wrote on God, religion, philosophy, human autonomy, and what we call today the dignity of man. In other words: Doctors became intellectuals. Padua and Bologna medical alumni were well familiar with the most brilliant and influential fifteenth-century humanist philosophers including Leon Battista Alberti, Marsilio Ficino, Bessarion or Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, not to mention the idolized Plato30 A special role concerning this development is played by Padua, where, at the turn of the fourteenth century, professor of medicine Peter of Abano had established a first year medical curriculum which emphasized the ‘liberal arts’ as well as the study of Aristotle (while Plato was not included, as was customary at this time).31 These liberal arts, akin to a ‘fundamental order’ (Ernst Robert Curtius32) for the intellectuals, led more and more to the dominance of trivial logics or dialectics and thus, already in the Middle Ages, directly to (Aristotelian) philosophy. Towards the end of the fifteenth century in Padua a kind of general education (Allgemeinbildung in German) was an indispensable prerequisite to the second year of medical studies. It was, however, accentuated by the scholastic impact. This was a local academic tradition, one which did not question, on the other hand, authority and which consequently led – from about 1400 on – to a certain ossification of research and teaching. When one considers that medieval scholastic physicians had been narrow-minded Aristotelians (as to that Padua was influenced by Paris, where Pieter of Abano came from33), then one can 28 Ernest Renan, Averroes et l’Averroisme, Paris 1852, p. 260. 29 Lucius Keller, Übersetzung und Nachahmung im europäischen Petrarkismus. Studien und Texte, ed. Lucius Keller (=Studien zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 7), Stuttgart 1974. 30 Bergdolt, Zwischen “scientia” und “studia humanitatis” (see n. 12), pp. 24–38. 31 Nancy G. Siraisi, Arts and Sciences at Padua. The Studium at Padua before 1350 (= The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Studies and Texts 25), Toronto 1973, pp. 110–112. 32 Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, Bern/München 1967, p. 52. 33 Martin Grabmann, I divieti ecclesiastici di Aristotele sotto Innocenzo III e Gregorio IX (= Miscellanea Historia Pontificiae XI, 20: I Papi del Duecento e l’Aristotelismo I), Rome 1941.

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appreciate how the paradigm shift within Italian medicine toward humanist ideas was a real sensation. The new methodological alliance of humanism and medicine scandalized many conservative physicians and humanists in Italian as well as German cities. It is important to recall that the first two generations of humanists – figures including Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio († 1375), Coluccio Salutati († 1406) and Leonardo Bruni († 1444) – were antipathetic toward medicine and all sciences taught at the scholastic universities, law included.34 If Petrarch’s mid-fourteenthcentury Invectivae were to be believed, physicians were superficial loudmouths, braggarts and swindlers who had little to offer when their patients were in truly desperate straits. One of Petrarch’s famous dictums, ‘medicinae nihil commune cum ethica’ (medicine has nothing in common with ethics),35 testifies to his low opinion of ethics among physicians. He firmly believed they were powerless against any kind of illness, not least in times of the plague, for example. When this catastrophe spread to Central and Western Europe in 1348, it marked a lowpoint in the profession’s reputation. Moreover, Petrarch declared physicians morally corrupt, stupid and insipid. He insisted that their everyday work consisted of the inspection and smelling of their patient’s urine and other stinking bodily fluids produced by men and animals daily.36 Medicine and humanism were two very different worlds in the fourteenth century, separated by a huge spiritual gap. Petrarch’s reproach of atheistic physicians (‘ubi tres medici, duo athei’) could even be traced back to early Christianity.37 Whereas Origen († 254) defended secular medicine as a gift from God,38 Gregory of Nazianzus († 389) criticized physicians for caring only about the body’s health, curing only those things which were visible. Tertullian († 225) reviled Herophilos († 280 BCE) ‘as a healer or butcher hating people’39 and Prudentius († 405) also wrote of the ‘Hippocratic butcher’s shop’ alluding to medicine.40 Gregory of Tours († 594) and Basil the Great († 379) argued along similar lines.41 It is to Petrarch’s credit that he col34 Bergdolt, Arzt, Krankheit und Therapie (see n. 13), p. 1. 35 Francesco Petrarca, Invectivae contra medicum. Testo Latino e volgarizzamento di Ser Domenico Silvestri, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci (=Storia e Letteratura. Eaccolta di Studi e Testi 32), Roma 1978, p. 76 ( III, 607f). 36 Petrarca, Invectivae contra medicum (see n. 35), p. 57 (II, 631). 37 Bergdolt, Arzt, Krankheit und Therapie (see n. 13), p. 44. 38 Origenes, in Numeros Homiliae 18,3, cf. Patrologia Graeca, Migne, Paris 1857–1866, vol. 12, c. 715. 39 Tertullian, De anima 10, 4 (‘ille medicus aut lanius qui hominem … odit’). 40 Prudentius, Peristephanon X, 498, cit. Albert Dressel, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis quae exstant carmina, Leipzig 1860, p. 412. 41 Cf. Klaus Bergdolt, Das Gewissen der Medizin. Ärztliche Moral von der Antike bis heute, München 2004, pp. 64f.

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lected all of the arguments of these prominent and pious critics emphasizing the pagan origin of medicine. The fact is, let me repeat, that early humanists such as Petrarch despised medical doctors as a group of narrow-minded specialists with a superfluous, ridiculous expertise. Returning to the late fifteenth century, we see the gap increasingly bridged. This was a crucial point in the history of medical science. Important humanists such as Ermolao Barbaro († 1493) discovered Aristotle as a source of wisdom and philosophical authority, while men like Petrarch and Bruni had explicitly relied upon Plato and St. Augustine. The prominent Venetian humanist had even planned a new Latin edition of the stagyrite’s Opera omnia (between 1474 and 1485).42 A century earlier Petrarch – to once more come back to him – had made fun of Aristotle whom he saw as a pagan seducer; he also believed the Greek had been misunderstood by Arabian commentators. It seemed his writings were not worth the effort of study, but this all changed. In his treatise De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis adolescentiae early fifteenth-century religious reformer Pier Paolo Vergerio († 1444), who had studied medicine and law, counseled against the preoccupation with medicine and the natural sciences.43 Bartolomeo Facio († 1457), a leading humanist (at the court in Naples), glorified medicine as a chance to train logical thinking, arguing that it helped students understand the complex interdependencies of the body’s structure.44 In 1452 the brilliant author and philologist Giannozzo Manetti († 1459) wrote De dignitate et excellentia hominis which describes anatomical details of the human body.45 Was not the beautiful composition of the human body – God’s work, after all – also proof of man’s dignity? Studying anatomy meant not least discovering the secrets and details of divine creation. Viewed in this light, anatomy was a new way to find God! Another point of reconciliation of medicine and humanism was the discovery of De medicina by the Roman encyclopedic author Celsus (2nd c.), a discovery attributed to Guarino da Verona in 1425.46 Thus, by the early sixteenth century, the situation had completely changed. Humanists too were intensely interested in medical problems, questions of health and pain, aging, death and in what we

42 Vittore Branca, “L’umanesimo Veneziano alla fine del Quattrocento. Ermolao Barbaro e il suo circulo,” in Arnaldi/Stocchi, Storia della cultura Venetia 3/I (see. n. 16), pp. 123–175. 43 Cf. August Buck, “Die Medizin im Verständnis des Renaissancehumanismus,” in Humanismus und Medizin (= Mitteilung XI der Kommission für Humanismusforschung), ed. Rudolf Schmitz/Gundolf Keil. Weinheim 1984, pp. 181–198, here p. 183. 44 Cf. Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine. An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, Chicago 1990, p. 78. 45 Giannozzo Manetti, Über die Würde und Erhabenheit des Menschen, trans. by Hartmut Leppin, ed. August Buck (=Philosophische Bibliothek 426), Hamburg 1990, pp. 7–35 (book I). 46 Cf. Ongaro, La medicina (see n. 16), p. 96.

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today call psychological problems.47 In Raphael’s famous 1510 painting The School of Athens set in the Vatican Palace, Plato and Aristotle are portrayed as good, equally respected members of the intellectual world.48 In the north, Erasmus of Rotterdam († 1536) wrote an essay entitled In Praise of Medicine which would have made Petrarch spin in his grave! 49 In his Adagia, Erasmus also wrote many proverbs and aphorisms concerning medical or psychological topics including ‘Haste makes waste’ and ‘excesses are unhealthy’. He reflected on the ‘quinta essentia’ (quintessence), literally a ‘fifth essence’ which hinders aging and feebleness but which unfortunately does not really exist.50 His contemporary Sebastian Brant († 1521) similarly castigates a foolish, unhealthy, silly, uncontrolled life in his Narrenschiff (‘ship of fools’, 1494) for these inevitably end in disease and madness: ‘A fool is a man who does not take his doctor seriously […] (like those who deny the existence of God!)’.51 Many physicians in 1500 knew this text, printed in many editions, understood his moral emphasis on health and illness – and felt morally and intellectually accepted. New humanist sympathies led to many chances for medical doctors, as they did for artists, painters and sculptors. Andrea del Verrocchio, Mantegna, Signorelli, Leonardo, Raphael, Dürer and Michelangelo all clearly profited from the new advances in anatomy.52 Physicians could not disappoint them. It is difficult to imagine Michelangelo without Realdo Colombo, or Leonardo without Marcantonio della Torre! 53 In his 1435 treatise De statua (1435) the polymath humanist Leon Battista Alberti († 1472) insisted that a good sculptor had to know the parts of the body precisely (as a shipbuilder needs to know how the parts of the ship fit together).54 Both artists and physicians discovered the body’s internal

47 Cf. also Gerhard Baader, “Medizinische Theorie und Praxis zwischen Arabismus und Renaissancehumanismus,” in Der Humanismus und die oberen Fakultäten (= Mitteilung XIV der Kommission für Humanismusforschung), ed. Gundolf Keil/Bernd Moeller/Winfried Trusen, Weinheim 1987, pp. 185–213. 48 Bergdolt, Zwischen “scientia” und “studia humanitatis” (see n. 12), p. 34f. 49 Klaus Bergdolt ed., Erasmus von Rotterdam. Encomium artis medicae. Lob der Heilkunst, Heidelberg 2008. 50 Erasmus von rotterdam, Adagia. Vom Sinn und vom Leben der Sprichwörter, ed. Theodor Knecht, Zurich 1984, pp. 112, 140. 51 Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff, trans. by H.A. Junghans (=Reclams Universalbibliothek 899), Stuttgart 2006, pp. 136–140. 52 Charles Singer, “Das Zusammenfließen von Humanismus, Anatomie und Kunst,” in Zu Begriff und Problem der Renaissance (= Wege der Forschung CCIV), ed. August Buck, Darmstadt 1969, p. 326–335. 53 Nutton, Medieval Western Europe, 1000–1500 (see n. 19), pp. 265–68. 54 Leon Battista Alberti, On painting and on sculpture. The Latin texts of De pictura and De statua, ed. Cecil Grayson. London 1972, pp. 128f (De statua 8, 1).

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parts.55 Fine arts, philology, humanism and medicine were once again mediated by studia humanitatis. Alberti compared the activities and goals of humanists directly with those of a physician: medical doctors care about physical health, whereas humanists reflect upon the health of the soul. This great intellectual and artist now praised this new kind of physician (in De Famiglia) who restores health and acts as a kind of life councilor (or ‘life coach’ in its modern meaning).56 Alessandro Benedetti († 1525), professor of anatomy and surgery at Padua, planned the first teatrum anatomicum; it was not completed – while Fabrizio d’Acquapendente’s († 1619) can still be admired today in Padua’s Palazzo del Bò.57 Benedetti was considered the leading Paduan medical scientist of his day and it is no wonder that he wrote Historia corpors humani sive Anatomiae (1502), much admired also for the wonderful Ciceronian style of its introduction.58 It is important to recall that Petrarch and Salutati had made fun of the rough Latin used by medical authors. These paradigmatic changes were hesitantly accepted in German-speaking Europe. The shift was hard and did not remain uncontested, but the studia humanitatis showed the way. Too many German-speaking physicians had been exposed to the humanities in Italy. Medicine north of the Alps had long suffered, still more than in the south, under Petrarch’s degradation of it according to the system of medieval ‘artes mechanicae,’ but was now elevated from being a mere craft.59 It was more and more acknowledged as a legitimate and important way to discover the individual character and dignity of man. By reflecting as a humanist, the medical scientist demonstrated a fascination with the human soul. The exact location of the soul, however, remained contested. Still Descartes focused on this difficult question.60 In German-speaking Europe, at the turn of the sixteenth century, we may also find a certain antipathy toward the country in the south in general. A conservative fraction among physicians stood against a self-confident one whose Italian experiences had left many positive impressions. Renaissance culture was also in fashion at German courts, and the resistance was particularly strong among some intellectuals, towards the middle of the century not least as a Protestant manifestation of anti-Catholic sentiment. Prejudice and arrogance were prevalent 55 Nutton, Medieval Western Europe, 1000–1500 (see n. 19), p. 264. 56 Leon Battista Alberti, Vom Hauswesen (Della famiglia), Munich/Zurich 1986, p. 369. 57 Maurizio Rippa Bonati, “L’anatomia teatrale nelle descrizioni e nell’iconografia,” in Camillo Semenzato, il teatro anatomico. Storia e restauri, Padova 2003, here pp. 67f. 58 Cf. Vivian Nutton, “The changing language of medicine, 1450–1550,” in Vocabulary of Teaching and Research between Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. O. Weijers (= Etudes sur le vocabulaire intellectual du moyen age VIII), Brepols 1995, here p. 185. 59 Bergdolt, Arzt, Krankheit und Therapie (see n. 13), pp. 38–40. 60 Cf. René Descartes, Discours de la methode V, 12. Französisch-Deutsch. (=Philosophische Bibliothek 261). Hamburg 1990, pp. 96f.

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both north and south of the Alps, where many Italian humanists despised German culture whose value they denigrated to the marginal influence of Italian art, literature and philosophy.61 Ulrich von Hutten († 1523), also an alumnus of Padua, was one of the influential anti-Italian trailblazers.62 This can also be seen after the 1520s in the numerous guidebooks and medical texts for young students, postgraduates, and nobles where one could learn how to preserve one’s moral integrity against the seductive southern locales. Italy was simultaneously admired and disdained.63 The real or alleged preference of Italian humanists for beauty, aesthetics, style, and fine arts seemed to some intellectuals contrary to German character and honesty.64 They were contrary to the image Germans cultivated of themselves, opposed to the world of outer appearances. Indeed, most German physicians had a more sober and rational approach to the ‘humanities.’ Philological research became very popular and a kind of ascetic book enthusiasm and language analysis was typical of their approach.65 Following the Italians, excellent humanists like Reuchlin taught Hippocratic medicine and systematics to medical students! 66 In the nineteenth century any professor in German-speaking Europe would have associated ‘medicine and the Reformation’ with one famous and emblematic figure: Paracelsus. As early as the sixteenth century Paracelsus had been canonized as the ‘Luther of Medicine’, the highest consecration a well-educated German could offer at that time. Paracelsus was regarded as Luther’s medical counterpart. Just as the Reformer detested the scholastic theological circles and their medieval traditions, so Paracelsus dissociated himself from the medical faculties and their worship of Ancient authority. But his microcosmos-macrocosmos model was not totally new, and his theory of the three spiritual substances (‘tria prima’) mercury, sulfur and salt was more of an esoteric experiment than a source of inspiration for future chemists.67 Anyhow, his theories sounded

61 Klaus Bergdolt, Deutsche in Venedig. Von den Kaisern des Mittelalters bis zu Thomas Mann, Darmstadt 2011, pp. 41, 86. 62 David Friedrich Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten. Mit 38 zeitgenössischen Bildern, Merseburg/ Leipzig 1930, p. 170; cf. also Bergdolt, Deutsche in Venedig (see n. 61), p. 90. 63 Bergdolt, Deutsche in Venedig (see n. 61), p. 104–111. 64 Cf. Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio, Medizinische Ästhetik. Kosmetik und plastische Chirurgie zwischen Antike und früher Neuzeit. (= Humanistische Bibliothek I, Abhandlung 56), Munich 2005, esp. pp. 74–95. 65 One of these humanist doctors was Johannes Sinapius, a doctor and humanist who had studied medicine in Ferrara, cf. John L. Flood, David J. Shaw, Johannes Sinapius (1505– 1560). Hellenist and physician in Germany and Italy, Genève 1997. 66 Thomas Rütten, Hippokrates im Gespräch (= Schriften der Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Münster 9), Münster 1993, p. 38. 67 A good (admiring) summary presents Frank Geerk, Paracelsus. Arzt unserer Zeit. Leben, Werk und Wirkungsgeschichte des Theophrastus von Hohenheim, Zurich 1992; about the

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interesting and reflected the zeitgeist. Yet Paracelsus was an outsider, a rebel. And his reception grew more important long after his death.68 A small but influential group of German physicians became famous as collectors: books, painting, graphic arts and strange items such as fossils, stuffed animals, skeletons of deformed animals or monsters.69 Examples of these include the Imperial Counselor and humanist-physician Johannes Cuspinianus († 1529) 70 and Hartmann Schedel († 1514) from Nuremberg.71 The latter commissioned the 1493 Weltchronik, a chronicle of the world edited in German as well as in Latin, which is considered one of the most beautiful books of its age.72 Practicing medicine for this kind of German physician, who copied the lifestyle of Italian humanists and nobles, increasingly held the status of a hobby. They were so thrilled by arts and literature that their time for patients became limited. Schedel, who had, like his cousin Hermann (another admirer of Greek literature), studied medicine in Padua, was an expert in the historical writings of Flavio Biondo († 1463), Bartolomeo Platina († 1481), Enea Silvio Piccolomini, and even medieval authors such as Vincent of Beauvais († 1264) rather than Hippocrates or Galen.73 Nevertheless he worked for years as a ‘town physician’ in Nuremberg. It seems that Hermann, about thirty years older, had been more able to accommodate medical ambitions to the new challenge of the studia humanitatis.74 Many other doctors split their time in this way. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were serious practicing doctors and scientists in Germany such as Leonhart Fuchs († 1566) who cared as much for patients as for the architecture of botanic gardens and wrote wonderful books in Latin and Greek. Fuchs, who had studied and worked in many towns and universities in Germanspeaking Europe (but not in Italy!) became a convinced follower of traditional Greek medicine whose principal works had been recently reinterpreted. Autopsies became commonplace for such physicians because the Ancient texts

68

69 70 71 72 73 74

“occult writings” and the microcosmos-macrocosmos theories cf. Helmut Werner, ed., Mikrokosmos und Makrokosmos. Okkulte Schriften von Paracelsus, Wiesbaden 1994. The literature about Paracelsus is overabundant, cf. (for example) Udo Benzenhöfer, Paracelsus, Einbeck/Hamburg 2003; Charles Webster, Paracelsus. Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time, Yale 2008; Lucien Braun, Paracelsus. Alchimist, Chemiker, Erneuerer der Heilkunde. Eine Bildbiographie, Zurich 1990. They participated here in the interests of many humanists, cf. Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, ed., Humanismus im deutschen Südwesten. Biographische Profile, Sigmaringen 1993. For Cuspinian see Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven, Der Wiener Humanist Johannes Cuspinian. Gelehrter und Diplomat zur Zeit Kaiser Maximilians, Graz/Köln 1959. Cf. Beatrice Hernad, ed., Die Graphiksammlung des Humanisten Hartmann Schedel. Catalogue, Munich 1990. Peter Zahn, “Hartmann Schedels Weltchronik. Bilanz der jüngeren Forschung,” Bibliotheksforum Bayern 24 (1996): pp. 230–248. Hernad, Graphiksammlung Schedel (see n. 71), pp. 104f. Hernad, Graphiksammlung Schedel (see n. 71), p. 13.

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demanded, following the Italian model, a comparison of what was to be seen in a real corpse and what Hippocrates or Galen had written so long ago.75 In 1535, Fuchs was appointed Professor of Medicine at the university of Tübingen, a German city recently turned Protestant. The author of the New Kreuterbuch (1543), which appeared in Latin and German, was invited by the Grand Duke Cosimo de Medici to the cathedra of botanics in Pisa, a position to be combined with the directorship of the newly founded Botanic Garden. Taking the pride and self-confidence of the Italians of this era into account, inviting a German who had not been to Italy before to such a post was a sensation. Fuchs (his name survives also in the beautiful flower ‘Fuchsia’) refused this honor, which was a further sensation! One might suspect the simple explanation: that as a Protestant he did not want to move to a Catholic country.76 Typical of the German medical world were furthermore illustrated herbal books – Kräuterbücher – a printed form of the traditional pressed plants found in many medieval libraries.77 These printed herbal books demonstrate a new preference for systematics. Jakob Tabernaemontanus († 1590), Hieronymus Bock († 1554), Otto Brunfels († 1534), and Leonhart Fuchs are famous authors of such volumes which are mostly characterized by beautiful, firm, faithful drawings.78 Botanical excursions were also an indispensable part of medical education in this age. Under the influence of Italian humanism, German physicians rose above being specialists to become proud representatives of the ‘upper faculties’ which strove to produce broadly educated and well-formed scholars. Of special credit to these humanist-physicians was the revival of the Hippocratic Oath which was not, as many think up to the present day, continuously practiced by European medical doctors and healers down through the ages. I shall conclude with a few reflections on the fortune of this Oath in Europe and Germany. From its origins in fifth century BC Greece until the Middle Ages the Oath was mentioned only from time to time. A few rare samples could be found in medieval monastery libraries.79 It is also noteworthy that the Oath was 75 Brinkhus, Leonhart Fuchs (see n. 10), esp. pp. 10–21. 76 Brinkhus, Leonhart Fuchs (see n. 10), p. 17. 77 Gundolf Keil / Peter Dilg, “Kräuterbücher”, in Lexikon des Mittelalters. Bd. V, 1991, Sp. 1476–1480; Vittorio Dal Piaz/Maurizio Rippa Bonati, “The Design and Form of the Padua Horto Medicinale”, in: A. Minelli, The Botanical Garden of Padua 1545–1995, Venice 1995, pp. 33–54; Dietrich von Engelhardt, “Luca Ghini (um 1490–1556) und die Botanik des 16. Jahrhunderts. Leben, Initiativen, Kontakte, Resonanz,” Medizinhistorisches Journal 30 (1995): pp. 3–49. 78 Klaus Bergdolt, Wellbeing. A Cultural History of Healthy Living, trans. by Jane Dewhurst, Cambridge 2008, pp. 192f. 79 Karlheinz Leven, “Der hippokratische Eid im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin. Von den Schwierigkeiten einer Kooperation (= Medizin-Ethik 10), ed. Richard

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first mentioned some four centuries after its alleged origin by Scribonius Largus, personal physician to first century Roman Emperor Claudius,80 who cites it only briefly.81 In the practical medical life of the Middle Ages, the Hippocratic Oath hardly ever played a role. In 1508 it was rediscovered, philologically improved, and integrated into the statutes of the newly-founded university at Wittenberg in Saxony. Only a few years later this city would become a fundamental Protestant flashpoint.82 But the basis for the reception of the oath had been prepared in Italy: The first printed Latin edition was published in 1525 by Marco Fabio Calvo in Rome, the first Greek one 1526 by Franceso d’Asola in Venice.83 What this means is that the first time this Oath, if we trust in documents, was taken by young physicians in Wittenberg in the years following 1508. And it was from this town, which would later become a center of Protestantism, that the tradition of taking the Oath spread quickly through Europe and abroad. As many German humanists, for instance Johannes Reuchlin (Tübingen 1512), Janus Cornarus (Basel 1538), Anutius Foesius (Frankfurt 1595) and Petrus Forestus (1609) worked on the Corpus Hippocraticum, the circulation of the oath was only a matter of time.84 The fifteenth-century import of studia humanitatis from Italy into Germanspeaking Europe enabled the discovery of the Oath and its integration into pedagogic medical ethics. A new, lasting interest in texts had been transferred from south to north and found extremely fertile ground.85

80 81 82 83 84 85

Toellner/Urban Wiesing, Stuttgart 1997, p. 50 (Bibl. Vat. Urbinas Graec. 64 and Ambrosianus B 113 sup.). Sergio Sconocchia, ed., CONCORDANTIAE Scribonianae … Hildesheim 1988, p. 2. (‘Hippocrates, conditor nostrae professionis, initia disciplinae ab iureiurando tradidit’). Bergdolt, Das Gewissen der Medizin (see n. 41) pp. 48–51. Vivian Nutton, “What’s in an Oath? College Lecture,” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London 29 (1995): pp. 518–24. Bergdolt, Das Gewissen der Medizin (see n. 41), p. 49. Rütten, Hippokrates im Gespräch (see n. 66), pp. 37–50. Schmidt, Humanismus im deutschen Südwesten (see n. 69), p. 9–12.

Elke Anna Werner

Pictorial Concepts of Law and Grace: Relations between the Lutheran Reformation and the Anthropology of the Image

To relate the topic of the volume Anthropology and Reformation – which offers an abundance of questions, methodological approaches and thematic dimensions – to the issue of images, seems interesting for two reasons. On the one hand, the question of the image – that is to say, the question of whether images are permissible, and if so, for which purposes they may be manufactured and displayed – is among the central controversies of the Reformation, especially since it highlights the delimitation between the Old Faith and its cult in an externally visible way.1 In this context, just recall the iconoclasts, who are active in Wittenberg in 1522, in Zwickau and Halberstadt in 1523, in Magdeburg in 1524, in Braunschweig and Bern in 1528, in Copenhagen in 1530, and so forth. For a long time, the destruction of images – depicted vividly in a woodcut executed by the Nuremberg artist Erhard Schön in 1530 – was regarded as symptomatic of the dismissive attitude of the Reformation toward the use of images.2 Emphasized in recent years, on the other hand, and with ample justification, has been the enormous significance of images for the age of the Reformation.3 The broad spectrum of themes, motifs, and functions underscores the wide range of uses for which images were deployed – from portraits of the Reformers and of the sovereigns who embraced the new faith, to illustrations of the Bible and other books, to altar and epitaph images, and not neglecting the abundance of propagandistic images produced during the Reformation. Exemplary for the lastmentioned group of images is a work by Lucas Cranach the Elder, which can be 1 Cf. the recent comprehensive study on the Reformation and the status of images by Anne Eusterschulte, “Der reformulierte Bilderstreit – Grundlagen einer reformierten Theorie der Imago”, in Philosophie der Reformierten, ed. G. Frank and H. Selderhuis, MelanchthonSchriften der Stadt Bretten, vol. 12, Stuttgart 2012, pp. 113–167. 2 Cécile Dupeux, Peter Jezler and Jean Wirth, ed., Bildersturm - Wahnsinn oder Gottes Wille?, Munich 2000. 3 Bridget Heal, “The Catholic Eye and the Protestant Ear: the Reformation as a non-visual event?,” in The Myth of the Reformation, ed. Peter Opitz, Göttingen 2013, pp. 321–355; Josef Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image, Chicago 2004.

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regarded as the first broadsheet of the Reformation, and which was executed in 1519 on a commission from the Wittenberg Reformer Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt.4 The large-format woodcut is divided into two horizontal registers: above, St. Augustine and the Apostle Paul are carried by celestial chariots toward Christ, who is seen on the left, while below a scholastic theologian is driven toward hell. In iconographic terms, this polemical sheet is not particularly innovative, and relies upon familiar pictorial models: it takes up the medieval tradition of typological depictions, and is oriented toward Italian images of triumphal chariots as well as toward German prototypes involving related themes. Through the dense distribution of figures and inscriptions on the pictorial surface, one expressive of a horror vacui, the scene seems heavily overdetermined: the complex web of pictorial and textual elements is intended to convey the fundamentals of the new creed to the viewer as comprehensively as possible, while at the same time establishing a distance from the Old Faith. Probably by virtue of its drastic juxtaposition of redemption and damnation this broadsheet exercised considerable impact on contemporaries, and succeeded in causing quite a stir. Despite the concentration of information in the scene, the public called for additional explanations. Shortly thereafter, a detailed textual explication of the image was published by Karlstadt. Just three years later, in 1522, Karlstadt called for the abolition of images in his treatise Von der Abtuhung der Bylder (On the Elimination of Pictures), primarily in order to prevent the worship of images of saints in the churches. Luther himself opposed the iconoclasts. He regarded works of art as Adiaphora, i. e., as neither useful nor harmful.5 With regard to salvation, they were neither forbidden nor recommended, but were instead regarded as ineffectual. Although Luther did not regard images as useful for salvation, his relationship to them was basically positive. This is related directly to his anthropology and his doctrine of the soul. According to Luther, the human being does not live in abstract ideas, but in mental images – only through the mediation of imagery are we capable of recognizing and understanding.6 Accordingly, it is images created by the imagination that exercise power on our inner lives, engender fear or provide comfort. In order to influence these inner images, Luther believed that people should be 4 Dieter Koepplin and Tilmann Falk, Lukas Cranach. Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik, vol. 2, Basel / Stuttgart 1976, p. 504, no. 351. 5 Thomas Lentes, “Zwischen Adiaphora und Artefakt. Bildbestreitung in der Reformation,” in Handbuch der Bildtheologie. Band I: Bildkonflikte, ed. Reinhard Hoeps, Paderborn 2007, pp. 213–240 6 D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe [= WA], vol. 18, 83, pp. 6–15 (Sermon: Wider die himmlischen Propheten, 1525); WA 37, 63, 25–64, 5–12 (Sermon: Predigt zur Höllenfahrt Christi, 1533).

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presented with appropriate images when receiving instruction in the faith in church. These real pictures in turn shape the individual’s inner or mental images that are hence capable of promoting a comprehension of faith, cementing his recollection of salvific history, and prompting him to devotion. In this concrete functional context, according to Luther, images are permissible not only in churches, but in other public or even private spaces as well ‘damit man Gottes werk und wort an allen enden ymer fur augen hatte und dran furch und glauben gegen Gott ubet.’7 Deeply rooted, then, in Luther’s anthropology was a positive understanding of images, and one that made the continued existence of pictures possible. The second reason for the anthropological perspective on images presented here is related to the history of science. In the wake of the iconic turn and a heightened attention to images which began in the 1990s, the art historian Hans Belting introduced the anthropological dimension of images into the scholarly discourse.8 This approach makes it possible to establish new connections to Luther’s understanding of images. In the following, I will take up two central ideas. Belting’s anthropological approach has its point of departure in the assumption that everything that meets the human gaze or that appears before the inner eye can be referred to as imagery. Fundamental to his conception of the image, then, is that it encompasses both inner and external imagery. In both instances, the location of pictures is the body, which is occupied by images.9 Through sensual perception, the human individual is subject to the real or imaginary images which he himself creates; they are inscribed in his corporeal perception. By turning away from image and media studies that are oriented predominantly toward technology and focusing on the human body as the site of production and reception, Belting sets up a methodological foundation on the basis of which the relationship between external and internal images, which Luther established for the image culture of the Reformation era, can be developed further. As Belting says, ‘images are more than a product of perception. They emerge as the result of personal or collective symbolization.’10 On the one hand, the act of semantization in the process of perception that is addressed here is the basis for the human epistemic ability; on the other, it accounts for the effectiveness of images in generating identity and a sense of community. That is to say: to the extent the individual associates the image with a specific meaning, vision be7 8 9 10

WA 10/22, 458, 24–27. Hans Belting, Bild-Anthropologie, Munich 2001. Belting, Bild-Anthropologie (see n. 8), p. 12. Belting, Bild-Anthropologie (see n. 8), p. 11.

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comes cognition. This cognitive process, again, is a precondition for the very possibility of transmitting specific collective values and symbols visually. From this point, it is possible to establish a link to Luther’s notion that ‘correct’ images are capable of conveying the true faith to the beholder. With reference to a number of paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his son Lucas Cranach the Younger which may be regarded in general as visualizations of Luther’s Doctrine of Justification, and which are referred to through various modern titles, among them Gesetz und Gnade (Law and Grace), Verdammnis und Erlösung (Damnation and Salvation), and Gesetz und Evangelium (Law and Gospel),11 I now want to incorporate this anthropological perspective into a reading of images, one whose focus is the role and function of the human individual: both the individual in the image and the individual standing before it. These analyses are intended to provide insights into the way in which these works conceptualize the relationship between image and beholder, between the individuals depicted in them and the bodies of the people standing before them, between the meaning of these pictures and their possible forms of transmission.

The certainty of the True Faith In 1529, Lucas Cranach the Elder produced two paintings which may be regarded as the pictorialization of the Justification of the Faith which Luther had begun working out in 1510–11, based on Pauline theology, along with the works of Augustine.12 For the Reformation, the year 1529 was associated with crucial decisions in the realm of ecclesiastical politics: we might recall the protests of the Protestant princes and municipalities at the Diet of Speyer, mounted with the intention of revising the imposition of an empirial ban on Luther and the proscription of his writings. Commencing in that same year was Luther’s strengthened teaching activity on the foundation of the Large and Small Catechism, both published in Wittenberg in 1529. There are several reasons, then, for situating 11 Heimo Reinitzer, Gesetz und Evangelium. Über ein reformatorisches Bildthema, seine Tradition, Funktion und Wirkungsgeschichte, Hamburg 2006; Miriam Verena Fleck, Ein tröstlich gemelde. Die Glaubensallegorie ‚Gesetz und Gnade‘ in Europa zwischen Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Korb 2010. 12 Bernd Hamm, Der frühe Luther. Etappen reformatorischer Neuorientierung, Tübingen 2010; cf. also Bernd Hamm, “Was ist reformatorische Rechtfertigungslehre,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 83 (1986): pp. 1–38; Friedrich Ohly, Gesetz und Evangelium. Zur Typologie bei Luther und Lucas Cranach. Zum Blutstrahl der Gnade in der Kunst, Münster 1985; Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance, Chicago 1993, pp. 262–519; Matthias Weniger, “Durch und durch Lutherisch? Neues zum Ursprung der Bilder von Gesetz und Gnade,” Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 55 (2004): pp. 115–134.

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these pictorial subjects – which were new within Cranach’s oeuvre – in a Reformation context. Disputed, however, is the question of which of the two paintings was produced first – an issue that, given the substantial differences between them, is important in several ways. While one group (in reliance on Friedrich Ohly’s influential book13) believes that the painting in Gotha represents Cranach’s first depiction of this subject, another group accords priority to the work found today in Prague.14 Without detailing the arguments proposed in this dispute, I adopt the position of the second group, according to which the painting in Prague is held to precede the other one – an assumption that seems productive from the anthropological perspective I am pursuing here. Appearing in the center of the Prague painting in the immediate foreground is a group of three figures that mediates between the work’s left and right halves, which are sharply divided compositionally by a tree (see p. 557 for illustration).15 Found on the left-hand side – and proceeding now from front to back – are Death, the Fall from Grace, the handing down of the Commandments, and the Bronze Serpent, set in a rocky landscape space that opens up into depth. A prophet who stands on the left-hand side bends down toward a naked man at the center of the image, guiding the latter’s gaze with the gesture (now proceeding from above and downward) toward the Annunciation, the Lamb of God, the Crucifixion, and the Risen Christ on the right-hand side. This pointing toward the right-hand side is reinforced by John the Baptist, who also gestures in this direction with his right hand. The gestures of these two mediators appear to be differentiated quite precisely: John the Baptist points toward the Lamb and the Risen Christ below, while the prophet indicates the crucified Christ and the kneeling figure of Mary. A woodcut printed in either Paris or Antwerp has been cited as a direct or indirect model for Cranach.16 Both compositions largely agree in their basic dispositions: they share the partially leafy, partially bare tree at the center, the sequence of scenes from left to right, as well as the foreground group of three figures. The woodcut has been supplied with numerous inscriptions which have been lost in the Prague painting, but their original presence is attested by a copy of the painting, where they have been preserved. The crucified Christ, for example, is accompanied by the words ‘Nostre iustice,’ which has been translated in the copy of the Prague painting as ‘unsere Gerechtigkeit’ (‘our righteousness’). The scene thereby displays a close proximity to a core element of the teachings of the Apostle Paul, which were foundational for Luther’s Doctrine of Justification, 13 Ohly, Gesetz und Evangelium (see n. 12). 14 Cf. Fleck, Glaubensallegorie (s. n. 11), pp. 19–23. 15 Max J. Friedländer, Jakob Rosenberg, Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach, Stuttgart 1989 [Berlin 1932], no. 183c/221. 16 Weniger, Ursprung der Bilder, 2004 (see n. 12).

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Fig. 1: Lucas Cranach the Elder, Heaven and Hell Wagon of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, 1519, woodcut.

and were formulated in the so-called September testament of 1522 as follows: ‘So halten wyrs nu / das der mensch gerechtfertiget werde /on zu thun der Werck des gesetzts / alleyn durch de(n) glawben.’ Without going in detail into the question of whether Cranach arrived at his visualization of the Doctrine of Justification on the basis of the woodcut or rather through a close collaboration with Luther, which remains a matter of controversy, I want to turn again toward the group of three figures in the foreground, and to call attention to the attitude of the central figure, who is designated as ‘L’Homme/Der Mensch.’ In the woodcut, as in the Prague painting, this figure’s body is turned toward the left, toward the side of the Prophets and of the Law. Only his head is turned toward the right, toward the side of Grace. This powerful and almost unnatural torsion of the body and head is heightened in Cranach’s painting through the emphatic positioning in profile facing left of the legs of the luminous, naked human body, while the turn of the head toward the right seems to have been instigated directly by the prophets, who have been shifted into direct bodily proximity to the nude man. Consummated through the human body – in accordance with Pauline theology – is the transition from the Old to the New Covenant.

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Fig. 3: Geofroy Tory, The Law and the Gospel, about 1530, woodcut.

In iconographic terms, the motif of the human individual who is suspended between two contrasting worlds is associated with the pictorial tradition of ‘Hercules at the Crossroads.’17 The classical motif, which vividly negotiates the decision for the righteous path in life by means of a hero who serves as an identificatory figure for the beholder, has been altered in the woodcut, and even more so in the painting: now, both the prophet of the Old Covenant as well as John the Baptist gesture toward the right-hand side, that is to say toward grace. The necessity for deciding between two divergent possibilities is thereby annulled in favor of an orientation toward divine grace. In the painting, this reliance on grace is underscored pictorially by having both prophets positioned more closely to the naked figure, who requires their protection, conveying to him through this physical closeness and solicitude a certainty of the act of grace. The man at the center of the woodcut and of the Prague painting, who turns from the Old to the New Covenant, thereby becomes an efficacious figure of identification for the beholder.

17 Koerner, Selfportraiture (see n. 12), pp. 384–406.

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The contrast between damnation and salvation in the didactic image The fundamental difference between the Prague painting and the version preserved in Gotha18 is that the central trio of figures in the former, analyzed above, is absent in the latter (see p. 558 for illustration). In the Gotha picture too, of course, the left-hand side of the image is separated from the right-hand one by a tree, but this division is now more definite, since there is no mediation between them. The human figure that affected a transition from one side to the other is now depicted twice, and moreover in fundamentally different situations. While on the lefthand side, Death and the Devil drive a despairing man into Hell, John the Baptist on the right-hand side exhorts another man to turn toward the crucified Christ. More than in the Prague painting, the division into two pictorial halves corresponds to Luther’s notion of the two necessary forms of gnosis: penitence and redemption through Christ. In accordance with Luther, the left-hand side of the composition exposes sin and the significance of penitence, while the Gospel on the right-hand side extirpates sin. The individual is expected to acknowledge his sins, but then to place them on the Redeemer: ‘Christus hat sie, dort seh ichs, er hats am Kreuz auf sich genommen […]; ich habe wohl Sünden und gute Werke, ich sehe sie aber nicht an, ich sehe allein Christus an.’19 This citation from Luther can be interpreted, so to speak, as instructions for use for the Gotha painting, particularly since it corresponds explicitly to the form of visual perception (‘there I see it, I see only Christ’). As in the Prague painting, the process of vision and insight in which the beholder is involved proffers the man in the image as an identificatory figure. The relationship between the two, however, has been altered decisively. In place of a representation that is oriented toward the body and which shows the individual turning toward the certainty of grace, and hence toward the New Faith, damnation and redemption are presented now to the eye of the beholder as complementary elements of Lutheran doctrine. Now, the relationship between beholder and image – especially when we attend to the inscriptions set along the lower edge of the picture, thereby becoming aware of their meticulous coordination with the depicted scene – could be characterized as being both rational and distanced. For the sake of the didactic transmission of the image’s message, to be sure, Cranach exploits emotional motifs and forms of expression such as the man who is hounded by the devil and throws his arms up in despair. It seems to me, nevertheless, that the beholder is not moved to empathy, to Compassio, but is instead impelled, via the doubling of 18 Friedländer and Rosenberg, Cranach 1989 (see n. 15), no.183/221; Allmuth Schuttwolf, Werner Schade, Gotteswort und Menschenbild. Werke von Cranach und seinen Zeitgenossen, Schlossmuseum Gotha 1994, pp.20–21; Koerner, Selfportraiture (see n. 12), pp. 370–374. 19 Weniger, Ursprung der Bilder (see n. 12), p. 120.

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the human figure in the image, to an attitude of rational reflection. Only with the iconographic shift from the Prague to the Gotha type do these images of law and grace acquire the status of ‘Merkbilder’ – a status that is too commonly attributed in a sweeping way to Protestant images in general.20

The self-reflexive image as an intermediary of faith This reflective relationship between beholder and image is heightened further when the subject is transferred from the panel painting in cabinet format to the large-format altar painting. At last this issue shall be examined in connection with Cranach’s Weimar altarpiece, presumably executed between 1552 and 1555.21 The Schneeberg ‘Reformation Altarpiece’ of 1539 may be seen as an intermediate stage, a work in which the theme of ‘Gesetz und Gnade’ (‘Law and Grace’) is depicted for the first time on the outer wings of a large-format altar painting.22 Aside from minimal alterations, the iconography corresponds to the Gotha type, and shows a man being driven into damnation on the left, and having his attention directed toward Christ by John the Baptist on the right. Of particular interest is the way in which the tree at the center of the image formed by the outer wings is linked to Christ’s cross, into which it is transformed into when the altarpiece is opened23 (see p. 559 for illustration). This transformation of tree into cross undergoes a further logical development in the Weimar altarpiece. The altar highlights the crucifixion and death of Christ as the point of crystallization for Lutheran theology. The dichotomous structure of the Gotha painting is renounced in favor of a unified and articulated space. The focus on the law is shifted into the background, while the theme of redemption through Christ via the crucifixion, the Lamb of God, and Christ as Conqueror of Death is positioned in the foreground. New here are the portraits of 20 WA 28, 674; Hans Belting, Bild und Kult, Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst, München 1990, p. 510f. 21 Daniel Görres, “Der Cranach-Altar der Stadtkirche St. Peter und Paul in Weimar und sein Betrachter. Eine Studie zum Medium ‚Bild‘ im Kontext der Reformation,” in Deubner-Preis 2006. Sonderdruck aus den Kunsthistorischen Arbeitsblättern, Köln 2007; pp. 19–34; Michael Böhlitz, “Der Weimarer Cranachaltar im Kontext von Religion und Geschichte: ein ernestinsches Denkmal der Reformation,” in Lucas Cranach 1553/2003. Wittenberger Tagungsbeiträge anlässlich des 450. Todesjahres Lucas Cranach des Älteren, ed. Andreas Tacke, Leipzig 2007, p. 277–298; Bonnie Noble, Lucas Cranach the Elder. Art and Devotion of the German Reformation, Lanham 2009, pp. 138–162. 22 Thomas Pöpper and Susanne Wegmann ed., Das Bild des Neuen Glaubens. Das CranachRetabel in der Schneeberger St. Wolfgangskirche, Regensburg 2011. 23 Heike Schlie, “Das Holz des Lebensbaumes, des Kreuzes und des Altarretabels. Die Cranach’sche Neufassung einer sakramentalen Bildgattung,” in Das neue Bild des Glaubens, Pöpper and Wegmann ed., (see n. 22), pp. 101–118.

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Luther and of Lucas Cranach the Elder, which occupy the right-hand side together with John the Baptist. The issue of their contribution to the theological statement of the depiction of Law and Grace and the changes in the relationship between beholder and image that they engender can be analyzed via the figure of the Baptist. For Luther, John is the prophet who occupies a midpoint ‘inter Christum und Mosem, inter gratiam et legem, inter novum et testamentum’24 – as a contemporary witness of the arrival of the Messiah, the prophecy of John, which ‘auff Christum zeygt und spricht “Sihe, das ist das Lamb Gottes, das der wellt der suende weg nympt”,’ is accorded a special function by virtue of its historical authenticity.25 Luther, who is depicted on the Weimar panel in the foreground right with an open Bible, appears here for the beholder as a new prophet who perpetuates the lineage of the Old Testament prophets, seen here in the background, via the Baptist and into the present day. Luther’s index finger shows the beholder the path which proceeds Sola scriptura, while the Baptist gestures toward its goal, namely Christ. By depicting Luther on the retable in the tradition of the biblical prophets, his theology acquires the rank of the sole true doctrine, the only path that promises justification. The artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, who presumably began the work, ultimately completed by his son Lucas, now assumes the position formerly occupied by the nude, individualized human being, and is now offered to the beholder as a figure of identification. As an intimate confidant and follower of Luther who lacks a theological education, the laymen Cranach is particularly well-suited to visualizing the message that anyone standing before the image can become a righteous person through Christ. But things do not remain at this identificatory understanding; instead, a further level is involved, one that is suggested to the beholder through the initially provocative presence of the painter within the image: the painting becomes a scene of reflection on the symbolicity of the medium itself. To begin with, the picture’s numerous pointing gestures support this conclusion on the visual level. Again and again, a depicted figure indicates the path toward Christ or the Holy Writ – just as, according to Luther’s conception, the medium in general ought to do: just as John the Baptist, as the ‘tzeyger’ (‘pointer’) serves as a mediator between the faithful and the crucified Savior, in the Lutheran conception an image is ‘on sund,’ (‘without sin’) if the image is understood as a sign, as a mediator that alludes to the Word of God as the sole agency of salvation. In this 24 Görres, Der Cranach-Altar der Stadtkirche (see n. 21), p. 22. 25 Heike Schlie, “Bild und Farbe. Sakramentale Dimensionen der frühneuzeitlichen Bild- und Kunsttheorie,” in Sakramentale Repräsentation. Substanz, Zeichen und Präsenz in der Frühen Neuzeit, Stefanie Ertz, Heike Schlie and Daniel Weidner ed., Munich 2012, pp. 51–80.

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sense, the figures of Luther and Cranach in the Weimar altarpiece are interpretable as mediators of the faith.26 Through the index finger that points to the Bible, Luther presents himself as translator of the holy writ, through whose mediating agency the laymen is able to find his justification sola scriptura. Through the depiction of Cranach, whose gaze addresses the beholder directly, and who – as creator of the image – signifies its specific intermediary function, the pictorial act of mediation becomes the object of reflection within the image. Contributing to this perspective is not just the presence of the artist as a real individual, but also an emphasis on the materiality of the image. One exemplary aspect in this context is the specific materiality of the paint, shown by its fluidity in the spurting blood, its transparency in the standards, its opacity in the pelt of the Lamb, which – in conjunction with the artist’s signature, displayed prominently on the vertical beam of the cross – emphasize the image’s facture.27 They sensitize the beholder to its specific mediality: on the one hand, the image indicates – through the possibility of identification with the artist – the path of the true faith; on the other hand, it reveals itself as a medium, and hence only as a means to an end. Faced with this altar image, with its splendid gold embellishments and brilliant technical execution, its particularly monumental impact in the setting of the little Herderkirche, the beholder is torn between aesthetic admiration, a lucid recognition of the Doctrine of Justification, and a reflection on the image as an artistic artifact, one presented here as an intermediary with Christ. At least for the Cranach workshop, the creative potential of an attempt to exploit the anthropological dimension of the image and its relationship to the beholder – one I have attempted to characterize, no doubt, in a simplified fashion – through a triadic structure consisting first of identification, secondly of didactic instruction, and finally of a complex and ambivalent mixture of identification and aesthetic reflection arrives here at an endpoint.

26 Görres, Der Cranach-Altar der Stadtkirche (see n. 21), p. 31. 27 Schlie, Bild und Farbe (see n. 25), pp. 66–71.

II. Reformations of Body and Soul

Kyle J. Dieleman

Body and Resurrection in Calvin’s Commentaries

John Calvin, the great 16th century Reformer, has often been designated by scholars, seldom meant as complimentary, as a dualist whose anthropology elevated the soul and denigrated the physical body. Years ago, in 1958, Roy Battenhouse wrote that in Calvin’s view, ‘The soul is associated with the body yet ideally detached; the world is but a vestibule to heaven.’1 Similarly, and even longer ago, John Leith claimed in Calvin’s thought an ‘inconsistency […] in the confusion between Hebraic and Platonic interpretations of the relationship of the soul and body.’2 More recently, John Cooper has asserted, ‘That a large portion of the tradition is uncritically Platonistic is beyond dispute. One need only return to the relevant passages in Calvin’s Institutes for a classic example.’3 It is, of course, not difficult to see where such a view originates; on more than one occasion in his Institutes Calvin refers to the ‘prison of the body’ or ‘prison house of the flesh.’4 In fact, Alida Sewell has noted 91 occurrences where Calvin uses the prison metaphor in relation to the body.5 Yet, such caricatures have not gone unquestioned. While perhaps downplaying Plato’s influence on Calvin, already in 1977 Charles Partee asserts that, ‘Calvin’s anthropology could, and does, contain a distinction between the body and soul without the Platonic division.’6 In 1981 Margaret Miles found Calvin’s anthropology to be much more nuanced in her article “Theology, Anthropology,

1 Roy W. Battenhouse, “The Doctrine of Man in Calvin and in Renaissance Platonism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 9, no. 4 (1948): pp. 447–471, here p. 468. 2 John H. Leith, John Calvin’s Doctrine of Christian Life, Louisville 1989, pp. 34–35. 3 John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the MonismDualism Debate, Grand Rapids, MI 1989, p. 94. 4 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, Louisville, KY 2006, II. vii.13, III.iii.14, IV.i.1. 5 Alida L. Sewell, Calvin, the Body, and Sexuality: An Inquiry into His Anthropology, Amsterdam 2011, pp. 223–238. 6 Charles Partree, Calvin and Classical Philosophy, Leiden 1977, p. 65.

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and the Human Body in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.”7 Likewise, Thomas Davis acknowledges Calvin’s disparaging remarks on the body but places them in Calvin’s overall thought in which the body is seen much more positively.8 More recent scholarship, such as Mary Potter Engel’s John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology and Sewell’s Calvin, the Body, and Sexuality, has continued to provide a more balanced, in depth analysis of Calvin’s anthropology.9 Despite this scholarly interest in Calvin’s anthropology, Calvin’s anthropological ideas in his biblical commentaries have received little attention. If one were to comb through the literature on Calvin’s understanding of the body one would inevitably notice that the arguments almost exclusively arise from Calvin’s Institutes. Examination of Calvin’s anthropology via the Institutes is certainly understandable given its structure as a set of loci communes and disputationes, as Richard Muller has argued.10 Randall Zachman rightly notes that in the Institutes Calvin explains the phrase ‘diffused into all parts of the soul’ and addresses the definition of the faculties of the soul.11 Nonetheless, examining only the Institutes to determine Calvin’s anthropology is reductionist and fails to take into account Calvin’s enormous volumes of other work, namely his commentaries and sermons. With but a few exceptions, very few scholars have turned to Calvin’s commentaries when studying his understanding of the body and soul. Particularly unanalyzed within Calvin’s ‘anthropology’ is how Calvin understands the human body in relation to the final resurrection. Thus, my paper will examine Calvin’s commentary on several relevant biblical texts, such as, 2 Corinthians 5, Genesis 2, Philippians 3, and 1 Thessalonians 4. Examining Calvin’s commentaries on such passages will reveal that Calvin understood the body as being an essential aspect of the final resurrection. Indeed, at the final resurrection, Calvin argues, the body will be raised, restored, and perfectly united to the soul. Any examination of Calvin’s anthropology must take into account the role of the body in the final resurrection, and such an examination leads one to a surprisingly positive understanding of the body in Calvin’s anthropology.

7 Margaret R. Miles, “Theology, Anthropology, and the Human Body in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion,” Harvard Theological Review 74, no. 3 (1981): pp. 303–323. 8 Thomas J. Davis, “Not ‘Hidden and Far Off ’: The Bodily Aspect of Salvation and Its Implications For Understanding the Body in Calvin’s Theology,” Calvin Theological Journal 29 (1994): pp. 406–18. 9 Mary Potter Engel, John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology, Atlanta, GA 1988. Sewell, Calvin (see n. 5). 10 Richard A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition, New York 2000, p. 116. 11 Randall C. Zachman, John Calvin as Teacher, Pastor, and Theologian: The Shape of His Writings and Thought, Grand Rapids 2006, p. 93.

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Calvin’s talk of the body being a prison house of the soul also finds expression in his commentaries. In his comments on 2 Corinthians 5:4 Calvin writes that believers groan because they know ‘that they are shut up in the body as in a prison.’12 In commenting on verse 4 a bit later, Calvin says, ‘On this account, our body is called a prison, in which we are confined.’13 Earlier, in verse 1, Calvin speaks of the mortal body as a ‘frail hut’ that is inhabited only ‘for a few days.’14 Such comments certainly seem to clearly denigrate the body. Indeed, in Calvin’s comments we see what we might call a clear body-soul dualism. In verse 8 of 2 Corinthians 5 Calvin speaks of souls being released from the body into the presence of God upon death.15 In verse 1 Calvin draws clear distinctions between the soul and the body. The soul, Calvin says, should be regarded by believers as immortal; the body, on the other hand, is to ‘be inhabited by them [men] for a few days.’16 The body and the soul, then, for Calvin are very clearly different things. The soul has certain properties, in this case immortality, that the physical body simply does not have and vice versa. To better understand the particularities of the soul, Calvin does not shy away from encouraging study of Plato’s teaching.17 In this regard, Calvin clearly has no qualms about using Plato’s ideas and, thus, could not unfairly here be called a sort of Platonist. Calvin explains the relationship of the body and soul in his commentary on Genesis. In the Genesis 2 narrative, God forms man out of the dust of the ground and then breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. Commenting on the passage, Calvin makes clear the dualist narrative of the man. The body is formed of dust; the breath God breathes into man represents the soul. Calvin notes that the fact that man is formed out of the dust of the ground prevents man from being proud. He writes, ‘The body of Adam is formed of clay and destitute of sense, to the end that no one should exult beyond measure in his flesh.’18 Calvin’s remarks seem to be somewhat negative towards the body, implying that it is of less worth because 12 Jean Calvin, in Joannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. by Edouard Cunitz, Johann-Wilhelm Baum, and Eduard Wilhelm Eugen Reuss, 59 vols., Corpus reformatorum 29– 87, Brunsvigae: Schwetschke, 1863, http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:650. Hereafter, abbreviated CO followed by Tome number, colon, and page number. Comm. on 2 Corinthians 5:4, CO 50:62, ‘Gremitus autem fidelium inde nascitur, quod se exsulare hie sciunt extra patriam: quod sciunt se corpore inclusos teneri tanquam ergastulo.’ 13 Calvin, Comm. on 2 Corinthians 5:4, CO 50:62, ‘Hac ratione corpus nostrum vocatur career, qui nos promit.’ 14 Calvin, Comm. on 2 Corinthians 5:1, CO 50:61, ‘ita corpus mortale hominibus datum est tanquam caducum tugurium, quod paucis diebus incolant.’ 15 Calvin, Comm. on 2 Corinthians 5:8, CO 50:64, ‘animas a corporibus solutas apud Deum vivere. Nam si a corpora absentes Deum habent praesentem, cum eo certe vivunt.’ 16 Calvin, Comm. on 2 Corinthians 5:1, CO 50:61, ‘quod paucis diebus incolant.’ 17 Zachman, Calvin as Teacher, Pastor, and Theologian, (see n. 11), p. 81. 18 Calvin, Comm. on Genesis 2:7, CO 23:35, ‘Producat terra omnem animam viventem: nunc luteum et sensu carens fingitur Adae corpus: ne quis sibi ultra modum in carne sua placeat.’

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of how it was created. However, taken within its context, Calvin’s goal is not to disparage the body. Calvin is worried that man will be tempted to boast because of being created in God’s image. Thus, Calvin uses the human body being formed out of dust as an opportunity to prevent anyone from being overly proud about their worth. Having addressed the man’s physical body, Calvin moves on to discuss the soul of the created man. Here Calvin sees the breath God breathes into the body to be the soul being joined with the body. In the specific context of Genesis 2:7 Calvin believes the text is referring ‘only of the lower faculty of the soul, which imparts breath to the body and gives it vigor and motion.’19 It is the soul, then, that gives life to the body. The soul, Calvin says, has many more attributes not described here, but he only nebulously refers to what such attributes might be, mentioning the ‘intellectual part’ of the soul that is here left out.20 Notably, Calvin explains that it is the image of God being engraved on the soul that gives the soul its property of immortality; the soul, evidently, would not necessarily be inherently immortal had it not been given God’s image. In his commentary on Genesis 1, Calvin highlights Augustine’s use of Aristotle’s three faculties of the soul – the intellect, the memory, and the will.21 Calvin has ‘no difficulty’ in accepting such a division of the soul, but he prefers a two-fold division of the soul that he believes is more clearly found in Scripture. Calvin will later explain, though somewhat unclearly, the soul is composed of the mind and heart. Notably, after discussing the soul’s composition Calvin writes, ‘and in the body there was a suitable correspondence with this internal order.’22 So, perhaps Calvin’s thoughts on the physical body are actually not so negative. In his comments on 2 Corinthians 5, the body is a ‘prison,’ says Calvin, not because of any ontological properties but because being in the body means a person remains in bondage to sin.23 The body, then, is not in itself a despicable thing. What is despicable is being caught up in sin and the only way for humans to escape this condition is to die and enter into the presence of God. Yet, Calvin is

19 Calvin, Comm. on Genesis 2:7, CO 23:35, ‘quamvis hie tantum memoretur inferior animae facultas, quae corpus inspirât, et illi dat vigorem et motum.’ 20 Engel rightly notes Calvin’s ‘flexibility of his definition and use of the term’ soul, making it difficult to pin down one particular definition Calvin has for the soul. See Engel, John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology (see n. 9), p. 153. 21 Calvin, Comm. on Genesis 1:26. Calvin refers his listener or reader to Augustine’s City of God, the tenth, fourteenth, and eleventh books. 22 Calvin, Comm. on Genesis 1:26, CO 23:27, ‘in corpore aequabilis quaedam ad illum ordinem proportion.’ 23 Calvin, Comm. on 2 Corinthians 5:4, CO 50:61–62.

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clear that the body is in no way the cause of sin. In his commentary on Romans 8, he notes, ‘it would be otherwise absurd to ascribe to the body the fault of sin.’24 And, of course, dying requires abandoning the physical body, at least temporarily. When Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:2 about the longing for a ‘heavenly dwelling’ Calvin understands this as ‘blessed immortality,’ but he does not dismiss the interpretation that the ‘heavenly dwelling’ is referring to an ‘incorruptible, glorious body which awaits believers after death.’25 Thus, the death of the body will not be the end of the body; it will one day be joined again with the soul at the final resurrection. This need for the soul to separate from the body in order to escape the bonds of sin is the essential reason Calvin speaks of the body as a prison; not because of any ontological deficiency the body has in comparison to the soul. Calvin is clear about the separation of the body and soul at death in his commentary on Psalm 6. Death puts an end to the physical life of the body; in Psalm 6 King David will be unable to praise God if he is removed from this world by death.26 However, the soul, Calvin says, lives on. Calvin believes the soul after death continues to maintain some sort of conscious awareness. He writes, ‘But it does not follow from this, that the souls of the faithful, when divested of their bodies, are deprived of understanding, or touched with no affection towards God.’27 Unfortunately, Calvin does not expand on which exact characteristics the soul does or does not possess after death. What is clear, however, is that the soul continues to exist after death apart from the physical body; the body-soul dualism here is undeniably explicit. The soul is not, in Calvin’s view, separated from the body forever. Calvin reassures his reader that, ‘our soul, though it appears to vanish upon its separation from the body, is in reality only gathered to the bosom of God, there to be kept until the day of the resurrection.’28 The soul, then, continues to exist in the presence of God after death apart from the body, but such an existence exists only until the day of resurrection. On that day, as we will see, the body and soul will be reunited. 24 Calvin, Comm. on Romans 8:10, CO 49:145, ‘Nam corpori tribuere peccati culpam alioqui absurdum esset. Rursum anima adeo vita non est, ut ne ipsa quidem vivat.’ 25 Calvin, Comm. on 2 Corinthians 5:2, CO 50:61, ‘Huic opponit aedificium perpetuae durationis: quo nomine incertum est an significet statum beatae immortalitatis, qui post mortem fidèles manet: an vero corpus incorruptibile et gloriosum, quale post resurrectionem erit.’ 26 Calvin, Comm. on Psalm 6:5, CO 31:76. 27 Calvin, Comm. on Psalm 6:5, CO 31:76, ‘Nunc quamvis mors finem afferat talibus praeconiis, non tamen sequitur, fideles animas corporibus exutas privari intelligentia, vel nullo tangi Dei affectu.’ 28 Calvin, Comm. on Psalm 49:16, CO 31:491, ‘Ergo utcunque in speciem evanescat hominis anima dum migrat a corpore, statuendum tamen est, colligi tanquam in Dei sinum, ut illic fideliter servetur usque ad diem resurrectionis.’

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Calvin’s position becomes even clearer in his commentary on 1 Thessalonians 4. Here, as Paul addresses what will happen to Christians who have died prior to Christ’s return, Calvin comments on the place the body has in such a death. Again, Calvin clearly operates with what has been called a body-soul dualism. He emphasizes that the body, but not the soul, sleeps at the time of death.29 However, when the topic turns to the differences at the final resurrection between those who have physically died and those who are yet alive, Calvin’s view on the status of the body becomes clear. Those who have died, Calvin writes, have had their flesh ‘reduced to nothing, as it is now liable to corruption.’30 Indeed, ‘those who sleep put off the substance of the body for some space of time.’31 On the other hand, those who are still alive at the time of the final resurrection ‘will be suddenly changed’ and ‘will put off nothing but the quality.’32 What is clear here is that for Calvin what needs to be discarded in light of the perfection the final resurrection brings is not the substance of the body. What needs to be altered, albeit drastically, is the quality of the body. The body’s qualitative substance is not to be abolished at the final resurrection. It is only the sinful, temporal qualities of the body that, to use Calvin’s language, must be ‘suddenly changed.’33 Calvin addresses this change which the body undergoes at the final resurrection in his commentary on Philippians 3. Calvin here acknowledges ‘this body which we carry about with us is not an everlasting abode, but a frail tabernacle, which will in a short time be reduced to nothing.’34 Indeed, sounding again the negative aspects of the physical body, he says it can be ‘spoken of as vile and full of ignominy.’35 However, in the final resurrection at Christ’s coming these same bodies will undergo a restoration. This restoration comes from heaven and, as such, the physical body will be given a glory that is incomprehensible to

29 Calvin, Comm. on 1 Thessalonians 4:13, CO 52:164–165, ‘Dormientes vocat mortuos, communi scripturae more, quo verbo mortis acerbitas mitigatur multum enim differt ab interitu dormitio. Caeterui non ad animam, sed corpus refertur: iacet enim in sepulcro cadaver, quasi in lecto, donec hominei Deus excitet. Itaque desipiunt, qui inde colligun animas dormire.’ 30 Calvin, Comm. on 1 Thessalonians 4:16, CO 52:167, ‘dum in nihilum redigitur haec caro, ut nunc est corruptioni obnoxia.’ 31 Calvin, Comm. on 1 Thessalonians 4:16, CO 52:167, ‘quod qui dormiunt aliquo temporis spatio, corporis exuunt substantiam.’ 32 Calvin, Comm. on 1 Thessalonians 4:16, CO 52:167, ‘qui autem subito innovabuntur, non nisi qualitatem exuent.’ 33 Calvin, Comm. on 1 Thessalonians 4:16, CO 52:167. 34 Calvin, Comm. on Philippians 3:21, CO 52:56, ‘quia scilicet corpus hoc, quod gestamus, non perpetuum est domicilium, sed caducum tabernaculum, quod mox in nihilum redigetur.’ 35 Calvin, Comm. on Philippians 3:21, CO 52:56, ‘Deinde tot miseras obnoxium est, tot pudendis infirmitatibus subiectum, ut merito abiectum et ignominiae plenum vocari queat.’

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humankind.36 Indeed, Calvin says these resurrected bodies will be made to conform to the likeness of Christ’s body. Since the disciples could not ‘endure the slight taste which he [Christ] afforded in his transfiguration,’ no person can attain the true fullness of such a transformed body here on earth.37 Because the reality of a transformed body is beyond human comprehension, Calvin advises Christians to be content with the knowledge that they are ‘destined to know the riches of our inheritance when we shall come to the enjoyment of them.’38 The context of Calvin’s comment makes clear these ‘riches of inheritance’ to be enjoyed are nothing less than the renewed and restored Christ-like bodies. Calvin also addresses the final resurrection in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 15. As in the Philippians passage, Calvin again argues that at the final resurrection God will ‘renew our bodies by changing the present condition of things.’39 The problem with the body is not that it needs to be done away with. Rather, the problem is that the sinful body is ‘liable to corruption’ and, as such, ‘cannot inherit God’s incorruptible kingdom.’40 Thus, says Calvin, Paul is clear that Christ must renew believers’ bodies into his own image. In sum, Calvin’s comments on 1 Corinthians 15 clearly show that Calvin believes the sinful body in radical need of restoration and transformation. Notably, what Calvin does not say is that the earthly body will simply be cast aside; the physical body is never abandoned. Instead, it is at the final resurrection where Christ will restore the bodies of believers so that their bodies are transformed into incorruptible, sinless bodies. Clearly, the final resurrection is of significant importance for Calvin.41 It is difficult to see how one scholar could assert that, ‘There is thus no genuine apocalypticism in Calvin. The hope of certain Anabaptists for a new heaven and a new earth found no sympathy from him. His outlook on the secular order was

36 Calvin, Comm. on Philippians 3:21, CO 52:56. Sewell notes that Calvin’s caution against unprofitable speculation is quite different than Luther’s more specific beliefs about the heavenly afterlife. Reference Sewell, Calvin, the Body, and Sexuality, 212. 37 Calvin, Comm. on Philippians 3:21, CO 52:56, ‘Nam si exiguum gustum, quem praebebat in transfiguratione, non ferebant diseipuli.’ 38 Calvin, Comm. on Philippians 3:21, CO 52:56–57, ‘Contenu nunc simus testimonio nostras adoptionis, divitias nostrae haereditatis cognituri, quando Ulis fruemur.’ 39 Calvin, Comm. on 1 Corinthians 15:40, CO 49:556, ‘quia Deus palam ostendit, sibi non esse difficile corpora nostra renovare, praesentem statum mutando.’ 40 Calvin, Comm. on 1 Corinthians 15:50, CO 49:560, ‘nos oportere corporibus renovari, quoniam non possint corpora nostra, ut sunt obnoxia corruptioni, regnum Dei incorruptibile possidere.’ 41 Davis argues Calvin’s ‘treatment of the resurrection of the body in Institutes 3.27.7 is not in any way peripheral to his anthropology.’ See Davis, “The Bodily Aspect of Salvation,” (see n. 8), p. 418.

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utilitarian, not radically eschatological.’42 The final resurrection consists of nothing short of the body and soul finally being reunited with one another. Both parts of the human person, both the body and the soul, will need to be transformed. Calvin is quite clear about this point. But the transformation will restore the human person, body and soul, to its original unblemished state. In conclusion, what has become clear is that Calvin undoubtedly operated with a concept that the human person is composed of a body and soul. Here Calvin is clearly a dualist in the line of Plato. However, Calvin’s commentaries on the biblical text also make it clear that the body and soul are intended to operate as a unified whole and are incomplete when not doing so. Furthermore, while Calvin does make some disparaging remarks about the body, such remarks refer to the body’s weak and corrupted state as a result of the fall into sin. The physical body is, for Calvin, inherently good and simply stands in need of the transforming work of God’s grace to be restored to its original state. Calvin anticipates the day when the body and soul will be reunited and transformed at the final resurrection. Calvin is a dualist, to be sure, but his view of the body taken from his commentaries should not be seen as overly negative but, on the contrary, as rather affirming.

42 Battenhouse, “The Doctrine of Man in Calvin and in Renaissance Platonism” (see n. 1), p. 469.

Barbara Pitkin

Human Nature in Calvin’s Commentary on Seneca

Studies of Calvin and Stoicism have focused primarily on Calvin’s mature theological writings to explore his critical engagement with typical Stoic themes, such as providence, predestination, and fate; understandings of human agency; and the role of the emotions. Recently, Paul Helm and Kyle Fedler have argued for a fundamental continuity between certain aspects of Stoic anthropology and Calvin’s mature understanding of human agency and his view of the nature of the emotions.1 Despite these similarities, however, these scholars have also seen a distinction between Calvin’s views and those of generalized Stoicism first in the way that Calvin envisions God to be at work in human action and, second, in how he understands the place of the emotions in the moral life. Moreover, both identify Calvin’s understanding of divine providence as distinct from the Stoic notion of fate as a key element shaping his divergence from Stoic anthropology. Finally, Fedler notes that Calvin’s convictions about the importance of temporal and embodied human existence further differentiate his views from those of the Stoics and are reflected in his criticisms of the Stoic doctrine of apatheia. These observations only begin to scratch the surface of the topic of Calvin’s relationship to Stoicism, yet they clearly signal the wider significance and ongoing relevance of the larger project of which this investigation into his singular, sustained engagement with classical Stoicism – a 1532 commentary on the Roman philosopher Seneca’s treatise de clementia – is a part.2 I take as well established that Calvin’s engagement with Stoicism, as with all classical philos1 Paul Helm, “Calvin and Stoicism,” in Philosophie der Reformierten, ed. Günter Frank/Herman J. Selderhuis, Melanchthon-Schriften der Stadt Bretten, vol. 12, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2012, pp. 169–182; Kyle Fedler, “Calvin’s Burning Heart: Calvin and the Stoics on the Emotions,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 22 (2002): pp. 133–162; according to Fedler, Calvin views the emotions not as ‘arational sensations’ but rather as ‘a type of judgment’ – specifically, as ‘false judgments about virtue’ (citations from 138, 137). See also Charles Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 14, Leiden 1977. 2 John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary on Seneca’s de clementia, ed. and trans. by Ford Lewis Battles/André Malan Hugo, Leiden 1969.

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ophy, was extremely complex and highly eclectic, and, furthermore, that ultimately the exact nature of his relationship to Stoicism depends on the topic in question and the text being investigated. This paper seeks to contribute to scholarly discussion of Calvin’s relationship to Stoicism through the lens of his early anthropological views in two ways: first, by highlighting the way that certain passages in Seneca’s commentary prompt Calvin’s first recorded expressions of his understanding of human nature and, second, by demonstrating how Calvin subtly prepares his reader early in his commentary for his explicit departure from Seneca’s understanding of pity as a vice in Book 2 of the treatise. The investigation begins with a brief summary of the background and format of Calvin’s commentary on Seneca’s text, considers several key passages in which Calvin engages ideas about the constitution of human nature, and finally assesses his discussion of clemency, cruelty, and pity.

Calvin’s Commentary on Seneca’s de clementia: Background and Format The introduction to the critical edition and translation of Calvin’s commentary produced by Ford Lewis Battles and André Malan Hugo in 1969 provides a thorough examination of the contexts surrounding Calvin’s foray into the world of humanistic scholarship as well as its format and content. A brief summary sets the stage for closer consideration of key passages on human nature.3 Calvin likely composed his commentary on Seneca’s treatise between 1529 and 1531 while he was in Bourges and Paris. This was a transitional point in his life, during which he completed his licentiate in law, experienced the passing of his father, moved to Paris, and issued his first publication, a preface to a polemical legal treatise by his university classmate, Nicolas Duchemin. A number of factors certainly contributed to his decision to write on Seneca and on de clementia in particular, and several important studies have shed light on his potential motives, both those expressed in the work’s highly rhetorical dedicatory preface and those that can be gleaned from analysis of his biographical situation and likely personal

3 Ford Lewis Battles/André Malan Hugo, “Introduction,” in Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), pp. 3*–140*. On the background to Calvin’s commentary, see also André Malan Hugo, Calvijn en Seneca: Een inleidende studie van Calvijns Commentaar op Seneca, De Clementia, anno 1532, Groningen 1957; Quirinus Breen, John Calvin: A Study in French Humanism, 2d ed., N.p., 1968, pp. 67–99; Monheit investigates the social contexts for Calvin’s ambitious undertaking (Michael Monheit, “Passion and Order in the Formation of Calvin’s Sense of Religious Authority,” Ph.D. Diss., Princeton University 1988, pp. 27–65).

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ambitions.4 At the very least, his commentary represented his aspiration to make his mark as a humanist scholar in the vein of Erasmus, who, as Calvin shrewdly notes in his preface, had already produced two editions of this very treatise. Those familiar with the form of Calvin’s biblical exegesis will recognize the method of commentary applied here to Seneca’s text. Following a dedicatory preface to his family friend and patron Claude de Hangst and a short summary of Seneca’s life drawn from Tacitus and the anonymous life that appeared in Erasmus’s editions, Calvin tackles the text itself.5 Short prefaces to each of the two books help situate Seneca’s presentation. Within each of the books, Calvin proceeds chapter by chapter, first supplying the Latin text and then commenting on selected words, phrases, and concepts in order of their appearance. Despite his declaration in the general preface to the work that he aims to defend Seneca against his detractors, Calvin only rarely leaps to Seneca’s defense or even passes judgment on his views.6 Following standard humanistic methods of annotation and foreshadowing the aim of his own later biblical commentary, he primarily explains the mind of the author. He elucidates the rhetorical structure and provides linguistic explanations, historical background, and various illuminating confirmations from classical orators, poets, and philosophers. All of this aims to make Seneca’s appeal to the Roman emperor Nero intelligible to Calvin’s contemporaries.7 This method yields, however, an ad hoc rather than systematic character with respect to the content of his comments, including those that have anthropological implications. The eclectic and, it must be underscored, partial nature of the vision of human nature that emerges from Calvin’s comments is thus first and foremost conditioned by the character of the work itself: this is a commentary, and given Calvin’s approach, the content will be shaped largely by the substance of Seneca’s rhetorical and fragmentary discourse on the character of the sovereign. To bear in mind also is the fact that Calvin wants to elucidate Seneca’s meaning, but at the same time he hopes this to be a teaching text. He wrote letters to friends and allies 4 See especially Monheit, “Passion and Order” (see n. 3) and Battles/Hugo, “Introduction” (see n. 3), pp. 12*–62*. 5 See the editors’ note to the title “Vita Senecae” in Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), p. 14. 6 Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), pp. 6–9. 7 Hugo has noted how this method follows the outlines of Erasmus’s 1521 “De ratione studii, ac legendi interpretandique auctores” (Hugo, Calvijn en Seneca, [see n. 3], pp. 40–41); see also Battles/Hugo, “Introduction” (see n. 3), pp. 72*–84*. On Calvin’s method of biblical interpretation, see Barbara Pitkin, “John Calvin and the Interpretation of the Bible,” in History of Biblical Interpretation, vol. 2, The Medieval Through the Reformation Periods, ed. Alan J. Hauser/Duane F. Watson, Grand Rapids 2009, pp. 341–371; for deeper analysis of the relationship between the commentary on Seneca and Calvin’s hermeneutic, see Olivier Millet, Calvin et la dynamique de la parole: étude de rhétorique réformée, Paris 2009.

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upon publishing the work, urging them to promote it and encouraging lectures on it. He thus piles up opinions so that readers can judge for themselves, at least in some open questions.8 The number of times that he explicitly relates Seneca’s teaching to his own day can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. So this means that the task of reading for what Calvin himself thinks about human nature is reading quite a bit against the grain. At the same time, such an effort is worthwhile for the light it sheds on Calvin’s early anthropology.

Anthropology and Ethics in Calvin’s Commentary on Seneca’s de clementia Calvin ends his dedicatory preface by expressing his own opinion on Seneca’s virtues as writer, claiming that ‘it is in dealing with matters ethical, that he reigns supreme.’9 In this judgment he echoes a sentiment common among his contemporaries that Seneca, despite criticisms of his style and philosophy, was widely read for his moralizing proverbial wisdom and was ‘eminently quotable.’10 It is largely through his engagement with ethical dimensions of Seneca’s treatise that Calvin articulates his views on human nature. These anthropological comments fall into three broad categories: ideas about the constitution of human nature (and in particular, the soul), about the grounds of human action, and about human moral character and the classification of virtues and vices. By way of illustration, the present investigation focuses only on the first of these. Calvin’s comments on the constitution of human nature center on its ideal character, the proper order of its constituent parts, and deviations therefrom. These reflections are stimulated by passages in which Seneca indicates the disorderly potential of uncontrollable passions to upset the rule of reason and undermine the ideal tranquility of the well-ordered soul. As discussed in detail by Michael Monheit, Calvin offers in three passages two distinct ‘conceptual descriptions’ of the constituent parts of the soul and an additional classification of different types of passions. None of these represents a pure type of any classical philosophical tradition. Rather, one is an ‘amalgam’ of various doctrines of the soul and the other two Calvin appropriates and adapts from Cicero. Moreover, these images of the soul and its faculties are not entirely consistent with one 8 Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), pp. 238–238 and 368–369. He echoes here his claim in the preface that his readers should form their opinions and not be bound by his (pp. 8–9). 9 Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), pp. 10–11. 10 Battles/Hugo, “Introduction” (see n. 3), p. 37*. This image was fueled by Erasmus’s Adagia, which Battles and Hugo suggest ‘did more for Seneca’s popular prestige as a moralist than all the editions of Seneca put together’ (p. 38*).

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another.11 At the same time, in Calvin’s interaction with Seneca’s text, we can detect the ways in which he subtly steers Seneca’s discussion toward his own vision of the ideal soul as embracing rather than effacing properly ordered passions. Seneca’s praise for a tranquil soul that is not moved by anger, his use of an analogy of the mind to the body for the relationship of the sovereign to the governed, and a reference to uncontrolled desires prompt Calvin to make various remarks pertaining to the composition of the soul, in all three cases distinguishing or implying a distinction between the rational faculty and the passions or emotions and prioritizing the rational part, but in such ways as to leave an opening for a more balanced and perhaps fluid relationship between the two capacities.12 In the first passage, Calvin describes tranquility as a ‘peaceful state of mind’ and ‘moderation of mind,’ which he also characterizes as ‘peaceful and quiet constancy,’ ‘equanimity,’ ‘security,’ and ‘peace.’ Quoting Cicero on a Platonic and Pythagorean division of the soul into two constituent parts, Calvin notes that these views ‘posit tranquility as a partner with reason,’ and put the ‘turbulent emotions’ such as anger and desire into the other part, which is ‘contrary and inimical to reason.’ He summarizes: ‘Therefore, a tranquil soul is composed, and subject to no emotions, which the Greeks call pathe, that is, passions.’ It appears that Calvin generally agrees with this bipartite view of the soul; however, when he goes on to characterize tranquility at the end of his comments as euthymia and joyousness, it seems also that, for him, the tranquil soul is not immune from all passions or emotions but perhaps only from turbulent, disruptive ones.13 11 Monheit, “Passion and Order” (see n. 3), pp. 66–67. 12 Seneca’s De Clementia will be abbreviated DC and cited according to book, chapter, and paragraph: Seneca, De clementia, ed., trans., and comm. Susanna Braund, Oxford 2009. These discussions appear in DC 1.1.3, 1.3.5, and 1.1.7. In his comments on Seneca’s breath of life metaphor (in DC 1.4.1), Calvin offers yet another brief statement about the constitution of human nature; this is not relevant for our questions but is noteworthy for Calvin’s clear indication of his own views on the matter. Calvin notes this is here a metaphor taken from the philosophers for rulers and the people: people breathe through their rulers. Calvin cites or refers to Celsus, Lactantius, Gellius, Cicero, Aristotle, and Servius commenting on Vergil, all of whom equate life with breathing. But Calvin also remarks that it is ‘truer to say that all living beings consist of four elements and a divine spirit,’ which he identifies as Aristotle’s opinion, and contrasts this to the views of astrologers (Calvin, Commentary on de clementia [see n. 2], pp. 100–103). 13 ‘Haec etiam verba addunt emphasim non negligendam, quod iuuenem deturbare de placido animi statu non potuerint temeritas hominum & contumacia, quae patientiam excutiunt viris patientissimis, & omni perturbatione liberis. hoc enim significat nobis tranquillitas, vt facile intelligitur ex verbis Ciceronis Tuscula. iiij. In his, inquit, explicandis veterem illam equidem Pythagorae primum, deinde Platonis descriptionem sequar: qui animum in duas partes diuidunt: alteram rationis participem faciunt, alteram expertem. In participe rationis ponunt tranquillitatem, id est placidam quietamque constantiam: in illa altera motus turbidos, tum

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The plausibility of this interpretation increases in light of Calvin’s comments on Seneca’s mind/body analogy, in which Seneca uses the ideal domination of the mind over the body to suggest that the well being and behavior of the governed depend on and reflect the character of the sovereign. Calvin takes this opportunity to elaborate on the comparison in a way that provides further insight into his view of the role and character of the passions in the soul.14 First he notes the appropriateness of the comparison and details how the tiny and inconspicuous mind moderates the large, resplendent body and its varied functions. He then quotes a passage from Plutarch cataloging different classical positions on the location of the soul. Finally, in commenting on Seneca’s image of the mind as a grasping or ambitious lord leading the body to rash behaviors, he offers a threefold classification of the appetites, which represents an alternative picture of the soul to that described earlier.15 It is this aspect of this discussion that draws our attention. Calvin attributes to unnamed philosophers the view of a threefold appetite: a natural, attributed to all natures; a sensitive appetite, attributed to animate beings and sub-divided into a higher part consisting of inner affections such as hate, love, sorrow, etc. and a lower part residing ‘in the bodily passions, such as hunger, thirst, cold, and the like’; finally, there is a rational appetite attributed to rational souls. Calvin then judges that Seneca’s image of the tyrant relates to the inner affections of the sensitive type, which are ‘the root of all desires.’ He invokes Plato’s description of them as ‘sinews’ or ‘ropes’ that draw humans in contrary directions ‘unless Mistress Reason is in charge.’ He concludes with a number of citations from classical poets and Sallust illustrating the perils toward which one can be steered when greed or ambition is in the driver’s seat.16 Thus Calvin turns Seneca’s analogy designed to support the argument that irae, tum cupiditatis, contrarios inimicosque rationi. Est igitur tranquillum pectus, bene compositum, nec vllis affectibus obnoxium, quos graeci πάθη, id est passiones appellant. Tranquillitas ipsa, animi moderatio, & quasi aequanimitas: quam alibi securitatem, alibi pacem vocat Seneca noster. Theologi semper ferè pacem. Haec etiam ipsa est insignis illa, εὐθυμία Democriti, dicta quasi animi alacritas […]’ (Calvin, Commentary on de clementia [see n. 2], pp. 40–41). 14 Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), pp. 90–95. 15 Monheit accurately describes this as ‘a hasty attempt to synthesize conceptions of the soul of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Ficino. It is a hodge-podge of conceptions and terminology’ (“Passion and Order,” [see n. 3], p. 74). 16 ‘Ponunt philosophi triplicem appetitum, naturalem, sensituum, & rationalem. Primum omnibus naturis attribuunt, alterum animalibus, tertium animae rationali. Rursum appetitum sensitiuum sic partiuntur, vt alius sit appetitus superior, ad adfectus interiores pertinens, odium, amorem, tristitiam, spem, metum & huiusmodi: de quo accipiendus est hic locus. alter in passionibus corporis resideat, fame, siti, frigore, & similibus. De quo igitur fit mentio à Seneca, radix est omnium cupiditatem, quas velut neruos in homine scribit Plato in legibus, & seu funiculos quosdam quibus trahamur: & quemadmodum inter se contrariae sunt ipsae, sic & nos raptari in partes varias, nisi domina ratio praefecta fuerit’ (Calvin, Commentary on de clementia [see n. 2], pp. 92–95).

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members of a society should be governed by the ruler’s spirit, intellect, and discernment into a glimpse of human nature in which appetite is the constitutive category, even for the rational dimension, which ideally rules the sensitive appetite’s passions, here subdivided into higher and lower categories. Both of these implied models of human nature rely on an antithesis between reason and the passions – or at least some passions. In this latter image, the disruptive, inner affections of greed and ambition, like the motos turbidos in the earlier passage, fight against the rule of reason. But is this true of all the inner affections? Can others – like love, or pity – be more like tranquility as alacritas, and stand as partners of reason? Seneca’s mention of desires being never well enough controlled to cease when they are attained prompts Calvin to delineate a threefold division of cupiditas that leaves open the possibility of an affirmative answer. Calvin draws on Epicurus by way of Cicero to distinguish three types of desire: natural and necessary, which is easily attainable; natural but not necessary, which is content with moderate expense; and neither natural nor necessary, which is insatiable. He judges that Seneca refers here to only desires of the third type when he says they do not cease, and clearly the focus is on the dangers of desires of this type.17 But what of the status of the other types of cupiditas and, moreover, the notion of concupiscence to which Calvin refers in setting up his classification? Noting that desire has various meanings, he writes: ‘here it is to be referred to the higher sense.’18 In other words, it refers to the higher part of the sensitive appetite that he had identified when discussing the mind/body analogy. There he noted that this higher part of the sensitive appetite, the locus of the inner affections, was also the root of desires.19 Here he identifies the higher sense as what the philosophers call the ‘seat of concupiscence’ and says that it ‘contains all the passions of the mind, and those inner dispositions not subject to the rule of reason.’20 What is interesting here is the implied distinction between two kinds of passions in the higher part of the sensitive appetite, one of which is allied with reason and the other which is not.

17 See Monheit’s discussion of the broader context of desire for Seneca (“Passion and Order,” [see n. 3], pp. 68–71). 18 ‘Nomen cupiditatis variam habet acceptionem. hic vero refertur ad sensum superiorem […]’ (Calvin, Commentary on de clementia [see n. 2], pp. 58–59). 19 Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), pp. 94–95. 20 ‘[…] sic philosophi vocant sedem concupiscentiae, quae continent omnes animi passiones, & illos interiores affectus imperio rationis non subiancentes’ (Calvin, Commentary on de clementia [see n. 2], pp. 58–59).

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Clemency, Cruelty, and Pity With these three passages in mind we turn to Calvin’s engagement with Seneca’s pronouncements on clemency, cruelty, and pity in Book 2. Here, too, Calvin goes somewhat beyond his goal of explaining Seneca’s meaning to interject his own ideas about human nature, and, in this case, to criticize Seneca’s teaching on clementia in implicit and explicit ways. A brief summary of Seneca’s views and of Calvin’s response brings these divergences to light. Prior to Seneca’s day Roman conceptions of clemency evolved from a policy exercised toward conquered peoples to a personal attribute of the ruler.21 For Seneca, clemency is an imperial virtue that implies social hierarchy and absolute power. In making his case, Seneca addresses the traditional Stoic rejection of clemency on the grounds that it makes exceptions to the law and compromises justice, but he still defends the Stoic school. By redefining clemency as a virtue and distinguishing it from pardon, forgiveness, and, crucially, pity understood as a mental defect, Seneca also addresses the Stoic concern that clemency is associated with emotion and not rationality. He contends that the ruler, in demonstrating clemency, acts rationally and does not overlook justice but rather in fact maintains justice by considering mitigating circumstances and tailoring punishment to each specific case.22 While Susanna Braund has recently suggested that Seneca here might represent a softening of orthodox Stoic teaching, for Calvin, it was still too harsh.23 In large part his difficulty with Seneca’s view reflects the fact that, for Calvin, clemency is an ethical virtue that applies to all, and this leads him to criticize Seneca’s adherence to the Stoic rejection of pity. He thus criticizes Seneca’s first two attempts to define clemency as too restrictive for limiting clemency to those in power or above others in the social and political hierarchy. For Calvin, whether or not one is merciful is shown not in the effect of actions but in one’s state of mind, and hence is possible among equals and among inferiors toward superiors.24 He accepts Seneca’s third definition, which understands clemency as an ‘inclination of the mind towards leniency in exacting punishment.’ Calvin explains that misericordia is the excess of the virtue of clemency, and the defect of the virtue of strictness.25 However, this is not his own view but rather, as he says 21 My discussion in this paragraph draws on Susanna Braund’s introduction to her edition of Seneca’s text: Seneca, De Clementia (see n. 12), pp. 32–35. 22 Seneca, De clementia (see n. 12), pp. 66, 70. 23 Seneca, De clementia (see n. 12), pp. 67–68. 24 ‘[…] cum & par erga parem clementer se gerere possit, & inferior erga superiorem: cum non de effectu, sed de animi affectu quaeratur’ (Calvin, Commentary on de clementia [see n. 2], pp. 352–353). 25 Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), pp. 354–355.

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shortly thereafter, the view of the Stoics. ‘Obviously we ought to be persuaded of the fact that pity is a virtue, and that he who feels no pity cannot be a good man – whatever these idle sages may discuss in their shady nooks.’26 In the ensuing discussion, Calvin lays his cards on the table, marshaling support from a wide range of authorities for the notion that pity is good. He quotes Pliny, Cicero, Juvenal, Horace, and Vergil to show that pity is a part of human nature, concluding ‘In favor of pity, against the Stoics’ opinion, read Augustine.’27 He continues to criticize the Stoic view on pity and the emotions as more subtle than true in the next chapter; however, he also invites the reader to read more and pass own judgment on whether or not emotions may touch the wise man.28

Conclusion This brief consideration of key passages in Calvin’s Seneca commentary demonstrates at the very least how Calvin’s preferred method of commentary aims not only to expound the mind of the author but also provides glimpses of the interpreter’s own views via Calvin’s brief interjections, in this case, on human nature. Although this early anthropology is ad hoc and philosophically eclectic, the characterizations of human nature in book one prepare for Calvin’s questioning of the Senecan and Stoic characterization of pity as a vice in book two by introducing the topic of the composition of the soul and the role of passions and desires in the soul early on. Layering Seneca’s treatise on kingship with larger concerns about human nature more generally, Calvin shifts the focus from kingly virtues to human virtue per se, and suggests that all humans are subject to this complex picture of human nature and ethical demands. Although at times his own convictions about these issues shine through, the format of the text is designed to invite discussion about this issue of perennial interest, and one that was especially of concern during the Reformation era.

26 ‘Illud sane nobis persuasum esse debet, & virtutem esse misericordiam, nec bonum hominem esse posse, qui non sit misericors, quicquid in suis vmbris disputent otiose isti sapientes […]’ (Calvin, Commentary on de clementia [see n. 2], pp. 358–359). 27 Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), pp. 360–361. 28 Calvin, Commentary on de clementia (see n. 2), pp. 368–369.

Sini Mikkola

Female as the Other in Martin Luther’s Anthropology in the Early 1520s

1.

Introduction

Existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir has noted in her famous treatise The Second Sex that the relationship between man and woman has been and is regarded as asymmetrical, man representing positive, as well as neutral characteristics of the human being.1 Within this discourse, advocated by male thinkers and writers, ‘He [the man] is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she [the woman] is the Other.’2 Although de Beauvoir, along with several modern feminist thinkers, has questioned the very foundations of this understanding, the citation reflects aptly both the explicit and the implicit level of discourse among late medieval and early modern male thinkers, including Martin Luther (1483–1546). This article discusses Martin Luther’s view on woman and her bodiliness during the early years of the 1520s, before Luther’s own marriage with Katharina von Bora (1499–1552) in 1525. The contents of this text are a part of my uncompleted doctoral thesis that discusses gendered bodiliness in Luther’s anthropology. In the thesis I am discussing the bodiliness of both women and men, unlike in this text. Thus I understand, as most of the scholarship today, gender studies to focus on both of the sexes, not merely on women. My starting point in this article is that for Luther, the female represented otherness as a premise. By otherness, I am referring to a relation in which one (the man) holds the power to define the other (the woman). The main question of this article is: in what way did Luther construct female otherness? Thus, I analyze Luther’s rhetoric concerning female as the other or, to put it another way, female as the secondary sex by presenting practical examples from Luther’s texts. The discursive construction of female otherness in Luther’s thinking becomes validated first and foremost by his reading on Genesis 1, which he explicated in 1 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, London 1988, p 15. The two volumes of the treatise were originally published in French under the heading Le deuxième sexe in 1949. 2 De Beauvoir, Second Sex (see n. 1), p. 16.

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various contexts. In addition to discussing Luther’s rhetoric per se, I will contextualize his views and point out continuity and discontinuity in his thinking in relation to the views of his predecessors and contemporaries.

2.

Femininity as Subordination

The starting point of Luther’s discussion on women during the early years of the 1520s rested upon the insight that woman and the female body were significant, and existent as a whole, only in relation to man and the male body. The creation of woman began with the need of man, as Luther interpreted the text of Genesis 1.3 A man per se was a sufficient representative of humankind, and the need for a companion was, as Luther put it, merely for reproduction. Luther stated in the Sermons on Genesis, held in 1523–1524:4 ‘Women have been created for no other purpose than to serve man and to be his help in conceiving.’5 The same reasoning becomes evident also, for instance, in a public letter to Leonard Koppe from 1523,6 and in a letter to three nuns from 1524,7 in which he discussed whether these women should leave their convent: God created her [a woman’s] body to be with a man, bear children and raise them, as the Word makes clear in Genesis 1. The members of her body, ordained by God for this, also demonstrate this. It is as natural as eating and drinking, sleeping and [waking up], which God has also created.8

Luther’s viewpoint of the purpose of the creation of women was by no means a new one, but similar to that presented by his predecessors and contemporaries. 3 Compare D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Schriften, Weimar 1883 – 2009, 24, p. 76b. References will be abbreviated to WA. 4 The sermon manuscripts, titled Predigten über das erste Buch Mose gehalten 1523 und 1524, can be found in WA 14, pp. 97a–450d. I use the printed version Uber das erst buch Mose, predigete Mart. Luth. sampt einer unterricht wie Moses zu leren ist, found in WA 24, pp. 1b– 710b. Of the connection between the sermons held and the printed edition, as well as of the relation between the German and the Latin edition, see Paul Pietsch, Einleitung, Weimar 1900, pp. xiii – xvii. 5 WA 24, p. 79b. Charles Cortright has also analyzed quite recently the creation of the female in Luther’s printed Genesis-sermons; see Charles Lloyd Cortright, “Poor Maggot-Sack that I Am”: The Human Body in the Theology of Martin Luther, Diss., Marquette University 2011, pp. 104–111. 6 WA 11, p. 398. 7 D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Briefwechsel, Weimar 1930–1985, 3, no. 766, pp. 327–328. References will be abbreviated to WA BR. Lyndal Roper has treated the complex issue of Luther’s letters as ego-documental sources, and paid particular attention to the strategic nature of his private letters. Lyndal Roper, “‘To his Most Learned and Dearest Friend’: Reading Luther’s Letters,” German History 28, no. 3 (2010): pp. 283–295. 8 WA BR 3, no. 766, pp. 327.

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According to, for instance, Mickey Mattox and Theo Bell, Luther’s discussion on woman’s initial subordination to man was undoubtedly in accordance with the theological tradition in the beginning of the 1520s.9 However, Luther did not go as far as to claim that women were of little worth, as some of his contemporaries seem to have thought. Namely, there was a common tendency among humanist scholars in Wittenberg to regard women not only inferior to men, but also worthy of prejudices and ridicule.10 According to Luther, neither one of the sexes was entitled to despise one another but ‘each should honor the other’s image and body as a divine and good creation […].’11 He criticized men for not understanding that the female sex was valuable due to God’s very decision to create her: ‘Now you see that he [God] calls the woman good and a helper.’12 Simultaneously Luther disapproved of the common insight of his day that regarded women as the necessary evil.13 It seems obvious that the aim to convince both lay and clerical audiences to assume marriage as the proper estate had an influence on the need to emphasize the goodness of the creation of women in the texts at issue. With these discussions Luther joined in the ongoing discourse, which began forcefully during the early years of the 1520s, dealing with questions concerning, for instance, the right to leave the cloister, the new social positions of monks, nuns, and priests, and the challenges faced by traditional social norms.14 Thus, Luther’s focus was twofold: First, the question was not of the value of the woman as such, but on the way her gender should be constructed to meet the new social demands. Second, his emphasis on the goodness of woman rose from a close reading of the text of Genesis, and thereby followed his demand of the biblical word as the basis of all human life. Thereby I believe Luther’s view on the value of women, although it 9 Mickey L. Mattox, Defender of the Most Holy Matriarchs. Martin Luther’s Interpretation of the Women of Genesis in the Enarrationes In Genesin, 1535–1545, Leiden 2003, pp. 30–31; Mickey L. Mattox, “Luther on Eve, Women and the Church,” Lutheran Quarterly 17, no. 4. (2003): p. 459; Theo M.M.A.C. Bell, “Man is a Microcosmos: Adam and Eve in Luther’s Lectures on Genesis (1535–1545),” Concordia Theological Quarterly 69, no. 2 (2005): p. 165. 10 Kristen E. Kvam, Luther, Eve, and Theological Anthropology: Reassessing the Reformer’s Response to the ‘Frauenfrage’, Diss., Emory University 1992, pp. 7–8; Kristen E. Kvam, “Equality in Eden? Gender Dynamics and Luther’s Lectures on the Creation of Adam and Eve,” Seminary Ridge Review 6, no. 2 (2004): pp. 8–9. 11 WA 10II, p. 276. 12 WA 10II, p. 294. 13 WA 10II, pp. 292, 294; WA 12, pp. 233-234; Bell, Man is a Microcosmos (see n. 9), p. 167. 14 Also Cortright has noted the significance of this context for Luther. See Cortright, MaggotSack (see n. 5), pp. 98–99. See also Martin Brecht, Martin Luther. Ordnung und Abgrenzung der Reformation 1521–1532, Band 2, Stuttgart 1986, especially pp. 30–34. Marjorie Plummer has described the historical situation thoroughly in her recent study. See Marjorie Elisabeth Plummer, From Priest’s Whore to Pastor’s Wife. Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation. St. Andrew’s Studies in Reformation History. Farnham, Burlington 2012.

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may have differed from that of many of his contemporaries, did nevertheless not mean regarding women as equals to men in the everyday life.15 Quite on the contrary, on the basis of her analysis of Luther’s Lectures on Genesis (1535–1545), Kirsi Stjerna has come to a conclusion of ‘equality yet difference’ between Eve and Adam in Luther’s biblical interpretation.16 Since Luther’s texts from the 1520s do not support this argument I assume that, concerning the gender system, Luther’s anthropology was complicated, but also underwent changes during his lifetime. In seeking to detect the way Luther may have seen woman in the early 1520s, one has to ask whether woman was created in the image of God in the first place or whether she was brought into being merely in the image of man. In his treatise Estate of Marriage17 from 1522 and in the address to the Teutonic Knights18 from 1523, for instance, the emphasis seems to be in the likeness of God concerning both sexes,19 whilst the Sermons on Genesis suggest the creation of woman to be first and foremost in the likeness of man.20 It is possible that Luther had a similar kind of an understanding of Imago Dei as Jean Calvin did, according to whom in terms of salvation both of the sexes were images of God, whilst in terms of present life and gender hierarchy the image of God was not mutually shared between men and women.21 This view was in line with the theological tradition, as it was commonly supported by several medieval thinkers.22 In Luther’s view both sexes were respectable by creation as long as the gender hierarchy was not disturbed. Even though Luther did show discontinuity in terms of not approving the ridiculing of women, he was tied to traditional insights of the gender hierarchy, the male indicating the normative, the female the inferior 15 Some modern scholars have connected Luther’s statements concerning the value of women to ‘the Woman Question’, Frauenfrage in German, and querelle des femmes in French, of the Late Middle Ages. See, for instance, Kvam, Luther; Kvam, Equality, p. 8 (see n. 10); Else-Marie Wiberg Pedersen, “A Man Caught Between Bad Anthropology and Good Theology? Martin Luther’s View of Women Generally and of Mary Specifically,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 49, no. 3 (2010): p. 191. 16 Kirsi Stjerna, “Grief, Grace, and Glory: Luther’s Insights on Eve and Tamar in Genesis 3 and 38,” Seminary Ridge Review 6, no. 2 (2004): p. 35. 17 WA 10II, 275–304. Vom Ehelichen Leben. 18 WA 12, 232–244. An die herrn Deutschs Ordens, das sie falsche keuscheyt meyden und zur rechten ehlichen keuscheyt greyffen Ermanung. 19 WA 10II, pp. 276, 292, 294; WA 12, pp. 233–234. 20 For instance WA 24, pp. 76b, 78b–79b. 21 John L. Thompson, “Creata ad Imaginem Dei, Licet Secundo Gradu: Woman as the Image of God According to John Calvin,” The Harvard Theological Review 81, no. 2 (1988): pp. 125– 143. 22 A.J. Minnis, for instance, describes Duns Scotus’ view in a very similar fashion. A.J. Minnis, “De impedimento sexus: Women’s Bodies and Medieval Impediments to Female Ordination,” in Medieval Theology and the Natural Body, ed. Peter Biller/A.J. Minnis, York 1997, pp. 109– 139, here p. 119.

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other. The woman’s proper way of being was to be subordinated to the man, which Luther described, for instance, in On Monastic Vows23 from 1521. In the text he remarked that the corporal type of obedience, obedientia corporalis, was the part equally of wives, children, servants, and captives.24 Similarly he emphasized the substantial difference between the sexes by using a metaphor of the sun and the moon in the Sermons on Genesis,25 which he later came to use also in the Lectures on Genesis. Both of these examples strongly imply the view of subordination as belonging essentially to femininity.

3.

Female Body – An Apparatus of Procreation

The otherness of the female involved an idea of the female body as the object over which power was exerted; power used by God and men both in pre- and postlapsarian world. The power relations of the sexes were explicitly a less discussed topic, compared, for instance, to motherhood, in Luther’s texts. However, implicitly the matter was treated in several contexts. When discussing the power relations, Luther’s insight rose from an understanding of woman’s body being tied to man’s in every respect, and of the denial of her capability to control her body even in the initial state. As Luther put it, ‘it is not her power of decision that she comes from the rib and nowhere else. Thus, either it is not [her power of decision] that she would not be conceived by a man.’26 In the creation, as after the fall, it was God who had the power over the woman’s body. The power used by God in punishing concerned the female body in a more profound way than it concerned the male body. According to Luther, after the fall woman was punished ‘as per her body’,27 as the penalty connected pain and sufferings to the prima causa of her existence, that is, to pregnancy and childbirth. Female body and genitals were given an emphasized significance, and all women, the daughters of Eve, bore the same burden in their bodies.28 The power of man over woman, on the other hand, became visible especially in sexual29 relationships, wherein the woman had no choice but to submit to being impregnated.

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

WA 8, 573–669. De votis monasticis Martini Lutheri iudicium. WA 8, p. 645. WA 24, p. 53b. WA 24, p. 79b. WA 24, pp. 102b, 108b. WA 11, p. 398; WA 24, p. 101b; Mattox, Defender, p. 59. I acknowledge that ‘sexual’, ‘sexuality’ or ‘sexual desire’, for instance, are modern concepts and have not been used at least before the 18th century.

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Luther deemed the female body and woman’s proper way of being as a continuum, the latter derived directly from the former. In other words, female sex dictated the gendered way of being.30 As woman lived her life first and foremost within her body and was determined by it and the power of the man over her, she was to accept the only way for her to be in accordance with her sex and to serve the purpose she was created for. She was to become a wife and a mother. The mission of a woman’s life, to guarantee the continuation of a family, was thus written in her body in Luther’s view. His viewpoint was not a unique one though, for in the later Middle Ages it had been regarded as normative especially for young laywomen to want to be mothers, an insight that can be regarded as grounded in norms based on the female body in medieval discourse. Medieval conduct books written for women perceived that wife- and motherhood were natural roles for the female sex as a whole. Especially the Virgin Mary was a role model offered for women to support this insight. Even before the reforms of the evangelical movements most women had indeed got married, and had children.31 In addition to the historical continuity, Luther’s emphasis of a woman’s life as altogether based on her body as an apparatus of procreation was definitely socialpolitical, and up to date in that regard. It was largely due to his motive to reject the cloister and to defend matrimony as the desired estate for all human beings in the situation of social turmoil around the monastic vows. Thus it is clear that Luther’s interpretation of woman’s gendered way of being was greatly influenced by the historical context, both prevailing and preceding.32 Fertility became one of the key issues in validating the link between body and the proper way of being, for in Luther’s opinion a fertile woman was altogether physically fit, clean and happy.33 Luther’s notion of the affiliation between fer30 Lyndal Roper has used the word ‘destiny’ to describe the gendered lives due to ‘natural’ differences between the sexes: ‘In Luther, […] biology [sex difference] itself dictated different destinies […].’ Lyndal Roper, “Luther: Sex, Marriage and Motherhood,” History Today 33 (1983): pp. 33–38. 31 Pamela Sheingorn, “The Maternal Behavior of God: Divine Father as Fantasy Husband,” in Medieval Mothering, ed. John Carmi Parsons/Bonnie Wheeler, New York 1996, pp. 77–100, here p. 89; Isabel Davis, Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages, New York 2007, pp. 68–69. Luther himself treated Virgin Mary not only as an example of motherhood but also, and more importantly, as a model example of humility for both women and men. See Studienausgabe/Martin Luther, Berlin 1979–, 1, pp. 324–331. The Magnificat. Further references will be abbreviated as StA. 32 I am by no means the first one to make such a statement. See the notion in Susan C. KarantNunn, “The Masculinity of Martin Luther. Theory, Practicality, and Humor,” in Masculinity in the Reformation Era, ed. Scott H. Hendrix and Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Kirksville 2008, pp. 167–189, here p 167. 33 WA 10II, p. 301. Of the modern scholars, for instance Kirsi Stjerna has also paid attention to the connection between fertility and womanhood in Luther’s anthropology. See Stjerna, Grief (see n. 16), p. 34.

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tility and physical well-being reflects the way people in the late medieval period, as well as in the beginning of the early modern era, illuminated the body – it was a scene of fertility and decay rather than of sexuality as such, as Caroline Walker Bynum has stated.34 These insights into bodily functions had their roots already in Greco-Roman medical theories. Sexual desire, illness and fertility among others were thought to be dependent on bodily humors and qualities.35 The idea that childbirth gave significance to woman’s life and consummated it was such a noteworthy one that it glorified womanhood as a whole for Luther. Therefore even a mother’s death during labor was not an issue for him.36 Thus, the lived bodiliness of becoming a mother meant both the glorification of a woman but, conversely, also the irrelevance of her life or death, as it were. As long as a woman was producing offspring, she fulfilled her duty in reproduction, the proof of which was her physical well-being. However, wearing herself out was natural and approvable for a woman in the duties of labor and nurture. Childbirth was for a woman a noble deed through which she showed the highest obedience to God and to man. Indeed, it seems that Luther presented childbirth as female martyrdom. On the whole, Luther’s disinterest fell on a woman as an individual, as it were, and on the other hand glorification seems to have focused on womanhood as a whole. This notion supports the idea of a woman as a productive unit, in which case not the individual woman but the host of women, anyone of them performing the duty required, becomes of importance. In other words: the importance lay not in the person, but in the performance. Man’s normativity, making woman, her experience, and the nexus of women into otherness, is further supported by Luther’s discussion on the father’s role next to his wife in labor. It was the man’s duty to comfort the woman in the middle of her suffering, and, conversely, the woman should listen to the comforting words of the man instead of ‘old wives’ tales’, as Luther put it. As an example of women’s tales he took the legend of St. Margaret,37 who was considered as a patron saint of pregnancy. In this way Luther tended to regard the mutual relationship between women as secondary compared to male-female 34 Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption. Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, New York 2012 [1991], p. 182. 35 See, for instance, Helen Rodnite Lemay, “William of Saliceto on Human Sexuality,” Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies 12 (1981): p. 166; Vern L. Bullough, “On Being a Male in the Middle Ages,” in Medieval Masculinities. Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A. Lees, Medieval Cultures 7, Minneapolis 1994, pp. 31–45, here pp. 31–32; William F. MacLehose, “Nurturing Danger: High Medieval Medicine and the Problem(s) of the Child,” in Medieval Mothering, ed. John Carmi Parsons/Bonnie Wheeler, New York 1996, pp. 3–24, here pp. 4–5, 7; Teresa M. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh. Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity. Minneapolis 1998, pp. 27–28, 53–54, 65–66, 70–72. 36 WA 10II, p. 301. 37 WA 10II, p. 296.

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relation, as he dismissed not only the role of contemporary women, but also the role of retelling the legends of female patron saints, which might have strengthened and supported female relations.

4.

The Flip Side of Theory – Luther’s Response to Female Agency

Luther’s view, according to the texts examined thus far, was that women did not have the possibility or capability to make decisions whatsoever concerning themselves and their bodies, which leads to a conclusion that women were not entitled even to try to do so. This was the theoretical point of view, presented to mainly male audiences. However, in practice Luther could support women to make independent choices, as the letter to three nuns reveals, and even to favor women to act publicly, as can be deduced from a letter to Katharina Schütz Zell (1498 – 1562).38 In the letter to the nuns, Luther advised the women to stay in the convent in case they could do it freely and with good conscience, without sexual temptations. Nevertheless he reckoned they would leave the cloister, despite his advice, and thus admitted to them having their own decision in the matter, based on their own consciences.39 The advice to stay in the convent was in an absolute contradiction to Luther’s public, polemical writings. From Luther’s theoretical point of view, an attempt to use the female body in other missions than motherhood, such as virginity, was an undertaking to ‘make herself to be better than God has made her’,40 as he wrote in the public letter to Leonard Koppe. To pursue things not correlating with female corporality, like virginity, was not to remain a woman at all, as it were. In addition, if we consider sexual relationships to be power relationships,41 Luther’s criticism towards female virginity can be understood as supporting gender hierarchy and male authority, practiced within matrimony. Nonetheless, the recommendation to the nuns to stay cloistered suggests that Luther was also comfortable not to apply his theoretical viewpoints in practice. In this case, the significance to act according to one’s conscience was thus more important than to act according to one’s gender. 38 WA BR 3, no. 808, p. 406. The letter is one of the two letters remaining in WA, which are addressed to Katharina Schütz Zell. The other, written in January 1531, can be found in WA BR 6, no. 1777, p. 27. 39 WA BR 3, no. 766, p. 327. 40 WA 11, p. 398. 41 Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World. Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice, New York 2010 [2000], p. 10. This argument closely relates to, for instance, Michel Foucault’s understanding of sexuality and power, but, as Wiesner-Hanks notes, actually antedates Foucault’s discussion in History of Sexuality (1976).

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In the letter to Schütz Zell from December 1524, which was sent soon after she had published her first treatise, an apologia for her husband and for their marriage,42 Luther rejoiced that she ‘saw and knew’ the kingdom of God, which was hidden from many others.43 In addition, Luther expressed his pleasure of Schütz Zell’s marriage, which had nevertheless taken place already a year before, in December 1523.44 He was delighted that she had found a suitable husband, ‘through whom you daily and unceasingly are better able to learn and hear this [of God’s kingdom] […].’45 Luther’s words concerning man’s status as the teacher and woman as the listener can be regarded to represent a view on women as weaker vessels, in need for mastery of their husbands, which would be in line with ideas presented earlier. However, the letter was more likely a response to Schütz Zell’s treatise and the overall situation in Strasbourg, not to her marriage or her role as a wife.46 Luther’s notion of Schütz Zell as one who knows God’s kingdom strongly imply encouragement, offered by Luther to Schütz Zell in publishing her evangelical faith and in her actions to aid the evangelical movement. Schütz Zell was, as Stjerna has noted, ‘particularly devoted to Luther’s theology’ in spite of being influenced by a variety of evangelical characters.47 On the basis of this notion as well as the timing and the tone of the letter, I tend to regard Luther as a supporter of Schütz Zell’s public agency. Actually, encouraging a woman to play an active role in societal, political, or ecclesiastical matters would not have been unique or even rare. Throughout the Middle Ages several letters to women who were, in one way or another, in ‘official positions’, had been written to call the women to use their influence within the public sphere. Not only empresses but also other learned women were considered worthy of approaching.48 The practice Luther seems to have employed with Schütz Zell was thus more commonly the practice of his predecessors and contemporaries as well.

42 The apology was not the first printed text of Schütz Zell, though. See, for instance, Elsie Anne McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell. The Writings. A Critical Edition, Leiden, Boston 1999. 43 WA BR 3, no. 808, p. 406, 4. 44 Kirsi Stjerna, Women and the Reformation, Malden 2009, p. 112. 45 WA BR 3, no. 808, 406, 5–7. Transl. Susan Karant-Nunn and Merry Wiesner-Hanks. 46 Strasbourg was at this point one of the scenes wherein the rift between Luther and Karlstadt concerning the communion was figured. See, for instance, Karl Drescher, “Einleitung,” in WA 18, Weimar 1908, pp. 37–61, especially pp. 37–42; Brecht, Martin Luther (see n. 14), pp. 163–165. 47 Stjerna, Women (see n. 44), p. 113. 48 Joan M. Ferrante, “‘Licet longinquis regionibus corpore separate.’ Letters as a Link in and to the Middle Ages,” Speculum 76, no. 4 (2001): pp. 881–882.

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Conclusion – The Flexibility of Luther’s Gender Construction

According to Luther’s texts from the early 1520s, discussed in this article, the female sex was undoubtedly the other from his viewpoint. Further, the female body was for Luther the setting in wherein gender was constructed, and he described the gender construction in various ways. In addition, Luther had in his writings an undeniably normative way to discuss women. He was not just describing the power relations and the otherness of women but also participating to strengthen these norms. He did this not only via his readings on the Scripture but also via the practical deductions he made on the basis of those very readings. Especially Luther’s discussion on sexual relationship between female and male as the sphere of dominance and submission emphasized the idea of the otherness of woman in a most profound way. By redefining woman in the way discussed in this paper, Luther thus reasserted man’s power to define a woman. Nevertheless, the contradictions between theoretical and practical situations suggest a more fluid understanding of the limits that woman’s sex constituted. The difference between Luther’s theoretical writings, on the one hand, and the applications he made in situations of everyday life, on the other, remained and even intensified within years to come.49 His marriage with Katharina von Bora was undoubtedly one of the most important factors in this process. Although Luther seems to have made use of several dichotomies concerning the sexes, such as associating female with matter and male with spirit, in his own marriage as well,50 nevertheless he treated von Bora as an active agent in all of his writings to and of her. He could consult her in ecclesiastical matters,51 and regarded her as one of full capacity by naming her as the possessor of their property in his will.52 On the other hand, Luther’s overall evaluation of the female sex as otherness seems not to have undergone major changes towards the end of his life, compared to the 1520s.53 Women, including Katharina von Bora, seem thus to have 49 Susan Karant-Nunn, for instance, has interestingly discussed Luther’s later views, and the tension between theory and practice regarding his understanding of femininity and masculinity. See Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Masculinity (see n. 32), pp. 167–189. 50 Stjerna, Women (see n. 44), p. 61. Concerning the gendered dichotomies, see, for instance, Bynum, Fragmentation (see n. 34), pp. 151, 171, 175. 51 WA BR 9, no. 3509, p. 168. July 2, 1540. Susan Karant-Nunn and Merry Wiesner-Hanks have also noted this. See Susan C. Karant-Nunn/Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Luther on Women. A Sourcebook, Cambridge 2003, p. 187. 52 WA BR 9, no. 3699b, p. 575. Letter 3699b is an addition to Luther’s will, written in 1542 (WA BR 9, no. 3699a, pp. 572–574.). The addition was made in 1544 to emphasize von Bora’s position as the owner of their possessions. See Gustav Bebermeyer/Otto Clemen, “Beilage I. Luthers Testament im Wittenberger Gerichtsbuch. 1. Februar 1544. [Vorbemerkungen b],” in WA BR 9, Weimar 1941, pp. 574–575. 53 One of the most analyzed writings of Luther’s are the Lectures on Genesis, held between 1535 and 1545, in which he discussed the relations between the sexes at length. Of women and men

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represented otherness for Luther to some degree throughout his life. Nevertheless it seems also that Luther’s approval of female agency increased in the course of time. Luther’s theoretical writings have had enormous significance after his lifetime. However, the prevailing gender system of each time has certainly influenced the interpretations of Luther, and it is, as is the case with all the social structures that carry traditions from centuries, slow to change. This means, for instance, that it has been, and still is, supported by various laws and regulations. One particular example, wherein the significance of the gender system in interpreting Luther can easily be detected, is the issue of succession rights. Even though Luther had left the properties, and their children, in the governance of von Bora herself, guardians were, however, assigned for her and for the children in spite of Luther’s instructions.54 Also the scholarly attention that has formerly been paid especially to Luther’s theoretical writings, and the dismissal of the practical flip side, has resulted in an overly biased view of Luther’s understanding of womanhood, or in overlooking the whole topic. The gender-sensitive scholarship of the past decades has diversified these readings of Luther. Nevertheless, as Merry Wiesner-Hanks has noted already in the 1980s,55 and which still holds true in the twenty-first century, a lot is yet to be done in order to integrate gender-sensitive scholarship as an essential part of Reformation studies.

ante et post lapsum in the Lectures on Genesis, see WA 42, 51b–168b. In addition to the scholars already mentioned, see, for instance, Pilgrim Lo, “God created Man and Woman. Problems of Luther’s Understanding of Gender Relations,” in Glaube und Denken. Christiliche Existenz in einer überwiegend nicht-christlichen Umgebung. Jahrbuch Der Karl-HeimGesellschaft. Hrsg. Andrea König. Frankfurt 2008, pp. 127–140. 54 Karant-Nunn/Wiesner-Hanks, Luther (see n. 51), p. 187. 55 See Merry Wiesner-Hanks, “Beyond Women and the Family: Towards a Gender Analysis of the Reformation,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 18, no. 3 (1987): pp. 311–321.

Tom Bervoets

‘Embodying’ the Catholic Reform. Mathias Bossemius and the Defence of Clerical Celibacy in his De clericorum cum foeminis cohabitatione (1586)*

According to the standards of the Catholic Reform, as prescribed by the Council of Trent, the ideal priest was supposed to preach regularly, give religious education to his flock and stay away from the local inn. Even more important was his attitude towards the other sex. Intimate friendships with female parishioners had to be avoided and if his young beautiful housekeeper constituted a risk for his chastity vows, he was supposed to send her away.1 Even though it was one of the main points criticized by Protestant reformers, the issue of clerical celibacy was not discussed until the last but one session of the council in 1563, together with the sacrament of matrimony.2 The debate did not go very smoothly. Many participants believed that the preservation of the chastity vow would fail to square with reality. Especially Emperor Ferdinand I and the duke of Bavaria were opposed to its reconfirmation. Ferdinand was convinced that this way of living was at the utmost reserved for a very select group. He argued that a legalization of clerical marriage would appeal to the clergy in the Holy Roman Empire. The ducal delegate declared that approximately 95 percent of the Bavarian priests had a concubine. William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, came forward with similar numbers. Notwithstanding this opposition, the council fathers eventually decided to stick to clerical celibacy, thereby confirming the measures that had been

* I would like to thank Eddy Put and An Verscuren for their support while preparing this contribution. 1 Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770, Cambridge 2005, p. 116. The issue of clerical reform was discussed during the last two sessions of the Council of Trent, together with the discussion on clandestine marriages. Clerical celibacy was confirmed and declared to be superior to marriage. For the decrees of the Council see Henry Joseph Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 3rd ed., Rockford 1978. For a recent historical overview of celibacy see for instance Helen Parish, Clerical celibacy in the West: c. 1100–1700, Farnham 2010. 2 For more information on Protestant ideas on celibacy and clerical marriage cf. Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, From priest’s whore to pastor’s wife: Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation, Farnham 2012.

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taken on the subject during the First and Second Council of the Lateran in the 12th century.3 The Tridentine guidelines were introduced in various European dioceses, albeit with varying success.4 For the Low Countries, the decrees of the provincial councils of 1565 and 1570, in the archdioceses of Cambrai and Malines respectively, endorsed the obligation of chastity for those who belonged to the clergy. Transgressors were at risk of being punished.5 Despite these rules, the early Catholic Reform made no headway in the Netherlands – in particular due to the troubles caused by the Dutch Revolt – and violations of clerical celibacy remained a matter of course.6 The battle for the observance of the chastity vow during this period not only constituted a concern for bishops and rural deans who conducted parish visitations, but it also resulted in some theological writings which fiercely defended clerical celibacy. One of these apologies, written in 1586 by Matthias Bossemius, professor of theology and chancellor of the University of Douai, was pronounced at a graduation ceremony for six theology students. His De clericorum cum foeminis cohabitatione, which consists of five sermons, strongly condemned the idea that clerics should be allowed to have a relation with a woman.7 Bossemius emphasized the exemplary role of the clergy and reprimanded those who lived under the same roof with a person of the opposite sex, even if just for practical reasons. This contribution has a double purpose. On the one hand, by analyzing the misogynistic discourse used by Bossemius, I will demonstrate how he considered the female body as the main impediment for the observance of the chastity vow. On the other hand, I will analyze the virulent antiProtestant tone of his apology, which turned his work into a typical vehicle for 3 Henry Charles Lea, An historical sketch of sacerdotal celibacy in the Christian Church, Boston 1884, pp. 531–536. For more information on Jülich-Cleves-Berg see also Antje Flüchter, Der Zölibat zwischen Devianz und Norm: Kirchenpolitik und Gemeindealltag in den Herzogtümern Jülich und Berg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Cologne 2006. 4 For the Low Countries see Fernand Willocx, L’introduction des décrets du Concile de Trente dans les Pays-Bas et dans la principauté de Liège, Louvain 1929. 5 Pierre Francois Xavier de Ram, Synodicon Belgicum sive acta omnium ecclesiarum Belgii a celebrato concilio Tridentino usque ad concordatum anni 1801, Malines 1828–1858, vol. I, pp. 118–119. 6 On the eve of the Council of Trent, 45 to 60 percent of the clergy in several Brabant deaneries had been penalized for improper sexual behaviour, see Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld, Laverend tussen Kerk en wereld. De pastoors in Noord-Brabant, 1400–1570, Amsterdam 1993 pp. 342–362 and Erik Lips, “De Brabantse geestelijkheid en de andere sekse. Een onderzoek naar celibaatschendingen bij de Brabantse parochiegeestelijkheid in de vijftiende en zestiende eeuw,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 102 (1989): p. 19. For an example of a post-Tridentine bishop who had to battle against priests harassing their female parishioners see the biography of Mathias Hovius, third archbishop of Malines, in Craig Harline and Eddy Put, A bishop’s Tale: Mathias Hovius among his flock in Seventeenth-century Flanders, New Haven 2000. 7 Matthias Bossemius, De clericorum cum foeminis cohabitatione, licitane ea sit an non, tractatus ethicus, in quinque distinctus sermones, Douai 1586.

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religious militancy as developed by Catholic refugees in places such as Cologne, Liège and, in this case, Douai. For a good understanding of the tract however, it is necessary to first provide a short biography of the author.

1.

Biography

Matthias Bossemius was born in 1527 in Amsterdam where he went to the local Latin school. Afterwards, he moved to Leuven to study at the Pedagogy of the Pig, one of the four pedagogies of the Old University where the liberal arts were taught. Consequently Bossemius decided to become a priest and continued his education at the Faculty of Theology where he obtained his licentiate degree. During this period, the Dutchman was instructed by some famous theologians such as Ruard Tapper, Judocus Ravesteyn, Michael Baius, Martinus Rythovius and Petrus Curtius. Soon after, the latter two became the first bishops of the newly established dioceses of Ypres and Bruges. After his studies, the young priest was appointed professor of scriptural interpretation in the nearby Celestine priory of Heverlee, near Leuven.8 His application to this task established him as a theologian on the national scene. A few years later, his reputation provided him with a professorship at the newly opened University of Douai, in what today is France: at that time, however, it was part of the Low Countries. It was here that he received his doctoral degree in Theology (1571). This institution, founded in 1562 by Philip II, proved to be a Catholic bulwark in the struggle against Protestantism. Willem Frijhoff once described it as ‘[…] a single large CounterReformation seminary’.9 In 1573, Bossemius became provost of the Saint-Amé church and on that account chancellor of the university. In this position, he became involved directly and indirectly in some notorious theological quarrels. For instance, in the aftermath of the so-called Lessius censure proclaimed by the faculty of theology of Leuven in 1587, the Douai theologians even more severely condemned the 31 theses of the Jesuit.10 Another dispute occurred in 1591, when Bossemius clashed with the local Jesuit college of Anchin over its theological view on grace. He died in 1599 and was buried in the choir of the Saint-Amé church. 8 Johannes Fruytier, “Bossem, Mathias van,” in Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, Leiden, 1911–1937, vol. VI, pp. 171–172; T. Bouquillon “Les théologiens de Douai,” in Revue des sciences ecclésiastiques XLII (1880): p. 255. 9 Willem Frijhoff, “Patterns,” in A history of the University in Europe. 2: Universities in early modern Europe 1500–1800, ed. Hilde De Ridder-Symoens and Walter Rüegg, Cambridge 2003, p. 66. 10 For more information on this controversy see for instance Edmond van Eijl, “La controverse louvaniste autour de la grace et du libre-arbitre à la fin du XVIe siècle,” in L’augustinisme à l’ancienne faculté de théologie de Louvain, ed. Mathijs Lamberigts and Leo Kenis, Louvain 1994, pp. 207–284.

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Once described by the Dutch antiquarian and humanist Arnoldus Buchelius as grotesque, greedy and arrogant, Bossemius was judged more positively by other contemporaries and biographers.11 They praised him for his ascetic lifestyle and for the way he sustained ecclesiastical discipline and managed to keep distance from women.12

2.

Work

The five previously mentioned sermons pronounced at the graduation ceremony were printed in 1586 in Douai at the printing office of Johannes Bogardus. At that time, the city was well known for its small, but productive Catholic printing press, which proved to be a breeding ground for the development of religious militancy among refugees.13 Bossemius’ tract starts with an ode to chastity, a theme that reappears throughout the whole work. Christ himself, who was born out of a virgin, proved the importance of this virtue. The audience in general, and the six theologians to whom he spoke had to be aware of the grave consequences unchaste behaviour could have. He substantiated this argument by referring to the Biblical story of Reuben, son of Jacob, who had sexual intercourse with one of his father’s maidservants and as a result lost his precious birthright.14 Eternal abstinence was described as an ideal for the clergy – people who had chosen to follow Jesus’ path. Bossemius in this context quoted one of the Vesting Prayers, pronounced by priests while putting on vestments as part of liturgy, or, more specifically, while fasting on a cincture and asking God to gird their loins with the cincture of chastity, in order to stifle the carnal desires.15 Being a staunch defender of clerical celibacy, the Douai theologian fulminated against early Christian movements which, at that time, tried to pollute the ecclesiastical 11 Judith Pollmann, Religious choice in the Dutch Republic. The reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius (1565–1641), Manchester 1999, p. 46. 12 Georges Cardon, La fondation de l’université de Douai, Paris 1892, p. 333. 13 See André Labarre, “Les imprimeurs et libraries de Douai au XVIe et XVIIe siècles,” in Liber amicorum Léon Voet, ed. Francine de Nave, Antwerpen 1985, pp. 241–260. For the development of Catholic Militancy in Douai see Geert Janssen, “The Counter-Reformation of the Refugee: Exile and the Shaping of Catholic Militancy in the Dutch Revolt,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63 (2012): pp. 671–692. 14 Bossemius, De clericorum (see n. 7), pp. 18–19: ‘Nam et in figura quando adhuc contingerent patribus nostris omnia, et primogenitis sacerdotalis an[n]exa haereret dignitas, non[n]e Rube[m] patriarcharum primogenitus, praerogativa illa propter effusam libidine[m], ignominiose per patrem moribundum orbatus fuit?’ 15 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 21: ‘Dealba me domine, et mu[n]da cor meum. Precinge me cingulo puritatis, et extingue in lu[m]bis meis humorem libidinis; ut maneat in me virtus co [n]tine[n]tiae, et castitatis.’

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doctrine on chastity.16 Moreover, he argued that Satan’s spirit manifested itself to this day and that some priests were slipping further and further into concubinage and fornication. Bossemius thereby clearly referred to the lifestyle of some members of the Catholic clergy in the Southern Netherlands, to whom he had addressed himself explicitly in his preface and who, at least partly, had been exposed to Protestant influences during the previous decades.17 Towards the end of his dissertation on chastity, he tackled the main question of his discourse: should clergymen be allowed to live under the same roof as women, even if it was just for practical reasons? Bossemius answered this in the negative and warned priests who cohabited with persons of the opposite sex about the risks they took and the inevitable scandal that would arise, given that the presence of female persons in the rectory provoked carnal desire and led to unchastity.18 According to the theologian, it was impossible to look at women without being assailed by lust, thereby citing Augustine who claimed that a person whose gaze was full of desire already committed adultery.19 He continued by painting a picture of scantily clad maidservants flaunting their naked shoulders, trying to seduce the clerics with whom they lived. Merely by watching, clergymen could see this immoral behaviour and thereby let sin enter their bodies.20 According to Bossemius, this was enough to prove how unreliable senses in general were and eyesight in particular. In fact, the Ancient Greek philosopher Democritus had already realised this when he gouged out his eyes in order to be less disturbed in his scientific work.21 Priests not only had to be careful when looking at women. Possibly even more dangerous were the words these creatures could use. When they started to flatter, men should know that they did not do this without a reason. Citing the 7th 16 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 28: ‘[…] per impuros Nicolaitas, per coenosos Gnosticos […]’. 17 Bossemius, De clericorum, pp. 29–30: ‘[…] caeterique clerici, qui perpetuam deo castitatem voveru[n]t eodem, ut ubique videre est, habitent sub tecto cum mulieribus.’ For an overview of the history of the Reformation in the Southern Netherlands see Guido Marnef, “The Netherlands,” in The Reformation World, ed. Andrew Pettegree, New York 2000, pp. 344–364. 18 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 30 and pp. 46–47: ‘Respondeo igitur simpliciter licitum non esse […]’; ‘Etenim veluti communis quida[m] apud vulgus habetur co[n]ceptus, semperque; habitus fuit, esse quasi impossibile, ut illibata[m] is semper, sicuti vovit, mente et corpore tueatur castitate[m], cum quo eade[m] semper in domo, foemina versari co[n]spicitur.’ 19 Bossemius, De clericorum, pp. 31–32: ‘Periculose aspicitur, clamat s[anctus] Aug[ustinus] quod co[n]cupiscere no[n] licet: quando qui mulierem ta[n]tum viderit ad concupiscendum eam, iam eandem moechatus sit in corde suo.’ 20 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 32: ‘Quanto, inquam, periculosius asspicitur simul et auditor, quando, ut in domestica accidere solet familiaritate, intecto interdum capite, et unica cum tunicella, nudisque lacertis, et aperto pectore, nec uberibus omnino tectis, in oculos sacerdotis incurrit foemina, cubile praeterit, ostium eius pultat, aut etiam intrat.’ 21 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 32: ‘Oculo enim nequius quid creatum est? […] Oculos ipse sibi suos ervisse legitur Democritus, quod mulieres sine concupiscentia asspicere non posset, et doloret si non esset potitus.’

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century Christian monk John Climacus, the Douai theologian argued that female persons always resorted to tricks when trying to seduce those who had taken the vow of chastity.22 As a result, every clergyman had to choose his words carefully when talking to them. But women as well had to be aware that speaking to clerics could be dangerous. For instance, when a woman confessed her sins to her confessor, she had to avoid letting the conversation become too intimate, as this could provide a possibility for the Devil to strike under the pretence of sacredness.23 Priests who believed they could resist carnal desire and therefore did not object to living together with their maidservants were warned by Bossemius in no uncertain terms. They had to realize that those who play with fire would get burnt.24 Cohabiting with women after having taken a chastity vow was compared to travelling through the Strait of Messina, where, according to Greek mythology, two horrible sea monsters Scyla and Charybdis swallowed down every sailor who attempted to pass. By referring to Samson, King David and his successor King Solomon, the author proved that even great Biblical figures were unable to fight temptation when women used the art of seduction.25 Given that even the smallest spark could provoke a big fire, priests had to live apart from women. In one of his sermons, the theologian explicitly addressed unchaste clergymen and urged them to send their concubines away.26 Clerics with an immoral way of life also had to realize that their behaviour could give offence to the community in which they fulfilled their holy task. Moreover, the various infringements formed grist to the mill for the Protestants 22 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 36: ‘Audite clamat s. Ioan[n]es Climacus, autor antiquus, et valde bonus, astu[m] atq[ue]; versutia[m] seductoris omnes, qui castitate[m] exercere, et servare delegistis.’ 23 Bossemius, De clericorum, pp. 35–36: ‘Quamobrem suadebat suo tempore doctor theologus Godscalcus omnibus religiosis virginibus, et quibuscunque aliis mulieribus, ne unquam nimiam familiaritatem, et amicitiam ullam sensualem haberent cum suis confessoribus. Diabolus enim aiebat; est mille artifex, et sub specie sanctitatis et religionis, mirabilia operator.’ Hearing confession could form an ideal opportunity for priests to harass a female confessant, see Stephen Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned, Oxford 1996. A similar study for the Southern Netherlands is lacking, but a complaint of archbishop Jacob Boonen in 1642 showed that ‘sollicitatio’ was by no means a pure Spanish phenomenon, cf. Lucien Ceyssens, “Jacques Boonen face au laxisme penitentiel,” Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Port-Royal, 9 (1958): pp. 14–15: ‘Quod multis annis non potui credere, iam dolens agnosco, aliquoties si non saepe, confessarios cum suis poenitentibus tractasse et fecisse turpia.’ 24 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 44: ‘Qui amat periculum, peribit in illo […] Ac perit isto quidem in cohabitationis periculo.’ 25 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 77: ‘Neque enim Davide sanctior esse potes, nec Salomone sapientior, nec Sa[m]psone fortior.’ 26 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 75: ‘Unde et vos homines dei, qui vitam geritis monasticam, aut sacerdotalem, separate vos lo[n]ge a mulieribus.’

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who often mocked those who they called ‘the Pope’s whores’.27 Bossemius argued that even mockery itself insinuated unchastity. According to him, the only effective way for the clergy to avoid scandals was to put an end to the practice of cohabiting with women. Obviously, the Douai theologian did not tolerate any exception. Referring to the instructions from Trent and different other provincial councils and local synods, which prohibited the presence of concubines or other female persons in the rectory, he adopted a more radical position.28 To rule out every possibility of offending their chastity vow, clerics should expel their mothers, sisters and other female family members from their houses. After all, danger lurked around every corner and history had showed that under certain circumstances lust could even arise between close relatives. Had Lot, a model of chastity, not given in when he was plied with liquor and seduced afterwards by his childless daughters? 29 In this context, Bossemius also mentioned the tragic story of Oedipus who had an incestuous relation with his own mother. If clergymen wanted to save the Church from such scandals, the only option was to entirely ban maidservants and other female company from the rectories. Only by doing this, could they avoid being overwhelmed by sexual desire which would convert their heart from a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit into a temple where Asmodeus, the demon of lust, would reign.30

3.

Conclusion

By constantly focussing on the presence of women in presbyteries, their depraved habits and the threat this inevitably constituted for those men who had taken a chastity vow, Matthias Bossemius situated the main impediment for the observance of clerical celibacy outside of the clergy. He opposed the male, priestly body, which he depicted as strong, pure and free from any carnal desire, to the female body, which he considered as weak, impure and full of sinful passions. The tract of the Douai theologian thereby proved to be representative of the spirit of the times. According to the theory of humoralism, women were associated with a 27 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 47: ‘[…] quod apud Teutones horribilius sonat, Papen hoer […]’. 28 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 98: ‘[…] prohibet s. synodus quibuscunque clericis, ne co[n] cubinas, aut alias mulieres, de quibus possit haberi suspicio, in domo vel extra detinere, aut cum eis ullam consuetudinem habere audeant: alioqui poenis a sacris canonibus, vel statutis ecclesiarum impositis, puniantur.’ 29 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 102: ‘Novimus ex s. scriptura quomodo admirabilis ille Loth […]’. 30 Bossemius, De clericorum, p. 45: ‘Iam tum (miserabile dictu) consecratae castitatis suae sacrarium, per obscoenam violavit concupiscentiam: proque templo spiritus sancti, foedu[m] in corde suo erexit prostibulum Asmodaeo, spiritui immundo.’

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combination of cold and moist, which made them unpredictable and less persistent.31 As a result, they were excellent instruments of the Devil who, for his part, did not hesitate to use them in his attempts to seduce men. The strong anti-female overtone of the apology was also in accordance with the Christian culture in general and the broader Church policy of the time in particular. Church fathers and medieval theologians had already spoken condescendingly of the female sex. Moreover, the latter part of the 16th century witnessed the persecution of witches, most of whom were women. Furthermore, in 1563 pope Pius V promulgated the bull Circa Pastoralis, by which he officialised the decrees of Trent regarding the encloisterment (clausura) imposed on female religious communities.32 By using a virulent anti-Protestant tone in his work, Matthias Bossemius adopted a clear position. He complained about the times in which he lived and the so-called heretical ideas that were spreading, a clear reference to the political and religious situation in the Low Countries. Those who openly questioned the importance of celibacy for the Catholic clergy as well as those who broke a lance for allowing priests to marry were wrong.33 The author’s viewpoints left little room for pragmatism. Eternal chastity was an absolute requirement for the clergy who played an important role as intermediary between heaven and earth. Bossemius’ rather radical opinion, however, did not correspond to the situation on the ground. Just as in other regions, concubinage in the Low Countries continued to be a widespread phenomenon among the first generation of post-Tridentine clerics. Nevertheless, his work fits well with the atmosphere of militant Catholicism exuded by the city of Douai. By stressing the importance of celibacy for the clergy, he made a clear distinction between the Protestant and the Catholic mode of thought. The Douai theologian was not the only one who devoted an extensive tract to clerical celibacy in this period. A few years earlier Wilhelmus Lindanus, the first bishop of Roermond, who had been forced to flee to Cologne, another place of exile for Catholic refugees, had published on the same topic.34 His successor in Roermond, Henricus Cuyckius, proved to be a staunch defender of the chastity vow as well.35 Obviously both men were inspired by the low moral 31 Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and culture in early modern France, London 1975 p. 124. 32 Hsia, The World (see n. 1), p. 33. 33 A more moderate view can be found in the writings of Desiderius Erasmus, see Léon-Ernest Halkin, “Erasme et le célibat sacerdotal,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 57 (1977): pp. 497–511. 34 Wilhelmus Lindanus, De Apostolico Virginitatis Voto, Atque Evangelico Sacerdotum Caelibatu, Cologne 1577. For more information on Lindanus, see Petrus Theodorus Van Beuningen, Wilhelmus Lindanus als inquisiteur en bisschop: bijdrage tot zijn biografie, 1525–1576, Assen 1966. 35 Cuyckius discussed the topic in three different studies, most extensively in his Speculum concubinariorum, Louvain 1601. Further references and a short biography can be found in

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standards of the clergy in their diocese, where infractions of clerical celibacy were the rule rather than the exception. Recent research has argued that Catholicism at least partly triumphed in the Southern Netherlands after 1585 because the clergy managed to engage laypeople for the Tridentine offensive.36 At least in his work, Matthias Bossemius did not pay much attention to the flock. He urged the clergy to give up their bad habits of cohabiting with women and warned them to be careful in their contact with the other sex. Only by doing this, they could carry out their duties and truly embody the spirit of the Catholic Reform.

Jean-Joseph Thonissen, “Cuyck, Henri van,” in Biographie Nationale, Brussels 1914–1920, vol. V, pp. 601–602. 36 See the recent work of Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635, Oxford 2011.

Renske van Nie

Mystical Anthropology in a Sixteenth-Century Textual Witness of the Catholic Reformation

In the following contribution I will give an introduction to three topics. Firstly, I will briefly discuss the concept of a Catholic reform movement as set apart from the traditional notion of a Protestant-dominated Reformation. Secondly, I will elaborate on the initiatives undertaken by the monks of the Charterhouse of St. Barbara in Cologne within the context of this Catholic Reformation and, more specifically, on their connection to the Regular Canonesses of Saint Augustine from the Saint Agnes convent in Arnhem, in the region of Guelders in the Netherlands. Finally and most importantly, my contribution introduces the central themes of mystical anthropology in the sixteenth-century Dutch mystical treatise The Temple of Our Souls, which very likely was written by the inhabitants of the convent. In the last four decades there has been a shift in the study of the changes and transformations within the Catholic Church during the early sixteenth century. The traditional, previously dominant notion of a strict temporal dividing line between a protestant Reformation and a Catholic Counter Reformation was reconsidered and altered.1 This concept, of a Counter Reformation as an institutional response to Lutheranism by the Catholic Church, starting with the Council of Trent in 1545, has been discarded. In the field of the study of early modern Catholic history, the term ‘Catholic Reformation’ or simply ‘Catholic Reform’ is nowadays more commonly used.2 The term is important because it acknowledges the significant changes within Catholicism in the era before the Tridentine renewal.3 Additionally, whereas the notion of a Counter Reformation 1 The following list is in no way exhaustive and only mentions a few of the many publications on this topic: Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation, London 1999; John C. Olin, Catholic Reform. From Cardinal Ximenes to the Council of Trent 1495–1563, New York 1990; Alexandra Walsham, “Miracles and the Counter-Reformation Mission to England,” The Historical Journal 46, 4 (2003): pp. 779–815 and “The Reformation and the ‘disenchantment of the world’ reassessed,” The Historical Journal 51, n. 2 (2008): pp. 497–528. 2 Cf. Walsham, Miracles (see n. 1), p. 501ff. 3 Cf. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation, p.1ff and Walsham, Miracles, p. 501ff.

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presents the Catholic reformation only in the light of a – solely – Protestant Reformation, the concept of a Catholic Reform movement recognizes the independent desire for renewal of individuals and groups within the Catholic Church. In the first decades of the sixteenth century, Catholics, like Protestants, pursued a more interiorized, individually experienced belief, as is shown by the publication and the context text of The Temple of Our Souls.4 Of course, as it is with the course of history, it remains difficult to grasp developments and changes of institutions and societies in a single term, and the picture given here is only a very rough and highly summarized outline of the scholarly views on the subject, and is by no means exhaustive. As stated above, this contribution may be regarded as an introduction to the phenomenon of the Catholic reform movement. It is against the historical background of Catholic renewal that the anthropology of the mystical treatise discussed will be presented. Apart from this, it is important to mention that the notions of ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ will be used to distinguish between the institutionalized faith and members of the Catholic Church and those who did not regard themselves as members of that institution. The term ‘Protestant’ therefore refers to all nonCatholics. This usage will not do justice to the diversity of theological views and many initiatives of the reformers. However, since the main focus will be on the Catholic reform movement, this definition of the term ‘Protestant’ is chosen for practical reasons. With regard to the Catholic Reformation, two kinds of reform initiatives can be distinguished. The first and most noticeable one is renewal, initiated and implemented by the institution itself. From this perspective, the reforms and decrees issued by the secular clergy, i. e., by the ecclesiastical authorities can be regarded as institutional renewal. This type of reform is traditionally associated with the Counter Reformation5 and will not be discussed further in this paper, since I will focus my attention on the Catholic Reform movement which started much earlier, and not on the Counter-Reformation. In the Catholic Reform movement numerous separate initiatives were instigated in the first decades of the sixteenth century.6 They were the result of a deeply felt desire for a reform of personal faith on the level of the individual person. Most of these reforms were initiated by individuals or by a group of individuals, sometimes members of the clergy, both secular and regular. It was thought that by approaching the in4 Cf. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (see n. 1), p. 27. 5 Cf. Olin, Catholic Reform (see n. 1), p. 19ff. 6 Cf. Olin, Catholic Reform (see n. 1), p. 11 ff and Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (see n. 1), p. 27.

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dividual and implementing change in him or her, the community of the Church and Catholic faith could be transformed and renewed.7 From the second half of the fifteenth century onwards, there had been a both simple and effective way to reach out to this individual believer – printed texts. Not only the Protestant but also the Catholic Reformation movement benefited from the existence of print.8 Due to printed texts that focused on spiritual renewal individual believers and thus large groups of faithful Christians could interiorize and revitalize their faith, in a response to changing times and views. A striking Catholic reform initiative aimed at spiritual transformation of the individual can be found in the printing activities of the Carthusians of Cologne. From the 1520s onwards, the monks of the Charterhouse of St. Barbara committed themselves to the editing, printing and dissemination of both thirteenthand fourteenth-century as well as contemporary mystical texts. By doing so, they hoped to start a revival of mystical thought and spirituality.9 Secondly, but equally if not more important, they aimed to strengthen the faith and religious life of lay people. The activities of the Carthusians were a sincere attempt to revitalize Catholic spirituality, but at the same time they were a response to the spreading of Lutheranism. The printing of these texts can therefore be regarded as an example of an early Catholic reform. Moreover, the monks of the Charterhouse developed their most intense printing and reading activities long before the start of the Council of Trent.10 The priorate of Peter Blomevenna (1466– 1536), running between 1507–1536, proves to be a period of intense activity. From the 1500s onwards, the Carthusians edited and printed their own works as well as, among other medieval mystical texts, Hendrik Herp’s work Mirror of perfection.11 Gérald Chaix, who wrote his doctoral thesis on the Charterhouse in the early 16th century, calls these publications expressions of ‘lay piety’ (‘piété civique’).12 Under Gerard Kalkbrenner serving as the prior of St. Barbara, the Carthusians resumed their work in 1537, almost a decade after their last publications. They turned, however, to a different publishing strategy. Undoubtedly influenced by the events in Northern Europe, they started to edit and print more controversial texts and spiritual works. In many of these publications, thoughts and practices 7 Cf. Walsham, Miracles (see n.1), p. 501. 8 Cf. Walsham, Miracles (see n.1), p. 519, and Gérald Chaix, Réforme et contre-réforme catholiques: recherches sur la Chartreuse de Cologne au 16e siècle, Salzburg 1981, vol. 1, p. 54ff. 9 Cf. Chaix, Réforme et contre-réforme catholiques (see n. 8), vol.1, p. 90ff. 10 For this and the following, cf. Chaix, Réforme et contre-réforme catholiques (see n. 8), vol. 1, p. 94ff. 11 Chaix, Réforme et contre-réforme catholiques (see n. 8), vol. 1, p. 101ff. 12 Cf. Chaix, Réforme et contre-réforme catholiques (see n. 8), vol. 1, p. 241.

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derived from medieval mystical thought are incorporated in the liturgical and sacramental life as set by the Church. According to Chaix, this was exactly what the urban elite in the Catholic cities of the Rhineland needed.13 The text that is the subject of this article is an example of this Carthusian engagement. In accordance with the above, I consider it a witness of the Catholic reformation, as the title of this article already makes clear. The Temple of Our Souls was printed in 1543 in Antwerp by Simon de Cock and edited by Nicolaas Van Essche, a leader of the Beguines who was closely connected to the Charterhouse in Cologne.14 The Temple, the shortened title commonly used to refer to this mystical treatise, was not written by one or several monks but by an anonymous author, whose name remains unknown. The title page of the 16th-century print however, states that it was written by the same unnamed religious woman who wrote The Evangelical Pearl, first printed in 1535 and edited and introduced by the Cologne Carthusian Dirk Loer.15 Unsurprisingly, the two treatises are closely connected both thematically and terminologically. Apart from this, the sermon collection that now is called the Arnhem Mystical Sermons shows strong resemblance to both the Temple and the Pearl with regard to spirituality, structure and content.16 The sermon collection as a whole was very probably written in the same decades, but the name of the author or copyist again remains unmentioned. Because of the strong similarities between the three texts, it is tempting to conclude that they would derive from, at the very least, the same spiritual context, if not the same author or group of authors. Recent codicological evidence has supported this assumption: all of the three mystical texts can be traced back to the same convent, that of Saint Agnes in Arnhem, where a group of nuns lived under the Rule of St. Augustine.17 Chronicles and other documents point towards the fact that the decade preceding the printing of the Pearl and the Temple can be regarded as the heyday of the convent. Taking this into account, as well as the already mentioned connections of the nuns to the Carthusians of Cologne and the newly developed mysticism addressed in the three texts, it should come as no surprise that first Kees Schepers18 and subsequently Bernard

13 Chaix, Réforme et contre-réforme catholiques (see n. 8), vol. 1, p. 242. 14 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel onser Sielen, Antwerpen 1543. 15 Anonymous, Die Grote Evangelische Peerle, vol Devoter Gebeden, Godlijcker Oeffeninghen ende Ggeesteliker Leerringhen, Antwerpen 1537. 16 Cf. Kees Schepers, “Het verborgen leven van de zusters Agnieten,” Ons Geestelijk Erf 79, n. 3 (2008): p. 294ff. 17 Cf. Schepers, Het verborgen (see n. 16), p. 294, fn. 36, where Schepers refers to H. Kienhorst, Middeleeuwse Verzamelhandschriften uit de Nederlanden 9, Hilversum 2005. 18 Schepers, Het verborgen (see n. 16), p. 285.

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McGinn19 have spoken of the St. Agnes convent as the center of a ‘16th-century mystical renaissance in the Eastern Netherlands’. Before I move on to discuss the Temple, I will first give a short overview of the most important features of the Arnhem mysticism, for which I rely on Kees Schepers’ excellent introductory article to the spiritual life of the Augustinian nuns.20 First of all, the two treatises and the sermon collection all display a unique combination of14th-century Brabantine and Rhenish mysticism. The speculative mysticism of Meister Eckhart and John Tauler is combined with the Trinitarian thought and love mysticism of John of Ruusbroec. Secondly, the Arnhem mysticism is strongly Christocentric, with an emphasis on a ‘mystically orientated imitatio Christi’.21 In order to experience unity with the divine, the texts encourage the readers to annihilate and empty oneself after the example of Christ. A third and final general aspect of the Arnhem mystical thought is the stress on the mystical reliving of the liturgy. This of course also involves the reliving of the life of Christ through the liturgical cycle. The Temple and, possibly less surprisingly, the sermon collection are both structured along the cycle of the liturgical year. The title Temple already acknowledges the place where the liturgy should be celebrated. The notion of a temple of the human soul indicates that according to the author the latter was created as a temple, a church building, or even as heaven where God is present.22 With regard to the liturgy, it follows that God should be worshipped in the soul in conjunction with the liturgy that is celebrated in the church. As a biblical reference, the first chapter of the Temple quotes 1 Corinthians 3:16, where it is stated: ‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?’23 Two textual witnesses of the Arnhem mystical renaissance, The Evangelical Pearl and the Arnhem Mystical Sermons, have strong mystagogical tendencies, that is, they exhaustively inform their readers on the correct disposition and conduct in their successive states on the path to the mystical union with God the Father through Christ.24 The mystagogical elements, especially in the Pearl, are often 19 Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550), New York 2012, p.141ff., cf. chap. 5 “A Mystical Renaissance in the Eastern Netherlands”. 20 Schepers, Het verborgen (see n. 16), pp. 305ff. 21 Schepers, Het verborgen (see n. 16), p. 306. 22 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14), f 15v. 23 King James Bible, via www.kingjamesbibleonline.org (last accessed 4 December 2013). 24 As an example, I will quote here the first lines of the prayer in Book I, chapter 8 of The Evangelical Pearl, in which a prayer is written to contemplate on the unity of the soul with God: ‘Ic bid u mijn alre liefste mijn Heere ende mijn God. O alder hoochste onwandelbaer goet geeft mi na dijnen behageliken lieven wille u aen te beden in dat beelt mijnre sielen daer ghi u in vereniget hebt daeric u altijt vinden mach tegenwoordich te wesen verstaende mijn mey-

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given in the form of prayers that have to be said by the reader. But the treatise and the sermon collection also contain more difficult, highly theological discussions of, for example, the nature of the Trinity and the connection between the human soul and Christ.25 The Temple differs from the other texts insofar that the author hardly provides practical directions or prayers and that he or she hardly ever directly addresses the reader, except for a first introductory chapter. To a large extent, the text can be regarded as descriptive, because of its many elaborations on theological problems, the discussions of the various stages of the human soul in its ascent to the state of unity with the divine and because of its detailed account on the role of the liturgy. As mentioned above, The Temple of Our Souls describes the human being in his immediate relationship to the Trinity. This connection implies that the author’s portrayal of mankind would be highly positive, for a union between God and man can only take place if the two are, at least to a certain extent, equal. This is indeed the case. Man, more specifically the human soul, is created as a temple wherein God lives and where he should be worshipped, as the first chapter states.26 The eighth chapter of the text expresses this view even stronger: ‘Because of this interior temple, the exterior temple has been created’.27 The praise of God within the human person is deemed more important than praising God in the church. But due to the Fall, man befouls and dishonors his temple through sin. The author of the treatise obviously does not state that the whole of the human soul is equal to God, and thus does not deify the human person. The final part of this article will address the terminology and the mystical anthropology in the Temple of Our Souls. Because of the length of the treatise, it is impossible to present a very detailed account of the full anthropological terminology and views of the author. My discussion is therefore based on quotations from the first chapter of the text. The editor of the Temple, Albert Ampe, considers this chapter the introduction to the book, in which the creation of the ninge ende gedachten wil ende begeerten […].Nu bid ic u o eewich enich een o mijn god o leven mijnre sielen. Neemt mi mi selven ende gebruyct my selver Ic bid u ontfangt mi die daer ben een vat der boosheyt. Ic gheve my u geheelijcken over met mi te doen uwen alder liefsten wille in tijt / ende in eewicheyt’. Cf. Anonymous, Die Grote Evangelische Peerle (see n. 15) ll. 370ff. 25 An example of these discussions can be found in Ineke Cornet and Kees Schepers, “The Arnhem Mystical Sermons in Context: Introduction,” Ons Geestelijk Erf. De Arnhemse Mystieke preken in context 81, n. 1 (2010): pp. 5–16. A print edition of the sermon collection – the largest known collection of late medieval Dutch sermons – is currently being prepared by Kees Schepers. 26 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14) c. 1, f 15r ff. 27 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14) c. 8, f 35v.

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human soul as in its state in the Garden of Eden is explained.28 After this, seven more chapters on the current condition of mankind follow. The ninth chapter then starts with a description of the solemn consecration of the temple-soul, as a starting point for the discussion of the liturgy.29 The first chapter of the treatise gives an elaborate introduction to the structure of the human soul, as it was originally created by God. Referring to the first chapter of the Biblical Book of Proverbs,30 the author emphasizes that the figure of the house made by the eternal Wisdom31 is to be understood as the rational soul, which can also be interpreted as heaven of the Holy Trinity.32 A just soul, a pure consciousness, is the seat of God. The first three of the seven pillars of the house are described as the highest faculties of the soul, i. e., memory, intellect and will. In these, as if in a chamber, lives the Holy Trinity, being the life, nourishment and buttress of the soul. The other four columns are the four elements of which the body is made and which are to be used when the spirit (mind) is united with God.33 This short paragraph introduces some of the key elements of the Temple’s mystical anthropology. First of all, the reader will recognize the traditional tripartite and hierarchical structure of the human person: body, soul and spirit (mind). One might think that the terminology is used quite freely and without much attention to terminology. The opposite, however, is true. In the quotation above, the word ‘united’34 is used only in combination with the term ‘spirit’ (‘gheest’),35 whereas there always remains a difference, even if a very small one, between God and the soul. The Trinity has its residence in the soul, it gives it life, feeds and nourishes the soul, but the two are not united.36 We may therefore conclude that spirit (‘gheest’) has a higher hierarchical status than the soul. However, it should be acknowledged that the author uses the term soul (‘siele’) in two different ways. ‘Soul’ can either refer both to the soul and the spirit, as

28 Albert Ampe, ed., Vanden tempel onser sielen, Ruusbroecgenootschap, Antwerpen 1968, p. 110ff. 29 The treatise as a whole counts 60 chapters, from which 53 are devoted to the celebration of the liturgy in the human soul. The final seven chapters have a devotional, prayer-like character. 30 Cf. Prov. 9:1: ‘Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars’. Accessible via www.kingjamesbibleonline.org (last accessed 4 December 2013). 31 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14), c. 1, f 16r. 32 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14), f 16r. 33 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14), f 16v. 34 Middle Dutch: ‘vereenicht’. 35 Middle Dutch: ‘gheest’. 36 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14), f 17r.

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opposed to the body, or to the soul alone. The latter is mainly found in discussions on the tripartition of man.37 After the seven pillars are interpreted for a second time as the columns of the divine and cardinal virtues, the author states that upon these, a golden throne is set in the temple, which is the ‘deiform mind’ (‘godvormig ghemoede’), enlightened with divine clarity.38 Next, the author continues by distinguishing between the chair and the arm rests, in which the chair is given the meaning of the pure consciousness (‘puer ghedacht’). In the pure consciousness rests the king of eternal wisdom who after sinking it in quiet love and freedom of the mind then renews everything in the soul. He flows through all the faculties and senses to make the whole of the human person enjoyable (‘ghebruckelic’) to God.39 In this discussion, we can see the whole structure of the human person: the body with its faculties and senses, the soul with its own faculties (memory, intellect and will) and finally, as a throne upon the pillars of the body and soul, the deiform mind, of which the pure consciousness is a part. But as in a church, where the seat of the priest is visibly present, but by far not the most important piece of furniture in the building, the pure consciousness of the deiform mind does not hold the highest hierarchical position. The author goes on by elaborating on the sanctuary of the temple-soul, which is designated as the unity of the spirit (‘eenicheit des geestes’).40 In this unity, the Holy Trinity is ceaselessly honored and worshipped by the human person. At the center of this sanctuary stands the altar – the most important place in the church which is defined as the most important part of the human spirit. And it is this that the author of the text regards as the place in the human person where the eternal Word, that is the Son, is born – eternally, relentlessly and in time.41 The author calls this human altar ‘the hidden wealth’ (‘die verborgen rijcdom’), or ‘the hidden sanctum’ (‘die verborgen heilicheit’). The eternal Word is born here, and the interior soul devotes itself and all the grace it has been given to God. This place, which can be defined as the absolute essence of the human being, is where God and man will meet in mystical union. 37 In his previous discussion of the three pillars of the house-soul, which are identified as the highest faculties, speaking of the highest faculties of the soul, the author uses the term ‘siele’ to refer to both the soul and to the spirit (mind). 38 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14), f 19r. 39 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14), f 19v. The Middle Dutch term ‘ghebruyckelic’ and its verb ‘ghebruycken’ (‘to enjoy’) have a central position in the terminology of the Middle Dutch mysticism of Jan van Ruusbroec. Cf. Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, vol. IV, Die niederländische Mystik des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts, chap. “Jan van Ruusbroec,” München 1990, p. 37ff. 40 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14), f 19v. 41 Anonymous, Vanden Tempel (see n. 14), f 19v.

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At this acme of the mystical anthropology in the Temple of Our Souls, my introductory article on the terminology and views of the relationship between God and the human temple-soul has reached it conclusion. I have pointed towards the notion of a Catholic Reformation as a reform movement that developed during the first decades of the sixteenth century independently from the Protestant Reformation. Texts such as The Temple of Our Souls played an important role in the Catholic search for a new faith with a firm basis within the tradition of the Catholic Church. The addressed anthropology demonstrates the significance of a highly interiorized belief for the author, for the monks of the Charterhouse in Cologne and for the readers of the text. It also points towards the renewal of mystical thought visible in the mystical renaissance in the Netherlands at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in which the Carthusians of the monastery of St. Barbara in Cologne played a defining role by editing, translating and publishing, among others, texts of the canonesses of St. Agnes. Through all of this, the intriguing anthropology of The Temple of Our Souls serves as a true witness of the Catholic Reformation.

III. Images of Reformation and Religious Imaginations

Marion Deschamp

An Embodied Theology. Body, Images and the Imagination of God by Luther

In 1501, the German humanist Magnus Hundt published a treatise on anatomy that contains the first mention of the term ‘anthropologia,’ coined from the Greek predicative adjective anthropologos, literally – ‘speaking of man.’ His compatriot, the Protestant scholar Otto Casmann, popularized the word at the very end of the 16th century and gave it its first definition: ‘Anthropology is the doctrine of human nature. Human nature is an essence partaking of two worlds, the spiritual and the corporeal, yet united in one vehicle.’1 Casmann proposed to divide anthropology, that is the science of human nature, into two different parts: the somatotomia, the aim of which it was to study the fabric of the human body and the psychologia, which was to deal with the study of the soul in conjunction with (but separable from) the body.2 This dualist anthropology had its roots in the questioning of Aristotelian tradition and, through it, of the Scholastic definition of man. For Thomas Aquinas, body and soul belonged to the same essence of human being and were determined through the relationship between matter and form. The soul, defined as ‘the first principle of life’ was the substantial form of the body, attributing the mode of its being to every single part of man’s corporeal constitution.3 At the end of the 15th century, and with the help of the idealist philosophy of Plato, some humanists however abandoned the Scholastic ontology in favour of the dualist concept of man. Body and mind were thus considered two distinct elements. Moreover, one reckoned that human essence resided in the soul, not in the body, which was just its contingent frame.4 The fate of the dualist concept of man 1 Otto Casmann, Psychologia Anthropologica, sive Animae Humanae Doctrina, Hanau 1594– 1596. Cf. Pars II: Anthropologia, hoc est de fabrica humani corporis. 2 Paul Mengal, “La constitution de la psychologie comme domaine de savoir aux XVIe et XVIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines, no. 2 (2001/1): pp. 5–27. 3 Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis, l. 1, d. 8, q. 5, Articulus 3: ‘anima est forma substantialis corporis animatis.’ 4 For a general view of the pluralist Aristotelian tradition and its similarly pluralist critics during the Renaissance, see Charles B. Schmitt/Quentin Skinner/Eckhard Kessler, ed., The

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proved to be long-lasting in the European history of ideas, reaching its arguably most famous expression in Descartes’ philosophy of the ‘body-machine.’ Already at the beginning of the 17th century, the majority of the Protestant intelligentsia seemed to have endorsed the principle of Casmann’s dualist anthropology. Further support came from Melanchthon, whose works on natural philosophy promoted new ideas on the dualist nature of man. Luther’s understanding of human beings, on the other hand, appears to have had very little in common with the scheme of the homo duplex. As we will see, the Reformer developed in his theology a very singular concept of the ‘whole man’ that at the same time emphasized the antagonism between flesh and spirit and nevertheless refused to divide the human person into two separate substances. Man, argued Luther, is simultaneously all flesh and all spirit, and he cannot be reduced to one of his two natures. Yet, interestingly, Lutheran studies remain trapped in the dualistic body-mind division when speaking about Luther. Just like Casmann’s binary program did while pointing to the physical and psychological aspects of the human being separately, the studies on Luther seem polarized between the somatic and intellectual aspects of the Reformer’s life. What is more, this dichotomous approach seems especially focused on the subject of ‘Lutheran anthropology,’a label that is now used by scholars to refer to the general discussion of man in Luther’s works. When it was first applied, the concept of Lutheran anthropology referred to the understanding of man in Luther’s thought in a strict theological sense. As Luther used to identify the subject of his theology not by speaking about God but in the understanding of man as a sinner who was redeemed by the grace of God the Saviour, it seemed actually easy to qualify his theology along the same line as an anthropology, that is, in the general meaning of ‘speaking of man.’5 But, most often, the study of Luther’s philosophy revealed itself to be a very much disembodied anthropology. On the grounds of Luther’s statements concerning fallen man and his miserable, depraved and corrupted nature, scholars have examined the doctrinal impact of this pessimistic anthropology on substantial aspects of his theology: the bondage of human will, the necessity of God’s free grace, the concept of justification by faith alone through Christ’s redemption or the doctrine of man as simul justus et peccator.6 Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge 1988, especially chapter IX: Psychology, pp. 455–534. 5 Martin Luther, Doctor Martin Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe [WA], ed. Rudolf Hermann/Gerhard Ebeling et al., Weimar 1883–2009, 40/II, p. 328: ‘Subjectum Theologiae homo reus et perditus et deus justificans vel salvator.’ 6 Theological studies on Luther’s anthropology are plentiful. See in particular Erdmann Schott, Fleisch und Geist nach Luthers Lehre unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Begriffs ‘totus homo’, Leipzig 1928; Paul Althaus, Paulus und Luther über den Menschen. Ein

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A later development saw some scholars studying the mundane, banal and every-day-life of the great Reformer in order to offer an incarnate vision of the great man and explore concrete aspects of his subjectivity. His relationship to food and drink, to women and sex, his desires and diseases, his accounts of his own body and organic troubles, digestion or anality have been avidly scrutinized with the help of plentiful sources left to posterity by the Reformer himself or his close entourage.7 When paying attention to the significance of these trivial aspects, scholars have tried to reconstitute a certain worldview which could encompass both the idiosyncrasies of a (great) man and the collective representations of a society at a given place and time. To date, only a few studies have tried to link aspects of Luther’s somatic realities with his theological views. Since the biographical work of Erik Erikson, who tried to interpret the theological innovations of the young Luther in psychoanalytic terms, the attempts to conceptually connect (not only in a Freudian perspective) Luther’s mind and body emerged here and then, but always sporadically. Lyndal Roper, for example, examined Luther’s obsessive recourse to scatology through the prism of his understanding of the devil’s realm and of his apocalyptic eschatology, arguing that ‘Luther’s physicality was integrally connected to some of his deepest theological insights.’8 This article intends to transcend this aporetical division of body and mind that still prevails in Lutheran studies today. However, its aim is not to grasp the individual physicality of Luther’s belief but rather to lay bare the general anatVergleich, Gütersloh 1938; Gerhard Ebeling, “Das Leben – Fragment und Vollendung: Luthers Auffassung vom Menschen im Verhältnis zur Scholastik und Renaissance,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 72 (1975): pp. 310–336; Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien II: Disputatio de homine (Pt. 1: Text und Traditionshintergrund; Pt. 2: Die philosophische Definition des Menschen; Pt. 3: Die theologische Definition des Menschen), Tübingen 1977–1989; Bengt Hägglund, “Theologische und philosophische Anthropologie bei Luther,” Studia Theologica. Nordic Journal of Theology 37, no. 1 (1983): pp. 101–124. 7 Luther’s huge correspondence and the so-called ‘Table Talk’ (Tischreden) are replete with anecdotal reports about Luther’s physicality. Among a lot of other studies which illustrate this kind of inquiry into Luther’s life and thought, we can mention Susan C. Karant-Nunn, “‘Fast wäre mir ein weibliches Gemüt verblieben’: Martin Luthers Männlichkeit,” in Luther zwischen den Kulturen, ed. Hans Medick/Peter Schmidt, Göttingen 2004, pp. 49–65; Merry WiesnerHanks, “Luther on Women: The Death of Two Marys,” in Disciplines of faith: Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarchy, ed. Jim Obelkevich/Lyndal Roper/Raphael Samuel, London 1987, pp. 295–310; Lyndal Roper, “Venus in Wittenberg: Cranach, Luther and Sensuality,” in Ideas and Cultural Margins in Early Modern Germany, ed. Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer/Robin Barnes, Farnham 2009, pp. 81–98; Harald Meller, ed., Fundsache Luther: Archaeologen auf den Spuren des Reformators, Stuttgart 2008. 8 Lyndal Roper, “Martin Luther’s Body: The ‘Stout Doctor’ and His Biographers,” The American Historical Review 115, no. 2 (2010): pp. 351–384. The author’s thesis actually refers to a study by Heiko Oberman, which she developes and systematizes, see Heiko Oberman, “Teufelsdreck: Eschatology and Scatology in the ‘Old’ Luther”, Sixteenth Century Journal 19, no. 3 (1988): pp. 435–450.

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omy of his concept of faith. This amounts to the question to what extent bodies mattered to the Reformer in the act of believing. How could hearts, eyes and ears interfere with the human knowledge of God? How could sensations, emotions, imaginations and other somatic aspects be incorporated into the process of faith? And, in brief, how were bodily issues involved in the practice of religion? In order to rightly appreciate the power of the body within Luther’s theology, it remains necessary to explore the singularity of the Reformer’s concept of man being simultaneously all flesh and all spirit. In fact, his original anthropology explains why the body, that is to say, the sinful part of man, cannot be excluded from the human cognition of God and the reception of the divine Word (Part I of my article). Moreover, while investigating the role of body in the works of the Reformer, the question of images in general – and of the image of God in particular – proves to be fundamental to Luther’s understanding of the corporeality of faith. Luther distinguished between two different kinds of images which both have an obvious connection to the body: ‘the images before the eyes,’ and the ‘images in the heart’ (Parts II and III). These two modes of visualisation, which correspond in today’s language to the object and its mental image, fall within the general process of polarization imposed by Luther upon external and internal realities. This distinction allowed him, in the case where the subject of visual representation was nothing but God, to separate the production of images from the practice of idolatry. Idolatry, in his eyes, had nothing to do with the commerce of actual images, but resulted from the false imagination of God in the heart (Part IV). But idolatry was all the more difficult to extract from the heart of men because of man’s innate need to imagine God. Due to their undeniably bodily nature, human beings were condemned to know God imperfectly, that is, through the mediation of their senses. Even the cognition of God could not be achieved by a pure process of visualisation. Thus, the only way to imagine God properly was to hear the Word of God and to inscribe it in the heart. The heart could then become the mirror of the true image of God – the man on the cross (Part V). Finally, the true imagination of God and its translation into actual images will enable us to provide a complete anatomy of the Lutheran faith and a general view on the role of the body in his anthropology.

I Anthropology, understood as the doctrine of the human person and especially of the relationship between soul and spirit, existed long before the word itself appeared. The definition of man was a philosophical question par excellence. But Scholastic theology, relying on Aristotle’s ontology, also concerned itself with the issue. When the humanists, in their turn, took hold of this subject, most of them

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abandoned the Peripatetic framework and developed a dualistic concept of man on the basis of Platonism, promoting at the same time the superiority of the spirit over the body, which was seen as the prison of the soul. Within the Protestant world, different versions of the human equation also used to coexist, nourished by both the Scholastic and humanist traditions. Luther’s and Melanchthon’s concepts of man are the perfect embodiment of this plurality of anthropological discourses which had strong repercussions on their theological doctrines. Luther in fact reckoned that the only true definition of man had nothing to do with philosophy but was essentially theological. It was fundamentally about man’s relation to God and to his own salvation. Melanchthon, in his dialogue with Aristotle’s works and finally in his own ontological concept which was to a great extent related to the Neoplatonism of Erasmus, showed a more humanist view of man. At the end, his approach would prevail over Luther’s more original but complex view. Nevertheless, these two divergent Protestant perspectives regarding the anthropological question need further explanation. Philip Melanchthon, at an early stage of his academic career, strictly refused to adopt the physical or metaphysical laws of Aristotle. However, at the end of the 1520s, he returned to an intensive reading of Aristotelian works.9 This surge of interest did not yet mean that he was ready to endorse en bloc the premises and statements of the Stagirite. As Sachiko Kusukawa has highlighted, Melanchthon’s effort to promote a new natural philosophy at Wittenberg University was, for instance, a clear attempt to sideline the form-matter scheme of classical ontology.10 In his commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, published in 1540, Melanchthon took into account the most recent anatomical discoveries of the human body in order to defend an understanding of the ‘whole human nature’ as the association of a body and a rational soul. The Commentary was quickly considered a seminal work and inspired a large number of Protestant physicians. In a new edition of 1603, the work was re-named Anthropologia.11 Kusukawa maintained that Melanchthon carried out a transformation of traditional natural philosophy, which in his hands became Lutheran. Especially his understanding of the human soul, she argued, could ‘only be made full sense of in terms of Lutheran theology.’12 Now, the qualification of Melanchthon’s natural philosophy as ‘Lutheran’ seems very questionable, not only because of the ambiguity of the term which can be understood as referring to Luther, to Lutheran orthodoxy or to a more nebulous Protestant theological inheritance, in 9 Cf. Nicole Kuropka, Philip Melanchthon: Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Ein Gelehrter im Dienst der Kirche (1526–1532), Tübingen 2002. 10 Cf. Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philip Melanchthon, Cambridge 1995. 11 Cf. Paul Mengal, La naissance de la psychologie, Paris 2005, p. 109. 12 Kusukawa, Natural Philosophy (see n. 10), pp. 99–101.

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which Luther’s and Melanchthon’s thoughts both play an important role. In any case, there is no doubt that Melanchthon’s reading of the De Anima was guided by a number of essential ‘Lutheran’ doctrines, like the justification through faith alone. Furthermore, there can be no doubt that his work had an important effect on Lutheran scholars of the next generation and influenced the birth of a premodern anthropology which was concerned both with somatic as well as psychic aspects of men. However, Melanchthon’s understanding of the human being, especially of the soul, seems to come up against the ‘anthropology’ (in the largest sense of the word – ‘speaking of man’) that Luther developed in his works. In 1519, Luther expounded his view on the subject on two different occasions: at the dispute of Leipzig where he found himself pitted against the Roman theologian Johannes Eck, and in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians.13 Both times, he spoke out against the ancient division of the human being in flesh (caro), soul (anima) and spirit (spiritus) as endorsed by Eck – a view also held by Erasmus and many other humanists. But beyond this tripartite equation of man, Erasmus and his partisans defended a dualist philosophy of man being split between his body (which made him an animal) and his spirit (which connected him to the divine). The spiritual part was seen as the only one to matter in terms of Christian salvation. Located between the body and the spirit, the soul was understood as an ontologically indifferent and undecided buffer zone which could ‘turn downward to the animal-like, or upward to the divine.’14 But according to Erasmus, the soul possessed the freedom, or free will, to go in one or the other direction and, for example, to fight for the spirit against the flesh. In fact, this view of the human person was strongly related to the Pauline idea of opposition between the desires of the flesh and those of the spirit. Luther’s reading of Paul, however, differed tremendously from this dualist interpretation. He refused to consider the soul a neutral entity, free to join up with one of the two opposite elements of human nature. For him, the whole person and especially the soul, defined as the life of the body (Leibs Leben),15 was 13 See Resolutiones Lutherianae super propositionibus suis Lipsiae disputatis, WA 2, pp. 391– 435 and In epistolam Pauli ad Galatas M. Lutheri commentarius, WA 2, pp. 443–618. 14 Oswald Bayer, “Freedom? The Anthropological Concepts in Luther and Melanchthon Compared,” The Harvard Theological Review 91, no. 4 (1998): pp. 373–387. In footnote no. 11 (p. 376), the author gives this quotation from Erasmus’s Handbook of the Christian Soldier: ‘Therefore the spirit makes us gods; the flesh makes us brute animals. The soul constitutes us as human beings […]. Whatever is carnal is base, whatever is spiritual is perfect, whatever belongs to the soul as life-giving element is in between and indifferent.’ 15 Luther remains in the framework of the Scholastic tradition when he defines the soul as the ‘life of the body,’ that is, as the vital principle of the body. In a sermon of 1526 (Am dreizehnten Sonntage nach Trinitatis. Evang. Luc. 10), Luther describes the soul in these terms: ‘Seele in der gschrifft haist das leibs leben, was in den fünff sinnen daher geet, essen, trincken, schlaffen, wachen, sehen, hoeren, rychen, schmecken, und alles, was die seele durch den leib würcket.’ See WA 10, I/2, pp. 355–366, here p. 362.

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a battlefield between flesh and spirit. But this did not mean that human nature as a whole was divided into these two antagonistic elements. Indeed, Luther claimed that man was all flesh and all spirit and that he was placed, according to God’s will, under the divine wrath or the divine grace in his entirety. In an expression that is paradoxical in the extreme, Luther explained that in one man there were in fact two complete men (Sunt duo toti homines et unus totus homo).16 As many Lutheran theologians have pointed out, this definition had nothing in common anymore with the humanist concept of homo duplex. The Lutheran concept of man as totus homo, comprising both totus caro and totus spiritus, was, in terms of logic, pure insanity. Nonetheless, in Luther’s eyes, it could be justified theologically. Indeed, this aberrant view of human nature was necessarily connected to the doctrine of justification through faith alone, according to which salvation was a gift of God, passed on to humanity through His Son. Man’s redemption had nothing to do with the hoarding of good works but was accomplished only through faith in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. At the same time, Luther’s theology was influenced by the Augustinian view, whereby since Adam’s original sin all men were sinners (peccatum radicale). Even after being justified by faith, a Christian was still dominated by concupiscence (the innate tendency to choose evil over good) and was only justified through the grace of God, who did not impute his sins. From this conception followed that man was simul justus et peccator. The saints, Luther wrote, ‘were always sinners in their own minds, and therefore always justified outwardly.’17 But as some theologians have pointed out, this double definition of man (sinner in himself and justified before God) could not be related to the ontology of substances anymore, but had to be comprehended as a process of relational determination.18 The understanding of man became, according to Luther, a matter of point of views – per naturam relativorum. It is precisely with this relative definition of human nature that Melanchthon could not agree, as he took it to be a ‘stoica et manichea deliria.’19 Melanchthon 16 Cf. WA 2, p. 586. 17 Scholien de Epistola ad Romanos (1516), WA 56, pp. 268–269: ‘I use the term inwardly (intrinsice) to show how we are in ourselves, in our own eyes, in our own estimation; and the term outwardly (extrinsince) to indicate how we are before God and in his reckoning. Therefore we are righteous outwardly, when we are rigtheous solely by the imputation of God and not of ourselves or of our own Works[…].’Translation by the author. 18 Theologische Realenzyklopädie [TRE], ed. Gerhard Müller/Gerhard Krause, Berlin, 1977– 2004, “Luther”, II.6.2.: Simul Justus et peccator, pp. 545–546. 19 Corpus Reformatorum [CR], 1–28: Philip Melanchthon, Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, ed. Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider/Heinrich Ernst Bindseil, Halle 1834–1860, here CR 9, p. 766. See on this point Theobald Beer, Luthers Theologie. Eine Autobiographie, Giessen 1995, p. 6.

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was following Luther while believing that man was a sinner whose sins were not taken into account by God. However, he reckoned that man had at least the capacity to receive or reject God’s gift of salvation and could be held responsible for his own choice. ‘God draws, but he draws him who is willing,’ wrote Melanchthon in the Commentary on the De Anima.20 If, as Erasmus had claimed, the soul had no free will, it nonetheless had a modus agendi and could contribute in a limited way to its own damnation or justification. Anyhow, man could in no instance be simultaneously something and the opposite of it, claimed Melanchthon, who refused to give up the principle of non-contradiction. Besides, exactly for the same logical reasons, he found it hard to deal with the theological concept of unio hypostatica that postulated a communication of idioms (namely a permeability of properties) between the two natures of Christ. Stressing the unmixed features of the divine and human nature of Christ, he considered the communicatio idiomatum to be a simple form of speech that could be used to speak more easily about the Christian person.21 Luther, on the contrary, had no problem with admitting the presence of this contradiction in his theological system. For instance, he firmly believed that the hidden God (deus absconditus) could accomplish something by its opposite.22 Moreover, with the help of the communication of idioms, he was inclined to resolve the contradictive natures of both man and Christ, and the fact that they could be one thing and its opposite at the same time (coinstantaneous).23 The different concepts of human nature developed by Erasmus, Luther, and Melanchthon not only show that they had three distinctive ways of resolving the articulation between the body, the flesh, and the soul within one unit. They also corresponded to three different theologies of human volition regarding the process of salvation. Moreover, these differences unravel the specificity of Luther’s anthropology as compared to those of his contemporaries. The Erasmian philosophy of man, which Melanchthon increasingly aligned himself with, as20 See CR 21, p. 376. 21 Philip Melanchthon, Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl [MSA], Studienausgabe, ed. Robert Stupperich, Gütersloh 1951–1975, here MSA 6, p. 374. See also on this point Irene Dingel, “Melanchthon and the Establishment of Confessional Norms,” in Philip Melanchthon: Theologian in Classroom, Confession, and Controversy, ed. Irene Dingel/Robert Kolb/Nicole Kuropka/Timothy Wengert (dir.), Göttingen 2012. 22 Luther reckoned that the absconditus Deus could sometimes ‘contradict himself ’ (Deus sibi ipsi sit contrarius) in terms of human logic and dissimulate towards men his real will. Cf. WA 43, pp. 201–229: ‘Et talis agnoscendus est Deus, quod agat contraria in contrariis.’ 23 See WA 56, p. 343: ‘Sed quia ex carne et spiritu idem vnus homo constat totalis, ideo toti homini tribuit vtraque contraria, que ex contrariis sui partibus veniunt. Sic enim fit communio Ideomatum, Quod idem homo est spiritualis et carnalis, Iustus et peccator, Bonus et malus. Sicut eadem persona Christi simul mortua et viua, simul passa et beata, simul operata et quieta etc. propter communionem Ideomatum, licet neutri naturarum alterius proprium conueniat, Sed contrariissime dissentiat, vt notum est.’

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sumed a fundamental body-mind dualism, impossible to reconcile on the grounds of Luther’s idea of the totus homo. Admittedly, the Reformer postulated an antagonism between flesh and spirit, but at the same time he resolved this dichotomy with concepts such as simultaneity, relativity and idiomatic communication, connected to his theology of justification. It results from this theological doctrine that one cannot do without the body: one has to accept it as (the sinful) part of the whole man. Thus, the complexity of Luther’s anthropology resides in its paradoxical relationship to the body which simultaneously condemns and redeems it, exposes its corrupted nature and assimilates it in the process of divine recognition. In fact, it seems that Luther’s central anthropological principle, homo simul justus et peccator, led paradoxically to a rehabilitation of the senses in the operation of faith. Man has nothing but his senses, that is, his body, his eyes, his ears, his heart to partake in the divine Word and to feel the divine grace. More generally, the ontological disability of human beings (due to their corrupted nature) to appreciate God perfectly generated a specific heuristic of God’s knowledge which took account of the sensual part of the believer. This does not mean that Luther’s anthropology was a rehabilitation of the senses or of the ‘entire fleshly man.’ On the contrary, Luther insisted on the mercy of God who was willing to communicate Himself and therefore externalized his Word through mundane and human ways of understanding. One of these ways was the image in the way it appealed to man’s sense of sight. As it will be shown in the next sections, one of the consequences of Luther’s anthropology was the conviction that images and imagery provided the very fabric of the understanding of the divine Word.

II Luther’s statements on images are well known. He does not seem to have had an a priori opinion on the subject, before the topical issues relating to iconoclasm in Wittenberg during the winter 1521–1522 forced him to come out in favour or against the removal of the holy images from the space of the civic church (Stadtkirche). The destructive wave of violence had been preceded by fiercely anti-idolatry propaganda by a number of Wittenberg preachers, most prominently Andreas Karlstadt and Gabriel Zwilling. Thus, Karlstadt’s pamphlet On the Removal of Images, which had been released a few days before the imagebreaking tumult, asserted that all images located in a church were de facto idols and should be destroyed to purify the ‘house built for God,’ dedicated to no-one besides Him.24 Radical Reformers clearly took advantage of the vacuum of 24 Cf. Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of The Image, Chicago 2004, pp. 83–93; Sergiusz

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leadership occasioned by the absence of Luther, who was hiding at the Wartburg. Luther’s first concern after his hasty return to Wittenberg was to take a stand in a set of sermons preached during the week of Invocavit and known as the Lent Sermons. Luther first outlined a theological answer to Karlstadt’s interpretation of the biblical ban of images by providing a counter-exegesis of the Decalogue’s articles relating to the subject.25 In contrast to Karlstadt (as well as to Zwingli and, later on, Calvin), Luther refused to see the prohibition of images as a separate and selfsufficient command, but (following Catholic tradition in this point) he subsumed it under the first Commandment: ‘You shall have no other gods before me.’26 As Margarete Stirm has remarked, the only thing that the Old Testament condemned in Luther’s view were cults attached to images, so that the interdiction did not concern the fabrication of artefacts itself but the worship of these images.27 Moreover, the Reformer considered the Gospel to have given Christians a new alliance with God and to have taken out the constraining nature of the Law. In practical terms, the Reformer advised believers not to care about images: people ‘were free to have them or not, as [they] please,’ since their possession was part of every Christian’s freedom.28 Starting from a biblical gloss, Luther’s reaction to the image-breaking event in Wittenberg was an attack against Karlstadt’s support for iconoclasm. While Luther claimed to have nothing against a partial removal of images undertaken by the authorities, he did not want to justify the violent destruction of visual artefacts based on respect of the Mosaic Law. Refusing the radical iconoclasm of Karlstadt to the same extent as the Catholic idolatry, Luther tried to establish a via media: a viable way to deal with images. He proposed to this end to detach the object itself from its uses or misuses and to postulate its ontological neutrality. Artworks, he declared, should be seen as neutral things: they were ‘neither good nor bad,’ and thus could not be harmful or helpful per se. They were just lifeless, hand-made artefacts, as the prophets said and the iconoclasts themselves asserted.29 In a later sermon, Luther clarified his thought and assured that the value of an image was not to be found in its nature but in its functions. Endorsing

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26 27 28 29

Michalski, The Reformation and The Visual Arts. The Protestant Image in Western and Eastern Europe, London 1993, pp. 10–16. See Exodus 20:4–6 (and Deuteronomy 5:8–10): ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything […]. You shall not bow down to them or serve them’. About the controversial comput of the Ten Commandments and the different interpretations of the text, see Walter Zimmerli, Das Zweite Gebot, Tübingen 1950. See Exodus 20:3 and Deuteronomy 5:7. Margarete Stirm, Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation, Gütersloh 1977, pp. 45–49. Cf. WA 10, 3. Invocavitpredigten, Die dritte Predigt – zum Dienstag nach dem Sonntag Invocavit (1522), WA 10, 3, pp. 21–30, here pp. 25–26: ‘sie seind weder gut noch boëse.’

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the Aristotelian distinction between the essential and accidental properties of a thing, he declared: ‘non est disputatio de substantia, sed usu et abusu.’30 This transfer of attention from the perceived object to the perceiving subject reversed in no uncertain way the relationship between image and viewer. Luther was not the first to adopt this epistemological inversion, Albrecht Dürer having previously reacted to an outbreak of iconoclasm by stating that ‘contrary to what many people who hate art say, images do not corrupt the viewers, only their improper uses.’31 Yet, this ‘iconic turn’ took on a specific connotation in the framework of Luther’s theology. Indeed, once the neutrality of visual artefacts had been postulated and the regime of values had been located in its functions, Luther’s economy of images still required a measure of distinctions between the good and improper uses of visual artefacts. Luther put his full confidence in the Word of God as arbiter and supreme ruler. Thus, if the image, its visual message or its function conformed with the divine Word, the Reformer found no reason to worry about its use and ownership. But if he failed to find some congruence between the images and the Gospel, as it was the case with the holy images of the Papists, then they were definitively being misused. The Reformer saw the Catholic image as harmful inasmuch as it was (in his eyes) embedded in a perverted economy of salvation that totally ignored God’s revelation. After having condemned the 1521–1522 episode of iconoclasm that had ignited Wittenberg, Luther continued to make important statements on the question of images. But his thought seems to have moved perceptibly from the question of images, taken in their material meaning, to the problem of imagery and imagination, according mental images greater importance of the two. Thus, Luther not only legitimised the use and ownership of actual images (under some circumstances) but provided a theoretical justification of images, which he understood as a central instrument for human cognition of divine messages. From a quasicasuistry of images based on the practical distinction of its uses and abuses, Luther’s iconology turned into a reflection on the modality of human thinking.

30 Predigt über 5. Mose (1529), WA 28, pp. 509–763, here p. 554. 31 Quotation in Joseph Leo Koerner, “The Icon as Iconoclash” in Exhibition Iconoclash – Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, ed. Bruno Latour/Peter Weibel, Cambridge/London 2002, pp. 164–213, here p. 178.

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III In 1525, Luther held his well-known sermon Against the Heavenly Prophets in which he attacked the positions of his former disciple Karlstadt who had by now become his fiercest opponent.32 In a series of statements on images and the sacrament of the Eucharist, Luther declared: Of this I am certain, that God desires to have his works heard and read, especially the passion of our Lord. But it is impossible for me to hear and bear it in mind, without fanning mental images of it in my heart. For whether I want it to or not, when I hear of Christ, an image of a man hanging on a cross takes form in my heart, just as the reflection of my face naturally appears in the water when I look into it. If it is not a sin but good to have the image of Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have it in my eyes? This is especially true since the heart is more important than the eyes, and should be less stained by sin because it is the true abode and dwelling place of God.33 We can infer a lot about Luther’s anthropology from this quotation. First, if Luther speaks about himself here, the phenomenon he describes is supposed to be a general reality, concerning all human beings. However, the fact that Luther presents himself as the subject of the act of imagination is hugely important. It actually leads to the erasure of the boundary between the ‘common man’ and the theologian, the authorized expert of the divine Word. In fact, the Christian tradition had always accepted the idea that the image could serve to replace the divine Word for the illiterate men. For Luther, however, if the Word could not be replaced by the image, the process of translation from the text to an inner image concerned all men. The literate and the illiterate, the theologians and the laics: all cannot help themselves but to shape an image in their hearts out of perceived words. Thus, the experience of faith was above all a physical one for Luther, bringing into play a specific configuration of human organs. In the somatic framework of worship, the ears and eyes were apparently the first body parts to come into play through listening and reading, operating as intermediaries of God’s revelation and guaranteeing its reception. Placed at the liminal space between the external and internal territories of the body, the two organs also ensured that God’s Word was transported into the inner sphere, where it became an object of worship. 32 On Karlstadt, see Ulrich Bubenheimer, “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt und die Reform von Gottesdienst und Leben,” in Martin Luther – Zeuge des Glaubens in Kirche und Gesellschaft. Dokumentation 38/83, Berlin 1983, pp. 65–79; Ulrich Bubenheimer, “Karlstadt,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie 17, pp. 649–657. 33 Wider die himmlischen Propheten, von den Bildern und Sakrament (1525), WA 18, pp. 62– 214, here p. 83, ll. 6–16 (translation by the author).

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More specifically, Luther located worship in the heart of all Christians and described it as a natural innate apparition of visual character. The internal image of Christ on the cross, that is, the imagination of Deus incarnatus et salvator, causes an inverse process of image-making. The image inhabiting the heart, which, for Luther, was nothing more than the reverberation of the Gospel, justified the existence and fabrication of actual images, as long as they were direct translations of the internal imagination of the Word. This two-directional process of images, shuttling back and forth between the outside world and the inner body, delineated a specific Lutheran anatomy of worship. In fact, the differentiation that Luther made between the images before the eyes and the images in the heart signified a general polarization between external and internal realities that can be found throughout Luther’s works. The theologian Heinrich Bornkamm underscored the significance of this structural antinomy in Luther’s thought while asserting that ‘the opposition “aussen/innen,” “äusserlich/innerlich,” was one of the schematic criteria of classification that Luther made use of in unbelievably plastic and lively ways.’34 Indeed, throughout his Against the Heavenly Prophets we find plenty of these antithetical couples of concepts based on the outside/inside polarity, particularly in relation to images. Luther for instance claimed to have destroyed the holy images, that is, the Roman idols, ‘outwardly and inwardly.’ In contrast to this view, Karlstadt was accused of caring only about the mundane reign of idols and of forgetting their existence in the interiority of the believer. In Luther’s own words: I approached the task of destroying images by first tearing them out of the heart through God’s Word and making them worthless and despised […]. For when they are no longer in the heart, they can do no harm when seen with the eyes. But Dr. Karlstadt, who pays no attention to matters of the heart, has reversed the order by removing them from sight and leaving them in the heart […]. He who only smashes them in pieces outwardly while he permits idols to remain in the heart and sets up others alongside them acts contrary to God’s Word, namely through false confidence and pride in works.35 Luther’s intention was to proceed to a reordering of visible and invisible ontologies. For the Reformer, Karlstadt failed to understand that the sensible and visible things perceived by the eyes were contingent upon the invisible ones located in the heart. While claiming to be the disciple of the Holy Spirit, Karlstadt actually remained a captive of the material things that he treated as enemies and 34 Heinrich Bornkamm, “Äußerer und innerer Mensch bei Luther und den Spiritualisten,” in Imago Dei. Beiträge zur theologischen Anthropologie, ed. Ibid, Giessen 1932, pp. 85–109, here p. 85: ‘Der Gegensatz “aussen/innen”, “äusserlich/innerlich” ist eine jener schematischen Einteilungsformeln, die unter Luthers Händen eine unglaublich reiche und lebendige Verwendung finden.’ 35 WA 18, p. 67, ll. 9–24 (translation by the author).

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could therefore propose only a very superficial criticism of images. On the contrary, Luther claimed to have nothing against material things but to be intent on focusing on Christians’ deep-held belief in impalpable idols instead. His opponent’s inability to tolerate the presence of Divinity in visible signs also explained, for Luther, why Karlstadt preached an exclusively symbolic interpretation of the Lord’s Supper. In the second book of the treatise, concerned specifically with the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, Luther connected the dogma of the Eucharist to the comprehension of God’s tangible epiphanies, that is to say, the way he chose to reveal himself to the world and to communicate with its creatures. Luther differentiated between two regimes of divine conveyance: When God sends forth His Holy Gospel He deals with us in a twofold manner, first outwardly, then inwardly. Outwardly He deals with us through the oral Word of the Gospel and through material signs, that is, Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar. Inwardly He deals with us through the Holy Spirit, faith, and other gifts. But whatever their measure or order the outward factors should and must precede. The inward experience follows and is effected by the outward. God has determined to give the inward to no one except through the outward.36 The fact that Karlstadt denied that God communicated through various physical signs was to Luther the touchstone of all the heretical doctrines of his former disciple. Idols were conceived of only in a material sense, which in turn made the Lord’s Supper a pure spiritual event since Karlstadt was unable to appreciate God’s Word. For Luther, Karlstadt not only misunderstood the meaning of the sacraments, but also the physical power of God’s revelation and its imprint on the body of men through the voice (emission) and the hearing (reception). Once again, Luther underlined his position by differentiating between the external and internal Word of God. In His supreme benevolence, God had chosen to communicate with His creatures by using their language, translating the divine Logos into human words and giving them Holy Scripture as a record of His Word. This external Word needed to be received by the body as well as proclaimed and heard before the Holy Spirit could imbue the heart with faith and inscribe in it the internal Word in living letters. Thus, the physical performance and perception of the Word came before its spiritual reception and gave a significant role to the preaching of the Gospel. Karlstadt, on the contrary, categorically refused the idea that the divine Word could be carried by the human voice. Or, in other words, that a transient vocal sound enunciated through human agents could convey something of the eternal truth. By stating that man should ‘turn his ears from the Word of God and see with a single vision the bread and the wine,’ he instead claimed that man had a direct and personal relationship with God through the Holy Spirit. Such spiritual 36 WA 18, p. 136, ll. 9–23 (translation by the author).

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communication had the advantage of circumventing any kind of bodily mediation. For Luther, however, Karstaldt’s adamant refusal of any physical experience of faith and, consequently, his contempt for the spoken Word brought him to ‘believe only what he sees and feels,’ and thus to engage in a vain soliloquy with himself.37 Luther’s description of the bodily communication and reception of the Gospel was essentially a matter of speaking and hearing. At first glance, it seems that the sense of sight was excluded from this sensual economy of faith. In a sermon of 1528, for instance, Luther explained: We should close our eyes, see and hear, feel and think nothing on our own but remain glued to the Word alone. […] For whatever one sees or feels with reason, that he does not believe. […] For that reason, he has to hang on the bare Word, shut his eyes, blind his reason and only prick up his ears, stand upon the Word and write it in his heart.38 This passage makes it quite clear that the Lutheran experience of faith did not require the sensual economy to be relinquished. Luther frequently proclaimed that God’s Word had to be felt, to arouse emotions and to affect the whole man and, especially, his deepest part: the heart. Thus, if the eyes of reason could not conceive of the Divinity, the inner eyes – those of the heart – could imagine God perfectly through his Word. For Luther, the heart and the feelings of the heart are in the end the true somatic basis of faith. Some scholars, like Susann KarantNunn, have reckoned that the omnipresence of the heart in Luther’s writings should be understood metaphorically, not physically.39 Karant-Nunn has argued that Luther, just like Calvin and unlike the Catholic piety, abandoned the corporeality of the heart and its organic denotation and employed the figurative sense of it, which he equated to heartfelt sincerity. In order to describe the true reception of the Gospel that Luther himself conceived as the ‘Word written in the heart,’ Karant-Nunn therefore had no choice but to use inverted commas when stating: ‘Faith will reveal itself as a sensation in “the heart.”’40 But a sensation, like an emotion or a feeling, is always ultimately produced by the body. Hence, one can assume that this sensation is not only metaphorical but, in Luther’s perspective, really takes place in the body parts themselves. Besides, Luther’s concept of man offers arguments in favour of an organic meaning of the word ‘heart’. Many scholars have pointed out that the word Herz, (heart) in Luther’s works and, as Patrice Veit remarked, especially in his trans37 WA 18, p. 136, ll. 9–23. 38 Evangelium am Palmsonntage. Matth. 21, 1–9, WA 21, pp. 147–155, here pp. 147–149 (translation by the author). 39 Susan Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany, Oxford 2010, pp. 248–249. 40 Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling (see n. 39), p. 83.

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lation of the psalms, is used as an equivalent of Seele (soul).41 Once more, the use of a bodily reference is neither purely a rhetorical artifice nor a metaphor. The medieval idea of the soul being located precisely in the heart is one of the most obvious differences to the Melanchthonian anatomy which endorsed the novel concept that the soul was located in the brain. For Luther, the heart was the place of all interventions of the soul and was therefore concerned with volition, cognition, emotion and imagination. Consequently, according to Luther, the faith of the heart (Herzglauben) meant a heartfelt conviction as well as the bodily assimilation of the Word of God. The image of God in the heart as Man on the cross was central to the organic meaning of faith and as such defined the Lutheran faith to equal degrees as a theologia crucis and a theologia cordis.

IV In a sermon of 1534, Luther elaborated his commentary on the identification of the act of belief with an act of imagination. He first developed the idea that the Gospels are a ‘good mirror giving an undistorted reflection of God,’ where He ‘pictures Himself as He truly is.’42 If one looked into this mirror with faith, the true image of God would appear in the heart. This process of the reflection of the Word (reverberatio) is made easier by the fact that biblical language is full of imagery. The deus verbosus often resorted to visual metaphors: ‘sic deus ab initio suum verbum hat in gemelt gefasst,’ said Luther in another sermon.43 But if man moved away from the Word he would immediately deface God’s image through the devil’s influence, who would hasten to erase God’s true likeness and to replace it with a false reflection. Interestingly, Luther explained that the misrepresentation of God would look like the pictures of the devil made by the painters and like the one to be found in the hearts of monks. As Luther stated, ‘it works and remains as we say: as one pictures Him, that is how He will be. That is: as man believes, so it shall be to him.’44 Faith was a process of reverberation that generated true and false images of God, according to the mirror reflecting Christ. Hence the Roman dogma, missing the revelation of the divine Word, became a factory of false imagination, that is, of idolatry. On several other occasions in his homiletic works, Luther evoked the most ‘heretical image’ ever invented by the Roman Church: Jesus Christ at the Last 41 Patrice Veit, Das Kirchenlied in der Reformation Martin Luthers, Stuttgart 1986, pp. 156– 157. 42 WA 37, p. 452. 43 WA 27, p. 384. 44 WA 37, p. 455.

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Judgement. The representation of the Son of God coming at the end of time to assess the good and the bad works of men was actually a very common pictorial theme in late medieval Germany. One picture of this kind was imposingly placed behind the altar in the chapel of the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt during Luther’s time as friar there. According to Luther’s own admission, the sight of an angry Christ threatening men with his sword struck him directly in the heart. It terrified him and let him plunge into a feeling of deep religious anxiety. Yet, Luther did not blame the image itself but the way he looked at it, believing that it was a lack of faith in Christ’s sacrifice that caused him such despair: For I did not believe in Christ: I regarded Him only as a severe and terrible judge portrayed as seated on the rainbow. Therefore I cast about for others intercessors, Mary and various other saints, also my own works and the merit of my order […]. Nevertheless it was heresy and idolatry since I did not know Christ and did not seek in and through Him what I wanted.45 In a sermon of 1531, Luther again broached the problem of the misrepresentation of the Son of God under the papacy that led the believer to ask for other mediators. Believers, he explained, were taught to see Christ as ‘a grim tyrant, a furious and stern judge who demanded much of us and imposed good works for the payment of our sins.’ Starting from these preachings, the painters had created a ‘shameful and blasphemous image or painting of the Last Judgement while painting the Son falling down in front of the Father, showing Him his wounds’ while John and Mary were begging Christ for pity.46 According to Luther, false preaching always preceded bad images. Consequently, if he advised to reject this image, it was because ‘through it, the people were taught to be afraid of God.’47 But the image itself was always incriminated as the sign of perverted doctrine, which incited the believers to find shelter and protection with the saints and the Holy Mother. Luther actually understood the image of an irascible and pitiless Christ as the visual translation of the verbal message taught by the Church to the believers. But as this misrepresentation reflected and reverberated the wrong doctrine of the papists, another image came into play when the true doctrine was preached, that is to say, when Christ the Redeemer supplanted his wrathful doppelgänger.

45 Matth. 18–24 in Predigten ausgelegt (1537–1540), WA 47, pp. 232–627, here p. 275 (translation by the author). 46 WA 33, p. 83. 47 WA 33, p. 83.

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V Paradoxically, the true image of God’s revelation in the heart, that of Christ on the cross, ensured that images would continue to play a role in Lutheran religious practises. For Luther, the internal image, when it corresponded to the true imagination of God, legitimized the use of visual artefacts. Indeed, if faith was genuine, actual images could do no harm but were useful to remind the viewer of the message of Christ’s sacrifice in order to ensure human salvation. Actual images were like signs (Zeichen) which could recall the true faith and consolidate the faithful’s belief. ‘Images are here,’ wrote Luther, ‘so that the heart thinks that when the eyes are looking, we also have to thank and praise the Lord.’48 There is therefore no opposition between internal and external images, just a fruitful coming and going between the two. No wonder, then, that the iconic theme of Christ on the Cross is so frequent in Lutheran iconography and particularly in Cranach’s paintings. Indeed, Cranach showed a real predilection for painting or engraving Luther or the princes of Saxony as kneeling and praying under the Crucifix. Actually, Cranach’s depictions of the crucified Christ were often so realistic as to make the viewer hesitate in identifying them as a Crucifix (a visual object) or as a representation of the Crucifixion (a historic event). The same ambiguity characterizes the most famous and discussed depiction of Christ on the cross by Cranach, executed in 1547 and integrated into the predella of the altarpiece of the City Church of Wittenberg. The entire altarpiece summed up the main tenets of the Lutheran confession in a visual manner: the central panel represents the Communion, while the lateral panels depict Luther’s acolytes in Wittenberg, administering baptism and confession to the flock. The predella itself represents Luther preaching from the pulpit before the community of believers. Proclaiming the Gospel with one hand laid on the Bible, he points with the other to the crucified Son of God. Many articles have been written on this painting. Some have stressed with good reason the rupture in the iconic conventions involved in the representation of the sacrifice of God’s Son by Cranach. Karant-Nunn, for instance, outlined the ‘contrast between the peace of Christ’s body in the Wittenberg predella and the agonized facial features of the Lord in many contemporary Catholic crucifixes.’ The author interprets this difference regarding the emotional charge of images as a complete reformation of feeling that occurred with the introduction of the Lutheran interpretation of the faith. Thus, while the doctrine of the atonement that prevailed in the devotio moderna at the eve of the Reformation was the Imitatio Christi, which postulated that the believer ought to share the experience 48 WA 31/1, p. 415.

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of Jesus’s Passion in his body and his mind as well as to relive his pain through the contemplation of his wounds, the Lutheran onlooker was invited to thank Christ for his sacrifice, thus filling his heart with gratitude and reinforcing his faith in salvation.49 But for Karant-Nunn, Cranach’s predella did not just break with the devotional pattern that favoured the bodily assimilation of the Passion through the contemplation of a doloristic image. Instead, it offered an ‘iconography of spiritualization,’ since the depiction of Jesus Christ’s Passion was meant as an abstraction. Its semiotic message was directed at the believer’s capacity for rational comprehension.50 Yet, once Luther’s physical understanding of faith is taken into account, this process of the disembodiment of images is unconvincing. More illuminating is Joseph Leo Koerner’s analysis pointing out that Christ on the Cross in the Wittenberg predella does not look like an artefact. At first glance, one could take it as a monumental crucifix in wood. But the larger than life-size cross is not placed on the ground so that its integration into the same space as that occupied by Luther and the Wittenberg community produces a strong impression of unreality.51 As the ‘smoke-like wafting […] of his overlong loincloth’ suggest, the entire figure of the crucified Christ seems to float in the air. Although it is itself a painted image, Cranach’s crucifix does not depict a fabricated object. Should the cross exist elsewhere, it must be ‘in the heart’ of believers. Thus the visual apparatus created by Cranach used the actual image to reveal the importance of the internal imagination of God. The predella should in this way be seen as a dialectical reflection on the Lutheran concept of images. It demonstrates that the representation of the crucified Christ is an image located in man’s interiority and that it has the power to destroy all other idols in the heart.

Conclusion In their book Re-forming the body, a vast historical investigation into the somatic experience of the sacred through the successive religious pattern of the corporeal, Chris Schilling and Philipp Mellor, a sociologist and a theologian respectively, defended the idea that the Reformation gave birth to the modern and individualized body. In their minds, the priority given to cognitive belief and intellectual narratives dislocated the medieval bodies from their natural und supernatural environments and placed rational thought in the centre of self-identity and self-assumption. Specific and individualized contact with the Word of God led to the ‘autonomisation 49 Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling (see n. 39), p. 66. 50 Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling (see n. 39), p. 71. 51 Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (see n.°28), pp. 171–177.

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of language’ in the process of knowledge and, to the same extent, to a devaluation of bodily experiences and an anxious relationship to the sinful aspects of human existence.52 This synoptic view of Protestant identity as ‘rationalised spirit’ and ‘disenchanted body’ however appears to be a very rudimentary narrative of the anthropological Reformation initiated by Luther and other Reformers. In a recent study, Jonathan Sheehan has reminded us that within the world of the reformations the question of idolatry was not only related to the problem of images but also to those of imagination. Quoting a large number of statements by seventeenth-century Calvinist preachers, anxiously eager to know ‘what the worshipper attached to them in their imagination’ or trying to prevent that the Christian ‘dethroneth God in his imagination and setteth up some other object in his place,’ the author underlined not only a profound difference between Lutherans and Calvinists on the matter of idolatry.53 He also highlighted the even more fundamental distinction between the two confessions regarding the role played by the body in the structure of human cognition and its ability to worship God. For Calvin, the imagination of God was a capital offense against Him due to the impossibility of representing Divinity in human and sensual terms. The body, because it was all too human, was excluded from the process of the true recognition of God. For Luther, on the contrary, man could not claim to worship God except in a human way, that is, imperfectly. Luther’s acceptance of the sensual and bodily modalities of comprehending the divinity and his acts towards humanity was the logical consequence of his anthropological theology, postulating that human nature was at the same time sinful and justified before God. To exclude the body from the process of faith would mean to forget about the concept of man as totus caro and potentially to encourage the pretense of understanding the divinity directly and perfectly. Thus, according to Calvin and Luther, the same idea of the inherent weakness of human nature leads to opposite politics of the body. If Luther induced from human incompetence the legitimacy to visualize the Divinity through the imagination of Christ on the cross and furthermore to use images as signs before the eyes, Calvin perceived an insurmountable gap between a spiritual Divinity and its human creatures. For him, God could by no means be encapsulated in some material artefact, and, above all, be the subject of internal visualization. Finally, if we want to reach a panoramic view of the ways in which God was imagined in the different Protestant traditions of thought, we have to keep in mind the bodily processes of knowledgegeneration in general and of the comprehension of God in particular.

52 Philipp Mellor, Chris Schilling, Re-forming the body. Religion, Community and Modernity, London 1997, pp. 41–45. 53 Jonathan Sheehan, “Sacred and Profane: Idolatry, Antiquarianism and the Polemics of Distinction in Seventeenth Century” Past and Present 192 (2006): pp. 35–66, here p. 48.

Sasja Emilie Mathiasen Stopa

Soli Deo honor et gloria1 – the Concepts of Honour and Glory in the Theology of the Young Martin Luther

Introduction The concepts of honour and glory have left their footprints throughout the works of Martin Luther. In his early Lectures on Romans (1515–1516), Luther states that man honours God through faith and dishonours God by not believing.2 In De Libertate Christiana (1520), the second virtue of faith is described as the duty to honour God.3 Attempting to come to terms with the righteousness of works in Lectures on Galatians (1531), Luther argues that the only demand made on man is to ascribe honour and divinity to God.4 Lectures on Romans epitomises this demand in the proclamation: ‘Deo laus et gloria.’5 As has been pointed out by several scholars, Luther emphasises man as a relational being defined by his relationship to God and to his neighbour.6 Within 1 Cf. WA 2, 130, 19. References are made to the Weimar Edition of Luther’s works: D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesammtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe, WA). 2 WA 56, 296, 4–5. 3 WA 7, 53, 34–54, 30. 4 WA 40 I, 360, 28–29. 5 WA 56, 247, 2. Cf. WA 56, 165, 22–23. 6 Luther’s accentuation of relation has been pointed out in the hermeneutical theology of Gerhard Ebeling, which is rooted in the Kantian tradition as well as in the existentialism of Heidegger and employs the term “relational ontology”. See Gerhard Ebeling, “Luthers Wirklichkeitsverständnis,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 90 (1993): pp. 409–424. Recently, the German theologian Theodor Dieter has criticised Ebeling for focusing on Luther’s relational thinking instead of the ontology of relations, i. e. on the status of relations as relations (“die Relation als Relation”), – see Theodor Dieter, Der Junge Luther und Aristoteles, Berlin 2001, p. 635). As Dieter suggests, Ebeling’s understanding of relation is reduced to a mere negation of substantiality, and relational ontology is thus in fact lacking ontology. Paul Althaus describes the subject matter of theology as the proper recognition of God and man in their mutual relationship to each other; see Paul Althaus, Die Theologie Martin Luthers, 2nd ed., Gütersloh 1963, p. 21. Oswald Bayer stresses the relational constitution of man in Luther’s theology as part of a break with antique metaphysics of substance as well as with the Kantian tradition, the so-called ‘modern metaphysics of the self ’, – ‘neuzeitliche Subjektmetaphysik’, based on a rediscovery of Luther’s creation theology. According to Bayer,

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systematic theology, honour can be characterized as a relational concept; honour is ascribed to a person in relation to his fellow human beings and to God.7 On the basis of this understanding of honour, this article relies on the assumption that the concepts of honour and glory play a vital role in Luther’s relational anthropology, that is, the Lutheran understanding of the relationship between God and man as well as the relations between men inhabiting the hierarchies of the earthly realm. The present article focuses on the theology of the young Luther in Lectures on Romans and emerges from the presumption that the Lutheran exposition of both Christology and anthropology is determined by a dialectic of humiliation and glorification. Previous research has generally been examining the forensic aspects of the lectures and has pointed to Luther’s employment of the notion of humilitas as denoting either pre-Reformation remnants or as expressing genuine Reformation theology. The extensive application of the concepts of glory and glorification in Luther’s unfolding of both Christology and anthropology, however, is rather uncharted. The question that follows is whether the focus on humiliation in what has been termed Luther’s theology of the cross leaves the glory of man out of sight.8

Terminology Instead of applying a strictly terminological perspective centring for instance on the term gloria and its verbal derivatives, this article rather focuses on a certain field of meaning surrounding the terms honour and glory. The terminological Lutheran anthropology is characterized by the emphasis on existence as an eccentric existence; the Christian lives extra se in Christ and in his neighbour; see Oswald Bayer, Martin Luthers Theologie 3rd ed., Tübingen 1993, p. 108. 7 Martin Honecker, “Ehre,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 4th ed., vol. II, ed. Hans D. Betz et al., Tübingen 1998–2005, p. 1103. 8 The term theologia crucis was promoted by the German theologian Walter von Loewenich in his later renowned book Luthers Theologia crucis, in which Luther’s Reformation theology is unfolded as a theology of the cross on the basis of The Heidelberg Disputation from 1518, see Walter von Loewenich, Luthers Theologia crucis, 4th ed., Munich 1954 (1929), p. 7. Since then, the perception of Lutheran theology as theologia crucis has won widespread approval among Luther scholars, see Paul Althaus, Die Theologie Martin Luthers, 2nd ed., Gütersloh 1963 (1962), pp. 34–42; Hubertus Blaumeiser, Martin Luthers Kreuzestheologie. Schlüssel zu seiner Deutung von Mensch und Wirklichkeit. Eine Untersuchung anhand der Operationes in Psalmos (1519–1521), Paderborn 1995, p. 13. Ernst Bizer, among others, regards Lectures on Romans as determined by a theology of the cross focusing on the humiliation of the Christian, see Ernst Bizer, Fides ex auditu. Eine Untersuchung über die Entdeckung der Gerechtigkeit Gottes durch Martin Luther, 2nd ed., Neukirchen 1961 [1958], p. 25. This leads Bizer to discern a lacking separation between law and Gospel in Lectures on Romans, which is consequently determined as a pre-Reformation text.

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focus has at its core the term gloria and its neighbouring terms honor, clarificatio and gloriatione, along with the verbs glorificare, glorior, honorare and clarificare. Along the periphery are other related notions such as praise, worship, love and thanksgiving. Furthermore, the counter concepts to honour and glory that are dishonour, vainglory, shame and even humiliation (contumelia, ignominia, vanegloria and humiliatio) will also be taken into account. In Luther’s works in general both gloria and honor can refer to the earthly as well as the divine realm and consequently designate worldly as well as divine honour and glory. In Lectures on Romans, Luther primarily employs the term gloria and the verbal derivatives glorior and glorificare, whereas the term honor only rarely occurs.9 As is widely acknowledged, the monastic notion of humilitas plays an important part in the young Luther’s terming of his theology and in the article, humilitas is analysed as a counter concept to glorificatio.

The Concepts of Honour and Glory in Lectures on Romans The appropriate understanding of God’s righteousness in relation to justification is at the core of Lectures on Romans. Luther begins his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans by stating the purpose of the letter in forensic terms through the dichotomy of iustitia hominis, human righteousness, and iustitia dei or iustitia Christi, the righteousness of God or Christ. According to Luther, Paul intended chapters one through eleven to break down human righteousness and wisdom, to reveal and enlarge sin, and to point to the fact that the righteousness of Christ is needed in order to crush sin. Chapters twelve through sixteen teach the kind of works that are to be done after receiving the righteousness of Christ. In a renowned phrasing, Luther refutes righteous works as a means of justification and maintains them instead as the result of the righteousness acquired through Christ.10 Contrary to human righteousness, which as stated in the ethics of Aristotle results from works, God’s righteousness precedes and preconditions works.11 The underlying assumption is the fallen character of human nature and thus the letter is not only directed to the Romans but to all of fallen mankind, i. e., ‘totam massam perditi generis humani’.12 The righteous man does works and fulfils the law only through Christ, because: ‘extra Christum nullus est Iustus, nullus legem implet’.13 9 10 11 12 13

WA 56, 11, 6; 26, 8–9. WA 56, 3, 13–14. Cf. WA 56, 35, 22–36, 1. WA 56, 172, 10–11. WA 56, 176, 10. WA 56, 22, 28–29.

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Shifting the analytic perspective away from the extensive application of forensic terminology in the lectures, the following analysis focuses on Luther’s so far rather uncharted employment of concepts of honour and glory as well as their respective counter concepts in terming the relationship between God and man. This is done by unfolding four central themes in Lectures on Romans that evolve around the notions of honour and glory. The starting point is Luther’s assertion that sinful humanity fails to glorify God. On this background the Lutheran interpretation of the humiliation and glorification of Christ is expounded. This forms the basis for the interpretation of the humiliation and glorification of man. Finally, the analysis investigates the re-established possibility for man to glorify God.

1.

Sinful Humanity Fails to Glorify God

Luther states that from Romans 1:18 and onwards Paul intends to show that all men are sinners and that human righteousness is futile. Man is always an unrighteous sinner doing the works of the law: ‘Nos autem semper in operibus legis, semper iniusti, semper peccatores’.14 The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is not a question of righteous versus sinner, but pertains to cognition; the Christian acknowledges his sin and his need for the imputed righteousness of Christ through which he is simultaneously sinner and nonsinner, ‘simul peccatores et non-peccatores’.15 The Christian is simultaneously an actual sinner and a righteous person through God’s imputation and promise of complete recovery, i. e., ‘peccatores in re, Iusti autem in spe’.16 In this way, sin is understood as an existential anthropological determination, which Luther unfolds through the dichotomy of glory and shame. In Romans 3:23, Paul defines sinful humankind as lacking the glory of God, ‘egent gloria Dei’.17 According to Luther, the term gloria is to be understood as gloriatione, glorying,18 and the verse reveals that the sinner ‘non habent Iustitiam, de qua apud Deum gloriari possint’.19 As sinners before God, coram deo, all men are emptied of God’s glory, ‘vacui sunt gloria Dei,’ and have nothing to be glorified with in God and by God.20 Luther thus understands the lack of God’s glory as a lack of righteousness. The ungodly fail to glorify and praise God 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

WA 56, 252,32–253,1. WA 56, 270,10. WA 56, 272,17–19; WA 56, 269, 29–30. WA 56, 261, 10. WA 56, 261, 11. WA 56, 261, 12–13. WA 56, 37, 9; WA 56, 261, 16–17. Cf. WA 56, 37,8–11.

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because they do not allow for God to be justified in them.21 Hereby, man lacks the righteousness that comes through faith and is, consequently, unrighteous.22 The lack of glory is caused by the fallen nature of mankind, which Luther describes by enumerating four levels of perdition.23 The first level is ungratefulness, which originates from self-satisfaction, whereby the things received from God are treated as if they have not been given. Consequently, man ignores the giver. The second level of perdition is vanity, which causes man to seek his own glory, pleasure and advantage. Throughout the lectures, Luther accentuates how vainglorious men seek glory before other humans, coram hominibus, rather than the glory of God and how they do good deeds out of fear of punishment or love of money, glory or other creaturely things.24 Man wishes to please and applaud himself and seeks glory and boast, ‘gloriam et iactantiam’.25 The third level is determined as blindness. In turning away from God, the sinner is blinded in his heart and thoughts. The fourth level is wrongdoing against God, which leads to idolatry.26 Hereby, God’s honour is attributed to others, and human beings glorify a figment of their own imagination.27 Luther describes man as turning towards himself: ‘in nos ipsos inflexi,’ and as curving inward on himself: ‘incurvatus in se ipsum’.28 The work-righteous men glory in their own righteousness and steal the glory of God.29 Instead of seeking the glory of God, man is filled with his own glory and thus faith is prevented.30 By recounting the four levels of perdition, Luther describes the inevitable fall of man; failing to acknowledge God as a giver leads the work-righteous human being to turn away from God and glorify his own phantom, ‘phantasma suum’.31 This failure to glorify, to give thanks and to worship God leads to a repression of the truth of God.32 God is not glorified as God, as Paul states it in Romans 1:21.33 Sin prevents man from

21 WA 56, 222, 18–19. 22 WA 56, 186, 21–23. 23 WA 56, 178, 24–179, 7. Luther subsequently unfolds the reverse levels leading to the right worshipping of God through gratitude (WA 56, 179, 25). 24 WA 56, 261, 18–20; 205, 38–206, 4; 235, 5–7; 241, 18–20; 308 ,5–12. 25 WA 56, 237, 11–12. 26 Cf. WA 56, 11, 3–4. 27 WA 56, 178, 6. 28 WA 56, 258, 27–28; WA 56, 304, 25–26. 29 WA 56, 39, 4; 199, 26. Cf. The Heidelberg Disputation (WA 1, 358); Deutsche Auslegung des Vaterunsers für die Einfältigen Laien (WA 2, 89, 37); Lectures on Galatians (WA 2, 460, 3). 30 WA 56, 37, 23–25. 31 WA 56, 179, 17. Cf. Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (WA 7, 25, 14–18). 32 WA 56, 11, 7. 33 WA 56, 12, 1–5. Cf. WA 56, 178, 18–20.

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entering into a trusting relationship with God and hereby glorifying the truth of God pro nobis.34 In this way, Luther paraphrases Paul in determining that the sinner lacks the glory of God and interprets it to mean that the sinner is without the righteousness through which he can be glorified coram deo. The establishment of the possibility for man to partake in the glory of God through the humiliation and glorification of Christ is the subject of the ensuing paragraph.

2.

The Humiliation and Glorification of Christ

According to Luther, Christ is the content of the Gospel and everything in Scripture must be understood in relation to him.35 In Romans 1:3–4, Paul recaptures the Gospel that is the incarnation according to the flesh: ‘De filio suo, qui factus est ei ex semine David secundum carnem’ and the resurrection according to the spirit of sanctification: ‘qui predestinatus est filius Dei in virtute secundum spiritum sanctificationis ex resurrectione mortuorum Ihesu Christi’.36 Luther’s exposition of the verses is characterized by an interpretation of the incarnation, resurrection and exaltation of Christ through the terms ‘humiliation,’ ‘glorification’ and ‘clarification,’ which Luther applies to describe how the Son of God hid his divinity and emptied himself in the incarnation and how Christ was then resurrected and exalted from the Son of David to the Son of God. Luther takes over the theme of incarnation and resurrection, that is of being made into a human being and being predestined as the Son of God in power, from Paul, but the specific interpretation of the Christ Event in light of the pivotal concepts humiliato, glorificato and clarificatus is specific to the Lutheran interpretation. The terms might be inspired by the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2:5– 11, which is also behind Luther’s employment of the terms forma dei and forma servi.37 In the Vulgate translation of Philippians 2:8, Christ is described as humiliating himself, ‘humiliavit semet ipsum,’ and the state of the risen Christ as a 34 Luther underlines the pro nobis-aspect several times in the lectures: Cf. WA 56, 46, 13–15; 173, 24–25; 12, 13–13, 2; 169, 30; 212, 26–28; 214, 19–21; 215, 16–17; 217, 19–21. 35 WA 56, 5, 9–10. Cf. WA 56, 167, 3. 36 WA 56, 166, 15–16; WA 56, 166, 16–17 37 Bo Kristian Holm and Johann Anselm Steiger have pointed to the pivotal role of Philippians 2:5–11 for Luther’s conception of Christology and anthropology as presented for instance in De Libertate Christiana; see Bo Kristian Holm, Gabe und Geben bei Luther: das Verhältnis zwischen Reziprozität und reformatorischer Rechtfertigungslehre, Berlin 2006, p. 111– 131; Johann Anselm Steiger, “Die communication idiomatum als Achse und Motor der Theologie Luthers. Der ‘fröhliche Wechsel’ als hermeneutischer Schlüssel zu Abendmahlslehre, Anthropologie, Seelsorge, Naturtheologie, Rhetorik und Humor,” Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 38, no. 1 (1996): pp. 1–28.

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being ‘in gloria Dei’. Luther states that the Son of God received glory, gloria, after his humiliation but in his humanity. Subsequently, the Spirit ascribed the clarification of Christ, clarificatio Christi, to the son of David by publicly declaring him to be the Son of God and to possess the power and glory. The clarificatio Christi takes place after the glorification of Christ and is a precondition for Christ exercising his divine power. In this way, the glorification of Christ and his clarification apparently do not happen simultaneously at the resurrection; the former coincides with the resurrection of Christ incarnate while the latter takes place as the Spirit declares the risen Christ to be the Son of God using the apostles as messengers.38 In this way, being clarified entails the public declaration of a state, which up until then was hidden. According to Luther, however, Christ is present in man in an alien and humble form and not in a glorious form.39 The dichotomy of humiliation and glorification mirroring the doctrine of the two natures thus persists in Christ. In the following paragraph it is employed as a model for interpreting Luther’s anthropology, which is to be investigated through the notion of Christ as example, whereby the Christian is humiliated, and as gift, through which the Christian is glorified.

3.

The Humiliation and Glorification of Man

3.1.

Christ as exemplum: The Christian glories in shame and humiliation

As has been touched upon, Lutheran anthropology emerges from Christology and especially from the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, which becomes a model for Luther’s dichotomous anthropology. This is manifested for instance in the distinction between the ‘inner’ and ‘outer man’ or in the determination of man as simultaneously righteous and sinful, ‘simul peccator et iustus’.40 In Lectures on Romans, Luther apparently interprets man on the basis of the humiliation and glorification of Christ and, consequently, he states that man has to be humiliated in order to be exalted: ‘non exaltatur nisi humiliates’.41 The foolishness and humiliation of the Christian is rooted in Christology; following the example of Christ, the Christian should hide every power, wisdom and righteousness in order to conform with the image and likeness of Christ who emptied 38 Both the English translation in Luther’s Works vol. 25 and the German translation in the Münchner Ausgabe fail to recognize this difference and translate both clarificatio and glorificatio with the same word: glorification and verklären, respectively. 39 WA 56, 256, 17–19. 40 Cf. WA 56, 272, 17; WA 40 I, 368, 26. 41 WA 56, 218, 20.

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himself and, hiding his power, wisdom, and goodness, took on weakness, foolishness and hardship.42 What benefits man is hidden ‘sub contrario’ and thus glory is hidden under shame.43 Through open shame, man is able to seek the hidden glory. Although outwardly disgraced, he is honoured in conscience, despised among men but glorified before God.44 Attesting to his monastic background, Luther maintains that a renunciation of worldly glory is at the core of Christian humility. Luther describes how Christians are persecuted on the grounds of their property, renown, honour and bodily wellbeing and thus only possess suffering and the cross.45 God makes the human being, who lives the life of the Gospel, look foolish and weak in the outer man, ‘in exteriori homine,’ but wise and strong coram deo in the inner man, ‘in interiori homine’.46 Anticipating the exposition of the Christian as slave in De Libertate Christiana, Luther maintains that the Christian is taught by Scripture to submit to God and any creature and show complete humility in renunciation of glory. Luther underlines that God has pleasure in souls that are worthy of contempt and that such a soul has perfect humility both towards God and neighbour.47 A good work is only pleasing to God if it is met with worldly resistance and, in this way, leads to the cross, i. e., to shameful suffering, ‘ignominiosam patientiam’.48 Luther distinguishes between the law of works done out of human righteousness, which causes man to glorify himself, and the law of faith that eliminates selfglorying and makes the people of faith humble and shameful, ‘humilis et vilis’.49 The man, who abides by the law of works, benefits from peace, glory, honour and all good things, ‘gloriam, honorem et omnia bona’.50 The humbled sinner, on the other hand, denies his own righteousness and worldly honour and accepts punishment, damage and shame as his rightful possessions.51 In this way, Luther contrasts the work-righteous man stealing the glory of God with the Christian who in doing good seeks glory from God and shame from human beings. A similar motif is predominant in Commentary on Galatians from 1519.52 Herein, Luther admonishes the Christian to glory only in the cross of Christ, i. e., in the fact that he has been crucified with Christ and is thereby considered worthy

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

WA 56, 171, 14–18. WA 56, 392, 29; WA 56, 392, 30. WA 56, 527, 10–12. WA 56, 246, 13–15. Cf. WA 56, 173, 27; WA 56, 10, 20–21; 173, 31–174, 2. WA 56, 199, 28–30. Cf. WA 56, 209, 5; 208, 27–209, 2. WA 56, 194, 10–11. Cf. WA 56, 264, 11; WA 56, 194, 18–19. WA 56, 232, 4–5. WA 56, 232, 6–10. WA 2, 436–618.

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to suffer shame for the sake of his name.53 According to Luther, the Christian renders glory to God and shame to himself whereas the non-Christian gives glory to himself and shame to God.54 As opposed to the work-righteous who glories in wisdom, virtue, righteousness, works and so forth, the Christian glories in being foolish, sinful and weak and is without everything but Christ.55 Those who strive for and obtain honours, riches and pleasure for the name of Jesus and shun contempt, poverty and sufferings are not glorying in the cross but in the world, ‘gloriantur in mundo’.56 On the contrary, the Christian glories in the fact that he lacks the things of this world, that is worldly honour and righteousness.57 In this way, humiliation is interpreted as a renunciation of human glory and a turning towards the glory of God. A human being filled with his own righteousness is unable to be filled with God’s righteousness so that only an empty, suffering and humiliated heart can receive the truth of God. Therefore, man should gladly be empty in order for God to dwell in him, weak in order for God’s power to be in him, sinful in order for God to be justified, foolish that God may be his wisdom and unrighteous in order for God to be his righteousness.58 God seeks his glory in the misery of the sinner.59 Luther goes on to interpret humiliation in light of the golden rule of reciprocity found in Matthew 7:12 by asserting that humility enables man to receive everything whereas the human being who fails to confess his sins and to call out to God is unable to receive.60 In line with the description of the sinner as failing to acknowledge God as a giver, Christian humility means to accept that God is a giver and man is a receiver. This is what it entails to know God as God and consequently to worship God as God, that is to glorify God. As appears from the abovementioned, Luther includes unrighteousness as a remedy for humiliating the sinner. Romans 1:24 states that God gave man up to the lusts of his heart and Luther interprets this to mean that God commands human beings to sin.61 Sin and evil occur because God allows them and are as such willed by God.62 However, God only promotes sin for the sake of punishment.63 Rather than God’s punishment being sin per se, it consists of the

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

WA 2, 613, 29–30; 614, 7. WA 2, 491, 6–7. WA 2, 613, 31–34. (WA 2, 614, 10). WA 2, 614, 15. WA 56, 219, 6–10. WA 56, 386, 14–15. WA 56, 246, 22; 254, 13–14. WA 56, 179, 26–28. Cf. WA 56, 386, 8. WA 56, 180, 28–29.

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shame connected to sin,64 and God would prohibit sin if shame could be inflicted without it.65 Because of the rejection of the glory of God in idolatry, God gives man up to shame.66 Through the infliction of sin and shame man is humiliated, and suffering makes man despair of all created things and seek glory from God.67

3.2.

Christ as donum: The Christian partakes in the glory of Christ

Relying on Paul, Luther asserts that the reason why the Christian joyfully shares the sufferings of Christ is that he glories in the hope of partaking in the glory of God.68 The fact that Christ died for the sake of the ungodly is a cause for hope and glorying even in sufferings.69 As opposed to Luther’s statement above that humiliation prepares man to receive Christ, it seems that the promise of glorification is a prerequisite for the glorious humiliation of the Christian. Christ as donum preconditions Christ as exemplum. In interpreting Romans 5:11, Luther paraphrases Paul in stating that the Christian glories in God through Christ.70 Christ instigates a renewed relationship with God based on the possibility to glory in God. Luther juxtaposes the Pauline term gloria Dei with the righteousness, wisdom and virtue of God, all of which are given by God in order to enable man to be glorified in front of God.71 There is no faith outside of Christ and only through the imputed righteousness of Christ is the Christian made worthy to approach God.72 In the exposition of Romans 1:17, Luther juxtaposes human and divine righteousness. Iustitia hominum is revealed in human doctrine that teaches who is and will be righteous coram hominibus.73 Iustitia Dei, on the other hand, is revealed exclusively in the Gospel whereby man is taught to discern who is righteous coram deo. In line herewith, Luther distinguishes between a particular and legal righteousness justifying the heathens on the one hand, and a universal, eternal, infinite and divine righteousness from Christ on the other hand.74 According to Luther, the righteousness of God is that through which man is made righteous.75 To elaborate on this understanding of 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

WA 56, 181, 17–20. WA 56, 181, 21–22. WA 56, 15, 7. Cf. 181, 12; 183, 28–30; 184, 1–3. WA 56, 306, 1–2. Cf. WA 56, 49, 12–14. WA 56, 50, 14–15. WA 56, 261, 15. Cf. WA 56, 51, 15. WA 56, 261, 20–22. WA 56, 299, 22–23. Cf. WA 56, 261, 17–18; 10, 5. WA 56, 171, 27–28. WA 56, 234, 15–16. WA 56, 262, 21–23. Cf. WA 56, 54, 176–187.

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God’s righteousness, Luther distinguishes between the inner, formal righteousness of God and the effective righteousness of faith by enumerating three ways in which God is justified. Firstly, God is justified when he punishes the unrighteous and thus shows himself to be righteous. Hence, an unrighteous man reveals God as just and is glorifying the righteousness of God. Secondly, God is justified coincidentally when his righteousness shines the brightest compared to the hideous righteousness of man. According to Luther, neither the first nor the second kind of justification is addressed in the Epistle to the Romans, as they concern ‘iustitia dei interna et formalis’.76 Thirdly, God is justified in an effective way when justifying the ungodly and pouring his grace upon the repenting sinners. God is thus justified when human beings believe God to be righteous in his words. Through this faith, God justifies man. There is thus a complex interconnection between the justification of God and the justification of man whereby man’s passive justification of God through faith is God’s active justification of man.77 Luther describes this as almost a circle of justification: ‘Ergo dum Iustificatur, Iustificat, et dum Iustificat, Iustificatur’.78 Luther’s statement that the unrighteous man glorifies the righteousness of God and that God is hereby justified points to a seeming analogy between the concepts of justification and glorification. It is consistent with the employment of glory as analogous to righteousness elsewhere in the lectures and in other writings of Luther.79 Hence, justification is a way for man to partake in the glory of God. In Romans 2:6–7, Paul states that God will render justice to every man according to his works and give eternal life to those who seek honour and glory. The text challenges Luther’s refusal of work-righteousness and makes it necessary for Luther to underline, that the glory and honour, which man is to seek, is the glory of the life to come. Luther apparently views the three words gloriam, honorem and incorruptionem as analogous expressions and further determines the term glory as clarity and praise: ‘gloriam i. e. claritatem et laudem’.80 In Luther’s Works claritatem is translated as ‘renown,’ which is commonly perceived as a term belonging to the earthly sphere defining a characteristic of the relationship between men.81 Instead, the term might be more appropriately translated with 76 77 78 79

WA 56, 220, 8. WA 56, 226, 23–25. WA 56, 227, 7–8. WA 56, 261, 20–22; 222, 18–19. In the preface to the first volume of his Latin writings published in 1545, in which Luther explains his so called Reformation breakthrough as revolving around the understanding of the term iustitia dei as passive righteousness on the basis of which God justifies man through faith, the glory of God is perceived as the glory with which God makes man glorious and thus as a parallel term to righteousness, see WA 54, 186, 13. 80 WA 56, 21, 1–2. 81 Hilton C. Oswald, Luther’s Works vol. 25, Saint Louis 1972, p. 18.

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‘clarity’. As mentioned above, Luther employs the term claritus to define the declaration of Jesus as the Son of God. Consequently, Luther interprets the verse to mean that instead of seeking earthly renown, the good are seeking the glory, clarity and incorruption of the eternal life. Accordingly, Luther immediately distinguishes between the eternal life and the vanity of this world.82 In line with this, while Romans 2:10 recounts glory, honour and peace as God’s reward for good works, Luther explains gloria with claritas and honor with reverentia, i. e., reverence.83 All four expressions belong to a field of meaning expressing the reward for good works to be received from God in eternity. Subsequently, Luther employs Augustine and Aristotle in order to establish the notions of glory and honour as belonging to the divine sphere. In Augustine’s exposition of John 17, glory is determined as the constant mentioning of a person with praise and in the fifth book of De Civitate Dei, glory is the judgement of men who have a good opinion concerning other humans.84 Subsequently, Luther recounts Aristotle’s definition of honour in the Nicomachean Ethics, in which honour is attributed to men on account of virtue.85 Both the Augustinian exposition of the term glory and the Aristotelian employment of honour concern the human sphere; gloria concerns the favourable judgement of men, honor relates to the reverence with which the virtues of men are acknowledged. Because of this common employment of the words ‘glory’ and ‘honour,’ Luther states that Scripture usually employs the words claritas and clarificatio as well as the expressions ‘being glorified’ and ‘being clarified,’ glorificari and clarificari.86 Luther thus refers to terms that are elsewhere employed to describe the glory of Christ. Hereby, Luther establishes that the Pauline application of the terms gloria and honor does not pertain to the notions of glory and honour in Augustine and Aristotle, in which they describe the esteem man can attain from other men on account of his works. Instead Paul refers to the glorification and clarification of the Christian which is instigated in justification and fulfilled in eternity. As stated above, this glory appears sub contrario in the world, that is, as humiliation.

82 83 84 85 86

WA 56, 21, 3–4. WA 56, 21, 14–16. WA 56, 195, 21–23. WA 56, 195, 24–196, 2. WA 56, 194, 23–24.

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The glorification of God

On the basis of Scripture, Luther applies five interconnected acts to describe the appropriate human attitude towards God; love, worship, thanksgiving, praise and glorification.87 Through Christ, man is enabled to partake in his glory and to glorify God to whom praise and glory are due: ‘Deo laus et gloria’.88 Christ is further described as ‘mediator noster’89 enabling man not only to receive glory from God through justification but also to give glory back to God.90 On the basis of the Pauline employment of Abraham as exemplum fidei in Romans 4, Luther concludes that man honours God through faith and dishonours God by not believing.91 In accordance with the recurring motif of humilitas, Luther establishes the confession of sins as the preferred manner in which to glorify God. In Romans 3:5–8, Paul states that the unrighteousness of man commends the righteousness of God.92 Luther interprets the term commendat to mean glorify and he is, consequently, forced to expound whether human unrighteousness glorifies God.93 God is, however, not glorified by human unrighteousness per se but by the acknowledgement and confession of this unrighteousness, through which man is humbled and realises the necessity of God’s saving righteousness.94 The selfglorification of man is terminated and only God is glorified in the confessing sinner.95 In describing the confession of sin, Luther employs mystical terminology distinguishing between the internal man coram hominibus, who wrongfully thinks of himself as righteous, and the external man coram deo. Externally, man is a sinner, a liar and a fool and his righteousness, truthfulness, wisdom and strength are destroyed. In order to become humiliated internally, man must believe himself to be a sinner and thus become internally, intra nos, what he is externally, extra nos. God is true, righteous and powerful in himself, and, according to Luther, the glory of any good thing consists in being poured out from within itself upon others.96 In this context, Luther distinguishes between gloria, which radiates from one person to another, and honor that comes from other persons to or into man. Glory radiates and turns to the outside in modus exitus 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

WA 56, 215, 20; 248, 2–3; 7, 18. WA 56, 247, 2. Cf. WA 56, 7, 7; WA 56, 299, 30–31. WA 56, 7, 20–21. Cf. WA 56, 7, 25. WA 56, 296, 4–5. WA 56, 32, 3–4. WA 56, 216, 8–9. WA 56, 215, 5–9. WA 56, 216, 21–22. WA 56, 229, 17–18.

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whereas honour flows towards man and goes into him in modus introitus.97 God is good per se and in order to be glorified, God wishes to be good, that is, to be true, righteous and powerful outside of himself.98 God wishes to be true externally, in man, and through his coming forth God causes man to enter into himself and acknowledge his sin internally. The background for the confession of sin, which glorifies God, is the humbling recognition of sin, which comes through the law. The conveyance of the law, however, happens as God comes forth and invites the sinner to partake in the gloria Dei.

Concluding remarks Within the last century, Luther scholars have been focusing on the theology of the young Luther as theologia crucis in opposition to theologia gloriae. For Luther, however, the dismissal of certain theologians of glory in the specific context of The Heidelberg Disputation apparently did not lead to a dismissal of glory as a crucial theological concept. As opposed to previous Luther research interpreting Lectures on Romans as confining everything to humiliation, this article claims that the focus on the notion of humilitas in Lectures on Romans does not entail an annihilation of glorification, but speaks in favour of maintaining a simul of humiliation and glorification as a key for interpreting both Christology and anthropology in the theology of the young Luther. The analysis of Lectures on Romans reveals that the concepts of honour and glory as well as the counter concepts of dishonour and shame play a definitive role in Luther’s unfolding of Christology and anthropology. Luther states that man honours God through faith and dishonours God by not believing.99 Sinful humanity lacks the glory of God so that instead of glorifying God, man glories a figment of his own imagination. In order to re-establish the possibility for God to be glorified by man, God appears sub contraria specie, in the shameful suffering on the cross. Luther employs Pauline Christology and the doctrine of the two natures of Christ as a background for unfolding incarnation and resurrection as a dialectic of humiliation and glorification. The article employs this Christological double movement as a pattern for interpreting the anthropology of Lectures on Romans. Accepting Christ as exemplum, the Christian is to humiliate himself, and receiving Christ as donum, man is enabled to partake in the glory of God. Through Christ, man is

97 WA 56, 196, 3–6. 98 WA 56, 229, 15–17. 99 WA 56, 296, 4–5.

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able to provide a proper answer to God’s justifying Word by exclaiming: ‘Soli Deo honor et gloria’.100

100 In this way, the analysis of honour and glory might point to a larger degree of reciprocity in the relationship between God and man than has previously been acknowledged by scholars working with the theology of the young Luther.

Maria Lucia Weigel

Light as a Metaphor in Protestant Prints1

In my paper I would like to show how light serves as a visual sign of divine presence in Protestant prints of different eras. With respect to content, I would like to confine myself to the connection between the metaphor of light and Martin Luther, as can be found in early portraits dating from the 1520s. Light as a metaphor of divine presence can be found in portraits of Luther as a cliché in varying iconographical contexts – appearing in different functional contexts and in those of intellectual history in the art of the 16th up to the 19th centuries.2 With regard to this content, the focus of the message oscillates between light that takes the shape of a candle on the one hand, signifying the light of the Gospel, which was spread throughout the world by Luther, divine inspiration of the person himself on the other hand and the emphasis on Luther’s own achievements, namely his teachings, even though this is connected to the divine as the origin of his preaching and bringing the word of God to life. Both of the latter aspects are indicated by an aureole around the head of Luther – a motif that I have encountered mainly in prints. The statements mentioned are not always translated into visual rhetoric, which means that they are not always used as a strategy for rendering the picture by pictorial means. The examples chosen in this paper are intended to draw attention to the perhaps unexpected continuity of the motif of the aureole around Luther’s head over a long period. In this context, the following well known print, one sample of which is in the Collection of Prints in the Melanchthonhaus at Bretten, has to be included. It is an iron engraving by Daniel Hopfer from 1523, created according

1 I owe many thanks to Francis John Kelly, Heidelberg, for the translation of the German text into English. 2 For a survey in the latest literature see the publications of Gerhard Seib, ed., Luther im Porträt. Druckgraphik 1550–1900, Exhibition catalogue, Bad Oeynhausen 1983 and Volkmar Joestel/Jutta Strehle, Luthers Bild und Lutherbilder. Ein Rundgang durch die Wirkungsgeschichte, Wittenberg 2003, each of which was presented with reference to previous literature.

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to a model by Lucas Cranach the Elder.3 In this case, Warnke, who had incisively analysed the woodcut portrait of Luther with a halo by Baldung from 1521, also considers the alterations to have been made in order to achieve a popularisation.4 The inscription, translated into German from the Latin original in Cranach’s print and at the same time simplified, reads as follows in English: ‘Luther’s flesh may well perish / His Christian soul will never die’.5 This is the well-known dichotomy between mortal remains and immortal spirit. Luther is rendered in profile, reflecting antique theories of physiognomy and wearing a monk’s habit, complemented by a doctoral cap. This mode of rendering, calling up associations of numismatic portraits showing ancient Roman rulers that were absorbed by the German sovereign’s portrait shortly before, lends authority to the person thus depicted.6 Cranach’s formulation is expanded by a nimbus that replaces the dark background in the second stage of Cranach’s engraving.7 In Hopfer’s print a pictorial scheme is applied that had been handed down in the context of the Old Church.8 It depicts Luther as a pious, holy monk in an interpretation that defines light as divine inspiration in the shape of a halo. In Hopfer’s engraving, however, the inscription adds another level of interpretation. The spirit, or better, the soul (‘gemiet’) is now explicitly called Christian and for this reason it can be assumed that it is not going to die. In Cranach’s engraving in the same place it says: ‘[…] the eternal spirit […]’.9 Cranach’s inscription remains within the flash point of the humanism of the 16th century. But now the soul is pervaded by divine light because it is a Christian one and therefore immortal. We can ask the following questions: Is what we have here a pictorial contribution to a Lutheran anthropology? The immortal substance of man is that which has been permeated by Jesus Christ – and this has nothing to do with his mortal remains. In no way does the statement in Hopfer’s engraving in its theological and philosophical implications take a back seat to that in Cranach’s engraving, which was beyond doubt conceived for an educated humanist public. 3 The well-known engraving by Lucas Cranach the Elder dates from the year 1521, cf. Martin Warnke, Cranachs Luther. Entwürfe für ein Image, Frankfurt/Main 1984, fig. 19, p. 40. 4 Cf. Warnke, Cranachs Luther (see n. 3), p. 49, reference to Baldung, p. 32. 5 The German inscription reads as follows: ‘Des Luthers Gestalt mag wohl verderben / sein christlich gemiet wirt nymer sterben’. 6 Cf. Warnke, Cranachs Luther (see n. 3), pp. 42ff. 7 Cf. Warnke, Cranachs Luther (see n. 3), fig. 46, p. 47 for the first state of Cranach’s engraving from 1521. 8 Cf. Warnke, Cranachs Luther (see n. 3), pp. 32ff for the pictorial tradition in Baldung’s woodcut. 9 The complete inscription on the engraving by Cranach from 1521 reads as follows: ‘LUCAE OPUS EFFIGIES HAEC EST MORITURA LUTHERI / AETHERNAM MENTIS EXPRIMIT IPSE SUAE/M.D.X.X.I.’, cf. Warnke, Cranachs Luther (see n. 3), p. 41.

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Daniel Hopfer, Portrait of Martin Luther, 1523, iron etching, 22,2 × 15,7 cm, Collection of Prints in the Melanchthonhaus, Bretten, inv. no. P Luth 14

Did Lutheran content in Hopfer’s work develop from humanist thought combined with a traditional Christian topos? We may assume that the halo in the context of Luther’s portrait made the importance of the person accessible in an obvious and familiar way to a public that grew up with the Catholic way of venerating saints in the early 16th century. This visual level, it seems to me, was specified and complemented by the second one mentioned in the inscription. It was thus revealed to the theologically educated. In the numerous pamphlets that appeared up to the Thirty Years War, a broad range of personal features and modes of activities of the reformer are presented; the latter were interpreted as the working of God’s grace upon the world.10 The authors often used metaphorical language to this end. 10 Cf. Andrea Körsgen-Wiedeburg, “Das Bild Martin Luthers in den Flugschriften der

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I would like to present a sample of an engraving with a laudatory poem from the period around 1623 that is part of the collection of prints and drawings in the Germanische Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. The dating is attributed to the commemoration given in the heading. Luther’s birth is described as having taken place 140 years before. The sheet has been trimmed along its margins; part of the heading is missing. The engraved portrait of Luther takes on the appearance of the countless printed and painted portraits by Cranach the Elder. The reformer is depicted in a three-quarter profile to the left, he is bareheaded and wears the robe of a scholar, holding a closed book in both his hands. What is not found in Cranach’s model is the halo that surrounds Luther’s head and that contrasts well against the dark background. Here, a very popular image of Luther, passed down since the first half of the 16th century, is combined with a motif that originally did not belong to it, as we have seen thus far. It is to be found as a modification of Cranach’s pictorial inventions in the works of other artists in the 1520s, but has disappeared hereafter. A recontextualisation has taken place in conjunction with the print presented here. What is the reason for this? Beneath the portrait of Luther a Latin subtitle in four lines is attached as well as a long text in two columns, a laudatory poem by an author known only as C. L. I have not yet been able to decipher the abbreviation. In the Latin four-liner, Luther’s date of death is repeated in a riddled way. It is also part of the biographical data in the German inscription above the portrait. In the Latin verses it is followed by the information about Luther’s age in the year of his death and the conclusion: ‘[…] You, Luther, ascend as a pious man (or piously) to the magnificent roofs of Heaven.’11 In the attached German poem, Luther is described as being ‘true’ and showing ‘the eternal Gospel clearly’. Furthermore, the author calls him an ‘angel,’ having flown through the ‘heavens of Christianity’. He is called somebody who warns against heretics; the army of the Antichrist is mentioned. I will not deal here with the second strand that discusses the succession of Jan Hus, the goose, mentioned in the heading, and Luther, the swan. What has been said may be enough to characterise Luther in this commemorative sheet as a warrior for God’s cause facing imminent Doomsday. All of those characterisations remain within the bounds of what can often be found in pamphlets from the 16th century onwards. By means of the twofold mention of the reformer’s biographical data, in both the heading and the subtitle, it becomes clear at once how the picture itself is to be frühen Reformationszeit,” in: Festgabe für Ernst Walter Zeeden zum 60. Geburtstag am 14. Mai 1976, ed. Horst Rabe/Hansgeorg Molitor/Hans-Christoph Rublack, Münster 1976, pp. 153–177. 11 The complete Latin subtitle reads as follows: ‘Occuluit solis ter senos Februus ignes / Magnus vi Islebiae, nocte Lutherus obit. / Fortis et extremae verax aetatis Helias / Caelsa pius caeli tecta Luthere subis.’ For the translation into German I owe thanks to Andrea Fleischer, Altrip.

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Anonymous, Portrait of Martin Luther on a leaf with a laudatory poem, 17th century, engraving, 29,5 × 16,6 cm (Leaf), Collection of Prints in the Germanische Nationalmuseum Nuremberg, inv. no. MP 14781_99

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understood. It is conceived as an epitaph, a memoria for a dead person. The poem should be interpreted in the same way. It points out the working of God’s grace on Luther’s activities and ends with the following words: ‘[…] Because the word of God and the teaching of Luther / will never fade. / And so Luther shines in a bright light within the Christian community.’12 The statement of the Latin subtitle surpasses Luther’s lifetime, as he is described as ascending into Heaven. This opening of time beyond Luther’s lifetime is also repeated in the poem. The teachings of Luther are promised eternal life, as the word of God is as well. Both are closely connected with each other with respect to the text and its content. Nevertheless, they do not merge. Hence it would seem to be legitimate to grant Luther the honour of recognition on his own accord. His personal achievements are emphasised and acknowledged both in the text and in the picture. This is possible in such elaborate form because the person thus described has already passed away, as is made clear more than once in the text. The person himself finds his lasting place in Heaven; his teachings will continue to have an effect on earth – this is how the message can be summed up. The last line of the poem is translated into the picture almost literally. Luther is ‘shining in a bright light’ – this is exactly what is demonstrated by the halo. The pictorial tradition of representing Luther at an advanced age in the setting proposed by Cranach remained valid and familiar even in the 17th century. Consequently, it was integrated in the memoria of the anniversary.13 It was adapted to the intention that is expressed in the laudatory poem: to let Luther shine brightly in his beneficial impact on mankind that is part of the workings of God’s grace within the world. This can hardly be rendered more manifestly than by means of the pictorial formula of the halo, which also follows a long tradition and is not intended to convey anything else but the same message. Obviously a long time after the death of Luther – and perhaps only then – the reserve towards such ways of expression that were close to the still surviving pictorial practice of the Old Church could give way to the power and readability of the symbol. We do not know, however, who the author of the picture is, nor can we classify the text chronologically. The heading could have been put above an already existing older text. Nevertheless, for reasons of coherence of the overall plan of the poem and the picture, it appears to be correct to accept the creation of both at the same time. 12 The German text reads as follows: ‘[…] Denn Gottes Wort und Luthers Lehr / Vergehen nun noch nimmermehr. / Und also Glänzt mit hellem Schein / Lutherus in der Christen Gmein’. 13 The prominent position of Cranach’s image of Luther reveals itself in an overview of the prints of the time, cf. Seib, Luther im Porträt: Joestel/Strehle, Luthers Bild und Lutherbilder (see n. 2). The print under discussion appears in Johann Stigel, C. L., Waare und Klare Bildnuß/der zweyen theuren Männer Gottes Als Herrn Johann Hussen […] Und Den Herren D. M. Luthers […], 1623.

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Also in this case, a broad reception was intended and laid down in the form itself. Certainly the Latin inscription could only be appreciated by educated humanists, while the German text could also be understood by those who could not understand Latin. Both levels of reception were addressed in the concept. In the last part of my paper I would like to present another print from the Bretten collection. It is an engraving by Martin Tyroff, born in Augsburg in 1704, who is on record as the owner of a workshop and was engaged in merchandising art in Nuremberg.14 Illustrations for some major works, for example the Scheuchzersche Kupferbibel from the 1730s, are known to have been made by him. However, the engravings contained therein were produced according to models made by other artists. Religious subjects can be found in Tyroff ’s repertoire as well as allegories and portraits. In the Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, established by Thieme and Becker, an ‘extraordinary softness in modelling the faces’ as well as a ‘prudent distribution of light and shadow, technical correctness, thoroughness and delicacy’ are attributed to him. The engraving that interests me here is an allegorical portrait of Martin Luther. It shows the honouree in a head-and-shoulders-portrait with a scholar’s robe and a book, obviously rendered according to Cranach’s model. The portrait is depicted in a clipeus, carried in heavenly spheres by two angels, personifications of fama (fame) and eternity, as is made clear by the attributes of trombone and ouroboros (ring of eternity). Three female figures are placed on the earth below. At the left, a naked person points to the depiction of Luther, hidden by a seated, dressed woman with a veil, in whose lap a bible is lying, opened to the quotation of Isaiah 60, 1–3: Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.15

The person turns to the spectator with a gesture of speaking. At the right, a partially undressed person with horns is situated, with her face covered by the shade of a mirror that she holds over her head in order to protect herself. In the 14 Cf. here and for the following Fritz Tr. Schulz, art. “Martin Tyroff,” in: Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, founded by Ulrich Thieme/Felix Becker, ed. Hans Vollmer, vol. 33, unchanged reprint of the original edition Leipzig 1939, Leipzig 1999, p. 514f. 15 The German text reads as follows: ‘Mache dich auf und werde Licht, denn dein Licht kommt, und die Herrlichkeit des Herrn geht auf über dir! Denn siehe, Finsternis bedeckt das Erdreich und Dunkel die Völker; aber über dir geht auf der Herr und seine Herrlichkeit erscheint über dir. Und die Heiden werden zu deinem Lichte ziehen und die Könige zum Glanz, der über dir aufgeht’.

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Martin Tyroff, Allegorical Portrait of Martin Luther, 18th century, engraving, 14 × 9,5 cm, Collection of Prints in the Melanchthonhaus, Bretten, inv. no. P Luth 53

case of the figure with the bible, it may deal with the allegory of belief; hence the person lying on the ground probably depicts disbelief that has to protect itself from the radiance emanating from Luther.16 In not one of the prints presented so far has light been utilized in its potential of visual rhetoric in the way it is used in Tyroff ’s engraving. The light of the halo in the engraving from the 17th century is contrasted by the print’s dark background. But darkness as a quality of disbelief, attached to the Antichrist or other opponents of Luther already in pamphlets of the 16th century and mentioned in 16 For the interpretation of the scene cf. Peter Mortzfeld, ed., Katalog der graphischen Porträts in der Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel 1500–1850, Reihe A, Die Porträtsammlung der Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, vol. 33: Biographische und bibliographische Beschreibungen mit Künstlerregister, 5, Munich 2000, p. 260, n. A 13078.

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the laudatory poem, has not been explored there in a pictorial way. In Tyroff ’s print, however, this potential of visual rhetoric has been adequately explored and integrated into the rendering of the personification. Exclusively in this figure, the radiation of light emerging from Luther’s portrait becomes manifest, now as a shadow on a face. So far, we have dealt with prints that use the metaphor of light defined as a concept of Christian origin. Now there is a change in language. Tyroff unfolds his message, the honouring of Luther, within the framework of a pictorial language inspired by antique art. The imago clipeata can originally be found in triumphal processions as well as in Roman sepulchral art.17 It demonstrates the virtus of the depicted personage who appears to have been turned into a hero. It is to be found in medieval and Renaissance art; in the baroque era it became part of the iconography of personalities to be honoured. The putti on either side have their origin in antique art. On Roman sarcophagi, victoriae often carry the clipeata imago skywards. An ascension to the gods is then depicted, an apotheosis or consecratio. Both the accompanying figures in Tyroff ’s engraving can be interpreted as descendants of the victoriae; they announce the fame and durability of the person and the preaching. The related idea of the memoria of the dead has been borrowed from the antique scheme, comparable with the mode of perception in which Luther is depicted in the previously mentioned print from the 17th century. What has been said so far is complemented and overlapped by a second line of argumentation. The radiation emanating from the transfigured Luther is explained biblically. He has become light as demanded by Isaiah in his text, although he originally referred to the city of Zion. In the Scriptures, darkness is also mentioned as a counterpoint. In Tyroff ’s engraving it is impressively represented by the personification, which is given an active part in averting the light. The artist, however, refrains from depiction of the divine light mentioned in the Scriptures as the real origin of all light. Luther thus appears as the honoured one and at the same time as the source of light. This uplifting definitely fits into the intention of the content and into the context of the rendering. A great man is to be praised. The engraving was used as a frontispiece in the edition of Luther’s biography by Johann Daniel Herrenschmidt dating from 1756, which had been first published by Benjamin Lindner in Saalfeld in 1723, together with a history of Lutheranism by Veit Ludwig von Seckendorf and devotional letters by Luther a long 17 Cf. here and for the following Johannes Bolten, “Die Imago Clipeata. Ein Beitrag zur Portrait- und Typengeschichte,” in: Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums, ed. in comission of the Görres-Gesellschaft Engelbert Drerup/Hubert Grimme/Johann Peter Kirsch., vol. XXI, n. 1 (1937): p. 7ff.

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time after the death of the main author.18 Lindner (1694–1754) was a superintendent in Saalfeld and chaplain at the Saxon ducal court.19 The picture served as an author’s portrait to a certain degree. The edition of 1743, the one that has been available to me, does not contain the engraving.20 However, the preface that Lindner added to the edited writings is revealing. Like Herrenschmidt, he seems to have been connected very closely to the pietists in Halle. ‘The life of D. Martini Luther’ is said by the author to be ‘presented in constant consideration to inner reason,’21 and indeed the biography follows this characteristically pietist idea. Luther’s importance as a shining example is emphasized in Lindner’s preface. In the first chapter of the biography it reads: ‘The divine mercy is thus to be praised highly that it intended to set up such a small plain light against the darkness, but grant so much glory to it gradually that the clearness of the Gospel was significantly revealed through it and spread over whole countries and kingdoms.’22 The author of these words was Herrenschmidt; he refers both to the shine emanating from Luther as well as to the impact of the latter’s work in referring to the addressees of divine salvation mentioned also in Isaiah’s text. Those ideas constitute the basis for the pictorial program of the engraving in the later edition, prominently conceived by Lindner, the publisher and patron of Tyroff. Both men knew each other personally, as proven by a portrait of Lindner engraved by Tyroff, one sample of which can be found in the Heidelberg University Library.23 The engraving presented here is a complex interconnection of a traditional, antique pictorial scheme on the one hand and of biblically based praise on the other hand, tailored to the work of Luther in integrating the most popular portrait of the latter, the one conceived by Cranach.

18 Johann Daniel Herrenschmidt, Das merckwürdige Leben des um die Kirche Christi hochverdienten und theuren Rüstzeugs Gottes Herrn D. Martini Lutheri, 2nd ed., ed. Benjamin Lindner, Saalfeld 1756. 19 Cf. N. N., art. “Johann Daniel Herrnschmidt,” in Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, est. and ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, cont. Traugott Bautz, vol. 2, Hamm 1990, col. 773–774. 20 This volume is to be found in the Landeskirchliche Zentralbibliothek Stuttgart, location: Bibliothek der Deutschen Waldenservereinigung, Schönenberg, inv.no. D 78/Lind 1. 21 The German text reads: ‘Das Leben D. Martini Luther […] in beständiger Absicht auf den inneren Grund vorgestellet.’ Cf. Lindner, preface to Herrenschmidt, Das merckwürdige Leben (see n. 18). 22 The German text reads: ‘[…] ist demnach die göttliche Erbarmung hoch zu preisen, daß sie wider die Finsternis […] ein unansehnlich Lichtlein zubereiten, demselben aber nach und nach soviel Glanz verleihen wollen, daß die Klarheit des Evangelii dadurch ziemlich geoffenbart, und in ganze Länder und Königreiche ausgebreitet worden’, cf. Herrenschmidt, Das merckwürdige Leben (see n. 18), p. 3. 23 Martin Tyroff, portrait of Benjamin Lindner, engraving, 15×9,7 cm, Heidelberg University Library, Collection of Prints, inv.no. P_0988.

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The positioning of the reformer at the end of a series of important biblical personalities and those of Church history as well intends to express the continuity of history as the work of God on earth. This rendering can be found as early as the 16th century, e. g., in Melanchthon’s funeral oration on Luther.24 The concept presented here, however, seems to me to be quite singular. It can probably be traced back to the personal inventio of an intelligent, educated theologian. The light now no longer permeates the reformer himself; it rather emanates from him. Instead of indicating the inspiration of the person, the accent is laid on the visualization of his impact on Church history.

24 Cf. Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider, ed., Corpus Reformatorum. , vol. VI, Philippi Melanthonis opera quae supersunt omnia, Halle 1839, col. 155–170; vol. XII, Philippi Melanthonis opera quae supersunt Omnia, Halle 1844, col. 726–734. Cf. Robert Kolb, “Umgestaltung und theologische Bedeutung des Lutherbildes im späten 16. Jahrhundert,” in: Die lutherische Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland. Wissenschaftliches Symposion des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 1988, ed. Hans-Christoph Rublack, Gütersloh 1992 (Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, comm. by the Verein für Reformationsgeschichte, ed. Gustav Adolf Benrath, vol. 197), pp. 202–231, here p. 204.

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„Caron mit den abgeschidnen geisten“. Antike Mythologie und christliche Imagination bei Hans Sachs

I. Im neunten Gesang des Inferno erreichen Dante und sein Begleiter, Vergil, den fünften Höllenkreis, der die Zornmütigen beherbergt. Die beiden haben den Styx überquert und stehen nun vor den Toren der Höllenstadt Dis, wo sich ihnen als Torwächterinnen die drei Furien Megära, Tisiphone und Alekto in den Weg stellen: „bluttriefend […], weiblich in Gestalt und Gebaren, und mit giftgrünen Schlangen um die Hüften; Nattern und Vipern waren ihre Haare, die sich ihnen gräulich um die Schläfen wanden.“1 Mit schrillem Geheul rufen sie nach der Medusa, um die beiden Eindringlinge zu bestrafen. Vergil drängt Dante, vor ihrem bannenden, jede Rückkehr ins Diesseits unmöglich machenden Anblick die Augen zu verschließen und legt ihm sogar noch selbst die Hände auf das Gesicht. In diesem Augenblick wird das Geschehen von einem Erzählerkommentar unterbrochen: „Ihr aber, die ihr voll bei Verstand seid, achtet auf die Lehre, die sich unter dem Schleier der ungewöhnlichen Verse verbirgt!“2 An dieser Szene aus Dantes Commedia (ca. 1307–1320) seien im Hinblick auf die folgenden Ausführungen drei Aspekte festgehalten: Erstens entwirft der Text einen Raum, der sich aus Topoi des mythologischen descensus ad inferos ebenso speist wie aus solchen einer christlichen Höllenvorstellung, ohne dass religiöse Differenzen überhaupt zur Sprache kommen.3 Zweitens stehen sich ein materielles und ein ideelles Modell visueller Wahrnehmung gegenüber: Während die detaillierte descriptio der schreckenerregenden Furien rhetorische enargeia, 1 Dante Alighieri, La Commedia/Die Göttliche Komödie. Italienisch/Deutsch. In Prosa übersetzt und kommentiert von Hartmut Köhler, Bd. I: Inferno/Hölle, Stuttgart 2010, S. 135– 137. 2 Dante, Commedia (s. Anm. 1), S. 139. 3 Vgl. dazu Max Wehrli, „Antike Mythologie im christlichen Mittelalter“, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 57 (1983): S. 18–32. Der Autor findet die Konvergenz von Heidnischem und Christlichem in Dantes Formel vom Giove crocifisso gar „zum schreienden Widerspruch gesteigert“ (S. 18).

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Präsenz, erzeugt, fordert der Erzählerkommentar die Rezipienten dazu auf, den sinnlichen Effekt als „Schleier“ (velame) beiseite zu ziehen und auf den geistigen Gehalt zu achten, der sich dahinter verberge.4 Der Punkt, an dem die eine Form der Sichtbarkeit in die andere umschlägt, ist just der Anblick der Medusa, der Dante in Bann zu schlagen droht und deshalb von Vergil unterbunden wird. Drittens schließlich erweist sich Vergil aus der Perspektive des Kommentars nicht nur als „Kenner und Künder der Jenseitsreiche“ (E.R. Curtius), sondern führt Dante auch als literarisches Vorbild durch eine textuelle Unterwelt. Er führt ihn durch die Tradition der antiken mythologischen Literatur, in erster Linie natürlich durch die Aeneis, die Dantes christlichem Inferno als poetischer Hypotext zugrunde liegt. Offenkundig, so lassen sich diese Beobachtungen zusammenfassen, ist Dante ebenso sehr darum bemüht, die Literarizität der Erzählwelt seiner Commedia ins rechte Licht zu rücken, wie er zugleich keinerlei Zweifel daran aufkommen lassen will, dass er den Rezipienten einen wahrheitsgetreuen Bericht eschatologischer Tatsachen liefert – entsprechend gründet er seinen visionären Anspruch, den „Zustand der Seelen nach dem Tod“5 darzustellen, auf die Autorität keines Geringeren als des Apostels Paulus. Es ist hier nicht der Ort, die Engführung von literarischem und religiösem Diskurs, wie sie Dante in seiner Commedia vornimmt, im Einzelnen zu rekonstruieren.6 Worauf es mir lediglich ankommt, ist die zentrale Rolle, die die mythologischen Referenzen in diesem Zusammenhang spielen: Gerade im Blick nämlich auf die Furien und Medusa beginnt die oben zitierte Textstelle zwischen

4 Mit der Metapher vom „Schleier“ wählt Dante eine Formulierung, die sowohl biblischen als auch neuplatonischen Ursprungs ist und in der Poetik des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit häufig Verwendung findet. Vgl. dazu etwa Hennig Brinkmann, Mittelalterliche Hermeneutik, Darmstadt 1980, S. 169–214; Concetta C. Greenfield, Humanist and Scholastic Poetics 1250–1500, Lewisburg 1981; Patricia Oster, Der Schleier im Text. Funktionsgeschichte eines Bildes für die neuzeitliche Erfahrung des Imaginären, München 2002. 5 Dante Alighieri, Das Schreiben an Cangrande della Scala. Lateinisch/Deutsch. Übers., eingel. u. kommentiert von Thomas Ricklin. Mit einer Vorrede von Ruedi Imbach, Hamburg 1993 (Philosophische Bibliothek Bd. 463), S. 11. 6 Vgl. dazu u. a. Erich Auerbach, Dante als Dichter der irdischen Welt. Mit einem Nachwort von Kurt Flasch, Berlin/New York 22001 [1929]; Joseph A. Mazzeo, „Dante’s Conception of Poetic Expression“, The Romanic Review 47 (1956): S. 241–258; Giuseppe F. Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert. History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy, Princeton 1979; Andreas Kablitz, „Poetik der Erlösung. Dantes Commedia als Verwandlung und Neubegründung mittelalterlicher Allegorese“, in Commentaries – Kommentare, hg. v. Glenn W. Most, Göttingen 1999 (Aporemata Bd. 4), S. 353–379; Gerhard Regn, „Doppelte Autorschaft. Prophetische und poetische Inspiration in Dantes Paradies“, in Inspiration und Adaptation. Tarnkappen mittelalterlicher Autorschaft, hg. v. Renate Schlesier/Beatrice Trînca, Hildesheim 2008 (Spolia Berolinensia Bd. 29), S. 139–155. Zum Verhältnis von Poesie und Theologie in der italienischen Frührenaissance vgl. allgemein Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, Tübingen/Basel 111993 [1948], S. 221–234.

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der „Anschauung jenseitiger Wirklichkeit“7 und der Entfaltung dichterischer Einbildungskraft zu oszillieren. Aus christlicher Sicht sind sie als Figuren des antik-heidnischen Mythos Teil einer poetischen Fiktion, einer fabula, die den Blick des Betrachters ebenso sehr faszinieren wie verschleiern kann und traditionell als spezifisch dichterische Form der allegorischen Aussage begriffen wird.8 Gleichzeitig integriert Dante die mythologischen Gestalten jedoch umstandslos ins Personal einer als wirklich vorgestellten christlichen Jenseitstopographie. Auf der Ebene des Literalsinns ist das Ergebnis ein hybrides Konstrukt, in dem sich die Überzeugung von der transzendenten Realität der eschatologischen Vision auf paradoxe Weise mit der unverhohlenen Bewunderung für die ästhetisch vollendete, dichterische Erfindung verbindet: Christlich-eschatologische facta und antik-mythologische ficta bilden einen gemeinsamen, sprachlich verfügbaren Imaginationsraum.9

II. In der Zeit um 1500 wird das Verhältnis von Christentum und antiker Mythologie vor allem im Kontext der Poetik kontrovers diskutiert.10 Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf den mit der mythologischen Überlieferung verknüpften Problemen der Idolatrie und der Fiktionalität. Als wirkungsmächtig erwies sich in diesem Zusammenhang Marsilio Ficinos neuplatonische Theorie des Enthusiasmus, durch die die heidnisch-antike Mythologie als prisca theologia einen der Bibel vergleichbaren Offenbarungscharakter erhielt: Beider Ursprungs- und Bezugspunkt 7 Kablitz, Poetik (s. Anm. 6), S. 356. 8 Vgl. dazu etwa Peter Dronke, Fabula. Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism, Leiden/Köln 1974 (Mittellateinische Studien und Texte Bd. 9), S. 13–78. 9 Es nimmt daher nicht wunder, wenn der Dante-Kommentator Benvenuto da Imola im späten 14. Jahrhundert den namenlosen (!) Himmelsboten, der den beiden Jenseitsreisenden schließlich die Tore zur Höllenstadt Dis aufsperrt, als Merkur, den Stab in seiner Rechten als Merkurs Caduceus identifiziert. Vgl. Benevenutus Imolensis, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam, hg. v. Giacomo F. Lacaita/William W. Vernon, Vol. 1, Florenz 1887, S. 321. Vgl. dazu auch David Quint, „Epic Tradition and Inferno IX“, in Dante. The Critical Complex, hg. v. Richard Lansing, Vol. 2, New York/London 2003, S. 71–77, hier S. 76. 10 Vgl. dazu u. a. Wilhelm Kühlmann, „Poeten und Puritaner. Christliche und pagane Poesie im deutschen Humanismus – Mit einem Exkurs zur Prudentius-Rezeption in Deutschland“, Pirckheimer-Jahrbuch 8 (1993): S. 149–180; Rainer Stillers, „Zwischen Legitimation und systematischem Kontext. Zur Stellung der Mythologie in der italienischen Renaissancepoetik“, in Renaissance-Poetik. Renaissance Poetics, hg. v. Heinrich F. Plett, Berlin/New York 1994, S. 37–52; Bodo Guthmüller, „Formen des Mythenverständnisses um 1500“, in Literatur, Musik und Kunst im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, hg. v. Hartmut Boockmann, Göttingen 1995, S. 109–131; Volkhard Wels, Der Begriff der Dichtung in der Frühen Neuzeit, Berlin/New York 2009 (Historia Hermeneutica, Series Studia Bd. 8).

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ist für Ficino die transzendente, göttliche Wahrheit, die der Dichter in einem Moment der Entrückung unmittelbar schaut und die er anschließend unter poetischen „Schleiern“, unter fabulae und Allegorien verbirgt.11 Die Konsequenzen, die sich aus dieser, christliche und antik-mythologische Aussagen miteinander harmonisierenden Auffassung für die Heilige Schrift potentiell ergeben, liegen auf der Hand und zeigen sich unter anderem bei Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: „In seinem ,Heptaplus‘ legt Pico die ersten Verse der Genesis als eine poetisch verschleierte Darstellung theologischer Grundwahrheiten aus.“12 Bereits Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts wurde Ficinos poetologisches Konzept auch von deutschsprachigen Humanisten adaptiert, so etwa von Konrad Celtis, Jacob Locher und Joachim Vadian. Für sie stehen die göttliche Inspiration des Dichters, die historische Priorität der Poesie gegenüber der Theologie und mit ihr zugleich die sakrale Begründung der fabula außer Frage. In Vadians De poetica et carminis ratione (1518) ist es ihre Aufgabe, heiligen und nicht unverhüllt auszustreuenden Gegenständen durch den Schmuck sinnlicher Einkleidung zur Würde zu verhelfen, den Einfältigen nach Möglichkeit das Übersinnliche auf dem Weg des sinnlich Wahrnehmbaren zu erschließen, oder, wenn es die Unzugänglichkeit des Heiligen fordert, ganz zu verbergen […].13

Der göttliche Ursprung dieser poetischen Theologie ist für Vadian offenkundig: Auch die Bibel bediene sich einer solchen, eo ipso poetischen Redeweise, was die Allegorien, Parabeln und Gleichnisse Christi oder prophetische Bücher wie die Offenbarung des Johannes zur Genüge bewiesen. Von den Reformatoren hingegen wurde Ficinos esoterischer Versuch einer theologisch-mystischen Apologie der antiken fabulae – verstanden als Paradigma dichterischer Erfindung – nachdrücklich abgelehnt.14 Im Zuge der umfassenden Revision, der sie die christliche Tradition und das kirchliche Brauchtum

11 Ficinos interpretatives Anliegen ist es deshalb, die christlich bestimmte göttliche Wahrheit auch aus der heidnischen Überlieferung zu rekonstruieren. Vgl. dazu Greenfield, Poetics (s. Anm. 4), S. 230–245; Cesare Vasoli: „La ,prisca theologia’ e il neoplatonismo religioso“, in Il neoplatonismo nel Rinascimento, hg. v. Pietro Prini, Rom 1993, S. 83–101; Wels, Begriff der Dichtung (s. Anm. 10), S. 197–221. Zur neuplatonischen Interpretation der antiken Mythologie und ihrer (philosophisch-künstlerischen) Verwendung als Medium der Gotteserkenntnis in der italienischen Renaissance vgl. Edgar Wind, Heidnische Mysterien in der Renaissance, Frankfurt a. M. 1981. Grundlegend zum Verhältnis von Platonismus und Christentum vgl. Werner Beierwaltes, Platonismus im Christentum, Frankfurt a. M. 1998 (Philosophische Abhandlungen Bd. 73). 12 Wels, Begriff der Dichtung (s. Anm. 10), S. 214. 13 Joachim Vadianus, De poetica et carminis ratione. Kritische Ausgabe mit deutscher Übersetzung und Kommentar von Peter Schäffer, Bd. 2, München 1976 (Humanistische Bibliothek, Reihe II, Bd. 21,2), S. 146. 14 „Die neuplatonische Poetik hatte mit der Reformation keine Zukunft mehr. Ihre Rezeption bricht um 1520 endgültig ab.“ Wels, Begriff der Dichtung (s. Anm. 10), S. 180.

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unterziehen, schränken Luther und Melanchthon den Offenbarungscharakter strikt auf die biblischen Bücher ein: Sie allein – und nicht etwa die von den Neuplatonikern hochgehaltene apokryphe Tradition der hebräischen Kabbala, der heidnischen Mythen und ägyptischen Hieroglyphen – repräsentieren das vom Heiligen Geist inspirierte Wort und den einzig wahren Bezugspunkt christlicher Glaubensgrundsätze.15 Eine „interpretatio Christiana fabularum“16 ergibt dieser Auffassung nach keinerlei Sinn, weil der antik-mythologischen Überlieferung alle christlich-soteriologische Vermittlungsfunktion fehlt: Heilsrelevante Aussagen sind aus ihr schlechterdings nicht zu gewinnen. Im Gegenteil bergen derartige Analogiebildungen – genau wie die „erlogenen und erstunckenen Heiligen, denen man hat nachgeloffen“17 – lediglich die Gefahr, zugunsten außerbiblischer fabulae von der in der Heiligen Schrift überlieferten wahren historia und ihrem Wortlaut abzulenken, durch den allein das factum Christi für die Gläubigen erlösende Gegenwart werden kann.18 Derart radikal von der sakralen, soteriologischen Funktion des biblischen Textes geschieden und von Luther auf „menschliche merlin“19 reduziert, kommen die antik-heidnischen fabulae lediglich – und nur bei sittlicher Unbedenklichkeit20 – für moraldidaktisch-exemplarische Zwecke in Betracht. So sieht etwa Melanchthon in den mythologischen Erzählungen der Metamorphosen Ovids – von ihrer Eignung als grammatisch-rhetorischer Übungsstoff im Lateinunterricht einmal abgesehen – sowohl Beispiele des göttlichen Wohlwollens und Zorns („exempla benevolentiae et irae divinae“) als auch eindrückliche 15 Das zeigt sich etwa an Luthers kritischem Umgang mit der legendarischen Tradition. Im Nachwort zu der 1537 herausgegebenen Lügend von St. Johanne Chrysostomo bezeichnet er die Heiligenlegenden als teuflische Erdichtungen, weil sie den Christen als dogmatische Wahrheit bzw. soteriologische Alternative verkauft, von der Bibel ablenken und, einmal als Lügen erkannt, Zweifel an der Gewissheit auch der „rechten heubt Artikeln des waren christlichen Glaubens“ säen würden. Vgl. Martin Luther: Die Lügend von St. Johanne Chrysostomo, in D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Bd. 50, Weimar 1914, S. 52–64, hier S. 62 (im Folgenden werden Luthers Werke nach dieser Ausgabe als WA mit Band- und Seitenangabe zitiert). 16 Walter Sparn, „Hercules Christianus. Mythographie und Theologie in der frühen Neuzeit“, in Mythographie der Frühen Neuzeit. Ihre Anwendung in den Künsten, hg. v. Walter Killy, Wiesbaden 1984 (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen Bd. 27), S. 73–107, hier S. 74. 17 WA, Bd. 47, S. 519 (Mt 18–24, in Predigten ausgelegt). 18 Einen ähnlichen Vorwurf erhebt Erasmus von Rotterdam im Ciceronianus (1528) gegen diejenigen, die Gottvater als Jupiter Optimus Maximus oder Christus als Apollo anrufen. Vgl. Jörg Robert, „Die Ciceronianismus-Debatte“, in Diskurse der Gelehrtenkultur in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ein Handbuch, hg. v. Herbert Jaumann, Berlin 2011, S. 1–54. 19 WA, Bd. 17/II, S. 209 (Fastenpostille 1525). 20 Scharf hat sich insbesondere Luther gegen die auch traditionell als unmoralisch verworfenen „Narrenteydinge“ ausgesprochen, „[d]er die Kriechen sonderlich fur andern vol sind“, sofern sie „eusserliche sitten verderben und hyndern bessers und machen kalte, lasse Christen“. Vgl. WA, Bd. 17/II, S. 208f (Fastenpostille 1525).

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Bilder nahezu jeder erdenklichen menschlichen Lebenssituation („illustres imagines totius vitae et conditionis humanae“).21 In dieser Eigenschaft sollen die fabulae den Lesern Weltwissen vermitteln, ihnen Muster falschen und richtigen Handelns vor Augen führen und auf diese Weise der Erkenntnis und Korrektur ihrer Lebenspraxis dienen. Anstatt im Sinne der Neuplatoniker als Verhüllung heiliger Gegenstände auf eine andere Realität zu verweisen, erhellt die fabula, bei entsprechendem, ethisch vertretbarem Gehalt, reflexiv das „eusserliche […] Leben in der Welt“22. Ihre Fiktionalität ist in diesem Kontext denn auch nicht ontologisch, mit Blick auf das darzustellende sakrale Objekt, sondern rhetorisch, aus der spezifischen Wirkungsabsicht heraus begründet: Sie gewährleistet nicht nur die didaktisch-infinite Anwendbarkeit der erzählten Geschichte als exemplum, sondern lässt sich als Instrument verstehen, das die einprägsame Vergegenwärtigung und mnemotechnische Speicherung des vermittelten ethischpraktischen Wissens sicherstellt – damit die Jugend „solche feine Lere und Warnung unter der lieblichen gestalt der Fabeln gleich wie in einer Mummerey oder Spiel deste lieber lerne und fester behalte“23.

III. 1531 schreibt Hans Sachs die einaktige Tragedi Der Caron mit den abgeschidnen geisten.24 Der Nürnberger Handwerker und Meistersinger, der sich in den 1520er Jahren wiederholt publizistisch für die Reformation engagiert hatte,25 bearbeitet in dieser kurzen Tragedi eines der Totengespräche Lukians von Samosata, die, dem lateinischen Mittelalter unbekannt, seit dem Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts in 21 Die Zitate sind der unter dem Namen seines Schwiegersohnes Georg Sabinus veröffentlichten, jedoch vermutlich Melanchthon selbst zuzuschreibenden Einleitung in das erste Buch einer Paraphrase und Interpretation der Metamorphosen von 1555 entnommen: FABVLARVM || OVIDII || INTERPRETA=|| TIO TRADITA IN ACADE=|| MIA REGIOMON=|| TANA.|| A || GEORGIO SABINO. Wittenberg: Georg Rhau 1555 (VD 16 Nr. S 121), unpaginiert [Bl. A6v]. Vgl. zur Verfasserfrage Wels, Begriff der Dichtung (s. Anm. 10), S. 58, Anm. 15. 22 WA, Bd. 50, S. 452 (Etliche Fabeln aus Esopo). 23 WA, Bd. 50, S. 454 (Etliche Fabeln aus Esopo). Luther zieht an dieser Stelle bereits einen Vergleich zum Theater („Mummerey oder Spiel“), dessen moraldidaktischen Wert er mehrfach betont hat. Vgl. Wels, Begriff der Dichtung (s. Anm. 10), S. 75–77. 24 Hans Sachs, Ein tragedi, mit 11 personen zu agiern. Der Caron mit den abgeschidnen geisten, in Hans Sachs, hg. v. Adelbert von Keller/Edmund Goetze, Bd. 7, Hildesheim 1964 (Nachdruck der Ausgabe Stuttgart 1873), S. 3–16 (im Folgenden werden Sachs’ Werke nach dieser Ausgabe als KG mit Band- und Seitenangabe zitiert). 25 Vgl. dazu etwa Maria E. Müller, Der Poet der Moralität. Untersuchungen zu Hans Sachs, Bern u. a. 1985 (Arbeiten zur Mittleren Deutschen Literatur Bd. 15), S. 34–42; Franz Otten, „Mit hilff gottes zw tichten…got zw lob vnd zw auspreittung seines heilsamen wort“. Untersuchungen zur Reformationsdichtung des Hans Sachs, Göppingen 1993 (Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik Bd. 587).

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lateinischen Übersetzungen auf dem europäischen Buchmarkt kursierten und in humanistischen Kreisen rasch zum bevorzugten Modell satirisch-zeitkritischer Dialogliteratur avancierten.26 Situiert ist die Handlung des Spiels in der Unterwelt: Der Fährmann „Caron“ soll acht Seelen über einen Fluss „für gericht“ transportieren. Vom „gott Mercurio“ aufgefordert, müssen die Seelen alles, was noch an Diesseitigem an ihnen haftet, zurücklassen, um anschließend „[n]acket und bloß, gantz ler und rein“ das Boot zu betreten. Der Reihe nach rekapitulieren sie ihr vergangenes Leben und legen ihren weltlichen Besitz ab. Beim siebten Passagier, einem „Philosophus“, muss nachgeholfen werden: Im Auftrag Merkurs hackt ihm Menippus, der das Schiff als erster bestiegen hatte, mit einem Beil den langen Bart ab. Der letzte Mitreisende, „Epicurus“, verzögert durch seine notorische Trunkenheit erneut den Aufbruch. Nach kurzer Fahrt verlassen die Seelen das Schiff und treten den Weg zum „hellisch gericht“ an, das jedoch nicht mehr Teil des Bühnengeschehens ist. Wie für sein frühes Dramenwerk insgesamt, so hat Sachs vermutlich auch in diesem Fall nach einer lateinischen Vorlage gearbeitet:27 Die bislang bekannten deutschen Übersetzungen des dem Caron zugrunde liegenden Totengesprächs sind erst nach der Tragedi entstanden.28 Damit schlüpft Sachs auch im Hinblick auf Lukian in die für seine Dramenproduktion typische Rolle eines „exemplarischen Leser[s]“29, der einem nicht humanistisch gebildeten, volkssprachigen 26 Es handelt sich um das sog. Scaphidium, das 20. Totengespräch nach Zählung Macleods. Vgl. Luciani Opera, hg. v. Matthew D. Macleod, Bd. 4, Oxford 1987, S. 196–204. Zur humanistischen Lukian-Rezeption im 15. und 16. Jh. vgl. David Marsh, Lucian and the Latins. Humor and Humanism in the Early Renaissance, Ann Arbor 1998; Nicola Graap, Fénélon: dialogues des morts composé pour l’éducation d’un prince. Studien zu Fénélons Totengesprächen im Traditionszusammenhang, Hamburg 2001 (Ars rhetorica Bd. 10), S. 17–57; Manuel Baumbach, Lukian in Deutschland. Eine forschungs- und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Analyse vom Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart, München 2002 (Beihefte zu Poetica Bd. 25), S. 27–51; Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, „Art. Lukian“, in Der Neue Pauly, Supplemente Bd. 7: Die Rezeption der antiken Literatur, hg. v. Christine Walde, Stuttgart/Weimar 2010, Sp. 465–474. 27 Nesselrath, Lukian (s. Anm. 26), Sp. 470, geht davon aus, dass Sachs die lateinische Fassung des Vitus Werler (Erstdruck Leipzig 1513) benutzt hat. Sachs’ Lateinkenntnisse sind in der Forschung umstritten. Vgl. dazu zuletzt Christine Baro, Der Narr als Joker. Figurationen und Funktionen des Narren bei Hans Sachs und Jakob Ayrer, Trier 2011, S. 57f. 28 Laut Nesselrath, Lukian (s. Anm. 26), Sp. 470, erscheint 1536 die erste deutschsprachige Übersetzung des Scaphidium durch Johann Neuber. Vgl. dagegen die Angaben bei FranzJosef Worstbrock, Deutsche Antikerezeption 1450–1550. Verzeichnis der deutschen Übersetzungen antiker Autoren. Mit einer Bibliographie der Übersetzer, Boppard 1976, S. 106 (erste deutschsprachige Fassung um 1540/44). 29 Cornelia Epping-Jäger, Die Inszenierung der Schrift. Der Literalisierungsprozeß und die Entstehungsgeschichte des Dramas, Stuttgart 1996, S. 385; zur Semioralität des Sachs’schen Publikums vgl. ebd., S. 410–431. Sachs hat sich in zahlreichen weiteren Spruchgedichten auf Schriften Lukians bezogen. Vgl. dazu Wilhelm Abele, Die antiken Quellen des Hans Sachs, Teil II, Cannstatt 1899, S. 70–74.

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und vielfach noch semioralen Publikum antike Skripturalität vermittelt. Allerdings greift er mit Lukian einen antiken Autor auf, den gerade die Reformatoren für theologisch äußerst fragwürdig hielten: Luther etwa ging so weit, ihn im Streit mit Erasmus „zu einem gefährlichen Atheisten“30 zu erklären. Problematisch erscheinen Lukians Dialogi mortuorum im christlichen Kontext schon aus darstellungspraktischen Gründen: Das heidnische Totenreich als Gesprächsort gerät samt seinem mythologischen Personal zwangsläufig mit den Jenseitsvorstellungen der christlichen Rezipienten in Konflikt.31 Differenzen zwischen Hades auf der einen und Hölle, Himmel oder Fegefeuer auf der anderen Seite zeigen sich dabei nicht nur in konzeptionellen Details, sondern auch und vor allem im ontologischen Status der jeweiligen Orte. Im markanten Unterschied zum christlichen Jenseits gilt die mythologische Unterwelt in der mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Kommentartradition als eine fabula, die von den heidnischen Dichtern, paradigmatisch von Vergil, zur Vermittlung anthropologischen, kosmologischen oder moralischen Wissens erfunden wurde und deshalb allegorisch zu deuten ist.32 Als „metaphorische[s] Konzept, das sich bereits seit der Spätantike von der Annahme eines geographischen Unterweltortes gelöst hatte“,33 birgt das heidnische Jenseits daher, sobald es zur Veranschaulichung der christlichen Hölle in Anspruch genommen wird, die Gefahr, den christlichen Strafort seiner „eschatologischen Aktualität“ zu berauben und „zu einem bloßen Bild“ zu degradieren.34 Dieses Spannungsverhältnis zwischen antik-mythologischer und christlichheilsgeschichtlicher Topik lässt sich auch in Sachs’ Caron beobachten. Das Spiel wird von einem „herolt“ eröffnet, der die Zuschauer begrüßt, auf die Quelle verweist und anschließend das argumentum referiert:35 In freundtschafft, gunst, euch zu gefallen, / Kumb wir, ein tragedi zu halten, / Die hat gemachet bei den alten / Lucianus, der groß poet […] Und sagt von einem, heyst 30 Graap, Fénélon (s. Anm. 26), S. 21. Auch Jacob Micyllus sah sich 1538 in seiner lateinischen Lukian-Ausgabe gezwungen, auf den Vorwurf des Atheismus einzugehen. Vgl. Die Deutschen Humanisten. Dokumente zur Überlieferung der antiken und mittelalterlichen Literatur in der Frühen Neuzeit. Abt. I, Bd. 3, hg. u. bearb. von Wilhelm Kühlmann/Volker Hartmann/ Susann El Kholi/Björn Spiekermann, Turnhout 2010 (Europa Humanistica Bd. 9), S. 48. 31 Vgl. dazu Petra Korte, „Christlicher Hades und vergilisches Fegefeuer. Die antike Unterwelt in der mittelalterlichen Rezeption“, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 42 (2009): S. 271–306. 32 Vgl. dazu konzis Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant. The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance, Baltimore 1970, S. 135–162. 33 Korte, Christlicher Hades (s. Anm. 31), S. 306. 34 Vgl. Korte, Christlicher Hades (s. Anm. 31), S. 305. Korte verweist (ebd.) darauf, dass die „Grenze zwischen allegorischer Unterwelt und christlicher Hölle“ deshalb in der mittelalterlichen Tradition „streng beachtet“ werde. 35 Vgl. zu dieser für Sachs’ Dramen typischen Prologstruktur Brigitte Stuplich, Zur Dramentechnik des Hans Sachs, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1998 (Arbeiten und Editionen zur Mittleren Deutschen Literatur, NF Bd. 5), S. 101–106.

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Caron, / Der sei ein schiffman in der hel, / Und wann hinunter komb ein seel, / So für er sie in einem schiff / Uber etliche wasser tieff / Hin in die hell für das gericht. / Nun werd ir hie zu angesicht / Den selben schiffman sehen do / Mit sampt dem gott Mercurio, / Darbey acht abgeschieden seel. / Die sol er füren in die heel, / Das sie da kommen für gericht.36

Lenkt die Exposition die Aufmerksamkeit des Publikums einerseits auf die historische Autorität der Vorlage und die Fiktionalität der mythologischen Handlung sowie ihre Herkunft aus der poetischen Literaturtradition des Altertums,37 so bleibt andererseits der Raum, in dem das fiktionale Geschehen lokalisiert sein soll, in jeglicher Hinsicht ambivalent: Zentrale topographische Fixpunkte der Handlung, „die heel“ und „das gericht“, lassen sich, ebenso wie die auftretenden „seel“, sowohl pagan, als Teile der antik-mythologischen inventio Lukians, als auch christlich, vor dem Hintergrund des biblisch und apokryph überlieferten, religiösen Wissens von Jenseits und Endzeit verstehen.38 Ähnliches gilt für das Personal der Unterwelt: Obwohl „Caron“ und der „gott Mercurio“ durch ihre Namen als Angehörige der heidnisch-mythologischen Sphäre und damit als poetische Charaktere erkennbar sind, verzichtet Sachs weitgehend darauf, ihre semantischen Konnotationen bzw. ihr allegorisches Potential eigens zu aktualisieren.39 Insbesondere die Figur Merkurs bleibt unkommentiert.40 Die Funktion der mythologischen Gestalten erschließt sich dem Publikum daher in erster Linie aus der Handlungskonfiguration des Dramas, die auf diese Weise ins Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit rückt. An dieser Handlungskonfiguration hat Sachs – anders, als es auf den ersten, flüchtigen Blick scheinen mag – gegenüber seiner Vorlage zahlreiche Änderungen formaler und inhaltlicher Art vorgenommen. Bedeutsam ist dabei vor allem die Substitution des bei Lukian als letzter Passagier auftretenden Rhetors durch 36 KG, Bd. 7, S. 3. 37 Auch der Konjunktiv der Inhaltsangabe macht deutlich, dass es sich um ein Geschehen im „Modus des Als-Ob“ handelt. Vgl. dazu Wolfgang Iser, Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre. Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie, Frankfurt a. M. 1993, S. 37ff. Zur Funktion des Prologs als Ort „metadramatische[r] Reflexion“ bei Sachs vgl. ferner Barbara Sasse, „Die neue Wirklichkeit des Spiels. Zu den Anfängen einer metadramatischen Reflexion bei Hans Sachs (1527–1536)“, A. I. O. N., Sezione Germanica, N. S. 15 (2005), S. 131–172. 38 Vgl. dazu neuerdings konzis Hans-Werner Goetz, Gott und die Welt. Religiöse Vorstellungen des frühen und hohen Mittelalters. Teil I, Bd. 2, Berlin 2012 (Orbis mediaevalis Bd. 13,2), S. 111–131. 39 Fremd war Sachs die Bedeutungsfunktion mythologischer dramatis personae, wie sie insbesondere auch das Humanistendrama kennt, nicht. Vgl. etwa die ein Jahr vor dem Caron entstandene Comedia, darin die göttin Pallas die tugend und die göttin Venus die wollust verficht (KG, Bd. 3, S. 3–27). 40 Das mythologische Amt des Psychopompos, das bei Lukian vorausgesetzt ist, wird im frühneuhochdeutschen Text nicht expliziert. „Caron“ dagegen tritt bereits im Prolog als „schiffman in der hel“ auf.

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die Figur des „Epicurus“.41 Nicht minder folgenreich ist die Tatsache, dass Sachs den dramatischen Modus des Lukianschen Totengesprächs aufgegriffen, ihm eine explizit theatrale Struktur gegeben und damit zugleich ein verändertes Rezeptionsverhalten einkalkuliert hat. Er bringt den Dialog in die traditionelle Form des Reihenspiels, wie sie besonders prominent das frühe Nürnberger Fastnachtspiel kennt und wie sie zugleich Assoziationen an die Darstellungsmodi von Ständedidaxe und Totentanz weckt:42 Die Figuren treten nacheinander einzeln vor, um sich und ihr weltliches Dasein im Dialog mit Merkur kurz zu charakterisieren; Interaktion bleibt auf wenige Szenen beschränkt. Sind damit für das Publikum bereits spezifische Rezeptionssignale gesetzt, so verleiht die Tatsache, dass die Handlung sich an einem als „hell“ bezeichneten Jenseitsort abspielt und das Schicksal von „acht abgeschieden seel“ darstellt, der Revue Züge einer Seelenfangszene, wie sie in einigen Oster- und Passionsspielen des späten Mittelalters – im eschatologisch bedeutsamen Moment zwischen Höllenfahrt und Auferstehung Christi – „einen beunruhigenden Blick auf das Leben in der Gegenwart der Zuschauer“ eröffnet.43 Ähnlich wie die Seelen der Verstorbenen dort in einer meist berufsständisch konkretisierten, zugleich als Sündenregister begreifbaren Typenreihe vom Teufel vorgeführt, mit ihren Verfehlungen konfrontiert und anschließend in die Hölle verbracht werden, rekapitulieren die Toten auch in der Sachs’schen Tragedi ihren auf Ruhm oder Macht, Reichtum oder Sinneslust ausgerichteten Lebenswandel und besteigen, nachdem sie all ihren weltlichen Besitz zurückgelassen haben, Charons Schiff, das sie zur „hell“ überführen soll: Carmelius, der buler, spricht: / So wiß, ich bin Carmelius / Ein diener der göttin Venus, / Wann ich auff erd bey meinen tagen / Hab schönen frawen lieb getragen. […] Eins mals kost mich zweyhundert pfund / Ein einiger freundtlicher kuß, / Der mich ewigklich frewen muß. / Mercurius spricht: / Ach wehe, du tregst zu schwer mit dir. / Laß ligen dein geschmuck und zier, / Dein federbusch und ketten klar, / Dein roten mund und gelbes har, / Dein kuß und alle dein bulbrieff / Und trit frey nacket in das schiff! 44

41 Vgl. dazu unten Anm. 45. In Vitus Werlers Scaphidium – Sachs’ mutmaßlicher lateinischer Quelle – tritt, wie auch schon bei Lukian, ein Orator (Rhetor) auf. 42 Vgl. Stuplich, Dramentechnik (s. Anm. 35), S. 61. Zur Form des Reihenspiels vgl. Eckehard Catholy, Fastnachtspiel, Stuttgart 1966 (Sammlung Metzler Bd. 56), S. 27–31. 43 Ursula Schulze, Geistliche Spiele im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. Von der liturgischen Feier zum Schauspiel. Eine Einführung, Berlin 2011, hier S. 62f. Beispiele bieten etwa das Wiener Passionsspiel sowie das Innsbrucker und das Redentiner Osterspiel. Vgl. auch Stuplich, Dramentechnik (s. Anm. 35), S. 61. Eine eigene Tradition des Geistlichen Spiels fehlt in Nürnberg. Als funktionales Äquivalent ließe sich möglicherweise das „von Folz begründete geistliche Fastnachtspiel“ begreifen. Vgl. Eckehard Simon, Die Anfänge des weltlichen deutschen Schauspiels 1370–1530. Untersuchung und Dokumentation, Tübingen 2003 (Münchner Texte und Untersuchungen Bd. 124), S. 315f. 44 KG, Bd. 7, S. 5.

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Wie sich hier bereits zeigt, dass die auftretenden Seelen nicht zuletzt als Repräsentanten moralisch fragwürdigen Verhaltens konzipiert sind, so wird im weiteren Verlauf des Spiels deutlich, dass Sachs dieses Verhalten zusätzlich mit Konnotationen der sieben christlichen Hauptsünden verknüpft: Während Carmelius als „diener der göttin Venus“ die Wollust verkörpert, werden die folgenden sechs Figuren mit Hochmut, Habgier, Zorn, Neid und Völlerei assoziiert.45 Ausgenommen bleibt lediglich der die Reihe anführende Menippus, der als einziger keinerlei Fehlverhalten zu bekennen hat und deshalb auch von Merkurs Ermahnungen verschont bleibt. Dagegen soll Epikur, mit dessen karnevaleskem Auftritt der Lasterkatalog schließt, quasi stellvertretend für seine Vorgänger und analog zu den Sündern der Seelenfangszenen eine spiegelbildliche Strafe für seine Vergehen erdulden: Menippus fordert, man möge ihm „bech und schwebel“ statt Wein in seinen Krug füllen.46

IV. Es ist vor allem dieser, auf die Figur Epikurs zugespitzte Rekurs auf die Typologie der sieben Todsünden, wie sie Sachs dem Lukianschen Strukturschema einschreibt, der das mythologische setting in der Bedeutung eines christlichen Strafortes, Charon und Merkur entsprechend in der Rolle höllischer Funktionäre exponiert und dem plot eine dezidiert eschatologische Semantik verleiht: So 45 Vgl. KG, Bd. 7, S. 6 (Mercurius zum König Lampichus: „Leg hin all dein kraft, sterck und macht, / Dein hochmut, ubermut und bracht“), S. 7 (Mercurius zum Athleten Damasias: „In hoffart bist auffblasen gantz“), S. 8 (Mercurius zum Reichen Craton: „Würff hin dein arglistigen mut, / Der geitzigklichen stelt nach gut!“), ebd. (Mercurius zum Soldaten Mico: „Leg hin dein raub, rachgirig mordt!“), S. 9 (Mercurius zum Philosophus: „Hat dieser unter seinem rock, / Neyd, haß und zanck, ein gantzes schock!“) und S. 12 (Mercurius zu Epicurus: „Leg hin dein schweren sewmagen!“). Insbesondere die Einführung der Figur Epikurs macht deutlich, dass Sachs die sieben negativ konnotierten Seelen tatsächlich in eine wenn auch latente Analogie zur Siebenzahl der Todsünden bringt: Anders als der Rhetor bei Lukian ist Epikur nicht Vertreter eines gesellschaftlichen Standes oder einer speziellen Berufsgruppe, sondern Repräsentant stände- und berufsübergreifender Sauf- und Fresslust. Zur Topik der Todsünden in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit vgl. Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins. An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept with Special Reference to Medieval Literature, East Lansing, Michigan 1952; Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, hg. v. Richard Newhauser/Susan J. Ridyard, Woodbridge 2012. 46 KG, Bd. 7, S. 13. In Lukians Totengespräch zitiert Menippus stattdessen die einschlägigen mythologischen Hades-Büßer Sisyphos, Tityos und Ixion, um auf die bevorstehenden Qualen zu verweisen. Bestraft wird in gewissem Sinne auch der „Philosophus“, dem Menippus in einer karnevalesken Szene den Bart abtrennt. Vgl. KG, Bd. 7, S. 10. Grundsätzlich zum karnevalesken Potential der Totengespräche im frühen 16. Jh. vgl. jetzt Bianca Hufnagel: „,Auß der Vrsach das Du ein Tyrann bist’. Die verkehrte Welt des lukianischen Totengespräches als politisches Kampfmittel bei Ulrich von Hutten“, Daphnis 41 (2012), S. 1–69.

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gesehen, scheint Sachs Lukians Dialog in erster Linie als Darstellung einer Reihe von Sündern zu begreifen, die „[f]ür das hellisch gericht […] kommen“ und dort das endgültige Urteil über Gut und Böse zu erwarten haben: „Unstraffbar bleiben wol die frommen, / Den bösen wirt ir lohn geben“.47 Überraschend nimmt sich unter dieser Perspektive dann allerdings die Anweisung aus, die der Herold dem Publikum abschließend im Epilog erteilt: Also habt ihr kurtz hie vernommen, / Wie die acht seel seind uberkommen […] Und wie die siben sind beschwert. / Bey den siben ein mensch gedenck, / Das er das sein gemüt nit henck / An das zergencklich hie auff erd, / Das nit sein seele werd beschwerdt, / Wann er muß nacket bloß darvon, / Gwalt, ehr und gut hinter im lon, / Gleich wie die sibn kommen daher. / Darumb das allerbeste wer, / Wir thetten, wie Menippus thet, / Der weng wollüst auff erden het, / Sonder auff tugent war geflissen / Und het ein sicher gut gewissen / Nach seinem todt in jenem leben. / Der sey euch hie zum beyspil geben! 48

Mag der explizite Verweis auf die Siebenzahl der Seelen, vor deren negativem Beispiel das Publikum gewarnt wird, noch einmal die Topik der sieben christlichen Kardinalsünden aufgreifen, so ist doch das moralisierende Fazit selbst keine Warnung davor, eine Todsünde zu begehen und damit – gemäß der gängigen Überzeugung mittelalterlicher Theologie – ewige Verdammnis zu riskieren, sofern nicht beizeiten durch fromme Praktiken wie Beichte, Almosen, Fasten und gute Werke Abhilfe geschaffen wird. Es beschränkt sich vielmehr auf ein pauschales memento mori und eine allgemeine Warnung vor der Weltverfallenheit: Die Rezipienten werden mit Blick auf sieben der acht Figuren aufgefordert, weltliche „[g]walt, ehr und gut“ angesichts ihrer Vergänglichkeit gering zu schätzen, das heißt, „gemüt“ und „seele“ möglichst von ihnen und ihren falschen Glücksversprechungen zu lösen. Entsprechend verkörpert der dem Publikum als positives „beyspil“ angetragene Menippus – in Lukians Dialog noch Repräsentant eines asketischen Kynismus und deshalb mit den entsprechenden Attributen, mit Ranzen, Tribon und Stab ausgestattet49 – nicht etwa eine dem Laster47 Vgl. KG, Bd. 7, S. 15. Explizit aktualisiert wird diese heilsgeschichtliche Deutung des Dialogs in der Holzschnitt-Illustration zur um 1542 gedruckten deutschsprachigen Übersetzung des Scaphidium durch Jakob Vielfeld (Multicampianus). Unter der Überschrift Das Todten Schiflein thront Christus als Weltenrichter über einer Topographie, die die bildliche Wiedergabe der in Lukians Totengespräch geschilderten Situation mit Darstellungskonventionen des christlichen Weltgerichts und der aus Mt 7,13–14 bekannten Metaphorik der zwei Wege verknüpft. Vgl. FINES BONORVM ET || MALORVM M. T. C. || Von der alten Phi=|| losophen Seligkait etc. Straßburg: Jakob Cammerlander um 1542 (VD 16 Nr. S 4719), unpaginiert [Bl. i3v]. 48 KG, Bd. 7, S. 15. 49 Zu diesen typischen Attributen des Kynikers in der Antike vgl. Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, „Art. Kynismus“, in Der Neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike, hg. v. Hubert Cancik/ Helmuth Schneider, Bd. 6, Stuttgart/Weimar 1999, Sp. 969–977, bes. Sp. 974f. Zur Rezeption des Kynismus in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit vgl. Niklaus Largier, Diogenes der Kyniker. Exempel, Erzählung, Geschichte in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit; mit einem Essay

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katalog Paroli bietende Liste guter Eigenschaften und frommer Verhaltensweisen, sondern soll sich lediglich durch einen maßvollen Umgang mit seinen „wollüst“ und das Bemühen um „tugent“ ausgezeichnet haben.50 Mit dieser, ganz auf der Linie reformatorischer Kritik an katholischer Werkheiligkeit und übertriebener mönchischer Askese51 liegenden Wendung verwandelt sich die eschatologische Demonstration einer die Seelen der Sünder – vor allem diejenigen der Todsünder – zu Recht ereilenden ewigen Höllenstrafe in ein Exempel mangelnder Kontrolle der im Glauben an die Gnade der Sündenvergebung potentiell gerechtfertigten christlichen Seelen über das weltliche Angebot an Macht, Reichtum, Ruhm und Sinneslust: In Menippus und seinen sieben Mitreisenden stehen einander nicht die benedicti und maledicti der Weltgerichtsspiele gegenüber,52 sondern in ihnen werden die zwei Seinsweisen des – reformatorischer Anthropologie zufolge – grundsätzlich als Sünder definierten Menschen, der homo spiritualis und der homo carnalis, gegeneinander ausgespielt. Was das Bühnengeschehen dem Publikum vor Augen führen soll, ist mithin nicht bloß generell der christlich-heilsgeschichtliche Topos des dereinst über alle Menschen ergehenden göttlichen Gerichts, sondern auch und speziell der reformatorisch-anthropologische Topos von innerem und äußerem Menschen:53 Während Epicurus und seine Genossen sich lediglich an menschlichen Werten und irdischen Genüssen orientieren, sich dieser Werte und Genüsse – dramaturgisch vertreten durch Kostüme und Requisiten – nur widerstrebend entledigen und auf diese Weise deutlich machen, dass sie „unter der Macht des Fleisches“ stehen, vertritt Menippus die Position desjenigen, der sich coram Deo als Sünder erkannt, „als ganzer unter den Maßstab Gottes“ gestellt und ent-

50

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zur Figur des Diogenes zwischen Kynismus, Narrentum und postmoderner Kritik, Tübingen 1997 (Frühe Neuzeit Bd. 36). Größere Plausibilität gewinnt diese Interpretation der Figur, wie sie der Herold im Epilog präsentiert, durch einen didaktischen Zweizeiler, den Sachs den Worten des Menippus’ bei seinem ersten Auftritt anfügt: „Reichtumb und hoffart ich nicht acht, / Allein auff tugend hab ich tracht.“ KG, Bd. 7, S. 5. Gegen eine als innerweltlicher Heilsweg missverstandene asketische Praxis wendet sich Luther bereits 1520 in seiner Schrift Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen: „Aber die selben werck [i. e. Fasten, Schlafentzug, Arbeit; FJN] muessen nit geschehn ynn der meynung, das da durch der mensch frum werd fur gott, denn die falsch meynung kan der glaub nit leyden, der allein ist und sein muß die frumkeyt fur gott, sondernn nur yn der meynung, das der leyp gehorsam werde und gereynigt von seynen bosen luesten, und das aug nur sehe auff die bosen luesten, sie auß zu treyben, Denn die weyl die seel durch den glauben reyn ist und gott liebet, wolt sie gern, das auch also alle ding reyn weren, zuvor yhr eygen leyp, und yderman gott mit yhr liebt und lobt.“ WA, Bd. 7, S. 30f. Vgl. Schulze, Geistliche Spiele (s. Anm. 43), S. 164f. Vgl. dazu Karl-Heinz Zur Mühlen, „Innerer und äußerer Mensch. Eine theologische Grundunterscheidung bei Martin Luther“, in Ders., Reformatorisches Profil. Studien zum Weg Martin Luthers und der Reformation, hg. v. Johannes Brosseder/Athina Lexutt, Göttingen 1995, S. 199–207.

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sprechend darum bemüht hat, sein leibliches Dasein zu disziplinieren.54 Und wie die kreatürliche Existenz sehr zum Leidwesen der anderen Seelen im Gespräch mit Merkur als das Grundübel entlarvt wird, das sie nach reformatorischem Selbstverständnis durch die Erbsünde ist, so verfügt Menippus über das „sicher gut gewissen“55 desjenigen, der sich, sowohl im Wissen um seine prinzipielle Schuldverfallenheit als auch im Glauben an die gnadenvolle Überwindung dieser Schuld durch Christus, zu einem christlich-gottgefälligen, sprich, Kontrolle über die Ansprüche und Verlockungen des äußeren Menschen ausübenden Leben hat anleiten lassen.56 Es ist dieser abschließende Verweis auf die Instanz des Gewissens, mit dem der Herold sich direkt an das Publikum wendet, der der eschatologischen und der moraldidaktischen Dimension von Sachs’ Tragedi schließlich die dezidiert reformatorische „Aufforderung zu einer letztverbindlichen Umstellung der eigenen Selbstdeutung“57 hinzufügen soll: Was Menippus zu einem guten „beyspil“ für die Rezipienten macht, ist nicht nur sein – vorgeblich – tugendhaftes Verhalten, sondern die oben schon erwähnte Tatsache, dass er die „letzte Bestimmtheit seines Selbstverständnisses“58 im Unterschied zu den übrigen sieben Dramenfiguren nicht in sich selbst und in der Welt, sondern bereits zu Lebzeiten in seinem Sein vor Gott – „[n]acket und bloß, gantz ler und rein“59 – gefunden hat. Damit allerdings zeigt sich auch das antik-mythologische setting in anderem Licht: Während es vor allem die strukturelle Reminiszenz an eine Reihe von sieben (Tod)Sündern ist, die der mythologischen Unterwelt die eschatologische Semantik des christlichen Strafortes einschreibt, repräsentiert dieser Jenseitsort mit Blick auf die positiv gewertete Figur des Menippus und im Kriterium reformatorischer Anthropologie eher allgemein das transzendente Forum, die höhere Sphäre, deren Aufgabe nicht in der letztgültigen Korrektur irdischer Ungerechtigkeit liegt, sondern vor der sich ein allein an menschlichen Werten 54 Vgl. Zur Mühlen, Innerer und äußerer Mensch (s. Anm. 53), S. 201f. Tatsächlich ist Menippus die einzige Bühnenfigur, die ihr – ohnehin geringes – Hab und Gut freiwillig, ohne vorhergehende Aufforderung durch Merkur, ablegt: „Schaw, Mercuri! mit meiner handt / Hab ich ins wasser gworffen nein / Den stab und auch die daschen mein.“ KG, Bd. 7, S. 5. 55 KG, Bd. 7, S. 15. 56 In Luthers theologischer Anthropologie ist das Gewissen Organ gleichermaßen der „inneren Erfahrung der Sündhaftigkeit“ und der „Erfahrung der rettenden Tat Gottes am Menschen“. Vgl. Friedhelm Krüger, „Art. Gewissen III. Mittelalter und Reformation“, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, hg. v. Gerhard Müller u. a., Bd. 13, Berlin/New York 1984, S. 219–225, hier S. 222 und 223. 57 Dietrich Korsch, Martin Luther. Eine Einführung, überarbeitete Auflage, 2Tübingen 2007 [1997], S. 40. 58 Korsch, Luther (s. Anm. 57), S. 41. 59 KG, Bd. 7, S. 4. Es ist diese „Selbstbehauptung als Selbstentäußerung“, die Sachs’ Texte in unzähligen Varianten immer wieder durchspielen. Vgl. Müller, Poet der Moralität (s. Anm. 25), S. 232–239.

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orientiertes und auf irdische Glückseligkeit ausgerichtetes Leben generell als ebenso vorübergehend wie selbstbezüglich erweist. Der Schauplatz und sein mythologisches Personal werden in Sachs’ Tragedi mithin nicht nur spezifisch christlich, sondern dezidiert reformatorisch funktionalisiert: Dienen sie einerseits dank ihrer Assoziationsfähigkeit an christlich-eschatologische Vorstellungen von Hölle und Weltgericht dazu, das moralisch verwerfliche Verhalten sieben exemplarischer Figuren speziell als Sünde bloßzustellen und eine entsprechende Bestrafung zu antizipieren, so werden der extramundane Raum und die extramundanen Figuren der antik-mythologischen Tradition andererseits zur Vergegenwärtigung jenes göttlichen Maßstabs genutzt, dem der christliche Mensch laut lutherischer Anthropologie nicht in der kirchlichen Autorität, sondern in seinem eigenen Gewissen begegnet.

IV. Subjectivity, Freedom of Will and Faith: Ethical Questions

Svein Aage Christoffersen

Subjectivity and Self-Understanding – Some Considerations Concerning Luther and Caravaggio

Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is often used as a symbol of the new understanding of man which emerges in the Renaissance and paves the way to modernity. From this time on, man has grasped the power to define his living space and the whole universe according to his own power of reasoning. Man is the measure of all things, and by understanding this he is the master of the universe. There is much to be said about this triumphant reception of Leonardo’s drawing, but in the following I will concentrate on just one aspect: the idea that man is transparent to himself due to his own ability to reason. This self-transparency, then, is the key to man’s universal power. Because man is a reasonable being, he is able to understand himself. As a consequence, he is able to master the universe. But how reasonable is this idea, and to what extent is the history of modernity a confirmation of it? Is man’s self-understanding from the Renaissance onwards the immoveable point from which the universe may be conquered, or is modernity, on the contrary, a story of human subjectivity in a state of flux? May not the triumphant reception of Leonardo’s drawing be just narcissism, a story of modernity helplessly in love with itself ? Almost as a response to these questions, Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo (1610) gives voice to the ambiguity of man’s self-understanding at the threshold of modernity. When Orpheus manages to make his way into Hades in order to rescue his beloved Eurydice, the Chorus of infernal spirits praises man for his ability to conquer any challenges that are put before him: Man undertakes no enterprise in vain, And Nature can no longer protect herself from him. On the unpredictable plain He ploughed the rolling fields, and scattered seed, With his own labor, reaping golden harvests. Hence, that memory Of such glory might live on, Fame loosed her tongue to sing of him,

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Of how he harnessed the ocean with fragile ships Defying the fury of the south wind and the north.1

This chorus is almost like a subtext to Leonardo’s drawing. But things were not and are not that simple, not in the real world and not in the opera. Contrary to the myth, Orpheus in Monteverdi’s opera does not manage to sing his way into the Underworld. Charon, who protects the borders between the world of the living and Hades, does not surrender to Orpheus’ singing, but he falls asleep letting Orpheus sneak past him. Later, Orpheus fails to take Eurydice with him back to the world of the living. His enterprise was, in fact, in vain. The infernal spirits’ praise of man’s ingenuity may very well correspond to the way in which Orpheus understands himself, but this understanding proves to be wrong. The story of Orpheus is the story of a man with no real understanding of himself, and in his overwhelming self-esteem, he is just a narcissist. The triumphant reception of Leonardo’s drawing may indeed be inverted. Thus, modernity is the story of how man’s self-understanding is time and again brought into play and questioned. It is the story of an unruly, destabilized subject constantly searching in vain for a firm stand from which it is possible to generate a reasonable and reliable self-understanding. This destabilized subject is found not just in Monteverdi’s opera, but in theology and in art as well. In the following, I will mention just two examples – Martin Luther and Caravaggio. Both are at work at the threshold of modernity, and both may be taken as signs of what is to come. The point is neither that Caravaggio is a crypto-Lutheran in his paintings, nor that Luther and Caravaggio are parts of the same theological movement. What they have in common is that they are aware in different ways of a human subject without a firm grounding. Let us first very briefly consider some main points in Luther’s Disputatio de Homine from 1536.2 In his Disputatio de Homine, Luther starts off with the philosophical definition of man as ‘animal rationale, sensitivum, corporeum’ (thesis 1). Note, however, that in this context philosophy is not understood as an academic profession, but as the quintessence of human wisdom, i. e. the core of sapientia humana. Luther does not object to the philosophical definition of man. On the contrary, he affirms it. Man is, in fact, a rational animal, and his rationality is what distinguishes him from other animals. Luther is in no way constrained when he 1 Alessandro striggio, L’Orfeo, libretto with translation by Avril Bardoni, booklet for L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi. Orch. New London Consort. Perf. John Mark Ainsley, Catherine Bott. Cond. Philip Pickett. Decca L’Oiseau-Lyre 1992, pp. 123–125. 2 Cf. Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien vol. 2, Disputatio de Homine, part 1, Text und Traditionshintergrund, Tübingen 1977; part 2, Die philosophische Definition des Menschen. Kommentar zu These 1–19, Tübingen1982; part 3, Die theologische Definition des Menschen. Kommentar zu These 20–40, Tübingen 1989.

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starts to praise man’s ability to reason. Reason is both an inventor and mentor, ‘inventrix et gubernatrix,’ of all the arts, wisdom, power, virtue and glory of man in this world (thesis 5), and Luther even refers to the Bible as a confirmation of this praise (thesis 7–9). Reason, however, is something that philosophy knows only a posteriori, from experience. From this point of view, it is not possible to bring to light either man’s material cause (thesis 12) or the forces which are driving him or the ultimate goal of his life (theses 13–14). And for every one of us it is the case that we do not have full and unerring control either over counsel or thought, but we are subject to error and deception (thesis 18). In short, from the point of view of philosophy, man has no real understanding of himself, either as body or as soul. Man’s understanding is incomplete, fragmentary and slippery (thesis 19). When Luther then moves on to the theological definition of man, one gets the impression initially that theology has all the answers to the philosophical questions. This, however, proves to be wrong. Indeed, Luther states that from the fullness of its wisdom, theology defines man as whole and perfect (thesis 20). But reason is not replaced by faith, and philosophy is not replaced by theology. What theology in fact does is to explain why man cannot understand himself. It is because man is subject to sin, death and the devil (thesis 25). In response to this situation, theology defines man as justified by faith alone (thesis 32). This means that man is not determined by his own work. Man is not just what he does by virtue of his ability to reason; he is something else and something more. Basically man is what he receives by grace. Therefore man, being body and soul, is just matter to God – pura materia. God bestows upon him an eschatological dimension (thesis 35). From one point of view, this answer is strangely at odds with the philosophical questions concerning the definition of man. At the same time, the response involves another, more basic question: how do we relate to our own wisdom and rationality? This leads to the underlying presupposition that in order to know who we are, we need to know where we are. From this point of view, there is an obvious connection between Luther’s Disputatio de homine in 1536 and his Heidelberg disputatio in 1518. When Luther in 1518 condemns the theologians of glory, it is because they do not know where they are. They are speaking as if they were in heaven, while they in fact are on earth, at the foot of the cross. Therefore, the person who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly ‘perceptible in that which has actually happened’ does not deserve to be called a theologian (thesis 19). But only he who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross deserves to be called a theologian (thesis 20). By placing man on earth, at the foot of the cross and not in heaven, Luther rejects the utopian aspiration in the philosophical definition of man. The phil-

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osophical definition of man is not repudiated, but made provisional and temporary. In fact, the philosophical definition of man is already written down in thesis 3, when Luther states that the philosophical definition of man only counts for man in his mortality. The fact that the philosophical definition of man is made relative may be taken as a philosophical failure. But from a theological perspective, this failure corresponds to a more profound understanding of man’s place on earth based not on his own achievements but on grace. Hence, man’s appropriate attitude towards himself is not Orpheus’ soaring self-esteem, or despair when his enterprises fail, but humility. This is Luther’s answer to man’s search for his own identity: humility. In short, both from a philosophical and theological point of view, the existence of man is destabilized in Luther’s Disputatio de homine, and one might say that from now on, man’s understanding of himself is in a constant state of flux. This flux or instability is in an interesting way visualized in some of Caravaggio’s paintings as a specific kind of self-awareness and self-reflectivity. It was not just the genre of portraiture which came to flourish in Renaissance art. A specific version of this genre was also invented and developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: the self-portrait.3 This invention has to do with a new understanding of art and the social status of the artist, and Caravaggio was of course a prominent participant in this development. However, self-awareness and self-reflection take a peculiar turn in his paintings, and this turn or twist is well worth some considerations. In spite of the popularity of self-portraiture in this period, Caravaggio did not make portraits of himself in the conventional understanding of the genre. Quite the contrary, there are no straightforward self-portraits in Caravaggio’s oeuvre. And still he is present in his paintings in at least two different but nevertheless inter-connected ways. Firstly, it is striking how Caravaggio’s own existential experiences are brought into play in his paintings in a way which points towards the 19th and 20th centuries. As an example, we may compare two versions of the same biblical episode, the Emmaus story. Both paintings depict the moment in which the resurrected Jesus reveals himself to two of his disciples, only to promptly vanish from their sight. In the first version painted in 1601 when Caravaggio was a rising star in the art world of Rome, the colors are bright, the table is covered with food, the gestures are almost theatrical, and Jesus is depicted as a well-nurtured young man. There is almost a triumphant atmosphere to the painting as a whole, analogous to Caravaggio’s standing in Rome, where he was the master of art, revealing his pictures to a public struck by shock and awe. 3 Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture, London 1998, p. 1.

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In the second version (see p. 560 for illustration), painted in 1606, Jesus is older, the expansive theatrical gestures have become understated and natural, the shadows are darkened and the colors muted although still saturated. The table is beggarly, the food simple and Jesus himself seems dubious about the future, perhaps considering the state of his disciples who are to continue his work. There are many reasons for the difference between these pictures, but one of them corresponds to what has happened to Caravaggio himself. He has killed a man; he is on the run with a prize on his head and he is hiding from his enemies. His own life is not triumphant any more, quite the contrary. He has good reasons for being gloomy, and reflection or even humility seems to be a more appropriate attitude than pride. Caravaggio has, however, painted himself into his pictures in an even more explicit way. He was famous, but he was also blamed for using live models, and in several of his works we are able to distinguish his own facial traits in one of the actors. This is the second way in which he is present in his pictures, and it is this presence I want to consider in the following. The most famous and characteristic work revealing how Caravaggio paints himself into his own pictures is of course Sick Bacchus (1593–94), commonly known as Self-Portrait as Bacchus. This painting is characteristic of the way Caravaggio is always present as someone or something other than a painter. In his exciting book, The Moment of Caravaggio (2010), Michael Fried identifies and discusses several of these pictures from the point of view of the dialectic between immersion and specularity. His thesis is that Caravaggio in several of these pictures of himself as someone else still is present as a painter in disguise. I have no intention of contradicting Fried on this point. However, my aim is not to see through these disguises in order to disclose the painter behind them, but to concentrate on the way in which Caravaggio appears in disguise. What happens if we take his disguises at face value? There are at least five paintings worth considering from this point of view, in which Caravaggio has imposed his own facial features on one of the persons. Let us take a brief look at them. The first one is The Martyrdom of St Matthew (1599–1600, see p. 561 for illustration), located in the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. The story is not found in the New Testament, but according to tradition, the saint was killed on the orders of the king of Ethiopia while celebrating Mass at the altar. Cardinal Contarelli, who had died several decades earlier, had laid down very explicitly what was to be shown: the saint being murdered by a soldier sent by the wicked king, some suitable architecture and crowds of onlookers showing appropriate emotions. What Caravaggio has depicted is the murderer’s moment. He has thrown St. Matthew, a bearded old man, to the ground. Whilst his victim helplessly props

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himself up on the ground, the murderer holds him still for the death blow, while an angel extends a martyr’s palm-leaf to the saint’s open hand. However, the most interesting thing from our point of view is the man who flees head over heels in the background, bearing an unmistakable resemblance to Caravaggio himself. At this time, Caravaggio was already known as a hothead, bearing weapons illegally, and as one who did not step back from a fight. He is perhaps trying to suggest a more pacifist impression of himself, but if we put this biographical aspect aside, the man in the picture is just running away, presumably in order to save his own life. Mathew is a saint, but the fleeing man is not, and if this implies risking one’s life, he does not want to be one either. However, he cannot cease to look or stare at the event. His body is running one way, but his head is turned in the opposite direction. He is spellbound by the criminal event, or absorbed in it. As the painter of this picture, Caravaggio is of course standing outside the representation, looking at the murder he is depicting, but his gaze is duplicated in the painting itself. And as Fried has noticed, it is difficult to precisely interpret his facial expression.4 Is he looking back with dismay, or bitterness, or regret? Be that as it may, Caravaggio has explicitly implicated himself as being immersed in the violent event he is painting. The next work is The Taking of Christ (see p. 562 for illustration), assumed to have been painted in 1602. The painting had been considered lost until recently, but was rediscovered in Dublin in 1990 and is now housed in the National Gallery in Dublin. Caravaggio has captured the very moment in which Judas Iscariot greets Jesus with a kiss letting the soldiers know who should be captured. At the far left, a man, presumably St John, is fleeing; his arms are raised, his mouth is open in a gasp, his cloak is flying and being snatched back by a soldier. At the far right, a man raises a lantern in order for him and us to see what is happening. The man with the lantern is obviously Caravaggio. Once again we are dealing with a self-portrait. The contrast between Caravaggio and St John is obvious. While St John recognizes the betrayal as a blatant injustice, Caravaggio does not seem to be offended at all by the course of events. This time he is not running away, but he is not taking part in the horrendous event either. He is just a spectator, trying to get every detail as clearly as possible. Or perhaps he is helping the Romans with his lantern, making it easier for them to see who to grasp? His participation is ambiguous, but Fried takes Caravaggio’s presence in the painting to express far more than curiosity,5 and I agree with this interpretation. Caravaggio’s gaze is

4 Michael Fried, The Moment of Caravaggio, Princeton 2010, p. 205. 5 Fried, The Moment (see n. 2), p. 217.

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concentrated and absorbed in the event which Fried calls the most aversive event in all Christian history.6 The self-portrait in The Taking of Christ is paralleled in what might have been Caravaggio’s last painting, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (1610). The picture is sadly in a very poor state, but once again Caravaggio undoubtedly has painted himself witnessing the murderer’s moment. Caravaggio is stretching his neck and is perhaps on his toes as well, in order to take into his eyes the very moment when the deadly arrow pierces the saint’s body. The fourth picture I want to take into consideration is David with the Head of Goliath (1610?), housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Caravaggio has painted this motif several times, but this is the only version in which he beyond doubt has depicted himself as Goliath. At the time when the picture was painted, Caravaggio had fled from Rome in order to escape the price that was put on his head, and perhaps the picture was meant for the papal court as a kind of painted petition for pardon, saying ‘All right, here is my head. Be satisfied’. Once again we encounter a self-portrait. However, this picture in fact may be a double self-portrait. David has often been identified as Caravaggio’s studio assistant in Rome with whom he was assumed to have had a sexual relationship. This identification, however, is just guesswork, since we do not have any picture of this boy. A more likely interpretation is that this is a double self-portrait. Caravaggio is painting himself as a young man beheading himself as an old man. Thus, the painting is portraying a man who has not played his cards particularly well. But again, be this as it may. The most striking features are the gazes. Goliath is depicted at the very moment of dying. One eye is still living, the other is glazed. David is not looking back on what he has done, but he is taking into his eyes the very moment of Goliath’s dying. The world around him has disappeared. He is wholly absorbed in the moment in which life sips away from the head of Goliath. The last picture I would like to mention is the The Raising of Lazarus (see p. 563 for illustration). It dates from 1609 and was made for the church of the Padri Crociferi, ‘The Cross-Bearing Fathers,’ in Messina. It is nowadays heavily restored. There is an obvious allusion to Michelangelo’s creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel with life returning to Lazarus’ right hand from the command of Christ, while the rest of his body is still in the power of death. But there is also a self-portrait in this picture. The man just above the hand of Jesus, facing Christ with praying hands and perhaps looking at the source of light, is commonly identified as Caravaggio. This identification initiates a very pious interpretation, enabling us to draw an edifying line from the man who runs away in the Martyrdom of St. Matthew to the man who now sees the light and prays.

6 Fried, The Moment (see n. 2), p. 214.

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This may be, however, an excessively pious interpretation, because another and perhaps better candidate for the identification of Caravaggio is suggested by Patrick Hunt.7 It is the individual holding Lazarus in the middle of his body with his bearded face almost entirely in shadow, yet fascinatingly lit by the light reflected off Lazarus. He is not looking at Jesus, but at Lazarus in the moment when he is coming back to life. The attitude of this person is, in fact, more in accordance with the other self-portraits we have seen, whereas the pious attitude of the first person is a bit at odds with the other self-portraits. This is, of course, not a conclusive argument, but it corresponds on the other hand with a kind of characteristic ambiguity connecting all these pictures taken together. And once again Caravaggio is wholly absorbed in the crucial part of the event he is painting. In all these pictures, Caravaggio is painting the decisive moment when life confronts death and death confronts life. Saint Matthew is in a state of dying, and the same goes for Goliath and Saint Ursula. Lazarus is in the transition from death to life, and Judas is giving Jesus the kiss of death. And Caravaggio is staring frightened, curious, sad and wonder-struck or perhaps expectant at these transitions between life and death. The main point is not a particular interpretation of these pictures, but the fact that Caravaggio himself is present in them in a very peculiar way. He has painted himself into these pictures in a way that makes him absorbed in the pictorial event. In doing so, he is placing himself in the middle of a struggle between life and death, and his signature technique of deep chiaroscuro is not just an effective way of modeling volumes, but it becomes a metaphor of life and death, being and nothingness.8 A common feature of these paintings is that Caravaggio is gazing. But he is not gazing out of the picture at the beholder. The beholder is not fixated in his subjectivity as the firm point from which he or she may look at the picture at a distance, in the painter’s shoes, so to speak. There is no such fixation in Caravaggio’s paintings. As someone who is looking at the picture, the beholder is immersed in the picture as well, captured by the painter’s gaze. Fried may certainly be right in finding a dialectic relation between immersion and specularity in these pictures in so far as Caravaggio in a certain way stands back and cuts himself off, while at the same time he is immersed in the paintings. But the consequence of this “specularity” is that the paintings leave us with a painter whose gazing eyes stay within the picture. There is no privileged position which makes it possible to review the struggle between life and death from the outside. 7 Patrick Hunt, “Caravaggio’s Raising of Lazarus (1609): New Observations,” Philolog (Stanford) June 2007 (http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/philolog/2007/06/caravaggios_raising_ of_lazarus.html). 8 John T. Spike, Caravaggio, London: Abbeville Press Publishers 2001, p. 197.

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There is no firm base of self-understanding. Man is, for reasons unknown, just thrown into a battle between life and death, and the only personal insight that is possible is – perhaps – humility.

Gregory B. Graybill

Dialectics as Catalyst: The Role of Aristotelian Logic in the Development of Melanchthon’s Doctrine of the Will

While Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, ‘out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” John 7:37–8 (NRSV)

Introduction Throughout his career, Philipp Melanchthon consistently taught that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ. But why do some people believe, and others do not? Is the human will bound, such that God alone chooses who will be saved, or is the will somehow free, such that individuals choose for themselves whether they will accept or reject Christ? In 1519, Melanchthon taught that the will was bound. By the early 1530s, he was teaching something different – a limited but genuine freedom to choose or reject Christ. My purpose here is not to examine this doctrinal transition in detail. I have done that elsewhere at some length.1 Instead, my aim is to consider a small piece in the puzzle. That is, how did Melanchthon’s use of rhetoric and dialectics affect his theological analysis of this great issue of predestination and free will? Though he rejected Aristotelian metaphysics (and all scholastic soteriologies that relied upon it),2 did Melanchthon in fact employ Aristotelian logic to affirm that one had to support either free will or predestination (but not both)? 1 Gregory Graybill, Evangelical Free Will: Philipp Melanchthon’s Doctrinal Journey on the Origins of Faith, Oxford 2010. Much of the content of this paper can also be found in my book, pp. 141–9, and is included here by permission. 2 ‘Theology and philosophy are to be differentiated; they may not be mixed together like broth in the kitchen.’ Declamatione de philosophia. 1536. In Corpus Reformatorum: Philippi Melanthonis opera quae supersunt omnia, eds. K. Bretschneider and H. Bindseil, 28 vols. Halle, 1834– 60, henceforth abbreviated as ‘CR’ 11:282. Hans Engelland, trans., Introduction to Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: 1555 Loci Communes, ed. and trans. Clyde L. Manschreck, New York 1965, p. xxxii.

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We start with the subject of Scripture, which served as the source for Melanchthon’s theological doctrine. Then we will see how Melanchthon viewed it as divine rhetoric, and thus open to careful exposition through the established Aristotelian rules of rhetoric and dialectics. One of those rules included the principle of non-contradiction. This then served as a unique feature as Melanchthon processed the systematic implications of key theological doctrines, including predestination and free will.

Scripture Alone – Divine Rhetoric Scripture was the key to all theology,3 and it had to be read and understood. Here Melanchthon always used the rhetorical methods of the humanists.4 Rhetoric and dialectics were bound together,5 and dialectics (even the dialectics of Aristotle) was to be utilized for theology.6 In 1547, Melanchthon wrote, ‘I […] profess the true uncorrupted and original dialectic, which we have received from Aristotle as well as from some of his reliable commentators […] I declare that it is very useful, not only in the forum and in trials, but also in the Church.’7 In fact, it was impossible to do theology without dialectics, for doctrine could only be formed through it.8 Moreover, as part of his rhetorical-dialectical focus, doctrine had to 3 He also valued the church fathers, but their significance was secondary. Peter Fraenkel, Testimonia Patrum: The Function of the Patristic Argument in the Theology of Philip Melanchthon, Geneva 1961, pp. 17–18. See also E.P. Meijering, Melanchthon and Patristic Thought: The Doctrines of Christ and Grace, the Trinity, and the Creation, Leiden 1983, p. 138. 4 H. Gerhards, Die Entwicklung des Problems der Willensfreiheit bei Philipp Melanchthon, Ph.D. dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms Universität 1955, pp. 25–26. 5 Oswald Bayer, Theologie, Handbuch systematischer Theologie; Bd. 1, Gütersloh 1994, p. 141. See also John R. Schneider, Philip Melanchthon’s Rhetorical Construal of Biblical Authority: Oratio Sacra, Lewiston, NY 1990, p. 68: ‘Melanchthon proposed that dialectic and rhetoric were two elements of the same substantive procedure rather than discrete disciplines, and that differences between them were strategic and secondary.’ In Melanchthon’s own words, this point can be found in his letter to Johannes Schwertfeger (in Wittenberg), dated March, 1520. Melanchthons Briefwechsel: Kritische und kommentierte Gesamtausgabe, ed. Heinz Scheible, Stuttgart 1977 –, p. 78. From here on abbreviated as ‘MBW’. 6 ‘Melanchthon stellt […] die aristotelische Rhetorick und Dialektik in den Dienst der Theologie.’ Gerhards, Die Entwicklung (see n. 4), p. 77. 7 Melanchthon (in Wittenberg), letter to Johannes Camerarius (in Königsberg), September 1, 1547. MBW p. 4696. This document was also the dedicatory letter to Melanchthon’s Erotemata Dialectices of 1547. The English translation in the main text above is that of Sachiko Kusukawa, in The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philipp Melanchthon, Cambridge 1995, p. 86. 8 Melanchthon, in an unused foreword (although, in some editions, it was used) to Melanchthon, Opera, dated July 27, 1541, wrote that in the Loci and in his commentaries on Romans he was bringing together Reformation doctrine in a dialectical method. MBW p. 2780. See Engelland, “Introduction,” (see n. 2), p. xxxii. See also Siegfried Wiedenhofer, Formal-

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be presented with eloquence9 and consistency.10 This was all possible, finally, because Scripture itself (especially Paul’s letters) adhered to the rules of rhetoric and dialectics.11 In his Scholia in Epistolam Pauli ad Colossenses of 1527, Melanchthon wrote, ‘It may perhaps seem inept of me to relate Paul’s prose to rhetorical conventions. But it is my opinion that the Pauline style of writing can be better understood if the series and dispositio of each section is taken into consideration.’12 Neuser aptly comments that humanistic dialectics and Pauline thought were closely bound together for Melanchthon,13 because Scripture was rhetoric. It was, in the words of Schneider, ‘sacred oration.’14 As a result, Melanchthon said that an unlearned theology was evil15 – meaning, a right understanding of the Word of the Lord required skill in rhetoric and dialectics.

Exegesis: The Importance of Rational Consistency Melanchthon wrote influential textbooks on dialectics and rhetoric.16 He defined dialectics as the art or the way of correct, exact and clear teaching, right definition and division, connecting true arguments, and annulling and refuting false or

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strukturen humanistischer und reformatischer Theologie bei Philipp Melanchthon, 2 vols., Bern 1976, p. 382. R. Stupperich, ed. Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl [Studienausgabe], 7 vols., Gütersloh 1951–75. From here on abbreviated as ‘MSA’. In MSA 3:43, Introduction to Encomium eloquentiae (1523). ‘There are nevertheless two of the highest effects of the art which not even clever men can achieve without knowledge or erudition. The first is to see the causes of certitude, that is, why the beliefs we embrace are fixed, and why what we construct needs to be consistent […]. What we construct needs to be consistent […]’ Trans. Kusukawa, Orations on Philosophy, 84. Melanchthon (in Wittenberg), letter to Johannes Camerarius (in Königsberg), September 1, 1547. MBW p. 4696. Schneider, Oratio sacra, (see n. 5), p. 119. Trans. D. C. Parker, in Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, Sheffield 1989, p. 32. [Col. 1.3]. MSA 4:214–15:32–34, 1. Wilhelm H. Neuser, Der Ansatz der Theologie Philipp Melanchthons, Neukirchen Kr. Moers 1957, p. 33. Schneider, Oratio sacra, (see n. 5), p. 157. See also Kenneth Hagen’s argument to the same effect in Luther’s Approach to Scripture as Seen in his ‘Commentaries’ on Galatians, 1519– 1538, Tübingen 1993, p. 10 and 38. Melanchthon Reader, trans. and ed. Ralph Keen. American University Studies Series, Series VII, Theology and Religion, vol 41, New York 1988, p. 67. Declamatione de philosophia (1536). ‘…tantum habeat mali inerudita theologia…’ MSA 3.91.6. De rhetorica (1519, not available in a modern edition), Compendiaria dialectices ratio (1520, CR 20:748–50), Institutiones rhetoricae (1521, not available in a modern edition), De dialectica (1528, CR 11:159–163), and Elementorum rhetorices (1531 [and revised in 1542], CR 13:413–506).

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badly coherent arguments.17 Melanchthon called dialectics ‘the art of arts, the science of sciences.’18 Even Luther praised Melanchthon’s work in dialectics, declaring, ‘Philipp has done in dialectics what nobody else has done in a thousand years. I knew dialectics before, but Philipp taught me to apply dialectics to the concrete. Nobody can repay Philipp for his work.’19 Dialectics was the spade by which Melanchthon dug for theological gold. Rhetoric went hand in hand with dialectics because an unconvincing presentation of truth spoiled whatever dialectical efforts had led to the discovery.20 For Melanchthon rhetoric and dialectics were inextricably intertwined. Schneider put forth that ‘what would distinguish Melanchthon’s rhetoric from all other models in his time (and perhaps in any time) is the thoroughly systematic integration of dialectics into it.’21 The two belonged together, and both placed a high value on the use of reason. In fact, Melanchthon saw the aggregate of rhetoric and dialectics as the height of reason, and (following Agricola), as philosophy in its most concentrated form.22 When it came to the actual exegesis of Scripture, Melanchthon rigorously applied the principles of rhetoric and dialectics – and vital to these were order, consistency, and the absence of contradiction. Doctrine had to be rational.23 17 ‘Dialectica est ars seu via, recte, ordine, et perspicue docendi, quod fit recte definiendo, dividendo, argumenta vera connectendo, et male cohaerentia seu false retexendo et refutando.’ Erotemata Dialectices. CR 13:513. See also Melanchthon (in Wittenberg), letter to Johannes Camerarius (in Königsberg), September 1, 1547. MBW p. 4875. 18 ‘Dialectica est ars artium, scientia scientiarum, ad omnium methodorum principia viam habens.’ CR 13:515. Erotemata Dialectices. 1547. 19 Tischrede. May 20, 1532, Luther’s Works: American Edition, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann, 55 vols., St. Louis/Philadelphia 1955–86, 54:156. ‘Philippus fecit, quod nullus fecit in mille annis in dialectica. Dialecticam hab ich gewust, aber Philippus hatt michs lernen appliciren ad rem. Philippo khan sein arbeit niemant bezalen.’ D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Tischreden, 6 vols., Weimar 1912–21, 2:127.23–26. 20 On the importance of rhetoric, see Melanchthon (in Wittenberg), letter to Leonhard Crispinius (in Homberk [Bezirk Kassel]), August 1, 1538. MBW 2072. 21 Schneider, Oratio sacra, (see n. 5), p. 149. See also John R. Schneider’s “The Hermeneutics of Commentary: Origins of Melanchthon’s Integration of Dialectic into Rhetoric,” in Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary, eds. Timothy J. Wengert and M. Patrick Graham, Sheffield 1997, pp. 20–47. Melanchthon’s rhetoric also differed from the rhetoric of Erasmus. See Manfred Hoffmann, “Rhetoric and Dialectic in Erasmus’s and Melanchthon’s Interpretation of John’s Gospel,” in Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary, ed. Timothy J. Wengert and M. Patrick Graham, Sheffield 1997, pp. 72–3. 22 John R. Schneider, “Melanchthon’s Rhetoric As a Context for Understanding His Theology,” in Melanchthon in Europe: His Work and Influence Beyond Wittenberg, ed. Karin Maag, Grand Rapids 1999, p. 150. Melanchthon stated this opinion before his arrival at Wittenberg, and in his inaugural address there (MSA 3:35–7). I concur with Schneider against Neuser that Melanchthon maintained this rhetorical theory throughout his life. 23 Alfons Brüls, Die Entwicklung der Gotteslehre beim jungen Melanchthon, 1518–1535, Untersuchungen zur Kirchengeschichte, Bielefeld 1975, p. 31.

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Melanchthon was known as the first Protestant systematizer for a reason. Stupperich states that Melanchthon drew conclusions from Scripture with greater consistency than Luther.24 According to Buzogany, one of Melanchthon’s favorite maxims came from Xenophon’s Oeconomicus: ‘If something lacks order, it is not worthy of respect, and is useless.’25 Maurer points out that Melanchthon had an aversion to paradox, and in that sense was more strongly traditional than Luther.26 Schneider views Melanchthon as focused on the logical operations of the intellect, seeking perfect logical coherence, and believing in the literal unity of Scripture.27 Kolb, too, notes ‘[…] the greater inclination [than Luther] on Melanchthon’s part to try out formulations that resolved the tension of the paradox of God’s and human responsibilities.’28 In Melanchthon’s own words, his many writings on rhetoric and dialectics stressed definition, order, and rational consistency. In 1536, Melanchthon wrote, ‘We may expect perfect doctrine from the greatest efforts of minds, from which some usefulness may accrue to the state and the church.’29 The purpose of dialectics was to ‘judge whether in teaching everything is consonant with everything else.’30 In 1546, Melanchthon favorably referenced Aristotle, noting that he had censured absurdity and emptiness in words. Melanchthon also endorsed a teaching of Euripides that ‘the clear is good,’ and ‘clarity is the sign of a generous mind.’31 He lauded the logical consistency of Cicero,32 and decried ‘absurd and

24 Robert Stupperich, Melanchthon, trans. Robert H. Fisher, London 1965, p. 39. This book was republished in 2006 under the title, Melanchthon: The Enigma of the Reformation. 25 Deszo Buzogany, “Melanchthon as a Humanist and a Reformer,” in Melanchthon in Europe: His Work and Influence Beyond Wittenberg, ed. Karin Maag, Grand Rapids 1999, p. 91. Buzogany does not, however, cite his source for this assertion. For more on Melanchthon’s method of “finding order in chaos,” see Wiedenhofer, Formalstrukturen, (see n. 8), p. 369. 26 Wilhelm Maurer, Der junge Melanchthon: zwischen Humanismus und Reformation, two vols., Göttingen 1967–69, 2:237. 27 Schneider, Oratio Sacra, (see n. 5) pp. 30, 70, and 103. 28 Robert Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method, Grand Rapids 2005, p. 95. 29 Declamatione de philosophia (1536). Keen, Melanchthon Reader, (see n. 15), p. 66. ‘… summa contentione animorum expetamus perfectam doctrinam, ex qua ad rempublicam et ad ecclesiam utilitas aliqua pervenire possit.’ MSA 3:89.28–31. 30 Trans. Mary Joan La Fontaine, A Critical Translation of Philip Melanchthon’s ‘Elementorum Rhetorices Libri Duo.’ (Latin Text), (unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan) Ann Arbor 1968, p. 80. ‘Ut autem dialecticae finis est, iudicare, Utrum in docendo apte consentiant omnia.’ Melanchthon, Elementorum rhetorices libri duo (1543), CR 13:419. 31 Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, Book I, 1546. Keen, Melanchthon Reader, (see n. 15), p. 190. Enarrationes aliquot librorum ethicorum Aristotelis. ‘[…] et non sit nimia obscuritas, dogmata sint perspicua, et proprie dicta, et […] inquit Euripides, id est, perspicuitas est generosi animi indicium.’ CR 16:294. 32 ‘Others [than Cicero] join very different ideas and have a great many thoughts mangled, so to speak, and sometimes add foreign ideas. But Cicero aptly includes all things which pertain to

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inane studied subtleties’ of Politan and Pliny.33 Melanchthon concluded, ‘Thus let us flee from the hiding places of words and let us love clarity, especially in teaching.’34 Regarding paradox in particular, Melanchthon mentioned his disapproval a number of times in 1536. Two of Melanchthon’s specifically anti-paradox statements came in his final extant letter to Erasmus, dated May 12, 1536. In Greek, he wrote, ‘For I do not like, nor will I tolerate, irrational words and vulgar paradoxes.’35 He went on later in that same letter to assure Erasmus that he was neither the author nor supporter of new dogmas, but that he had collected the common doctrines of religion, as simply as possible, without defending paradoxes.36 These statements clearly demonstrate that while Luther may have had no problems with paradox, Melanchthon did. Melanchthon’s entire exegetical method favored order, precision, and the absence of rational contradictions – even paradox, if it could be adequately interpreted through other Scripture passages. Melanchthon sought to move beyond paradox to arrive at “perfect doctrine.” Before moving forward, however, it is important to clarify our definitions, for what Melanchthon understood by the word “paradox” was often, in fact, something different than what the modern Anglophone reader would understand by the same word. In modern English, The Oxford American Dictionary defines “paradox” as ‘a statement etc. that seems to contradict itself or to conflict with common sense but which contains a truth (as “more haste, less speed”).’37 Melanchthon, though, defined “paradox” according to a much earlier Greek usage. He defined it, not as apparent contradiction, but simply as something unexpected. He wrote, ‘The paradox, or the unexpected, is well known, as: “Never

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a subject and he connects them so that the parts are as consistent as the proofs of a logician.’ Trans. La Fontaine, A Critical Translation, (see n. 30), p. 322. CR 13:498. ‘But in serious affairs nothing is more absurd [and inept] than these studied subtleties. What have we gained in reading them?’ (of Politan and Pliny). Trans. La Fontaine, A Critical Translation, (see n. 30), p. 339. CR 13:503. Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, Book I. Keen, Melanchthon Reader, (see n. 15), p. 190. Enarrationes aliquot librorum ethicorum Aristotelis. ‘Quare fugiamus verborum latebras et amemus perspicuitatem praesertim in docendo.’ CR 16:294. Melanchthon (in Leipzig), letter to Erasmus (in Basel), May 12, 1536. MBW 1735. By vulgar paradoxes, I take Melanchthon to mean that he does not tolerate the appearance of contradiction. However, his quotation here can be interpreted in more than one way. ‘Deinde toties profiteor me nec autorem novorum dogmatum nec suffragatorem esse, sed collegi communem doctrinam religionis, quam potui simplicissime, ne nostrorum quidem paradoxa defendens.’ MBW 1735.30–32. Hartmut Oskar Günther also mentions this quotation on pp. 111–12 of his thesis, Die Entwicklung der Willenslehre Melanchthons in der Auseinandersetzung mit Luther und Erasmus, Ph.D. Dissertation, Friedrich-Alexander Universität 1963. Eugene Ehrlich, et al., ed., The Oxford American Dictionary, New York 1980.

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did I believe, Judges, that anything would find favor for the defendant Scaurus in this trial of his.”’38 Indeed, Melanchthon’s usage here is standard for the ancient world. Both classical and New Testament Greek dictionaries define paradox as ‘unexpected; incredible, marvelous; strange, wonderful, startling, astonishing.’39 With this in mind, if we want to speak about Melanchthon’s views on the use of apparent contradictions in theology, we should probably not use the word “paradox” with its present-day connotations, but instead, use the word that Melanchthon usually did: antinomy (anti-nomos – opposed laws).40 Melanchthon defined antinomy in On the Elements of Rhetoric (1543): The status of opposing laws occurs when contradictory laws give rise to possible dispute, as quite often happens. The Greeks call this state antinomies. [For example:] It is better to marry than to be consumed by passion. [But] the canon [law says]: Priests are not permitted to marry.41

Melanchthon proceeded to teach that antinomies could not be allowed to stand as presented. They had to be smoothed out through ordered reasoning.42 In sum, conflicted laws had to agree with reasoning.43 This idea would have significance for Melanchthon in sorting through the antinomy of a doctrine of predestination held in tension with the idea of human free will. This principle was important in church matters, as well as in civil law. He wrote, Now ecclesiastical disputes have in large part a certain resemblance to forensic debates. They expound laws, refute antinomies, that is, rules that seem to contradict each other; clear up ambiguities, argue at time de jure, at times de facto; and seek an understanding of the facts.44

Antinomies, or apparent contradictions, were to be resolved – even in church affairs, that is, in theology. Melanchthon elaborated, Confirmations and confutations in ecclesiastical affairs are drawn from the clearer testimony of the Scripture. Sometimes, however, dialectics is to be called upon because 38 Trans. La Fontaine, A Critical Translation (see n. 155), p. 255. ‘Cognatum est paradoxon seu inopinatum, ut: Nunquam credidi fore iudices, ut reo Scauro, ne quid in eius iudicio gratia valeret.’ Elementorum rhetorices. CR 13:477. 39 See, for example, ed. Karl Feyerabend, Langenscheidt’s Pocket Greek Dictionary: Classical Greek-English Berlin n.d., and The Analytical Greek Lexicon Grand Rapids 1967. See Luke 5:26 for an example. 40 Please note, however, that I will continue periodically to use the word “paradox” or “paradoxical,” in its modern sense. To say “antinomian” would lead to great confusion, considering the rich theological heritage already attached to that word! 41 Trans. La Fontaine, A Critical Translation (see n. 15), p. 155. CR 13:441. 42 La Fontaine, A Critical Translation, p 155. CR 13:441. 43 Trans. La Fontaine, A Critical Translation, p 156. CR 13:441. 44 Trans. La Fontaine, A Critical Translation, p 114. CR 13:429.

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we often are compelled to infer something from the definition or from the cases that are in Scripture. But here it must be seen to that things which do not belong together […] are not connected, or, as the dialecticians say, that illogical constructions are not stitched together [emphasis added].45

Illogical constructions were not to be stitched together! Melanchthon therefore had an aversion to antinomy. For Melanchthon, theology had to be rationally consistent. This emphasis on the rational consistency of doctrine would turn out to play at least an important ancillary role in the evolution of Melanchthon’s thought on the freedom of the will, for it was part of the thinking that led him to resolve the apparent tension between predestination and free will. Moreover, Melanchthon’s aversion to the appearance of rational inconsistency in doctrine was no mere rhetorical-dialectical convention. It was not the fussy rigor of an obsessive grammarian. Melanchthon saw that theological doctrinal coherence was important for calming the worries of mortal men and women facing their eternal destinies. Pastoral comfort could only come from the reassurance of the truth, and the truth about the Good News of Jesus Christ had to make sense. As a theologian and a teacher of pastors, Melanchthon had to teach the Word of God coherently and clearly or else risk hurting the faith of the people. To put it more technically, he was concerned about the effect of doctrine. In 1536, in an address to new master’s graduates, Melanchthon emphasized this point. He began by quoting Horace, and then added his own thoughts: “[Consider] a painter [who] wished to join a human head to a horse’s neck, and set multicolored feathers about.” Nothing in that coheres; not the beginnings, nor the middles, nor the ends can be discerned. Such a doctrine cannot help but engender infinite errors, unending dissipation, and misunderstandings occur on account of the great confusions that arise. Meanwhile hesitant consciences depart. And because no furies torture the spirit more vehemently than doubts about religion, so the universal religion is maliciously discarded, and minds become profane and Epicurean.46

Doctrine had to be consistent, and for a scripturally-based Christianity, therefore, theology had to be subordinate to the rules of rhetoric.47 Luther, noting this tendency in Melanchthon, would later comment that Philipp was a very learned man, but that ‘reason occasionally caused him trouble – he would have to be on his guard lest he end up at the same point where Erasmus came out.’48 45 Trans. La Fontaine, A Critical Translation, pp. 160–61. CR 13:443. 46 Keen, Melanchthon Reader (see n. 15), pp. 66–67. Declamatione de philosophia. MSA 3:90.32–91.5. 47 Quirinus Breen, “The Subordination of Philosophy to Rhetoric in Melanchthon: A Study of His Reply to G. Pico della Mirandola,” in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 43 (1952): pp. 13–28. 48 Trans. Timothy Wengert, “Melanchthon and Luther/Luther and Melanchthon,” Lutherjahrbuch 66 (1999): p. 88. ‘Es wäre ein teurer gelehrten Mann, sprach Martinus, aber die

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Conclusion Melanchthon viewed Scripture as sacred oration, subject to the rules of Aristotelian rhetoric and dialectics. These disciplines required that in the interpretation of a passage, doctrine should avoid antinomy, or the appearance of rational inconsistency.49 Thus, by providing a test of rational consistency to theological doctrines that some hold to be above rational comprehension, the development of Melanchthon’s doctrine of the will naturally diverged from formerly likeminded colleagues, such as Reformed and so-called Gnesio-Lutheran theologians. Specifically, Melanchthon moved from a strong view of divine determination and the bondage of the human will in 1519–21, to a new position of evangelical free will by the early 1530s – that is, human beings freely assented to belief in Christ, resulting in forensic justification.50 While this doctrinal transformation was predominantly motivated by pastoral concerns, it was certainly aided by an adherence to the Aristotelian rule of non-contradiction. That is, if one had to affirm either predestination or free will (but not some paradoxical or supra-rational embrace of both), then positing a measure of free will seemed least systematically-problematic for Melanchthon. It indeed seemed to relieve God of responsibility for sin, evil, and the damned. Accordingly, the rhetorical-dialectical filter through which Melanchthon examined theological affirmations played a small but important role in the evolution of his thought on free will in the question of faith in Christ.

Vernunft plagte ihn darneben; er müßte sich wohl vorsehen, daß es ihm endlich nicht dahin geriete, wie mit dem Erasmo…’ D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Briefwechsel, 18 vols., Weimar 1930–85, 7:412, Nr. 3022. 49 ‘I wanted nothing more splendid, and with pious effort as befits one in the catechism, than to propound useful things to youth, and to try to explain them with the right type of speech and to avoid hyperbole, useless words and ambiguities, which breed dissensions.’ Keen, Melanchthon Reader, (see n. 15), p. 141. “Preface to The Corpus of Christian Doctrine, 1560.” Praefatio Philippi Melanthonis. MSA 6:9:9–14. 50 Please see my book, Evangelical Free Will, for my attempt to substantiate this assertion. I use the term “evangelical free will” (meaning free choice resulting in justification by faith alone) to differentiate it from Erasmus’ Roman Catholic free will (meaning free choice leading to justification by faith and works together).

Bettina Noak

Concepts of Illness and Health in the Zedekunst dat is Wellevenskunste (Ethics, or the Art of Living Well, 1586) by Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert (1522–1590)

Introduction When, after almost ten years of wandering the troubled seas, Odysseus finally reached his homeland Ithaca, he had to overcome the hardest part of his adventurous life. Coming back to his own home in disguise, the hero had to oppress all his passions in order to avoid recognition by the hostile suitors in his palace and to wait for the right time for revenge. Nevertheless a moment came when Odysseus lost his self-control: he was recognized as the missing master of the house by his old and sick dog, which, after it had given some signs of love, died at his feet. It was at this moment when the hero cried bitter tears, a mental weakness which he would never show afterwards, not even during the confrontation with the sufferings of his beloved wife Penelope. This story shows how even the mind of a great man can fail in the steering of the passions. Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert used this anecdote in his ethics Zedekunst dat is Wellevenskunste (Ethics, or the Art of Living Well, 1586) in order to demonstrate the necessity of constant training of the will. He tells the story mentioned here in his chapter about melancholy, where it illustrates that many men come to feelings of grief, because they do not have the ability to anticipate difficult situations and therefore can’t master their feelings beforehand.1 In this article, I will deal with one aspect of the Zedekunst, namely the concepts of illness and health used by Coornhert. This is not at all an easy task, because the author does not give a systematic view on contemporary theories about illness or medical ideas of his time. Therefore, the anthropological concepts behind his ethics have not been an object of study so far.

1 Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, Zedekunst dat is wellevenskunste, ed. Bruno Becker, Leiden 1942 (see: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/coor001zede01_01/; accessed October 17, 2013), V, VI, 358–359. In this article this work is referred to as Zedekunst.

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Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert and the Zedekunst Dirk Volkertszoon Coornhert was born in Amsterdam in 1522 as the son of a rather wealthy cloth merchant.2 Although he was talented in many ways, he did not get a humanist or university education. It seems that already in his younger days he developed an independent mind and already as a teenager turned to the study of religious problems. His parents were Catholics and eagerly brought him up in the faith of their church, but the study of the Dutch Bible showed him inconsistencies in the Catholic dogmas which troubled his conscience. After the marriage to Cornelia Simons, a penniless girl from Haarlem, whose sister was the mistress of Count Reinoud III of Brederode, Coornhert was disinherited by his father’s will and lived for a short time as a major-domo at the castle Batestein of the family Brederode in Vianen. In the library there, he got the chance to become familiar with works of Luther, Calvin, Menno Simons, Sebastian Franck and other authors of the reformation. Disgusted by the courtly life, he moved to Haarlem in 1546, where he worked as an engraver on copper for Maarten van Heemskerck. In 1560 he started a printer’s business with three friends in Haarlem. Coornhert had learned Latin at the age of 30 in order to study the problem of original sin as described by the Church Fathers. Now he translated into Dutch De Officiis by Cicero, De Beneficiis by Seneca, fifty stories of the Decamerone by Boccaccio (from the French) and the first twelve books of the Odyssee (from the Latin). The publication of these works was an important contribution to the development of Dutch Renaissance literature. In the years of the Dutch revolt against Spain, Coornhert stood at the side of William of Orange and had to live in exile in Germany for several years. Although he saw the fight against the ‘Spanish tyranny’ as a rightful struggle, he could not close his eyes against the fact that the Calvinist church also was dogmatic and would not allow a complete freedom of conscience. Coornhert fought for the right of the individuality of the experience of faith and could not see the absolute truth as a possession of a special community, neither of the Catholic Church – which he never left – nor the protestant communities. The difficulties which he had to endure in the 1570s and 1580s were also due to the fact that Coornhert rejected some of the central dogmas of Calvinism and Lutheranism as well, e. g., original sin and the protestant theory of justification.

2 For the following information see Henk Bonger, The life and work of Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, ed. Gerrit Voogt, Amsterdam 2004; Henk Bonger, “Inleiding” in Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, Op zoek naar het hoogste goed, ed. Henk Bonger, Baarn 1987, pp. 11–37.

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Coornhert believed in the possibility of human perfectibility.3 He took the word of Matthew 5:48 literally: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect’. Sins are not innate to man, but people have the chance to reach the status of sinlessness and perfection all in earthly life if they use their natural faculties of reason and will. In the communication between the different groups of faith Coornhert saw one basic principle, which he called a ‘natural law’: the Golden Rule. Starting from these values he demands religious tolerance and mutual respect. The True Church is the invisible community of those who are bound together in the devoted love of Christ, all rites and rituals are only human constructions to show the right path to the weak believers. These ideas are the background of much of his writing, e. g., the Synodus van der conscientien vryheydt (1582, Synod on the Freedom of Conscience) and Proces van ’tketterdooden (1590, Trial of the Killing of Heretics).4 The latter work, published in 1590, was written against the book Politicorum seu civilis doctrinae libri sex (1589) by Lipsius, in which the famous humanist had underlined the political necessity of the homogeneity of faith in the state.5 The sharp polemics of Coornhert against him was seen as one of the reasons why Lipsius left the Netherlands and went back openly to Catholicism in 1590. The Zedekunst dat is wellevenskunste was published anonymously in 1586 without the place of publication or the name of the printer.6 Coornhert signed his dedication of the work to his friend H.L. Spiegel as ‘Thiroplusios Laoskardi’ 3 For Coornhert’s ideas see Bruno Becker, “Coornhert, de 16e eeuwsche apostel der volmaakbaarheid,” Nederlandsch archief voor kerkgeschiedenis 19 (1926): pp. 59–84; Ruben Buys, De kunst van het weldenken. Lekenfilosofie en volkstalig rationalisme in de Nederlanden 1550–1600, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 3–59; Ruben Buys, Coornhert in het klein. Korte teksten over deugd, onwetendheid en volmaakbaarheid, Amsterdam 2011; Jaap Gruppelaar and Gerlof Verwey, D.V. Coornhert (1522–1590): polemist en vredezoeker: bijdragen tot plaatsbepaling en herwaardering, Amsterdam 2010. For more information about the recent Coornhert-research see the site of the Coornhert foundation: http://www.coornhertstichting.nl (accessed October 17, 2013). 4 The Synodus is available in an English translation: Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, Synod on the freedom of conscience, ed. Gerrit Voogt, Amsterdam 2008. Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, Proces vant ketterdoden ende dwang der conscientien: tusschen Justum Lipsium, schryver van de Politien anno 1589 daar voor, ende Dirick Coornhert daar teghen sprekende, Gouda: Jaspar Tournay 1590. See also Coornhert’s other political writings: Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, Politieke geschriften: opstand en religievrede, ed. Jaap Gruppelaar, Amsterdam 2009. 5 On the relationship between Coornhert and stoic ideas see Hans and Simone Mooij-Valk, “Coornhert on virtue and nobility,” in Christian Humanism. Essays in honor of Arie Vanderjagt, ed. Alasdair A. MacDonald e.a., Leiden 2009, pp. 155–169. On Lipsius and his influence on the early modern political science see recently Robert von Friedeburg, Politics, law, society, history and religion in the “Politica” (1590s–1650s): interdisciplinary perspectives on an interdisciplinary subject, Hildesheim 2013. 6 For information about the edition of the Zedekunst see Bruno Becker, “Inleiding,” in Zedekunst (see n. 1), pp. VI – XXXII.

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which is the Greek version of Dirck Volckertsz. It was the first European ethics in the vernacular. In six books, Coornhert provides the main ideas of his Christian ethics – the possibility of free will and the perfectibility of men through the love of God and the heavenly gift of ratio. Coornhert used many authorities to support his ethical ideas, such as Greek and Roman authors, church fathers and moral theologians of his own time such as Foxius Morzillus and Cornelius Valerius.7 Surprisingly, the reader cannot find any quotations from the Bible, because Coornhert was eager to avoid confessional quarrelling about his work. In 1584, Justus Lipsius had published his famous De Constantia (Antwerp, Plantin). Coornhert admired the work and had suggested to make a Dutch translation, but Lipsius gave this opportunity to Moretus, the son-in–law of his publisher Plantin. Despite his admiration for the work of Lipsius, Coornhert himself was not a neostoic, and he criticized the Lipsian concept of fate very sharply. Lipsius, who got a copy of the Zedekunst, was for his part very satisfied with Coornhert’s book. However, this approval did not improve the relationship between the two scholars.

Body and soul Although Coornhert emphasizes at the beginning of his work that he only deals with the problem of the human mind, one can also ask which physiological and medical concepts lie behind Coornhert’s ethics. Hitherto, this was not a topic in the study about Coornhert as far as I know and therefore the following remarks present only a work in progress which hopefully can open a new perspective in the Coornhert-studies. In the physiology of Coornhert, there is a tight link between body and soul.8 Not surprisingly, he describes the faculties of the soul as superior to the capabilities of the body. The qualities of the body are visibleness and moribundity, while the soul is invisible and immortal.9 Two special forces of the soul have to regulate the behavior of men: firstly the mind (ghemoed), which has no alliance with the body. It is a heavenly power which has to govern the other faculty of the 7 See Suffridus van der Meer, Bijdrage tot het onderzoek naar klassieke elementen in Coornhert’s Wellevenskunste, Amsterdam 1934; Gerrit Kuiper, Cornelius Valerius en Sebastianus Foxius Morzillus als bronnen van Coornhert, Harderwijk 1941. 8 On the concepts of early modern physiology see Manfred Horstmanshoff/Helen King/ Claus Zittel, Blood, Sweat and Tears – The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe, Leiden/Boston 2012. See also Simone de Angelis, Anthropologien. Genese und Konfiguration einer ‘Wissenschaft vom Menschen’ in der Frühen Neuzeit. Berlin/ New York 2010. On different concepts of the soul see Die Seele. Ihre Geschichte im Abendland, ed. Gerd Jüttemann/Michael Sonntag/Christoph Wulf, Weinheim 1991. 9 Zedekunst (see n. 1), I, II, 14–17.

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soul: the desire (begheerlyckheyd), linked with the body. It is divided into two powers – the adducent and the repellent force. The task of the mind is the regulation and taming of these two potencies, but, as Coornhert states, frequently the lower faculties of the soul are as unbridled horses which disdain the charioteer and wildly pull the chariot into the darkness of sin and shame.10 It is the aim of the Zedekunst to show the reader the possibilities of the development of the mind in order to obtain wisdom to control the lower faculties of the soul. In Coornhert’s opinion, the ultimate harmony of the relationship between body and soul is possible. In the limited range of this article, I cannot give a comprehensive description of Coornhert’s characterisation of the faculties of the mind. Nevertheless, I will name two important concepts: He sees the intellect (verstandelyckheyd) as the effective reasoning power of the mind and the imagination (verbeeldinghe) as ancillary to the intellect and linked with the senses. The imagination can produce pictures of the present, the past and the future. In relation to the natural concepts, used by Coornhert, it is interesting that he concedes the faculty of imagination also to certain animals, e. g., dogs.11 In men, the ‘intellectual animals’, however, these faculties are stronger.12 The imagination is connected with the senses. The senses catch the different material aspects of the world and conduct them ‘as through pipes’ to the brain, where the imagings are created.13 Another important analogy between men and animals lies in the difference between the natural disposition (gheneghentheyd) of the human body and the concupiscence (begheerte), which is only a quality of the human mind.14 Although the focus on the faculties of the soul seems to overpower the physiological determination of men in Coornhert’s Zedekunst, at this point we see an important indication of the natural basis of the passions. The disposition (gheneghentheyd) is a natural feeling innate in both human beings and animals. It is necessary for the maintenance of life, because it gives animals and men a natural awareness of the needs of the body, such as hunger, 10 Zedekunst (see n. 1), I, II, 15: ‘Doch ghevalt dit meest anders. Wantmen ghemeenlyck bevint, dat deze twe andere krachten als hollende paarden hueren onachtzamen ende onwyzen waghenaar verachten ende daar met wildelyck rennen in die verderflyckheyds grachten.’ 11 Zedekunst (see n. 1), I, II, 16: ‘Want de hond, voor oghen ziende den stock daar hy eens met gheslaghen is, werd verbeeldt metter ghedaante, niet alleen vande stock in teghenwoordigheyd, maar oock mede vande voorleden smerte ende insghelyx vande toekomende smerte, die hy verwachtende is, om welcke te ontghaan hy wech loopt. Doch is alle zulx inden menschen krachte-lyker.’ 12 Zedekunst (see n. 1), I, II, 14–16. 13 Zedekunst (see n. 1), I, II, 16: ‘Alle welcken verscheydenheyden van ghedaanten door die ghevoelycke zinnen (als door pypkens) ghevoerd werden inde herssenen, schilderende alzo die verbeeldinghen.’ 14 For the following see Zedekunst (see n. 1), I, V, 26–29.

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thirst and exhaustion and also the natural will of the reproduction of the species, so that they will seek the fulfillment of this natural need to maintain life. In this regard, God endows animals and humans with a natural feeling of pleasure, the natural and good voluptuousness (natuurlyke lust), in order to motivate the bodily faculties to seek the fulfillment of the natural needs of the body. God limited this natural voluptuousness in a way that after fulfillment of the bodily needs, i. e. the feelings of hunger, thirst etc. cease and therefore also this natuurlyke lust stops. This is the natural and healthy circulation of the stimulation and satisfaction of bodily needs which is a positive rule of nature in regard to ethics. Coornhert sharply distinguishes the disposition (gheneghentheyd) from the concupiscence (begheerte).15 Concupiscence is not innate and is absolutely dependent on human will. Because it is a faculty of the lowest part of the human soul, it cannot be found in animals anyway. It is the unnatural, perverse concupiscence (begheerte) which drives humans to eat and drink beyond hunger and to seek the pleasure of sex without the intention of reproduction. All the problems of bodily and mental illness result from this in many men who have these strong feelings. Here we can find the unnatural and unethical voluptuousness (wellust) which can reign in the human soul in such a way that many people lose their rational faculties and even the love of God. Coornhert’s work, especially the Zedenkunst, is intended to give the reader the remedy to overcome the false concupiscence. Loving the ‘true master of medicine’ – God – will provide the essential force in this struggle and awake the rational feeling of measure which lies in the virtues described by Coornhert.16

Culpable and inculpable illness The fulfillment of the natural needs in the sense of the doctrine of the sex res non naturales forms the background of the general medical theory in the work of Coornhert.17 However, his main concern is the health of the soul which is indissolubly linked with the health of the body. In this regard the author develops 15 Zedekunst (see n. 1), I, V, 28–29. 16 God seen as the highest master of medicine, Zedekunst (see n. 1), V, VIII, 380. On the relationship between theology and medicine see Ralf-Dieter Hofheinz/Ralf Bröer, “Zwischen Gesundheitspädagogik und Kausalitätstheorie: Melanchthons ‘Theologie der Krankheit,’” in Zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Günter Frank/Sebastian Lalla, Heidelberg 2003, pp. 69–86; Johann Anselm Steiger, Medizinische Theologie. Christus Medicus und Theologia Medicinalis bei Martin Luther und im Luthertum der Barockzeit, Leiden/Boston 2005. 17 For an overview of the theories of the sex res non naturales see Klaus Bergdolt, Leib und Seele: eine Kulturgeschichte des gesunden Lebens, Munich 1999.

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the concept of the culpable and the inculpable illness (kranckheyd), wherein kranckheyd is seen as a disorder of the soul. The fulfillment of the false concupiscence so to speak causes a consumption of the soul which vigorously becomes more fragile all the time.18 In this regard, Coornhert stresses the difference between the culpable illness (schuldighe kranckheyd) and the inculpable illness (onschuldigh onvermoghen). Because the health of the soul lies in the force of the human mind, more precisely the abilities of the intellect and the will, one has to take into consideration if these faculties can be present in the individual person. In the case of very young children and mentally disabled persons (gheboren zotten), Coornhert speaks of the inculpable illness.19 Concerning the mentally disabled, the inculpable illness of mind (and body) will last for life, consequently these persons are not able to sin against the will of God because they have no ability to know his commandments. At this point we see an important concept of a future treatment of mentally disabled persons, who are absolutely sinless in comparison with their ‘healthy’ fellow men.20 The case of young children is different. According to Coornhert’s denial of the concept of original sin they are born sinless, but they will experience a process of growth of their mental and intellectual skills. At a certain moment they will be able to know the will and the love of God. Then the inculpable illness of their childhood will change into the culpable illness of the weak sinner, who follows his unnatural concupiscence and therefore causes pain of body and soul.21 If we look more closely, Coornhert describes the schuldighe kranckheyd as the inability of the intellect to see the real good and to refuse the real evil, to see God’s love and to refuse the false love of the worldly pleasures. To recognize harmful and ill appearances as good weakens the strength and the health of the soul which is no longer able to recognize the love of God as the true remedy against its illness. In fact, men have to set just one step to obtain their perpetual mental health – they only have to accept God as their true medic. At this point, we can also say some words about the concept of pain in the work of Coornhert. From the aforesaid it is clear that the culpable illness, which 18 Zedekunst (see n. 1), V, II, 329–336. 19 Zedekunst (see n. 1), V, II, 330–331. 20 On the history of insanity and its treatment in the early modern period see Michael Kutzer, Anatomie des Wahnsinns. Geisteskrankheit im medizinischen Denken der frühen Neuzeit und die Anfänge der pathologischen Anatomie, Hürtgenwald 1998; Michel Foucault, Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft. Eine Geschichte des Wahns im Zeitalter der Vernunft, Frankfurt a.M. 2001 [this ‘classical’ approach caused a fundamental opposition in the field of medical history in the last few years]; Roy Porter, Wahnsinn. Eine kleine Kulturgeschichte, Zürich 2005; Burkhart Brückner, Delirium und Wahn. Selbstzeugnisse, Geschichte und Theorien von der Antike bis 1900, vol. 1: Vom Altertum bis zur Aufklärung, Hürtgenwald 2007. 21 Zedekunst (see n. 1), V, II, 331–336.

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estimates false values as good, causes pain not only in the soul which has to suffer under the absence of God’s love, but also in the body, because the natural temperance of the desirousness gives way to the rule of bad concupiscence. This is a form of ‘zondelycke ende schuldighe pyne’ – ‘sinful and culpable pain’, which is the pain in body and soul suffered by drunkards, devourers and fornicators, who double their suffering by complaining about pains which they have caused themselves.22 On the other hand, Coornhert admits that even the greatest wisdom cannot free the body of natural pain, caused by the process of bodily decline in this mortal world. ‘Intellect cannot change nature’, as Coornhert writes.23 In this regard it is obviously not possible to steer the passions as to avoid the natural signs of suffering: The body squirms with pain, the tongue wails, because pain is a consequence of natural processes in flesh and blood.24 However, the wise sufferer can command his mind. With his intellectual abilities he achieves a separation of the physical pain from the feelings of the soul. Since he will not doubt the goodness of God, he knows that God will give him the necessary strength to bear the pain or that the ‘true medic’ will end his suffering and let the patient go to his heavenly fatherland. With this certainty, it is even possible to obtain pleasure in the midst of physical troubles: the virtue of steadfastness can free the soul of all suffering.25

Conclusion The first figure of this article was Odysseus, the hero who was credited by Coornhert with a lack of constancy. In one of the last parts of his Zedekunst, the author returns to the problem of the weakness of will in relation to suffering. He refers to the topics of the continentia and incontinentia, of, as Coornhert puts it, the question of tem-lust and volgh-lust.26 In relation to the continentia, he underlines once more the importance of natural boundaries as a principle for human life and health. Temperance is a result of the rational understanding of the physical weakness of humans and the direction of the will through the intellectual faculties of men. Therein lies the only way to the freedom of body and mind. In contrast with this, the incontinentia is the exceedance of the natural 22 Zedekunst (see n. 1), VI, IV, 407–412. 23 Zedekunst (see n.1), V, VI, 359: ‘Want verstant en verandert de nature niet.’ 24 Zedekunst (see n. 1), V, VI, 359: ‘Wringt ende kromt zich ‘tlichaam van smerte, roept, ja kermt de tonghe met ach ende wach, ‘tghemoed zeyt: wat gheschiet my doch onmenschelyx of onnatuurlyx, zyn dit niet alle menschen onderworpen?’ 25 Cf. Zedekunst (see n. 1), V, VI and VII, 358–375. 26 Zedekunst (see n. 1), VI, V, 412–420.

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needs of the body, not governed by the ratio or the will. Thereby man can lose his freedom and becomes the slave of his perverse concupiscence. This is, Coornhert writes referring to the story of Odysseus, the true magical potion of Circe: it transforms free born men into unchaste sows, wild bears and greedy wolves.27 In distinction with the reformatory theory of the incontinentia of akrasia, Coornhert sees the reason of the weakness of will not in a domination of the passions over the will but in the failure of human intellect.28 In conclusion, I would like to emphasize the importance of Coornhert’s concepts of culpable and inculpable illness in the medical thinking of his time. The inculpable illness turns out to be an idea of the acceptance of the natural causes of physical decline and pain. The ethical task of the patient is to realize and to admit the natural needs of the body which is an important intellectual process. Following their innate natural disposition and their good voluptuousness humans can accept the positive meaning of natural processes. In this sense, men and animals are linked in a positive way as part of the good Creation of God. Where the animals are sinless by nature, it is only man who can obtain freedom through the faculties of his mind. Coornhert’s concept of culpable illness underlines the individual responsibility of men for the preservation of their health. He points out that false concupiscence is not innate to men and therefore culpable illness is not a result of original sin but of an individual defect of the intellect with some patients. Against the background of his ideas on perfectibility and the freedom of will, the author uses the well-known theory of the sex res non naturales to offer curative concepts to regain health – knowledge and will power are the most important human facilities to manage the challenges of illness.

27 Zedekunst (see n. 1), VI, V, 413: ‘De temlust matight de hertstochten, bedwingt de lusten ende mindert de begheerten, die onmatigh, ydel of schadelyck zyn. Maar de volghlust laat haar zonder alle wederstant anlocken ende leeden tot het volbrenghen van huere blinde, schadelycke ende zotte begheerlyckheyden. D’een maackt den mensch vry ende een Heere over, d’ander een slave ende dienaar onder zyne dierlycke krachten. Die volghen deze lustvolghers als onredelycke dieren, ende worden alzo zelf niet dan wilde dieren. Dits die toversche dranck van Cyrce. Deze maackt vermids des redens dronckheyd hueren drinckers onkuysche zeughen, toornighe beyren, ghulzighe wolven ende meer andere derghelycke snoode beesten.’ 28 Zedekunst (see n. 1), VI, V, 418-419. See about the problem of the weakness of will in reformatory theory: Risto Saarinen, “Weakness of Will in the Renaissance and the Reformation,” in ed. Tobias Hoffmann, et al., Das Problem der Willensschwäche in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie = The problem of weakness of will in medieval philosophy, Leuven 2006, pp. 331–353, here 341.

Ine Kiekens

From Vanden twaelf dogheden to Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten. The Rewriting of a Medieval Spiritual Text in the Counter-Reformation*

Research has shown that the transition from the late Middle Ages to the CounterReformation period involved elements of continuity as well as elements of rupture concerning the content of spiritual writings. This observation can be easily explained when the religious contexts in which those texts were composed are taken into account. Considering the success of the Protestant Reformation movement and the spiritual literature the Protestants produced, the Catholic authorities were forced to recognize that their own spiritual texts, in which they wanted to promote a virtuous life, were clearly behind compared to the wind of change that blew through Western Europe. The contemporary Catholic literature in fact no longer met the needs of the 16th-century audience that was confronted with new ideas concerning religious matters. Therefore, if the movement of the Counter-Reformation wanted to be successful and competitive with the Protestant Reformation, the traditional Catholic ideas, had to be transposed to another period. Not only brand new texts were written for this purpose, but also existing spiritual and mystical texts from the Middle Ages were rewritten and adjusted to the renewed Catholic faith.1 The study of 16th-century spiritual Spanish and Italian texts showed that the rewriting of medieval texts was of major importance for the creation of Counter-

* This article is based on results of my research project ‘Vanden twaelf dogheden: An Exemplary Study of the Functions, Distribution and Impact of Middle Dutch Mystical Writings’ (Research Foundation – Flanders [FWO], 2012–2016). I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Dr. Youri Desplenter (UGent) for his constructive suggestions. I would also like to thank Tobias Cap for his useful comments on the English version of this text. 1 This paragraph is based on Urban Holmes, A History of Christian Spirituality. An Analytical Introduction, Seabury 1980, pp. 99–102; Thomas Worcester, Seventeenth-Century Cultural Discourse. France and the Preaching of the Bishop Camus, Berlin 1997; John Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils: Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany, Leiden 2010; Gabriël van den Brink, “Nederland in Historisch Perspectief,” in De Lage Landen en het Hogere. De Betekenis van Geestelijke Beginselen in het Moderne Bestaan, ed. Gabriël van den Brink, Amsterdam 2012, pp. 69–88.

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Reformation works.2 In the research of Germanic literature, however, little attention has been paid to this rewriting process. Nevertheless, the last decade shows a significant catching up in the study of Dutch literature. Research by K. Schepers for instance revealed the importance of a late medieval mystical culture in the St. Agnes convent in Arnhem, influenced by the Counter-Reformation ideas of the Carthusians of St. Barbara in Cologne, and in which the rewriting of mystical texts constituted an important part.3 The present article wants to instigate the further exploitation of this field of research in the study of Dutch literature, specifically by examining the evolution of the theological anthropology in a medieval spiritual text and its Counter-Reformation adaptation. The 14th-century Middle Dutch treatise Vanden twaelf dogheden (On twelve virtues) and its 16th-century German adaptation Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten (Treatise of Virtues) will serve as a case study. My article consists of three parts. First, I want to give a brief introduction to Vanden twaelf dogheden and the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten. I will discuss their contexts of origin, their content, and their distribution. At the same time I will mention some general differences between the two treatises. Subsequently, I want to study the adaptation of the theological anthropology – the way the individual human soul relates to God – from Vanden twaelf dogheden to the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, as a specific angle to examine the rewriting of medieval spiritual texts.4 Because of the limited scope of this article, I will analyze the theological anthropology in both texts by means of four central concepts, which are ‘humility,’ ‘confession,’ ‘sincere repentance’ and ‘perfection’. Although Vanden twaelf dogheden and Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten contain even more interesting ideas concerning the mutual relations between God and the human person, the study of those four notions will allow us to make up a clear image of the theological anthropology present in the two treatises. The last part of this article is devoted to

2 Examples of those studies can be found in Holmes, A History of Christian Spirituality (see n. 1), pp. 99–102; Gabriele Zarri, “Living Saints: A Typology of Female Sanctity in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, Chicago & London 1996, pp. 219–303; Carmen R. Rabell, Rewriting the Italian Novella in Counter-Reformation Spain, Woodbridge 2003, pp. 110–112. 3 See for instance Kees Schepers, “Het Verborgen Leven van de Zusters Agnieten. Mystieke Cultuur in Arnhem,” in Ons Geestelijk Erf 79 (2008): pp. 285–316; Kees Schepers & Ineke Cornet, “The Arnhem Mystical Sermons in context. Introduction,” in Ons Geestelijk Erf 81 (2010): pp. 5–16; Kees Schepers, “Mystiek Leven van de Zusters Agnieten,” in Een Verborgen Leven: Arnhemse Mystiek in de Zestiende Eeuw, ed. Hans Kienhorst & Jan Kuys, Arnhem 2011, pp. 135–150. 4 The definition of theological anthropology is borrowed from Edward Howells, “What is ‘Mine’ in Union with God? The Theological Anthropology of Meister Eckhart and St. John of the Cross,” in Eckhart Review 7 (1998): pp. 42–54, see p. 44. Further down this article, the choice for this definition will be justified.

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a summarizing conclusion, in which the importance of the further study of rewriting texts for Counter-Reformation purposes is underlined.

Vanden twaelf dogheden against Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten: an Introduction The Middle Dutch text Vanden twaelf dogheden is presumed to be written at the end of the 14th century in the Augustine priory of Groenendaal near Brussels in Belgium. At that time, the monastery accommodated influential spiritual authors such as Jan van Ruusbroec († 1381) and Jan van Leeuwen († 1378).5 Vanden twaelf dogheden was for a long time attributed to Ruusbroec, but nowadays it is presumed that Godfried van Wevel († 1396), canon, procurator, confessor and scribe at Groenendaal, must have been the author.6 The treatise is based on two main sources, being Reden der Unterweisung (Talks of Instruction) of Meister Eckhart († 1328) and Die Gheestelike Brulocht (The Spiritual Espousals) of Ruusbroec.7 In fact, Vanden twaelf dogheden occupies a special and unique place in the mysticism of Groenendaal. Unlike much of the other mystical writings of Groenendaal, Vanden twaelf dogheden contains no exalted theoretical explanations. It rather constitutes a practical guide for those pursuing a virtuous life.8 The text consists of twelve chapters, each representing a virtue or a way to achieve virtuousness.9 Successively treated are ‘humility,’ ‘obedience,’ ‘rejection of the own will,’ ‘forbearance,’ ‘detachment,’ ‘from temptation to virtue,’ ‘free will,’ ‘from sin to humility,’ ‘repentance’ and two times ‘penance’. Initially, the treatise probably served as the written expression of lessons in virtuousness, most likely given by the author of Vanden twaelf dogheden himself to the new-come novices of Eemstein near Dordrecht in the Netherlands.10 That 5 Geert Warnar, Ruusbroec. Literature and Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century, Leiden 2007, pp. 173–226. 6 Veerle Fraeters, “De Fabricatie van een Tekst. Toe-eigeningsmechanismen in Tekst en Traditie van Pseudo-Ruusbroecs Vanden twaelf dogheden,” Volkskunde. Driemaandelijks tijdschrift voor de studie van de volkscultuur 104 (2003): pp. 85–104; Warnar, Ruusbroec (see n. 5), here p. 219. 7 Fraeters, De Fabricatie van een Tekst (see n. 6), here p. 89. 8 Stephanus Gerard Axters, Geschiedenis van de Vroomheid in de Nederlanden. De Eeuw van Ruusbroec, Antwerp 1952, p. 334; Frank Willaert, “Ruusbroec als auteur”, in Een Claer Verlicht Man. Over het Leven en Werk van Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381), ed. Egbert P. Bos and Geert Warnar, Hilversum 1993, pp. 59–72. 9 I used the edition Jozef van Mierlo, Jan van Ruusbroec Werken: I. Vanden XIJ Beghinen II. Vanden XIJ Dogheden, Mechelen and Amsterdam 1932, pp. 227–310. 10 Jozef van Mierlo, “Uit de Uitgaven van het Obituarium van Groenendaal,” Verslagen en Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamsche Academie voor Taal- en Letterkunde 55 (1941): pp. 429–458, here pp. 434–435; Fraeters, De Fabricatie van een Tekst (see n. 6), here p. 90.

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monastery was established under the auspices of Geert Grote († 1384) and can be considered as the first monastic foundation of the Modern Devotion.11 Vanden twaelf dogheden enjoyed great success and its distribution soon extended the circles of Geert Grote’s reform movement. Spread in several translations and adaptations, both in manuscripts and prints, the treatise was read all over Western Europe until the 19th century. It was used for spiritual purposes both by religious and semi-religious communities and individuals outside those milieus.12 In sum, at least 100 full and partial textual witnesses of the treatise were handed down in manuscripts and prints and they were read and redistributed in varying contexts. One particular exponent of the distribution of Vanden twaelf dogheden is the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten. The complete title of this German adaptation is Des Erleüchten D. Johannis Tauleri götliche leren. Wie man durch geystliche übungen und tugenden, zu lieblicher vereinung gots kommen sol, neüw gefunden. For reasons of clarity, however, I will be using the abbreviated title Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten throughout the rest of this article. Initially, this adaptation was not distributed separately, but it was part of the collection Des Erleüchten D. Johannis Tauleri, von eym waren evangelischen Leben, Götliche Predig, Leren, Epistolen, Cantilenen, Prophetien.13 That collection of texts is an anthology, containing the works of John Tauler († 1361), one of the greatest 14th-century mystics, and a number of texts attributed to him. The compiler of the anthology was Peter Noviomagus. In the past, this person was identified as Peter Canisius († 1597), theologian and Doctor of the Church.14 Nevertheless, some modern scholars are 11 Wybren Scheepsma, “Das mittelniederländische Nachleben der Erfurter ›Reden‹ Meister Eckharts”, in Meister Eckharts Erfurter ›Reden‹ in ihrem Kontext, ed. D. Gottschal, D. Mieth, Stuttgart 2013, pp. 131–151, here p. 142. 12 A complete catalog with textual witnesses of Vanden twaelf dogheden is not available. With my FWO-project, I hope to rectify this deficiency. Until then, my research is based on different general catalogs, such as Bibliotheca Neerlandica Manuscripta: http://www.bibliotheek.leidenuniv.nl/bijzondere-collecties/handschriftenarchievenbrieven/ bnm.html; Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen: http://database.stcv.be; Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands: http://www.kb.nl/stcn/; Willem de Vreese, De handschriften van Jan van Ruusbroec’s werken, Ghent 1900–1902; Albert Ampe, Jan van Ruusbroec 1293–1381. Tentoonstellingscatalogus. Met als bijlage een chronologische tabel en drie kaarten, Brussel 1981. 13 Petrus Noviomagus, Des Erleuchten D. Johannis Tauleri, von eym waren Evangelischen Leben, Götliche Predig, Leren, Epistolen, Cantilenen, Prophetien, Cologne 1543. Edition: Utrecht, University Library, THO: RIJS MAG 002–24. This edition is available online at http:// objects.library.uu.nl/reader/index.php?obj=1874–21182&lan=nl#page//10/69/19/106919 091207521709169503472780123842342.jpg/mode/1up (last accessed 1 December 2013). 14 John Neville Figgis, “Petrus Canisius and the German Counter-Reformation,” The English Historical Review 24, no. 93 (1909), Albert Ampe, “Een Kritisch Onderzoek van de ‘Institutiones Taulerianae’,” Ons Geestelijk Erf 40 (1966), here pp. 167–169; Albert Ampe, Jan van Ruusbroec 1293–1381. Tentoonstellingscatalogus. Met als bijlage een chronologische tabel en drie kaarten, Brussel, 1981, pp. 167–240, here pp. 245–246. pp. 18–43; Hughes Oliphant

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rather doubtful about this hypothesis.15 Considering the texts of his anthology, it is clear that whoever is hidden behind the figure of Noviomagus was a supporter of the Counter-Reformation. In 1543 Noviomagus’ anthology of Tauler was printed by Jaspar von Gennep († 1564) in Cologne. Five years later, in 1548, the collection was translated into Latin by the Carthusian Laurentius Surius († 1578) under the title D. Ioannis Thauleri, sublimis et illuminati theologi, saluberrimae ac plane divinae institutiones aut doctrinae, recens inventae, quibus instruimur, uti per spirituales exercitationes virtutesque, ad amabilem Dei unionem pertingatur or simply the Institutiones taulerianae. Based on that version, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and even Dutch and German translations were made and thus, the content of the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, and consequently, the content of Vanden twaelf dogheden, was distributed all over Western Europe.16 However, Noviomagus did not just translate Vanden twaelf dogheden. He rewrote and, as is mentioned in his foreword, ‘improved’ this mystical treatise in order to make its content suitable to its new user’s context, the Counter-Reformation milieus. The rewritten texts needed to be easily readable and pragmatic, so as to convince the readers of the direct benefits they could have of professing Catholicism or of converting themselves to this faith. Already in the first years after the rise of Martin Luther († 1546) against the abuses of the Catholic Church, some anonymous Catholics tried to adapt medieval religious texts and spread them as manuals to support their faith. However, those manuals were not as successful as those published in the middle of the 16th century, like Noviomagus’ anthology of Tauler or Surius’ translations of Tauler, Ruusbroec and Henry Suso († 1366). It nevertheless shows us that the act of rewriting medieval mystical texts during the Counter-Reformation was not exceptional.17 Noviomagus clearly made a great effort in adapting Vanden twaelf dogheden to the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten. The latter is significantly more extensive than the former. While the original text contains only twelve chapters, the rewritten text includes thirty-nine. Although Noviomagus borrowed a lot of quotations literally from Vanden twaelf dogheden, he seems not have been completely satisfied with Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, Michigan and Cambridge 2002, pp. 190–192. 15 See for instance Rob Van de Schoor, “Canisius als Herausgeber. Die Ausgaben von Tauler (1543), Kyrill (1546) und Leo dem Grossen (1546),” Ons Geestelijk Erf 82 (2011): pp. 161–186. Further publications on this question are still in preparation. 16 For this paragraph I used Ampe, Een Kritisch Onderzoek van de “Institutiones Taulerianae” (see n. 14), pp. 167–240; Thom Mertens, “Boeken voor de eeuwigheid. Ter inleiding,” in Boeken voor de Eeuwigheid. Middelnederlands Geestelijk Proza, ed. Thom Mertens, Amsterdam 1993, pp. 80–81. 17 The background information in this paragraph is based on Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils (see n. 1), here p. 259.

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his main source and he inserted a considerable number of textual fragments from other texts into the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten. The external influence of the great mystics Tauler and Suso for instance is undeniable.18 The treatise can be split up into three core sections. The first part, consisting of chapters one to twenty-one, includes the twelve chapters that are taken from Vanden twaelf dogheden. The original order from Vanden twaelf dogheden has been changed though, and some of the original chapters are spread over several chapters. Successively treated are ‘penance,’ ‘repentance,’ ‘humility,’ ‘resignation,’ ‘patience,’ ‘perfection,’ ‘how to praise God’s mercy,’ ‘humility,’ ‘resignation,’ ‘obedience,’ ‘resignation,’ ‘patience,’ ‘detachment,’ ‘how God should be sought,’ ‘sincere will,’ ‘how to fight against temptations,’ ‘how to thank God’ and finally again ‘humility’. The second core section, from chapter twenty-two to chapter thirty-seven, consists of illustration material for the first core section. Discussed are ‘humility,’ ‘resignation,’ ‘how to conceive the union with Christ,’ ‘perfection,’ ‘how to abandon the own will,’ ‘how to strive for an inner life,’ ‘detachment,’ ‘patience,’ ‘humility,’ ‘resignation,’ ‘how to love your enemies,’ ‘secular and spiritual poverty,’ ‘how to strive for virtuousness,’ ‘inner life,’ ‘how to abandon the own will’ and ‘how to strive for an inner life’. The third and last core section of the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten considers the ‘Twelve Fruits of the Holy Spirit’. It might be clear that in the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, a shift occurred from the description of virtues to the description of ways to achieve virtuousness. Apparently Noviomagus did not want to spend too many words on the background of the virtues, which was for him of lesser importance than the pursuit of virtuousness itself.19 In sum, Noviomagus enlarged his main source, principally with illustration material and practical information on how to pursue virtuousness, for the most part borrowed from great mystic writers. Furthermore, he changed the order in which the virtues were presented in Vanden twaelf dogheden. From this we can assume that Noviomagus not only wanted to create a practical manual, but also wished to lay stress on other things than Wevel did. That assumption is useful for the examination of the theological anthropology in both texts, which will be treated in the next part of this article.

18 Ampe, Een Kritisch Onderzoek van de “Institutiones Taulerianae” (see n. 14), pp. 172–188. 19 The division is based on Ampe, Een Kritisch Onderzoek van de “Institutiones Taulerianae” (see n. 14), pp. 167–240.

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The Rewriting of Theological Anthropology Before analyzing texts from a specific angle, it might be appropriate to explain what in this article is exactly understood by the concept of ‘theological anthropology’. I therefore use the definition of E. W. Howells, in which he states that ‘“theological anthropology” is a jargon-term meaning the way the individual human soul relates to God’.20 The choice for a similar broad interpretation is not coincidental, as it not only permits to include mystical relationships – as the highest form of interconnection between God and the soul on earth – but also any form of relationship into which God and the soul can enter with each other. That addition is important for the analysis of Vanden twaelf dogheden, in which mystical experiences between God and the individual are rather absent. The following part of my article is divided into two subparts. First, I briefly introduce some general statements concerning theological anthropology in Vanden twaelf dogheden, derived from the source material Wevel used. Subsequently, I will analyze the evolution in meaning of the concepts of ‘humility,’ ‘confession,’ ‘sincere repentance’ and ‘perfection’ from Vanden twaelf dogheden to the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten.

1.

The General Theological Anthropology in Vanden twaelf dogheden

Vanden twaelf dogheden is for the most part based on the Reden der Unterweisung and Die Gheestelike Brulocht, as mentioned above.21 It might thus seem evident that the theological anthropology in Vanden twaelf dogheden is also to a large extent based on the ones that Eckhart and Ruusbroec adhere to. Nevertheless, the textual reality is in some respect slightly different. Above all, following Augustine of Hippo († 430), both mystics state that the soul consists of a Trinitarian structure, composed of its highest powers, being memory, intellect and will.22 They both devote long explanations to that proposition and its consequences for human beings. Still, similar statements are completely absent in Vanden twaelf dogheden. This should not come as a surprise. Vanden twaelf dogheden is indeed not an edifying treatise in which intricate theological explanations, such as the Trinitarian composition of the soul, prevail.23 In spite of the lack of exalted theological ideas, however, there are still traces of Eckhart’s 20 Howells, What is “Mine” in Union with God? (see n. 4), here p. 44. 21 Fraeters, De Fabricatie van een Tekst (see n. 6), here p. 89. 22 Howells, What is “Mine” in Union with God? (see n. 4), here p. 44; Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec, Mystical Theologian of the Trinity, Indiana 2003, pp. 102–111. 23 Axters, Geschiedenis van de Vroomheid in de Nederlanden (see n. 8), p. 334; Willaert, Ruusbroec als auteur (see n. 8), pp. 59–72.

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and Ruusbroec’s theological anthropology perceptible. For instance, Wevel adopted Eckhart’s reasoning concerning the concept of ‘detachment’ in order to get closer to God.24 Eckhart advances that ‘[i]t is impossible to know God by the common terms applied to Him’, because He ‘is unlike any other created thing’.25 God indeed surpasses the classifications that human beings use to make distinctions. In order to get to know Him after all, ‘[…] the soul must […] proceed by a way of unknowing’.26 The soul must therefore detach itself from all the created things by which it is surrounded. That form of self-denial will eventually lead to a ‘[…] new perception in which [the soul] knows God more intimately’.27 This argumentation is treated in Vanden twaelf dogheden, although the ultimate union with God is not stressed. Furthermore present in Wevel’s treatise is Ruusbroec’s concept of ‘grace’. ‘Detachment,’ as Eckhart presents it, does, according to Ruusbroec, not suffice to enter the spiritual ascension to God. He states that it could after all lead to wrong attitudes, such as stillness, passivity and even quietism.28 In order to get closer to God, the soul has to transcend its stage of ‘detachment’ and needs to be perfected with ‘grace,’ which, however, is ‘[…] only […] available in Christ’.29 To obtain it, the soul thus needs to participate in Christ’s life and works, which is, for human beings, concretely possible in pursuing a virtuous life.30 This brings us back to the central aim of Vanden twaelf dogheden, which is providing a series of practical guidelines to virtuousness.31 In other words, Vanden twaelf dogheden constitutes a concrete example of the teachings of Ruusbroec concerning grace and virtuousness. Moreover, living a virtuous life is specified as the duty every soul has before God. To sum up, the general theological anthropology of Vanden twaelf dogheden is characterized by a lack of exalted argumentations, a preference for detachment and the necessity of being virtuous in order to get closer to God. The eventual mystical relationship between God and the soul, however, is not explicitly promoted.

24 For Eckhart’s reasoning concerning ‘detachment’, see Howells, What is “Mine” in Union with God? (see n. 4), here pp. 44–45. 25 Howells, What is “Mine” in Union with God? (see n. 4), here p. 44. 26 Howells, What is “Mine” in Union with God? (see n. 4), here p. 44. 27 Howells, What is “Mine” in Union with God? (see n. 4), here pp. 44–45. 28 Van Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec (see n. 22), pp. 111–115. 29 Van Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec (see n. 22), p. 120. 30 Van Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec (see n. 22), p. 120. 31 Axters, Geschiedenis van de Vroomheid in de Nederlanden (see n. 8), p. 334; Willaert, Ruusbroec als auteur (see n. 8), pp. 59–72.

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313

From Humility to Perfection: the Evolution of the Theological Anthropology

As mentioned above, the first chapter of Vanden twaelf dogheden begins with the evocation of ‘humility’.32 That quality is presented as the central virtue throughout the whole treatise. It is even mentioned as the foundation of all virtues, elected by Christ above all others.33 We might discover a glimpse from the context of origin of Vanden twaelf dogheden here, being the initial phase of the Modern Devotion, where humility was one of the most important attitudes to strive for.34 In the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, however, ‘humility’ seems no longer that important. Although this concept is discussed in several chapters, it is not explicitly promoted as an essential virtue.35 Moreover, it has lost its place in the opening chapter of the treatise and it has been replaced by a chapter on ‘penance’. This adaptation is no pure coincidence. Throughout the whole Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, ‘penance’ is promoted as the first and most important virtue to pursue in order to get closer to God. It might be clear that Noviomagus made this shift for a special reason. During the Reformation, Luther and his supporters denounced the sanctimonious practice of selling indulgences, with which the absolution of penance for sins could be acquired.36 The Catholic Church, already conscious of those abuses before Luther, needed urgently to respond to this situation.37 It can therefore be assumed that Noviomagus, by emphasizing the importance of penance, wanted to distance himself from the practice of selling indulgences and that he wanted his readership to do the same. Penance was in his view the only solution to obtaining complete remission of sins and to pursuing a virtuous life towards God, while Wevel asserted that first humility needed to be achieved and that penance would follow afterwards. 32 Van Mierlo, II. Vanden XIJ Dogheden (see n. 9), here pp. 227–247. 33 Van Mierlo, II. Vanden XIJ Dogheden (see n. 9), here p. 227. 34 Hildo van Engen, “Cisterciënzers in de stad. De priorij Mariënkroon in Heusden,” in Monastiek observantisme en Moderne Devotie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, ed. Hildo van Engen and Gerrit Verhoeven, Hilversum 2008, pp. 107–132, here p. 125. 35 Noviomagus, Des Erleuchten D. Johannis Tauleri (see n. 13), here pp. CCLXXXIv – CCLXXXIIIIr (chap. 3–4), CCLXXXVIIr – CCLXXXIXv (chap. 9–10), CCCIIIr – CCCVIr (chap. 21–23), CCCXv – CCCXIv (chap. 30). 36 On the sanctimonious practice of selling indulgences, see Patrick Collinson, The Reformation. A History, New York 2003, pp. 1–102; Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion, Cambridge 2005, pp. 1–39; John Portmann, A History of Sin. Its Evolution to Today and Beyond, Maryland 2007, here p. 55. 37 On the efforts of the Catholic Church, see Jan Art, “Social Control in Belgium: The Catholic Factor,” in Social Control in Europe 1800–2000, vol. 2, Ohio 2004, pp. 112–124, here pp. 112– 114; Collinson, The Reformation (see n. 36), here pp. 103–122; Portmann, A History of Sin (see n. 36), here p. 55.

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Connected to this is the emergence of the concept of ‘beicht’ or ‘confession’ in the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten. Noviomagus wanted his readers to have sincere repentance and to do penance for their sins, but this was in his view not sufficient. They also needed to confess their sins in order to obtain complete remission of them, so they could progress in their spiritual ascension to God. This statement is repeated several times in the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten.38 In Vanden twaelf dogheden, however, the practice of confession is completely absent. This discrepancy can as well be explained by the context of origin of the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten. During the 16th century, stimulated by the Reformation movement and followed by the Catholic Church, the sacrament of confession became increasingly important.39 Noviomagus obviously wanted to support this shift by insisting on the benefits of this sacrament. In the previous paragraph, ‘sincere repentance’ was mentioned. This particular concept also deserves our attention in the study of theological anthropology. In Vanden twaelf dogheden, ‘sincere repentance’ is explained by feeling guilty, exclusively for the pain one has caused God by committing sins.40 In other words, having repentance just because you feel anxious about the destiny of your soul, does not count as ‘sincere repentance’. It does not bring you any nearer to God. Noviomagus literally adopted that explanation in the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, although he added on several places in his treatise references to the terrible pains sinners will have to endure in purgatory and hell when they have no sincere repentance.41 It can therefore be assumed that Noviomagus, more than Wevel, wanted to urge his readers to have sincere repentance. One of the denouncements of the Reformation movement was indeed the fact that a number of Catholic sinners was not sincere while repenting and doing penance and only did this when the fate of their souls was endangered.42 By encouraging, if not by threatening, his readers, Noviomagus distanced himself from that abusive behavior and responded in the meantime to one of the major criticisms of the Reformation movement.

38 Noviomagus, Des Erleuchten D. Johannis Tauleri (see n. 13), here especially pp. CCLXXIXr – CCLXXXIv. 39 See for instance Peter Brooks, Troubling Confessions. Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature, London 2000, pp. 100–101; Ronald Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys. Confession, Conscience and Authority in sixteenth-century Germany, Cambridge (USA) 2004, pp. 170– 192; Jill Fehleison, Boundaries of Faith. Catholics and Protestants in the Diocese of Geneva, Missouri 2010, especially pp. 189–190. 40 Van Mierlo, II. Vanden XIJ Dogheden (see n. 9), here especially pp. 297–308. 41 Noviomagus, Des Erleuchten D. Johannis Tauleri (see n. 13), here especially pp. CCLXXIXr – CCLXXXIv. 42 See for instance Brooks, Troubling Confessions (see n. 39), pp. 100–101; Kit Wesler, An Archaeology of Religion, Maryland 2012, pp. 228–230.

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The fourth and last concept treated in this article is the ‘volcommenheit’ or ‘perfection’. By reaching this state, the soul can eventually enter in a spiritual relationship with God. This concept is frequently used in the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten,43 nevertheless, it is absent in Vanden twaelf dogheden. Wevel apparently wanted to promote a humble and virtuous life, without explicitly emphasizing the strive for a union with God. This difference can be explained by recalling the fact that ‘humility’ was in the view of Wevel the ultimate virtue to pursue. However, I think there might be another explanation at the basis of this discrepancy. We therefore need to look at the other discrepancy already mentioned, namely the differences in content within the opening chapter, where Noviomagus discussed sin and the terrible things that might happen in purgatory and hell when sinners do no sincere repentance, confession and penance. I think that Noviomagus did not want to give the impression that religion only consists of punishing and threatening. In other words, he did not want to give a general sense of 16th-century Catholic spirituality by discussing negative values. On the contrary, he wanted to introduce positive values that needed to be pursued. It is obvious that people who are threatened and frightened all the time would more easily abjure their belief and choose one that shows much more mercy. From that point of view, the Catholic authorities probably feared that they would lose even more believers to the Reformation movement, which they obviously wanted to avoid. The emphasis on the virtue of ‘perfection’ in the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten should then be interpreted as the ultimate stage of virtuousness that should be pursued in the spiritual ascension to God. It is evident that, from Vanden twaelf dogheden to the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, the theological anthropology changed fundamentally. In the first treatise, striving for virtuousness is characterized as a duty to God. According to Wevel, this statement suffices as a justification for promoting a virtuous life. He does not offer the prospect of an eventual union with God to his readership. It is possible that he considered his initial public incapable of understanding the meaning of mystical experiences. After all, Vanden twaelf dogheden was clearly conceived as a practical guide, probably to instruct new-come novices in a virtuous life.44 In the adapted version, the same wish to educate the readership in virtuousness is made explicit. In contrast to Vanden twaelf dogheden, however, the reason why this lifestyle should be pursued is repeatedly discussed. The way to virtuousness, with repentance, confession and penance as pillars, culminates indeed in the blessed state of perfection, in which God and the soul can happily sojourn together. A mystical relationship between God and the soul is thus explicitly promoted as an attainable objective. The presence of this 43 Noviomagus, Des Erleuchten D. Johannis Tauleri (see n. 13), here pp. CCLXXXIIIIr – CCLXXXVr (chap. 5), CCCVIr – CCCVIIr (chap. 24), CCCVIIr– CCCVIIv (chap. 25). 44 Axters, Geschiedenis van de Vroomheid in de Nederlanden (see n. 8), p. 334; Willaert, Ruusbroec als auteur (see n. 8), pp. 59–72.

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objective in the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten can be explained by the context in and for which the treatise was created. In the middle of the 16th century, there was a revival of late medieval mystical images, especially concerning the mystical relationship between God and the soul. Such traces of – as B. McGinn, following K. Schepers, calls it – ‘the mystical renaissance of the 16th century’ are thus also to be found in the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten.45 Since the readership of this treatise was already acquainted with ideas on the mystical union, there was no difficulty presenting this union as a goal to pursue. On the contrary, it can even be interpreted as an additional impetus to strive for virtuousness and to be faithful to the Catholic belief. To sum up, from Vanden twaelf dogheden to the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, the relation between God and the soul altered from one in which the soul only pays off the debts made before God to one in which the two enter in a perfect mystical union.

Conclusion The main goal of this article was to call attention to the rewriting process of medieval spiritual texts during the Counter-Reformation. I therefore examined the evolution from the 14th-century spiritual treatise Vanden twaelf dogheden to its 16th-century rewritten version the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten from the angle of the theological anthropology. More specifically, I studied the development of four concepts, namely ‘humility,’ ‘confession,’ ‘sincere repentance’ and ‘perfection’. My study proved that the theological anthropology, from the original to the adapted version, underwent an essential modification. In Vanden twaelf dogheden, the possibility to enter a mystical relationship with God remains silent. It was clearly not the intention of Wevel to expose – let alone stimulate – these kinds of ideas to the novices. In the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, on the contrary, the state of perfection, in which God and the soul are united, is declared as the acme of the pursuit in virtuousness. It might be clear that this finding is of major importance for the analysis of both texts. I hope that I was able to show that examining rewritten texts is thus no pointless work. On the contrary, the study of adaptations, such as in the example of Vanden twaelf dogheden and the Tractat vonn Tu˚ gentten, can reveal interesting information about the new context for which they were created. Current academic research, however, still pays rather little attention to this phenomenon. It is therefore my wish that new research devoted to the rewriting process of medieval spiritual texts during the CounterReformation will appear in future studies of the literary production of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. 45 On the mystical renaissance of the 16th century, see Schepers, Het Verborgen Leven van de Zusters Agnieten (see n. 3), pp. 285–316; Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550), New York 2012, pp. 141–175, especially pp. 141–143.

V. Reformation of Church and Religious Practices

Herman A. Speelman

Man, Freedom, and the Church: Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin on How to Serve God Freely, within or outside the Power of the Church

Introduction Theological attention for the individual The penance law of 1215 demanded from all citizens, both men and women, that they critically examine themselves at least once a year. In that way, the focus in the sacrament of confession shifted from ‘sin’ to ‘the sinner’. This process would include interrogation by one’s priest on doctrine and life, a trend which prompted a theological interest for psychology. The individual believer became the focus of attention, and in private confession the notion of remorse took centre stage, that is, attritio (a fear of punishment) or contritio (a fear of God based on love and respect). From then on, the sacrament of penance would come to dominate daily life in the West for centuries.

A shift of focus from the external to the internal In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a development took place within the sacrament of penance towards a greater stress on internality. Many medieval theologians occupied themselves with the question of whether remorse alone might be sufficient for atonement between God and the sinner, and if so, whether this made penance superfluous.1 In this context, the sociologist Alois Hahn notes that ‘guilt shifts to the terrain of intentions,’ and relates this development to the simultaneous process of individualization in European society.2 Prior to that 1 Alois Hahn, “Zur Soziologie der Beichte und anderer Formen institutionalisierter Bekenntnisse: Selbstthematisierung und Zivilisationsprozess,” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 34 (1982): pp. 407–434, here p. 416. 2 Hahn, Soziologie der Beichte (see n. 1), pp. 408f. Further, Hahn observes that in the Middle Ages, the sacrament of confession stands in the ‘Kontext […] von Sündenkatalogen, die die Beobachtung des eigenen Verhaltens und des Innenlebens ausrichten und im Dienst gestei-

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time, the sacrament of confession had been regarded as an instrument of the Church which could turn newly baptized children into legitimate Christians.

Luther’s novel perspective on penance In 1515, or shortly after, Luther came to a new insight, as he confessed to his mentor Johann von Staupitz (ca. 1460–1524) in a letter in which he discussed his ninety-five theses of 31 October 1517. In this letter, written on 30 May 1518, Luther told von Staupitz that he had been greatly impacted by his teaching ‘that penance can only be true if it begins with a love for justice and for God.’ From that moment onwards, the word ‘penance’ in Scripture started to take on sweet rather than bitter connotations for him.3 According to Erasmus, the Greek word for penance, metanoia, was meant to be interpreted in an internal and spiritual way, rather than as something concrete and sacramental.4

Farewell to the Societas Christiana Luther’s ideal raised the bar. While in the Middle Ages the Church protected its members through the sacramental system, in the Reformation era each individual believer was supposed to fight on his own in the battle against sin and the world, aided only by his baptism and the Holy Spirit. A true believer had to be a spiritual person (homo spiritualis) emancipated from the authority of the Church and from the world by both personal faith and ‘evangelical freedom’ (libertas evangelica). For Luther, truly being Christian was no longer a matter of birth or baptism but of conscious obedience to the Gospel. Infant baptism, then, was not a separate sacrament, but rather the acceptance of the promises sealed in the baptism. The gerter Selbstkontrolle stehen: Das Wissen, das man so von sich gewinnt, entspringt dem Gewissen.’ See Alois Hahn, “Identität und Selbstthematisierung,” in Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis: Bekenntnis und Geständnis, ed. Alois Hahn/Volker Knapp, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 7–23, here p. 18. Arnold Angenendt, Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter, Darmstadt 2000, p. 657. 3 Otto Clemen, ed., Luthers Werke in Auswahl, Berlin/Bonn 1925, vol. 1, pp. 16–19 = D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 60 vols., Weimar 1883–1983 [= WA], vol. 1, pp. 525– 527 = Kurt Aland, ed., Luther Deutsch: Die Werke Martin Luthers, Stuttgart/Göttingen 1962, vol. 2, pp. 28–31. 4 Clemen, Luthers Werke (see n. 3), vol. 1, 22f = WA (see n.3), vol. 1, pp. 530f; Philippus Melanchthon, “Articuli de quibus egerunt per Visitatores in Regione Saxoniae,” Wittenberg 1527 [= AV], in Corpus Reformatorum, Brunsvigae 1858 [reprint Graz 1964f], ed. Bretschneider, vol. 26, pp. 7–28, art. 6. See also Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus, Baarn 1986, p. 50.

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Reformation marks the end of medieval Scholasticism. Luther saw penance and the preaching of the Law as a key preparation for receiving the comfort of the Gospel, rather than the Christian’s profession of a more or less sincere repentance in order to receive the sacraments. Luther stressed the importance of the sacrament of Holy Baptism received in infancy over adult baptism at conversion and over confession as a second escape route, as had been the case in the early Church. Whenever there was relapse into sin, the sinner always had to be called to make confession and receive absolution. Luther would have nothing to do with the notion of confession as an instrument for disciplining the masses, as had indeed been its function in the medieval Church. For him, being a Christian had become a matter of personal experience and a conscious choice. It was not the Church that had to control life through its system of sacraments, but rather the believers had to make free use of the instruments of grace offered to them by the Gospel. The familiar, age-old notion of a European Christendom guided by the Church, whose pastoral care and rituals structured and disciplined the whole life as well as the notion of the corpus christianum – all of this was more or less rejected in the time of the Reformation.5 But, then, how did the reformers view human beings and their individual relationship with God, and how did they put their new doctrines into practice in church life? In answering these questions, we will look at: 1. The relationship between the Church as an external institution and the individual’s inner, spiritual life in the late medieval period. 2. The homo spiritualis, whose salvation depends solely on the grace of God. 3. The power of the Church as against the evangelical freedom (libertas evangelica) of the individual believer. 4. The necessary regulations that in the new ecclesiastical situation curtailed the freedom of the individual to a certain extent. 5. The position of lay believers within the Church, in which their direct relationship with God grew in importance at the cost of the Church as a human institution.

5 According to Zwingli the word ‘church’ could also be used to refer to a regular civil institution. Zwingli also understood a good citizen to be nothing other than a Christian, see Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, ed. Emil Egli et al., Leipzig 1929, vol. 14, no. 6, p. 424.

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Man in the Late Medieval Period

Daily penance In the early Church, ascetic movements sought to avoid penance as much as possible by avoiding sin altogether. For most believers in the medieval period, however, this proved an unattainable ideal. In their eyes, the Christian life revolved around the sacrament of penance. At the very beginning of the Reformation, the notion of ‘daily penance,’ which was already important in the early Church of Ambrose and Augustine, was taken up by Luther; in fact, we find it in the very first of his ninety-five theses, where he applies it integrally to the Christian life.6 In his Large Catechism, Luther echoes Augustine in calling the whole of Christian life a ‘daily baptism’; in the same way, Reformed Protestantism would distinguish between a ‘first or initial conversion’ and a ‘continuous or daily conversion’.7 To be a Christian and to live in daily penitence represented a way of being and a humble attitude respectively, as exemplified in the well-known prayer of St. Francis of Assisi which ends with the words: ‘it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.’

A crucified life in self-hate Luther and his followers opposed a feigned, external penance with a true, internal penance. They opposed the ‘satisfaction of works’ (satisfactio operum) with justification through the satisfaction earned by Christ alone, and considered good works as nothing but the fruits of faith. The young Luther radicalized a type of medieval piety in which he connected the sacrament of penance to an explicit ‘theology of the cross’ (theologia crucis). According to the third and fourth of Luther’s ninety-five theses, inner penance must be accompanied by a ‘mortification of the flesh’ and by ‘self-loathing’ (odium sui). This is the true punishment (poena) that the penitent will have to bear all his life ‘until the entrance of the kingdom of the heavens.’ Like Thomas 6 Clemen, Luthers Werke (see n.3), vol. 4, pp. 87f = WA (see n.3), 30/1, pp. 220f. 7 For Johannes Tauler penitence could not be a one-time action because every day without exception (ane underlos) should be devoted to self-reflection. In 1516 and 1518 Luther published the Theologia deutsch of Tauler and it is likely that he was inspired by Tauler’s writing. See René Süss, Luther, een sympathieke potentaat (English: Luther, a Sympathetic Potentate), Amsterdam 2012, p. 40. For the distinction between conversio actualis prima and conversio cotidiana, see Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek (English: Reformed Dogmatics), Kampen 1930, vol. 4, p. 157.

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Aquinas, Luther described this inner penance as a sadness (dolor) over the sin committed, but to it he added the elements of ‘self-loathing’ and the carrying of one’s cross in imitation of Christ.8 From the 11th and 12th centuries onwards, inner conversion (conversio) to God came to play an ever larger role in personal piety. Here we need only think of the impressive figure of Bernard de Clairvaux (1090–1153). According to Bernard, the virtue of humility means ‘that, through true self-knowledge, humans come to consider themselves as worthless.’9 Geiler von Kaisersberg, a preacher who was active in Strasbourg from 1478 and who has been described as a ‘German Savonarola,’ claimed that ‘the whole life of a Christian consists of nothing other than a cross’.10 In late medieval piety and theology, then, we not only see the sources for Luther’s view of the religious life as a continuous penance but also of his ‘theology of the cross’ – even if he gave both of these concepts a twist of his own by calling the Christian life a penitent, crucified life. In the late medieval period, we find an increasing number of accounts in which inner penance threatens to undermine the importance of the actual sacrament of penance. Wessel Gansfort (ca. 1419–1489), for instance, says in his treatise On penance that remorse (contritio) born from love should not be regarded as a part of the sacrament of penance, because where this remorse is present, the sins must already be considered forgiven and the sinner justified. This means that the third part of the sacrament of penance – i. e., satisfaction (satisfactio) – can be discarded: once sins have already been completely forgiven, there is no need to pay for them through ecclesiastical punishments anymore. In this way, inner penance or conversion to God and a crucified life in imitation of Christ worked to push the external sacrament of penance to the sidelines and thereby to reduce human dependence on the Church as an institution.11

8 Heiko A. Oberman, The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications, Grand Rapids 1994, chap. 6 “Wittenberg’s War on Two Fronts: What Happened in 1518 and Why”, pp. 117–148. 9 Bernard of Clairvaux, De gradibus humilitatis chap. 1, n. 2. See also Reinhard Schwarz, Vorgeschichte der reformatorischen Busstheologie, Berlin 1968, pp. 83–104. 10 Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, Leipzig 1930, vol. 3, p. 627. Cf. Thomas a Kempis, De imitatione Christi, bk. 2, chap. 12,1f “De regia via sanctae crucis” and bk. 3, chap. 34,19: “Adhuc proch dolor viuit in me vetus homo: non est totus crucifixus, non est perfecte mortuus,” in Thomae a Kempis canonici regularis ordinis S. Augustini Opera Omnia, ed. M.J. Pohl, Freibourg i.B. 1904, vol. 2, pp. 82, l.7f and p. 208, l.20f. 11 Wessel Gansfort, “De sacramento poenitentiae et quae sint claves ecclesiae,” in Reformtheologen des 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Gustav A. Benrath, Gütersloh 1968, pp. 61–92. See also Heiko A. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought Illustrated by Key Documents, London 1967, pp. 93–120.

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Intermezzo In the late Middle Ages, as well as for Luther, human freedom was a matter of repentance, and of self-loss, self-denial, humility, letting go, self-doubt, and even self-hatred.12 In the nineteenth century the Danish existentialist philosopher Kierkegaard (1813–1855), to name one example from a later date for the sake of comparison, placed the pursuit of one’s true self at the centre as a crucial stepping stone to finding one’s freedom. An earlier form of spirituality sought a freedom in which one’s highest ideal was to lose oneself in God, to whom one had to relate in set ways. In this later mode of spirituality, human existence forms the starting point – man searches for the right way to relate to himself, a way in which he can become himself and in which losing oneself is in fact the greatest danger.

2.

A New Perspective on the Christian as Spiritual Man (homo spiritualis)13

The Christian is called away from himself Luther had for some time accorded central importance to the ‘spiritual man’. In his marginal commentaries on Tauler’s sermons (1516), in debate with both Gerson’s and Tauler’s anthropology, Luther construes the spiritual man in such a way as to exclude all varieties of ‘doing one’s best’ (facere quod in se est14): ‘The spiritual man [is he] who strives [not by the height of his mental powers, not by synteresis, but] by faith; the Apostle calls this man spiritual [1 Cor 2: 14f], and true Christians are not unlike him.’15 12 Cf. Thomas a Kempis, De imitatione Christi, bk. 3, chap. 37 (De pura et integra resignacione sui …): relinque te, loosing yourself, tibi mori, letting go; chap. 39: abnegatio sui, self-denial; chap. 40 (Quod homo nichil boni ex se habit); chap. 42: te adnichilare, neglecting oneself, chap. 43: compunctio cordis, heartfelt regret (cf. bk. 1, chap. 21) and mortificatio, dying, in Opera Omnia (see n. 10), pp. 212–222 and pp. 39–41. See also Paul J.J. van Geest, Thomas a Kempis (1379/1380–1471). Een studie van zijn mens- en gods¬beeld. Analyse en tekstuitgave van de Hortulus rosarum en de Vallis liliorum (English: Thomas a Kempis [1379/80–1471]. A Study of the Anthropology and Theology of Thomas a Kempis: Analyzing the Hortulus Rosarum and the Vallis Liliorum), Kampen 1996 and Luther, WA (see n. 3), vol. 1, De Sermo de Poenitentia, pp 319–324. 13 For the background of this term, see Steven E. Ozment, Homo Spiritualis. A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther (1509–1516) in the Context of Their Theological Thought, Leiden 1969, in particular p. 197. 14 Oberman, The Reformation (see n. 8), p. 127. 15 WA (see n. 3), vol. 9, pp. 103–104.

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In his commentary on this text, Heiko Oberman points out that Luther here laid the anthropological foundations for the de-anthropologization of medieval soteriology. The believer is called away from himself, like Abraham from his kin; indeed, in the language of mysticism, “torn out of himself” (rapi). Here we find an outline of Luther’s principle “outside ourselves” (extra nos), according to which the true Christian does not rely on his spiritual foundation or on his conscience in whatever sublimated form it may take. Here is the indispensable root of the Reformation principle “Christ alone” (solus Christus).16

Each person a spiritual person Luther saw each and every believer as a clergyman, as if each person was his own priest and subject to the rule of monastic life; he even spoke about ‘the priesthood of all believers’. With regard to the ecclesiastical ideal, this amounts to what may be called an ‘inner-worldly asceticism’ – as Max Weber described this key aspect of religiosity during the Reformation.17 The writings of the young Luther show again and again that he interpreted the Gospel as having high expectations for the demands that can be made of the true Christian. In his 1523 treatise On secular government, we learn that worldly government is superfluous for the Christian who, as a ‘spiritual person’ (homo spiritualis), is fully led by the Gospel. However, since such Christians are few and far between, in practice we cannot do without secular authorities.18

Humanity remains sinful and in continuous need of God According to Luther, original sin stripped people of their initial righteousness and of every ability to be just. Original sin was more than a human deficiency. It was ‘the inclination to evil, the turning away from the good, the loathing of light and wisdom, the love of error and darkness, the flight from and abhorring of good works, the pursuit of evil.’19 Luther opposed the medieval anthropological division according to which the higher human faculties (in contrast to the lower faculties) were not under the influence of sin. Luther argued that we are completely and utterly sinful ac16 Oberman The Reformation (see n. 8), p. 129. 17 In his essay “Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus,” now in Max Weber, Die protestantische Ethik I. Eine Aufsatzsammlung, Hamburg 31973, vol. 1, pp. 115f. 18 Aland, Luther Deutsch (see n. 3), vol. 7, pp. 13–16. 19 WA (see n. 3), vol. 56, pp. 312–313.

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cording to human measures but truly and completely justified according to the measure of God.20 In this way, human beings remain sinners in every respect, while they are simultaneously justified by God’s grace. This came to expression in his famous phrase: simul peccator et iustus.21 In the Reformer’s negative anthropology, Christians are and remain both justified and sinful – this means that they need permanent assistance in the form of God’s grace through Word and sacrament in order to survive. Luther’s point of departure was not the fear of punishment (attritio) but rather the love of God (contritio). This love of God leads one to recognize not his perfection and righteousness, but rather one’s own misery and inability. Those who love Christ must hate themselves, that is, they must develop an odium sui; paradoxically, therefore, true contritio implies that very little real contritio will actually be found in the world. As we learn at the end of Luther’s sermon On penance in 1519, penance cannot justify the sinner. Justification is by faith in the grace of God alone.22 In 1518, the ingenuous John Eck (1486–1543), who would be Luther’s opponent during the famous Leipzig Disputation of 1519, published a series of twelve theses directed primarily against him. In these theses, Eck argued against the idea that Jesus, in his call for penance, desired the whole life of the believer to consist of penance. He also opposed the idea that the just sin in all their good works, even in righteous mortification, or that a just person could commit a mortal sin while also being righteous. Had Luther not declared that the works of the justified were mortal sins and that believers were at once both righteous and sinful? 23 Beginning in 1520, Luther further developed his view that the entire Christian life is a continuous penance; years later this view was adopted by Calvin as well.24 Lu20 WA (see n. 3), vol. 56, p. 269. We are ‘brothers’ and ‘coheirs’ with Christ by adoption through grace, not substantively one with God the Father. And by the same faith in which the righteousness of God lives in us, sin also lives in us: conformity with God is simultaneously disconformity with God. Cf. WA (see n. 3), vol. 56, p. 79 and p. 231; Ozment, Homo Spiritualis (see n. 13), p. 214. 21 WA (see n. 3), vol. 56 (Commentary on Romans of 1515/6), p. 272; cf. WA, vol. 2, pp. 496–497; WA, vol. 39/I, p. 492; WA, vol. 39/I, p. 563. 22 Clemen, Luthers Werke (see n. 3), vol. 1, p. 182 = WA (see n. 3), vol. 2, p. 721. 23 For example thesis 3 and 7 of the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518: Opera hominum, ut semper speciosa sint, bonaque videantur, probabile tamen est, ea esse peccata mortalia (‘Human works, as splendid as they are and as good as they appear to be, nevertheless are probably mortal sins’) and: Iustorum opera essent mortalia, nisi pio Dei timore ab ipsismet iustis, ut mortalia timerentur (‘The works of the righteous would be mortal, unless they are feared by the righteous themselves as mortal according to a pious fear of God’). See Winfried Härle, ed., Martin Luther: Lateinisch-Deutsche Studienausgabe I, Leipzig 2006, pp. 36f and pp. 40f = WA (see n. 3), vol. 1, p. 356 and p. 358. 24 Calvin did follow Luther entirely in his view of a continual and life-long repentance, penitence, and dying in imitation of Christ. For example, in his 1541 short treatise on the Lord’s Supper he writes: ‘Now true repentance is firm and constant; therefore it makes us battle

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ther’s point was that every believer had to repent continuously, and seek refuge in the comfort of the Gospel. In his 1520 bull Exsurge Domine (‘Arise, O Lord’), the pope condemned Luther, among other reasons for his anthropology which presupposed that ‘every good work, however well it is done, amounts to daily sin’.25 In the following year, Luther defended his position and delineated it somewhat more clearly: ‘good works, done as well as possible, amount to everyday sins if measured by God’s grace, and are mortal sins if measured by God’s strict judgment.’ Even when they engage in good acts and virtuous deeds, humans are self-seeking.26 Therefore, to fulfil the precepts of God’s law is impossible.27 This perspective on man would go on to impress its stamp upon the Protestant doctrine, as for instance in Calvin’s Small Catechism of 1537, where he confesses about man (De lhomme) that ‘our strength, weakened for every good work, madly dashes off into wickedness’ (art. 4), while the next article on free will (Du liberal arbiter) adds that, “because on account of the corruption of his feelings he utterly loathes all of God’s righteousness and is inflamed to every sort of wickedness, it is denied that he is endowed with the free capacity to choose good and evil which men call ‘free will’.”28

Faith as personal experience But why would those who have no free will, who lack the capacity to do good out of their own strength, and who will always remain wholly sinful – why would such people take the initiative to act piously, and why would they freely choose to read the Bible themselves, to pray and to go to church in order to receive the Word and

25

26 27 28

against the evil which is within us, not for a day of a week, but without end or intermission (sans fin et sans cesse)’. See Eberhard Busch/Matthias Freudenberg/Alasdair Heron, ed., Calvin Studienausgabe [= CS], Neukirchen 1994, vol. 1/2, p. 462 = Petrus Barth/ Guilelmus Niesel, ed., Joannis Calvini Opera Selecta [= OS], 5 vol., Munich 1926–1936, here vol. 1, p. 514. Cf. Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute (1518) in WA (see n. 3), vol. 1, p. 608. In 1521 Luther says: ‘Eyn frum mensch sundigt ynn allen gutten werkenn,’ see Grund und Ursach aller Artikel D. Martin Luthers so durch römische Bulle unrechtlich verdammt sind, in WA, vol. 7, p. 438 and p. 433. WA (see n. 3), vol. 56, p. 236f. Cf. Luther’s comment on Rom. 3: 10: ‘There is no one who is righteous’. Ozment, Homo Spiritualis (see n. 13), p. 191. WA (see n. 3), vol. 56, 355. Cf. Ozment, Homo Spiritualis (see n. 13), p. 207. OS (see n. 24), vol. 1, p. 381: ‘Les forces impuissantes a toutes bonnes oeuvres tendent furieusement a iniquite’ (art. 4). ‘Mais parce que pour la corruption de son affection il a tresfort en hayne toute la iustice de Dieu et dautre part est fervent en toute espece de mal, il est dict navoir pas puissance libre de eslire le bien et le mal, ce quon appelle le liberal arbitre’ (art. 5).

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the sacrament? Here the Reformation movement clearly failed to anticipate what would happen. Neither the laity nor the clergy would ‘behave’ properly without the firm hand of church discipline. This was the lesson of the mid 1520s.

The flesh does not let go Many bitter experiences brought Luther and Melanchthon to the conclusion that the emphasis on the Gospel as a message of liberation and forgiveness, resulting in ‘evangelical freedom,’ had made people frivolous and negligent of their duties towards Church and faith. In 1529, Luther complained that it would be better if the careless masses were to resubmit themselves to papal authority. ‘For the masses, who do not want to obey the Gospel, need a servant of the law to act as God’s devil and hangman.’29

3.

Freedom of Conscience versus Ecclesiastical Power

Luther: conscience thrown into freedom Because the medieval Church held the key to salvation in its hands, it had a position of authority in the life of the individual believer. This is exemplified in the sacrament of penance: sinners could be certain that God had forgiven their sins and acquitted them of eternal punishment in hell simply by virtue of their participation in the sacrament of penance. Due to the thirteenth-century canonical law (see above), no one could escape a yearly inquiry into his or her conscience. Here the Reformation effected a radical change. No longer did people have to achieve their own salvation by works of penance. God’s wrath and his accusing and condemning Law reached into the individual human conscience. Judgment was now understood to take place in the conscience. This was also the place where individuals experienced their relationship with God so that it too had to be set free from the power of the Church. In a 1521 work, Luther summarized this as follows: ‘Therefore, Christian or evangelical freedom is the freedom of conscience, by which the conscience is liberated from works – not so that they are not done, but so that one does not rely on them.’30 Accordingly, Karl Holl would 29 Aland, Luther Deutsch (see n. 3), 31961, vol. 3, pp. 145f = Bekenntnisschriften der evangelischlutherischen Kirche [= BSLK], Göttingen 1930, pp. 725f. 30 WA (see n. 3), vol. 8, p. 606: ‘Daher ist die christliche oder evangelische Freiheit die Freiheit des Gewissens, durch die das Gewissen von den Werken befreit wird, nicht dass sie nicht getan werden, doch dass man nicht darauf vertraut.’

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later aptly characterize Luther’s theology as a ‘religion of the conscience’ (Gewissensreligion).31

Calvin’s battle of conscience Calvin saw the human conscience as the place where individuals share knowledge with God (con-scientia) and where they are placed directly before the judgment seat of God. The young Calvin writes in a highly personal way about his fear of the God who judges and of the Church’s inability to help him deal with these fears: Whenever I descended into myself, or raised my mind to thee, extreme terror seized me – terror which no expiations nor satisfactions could cure. And the more closely I examined myself, the sharper the stings with which my conscience pricked me, so that the only solace which remained to me was to delude myself by obliviousness.32

Time and again there was the torment of being left with one’s own repentance.33 In the established Church, one’s peace of mind was in the hands of the Church, which governed these things. At the same time, Calvin maintained that a continuous battle in conscience and in faith was characteristic of the pious life.34

The fear of God As a result, the conscience no longer was a tool that the Church ruled over.35 The Church lost some of its power, so that room was made for more direct interaction between God and the believers. Echoing Melanchthon, Calvin warned of the importance of the fear of God. A spiritual person needs an outside substance (substantia extra nos36) to anchor his life and to dwell in that substance. The same attention for the presentia realis of the Lord applies for the administration of

31 Cf. Gerhard Müller, ed., Theologische Realenzyklopädie, part 1, vol. 13 Gesellschaft/Gesellschaft und Christentum VI – Gottesbeweise, Berlin/New York 1985, p. 222. 32 OS (see n. 24), vol. 1, p. 485 = Guilielmus Baum et. al., ed., Ioannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia [= CO], 59 vol. Corpus Reformatorum 29–87, Brunswick 1863–1900, here vol. 5, p. 412. John Olin, ed., A Reformation Debate: John Calvin & Jacopo Sadoleto, New York 1966, p. 82. 33 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion [= Inst.], bk. 3, chap. 4.17; William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth century portrait, New York/Oxford 1988, pp. 56f. 34 Inst. (see n. 33), bk. 3, chap. 2.17 (1539) = OS (see n. 24), vol. 4, p. 27 = CO (see n. 32), vol. 2, pp. 411–412. 35 Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Work, Edinburgh 1987, p. 59. 36 Ozment, Homo Spiritualis (see n. 13), pp. 105f.

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Word and sacrament. Calvin states that in this process the Lord draws near to us and offers us complete grace.37

4.

New Ecclesiastical Regulations Curtailing the Individual’s Freedom

Preaching the law prior to the comfort of the Gospel through Faith Back to Wittenberg. During the Saxon church visitations, Luther and Melanchthon were forced to realize that the new view of human and Christian identity was a lofty or unattainable ideal. For this reason, both the 1527 Articuli visitationis and the 1528 Unterricht der Visitatoren placed great emphasis on repentance and the preaching of the Law. These practices ought to prepare one for faith and set the boundaries of the ‘evangelical freedom’.38 The chaotic events of the Peasants’ War and the many confusions of the Wittenberg Reformation, as they came to light in the visitations in Saxony, for instance, confirmed Luther in his pragmatism. Now not only critical outsiders like Erasmus judged that the reform movement had led in practice to civil strife and loose morals;39 Luther and Melanchthon too discovered that the movement of reform would not last unless a forceful intervention were to take place. The elector of Saxony therefore decided to lead a series of church visitations and wrote an instruction manual in June 1527. Melanchthon, who was part of the first group of visitors, spent the summer compiling a textbook for preachers, in which he outlined his new perspective on the central role of penitence and on the preaching of the Law in order to curb the ‘evangelical freedom’ which had spun out of control.

37 CO (see n. 32), vol. 6, Calvin’s Catechism (Le catéchisme de Genève), pp. 125–126, answer 346: ‘For though both in Baptism and in the Gospel Christ is exhibited to us, yet we do not receive him wholly [like in the Supper] but only in part’ (‘Car combien que Iesus Christ nous soit vrayement communiqué, et par le Baptesme, et par l’Evangile, toutesfois ce n’est qu’en partie, non pas pleinement’). 38 See Heiko A. Oberman, The Dawn of the Reformation. Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought, Göttingen/Edinburgh 1986, chap. 7 “The Gospel of Social Unrest: 450 Years After the So-called ‘German Peasants’ War’ of 1525,” pp. 155–178, here pp. 160f (‘For over a century the “libertas Christiana” had been a current issue and a central question in pub and marketplace,’ p. 161). See also Herman Speelman and Theo Korteweg, Hoe overleeft de kerk? Melanchthons Onderricht aan predikanten (English: How Does the Church Survive? Melanchthon’s Instructions to Preachers), Heerenveen 2013. 39 See Erasmus’s letter to Spalatin from 6 September 1524 in Percy S. Allen, Erasmi Epistulae II, Oxford 1910, no. 1497.

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The conclusion Melanchthon reached after the first visitations in July 1527 was that people become ‘self-confident and fearless’ when they believe they are forgiven by God even if there is no penitence. According to Melanchthon, this would be a greater sin than all the errors that have been discerned so far.40 Melanchthon describes faith without prior penitence, i. e., ‘without the doctrine of the fear of God or the doctrine of the law,’ as new wine in old skins. He argued that people would only grow used to a ‘carnal security’ and become careless. The preaching of penitence was in his mind to include the Law as well as the temporal and eternal punishments with which God threatens sinners. When God ‘so scares the heart and produces a fear of judgment,’ the soil will be prepared for the comfort offered in the preaching of the Gospel.41 Just like the preaching of the Law precedes the preaching of the Gospel, so penitence precedes faith.

To coerce or not to coerce Luther had insisted that participation in penance and in the Lord’s Supper was to be voluntary and ought not to be forced on anyone. He fiercely opposed any notion of laws and duties imposed by the church, as for example in the opening words to his treatment of confession in the 1529 Large Catechism: Concerning confession we have always taught that it should be voluntary and purged of the pope’s tyranny. We have been set free from his coercion and from the intolerable burden and weight he imposed upon the Christian community. […] Up to now, as we all know from experience, there has been no law quite so oppressive as that which forced everyone to make confession on pain of the gravest mortal sin. Moreover, it so greatly burdened and tortured consciences with the enumeration of all kinds of sin that no one was able to confess purely enough. […] Instead, it was made sheer anguish and a hellish torture because people had to make confession even though nothing was more hateful to them. Now they have been made voluntary, that we may make confession without coercion or fear.42

Calvin would end up shifting this balance in the practice of penitence and confession through his Ecclesiastical Ordinances. The more external and practical orientation of his approach emerges above all from the form he gave to penitence and confession in Geneva, most notably in the introduction of the consistory as a 40 Philippus Melanchthon, Unterricht der Visitatoren, Wittenberg 1528 [= UdV], in Martin Delius, ed., Studienausgabe Martin Luther, Leipzig/Berlin, vol. 3 (1983), pp. 415–462, art. 1. 41 AV (see n. 4), art. 1. 42 Robert Kolb/Timothy Wengert, ed., Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Minneapolis 2001, p. 476 = BSLK (see n. 29), pp. 725–726.

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place where sins were confessed, punishment was imposed and absolution was received upon remorse for and repentance from sin.43 This can be demonstrated with a quotation from article 163 of the Genevan church order: If someone because of his rebellion, or because he continues to persist in sin, or because he has been found to be unworthy of holy communion, is kept from [communion], and, instead of humbling himself, scorns the ecclesiastical law and does not voluntarily confess his sin in the consistory, he is to be kept from the Lord’s Supper for a period of six months, and thereafter summoned, admonished, and compelled to return [to communion]. But if he persists until the end of the year without correcting himself according to the admonitions he has received, he is to be banished for a year as an unrepentant man, unless this should be avoided by him asking for forgiveness from the council and admitting his sin in the consistory, so as to be admitted to the Lord’s Supper community.44

Therefore, like Luther and Melanchthon, Calvin demanded attention for the internal aspect of penitence as a life-long process: ‘Repentance can thus be well defined: it is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of him; and it consists in the mortification of our flesh and of the old man, and in the vivification of the Spirit.’ At the same time, he insisted more than them on the external form which this penitence and confession was to assume.45

A continuing call to repentance In the theology of Melanchthon, the penitence preceding faith is not just an isolated element. In those who respond to the preaching of the Gospel, penitence must continue in the sense of the ‘mortification of the flesh’ and the ‘dying of the old man’. For this reason there must be constant attention to the commandments 43 See Herman A. Speelman, Biechten bij Calvijn: Over het geheim van heilig communiceren (English: Confession in Calvin: On the Mystery of Holy Communion), Heerenveen 2010, pp. 454–567. 44 OS (see n. 24), vol. 2 (17 Nov. 1557), p. 360 = CS (see n. 24), vol. 2, p. 272 = Wilhelm Niesel, Bekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen der nach Gottes Wort reformierten Kirche, Zürich 1938, art. 163, p. 62. 45 OS (see n. 24), vol. 1, p. 171; Inst. (see n. 33), bk. 3, chap. 3.5f = OS, vol. 4, p. 60. Inst., bk. 3, chap. 3.4 = OS, vol. 4, p. 60. Cf. Calvin’s discussion of the permanent battle against sin in our lives and of continuing penitence or repentance which is necessary in the Christian life, Inst., bk. 3, chap. 3.9 and 10. Here Calvin and Luther agree. True penitence consists in life-long repentance and continuous penitence, rather than the performance of certain rites at set times. In 1541 Calvin formulated his position as follows: true penitence is not something we do for a day or a week, but it has no end and means a constant (sans cesse) battle against the evil within us. Cf. OS, vol. 1, p. 514. See Speelman, Biechten bij Calvijn (see n. 43), pp. 442– 447.

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of God. The cross which Christians must bear in life also serves to incite them to penitence. The oppressions they suffer can therefore be seen as ‘a part of the instruction of the law’ and a punishment for their sins.46 Yet in spite of his emphasis on fear of divine judgment and punishment, Melanchthon does not teach the attrition of medieval theology. When he discusses the ‘fear of God,’ he distinguishes between the ‘fear of slaves’ (timor servilis), which he sees reflected in James 2:19 and which only trembles at the thought of judgment yet does not believe in forgiveness, and the ‘fear of sonship’ (timor filialis), in which fear of God and faith in forgiveness are always conjoined.47 The goal is therefore this latter notion of the dialectic between Law and Gospel – this applies to both the first confession or conversion, which serves to prepare outsiders for the preaching of the Gospel, and to the second confession or conversion, which runs throughout the entire Christian life from beginning to end. Yet the church visitations of the 1520s brought about a situation in which large groups of people, who had always been considered as Christians, were now primarily approached and addressed as if they were unbelievers and outsiders who still had to be prepared for the preaching of the Gospel by having the Law preached to them and by being called to confession or conversion.

5.

The Position of the Common People within the Christian Religion

Greater internality and freedom as an ideal Although the Reformation arose as a movement against the Church’s fully externalised practice of penitence, Protestantism too proved to be unable to avoid a certain externalisation when it produced ecclesiastical regulations and introduced more or less compulsory systems of penitence and confession in Saxony, as well as in Geneva. In line with its radically negative anthropology, Protestantism had a very positive view on the role of the civil government. Yet the remarkable thing is that, just as Luther’s efforts for ecclesiastical renewal ended with a state church (i. e., the evangelical variant of the ‘landesherrliche Kirchenregiment’), so in the Swiss Reformation the leadership of the church ended up in the hands of the members of the city council. Under Calvin a ‘mixed form’ (res mixta) was developed, in which, especially in the consistory, the pastors and the

46 AV (see n. 4), art. 2. 47 AV (see n. 4), art. 6; Cf. Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 21 (Loci 1535), pp. 409–491 and UdV (see n. 40), art.1 (Luther’s distinction between a fear-based faith and justifying faith).

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elder-councillors closely cooperated in such matters as the discipline of confession, which were in fact typically spiritual in nature. The ideal the Reformers first entertained was to increase internality and freedom, and to decrease externality, coercion, and ecclesiastical control.

A continuous penitence in combination with weekly communion True Christians ought to be intrinsically motivated, out of their love for God and his justice, to share in the treasures and gifts of Christ as they are worked by the Holy Spirit. In such a context the administration of the Word, as well as the sacraments, came to receive greater emphasis. The ideal was for someone to die (off) daily in his penitence and share in the suffering, death, and life of Christ. In the 94th and 95th of Luther’s theses (1517), this motif of a life of the cross is connected to the imitation of Christ: ‘Christians should be exhorted to be zealous to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell.’ Thus they will be ‘more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations.’ Luther developed the shift from a purely spiritual communion with Christ to a more frequent and sacramental communion, which finds its modest origins in the late Middle Ages.48 The shift occurred in significant measure when he established in the Sunday liturgy a weekly Lord’s Supper celebration which was open to all believers. Calvin followed Luther on this point in his first church order.49 Ideally people ought to have the chance to ‘partake of the Eucharist’ at every gathering, that is, probably even at the weekday assemblies. As Calvin wrote, ‘plainly this custom which enjoins us to take communion once a year is a 48 In the medieval period, the custom was for people to receive sacramental communion once a year, around Easter. At that time they went to communion and received the host. Throughout the rest of the year, they only received spiritual communion in which one united one’s spirit with Christ without actually receiving the host. After the Reformation, the more frequent, communal participation in the Lord’s Supper expressed the communal character of the church members. In this way, the continued involvement of the people could be measured beyond the Easter period as well. However, people continued to show a certain reserve toward participating in communion more often than was strictly legislated. Spiritual communion was seen as a ‘safer’ way to be united to Christ without running the danger of partaking of the sacrament in an unworthy manner and to one’s condemnation. 49 ‘Right Honourable Gentlemen: it is certain that a Church cannot be said to be well ordered and regulated unless in it the Holy Supper of our Lord is always being celebrated and frequented. […] It would be well to require that the Communion of the Holy Supper of Jesus Christ (que la communication de la saincte cene de Jesucrist) be held every Sunday at least as a rule,’ or even at every assembly, as he wrote in his Institutes, i. e., Inst. bk. 4, chap. 17.44. OS (see n. 24), vol. 1, pp. 369–370 = Cornelis Augustijn and Frans P. van Stam, Ioannis Calvini Epistolae, Genève 2005, in Ioannis Calvini Opera Omnia Denuo Recognita [= COR], vol. 6/1, ep. 31, p. 160.

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veritable invention of the devil.’50 Luther and Calvin attempted to pursue a weekly celebration of the Eucharist. In this respect Calvin may have failed in Geneva, and yet he did manage to give the Lord’s Supper an obligatory character. Thus, the liturgical changes of the Wittenberg and Genevan Reformations had far-reaching implications, and were not just limited to a renewed attention for the preaching of the Word. God’s Temple is not only ‘a house of the Word’. In addition to verbal food and conversation, the church is about the daily consumption of the body and blood of Christ. In communion, i. e., in being together, he reveals himself and thereby enables a unity between himself and the believer.51 It is only when we understand Calvin’s view of the individual as sinful and unable to do anything without Christ that we can understand his emphasis on the frequent – as often as possible! – participation in communion by each and every believer. Why did the Reformers decide to offer the lay people a weekly celebration of the Eucharist, when just before they had harshly condemned the sacramental externalisation of religion as it had been practiced in the established church? Their decision will seem less strange to us when we consider that they were concerned with the inner experience of sharing in the body and blood of Christ, the unio cum Christo.52 As noted above, by abandoning the sacrament of penitence the Protestant churches had lost their hold on the congregation. A consequence of this was that the people’s own responsibility increased. In this new situation, the conscience was no longer governed by the Church.53 The Church had surrendered some of its power, and that ecclesiastical control was replaced by the direct communion which people could now enjoy with God. Entirely in the spirit of Melanchthon, Calvin often sounded a warning to the people that they must fear God. It is foolish, he claimed, to be smug and to think that we no longer have to fear God. In 1561, for example, Calvin wrote that we must remember that we stand directly ‘before the judgment seat of God,’ and that we should accordingly ‘summon our conscience’ to appear before it. It is ‘an all too common shortcoming that people who have sinned a thousand times and deserve eternal death a thousand times over believe that they have fulfilled their duty before God by means of a few frivolous ceremonies.’ The fear of God 50 OS (see n. 24), vol. 1, p. 149 = Ford L. Battles, ed., Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1536 Edition, rev. ed., Grand Rapids 1975, p. 113. 51 CO (see n. 32), vol. 6, Calvin’s Catechism, pp. 127–128, answer 353: ‘I do not doubt but that, as testified by words and signs, he thus also makes us partakers of his substance, by which we are joined in one life with him’ (‘Ie ne doubte pas qu’il ne nous face participans de sa propre substance, pour nous unir avec soy en une vie’). Cf. CS (see n. 24), vol. 1/2, p. 454. 52 Cf. Luther’s Eyn sermon von dem hochwirdigen sacrament (1519). Cf. Süss, Luther (see n. 7), p. 227. 53 Lohse, Luther (see n. 35), p. 59.

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naturally produces anxiety in the human conscience, but it also causes us to see the true value of God’s grace.54

Some Concluding Remarks How free can one be in a church-based society? The fact that the connection between confession and communion was maintained in the 1528 Saxon church polity ought to be considered remarkable. This connection is about more than introspective self-examination. It was not just the individual who was responsible for preparing his participation in the weekly communion, but the Church too shared in this responsibility: ‘No one should be allowed to go to communion who has not been individually examined by his pastor to see if he is prepared to go to the holy sacrament.’55 Despite this rule, which bore great similarities with the tradition decreed by Rome, the Lutheran church remained strongly opposed to the implementation of force. People could be admonished or reprimanded, but they could not be forced to live or believe in a certain way: ‘no one is to be forced to believe, or driven by command or force from his unbelief, since God takes no delight in forced service and wants only those who are his servants by their own free will.’56 Individual religious freedom of conscience prevailed over the general interest of the church. In other words, in Lutheranism the internal dominated the external. The same is true of the Reformation in some of the Swiss cities, including Bern. Its synod of January 1532, which followed upon the bloody religious battle fought at Cappel in October 1531, decided that pastors should be allowed to support the state in the battle against sin, among others by serving as members of the local Chorgericht, i. e., the state committee for matters of morals.57 However, the clergy members did not as such receive any special powers or disciplinary means. Hundreds of pastors in the territory of Bern’s city state would have to motivate the people to do what is good without the use of coercion. Article 22 of the synod shows that the pastors agreed to this. The preachers were convinced that this committee for supervision and discipline in issues pertaining to morals ought to look more to ‘the internal […] than the external matters.’ They further insisted that they were 54 CO (see n. 32), vol. 18, no. 3485 (18 August 1561), p. 622; cf. CO, vol. 18, no. 3161 (Letter to Blaurer). 55 UdV (see n. 40), art. 8. 56 UdV (see n. 40), art. 6. 57 The synod of Bern had in mind such sins as prostitution, frequenting brothels, drunkenness, gambling, cursing, perjury, entering the service of foreign princes, mercenary warfare, etc., art. 32b.

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not trying to ‘increase their powers for the exercise of discipline’.58 Not long before the synod, in December 1531, Bullinger had fought for and managed to obtain for the pastors the freedom of preaching.59 By emphasizing penitence and confession as a beneficial remedy for both individuals as well as society as a whole, Calvin would reinvigorate the societal significance of ecclesiastical penitence and supervision. Penitence was used to educate and discipline the masses. In departure from the situation of the early church, Christians usually had not deliberately chosen their faith but instead acquired it upon their baptism as children. This created a need for the congregation to participate frequently in the sacraments and to be instructed in Scripture. Luther considered such a spiritual life necessary for every Christian, not just for monks and pastors. Penitence prior to faith became a typically Lutheran doctrine. Melanchthon departed from Luther somewhat in teaching that penitence ought to flow from the fear of God. What Melanchthon meant, however, was that this fear, which God himself ignites in us and which technically comes forth out of love, should be connected to the contritio, even when the latter concerns the believer’s condition before ‘vivification’ or ‘comfort,’ or, as he says elsewhere, before ‘justification’.60 It is God who brings about penitence in us, just as it is he who enables our faith. Remorse cannot be without faith; that would promote negligence and false security. Conversely, faith without remorse produces doubt instead of penitence. According to Luther, spiritual life ought not to be reserved primarily for monastics and preachers, but it was to be the prerogative of each and every believer. This had far-reaching implications. Just like in the early church, penitence and repentance obtained a new significance in the new doctrine. Instead of participating in external religious ceremonies, Christians were expected to participate and be involved personally. The Reformers taught that direct communion with God himself was possible without the mediation of a member of the clergy class. In this context Luther spoke about the ‘priesthood of all believers’ – yet not as a way to elevate humanity.

58 Gottfried W. Locher, ed., Berner Synodus, Neukirchen 1984 [= BS], vol. 1, 32a, 125. Cf. BS, art. 1, p. 37 and BS art. 22, p. 93. 59 Herman A. Speelman, Calvin and the Independence of the Church, Göttingen 2014, see chap. 1. 60 To Agricola Melanchthon writes about the fear of the conscience and being upset before ‘vivification or comfort,’ see Robert Stupperich, ed., Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl, Gütersloh 1975 [= MW], vol. VII/2 (Letter 121, Oct. 1527), p. 36. To Justus Jonas he writes about comparable feelings ‘before justification,’ see MW, vol. VII/2 (Letter 122, 20 dec. 1527), p. 41.

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Today we witness an even more intense search for a balance between a purely individualistic spirituality as well as a more general ecclesiastical piety, where the sacred is not located in the heart alone but also in the objective.

The evangelical movement’s failure to avoid a certain externalisation We have also seen how the sixteenth-century evangelical church could not avoid putting doctrine and life down on paper, and using its authority to ensure that its members stayed true to its tradition. The new church regulations which were introduced after the Saxon church visitations and intended to replace the existing externalised system nevertheless failed to avoid a certain degree of externalisation. As a result, Melanchthon was reproached by John Agricola, for example, who charged that he seemed ready to return to the Roman practices and to give up what Luther had gained. Luther himself did not agree with this evaluation, but approved the confession of Melanchthon published in March 1528. In the church’s practice and in theological reflection, the medieval tradition came to revolve in increasing measure around the sacrament of penance. Whether more internal or more external, the sacrament of penance represented the most useful instrument for the church to turn those who had been baptised into true Christians. Penance (i. e. poenitentiam agree) was accompanied by an external ritual in which three elements came to be distinguished over the course of time: a full or partial contrition (contritio cordis), a confession made before a priest (confessio oris), and a fitting act of satisfaction (satisfactio operis) imposed by the confessor priest. As a result, the concept of penitence (poenitentia) came to be associated increasingly with punishment (poena). Luther did away with the sacrament of penance, but he renewed confession. Ten years later, Melanchthon introduced a second shift. He not only wrote a first confession or church order to which pastors were both bound and measured, but he also insisted on the importance of personal penitence. For the evangelical movement this would prove to be of both practical a well as immense theological significance.

The freedom of conscience A remarkable difference can be observed between Luther’s and Calvin’s views on the freedom of conscience. Calvin had heartily followed Luther’s theology, especially in regard to the doctrines of God and humanity. Like Luther, he too thought that the Lord’s Supper should be a weekly event for believers, to be accompanied by some form of penance and confession. But in his eyes the whole

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was more important than the parts and the community more important than the individual. For Calvin, like for Melanchthon, this meant that the church’s representatives bore responsibility for the attendance at the Lord’s Supper. For Calvin this was not only a matter of theory. More so than Luther and Melanchthon, Calvin felt a great responsibility for the way in which the supervision of Lord’s Supper was executed. In this, he did not shy away from using a certain form of ecclesiastical power to enforce the evangelical doctrine and way of life. He expressed his struggles in this regard in the preface to his Small Catechism where he pondered aloud in the beginning of 1538: ‘Yet ought one not to consider that the pastor who has no delight in communicating it is himself profaning this great mystery?’61 For the practice of home visits in Geneva in the weeks leading up to Easter, Calvin in 1541 introduced – in line with the structures already in place in Geneva – the institution of the elder and, for the more delicate issues, the consistory. Backed by the state, Calvin, who had originally been trained as a jurist, drew up a series of ecclesiastical laws. He would work hard to perfect a Protestant system of penitence and confession over the course of some twenty-five years. At their end, he could hardly disguise his pride and expressed the wish that his ecclesiastical laws might become an example for all the churches.62 This new and very detailed system of supervision and discipline once again extended to every corner of the church’s life, and was perhaps even more restrictive than what had been in place prior to the introduction of the Reformation to Geneva. In Geneva, the eventual outcome was that every year hundreds of citizens, or some five percent of the total population, would be excommunicated for shorter or longer periods of time. This strict Calvinist approach soon spread from Geneva and across all of Europe. In countries with Calvinist (national) churches, the socalled Christian freedom of the individual would be highly impacted by the power of the church. Every new member ‘voluntarily’ had to place himself under the supervision and penitential authority of the church council. The council of the church was the shepherd who cares for and leads sheep – a position that Calvin had actually envisioned as belonging to the bishop. The Reformers drew up ecclesiastical regulations with varying degrees of strictness, following from their common understanding that the human race is radically sinful, can only experience evangelical freedom through Christ, and constantly requires the grace of God. Yet they did not all agree on how the church 61 CO (see n. 32), vol. 5, p. 319 = OS (see n. 24), vol. 1, p. 429. 62 In a meeting of the General Council of Thursday, 13 November 1561, Calvin held a speech in which he called the definitive regulations ‘a light’ that may function as ‘an example to all churches which have been guided on the path of Christian reformation’ and be a testimony ‘to those who are suspicious of our order and religion.’ See CO (see n. 32), vol. 21, p. 766 = CO vol. 10a, p. 92.

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ought to be supervised and on the form discipline ought to take, or on what powers and responsibilities the church was to have in the concrete daily realities of both people and society. While the church’s reform did obtain a certain degree of freedom of conscience for the individual believer, especially in the Reformed wing of the Protestant tradition the supervision of the church remained widespread. In the eyes of the Genevan Reformer, people did not worry enough about their eternal salvation. Their contempt for God resulted from a worldly self-confidence. They did not understand or recognize their own misery, so Calvin wrote to the evangelicals in France, and therefore they did not look for their own salvation. The sinners’ conscience had to be frightened once again, for only then would they value the reconciliation earned for us by the blood of Christ.63 Later in the sixteenth century, members of the Calvinistic churches had to agree voluntarily to the accompaniment of church officials in their daily spiritual lives. Looking back we can say that the Reformers introduced a new view on man and his place in church life. Here Christian freedom and penitence played an important role. In this context Wolfhart Pannenberg thought to discern a specifically Protestant ‘penance piety’ (Bussfrömmigkeit). But, as this study has revealed, the typical element of this piety was not, as Pannenberg supposed, that the Protestants sought to follow the late medieval awareness of sin and fear of judgment.64 Instead, their very opposition to the medieval sacrament of penance was what moved them to give such a prominent place to sin and penitence in the Christian life, in which inner penitence and repentance were to occupy the centre of the stage. As such, the medieval sacrament of penance remained, albeit in a radically transformed manifestation, the formal principle which continued to structure the Christian life in the Reformation. Influenced by humanism, the Reformers’ doctrine of humanity was above all aimed at bringing about a personal faith and life renewal, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

63 CO (see n. 32), vol. 18, no. 3485, 18 August 1561, p. 622. In his pastoral letter to his followers in France, Calvin warned that the majority had contempt for Christ and his Gospel of the forgiveness of sins, because most people were ‘without fear, without a sense of evil in their own life, and without fear for God’s wrath,’ and comforted themselves with a false sense of security. Decades earlier he had similarly complained about the way many laypeople were not serious enough about the Gospel. See, for example, the preface to his catechism of 1538 in CO vol. 5, p. 319 = OS (see n. 24), vol. 1, p. 428. 64 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Christliche Spiritualität, Göttingen 1986, chap. 1 Protestantische Bussfrömmigkeit, pp. 5–25.

Konrad Küster

Protestant Church Cantata: Poetical and Musical Challenges Around 1700

During the late 19th century, the question was raised how the great Protestant church cantata, as it is known from Bach’s œuvre, might have emerged. These cantata librettos seemed to combine Bible quotes and hymn strophes with contemporary baroque poetry, all this transferred into chorus movements, recitatives and arias. A typical example is the libretto ‘Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland’ written (or rather compiled) by Erdmann Neumeister and composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (cantata no. 61) in 1714 and others. In Bach’s composition, the opening is a concerted chorale movement based upon a hymn by Martin Luther. It is followed by a recitative-aria pair for tenor and a single aria for soprano with a bass recitative from the Bible (Book of Revelation 3:20) separating both ‘units’ from each other. The conclusion is again a (part of a) hymn, this time much less elaborate.1 This approach to cantata libretti is, strictly speaking, incoherent: Two different groups of components are formulated, one referring to textual and liturgical types (texts from the Bible, hymn strophes, contemporary poetry) and the other to musical genres (chorus movements, recitatives, arias). They don’t fit each other and, at last, any text could be transformed into any musical form. For example, a hymn strophe, typically used as a concluding section, could become a solo aria or even a recitative, and a number of concerted opening choruses (like the one in this cantata) are based upon a hymn strophe, too. Likewise, there is no typical scoring for a biblical text and its composition. Thus, the question is how the coherent musical structure of Bach’s cantatas could be formed, which replaced the older concepts of using text fragments from the Bible or hymns only. In the later 19th century, the Bach scholar Philipp Spitta pointed to the cantata librettos by the theologian Erdmann Neumeister as a vital clue.2 In a first step, Neumeister had written a text cycle for a whole year of services; its title was 1 For a structural and textual overview see http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~wfb/cantatas/61.html (last accessed 2 January 2014). 2 Philipp Spitta, J. S. Bach, 2 vol., Leipzig 1873/80, especially vol. 1, p. 471.

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Geistliche Cantaten statt einer Kirchen-Music (Sacred Cantatas Instead of Church Music, printed in 1702).3 Thus, the point was to create a genre that could replace the ‘main church music,’ usually preceding the sermon. These libretti consisted solely of recitatives and arias, just as they could be found in contemporary operas. Some years later, however, Neumeister resorted to biblical texts and, in a final stage of his attempt, even to hymn strophes. Consequently, it seemed that a somewhat revolutionary experiment of ‘operatic church music style’ had failed at least in part4 – a failure which on the other hand led to the beloved cantata structure, as it was used by Bach and others. Clearly, the re-integration of biblical texts or hymn strophes would have contradicted the original idea of transforming as many elements as possible from the contemporary opera into church music. In the meantime, however, it has become clear that Neumeister’s ideas were much less revolutionary. For example, libretti with just the two crucial genres of recitatives and arias were written already in 1670 by the Dresden poet and composer Constantin Christian Dedekind.5 And a number of aspects point to much more continuity than Spitta and his followers could think of. Music of the late 17th century was widely unknown to commentators of the time around 1900; it was only in the later 20th century that archetypes of church music from the preBach time could be formulated.6 But both facts have hitherto not been combined: Neumeister’s presumed cantata reform has not yet been linked to the church music of the late 17th century. In order to outline the demands, one has to separate several possible approaches to the matter. It is true that Bach’s cantatas impress with the variety of the musical genres involved. But this variety is the consequence of both theological and poetical practices. Often, the theological concepts involved in the works of Bach are regarded in terms of the corresponding music (e. g., ‘Bach as interpreter of the Bible’). It would surely be much more fruitful to focus on the libretti themselves: How are the poetical components related to each other? What 3 Max Seiffert, preface to: Johann Philipp Krieger, 21 ausgewählte Kirchenkompositionen, Leipzig 1916 (Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst, vol. 53/54), S. LXXVIf. Cf. the digital version of Neumeister’s 1705 edition: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0003/bsb00036860/images/index.html (last accessed 2 January 2014). 4 Hans-Joachim Schulze, “Bemerkungen zur Leipziger Literaturszene – Bach und seine Stellung zur schönen Literatur,” in Bach-Studien 7: Johann Sebastian Bach und die Aufklärung, ed. Reinhard Szeskus, Leipzig 1982, pp. 156–169, here p. 166. 5 Wolfram Steude, “Zur Vorgeschichte der ‘Madrigalischen Kantate’ Erdmann Neumeisters,” in Schütz-Jahrbuch 23 (2001): pp. 43–53, here p. 52. 6 Friedhelm Krummacher, Die Überlieferung der Choralbearbeitungen in der frühen evangelischen Kantate: Untersuchungen zum Handschriftenrepertoire evangelischer Figuralmusik im späten 17. und beginnenden 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1965, p. 29–31; Mary E. Frandsen, Crossing Confessional Boundaries: The Patronage of Italian Sacred Music in SeventeenthCentury Dresden, Oxford 2006, p. 229.

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does it mean if a specific hymn strophe interpolates a biblical text? And, clearly, a composer might have misunderstood a librettist’s intentions; therefore, a purely textual approach should precede any interpretation of the text as a part of the music. Similarly, a poetical approach to the impact of theology on the texts is also necessary, and this means focusing on texts which have long been regarded as poor or crude baroque. For this approach, the role of a librettist for church music must be reshaped. Clearly, in the early 17th century such a librettist was not yet necessary since a composer wrote music to a text passage from the bible; similarly, he could use a hymn. From around the middle of the 17th century onwards, however, the composer could be provided with newly written poetry. And this is a crucial point: Modern poetry of that time was dominantly strophic. Who, then, should have had the idea to write a cantata libretto similar to those composed by Bach, i. e., a sequence of short poetical sections shaped like single strophes, but differing from each other in poetical aspects? Clearly, these poetical structures could be found on stage; but they were not part of the typical demands for church music. So, how did this non-strophic idea invade the service? Possible answers to these questions come from an unexpected, but nevertheless plausible source.7 The leading German opera house of the time was the one at Hamburg, founded in 1678 as the first public opera house north of the Alps. Composers, librettists and singers (if not even instrumentalists) were at least in touch with Duke Christian Albrecht of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf, whose territory was placed roughly on both sides of the contemporary border between Germany and Denmark. Between 1677 and 1689, during the Nordic wars of the time, he was twice exiled to Hamburg. When he returned to his castle, he apparently wished to hear the operatic music, as he had witnessed it in Hamburg, in his court chapel as well; thus, a crucial demand of the cantata concepts, as outlined by Neumeister in 1700, was realized at Gottorf Castle already in 1680 – twenty years earlier. These works were based upon specific operatic concepts to an even greater degree than those composed by Neumeister at the turn of the century, but, at the same time, derived much more from traditional church music principles of earlier times. In fact, they already anticipated the complete mixture of textual forms, as it can be found in the 18th century. Consequently, a typical missing link might be found. The composer in charge was Johann Philipp Förtsch, and it is important that he was not solely a musician. He was one of the most important librettists at the Hamburg opera house as well. Perhaps Förtsch

7 For details see Konrad Küster, preface to Johann Philipp Förtsch, Evangeliendialoge, 3 vols., Wilhelmshaven 2013 (Quellenkataloge zur Musikgeschichte, vol. 58–60), vol. 1, especially pp. XXXI – XXXIX.

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was also responsible for the church music libretti. Additionally, a court chaplain could be taken into consideration. The theatrical approach to this kind of church music was not guided by the somewhat abstract formal idea of combining recitatives and arias (as both Dedekind and Neumeister did). The focus was upon the small dramas themselves as the mode in which Gospel texts can appear, i. e., the dialogues between actors within an allegory or the stories which consist of dialogues between Jesus, his disciples and people in the surrounding scenery. These dialogues might be easily adapted for the stage, simply by omitting the narrative of the Gospel. In most cases, however, the meaning of the story is not perceivable any longer if the narrative components are missing completely. Thus, material to replace this ‘gap’ has to be found. Further biblical passages, hymn strophes or newly written text portions could be used for this purpose. Förtsch’s cantata text for the 11th Sunday after Trinity is an example of this kind of composition. The libretto is based upon the allegory of the sinner and the Pharisee, as reported in Luke 18: Aria 1

Ihr Sünder tretet bald herzu, Die ihr mit Schuld beladen, Hier ist für eure Seelen Ruh, Hier ist der Stuhl der Gnaden. Aria 2 Wer nur in Demut auf ihn traut, Dem steht der Himmel offen, Wer aber auf die Werke baut, Hat Heuchlers Gnad zu hoffen. Phar. Ich danke dir Gott, dass ich nicht bin wie andere Leute, Räuber, Ungerechte, Ehebrecher, oder auch wie dieser Zöllner. Christ Es haben mir/dir die Hoffärtigen noch nie gefallen, aber allezeit hat mir gefallen der Elenden und Demütigen Gebet. Sinner Gott, mein Geist ist ganz zerrissen, Ach mich ängstet mein Gewissen, Weil ich Übels hab getan. Ach, sieh mich gnädig an. Christ Ich sehe aber an den Elenden und der zerbrochenen Geistes ist und der sich fürchtet vor meinem Wort. Christ Wer sich selbst erhöhet, der wird erniedriget werden; und wer sich selbst erniedriget, der wird erhöhet werden. Phar. Ich faste zwier in der Woche, und gebe den Zehenden von allem, das ich habe. Sinner Gott, sei mir Sünder gnädig. Tutti: Bei dir gilt nichts denn Gnad und Gunst, Hymn str. Die Sünde zu vergeben, Es ist all unser Tun umsonst, Auch in dem besten Leben, Für dir niemand sich rühmen kann,

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Des muss sich fürchten jedermann Und deiner Gnade leben.8

The basic dramatic elements are the words by the Pharisee, by Christ and a very short sentence uttered by the sinner. Clearly, in this way the story behind these words is not perceivable. Therefore, another two biblical passages are added, both sung by the voice of Christ. The sinner, however, is introduced with an impressive aria which transforms his biblical contribution into a mere appendix within the action. This dialogue is framed by two strophes of an aria, again with a newly written text and a concluding hymn strophe. The introduction is sung by the sopranos, who are not involved into the stage-like action, thus appearing as commentators on the scenery. By this compositional approach of Förtsch, the formal structure known from Bach’s cantatas is prefigured: The work consists of text portions from the Bible and a hymn strophe as well as newly written poetry, and they are transferred into solo arias, choral movements and a part which should necessarily be understood as an earlier form of the recitative. Even if the musical result does not fit the compositional practice employed in later decades, a passage which is formed as a direct equivalent to an opera-like dialogue cannot be described in a different way. Returning to Neumeister, it becomes clear that his idea of operatic church music was not new. But the question remains how the operatic approach can be linked to the earlier practice of church music. An answer can be found in one of Förtsch’s cantatas, in which a more traditional church music concept forms the basis. This concept consists of a biblical opening and a continuation formed from the strophic text. An example is the composition for the 9th Sunday after Trinity (Luke 16): [Lk 16, 2] Basso Tenore Basso 2 Canti Aria str. 1 2 Canti

Wie hör ich das von dir? Tue Rechnung von deinem Haushalten. [insertion: Job 9, 3] Herr, so du Lust hast mit mir zu hadern, so kann ich dir auf tausend nicht eines antworten. Tue Rechnung, denn du kannst hinfort nicht mehr Haushalter sein. [insertion: Ps. 103. 10, varied] Herr, handele nicht mit uns nach unsern Sünden und vergilt uns nicht nach unsrer Missetat. Bei mir ist weder Rat noch Kraft Zu legen ab die Rechenschaft. Mein Gott, ich kann gar nicht bestehen, wenn du willst zu Gerichte gehen.

8 Libretto to Johann Philipp Förtsch’s composition on Luke 18,9ff; ed. in Küster (see note 7), vol. 3, pp. 469–488.

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Siehe, ich sage euch machet euch Freunde mit dem ungerechten Mammon, auf dass, wenn ihr nun darbet, sie euch aufnehmen sie euch aufnehmen in die ewigen Hütten.

Aria str. 2 Alto/Tenore Mein Jesu, soll und muss ich dran, So nimm mich aus Genaden an, und sei mein Freund, wenn einst der Erden, das Urteil soll gefället werden. Aria str. 3 Tutti Sei mein Vorsprecher in Noht, So kann ich freudig durch den Tod, mein Jesu [Herr Jesu] zu der Schar der Frommen in deiner ew’gen Hütten kommen.9

The cantata begins directly with the biblical dialogue, i. e., without an introducing movement on a newly written text as in the work previously cited. The continuation is supplied by the typical strophic poem composed as aria strophes for different voices. This reflects the old principle of a Gospel opening followed by a strophic continuation, and there are only few details which do not fit the tradition. The opening biblical text is not set for tutti; therefore, a tutti frame cannot be established for the whole work. Secondly, the bass voice divides the aria by introducing biblical text. This is not very much; it is obvious how easily the traditional concept could be varied for dramatic purposes. So, the conditions under which the earlier cantata structure emerged are quite clear. The remaining question is: What does this mean with respect to Protestant culture? Undoubtedly, a theatrical approach to Gospel compositions at Gottorf Castle was by no means problematic, and this concept had no other exegetic purpose than to ‘tell’ stories in a dramatic manner. But how could this concept be transmitted to other conditions within the contemporary Lutheran service? Protestant pastors were very keen not to allow any operatic music in church, and, clearly, Neumeister formed an exception to this. How, then, did the Gottorf ideas spread out? Förtsch’s music was known in Central Germany. Furthermore, his Gottorf successor Georg Österreich was engaged to the court of Coburg some time after 1695.10 Apparently, it was Georg Österreich who had brought the concept itself to Central Germany some years before Neumeister entered his experiment. The 9 Libretto to Johann Philipp Förtsch’s composition on Luke 16; ed. in Küster (see n. 7), vol. 3, pp. 433–450. 10 For the biography see Kerala J. Snyder / Geoffrey Webber, “Österreich, Georg,” in Grove Music online (http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/20542). Last accessed 2 January 2014.

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court at Coburg had close links to the neighbouring one of Meiningen. It should therefore come as no surprise that the next steps of the cantata development can be traced there. In Meiningen, a cycle of influential cantata texts was printed in 1704.11 They can be considered in direct connection with the abovementioned matters. The works have a quite uniform structure: After a movement based upon a text from the Old Testament a recitative-aria pair follows. The next movement quotes the New Testament, followed by an aria, a recitative, a chorus and a concluding hymn strophe. However, this structure was enlarged for the biggest feasts of the church year. The text for Ascension Day can serve as an example. Johann Sebastian Bach himself was among the musicians known to have composed a cantata on this libretto (as late as 1726; cantata no. 43).12 In this larger concept, the quote from the New Testament is followed by a strophic poem, clearly set for different voices – as in the traditional 17th-century church music. The combination of the Gospel with a strophic poem reflects the pattern displayed in Förtsch’s music. In the original edition of the Meiningen librettos, the recitative-aria-pairs are assigned to specific, but not theatrical roles: The soul appears as someone more specified, in this case as ‘the attentive Soul’ and ‘the praising Soul’.13 Thus, the basic theatrical approach is reflected even here, transformed into an unsuspicious non-stage context. Moreover, it is important that the personified soul does not speak to God but to the audience, simply reporting a specific feeling or attitude as in a contemporary operatic aria where the central purpose was a ‘moving’ display of standard affections. Finally, the essentially dramatic approach characterizes Neumeister’s cantatas as well. Seen from Förtsch’s perspective, the libretto ‘Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland’ reveals a dramatic approach to the subject of Advent. The opening hymn strophe is a clear imperative: ‘Nun komm!’ (‘Come now!’). Both the recitative and the aria texts directly address Christ, and the biblical recitative appears as a corresponding answer. The result is the concluding aria, again expressing an individual statement: ‘Ich’ (‘I’). Why should this work not be performed on stage? This all points to a reassessment of Neumeister and his experiment, which (by now) does not seem as revolutionary as it did in the 1880s and 1890s. Apparently, 11 Konrad Küster, “Meininger Kantatentexte um Johann Ludwig Bach,” Bach-Jahrbuch 73 (1987): pp. 159–164. 12 For the text and structure see http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~wfb/cantatas/43.html, last accessed 2 January 2014. 13 Konrad Küster, Bach-Handbuch, Kassel and Stuttgart/Weimar 1999, p. 108f; for further details see Hans-Joachim Schulze, “Johann Sebastian Bachs dritter Kantatenjahrgang und die Meininger ‘Sonntags- und Fest-Andachten’ von 1719,” Bach-Jahrbuch 88 (2002): p. 193– 199 and Konrad Küster, “Aneignen, Überbieten, Variieren: Bachs Kantate BWV 88 und die Komposition Johann Ludwig Bachs,” in Bach oder nicht Bach?, ed. Reinmar Emans and Martin Geck, Dortmund 2009, pp. 103–134, here p. 105 and 114.

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it was not uncommon for church music around 1700 to include the same variety of textual and musical genres as the later compositions of Bach, and the dramatic approach to the Gospel posed no problem for the church either. This combination dates back to the time around 1680 when Förtsch wrote his cantatas – under quite unique circumstances, because he took both operatic experiences and the Gospel as starting points. Thus, he simply had to use additional poetical text shaped as single strophes instead of the traditional strophic poems. After that, it is a real interdisciplinary demand to reconstruct how this structure was transferred to cantata libretti, which were not based upon the idea of performing a drama. Some hints can already be found in other works by Förtsch. Others are displayed by the more sophisticated role structure of the Meiningen print. Thus, the rise of one of the most popular elements of Lutheran practice, the church cantata, now once again becomes an open question – a question with Luther and Bach in sight, but much more focused on Lutheran theology and church music of the neglected late 17th century in its non-pietistic part.

Anna Michalska

Churches for People. Protestant Search for the New Liturgical Space in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century

The aim of this paper is to show the problem of the protestant search for the new liturgical space in the 16th and early 17th century, from the onset of the Reformation to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, seen as a milestone for the development of protestant church architecture. Examples discussed contain newly built objects as well as rebuilt medieval ones, adapted for the new religious needs. Although the topic has been explored by many respected scholars, here it will be presented in the light of a new research program run at the University of Wrocław.

Churches for People? In a verse written by one of the Polish romantic poets the world before the Reformation era is compared to the gothic cathedral which – due to the protest of Martin Luther – falls down, shaken with the Word. The image of an immense but overwhelming structure is juxtaposed with a space of light and freedom.1 The metaphor, however exaggerated, expresses the fundamental change of reality during the 16th century. Even if the Reformations of the 16th century cannot be considered as the only reason, they were undoubtedly a major catalyst and best expression of changes.2 Declaring oneself on the side of the Protestant Reformation meant not only a rejection or revision of a range of doctrinal issues, but also a beginning of a new way of thinking about social relations, personal religiousness, and everyday life. On the one hand, the new church polity determined the role of local churches or – what Luther himself seemed to prefer – 1 Juliusz Słowacki, Oda do wolnos´ci [Ode to Freedom], 1830, available online on http://pl. wikisource.org/wiki/Indeks:Oda_do_wolno%C5 %9Bci_%28Juliusz_S%C5 %82owacki%29, p. 2(235)–3(236) (last accessed 22 November 2013). 2 Heinz Schilling, Konfesjonalizacja. Kos´ciół i pan´stwo w Europie doby przednowoz˙ytnej, Poznan´ 2010, p. 104ff.

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communities (Gemeinden). On the other, as the reformers stressed, the church was defined as a ‘spiritual collection of the faithful wherever they may be’ and thus impossible to be geographically limited.3 The change encompassed church architecture as well. Even though gothic churches were frequently adopted, theologians, architects, and founders were put in charge of creating the new liturgical space, not tainted by ‘Papist’ influence. Reformers tended to focus mainly on the functional solutions.4 The essential problem to be solved was how to conform the space with the Protestant service of worship. That service was determined by the change of meaning and the manner of celebration of Communion, the emphasis of the Word of God and teaching, as well as the importance of regular participation of the whole community in worship. The aforementioned change in the meaning of Eucharist, especially visible in the Reformed communities but also present in the Lutheran tradition, was followed by the revision of the role of clergy. It led to a problem with prior spatial and functional divisions between the nave and the long chancel, the latter thus far set apart for the well-developed church hierarchy or numerous monks or friars. Luther himself emphasized that the space for Eucharist distribution should be somewhat distinguished e. g., raised above the level of the nave. Eventually, the Lutherans maintained the ‘symbolic division’5 between aforementioned spaces. The type of a ‘medieval church’ was never abandoned; moreover, it could remain a most obvious choice.6 In medieval churches, adapted both by Lutheran and Reformed communities, the chancel could retain its significant role, slightly adjusted to the new manners of celebrating the Lord’s Supper – to mention only the long communion tables along the chancel of the Great Church in Emden.7 However, when one of the spaces – either the chancel or the nave – was found large enough to house a whole community, the other could be spared or even abandoned. Sometimes a chancel was given an additional purpose: it could house the pews for honorable members of the community or serve as a place of commemorations

3 Erwin R. Gane, “Luther’s Views of Church and State,” in Andrews University Seminary Studies, 8 ( July 1970): p. 120. 4 Jan Harasimowicz, “Sztuka jako medium nowoz˙ytnych konfesjonalizacji,” in Sztuka i dialog wyznan´ w XVI i XVII wieku, Warsaw 2000, p. 60; Marcin Wisłocki, Sztuka protestancka na Pomorzu 1535–1684, Szczecin 2005, p. 61; Sergiusz Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts. The Protestant image question in Western and Eastern Art, London–New York 1993, p. 5ff. 5 Harasimowicz, Sztuka jako medium (see n. 4), p. 59. 6 Kathrin Ellwardt, Evangelischer Kirchenbau in Deutschland, Petersberg 2008, p. 34. 7 Karl Emil Otto Fritsch, Der Kirchenbau des Protestantismus von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, Berlin 1893, p. 458.

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with epitaphs.8 As Steensma notices, ‘that is how the Lord’s space turned into lord’s space’,9 mirroring the social structure of the community. In the newly built churches, especially Reformed ones, the long, structurally distinct chancel was no longer necessary. The ground plan of Zuiderkerk (1603– 1611) in Amsterdam resembled a three-aisled nave without a chancel.10 Moreover, the pulpit placed by the column in the midway of the nave determined the transverse layout. Two rows of slender columns did not disturb the impression of a uniform, consistent space. As for the furnishings, the slight rearrangement of the rows of pews allowed to prepare the place for Communion tables. One particular example of the church’s ground plan without a distinguished chancel is the central plan rooted in Christian tradition.11 Early post-Reformation examples, dating back to the 16th century can be found in France (a famous Huguenot temple called Paradis near Lyon, built 1564), Scotland (Burntisland, 1592), the Netherlands (e. g., Willemstad), as well as in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the Greek-cross-shaped ground plans of the Reformed churches).12 The predilection for a uniform, often centralising space was a result of the emphasis put on the availability of God’s Word and teaching. The pulpit became a focal point in the church interior, chosen to ensure the best visibility and audibility. To avoid dividing people’s attention between altar and pulpit, the pulpit altars were introduced.13 The pulpit’s crucial role affected the whole organization of the space. Adjusting church space could be reduced to the introduction of galleries by the walls opposite the pulpit. Good examples of that practice can be found in churches in 8 Regnerus Steensma, Protestantse kerken hun pracht en kracht, Bornmeer 2013, pp. 142– 160. It must be stressed that, although the burial close to the altar is one of the oldest Christian traditions, in the Protestant church building it was no longer considered as a burial ad sanctos as the deceased’s soul was no longer believed to derive any ‘spiritual benefits’ from the placement of its mortal remains. Despite this, the chancel was still reserved for the elite burials, see Piotr Birecki, Sztuka luteran´ska na ziemi chełmin´skiej od drugiej połowy XVI do pierwszej c´wierci XVIII wieku, Warsaw 2007, p. 315 n. 9. 9 Steensma, Protestantse kerken (see n. 8), p. 142. 10 Cornelius Albertus van Swigchem, Teunis Brouwer, W. van Os, Een huis voor het Woord. Het protestantse kerkinterieur in Nederland tot 1900, ‘s–Gravenhage 1984, p. 116; Fritsch, Der Kirchenbau des Protestantismus (see n. 7), pp. 456–458. 11 Nigel Yates, Liturgical Space. Christian Worship and Church Buildings in Western Europe 1500–2000, p. 4ff.; Konrad Ottenheym, “Centralised Dutch Calvinist Churches, Jewish Synagogues in Amsterdam and the Model of the Temple of Solomon,” in L’architecture religieuse européenne au temps des Réformes: héritage de la Renaissance et nouvelles problématiques, Paris 2009, pp. 91–106. 12 Andrew Spicer, Calvinist Churches in Early Modern Europe, Manchester–New York 2007, p. 51; Steensma, Protestantse kerken (see n. 8), p. 18; Tadeusz Przypkowski, “Zabytki reformacji w Kielecczyz´nie,” in Studia Renesansowe, vol. 1, ed. M. Walicki, Wrocław 1956. 13 Yates, Liturgical Space (see n. 11), p. 34.

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Niedz´wiedzica (Bärsdorf) in Silesia as well as Ottensheim in Austria, where the two rows of galleries are intersecting at right angle, forming an L-shaped auditorium.14 It is particularly visible when looking from the pulpit towards the nave. Among the newly erected buildings, a transverse spatial solution launched in the castle chapel in Stuttgart (1560) is undoubtedly the perfect example of this aim.15 The Reformers demanded that the whole community should not only have a possibility to attend the service but also to participate in it actively and consciously. It was achieved by the introduction of the liturgy in the vernacular and – as to the architecture – by the provision of permanent seating for the congregation, which is important if we remember that the sermon could last up to three hours.16 That demanded an additional space to house new pews. The most common solution was to introduce one or more levels of galleries. They are sometimes referred to as a ‘distinctive trademark of the Protestant architecture’.17 A different way of expanding church space was chosen by the members of the magistrate in Kamienna Góra (Landeshut).18 In late 16th century they decided not only to provide the medieval building with galleries in the aisles, but also to add an additional aisle. A larger area was gained by making the ground plan asymmetric. In 1602 the castle church in Königsberg was enlarged by adding a second nave – the concept appearing before in mendicant architecture.19 Simultaneously, the transverse layout was introduced and the floor plan remained symmetric. More complex is the reason why the nave of a parish church in Oława (Ohlau) in Silesia needed to be torn down and built anew after 1587. Local rulers from the Piast dynasty noticed negligence in religious duties among their people. In 14 Magdalena Karpin´ska, Kos´ciół w Niedz´wiedzicy i Olszyn´cu jako przykłady ´sla˛skich budowli sakralnych wieku reformacji, Master in Art History, supervisor: Professor Jan Harasimowicz, Art History Institute, University of Wrocław, Wrocław 2007. See also: Uszok Wojciech, Małopolskie zbory Braci Polskich, Master in Art History, supervisor: Professor Jan Harasimowicz, Art History Institute, University of Wrocław, Wrocław 2000; Nowak Katarzyna, Kalwin´skie zbory Małopolski, Master in Art History, supervisor: Professor Jan Harasimowicz, Art History Institute, University of Wrocław, Wrocław 2000. 15 Reinhard Lieske, Protestantische Frömmigkeit im Spiegel der kirchlichen Kunst des Herzogtums Württemberg, Deutscher Kunst Verlag 1973, pp. 60–66. 16 Ellwardt, Evangelischer Kirchenbau (see n. 6), p. 18. 17 James F. White, Protestant Worship and Church Architecture. Theological and Historical Considerations, New York 1964, p. 85. ´ ski, J. Potocki, ed., Słownik Geografii Turystycznej 18 M. Staffa, K.R. Mazurski, J. Czerwin Sudedów, vol. 9: Góry Kamienne, p. 145 (ground plan). Detailed monography of the church in Justyna Chodasewicz, Kos´ciół parafialny p.w. ´sw. ´sw. Piotra i Pawła w Kamiennej Górze, Master in Art History, supervisor: Professor Jan Harasimowicz, Art History Institute, University of Wrocław, Wrocław 2013. 19 Ehler W. Grashoff, Probleme des protestantischen Kirchenbaues im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1938, p. 55.

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counteraction, Duke Georg II addressed a letter to the city magistrate and named the errors of church ministers. Soon, his sons and successors ( Joachim Friedrich and Johann Georg) provided money to rebuild the nave of the church. The contracted architect, Bernard Niuron, managed to create one of the most elaborate examples of early Protestant church architecture in Silesia.20 Of course, it should be regarded as the expression of the ruler’s auspices as the protector of the church and a display of city’s status as ducal residence. The main aim, however, seems the duke’s will to provide a motivating factor for people from Oława. The foundation of the new church was the final effort – after the letter and visitation – taken to encourage people’s piety. Emerging buildings closely linking new spatial structures and a rich abundance of ideological content – these are primarily Protestant palace chapels.21 At this point it is impossible to recapitulate their ideological programs. However, I would like to mention how important they were for the search for the new liturgical space. These chapels were not only model examples of Protestant churches. They were also serving as an expression of the new status of the rulers as heads of the local churches. The first objective was achieved by using a number of solutions, often innovative, which became common in Protestant architectural language: multi-level galleries, arranging altar, organs and pulpit in one vertical axis, or applying transverse architectural layout. The representative function was manifested in the pursuit of developing monumental space – such as in the example of the continuous rhythm of the spans and piers of the chapel of Frederiksborg Castle – and in reflection of the social hierarchy, represented through the emphasized role of the ruler’s loge. The same hierarchy could be observed in many town churches where the seating arrangement provided the distinguished place for the community elders and members of magistrates, and in rural churches, where the status of the patron of the church and the representatives of his family was emphasized. The structure of the gathering community can be clearly seen in the Kirchenstuhldekret for the Holy Trinity Church (Dreieinigkeitskirche) in Regensburg (1627). The document listed certain places for the named officials as well as unnamed churchgoers – each with a certain fee.22

20 Jan Harasimowicz, “Bernard Niuron – budowniczy fary oławskiej,” in Ludzie Oławy. Studia, szkice i materiały, ed., K. Matwijowski, Wrocław 1992, pp. 27–40. 21 The current state of research in Hugo Johannsen, “The Protestant Palace Chapel: Monument to Evangelical Religion and Sacred Rulership,” in Signs of Change: Transformations of Christian Traditions and Their Representation in the Arts, ed. N.H. Petersen, C. Clüwer, N. Bell, Amsterdam–New York 2003, pp. 137–164. 22 Reinhold Wex, Ordnung und Unfriede. Raumprobleme des protestantischen Kirchenbaus im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert in Deutschland, Marburg 1984, pp. 314–316.

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The last issue that should be brought up is a matter of aesthetics. Recommendations left by reformers on the shape of the church buildings were related to their functions. Hence the often accepted assumption that functional considerations dominated the Protestant architectural thought. However, the examples of the palace chapels and the new nave of the church in Oława show that the first Protestant churches formed in the 16th century were not only functional solutions, but also planned with the utmost care for aesthetics. The tension between these two aspects of early Protestant church architecture is particularly visible in the example of two churches erected on the L-shaped ground plan. The first one, in Secemin (Lesser Poland), was primarily a 15th century gothic parish church. Its patron, Krzysztof Szafraniec (raised at the court of Albrecht Hohenzollern), decided to turn it into a Protestant temple by removing the gothic nave and raising the new one, intersecting with the chancel at right angle. In between these two sections the rooms for the minister were placed. The pulpit was located in the middle of such a layout, accessible from the minister’s office and perfectly visible from both sections of the church. Although innovative and breaking with medieval tradition, the L-shaped space was noticeable only from the inside. Outside, the church and the minister’s rooms form a solid mass with the features of defensive architecture.23 Less than fifty years later, the L-shaped ground plan of a parish church in Freudenstadt (1601–1615) was not only apparent from the exterior view, but even emphasized by placing the church in a certain urban context: at the corner of the main square of an early modern ‘ideal city.’24 An even more glaring example is the discussion over the plans of the Hofkirche in Neuburg. The building was primarily designed by Joseph Heintz the Elder as a pilaster church. The church administration opposed this plan, as the side ‘chapels’ seemed too similar to Roman-Catholic churches. The founder – count Wolfgang Wilhelm – was trying to force his vision of a church building in the Italian form. He claims that there was no established model for a Protestant temple, and that the usage of the building would be the true test of its conformity with the Protestant worship.25

23 Magdalena Gronek-Gola, ed., Evidence Card of Architectural and Building Monuments, church of St. Catherine and St. John Evangelist in Secemin, 14. 11. 2012.; Insurance Direction Acts, 1847, no1736, Archiwum Pan´stwowe w Kielcach [National Archives in Kielce]; Tadeusz Przypkowski, “Zabytki reformacji w Kielecczyz´nie”, in Studia Renesansowe, vol. 1, ed. M. Walicki, Wrocław 1956, p. 68. 24 Lieske, Protestantische Frömmigkeit (see n. 15), pp. 37–43. 25 Kai Wenzel, “‘Zimblich viel anguli, so vor Jaren im Pabstumb gebraucht worden’: mitteleuropäische Wandpfeilerkirchen um 1600 im konfessionellen Wettstreit,” in Konfessionen im Kirchenraum: Dimensionen des Sakralraums in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. S. Wegmann/ G. Wimböck, Korb 2007, pp. 104–105.

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Churches erected by the Protestants during the discussed period were a first attempt to translate the ideas proclaimed by the Reformers of the 16th century into the language of architecture. The space of the church building gave a visual expression to the new, distinctly changed perception of problems such as liturgy, the function of a church building and its ideological program, and, by doing so, it also served the local church. Choosing a certain spatial solution appropriate for Protestant worship was determined by the will and capability of the founder and the particular needs of each community. The church did not cease to be the ‘house of God.’ However, it could only retain its status under specific conditions: first of all, the presence of the community of believers. A Protestant church building served the presence of this community in a number of ways, providing the possibility of full participation in the service and reflecting its social stratigraphy. In a sense, Protestant churches should be seen as churches for the people.

Research Project The first part of this paper displayed the Protestant search for the new liturgical space using the examples of churches from many places across Europe. Protestants in different countries did not enjoy equal religious rights, and they drew from different local traditions. The Reformation was introduced in different forms and manners. The examples presented show that we can understand many of these problems better, just by seeing them in a broad European context. The assumptions of the research project ‘Protestant Church Architecture of the 16th–18th centuries in Europe’26 have been designed in this spirit. Its aim is to develop a synthesis of the history of the Protestant church architecture, including the development of spatial solutions, the urban context, the political determinants of building actions, and the current functioning of Protestant churches (or – in some parts of Europe – former Protestant churches) in different countries. This objective could not be achieved without tools such as a web database within the Midas system, containing records of individual objects as well as interactive geographic visualisations of their urban contexts. Geovisualisations will be available for the cities which developed intensively within the investigated period, e. g., London, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam. All the descriptions will be developed using the Hierarchical Dictionary of Cultural Heritage. Therefore, objects from all over Europe will get a unified description, whereas their division into various aspects, including architectural issues, the aforementioned broad 26 The research grant for this project has been financed by Polish National Science Center (NCN), decision no DEC-2012/04/A/HS2/00435.

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urban context, as well as the aspects of the foundation and main fittings, will allow us to systemize knowledge and carry out far-reaching comparisons. The project shall result in a comprehensive book publication in Polish and English, including a richly illustrated catalogue. One of the project’s assumptions is the cooperation with scholars from different countries, whose areas of study deal with the problems of Protestant architecture on specific territories as well as issues such as sacred space, early modern art and architecture, Protestant theology and art history. The ‘Protestant Church Architecture’ Research Project shall be completed by 2017, when hopefully it may extend to other areas of research, such as sepulchral art in Protestant churches.

Joanna Kaz´mierczak

The Sixteenth-Century Pictorial Epitaph in Central Europe: Between ‘Reform’ and ‘Reformation’

In this article, I would like to juxtapose the ‘Lutheran model’ of a pictorial epitaph with the little-known and quite unusual foundation of a Catholic cleric from Wrocław, in order to contribute to the question of dividing such artworks into ‘confessional groups’ and calling their traits unambiguously ‘Protestant’ or ‘Catholic’. However, every reflection on the subject of the early modern epitaphs cannot be complete without saying at least a word or two about their medieval predecessors. That is what I would like to start with. It is commonly known that the medieval pictorial epitaphs were seen as an effective tool helping to gain salvation.1 Usually containing a devotional image as their main pictorial motif, they served as a visual way of petitioning for blessing, decreasing the duration of time the soul spent in Purgatory, and eventually – for receiving the eternal remission of sins. The ones who were supposed to support the dead on their way to salvation, helping them with their prayers to gain God’s mercy, were not only the patron saints or Virgin Mary, depicted on epitaphs as mediators of redemption. A great responsibility lay in the hands of the individual observer – a member of a living community that the founder of an epitaph had left at the moment of his death. The relation between the foundation of an epitaph and the observer’s role was very precise. We can call it a certain kind of ‘feedback’: the founder sends a plea for prayer through the medium of a work of art, directed at a potential observer. The observer, responding to and carrying out this request, sends the message back by praying on founder’s behalf and asking the saints depicted in the epitaph – Virgin Mary or Christ himself – for intercession. The character of the petition was additionally emphasized by such standard written formulas as ora pro me (‘pray for me’). Changes came about with the Lutheran abolition of the legitimacy of the prayer for the dead. The 1 For basic information about medieval epitaphs see Alfred Weckwerth, “Der Ursprung des Bildepitaphs,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 20 no. 2 (1957): pp. 147–185; Paul Schoenen, “Epitaph,” in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, vol. 5, ed. Otto Schmitt, Stuttgart 1967, col. 872–921.

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doctrine of justification by faith alone, negation of Purgatory’s existence and Saintly Intercession, as well as the accentuation of the eternal peace of souls after death left no place for such practices. In the moment of death, all the relations with the earthly world are broken – there is no longer any possibility of ‘communication’ with a soul that has already left one’s body. The act of foundation also loses its importance as a ‘good work’. Any attempt to construct a ‘model’ of a specific type of a work of art must be called utopian, but for the purpose of illustrating and juxtaposing certain phenomena we have to use a bit of simplification. To build a ‘model’ of the Lutheran epitaph, I have chosen the complex of the early modern painted epitaphs from the Town Church of St. Mary’s in Wittenberg. This complex consists of 13 works, dated from 1558 to 1586, and is attributed to the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger.2 Why should it be considered as representative? This church alone is a place of the greatest importance for the history of Lutheranism, sometimes even called the ‘spiritual heart of the Reformation’. It was the place where Martin Luther preached, where the bonds between the Church and the University of Wittenberg were tight and especially visible – with professors of theology serving as pastors. The parish itself was a significant centre of coordination of the churches’ inspections and, last but not least, an important ‘market area’ for an artistic workshop with a vast influence – the one owned by the Cranach family. The set of iconographical motives and formal aspects of a work of art, which can be observed within the group of the workshop’s epitaphs from St. Mary’s, can be seen as a point of reference for other Protestant complexes of epitaphs scattered around Central Europe, including Silesia and Wrocław.3 They served as pictorial confirmation both of the community members’ faith and their religious denomination.4 2 On the epitaphs in Wittenberg, attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger, see Werner Schade, “Die Epitaphbilder Lucas Cranach d. J.,” in Ze studiów nad sztuka˛ XVI wieku na S´la˛sku i w krajach sa˛siednich, ed. Boz˙ena Steinborn, Wrocław 1968, pp. 63–76; Ingrid Schulze, Lucas Cranch d. J. und die protestantische Bidlkunst in Sachsen und Thüringen, Bucha bei Jena 2004; Albrecht Steinwachs, ‘Ich sehe dich mit Freuden an…’. Bilder aus der Lucas-CranachWerkstatt in der Wittenberger Stadtkirche St. Marien, Spröda 2006; Doreen Zerbe, “Bekenntnis und Memoria. Zur Funktion lutherischer Gedächtnisbilder in der Wittenberger Stadtkirche St. Marien,” in Lucas Cranach 1553/2003. Wittenberger Tagungsbeiträge anlässlich des 450. Todesjahres Lucas Cranachs des Älteren, ed. Andreas Tacke, Leipzig 2007, pp. 327–342; Doreen Zerbe, Reformation der Memoria. Denkmale in der Stadtkirche Wittenberg als Zeugnisse lutherischer Memorialkultur im 16. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 2013. 3 More about pictorial epitaphs from various centres in that region and further bibliography in Boz˙ena Steinborn, “Malowane epitafia mieszczan´skie na S´la˛sku w latach 1520–1620,” Roczniki Sztuki S´la˛skiej IV (1967): pp. 7–125; Jarmila Vacková, “Epitafni obrazy v prˇedˇ echach,” Umeˇní 17 (1969): pt. 2, pp. 131–156; Katarzyna Cies´lak, Kos´ciół beˇlohorskych C cmentarzem. Sztuka nagrobna w Gdan´sku (XV–XVII w.), Gdan´sk 1992; Jan Harasimowicz, Mors Janua Vitae. S´la˛skie epitafia i nagrobki wieku reformacji, Wrocław 1992; Katarzyna Cies´lak, Epitafia obrazowe w Gdan´sku XV – XVII w., Wrocław 1993; Marcin Wisłocki,

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The medieval aspect of ‘feedback’ was changed and reversed. An epitaph can be seen as a spiritual testament of the founder addressed more to the whole community than to an individual observer. It was an expression of care for the salvation of the living, not the salvation of those commemorated in the epitaph, yet unattainable. The founder’s role was to strengthen the faith and certainty of salvation throughout the church community, thanks to the commission of work of art. A telling example of such a broad understanding of the ‘observer’ – understood as the whole community – is the epitaph for the Drachsted family (ca. 1573), depicting Christ as the Good Shepherd. The motif refers both to the living and the dead members of the parish of St. Mary’s as well as to the ‘Flock’ following its shepherd trustfully, listening to his Word, and recognizing Him through His Word. The aspect of superiority of verbum audibile over verbum visibile was also emphasized here. The epitaphs served well (and were in fact meant to do so) as an illustration of the fundamental truths of faith – especially those subjects that had been recommended by Martin Luther in the context of sepulchral art, as a visual supplement of gravestone inscriptions or written epitaphs. Luther focused on three subjects: the Resurrection (as in Lamberg’s – ca. 1558, or Seydlitz’s – ca. 1582, epitaph), the Crucifixion (epitaph for Sara Cracov, ca. 1565) and the Last Judgment. A great emphasis was laid on the Christological subjects as well as on the eschatological ones, with the depictions of miraculous raisings from the dead gaining much popularity (here represented by the Raising of the Youth of Naim in the epitaph for Franciscus Olderhorst, ca. 1565). The epitaphs served also as a kind of ‘visible word’ – this could be considered as the realization of the doctrine of sola scriptura. They were used as illustrations (not commentaries!) of biblical texts, accurately depicting historical events from the Holy Scripture and worked as a kind of a didactic aid for the members of the church community. As examples we can name the epitaph for Melchior Fendt (Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, 1569), for Veit Oertel (Conversion of Saint Paul, ca. 1586) or, again, for Franciscus Olderhorst (Raising of the Youth of Naim). The written word itself played a great role, used as a direct commentary on the depicted subject, i. e., an explanation of its meaning and context. The epitaph for Paul Eber (ca. 1569/1573), containing a long inscription which precisely describes what was depicted in the main panel, or – again – the epitaph for the Drachsted family exemplify this role. The inscription (now missing) literally identified the family and the community as a ‘flock of sheep’ waiting impatiently for the meeting with their Shepherd.5 Another popular Sztuka protestancka na Pomorzu 1535–1684, Szczecin 2005; Piotr Birecki, Sztuka luteran´ska na ziemi chełmin´skiej od 2 poł. XVI do 1 c´w. XVIII w., Warsaw 2007. 4 For further bibliography on protestant pictorial epitaphs, see nn. 2, 3. 5 The whole inscription reads as follows: ‘Veni Domine Iesu Christe, veni et noli tardare, ouiculæ

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practice was to create relations between the iconography of the epitaph and the name or the biography of its founder. The former is realized in the epitaph for Johannes Bugenhagen (1560), depicting the Baptism of Christ, with the central figure being Saint John the Baptist. Franciscus Olderhorst, whose epitaph illustrates the motif of the Raising of the Youth of Naim, was a man who himself died at a very young age and was – exactly as his biblical predecessor – the only son of a widow. Caspar Niemeck chose for his epitaph (ca. 1562) the Nativity Scene. The image of the newborn Christ dramatically recalls that he and his wife were in fact childless. Such bonds between the biblical reality and that of the 16th century were all the more impressive, when the themes described in the Holy Scripture were used not only in relation with the lives of individual persons and families, but also in connection with the events happening currently not only in Wittenberg, but within the Christian world. A splendid and well-known example of such a treatment of – in this case – a biblical parable, is the epitaph for Paul Eber, with the depiction of the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.6 It can be seen as a strong expression of the confessional affiliation of its founder, with a clear, antiCatholic message – literally dividing Christians into two confessional groups. It is also a sign of its times – it was commissioned in the early 1570s, in the age of conflicts among the Lutheran theologians. With the threat of partition upon its head, the ‘camp of reformers’ is depicted on the epitaph as it had been (or was supposed to have been) at the times of its first generation. The Reformers are shown working together without any conflict – this recalls the initial unity of the Lutheran thought. Among such distinguished ‘labourers’ as Luther, Melanchthon, Bugenhagen and others, Paul Eber himself is depicted as well. On the left side, Philip Melanchthon and Johannes Forster can be seen drawing water from the well. This motif is said to express their immersion in ‘cleansing’ and bringing faith and the Church back to their basics, in accordance with the popular motto of the humanists: ad fontes! (‘to the sources!’). The same idea was supposedly in the mind of the canon from Wrocław, Laurentius Potschel, a Catholic.

certe tuæ nos sumus sanguine tuo redemtæ de tuis humeris nos pendentes in æterna gaudia tecum transferto’, transcription after: Balthasar Mentzius, Syntagma Epitaphiorum. Quae in inclyta septemviratus saxonici metropoli Witeberga, diversis in loci splendide honorificeque erecta conscpiciuntur, In 4 Libros divisum, vol. 2 Magdeburg 1604, p. 85. 6 See Oskar Thulin, “Die Reformatoren im Weinberg des Herrn. Ein Gemälde Lucas Cranach des Jüngeren,” Luther-Jahrbuch 25 (1958): pp. 141–154; Ingrid Schulze, “Der Weinberg des Herrn. Ein Beitrag zum Schaffen Lucas Cranach des Jüngeren,” in Philipp Melanchthon als Praeceptor Germaniae und die Herausbildung des höheren Schulwesens in Eisleben, Protokoll des Wissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums am 26. 04. 1997 in Lutherstadt Eisleben, Halle/Saale 1998, pp. 43–61; Albrecht Steinwachs, Der Weinberg des Herrn. Das Epitaph für Paul Eber von Lucas Cranach d. J. von 1569 in der Stadt- und Pfarrkirche St. Marien Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Spröda 2011. See also n. 2.

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Potschel was probably born in the 1490s, studied law in Rome and after his return to Wrocław served there as a canon in the cathedral and in the collegiate church of the Holy Cross, among other ecclesiastical functions.7 He died in 1539, probably in his early 40s.8 His epitaph, painted with tempera on wood, surviving in very good condition and now in the collection of the Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław, depicts an interesting biblical subject – the Cleansing of the Temple. Apart from the main panel, it also contains a well-preserved inscription panel, as well as a polychromed frame. One of the main factors that motivated me to examine the Potschel’s epitaph more carefully was the fact that almost nobody else has written much about it before.9 The last study containing its exhaustive description and a small attempt at analyzing the meaning and the context of its creation dates back to 1967.10 Later, it was effectively ignored by art historians or treated only with a very short reference.11 The supposed main cause of such a state of affairs is significant for

7 In Wrocław he served also as a parish priest in Saint Maurice Church and in Saint Giles Church, as an altarist in the cathedral and in Saint Mary Magdalene Church. In Nysa, Potschel was a canon and an altarist (in the parish church), as a canon he served also in Opole. However, the inscription on the epitaph mentions only two of all his titles. The whole text reads as follows: ‘Venerabli et eximio jur. licen. D.[ominus] Laure.[ntio] Potschel hui[us] et / s. Cruc[e] eccl.[esiae] cano.[nico] ac p[re]posito s aegidij uiro m[u]lta laude cu / m[u]lato p [re]cipueque de hac aede b[e]n[e] merito Exe[gunt]. Fr[atr]i. chariss.[imi] p. [ii]’; transcription after Steinborn, Malowane epitafia (see n. 3), p. 81. 8 For biographical information see C.I. Herber, Silesiae sacra origines, Wrocław 1821, p. 90; August Kastner, ed., Archiv für die Geschichte des Bisthums Breslau von 1500 bis 1655, vol. 1, Nysa 1858, pp. 37–38; Johann Heyne, Dokumentierte Geschichte des Bisthums und Hochstiftes Breslau, vol. 3, Wrocław 1868, pp. 591–592; Gerhard Zimmermann, Das Breslauer Domkapitel im Zeitalter der Reformation und Gegenreformation (1500–1600), Weimar 1938, pp. 428–430; Alfred Sabisch, ed., Acta Capituli Wratislaviensis 1500–1652, vol. 2, pt. 2, Cologne-Vienna 1972–1976, p. 850. 9 Before 1967, Potschel’s epitaph was briefly mentioned in Friedrich Wilhelm Erdmann, Beschreibung der Kathedral-Kirche ad St. Joannem und der Kirche zum Heiligen Kreuz, auf der Dominsel zu Breslau, Wrocław 1850, p. 70; Hans Lutsch, Verzeichnis der Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Breslau, vol. 1, Die Stadt Breslau, Wrocław 1886, p. 178; Ludwig Burgemeister, Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Breslau, vol. 1, Kirchlichen Denkmäler der Dominsel und der Sandinsel, Wrocław 1930, p. 165; Alfons Nowack, Führer durch das Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum in Breslau, Wrocław 1932, p. 53. 10 Steinborn, Malowane epitafia (see n. 3), pp. 28, 81–82, pl. 101. See also Boz˙ena Steinborn, Malarstwo ´sla˛skie 1520–1620. exh. cat.: Muzeum S´la˛skie, Wrocław, 12.1966–03.1967, Wrocław 1967, pp. 43–44. 11 After 1967, Potschel’s epitaph was briefly mentioned in Mieczysław Zlat, “Sztuka Wrocława more italico: 1520–1560,” in Sztuka Wrocławia, ed. Tadeusz Broniewski, Mieczysław Zlat, Wrocław 1967, pp. 199–223, here p. 218.; Jan Białostocki, “Kompozycja emblematyczna epitafiów ´sla˛skich XVI wieku,” in Ze studiów nad sztuka˛ XVI wieku na S´la˛sku i w krajach sa˛siednich, Wrocław 1968, pp. 77–93, here p. 82 (reprinted in: Jan Białostocki, Symbole i obrazy w ´swiecie sztuki, vol. 1, Warsaw 1982, pp. 200–213, here p. 204); Wincenty Urban, Muzeum Archidiecezjalne we Wrocławiu oraz katalog jego zbiorów, Lublin 1975,

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Epitaph for Laurentius Potschel, ca. 1538, Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław; image source: private collection of Professor Jan Harasimowicz, by permission.

p. 291; Małgorzata Biernacka, Ikonografia publicznej działalnos´ci Chrystusa w polskiej sztuce nowoz˙ytnej, Warsaw 2003, p. 177.

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our reflections on that subject. We have to look at the Potschel’s epitaph as stretched between the two huge poles of the 16th century sepulchral art: the Protestant and the Catholic one, quite precisely dividing the surviving epitaphs into two confessional groups. It is particularly interesting to note that the Potschel’s epitaph does not seem to fit easily into either of them. Surely, as a commission of a Catholic canon, it cannot be described as belonging to the huge group of Silesian epitaphs connected with the Lutheran denomination. But what does it exactly mean, if we instead call this epitaph created in the late 1530s ‘Catholic’? Catholic, in the city gradually dominated by the Lutherans, in which the cathedral and its chapter, situated on an island in the middle of the Oder River, were in a religious sense literally an ‘island’ of the Roman Church. I will try to answer, or at least to broaden these questions. Potschel’s epitaph can be seen as a spiritual testament of its founder – it was most likely commissioned when he was still alive, probably in 1538.12 There are no standard formulas referring to his death or giving its specific date in the inscription. The use of a very unconventional, rare subject implies that the decision of placing it on the epitaph was a concrete, deliberate choice of the founder who knew exactly what he wanted to express through his commission. The chosen motif, as the main pictorial subject for an epitaph, has no known analogies in Central Europe. Although the subject of the Cleansing of the Temple has a long tradition in the visual arts, it never gained such popularity and attention as other scenes from the life of Christ did.13 In the Middle Ages the subject appeared rarely, usually as a part of Passion cycles or at least compiled with other biblical scenes, and could be found on both sides of the Alps. A certain increase of its popularity can be observed at the turn of the 16th century. At that time it appeared in the work of Hans Holbein the Elder (in the wing of the High Altar of the Dominican Church in Frankfurt, 1502, Städel Museum) and, more noteworthy, in that of Michael Pacher – in one of the panels of the Altarpiece of St. Wolfgang (1471–1481).With the latter example the composition of Potschel’s epitaph has the most in common. Within the space of three years, from 1507 to1509, the subject of the Cleansing of the Temple was depicted first in the graphic form by Hans Schäufelein, in 1507, by Albrecht Dürer, ca. 1508/1509 (one of the woodcuts 12 Potschel received the canonry in the Collegiate Church of Holy Cross in Wroclaw in August 1538. See Zimmermann, Das Breslauer Domkapitel (see n. 8), p. 430. As this fact is mentioned in the inscription, the epitaph was supposedly made after this date. Its dating can be therefore narrowed down to the period between 1538 and 1539. Up to now, the epitaph was dated to the 1540s or 1550s, i. e., after Potschel’s death (see nn. 9–11). 13 On the Cleansing of the Temple as a motif in visual arts, see Louis Réau, Iconographie l’art chretien, vol. 2, Paris 1955, pp. 401–403; Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, vol. 2, Gütersloh 1968, p. 33ff; Engelbert Kirschbaum, ed., Lexikon der christlichen ikonographie, vol. 4, Rome–Freiburg–Basel–Vienna 1972, p. 261ff;

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in The Small Passion), and then by Lucas Cranach the Elder, in the painted central panel of the altarpiece from the Dresden State Art Collections, dated 1509 (the wings were destroyed in 1945). This increased interest in the subject coincides with the process of reappearance and intensification of the ideas demanding the revival of the Church in its original purity, which were propagated especially by the humanists and educated representatives of the clergy, as a reaction to the malpractice that could be seen within western Christianity. In this context we have to look closer at the meaning and positioning of the event of Cleansing – or rather – Purification of the Temple in the Bible. Described by all four Evangelists, it is placed before the Wedding at Cana ( John 2:13–22) or – what is more important – after Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, just before his Passion (Matt. 21:12– 13; Mark 11:15–18; Luke 19:45–46). Modern Biblical studies distinguish the ‘first’ and the ‘second Cleansing’, however, in the past they were treated jointly. The artists usually depicted the event as a part of the Passion, but showing Christ in the way he was described by John: holding the ‘whip of cords’: The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” ( John 2: 13–17)

Matthew, Mark and Luke quote Christ describing the temple more trenchantly, as a ‘den of the robbers’. The fact that we are dealing here with the symbolic understanding of the Temple as Christ’s body becomes obvious regarding the words from the Gospels of John, which directly follow the description of the Cleansing, where Christ says to the Jews: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. ( John 2: 19–21)

In this context, the Temple represents the Church itself, and this relation can be very well traced to the depictions of the Cleansing of the Temple form the early 16th century mentioned above. The importance of the figure of Christ was emphasized thanks to its placing on the background of neutral architectural supporting elements: a column or a pillar. Such a visual connection of Christ and architecture symbolically identifies the Saviour not only as the Church itself, but also as its base and foundation. From the second decade of the 16th century, the motif of the Cleansing of the Temple started to evolve gradually, being used more distinctly as a commentary on current events, and eventually as one of the tools of visual propaganda and confessional polemic. The merchants occupying the Temple of Jerusalem were

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seen as a specific religious group which should be ‘cleansed’ from the Church. One of the most interesting depictions of that subject is Albrecht Altdorfer’s engraving, which was made after the actual expulsion of the Jews from their temple.14 The event took place in February 1519 in Regensburg when the whole Jewish district was destroyed. Just before that, Altdorfer had documented the appearance of the synagogue in two graphics – he later used them as the compositional basis for the image of the Cleansing of the Temple. In the anti-Catholic context, the motif appeared early in the work of Lucas Cranach the Elder, in 1521, as one of the woodcuts illustrating the famous Passional Christi et Antichristi. The image of Christ throwing out the merchants, accompanied by a suitable written comment, has an interesting neighbour: the scene in which the Antichrist, sitting on the throne in the Temple and dressed as the Pope, erzeigt sich als Gott […], vorandert alle gottlich Ordnung […] und unterdruckt die heilig Schrift, vorkäuft Dispensation, Ablaß, Pallia, Bisthum, Lehen […]. Erhebt Heiligen, benedeiet und maledeiet […] und gebeut sein Stimm zu horen, gleich wie Gotts Stimm.15

On the Catholic side, the Cleansing of the Temple was also being used, especially in the age of the Council of Trent and after. Written and material sources from Poland can serve as an example. Jakub Wujek (1541–1597), Jesuit and translator of the Bible into Polish, had no doubt whatsoever about the question who in the modern world should be expelled from the Church. In 1593, describing the event, translated by him from the Gospel of Mark, he identified the ‘robbers’ as the Lutherans and called their masses ‘the cursed heretic – or even satanic – suppers’.16 The Cleansing of the Temple was also a popular subject in sermons – their collections were sometimes illustrated, so the motif can be found in pictorial form in the works written by such preachers as the above-mentioned Jakub Wujek or Marcin Białobrzeski.17 Finally it is worth mentioning the similarity of the two motifs: the biblical and the actual ‘cleansing of the churches,’ understood literally as iconoclastic practices, often depicted in a graphical, more or less symbolical form.18 14 Franz Winzinger, ed., Albrecht Altdorfer. Graphik, Munich 1963, pp. 104, 114–115; Werner Hofmann, ed., Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, exh. cat.: Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 10. 11. 1983–08. 01. 1984, Munich 1983, p. 133. 15 Passional Christi et Antichristi, Wittenberg 1521, p. [25]. 16 The whole passage reads as follows: ‘Jes´li na on czas kos´c´iół był iaskinia zboyców dla tego, z˙e w nim przedawano y kupowano rzeczy które miano Bogu ofiarowac´: takoz˙ daleko wiecey teraz, kiedy domy Boz˙e na ofiare s´wieta y na poz˙ywanie ciała y krwie Pan´skiey pos´wiecone, obracaia sie˛ w jaskinie Luterskie y na przeklete wieczerze heretyckie abo raczey szatan´skie’, Jakub Wujek, transl., Nowy Testament Pana naszego Jezusa Christusa, Kraków 1593, p. 167. 17 Biernacka, Ikonografia (see n. 11), p. 176. 18 For example, a well-known leaflet, dated 1566, now preserved in Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, depicting a group of Calvinists while removing idols and literally cleansing the Church with…

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But why did Potschel choose such a subject? There is no clear evidence that the message he wanted to express by his foundation was strictly anti-Lutheran, although he was living in a community in which such public feelings were common. The cathedral chapter in Wrocław was in the first decades of the Reformation the main Silesian centre of Catholic resistance.19 It was the canons from the Cathedral Island who exerted pressure on their bishops, demanding the sharpening of the anti-Reformation politics. The Cathedral Island was also the place of publication of the first polemic Catholic writings (in Wrocław) and, most notably, the centre of work of the theologian and humanist Johannes Cochläus who, after his escape from Saxony, settled in Wrocław and became a canon there. It was exactly in the same year Laurentius Potschel died. We cannot, however, exclude the possibility, that Potschel, commissioning his epitaph, had something broader in mind than the quite temporary ‘Lutheran problem,’ which in fact had begun only 20 years before the canon’s death. It is clear, that the epitaph contains a dismal reflection on the reality expressed by the founder himself. Above the hands of the kneeling figure of the canon we can read the inscription – a quotation from the Book of Habakkuk: ‘Deus iratus fueris misericordiae recordaberis’. The complete passage in the Holy Scripture reads as follows: ‘O Lord, I have heard of your renown, and I stand in awe of your work. In our own time revive it; in our own time make it known; in wrath may you remember mercy’ (Hab. 3:2). The Book of Habakkuk shows the image of evil that corrupted the world – this probably corresponded with Potschel’s pessimistic judgment of current events. He could identify with the words of the prophet who wrote: O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? […] Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. […] The wicked surround the righteous therefore judgment comes forth perverted. (Hab. 1: 1–4)

The only hope and the only comfort lies in the promise of Salvation, expressed in the words Christ said to Jews after the Cleansing of the Temple ( John 2:19–22) as well as in the passage of the Book of Zechariah, linked with the evangelical descriptions of that event. In that Book, among the apocalyptic visions, the

brooms; Franz Hogeberg’s Der calvinistische Bildersturm vom 20. August 1566 from Michael Aitsinger’s De leone Belgico (Cologne 1588), or – almost satirical in meaning – Jan Lukyen’s Bildersturm, ca. 1600. See: Luther und die Folgen (see n. 14), pp. 144–147. 19 On the cathedral chapter in Wrocław in the 16th century, see Zimmermann, Das Breslauer Domkapitel (see n. 8); Józef Mandziuk, Historia Kos´cioła katolickiego na S´la˛sku, vol. 2, Czasy reformacji, reformy katolickiej i kontrreformacji, Warsaw 1995; Gabriela Wa˛s, “Kos´ciół katolicki i biskupi wrocławscy w okresie reformacji,” in Historia S´la˛ska, ed. Marek Czaplin´ski, Elz˙bieta Kaszuba, Gabriela Wa˛s, Ros´cisław Z˙erelik, Wrocław 2002, pp. 148–152.

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Epitaph for Laurentius Potschel, ca. 1538, Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław, detail; image source: private collection of Professor Jan Harasimowicz, by permission.

demand for purity within the temple, priesthood, and other areas of life can be found. Eventually, after the Day of the Lord: […] all who survive of the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts […]. And there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.’ (Zech. 14: 16–21)

Regarding the medieval legacy, if we tend to see the Lutheran way of creating and understanding the role of an epitaph as a progressive one, and the Catholic objects of that kind as the traditional and less innovative ones, we have to ask how such divisions correspond with this specific example. Does the expression ‘an epitaph of a Catholic’ mean ‘an epitaph of a traditionalist’? What kind of relation can be observed between the Potschel’s epitaph and the late medieval examples? As I have already mentioned, the use of the motif of the Cleansing of the Temple was quite rare in the medieval art. Independent depictions of such a subject, not related to other biblical scenes, were practically absent. In the case of the Potschel’s epitaph, the motif was used as a self-sufficient, accurate illustration of the Word of God i. e., of a ‘historical’ biblical event. It has to be noticed, that it also contains two figures of saints, besides the image of the kneeling founder. However, the role of the saints is now quite different. There is no plea for prayer

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for the founder’s salvation – directed neither to the saints, nor the potential observer. Both saint’s figures are very precisely bound with canon Potschel himself – one being his name patron, the other the patron of the cathedral in Wrocław. Furthermore, there are no additional pictorial elements such as the patron saints of ‘good death,’ very popular and commonly present in the late medieval Silesian epitaphs (e. g., Saint Barbara), or local patron saints, such as Saint Hedwig of Silesia.20 The figures of Saint Lawrence and Saint John the Baptist can be understood here as a visual ‘signature’ of canon Potschel – the first expressing his name, the second his affiliation to the chapter. It is all the more interesting, if we consider the similarities in the physiognomies of Potschel and his name patron. It is worth emphasizing that the proportions of the canon’s figure were not reduced in comparison to the other ones, including that of Christ – the practice of depicting the deceased as smaller than the other, more important dramatis personae, was common not only for the late medieval epitaphs, but lasted deep into the 16th century.21 The message included in the epitaph in the painted form was elaborated thanks to the short, but very relevant written commentary – it emphasized the aspect of God’s wrath, as well as the founder’s own reflection on reality. Understanding the message of the epitaph required from the viewer a very good knowledge of the Holy Scripture. In a way, this echoes the Lutheran doctrine of sola scriptura and the words: scriptura sui ipsius interpres. The epitaph’s program, although not unambiguously Christological, still has Christ in its middle, both in respect of meaning and form – with the figure of Christ being the central and ordering part of the composition. The image of the Deus iratus resembles neither the late medieval depictions of suffering Christ, nor the Lutheran model of merciful Saviour. However, one can be under the impression that this kind of wrath is more an earthly than an eschatological one, although the process of ‘purification’ refers also (above all?) to the spiritual condition of the Church. The emphasis is put more on the worldly than the heavenly reality: canon Potschel, instead of directing the observer’s attention to his own death, salvation, and commemoration, points to the – in his opinion – dramatic situation of the Church and demands changes. Do not ‘pray for me’, rather ‘pray for yourselves’ – and do something with the Temple, that has become ‘a den of robbers’. In conclusion, the Potschel’s epitaph can be to a greater extent considered as a work of art standing in opposition to the medieval tradition, than as one still imbedded in it. Many of its traits, such as the lack of visual or verbal request for a 20 See Romuald Kaczmarek and Jacek Witkowski, “Ze studiów nad gotyckimi epitafiami obrazowymi mieszczan´stwa na S´la˛sku,” in Sztuka miast i mieszczan´stwa XV – XVIII w. w Europie S´rodkowo-Wschodniej, ed. Jan Harasimowicz, Warszawa 1990, pp. 171–190. 21 See n. 3.

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prayer for salvation of the founder’s soul, the depiction of a biblical event, the distinct emphasis on the Christ’s role, or the importance of the written word, can be seen as belonging to the repertoire of artistic practices, considered as key elements for the Lutheran ‘model’ of epitaph. The Potschel’s epitaph shows that sometimes the attempts to divide the works of art into complexes corresponding with particular religious denominations prove to be insufficient. Calling this epitaph ‘Catholic’, one can only mean the confessional identity of its founder, not the traits of the commissioned work of art alone. As we can observe, the instability of beliefs and divisions, characteristic of the European society in the first half of the 16th century, can be examined also in the visual arts. And in fact, the meaning of the commissioned work depends more on the founder’s personal way of thinking than his confessional identity.

Jennifer Crangle

Why did England Change its Mind? Perceptions Regarding Human Remains Before, During, and After the Reformation

Introduction The post-depositional activities which occurred throughout the medieval period (c. 1066–1550) in England were many and varied. Post-depositional disturbance is defined here as the intentional movement or disturbance of some or all of the skeletal material of a person subsequent to their burial in a grave or tomb. The practises which are evidenced derived from those that were established in the preceding Anglo-Saxon period (c. 600–1066). Over many centuries, these acts progressively developed into complex funerary rites and observances, culminating in the post-burial practises of the medieval period. With the advent of the English Reformation (c. 1536–1600), participation in and practise of these deeply meaningful and intricate funerary acts were abruptly ceased. The religious and social changes which occurred during the tumultuous Reformation time period were drastic and of huge consequence, the impact of which is far further reaching than it has hitherto been given credence for. The magnitude of the Reformation is such that it has profoundly affected how religion and funerary behaviour during the English medieval period is archaeologically and historically interpreted and promoted. At the time of the Reformation in the mid-1500s, contemporary attitudes towards human skeletal remains changed drastically from pre-Reformation opinion. Charnelling, which is the collection, storage and curation of disinterred bones, represented the now old and illegal Catholic religion and had no place in new Protestant faith, which denied any influence of prayers over the fate of the dead.1 These new attitudes can be deduced by the apparent vigour with which charnel collections were dismantled; bones were concealed from view, reburied, or destroyed altogether. The buildings housing the bones were emptied, stripped of religious connotation and reused for secular activities. Interaction between the living and the dead, both on spiritual and physical terms, was effectively prohibited. This paper will explore 1 Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480–1750, Oxford 1998.

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these anthropological changes towards the deceased which occurred in association with the English Reformation, by adopting a multidisciplinary approach incorporating osteological, funerary, literary and archaeological evidence.

Origins of Post-Depositional Disturbance From as early as 5000BC, people in England have been physically interacting with their dead. Large megalithic tombs, such as Spinster’s Rock, Devon, were used to store the comingled bones of multiples of individuals, and were repeatedly added to and visited by successive generations.2 Recently, it has been discovered that at least two mummified individuals at the Neolithic (2500–800 BC) site of Cladh Hallan, the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, were composed of skeletal elements of numerous different individuals.3,4 For the purposes of this paper, only Christian post-interment practises will be further considered. In the earliest example of Christian burials in England, those of the Christian Anglo-Saxon period, there is evidence of deliberate interaction with human skeletal material. For example, at numerous seventh to tenth century cemeteries such as Pontefract in North Yorkshire, Bevis Grave in Portsmouth, and SOU 13 in Southampton, existing graves were being re-opened on successive occasions, in order to insert a secondary or tertiary burial, with some graves representing the remains of up to eight individuals.5,6 On each occasion, the initial skeleton was removed, a new body was inserted, and the bones comprising the original interment were placed, sometimes arranged in patterns, around the new interment. Box reburials of disarticulated individuals were also initiated during this time period. These were the reburial of an individual who was regarded as saintly, due to posthumous miracles occurring at their burial site, which were attributed to the deceased individual. The person’s remains were exhumed and brought inside 2 Alex Gibson & Derek Simpson, eds., Prehistoric Ritual and Religion: Essays in Honour of Aubrey Burl, Stroud 1998. 3 Mike Parker Pearson, Andrew Chamberlain, Oliver Craig, Peter Marshall, Jacqui Mulville, Helen Smith, C. Chenery, Matthew Collins, G. Cook, J. Evans, Jen Hiller, J. Montgomery, J. L. Schwenninger, G. Taylor and T. Wess, “Evidence for Mummification in Bronze Age Britain,” Antiquity 79 (2005): pp. 529–546. 4 Mike Parker Pearson, Andrew Chamberlain, Matthew Collins, Christie Cox, Geoffrey Craig, Oliver Craig, Jen Hiller, Peter Marshall, Jacqui Mulville and Helen Smith, “Further Evidence for Mummification in Bronze Age Britain,” Antiquity 81 (2007): pp. 617–640, http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/parker/ (last accessed in October 2013). 5 Annia K. Cherryson, “Disturbing the Dead: Urbanisation, the Church and the Post-Burial Treatment of Human Remains in Early Medieval Wessex, c.600–1100AD,” in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 14, eds. Sara Semple and Howard Williams, Oxford 2007, pp. 130–142. 6 Dawn M. Hadley, Death in Medieval England: An Archaeology, Stroud 2001, pp. 66–67.

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a church in an elaborate ceremony, where they were redeposited inside a small box, itself set in a tomb shrine. This “translation” was regarded as a deeply respectful and blessed act, one which redefined that individual as a canonised saint.7,8,9,10

Medieval Post-Depositional Practises The wide range of activities and practises relating to human skeletal remains that had been established in the Anglo-Saxon period continued to develop throughout the subsequent medieval period. Familiarity with skeletal remains and the interaction with particular graves and deceased individuals appear to have been frequently engaged in and not to have been regarded as a negative or sacrilegious event. Graves of both ecclesiasts and the laity were disturbed for the deliberate movement and relocation of their contents, for a variety of practical and liturgical reasons. At St. Saviour’s Hospital, Bermondsey, there is distinct evidence for multiple individuals having been removed from their graves – in one case a left arm was left unintentionally behind in the grave, proving that the grave had once been used.11 There are also accounts of people moving bodies, and archaeological evidence for reburials or interments of people in an advanced state of decomposition, such as at Raunds Furnells, Northamptonshire and the Priory of St. Andrew Fishergate, York.12,13 Viscera burials are burials of the organs of an individual and are normally attributed to wealthy clergy, knights or royalty who died abroad.14 It was not always feasible to bring back the entire body articulated for burial and so on these occasions the flesh and organs were removed and interred at the place of death, whilst the bones were transported home. This practise was also engaged in by people or patrons who wished to be seen to support numerous ecclesiastic establishments, or wished to be reburied in a better secondary location once funds had been raised posthumously. In 1485, a knight, Thomas Arundel, requested in his will that his body was ‘to be buried in 7 John Crook, English Medieval Shrines, Woodbridge 2011. 8 David Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford 1989, p. 34. 9 Roberta Gilchrist & Barney Sloane, Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain, London 2005, p. 197. 10 Ben Nilson, Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England, Woodbridge 1998, p. 14. 11 Gilchrist & Sloane, Requiem (see n. 9), p. 198. 12 Andy Boddington, Raunds Furnells: the Anglo-Saxon Church and Churchyard, London 1996, p. 29. 13 Gillian Stroud and Richard L. Kemp, The Archaeology of York. Volume12, The Medieval Cemeteries. (Fasc.2), Cemeteries of the Church and Priory of St Andrew, Fishergate, York 1993, p. 148. 14 Gilchrist &Sloane, Requiem (see n. 9), pp. 159–160.

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the parish church of Edeson in which I shall rest for a season […] remove my bones and bring them to the Grey Friars of Dorchester and lay them in the middle of the quire.’15 Post-depositional treatments were also exacted on large numbers of individuals, collectively. Charnel pits are holes dug into the ground of a graveyard which are then filled with disarticulated human bones, or “charnel.” It is assumed these pits derive from when newly dug graves intercut existing graves and the bones represent those removed from these disturbed interments.16 This is not a definitive explanation and the mode of pit varies greatly; in some the charnel is arranged into patterns as excavated at St. Helen-on-the-Walls, York and St. Mary Merton, Surrey. Other pits merely appear to be haphazardly filled, with no arrangement evident.17,18 These charnel collections are thought to represent functional clearance of a section of a graveyard once it became too full for further burials to take place in that location.19 Occasionally large quantities of bones were stored in buildings within ecclesiastic complexes. Officially the places which housed these bone collections were called “charnel chapels” but within years of their foundation they were colloquially known as ossuaries, bone houses, charnel houses, or carnaria amongst other terms.20,21,22,23 These medieval buildings were all built to a very specific template, as identified by the author; they are all semiunderground; they all have chapels or churches above them; they were designed to be accessed by people via permanent entrances; their interior and contents were intended to be seen from the outside via strategically placed windows.24 Current research also by the author has identified that they served as chapels for the skeletonised dead, where people would come in, and pray for their dead, amongst their dead. They were also opened on specific days of celebrations of the dead and for pilgrims to visit. The charnel chapel at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London was to be opened ‘every Friday and on certain days, such as the Feast of the 15 Nicholas Orme, Cornish Wills, 1342–1540, Devon and Cornwall Record Society, Exeter 2007, pp. 97–98. 16 Gilchrist & Sloane, Requiem (see n. 9), p. 195. 17 Jean D. Dawes and J. R. Magilton, The Cemetery of St. Helen-on-the-Walls, Aldwark: The Archaeology of York, Volume 12, The Medieval Cemeteries, York 1980. 18 Gilchrist & Sloane, Requiem (see n. 9), p. 195. 19 Gilchrist & Sloane Requiem (see n. 9), pp. 194–195. 20 Roberta Gilchrist, Norwich Cathedral Close. The Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape, Woodbridge 2005, p. 101. 21 Nicholas Orme, “The Charnel Chapel of Exeter Cathedral,” in Medieval Art and Architecture at Exeter Cathedral, ed. F. Kelly, Exeter 1991, pp. 165. 22 W. Page, ed., A History of the County of Suffolk, Volume 2, London 1907. 23 W. Page, The Victoria History of the County of York, North Riding, Volume 2, London 1923. 24 Jennifer Crangle, “The Rothwell Charnel Chapel and Ossuary Project”, in Past Horizons. 2013, http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/08/2013/the-rothwell-char nel-chapel-and-ossuary-project (last accessed in October 2013).

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Dedication of the cathedral, three days after Whitsun, and the Feast of the Relics’.25 They were inherently connected to prayer, serving as places of confession and penance. In the foundation record of Norwich Cathedral’s charnel chapel it is stated that ‘in the carnary beneath the said Chapel of St. John we wish that human bones, completely stripped of flesh, be preserved seemly to the time of the general Resurrection.’26 In the foundation charter from the charnel chapel of Bury St. Edmonds, Abbot De Northwold decreed that the structure was to be ‘covered with stone competently, under the cavity of which the buried bones may be laid up, or buried reverentially and decently in future […] the place shall happily be rendered most famous by the perpetual celebration of the masses of two chaplains.’27 These quotes, amongst others, illustrate the explicit intention that during the medieval period, human bones were to be curated and interacted with. Apart from frequent physical interaction with the dead, throughout this time period there was also a general familiarity of skeletal imagery. Once thought only to have become commonplace due to the aftermath of the Black Death in 1348, current research indicates that depictions of skeletal material featured heavily in medieval religion for centuries prior to this. Common themes included the Dance of Death, Doom paintings of the Resurrection, the tale of the Three Living & the Three Dead.28 It is patently clear that bones were integrated into medieval theology and religious observance from an early date, and that for medieval people they signified something of great importance.

25 Marie-Hélène Rousseau, Saving the Souls of Medieval London, Perpetual Chantries at St. Paul’s Cathedral c.1200–1548, Ashgate 2011, p. 75. 26 Gilchrist & Sloane, Requiem (see n. 9), p. 42. 27 M. H. Bloxam, On the Charnel Vault at Rothwell Northamptonshire and on Other Charnel Vaults Elsewhere, Northampton 1855, p. 5. 28 Rosemary Horrox, “Purgatory, prayer and plague: 1150–1380,” In Death in England. An Illustrated History, eds. Peter C. Jupp and Clare Gittings, Manchester 1999, Plate 7.

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A reconstructed 13th or 14th century ‘Doom’ painting from St. Mary’s Church, Lutterworth, Leicester. The dead are depicted rising from their graves as skeletons, to be re-fleshed by God at the Resurrection, author’s own photograph.

Detail from the Lutterworth Doom painting of a skeleton rising from his coffin, author’s own photograph

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Reformational Opinion Regarding Human Skeletal Material With the advent of the English Reformation, c. 1536, it suddenly became crucial to cease any interaction with these collections of human bones. It was deemed necessary to cease “Popish” behaviour such as idolatry and iconography, and bones appear to have been regarded as an extension of these practises. Ossuaries were removed from sight; the bones were buried in situ, or removed in an undignified manner, and the chapel and charnel rooms were reused, mainly for secular purposes.29,30,31,32,33 In medieval theology bones represented the power of prayer and the influence that the living could have on the time a soul spent in Purgatory. The eradication of such beliefs would have been profoundly distressing for medieval people. Not only were their ancestors physically taken from them, their ability to connect with them via prayer was no longer spiritually or legally sanctioned, according to the new prevailing religion. Now, charnel represented a defunct and obsolete belief. Bones were removed from sight and access to collections of charnel was prevented. By doing so, the memory of these liturgical practises and the inherent role of skeletal remains in medieval religion were erased. In 1549, English chronicler John Stow recorded the destruction of the charnel chapel at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. He documents how the building was converted into a house, warehouses and sheds, while ‘The bones of the dead couched up in a Charnill under the chappell were conveyed from thence into Finsbury field […] amounting to more than 1000 cartloads.’34 The human skeletal material was removed from the consecrated building and taken to a secular location, where they were dumped as rubbish. This was a deliberate and public act, with the intention of firmly emphasising the state of religious opinion on such antiquated and illegal practises. This was by no means an isolated occurrence. By 1550, Norwich Cathedral’s charnel chapel was being let out to wine merchants and used as a school, after the structure had been emptied of bones .35 The charnel chapel of Ely Priory was destroyed by 1553, as was the ossuary at St. 29 Tony Gnanaratnam, “Leicester, Shires West,” Leicester Archaeological and Historical Society 72 (2005): p. 6–7. 30 Tony Gnanaratnam, “An Urban Medieval Population from St. Peter’s, Leicester,” The Archaeologist 60 (2006): pp. 26–27. 31 V. Green, The History and Antiquities of the City and Suburbs of Worcester, Volume 1. London 1796, p. 56. 32 C. G. Henderson and P. T. Bidwell, “The Saxon Minster at Exeter,” in The Early Church in Western Britain and Ireland: studies presented to C.A. Ralegh Radford Arising from a Conference Organised in his Honour by the Devon Archaeological Society and Exeter City Museum, British Archaeological Research Report 102, ed. S. M. Pearce, Oxford 1982, p. 169. 33 R.B. Pugh, ed., 1953. The Victoria History of the county of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely, Vol. 4. London 1953. 34 John Stow, A Survey of London, Volume 1, Oxford 1971, p. 329. 35 Gilchrist, Norwich (see n. 20), p. 208.

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Gregory’s Church, Newcastle, by 1539, and St. Peter’s Church, Leicester, in 1573.36,37,38,39 Exeter Cathedral’s charnel chapel was dismantled down to its foundations, the building material being reused elsewhere, and the bones buried in situ.40,41 The key aim in the destruction of these sites was to prevent visibility of bones and to make the charnel rooms inaccessible. By achieving these aims, the sites and their function and purpose, were soon eradicated from memory. The Reformers were highly successful in these goals to eliminate medieval post-depositional practises. Within a few short decades, peoples’ views with regard to bones, cemeteries and the dead had altered drastically. Instead of a reverence for skeletal material, charnel was viewed as non-liturgical rubbish, associated with superstitious nonsense, bordering on the profane. Interaction with skeletal remains, whether physical or spiritual, was tantamount to blasphemy, and was sacrilegious. This change in attitude is evidenced from contemporary writers. One Thomas Nashe, a poet writing between 1567 and 1601, describes charnel as ‘the boanes of the dead, the divell counts his chiefe treasure, and therefore is he continually raking among them.’42 Another author, Thomas Browne, writing between 1605 and 1682, states; ‘the reason that phantoms doe frequent cemiteries, charnell houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where the Devill like an insolent Champion beholds with pride the spoyles and trophies of his victory in Adam.’43 Within a few years of the Reformation coming into effect, there had been a complete change of opinion and regard of human bones, totally at odds with the preceding medieval view. This change did not only concern bones, but is evident in relation to graveyards in general. Whereas previously they were places of communal activity, and were used for animals to graze, to hold fairs and markets, as well as serving as areas of public preaching and ceremony, now they were places which invoked fear and unpleasant connotations.44 By the late 16th century, it seems that graveyards were fearful places, associated with the devil and negativity. The success of the Reformers is demonstrated via the rediscoveries of these forgotten charnel chapels. Reformers did an excellent job at changing public consensus and opinion, and in destroying these once sacred places. When os36 F. Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 4: the History of the City and County of Norwich, Part II, London 1806. 37 Gnanaratnam, Leicester (see n. 29). 38 Gnanaratnam, An Urban Medieval (see n. 30). 39 Pugh, The Victoria History (see n. 33). 40 Henderson and Bidwell, “The Saxon Minster” (see n. 32), p. 169. 41 Orme, The Charnel Chapel (see n. 21), p. 169. 42 Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England, Oxford 2004, pp. 255–256. 43 Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead (see n. 42), pp. 256. 44 Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066–1550, London 1997, pp.110–115.

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suaries are rediscovered, they are randomly found as opposed to being sought after, as their locations have long been forgotten. In c.1700 at Rothwell, Northamptonshire, the charnel room was supposedly found by a gravedigger who fell into the charnel below the church whilst preparing a grave.45 Prior to this, there does not appear to have been any indication or knowledge that the room existed. The same is corroborated at alternative locations. John Leland, an antiquarian writing in 1545, makes no mention of any charnel chamber at the Church of St. Leonard, Hythe, Kent despite it having been in existence since the mid-13th century.46 By 1700, after its rediscovery, the vicar of Hythe, Rev. Brome says of the charnel and the room within which it is contained; ‘but how or by what means they were brought to this place the townsmen are altogether ignorant and can give no account of the matter.’47 The same experience was noted for St. Nicholas Church in 1824, and St. Bride’s Church, London in the 1950s when the charnel rooms were uncovered.48,49 By the mid-17th century, everything that charnel had previously represented to medieval people was forgotten and the once sacred buildings that housed the charnel were secularised. Charnelling was still practised in the post-Reformation period but it was devoid of religious symbolism. Bones were not curated in the same manner or for the same reason as they were in the medieval period. They were not advocated as representing or symbolising anything in particular. The post-Reformation version of charnelling entailed “charnel cisterns” in private burial vaults underneath churches, such as the Roper Vault, St. Dunstan’s Church 1590, or the Maynard Vault in Little Easton, 1621.50 These were holes or dumps fashioned at the furthest part of burial vaults to their entrances, where once coffins had broken down over time, they and their contents were pushed into these chutes, in order to make room for new burials within the vault. With the original purpose of charnel houses having been deliberately forgotten, at the time of their reopening in the post-medieval period, it was assumed that medieval charnelling had fulfilled the same function as post-medieval charnelling.

45 Bloxam, On the Charnel Vault (see n. 27). 46 Parsons, “Report on the Hythe Crania,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 38 (1908): pp. 419–450. 47 Jack F. Barker, A Study of the Crypt of St. Leonard’s Church Hythe, England 1993, p. 13. 48 E. Mackenzie, Historical Account of Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Including the Borough of Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne 1827. 49 Gustav Milne, St. Bride’s Church London. Archaeological Research 1952–60 and 1992–5, London 1997. 50 Julian Litten, The English Way of Death. The Common Funeral Since 1450, London 1991, pp. 195–226.

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Archaeological Consequences to Reformational Regard of Skeletal Remains Today, because of the fundamental change in regard to bones which occurred during the 16th century, the true portrayal of ossuaries, charnel and the treatment of skeletal material during the medieval period remains misunderstood. It is accepted as fact that there was never any great number of ossuaries in medieval England, that bones did not feature significantly in medieval religion, that they did not serve a liturgical or spiritual purpose, and that medieval England is not comparable to medieval Europe in their general reverence and familiarity with bones; ‘Ultimately some sites had to be reused, with any bones turned up in the process removed to a charnel […] such disturbance was uncommon.’51 Any documented occurrence of the storage or curation of bones is interpreted on purely functional terms; ‘[ossuaries/charnel chapels] seem to have had no general public role with regard to the dead.’52 The frequency of such post-depositional behaviour occurring in the medieval period is equally downplayed; ‘Provision of a charnel house was rare in monastic and parochial context.’53 Contrary to these assumptions, over 60 potential examples of medieval charnel chapel and ossuary sites have been identified throughout England by the author.54 Research into the medieval period, specifically in relation to funerary archaeology, medieval archaeology, and osteoarchaeology, has been intrinsically influenced by the Reformation and the acts of the Reformers. The impact was such that current interpretations of medieval post-depositional practises derive from those of the Reformers. Numerous myths have been perpetuated regarding post-burial practises. For example, it is accepted as fact that ossuaries served merely as convenient storage locations for human bones, which contemporarily were essentially regarded as rubbish.55,56 The architectural attributes of these buildings are also misinterpreted, with windows not being identified as windows, but as “bone-holes” used for throwing bones through and into the charnel rooms.57 It is also assumed that the buildings’ charnel rooms and their contents were not intended to be visited, as they did not function liturgically in any manner.58,59,60,61 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Horrox, “Purgatory, prayer and plague” (see n. 28), p. 104. Orme, personal communication, May 2nd 2012. Gilchrist & Sloane, Requiem (see n. 9), p. 195. Crangle, The Rothwell Charnel (see n.24). Horrox, “Purgatory, prayer and plague” (see n. 28). Orme, The Charnel Chapel (see n. 21). Timezone – History at University of Wales, Newport, ‘The Charnel House at Carew Cheriton, Pembrokeshire’, http://timezone.newport.ac.uk/staff/mg/carew2.htm 58 Gilchrist, Norwich (see n. 20). 59 Horrox, “Purgatory, prayer and plague” (see n. 28). 60 Orme, The Charnel Chapel (see n. 21).

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In some cases it is advocated that the charnel chapels and rooms could not have been used merely as storage receptacles and must have initially been built for an entirely different purpose.62

Conclusion The impact of the English Reformation was vast. Not only did it affect the perceptions of people at the time with regard to human skeletal material, but it has altered our current perception of an entire time period’s funerary, curation and post-depositional observances. The medieval physical and spiritual peri-mortem and post-mortem treatments exacted on individuals have been extensively studied, yet the post-depositional treatments are barely acknowledged as having occurred. Attitudes towards human skeletal material were forcibly changed during the Reformation and have, both intentionally and subconsciously, been upheld ever since. So successful was the Reformation, that the magnitude of those changes for particular areas of archaeology and history has practically gone unrecognised. As a consequence, archaeologists are not accounting for a hugely important and influential part of medieval funerary osteoarchaeology. In light of these new considerations regarding theological changes of the Reformation, these assumptions clearly need to be reassessed.

61 Orme, (see n. 52). 62 H.D. Dale & F.G. Parsons, Notes on the Crypt and Bones at Hythe Church, Kent 1917.

Gioia Filocamo

Through the mala notte: The Anthropology of Assisting Those Condemned to Die in Italy in the 15th and 16th Centuries*

The Bolognese confraternity of Santa Maria della Morte is the oldest and bestdocumented Italian Company of Justice, founded in 1336 in the wake of preaching by the Dominican friar Venturino da Bergamo.1 The specific assistance to those condemned to death was a true novelty, if, in Vincenzo Paglia’s words, ‘we consider the medieval opinion that condemned persons were diabolic creatures who had already entered Hell’.2 After having been notified of the sentence, the brethren of the local Company of Death took care of the condemned during the night preceding his execution, the so-called mala notte.3 From that point, the prisoner ‘was like someone who was already dead, with only his soul needing to be prepared for the final destination’.4 The execution took place the day after, and the corpse was left visible as a warning all that morning. What precisely did the brethren do? We can learn about their practical assistance by reading the surviving confortatori, devotional handbooks destined for the spiritual edification of prisoners condemned to death, used by brethren who prepared them to die in a Christian spirit in a very few hours. The confortatorio of the Confraternity contains much advice for a sensitive approach to the prisoner, which is very often accompanied also by prayers or laude, some of them written specially for the occasion. The brethren directed their efforts to a true and proper transformation of the prisoner’s soul, effecting a full and very fast conversion. But their job was more complicated than this: the prisoner had to attain complete inner peace and a total acceptance of the sentence, along with a * My sincerest thanks to Bonnie Blackburn, who has revised the English version of this paper. 1 On the Bolognese confraternity see Mario Fanti, La Confraternita di S. Maria della Morte e la conforteria dei condannati in Bologna nei secoli XIV e XV, Perugia 1978, pp. 3–101; also in Id., Confraternite e città a Bologna nel Medioevo e nell’età moderna, Rome 2001, pp. 61–173. 2 Vincenzo Paglia, La morte confortata. Riti della paura e mentalità religiosa a Roma nell’età moderna, Rome 1982, p. 39. 3 Fanti, La Confraternita di S. Maria della Morte (see n. 1), p. 167. 4 Adriano Prosperi, “Esecuzioni capitali e controllo sociale nella prima età moderna,” in La pena di morte nel mondo. Atti del convegno internazionale di Bologna (28–30 ottobre 1982), Casale Monferrato 1983, pp. 87–104, here p. 94.

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true disregard for his life.5 The condemned person had to forgive his judges and the executioner, and present his final sacrifice as an edifying example for other people. Beatitude was the final prize, on condition that the prisoner had repented of all his offences, made confession, and received the sacrament.6 In this way, he could also regain his honor. The brethren tried to convince him that he was luckier than other living people: he knew precisely when he would be dead, and this had the real advantage in that he could be properly ready. In fact, according to the principles of the ars moriendi, the final disposition of a soul during the last instants of life was decisive; it could be possible to repent even on one’s own deathbed. Moreover, dying in peace was like the death of martyrs or of Christ himself, the condemned par excellence. This spiritual similarity could permit the prisoner to go directly to Paradise, without any passage through Purgatory, as was the case with Dismas, the good thief crucified with Jesus.7 Public execution was considered a substitution for Purgatory. Moreover, the condemned was guaranteed burial in consecrated land – normally denied to criminals – and that his needy relatives would be cared for. This special conforteria was a typical Italian phenomenon with a substantial positive balance: there were only a few cases of failure. Even if the prisoner was innocent, or was punished too severely, he accepted his final end, beheading (with less shame) or hanging, depending on his social status. The town was the natural stage of this phenomenon, where a careful direction organized a civic show: ‘The public, who went to the executions as if to a show, required precise behaviours both from the condemned and from the executioner: the condemned had to be resigned to die, going to the scaffold repentant and obedient; the executioner had to be skilful in his job, avoiding unnecessary pain to the condemned’.8 This macabre show was intended to invest the legal murder with a religious dimension.9 In the art historian Lionello Puppi’s words, ‘suffering and death were constantly present in towns of the ancien régime, which were their stage’;10 he describes ‘the most spectacular ceremonies glorifying the wellmatched convergence (pro fide et patria) of political power and religious piety’.11 In sum, we can define all this as mutual social collaboration; civic cohesion also 5 The last instant of life was called punto (defined as mixero, streto, amaro) in many of the little poems. 6 Fanti, La Confraternita di S. Maria della Morte (see n. 1), pp. 144–147. 7 On this topic see Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Il Buon Ladrone: un santo per l’Aldilà,” in Parole e realtà dell’amicizia medievale. Atti del convegno (Ascoli Piceno, Palazzo dei Capitani, 2–4 dicembre 2010), Rome 2012, pp. 243–271. 8 Donata Mancini, “Giustizia in piazza. Appunti sulle esecuzioni capitali in Piazza Maggiore a Bologna durante l’età moderna,” Il Carrobbio 9 (1985): pp. 143–149, here p. 147. 9 Prosperi, “Esecuzioni capitali e controllo sociale” (see n. 4), p. 90. 10 Lionello Puppi, Lo splendore dei supplizi, Milan 1990, p. 13. 11 Puppi, Lo splendore dei supplizi (see n. 10), p. 18.

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played a part in the condemnation to death, with a constant ‘contradiction, always visible […] among a religion of gentleness and forgiveness, and the bloody violence of the rites of justice’.12 This phenomenon was particularly strong where papal power controlled the civic oligarchy, as in Bologna.13 Comforters taught the prisoners to assimilate the sorrows of the ancient martyrs in their own pain: in such way they could try to gather the necessary strength to face every pain destined to them. The devotional images, tavolette, placed in front of the prisoners by the comforters as a kind of mirror, were also destined to the same purpose: the pictures of the sorrows of martyrs and Christ were considered as a visual anaesthetic that was useful to numb fear and pain during the journey to the scaffold.14 The pictures of tortures on the tavoletta served different aims: if the victim had willingly accepted his physical suffering, he could gain a full post mortem redemption. The comforter had to hold the tavoletta as close as possible to the face of the condemned, also in order to cover all he could see: the prisoner was to concentrate his mind on Heaven, in particular when he was on the way to the scaffold. The brethren classified every earthly worry as diabolic temptation, ‘but also in their theological culture the idea was maturing that these were natural feelings’, passions instead of temptations.15 Comforters worked intensively, to the point that special schools were created for learning the job.16 These brethren were at first merchants and artisans, but during the Cinquecento they became gentlemen, priests, lawyers, even university professors.17 The manuals contain precise advice: the comforters did not have to listen to the personal stories of the condemned people, or to requests for pity. Even in case of innocence, the brethren could not give hope to the prisoner. In fact, condemnation to death was not prescribed on the grounds of a rigid jurisprudence, but had many variations:18 the longa manus of God was surely driving earthly justice, because of old sins or to avoid future sins. Unfair death 12 Adriano Prosperi, “Il sangue e l’anima. Ricerche sulle Compagnie di Giustizia in Italia,” Quaderni storici 17 (1982): pp. 959–999 (repr. in Id., America e Apocalisse e altri saggi, Pisa/ Rome 1999, pp. 155–185), here p. 962. 13 Nicholas Terpstra, “Piety and Punishment: The Lay Conforteria and Civic Justice in Sixteenth-Century Bologna,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1991): pp. 679–694, here p. 680. 14 ‘These tavolette were not intended as objects d’art in the purely aesthetic sense but as devotional images; more to the point, as a kind of visual narcotic to numb the fear and pain of the condemned criminal during his terrible journey to the scaffold’ (Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance, Ithaca/London 1985, p. 172). 15 Adriano Prosperi, Dare l’anima. Storia di un infanticidio, Turin 2005, p. 311. 16 This often happened on the impetus of the Jesuits. 17 Terpstra, “Piety and Punishment” (see n. 13), p. 690. 18 Paglia, La morte confortata (see n. 2), p. 112.

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had great value for God: it became like a hymn to rationality.19 After all, it was considered a test of intelligence ‘to accept a forced situation and to derive from it the most benefit possible’.20 The disdain for the body through torture and the final execution restored the civic social order and the inviolability of power: death through the executioner became ‘the only possible reconciliation with society’.21 At the same time, execution guaranteed a balanced exclusion/inclusion, ‘moving the criminal away and restoring him using the same event’.22 Moreover, thanks to the serene acceptance of his own death, the prisoner who sincerely repented earned not only plenary absolution from his own sins, but also became a redeemer for the crowd. The public cheered him as a martyr, an intermediary saint with the afterlife, to be remembered through the collection of alms destined to masses for his soul. What spurred the comforters to take on this job? Were they only philanthropists? I think that the answer lies in two different factors: (a) personal and individual reasons; and (b) social and political reasons. (a) Personal and individual reasons It seems to me that the brethren had a sort of passing identification with the prisoner. After all, innocence was not a guarantee; in fact death for an innocent was considered more praiseworthy, for its closeness to Christ’s earthly experience. The agreed public show was probably useful to brethren to rehearse their own death as well: singing in the first person, as in many lauda texts used by the comforters, they were asking for mercy,23 redemption from sins and courage also for themselves, earning credits in advance for their own death.24 Similar to the hypnosis produced by litanies, it is very possible that listening to laude increased the narcosis already produced by the tavolette.25 By singing laude, the brethren

19 Terpstra, “Piety and Punishment” (see n. 13), pp. 683–684. 20 Paglia, La morte confortata (see n. 2), p. 81, n. 3. ‘Submitting oneself becomes advantageous for the religious interests of the condemned prisoner, and at the same time was also appropriate in terms of reason’: Paglia, La morte confortata (see n. 2), p. 82. 21 Paglia, La morte confortata (see n. 2), p. 82. 22 Paglia, La morte confortata (see n. 2), p. 126. 23 ‘Mercy, Lord, and not justice’ is the last line of the lauda Ben ti posiamo lodare, o dolze legno in the MS New Haven (CT), Yale University, Beinecke Library, 1069 (fol. 55v), edited in Alfredo Troiano, ed., Il laudario di S. Maria della Morte di Bologna: il ms. 1069 della Yale Beinecke Library, Pisa 2010, pp. 177–178. 24 This hypothesis is inspired by Bonnie Blackburn’s ideas about singers of motets setting indulgenced prayers (Bonnie J. Blackburn, “For Whom Do the Singers Sing?,” Early Music 25 (1997): pp. 593–609). 25 This is the evocative hypotesis of Pamela Gravestock, “Comforting the Condemned and the Role of the Laude,” in Early Modern Confraternities in Europe and the Americas. Inter-

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perhaps established a sort of transfer between themselves and the prisoner: the mercy of God for the criminal would have been greater for volunteers working to wrest souls from the power of the devil. Moreover, the brethren received special indulgences for their spiritual assistance.26 Renaissance spirituality was based on a kind of imitative piety which assimilated those condemned to die to martyrs, and comforters to Christ;27 through inversion it became circular: the criminal became a brother, and the comforter became a criminal. Reabsorbing him into the social community meant something very complete, and the comforter could truly be satisfied with saving a soul who could otherwise be lost. (b) Social and political reasons The social and political reasons, on the other hand, were connected to political power. From the foundation of the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Morte in 1336 to the formal foundation of the School for Comforters in 1538, Bologna had greatly changed, especially after Pope Julius II (the Warrior Pope) banished the Bentivoglio family, who had ruled the town between 1401 and 1506. The previous municipal organization which represented the most important families, the Reggimento (Government), was enlarged and changed its name into Senato (Senate):28 it became a strict ally of the Bolognese papal government, overshadowing the other institutions of the city, the Tribuni del Popolo (Tribunes of the People) 29 and the Consiglio degli Anziani (Council of the Elders). A census of the social classes of the Bolognese comforters is possible only from 1538;30 in the following seventy years more and more nobles and important people increased their participation, and this meant a strong connection with the government of the town. The Company of Death also expanded its influence to the city prisons, and to Mount of Piety, where criminal reports were done. As a practical consequence of these social changes, the Company of Death became more and more important in Bologna.31 A relevant peak was the authorization the

26 27 28 29 30 31

national and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Christopher Black and Pamela Gravestock, Aldershot 2006, pp. 129–150, here pp. 136–138. Vincenzo Paglia, “La pietà dei carcerati”: confraternite e società a Roma nei secoli XVI – XVIII, Rome 1980, p. 147, and Paglia, La morte confortata (see n. 2), p. 51. Nicholas Terpstra, “Theory into Practice: Executions, Comforting, and Comforters in Renaissance Italy,” in The Art of Executing Well: Rituals of Execution in Renaissance Italy, ed. Nicholas Terpstra, Kirksville (MO) 2008, pp. 118–158, here p. 138. This happened under Pope Leo X (1513–21). The new classicizing name replaced the previous one, Gonfalonieri del Popolo (Banner Bear– ers of the People). They were charged with maintaining civic order. The merchant Pier Giacomo Ruggiero is the only comforter we know for certain before 1538: Terpstra, “Theory into Practice” (see n. 27), p. 143. The historical and social situation in well described in Terpstra, “Theory into Practice” (see n. 27).

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Bolognese Pope Gregory XIII gave in 1576 and 1577 to release first one and then two condemned persons every year.32 This fact attested not only the new political importance of the Confraternity, but also its new ideological basis: death for prisoners became something negotiable. In the past, being comforted was in itself the first step for a prisoner to enter the Confraternity. But since 1588, the deaths of prisoners were registered in a different book from those of the brethren,33 breaking in fact the previous bond with those condemned, so important for the Italian experience of spiritual comforting. My feeling is that being a comforter inside the exclusive Company of Death encouraged some political independence for the oligarchy of Bologna: in fact, although the papal rulers constantly tried to be well connected to the higher social classes, the nobles were not always happy with this. There were still individual spaces for the important Bolognese families, sustained also by being part of the Company of Death comforters. In conclusion, I think that one of the attractions of the Company of Death during the sixteenth century was its desire to reaffirm local oligarchic power despite papal rule. In the middle of the seventeenth century, comforting prisoners became a kind of reality show, with a quite mixed public:34 this confirms too that the gradual change in the social class of the comforters also altered their attitude towards the prisoners. The previous attitude was based on caritas (charity), but the new one became centred on misericordia (mercy): the charitable attitude implies a relationship between two similar people, but the merciful attitude looks at the different.35 In one sense, the comforter could be similar to God, the fair judge who has mercy on poor sinners and saves them using his power, even choosing to let them live or not. This attitude concords well with the relevant changes which occurred in jurisprudence during the sixteenth century all over Europe: in fact there was a ‘shift from the penal relevance of a fact or a behaviour from the damage level to the disobedience level, and this implies a political violation at every important penal violation’.36 32 Terpstra, “Theory into Practice” (see n. 27), p. 152. 33 Dead people were listed in the Libro dei morti (Book of the dead) and in Libro dei giustiziati (Book of those condemned to death). 34 Terpstra, “Theory into Practice” (see n. 27), p. 154. 35 Both ideas are adopted in Katherine A. Lynch, Individuals, Families and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800: The Urban Foundations of Western Society, Cambridge 2003, pp. 106–114 (quoted in Nicholas Terpstra, “Republicanism, Public Welfare, and Civil Society in Early Modern Bologna,” in Bologna. Cultural Crossroads from the Medieval to the Baroque: Recent Anglo-American Scholarship, eds. Gian Mario Anselmi, Angela De Benedictis, and Nicholas Terpstra, Bologna 2013, pp. 205–216, here p. 212, n. 16). Terpstra adapts them to the Bolognese situation at pp. 212–213, 215. 36 Sbriccoli goes on: ‘The turning point of this conception is in the ever closer relationship between justice and law, and in the idea – increasing in common opinion to the point of

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I think that the increased distance between condemned and comforters also conveys their efforts to get emancipated from papal rule on Bologna. It is certainly true that a serene death for a condemned person implied a social recomposition of his crime inside civic society; on the other hand, the comforters’ philanthropy lets them gain indulgences for their afterlife, and re-gain a certain civic political power, especially from the second half of the sixteenth century on.

becoming an ideology and common sense – that every transgression of a penal obligation could be assimilated to a form of threatening disorderly conduct (Mario Sbriccoli, “Giustizia criminale,” in Lo stato moderno in Europa. Istituzioni e diritto, ed. Maurizio Fioravanti, Rome/Bari 2002, pp. 163–205; repr. in Id., Storia del diritto penale e della giustizia. Scritti editi e inediti (1972–2007), vol. I, Milan, pp. 3–44, here p. 18).

VI. Political Theology and Anthropological Reforms of Pedagogy

Matthew J. Tuininga

Calvin as Two Kingdoms Theologian: in Theology, in Church, and in State

H. Richard Niebuhr indelibly shaped the popular perception of the political theologies of Martin Luther and John Calvin in his classic book Christ and Culture. In the book, Niebuhr developed a five part typology for the analysis of Christian cultural engagement. Niebuhr presented Luther’s two kingdoms theology as his prime example of the type ‘Christ and Culture in Paradox’. He portrayed Calvin’s political theology, in contrast, as a clear case of his own favored type, ‘Christ the Transformer of Culture’.1 In a series of lectures with Mennonite scholars Jürgen Moltmann appealed to this contrast as a commonplace. There are two major traditions of Protestant political theology, Moltmann argued: the Lutheran two kingdoms doctrine and the Calvinist emphasis on the sovereignty of God.2 Although these characterizations have an element of truth to them, like all typologies they fall victim to oversimplification and exaggeration. In the case of Luther and Calvin, scholars have spent so much energy emphasizing their supposed differences that they have lost sight of their quite fundamental similarities. One of the most basic of these was the tendency of both reformers to present their political theology in terms of God’s two kingdoms, or of a twofold government, in man. My argument in this paper is that Calvin’s two kingdoms theology played a paradigmatic role in his approach to the church, to politics, and to culture generally, throughout the corpus of his works, from the beginning to the end of his life. Although Calvin’s practical understanding of the institutions of the church and of civil government evolved over the years, his allegiance to a two kingdoms theological foundation remained constant. I demonstrate my argument in three parts. In the first part I consider Calvin’s initial formulation of the two kingdoms doctrine in his early writings. In the second part I consider how Calvin worked out the implications of his two kingdoms theology institutionally 1 H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, New York 1951. 2 Jürgen Moltmann, The Politics of Discipleship and Discipleship in Politics: Jürgen Moltmann Lectures in Dialogue with Mennonite Scholars, ed. Willard M. Swartley, Eugene 2006.

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through the ecclesiastical practices of elder administered church discipline and deacon administered poor relief. In the third part I demonstrate that despite Calvin’s ever more dogmatic emphasis on a magisterial responsibility to promote and defend the true religion, the reformer continued to understand the dynamic of church and state through the lens of his fundamental two kingdoms theology. Calvin’s classic formulation of the two kingdoms doctrine appeared in the first edition of the Institutes in 1536 and was maintained verbatim in all successive editions of the Institutes through 1559. Calvin declares that there is a ‘twofold government in man’; ‘There are in man, so to speak, two worlds, over which different kings and different laws have authority.’ ‘The one we may call the spiritual kingdom, the other, the political kingdom.’ They correspond, Calvin says, to the classic Christian distinction between the spiritual and the temporal jurisdiction. The spiritual kingdom is that wherein the conscience is instructed in piety and in reverencing God. It pertains to the life of the soul and to the inner mind. The political kingdom, on the other hand, educates human beings for the duties of humanity and citizenship. It pertains to the concerns of the present life, food, clothing, and the laws and institutions of human society.3 In a later reference to the twofold government Calvin notes that the spiritual kingdom pertains to the eternal life, while the political government pertains to civil justice and outward morality.4 At first glance it is tempting to interpret Calvin’s two kingdoms concept, as is so often done with Luther’s, as a form of neoplatonic dualism. This temptation is exacerbated by Calvin’s statement that the two kingdoms are easily distinguished; one need only to be able to distinguish between the soul and the body. But a careful analysis suggests that however much Calvin might have been influenced by neoplatonic categories, he understands the two kingdoms distinction in fundamentally eschatological terms. Indeed, this appears even in the statement in which Calvin makes the body-soul distinction just noted. He writes, ‘But whoever knows how to distinguish between body and soul, between the present fleeting life and that future eternal life, will without difficulty know that Christ’s spiritual kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct.’5 The defining characteristic of the political kingdom is that it pertains to the passing affairs of the present life, including the mortal body of believers. The defining characteristic of the spiritual kingdom is that its power is that of the Holy Spirit and its most important consequences are for eternity, the age to come. This appears most clearly in comments Calvin added to the 1539 edition of the Institutes. He writes, ‘I call ‘earthly things’ those which do not pertain to God or his 3 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, Louisville 1960, 3.19.15. 4 Calvin, Institutes (see n. 3), 4.20.1. 5 Calvin, Institutes (see n. 3), 4.20.1.

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kingdom, to true justice, or to the blessedness of the future life; but which have their significance and relationship with regard to the present life and are, in a sense, confined within its bounds. I call ‘heavenly things’ the pure knowledge of God, the nature of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom. The first class includes government, household management, all mechanical skills, and the liberal arts. In the second are the knowledge of God and of his will, and the rule by which we conform our lives to it.’6 From the very beginning Calvin associated the two kingdoms with the distinction between ecclesiastical and civil government, as his introductions to the chapters on those topics in the original edition of the Institutes makes clear. Like Luther, he argued that the church is governed by the word and Spirit, while the power of civil government rests fundamentally on the sword. Pastors have no discretionary or magisterial power, Calvin insists against Rome, but merely minister Christ’s kingship in the church through the proclamation of the word. Christian liberty does not, Calvin insists against the Anabaptists on the other hand, prevent magistrates, masters, or other political authority figures from exercising dominion or even enslavement over those under their charge. The two kingdoms must be kept separate. Although as would be expected for a leading theologian of the 16th century Calvin does affirm that civil government rightly ‘prevents idolatry, sacrilege against God’s name, blasphemies against his truth, and other public offenses against religion from arising and spreading among the people,’7 in the 1536 edition he never expands on the point. In the rest of the chapter when he addresses the various responsibilities of magistrates he says virtually nothing about religion, focusing instead on matters of justice and peace between human beings, a characteristic that, notably, carries into his commentary on Romans 13, published four years later in 1540.8 What’s more, in his discussion of church discipline in the 1536 Institutes he argues that ‘Turks and Saracens, and other enemies of religion’ should be barred from the society of the church but not persecuted by the sword of the civil magistrate. ‘Far be it from us to approve those methods by which many until now have tried to force them to our faith, when they forbid them the sue of fire and water and the common elements, when they deny to them all offices of humanity, when they pursue them with sword and arms.’9 Like Luther, early in his life Calvin seems to have followed the implications of two kingdoms theology to some measure of religious liberty. Like Luther, he 6 Calvin, Institutes (see n. 3), 2.2.13. 7 Calvin, Institutes (see n. 3), 4.20.3. 8 John Calvin, Iohannes Calvini Commentarii in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, 1556, Calvini Opera 49:1–292. 9 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536 ed.) ed. Ford Lewis Battles, Grand Rapids 1986, 2.28.

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would later back away from that early position. This comment was removed from all subsequent editions of the Institutes. It is important to note, at least in passing, that Calvin’s developing biblical theology was closely related to his two kingdoms theology. In 1539 Calvin added two chapters to the Institutes in which he considered the similarities and differences between the Old and New Testaments. It is difficult not to detect two kingdoms themes at play when Calvin contrasts the kingdom of Israel, which as a type of the kingdom of Christ was political, outward, and earthly, and the kingdom of Christ to which it pointed forward, which is spiritual, inward, and eternal. It is this biblical theological comparison that enables Calvin to interpret Old Testament prophecies and laws through the lens of his two kingdoms theology, distinguishing the metaphors and outward forms of the typological age from the substance and inner realities of the spiritual kingdom of Christ. As we shall see, however, this biblical theological perspective opened up Calvin’s political theology to criticism from the Anabaptists, many of whom allowed the difference between the testaments a much more decisive role in shaping their understanding of the difference between the two kingdoms. Early in his life, therefore, it is evident not only that Calvin embraced essentially the same two kingdoms theology as did Luther, but that he followed it to some of the same implications. During the late 1530s and early 1540s, however, Calvin began to work out radical institutional implications of the doctrine, specifically with reference to the church. In distinction from both the Lutherans and the broader Reformed tradition shaped by Zwingli and Bullinger, he insisted that the church must carry out its own spiritual functions of church discipline and care for the poor. These functions, distinct from the civil discipline or poor relief administered by the state, were to be carried out by men called to the spiritual and ecclesiastical offices of elder and deacon. Although Calvin shared the view of the Swiss Reformed that church and state together form one society, he much more sharply distinguished between the corporate body of the church, with its own offices and government, and the political authorities of the state. While Calvin acknowledged that there is a form of political power in ecclesiastical government, he distinguished this necessary government over the circumstances of worship and church life from ecclesiastical government proper, which he insisted was spiritual, not political. I don’t have the space here to outline Calvin’s unique understanding of these offices and functions, but I do want to draw attention to the arguments Calvin makes about the nature of these offices, and to the fact that he explicitly draws on the two kingdoms doctrine in those arguments. In his arguments for ecclesiastical discipline Calvin notes that just as a city requires a

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civil polity and magistrates, so the church needs a ‘spiritual polity.’10 This point already distinguishes Calvin’s position from that of the Swiss Reformed (who would have said, is not the civil government the polity of the church? ), but Calvin makes the disagreement explicit. He goes on to criticize Zwingli’s argument that the New Testament offices of elder and deacon are now fulfilled by various civil officers. ‘Some imagine that all those things were temporary, lasting while the magistrates were still strangers to the profession of our religion. In this they are mistaken, because they do not notice how great a difference and unlikeness there is between ecclesiastical and civil power. For the church does not have the right of the sword to punish or compel, not the authority to force; not imprisonment, nor the other punishments which the magistrate commonly inflicts.’ How is the church’s discipline different? ‘Then, it is not a question of punishing the sinner against his will, but of the sinner professing his repentance in a voluntary chastisement. The two conceptions are very different. The church does not assume what is proper to the magistrate; nor can the magistrate execute what is carried out by the church.’11 Calvin’s arguments concerning the diaconate were less controversial or polemical, but they are no less significant. In the 1543 Institutes Calvin writes of the early church diaconate, ‘it was not secular management that they were undertaking, but a spiritual function dedicated to God.’12 He clearly places the deacons in the order of ministers that together make up the order of church government and he discusses the diaconate under the category of spiritual government, not civil government.13 That Calvin was not pleased that the diaconate was often viewed as a secular office in Geneva appears from sermons he preached on Acts in 1549–1550 and 1 Timothy in 1554–1555. Preaching on Acts 6:1–3 he insisted that the diaconate is ‘not a profane or mundane office, but a spiritual charge.’14 Preaching on 1 Timothy 3:8–13, Paul’s most extensive and explicit discussion of the diaconal office, Calvin carefully distinguished the civil magistrate from the deacon and placed the latter in the spiritual government. ‘It is true that those who are in the office of justice also do God service […]. But these deacons appertain to the spiritual government which God has established.’15 Insisting that a thorough reformation required a reformed diaconate, Calvin complained, ‘Truth it is that we have some: but it is taken as a profane office.’16 In response, Calvin noted, 10 11 12 13 14

Calvin, Institutes (see n. 3), 4.11.1. Calvin, Institutes (see n. 3), 4.11.3. Calvin, Institutes (see n. 3), 4.4.5. Calvin, Institutes (see n. 3), 4.4.1. John Calvin, Sermons on the Acts of the Apostles, Serm. Acts 6:1–3, Supplementa Calviniana, 8:200. 15 John Calvin, Sermons Sur La Premiere Epitre A Timothee, Serm. 1 Timothy 3:6–7, CO 53:291. 16 Calvin, Serm. 1 Timothy 3:6–7 (see n. 15), CO 53: 290.

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Paul teaches that the diaconate is ‘not only an earthly office, but a spiritual charge, which serves the church of God, and therefore that they must be near the ministers of the word.’17 Calvin’s development of the two kingdoms doctrine in an institutional direction is one of the most important yet underappreciated parts of the reformer’s legacy, helping as it did to provide a vigorous model of a self-governed church for Protestants struggling under hostile authorities in France, the Netherlands, and beyond. If Philip Benedict is correct that Calvin’s model of the church is his most important social legacy, and if Heiko Oberman is on to something when he argues that Calvinism needs to be understood as a reformation of refugees rather than of magistrates, then surely the influence of two kingdoms theology on Calvin’s ecclesiology requires further exploration.18 One of the reasons why Calvin is often not thought of as a two kingdoms theologian is because over the course of his life the reformer increasingly emphasized the responsibilities of civil magistrates to promote the kingdom of Christ, not only by sponsoring pastors, schools and hospitals, but by punishing teachers of false doctrine, idolaters, and blasphemers. Calvin always believed the civil magistrate was responsible to enforce outward obedience to both tables of the law, but especially in the wake of sharp criticism from Sebastien Castellio and others after Servetus was burned at the stake (an event that Calvin heartily endorsed in principle, though not in style), he became all the more dogmatic in these arguments. The arguments of his opponents forced Calvin to come to grips with the charge that the political suppression of heretics and idolaters violated two of his fundamental theological commitments: the distinction between the two kingdoms, and the related contrast between old covenant Israel and the new covenant church. Calvin acknowledged as much in his defense of capital punishment for false teachers in the commentary on the Torah. ‘But it is questioned whether the law pertains to the kingdom of Christ, which is spiritual and distinct from all earthly dominion; and there are some men, not otherwise ill-disposed, to whom it appears that our condition under the Gospel is different from that of the ancient people under the law; not only because the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but because Christ was unwilling that the beginnings of His kingdom should be aided by the sword.’19

17 Calvin, Serm. 1 Timothy 3:6–7 (see n. 15), CO 53:291. 18 Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism, New Haven 2002; Heiko Oberman, John Calvin and the Reformation of the Refugees, Geneva 2009. 19 John Calvin, Mosis libri V. cum Ioannis Calvini Commentariis: Genesis seorsum; reliqui quatuor in formam harmoniae digesti, Comm. Deuteronomy 13:5, Geneva 1563, CO 24:355– 357.

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In response to these challenges there are several arguments to which Calvin returns over and over throughout his writings in the 1550s and 1560s. First, he wholeheartedly embraces the two kingdoms principle underlying the objection, but he rejects that the conclusion derived from it follows. That is, he affirms that the kingdom of Christ advances by means of the word and Spirit alone and that, governed by Christ, it requires no support or protection from secular rulers. In a very important sense magistrates cannot affect the kingdom of Christ at all, since it is spiritual. Still, he insists, that does not mean it is not God’s will that magistrates indirectly or accidentally promote and defend Christ’s kingdom as a matter of their political vocation. As he commented on Jesus’ statement in John 18, ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ magistrates serve indirectly to establish the kingdom by protecting the church and its pastors and by punishing attacks on it, whether physical or intellectual. The responsibilities that magistrates have toward the establishment and protection of the true religion are a function not of any office they bear within the kingdom of Christ, but of their political vocation.20 Second, Calvin likewise affirms that typological Israel must be sharply distinguished from Christian commonwealths, but once again, he denies that the conclusion follows that magistrates thereby lose their obligations toward religion. He then repeatedly invokes a set of three texts (first arrayed together in his argument against the Anabaptists in 1546) to demonstrate the contrary. He interprets Psalm 2, which calls kings to ‘kiss the Son,’ and Isaiah 49:23, which prophesies that when the kingdom is restored kings and queens will be the foster fathers and nursing mothers of the church, as clear demonstrations that magistrates will hold the same responsibilities toward the church under the gospel as they did under the law. He musters 1 Timothy 2:2, where Paul commands believers to pray for those in authority over them, ‘that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way,’ as the crucial New Testament confirmation of this argument, despite its ambiguity, and despite the otherwise silence of Christ and the apostles on the matter.21 Third, although Calvin admits that there were important elements of Israel’s law, or of the responsibilities of Israel’s kings, that were unique to it as a typological kingdom, he places greater emphasis on continuity within the moral law and in the vocational responsibilities of kings. For instance, he recognizes that Israel was to bring vengeance on the wicked in ways that the New Testament 20 John Calvin, In Evangelium secundum Iohannem, Commentarius Iohannis Calvini, Geneva 1553, Comm. John 18:36, CO 47:403–404. 21 In addition to his various commentaries and sermons on these texts, see John Calvin, Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Against the Libertines, ed. Benjamin Wirt Farley, Grand Rapids 1982, pp. 79, 81–82, 91. See also Calvin, Comm. Deuteronomy 13:5 (see n. 19), CO 24:355–357.

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church should not, and he acknowledges that Israel’s laws concerning usury, or concerning the liberation of slaves, were unique to Israel’s circumstances within redemptive history.22 But he goes on to insist that magistrates always retain the obligation of punishing all wickedness, whether committed against God or against human beings. He appeals to Plato, Cicero, and the widespread consensus among pagan philosophers and nations that natural law testifies to the responsibilities of magistrates toward religion and piety.23 In the end, the continuing significance of the two kingdoms paradigm for Calvin appears in his continued emphasis, present particularly in his commentaries on the prophets, that magistrates and pastors have mutual responsibilities toward one another, reflective of the twofold government within man. Pastors are obligated to proclaim the word of God with absolute fidelity, not holding back from rebuking magistrates wherever the word speaks clearly. On the other hand, they must refuse to assume anything that smacks of magisterial or discretionary political authority. Magistrates, for their part, are to submit to Christ by promoting and protecting his kingdom and ruling consistent with the moral law, even as they hold wide-ranging discretion in the details of social, economic, or legal policy. Yet they are never permitted to usurp discretionary authority over the worship of God, church discipline or other matters that pertain to the spiritual kingdom (i. e., to conscience). It is worth closing with an illustration of the two kingdoms doctrine as it continued to shape Calvin’s exegesis well towards the end of his life. An excellent example, though only one of many, is his 1559 commentary on Micah 4, the famous prophesy that the nations will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. The gospel will restore all nations to peace, Calvin agrees. But the question has to be raised, why has this not taken place since Christ proclaimed his kingdom? The answer is that Christians still make up a small minority of human beings, and even Christians are still plagued by sin. The fulfillment of Micah’s prophesy therefore takes place only through the spiritual kingdom, as the word and Spirit transform human beings and turn them toward the ways of peace. Yet this does not undermine civil government. ‘The Anabaptists, we know, have been turbulent, as though all civil order were inconsistent 22 On the judgment against the Canaanites see John Calvin, Ioannis Calvini in librum Iosue brevis commentarius, quem paulo ante mortem absolvit. Addita sunt quaedam de eius morbo et obitu …, Geneva 1564, Comm. Joshua 6:20, CO 25:469. On usury see John Calvin, In librum Psalmorum, Iohannis Calvini Commentarius, Geneva 1557, Comm. Psalm 15:5, CO 31:147–148. On the liberation of slaves see John Calvin, Ioannes Calvini Praelectiones in librum prophetiarum Ieremiae et Lamentationes, Ioannis Budaei et Caroli Ionuillaei labore et industria exceptae, Geneva 1563, Comm. Jeremiah 34:8–17; CO 39:87–91. 23 Calvin, Institutes (see n. 3), 4.20.9. See also Calvin, Comm. Deuteronomy 20:1 (see n. 19), CO 24:372.

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with the kingdom of Christ […]. We might indeed do without the sword, were we angels in this world; but the number of the godly, as I have already said, is small; it is therefore necessary that the rest of the people should be restrained by a strong bridle […]. The use of the sword will therefore continue to the end of the world.’24 Later Calvin adds, ‘We must therefore bear in mind what Micah has previously taught – that this kingdom is spiritual; for he did not ascribe to Christ a golden scepter, but a doctrine.’25 Calvin’s two kingdoms doctrine powerfully influenced the anthropology of the Reformation during the following centuries. In whatever political circumstances Protestants found themselves, they struggled to negotiate the dual claims of spiritual and political power with the guidance of deeply rooted convictions regarding the eschatological nature of human existence. Competing doctrines of resistance to tyrants, royal supremacy over the church, and of ecclesiastical liberty, not to mention less overtly political teachings regarding justification and Christian liberty, always presupposed that basic tension. Christians are predestined for the heavenly kingdom, their salvation secure in Christ, but even so, during the present life they continue to inhabit mortal bodies corrupted by sin and subject to temporal powers. Emphasizing the distinction between the two kingdoms did not solve the social and political debates of the age, but it did help Protestants make sense of the paradoxical nature of the Christian life under this barrage of competing pressures. With Calvin these Protestants testified that the Christian life is characterized both by ongoing sin and salvation in Christ, by suffering and mortality, as well as hope.

24 John Calvin, Ioannis Calvini Praelectiones in duodecim prophetas (quos vocant) minores …, Geneva 1559, Comm. Micah 4:3; CO 43:344–348. 25 Calvin, Comm. Micah 4:8 (see n. 24); CO 43:356–357.

Niranjan Goswami

Peter Ramus, William Ames and the New England Way: Investigations into Theologia Timocratica

Peter Ramus, the controversial Protestant martyr and philosopher, converted to the new faith in 1561 and his life came to an end in the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. Consequently, he does not find a place even in such a thorough treatment of Reformation history as that by Diarmaid MacCulloch.1 Nevertheless, the influence of Ramus’s method as a pedagogical tool in the works of Ramists like William Perkins, William Ames as well as Aristotelian writers of Ramistic encyclopaedia or ‘technometry’ like Bartholomew Keckermann and John Henry Alsted is well known.2 Ramus took part in the French Reformation by participating in the debate over church polity with Theodore Beza. First Morély and later Ramus had advocated a more democratic church organization than Beza’s Genevan example.3 Even though supporters of the Ramus-Morély view were convincingly defeated under Beza’s direct leadership on the question of Presbyterian-type church organization vis-à-vis a more democratic Congregational polity, the Ramist plan of church discipline continued through the later theological contributions of William Ames. In this paper I argue that the Congregational churches of New England in the seventeenth century had imbibed and leaned towards a Ramist model of polity rather than the Genevan model principally because of their pursuit of Amesian thought. Certain democratic features were ingrained in the Amesian church organization which was never as clergy-ruled as in Beza’s model.4 Further, I propose that Ramus’s idea of Christian polity was a humanist extension of the idea of polity found in Plato and 1 Diarmaid Macculloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700, London 2003. 2 Walter J. Ong, Ramus: Method and the Decay of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass. 1958; Wilbur S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700, Princeton, N.J. 1956; Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, Cambridge, Mass. 1963; Lee W. Gibbs, “William Ames’s Technometry,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): pp. 615–624. 3 We will discuss the difference between Morély’s and Ramus’s views later. 4 In Geneva according to the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541 the ministers elected themselves but in the Congregational churches of New England the brethren elected the ministers and elders as it was later codified in the Cambridge Platform of 1648.

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Aristotle that could be conceived as a liberating concept through his appropriation of Reformation anthropology of Zwingli, Bucer and Bullinger. Ramus’s discussion on theology was his Commentariorum de Religione Christiana, Libri Quatuor which was posthumously published in 1576.5 However, it appears from his letters that Ramus had obtained the approval of Bullinger and other Swiss theologians by circulating his manuscript before his death.6 According to Skalnik, Ramus’s formulation of theology largely followed the organization of Christian catechism, particularly that of Calvin in its discussion of faith (Creed), law and duty (the Decalog), worship (The Lord’s Prayer) and the sacraments, but Ramus rearranged the material according to his method by dividing theology into the two parts of doctrine and discipline and further subdividing doctrine into the two parts of faith and observance.7 Ramus’s treatment of church discipline in the second part of his work is unfortunately lost. Ramus was Zwinglian in his understanding of the sacraments.8 He was closer to Heinrich Bullinger and Martin Bucer and these Reformers find a frequent reference in his work.9 William Ames and John Cotton also refer to Bucer quite often, thus enabling us to draw a single line of inspiration from Ramus to Cotton via Ames. Two things stand out in Ramist theology: its method and organization that makes it amenable to Ramist analysis and its emphasis on application in life. Ramus defined theology as the doctrine of living well (doctrina bene vivendi). It was practical everyday theology for Ramus had written that ‘the end of doctrine is not knowledge of things relating to itself, but practice and exercise’ (usus et exercitatio).10 Whatever was left incomplete in Ramus’s theology was given a final shape by Dr. William Ames (1576–1610). Ames was known as a learned doctor as well as a Puritan ‘of the rigidest sort.’11 He spent sixteen years at Christ’s College, Cambridge and soaked up the influence of Ramus through the teaching of William Perkins, Laurence Chaderton and Gabriel Harvey. Ames belonged to the middle generation of Puritans who were active during the period of 1590 to 1640 when anti-Puritan repression frequently prevailed in the church and state. Ames was called to help the English delegation at the synod of Dort in which he dutifully participated in the debate to refute Arminian heresy in the Netherlands. How5 Peter Ramus, Petri Rami Veromandui, philosophiae et eloquentiae Regii professoris celeberrimi, Commentariorum de Religione Christiana, Libri Quatuor […], Frankfurt 1576. 6 James V. Skalnik, Ramus and Reform: University and Church at the End of the Renaissance, Kirksville 2002, p. 122. 7 Skalnik, Ramus and Reform (see n.6), p. 124. 8 Skalnik, Ramus and Reform, p. 131. 9 Skalnik, Ramus and Reform, p. 128. 10 Keith L. Sprunger, The Learned Doctor William Ames: Dutch Backgrounds of English and American Puritanism, Urbana 1972, p. 133. 11 Sprunger, The Learned Doctor William Ames (see n. 10), p. 96.

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ever, at the end of the synod Ames was in a precarious position again. He had proved himself an outspoken Puritan and because of pressure from the English authorities could not find a job at the University of Leiden. After lying low for a few years at Leiden he managed a job at the provincial university of Franeker.12 The moot point in the debate over church polity in French Reformation was the difference between Ramus and Beza on the question. Ramus had imbibed a Zwinglian understanding of the Eucharist and in the matter of church polity he was upholding the more democratic organization of the French national church over the Genevan one. Before him Morély had demanded fully democratic church polity which had created a lot of controversy. Skalnik has discussed how the French Reformed churches which were originally autonomous lay-controlled congregations were gradually transformed into clergy-dominated Genevan type presbyteries.13 The chief contention among these two competing systems were over the French-Swiss Zwinglian belief of the Eucharist as symbolic presence of Christ in the sacramental elements as a sign of grace against the Calvinist belief in Christ’s real presence in a spiritual sense. Beza was most instrumental in suppressing the French-Swiss belief by imposing the orthodox Calvinist view. The difference over the Eucharist was linked to the difference over who controls the church, the clergy or the laity. Though Morély could gather many supporters he was condemned at the synod of Orleans in 1562 and later the synod of La Rochelle in 1571 under Beza’s leadership established a Presbyterian control over the Huguenots of France by effectively suppressing Morély’s and Ramus’s views.14 Though Beza had equated Morély’s view with that of Ramus as one of democratic church polity there was a difference between the two. Nicolas de Lestre had written in a letter to Beza reporting the outcomes of the provincial synod of Lumigny en Brie in March 1572 that unlike Morély, Ramus desired to see not ecclesiastical democracy, rather a church government in which everyone has a voice, but ‘the opinions of some weigh more than those of others according to geometrical proportions.’15 Skalnik has shown how Ramus lifted the word timocratia from Plato and Aristotle and used it in the Platonic sense of meritocracy or rule by the learned as his famous example of such a rule was that of the Druids among the ancient Gauls.16 Jean Bodin had suggested that aristocratic governments functioned according to ‘geometrical proportions’ i. e. their votes were in proportion to their worth or wealth (timocratia in the Aristotelian sense) and 12 13 14 15 16

Sprunger, The Learned Doctor William Ames, p. 70. Skalnik, Ramus and Reform (see n. 6), p. 109. Skalnik, Ramus and Reform, p. 132. Skalnik, Ramus and Reform, p. 143. Skalnik, Ramus and Reform, p. 152. Skalnik cites Ramus, Liber de Moribus Veterum Gallorum, Paris 1559.

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popular governments functioned according to ‘arithmetical proportions.’ Bodin lived in the Carmelite monastery opposite Ramus’s College de Presles and could have been influenced by Ramus’s idea of timocratia.17 Ramus’s championing of merit and hard work against a rigid hierarchical oligarchy that was to be established after Ramus’s death in the Old Regime probably explains why his idea of church discipline failed in France whereas precisely these values were suitable for the immigrants of Massachusetts Bay in New England. Besides the questions of church organization and interpretation of the Eucharist there was a third level of difference between Ramus and Beza on the question of predestination. Ramus, a firm believer in work ethic and merit could never properly accept the strict Calvinist notion of a double predestination, a theory which Calvin himself had called ‘dreadful’ and omitted from his catechism written for children.18 This was the notion that some were elected and others were damned by God irrespective of their merit or good work. Beza had made it even more odious by suggesting that such a decision was taken by God even before Man’s fall, a view which is known as supra-lapsarianism. It has been suggested by recent scholars that the covenantal theory developed as a means of softening the impact of this dreadful theory of predestination. Jürgen Moltmann suggested that in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries there was in Reformed theology an anti-Bezan renaissance that encompassed diverse forms of Calvinism like later Zwinglianism (Bullinger, et al.), the Heidelberg-Herborn federal theology (Olevianus, Piscator), Arminianism, Amyrauldism, and English-Dutch proto-pietism (Perkins, Ames). All of these movements were opposed to the orthodox Calvinist school of Theodore Beza and they were also deeply influenced by the philosophical method and dialectic of Peter Ramus. “The real war being waged, therefore, was that of a Ramist biblical humanism against a Bezan ‘Aristoteliazation’ of theology […].”19 Ramus derived his covenantal idea from Swiss theologians. According to J. Wayne Baker Calvin regarded the covenant as a divine pledge or promise, a unilateral testament. Bullinger understood it as a mutual pact, a bilateral agreement that included not only God’s promises but also certain conditions which the human partner was obligated to fulfill.20 These two views of covenant were closely related to different doctrines of predestination: Calvin’s unilateral testament was linked theologically to absolute double predestination, Bullinger’s bilateral covenant to election only.21 We will now turn our 17 Skalnik, Ramus and Reform, pp. 155–157. 18 Skalnik, Ramus and Reform, p. 127. 19 Lyle D. Bierma, “The Role of Covenant Theology in Early Reformed Orthodoxy,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 21(1990): pp. 453–462; here p. 455. 20 J. Wayne Baker, Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant: The Other Reformed Tradition, Athens 1980. Cited by Bierma, The Role of Covenant Theology (see n. 19), p. 455. 21 Bierma, The Role of Covenant Theology, p. 455.

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attention to the texts of John Cotton and Thomas Hooker to seek a reflection of Ramist Congregational church polity. In the absence of any other designation the theology and practice of the nonSeparatist Massachusetts Bay Puritans has been called the “New England Way”, and has found a lucid treatment in the hands of Perry Miller.22 The Calvinist Congregational churches in New England shaped their form of government of the state and the church in opposition to their Separatist brethren in Plymouth and Quakers and Antinomians in Rhode Island. It is true that the Separatist Congregationalists were more democratic in their church organization and the nonSeparatists had a tendency to hand over more and more power to the clergy, yet there were certain fundamental issues in which they had a democratic practice. The founding principle behind New England church discipline was taken from Ames who had formulated it very clearly in his debate with the Separatist John Robinson in his Second Manuduction. For Ames the ‘constituting’ form of the church of Christ was Congregational in the New Testament and he found in it monarchy, aristocracy and democracy all at work. Insofar as Christ was the king and head it was monarchical but in its visible administration its nature was mixed: partly aristocratic and partly democratic.23 In The Marrow of Sacred Divinity Ames also spoke of there being as many autonomous churches as there were particular congregations and neither man-made hierarchies (of popes, vicars or cardinals) nor presbyterial synods could rob the churches of their freedom and authority.24 Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye in their ‘Introduction’ to John Cotton’s The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (1644) made it clear that this work was all about the dispensation of power among the members of the church. There is a deliberate attempt in the work to prevent accumulation of power in the hand of one as in a tyranny or a few as in an oligarchy. Goodwin and Nye refer to ‘proportional allotment’ though they do not specifically refer to a geometrical proportion as Ramus had wanted his “timocracy” in church to be. But they also suggest that the allotment of power will not be in the same measure for everybody, which suggests a “timocratic” structure. What is significant in the altered space and time of the New England Puritans is how far they could avoid Presbyterial control of the clergy as in Beza’s proposition and how far the lay members could actively and meaningfully participate in church discipline. The brethren had the right to speak, prophecy and censure in admonishing and voting for excommunication of 22 Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630–1650, Cambridge, Mass. 1933, pp. 148ff. 23 William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity drawne out of the holy Scriptures, and the Interpreters thereof, and brought into Method by William Ames, sometime Doctor and Professor of Divinity in the famous university at Franeken in Friesland. London n.d., EEBO Wing A3001–688_04 – p1–1922, p. 145. Para. 20. Accessed on 01. 01. 2011. 24 Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (see n. 23), p. 179. Paras. 27, 29.

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fellow members. Goodwin and Nye go on to explain that the sharing of power in such a dispensation is comparable to a state where the nobles and people stand in a power-sharing agreement. Perry Miller observes the New England Way of balance of power in church polity in terms similar to Goodwin and Nye: Thus when the internal government of a Congregational church was perfected in New England, the ostensible result was a peculiar system of balanced, interlocking, and yet independent authorities. The elders administered and the congregations rendered judgments, each according to a set of rules devised for those particular functions…25

In this regard Cotton is quite explicit: The Gospel alloweth no church authority (or rule properly so called) to the brethren, but reserveth that wholly to the elders; and yet preventeth the tyranny and oligarchy, and exorbitancy of the elders, by the large and firm establishment of the liberties of the brethren, which ariseth to a power in them. Bucer’s axiom is here notable; Potestas penes omnem Ecclesiam est; Authoritas ministerii penes Presbyteros et Episcopos. [The power belongs to all the church; the authority of the ministry belongs to the elders and the bishops.] 26

In his discussion of the power of the brethren Cotton first speaks of the power to choose ministers and deacons and also of sending forth ministers as representatives if necessity arises. Next he comes to the most important power of the brethren, i. e. of censure and excommunication. He writes: As the brethren have a power of order, and the privilege to expostulate with their brethren in case of private scandals […] So in case of public scandal, the whole church of brethren have power and privilege to join with the elders, in inquiring, hearing, judging of public scandals; so as to bind notorious offenders and impenitents under censure, and to forgive the repentants…27

Cotton cites the example of St. Paul telling the Corinthians to judge the incestuous person in I Cor.v, 4, 5. From this testimony of the Scripture he asserts that there is ‘even in the meanest of the saints, an ability to judge between brethren, in the things of this life, […] [a]nd the same brethren of the same church, as well as the elders, he entreateth to forgive the same incestuous Corinthian, upon his repentance […].’28 On the question of censure and excommunication Cotton writes that the offender is discerned beforehand by the elders and they present the matter before the church. The brethren principally

25 Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts 1630–1650 (see n. 22), p. 180. 26 John Cotton, The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, 1644 in John Cotton on the Churches of New England, ed. by Larzer Ziff, Cambridge, Mass. 1968, pp. 101–102. 27 Cotton, The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, 1644 (see n. 26), p. 103. 28 Cotton, The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, 1644 (see n. 26), p. 104.

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have a role of consenting with the judgment of the elders. However, it is not only ordinary members but even an elder may be sentenced and excommunicated. Cotton deliberates over the curious issue of the possibility of all the elders being offenders or all brethren being culpable. In either case excommunication is not possible because the elders must join with the brethren in judgment and vice versa. The elders cannot excommunicate the whole church nor can the brethren excommunicate all the elders even if they are apostate. However, in such cases one can withdraw from the offenders.29 On the question of the authority of the elders Cotton writes that ‘the key of authority, or rule, is committed to the elders of the church […].’ Apart from these the ministers also have the authority to baptize. But on this issue Cotton makes it clear that though lay men may speak or prophecy, yet they may not necessarily baptize because ‘the members of the church of Corinth (as of many other in those primitive times) were enriched with all knowledge, and in all utterance, 1 Cor. i, 5.’30In other words, though theoretically nothing prevents the lay members from being equal to the ministers, yet unless they have the extraordinary gifts and training of the ministers they cannot be deemed to be equipped to administer the sacraments. In The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared (1648) Cotton is busy refuting the charge of the Presbyterian polemicist Robert Baillie that Congregationalism is unworkable and unscriptural. In the process Cotton points out the theoretical difference between the Separatists, the Presbyterians and the Antinomians, particularly defending his role in the Anne Hutchinson controversy.31 Cotton takes up the question of the power of the keys again and explains the relationship between the ministers and the church with a homely simile. He writes: The stock of the vine (which growth in the bulk from the root) hath not immediate power to bring forth grapes; but yet it hath power to produce branches, which do bring forth grapes: so the body of church believers, though they have not immediate power of rule authoritatively to dispense the word, or to administer sacraments at all: yet they have power to produce such officers as may perform the same.32

Cotton is at pains to prove that he does not think the Congregational church to be as democratic as Baillie accuses him to be: He need not have marked me that, which if himself had marked, he could not but see, that I never acknowledged it to be in the power of the people to administer all ordi-

29 30 31 32

Cotton, The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, 1644, pp. 107–108. Cotton, The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, 1644, pp. 112–113. Ziff, ed. John Cotton on The Churches of New England (see n. 26), pp. 31–33. Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, 1648 in Ziff, ed. John Cotton, pp. 321–322.

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nances, but to administer some ordinances themselves, and to elect and call such to them, as might administer all the rest.33

Earlier, to prove the antiquity of the Congregational church and to defend its democratic nature Cotton refers to the description of churches in the Magdeburgenses: In the second century of years, the government of the church was administered, not in a Classical, but in a Congregational way, as in the former century, of which we need no better evidence, than the evident testimony of the Magdeburgenses […]. That is, if a man search the approved authors of this age, he shall see the form of the government, to be almost like to a democracy: for every single church had equal power of preaching the word, administering sacraments, excommunicating heretics and notorious offenders, absolving penitents, choosing, calling, ordaining ministers, and upon just and weighty causes deposing them again: power also of gathering conventions and synods, etc.34

The dominant note of modern scholarship is to counter the view of democratic leanings of the early Puritans in America. However, I fully agree with the different view taken on this matter by Larzer Ziff, the editor of the two works by Cotton treated in this essay. Ziff writes: Nevertheless, The Keys reveals that the Congregational system was developed by men who were allied with those financial and political leaders whose ends were best served by an extension of the people’s liberties. Congregationalism was an important part of the democratization of Anglo-American life.35

Thomas Hooker in The Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline (1648) refutes the Presbyterian theorist Samuel Rutherford’s argument that ordination should precede election of priests. Citing the Magdeburgenses, Ames, Bucer and others Hooker argues in favour of the priority of people’s election before a priest could be ordained: I issue all with Gerson Bucer: which argues not onely what his opinion was, but what was the constitution of all the Churches where he was. Postquam Presbyterio consensus Ecclesiae innotuit, succedit ad extremum Ordinatio. And in the following discourse, I hope it shall appear, That Ordination doth depend upon the people’s lawful Election, as an Effect upon the Cause by vertue of which it is fully Administred; So that in the very Apostolicall times, the liberty of the very Apostles was not so great in Ordaining as was the peoples in Choosing.36 [Hooker’s stress].

33 34 35 36

Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, 1648, (see n. 32), pp. 327–328. Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, 1648, p. 297. Ziff, ed. John Cotton on The Churches of New England, (see n. 26), p. 28. Thomas Hooker, A Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline wherein The Way of the Churches of New England is warranted out of the Word and all Exceptions of weight which are made against it, answered…, London 1648, EEBO Wing-H2658–69_E_440_1_-p1to224, pt. 2, chap.2, p. 41.

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Clearly, to the Congregationalists it was important to stress the democratic organization of the Church in order to resist the centralization of power in the hands of the priests in such other dominant varieties of Protestantism as Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, and in Bezanian and Laudian views of church polity.37 Church organization and discipline were not separate from theological interpretations; not only that, soteriological and ecclesiological tendencies were also linked to political ideologies; for example Anglicans were Erastian in their ecclesiology, Arminian in their soteriology and Laudian in politics. The Massachusetts Bay Puritans were predestinarian, covenantal and Calvinist in soteriology, Congregational in ecclesiology and anti-Laudian moderates in politics. It was important for them to distinguish themselves from the radical Separatist Congregationalists in politics, from the Presbyterians in ecclesiology and the Papists and Anglicans in soteriology. Hooker painstakingly distinguished between the power of office and the power of judgment because the kernel of political equations between the priests and the brethren within the body of the church anticipated the political dynamics in the state between contending aristocracy and the people. The influence of Ramus that percolated to the New England Puritans cannot by its nature be a direct influence. The circumstances in which Ramus found himself in the last half of the sixteenth century in France, in the charged atmosphere of civil war where he was forced to seek new patrons all the time, is very different from that of seventeenth century New England. Ramus got interested in theology late in life but once he took it on he found himself in the vortex of Reformation controversy. For a long time he pretended to be a devout Catholic, which in the exigencies of the time was very common among many French scholars, and was careful not to antagonize the Paris theologians by publishing any theological polemics. It would be unfair to compare Ramus to a biblical humanist like Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (c. 1460–1536) who wrote new interpretations and commentaries on the Bible because he did not live long enough. But he raised a new voice in France against Beza’s ideological hegemony and by a methodical discussion of theology created the model of scripture reading for later Protestants.38 In any case, his sudden and untimely death nipped in the bud 37 Miller argued against the idea that there was any basic difference between Hooker and the Bay Puritans on the question of democracy. See Perry Gilbert Miller, “Thomas Hooker and the Democracy of Early Connecticut,” The New England Quarterly 4 (1931): pp. 663–712. 38 Jacques Lefèvre belonged to an earlier generation to Ramus but moved in similar circles. His protector Marguerite de Navarre was also that of Ramus and like both men, she favoured humanist evangelism. Lefèvre, like Ramus, admired the reformers Zwingli and Bucer. His commentaries on the Pauline Epistles (1512, 1515) were similar in tone to that of the reformers. See Guy Bedouelle, “Attacks on the Biblical Humanism of Jacques Lefèvre D’Étaples” in Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus, ed. Erika Rummel, Leiden 2008, pp. 117–141.

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all possibilities of his further contribution to theology. However, he believed in Reformation anthropology insofar as he believed in the Protestant dogma of man’s depravity and God’s intervention through Christ for man’s salvation and its critique of certain Roman Catholic practices.39 He had prepared the ground of his Reformed anthropology by interpreting Plato as a proto-Christian and damning Aristotle as a blind pagan. It is here that his propaedeutic mission of teaching dialectic and rhetoric converged with his theological vision of upholding the Christian truth. In one of his prefaces to the epistles of Plato he bases his notion of Christian polity soundly on Plato: To say roughly, the disputation is here about the best situation in a Republic that Plato here judges finally to be in the future, when kings will philosophize in the republic and philosophers will rule. And laws will be the rulers of men, it and not tyrannical men [the rulers of law]. How sacred this advice of Plato is of friendship to be retained, of good fame to be established, of theology to be held in awe, of [the knowledge of] divine trinity (almost transmitted by sacred letters), of immortality of soul, of eternal justice, of a certain august kind of majesty of the ruler! How are you affected by this outline? I am truly inflamed by even a small part of this political discipline, and I could desire to follow the whole civic polity (πολιτειαν) of both Aristotle and Plato with this kind of dialectic and exercising of rhetoric. May the highest and best God make it that I may be able to carry on these labours for a long time.40

Ramus’s anti-Aristotelianism, however, made the Sorbonne professors hostile to his brand of teaching. Ramus was actually against the medieval form of Aristotelianism and disputation, the usual scholastic mode of teaching; otherwise paradoxically Aristotle was one of the chief sources of his Dialectic. Nevertheless, 39 According to Frank P. Graves, Ramus declared to an intimate friend that ‘two things have been especially misunderstood and distorted by all Christians of latter days, – to wit, the sacrament of the Holy Supper, and the second Commandment in the law, which forbids all worship of images; so much so that, in these two respects, under the pretext of piety, we have fallen more and more into an execrable idolatry.’ Frank Pierrepont Graves, Peter Ramus and the Educational Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, London 1912, p. 75. http://ia700400.us.archive.org/1/items/peterramuseducat00grav/peterramuseducat00grav. pdf Accessed on 17.09.13. 40 ‘[…] ferè disputatio est de optimo statu Reipublicae, qua tum demum beatam Plato hîc existimat futuram, cùm reges in ea philosophabuntur, aut philosophi regnabunt, legesque; dominae erunt hominum, non homines tyranni legum. Quid sancta illa Platonis monita de amicitia retinenda, de bona fama comparanda, de theologia reverenter attingenda, de divina (quails ferè sacris literis traditur) trinitate, de animorum immortali natura, de justitia aeterna, de augusta quadam regiae majestatis specie atque; forma, quomodo te afficient? Ego verò hac politicae disciplinae particula sic incensus sum, ut totam & Aristotelis & Platonis πολιτειαν hoc dialecticae & rhetoricae exercitationis genere persequi cuperem. Faxit Deus Optimus maximus, ut quam diutissimè labores istos ferre possim.’ Petrus Ramus, Audomarus Talaeus. Collectaneae Praefationes, Epistolae, Orationes, Marburg 1599; Rpt. Hildesheim 1969, p. 71. My translation.

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he was perceived as a threat to orthodox theology because of these activities and his own religion was held suspect. According to his own statement, his conversion did not come out of the influence of a leading Reformer but after hearing an oration by his patron Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine.41 His praise of Plato against Aristotle was probably a covert means of giving vent to his reformed faith. In a preface to Talon’s Academia he writes: Plato had taught that the world is created by God, and Glory is before other things, of the best and greatest God; and this is considered false by believers in Aristotle. Indeed, Aristotle’s opinion is opposite from the very beginning. Plato said that the Providence of God rules and governs world and the believers in Aristotle scoff at it because Aristotle’s On Fate, as Cicero is witness, opposes this opinion. Plato considered soul to be immortal and also confirmed [the notion] with many reasons and arguments and believers in Aristotle think Plato to be ignorant, (which they even confirm with subtle interpretations) and the idea of immortality of soul is displeasing to them. Plato taught that the happiness of men is received from God, and [should be] returned to God. The Aristotelians (not a little insolently but foolishly) impute this thought of Plato to be fallacious and of wicked pretence; they pull down the thought of the beginning and end of man’s happiness in God.42

The principal objection of Beza to Ramus and Morély was that they were democratic. Calvin never taught any doctrine that might upset the hierarchical power structure of the state.43 Ramus, on the other hand had set out on upsetting the hierarchy by opposing the orthodox Aristotelians at the university, many of whom were also political conservatives. It is quite likely that the Reformation anthropology of Zwingli, Bucer and Bullinger had opened up a space between state and man: a private religious space that was not as constricting as Ramus found it in Paris. This encouraged him to theorize on πολιτειαν, learnt from

41 Graves, Peter Ramus (see n. 39), p. 74. 42 ‘Plato docuerat mundum a Deo conditum, quae praecipua est Dei optimi maximi gloria: at creduli Aristotelei id falsum putant: Aristotelis enim principium contrarium est. Plato providentia Dei omnipotentis mundum regi atque gubernari dixit: at creduli Aristotelei derident, quoniam Aristotelis de fato, ut Cicero testis est, sententia repugnat. Plato putavit animam immortalem esse, adque; multis rationibus & argumentis confirmavit, at idiotam Platonem creduli Aristotelei existimant, quoniam (quod etiam ejus subtiles interpretes confirmant) Aristoteli immortalitas animae displicuit. Plato hominis felicitatem à Deo accipi, & ad Deum referri docuit: at creduli Aristotelei, quoniam Aristoteles Platonis illam sententiam captiosè & impiè calumniatus est, & principium & finem felicitatis humanae Deo detrahent, hominique non minùs arroganter, quam insipienter attribuent.’ Petrus Ramus, Audomarus Talaeus. Collectaneae Praefationes, (see n. 40), p. 86. My translation. 43 Calvin did not believe that people should rise in rebellion against the state, though he allowed the highest rank of magistrates to do so. In general, he stood for action in extreme cases like imposition of idolatry but generally passive resistance was the most that he would allow. See Herman J. Selderhuis, John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life, Illinois 2009, pp. 246–248.

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Aristotle and Plato which had so inflamed him earlier, within the organization of the church. From Calvin, the New England Puritans had learnt the notion that the church should submit to the authority of the state unless the magistrate dictated something against the Scriptures. This made the non-Separatist Congregationalists centrist in politics. However, as the local rulers and arbiters of the colony they found that they had the opportunity to allow brethren the freedom and rights denied in England. They would not allow Presbyterianism or any Synodal structure to rule the particular congregations. Thus if not a ‘timocracy’ dreamt by Ramus where merit found a representation in authority, at least a strong democratic leaning could be observed in their church polity, opening up the possibilities and creating the grounds for a future democracy in America.

Zsombor Tóth

‘Calvinian Anthropology’ and the Early Modern Hungarian Devotion: The Case of István Nagy Szo˝nyi, the First Hungarian Martyrologist1

I

Introduction

In his book dedicated to the Protestant culture of martyrdom, David El Kenz introduced the term ‘Calvinian anthropology’ (‘l’anthropologie Calvinienne’) when evaluating Calvin’s contribution to the development of early modern martyrological discourses.2 The term meant to comprise many of the seemingly disparate thoughts of Calvin’s theology related to the issues of persecution, martyrdom, death, and salvation. Moreover, it is the historical and cultural context of the persecution of the French Huguenots that provides a primary determining context for this anthropology, promoting an ideal conduct of the true Christian or martyr, as a theological and devotional pattern. Being an émigré, Calvin himself did not only experience this anthropology, but, as testified by his letters, he was also committed to giving comfort to all those prisoners, refugees, or afflicted persons who contacted him or asked for consolation. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the significance and possible functions (if there are any) of this Calvinian anthropology in the process of reception and assimilation of Calvin’s theology in Eastern Europe. Consequently, I propose a case study focused on one early modern Hungarian author, the Calvinist refugee István Nagy Szo˝nyi, a victim of the so called persecutio decennalis taking place in Royal Hungary in the decade between 1671 and 1681. Accordingly, I will first define the Calvinian anthropology on the basis of the French historiographical approach, and then I will confront it with Szo˝nyi’s writings in order to reveal some of the relevant connections and interferences between them. Taking into account the fact that Calvin’s oeuvre had a prolonged and unobtrusive reception

1 This paper was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. 2 David El Kanz, Les Bûchers de Roi. La culture protestante des Martyrs (1523–1572), Seyssel 1997, p. 118.

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in Royal Hungary or in the Principality of Transylvania,3 this analysis might reveal some of the hidden aspects of the early modern Hungarian understanding and perception of Calvin’s theology. I will conclude by suggesting that despite the fragmented reception of Calvin’s oeuvre, Hungarian theologians or even lay people as members of the Hungarian Calvinist Church managed to assimilate Calvin’s view on martyrdom due to its political theological nature.

II.

Calvinian Anthropology and the Discourses of Early Modern Reformed Martyrologies

I have already suggested that the concept of Calvinian anthropology, especially in the context of religious wars and persecution in France, can be reasonably well juxtaposed with Calvin’s vision of martyrdom and martyrs. Even at a superficial glance, one can delineate at least three major sources in Calvin’s works nurturing this anthropology. First, one should point to Calvin’s theology regarded as a system and conceived in his Institutes. For Calvin, El Kenz asserts, constructed a theology of martyrdom that integrated the political and historical contexts of the religious persecution in France.4 Indeed, Calvin claimed that true believers should imitate Christ and his sufferings. Earthly affliction endured by believers, he added, marked the strong unity between God and man through Christ. Therefore, this Christocentric process would start with mortification and election. Mortification presupposed the complete renouncement of earthly values and patient enduring of all afflictions, which ultimately would lead to the sanctification of the believer. Having been elected according to the principle of predestination started a process during which the believer had to transgress step by step from this mortal world to the eternal one, following the process of praedestinatio, vocatio, justificatio, adoptio, sanctificatio and glorificatio. All in all, the concept, also labelled as via salutis or gratiae gradus, was also favoured by the Puritan divines well into the seventeenth century. The Puritans, including Perkins and Ames, envisaged human existence as a process, which strikingly resembles the anthropological concept of the ‘rites of passage’ (‘rite de 3 Calvin’s Institutes was first translated to Hungarian in 1624, see Az keresztyeni religiora es igaz hitre valo tanitas, mellyet deakúl irt Calvinus Janos (Teachings of the Christian Religion and True Faith, Which Has First Been Written in Latin by Joannes Calvinus), transl. Albert Molnár Szenczi, Frankfurt am Main 1624. Quite surprisingly, Calvin’s letters have never been translated to Hungarian; there is no complete edition or translation of his letters. Moreover, there has never been any attempt to translate Jules Bonnet’s edition of Calvin’s French Letters, or its complemented English version. 4 El Kanz, Les Bûchers de Roi (see n. 2), p. 73.

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passage’),5 during which the elected individual performed a ritual journey of his or her existence. While Ames described this process as consisting of predestination, vocation, justification, adoption, sanctification and glorification,6 Perkins designed it to incorporate three major steps: election, justification and sanctification.7 The second source of the Calvinian anthropology is a collection of four pamphlets written by the reformer himself at the time of his ‘Dispute with the Nicodemites’ (La querelle des «nicodémites»).8 The conflict started and persisted because of the questionable conduct of those Huguenots who did not reveal their true commitment or even attended papist ceremonials and masses. Calvin, in order to express how deeply he disapproved of their attitude, applied to them the term ‘Nicodemites,’ making reference to a biblical character who cowardly approached Jesus only at nighttime so that he could not be seen.9 The charge of being a Nicodemite in this particular anthropological context functioned as a test filtering the community of the true believers, thus unfolding the enemies both inside and outside. Consequently, the paramount significance of Calvin’s discourse on Nicodemism was that it established a negative prototype in opposition to the martyr. The third source of the texts persistently sustaining and resolutely promoting the prototype of the martyr and his or her idealistic conduct was provided by Calvin’s impressive collection of letters, both in French and in Latin.10 For Calvin often relied on the practice of consolatio, sending encouraging or comforting letters to various afflicted persons. From the perspective of the aforementioned Calvinian anthropology there was a clear consistency in Calvin’s attitude and discourse. He insisted on his conviction about martyrdom and the necessity of undertaking it. Furthermore, he pointed to the patient suffering of afflictions (afflictiones) as an ideal and general demand, so that he would invoke the motifs of constantia and patientia. For patience and steadfastness represented the paramount virtues of the martyrs. The description of these anthropological views Arnold van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage. Étude Systematique des Rites, Paris 21992. Guilielmus Amesius, Medulla Theologica, Debrecen 1685, p. 330. Guilielmus Perkinsius, Operum Omnium Theologicorum qvae extant, Geneva 1608, p. 655. During the prolonged debate Calvin wrote the following texts: L’Epistola (1537), Petit traité (1543), L’Excuse aux Nicodémites (1544) and Des Scandales (1550). When quoting these texts, I shall rely on the edition available in Wolfenbüttel, in the Herzog August Bibliothek (1241.50 Th.(1)): Caluin, M.I., Petit Traicte monstrant que doit faire vn homme fidele cognoissant la verité de l’Euangile quand il est entre les Papistes, avec vne Epistre du mesme argument. Ensemble l’Excuse faicte sur cela aux Nicodemites, s.l. 1551. 9 Cf. Calvin, Petit Traicte (see n. 8), p. 136: ‘Car que ont ilz de semblable á Nicodeme? c’est disent ilz, qu’il est venu voir nostre Seigneur de nuit & ne s’est pas declairé estre de ses disciples’. 10 For a general view of Calvin’s letters and their editions see Herman J. Selderhuis, The Calvin Handbook, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2009, p. 10. 5 6 7 8

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had the task of revealing the complex process in which the concept of the martyr developed in Calvinian theology. Apart from the aforementioned historical and cultural context of the persecution, the newly emerging martyrological traditions, and their Huguenot authors, such as Jean Crespin, had certainly impregnated Calvin’s thoughts. Moreover, the spread and popularity of the stories of persecution and martyrdom promoted by a particular literary genre, the so called récit martyrologique, had perhaps influenced Calvin as well. El Kenz convincingly exposed that the Calvinian anthropology was part of the Protestant Culture of martyrs and martyrdom (‘la culture protestante des martyrs’).11

III.

Applications

Having traced the major features of the Calvinian anthropology, I now intend to turn my attention towards its reception and its possible impact upon Eastern European Calvinist societies and cultures. As I have previously mentioned, an illustration of this alleged reception will be provided by the case of István Nagy Szo˝nyi (1632–1709), a Calvinist refugee and the author of the first Hungarian martyrology entitled The Crown of the Martyrs.12 But before I evaluate the influence of Calvinian anthropology over Szo˝nyi’s work, some of the most relevant historical and cultural contexts need to be revisited.

III.1.

Contexts and Antecedents

It seems plausible to assert that the Reformation provided a new and influential mode of perception with regard to persecution and martyrdom, as opposed to medieval hagiography promoting disparate narratives, ideologies, and texts dealing with the political significance of exile. Influential publications, like the one written by Bullinger promoting the persecution of the True Church (De persecutionibus Ecclesiae Christianae),13 paved the way for the emergence of a spectacular and heavily mediated corpus of martyrologies. These were, in fact, narratives about the sufferings of the brave who did not necessarily die for the True Church, but endured suffering, persecution, and frequently exile. Therefore, it is possible to assume that martyrological narratives written by authors like Ludwig Rabus, Flaccius Illyiricus, John Foxe, Jean Crespin, Simon 11 El Kanz, Les Bûchers de Roi (see n. 2), p. 11. ˝ nyi, Mártírok Coronája [The Crown of the Martyrs], Debrecen 1675. 12 István Nagy Szo 13 Henricus Bullinger, De persecutionibus Ecclesiae Christianae, & ex Germanico sermone in latinum conuersus per Iosiam Simlerum, Zürich 1573.

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Goulart, and many others not only launched an influential genre defending the interests of the Reformation, but unavoidably led to a re-evaluation of politically significant concepts like sovereignty, loyalty, heroism, and martyrdom.14 The corpus of martyrological narratives promoted solely the unconditional loyalty toward the True Church, and only he who had undertaken the burden of witnessing was qualified as a martyr. This perception, however, altered due to the very nature of the Reformation. Thus, the Vera Ecclesia was soon complemented by the Patria (fatherland) which not only demanded the same degree of loyalty and commitment, but, after a time, seemed to take over the former. Accordingly, early modern patriotism or proto-nationalism denotes a complex attachment to the fatherland, nation, and national church as well.

III.1.1. The Hungarian Reception of Reformed Martyrological Discourses Although the corpus and discourses of the firstly Protestant, then predominantly Cavinist martyrologies soon diffused all over Europe, the Hungarian case represents an interesting exception, for the reception of the Reformed martyrology took place with a certain delay. Due to a particular sequence of events which had influenced the spread of the Reformation in the Principality of Transylvania and the Hungarian Kingdom during the sixteenth century, this reception was more significant in the seventeenth century. It was the rebellion of the so called Bújdosók (Refugees) against the Habsburgs during the 1670s, accompanied by the so called ‘persecutio decennalis,’ the decade of persecution (1671–1681), which brought to the fore the tradition of Reformed martyrology in Hungarian culture. One of the most important ideologists of this political discourse was István Nagy Szo˝nyi, a Calvinist priest and a victim of religious persecution during the 1670s, who not only assimilated Calvinist theology and martyrology but also wrote the very first Hungarian martyrological book inspired partially by his own experiences. This book was preceded by a work entitled The Pious Champion and ostensibly dedicated to the memory of Gustavus Adolphus, the great protector of Protestantism in Europe.15 Szo˝nyi’s objective in this work was to draw multiple 14 Ludwig Rabus, Historien Der heyligen außerwölten Gottes Zeügen, Bekennern und Martyrern, so in angehender ersten Kirchen Altes und Neüwes Testaments zu ieder zeyt gewesen seind…, Strasbourg 1552; Jean Crespin, Recveil de plvsievrs personnes qui ont constamment enduré la mort pour le Nom de nostre Seigneur Iesus Christ, depuis Iean Hus iusques á ceste annee presente MDLIII, Geneva 1554; Flaccius Matthias Illyiricus, Catalogus testium veritatis…, Basel 1562; John Foxe, Acts and Monuments of these latter and perilous dayes, touching matters of the church [The Book of Martyrs], London 1563; Simon Goulart, ed., Histoire des martyrs persecvtez et mis a mort pour la verité de l’Evangile, depuis le temps des Apostre iusque a l’an 1574, Geneva 1574. ˝ nyi, Kegyes Vitéz… [The Pious Champion], Debrecen 1675. 15 István Nagy Szo

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parallels between the deeds of the late king, the spiritual fight of the Protestant priests, and the military combat undertaken by the refugees. Szo˝nyi’s second book, also published in 1675, set forth the archetype of the martyr equally committed to the true Church (Ecclesia), and to the homeland (Patria). Accordingly, his main concern was to impregnate the notion of the martyr with a certain everyday rationality, so as to persuade his readers that every Christian could potentially become a martyr: He who bears witness to the Justice of Christ and undertakes in any possible manner suffering for the Gospel’s truth is declared to be a martyr. In this broad sense, therefore, all those persons who serve honestly with their mind and soul the Lord every day, are considered to be martyrs, for they are bearing witness to the truth.16

At the same time, Szo˝nyi incorporated in this secularized concept of martyrdom the traditional attributes of true Christians such as patience, constancy, and unconditional obedience to God. It is this particular aspect of the martyrology which anchors Szo˝nyi’s discourse in the Calvinist heritage. For the idea that sufferings (afflictiones) should be undertaken without any complaint, with patience, and steadfastness (patientia et constantia) stemmed from Calvin’s convictions about martyrdom which often corresponded to his anthropology. Szo˝nyi, in an attempt to imitate the Calvinian anthropology, asserted: ‘All those who patiently suffer their afflictions are martyrs.’17 However, Szo˝nyi’s utmost ‘invention’ was the redefinition of martyrdom. While in the Catholic tradition the martyr’s death was the ultimate act of witnessing, early modern Protestantism and Calvinism preferred the survival of the martyr, and so refused to identify martyrdom with the obligatory suffering of death. The political and ideological functions attributed to Protestant martyrology were more easily performed by living martyrs than by the deceased whose cult often proved to be problematic and controversial. Moreover, the escalating tendency to associate Patria with Ecclesia definitely favoured the experience of exile or persecution over passive death. It was this extreme experience of exile, the necessity to abandon one’s homeland, church, or religion which underpinned Szo˝nyi’s concept: Martyrs are those persons who are refugees, who fled from the bloody hands of the persecutors, for they bore witness to the Truth. Therefore, they lost all their fortune, houses and values and became servants among strangers and foreign peoples. They are in continuous necessity, and they are crying and sighing.18

˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), p. 5, [my translation]. 16 Szo ˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), p. 5, [my translation]. 17 Szo ˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), pp. 5–6, [my translation]. 18 Szo

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It is possible to state that Szo˝nyi’s martyrology, seemingly biased by confessional affiliation, became a powerful political ideology associated with both religious commitment to the true Church as Vera Ecclesia, and the military efforts to liberate the fatherland, that is, Patria.

III.2.

Calvinian Sources of Szo˝nyi’s Discourse on Martyrdom

Having exposed the constituent components of Szo˝nyi’s perception of martyrdom, in this particular subsection I will evaluate the Calvinist origins of the Hungarian martyrological tradition. Though it has already become clear that Calvin’s anthropology can be pertinently equated with the prototype or the profile of the Calvinist martyr, in Szo˝nyi’s case there are further possibilities of revealing the sources of those Calvinian texts that nurtured his martyrological pattern. Reiterating the thesis that the martyr’s mandate was to patiently endure all afflictions and to display steadfastness and constancy amidst all extreme situations, I shall endeavour to reveal Szo˝nyi’s particular application of Calvinian motifs, texts, and ideas in The Crown of the Martyrs. In order to exhibit how and to what extent Szo˝nyi made use of his readings in Calvin, I intend to pursue a textual analysis focussed on those passages which contain references to the oeuvre of the great theologian. It is almost certain that Calvin represented the most important theological and political authority for Szo˝nyi, though he also relied on a rather large number of authors such as Augustine of Hippo, Cyprian, Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, and most importantly Tertullian, to name but a few. Still, it is quite possible that Calvin’s particular view on martyrs and martyrdom constituted the most appealing antecedent for Szo˝nyi’s martyrology. The particular structuring and design of The Crown of the Martyrs seem to confirm this suggestion. Szo˝nyi’s book provides a long introductory and dedicatory chapter exposing the persecution of the Vera Ecclesia from Biblical times to the contemporary reality of his time. It is quite likely that Szo˝nyi was, in fact, imitating the practice of the most influential sixteenth-century martyrologists and sought to substantiate the orthodoxy and antiquity of the Hungarian Reformed Church. Thus, for the sake of the cause, Szo˝nyi reached back not only to its antecedents in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but also to the oldest martyrological tradition of the early church. His intention was to suggest an unbroken lineage of martyrs and to secure the claim about the continuity between the Early Church and the Reformed Church. Then he set forth ten definitions of martyrdom, clearly pointing out, as I have already mentioned, that bearing witness to the truth in any possible form was much more relevant for him than suffering death. Only the tenth definition included the undertaking of the ultimate sacrifice as a

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criterion for martyrdom: ‘The tenth category of martyrs is referring to those, who, according to the generally accepted view, are willing to suffer execution and die for Jesus Christ and His Truth.’19 In addition, Szo˝nyi’s book elaborated on the issue of martyrdom by proposing several allegories whereby a complicated hierarchical system of concepts was exhibited to the readers. Thus, after a short reflection dedicated to the issue whether martyrs were allowed to run or attempt to escape, he turned his attention to the so called fake prophets and their wicked strategies of misleading people. Six consecutive chapters examined situations in which those prophets, the servants of Satan, would probably attempt to use devilish temptations against true Calvinist believers and convince them to convert to Catholicism. In order to reach his goal, Szo˝nyi distinguished seven different temptations Satan allegedly would try to direct against believers.20 To avoid this great danger, Szo˝nyi argued, the only solution was to follow and imitate the ideal conduct of the martyrs. It took Szo˝nyi eight further chapters to enumerate, evaluate, and explain the virtues of the martyrs such as patience, constancy, unselfishness, and bravery. Moreover, he engaged in revealing and examining the sources of bravery displayed by the martyrs confronted with temptations or various forms of persecution.21 While performing this analysis, he described disparate forms of delights and enjoyments the martyrs were likely to experience when opposing temptations or witnessing suffering. He concluded by enumerating the fruits and treasures of martyrdom, which were justly gained eternal life and salvation. Notwithstanding its propagatory language and design, Szo˝nyi’s martyrology was erected upon a convincing theological foundation. A detail shared in the preface of the book refers to the fact that Szo˝nyi intended to compile a textbook from the most important martyrologies and thus constitutes a further proof of the author’s expertise and thorough understanding of martyrological traditions. One of the theologians he read, assimilated, and quoted was Calvin (most importantly his letters published in Latin by Theodore Béze).22 Accordingly, when Szo˝nyi was reflecting the delicate issue whether prisoners, provided an opportunity would arise, were allowed to flee from their prison or were supposed to stay and await execution, he was relying on Calvin’s views as well. Due to diverse persecution experiences they were acquainted with, the different theological authorities proposed, unavoidably, rather different answers. Szo˝nyi decided to 19 20 21 22

˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), p. 6, [my translation]. Szo ˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), pp. 57–106, [my translation]. Szo ˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), pp. 131–188, [my translation]. Szo Although Szo˝nyi was referring to Calvin’s letters using an abbreviation (Calv, Lib:Epist, Coll), I have managed to identify the edition he was quoting from. This is the editio princeps of Calvin’s letters, published in Latin by Béze. See. Theodor Béze, ed., Ioannis Calvini Epistolae et Responsa, Geneva 1575.

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set forth various options. Thus, discussing the possibility of escaping from prison, he mentioned the case of Peter the Apostle, who was assisted by an angel in his attempt to flee. In order to account for the alternative – why not to flee – he argued that the prisoner who left prison had a chance to confess and bear witness to Christ’s justice. As martyrdom was about witnessing,23 Szo˝nyi asserted that the martyr would become the procurator of Christ, having the possibility to defend his justice. As an illustration, he recalled the example of the Apostle, quoting from Calvin’s letter:24 Testatur Apostolus, sua vincula non parum valuisse ad Evangelii promotionem & certa illa spe sese erigit, quod morte sua Christum non minus quam vita glorificandum statuat. nec immerito sane quando qui pro Evangelio laborant, sistantur illic á Domino, ut juris illius assertores. Idque non quod idonei simus aut ipse nostra procurationes opus habeat; se quatenus insigni illo honore nos dignari ipsi visum est […].25

Furthermore, he encouraged his readership, as potential martyrs, to remember that the bravery of the martyrs was closely related to Christ. For he himself wanted the elected, as much as the martyrs, not only to confess their belonging to Christ but to perform it by bloody sacrifices as well. To sustain this claim Szo˝nyi quoted Calvin’s letter to Godfrey Varaglia:26 You see, moreover, my brother, to what a warfare you have been called, and this is what you must carefully turn over in your mind. For when Christ exacts even from private individuals their testimony to his gospel, by how much holier a tie does he hold you bound! – you whom he has appointed to be a public preacher of his doctrine, which is now persecuted in your person. Remember, then, that you are produced as a witness by

23 Cf. Szo˝nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), p. 1 where Szo˝nyi defines martyrdom in the following way: ‘Martyrdom is about the act of confessing and witnessing: he, who confesses and bears witness to the truth of Christ and then is willing to suffer for it, is surely a martyr’. 24 When referring to Calvin’s letters I shall usually rely on the Latin edition of Béze, but for their English quotation, if necessary, I shall rely either on the English or the French editions of Jules Bonnet (see Jules Bonnet, ed., Letters of John Calvin vol. I–IV, transl. David Constable and Marcus Robert Gilchrist, Edinburgh–Philadelphia 1855–1858 and Jules Bonnet, ed., Lettres de Jean Calvin. Lettres Françaises I.–II., Paris 1854). As for this letter, unfortunately neither the addressee nor the precise dating are known. Béze’s succinct description of the letter reveals only the fact that its original was French (ex gallica), cf.Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 196. Moreover, this particular letter has no French or English equivalent in Bonnet’s editions either. 25 Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 199. 26 The letter was written on the 17th of December, 1557. Godfrey Varaglia, the addressee of the letter, was an ardent supporter of the Italian Reformation and he was to become one of the martyrs of the movement. He was executed on the 29th of March, 1558, shortly after he had received this letter from Calvin. Cf. Bonnet, Letters of Calvin (see n. 24), p. 427. As for the Latin edition see Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 188.

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that same Master who thought you worthy of so high an honour, that what you formerly taught with your lips, you may, if need be, seal with your blood.27

The undertaking of martyrdom as militia is rather complex in Szo˝nyi’s case. The reason why I referred to it as ‘the bravery of the martyrs’ was that in the eyes of Szo˝nyi’s readership, the military and spiritual virtues were no symbolic entities whatsoever. Many of the soldiers from the ‘Refugee army’ possibly read this text. The book itself functioned as an ideology to motivate anti-Habsburg initiatives and actions. Still, one should not ignore the fact that Szo˝nyi was certainly aware of the origin of the term, for he had an intimate knowledge of Tertullian’s oeuvre.28 Chapter XXIV of Szo˝nyi’s book is dedicated to one of the key elements of the Calvinian anthropology, namely the constancy in the conduct of the martyrs or steadfastness. In his allegory, Szo˝nyi envisaged this virtue as an attribute within the ‘coats of arms’ of the martyrs.29 Hence, his aim in this particular chapter was to build further arguments exploring why it was so important to accept martyrdom. He emphasized this claim by referring to Revelation 2:10;30 a poignant allusion, for the crown of life was identified with the crowns worn by martyrs willing to die for Christ. At this point, Szo˝nyi inserted a consistent passage from Calvin’s letter, one that he might have appreciated to a great extent, addressed to the Church of Meaux and written on the 5th of January, 1558.31 Szo˝nyi was keen to recommend his readership the reading of the whole letter, 27 Bonnet, Letters of Calvin (see n. 24), p 428. 28 Although Szo˝nyi added only two explicit textual references to Tertullian’s De Corona Millitum and De Fuga in Persecutione (cf. Szo˝nyi, The Crown [see. n. 12], p. 8 and p. 166), he much more intensely read Tertullian’s teachings and applied them to his own martyrology than the very few quotations might suggest. After a detailed examination, I have come to the conclusion that Szo˝nyi might have had intimate knowledge of Tertullian’s writings, especially of those reflecting the conflicts between pagans and Christians as well as persecution and martyrdom (Apologeticum, Ad Martyras, and De Patientia). For of a comparative analysis of Tertullian’s oeuvre and Szo˝nyi’s martyrology see Zsombor Tóth, “Ad Martyras… Persecution, Exile and Martyrdom: Early Modern Martyrological Discourses as Invented Traditions” (in A Qui Appartient la Tradition? / Who Owns the Tradition? ed. Vilmos Keszeg, Erdélyi Múzeum Egyesület, Cluj Napoca, 2014, pp. 21–41). The first early modern edition of Tertullian’s complete works was printed in 1521. After this date however, it was frequently reedited, so by the time Szo˝nyi would start to work on his book he surely had easy access to Tertullian’s texts, see Tertullian Quintus Septimus Florens, Opera per Beatum Rhenanum edita, Basel 1521. When referring or quoting Tertullian, I shall rely on the critical edition of Tertullian’s oeuvre: Franciscus Oehler, ed., Q.S.F. Tertulliani opera omnia, Leipzig 1851–1854. ˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), pp. 116–122, [my translation]. 29 Szo 30 In the King James Bible this passage (Rev. 2: 10) reads as follows: ‘Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life’. 31 Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 197. A shortened version of this letter is available in both French and English editions see Bonnet, Lettres de Calvin (see n. 24), vol II, pp. 175–177 and Bonnet, Letters of Calvin (see n. 24) vol. III, pp. 393–394.

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provided that it was within their reach. However, after translating and comprising this passage he reasserted that the martyrs would not be abandoned amidst the terrors of persecution, for the Holy Spirit would strengthen them in front of the overwhelming horrors of torture. Moreover, Satan would never prevail over the martyrs who, despite his sustained efforts and repeated attempts to break them, superbly proved their resoluteness, constancy, and steadfastness. It was through these acts of brave witnessing that the martyrs’ soul gained glorious entrance to heavens. In a similar way, taking as a starting point a passage from a letter of Calvin from 1557,32 Szo˝nyi declared that the soul of Jesus Christ (Domini Jesu spiritus) would endorse the martyrs in their confrontation with sufferings. He added that there was no reason to be afraid, for as long as Christ himself wanted the martyrs to be his witnesses he would certainly assist them amidst the hardships inflicted upon them. Moreover, Szo˝nyi claimed that not a single drop of the martyrs’ blood would be wasted. Chapter XXXIII conjured up further examples of the benefits ensuing from martyrdom within the allegorical design conceived by Szo˝nyi. Referred to as one of the ‘fruits of martyrdom,’ Szo˝nyi reflected on the relation between the acts of martydom and the growth of the Vera Ecclesia. He denied that dying a martyrs’ death would finally lead to the deperition of Christian communities. On the contrary, he insisted that the outstanding examples of the acts of martyrdom might bring about the development of the church. To confirm this thesis, Szo˝nyi quoted a letter by Calvin which paraphrased a passage from Tertullian33 claiming that the ashes of the martyrs were the seeds of the church: ‘[…] martyrum cineres proditum est semen esse Ecclesiae […]’.34 Preserving this line of argumentation, Szo˝nyi further elaborated on the benefits of martyrdom. Accordingly, in chapter XXXIV, relying again on a passage from Calvin’s letter written in 1557, he suggests that the bravery of the martyrs would convince the hesitating believers to dedicate their life to bearing witness to the truth as well.35 Furthermore, after having learnt about the deeds of the

32 Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 277. 33 In the work Apologeticum addressed to the pagan magistrates, Tertullian formulated the idea that the ultimate sacrifice of the Christian martyrs was not in vain, for their blood constituted the seeds of the Christian Church: ‘Semen est sanguis Christianorum,’ see Oehler, Tertulliani Opera omnia (see. n 16), p. 301. Tertullian was one of Calvin’s favourite authors, especially with regard to the issue of martyrdom and persecution. For a detailed examination of Calvin’s use of Tetullian’s oeuvre see Anthony N.S. lane, “Tertullianus Totus Noster? Calvin’s use of Tertullian,” Refomation and Renaissance Review 4, no. 1 (2002): pp. 9–34. 34 Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 199. 35 Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 277.

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martyrs, those overwhelmed by fear or temptations would certainly be able to join the martyrs of the church or share their destiny.36 In addition, in chapter XXXVI Szo˝nyi overtly invited his readership to approach martyrdom as one of the means of exhibiting Christ’s glory. He explained that loyalty to Christ was the most important virtue of Christians, for mothers were happy to have obedient kids, kings always wanted loyal subjects, and professors found pleasure to work with their humble and obedient students. Szo˝nyi claimed that the utmost expression of this loyalty was martyrdom so that martyrs, during the most extreme situations, were privileged to enjoy the company of Christ, that is, to intimately experience his closeness. Szo˝nyi again relied on Calvin’s letter to exemplify the thesis according to which it was this particular intimacy that granted the victory of martyrs over their merciless persecutors;37 it was Christ, who fought and prevailed for them.38 Furthermore, Szo˝nyi insisted with Calvin39 that the steadfastness of martyrs always proved superior when confronted with the ire of the persecutors. Indeed, the death of a martyr was the ultimate proof of Christ’s glory. To illustrate this assumption, Szo˝nyi added a case taken from Calvin’s letter to Sleidanus, describing an execution of six martyrs.40 Finally, Szo˝nyi reminded his readership that whatever the outcome of a martyr’s destiny was, he or she would undoubtedly gain the reward of being taken to heaven by Christ. In doing so, Szo˝nyi was paraphrasing Calvin’s statement from a letter addressed to Godfrey Varaglia: ‘Qualiscunque erit eventus, tibi sufficiat haec compensatio nunc Filium Dei per te agere triumpham, ut te in aeternae gloriae societatem colligat’.41 That last reference to Calvin’s letter was, in fact, a reiteration of an idea previously introduced by Szo˝nyi. However, he once again quoted this particular passage from the letter written to Godfrey Varaglia,42 which was meant to be a reminder claiming that the privilege of bearing witness to God’s truth needed not solely words, but deeds and, most importantly, bloody sacrifices as well.43 All in all, it is possible to surmise that Szo˝nyi, besides the various texts of Calvin he had certainly read or assimilated, substantially relied, first of all, on Calvin’s letters, while constructing and promoting his martyrology. The passages 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), pp. 171–174, [my translation]. Szo Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 197. ˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), pp. 177–178. Szo Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 138. This letter was written to Sleidanus on the 27th of August, 1554. For the English version see Bonnet, Letters of Calvin (see n. 24) vol. III, pp. 57– 58. Cf. Bonnet, Letters of Calvin (see n. 24) vol. III, p. 57: ‘Within the last three months, five or six persons have been burnt in Gascony, in whose death the Lord has sublimely triumphed.’ Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 188. Béze, Calvini Epistolae (see n. 22), p. 188. ˝ nyi, The Crown (see n. 12), p. 186. Szo

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referred to or identified in The Crown of the Martyrs seem to suggest a deliberate imitation of Calvinian anthropology, strictly following the connections between patient undertaking of suffering and resolute steadfastness during the act of witnessing.

IV.

Conclusion

The significance of Szo˝nyi’s text being the first systematic early modern Hungarian martyrology to express an explicit commitment to Calvin’s theology is manifold. It would suffice to mention only the most relevant facts. Szo˝nyi’s text is an outstanding source testifying to the reception of Calvin’s theology. Moreover, it paid particular attention to a special genre (letters) within Calvin’s works which has never been translated to Hungarian. Szo˝nyi’s treatment of Calvin’s theology reveals the predilection of the Hungarian martyrologist to perceive the teaching about witnessing, confessing, and undertaking of the ultimate sacrifice as a kind of political theology. This reading of Calvinist martyrdom functioned as a powerful pattern for personal, puritan-like44 devotion as well as for adopting political identity. Thus, the afflictio, patientia, and constantia became the high marks of an ideology liberated from exclusive theological applications. The reception of Szo˝nyi’s book in the late 1690s or even in the 18th century testifies to a spectacular transfer towards politics and proto-nationalism.45 44 By the 1670s the reception of English Puritanism had already produced its most important results. A rich and flourishing Hungarian devotional literature had been developed, taking as a starting point the English or Latin texts of English Puritans. The theological education in the Hungarian Colleges had been focused on the practical theology of William Ames and William Perkins. The egodocuments of the time testify to the impact of Puritan practice of piety amongst lay people as well, see Zsombor Tóth, “From the Cradle to the Grave: Representations of Confessional Identity in Mihály Cserei’s Writings (1667–1647),” Colloquia XV (2008): pp. 44–71; Zsombor Tóth, “A Man for All Seasons: Exile, Suffering, and Martyrdom in the Autobiography of Miklós Bethlen,” Hungarian Studies 26 (2012): pp. 273–282. For a general survey on Hungarian Puritanism see Jeno˝ Zoványi, Puritánus mozgalmak a magyar református egyházban, [Puritan Movements in the Hungarian Reformed Church], Budapest 1911; József Bodonhelyi, Az angol puritanizmus lelki élete és magyar hatásai [The Spirituality of English Puritanism and its Influences on Hungary], Debrecen 1942; Pál Berg, Angol hatások tizenhetedik századi irodalmunkban [English Influences on the Hungarian Literature During the Seventeenth Century], Budapest 1946; Graeme Murdock, Calvinism on the Frontier 1600–1660: International Calvinism and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania, New York 2000, pp. 171–197; István Keul, Early Modern Religious Communities in East Central Europe, Leiden/Boston 2009, pp. 187–218. 45 For a detailed examination concerning Szo˝nyi’s martyrology as political theology and promoter of Hungarian proto-nationalism or patriotism see Zsombor Tóth, “The Homiletics of Political Discourse: Martyrology as a (Re)Invented Tradition in the Paradigm of Early Modern Hungarian Calvinism,” in Whose Love of Which Country? Composite States, National

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In conclusion, it is worth mentioning the remarkable case of János Komáromi, a political exile who might have personally known Szo˝nyi or might have read his book. In 1701, when reaching Nicomedia, the final destination of his exile, he wrote a remarkable entry in his diary. Deeply impressed by the history of the region, he not only remembered the Christian martyrs persecuted and killed in this city during the rule of Emperor Diocletian but he also found a moving parallel between his own exile and the persecution of the early Christians: ‘I experience it as a release that our martyrdom has been ordained to this place. Blessed be God!’46

Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe, ed. Balázs Trencsényi/Márton Zászkaliczky, Leiden/Boston 2010, pp. 545–568. 46 János Komáromi, Késmárki Thököly Imre secretariusának Komáromi Jánosnak törökországi diariumja s experientiája [The Experience and Diary of János Komáromi, the Secretary of Imre Thököly Késmárki], ed. Iván Nagy, Pest 1861, p. 76, [my translation].

Kristian Mejrup

Halle Pietism: Acrobats Buying Time

ἐξαγοραζόμενοι τὸν καιρόν, ὅτι αἱ ἡμέραι πονηραί ει᾿σιν (‘Be buyers of time, because the days are evil’) (Eph 5:16)

Imagine living in a world of schools with 12-hour teaching programmes and rules on how to get the most out of time. A world conceptually framed as a seedling nursery in which the subjects (Zöglinge) are seed planted in good soil. But what does it mean to be cultivated in an eschatological landscape? Which terms render in a satisfactory way clear anthropological implications of Pietist cultivation? As part of the research project SOLITUDES: Withdrawal and Engagement in the long Seventeenth Century,1 I am investigating this question. The present article reflects my work to date (autumn 2013), and the answers I offer are provisional. That said, let us now turn to August Hermann Francke’s Der Große Aufsatz (1704), its conceptual framing, inherent eschatology and apocalyptical drift. To my mind, these components have been somewhat overlooked due to the fact that the typical approach to the work focuses on its political and pedagogical implications, or uncritical praise of the man behind the work.

1

Introduction

August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) was pastor, professor and the founder of Die Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle. The heart of the Francke Foundations was an orphanage around which a complex of schools was established. The schools were closely affiliated with the University of Halle. The lively exchange between the two institutions, one located in town and the other on its outskirts – hence the ‘zu Halle’– formed a tandem enterprise which covered educational levels from elementary schools, ‘high schools,’ to university. The Foundations were conceived as a ‘universal seedling nursery’ – a seminarium. This was the place where 1 Based at the Department of Church History, University of Copenhagen and funded by the European Research Council.

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seeds were to be cultivated under the auspices of the Pietist motto: Hoffnung besserer Zeiten. According to Francke, the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) had corrupted all parts of society and severely disrupted schooling. The seminarium was established to counter this corruption with a Christian education for poor orphans as well as noble children. By referring to his project as a universal seminarium, the local lines between Halle and Glaucha, as well as borders between Germany, Europe and the world were deliberately blurred, and emphasis placed on the world as a mission- and a battlefield. Francke was successful in organizing and expanding his project. He could not, however, have done it without the aide of hardworking assistants and the financial support of the nobility and the bourgeoisie.2 In 1698 and 1702 he obtained a ‘Generalprivilegium’ from the king in Brandenburg-Prussia, Friedrich III (I) (1657–1713). The privilege was renewed in 1714 under the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm I (1688–1740). It contained important exemptions from regulations which would otherwise have made the establishment of the Francke Foundations impossible.3 The scholarly work on Der Große Aufsatz has tended to focus on Francke’s role as pedagogue and political partner of the Prussian state.4 Too little attention has been allotted to the inherent eschatology and apocalyptical drift in its pages. In view of Jacobi’s work, I shall leave out the discussion as to how Francke is rightly understood pedagogically, politically and historically.5 Instead I suggest ‘acrobatism’ as an applicable term to describe a central part of the process of cultivation in the Francke Foundations. Literally, an acrobat is one who walks on the edge (ἄκρος / βαίνω) and this is a fitting description of both eschatology and ‘ascetology’.6 More to the point, the term ‘acrobatism’ may shed light over the 2 Klaus Deppermann, Der hallesche Pietismus und der preußische Staat unter Friedrich III. (I.), Göttingen 1961, p. 90. 3 Deppermann (see n. 2), p. 105. 4 Carl Hinrichs, Preussentum und Pietismus, der Pietismus in Brandenburg-Preussen als religiös-soziale Reformbewegung, Göttingen 1971; Deppermann (see n. 2); Juliane Jacobi, Pietismus und Pa¨dagogik im Konstitutionsprozeß der bu¨rgerlichen Gesellschaft, Historischsystematische Untersuchung der Pa¨dagogik August Hermann Franckes (1663–1727), 2002 [1976], http://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/publication/2301254 (Accessed October 2013); Barbara Herrmann, Die ungewollte und die gewollte Welt, Eine Studie zur politischen Pädagogik des A. H. Francke, Münster (Westf.) 1983. 5 Juliane Jacobi convincingly dissects both the theological and historical approaches to Francke as pedagogue: Juliane Jacobi, “Bildung – eine zeitlose Kategorie?” in Hallesche Forschungen vol 32, ed C. Soboth and T. Müller-Bahlke, Halle 2012, pp. 35–40; Jacobi, Pietismus, 2002 (see n. 4), here 8–29; Jacobi, “Der Blick auf das Kind. Zur Entstehung der Pädagogik in den Schulen des Halleschen Waisenhauses”, in Hallesche Forschungen vol 5, Halle 2000, pp. 47–60, here pp. 57–58. 6 My use of ‘ascetology’ (and its Nietzschean roots) and ‘acrobatism’ is partly informed by Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern, Frankfurt am Main 2009. ‘Akrobatik ist überall im Spiel, wo es darum geht, das Unmögliche wie eine leichte Übung erscheinen zu

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virtuous endeavour of using composite Bible verses as a generator of an apocalyptical drift appropriate both for raising funds and for admonishing students to get ‘the most out of time’.

2.

Pietism and eschatology

The task of defining Pietism is troublesome.7 I shall use the term without taking sides in the question as to whether Pietism is the nadir or the highpoint of Lutheran Protestantism.8 Reading Francke’s Der Große Aufsatz, I find support for scholars who argue that an awareness of crisis, eschatology and engaged Bible reading are important markers of German Pietism. This trait is not against but rather in line with and at the same time different from Lutheran Protestantism.9 One of the differences, however, has to do with the perception of time and eschatology.10 Thus I shall focus on Francke’s Der Große Aufsatz and on his use of composite Bible verses and its importance for the conceptual framing of his seminarium-project. When studying the role of eschatology in Pietism, the challenge is to keep in mind the various ways in which eschatology can be conceptualized. Words such as Chiliasm, Millennialism, crisis, apocalypticism are often used alongside or synonymously with eschatology, but they are not necessarily the same. There is no doubt that eschatology played an important role in German Pietism: but the question is what generated or gave rise to a particular eschatological outlook or ‘apokalyptische Erwartung’? 11 Answers to this question depend on different research foci and scholarly preferences. Some define eschatology with a view to the history of ideas,12 others direct their attention to the importance of the crises in

7 8 9

10 11 12

lassen’ p. 307. For further clarification see pp. 103ff, pp. 194–195 and pp. 307–309. The eschatological aptitude in the term ‘acrobatism’ is my emphasis. See Jonathan Strom, “Problems and Promises of Pietism Research,” in Church History 71 (2002): pp. 536–554. For succinct summaries of this discussion see Jacobi, Pietismus, 2002 (see n. 4), here pp. 26ff; Hartmut Lehmann, ed., Geschichte des Pietismus vol. 4: Glaubenswelt und Lebenswelten, Göttingen 2004, pp. 4ff. In the introduction to Hallesche Forschungen vol 32, Reformation und Generalreformation – Luther und der Pietismus, the editors speak of ‘Kontinuitäten, aber auch Diskontinuitäten, Kongruenzen und Korrespondenzen sowie Konflikte und Kontroversen […]’ ed. C. Soboth and T. Müller-Bahlke, Halle 2012, p. VIII. See also Udo Sträter, “August Hermann Francke und Martin Luther,” in Pietismus und Neuzeit vol. 34 (2008): pp. 20–41. Ulrich Gäbler, “Geschichte, Gegenwart und Zukunft,” in GdP vol 4 (see n. 8) pp. 19–48. Hans Schneider, “Die unerfüllte Zukunft. Apokalyptische Erwartungen im radikalen Pietismus um 1700,” in Jahrhundertwenden: Endzeit- und Zukunftsvorstellungen im 15. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen, Göttingen 1999, p. 208. Jakob Taubes, Abendländische Eschatologie, Berlin 2006 [1947].

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the long seventeenth century;13 and some investigate how biblical interpretations and appropriations of the Bible prompted a particular theological and political outlook.14 No matter whether eschatology and related words are traced back to the sixteenth or seventeenth century or to the Bible, it plays a decisive role in the Pietist motto: Hoffnung besserer Zeiten coined by Philipp Jakob Spener (1635– 1705). Indeed one might say that eschatological temperament is a matter of how this phrase is interpreted. And here the distinction between ‘Churchly’ and ‘Radical’ Pietism is relevant, since it shows different understandings of the Pietist motto: Die Radikalen unterschieden sich von Spener in mehreren Punkten: Vor allem zogen sie aus der Erwartung der nahe bevorstehenden Zeitenwende unterschiedliche Konsequenzen. Schöpfte Spener aus der Zukunftshoffnung Impulse für eine innerkirchliche Reform, die jene verheißene herrliche Zeit anbahnen sollte, so verwarfen die Radikalen solche Reformversuche als inkonsequenten Irrweg.15

Eschatology refers to ‘Endzeit’ and ‘the last things’, ta eschata, but the eschatological expectation in Pietism was not unambiguously aimed at the end of all times, ‘die Jüngsten Tage’, but rather the millennium as an era about to begin: Endzeiterwartung hieß im radikalen Pietismus – wie im gesamten Pietismus am Ende des 17. Jahrhundert – freilich nicht Erwartung des Jüngsten Tages, sondern des Millenniums; die Erwartung ist eine chiliastische.16

In technical terms the outlook of Pietist eschatology is referred to as ‘Geschichtsimmanente Deutung der Apokalypse’17 or as post-millennialism.18 The end of the world is not around the corner, but present time is nevertheless 13 Hartmut Lehmann/Anne-Charlott Trepp, Im Zeichen der Krise, Religiosität im Europa des 17. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 1999. 14 Gäbler (see n. 10); Hans Schneider, Zukunft (see n. 11), pp.187–212; Hans Schneider, “Radikaler Pietismus im 17. Jahrhundert,” in Geschichte des Pietismus vol. 1, ed. Martin Brecht, Göttingen 1993, pp. 391–438; Howard Hotson, Alsted and Leibniz, on God, the Magistrate and the Millennium, Wiesbaden 1999; Markus Matthias, Johann Wilhelm und Johanna Eleonora Petersen, eine Biographie bis zur Amtsenthebung Petersens im Jahre 1692, Göttingen 1993. 15 Schneider, Zukunft (see n. 11) p. 190. 16 Schneider, Zukunft (see n. 11) p. 188. 17 ‘Die Schrift wird dann nicht nur als eine Summe der Weisheit Gottes verstanden, sondern auch als Theologie der Geschichte, und damit wird die geschichtsimmanente Deutung der Apokalypse gefördert’ Taubes, Eschatologie (see n. 12) p. 161. 18 ‘Der Pietist denkt mit seiner Theorie von dem Aufschub des Jüngsten Tages an eine Vollendung von Gottes Heilsplan im Sinne einer evangelischen Christianisierung der Welt und einer Zunahme der Frommen, ohne daß deshalb die Welt der Sünde und des Leides ganz aufgehoben würde. Die Aufhebung der sündigen Welt geschieht auch für Spener erst am Ende aller Tage. Damit gehört Speners Hoffnung dem postmillenniaristischen Typ des Chiliasmus zu. Erst nach dem „Tausendjährigen Reich“ oder der „besseren Zeit“ kommt Christus in der Parusie wieder und vollzieht das Endgericht’. Matthias, Petersen (see n. 14), p. 191.

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charged with expectation and Hoffnung besserer Zeiten. After such better times, Christ will return. As we shall see, eschatology and an apocalyptical drift are also hallmarks in Francke’s work.

3.

The grand prospectus of Pietism in Halle

Der Große Aufsatz is a work-in-progress. The original edition was lost in 1719, but other editions from 1704, 1709, 1711 and 1716 are neatly put together in Otto Podczeck’s critical edition of 1962.19 It is a prolific and multi-purposed text, consisting of three parts of which the second is the longest. The title of the second part is the same as for the entire work and thus it is the original title for Der Große Aufsatz: Offenhertzige und gründliche Nachricht von der inneren Beschaffenheit und Wichtigkeit des Wercks des HErrn zu Halle im Hertzogthum Magdeburg, sowol wie es anitzo stehet, als was unter dem fernem Segen Gottes darvon zu hoffen.

In 1701, three years before writing Der Große Aufsatz, Francke had begun his Fußstapfen, which described the inauguration and development of the Francke Foundations.20 Fußstapfen had the form of an expanding logbook to which continuation after continuation was appended. It originated as a defence against Francke’s opponents who had had a committee investigate his work. Both texts, Fußstapfen (1701–1709) and Der Große Aufsatz (1704–1716), were written in overlapping time periods. And both give an account of the establishment of the Francke Foundations from a pointed perspective which does not neglect fundraising.21 The decisive difference between them was that Fußstapfen was published and even translated, whereas Der Große Aufsatz remained unpublished, only circulating among friends and noble benefactors.

3.1

The sowing ground: an eschatological locus

Even though Der Große Aufsatz dates to 1704 there is an early draft from 1701, which was incorporated into the finished work.22 The title is worth quoting in full, since it is important for the overall conceptual framing: 19 See Otto Podczeck, Der Große Aufsatz, Berlin 1962, pp. 12–13. 20 Michael Welte, ed., August Hermann Francke, Segensvolle Fußstapfen, Brunnen 1994. 21 Kurt Aland compares Fußstapfen to a missionary newsletter with an attached donation slip. Welte, Fußstapfen (see note 17), pp. X – XI, and the same can be said about Der Große Aufstz. Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), p. 10. 22 Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), pp. 23–25.

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Project zu einem Seminario Universali oder Anlegung eines Pflanzgartens, an welchem man eine reale Verbesserung in allen Ständen in und ausserhalb Teutschlands, ja in Europa und allen übrigen Theilen der Welt zu gewarten.23

As we see, seminarium is a place of expectation and a place from which purification will spread centrifugally to all estates of society, in and beyond Germany to Europe and the rest of the world. In this regard, the seminarium is at once a waiting-room and a highly eruptive site. Furthermore ‘Anlegung eines Pflanzgartens’ calls for active work, whereas ‘zu gewarten’ refers to the modality of Gelassenheit: calm yet vigilant. Indeed, the title emphasizes the relation between expectation and cultivation, a relation brought fully to the fore in the emblem illo splendente levabor, ‘by his shining shall I be lifted up”. (In passing, emblem derives from ‘to throw in’: em/im, blem/ballein). It was used as the colophon for the Verlag des Halleschen Waisenhauses and it occurs on a great many of Francke’s texts.24

Colophon for the Verlag des Halleschen Waisenhauses. Photograph by the author.

In Der Große Aufsatz Francke states that the seminarium is founded on good soil. On the one hand it could be any soil, since it is God who gives growth, on the

23 Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), p. 23. 24 Reinhard Liese, “Motive aus Arndts ‘Wahren Christentum’ in Kirchenausmalungen,” in Frömmigkeit oder Theologie: Johann Arndt und die ‘Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum’ ed. H. Otte and H. Schneider, Göttingen 2007, pp 357–422, here p. 418, n. 110.

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other the soil in Halle hic et nunc is particularly prone to miracles.25 The balance between the actual local site and the universal potential site is struck on almost every page of Der Große Aufsatz (e. g. pp. 40ff and pp. 67–68). As a topos the seminarium epitomizes an indirect (and mysterious) relationship between cause and effect: the sower plants the seed, it undergoes a hidden transformation and signs appear of its recurrence as something new. The sower can plant, give water and wait; only God can make things grow. The seminarium thus allows collaboration between God and man. Although Francke insists that God’s part of the work is the more important part, he is nevertheless the one who knows what God’s will is and how to act upon it.26 The topic of the sower clearly alludes to the Bible. If we compare Francke’s use of the sower with the biblical account in Mark 4, a striking feature emerges. In Mark 4:3–9, the parable is an account charged with allegorical meaning expounded in verses 13–20. The different places the seed falls resemble people in different existential situations. Francke makes very different use of the theme. Whereas the biblical account has the seed fall randomly, as if by chance or divine foreknowledge, and on more or less auspicious locations, Francke is interested only in the good soil and what has already been planted in it.27 Da nun hieselbst ein solcher Acker angewiesen wird, welcher itzo schon seine hundertfältigen Früchte trägt, und, wenn er noch beßer in acht genommen und gebauet wird, wol tausendfältige Früchte bringen wird; warumb wollte man nicht seinen Saamen lieber an einen solchen Acker wenden, als an einen andern, deßen Früchte man noch nicht gesehen, ja da es mißlich ist, ob er werde so umbgearbeitet werden, daß der feisichte Grund, und die mit auffgehende Disteln und Dornen nicht alle Frucht oder doch die allermeiste ersticken und verhindern.28

As a location, the seminarium is both concrete and eschatological. It is already but not yet fully realized. In this regard the seminarium is an in-between-place: a place between a protological coordinate (garden) and an eschatological coordinate (city). Basically Francke’s seminarium resembles a global city planted in a local garden, hence the ambition that from Glaucha seeds of the seminarium will spread widely all over the world. It is the perfectly apt architectural design for

25 Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), pp. 63ff. 26 Werner Loch points out: ‘Nicht selten erweckt Francke den Anschein, als wisse er über Gottes Wollen genau Bescheid. In dieser Rolle als Mitwisser Gottes nimmt er dessen “Vorsehung” für die eigenen Vorhaben in Anspruch. Das kann er nur, weil er gelernt hat, den rechten Augenblick zum Handeln abzuwarten’, “Pädagogik am Beispiel August Hermann Franckes,” in GdP vol. 4 (see n. 8) pp. 264–308, here p. 270. 27 It is worth noticing that Erhard Peschke has pointed out how Francke’s theology is against the doctrine of predestination, Studien zur Theologie August Hermann Francke, vol. 1, Berlin 1964, pp. 68ff. 28 Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), pp. 66–67.

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God’s kingdom on earth without being either too spiritual, too utopian, or (on the surface) too political. In this regard the seminarium fits well into what Taubes describes as the ‘Geschichte der neuzeitlichen Eschatologie’ and the development in the conception of God’s kingdom on earth from Augustine, Joachim of Fiore, and Thomas Münzer towards a ‘kulturselige Zeitewigkeit der Aufklärung’.29

3.2

Irrigating the earth

Alongside planting and cultivating seeds, water plays a central role in Der Große Aufsatz. Francke distinguishes three estates in society: Regierstand, Haußstand, Lehrstand.30 All of them are equally affected by a lamentable corruption. But the Lehrstand has a particular part in countering it.31 Francke compares the present state with the one described in Genesis 6:12: (‘God saw the earth, and indeed it was ruined, for all living creatures on the earth were sinful’) but the former is not a matter of Erbsünde but corruption and misery in general: Es wird aber von dem jenigen Verfall und Verderben geredet, davon die Schrifft saget, wenn sie spricht von der ersten Welt 1. B. Mosis VI, 12 […] Demnach ist nicht die Erbsünde damit gemeynet, die auch den Frommen anklebet, sondern die herschende Sünde und Boßheit, wie sich dieselbe überall und in allen Ständen ausgebreitet hat, und eine Ursache ist alles übrigen Verderbens, Elendes und Jammers in der Welt gleich wie um deßwillen die erste Welt durch die Sündflut verderbet ward.32

The first world was flooded, and it might seem as if the present one is on the brink of suffering the same fate. This is the state of affairs but Francke is not discouraged. By means of education, i. e. cultivation and expectation, he believes that corruption can be overcome. At the end of Der Große Aufsatz, we find a description of a new flood, which balances the old: Denn das ist es, was man von Hertzen wünschet, suchet und verlanget, und darumb man ringet mit demüthigen Gebeth und Flehen vor Gott, daß er dasjenige Werck hieselbst, welches er mit seinem Segen, so geschmücket, daß von gantz Teutschland und auch von weit entlegenen Orten die Menschen darauff gerichtet sind, nicht allein erhalten und gnädiglich beschützen, sondern auch als sein Werck herrlich aufführen wolle, damit zu einer allgemeinen Verbeßerung in allen Ständen nicht allein in Teutschland und in Europa, sondern auch in den übrigen Theilen der Welt alle gehörige Zubereitung gemacht und in kurtzer Zeit die gantze Erde mit Erkentniß des HErrn als mit einem Strom lebendiger Waßer bedecket werde.33 29 30 31 32 33

Taubes, Eschatology (see n. 12) pp. 115ff. Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), p. 71. Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), p. 73. Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), p. 70–71. Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), p. 154.

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Both corruption and the solution to corruption are thus described in terms of universal flooding. By irrigating the world with ‘lebendiger Waßer’, Francke’s seminarium is nourished – or perhaps even flooded – with Godly knowledge.

3.3

The Lehrstand

The topos of the seminarium admits planting and irrigation to be actions carried out by God and man. Even if God has the greater part, man is not left without influence. The Lehrstand directs the seminarium and its action is understood on a continuum with the teaching of Christ and his Apostles: Nur wenn eine Besserung gesucht werden soll, muß sie nach der jetzt angezogenen Anweisung Christi und seines Apostels vom Lehr-Stande angefangen werden, als welcher das Salz der Erden seyn muß (Matth 10:13) [5:13, KRM].34

Francke relates the Lehrstand’s commission to the Gospel account of the spiritual warfare related to Jesus’ ministry. This is achieved by means of reference to various disjointed but, nevertheless, carefully selected scriptural verses. Consider the following: Darum da unserm Heylande das Verderben des jüdischen Volcks für Augen kam, sähe Er sie an wie Schaffe, die keinen Hirten hatten und da er ihnen von ihrem Verderben gerne wollte geholffen wißen, befahl Er seinen Jüngern, nur den HErrn der Erndte zu bitten, daß er Arbeiter in seine Ernde sende (Matth 9:36.38). Welches Er auch sofort mit seinem Exempel bestättiget, und damals nicht allein bloß seine Jünger unter das arme, unwißende Volck ausgesendet hat (Matth 10), sondern auch insgemein nur bloß seine Propheten, Weisen und Schrifftgelahrten, Apostel, Hirten und Lehrer durch seinen Geist gelehret, gelehret [sic!], geheiliget und gesandt hat, da er seinen Geistlichen Leib erbauen und die Menschen beyde klein und große von der Finsterniß zu dem Liechte, von der Gewalt des Satans zu Gott, und seiner ewigen Herrlichkeit beruften und bekehren wollen (Matth 23:34.37; Eph 4:11.12; Acts 20: 21; 26:17.18.22 [scripture references are given in English, KRM]).35

The composite scripture verses bring together various job titles (disciple, prophet, teacher, shepherd etc.) in one rather vague concept. At the same time, they serve to actualize biblical events in Francke’s own time.36 The Lehrstand is 34 Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), p. 75. 35 Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), p. 73–74. Compared to Mark’s account of the sending of the disciples (6:7–13), Matthew (10:5ff) is considerably more apocalyptical […] ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν […], ‘the kingdom of heavens is near’ (10:7) and […] ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀνεκτότερον ἔσται γῇ Σοδόμων καὶ Γομόρρων ἐν ἡμέρᾳ κρίσεως ἢ τῇ πόλει ἐκείνῃ, ‘Amen, I tell you, it will be more bearable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of crises than for that town.’ (10:15). 36 Cf. the Taubes quote in n. 17.

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thus nebulously defined, but nevertheless charged with an apocalyptical drift. Francke deliberately and inventively uses this drift for attracting funds and for pointing and charging his project with urgency. Consider this exhortation (modelled on 1 John 9:4) to his benefactors: So ist itzt auch ein Tag des Heyls, und eine sonderbare Gnaden-Zeit, darinnen viel gutes gewürcket werden kan. Laßen wir die vorbey gehen, so kann eine Nacht drauff folgen, das ist, eine solche Zeit, darinnen niemand würcken kan, und weder die Gelegenheit noch der Segen sich findet, so itzt von Gott angeboten wird, noch die Leute da sind, die etwas gutes zu würcken Lust haben, wenn man sichs gleich sonst alles wollte kosten laßen.37

It is worth noticing that Francke seems immune to the risks of ‘letting time pass’. As was the case with the overall corruption in and of society, he is not so much discouraged as hopeful. In fact the presence of an apocalyptical drift serves to exhort the reader to constructive action rather than to frighten, or pose as a prophet of doom.

4

The seed – time winning Bible virtuosi?

The metaphorical and topological realm of cultivating phytogenetical material is not restricted to buildings, schools and orphanages. It applies to the subjects (Zöglinge) as well.38 This is also evident elsewhere in Francke’s writings, particularly his famous treatise on education: Kurzer und einfältiger Unterricht, wie die Kinder zur wahren Gottseligkeit und christlichen Klugheit anzuführen sind (1702). In this text, cultivating seeds is a matter of […] ‘lebendigen Saamen auff alle mögliche Art und Weise ins Herz zu legen’.39 As the title of the treatise indicates, the objective of education and cultivation is Gottseligkeit and Christliche Klugheit. The first rule in the section on Christliche Klugheit is to make good use of time. Francke relies in particular on Eph 5:15–17 and Col 4:5–6 and the expression occurring in both ἐξαγοραζόμενοι τὸν καιρόν, ‘redeem / buy back time’ and in Eph 5:16: ὅτι αἱ ἡμέραι πονηραί ει᾿σιν ‘because the days are evil’.40 37 Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), p. 52–53. 38 Podczeck, Aufsatz (see n. 19), e. g. p. 76, p. 77, p. 127, p. 136. 39 Quoted from Erhard Peschke, August Hermann Francke, Werke im Auswahl, Berlin 1969, p. 132. 40 Francke elaborates further on Eph 5:15–17 in August Hermann Francke, Der rechte Gebrauch der Zeit, Halle 1713 (cf. Deppermann [see n. 2], p. 94). Here the aspect of buying time is brought fully to the fore: ‘Auskauffer der Zeit, d.i. keine einige bequeme Zeit / gutes zu wirken / versäumen / sondern es so damit machen / wie es ein Kauffmann machen möchte / so er eine Waare auf den Marckt anträfe / von welcher er großen Gewinn hoffete / die ihm aber alle Augenblick leichtlich könnte weggekauffet werden / und die er hernach vielleicht Sein

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The Bible verses quoted also concern the right attitude and way of verbally approaching ‘those outside’ (πρὸς τοὺς ἔξω, Col 4:5). ‘Your talk must always be seasoned with salt’ (Col 4:6). The focus on the world outside and the proper use of time are important elements of being cultivated to live in the world but not of the world. Francke’s exhortation to manage and to buy back time brings our attention to the so-called ascetic Arbeitsethos. Pietist scholars have long argued that the ethos of Pietism and puritanism, despite points of agreement, are different.41 In the case of Francke, an ascetic Arbeitsethos should not be shorn of the important conception of time as eschatologically chargeable. Time is chargeable in the sense that it actualizes biblical events and an inherent apocalyptical drift. This way of being in the world by virtue of scripture is, I suggest, an ascetic and an acrobatic manoeuvre. It is both to tiptoe, strike the right balance between historical time and eschatological urgency, and to make something difficult seem easy.42 The ability to bring together scripture verses in more or less meaningful, indirect, underplayed or perhaps even hidden ways is precisely to make what is complicated look easy. Francke does not write without quoting the Bible, and as a reader we are either deafened by the quotations or we start to follow them, acknowledging meanwhile the virtuosity and eschatology embedded in this acrobatic exercise.

4.1

Concluding remarks

The apocalyptical drift generated by exhaustive reference to scripture is highly important to Der Große Aufsatz and in general to Francke’s texts. As we have seen, it serves multiple purposes: it encourages donations and it charges his project with urgency and an apocalyptical drift. By framing his project as a seminarium, Francke neatly strikes a balance between expectation and cultivation. Furthermore, he manages to find firm ground for the unsteady and potentially radical eschatology rooted in the Pietist motto Hoffnung besserer Zeiten. What still awaits investigation is to what degree the ‘seed’ of the seminarium was deafened, and the degree to which followers of Francke’s acrobatic exercise found matching scriptural verses for all situations in life. Lebelang nicht wieder bekommen dürffte […] so viel an ihnen ist / eines jeden Tages / einer jeden Stunde / ja eines jeden Augenblicks wahrnehmen / daß sie immer etwas gutes aus der Zeit als aus einem schnell vorbey-lauffenden Strom heraus reissen / so ihnen mit in der Ewigkeit folge […]’. Francke, Zeit, pp. 28–29). 41 Deppermann (see n. 2), p. 174; Jacobi, Pietismus (see n. 4) p. 129), Lehmann, “Die Geschichte der Erforschung des Pietismus als Aufgabe”, in Pietismus und Neuzeit, vol 32 (2006): pp. 17–36, here pp. 33ff. 42 Cf. The Sloterdijk-quotation in note n. 6

VII. Exemplary Studies: The Self-understanding of Reformation

BonSeung Koo

You Can Have Faith but You Cannot Assemble: The Problem of Conscience under the 17th-Century Dutch Reformed Regime – On Simon Oomius’s Theologico-Politica Dissertatio (1662) –

1.

Simon Oomius – prominent figure in the Further Reformation

Simon Oomius (1630–1706) was born in the village of Heenvliet on the island Voorneputten in the Netherlands as the youngest of twenty-one children. His father Cornelis Simonsen Ooms/Oomius (1576–1653) was a preacher in Heenvliet. Oomius studied theology, philosophy, and Oriental languages in Leiden, Utrecht. He began his ministry in Pumerland, Noord Holland at the age of twenty-four, on February 22, 1654 and acquired his doctorate degree in Harderwijk on February 2, 1674. Oomius is one of the most important figures of the Further Reformation (de Nadere Reformatie).1 As Exalto says, ‘When we would like to set up a statuegallery of persons of the Further Reformation, or the Reformed pietism in our country, then surely Simon Oomius, a pastor first of Pumerland and then of Kampen, should have a place of honor in it.’2 Like most of the Nadere Reformers, Oomius was not a naïve academic. He had not only steadfastly served as a pastor at local churches but also intervened in various social, political, ecclesiastical, ethical, and theological situations and affairs through his pen,3 making him one of the most prolific writers of his time. According to Schuringa’s latest research,4 Oomius published a total of forty-one 1 For a general introduction to Oomius, see Klaas Exalto “Simon Oomius,” in De Nadere Reformatie en het gereformeerd Piëtisme, ed. Teunis Brienen et al., ’s-Gravenhage 1989, pp. 149–179. For the most recent outline of Oomius’s theology from a Reformed method see Greg D. Schuringa, Embracing Leer and Leven: the theology of Simon Oomius in the context of Nadere Reformatie orthodoxy (dissertation: Calvin Theological Seminary), Grand Rapids 2003. To understand Oomius’s influence on Kampen in relation to the background of his time, see Frank van der Pol, “Religious Diversity and Everyday Ethics in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch City Kampen,” Church History 71 (2002): pp. 16–62. 2 Exalto, Simon Oomius (see n. 1), p. 175, translated by Frank van der Pol, Religious Diversity (see n. 1), p. 17. 3 Oomius’s intervention did not end with the pen; he also had experience as a chaplain. 4 Schuringa, Embracing Leer and Leven (see n. 1).

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works during the period of 1650–1707.5 Schuringa classifies them into five groups, namely, ‘writings on the Christian life, occasional, polemical, dogmatic, and programmatic.’6 Oomius was hardly prolific without reason. In there [‘our theology’] nothing exists that does not belong to the ultimate end, the glory of God, and our salvation as well as to the means to lead there. The practice of life is also included in the theology so perfectly that not even one commandment of common truth, aiming at living well, is discovered in the domestic, moral, political or civil, and legal things, which is not related to the theology. Ultimus actus specificat, the philosophers say. Also the Christian theology has to be in this life, […] being practical, because all knowledge of it […] is ordained to the practice from and through itself and begins with the knowledge, ends up with the practice. With the practice, that is, of the repentance, faith, hope, love, comfort in life and death.7

We see here that the goal of Oomius’s theology is to practice life within theology – in other words, to ‘live well.’ According to Oomius, theology is wholly practical in the sense that the end of theology should be praxis. If a theology begins and ends only with theory or speculation, it is not a sound theology: ‘Not the doctrine which also speculates, but the doctrine which only speculates is speculative’ (Niet die leere welcke oock speculeert, maer die alleen speculeert, is een speculative).8 Therefore, it may rightly be said that the object of theology subsumes the realms of this life; life in its entirety can be termed theological. According to Oomius himself, the realms of life are four, that is, ‘domestic, moral, political or civil, and legal.’ While conceding the effectiveness of Schuringa’s classification for understanding the style of Oomius’s writing, we would better grasp its essential intent by adopting his own definition of said writing. With the exception of those works which Schuringa classified as dogmatic, the subjects of all Oomius’s other works would fall into one of the aforementioned four realms. Even Schuringa’s dogmatic works cannot be wholly excluded from Oomius’s categorizations. For

5 Schuringa, Embracing Leer and Leven (see n. 1), pp. 324–330. 6 Schuringa, Embracing Leer and Leven (see n. 1), pp. 39–48. 7 ‘Daer is niets in, dat niet tot het uytterste eynde, de eere Godts en onse saligheyt, als oock de middelen daer henen leydende, en behoort. Jae oock de practijcke des levens is in de Theologie soo volmaecktelick begrepen, dat ’er selfs niet een gebodt van gemeyne waerheyt, het wel leven be-oogende, in de Huyselicke, Zedelicke, Politijcke of Burgerlicke en Iuridische dingen, gevonden wort, dat niet eygentlick tot de Theologie zijn opsight heeft. Ultimus actus specificat, seggen de Philosophen; En soo moet dan de Christelicke Theologie, in dit leven, […] een Practische zijn, om dat alle desselfs kennisse, […] uyt en door sigh selven geordineert wort tot de Practijcke, en van de kennisse beginnende in de Practijcke eyndight, in de Practijcke nam: van boetveerdigheyt, gelove, hope, liefde, vertroostinge in leven en in sterven.’ See Simon Oomius, Dissertatie van de Onserwijsingen in de Practycke de Godgeleerdheid, Bolsward 1672, p. 29. 8 Oomius, Dissertatie (see n. 7), p. 27.

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example, Oomius’s dogmatic masterpiece Instutiones theologiae practicae9 does not assume the usual form of other Reformed orthodox textbooks. He follows well the order of loci but sustains it throughout the entire text with the intent of investigating the relationship between everyday life and doctrine. Even while explaining the doctrine of Trinity, he sees it in the light of the practice of life. However, research on Oomius has mostly focused on the religious or pietistic themes of his theology. Schuringa surveys Oomius’s theology based on Instutiones theologiae practicae, concentrating on illustrating the Reformed orthodox structure of Oomius’s theology and on explicating the unification of piety and Reformed Scholastic theology in the Further Reformation.10 As Oomius wrote the first full-fledged Dutch-language research on Islam and Muslims,11 there are studies on this book and Oomius’s view of Islam.12 Several practical and comparative subjects related to Oomius have also been taken up as the subject of study.13 Very little research deals with political or social issues in Oomius’s theology.14 9 This work consists of a series of books: The prolegomena, Bolsward 1672, The doctrine of the Scripture, Bolsward 1672, The doctrine of God 1 , Bolsward 1672 The doctrine of God 2, Schiedam 1680. 10 See also SCHURINGA, “Orthodoxy and Piety in the Nadere Reformatie: the theology of Siomon Oomius,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 20 (2009): pp. 95–103. For other similar subjects related to Oomius, see Jan Exalto, Gereformeerde heiligen. De religieuze exempeltraditie in vroegmodern Nederland (Dissertation), Nijmegen 2005; Willem J. op’t Hof, “Simon Oomius en het piëtistisch Puritanisme,” Documentatieblad Nadere Reformatie 26 (2002): pp. 89–98; “Geloofsleer en geloofsbeleving in de Nadere Reformatie,” in The syllabus for the 8th Wintercourse of the Stichting Studie der Nadere Reformatie 2002; Frank van der Pol, “De Institutie van het christelijk leven. Voetius’ leerling Simon Oomius over vroomheid bij Calvijn,” Documentatieblad Nadere Reformatie 33 (2009): pp. 24–36. For a general survey on Oomius, see Klaas EXALTO, “Inleiding tot Oomius’ Praktische theologie,” Documentatieblad Nadere Reformatie 22 (1998): pp. 91–101 and Klaas Exalto, Simon Oomius (see n. 1). 11 Simon Oomius, Het Geopende en Wederleyde Muhammedisdom of Turckdom, Amsterdam 1663. 12 Johan van den Berg, Het geopende en wederleyde Muhammedisdom of Turckdom. Beschrijving van een werk van Simon Oomius (1630–1706) (master’s thesis), Kampen 1998; “Detail en detail. Over Simon Oomius en de Arabische taal,” in the archive of Theologische Universiteit Kampen, ed. Gert van Klinken et al., Kampen, 2006, pp. 41–47; Peter H. op’t Hof, “Het mohammedanisme in de visie van enige oudvaders,” Documentatieblad Nadere Reformatie 30 (2006): pp. 68–74; “Het mohammedanisme in de visie van dominee Oomius en enige andere nadere reformatoren,” Transparant 19 (2008): pp. 10–17; Leendert. J. Joosse, “De islamvisie van Gisbertus Voetius, Johannes Hoornbeeck en Simon Oomius,” Documentatieblad Nadere Reformatie 34 (2010): pp. 116–133. 13 Roel Bosch, “‘Men zelden ziet een koordendanser in zijn bed sterven.’ De protestantse kerk in Nederland en zelfmoord,” De achttiende eeuw 33 (2001): pp. 133–140; Peter Buijs, “Van zonde naar ziekte: Nederlandse opvattingen over zelfmoord ten tijde van de Verlichting,” De Gids 125 (1992): pp. 301–312; Willem van Gent, “De zwanenzang van Simon Oomius,” Documentatieblad Nadere Reformatie 1 (1977): pp. 42–66; Frank van der Pol, “The Profile

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Although the Further Reformation can be seen as the Dutch version of the Pietism15 – or as a pietistic movement at the very least – the fact that the Nadere Reformatie is immanently Dutch as much as the Pietismus is German16 must also be taken into consideration. We must also bear in mind that the contexts of both movements made them what they were. While giving a solid summary and an outline of the Further Reformation, Graafland, op’t Hof, and van Lieburg17 are reluctant to reduce the concept Nadere Reformatie to Pietism.18 Pietism cannot be regarded as the entirety of the Further Reformation. Considerable attention should also be paid to the political and social situation of the Dutch Republic. For instance, the theocratic bent, which is one of the major characteristics of the Further Reformation,19 cannot be explicated only through its religious elements; the opposite of this statement holds equally true. Therefore, further research should also be performed on Oomius’s books that are not typically theological or religious. Insofar as I can ascertain, there are eleven books by Oomius which can be classified as ‘political or civil’ according to his conceptual framework. These would be all ten books20 which Schuringa classified as ‘occasional’ and the book

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15 16

17 18 19 20

and Use of John Calvin in the Dissertatie and the Institutiones theologiae practicae of Simon Oomius (1630–1706),” Church History and Religious Culture 91 (2011): pp. 179–192; “Simon Oomius (1630–1706) & de bid- en dankdagviering,” in The Syllabus for the 11th Wintercourse of the Stichting Studie der Nadere Reformatie 2006. Arie th. van Deursen, “Glorious Revolution in gereformeerd perspectief,” Documentatieblad Nadere Reformatie 23 (1999): pp. 1–12. Frank van der Pol, “Simon Oomius in reactie op zijn tijd” Documentatieblad Nadere Reformatie 23 (1999): pp. 44–62 and Religious Diversity (see n. 1), pp. 16–62. Cf. Martin Brecht, ed., Geschichte des Pietismus, vol. 1: Der Pietismus vom siebzehnten bis zum frühen achtzehnten Jahrhundert, Go¨ ttingen 1993, pp. 68–99. There had been an interesting debate over the definition of the term Pietismus and the disparity of its usage between Martin Brecht and Johannes Wallmann. Wallmann wanted to limit the term Pietismus to the German context, while Brecht set forth the Pietismus ‘in a broader sense.’ See Johannes Wallmann, “Eine alternative Geschichte des Pietismus. Zur gegenwärtigen Diskussion um den Pietismusbegriff,” Pietismus und Neuzeit: Ein Jahrbuch zur Geschichte des neueren Protestantismus 28 (2002): pp. 30–71; “Was ist Pietismus?” Pietismus und Neuzeit 20 (1994): pp. 13–20; “Fehlstart. Zur Konzeption von Band I der neuen ‘Geschichte des Pietismus’,” Pietismus und Neuzeit 20 (1994): pp. 218–235. For Brecht’s reply to this, see BRECHT, “Zur Konzeption der Geschichte des Pietismus. Eine Entgegnung auf Johannes Wallmann,” Pietismus und Neuzeit 22 (1996): pp. 226–229. However, Wallmann does not deny that there are phenomenal similarities between the Pietismus and contemporary pietistic movements, see Wallmann, Der Pietismus, Göttingen 2005, pp. 21–22. Cornelis Graafland, Willem J. op’t Hof and Fred A. van Lieburg, “Nadere Reformatie: opnieuw een poging tot begripsbepaling,” Documentatiblad Nadere Reformatie, 19 (1995): pp. 105–184. Graafland et al., Nadere Reformatie (see n. 17), pp. 111–118. Graafland et al., Nadere Reformatie (see n. 17), pp. 147–148. Schuringa, Embracing Leer and Leven (see n. 1), pp. 44–45.

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Theologico-Politica Dissertatio,21 which we will examine in this article. In order to rightly understand Oomius’s discussion, we must begin where he begins. The fundamental premise on which the various arguments in these eleven books are explicitly or implicitly based is as follows: The fate of a land or a nation depends on the fulfillment of the sound and pure religion which is Reformed Christianity.22 God judges a land or a nation according to the religion exercised within it; he judges individuals according to their (internal) faith. As will be explained, this premise is not simply a matter of politics or of theology. Oomius does not intend to coerce belief in Reformed Christianity through fulfillment of the sound and pure religion. Belief in a religion begins at conversion, which is, in essence, a matter of will and the choice of man. Therefore, a theologico-political matter is necessarily connected with anthropological elements. In the Dissertatio, Oomius summarizes these elements through the deeply rooted Reformed concept of conscience (conscientie). The book is a dissertatio; it is polemical, and Schuringa accordingly classified it as such. The main question of this dissertatio is not about conscience but about the public exercise23 of the Roman Catholic religion during Oomius’s time. Oomius attacks Roman Catholics in his writing and calls them Pausgesinden (Papists),24 the Roman Catholics which Oomius refers to being primarily Ultramontanists or Jesuits such as Bellarmine. However, the matter of conscience is solidly and anthropologically connected to the main question. We will explore the anthropological implications related to the matter of conscience in this book. We will only examine Oomius’s major arguments in the Dissertatio following the order of the book’s clauses, as a detailed analysis of the entirety of its contents would go beyond the scope of this paper. 21 Simon Oomius, Theologico-Politica Dissertatio, ofte discours over dese Vrage: Of den Pausgesinden, in dese Vereenighde Nederlanden, niet en behoorde toegestaen te worden, d’openbaere exercitien van haere Religie, in eenige openbaere Kercken, of Capellen van eenige Steden, of ten minsten in eenige privatio-publycke plaetsen, Utrecht 1662. Schuringa classified this book as ‘polemical.’ In the following, I will refer to the work solely as Dissertatio, and cite only the page number from which its quotations were taken. 22 The book Troost-fonteyn (Asterdam, 1666) may be seen as an exception because it deals with the relief of the poor. But Oomius here also justifies poor relief with the Bible, i. e., in terms of performing a purely biblical religion. Moreover, he extends the scope of national matters to include poor relief. 23 The main question is a part of the title of the book: ‘Whether or not the Papists are to be allowed to publicly exercise their religion in this United Netherlands (Of den Pausgesinden, in dese Vereenighde Nederlanden, niet en behoorde toegestaen te worden, d’openbaere exercitien van haere Religie),’ see n. 1. 24 In the following, I will use the term the Papists. I will also apply the term the Roman Catholicism instead of Roman Catholicism to denote the religion of the Papists according to Oomius’s usage. I do not intend to abuse any terminology but merely to achieve clarity of discussion. We should consider that the time in which Oomius lived was a time of confessionalization and polarization.

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Theologico-Politica Dissertatio

Oomius witnessed the Golden Age of the Netherlands as realized by the Further Reformation. Culturally and economically, the Dutch Republic during the Further Reformation was enjoying her glory days, the Dutch having gained independence from Spain as well as international recognition as an independent country under the Peace of Münster. It is inadvisable to interpret the significance of the Eighty Years’ War merely on the grounds of its political or economic contexts. An interpretation of the Eighty Years’ War devoid of its politico-economic contexts would be equally injudicious. From the year 1573 onwards, when William of Orange joined forces with the Calvinists, the war began to take on an explicitly religious aspect. In the Dissertatio, Oomius discusses the Dutch Republic’s liberation from the Roman Catholicism and the protection of the Reformed faith as the main causes of the war, rendering the Eighty Years’ War chiefly a war of religion. The Dissertatio was published in 1662, by which time the Reformed Church was already in place. Oomius was therefore able to write the Dissertatio with a firm sense of both the Orangist contraremonstrance against religious pluralism and the Roman Catholicism of the time. In the period of confessionalization, tolerance emerged in the Dutch Republic.25 Oomius’s reasons for writing the Dissertatio stem from the following question that he received from his friend: Can the exercise of the Roman Catholicism in public places (such as churches or chapels) be allowed? Oomius’s reply to this question is resoundingly negative. According to him, the Papists possessed the freedom of conscience which gave them the right to continue believing in their own religion, but they did not have freedom of assembly which would allow them to exercise their religion publicly.

25 Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806, New York 1998, pp.637–676. A good summary of the situation is to be found on p. 637: ‘It was indeed during the 1650s that all the large former Counter-Remonstrant towns in Holland – Leiden, Haarlem, Gouda, and Enkhuizen – finally ceased breaking up Catholic conventicles and harassing Catholic priests. The Reformed consistory at Haarlem complained to the burgomasters, in June 1665, about the great change which had taken place in the city over the last ten years, with whole streets and quarters assuming a Catholic character and priests no longer concealing their activity.’ Oomius had been a pupil of Voetius, see pp. 645–646: ‘States party writers, after 1650, found little good to say about Maurits, or William II, both of whom had demonstrated how great a change in politics and general culture, as well as religion, ensued when the Stadholder took sides with the Calvinist orthodox, but respected Frederik Hendrik for reverting to the tolerant principles of William the Silent. Voetians, by contrast, hoped that Frederik Hendrik’s policy was an aberration which would never recur. With the overthrow of De Witt, and accession to power of William III, in 1672, Voetians congratulated themselves that a new era of confessional and social discipline was at hand.’ Oomius wrote a series of books in favour of William III, cf. Schuringa, Embracing (see n. 1), p. 44; pp. 327–330.

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Every man stands and falls by his Lord

Oomius relates the Inquisition with the repression of conscience.26 He argues that ‘the conscience is subject only to God who will reveal the spirit’s weight and the secret plans of hearts. No man may rule over our faith or conscience. Every man stands and falls by his Lord.’27 Therefore, the conscience of the Papists should also not be intruded upon.28 Oomius mentions the Jesuits’ attempt to retract the liberty of the United Brethren of Bohemia under the reign of Emperor Rudolph II. They planned ‘to revive an old edict shutting up the brethren’s churches’29 only to fail. Oomius quotes the answer of the emperor on this count: ‘I have been expecting intelligence like this because I have arrogated to myself dominion over the consciences of men, which is the sole prerogative of God.’30 He also quotes the Polish king Stephen Bathory: ‘[…] he did not want to rule over consciences because God had preserved just those three things from him: creation of something out of nothing, knowledge of future things, and rule over the conscience. […] I am a king of the people, not of consciences.’31 Here, we clearly see that the sacrosanctity of the conscience is made a point of debate. According to Oomius, every man’s conscience has only one Lord, that is, God. This basic and primary theonomy can be regarded as a fundamental element of Oomius’s politics. The three things withheld from Stephen Bathory are those things which God handles immediately without any second vessel. No one can injure that theonomy without blaspheming against God Himself. Accordingly, even the consciences of the heretics God Himself will judge. The faith, choices, and practices enacted in faith are to be judged by God alone. We may here raise two questions. First, is it justifiable to forbid the public exercise of the Roman Catholicism? Is it not an intrusion or repression of the conscience of the Papists to do so? Secondly, if only God rules the conscience – namely, the internal man – then why should an external exercise corresponding 26 Dissertatio, pp. 5–6. 27 Dissertatio, p. 6: ‘De conscientie is alleen Gode onderworpen, die de Geesten weight, ende de verborgene raetslaghen des herten sal openbaeren. Gheen mensch magh over ons gheloove of conscientie heerschappye voeren. Een yeder staet ende valt sijne Heere.’ 28 Dissertatio, p. 8. 29 Adam Blair, History of Waldenses, vol. 2, London 1833, p. 315. 30 Dissertatio, p. 7: ‘Diergelijck verwachte ick; nae dat ick heden hebbe beginnen te ghebruycken Godts heerschappye, ’t welck is der consciecntie.’ The English translation is of Blair, History (see, n. 29), p. 315. 31 Dissertatio, p. 7: ‘[…] hy niet en wilde heerschen over de conscientien, nadien Godt voor hem alleen dese drie dingen hadde bewaert, yet uyt niet te scheppen, toekomende dingen te weten, en over de conscientien te heerschen. […] Ik ben een Koninck der Volckeren, niet der conscientien.’

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to the internal conscience be prohibited? Why should the rule of God be blocked by man? Oomius answers these two questions from various approaches.

2.2.

The Roman Catholicism is superstitious idolatry

Oomius’ primary reasons for opposing the exercise of the Papist activities are theological (de Theologische redenen). In general (in het gemeyn), the Roman Catholicism can be considered a heresy engaged in the promulgation of falsehoods. In particular (in het bysonder), the Roman Catholicism is an idolatry (afgodery) which goes far beyond that of the heathens.32 Oomius argues on the grounds of The Book of Judges and The Second Book of Kings that the exercise of idolatry is against the will of God, it incurs His wrath and causes countries to perish. This sort of argument implies the conclusion that choosing true faith is also directly connected with the existence and prosperity of a nation. As justification before God is necessary for an individual to become holy in this life and to be saved in the life to come, justification before God is also necessary for a nation to flourish and endure. This is clearly revealed when Oomius sums up the ultimate goal of the Eighty Years’ War as being ‘to vindicate the privilege, the freedom, and the justice of these lands.’33 The term ‘justice’ (gerechtigheden) used here is not a concept which simply indicates ethical or political justice. Although it does not exclude ethical or political characteristics, it is best understood from a religious standpoint. Privilege and freedom are regarded as the definitive means to choose true religion and to maintain it. Oomius therefore writes as follows: ‘Religion ought not to be tempered to politics; but politics to religion. Such is the rule of God’s Word.’34 As a result, Oomius considers the public exercise of the Roman Catholicism to be an act similar to bringing a Trojan horse into the Netherlands.35 The Reformed government was therefore to cease any attempt to exercise the Roman Catholicism.36 The Reformed government was to follow not its own will but the 32 Dissertatio, p. 9: ‘In het bysonder van hare grove tastelijcke ende grouwelcike afgodery, die in veelen d’afgodery der Heydenen te boven gaet, dewijle zy dat op-eten, ’twelcke zy achten haren Godt te wesen.’ 33 Dissertatio, p. 143: ‘[…] dat doen den oorlogh is ghevoert tot voorstandt van de Privilegien, vryheden, en gerechtigheden deser landen.’ 34 Dissertatio, p. 14: ‘De Religie en moet niet ghetempert worden naer de Politie maer de Politie na de Religie, dat is na den regel van Godts Woort.’ 35 Dissertatio, p. 14: ‘[…] soo souden sy wel verseeckert mogen zijn dat sy het Troyaensche Peert in haelden.’ 36 Dissertatio, p. 17: ‘Hoe konnen onse Overheden (die wy alle als Gereformeerde aenmercken) tonen dat haer’t wreck en de weldaedt der reformatie is aenghenaem, alsse die niet en poghen

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rules of the Word of God (revealed only in the Bible), and for this very reason were its governors called ‘the foster fathers of Christ’ (de Voetster-heeren van Christi). We may say that in ruling according to the Bible (the revelation of God’s will); they were performing the preventive judgment of God. Only in such situations could their rulings be God’s rulings. Here the conscience of the subjects is being assessed by the intermediate judgment of God.

2.3.

The Roman Catholicism teaches doctrines leading to the subversion of the state

Oomius goes on to describe the political reasons (de Politijcke redenen) for forbidding the public exercise of the Roman Catholicism. The Papists confer superiority on spiritual authority rather than on civil or political authority. The clergy are not judged by any secular law, as Bellarmine says in a passage which Oomius quotes: ‘Princes are not sovereign lords with respect to the clergy.’37 This position, however, is taken one step further: ‘Heretics ought not only to be excommunicated but also to be given the death penalty as they deserve.’38 Such an argument can only be asserted when supreme authority both spiritual and secular belongs to the Pope. This standpoint presupposes the following: ‘The temporal is subordinate to the spiritual. Temporary dominion is built on faith and grace.’39 On the basis of the above, the Papists believe that the Pope has the authority to nullify all oaths and vows. This power of nullification is fatal because it destroys oaths of loyalty. The Pope has the authority to do away with such oaths through other rulers by ordering immunity.40 The possibility of revolt therefore comes under the arbitrary will of the Pope.

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met alle macht en alle devoiren uyt te brengen, en alle dat gene, ’twelcke met deselve strijdt, te verbeteren, ende af te breecken.’ Dissertatio, p. 19: ‘Soo heeft Bellarminus in een bysonder tracktaetken van dese Stoffe, geleert. Dat haer Geestelickheyt van geen wereltsche Richter mach gheoordeelt worden, al is’t dat zy politijcke wetten overtreden; en dat de Princen, ten aensien vande Geestelickheydt, geen Souvereyne Heeren zijn.’ Dissertatio, pp. 19–20: ‘Dat de ketters […] niet alleen moeten geexcommuniceert, dat is, tot de helsche straffen veroordeelt worden; maer oock daer en boven de jure & de facto de straffe des doodts verdienen.’ Dissertatio, p. 30: ‘Om dat de tijdelicke dinghen den Geestelicken worden gesubordineert, en om dat het temporale dominium gefundeert wort in het geloove ende genade.’ Dissertatio, p. 31: ‘Dat wel den Paus […] niet wel en kan seggen, tot de onderdanen, wederstaet, of doodt uwen Koning, of Prins, om dat strijdt tegen het Goddelicke recht: Maer dat hy wel kan seggen, dat desen of genen geen meerder Koninckis, en derhalven die naderhant dien N. N. werderstaet of doodt.’

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These maxims are spread and circulated by the Roman Catholic schools and writings. Those who became open to the convictions of the Papists were willing to bind their consciences to the Pope and consider him as an authority higher than the State or magistrates of the Netherlands. Oomius describes these Roman Catholic maxims as ‘soul- and land-corrupting maxims’ (ziel- en lant-verdervende maximen).41 Therefore, he argued that the public exercise of the Roman Catholicism should be banned not only for religious but also for political reasons. Oomius also refers to the Jesuits who enthusiastically adhere to such papal absolutism.42

2.4.

Roman Catholics are pro-Spanish

Those who accepted the Roman Catholic standpoint were bound to express affinity for the king of Spain rather than the State of the Netherlands, the king of Spain being an advocate of the Roman Catholicism and an oppressor of the privileges and freedom of the Netherlands. Oomius substantiates this argument by suggesting several documents as proof of his claim.43 Their assertion is quite apparent. Once a Papist, one must be loyal to a sovereign who protects the Roman Catholicism.44

41 Dissertatio, p. 59. 42 Cf. Dissertatio, p. 59: ‘Nadien derhalven het Pausdom in het ghemeyn, ten minsten in dese onse Nederlanden, soo ganschelick met het Iesuitisdom is besoetelt, vermenght en doorweven, dat’et van het selve geheel inghenomen need geregeert wordt; en insonderheyt nadien de Iesuyten van de Pausgesinden selve niet met gewelt van haer verdreven ende geweert worden, maer in hooge achtinge by haer zijn, en roemen dat se in dese Nederlanden in een ontelbare menighte zijn, soo kan wel worden afghenomen, hoe schadelick dat’et soude zijn voor de Republijck en het ghemeyne best […] in dien de Pausghesinden hier openbare vryheyt, al was’et in noch soo weynigh Kercken en Steden, wierde vergunt, om publijckelick hare superstitien te leren, en ziel- en lant-verdervende maximen voor te setten.’ 43 For example, Dissertatio pp. 62–63 states: ‘[…] aldaer inde Academien onderwesen in die Spaansche Theologie, haer ghedurigh indrucken: Dat de Staten van dese Landen, niet en zijn geweldige Heeren, die als rebellen de regeeringhe onwettelick besitten, ja den Coning sijn landt dieflijck onthouden, om haer selven slechts rijcke te maken, ende de ghemeynten uyt te suypen; Dat de Coningh van Spanjen is onse wettelicke Prins, en dat derhalven, alle hem behoorden daer voor te erkennen, ende in tijdts daer na te trachten, om sijn gunste te krijghen, en met hem te vereenighen, eer hy door sijn groote macht de landen vermeestere.’ 44 Dissertatio, p. 63: ‘Dat onse Catholijcke waren toe-gedaen den Coninck van Spanjen, en dat hy […] met alle neerstigheydt dit dede, om haer in die devotie te houden.’

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Dutch who believe in the Roman Catholicism are unable to be patriots

This point is a reasonable conclusion drawn from the aforementioned discussions. From a theological viewpoint, the Papists entertain Roman Catholic idolatry and regard the Pope as their sovereign. From a political viewpoint, they cannot help but be pro-Spanish, which makes them essentially ‘enemies of the state.’45 Oomius goes on to state an important point: the Papists bind their conscience to the Pope. He calls this attitude ‘Papist conscience’ (paepsche conscientie). The essence of Papist conscience lies in exercising said conscience fearlessly with the firm conviction that the orders of the Pope belong to God.46

2.6.

Permitting exercise of the Roman Catholicism contradicts the fundamental laws of the Netherlands

Here Oomius draws upon many documents supporting the assumption that the establishment of a Reformed government in the Netherlands makes it illegal to publicly exercise any religion opposed to ‘the Reformed Evangelical religion’ (de Gereformeerde Euangelische religie). This provides yet another legal reason to forbid the public exercise of the Roman Catholicism.

2.7.

The Roman Catholicism cannot coexist with the Reformed religion

The impossibility of Roman Catholic and Reformed coexistence is caused wholly by the Roman Catholicism, as the Reformed government neither banished the Papists nor harmed their person or property. The Papists had the freedom of conscience to believe in their own religion personally and in private; only the public exercise of their religion was illegal. Roman Catholic regimes, on the other hand, founded the Inquisition in order to eradicate heretics. Heretics were not only to be excommunicated but also to suffer personal injury or loss of property. According to Bellarmine, freedom of conscience and religion was not to be granted to the heretics and the Roman Catholic religion was to be protected with the highest forces of governmental authority.47 45 Dissertatio, pp. 67–68: ‘[…] dat de Pausgesinden souden worden toe-gelaten, pleginghen van superstitien teghen Godts Heylige Woordt, oeffeningen van kennelijcke ergernisse, of in– voeringhe van Pauselijcke Hierarchie, noch oock betoninghe van toe-ghenegentheydt tot den Coningh van Spanjen, Erf-vyandt deser landen.’ 46 Dissertatio, pp. 73, 76. 47 Dissertatio, p. 95: ‘Bellarminus leert, dat geen Magistraet, of Prins gheoorloft is sijnen On-

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In this clause we need to pay attention to the difference in the terminology chosen by the Papists and the Reformed. The Papists principally denote the entire body of non-Papists with the term ‘heretic,’ but the Reformed chiefly call the Roman Catholicism an idolatry or superstition.

2.8.

The former promise of the government to preserve the Roman Catholic religion is not infringed

From here on Oomius refutes the counter-arguments against his line of reasoning. Firstly, he emphasizes that the Roman Catholicism should not be exercised publicly, while again affirming the danger of revolt within the Roman Catholicism. Moreover, he quotes various documents on the fact that the formal promise of public exercise was not rendered anywhere. Next, Oomius says that the Papists cannot be trusted. Because they may always break their oath of loyalty towards the state according to Papist conscience, they are not trustworthy and cannot become patriots. The possibility of conspiring against the fatherland is always within them.48 Therefore, the freedom of religion is promised, but its public exercise is not included in that promise.

2.9.

The prohibition of the public exercise of the Roman Catholicism is not the repression of conscience

Oomius begins by refuting the assertion that it is a repression of conscience to prohibit the exercise of the Roman Catholicism. He firstly criticizes the manner in which Roman Catholics treat the heretics.49 He continues by repudiating the Socinians, the Remonstrants, and the Libertines who hold the same convictions derdanen vryheyt van conscientie, of vrede van religie te vergunnen; maer dat hy alleen eene religie ghehouden is met het hooghste geweldt te verdedigen.’ 48 Dissertatio, p. 105: ‘[…] de Paepsche conventiculen en exercitien verboden zijn; t’welcke geschiede om Politijcke redenen, genomen vande tegenwoordige ende inevitabile of onvermijdelicke noodtsackelickheydt, welcke veroorsaeckt wiert door de trouwloosheydt der Geestelicke ende andere Papisten, die onder decksel vande exercitie haerer religie, […] Onder die verbergheden haer alderhande Religieusen, die tot verderf en ruine der republijcke met malkanderen raedt pleeghten, tot vervorderinge en voortsettinge van de geduyrige molitien der Spanjaerden, tegen het Vaderlandt, en desselfs rechten ende vryheyt.’ 49 Dissertatio, p. 115: ‘[…] want de Roomsche kercke niet alleen geen exercitie van een religie wil toe laeten, die met de haere niet accordeert; maer verstaet oock, dat den ketteren … geen vryheyt van conscientie magh vergunt worden, maer datse voor de vierschaere moeten worden gesleept, gedwongen haer geloove te openbaren, ende ’t Paepsche geloove aen te nemen, op verbeurte van lijf en goet.’

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as the Papists. However, Oomius ensures that freedom of conscience and freedom of the public exercise of religion are separate from each other. He holds that it is possible to prohibit the public exercise of a religion without repressing its believers’ freedom of conscience. He also gives several examples of how this is possible. The Remonstrants under the French regime had freedom of conscience even while the public exercise of religion was illegal; so did the Lutherans who lived under the Reformed government.50 Oomius goes on to mention two other points. Governments control only ‘the external man’ (den uytterlicken mensch). Hence, they are not to oversee the consciences of individuals but to limit themselves to dealing with public exercise of conscience. Oomius calls the governments ‘foster fathers of the true Church of Jesus Christ’ (Voester-heeren vande ware Kercke Jesu Christi). They curb the exercise of false religions – namely, the misuse of God’s name and the circulation of harmful doctrines which may potentially destroy the fatherland.51 Therefore, the governmental control over illegal exercises of faith cannot be considered the repression of conscience (conscientie-dwangh). According to Oomius, if governmental control of the public execution of crimes can be regarded as a repression of conscience, then the punishment of a person or denying ownership and believing theft would likewise be a repression of conscience. Therefore, all law enforcements would become the repression of conscience.

3.

Conclusion

Currently, freedom of conscience cannot be separated from freedom of assembly. In the period in which Oomius lived, however, the Reformed Church of the Dutch Republic was a privileged one, so that other religions could be officially prohibited from publicly exercising their beliefs. Nevertheless, it now seems clear that strict followers of the Reformed religion such as Oomius did not deny freedom of faith and of conscience. The matter of choosing and believing in a religion was left entirely to the individual, whose conscience would be judged only by God. 50 Dissertatio, p. 116. 51 Dissertatio, p. 124: ‘Maer den uytterlicken mensch wort alleen belet, dat ghebodt van de conscientie in ’t werck te stellen. Alsoo den uytterlicken mensch buyten twijffel staet ter inspectie van de Christelicke Overheden, en nadien die sijn Voester-heeren vande ware Kercke Jesu Christi, soo moghense wel beletten d’uytterlicke pleginge van een valschen Godt-dienst; insonderheyt wanneerse streckt tot groote ergernisse ende ontsteltenisse van de ware Kercke Jesu Christi, tot lasteringhe van Godts name, ende vergheselschapt gaet met seer schadelicke ende landt-verderffelicke maximen, hoedaenigh wy ghetoont hebben den Paepschen Godtdienst te wesen.’

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In Oomius’s logic, the distinction between freedom of conscience and freedom of assembly is not grounded in any theoretical or political objection. As is common at present, freedom of conscience and freedom of assembly should be regarded inseparable. However, Oomius’ greatest cause is the immediate obedience to God (that is, obedience without any mediation). What he calls the theological reasons in his book is nothing but the necessity to observe the Word of God. The disobedience of an individual causes the downfall of that individual only, but the disobedience of a nation leads to the downfall of that entire nation. Individuals are justified by their faith before God, but a nation is justified before God by its public exercise of true religion. For Oomius, both freedom of conscience and freedom of assembly are primarily a matter of God’s rights (not of human rights) but should be treated on different dimensions. Likewise, freedom of conscience should not be considered in the light of autonomy but of theonomy. The political reasons that Oomius discusses in the Dissertatio have their roots in theological reason. The theological necessity of God’s act is in itself political. The government must consequently decide its position with regard to religion. Which religion it chooses forms the fate of the country. This is different from the principle ‘cuius regio, eius religio’ because it is based not on the contingency of a prince’s religion but on the necessity of God’s precepts. As religious wars are waged for individuals’ freedom of conscience, so does the ‘war of religion’ asserted by Oomius battle for the choice of the right and true religion instead of idolatry. Another point of note is that the Roman Catholicism and its hierarchy have had the authority and power to shake a country and its regime in accordance with Oomius’s concerns. As previously mentioned, the Reformed Dutch regime concerned itself only with guarding against idolatry and the public exercise of false religion, but the Roman Catholic regime was stringently opposed to all that it considered to be heresy. The Roman Catholic concept of heresy encompasses the restraint of both individual conscience and the exercise of unauthorized religion. What Oomius called Papist conscience52 shows that the Pope stands between believers and God. Conscience does not primarily belong to God but to

52 Oomius says that the abrogation of the Union of Brussels and the formation of the Union of Arras in the southern provinces were stimulated and sustained by the ‘cord of three strands’ (dri-voudigh snoer) ‘[…] aroused by the orders of the Pope, their pro-Spanish Fathers, and priests. Under the pretext of protecting or recovering their religion, they harmfully betrayed the great cause of the fatherland ([…] en de gemeyne saeck van het Vaderlandt schandelick verraedende, daer toe wordende op-geweckt door het bevel van den Paus, en hare gespanjalonizeerde Papen ende Priesteren en onder pretext van hare religie te bewaeren ofte te herstellen’ (Dissertatio, p. 164). Irrespective of one’s political position, one can cause harm to the Netherlands if one has a ‘Papist conscience’ (Paepsche conscientie), see Dissertatio, p. 165.

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the Pope. Even if God rules over conscience, He does so by the mediation of the Pope. We have so far observed the close-knit relationship between God, the Bible, and conscience within Oomius’s theology. He follows the Reformed orthodoxy in asserting that God’s will is almost immediately revealed in the Bible. The letters of the Bible are inspired by the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who is also God. The Holy Spirit also enlightens the conscience so that God’s sovereignty is realized in the conscience through the Bible. Therefore, for Oomius, the Reformed equivalent of the Roman Catholic Pope is structurally the Bible. Whereas the Papists bind themselves to the will of the Pope, the Reformed Church believes that immediate ruling of God is to be actualized by the observance of God’s Word in the Bible. We may thus conclude that Oomius regards anthropology as inseparable from theology. God is a concrete agent in all dimensions of governance, from the individual to the nation. In Oomius’s political works as well as in his religious works, God is the utmost agent and substance. There are none who can evade this governance. Every man must make his own choice: to accept God’s ruling or declare himself insubordinate to it. God only will judge mankind one by one according to their deeds and choices. We may define this situation as theologicoanthropological. In Oomius’s conceptual framework, the conscience is bound to God. Freedom of conscience does not mean its liberation from God as conscience can never be freed from God. Thus the Bible, God’s word and revelation, has a positive function in politics besides its positive role in religious life. Can we, however, justify theocracy by means of theonomy in the present day, as Oomius did? This hardly seems possible. It is implausible to reproduce either the Reformed or Roman Catholic theologico-politica of Oomius’s time in the present day. However, in the present, there still exist political parties that claim to advocate religious identities. There are also many people who wish to participate in acts of government without abandoning their specific religious identities or without reducing them to general and common ethics. Should those kinds of identities be publicly performed or explicitly expressed? Can politics be religious? Or should a politician give up his religious identity while in office? Is his conscience bound only to himself or also to a deity that he believes in? Would there be any possibility for religious organizations not to become interest groups or pressure groups when their members come to power? Oomius’s discussions may stimulate further considerations on such matters.

Thomas Klöckner

Heinrich Alting (1583–1644) – erste Einblicke in eine Biografie (zugleich ein Beitrag zur Netzwerktätigkeit der Reformierten im ausgehenden 16. Jahrhundert)

1.

Einleitende Bemerkungen zur persona incognita Heinrich Alting

Wer war Heinrich Alting? Heinrich Alting darf als einer, wenn nicht der Begründer der Auffassung von Dogmengeschichte als einer selbstständigen Disziplin neben der Dogmatik verstanden werden, freilich in einem noch vorkritischen Stadium auf dem Weg zur Konsolidierung jener Disziplin.1 Die daraus resultierende verdiente Beachtung seiner Person und seines Werkes stehen noch aus. Die Forschung sieht in den voraufklärerischen Werken des Jesuiten Dionysius Petavius (1583–1652) und des reformierten Schotten Johannes Forbesius a Corse (1593–1648) Vorläufer der Disziplin, die im ausgehenden 19. und am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts ihre Blütezeit erreichen sollte.2 Die Frage steht im Raum, inwieweit Altings dogmengeschichtliches Werk hier ebenso Erwähnung verdient.3 1 Vgl. Otto Ritschl, Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus I, Leipzig 1908, S. 31f; Doede Nauta, „Alting, Hendrik“, in Biografisch lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlands protestantisme (=BLGNP), Bd. 2, Kampen 1983, S. 22–24, hier S. 22. 2 Vgl. nur Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, „Dogmengeschichtsschreibung“, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie (= TRE), Bd. 9, Berlin 1982, S. 116–125, hier S. 116; Gerhard May, „Dogmengeschichte/Dogmengeschichtsschreibung“, Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft (= RGG4), Bd. 1, Tübingen 41998 [1909], Sp. 915–920, hier Sp. 916. 3 In chronologischer Reihenfolge (hier bewusst in Form von Kurztiteln): Dogmatiken, wie die von Wilhelm Gass, Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik I, Berlin 1854, S. 434f und Alexander Schweizer, Die protestantischen Centraldogmen II, Zürich 1856, S. 163, 214–216, 389, 425, 430, 519 verweisen nur im Zusammenhang mit der Synode zu Dordrecht und in summarischer Form bzgl. der Prädestinationsanschauung nachreformatorischer Theologen auf Alting. Friedrich Loofs, Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, Halle 1906, S. 931–942, bes. S. 936f weist auf keinen Beitrag Altings hin. Ritschl, Dogmengeschichte I (s. Anm. 1), S. 30–32 nennt, wie bereits erwähnt, zwar Alting als Begründer der Idee einer Dogmengeschichte, widmet sich aber nur in aller Kürze den konkreten Vorstellungen, die hiermit verbunden sind. Paul Althaus, Die Prinzipien der deutschen reformierten Dogmatik,

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Zum Thema der Third RefoRC-Conference „Anthropological Reformations – Anthropology in the Era of Reformation“ ist in dogmengeschichtlicher Hinsicht allerdings kein Locus vorhanden. Altings opus magnum, die Theologia Historica, auf die sich vor allem die vorangestellten Bemerkungen zur noch mangelnden Würdigung seines Werkes beziehen, ist unvollendet geblieben. Es handelt sich bei der Theologia Historica nicht um ein Kompendium für den Gelehrten, sondern wie sein Sohn Jakob Alting schreibt, hat er jene verfasst, „um der akademischen Jugend zu nützen.“4 Nur etwa ein Fünftel des geplanten Stoffes – die ersten vier Loci („De natura Theologiae“; „De verbo Dei, sive de sacra scriptura“; „De Deo, essentia uno, trino personis“; „De decretis Dei in genere, deque praedestinatione divina in specie“) – hat Alting zu Papier gebracht und wahrscheinlich im Jahr 1635 in Groningen vorgetragen. Einen Locus „De homine“ sucht man hier vergebens.5 Seine Loci Communes, enthalten als erster Band der Heidelberger Schriften, sprechen jedoch ganz orthodox von der Schöpfung und dem Fall des Menschen innerhalb des Artikels „De creatione“ und betrachten ihn dabei nicht ausschließlich unter harmatologischen Gesichtspunkten.6 Mit den folgenden skizzenhaften Hinweisen zum Werden des Dogmenhistorikers Heinrich Alting soll der Versuch unternommen werden, einige biografische, historische und theologiegeschichtliche Zusammenhänge zu erhellen, ohne Leipzig 1914 verweist nicht auf einen dogmengeschichtlichen Beitrag Altings. Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte IV/2, S. 676–700, bes. S. 682f erwähnt Alting generell nicht. Im Namensregister von Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, Lehrbuch der Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte II, Gütersloh 1999 fehlt der Name Alting ebenso gänzlich. Immerhin Hubert Filser, Dogma, Dogmen, Dogmatik, Münster 2001, S. 384 erwähnt ihn „als Wegbereiter der historischen Theologie“ und attestiert ihm Ansätze zur Dogmengeschichtsschreibung; vgl. S. 289, 384–386. 4 Henricus Altingius, Theologia Historica sive systematis historici loca quatuor, Amsterdam 1664, hier Praefatio ad lectorem, S. 2 („maxime in usum Academicae juventutis“). 5 Ob ein solcher Artikel geplant war, konnte nicht rekonstruiert werden. 6 Henricus Altingius, Scripta Theologica Heidelbergensia, Tomus I: „Loci Communes cum Didactici tum Elenchtici“, Amsterdam 1646, S. 84f. Der vorgetragene Stoff erfährt dabei eine neue Anordnung, vergleicht man ihn z. B. mit der Entwicklung der Loci communes (1521) des Philipp Melanchthon, die gleich zu Beginn einen Artikel über die „Kräfte des Menschen, insbesondere den freien Willen“ (1,1–70) enthalten, hin zu den Loci praecipui theologici (1559), die im Sinne der alten Summen der Theologie mit einem Artikel über die Gotteslehre einsetzen. Ein Vergleich liegt nahe, da das philippistische Lehrbuch sich im späthumanistischen Heidelberg innerhalb des Kollegiums der theologischen Fakultät großer Beliebtheit erfreute, auch wenn seit 1602 daneben Calvins Institutio trat; vgl. Herman J. Selderhuis, „Ille Phoenix. Melanchthon und der Heidelberger Calvinismus 1583–1622“, in Melanchthon und der Calvinismus, hg. v. Günter Frank und Herman J. Selderhuis, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2005 (Melanchthon-Schriften der Stadt Bretten 9), S. 45–59, hier S. 55; Nam Kyu Lee, Die Prädestinationslehre der Heidelberger Theologen 1583–1622. Georg Sohn (1551–1589), Herman Rennecherus (1550–?), Jacob Kimedoncius (1554–1596), Daniel Tossanus (1541–1602), Reformed Historical Theology 10, Göttingen 2009, S. 32–35, 53f. Alting vertrat hier die dritte Professur, sprich die Dogmatik als „professor locorum communium“ von August 1613–1622.

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der Versuchung zu erliegen, in sich abgeschlossene Historie zu schildern; dies lässt die Quellenlage zum gegebenen Zeitpunkt nicht zu. Überhaupt ähnelt die Bildungsbiografie Heinrich Altings gewiss vielen Lebensläufen im frühneuzeitlichen Kontext, wirft aber passim einen Blick auf die Netzwerktätigkeit der nordwesteuropäischen Reformierten im ausgehenden 16. Jahrhundert. Abgerundet wird der kurze Abriss der Bildungsstationen Heinrich Altings mit einem Blick auf die anthropologischen Voraussetzungen, die hier kategorial von Bedeutung sind.

2.

Kurzer Abriss der Bildungsstationen Heinrich Altings

2.1

Schulische Prägung in Emden

Als Sohn des großen Menso Alting7 und seiner Frau Maria, geborene Bischoff,8 kam Heinrich am 17. Februar 1583 in Emden zur Welt.9 Seine Taufe fand am 7 Vgl. Biographisch woordenboek van protestantsche godgeleerden in Nederland (= BWPGN), Bd. 1, Den Haag 1907, S. 107–111 (mit älterer ndl. Literatur); Neue Deutsche Bibliographie (= NDB), Bd. 1, Berlin 1953, S. 225; RGG4 (s. Anm. 2), Bd. 1, Sp. 374f; Biographisches Lexikon für Ostfriesland (= BLO), Bd. 1, Aurich 1993, S. 24–30. Einen ausführlichen Überblick über Leben und Werk bietet Hermann Klugkist Hesse, Menso Alting. Eine Gestalt aus der Kampfzeit der calvinischen Kirche, Berlin 1928, dessen Monografie allerdings hagiografische Elemente nicht abzusprechen sind. Denselben Vorwurf erhebt der Verfasser (ebd., das Vorwort, S. 7) gegenüber einer unveröffentlichten Biografie von F. W. Cuno über Menso Alting; vgl. hierzu Gerhard Menk, „Friedrich Wilhelm Cuno (1838–1904). Pfarrer, Historiker und Glaubenskämpfer – Eine Lebensskizze“, in Ders., Zwischen Kanzel und Katheder. Protestantische Pfarrer und Professorenprofile zwischen dem 16. und 20. Jahrhundert – Ausgewählte Aufsätze, Marburg 2011, S. 867–888, hier S. 886, Fn. 65. Eine Gesamtschau neueren Datums bietet der Begleitband zur Emder Ausstellung „Menso Alting und seine Zeit: Glaubensstreit – Freiheit – Bürgerstolz“, insbesondere der um Präzision bemühte Beitrag von Klaas-Dieter Voss, „Menso Alting. Eine Kurzbiographie“, in Menso Alting und seine Zeit. Glaubensstreit – Freiheit – Bürgerstolz, hg. v. Dieter Voss und Wolfgang Jahn (im Auftrag der Evangelisch-reformierten Gemeinde Emden, der Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek Emden und des Ostfriesischen Landesmuseums Emden), Oldenburg 2012, S. 13–79. 8 Maria Bischoff (auch Bischop oder latinisiert Episcopia) entstammt einer vornehmen Familie aus Gangelt im Jülichschen Gebiet. Hesses Schilderung zufolge – er greift hier auf Ubbo Emmius zurück – stand sie Menso charakterlich in nichts nach, die Kampf- und Entbehrungsbereitschaft betreffend; vgl. Hesse, Menso Alting (s. Anm. 7), S. 74–77; zu Verlobung u. Hochzeit vgl. Ubbo Emmius, Mensonis Altingii Pastoris Emdani […] Vita, hg. v. Adam Menso Isinck, Groningen 1728, Kap. 5 u. 6; vgl. auch die kurzen Angaben zum Stammbaum in Samuel Maresius, Oratio funebris in luctuosissimum obitum theologi celeberrimi, D. Henrici Altingi in academiis Heidelbergensi […], Groningen 1644, S. 8 (die 40-seitige Schrift ist im Original nicht mit Seitenzahlen versehen, die hier verwandte Zählung setzt mit der ersten Seite des laufenden Textes ein). Zu den deutsch-niederländischen Heiratsbeziehungen, insbesondere im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, liegen einige Forschungen vor; vgl. Petrus Th. F. M. Boekholt, „Die Beziehungen zwischen den Nordöstlichen Niederlanden und Nordwest-

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22. Februar in der Großen Kirche zu Emden statt10 (dem heutigen Standort der Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek). In dieser frühneuzeitlichen Stadt mit ihrem sich formierenden Bürgertum, die nicht unwesentlich durch den Einfluss des Vaters Menso zu einem Brennpunkt reformierter Konfessionalisierung im europäischen Kontext wurde, besuchte Heinrich mit sieben Jahren die Lateinschule.11 Eine ausführliche Darstellung über diese Einrichtung fehlt bis dato. Petrus Bartels nennt in seinem Abriss einer Geschichte des Schulwesens in Ostfriesland nur am Rande die ostfriesischen Lateinschulen.12 Die in Emden gelegene Lateinschule hatte ihre Ursprünge im 15. Jahrhundert; zur Zeit Heinrichs befand sie sich allerdings nicht mehr an der Ecke Kirchstraße/Schulstraße13 unter der un-

9

10 11

12 13

Deutschland“, in Rondom Eems en Dollard. Historische verkenningen in het grensgebied van Nordoost-Nederland en Noordwest-Duitsland – Rund um Ems und Dollart. Historische Erkundungen im Grenzgebiet der Nordostniederlande und Nordwestdeutschlands, hg. v. Otto S. Knottnerus et al., Groningen/Leer 1992 (Van Dijk & Foorthuis REGIO-PRojekt Groningen), S. 244–255, hier S. 247–250, bes. 248f. Erich von Reeken, „Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen des Emder Predigers Menso Alting und seines Sohnes, des Professors der Theologie Dr. Heinrich Alting“, Quellen und Forschungen zur Ostfriesischen Familien- und Wappenkunde 24/1–2 (1975): S. 1–24, hier S. 4; Die nachfolgenden biografischen Angaben richten sich vor allem nach der Haus- und Familienchronik der Familie Alting. Erich von Reeken hat eine zuverlässige Übersetzung besorgt, den lateinischen Text samt Anmerkungen bietet eine Edition Erich von Reekens aus dem Jahr 1978. Uwe Claussen hat als Nachkomme der Familie Alting eine Zusammenstellung der bisherigen Daten (Faksimile und eigene Übersetzung der Chronik samt einführender Artikel) vorgelegt. Im Falle der Familienchronik handelt es sich um eine eingeheftete Blattbeilage in ein Werk von Heinrich Pantaleon aus Basel mit Namen Chronographia ecclesiae Christianae (1550). Die Vermutung liegt nahe, dass Menso Alting diese tabellarische Darstellung der Kirchengeschichte schon als Student in Basel erworben hat; vgl. Erich von Reeken, „Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen des Emder Predigers Menso Alting und seines Sohnes, des Professors der Theologie Dr. Heinrich Alting“, Lias. Sources and Documents relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas 5/1 (1978): S. 19–48, hier S. 21 und dann als Ablage für seine persönliche Geschichte und die seiner Familie nutze. Auf Seite 13 beginnt die Weiterführung der Chronik durch H. Alting, an die sich ein Appendix ab Seite 43 anschließt, der von anderer Hand verfasst ist – wahrscheinlich durch einen Enkel, Heinrichs Sohn, Jakob Alting; vgl. BWPGN (s. Anm. 7), Bd. 1, S. 119–127; Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek (= NNBW), Bd. 1, Leiden 1911, Sp. 96f. Im Gegensatz zu seinem Vater Menso Alting schildert Heinrich neben den genealogischen Nachrichten über seine Familie und Verwandte auch kirchliche und zeitgeschichtliche Ereignisse, womit das Urteil Erich von Reekens „seine Darlegungen [seien] interessanter“ nicht von der Hand zu weisen ist; vgl. von Reeken, Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen 1978 (s. Anm. 9), S. 23. Nachdem das Buch den Besitzer wohl mehrmals wechselte (ebd., S. 22f) befindet es sich jetzt in der Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek (=JaLB) in Emden unter der Signatur „Theol 4º 0504 R“. Von Reeken, Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen 1975 (s. Anm. 9), S. 7. Hierbei handelt es sich wohl um keine gravierende Abweichung von dem regulären Alter für einen Schuleintritt in den deutschen Territorien, der normalerweise mit 6 Jahren geschah; vgl. Stefan Ehrenpreis, „Bildung und Pädagogik“, in Calvin Handbuch, hg. v. Herman J. Selderhuis, Tübingen 2009, S. 422–430, hier S. 424. Petrus Bartels, Abriß der Geschichte des Schulwesens in Ostfriesland, Aurich 1870, passim. Zu diesem älteren Standort vgl. neuerdings die Ausgrabungsberichte, in Rolf Bärenfän-

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mittelbaren Aufsicht der Großen Kirche zu Emden. Anfänglich unterstand sie dort der Obhut der Kirchenältesten der Moederkerk (Mutterkirche) des nordwesteuropäischen Protestantismus.14 Eine hier besonders stark betriebene und presbyterial verordnete Form von Sozialdisziplinierung, in diesem Fall der Schule, hat unter anderem zu der Modifizierung des bekannten Oestreich’schen Paradigmas durch Heinz Schilling geführt.15 Der wohl von rauer Disziplin16 gekennzeichnete Unterricht widmete sich nicht nur der allgemeinen religiösen Unterweisung, sondern sollte bewusst dafür sorgen, dass „de edele latynsche kunst zo gar nicht vorachtet weerde.“17 Nicht allein die deutsche Sprache stand auf dem Lehrplan, sondern vornehmlich lateinische „Grammatica […], Dialectica […] et Musica […]“; sogar von „grekescher sprake“ ist die Rede, alles jedoch unter dem Vorbehalt nach Gelegenheit der Städte.18 Offenkundig spielen, be-

14

15

16 17

18

ger, Bernd Rasink und Friedrich Scheele, Zwischen Kirche und Emsmauer – Ausgrabungen in der Kirchstraße in Emden, Oldenburg 2006 (Wegweiser zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte Niedersachsens 25). Im Jahr 1573 kaufte der Emder Magistrat, nachdem die Räumlichkeiten direkt gegenüber der Großen Kirche zu eng und baufällig wurden, ein Gebäude an der Steinstraße, das bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt die Münzstätte beherbergte. Hier wurde nun die städtische Lateinschule eingerichtet bis ins Jahr 1877 hinein, wiederum nicht unweit der Großen Kirche gelegen; vgl. zur Vorgeschichte die Anmerkungen des Chronisten Jakobus Isebrandus Harkenroth, Oostfriesische Oorsprongkelykheden, Van alle Steden, Vlekken, Dorpen, Rivieren, enz. in ende buiten Oostriesland en Harrellingeland. Tweede Druk, Bd. 1, Groningen 1731, S. 158f. Vgl. Stefan Ehrenpreis, „Erziehungs- und Schulwesen zwischen Konfessionalisierung und Säkularisierung. Forschungsprobleme und methodische Innovationen“, in Erziehung und Schulwesen zwischen Konfessionalisierung und Säkularisierung. Forschungsperspektiven, europäische Fallbeispiele und Hilfsmittel, hg. v. Heinz Schilling und Stefan Ehrenpreis, Münster 2003 (Referate der Tagung „Konfessionelle und säkulare Trends frühneuzeitlicher Bildungsgeschichte – Forschungsperspektiven und Methodik“ am 11./12. Oktober 2001 in Berlin), S. 19–33, hier S. 29f, bes. Fn. 35 (Lit.). Vgl. die farbige Schilderung in Bartels, Abriß der Geschichte des Schulwesens (s. Anm. 12), S. 25, Fn. 3 über zwei Knaben, die vor der Zuchtrute des Rektors in Emden flohen. So nach der Ordinanz von 1529 durch Graf Enno II., in Eduard Meiners, Oostvrieschlandts Kerkelyke Geschiedenisse of een Historisch en Oordeelkundig Verhaal […] , Bd. 1, Groningen 1738, S. 586; Im Hintergrund stehen wohl die Vorgaben Melanchthons von 1528 in seiner dem Unterricht der Visitatoren beigegebenen Schulordnung, die auf ein dreigliedriges Klassenschema abzielten; vgl. Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl, Bd.1 – Reformatorische Schriften, hg. v. Robert Stupperich, Gütersloh 1951, S. 215–271, bes. 265–271; vgl. Martin Brecht, „Einflüsse der Reformation auf das Schulwesen“, in Regionale Aspekte des frühen Schulwesens, hg. v. Ulrich Andermann und Kurt Andermann, Tübingen 2000 (Kraichtaler Kolloquien 2), S. 63–73, hier S. 69. Nach einer Ordinanz aus dem Jahr 1535, an der zur Hilfe gerufene lüneburgische luth. Theologen mitgearbeitet haben; vgl. Meiners, Oostvrieschlandts Kerkelyke Geschiedenisse I (s. Anm. 17), S. 147 (Art. XIII) u. S. 603 (das Gutachten der Lüneburger Theologen befindet sich im Anhang, S. 591–608). Zur „Lüneburger“ Kirchenordnung vgl. Heinrich Schmidt, „Geschichte der Stadt Emden von 1500 bis 1575“, in Geschichte der Stadt Emden, Bd. 1, hg. v. Jannes Ohling et al., Leer 1994 (Ostfriesland im Schutz des Deiches X), S. 161–269, hier S. 229.

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trachtet man die jeweiligen Schulordnungen genauer,19 die Bedürfnisse des Staates und der Kirche die maßgebliche Rolle; gut ausgebildete Beamte und ein ebenso gelehrter Klerus waren das pädagogische Ziel jener frühen schulischen Anstalten. Nicht zu vergessen die schlichte Erhaltung der Kirchenmusik und des Kirchengesangs als konstituierendes Element der jeweiligen christlichen Gemeinschaft.20 Darüber hinaus sollten auch zukünftige Knechte und Mägde in den Grundelementen christlicher Erkenntnis unterrichtet werden. Hier trafen niederes Schulwesen und Katechese aufeinander.21 Nebenbei handelt es sich um eines der ersten Beispiele für die Forderung nach einer schichtenübergreifenden Form von Schulzwang. Gefördert wurde dies unter dem Einfluss von Johannes a Lasco in seiner Zeit als Superintendent des ostfriesischen Kirchwesens22 und von Persönlichkeiten wie Eggerik Beninga.23 Wohlgemerkt darf hierbei natürlich nicht die Differenz zwischen den obrigkeitlichen Verordnungen und der jeweiligen Schulwirklichkeit übersehen werden. Den älteren Darstellungen haftet dieser Makel an, hier nicht zu differenzieren.24 19 Zur als verschollen geglaubten ältesten Schulordnung Emdens vom 25. Oktober 1582, die ausdrücklich die lateinischen Schulen miteinschließt und ihren Schwerpunkt auf Katechismusunterweisung, die Disciplina und die Notwendigkeit von Visitationen legt vgl. Louis Hahn, „Emdens älteste Schulordnung“, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst und vaterländische Altertümer zu Emden 25 (1937): S. 62–65, hier S. 63–65. Nachfolgende Emder Schulordnungen bespricht Johann Fr. de Vries in seiner „Schulchronik oder Nachrichten über Gründung, Entwicklung und gegenwärtigen Zustand des Elementarschulwesens in der deutsch-reformierten Gemeinde Emdens“, Ostfriesisches Monatsblatt für provinzielle Interessen, 5. Jhg. (1877): S. 559–573 u. 6. Jhg. (1878): S. 9–18; S. 108–116; S. 161–163. 20 Menso Alting verfasste selbst geistliches Liedgut, nicht nur das bekannte, polemische Abendmahlslied „Ein christlick Gesang Vam Hilligen Nachtmal vnseres Heren Jesv Christi“, das 1590 in Bremen erschien; vgl. Voss, Menso Alting (s. Anm. 7), S. 51–54. Er förderte wohl auch die stimmliche Unterweisung seiner Kinder. Der Name seines Sohnes Daniel taucht in diesem Zusammenhang insbesondere auf; vgl. generell Jasper Goeman, Das Emder Gesangbuch (Enchiridion) aus d. J. 1630 (in niedersächsischer Sprache), Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst und vaterländische Altertümer zu Emden 17 (1910): S. 73–196, hier S. 163–168, 175–177, bes. 176f. 21 Vgl. Ehrenpreis, Bildung und Pädagogik (s. Anm. 11), S. 429f. 22 Vgl. Henning P. Jürgens, „Die vormundschaftliche Regentschaft der Gräfin Anna und die Berufung Johannes a Lascos zum ostfriesischen Superintendenten“, Emder Jahrbuch 79 (1999): S. 42–65 u. generell Johannes a Lasco (1499–1560). Polnischer Baron, Humanist und europäischer Reformator, hg. v. Christoph Strohm, unveränd. Studienausgabe Tübingen 2005 (Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation 14). 23 Zu dem friesischen Geschichtsschreiber aus der Beninga-Dynastie vgl. Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (=ADB), Bd. 2, Leipzig 1875, S. 334f; NDB (s. Anm. 7), Bd. 2, Berlin 1955, S. 49f; BLO (s. Anm. 7), Bd. 1, S. 45–50 u. Werner Delbanco, Die Quellen der „Cronica der Fresen“ des Eggerik Beninga, Aurich 1975 (Abhandlungen und Vorträge zur Geschichte Ostfrieslands 56). Vgl. auch Bartels, Abriß der Geschichte des Schulwesens (s. Anm. 12), S. 7f. 24 Vgl. hierzu Gerhard Schormann, „Zweite Reformation und Bildungswesen am Beispiel der Elementarschulen“, in Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland. Das Problem der „Zweiten Reformation“ – Wissenschaftliches Symposion des Vereins für Reformationsge-

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Als grundlegendes Vorbild für ein ständiges Schulwesen in Ostfriesland, das allen, Knaben und Mädchen, höhergestellten oder auch ärmeren Kindern geöffnet sein sollte, dienten die Anstalten der Brüder vom gemeinsamen Leben, einer niederländischen Bruderschaft, die ohne Gelübde und monastisches Leben im strengen Sinne auskam.25 Nicht ohne Stolz kann Petrus Bartels im Hinblick auf das deutsche Dorfschulwesen schon vor dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg formulieren: „[S]o ist es eine auffallende Erscheinung, wie das sonst so langsame Ostfriesland hier einen solchen Vorsprung zu gewinnen vermochte.“26 Im Hintergrund stehen die Verbindungen zu den Niederlanden, die nicht nur als Inventor dieser Ideen hier Pate standen, sondern auch das ostfriesische Land mit Lehrkräften, aber auch Schülern versorgten.27 Zum damaligen Zeitpunkt war die Lateinschule in Emden mit einem Apparat von zeitweise vier Lehrern und vier Klassen die einzige ihrer Art in Ostfriesland.28 Thomas Elsmann spricht von einer „gefestigte[n] Bildungsanstalt in melanchthonischer Tradition, die aber vermutlich einen weiter gefaßten Rahmen von Bildung vertrat.“29 Heinrich Altings frühe Bildung ist in diesem Zusammenhang zu erwähnen. Interessant wäre nun im Hinblick auf Heinrich Altings schulische Prägung in Emden und das Entstehen seiner Geschichtsauffassung eine genauere Analyse des durchgeführten Unterrichts am Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts, das heißt die Beschreibung der Lehrer und ihres geistesgeschichtlichen Profils, der verwendeten Schulbücher, etc.30 Zu bedenken ist, dass zuweilen die Lehrmethoden be-

25

26 27 28 29

30

schichte 1985, hg. v. Heinz Schilling, Gütersloh 1986 (Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte [=SVRG] 195), S. 308–348, hier S. 308. Vgl. neuerdings aus der zahlreichen Literatur zur Devotio moderna Antonius G. Weiler, „The Dutch Brethern, critical theology, Northern Humanism and Reformation“, in Northern humanism in European context, 1469–1625. From the ‚Adwert Academy‘ to Ubbo Emmius, hg. v. Fokke Ackermann et al., Leiden 1999 (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 94) S. 307– 332, bes. 308f. Bartels, Abriß der Geschichte des Schulwesens (s. Anm. 12), S. 10; vgl. auch Ehrenpreis, Bildung und Pädagogik (s. Anm. 11), S. 423. Vgl. immer noch generell Heinz Schilling, Niederländische Exulanten im 16. Jahrhundert, Gütersloh 1972 (SVRG 187). Vgl. auch Wolfgang Schöningh, „Schulen in alter und neuer Zeit: Von den ‚Dudeschen Scrifscolen’ bis zur modernen Schule,“ Rhein-Ems-Zeitung (Zum Wochenende. Beilage Sonnabend 3. Okt. 1959). Thomas Elsmann, „Ubbo Emmius. Inhalt und Ziel des Unterrichts – Eine Analyse auf dem Hintergrund seiner Bildungsbiographie“, in Ubbo Emmius. Een Oostfries geleerde in Groningen – Ubbo Emmius: Ein ostfriesischer Gelehrter in Groningen, hg. v. Willem J. Kuppers, Groningen/Emden 1994 (tentoonstelling „Ubbo Emmius en zijn tijd: Groningen en OostFriesland rond 1600“), S. 186–202, hier S. 188. Bekannt ist die in Genf begonnene Ablehnung des Schultheaters als katholische oder lutherische Einrichtung, die in Emden eine bis ca. 1560 herausragende Tradition der städtischen Lateinschule beendete. Der Magistrat beschloss 1573, dem reformierten Kirchenrat folgend, die jährliche Aufführung antiker Dramen nicht fortzuführen; vgl. Ehrenpreis, Bildung und Pädagogik (s. Anm 11), 428f.

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wusst unter Verschluss gehalten wurden, da eine Konkurrenzsituation zwischen den Lehrmeistern eintreten konnte. Diese möglichen Vorgänge, generell der bildungspolitische Zuschnitt der Emder Lateinschule, können zum gegebenen Zeitpunkt nur ansatzweise erschlossen werden, wie soeben skizziert wurde.31 Ein deduktiver Rückschluss auf Grund der Betrachtung reformierter Bildungspolitik und den damit verbundenen Erziehungsplänen im gesamteuropäischen Kontext der frühen Neuzeit steht unter dem Vorbehalt, die regionalgeschichtlichen Spezifika in Erziehung und Bildung nicht wahrzunehmen und damit zu nivellieren.32 Ob und in welcher Form es überhaupt konfessionsspezifische Unterschiede im Rahmen von Pädagogik und im Gefolge der sogenannten Zweiten Reformation im Alten Reich, den Niederlanden und darüber hinaus gegeben hat, steht zur Diskussion.33 Heinrich Altings Ausbildung erfuhr nach circa acht Jahren an der Emder Lateinschule in Groningen am dortigen Gymnasium ihre Fortsetzung.34

2.2

Historische Bildung in Groningen

In der Heimat seiner Familie, die sich schließlich in der Stadt Groningen niederließ, genoss Heinrich Alting drei Jahre lang den Unterricht des Historikers Ubbo Emmius,35 vormals ein beflissener Schüler von David Chyträus d. Ä.36 in 31 Vorarbeiten von Erich von Reeken, Johann Fr. de Vries u. a. für eine geschlossene Darstellung der Geschichte des Emder Schulwesens liegen in der JaLB bereit und warten auf eine kritische Durchsicht (der Verfasser dankt Herrn Dipl. theol. Klaas-Dieter Voß für die Einsicht in diese Materialsammlung). 32 Stefan Ehrenpreis, „Das Erziehungswesen der Reformierten im Kontext frühneuzeitlicher Kultur und Wissenschaft“, in Frühneuzeitliche Bildungsgeschichte der Reformierten in konfessionsvergleichender Perspektive. Schulwesen, Lesekultur und Wissenschaft, hg. v. Heinz Schilling und Stefan Ehrenpreis, Berlin 2007 (Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, Beiheft 38), S. 1–17, hier S. 7. 33 Vgl. hierzu die Beiträge der beiden Sammelbände von Schilling und Ehrenpreis, Erziehung und Schulwesen (s. Anm. 15) u. Dies., Frühneuzeitliche Bildungsgeschichte der Reformierten (s. Anm. 32), insbesondere im letzteren Leendert F. Groenendijk, „Die reformierte Kirche und die Schule in den Niederlanden während des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts“, S. 47–74 und Stefan Ehrenpreis, „Das Schulwesen reformierter Minderheiten im Alten Reich 1570–1750. Rheinische und fränkische Beispiele“, S. 97–122. 34 Folgt man den Jahresangaben in der Haus- und Familienchronik der Familie Alting; vgl. von Reeken, Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen 1978 (s. Anm. 9), S. 29. 35 Vgl. (hier nur die Literatur neueren Datums) die Beiträge in Kuppers, Ubbo Emmius. Een Oostfries geleerde in Groningen (s. Anm. 29); Martin Tielke, „Ubbo Emmius, die Reformation und die Freiheit“, in Collectanea Frisica: Beiträge zur historischen Landeskunde Ostfrieslands – Walter Deeters zum 65. Geburtstag, hg. v. Hajo van Lengen (Abhandlungen und Vorträge zur Geschichte Ostfrieslands 74), Aurich 1995, S. 229–266; Zweder von Martels, „Between Orosius and Ubbo Emmius. On the tradition of geographical descrip-

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Rostock und zugleich ein Freund seines Vaters Menso Alting. Diesen ersten Studien ging ein Jahr Unterricht durch den Konrektor der dortigen Lateinschule, Gerhard Buning – vormals Rektor in Bremen –, vorweg.37 Der Unterricht unter Ubbo Emmius an der Nachfolgeanstalt der bekannten Sint Maartensschool in Groningen lässt sich relativ präzise rekonstruieren.38 Die im Sinne des Späthumanismus exponierten Fächer, wie vor allem Latein, aber auch Griechisch, Philologie im allgemeinen und Philosophie standen auf dem Lehrplan.39 Heinrich musste in ihnen zunehmend große Fortschritte erzielt haben, wovon seine

36

37

38

39

tions in historical writings“, in Ackermann, Northern Humanism in European Context (s. Anm. 25), S. 178–283; Zweder von Martels, „Ubbo Emmius, the ‚Eternal Edict‘ and the Academy of Groningen“, in Christian humanism. Essays in honour of Arjo Vanderjagt, hg. v. Alasdair A. MacDonald et al., Leiden 2009 (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 142), S. 399–418 u. unter Vorbehalten die illustrative Biografie (allerdings mit einigen orthografischen Mängeln) von Gudrun Anne Dekker, Ubbo Emmius. Leben, Umwelt, Nachlass und Gegenwart – eine Biografie, Norderstedt 2010. Vgl. zu seiner Person (in Auswahl) Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche (= RE), Bd. 4, Hamburg 31898 [1855], S. 112–116; David Chytraeus (1530–1600). Norddeutscher Humanismus in Europa – Beiträge zum Wirken des Kraichgauer Gelehrten, hg. v. KarlHeinz Glaser, Ubstadt-Weiher 2000; Marcel Nieden, „Wittenberger Anweisungen zum Theologiestudium“, in Die Theologische Fakultät Wittenberg 1502–1602, hg. v. Irene Dingel und Günther Wartenberg, Leipzig 2002 (Leucorea-Studien zur Geschichte der Reformation und der lutherischen Orthodoxie 5), Leipzig 2002, S. 133–153; Harald Bollbuck, Geschichts- und Raummodelle bei Albert Krantz (um 1448–1517) und David Chytraeus (1530– 1600). Transformationen des historischen Diskurses im 16. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt a. M. 2006. H. Alting berichtet dies retrospektiv in seiner Fortführung der Familienchronik: „Anno 1598. Altera feria a Paschate, cum iam fundamenta literarum in schola patria posuissem, Groningam ad illius urbis gymnasium, quod tum moderabatur cl. [sc. clarus] vir, Ubbo Emmius, ablegatus sum, & in classe secunda conrectoris Buningij locatus. Sub quo egi annum unum: sub rectore autem triennium.“ von Reeken, Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen 1978 (s. Anm. 9), S. 29, 7–11. Ubbo Emmius bestätigt in einem Brief vom 9. Juni 1600 an Menso Alting, dass dessen Sohn Heinrich inzwischen – nach Abschluss der Vorstudien – mit dem Unterricht an der Groninger Lateinschule begonnen habe; vgl. Briefwechsel des Ubbo Emmius, hg. von Hajo Brugmans und Franz Wachter, Bd. 1: 1556–1607, Aurich 1911, S. 231, Nr. 125. Entnommen werden kann dies dem von Emmius aufgestellten Programma für die Lateinschulen (sc. sind die jeweiligen Klassenstufen) in Groningen: „Scholae apud Groninganos per bellorum tumultus collapsae ab amplissimo et pientissimo eius oppidi senatu post recuperatam nuper quietem ac libertatem, studio promovendae pietatis, ac rei literariae instituta instauratio, ex decreto Senatus eiusdem publicata. In qua publicatione consilium et institutum Senatus breviter ostenditur, ac scholae resurgentis synopsis succincta, aut delineatio prima et generalis repraesentatur lectori. Bremae: Excudebat Bernhardus Petri, anno M.D. XCIV mense Octobri.“ Da ein adäquater Groninger Buchdrucker offensichtlich noch nicht vorhanden war, erschien die Schrift in Bremen bei Bernhard Peters 1594, s. Ubbo Emmius, Programma bij de aanvaarding van het rectoraat der latijnse school [thans Praedinius Gymnasium] te Groningen in 1594, hg. v. Antoon Gerard Roos (Einleitung, lat. Text u. ndl. Übers. samt Anmerkungen), Groningen 1951, S. 25, Fn. 7. Das von Emmius vorgelegte Programm lässt sich in vier Abschnitte gliedern: 1. Allgemeines zur Schule – 2. Grundziele des Unterrichtes (einzelner Klassen) – 3. Weitere Vorschriften – 4. Lehrbücher.

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spätere Sendung nach Herborn und Berufung zum Präzeptor dreier Wetterauer Grafen zeugen. Gemäß den von Emmius aufgestellten Statuten – er ist damit zum dritten Mal als Rektor einer Lateinschule tätig – ist das vorrangige Ziel der Anstalt, neben der Vermittlung der lateinischen (und griechischen) Sprache, dass die Jugend darin von Kindesbeinen an mit der orthodoxen Glaubenslehre durchtränkt, in der antiken Philologie unterwiesen, an einen keuschen und lauteren Lebenswandel gewöhnt, zu Männern heranwächst, die durch ihre Frömmigkeit, Gelehrsamkeit und Tugend für die Kirche und Staat gleichermaßen eine Zierde darstellen und von Nutzen sein können.40

Der nicht zu leugnende konfessionelle Charakter der neuen Anstalt wird keineswegs verschwiegen, besonders der Heidelberger Katechismus wird unter der Rubrik der Lehrbücher am Ende der Schrift als Bekenntnisgrundlage hervorgehoben.41 Institutionell liegt die Annahme nahe, dass es sich bei den unteren Klassenstufen („scholae“) in Groningen – insgesamt acht werden angenommen – um eine Trivialschule gehandelt hat, ganz im Sinne der Definition von Ulrich Andermann: Diese Trivial- oder auch Partikularschulen konzentrierten sich in aller Regel auf die Fächer des sogenannten Triviums, namentlich Dialektik bzw. Logik, Grammatik und Rhetorik.42 Die weiteren vier Wissenschaften der sieben artes liberales wurden in den weiterführenden Klassen unterrichtet; in Groningen ist seit spätestens 1612 im Zuge der Aufrichtung einer Universität von einem Präzeptor für Arithmetik und von einem weiteren für den Fachbereich Musik die Rede (daneben tritt normalerweise noch die Geometrie und Astronomie).43 Es verwundert kaum, dass Geografie als eines der Fächer für die letzte Klassenstufe der neuen Lateinschule angegeben wird,44 entspricht dies doch ganz dem Œvre der neulateinischen Schriftsteller und dem Verfasser der Rerum Frisicarum historia.45 Die angegebenen Schulbücher verraten darüber hinaus die Affinität zu 40 „ut iuventus in iis a teneris orthodoxa imbuta, bonis literis erudita, castis sanctisque moribus assuefacta in viros adolescat, qui pietate, doctrina, virtute sua partiter Ecclesiae et reipublicae usui ac ornamento esse possint.“ Emmius, Programma bij de aanvaarding van het rectoraat (s. Anm. 39), S. 6, 8. 41 Emmius, Programma bij de aanvaarding van het rectoraat (s. Anm. 39), S. 16. 42 Ulrich Andermann, „Lateinschulen und Bildungswanderung im Zeitalter des Humanismus“, in U. Andermann und K. Andermann, Regionale Aspekte des frühen Schulwesens (s. Anm. 17), S. 29–61, hier S. 31. 43 Arent T. Schuitema Meijer, Inventaris van het archief van curatoren van de Latijnse school en het Stedelijk (sinds 1947 Praedinius-) Gymnasium te Groningen, Groningen 1949, S. 9, bes. Fn. 3; vgl. zur Entwicklung der Lateinschulen in der ndl. Republik Willem Frijhoff, „The Confessions and the Book in the Dutch Republic“, in Schilling und Ehrenpreis, Frühneuzeitliche Bildungsgeschichte der Reformierten (s. Anm. 32), S. 197–200 u. generell im Hinblick auf das niedere Schulwesen Groenendijk, Die reformierte Kirche und die Schule in den Niederlanden (s. Anm. 33). 44 Emmius, Programma bij de aanvaarding van het rectoraat (s. Anm. 39), S. 12. 45 Von Martels, Between Orosius and Ubbo Emmius (s. Anm. 35), S. 271 u. passim.

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den übrigen Lateinschulen, aber auch die Besonderheiten des Groninger Betriebes.46 Das Bildungsangebot scheint in komparatistischer Perspektive zu diesem Zeitpunkt doch sehr umfangreich gewesen zu sein.47 Insbesondere die philosophisch-methodologische Verortung der Groninger Lateinschule: „In Logicis Philippica ac Aristotelica cum Rameis conferemus“48 lässt aufhorchen – auch wenn dies keinen Einzelfall darstellt49 – und scheint wegweisend für den wissenschaftstheoretischen Rahmen der Werke Heinrich Altings gewesen zu sein. Die neue Lateinschule in Groningen befand sich seit 1594 nicht mehr an der Ostseite des Martinikirchhofes, also in unmittelbarer Nähe zur Hauptkirche

46 Genannt werden als Lehrbücher und Musterautoren: Cicero, Terenz, Ovid und Horaz als zu lesende Klassiker für den Lateinunterricht, daneben Caesar und Sallust, wahrscheinlich für die historischen Lektionen – ganz der zeitgenössischen Norm entsprechend –, allerdings fehlt Vergil. Lat. Sprachunterricht wird anhand der Elementargrammatik des Hermann Bonnus und der umfassenden Grammatik von Philipp Melanchthon erteilt (beides wohl im Rückgriff auf Emmius’ Bremer Lehrer, den Flamen Johannes Molanus). Als lexikalische Grundlage wird der Nomenclator latinosaxonicus (Rostock 1582) des Bremer Rektors Nathan Chytraeus (1543–1598) erwähnt, ein vielbenutztes Lehrbuch zumindest bis 1659 (17 Aufl.) in niederdeutschen Schulen. Die griechische Sprachlehre von Nicolaus Clenardus (1495–ca. 1542), ebenso ein bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts verbreitetes Kompendium, dient hier als Pendant in der zweiten klassischen Sprache. Ergänzend werden noch die griech. Syntaxbücher von Johannes Varennius (gest. 1536), meist mit Kommentaren von Joachim Camerarius gelesen und Friedrich Sylburg (1536–1596) genannt. Die Leseübungen sollen anhand von Isokrates, Homer, Hesiodos, Demosthenes und Abschnitten des Neuen Testaments geschehen; vgl. Emmius, Programma bij de aanvaarding van het rectoraat (s. Anm. 39), S. 14, 16; Elsmann, Ubbo Emmius. Inhalt und Ziel des Unterrichts (s. Anm. 29), S. 196f. Die Annahme liegt nahe, dass es sich nicht um eine vollständige Liste handelt, jedoch im Kern gängige Lehrbücher genannt werden, die vom jeweiligen Rektor einer Lateinschule um weitere Kompendien ergänzt werden konnten; vgl. Elsmann, Ubbo Emmius. Inhalt und Ziel des Unterrichts (s. Anm. 29), S. 202, Fn. 51; vgl. auch Thomas Elsmann, „Das Bremer ‚Gymnasium Illustre‘ und seine Vorläufer in ihrer Bedeutung für den Ramismus in Deutschland (1560–1630)“, in Ackermann, Northern Humanism in European Context (s. Anm. 26), S. 99– 108, hier S. 106. 47 Thomas Schulz, „Zur Rolle und Bedeutung von Lateinschulen im frühneuzeitlichen Bildungswesen: das Beispiel Württemberg“, in U. Andermann und K. Andermann, Regionale Aspekte des frühen Schulwesens (s. Anm. 17), S. 107–135, hier S. 113. 48 Emmius, Programma bij de aanvaarding van het rectoraat (s. Anm. 39), S. 16. Über den Schulbetrieb hinaus konnte Emmius Interesse an den Werken des Petrus Ramus zeigen, so erbat er sich z. B. 1606 ein Exemplar des Liber de Caesaris militia; s. Brugmans und Wachter, Briefwechsel des Ubbo Emmius I (s. Anm. 38), S. 323, Nr. 192. 49 So konnte bspw. das anhaltinische Fürstenhaus im Hinblick auf das Gymnasium Illustre in Zerbst und dessen Rektor, der den neumodischen Ramismus schroff ablehnte, im Sinne eines vermittelnden Philippo-Ramismus 1603 fragen, „ob Ramens Praecepta cum Philippices et peripatheticis sein zu conjungiren od[er] nicht.“ S. Bericht der Inspektoren des Fürstlichen Gymnasiums, ZFr, 1603 – Jubilate; zit. nach Joachim Castan, Hochschulwesen und reformierte Konfessionalisierung. Das Gymnasium Illustre des Fürstentums Anhalt in Zerbst, 1582– 1652, Halle 1999 (Studien zur Landesgeschichte 2), S. 285.

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Groningens, sondern erhielt – ähnlich wie in Emden – einen neuen Standort.50 Im ehemaligen, nun säkularisierten Franziskanerkloster (Minderbroeders-Kloster) gelegen, fand der Unterricht unter neuen Vorzeichen unter dem Rektorat des Ubbo Emmius statt.51 Diese Umgestaltung des Klosters entsprach ganz der vormaligen Feststellung Luthers in seinem Appell An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von des christlichen Standes Besserung (1520), dass die Klöster ursprünglich nichts anderes als Schulen gewesen seien.52 Ein wichtiges Instrumentarium hinsichtlich der Unterhaltung der neuen Bildungseinrichtungen wurde damit den von der Reformation erfassten Schulträgern an die Hand gegeben;53 dies geschah nicht nur in Groningen mithilfe der ehemaligen Klostergüter. Zunächst waren sechs Lehrer angestellt,54 die ihr Gehalt durch den Rat der Stadt Groningen erhielten. Schulgeld musste daher – wie angedeutet – nicht entrichtet werden.55 Im Jahr 1596 wurden die Klosterzellen renoviert und umgestaltet, um für ärmere Studenten – die pauperes – als Unterkunft zu dienen. Ob Heinrich, der im Frühjahr 1598 nach Groningen aufbrach, hier verblieb oder doch eher bei seinem Onkel zweiten Grades, dem patruus Joachim Alting,56 nächtigte, lassen die Quellen offen. Ob es sich darüber hinaus bei dem Wechsel von einer ersten zu einer zweiten Bildungsstation in der Vita Heinrichs um eine Bildungsreise im Sinne der sogenannten fahrenden Scholaren des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit handelt, lässt sich auf Grund der topografischen Nähe der beiden Orte in Frage stellen. Generell waren persönliche Beziehungen und Kontakte schon seit dem Spätmittelalter oft bei der Bestimmung von Reisezielen einer Bildungswanderung mitbeteiligt. Die juristische Dimension, damit einen geschützten Raum zu betreten und als Fremder nicht völlig wehrlos dazustehen, spielte hier sicher auch eine Rolle. Ein Weggang von Zuhause war damit nicht per se ein Weggang in die Fremde.57 Die weitere Entwicklung der Groninger La50 Vgl. zum alten Standort Jacques Hermus, Het Provinciehuis – van Latijnse school tot Bestuurscentrum, Groningen 1987 (Groninger Tijdingen 2). 51 Vgl. Schuitema Meijer, Inventaris van het archief (s. Anm. 43), S. 8f. 52 D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (=WA), Bd. 6, Weimar 1888, S. 381–469, hier S. 439f. 53 Vgl. Gerhard Menk, „Das Bildungswesen in den deutschen protestantischen Territorien der frühen Neuzeit“, in Schilling und Ehrenpreis, Erziehung und Schulwesen (s. Anm. 15), S. 55–99, hier S. 78. 54 Eine Liste der Rektoren, Konrektoren und Präzeptoren bietet in einer Beilage Schuitema Meijer, Inventaris van het archief (s. Anm. 43), S. 36f, bes. Fn. 2; vgl. auch S. 9, Fn. 2. 55 Schuitema Meijer, Inventaris van het archief (s. Anm. 43), S. 12, Fn. 1. 56 Joachim Alting (1556–1625) ist ein Sohn Egbert Altings, dem vormaligen Stadtsekretär Groningens, bei dem schon Menso zu Studienzeiten an der von Regnerus Praedinius geführten Lateinschule Unterkunft fand; vgl. Emmius, Mensonis Altingii Vita (s. Anm. 8), Kap. 2, S. 4. Er war einer der vier Bürgermeister, die im August des Jahres 1594 nach der sog. Reductie der Stadt Groningen ins Amt gehoben wurden; vgl. NNBW (s. Anm. 9) Bd. 1, Sp. 97f. 57 U. Andermann, Lateinschulen und Bildungswanderung (s. Anm. 42), S. 47.

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teinschule in bildungs- und institutionsgeschichtlicher Hinsicht bis zur Gründung der Universität Groningen und der Aufrichtung ihrer Statuten aus der neuerrichteten Lateinschule heraus zeichnete neuerdings Zweder von Martels nach.58

3.

Ramistische Einflüsse in Herborn

Im Alter von 19 Jahren erfuhr die Ausbildung Heinrich Altings eine Fortsetzung an der Hohen Schule in Herborn,59 die erst ein Jahr nach seiner Geburt, nämlich 1584 durch Graf Johann VI. von Nassau-Dillenburg gegründet worden war. In einem Netzwerk von reformierten Hochschulen bildete diese Ausbildungsstätte im ausgehenden 16. und beginnenden 17. Jahrhundert eine Hochburg an Gelehrsamkeit für Studenten reformierter Gesinnung aus dem ganzen (west-)europäischen Kontext.60 Inmitten der neu aufkommenden frühneuzeitlichen Bildungseinrichtungen (und damit Alternativen, letztlich Konkurrenten zu den alten Universitäten im Reich, wie Burg Steinfurt, dem Gymnasium Illustre in Zerbst oder Bremen – um nur einige wenige reformierter Prägung zu nennen), wurde die Hohe Schule in Herborn zu einem der führenden, wenn nicht zum wichtigsten zeitweiligen Zentrum jener Akademien.61 Kennzeichnend für alle 58 Zweder von Martels, „De Groningse Latijnse school aan de beginperiode van de universiteit. Beschouwingen naar aanleiding van vier Declamationes scholasticae ut de jaren 1619, 1620 en 1621“, in Onderwijs en onderzoek. Studie en wetenschap aan de academie van Groningen in de 17e en 18e eeuw, hg. v. Arend H. Huussen, Hilversum 2003 (Studies over de Geschiedenis van de Groningse Universiteit 1), S. 9–30. 59 Laut Matrikel der Hohen Schule zu Herborn wurde er – wahrscheinlich am 3. Mai – 1602 unter dem Rektorat von Matthias Martinius eingeschrieben; vgl. generell zum Rektoratswesen in Herborn Gerhard Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn in ihrer Fru¨hzeit (1584–1660). Ein Beitrag zum Hochschulwesen des deutschen Kalvinismus im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation, Wiesbaden 1981, S. 149–153, bes. S. 151. M. Martinius war davor Pädagogearch, also Vorsteher des Pädagogiums bis ins Jahr 1600 hinein; ebd., S. 171, Fn. 234. Heinrichs Herkunft wird als „Embdanus Frisius“ beschrieben, sein Werdegang – ein späterer Zusatz – folgt in nuce: „professor theologus Heidelbergensis, iuniorum principum Palatinorum praeceptor, professor post Groningensis“; vgl. Die Matrikel der Hohen Schule und das Paedagogiums zu Herborn, (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Nassau 5), hg. v. Gottfried Zedler und Hans Sommer, Wiesbaden 1908, S. 36. Zur Praxis der Herborner Professoren später Randbemerkungen zu ergänzen ebd., S. IV, XII. Die nachfolgenden Matrikel-Eintragungen sind teilweise ungenau, vor allem ab 1623 auf Grund der zunehmenden Kriegswirren; vgl. Alexander Persijn, Pfälzische Studenten und ihre Ausweichuniversitäten während des Dreißigjährigen Krieges. Studien zu einem pfälzischen Akademikerbuch, Dissertation Univ. Mainz, Mainz 1959, S. 3. 60 Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn (s. Anm. 59), S. 12–15, 40 u. passim schildert dies, insbesondere korrespondierend zur Bedeutung und Entwicklung der Universität Heidelberg am Vorabend der dortigen Maßnahmen der Gegenreformation. 61 Zur Stellung der sog. Johannea innerhalb der ref. Anstalten im Reich mit der Konzentration

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reformierten akademischen Institutionen war das hohe Niveau der Artistenfakultät und die Hervorhebung der theologischen Wissenschaft.62 Signifikant für die Herborner Anstalt ist neben dem organisatorischen Impuls, der von hier ausging, sicher die Berufung eines Caspar Olevian in den ersten Lehrkörper der Einrichtung im Sommer 1584. Diese Berufung ist nicht unwesentlich mitverantwortlich für den zentralen Status der Anstalt im ausgehenden 16. Jahrhundert.63 Persönliche Verbindungen über seinen Vater Menso zu Caspar Olevian, sowie die generelle verheißungsvolle Aussicht auf den Aufbau einer reformierten Elite-Akademie – trotz der bleibenden finanziellen Schwierigkeiten – haben Heinrichs Weg nach Herborn unter Umständen mitbestimmt. Zu den akademischen Lehrern Altings in Herborn gehörten nun – bewusst in dieser Reihenfolge – Johannes Piscator, Wilhelm Zepper und Matthias Martinius. In seiner Haus- und Familienchronik erwähnt Alting nur, dass er nach einem kurzen Aufenthalt in Marburg zu dem „berühmten Doktor Johannes Piscators geschickt“ wurde.64 Dieser vertrat in Herborn zunächst die erste philosophische Professur.65 Ebenso hebt Samuel Maresius66 in seiner Oratio funebris […] D. Henrici Altingi den Namen Piscator hervor, der sich unter anderen hochgepriesenen Herborner Theologen durch seine Arbeit für die reformierte Kirche besonders auszeichnete.67 Am Rande erwähnt er, dass die Herborner Anstalt, gleichsam wie aus einem trojanischen Pferd, viele gelehrte Männer hervorgebracht hat, trotz der fehlenden Privilegien, sprich Universitätsrechte.68 Eine Anspielung auf die machtpolitischen Verhältnisse im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation, das mit dem Augsburger Reichstag von 1566 bekanntermaßen der reformierten Konfession und ihrem Bildungsbedürfnis noch zu keinem großen Zugeständnis verhalf.69

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

auf das Gymnasium Arnoldinum zu Steinfurt, das Bremer Gymnasium Illustre u. die Hanauer Hohe Schule vgl. Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn (s. Anm. 59), S. 174–192. Ehrenpreis, Bildung und Pädagogik (s. Anm. 11), S. 426. Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn (s. Anm. 59), S. 37. Von Reeken, Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen (s. Anm. 9), S. 7. Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn (s. Anm. 59), S. 37f; zur Bedeutung Piscators vgl. auch S. 51– 53. S. zu seiner Person die historische Einleitung von E. Bizer, in Heinrich Heppe, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, hg. v. Ernst Bizer, Neukirchen 21958 [1861], S. LXI. „Ibi tunc inter alios docebat Celeberrimus Theologus, Joh. Piscator, cuius eximiis laboribus plurimum debet Ecclesia.“ (Hervorhebung im Original); Maresius, Oratio funebris (s. Anm. 8). S. 9. „Herbornam, inquam, ex quam, ceu ex equo Trojano, plures fere viri docti inter nostros prodierunt, quam ex ullam Academiam privilegiatam, etsi ipsa solo titulo Scholae Illustris hucusq[ue]; contenta fuerit.“ Maresius, Oratio funebris (s. Anm. 8), S. 9. Vgl. im Hinblick auf die reichspolitische Situation der Johannea in ihrer Frühzeit Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn (s. Anm. 59), S. 43–45 u. generell Walter Hollweg, Der Augsburger Reichstag von 1566 und seine Bedeutung für die Entstehung der Reformierten Kirche und ihres

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Nur am Rande sei erwähnt, dass sich die gedruckte Fassung der Leichenpredigt70 des Samuel Maresius nicht streng nach der klassischen Dreiteilung richtet (Widmung, verklärende Predigt und Lebenslauf), sondern folgende Abschnitte enthält: Einstieg mit einem Gebet, Charakterisierung H. Altings samt ausführlichem Lebenslauf unter theologischen Gesichtspunkten, Programma [Academicum] 71 und Epicedia zum Schluss.72 Verklärende Elemente fehlen jedoch keineswegs, wie z. B. die Angabe Heinrich Alting wäre „ab utero devotus“ gewesen, da er hingegeben an die humanistischen Studien und damit verbundenen Aufgaben war, die noch auf ihn warten sollten.73 Das vorliegende Exemplar aus dem Bestand der Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek (Signatur: Theol 4º 122R) enthält eine persönliche Widmung für Christian Friedrich Scholz in Emden, die unter Umständen von einem Enkel Heinrichs, Joannes Christianus Alting, stammt.74 Geistesgeschichtlich kennzeichnend ist für die Hohe Schule in Herborn die Sympathie für das System des Petrus Ramus. Schon Jürgen Moltmann kann urteilen: „Ganz ramistisch bestimmt war seit ihrer Gründung und durch die Statuten von 1609 die ‚Hohe Schule‘ in Herborn, wo Piscator, Alsted und Alting dedizierte Ramisten waren.“75 Im Zuge der Auseinandersetzung um ein adäquates Verständnis scholastischer Distinktionen und Argumentationsweisen im Rahmen der Spätreformation entwickelte man, vor allem im Anschluss an Philipp Melanchthon, und auf reformierter Seite in Auseinandersetzung mit, unter anderen, Theodor Beza, neue Theoriebildungen zu Verbleib und Bedeu-

70

71 72

73 74 75

Bekenntnisses, Neukirchen 1964 (Beiträge zur Geschichte und Lehre der reformierten Kirche 17), S. 391–411. Die Biografie Piscators, besonders die Jugend betreffend (vgl. Frans L. Bos, Johann Piscator. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der reformierten Theologie, Kampen 1932, S. 9, Fn. 1), baut fast ausschließlich auf Georg Pasors Oratio funebris in obitum Joh. Piscatoris (Herborn 1625). Im Falle Altings tritt notabene daneben noch die von ihm fortgeführte Haus- und Familienchronik. Vgl. hierzu Jacob Ensink, „Het programma funebre aan de Groninger academie in 17e en 18e eeuw“, in Huussen, Onderwijs en onderzoek (s. Anm. 58), S. 283–298. Vgl. hierzu die Bände der Reihe „Marburger Personalschriften-Forschungen“, insbesondere Bd. 35 von Rudolf Lenz, Uwe Bredehorn und Marek Winiarczyk, Abkürzungen aus Personalschriften des XVI. bis XVIII. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart 32002 [1978] zur Auflösung der dt. und lat. Abkürzungen. Maresius, Oratio funebris (s. Anm. 8), S. 8. Vgl. hierzu die Titelseite und die letzte Seite des Druckes in Maresius, Oratio funebris (s. Anm. 8), S. 38; zu Christianus Alting s. Voss, Menso Alting (s. Anm. 7), S. 23. Jürgen Moltmann, „Zur Bedeutung des Petrus Ramus für Philosophie und Theologie im Calvinismus“, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 68 (1957): S. 295–318, hier S. 296; Zur Vorgeschichte der Statuten durch die noch rudimentären Leges Scholae Herbornensis von 1585 unter Olevian, die noch ganz auf seine Person zugeschnitten waren vgl. Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn (s. Anm. 59), S. 41f, 129 u. zur nicht gedruckten Fassung von 1609 Johann Hermann Steubing, Geschichte der hohen Schule Herborn, Hadamar 1823, S. 271–313 (Beilage Nr. IV).

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tung von Metaphysik und Logik für die Theologie und ihre Fragestellungen. Entgegen eines Aristotelismus Bartholomäus Keckermanns76 liegt nun mit der „calvinistische[n] Philosophie“77, oder präziser ausgedrückt Wissenschaftstheorie des Ramismus, zunächst ein oppositionelles Lehrgebäude vor, das existenzielle Theologie trieb. Vereinfachend handelt es sich um die Fortentwicklung der frühen Kritik Melanchthons an der aristotelischen Philosophie bei gleichzeitiger Hochschätzung der Dialektik.78 Zu einem geschlossenen System im Sinne der Entstehung einer wissenschaftlichen Schulphilosophie reicht der Fortgang nicht; im 17. Jahrhundert muss der Ramismus Misserfolge in der Auseinandersetzung der theologischen Schulen verzeichnen und kann sich demnach nicht behaupten.79 Der Mangel an Metaphysik, ohne die der Ramismus jedoch nicht ganz auskommen kann, wird – etwas pathetisch formuliert – zu seinem Verhängnis.80 Auf der anderen Seite darf die Erfahrungsbezogenheit des ramistischen Ansatzes nicht einfach als hinreichender Grund für den zeitweiligen

76 Vgl. zur Einführung in die Thematik Althaus, Die Prinzipien der deutschen reformierten Dogmatik (s. Anm 3), S. 17–67; Bartholomäus Keckermann benennt die Fortschritte im Bereich der Logik seit den Tagen der Reformation, nimmt an dieser Stelle aber den mit Geschäften überhäuften praeceptor Germaniae in Schutz, dem eine weitere Ausarbeitung der Methodenlehre – so Keckermann – einfach nicht möglich war; vgl. Bartholomäus Keckermann, Operum Omnium Quae Extant Tomus Primus […], Genf 1614, Sp. 373. Neben Melanchthon u. a. ist es vor allem Ursinus und sein Katechismus, auf den sich Keckermann hinsichtlich des praktischen Charakters der Theologie immer wieder beruft; vgl. Bartholomäus Keckermann, Systema S. S. Theologiae, Tribus Libris adornatum […], Hannover 1602, S. 5, 17, 19 u. passim. 77 Wilhelm H. Neuser, „Die calvinistischen Ramisten“, in Handbuch der Dogmen- und Theologiegeschichte, Bd. 2: Die Lehrentwicklung im Rahmen der Konfessionalität, Göttingen 2 1998 [1980], S. 328–347, hier S. 328. 78 Vgl. Wilhelm H. Neuser, Der Ansatz der Theologie Philipp Melanchthons, Neukirchen 1957 (Beiträge zur Geschichte und Lehre der reformierten Kirche 9), S. 46–52. 79 Althaus, Die Prinzipien der deutschen reformierten Dogmatik (s. Anm 3), S. 25, Fn. 1; vgl. auch August Tholuck, Das akademische Leben des 17. Jahrhunderts, Abt. 2: Die akademische Geschichte der deutschen, skandinavischen, niederländischen, schweizerischen Hohen Schulen, Halle 1854, S. 3–7. 80 Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte (in Auswahl) vgl. Moltmann, Zur Bedeutung des Petrus Ramus (s. Anm. 76), S. 295–297, 316–318; Christoph Strohm, „Theologie und Zeitgeist. Beobachtungen zum Siegeszug der Methode des Petrus Ramus am Beginn der Moderne“, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 110 (1999): S. 352–371, hier S. 360–371; vgl. auch TRE (s. Anm. 2), Bd. 28, Berlin 1997, S. 131f; Elsmann, Das Bremer „Gymnasium Illustre“ und seine Vorläufer (s. Anm. 46); The influence of Petrus Ramus. Studies in sixteenth and seventeenth history of philosophy and science, hg. v. Mordechai Feingold, Joseph Freedman und Wolfgang Rother, Basel 2001; Stephen Triche und Douglas McKnight, „The quest for methode – the legacy of Petrus Ramus“, History of Education 33 (2004): S. 39–54; Howard Hotson, Commonplace Learning. Ramism and its German Ramifications, 1543–1630, Oxford 2007; vgl. auch die ausführliche und kommentierte Kurzbibliografie zu Petrus Ramus in Castan, Hochschulwesen und reformierte Konfessionalisierung (s. Anm. 49), S. 277f, Fn. 280.

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„Siegeszug der Methode des Petrus Ramus am Beginn der Moderne“ betrachtet werden.81 Der Versuch Heinrich Altings, sein dreijähriges Herborner Studium in der Schweiz und in Frankreich weiter voranzutreiben,82 womöglich noch unter Theodor Beza in Genf (gestorben am 13. Oktober 1605) oder Johann Jakob Grynäus, der in Basel die erste theologische Professur innehatte, scheiterte. Ein geplanter Besuch der erst 1599 gegründeten Ritterakademie zu Saumur ist ebenso denkbar, bleibt aber letztlich als spekulative Vermutung zurück. Frijhoff sieht in dieser vermeintlichen „Unlust“ zum Reisen ein typisches Merkmal, das er der großen Zahl an Studenten religionis causa attestiert, die zu jener Zeit das Deutsche Reich durchquerten. In der Familie Alting erblickt er sogar ein exponiertes Beispiel, dass deren höchstes Ziel nicht der Erwerb eines Grades einer anerkannten Universität war, sondern die Ausbildung zum heiligen Amt im konfessionellen Sinne.83 Der These, dass die Reformierten „[b]esonders im Hochschulbereich […] eine ausgeprägte Netzwerktätigkeit durch Gelehrten- und Studentenaustausch innerhalb Europas“ betrieben,84 kann nach dem bisher Dargelegten nur zugestimmt werden. Auch im Bereich des niederen Hochschulwesens scheint dies in der Tat schon der Fall gewesen zu sein. Heinrich Alting kann als lebendiges Glied innerhalb der Kette reformierter Hochschulen im Reich und darüber hinaus bezeichnet werden; diese Kette zerriss allerdings mit dem Ausbruch des Dreißigjährigen Krieges und schuf die Notwendigkeit sogenannter Ausweichuniversitäten.85 Heinrich Altings erste Lebensaufgabe, die Erziehung und Ausbildung der ihm anvertrauten Schüler und später Studenten, begann auf Anraten seiner Dozenten 81 Zur Pluralität der hierbei mitwirkenden Faktoren vgl. Strohm, Theologie und Zeitgeist (s. Anm. 80), bes. S. 354f (das Zitat spiegelt den Untertitel des Artikels von Christoph Strohm wider). 82 Laut dem Artikel über H. Alting in BWPGN (s. Anm. 7) Bd. 1, S. 112 handelte es sich um Italien als weiteren anvisierten Studienort, aber vgl. die Selbstangabe („Galliam“) in von Reeken, Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen 1978 (s. Anm. 9), S. 30, 26. Außerdem bot dieses Land zu jenem Zeitraum für einen jungen ref. Gelehrten nur wenig Fortbildungsmöglichkeiten. 83 Willem Frijhoff, La société néerlandaise et ses gradués, 1575–1814. Une recherche serielle sur la statut des intellectuels, Dissertation kath. Hochschule Tilburg 1981, S. 94 (eine präzise Quellenangabe fehlt leider, vgl. S. 318, Fn. 573); vgl. zum Wesen humanistischer Bildungswanderungen nicht nur im universitären Bereich U. Andermann, Lateinschulen und Bildungswanderung (s. Anm. 42), der hier eine Forschungslücke zu schließen versucht (S. 30) und sich dabei auf die Zeit des deutschen Früh- und Hochhumanismus konzentriert (S. 33) – der Späthumanismus wird allerdings nicht näher betrachtet. 84 Ehrenpreis, Das Erziehungswesen der Reformierten (s. Anm. 32), S. 8f; vgl. bspw. Iter Germanicum. Deutschland und die Reformierte Kirche in Ungarn im 16.–17. Jahrhundert, hg. v. András Szabó, Budapest 1999 u. neuerdings Jan van de Kamp, „Ein frühes reformiert-pietistisches Netzwerk in der Kurpfalz in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts“, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 103 (2012): S. 182–209. 85 Vgl. Persijn, Pfälzische Studenten und ihre Ausweichuniversitäten (s. Anm. 59).

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in Herborn mit den Erfahrungen am Hof von Sedan. Zu fragen bleibt, warum der offensichtlich begabte junge Gelehrte nicht innerhalb der nassauischen Akademie seinen Platz finden sollte, ähnlich wie Matthias Martinius, als zukünftiger Dozent und etwaiger Nachfolger eines Piscator oder anderer;86 diese Praxis der Protektion und Besetzung von Lehrstühlen durch eigenen Nachwuchs war an der Johannea nicht unüblich. Außerdem begann er hier schon im Oktober 1604 erste theologische und philosophische Vorlesungen zu halten.87 Hierauf geben die vorhandenen Quellen allerdings keine befriedigende Antwort. Ob die Berufung Johannes Althusius’ nach Emden, an der, wie nachgewiesen wurde, Menso Alting federführend beteiligt war, auch auf Empfehlung seines Sohnes Heinrich stattfand, und ob durch ihn sogar ein Exemplar der Politica seinen Weg nach Emden fand, ist nicht restlos auszuschließen.88 Die Alting’sche Familienchronik berichtet nur davon, dass Heinrich am Pfingstfest im Jahr 1604 zum Besuch seiner Eltern nach Emden eilte, „zusammen mit dem sehr berühmten Mann, dem Doktor J. Althusius, der damals zum Syndikat [sic!] des Staates berufen worden war.“89

86 Ernst Anton Lewald, Catechetischer Unterricht des Pfalzgrafen Friedrich V. von Heinrich Alting, eine nach der Reihenfolge der Fragen in dem Heidelbergischen Catechismus geordnete Erläuterung desselben im Geist und Styl der Reformationszeit aus einem Manuscripte der alten pfälzischen Bibliothek, hg. und mit dogmengeschichtlichen Anmerkungen vers. von Ernst Anton Lewald, Heidelberg 1841, S. VII informiert (leider ohne Quellenangabe) über Piscators Vorliebe für H. Alting, der „ihn und den Conr. Vorstius als die beiden tüchtigsten unter seinen Schülern zu charakterisieren pflegte, mit dem pikanten Zusatz, jener (Alting) sey der beste, dieser (der arminianisch-gesinnte, ja sogar auch im Geruch des Socinianismus stehende Vorstius) dagegen der schlimmste theologus“. (Hervorhebung im Original); zu Conrad Vorstius vgl. RE (s. Anm. 32), Bd. 20, Hamburg 31908 [1866], S. 762–764. 87 Von Reeken, Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen 1978 (s. Anm. 9), S. 23f. 88 Johannes Dillinger, „Althusius’ ‚Politica‘, Emden und der ostfriesische Hausmannsstand“, Emder Jahrbuch für historische Landeskunde Ostfrieslands 86 (2006): S. 20–38, hier S. 22 formuliert bewusst im Konjunktiv und verweist daneben noch auf den möglichen Einfluss des Baseler Theologen und Lehrer Althusius’, Johann Jakob Grynaeus, mit dem Menso korrespondierte; s. zu den Quellen Heinz Werner Antholz, Die politische Wirksamkeit des Johannes Althusius in Emden, Aurich 1955 (Abhandlungen und Vorträge zur Geschichte Ostfrieslands 32), S. 44, Fn. 2; vgl. auch S. 38, Fn. 2. 89 „Anno 1604. Ipso festo Pentecostes, visendorum gratia parentum, Emdam excurri cum amplissimo viro, Doct. J. Althusius ad syndicatum reipublicae tum vocato.“ Von Reeken, Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen 1978 (s. Anm. 9), S. 29, 18–21; Übers. nach von Reeken, Handschriftliche Aufzeichnungen 1975 (s. Anm. 9), S. 7.

Heinrich Alting (1583–1644) – erste Einblicke in eine Biografie

4.

477

Anthropologische Aspekte in der späthumanistischen Bildung Heinrich Altings

Im Rahmen der Entwicklung des Renaissance-Humanismus erfuhren das Menschenbild90 und das damit verbundene Weltempfinden bekannterweise eine Emanzipation von überlieferten Vorstellungen des Mittelalters, ohne hier von reiner struktureller Diskontinuität sprechen zu wollen.91 Die Frage steht nun im Raum, inwieweit Heinrich Alting als Renaissance-Mensch – sicher nicht als früher italienischer Vertreter – in seiner späthumanistischen Bildung der hierauf basierenden Pädagogik begegnet ist. Ein kurzer Rückblick auf die erwähnten Bildungsstationen offenbart zunächst die Überzeugung von der „fundamentalen anthropologischen Differenz“92 zwischen dem urwüchsigen Sein des Menschen und dem, was durch Gestaltung und Bildung des Menschen zum Vorschein zu bringen möglich war. Diese grundlegende Kategorie als Motor und Strukturmerkmal der studia humanitatis wird im Falle Altings durch die vielen Jahre seiner gelehrten Ausbildung mit dem Ergebnis des sozialen Aufstiegs verifiziert, spätestens seit der Begegnung mit dem späteren Kurfürsten Friedrich V. von der Pfalz in Sedan und der dann folgenden Heidelberger-Professur.93 Der konkrete Blick auf das geistige Klima der besuchten Bildungsanstalten und die familiäre, besser patriarchalische Unterstützung deren Bildungsziele,94 90 Die Literatur zu den hiermit verbundenen Fragestellungen ist Legion, an dieser Stelle sei nur auf das voluminöse Werk und seine Beiträge Vom Menschen – Handbuch Historische Anthropologie, hg. v. Christoph Wulf, Weinheim 1997 verwiesen. Im Hintergrund stehen die Neuansätze der u. a. mentalitätsgeschichtlich geprägten sog. Historischen Anthropologie, die im hierfür eingerichteten Interdisziplinären Zentrum für Historische Anthropologie der Freien Universität Berlin ihren institutionellen Rahmen hat. 91 Die Rede von einer optimistischen Anthropologie der Renaissance in scharfer Abgrenzung zu einem pessimistischen Leibbezug des Mittelalters mag in epochaler Hinsicht einschneidend erscheinen, übersieht aber die Schattierungen solcher Systematisierungen. Generell ist einzuwenden, dass das humanistische Idealbild des vollkommenen und kultivierten Menschen bei aller Wiederentdeckung des imago-Dei-Konzeptes auch eine scharfe soziale Grenze zwischen einer Elite und dem einfachen Volk hinterlässt. Die Schaffung dieses elitären Selbstbewusstseins als Schattenseite des Renaissance-Menschen wird dabei nicht immer thematisiert; vgl. nur Beate Hentschel, „Zur Genese einer optimistischen Anthropologie in der Renaissance oder die Wiederentdeckung des menschlichen Körpers“, in Gepeinigt, begehrt vergessen. Symbolik und Sozialbezug des Körpers im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, hg. v. Klaus Schreiner und Norbert Schnitzler, München 1992, S. 85–105. 92 Wilhelm Kühlmann, „Pädagogische Konzeptionen“, in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte I: 15.–17. Jahrhundert, hg. v. Notker Hammerstein, München 1996, S. 153– 196, hier S. 153. 93 Die Faktoren und Umstände dieser Entwicklung zum Hoftheologen, konnten in dem vorliegenden Artikel nicht in extenso ausgeführt werden; der familiäre Hintergrund, die reichspolitische Situation und seine außerordentliche Begabung wurden in aller Kürze angeführt. 94 Wie es um die religiöse Erziehung und allgemeine Bildung Heinrichs in seinem Elternhaus

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weisen vor allem auf die Affekttheorie Melanchthons, die hier in anthropologischer Hinsicht als tragend in Erscheinung tritt. Die schon von Rudolf Agricola, Jakob Wimpfeling und anderen vertretene Affektlehre mit ihren jeweiligen Nuancierungen95 lief letztlich auf eine Affektkontrolle mittels Disziplinierung der gefährlichen Affekte (perturbationes animi) hinaus. In der Fassung Melanchthons ist das anthropologische Ziel eine tugendhafte Haltung (virtus), das heißt die Unterwerfung des emotional angefochtenen Willen des Menschen unter die rechte Vernunft. Trotz Verdunklung der ratio naturalis durch den Sündenfall, verpflichtet die weiterbestehende Gottebenbildlichkeit zu moralischer Verantwortung, die am Dekalog zu messen ist, und fordert, ja fördert die moralische Erziehung und Selbstverständigung des Menschen.96 Aufnahme fanden die hieraus folgenden pädagogischen Einsichten an den (Hoch-)Schulen verschiedener Territorien – wie zu Beginn am nicht ganz homogenen Beispiel Emdens demonstriert –, nicht zuletzt auch an der besonders einflussreichen Straßburger Akademie unter Johannes Sturm.97 Nicht nur in pädagogischer Hinsicht lassen sich hier Verbindungslinien nachzeichnen, die über Genf und Zürich bis zur Hohen Schule Herborn reichen98 und vor die religiöse Prägung Heinrich Altings stellen. Als Sohn Menso Altings, früh unter der Ägide eines Ubbo Emmius und in dogmatischer Hinsicht Johannes Piscators und anderer Epigone, darf man Heinrich als das Gegenteil eines Kryptocalvinisten bezeichnen, unter Berücksichtigung der jeweiligen unterschiedlichen Ausprägungen reformierter Theologie und Frömmigkeit. Der Schluss ist erlaubt, die ersten Jahre der Vita Heinrich Altings demonstrieren einmal mehr das späthumanistische Bildungsideal von eruditio et pietas. In der wohldurchdachten Förderung beider Elemente sah man die Chance zur Mensch- und Weltgestaltung, im Falle Altings im Dienste der reformierten Konfession und ihrem nicht zu leugnenden Selbstbewusstsein.

95 96

97 98

bestellt war, deutet Ubbo Emmius in seiner Lebensbeschreibung Menso Altings an: „Deinde literarum studium in filiis studio isti dicatis, studia honesta alia in aliis, disciplinas sexui foemineo congruas in filiabus urgebat.“; vgl. Emmius, Mensonis Altingii Vita (s. Anm. 8), Kap. 99, S. 164. Vgl. Kühlmann, Pädagogische Konzeptionen (s. Anm. 92), S. 160f. Vgl. hierzu ausführlich Wilhelm Maurer, Der junge Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation II: Der Theologe, Göttingen 1969, S. 244–261 u. generell Hans-Ulrich Musolff, Erziehung und Bildung in der Renaissance – von Vergerio bis Montaigne, Köln 1997 (Beiträge zur Historischen Bildungsforschung 20), S. 152, 189f, 201, 203f. Kühlmann, Pädagogische Konzeptionen (s. Anm. 92), S. 166. Vgl. Ehrenpreis, Bildung und Pädagogik (s. Anm. 11), S. 427f; Auf die mit dem ramistischen Bildungsbegriff verbundene Didaktik, konnte aufgrund der Anlage des Artikels nicht näher eingegangen werden.

VIII. Reforms in the Art of Writing: Literary approaches

Antje Wittstock

Dem Selbst auf der Spur: Heterologes Schreiben und Sebstthematisierung in Ulrich von Huttens Traktat De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico.

Et nequis una aliqua parte ægrotasse me putet, aut leviter, dicam ut affectus fuerim. Primum sinistro pede eram inutilis iam, hærente ibi octo plus annis morbo, et in media quidem tibia, qua parte tenuissima cruri obducitur caro, ulcera erant cum inflatione carnis inflammata, putrescentia, ingenti cum dolore, et huiusmodi ut uno sanescente erumperet statim aliud…1 Damit niemand meint, ich sei nur an einer Stelle oder bloß leicht erkrankt gewesen, werde ich meine Beschwerden aufzählen. Zuerst war mein linker Fuß völlig unbrauchbar, da sich dort die Krankheit schon mehr als acht Jahre eingenistet hatte. Auch hatte ich in der Mitte des Schienbeins, wo das Fleisch am dünnsten über dem Knochen liegt, entzündete, faulige, ungemein schmerzhafte Geschwüre, um die herum das Fleisch geschwollen war, und sobald eins abzuheilen begann, brach schon ein neues auf.2

Verfaultes Fleisch, schmerzhafte Geschwüre, nicht endende Leiden: Dieser schonungslose Bericht über den hinfälligen Körper stammt von Ulrich von Hutten und findet sich in seinem Traktat De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico, den er 1519 verfasst hatte, nachdem er, der sich selbst in jungen Jahren, vermutlich bereits 1508 in Leipzig, mit der Syphilis infiziert hatte, nun geheilt glaubte. Das von ihm selbst erprobte und mit diesem Text propagierte Heilmittel war die sogenannte Guajakkur, bei dem der Sud des aus der Karibik importierten Guajakholzes kombiniert mit strenger Diät und Schwitzkuren eingenommen

1 „Ulrichi de Hutteni Equitis Germani De Admiranda Guaiaci Medicina et Morbi Gallici Curatione Ad Principem Albertum Cardinalem et Archiepiscopum liber unus“, in Ulrichs von Hutten Schriften, hg. v. Eduard Böcking, Neudruck der Ausgabe 1859–1861, 5 Bde, Bd. 5: Reden und Lehrschriften, Aalen 1963, S. 397–497, hier S. 483. In die vorliegende überarbeitete Fassung meines Vortrags sind Anregungen der Tagungsdiskussion dankend aufgenommen. 2 Die deutsche Übersetzung des Traktats hier und im Folgenden wird zitiert nach Ulrich von Hutten, „Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes und die Heilung der Franzosenkrankheit“, in Die Schule des Tyrannen. Lateinische Schriften, hg. v. Martin Treu, Darmstadt 1996, S. 207–295, hier S. 282.

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wurde. Leider war der Therapieerfolg nur von kurzer Dauer und Hutten starb bereits 1523, im Alter von 35 Jahren, an den Spätfolgen der Krankheit.3 In den unterschiedlichen Krankheitsstadien mehr oder weniger stark an den Symptomen leidend, hat sich Hutten intensiv vor allem auch öffentlich mit seinem Leiden auseinandergesetzt und unterscheidet sich darin signifikant von seinen berühmten Zeitgenossen wie beispielsweise Albrecht Dürer, Conrad Celtis oder Erasmus von Rotterdam, bei denen die Krankheit ebenfalls ausgebrochen war, sie diese jedoch nur bedingt oder gar nicht thematisierten. Huttens öffentlicher (literarischer) Auseinandersetzung mit der Krankheit vergleichbar erscheint nur Joseph Grünpeck, der als an der Syphilis Erkrankter ebenfalls zwei Traktate über die Krankheit verfasste.4 Auffällig an Huttens Traktat De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico ist die Gleichzeitigkeit von genauer und beobachtender Schilderung, die sich oft der neutral beschreibenden Perspektive eines Arztes annähert, dem Operieren mit gängigen zeitgenössischen Beschreibungs- und Erklärungsmodellen von Krankheit und dem in der Ich-Perspektive und in der Rückschau verfassten Bericht, der über das eigene Leiden und den körperlichen Zustand in der Rückschau Auskunft gibt. In der Forschung wurde der Traktat bislang vornehmlich unter historischem Interesse gelesen und der Versuch unternommen, anhand Huttens Text die vermeintliche ‚Person‘ zu rekonstruieren, das heißt die Beschreibung der Krankheit in einen Zusammenhang mit der Biographie zu setzen.5 In eine ähnliche Richtung bewegt sich auch die psychologisch ausgerichtete Studie von Michael Peschke, in der er nicht nur Huttens unsteten Lebensweg aus seiner 3 Eine genaue Aufarbeitung der Thematik findet sich bei Michael Peschke, Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523) als Kranker und als medizinischer Schriftsteller (Arbeiten der Forschungsstelle des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Universität zu Köln, Bd. 33), Köln 1985. 4 Vgl. Joseph Grünpeck, Tractatus de pestilentiali scorra (1496) und De mentulagra alias morbo Gallico (1503). Grünpeck hatte sich 1501 in Augsburg ebenfalls mit der Syphilis infiziert, konnte aber 1503 geheilt werden. Zu Werk und Leben Grünpecks grundsätzlich vgl. Sarah Slattery/Johannes Klaus Kipf, Verfasserlexikon. Deutscher Humanismus 1480–1520, Berlin/New York, Bd. 1/4, 2008, Sp. 971–991, bes. Sp. 977–978. Die beiden Traktate Tractatus de pestilentiali scorra (1496) und De mentulagra alias morbo Gallico (1503) sind abgedruckt in Konrad Heinrich Fuchs, Richard Kentish und Christian Friedrich Michaelis, Die ältesten Schriftsteller über die Lustseuche in Deutschland, von 1495 bis 1510 nebst mehreren Anecdotis späterer Zeit, gesammelt und mit literarhistorischen Notizen und einer kurzen Darstellung der epidemischen Syphilis in Deutschland, Göttingen 1843. 5 Zur Verbindung von Biographie und Erkrankung als Forschungsinteresse insbes. älterer Forschung vgl. Otto Flake, Ulrich von Hutten, Berlin 1929; Ernest L. Zimmermann, „The French Pox of that great clerke of Almayne, Ulrich Hutten, knight“, Janus XXXVI (1932): S. 235–250, S. 265–282, S. 297–310; Hajo Holborn, Ulrich von Hutten, Göttingen 1968 [1929]. In neuerer Forschung exemplarisch formuliert von Rueb: „Ganz sicher hat ihn auch die Krankheit zum ruhelosen Vaganten und leidenschaftlichen Hitzkopf gemacht.“ Vgl. Franz Rueb, Ulrich von Hutten. Ein radikaler Intellektueller im 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1981, S. 104.

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Erkrankung abzuleiten versucht, sondern auch dessen Schriften mit dem typischen Krankheitsverlauf und Strategien der Krankheitsbewältigung in Verbindung setzt.6 Ein weiterer Zugang zum Text besteht in einer medizinhistorischen Lesart, die den Traktat als geschichtliche Quelle über die Erkrankung Syphilis sowie deren Erscheinungsformen und Therapieansätze zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts benutzt. De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico wird so entweder als ein Beispiel medizinischer Fachliteratur und Quelle frühneuzeitlicher Krankheitstypologie oder als historisches Zeugnis mit biographischem Erkenntniswert aufgefasst – und mit dieser Fokussierung auf die jeweilige Lesart das auffällige Oszillieren des Textes gerade zwischen diesen beiden Polen ausgeblendet. Im Folgenden will ich der These nachgehen, dass es sich dabei eben nicht um sich ausschließende Arten von Beschreibungen handelt, sondern um ein und dasselbe Konstruktions- und Darstellungsprinzip, das diesem Text zugrunde liegt: Gerade im Modus anderer Beschreibungen wird eine Annäherung an das Selbst möglich. Damit greife ich zur Analyse von Huttens Text einen Ansatz auf, wie er zur Beschreibung frühneuzeitlicher Subjektivität Anwendung gefunden hat: Dabei handelt es sich um den Begriff der Heterologie, der, von Verena Olejniczak7 formuliert, dann von Eva Kormann als Ansatz eines heterologen Schreibens für autobiographische Texte des 17. Jahrhunderts produktiv gemacht wurde und den sie auf die Formel bringt: „Ein Ich sagt, spricht, schreibt sich über das andere, über Gott und die Welt.“8 Ausgehend von einer Analyse der unterschiedlichen Beschreibungs- und Deutungsmodelle von Krankheit allgemein bzw. Syphilis im Speziellen, die im zeitgenössischen Kontext zur Verfügung standen und nach denen Hutten seinen Text strukturiert, will ich im Folgenden aufzeigen, dass Prinzipien heterologen Schreibens auch zur Beschreibung des Traktats produktiv gemacht werden können und es darüber möglich wird, sich der Spezifik dieses Textes – wie auch von Huttens Schreiben und (Be-)Schreiben von eigener Wirklichkeit in einem größeren Kontext – anzunähern.

6 Peschke, Ulrich von Hutten (s. Anm. 3). 7 Verena Olejniczak, „Heterologie. Konturen frühneuzeitlichen Selbstseins jenseits von Autonomie und Heteronomie“, LiLi 26 (1996): S. 6–36. 8 Eva Kormann, Ich, Welt und Gott. Autobiographik im 17. Jahrhundert, Köln/Weimar/Wien 2004 (Selbstzeugnisse der Neuzeit, Bd. 13), S. 6.

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Beschreibungs- und Deutungsmodelle der Syphilis im zeitgenössischen Kontext Die Syphilis (auch Lues) trat in Europa zum Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts auf und wurde von da an epidemieartig verbreitet; zur Zeit Huttens litt schätzungsweise ein Zehntel der Bevölkerung daran.9 Ein eindrucksvolles Bild der zeitgenössischen Wahrnehmung vermittelt die Beschreibung von Joseph Grünpeck, die er in seinem Libellus de mentulagra alias morbo gallico (erschienen 1503) gibt und in der er das Aussehen von Soldaten schildert, die er während seines Aufenthalts in Italien gesehen hatte: Aliqui etenim a vertice ad usque genua quodam horrido, squalido, continuo, foedo et nigro scabiei genere, […] quod ab omnibus commilitonibus derelicti […] nihil magis quam mortem expetiverunt. Alii hanc scabiem per intervalla, sed multo duriorem arborum cortice, vel sincipitio, fronti, collo, pectori, vel occipitio, natibus et aliis corporis partibus ingestam unguibus prae nimio dolore evellere moliti sunt. Ceteri tanta verrucarum et pustularum frequentia in omnibus corporum membris descatuerunt, quod earum numerus nulla certitudine complecti potuit. Ex plurimorum tamen faciebus, auribus et naribus quaedam crassae et scabrae pustulae in longum instar ducillorum vel potius corniculorum porrectae pestiferoeque putore fluidae erumpentes exsertorum dentium similitudinem exhibuerunt. Hi, quum incommodi sui misereri debebant, risum et ludibrium in propriam perniciem exercuerunt.10 Die einen waren vom Scheitel bis zu den Knien mit einer zusammenhängenden, fürchterlichen schwarzen Art von Krätze überzogen und dadurch so abschreckend, daß sie, von allen Kameraden verlassen, sich in der Einsamkeit den Tod wünschten. Die anderen hatten diese Krätze nur an einzelnen Stellen, aber härter als Baumrinde, am Vorderkopf, an der Stirne, dem Hals, der Brust, dem Hinterkopf, dem Gesäß und anderen Stellen des Körpers und zerrissen sich dieselben vor heftigem Schmerz mit den Nägeln. Die übrigen starrten an allen Körperteilen von einer solchen Menge von Warzen und Pusteln, daß ihre Zahl nicht zu bestimmen war. Sehr vielen aber wuchsen im Gesicht, an den Ohren und an der Nase dicke und rauhe Pusteln, wie Zapfen und kleine Hörner in die Höhe, die mit pestialischem Gestanke aufbrachen und vorstehenden Hauern glichen. Diese lachten und scherzten über ihr Elend statt zu jammern.11

Eindrucksvoll zeigt Grünpecks Beschreibung, wie die Krankheit die menschliche Physis auflöst und deformiert; sie lässt „Zapfen und Hörner“ wachsen und ver9 Zur Syphilis in medizinischer Hinsicht vgl. Illustrierte Geschichte der Medizin, hg. v. Richard Toellner, Bd. 3, Salzburg 1986; in kulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive vgl. Claude Quétel, Le Mal de Naples. Histoire de la Syphilis, Paris 1986 (Médecine et Histoire. Collection dirigée par Jean-François Fayard et Claude Quétel); Ernst Bäumler, Amors vergifteter Pfeil. Kulturgeschichte einer verschwiegenen Krankheit, erweiterte Neuausgabe, München/Zürich 1989. 10 Josephus Gruenpeck, Libellus de mentulagra alias morbo gallico, zit. nach Fuchs, Die ältesten Schriftsteller über die Lustseuche (s. Anm. 4), S. 56f. 11 Übersetzung zit. nach Peschke, Ulrich von Hutten (s. Anm. 3), S. 40.

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ändert menschliche Gesichter zum Animalischen, fast Dämonischen; das Lachen der erkrankten Soldaten veranschaulicht die Überforderung bei der Wahrnehmung und der Verortung der Phänomene in bekannten Deutungsmustern. Während es sich bei der Syphilis nach heutiger Auffassung um eine Infektionskrankheit handelt, die zur Gruppe der sexuell übertragbaren Erkrankungen gehört und durch ein Bakterium hervorgerufen wird,12 warf die Seuche bei ihrem ersten Auftreten Fragen nach Erklärung auf und erforderte das Abgleichen mit vorhandenen Deutungsschemata: In einigem ähnelten die Symptome und Verlaufsweisen denen von Lepra und Pest13 und die Krankheit verbreitete sich in allen Schichten der Bevölkerung. Das Problem des plötzlichen und unzeitigen Todes, das mit der Pest einherging, stellte sich bei der Syphilis dagegen nicht, da diese nicht unmittelbar tödlich verlief und nur fünf Prozent der Erkrankten daran starben. Früh wurde ein Zusammenhang zu den Entdeckungsfahrten von Christopher Kolumbus gesehen, durch dessen Truppen die Krankheit wahrscheinlich um 1493 aus der Neuen Welt nach Neapel eingeschleppt worden war und sich von dort aus durch das Söldnerheer des französischen Königs Karl VIII. über ganz Europa ausgebreitet hatte.14 In Ermangelung anderer Deutungskategorien wurden die Bezeichnungen für die Krankheit zum einen aus den nach außen hin sichtbaren körperlichen Symptomen abgeleitet (pustulae, wartzen, blattern, welsche purppeln), zum anderen aus der Verbindung zu den vermeintlichen Verursachern: Aus Perspektive der Italiener war es ‚die Franzosenkrankheit‘ oder auch kurz Franzosen, aus Sicht der Franzosen wiederum das ‚neapolitanische Übel‘. Die heute gebräuchliche Bezeichnung Syphilis wurde erst 1530 durch das Lehrgedicht Syphilides sive morbi gallici libri tres des italienischen Arztes Girolamo Fracastoro geprägt, in dem dieser einen Schäfer mit Namen Syphilus auftreten lässt, der zur Vergeltung eines von ihm angezettelten Aufstands der Menschen gegen Sol mit einer bis dahin unbekannten Krankheit (morbus insuetus) geschlagen wird.15 12 Das Erscheinungsbild der Lues ist vielfältig. Typisch ist ein Beginn mit schmerzlosen Schleimhautgeschwüren und Schwellungen der Lymphknoten. Bei einem Teil der Infizierten kommt es zu einem chronischen Verlauf, der durch vielfältigen Haut- und Organbefall gekennzeichnet ist. Im Endstadium kommt es zur Zerstörung des zentralen Nervensystems. Nach wie vor existierend, ist die Syphilis heute mit Antibiotika zu behandeln. 13 Vgl. Klaus Bergdolt, Der schwarze Tod in Europa. Die große Pest und das Ende des Mittelalters, München 32011 [1994]. 14 Die Frage nach der Herkunft und Ausbreitung der Krankheit wird seit den hierfür einschlägigen Beiträgen u. a. von Iwan Bloch und Karl Sudhoff kontrovers diskutiert und ist bis heute nicht eindeutig geklärt. Zur Diskussion mit den einschlägigen Nachweisen und weiterführender Literatur zur Thematik vgl. Peschke, Ulrich von Hutten (s. Anm. 6), S. 193–194. 15 Vgl. Syphilides, Liber I: „De genere hoc est dira lues, quae nuper in auras exiit et tandem sese

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Die Deutungen der Syphilis orientierten sich an gängigen Erklärungsmustern von Krankheit: Durch die auffälligen Veränderungen der Haut und Körperoberfläche wurde sie bei ihrem ersten heftigen Auftreten u. a. in Verbindung mit Hautkrankheiten (insbesondere den Aussatz) gestellt und aufgrund des Gestanks, der von den Geschwüren ausging, eine Übertragung durch die Luft vermutet. Der Zusammenhang zum Geschlechtsverkehr wurde zwar formuliert, die Syphilis jedoch noch nicht als primär sexuell übertragbare Infektionskrankheit verstanden. Schließlich wurde die seltene Konjunktion der Planeten Saturn und Jupiter am 25. November 1484 im Zeichen des Skorpions und Hause des Mars als Ursache für den Ausbruch der Krankheit angesehen.16 In der Medizin therapierte man auf Grundlage der Humoralpathologie, mit Quecksilber oder auch mit der Guajaktherapie. Bereits früh wurde die Krankheit mit religiöser Verfehlung, Sünde und Sittenverfall in Verbindung gebracht, u. a. illustriert durch das sogenannte ‚Gotteslästeredikt‘ (Edictum in blasphemos) von Kaiser Maximilian, das auf den 7. August 1495 datiert ist, 1497 jedoch um einen Passus über die Syphilis ergänzt wurde: Diese sei, da in letzter Zeit die Gotteslästerung erheblich zugenommen habe, nun von Gott als neue, bisher unbekannte Seuche auf die Erde geschickt worden („praesertim novus ille et gravissimus hominum morbus nostris diebus exortus, quem vulgo malum Francicum vocant, post hominum memoriam inauditus, saepe grassetur …“).17

De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico Ulrich von Hutten verfasste den Text im Jahre 1519, nachdem er sich selbst der Guajakkur unterzogen hatte und annahm, dadurch geheilt worden zu sein, und widmete ihn dem Mainzer Erzbischof Albrecht,18 in dessen Diensten er zu dieser Zeit stand. Bereits kurze Zeit darauf folgte eine Übersetzung ins Deutsche durch Thomas Murner Von der wunderlichen Arzenei des Harzes, Guaiacum genannt, caligine ab atra exemit…“ („Von dieser Art ist die grausame Seuche, die jüngst ans Licht kam und sich endlich aus der schwarzen Finsternis befreite…“) in Girolamo Fracastoro, Lehrgedicht über die Syphilis, hg. u. übersetzt v. Georg Wöhrle, Bamberg 1988 (Gratia. Bamberger Schriften zur Renaissanceforschung in Verbindung mit Stephan Füssel und Joachim Knape hg. v. Dieter Wuttke), S. 28 u. S. 29. Zur Verbindung der Figur des Syphilus mit der Seuche vgl. insbes. a. a. O., S. 90–91. 16 Zu diesem Erklärungsmodell vgl. Wolf-Dieter Müller-Jahncke, „Die Krankheit aus dem Gestirn. Syphilis und Astrologie“, in Pirckheimer Jahrbuch 4 (1988): S. 118–127. 17 Text zit. nach Fuchs, Die ältesten Schriftsteller über die Lustseuche in Deutschland (s. Anm. 4), S. 305. 18 Vgl. dazu den Kommentar zur Schlusswidmung in Ulrich von Hutten. Die Schule des Tyrannen. Lateinische Schriften, hg. v. Marin Treu, Darmstadt 1996, S. 364.

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und wie man die Franzosen heilen soll (Straßburg 1519); ein Jahr später erschien eine französische19 sowie in der Folgezeit mehrere englische Übertragungen bzw. Bearbeitungen.20 Der Traktat steht im Zusammenhang mit einer ganzen Reihe von Texten zur Syphilis, wie z. B. von Konrad Schellig, Niccolò Leoniceno und dem bereits zitierten Joseph Grünpeck, die zum Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts erschienen, und die sich mit je spezifischem Darstellungs- und Erkenntnisinteresse der Krankheit näherten und mit deren Symptomatik auseinandersetzten.21

Kritik an den Autoritäten Kirche und Ärzteschaft Auffällig an dem Text im Vergleich zu den anderen Abhandlungen über die Krankheit ist die kritische Haltung gegenüber den Autoritäten Kirche und Ärzteschaft, die Hutten von Beginn an einnimmt: Nach dem wunderlichen Aberglauben, der die Krankheit empfangen habe, seien es danach „die Theologen, die die Seuche als Zorn Gottes [deuten, A.W.], der sie uns als Strafe für unsere bösen Sitten auferlegt hat, so dass wir sie als Züchtigung hinnehmen müssen“22 sowie schließlich die Ärzte, die nicht auf der Suche nach einem Heilmittel, sondern lediglich nach dem Ursprung der Krankheit seien: „Sie flohen den Anblick der Kranken und wollten sie nicht anfassen, denn diese Krankheit war wie keine andere…“.23

19 Jean Chéradame, L’Expérience et approbation Ulrich de Hutem, notable chevalier, touchant la médecine du boys dict guaiacum, pour circonvenir et déchasser la maladie indeuement appellée françoise, ainçoys par gens de meilleur jugement est dicte et appelée la maladie de Naples, traduite et interprétée par maistre Jehan Cheradame Hypocrates, estudyant en la faculté et art de medecine, Paris 1520 (weitere Ausgaben 1525 und 1530). 20 Thomas Paynell, De Morbo Gallico, London, 1533 (eine weitere Ausgabe erschien 1730); Thomas Paynell, Of the wood called Guaiacum, that healeth the Frenche Pockes and also helpeth the gout in the feet, the stone, the palsey, lepre, dropsy, fallynge evyll, and other dyseases, London 1536 (weitere Ausgaben 1539 und 1540). 21 Zu den wichtigsten in dieser Zeit entstandenen Schriften gehören: Konrad Schellig, Consilium (1495 oder 1496); Joseph Grünpeck, Tractatus de pestilentia scorra (1496); Niccolò Leoniceno, De epidemia quam Itali morbum Gallicum, Galli vero Neapolitanum vocant, libellus (1497 bei Aldus Manutius); Johannes Widmann, Tractatus de pustulis (1497); Corradino Giloni, De morbo quem Gallicum nuncupant (1497); Bartholomäus Steber, A malafranzos, morbo Gallorum, praeservatio et cura (1498); Natale Montesauro, De dispositionibus, quas vulgares mal franzoso appellant (1498); Antonio Scanaroli, Disputatio utilis de morbo Gallico (1498); Francisco Lopez de Villalobo, Somario de la medicina con un tratodo sobre las pestiferas bubas (1498). 22 Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 208. 23 Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 208; Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 402.

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In seinem Referat der verbreiteten Hypothesen über mögliche Ursachen der Krankheit zählt Hutten die gängigen auf und nennt dazu die vergiftete Luft, ungünstige Planetenkonstellationen, „schlechte Säfte und gefährliche Feuchte“ sowie infiziertes und verdorbenes Blut. Im dritten Kapitel: In quos morbos derivetur Gallicus („In welche Krankheiten die französische ausartet“24), gibt er eine unspezifische Sammlung auch anderer Krankheiten und Symptome, die er im Zusammenhang mit der Syphilis beobachtet hatte.

Erfahrung als Legitimation und Beschreibungsmodus Allem übergeordnet und wie ein roter Faden im Darstellungsverlauf ist jedoch der Aspekt der Erfahrung, den er vielfach betont, wie z. B. bei seinen Ausführungen über die Behandlungsmethode mit dem Guajakholz: Efficaciæ ab hac descriptione causas longa disputatione, si videtur, medici trahant: ego potius quod sit gaudeo, quam quale sit inquiro.25 Über die Gründe für die Wirksamkeit des beschriebenen Holzes mögen die Mediziner, wenn sie wollen, lange Dispute führen. Ich freue mich mehr, daß es wirkt, als daß ich mit der Frage umgehe, warum es wirkt.26

oder: nam ipse nihil tale profiteor, neque ita ingressus sum, ut corum quæ scriberem, continuo rationem quoque redderem, sed hoc promisi, quicquid de Guaiaco comperissem, aut in me aut in aliis, et quæ vel ipse vidissem vel ex aliis auditu accepissem, optima in literas fide referrem, relicturus ansam post me multis, qui rem pro sua dignitate explicabunt.27 Denn ich selber kann nichts erklären, auch bin ich nicht soweit vorgedrungen, daß ich in meiner Schrift fortlaufend theoretische Erläuterungen gebe, sondern ich hatte nur versprochen, was immer ich an mir selber oder von anderen über das Guajak erfahren habe, was ich selber erlebt oder von anderen gehört habe, ganz genau aufzuschreiben. Die Theorie überlasse ich getrost den vielen, die nach mir die Angelegenheit gebührend erklären werden.28

Die eigene Erfahrung steht über Theorie und erlerntem Wissen. Gleichzeitig spricht Hutten von ‚den Kranken‘ aus der Perspektive des Außenstehenden und – 24 Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 212; Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 405–407. 25 Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 416. 26 Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 221. 27 Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 482. 28 Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 281.

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des Kundigen. Im Text oszillieren die Beschreibungsperspektiven beständig zwischen der eigenen Erfahrung und dem Blick von außen. Die Beschreibung des Körpers und der Symptome erfolgt retrospektiv anhand seines eigenen Beispiels sowie aufgrund der Beobachtung anderer Erkrankter. Dies zeigt beispielsweise die Schilderung seiner Beinwunde: Ulcera vero quibus sunt, his quam latissime caro circumadeditur: atque hoc est incipientis tamen sanitatis argumentum. mihi quidem, ut nunquam antea, nudari in tibia os contigit, latitudine unguis humani, idque vigesimoquinto tandem die, meo magno terrore, sed nulla reparandæ carnis difficultate: adcrevit enim paucos intra dies.29 Um die Geschwüre aber, wenn sie bei jemandem vorkommen, wird das Fleisch im weiten Umkreis weggefressen, aber gerade dies ist ein Anzeichen beginnender Heilung. Mir selbst lag, wie nie zuvor, ein Stück Knochen von Fingernagelgröße im Schienbein bloß. Dies geschah zu meinem großen Schrecken bis zum 25. Tag der Kur, aber es gab keine Schwierigkeiten bei der Heilung, das Fleisch wuchs nämlich innerhalb weniger Tage darüber.30

Gleichzeitig zeigt sich an diesem Beispiel, wie sich genaue Beobachtung und sinnstiftende Interpretation mischen: Itaque video naturam ei esse subtus depurare ulcera, et sub carne vim prius suam experiri. […] quæ omnia, utcunque æstimanda veniunt, intelligo ut plurimum differri in longum eius opus: neque enim abrumpere est huius medicinæ, se paulatim corrigere sanguinem, in quo vitiato universa morbi vis inest, et humores noxios, mali ipsius alimenta, arcere a corpore et derivare, aliis quidem in urinam et sudores, in sedis excrementa aliis.31 Deshalb scheint es mir die Natur des Guajak zu sein, dass es den Untergrund der Geschwüre reinigt und seine Wirkung unterhalb des Fleisches entfaltet. […] Aus all diesen Überlegungen muss man mit mir zu dem Schluss kommen, dass das Guajak ungemein lang nachwirkt, denn dies Medikament wirkt nicht stürmisch, sondern reinigt das Blut langsam, in dem ja die gesamte Wirkkraft der Krankheit steckt. Auch drängt es die schädlichen Säfte, die die Krankheit nähren, zusammen und scheidet sie aus, zum Teil durch Harn und Schweiß, zum Teil auch durch den Stuhl.32

Die Erfahrung erscheint dabei jedoch weniger als Legitimation oder steht in der Tradition von Strategien der Beglaubigung durch (wahre oder fingierte) Augenzeugenschaft, sondern dient vielmehr der Entlastung und Absicherung: Ubi, ut in aliis, ea dicam quæ vidi ipse et cognovi, hoc iam præmonens, istam in me culpam ne coniiciat aliquis, si cui aliter atque ego scripserim eveniat.33 29 30 31 32 33

Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 477. Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 276. Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 477–478. Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 277. Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 475–476.

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Wie überall rede ich nur von Dingen, die ich gesehen und erfahren habe. Dies merke ich hier an, damit mir niemand eine Schuld nachsagen kann, wenn bei ihm etwas anders verlaufen ist, als ich es hier beschrieben habe.34

Ganz in der Tradition des medizinischen Traktats stehen die zahlreichen Verweise auf die traditionellen Autoritäten Galen, Celsus und Aristoteles sowie auf zeitgenössische Ärzte, die ihm als Experten während der Krankheit – und offensichtlich auch bei der Abfassung des Textes – zur Seite gestanden hatten. Was bei Hutten fast völlig fehlt, ist die Thematisierung geschlechts- oder gendertypischer Aspekte, wie sie demgegenüber in der Darstellung Grünpecks vorliegt, die eine Konnotation der Krankheit mit den Genitalien („Mentula“ = männliches Glied, Phallus und – „agra“ in Anlehnung an die Bildung in „Podagra“ = Gicht) bereits im Titel seines Textes führt. Bei Hutten gibt es nur wenige Erwähnungen, wie z. B. sein Hinweis auf die Gefahr, sich bei infizierten Frauen anzustecken, da diese die Anzeichen für die Krankheit in sich verborgen und damit für den Mann nicht erkennbar tragen könnten – ein Hinweis, der darüber hinaus im Kontext misogyner Tradition die altbekannte Rolle der Frau als Verführerin aufruft. Manent et mulieribus intra pudendas partes ulcuscula, miri diu veneni fomenta, atque ea tanto perniciosa magis, quanto minus oculis eorum qui caute mulieribus congredi volunt, subiici patiuntur. et vel iccirco pestilentissima est hæc morbi pars, quod in ea vitare morbum non licet, cum huiuscemodi mulierum levissima nonnunquam et immundissima sint corpora.35 Es bleiben auch den Frauen in den Geschlechtsorganen kleine Geschwüre, die eigentlich lange die Quelle des Gifts bilden und denen man mit um so größerer Gefahr ausgeliefert ist, als sie sich dem Blick auch dessen entziehen, der den Beischlaf mit einer Frau vorsichtig vollziehen will. Darin liegt der besonders gefährliche Teil der Krankheit, weil man sich hier nicht zu schützen vermag, da die Frauen bei ihren Leiden oft die reinsten und völlig fleckenlosen Körper haben.36

Bezüge auf Huttens eigene Geschlechtlichkeit bzw. eine Reflexion über seine Rolle oder Situation als erkrankter Mann fehlen im Traktat.

Krankheit und Gesellschaft: Symptom und Metapher Während dieser wesentliche Bereich der Krankheit also fast gänzlich ausgespart bleibt, dient Hutten deren Beschreibung wiederholt einer dezidierten Zeit- und Gesellschaftskritik: So z. B. in Kapitel 19, das ein Lob der Mäßigung gegenüber 34 Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 274. 35 Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 406. 36 Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 213.

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dem Überfluss formuliert und die ‚entartete Zeit‘, das Leben im Luxus, Maßlosigkeit und Sittenverfall anprangert, und in der Hutten die Schwere der Epidemie in Deutschland auf den gegenwärtigen Zustand der Gesellschaft zurückführt: Iam quos corripuit, ut quisque vivit, ita eum aut cito deserit, aut diu tenet, aut in totum consumit. Omnibus in Italia et Hispania ac sicubi præterea sobrii sunt homines, mitior; nobis propter crapulam et victus intemperantiam ut diutius inhæret, ita comprehensos infestissime torquet, acerbissime adfligit.37 So, wie einer lebt, so trifft ihn auch die Krankheit, sie verlässt den einen schnell, hält sich bei einem anderen lange oder verzehrt einen dritten ganz. Überall, wo die Leute maßvoll leben, wie in Italien oder Spanien, ist der Verlauf milder. Bei uns bleibt sie länger wegen unserer Unmäßigkeit im Essen und Trinken. Sie quält die Befallenen heftig und peinigt sie aufs schärfste.38

Vor allem aber verbindet Hutten die Krankheit, bzw. das Phänomen Krankheit allgemein, mit einer intensiven Adels- und Kirchenkritik: … cum, inquam, vix decimus quisque nunc reperiatur in Germania nobilium, qui non aut podagra laboret aut articulari morbo crucietur aut hydropisi infestetur, ischia, lepra aut illa maxima secum mala invehente morbo Gallico divexetur.39 … in Deutschland, sage ich, [ist] heutzutage kaum ein Adliger unter zehnen zu finden […], der nicht an Gicht, Rheumatismus, Wassersucht, Ischias und Lepra leidet oder von ernstlichen Folgen der Franzosenkrankheit gequält wird.40 At illi hæc agunt nunc qui in regnum dei duces nobis esse debent, sacerdotes, canonici, episcopi et pontifices, in tantum, ut per Germaniam proverbii vice sit, sacris initiari debere eum qui velit suaviter vivere, quasi hæc illos imprimis vita deceat.41 … heute prassen genau die Leute, die uns zum Reich Gottes führen sollten, die Priester und Stiftsherren, die Bischöfe und Päpste. Sie treiben es so toll, dass in Deutschland schon das Sprichwort verbreitet ist: Will einer angenehm leben, muss er sich zum Priester weihen lassen, als stünde gerade den Geistlichen ein solches Leben an.42

Seuchen und Krankheiten werden nach Hutten also wesentlich durch die Maßlosigkeit der Lebensführung verursacht. Gleichzeitig wird das Auftreten von Krankheit zu deren Metapher funktionalisiert:43 Der kranke Körper repräsentiert die kranke gesellschaftliche Organisation. Damit verwendet und modifiziert 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 403. Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 209. Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 463. Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 263. Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 462. Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 261. Die Rolle der Syphilis als Metapher und deren Funktion als Bewältigungsstrategie beschreibt Lewis Jillings, „The Aggression of the Cured Syphilitic: Ulrich von Hutten’s Projection of His Disease as Metaphor“, German Quarterly 68, 1,1/18 (1995): S. 1–18.

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Hutten das gängige Bild des Körpers als Sozialgefüge,44 das er selbst auch in anderen Texten, insbesondere in seinen Dialogen Febris I und II, in denen die Personifikationen ‚Hutten‘ und ‚Fieber‘ streiten, benutzt.

Intellektuelles Selbstverständnis und generelle Disposition zur Krankheit Schließlich taucht eine weitere Konnotation von Krankheit auf, die in diesem Zusammenhang zwar mit der Syphilis in Verbindung gebracht wird, ursächlich jedoch auf die generelle Disposition und Anfälligkeit ‚der Intellektuellen‘ für Krankheit verweist und mit der Hutten diese Gruppe, der er sich explizit auch zurechnet, besonders hervorhebt: Audivi medicos dicere, quia sit alia aliorum corporum ratio, mature aut sero provenire. Certum est hoc enim, quod identidem mihi crebro inculcat Stromerus, nobis qui subtiliori agimur spiritu, et in studiis literarum attentius versamur, morbos plerumque, si accidant, vehementiores esse et longiores.45 Auch hörte ich die Meinung der Ärzte, dass eine langsamere oder schnellere Besserung von der unterschiedlichen körperlichen Beschaffenheit der Patienten abhänge. Eins jedenfalls steht fest, auch hat es mir Stromer häufig eingeschärft: Wir, die wir feinfühliger sind und uns etwas aufmerksamer mit literarischen Studien beschäftigen, erleiden diese Krankheit länger und schwerer.46

Die hier formulierte Idee, dass die intellektuelle Betätigung eine besondere körperliche Disposition und eine Gefährdung von Krankheit impliziere, gehört zum Gemeingut und Selbstbild humanistischer Identität;47 prominent formuliert vor allem vom Florentiner Neuplatoniker Marsilio Ficino in seiner Gelehrtendiätetik De vita libri tres von 1489, in der dieser eine medizinisch-philosophische (und bei ihm damit einhergehend auch astrologische) Begründung von Exklusivität entworfen hatte, die auch bei Hutten hier anklingt.48 Vor allem aber war

44 Vgl. dazu den Überblick bei Maren Lorenz, Leibhaftige Vergangenheit. Einführung in die Körpergeschichte, Tübingen 2000, insbes. Kap. 4.1. „Body politics – Symbolische Körper: Körper als Metapher, kollektive Identitäten und die Bio-Macht“ (ebd. S. 104–121) mit weiterführender Literatur. 45 Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 476. 46 Hutten, Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes (s. Anm. 2), S. 275. Bei dem genannten Stromer handelt es sich um den Arzt Ulmann Stromer, der auch Hutten behandelt hatte. 47 Vgl. Werner Friedrich Kümmel, „Der homo litteratus und die Kunst, gesund zu leben“, in Humanismus und Medizin, hg. v. Rudolf Schmitz und Gundolf Keil, Weinheim 1984 (Mitteilungen XI der Kommission für Humanismusforschung), S. 67–85. 48 Marsilio Ficino, De vita libri tres, Florenz 1489 [editio princeps]; kritische Ausgabe:

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damit ein wissenschaftliches Erklärungsmodell für eine sich neu etablierende Suche nach Individualität bereitgestellt, in dem die Disposition zur Krankheit vom identitätsstiftenden Merkmal bis zur Inszenierung extremer Selbstbespiegelung und Hypochondrie reichen konnte.

Ein Seitenblick: adhuc Vulcanum aemulor In einem Brief von Hutten an seinen Freund Jacob Fuchs vom 21. 8. 1512 beklagt sich dieser über die Beschwerden in seinem Fuß: Durch die Syphilis beeinträchtigt und verformt, lasse er ihn dem hinkenden Gott Vulkan gleichen – „adhuc Vulcanum aemulor“.49 Beschwerden über die ständigen Schmerzen, vor allem aber die körperliche Einschränkung, die damit einherging und die ihn daran hindern, sich aktiv am politischen Geschehen beteiligen zu können, finden sich auch mehrfach in den Gedichten, wie z. B. in seinem „Gelübde für ein Fußleiden“ („Votum in Morbo Pedis“): Has tibi dona fero, mundi regnator, ad aras, Quæ dabo iam salvo prosperiora pede: Da morbum cessare pedis, da robur ademptum, Sic tua nunquam Arabo templa sapore vacent. Marte rapit Venetos dux Maximilianus in hostes Germanos pedites et Calabros equites: Non precor, ut morbo vivam tranquillus abacto, In bellum ut tanto sed duce miles eam.50 Zu diesem Altar bringe ich Dir, Weltenherrscher, meine Gaben, Marsilius Ficinus: De vita libri tres. Three books on life. A critical edition and translation with introduction and notes by Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark, Binghampton/New York 1989. Der Text von Ficino wurde bereits kurz nach seinem Erscheinen lebhaft im humanistischen Kontext rezipiert und dann zunehmend auch in weiteren Kreisen wirkmächtig. Zur Rezeption der De vita libri tres und des darin formulierten Selbstverständnisses im deutschsprachigen Raum des 16. Jahrhunderts und der Bedeutung für humanistische Selbstentwürfe vgl. Antje Wittstock, Melancholia translata. Marsilio Ficinos Melancholie-Begriff im deutschsprachigen Raum des 16. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen 2011 (Berliner Mittelalter- und Frühneuzeitforschung Bd. 9). 49 Dem Mythos zufolge ist Vulkan (im Römischen ist es Hephaistos) der Gott des Feuers, der Schmiedekunst und der Handwerker. Seine Mutter ( Juno) findet ihn bei Geburt hässlich und will ihn aussetzen, sein Vater ( Jupiter) packt ihn bei einem Streit am Fuß und schleudert ihn den Himmel hinunter. Seither hinkt er und vereinigt in sich den Widerspruch von mächtiger Kraft und körperlicher Versehrung, die ihn zum Handwerker und Künstler machen. Er besitzt die schönsten der Göttinnen zur Frau (in der Ilias Charis, in der Odyssee ist er mit Aphrodite verheiratet) und ist hier gleichzeitig der Gehörnte, da er – allen zum Wissen – von seiner Frau betrogen wird. 50 „Votum in Morbo Pedis“, in Ulrichs von Hutten Schriften, hg. v. Eduard Böcking, Neudruck der Ausgabe 1859–1861, 5 Bde, Bd. 3: Poetische Schriften, Aalen 1963, S. 218.

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Die ich in der Hoffnung auf Heilung meines Fußes Dir weihe: Gib, daß mein Fußleiden schwinde, gib die alte Kraft zurück, so werden Deine Tempel niemals des Weihrauchduftes entbehren. Im März führt Kaiser Maximilian gegen die venetischen Feinde Germanische Fußtruppen und Calabrische Reiter: Ich wünsche mir nicht die Heilung meiner Krankheit, um ein ruhiges Leen zu führen, Vielmehr daß ich unter einem solchen Anführer als Soldat in den Kampf ziehe.51

Seine Gedichte52 als lyrische Form und seine Briefe als Ego-Dokumente stellen damit weitere Möglichkeiten für Hutten dar, um sich literarisch der eigenen Krankheit anzunähern. Zudem übernimmt er mit der mythologischen Figur des Vulkan als dem körperlich Versehrten, Stigmatisierten und Ausgeschlossenen, der trotz seiner körperlichen Einschränkung außergewöhnliche Kraft in sich vereint und diese in seiner Tätigkeit als Schmied in handwerklich-künstlerische Aktion umsetzt, eine spezifische Selbstkonzeption, die später grundlegend für Vorstellungen von künstlerischer Produktivität werden wird und die Krankheit und körperliche Versehrung in Verbindung mit Schaffenskraft und Schöpfertum setzt.53 Gleichzeitig bedient sich Hutten mit der Figur des Vulkan – wie auch durch seine Selbstidentifikation als Odysseus an anderer Stelle – einer bildlichen Sprechweise, die mit dem Stilmittel der Metapher eine Form des uneigentlichen Ausdrucks und durch ein ‚Über-ein-Anderes‘ vermitteltes Reden Möglichkeiten der Ich-Aussage eröffnet, wie sie auch von Lewis Jillings für Huttens Schreiben herausgearbeitet wurde.54

51 Zit. nach Peschke, Ulrich von Hutten (s. Anm. 3), S. 348. 52 Ähnliche Beispiele seiner Lyrik: „In obsidione patavina aeger“: „…Iam pede pertæsum est claudoque insistere talo; / Qui valet ut vivat, me perimant Veneti.“ Vgl. Hutten, Poetische Schriften (s. Anm. 51), S. 212 („Krank in patavischer Gefangenschaft“: „Ich bin überdrüssig meines Fußes und meines lahmen Knöchels / Der eine freut sich des Lebens, mich mögen die Veneter töten.“); zit. nach Peschke, Ulrich von Hutten (s. Anm. 3), S. 148 und „Votum pro se in morbo pedis“: „Orbe pererrato terra omnia passus et undis / Nunc etiam raptum peste agitante pedem / Coritii pietate nova devolvor ad aram…“ Vgl. Hutten, Poetische Schriften (s. Anm. 51), S. 272 („Gelübde in einer Fußkrankheit dargebracht“: „Nach einer Wanderung über das Antlitz der Erde, alle Härten zu Lande und zu Wasser ertragend / Nur um jetzt geschlagen zu sein durch die in meinem Fuß sitzende Seuche…“ Zit. nach Peschke, Ulrich von Hutten (s. Anm. 3), S. 349. 53 Auf die Bedeutung dieses Gedankens bei Hutten deutet auch eine Passage aus seinem Dialog Febris II hin, in dem das Fieber von sich sagt, dass es als Krankheit gelehrt und fleißig mache (vgl. Ulrich von Hutten, Deutsche Schriften, hg. v. Peter Ukena, München 1970, S. 53). 54 Vgl. Lewis Jillings, „Ulrich von Huttens Self-Stylization as Odysseus. The Conservative Use of Myth“, Colloquia Germanica 26 (1993): S. 93–107 und Jillings, The Aggression of the Cured Syphilitic (s. Anm. 43).

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Dem Selbst auf der Spur … Nach Sichtung der Beschreibungen bleibt die Frage: Worum geht es in dem Text eigentlich? Um eine Behandlungsmethode der Syphilis? („De admiranda guaiaci medicina“55). Um eine bis dahin unbekannte Krankheit? („Annus fuit a Christo nato post millesimum et quadringentesimum nonagesimus tertius aut circa, cum irrepsit pestiferum malum …“56). Um Hutten selbst? („Quos mihi morbos ademerit hoc remedium“57). Eine quasi experimentelle Herangehensweise über das Ausschlussprinzip vermag die Spezifik von Huttens Text zu verdeutlichen: Zielte der Text einzig auf die Therapieform ab, läge ein präskriptiver Text wie ein Rezept- und Kräuterbuch oder ein Regimen vor; ginge es um die Krankheit, wäre es ein medizinischer Traktat; handelte es sich um die Person Hutten, hätte man eine Selbstbeschreibung z. B. in Form eines Ego-Dokuments oder ggf. auch im Stil der humanistischen Lyrik-Gattung De se aegrotans („Über sich in einer Krankheit“).58 Eben dies ist aber nicht der Fall: Der vorgenommene Textdurchgang zeigt, dass es sich gerade um alle drei Schreibweisen gleichzeitig handelt und die Annäherung an das Selbst bei Hutten vermittelt über Krankheitstheorien und Beschreibungen des Körperäußeren erfolgt. Deutungsschemata werden anzitiert, um letztlich die am eigenen Körper erlebte Erfahrung gelten zu lassen. Mit den Worten von Jillings: „The learned humanist can relativize book-learning and scholarship with reference to his privileged experience of the body.“59 An Huttens Text zeigt sich so, dass Krankheit und Deutung untrennbar miteinander verbunden sind, indem eine Beschreibung von Krankheit ohne sinnstiftendes Moment und ohne Selbsterfahrung per se nicht denkbar ist. In der Beschreibungsperspektive wechseln dabei die genaue Körperbeschreibung, die den Körper – Huttens eigenen und den von anderen als eines exemplarischen ‚medizinischen Körpers‘ – von außen als Objekt erfasst, und die erlebte Körperlichkeit, der nun zwar nicht im Sinne von Leiblichkeitskonzepten in der Wahrnehmung nachgespürt und nachgefühlt wird,60 dem sich Hutten aber über 55 Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 399 („Über die wunderbare Heilkraft des Guajakholzes“). 56 Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 399. („Es geschah um das Jahr 1493 nach Christi Geburt, dass sich diese schlimme Seuche einschlich.“). 57 Hutten, De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico (s. Anm. 1), S. 482. („Welche Krankheitserscheinungen das Mittel bei mir behoben hat.“). 58 Vgl. dazu Wilhelm Kühlmann, „Zur Bewältigung von Krankheitserfahrungen bei Andreas Gryphius und Petrus Lotichius Secundus“, in Andreas Gryphius. Weltgeschick und Lebenszeit, hg. v. der Stiftung Gerhart-Hauptmann-Haus, Düsseldorf 1993, S. 13–32. 59 Jillings, The Aggression of the Cured Syphilitic (s. Anm. 43), S. 6. 60 Auf die Unterscheidung der Konzepte von Körper und Leib (Körper-haben, Leib-sein) und der sich daran angelagerten Forschungsdiskussion, wie sie nicht erst durch die einschlägigen

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wechselnde Sinngebungs- und Deutungsmuster im Wechselspiel mit der experientia fast ‚tastend‘ annähert. Diesen Befund weitergedacht, ließe sich der Begriff der Erfahrung bei Hutten als ein zweifacher bestimmen: der des eigenen körperlichen Erlebens und der über Beobachtungen und Erfahrungswerte entwickelte. Dass der Aspekt der Erfahrung nicht nur prinzipiell in der Konstruktion des Textes mit angelegt ist, sondern auch in der Rezeption von De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico bedeutsam war und darin besonders hervorgehoben wurde, veranschaulicht die Adaptation des Textes in der bereits erwähnten französischen Ausgabe von Jean Chéradame (1530): Nicht nur zeigt die Illustration auf dem Titelblatt eine Szenerie, die möglicherweise die Behandlungsmethode der Guajakkur ins Bild setzt – und die mit der im Bett befindlichen Figur potentiell dazu angelegt ist, auch die Assoziation mit dem erkrankten Hutten aufzurufen. Vor allem rückt auch der veränderte Titel (L’Expérience et approbation Ulrich de Hutem, notable chevalier, touchant la médecine du boys dict guaiacum, pour circonvenir et déchasser la maladie indeuement appellée françoise, ainçoys par gens de meilleur jugement est dicte et appelée la maladie de Naples […]) durch das Voranstellen der Begriffe expérience (= Erfahrung, Versuch) und approbation (= Beweis) 61 den Aspekt der Erfahrung und Expertise explizit ins Zentrum.62 Dass Konzepte von Subjektivität und Individualität, in der Forschung lange ausschließlich für die Moderne angesetzt, seit einiger Zeit auch für die Vormoderne in Anschlag gebracht werden können, indem „unterschiedliche historisch variable Formen“ angenommen werden, haben u. a. Martin Baisch, Jutta Eming, Hendrikje Haufe und Andrea Sieber in ihrem Aufsatzband zu Subjektivität in der Literatur des Mittelalters nachgezeichnet.63 Ergänzend zu Auffassungen, nach denen einerseits „das Subjekt als ein vorausgesetztes, mit sich selbst identisches Selbst aufgefasst [wird], das sich seiner selbst bewusst ist“ bzw. andererseits der Akzentuierung „kultureller Prozesse […], durch die das Subjekt geformt oder Arbeiten von Barbara Duden (v. a. Barbara Duden, Geschichte unter der Haut. Ein Eisenacher Arzt und seine Patientinnen um 1730, Stuttgart 1987) etabliert ist, kann hier nur hingewiesen werden. Zu Begriffs- und Forschungsgeschichte im Überblick vgl. Lorenz, Leibhaftige Vergangenheit (s. Anm. 45), S. 32–38 mit weiterführender Literatur. 61 Vgl. die entsprechenden Einträge in Edmond Huguet, Dictionnaire du 16è siècle, Paris 1925– 1967. 62 Eine weitere, signifikante Änderung der französischen Ausgabe, die den Text von Hutten ansonsten in mehr oder weniger getreuer Übersetzung abschreitet, betrifft – erwartungsgemäß – die Bezeichnung bzw. Herleitung der Syphilis: Während Hutten vom morbus gallicus spricht, lautet die Bezeichnung bei Chéradamus Maladie de Neaples/Naples (vgl. Titelblatt der Ausgabe). 63 Inszenierungen von Subjektivität in der Literatur des Mittelalters, hg. v. Martin Baisch/ Jutta Eming/Hendrikje Haufe/Andrea Sieber, Berlin 2005.

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Abdruck mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Bibliothèque nationale de France.

denen es unterworfen ist“, wird „Subjektivität auch als Bewegung zwischen diesen Polen begriffen, als Ergebnis eines Dialogs, der durch eine Distanznahme

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und ein Zu-sich-selbst-ins-Verhältnis-Treten bestimmt ist.“64 An der strikten Trennung von Subjektivität als Ausdruck eines entweder vollständig autonom aufgefassten Subjekts (Paradigma der Autonomie in der Nachfolge Jacob Burckhardts) oder als eines gänzlich heteronom bestimmten ‚kulturellen Artefakts‘ (Paradigma der Kontextualität im Zeichen poststrukturalistischer und diskursanalytischer Ansätze, wie dem New Historicism) setzt auch die Kritik Kormanns an, wenn sie konstatiert, dass „die Debatte über die Geschichte von Subjektivität und Individualität […] in einer Fixierung auf das Spannungsverhältnis von Heteronomie und Autonomie festgefahren“ sei.65 Demgegenüber aber lasse sich das in Texten formulierte menschliche Selbstverständnis nicht lediglich in einer Alternative zwischen Heteronomie und Autonomie fassen, sondern „es kann auch anders sein: etwa heterolog. Es kann sich also bilden und darstellen, indem ‚anderes‘ gesagt wird.“66 Die Diskussion um die Konzepte von Subjektivität und Individualität ist eine mehr als komplexe und eine adäquate begriffliche Annäherung kann in der hier gebotenen Kürze nur misslingen. Auch das Konzept des Heterologen bräuchte ein längeres theoretisches Ausholen, zumal sich bereits der Begriffsgebrauch bei Olejniczak und Kormann signifikant unterscheidet. Ich greife für meine Überlegungen hier nur einen Aspekt des Heterologen, den des ‚Schreibens über sich selbst‘, auf: In Abgrenzung zu Kormann, die mit dem Konzept auf das „Beziehungsorientierte des Selbstverständnisses“67 und die „Beschreibung von Kommunikationsstrukturen“68 abzielt, das heißt, das Heterologe vorwiegend in personalen Relationen sieht, scheint mir mit Huttens Text eine weitere Form heterologer Selbstthematisierung vorzuliegen: Hutten beschreibt sich selbst, nicht, indem er (ausschließlich) über sich selbst schreibt, sondern indem er (auch) den ‚Umweg‘ über anderes nimmt. In Abwandlung der These von Kormann also: ‚Ein Ich sagt, spricht, schreibt sich über anderes.‘ Dieses ‚andere‘ wären im Falle von Huttens De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico die eingangs aufgezeigten Diskurse und Deutungsmuster: Beschreibungsmodelle aus Medizin, Theologie, humanistischen Identitätskonzepten sowie gesellschaftlicher und politischer Aktualität und Theoriebildung. Spezifisch erscheint nun Huttens literarischer Umgang 64 Baisch/Eming/Haufe/Sieber, Subjektivität in der Literatur des Mittelalters (s. Anm. 63), S. 12. 65 Kormann, Ich, Welt und Gott (s. Anm. 8), S. 6. Für die forschungsgeschichtliche Verortung des Begriffs aufschlussreich ist der Beitrag zur Heterologie von Olejniczak, Heterologie. Konturen frühneuzeitlichen Selbstseins (s. Anm. 7), auf die sich Kormann grundlegend bezieht. 66 Kormann, Ich, Welt und Gott (s. Anm. 8), S. 6. 67 Kormann, Ich, Welt und Gott (s. Anm. 8), S. 8. 68 Kormann, Ich, Welt und Gott (s. Anm. 8), S. 10.

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damit. Denn es ist kein einfaches Zitieren, kein neutrales Aneinanderreihen von Meinungen und Autoritäten im Sinne einer auf Vollständigkeit bedachten Kompilation. Vielmehr nimmt Hutten im (Be-)Schreiben und im Augenblick des Nennens gleichzeitig wieder Distanz dazu ein: Er relativiert Aussagen, indem er sie als falsche Annahmen desavouiert, sie mittels Ironie auf Abstand hält oder sich mit dem Gebrauch des Konjunktivs in eine ambivalente Beziehung dazu setzt. Es sind diese Distanznahmen, die als narrative Verfahren das eigentümliche Changieren des Textes bewirken und die mit den Leerstellen, also dem, was Hutten eben nicht über sich erzählt, Formen von Subjektivität darstellen. Bislang sind mit dem sich an die Begriffe vormoderner Subjektivität und Individualität anschließenden Fragenkomplex vornehmlich literarische Texte und deren narrative Strategien in den Blick genommen worden. Von dem vorliegenden Beispiel ausgehend ließe sich nun fragen, ob diese Textbasis nicht auszudehnen wäre, indem die Darstellung von Selbst zusätzlich vermittelt über ‚anderes‘ erfolgen kann und damit auch das Feld möglicher Schreibweisen von Ich und Selbst um eine weitere Facette zu ergänzen ist. In diesem Zusammenhang bedürfte es sicherlich weiterer Berücksichtigung, dass Hutten seinen Text nach überstanden geglaubter Genesung verfasst (wie im übrigen auch Grünpeck), was sich nicht nur biographisch verorten und begründen lässt, da er zum Zeitpunkt der Abfassung als körperlich rehabilitiert auch auf einen glücklichen Ausgang seiner bis dahin erfolglos angestrebten Heiratsbemühungen hoffte. Es legt auch eine apologetische Lesart des Textes nahe und eröffnet damit eine zusätzliche Perspektive auf De guaiaci medicina et morbo gallico als Form heterologen Schreibens.

Daniela Kohler

The Anthropological Concept in Jakob Ruf ’s Political Plays Etter Heini and Wilhelm Tell in the Light of the Prevalent Opinions of the Swiss Reformation

Jakob Ruf (1505–1558) was a man of some renown in 16th-century Zurich. He acquired his reputation through his excellent skills as a surgeon. Not only by practicing but also by sharing his medical knowledge in textbooks, Ruf considerably advanced the profession. Besides that, Ruf had another passion. Interested in literature, he had an ambition to write plays that resulted in two historical and five biblical works. This essay will concentrate on the two political plays and on Ruf ’s anthropological concept that they express – a concept based on the prevalent opinion in the Swiss Reformation as will be shown. Against the background of the political situation in Zurich and in the entire Swiss Confederation, I will analyse Ruf ’s interpretation of the Swiss as a chosen nation and the discrepancies between the defined characteristics of the chosen people and the actual attitude of the Swiss at that time. Ruf, a strong follower of the Reformation, as is evident both by his early departure from the monastery and in the anti-Catholic polemic of his plays, certainly knew Zwingli’s writings, but was in contact with Bullinger, too, and therefore influenced by his ideas. In the following, I will explain Ruf ’s anthropological concept against the background of statements Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) and Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) made before the appearance of Ruf ’s first drama in 1538. Initially, some short biographical information and a presentation of some aspects of the Swiss protestant drama shall be given.

1.

Ruf ’s evolution from town doctor to playwright

Jakob Ruf was born in Konstanz. The date of his birth is thought to be around the year 1505.1 He received his education at the monastery of Chur,2 which he left in the early years of the Reformation. Ruf then worked as an apprentice to a 1 Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, ed., Jakob Ruf. Leben, Werk und Studien, vol. 1, Zurich 2008, p. 43.

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‘scherer’ (shearer), i. e., he shaved beards and cut hair and was also trained to do small surgical interventions. As was usual for a ‘scherer’ at that time, he continued his education to become a ‘bruchschnyder,’ a doctor in charge of surgical operations. Since such operations were considered to be unclean, they took place in a workshop, which means that the ‘bruchschnyder’ was considered a craftsman. Much more highly regarded were the medical doctors who were trained at university and knew about the real ‘inside’ of the body, the humoral pathology.3 Although Ruf never went to university, he reached a reputation as high as a medical doctor, which was on the one hand due to his skills, on the other hand it was caused by political circumstances of his time. As in the wake of the Second War of Kappel (1531) not only Zwingli but also the town surgeon of Zurich were amongst the many dead soldiers, Ruf replaced the latter.4 Besides removing bladder stones, treating eye diseases or problems of cataracts and operating on testicular or ordinary hernias, Ruf was very skilled in midwifery.5 Through the merit of his work, not only evident in practice but also through the composition of various elaborated medical textbooks, Ruf was well known in Zurich and even beyond. He also had connections to the most influential people of the town, including Bullinger.6 Therefore, it is not surprising that Ruf was influenced by the thoughts of Zwingli and his successor in the office of the Antistes of Zurich, as it is evident in his two political plots Etter Heini and Wilhelm Tell. Unlike Luther, who was against genres like Shrovetide, Easter or Passion plays7 and only supported humanistically influenced school dramas,8 Zwingli and particularly Bullinger, who emerged as a playwright himself,9 fostered the Swiss theatre tradition in their different genres.10 Before giving an analysis of these two plays showing the aforementioned influence of Zwingli and Bullinger, I will highlight some aspects of the development of the Swiss Protestant drama and introduce Niklaus Manuel and Bullinger. 2 Andrea Kauer, “Jakob Rufs Herkunft und Erbe,” in Keller, Jakob Ruf (see n. 1), p. 54. 3 Hubert Steinke, “Vom Schererlehrling zum Chirurgenmeister,” in Keller, Jakob Ruf (see n. 1), p. 71. 4 Stefan Schöbi, “Geselle auf Wanderschaft,” in Keller, Jakob Ruf (see n. 1), p. 85. 5 Steinke, Vom Schererlehrling (see n. 3), p. 67ff. 6 Andrea Kauer/Seline Schellenberg Wessendorf, “Soziale Netze in Zürich und Konstanz,” in Keller, Jakob Ruf (see n. 1), p. 135f. 7 Wolfgang Friedrich Michael, Das deutsche Drama der Reformationszeit, Bern 1984, p. 119. 8 Detlef Metz, Das protestantische Drama, Köln 2013, pp. 123–126, 131–151. 9 On Bullinger’s play Lucretia and Brutus (written between 1526 and 1528) see Emidio Campi, “Bullinger’s Early Political and Theological Thought: Brutus Tigurinus,” in Architect of Reformation, ed. Bruce Gordon and Emidio Campi, Michigan 2004 (Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought), p. 182. 10 Metz, Protestantisches Drama (see n. 8), pp. 261–265.

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2.

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Niklaus Manuel and Heinrich Bullinger as antecessors of Ruf

When Ruf started his career as a playwright at the end of the 1530s with his drama Etter Heini (written around 1538), he joined the tradition of Swiss Protestant writers who used the stage as a platform for spreading reformatory doctrines. One of the first and most popular authors who put his oeuvre into the service of the Reformation, particularly by depicting strong anti-Catholic polemic as Ruf did, was Niklaus Manuel (1484–1530).11 He attained his fame through the authorship of Carnival plays.12 This type of drama, that has its origin in the 15th century, emerging from pre-Lent festivities, was still very popular in the 16th century. Manuel’s first two Carnival dramas, Vom Papst und seiner Priesterschaft and Von Papst und Christi Gegensatz, were both performed in Berne13 at preLenten time 1523. Against the background of thirty thousand Swiss mercenaries who died in the battle of Bicocca (1522), Manuel tried to use his Carnival plays as a platform for his political message. Focusing on the rank of the peasants as the ones who suffered most from the military conflict, he proclaimed the need for Reformation. In a satirical polemic he shows the awful situation of the peasants who were often forced to go into mercenary service14 in order to assure their survival, and he further depicts the corrupt behavior of the pope which is based on bellicosity, greed and corruption. Since Berne introduced the Reformation only in 1528,15 Manuel’s dramas can be regarded as genuine propaganda plays.16 Manuel’s third drama Der Ablasskrämer (1525) again shows strong anti-Catholic polemic by depicting the suffering of a country community from its corrupt priest.17 Unlike the prior dramas that were performed to a large public interest, there are no reports about a performance of the third one: it circulated only as a

11 On Niklaus Manuel in the context of the Bernese Reformation see Gerhard Aeschbacher, ed., 450 Jahre Berner Reformation, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Berner Reformation und zu Niklaus Manuel (Sonderdruck aus dem Archiv des Historischen Vereins des Kantons Bern, vol. 64 and 65), Bern 1980/1981. 12 On Manuel’s Carnival plays see Peter Pfrunder, Pfaffen, Ketzer, Totenfresser. Fastnachtskultur der Reformationszeit, die Berner Spiele von Niklaus Manuel, Zurich 1989. 13 On the Bernese theatre culture see Glenn Ehrstine, Theater, culture, and community in Reformation Bern, 1523–1555, Leiden, Boston 2002. 14 On the mercenary service in the Swiss Confederation, the so-called ‘Reislaufen,’ see Gottfried W. Locher, Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europäischen Kirchengeschichte, Göttingen/Zürich 1979, pp. 23–30. 15 Locher, Zwinglische Reformation (see n. 14), p. 280. On the Bernese disputation see also Gottfried W. Locher, Die Berner Disputation 1528. Charakter, Verlauf, Bedeutung und theologischer Gehalt, Zurich 1979. 16 Ehrstine, Theater, culture, and community (see n. 13), p. 94f. 17 Stefan Schmidlin, Frumm byderb lüt. Ästhetische Form und politische Perspektive im Schweizer Schauspiel der Reformationszeit, Bern 1983, p. 131.

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manuscript, and Zwingli belonged to its recipients, which shows his interest in dramatic works.18 Even though Bullinger was a school teacher in Kappel when he wrote his play Lucretia and Brutus (the exact date is not known, most probably between 1526 and 1528),19 Campi assumes that it was not solely aimed at the pupils as a typical, humanistically influenced school drama of the 16th century, but for a larger public to which he wanted, as a fellow worker of Zwingli, to proclaim reforms.20 In his drama, Bullinger connects the story of Brutus to the contemporary situation showing the fight against tyranny as an example for every nation that suffers from corrupt government or that is in danger of losing its freedom.21 Bullinger wants to outline the terms and conditions needed for a well-functioning state. In addition to the justice of the leaders, the relationship between state and church is fundamental, the latter understood as moral educator. Corruption, observed in both political and clerical leaders, makes the strongest empire fall, as it was manifest in the history of the Roman Republic and shown in Lucretia and Brutus. This is the danger that the Swiss Confederation of the time was facing and that is how Bullinger proclaims reforms using the stage.22 Even though Ruf wrote his first political play ten years after Bullinger’s drama and fifteen years after Manuel’s two political Carnival plays and therefore referred to a different political background (Berne had turned to Reformation in 1528, and Zurich’s successful fight against corruption was reached with the prohibition of mercenary contracts as will be expanded further in the next chapter), he shared the basic political and anthropological concepts of Manuel and of the Zurich’s Reformers.

18 Ehrstine, Theater, culture, and community (see n. 13), p. 113. 19 Anja Buckenberger, “Heinrich Bullingers Rezeption des Lucretia-Stoffes,” in Zwingliana, vol. 33, ed. Hans Ulrich Bächtold et al., Zürich 2006, p. 77. 20 Campi, Bullinger’s Early Political and Theological Thought (see n. 9), p. 184. 21 Buckenberger, Bullingers Rezeption des Lucretia-Stoffes (see n. 19), p. 84f. 22 Campi, Bullinger’s Early Political and Theological Thought (see n. 9), p. 184.

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3.

Ruf ’s two political plays Etter Heini and Wilhelm Tell and the anthropological concept they express

3.1.

Contents of the two plays

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The drama Etter Heini (around 1538) was neither printed nor performed; it was only passed on in two manuscripts.23 Ruf tells the story of a young Swiss who is worried about the lawlessness and corruption in his country. Not knowing what to do, he seeks the advice of seven wise men. The features of this moral depravity, exposed to him by the seven sages, are exploitation, selfishness and, most important of all, greed. The last feature is shown in the example of the Swiss’ willingness to provide mercenary services, particularly supported by the Catholics. Since Ruf created his dramas during the confessional period in which Zurich tried to establish a stable political situation that, after the defeat of the Second War of Kappel, included a balanced interdependence with the Catholic cantons,24 Ruf ’s anti-Catholic polemic seems not only somewhat out of date, but also quite controversial and imbalanced concerning the objectives and their target. This may have been the reason why only his second and less controversial political drama was performed. But as the relation between Ruf ’s two political plays shows (i. e., the second being the corrected and shortened version but following the first in its idea and message) his polemic against the Catholics was not primarily politically motivated. Ruf ’s intention was to give an example of moral corruption, as pointed out by Zwingli in several sermons and political statements, framed by moral advice. Having recognized that his example was badly chosen, Ruf, in his following historical play abstained from any antiCatholic polemic. Wilhelm Tell,25 which was performed and published in 1545, recounts the saga of the eponymous Swiss hero. The play starts with an address of the bailiff to his people. In his speech he demands absolute obedience to the sovereign – a demand that incurs the wrath of the peasants and provokes their resistance, notably Wilhelm Tell’s. Together with other farmers who suffered severe misery and hardship under the local governor he swears to free the Swiss. After having refused to show respect to the bailiff by not bowing to his hat stuck on a pole, Tell is punished by being forced to shoot an apple from the head of his son with his crossbow. Before taking aim at the apple on his son’s head he puts a second arrow into his quiver. When asked for the reason for his action, he replies 23 The full titles of these manuscripts are Etter Heini uss dem Schwizerland, sammt einem Vorspiel and Eyn nu¨wes Spil vom wol vnd vbelstannd, einer loblichen Eydgnoschafft. 24 Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, Manchester 2002, p. 134. 25 The full title of Wilhelm Tell is: Ein hüpsch vnd lustig Spyl vorzyten gehalten zu Vry in dem loblichen Ort der Eydgnoschafft / von dem frommen vnd ersten Eydgnossen Wilhelm Thellen jrem Landtmann.

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that had he missed his first target, the second arrow would have killed the bailiff. For this insolent remark he is immediately arrested. On the way to prison, however, he manages to escape and then shoots the bailiff. The story ends with Tell and the people taking an oath to oppose all tyranny and proceeding to seize the castle of another bailiff. Both plays, Etter Heini and Wilhelm Tell, consist of five acts and begin with a speech of the herald, as is typical for Reformation drama. Furthermore, both plays involve more than thirty dramatis personae, which brings me to my next point: the characters in Ruf ’s theatrical plays.

3.2.

The chosen Swiss

In both Etter Heini and Wilhelm Tell there are two main groups of characters: the good and the bad. There is always more than one character representing each group. In Etter Heini we have the protagonist Heini, who is concerned about the moral decadence in the Swiss cantons. In long monologues he talks about the evil that spreads itself among the population. Hoffart / muͦ ttwill / vnnd grosser pracht hatt vnser lannd zuͦ nütti gmacht verrachtung hass vnnd grosser gytt in unserm lannd begraben lytt.26

The pride, mischief and vanity here announced belong to a range of bad conduct which finds its roots – according to the general consensus at the time – in the deplorable social and political state of the Swiss Confederation, and they needed to be proclaimed for the purpose of illustrating the demand for reform. Zwingli, for instance, speaks of ‘gyt, wollust, muotwill, ungehorsami’ (avarice, lust, wantonness, disobedience) 27 and underlines narcissism and egoism as the greatest sins of all.28 Bullinger bewails idleness as a widespread evil amongst the Swiss. Ruf went on invoking his contemporaries to a way of living which would be virtuous and agreeable to God in repeating the lamentations not only by Heini, but also by Meister Eckhart and the ‘Landamman’ (chief magistrate). The continuous repetition of the bad moral conduct observed among the Swiss is reminicent of a school lecture that has to be memorized. As the repetition of these claims culminates in Meister Eckhart’s speech which directly addresses the au-

26 Jakob Ruf, Etter Heini, in Keller, Jakob Ruf (see n. 1), vol. 2, p. 85f. 27 Huldrych Zwingli, “Eine göttliche Vermahnung an die Eidgenossen zu Schwyz,” in Huldreich Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke 1 (Z), Corpus Reformatorum vol. 88, Berlin 1905, p. 174f. 28 Martin Haas, Huldrych Zwingli und seine Zeit, Zurich 1976, p. 146.

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dience, it is obvious that Ruf pursues pedagogical intentions. If you are not on your guard, implies Ruf ’s message, evil will quickly spread. The main feature of the moral depravity is greed. In Ruf ’s account, the focus lies on the accumulation of money and property. To reach this goal all means are justified, the worst and most demeaning being the ‘Reislaufen’ (engagement as mercenaries). To kill others not for patriotic reasons, but for money, represents the height of moral corruption, which is what not only Ruf in Etter Heini, but also other reformed playwrights depict, e. g., the already mentioned Manuel or Balthasar Spross (exact dates of life unknown) in Das Spiel von den alten und den jungen Eidgenossen (1514) and Pamphilus Gengenbach (around 1480–1524/25) in Der alte Eidgenosse (1514).29 By employing moral arguments, Ruf and the aforementioned playwrights revived an already existing and important discussion within the Swiss Confederation, that had begun in the early years of the Swiss Reformation. The defeat of Marignano in 1515, claiming the lives of many Swiss soldiers, intensified the issue of mercenary service that was discussed by politicians and theologians, as Zwingli’s various statements show.30 Zwingli connected political and theological arguments in pointing out that the debate about ‘Reislaufen’ harmed the peace within the Swiss Confederation and led to corruption as well as moral depravity, which signifies the rejection of God.31 Both the strength of Zwingli’s arguments against mercenary service and pensions and the political influence he had is shown by the fact that in 1521 the Zurich government, unlike other Swiss cantons, refused to renew the mercenary contract with the king of France.32 Even though Zurich retained the prohibition of war contracts and in 1526 stated an example by executing the Zurich councilman Jakob Grebel (around 1460–1526) who was accused of taking illegal pensions for procuring soldiers,33 the issue of mercenary service remained controversial within the Swiss Confederation. Therefore, Ruf ’s reference to it as a central theme still had a certain topicality, especially since the Catholic cantons did not abstain from war contracts.34 However, Ruf tied his criticism to strong anti-Catholic polemics, which was problematic in the light of the already mentioned fact that, after the Second War of Kappel, Zurich tried to establish a stable relationship with the Catholic cantons. This, most probably, was the reason why Ruf ’s play has never been performed. 29 Keller, Jakob Ruf (see n. 1), vol. 2, p. 44. 30 Christian Moser/ Hans Rudolf Fuhrer, Der lange Schatten Zwinglis, Zurich 2009, p. 39ff. 31 Moser/Fuhrer, Der lange Schatten (see n. 30), p. 33f. 32 Gordon, Swiss Reformation (see n. 24), p. 46. 33 Moser/Fuhrer, Der lange Schatten (see n. 30), p. 41. 34 Ulrich Gäbler, “Die Schweiz – ein ‘Auserwähltes Volk’?,” in: Zwingliana, vol. 19/1, ed. Heiko A. Oberman et al., Zurich 1992, p. 145.

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But the lamentations of Ruf ’s protagonists about the shameful behaviour of the Swiss are not only meant as anti-Catholic polemic. Corruption is observed everywhere – this is the message with which Ruf wants to alert his audience. To emphasize this alert, the figures of Landamman, Heini and Meister Eckhart kindle the sympathy of the audience not only by giving moral instruction but also by expressing emotions. Landamman speaks about his grief,35 and Heini is suffering from heartache.36 This emotional turmoil is caused by the consequences of the sinful behaviour observed in the Swiss Confederation. Both the Landamman and the wise Meister Eckhart are aware of what they are facing: they will lose God’s mercy. The description of this impending loss includes a scenario described in the Revelation of John, signifying the arrival of plagues, misery and ruin, as pointed out by Meister Eckhart: so dann den Tod gott schickt in dwellt Hagel risel / krieg vnnd thhüri die pestilenz mit vngehüri37

The loss of God’s mercy is associated with a kind of misfortune that shows a special point of view of the Swiss people. They felt that they had been chosen – in their minds God had elevated the Swiss to be his prosperous people, which was manifested in their historical past. Even though Zwingli was not very interested in Swiss history and therefore no great historian, he referred to victories in the past as God’s benevolent care gained through faithful behavior: ‘Darumb hat inen got allweg syg, eer und guot gemert, so gwüß, so dick, das dhein herr sy nie überwunden hat. Das on zwyfel nit menschlichs vermögens ist, sunder götlicher krafft und gnaden.’38 For Bullinger, whose profound historical knowledge already found expression in his early writings and resulted in the composition of his History of Reformation,39 God’s mercy proven in the past led to a very precise conclusion: Unlike Zwingli, who only compared the two peoples,40 Bullinger is convinced that the Swiss have the same status as the Israelites. In his accusation of the deprived Swiss,41 written in 1525 and printed three years later, he em35 36 37 38 39

Ruf, Etter Heini (see n. 26), p. 75. Ruf, Etter Heini (see n. 26), p. 75. Ruf, Etter Heini (see n. 26), p. 92. Z (see n. 27) 1, 10, p. 171. Heinrich Bullingers Reformationsgeschichte, ed. Johann Jakob Hottinger and Hans Heinrich Vögeli, 3 vols. (Reprint der Ausgabe 1838–1840), Zurich 1984. See also Christian Moser, Die Dignität des Ereignisses, Leiden/Boston 2012. 40 Gäbler, Auserwähltes Volk (see n. 34), p. 147. 41 Anklage vnd ernstliches ermanten Gottes Allmaͤ chtigen / zuͦ eyner gemeinenn Eydgnoschafft / das sy sich vonn jren Sünden / zuͦ jmm keere. See Hans Ulrich Bächtold, “History, Ideology and Propaganda in the Reformation: The Early Writing ‘Anklag und ernstliches ermanen Gottes’ (1525) of Heinrich Bullinger,” in Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe, vol. 1, ed. Bruce Gordon, pp. 46–59, Aldershot 1996.

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phasizes the danger of losing this status if moral conduct does not match the expectations.42 Thus the lamentations of Ruf ’s protagonists in Etter Heini are on par with the exhortations of Zwingli and Bullinger. This realization shows the influence Zurich Reformers had on Ruf, but it also underlines his intention to spread central doctrines of reform on stage. In depicting bad behavior as observed mostly amongst the young, the ones who do not respect tradition and the value of honor passed down from their ancestors, Ruf demonstrates in a symbolic way the antagonism between the worthiness of the past Swiss generations as the chosen people and the unworthiness of his contemporaries. The real values of the Swiss have their roots in the past, in tradition. New ways of living lead to greed, a temptation that cannot be easily resisted, as Ruf shows in his play and as it was already pointed out by Zwingli and Bullinger. Asking why there is no resistance introduces us to the concept of the power of evil. This power is symbolized by Satan, who spreads his vile ideas. Since Ruf lets him be represented by a figure dressed up as a monk, we do here not only have devilish power but a Catholic devilish power, which shows one more aspect of Ruf ’s strong anti-Catholic message. There is only one way of escaping these circumstances: going back to the roots. Therefore, in his second historical drama, Wilhelm Tell, Ruf demonstrates not only how people should and should not be, but he depicts how people were and should have remained. In Wilhelm Tell, Ruf illustrates the venerability of the Swiss ancestors as an example of the characteristics of the chosen people, and he again resorts to the ethical concept of Zwingli and Bullinger based upon the idea of a people being specially graced with God’s mercy. As Zwingli and Bullinger proclaim and Ruf continues to emphasize in his play Wilhelm Tell, the founders of the Swiss Confederation are the example of an upright, pious and faithful people who were rewarded for their righteousness by gaining their freedom from the high-born authorities and by conserving it. The saga of Wilhelm Tell, first mentioned in the so-called White Book of Sarnen, plays an important role in this context, which becomes apparent when both Zwingli and Bullinger depict the hero as an archetype of the good Swiss. Zwingli shows him as a ‘gotskrefftig held und erster anheber eidgnossischer fryheyt, üwer landtman, o treffenlichen, notvesten, getrüwe, liebe eltesten Eydgnossen.’43 (devotional hero, initiator of Swiss liberty and admirable ancestor). Bullinger, more accurate in narrating the saga that he considers to be a ‘Geschichtswerk’ (historical work), names the behavior of the bailiff as the biggest tyranny ever

42 Heinrich Bullinger, Schriften, ed. Emidio Campi, et al., vol. 6, Zurich 2006, p. 49. 43 Z (see n. 27) 4, 52, p. 48.

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heard of, which gives Tell’s defiance an even higher importance.44 As already shown above, both Zwingli and Bullinger connected the image of the old Swiss, amongst whom they count Wilhelm Tell, to an ethical concept of the ideal behavior that would guarantee the benevolent care of God. Ruf followed this line in his drama. According to him, the old Swiss living in the 13th century – the foundation period of the Swiss Confederation – represent the ideal of a strong, pious and virtuous people. The assumption of being chosen is based upon these characteristics. In Wilhelm Tell as in his first play Etter Heini, Ruf wants to remind the Swiss of their distinctiveness and of the significance of this fact. As Bullinger did in Lucretia and Brutus, Ruf links his claim to a political message. While Bullinger sees the Roman Republic as an example of what gives rise and fall to an empire, Ruf refers to the Bible. Every chosen nation which does not follow the will of God, as it is written in the prophecies of the World Empire in The Book of Daniel 2, will fall and be eliminated. This is why Ruf refers to the lecture of the World Empire not only in Etter Heini but also in Wilhelm Tell. Whilst in the first play the herald addresses this lecture at the end, in Wilhelm Tell he proclaims it at the beginning. It becomes obvious, as has already been stated, that Etter Heini is afraid of losing the privilege of being the chosen one who will rule. Wilhelm Tell shows which conditions have to be fulfilled in order to retain this merit, and it is therefore his advice to ascertain the general well-being of the Swiss Confederation. For Ruf, the conditions mentioned above depend upon a stable and harmonious family life. Already in Etter Heini the focus is placed on the family. In accordance with the widespread humanistic and Protestant opinion in the 16th century, family, being the smallest form of community, functions as a mirror image of a prosperous communal cohabitation.45 The importance that Bullinger attributes to a harmonious family life is shown in his efforts to give advice for a harmonious marriage.46 Thus, if this small community serving as a base for the big one is conceived of greed and distrust, the state of the latter can easily be imagined. This is what Heini and his companions wish to demonstrate when they speak of imperfect conditions in family life. In Wilhelm Tell, Ruf shows the other side of the coin. Here, the family is not conceived of as the nest of evil which generates an even greater corruption, but it serves as a community whose harmonious life is threatened and reflects the breaking apart of the Swiss Confederation. In every claim of Wilhelm Tell and other oppressed peasants the threat to the family is mentioned: Stauffacher from 44 Bullinger, Schriften (see n. 42), vol. 6, p. 43. 45 Barbara Könneker, Die deutsche Literatur der Reformationszeit, München 1975, p. 60. 46 Heinrich Bullinger, Der christlich Eestand, in Heinrich Bullinger. Werke. Dritte Abteilung, vol. 5: Theologische Schriften, ed. Emidio Campi, Zurich 2009, pp. 79˗90.

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Schwyz talks about the bailiff taking his new house and chasing away his wife and children,47 and the story of Abalzellen is even worse, as the governor tries to molest his wife, which Abalzellen can only prevent by killing the offender.48 The importance of the family and the fear of losing it is also expressed when Tell’s wife is compelled to give away her children.49 In the concept of a good family serving as the base for a prosperous community life, the father plays an important role, as Bullingers shows in his writings on the ‘Ehestand’50 and Ruf depicts in his plays. Already in Etter Heini, Ruf demonstrates the position of the father when he lets Meister Eckhart explain that he makes his exhortation to the audience like a father who wants to educate his children. Like God the Father who talks to his flock, Meister Eckhart gives advice to the audience trying to keep them together as his holy community. The connection to the already mentioned acclamation of Bullinger is easily made when we consider that Bullinger lets God the Father himself speak. As a concerned father God directs His Word to His children whom He loves, but whose manners and behavior cause Him to employ a severe tone: Wenn ich versöhnlich mit euch spreche, wie ein Vater zu seinen Kindern spricht, ja, dann lacht ihr nur darüber und ändert euch gar nicht, vielmehr werdet ihr von Tag zu Tag schlechter. Wenn ich euch aber strafe, wie ihr es eigentlich verdient, so kann dies nicht ohne großes Leid geschehen, da ich, euer Vater, mir das gewaltige Elend unter euch Unglücklichen ansehen muss.51

The challenges God is facing are similar to those the wise Meister Eckhart is confronted with: the children, i. e., the people are immune to well-intentioned, conciliatory councils. Both figures reflect on the consequences of a possible punishment that would bring about immense suffering. The difference between the two mentors, God and Meister Eckhart, lies in the fact that the first can decide what will be, whereas the other can only warn, anticipate and fearfully accept. Thus, the lamentations of Meister Eckhart and his appeal for a return are the expression not only of his concern but also of his own fear. In Wilhelm Tell we encounter another meaning of the father role since the circumstances in which the father has to prove his values are different. Here Ruf depicts what is needed for a well-functioning community. In order to guarantee 47 48 49 50

Jakob Ruf, Wilhelm Tell, in Keller, Jakob Ruf (see n. 1), vol. 3, p. 150. Ruf, Wilhelm Tell (see n. 47), p. 156. Ruf, Wilhelm Tell (see n. 47), p. 165. Evelyn Ingold, “Staatsbildung, Ehemoral und ‘weibliche Zucht.’ Heinrich Bullingers ‘Christlicher Ehestand’ im Spannungsfeld zwischen ständischen Eheschliessungsinteressen und frühneuzeitlicher Staatsbildung,ˮ in Heinrich Bullinger: Life – Thought – Influence. Zurich, Aug. 25–29, 2004, International Congress Heinrich Bullinger (1504˗1575), ed. Emidio Campi/Peter Opitz, vol. 1, Zürich 2007, p. 309. 51 Bullinger, Schriften (see n. 42), vol. 6, p. 40.

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peace and freedom it is important that the father acts wisely and fairly. Tell is the archetype of this father. He has always tried to look after wife and children with the grace of God, which is what he proclaims when the bailiff forces him to select one of his sons for the shooting of the apple; he cannot make this choice because he loves all his children equally.52 In his role as a good father, Tell stands as an example of a good regent – in contrast to the authorities who do not care about their people and only oppress them. In Etter Heini, the young people do not want to listen to the old. This is, as Ruf claims, the cause of the rise of corruption and the resulting danger for the Swiss nation. In Wilhelm Tell, Ruf shows that the Swiss confederation only exists as long as there is a caring father figure who looks not only after his own but also after all around him who are suffering under the same despotism. The ideal of mankind that Ruf presents in his dramas is based on a typological antagonism that is common for the Reformation period, as both Zwingli and Bullinger highlighted it in different writings. On the one side are the good, the upright, pious and faithful, i. e., the old Swiss. Wilhelm Tell belongs to them, and the protagonists Heini, Landamman and Meister Eckhart are their followers trying to convince their contemporaries to behave as their ancestors did. Only this behavior justifies the right of being or remaining the chosen people. On the other hand, we have the corrupt youth whose only aim is to acquire money. Their depravity is the result of the ‘Reislaufen,’ the engagement as mercenaries, which is supported by the Catholic Church. This is what Ruf portrays in Etter Heini. But the characters Ruf draws are not just typological. The feelings and emotions shown in various situations make them ordinary humans and allow the spectator to identify with them. The emotional engagement of the characters makes it easier not only to comprehend but also to heed the advice offered in order to prevent the decline of the Swiss nation. That is how Ruf went on spreading the doctrines of the Zurich Reformers Zwingli and Bullinger, which, one might conclude, could have contributed to the fact that Switzerland is still present on the map today.

52 Ruf, Wilhelm Tell (see n. 47), p. 166f.

Sukanya Dasgupta

‘This Hidden Knowledge Have I Learned of Thee’: Anne Vaughan Lock and the ‘Invisible Church’

In his Monument of Matrones (1582), a collection of prayers and meditations ostensibly written by, for, or relating to women, Thomas Bentley asserts: ‘There is nothing that becommeth a maid better than sobernes, silence, shamefastnes, and chastitie, both of bodie & mind. For these things being once lost, shee is no more a maid, but a strumpet in the sight of God.’1 Even in an early text like Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (1508), which in theory exalts the parity of noblewomen and men, the four female characters emerge as chaste, silent and obedient and have cameo roles to play: two merely perform a dance while Elisabetta Gonzaga and Emilio Pia rarely speak and certainly do not contribute to the discourse in any way. Thus Bentley is merely echoing an idea that was well established during the Renaissance – that of female disorderliness and the link between women’s speech and sexual transgression. Paradoxically, however, the same desire for godliness that was used to stifle women’s speech also gave them a voice, particularly if they were translating male words about God. Translation of godly works provided an acceptable means for a woman to enter public discourse by articulating her spirituality. In this paper I would like to look at the translations and appended original works of the English Calvinist writer Anne Vaughan Lock whose Protestant credentials have been well established ever since Patrick Collinson presented her as a key member of the godly community.2 Lock was also a close associate of the Scottish reformer John Knox who had been sheltered by her family during the reign of Mary and who was instrumental in her going to Geneva in 1557. Recent studies have emphasized her active role in the formation of godly communities in England and in Geneva where she was a Marian exile and her contribution to the literary culture of the Reformation. Margaret Hannay observes that Lock’s in1 Suzanne W. Hull, Chaste, Silent & Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640, San Marino 1982, p.142. 2 Patrick Collinson, “The Role of Women in the English Reformation Illustrated by the Life and Friendships of Anne Lock,” in Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism, London 1983, pp. 273–87.

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terpretation of Psalm 51, like that of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, calls for an international Protestant movement and justifies a public role for women in that cause. Similarly, Rosalind Smith argues that Lock’s translation of Calvin’s sermons and attached sonnets exert pressure on Queen Elizabeth to take a stronger leadership role in the Protestant cause, and for Christopher Warley, Lock’s poem reflects a reconfiguration of authority in the new Protestant state.3 What I would like to highlight however, is how Lock used the genre of translation to cloak and reveal her political agenda. Lock was acutely aware that translation both empowered and controlled women’s speech. In the dedication of her translation of the French Calvinist Jean Taffin’s Of the marks of the children of God, and of their comforts in afflictions (1590) she poignantly reminds us: Euerie one in his calling is bound to doo somewhat to the furtherance of the holie building; but because great things by reason of my sex I may not doo, and that which I may, I ought to doo, I have according to my duetie, brought my poore basket of stones to the strengthening of the walls of that Ierusalem, whereof (by grace) wee are all both Citizens and members.4

In both her translations of four sermons on Isaiah by Calvin (1560) and of Taffin thirty years later, by translating the work of approved male authors, Lock eliminates the perception that her voice is public and thereby satisfies contemporary expectations of women’s confinement to the private sphere. At the same time, she does something far more radical: she publishes a sonnet sequence The Meditations of a Penitent Sinner based on Psalm 51 that was strategically inserted as an addendum to her translation of Calvin and she attaches her own poem The necessite and benefite of affliction, elaborating on Taffin’s theme of suffering to her translation of Taffin. Thus Lock adopts an authoratative voice, particularly through her use of the Psalmic “I” to circumvent the prohibitions against women’s public speech and she creates space for a female voice that was transgressive, potentially subversive, yet completely legitimate. Literate, educated women were often encouraged to translate religious works for their unlettered contemporaries to aid in the dissemination of the gospel, but

3 Margaret P. Hannay, “‘Unlock My Lipps’: The Miserere Mei Deus of Anne Vaughan Lok and Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke,” in Privileging Gender in Early Modern England, ed. J. R. Brink, Kirksville, MO 1993, pp.19–36. See Rosalind Smith, “‘In a Mirrour Clere’: Protestantism and Politics in Anne Lok’s Miserere Mei Deus,” in “This Double Voice”: Gendered Writing in Early Modern England, eds. Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke, New York 2000, pp. 41–60. Christopher Warley, “‘An Englishe Box’: Calvinism and Commodities in Anne Lok’s A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner,” in Sonnet Sequences and Social Distinction in Renaissance England, Cambridge 2005, pp. 45–71. 4 Anne Lock, “Of the marks of the children of God, and of their comforts in afflictions,” (1590) in The Collected Works of Anne Vaughan Lock, ed. Susan M. Felch, Tempe, AZ 1999, Dedication of Taffin sig. A3v–4. All references are to this edition.

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any kind of original work by them was seen as dereliction from Christian duty. Margaret Roper, Kateryn Parr and the Cooke sisters all translated godly works but these were works that tacitly supported governmental agendas. Anne Lock’s works, on the other hand, revised the pattern set by her predecessors by giving her translations a new role as public signifiers of minority religious beliefs. By publishing translations of Calvin’s sermons from French, Lock advocates reforms outside the official Elizabethan agenda and encourages other radical Protestants to join in her critique of the quasi-Catholicism of the Elizabethan settlement. When Lock returned to England from Geneva in 1559, she joined a community unsure of whether it should conform to the Elizabethan settlement, which rejected the radical reforms practised by the English exiles in Geneva. The exiles had adopted a sermon-based service largely composed by John Knox and cited the reformist principle of ‘sola scriptura’. As William Whittingham points out in his ‘Preface’ to The Forme of Prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments published from Geneva in 1556, ‘We […] do present unto you […] a forme and order of a reformed churche, limited within the compasse of god’s woorde, which our saviour hathe left unto us as onely sufficient to governe all our actions.’5 By contrast, Elizabeth’s regime reinstated the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, removed the prayer books’ denial of transubstantiation and retained practices like communion with a wafer, public baptism of infants and sung liturgy. If John Knox was largely responsible for the development of Lock’s spiritual authority that made her a symbol of radical sympathies opposed to the official English Church, her translation of Calvin’s sermons functioned even more as a means of spreading resistance to the Elizabethan settlement. Lock’s avowed principle was to ‘rendre’ Calvin ‘so nere as I possibly might, to the very wordes of his text, and that in so plaine Englishe as I could expresse’.6 Although ‘plain’ could mean ordinary English that was not stylistically ornamental (an aim of many contemporary translators), if we look beyond translation theory to writing and speaking in general, ‘plain’ could refer to a blunt and direct manner, effective in exposing error but risky if offensive to those in power. Although Lock is credited with writing the first English sonnet sequence which was based on Psalm 51 and appended to her translation of Calvin, the title page does not refer to the sonnets at all, apparently making the translation itself the primary vehicle of her endorsement of Genevan religious protocol. Calvin had preached these four sermons in Geneva in 1557 when Anne Lock was living there. She obviously had direct access to Calvin’s manuscript, since the original French version was first published two years after her English translation. Lock was also 5 William Whittingham, The Forme of Prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments, Geneva 1556, Preface 9. 6 Lock, Sermons, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. A8r.

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probably familiar with the works of female reformist translators in England, like Kateryn Parr and the Cooke sisters, but she combines with this tradition the more recent trend of Geneva translators promoting Calvinism among English readers. Lock signs the translation anonymously as A. L., but her dedication of the work to Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk is instructive in many ways. In dedicating her Calvin translation to the Duchess, Lock draws a direct line of inspiration from God through Calvin to herself: God, ‘the heauenly Physitan’ has taught ‘his most excellent Apothecarie’ Calvin, ‘and I your graces most bounden and humble have put into an Englishe box, and do present vnto you.’7 The Duchess, like Locke, had been a Marian exile who had lived in Strasburg and Frankfurt and had supported English reformers like Hugh Latimer and John Field. The private relationship between Katherine Brandon and Lock ensured the public reception of the translation as a godly text written by an author who was a member of a radical Protestant community. Similarly, Lock’s choice of which sermons to translate is a clear marker of her religious-political agenda. The translation itself critiques the Elizabethan settlement by relating it to King Ezechias’ song of thanksgiving for his deliverance from disease (Isaiah 38:10–20). Genevan exiles viewed Ezechias as the godly exemplar of a reforming king. Like Ezechias who failed to search his soul and fell into sickness and spiritual death, English Protestants are cautioned against religious compromise that would have serious spiritual consequences. Lock’s elaboration on Psalm 51 as the basis of her original sonnet sequence is both interesting and historically significant. Although meditations on the psalms have been advocated as a spiritual exercise throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition, in the sixteenth century psalm translation had become identified with the Genevan Protestants. Coverdale wanted carters and ploughmen to whistle ‘psalms, hymns and such godly songs as David is occupied withal’ and women to sing them as they spin – but they were thought to be especially appropriate for occasions when ‘the godly’ were in danger.8 Psalm 51 had gained both doctrinal and political significance in the Protestant tradition. The seven Penitential Psalms had been of central importance in the medieval liturgy, but had gradually been phased out of daily use in England, since the Reformers saw the purpose of penitence as consolation, rather than discipline.9 Nevertheless, Psalm 51 had particular meaning for the Reformers, because of its description of original sin and its stress on faith over works. As Théodore de Bèze said,

7 Lock, Sermons, Collected Works, (see n. 4), sig. A3. 8 Miles Coverdale, Remains of Bishop Coverdale, ed. George Pearson, Cambridge 1846, p. 537. 9 Margaret P. Hannay, “‘Wisdome the Wordes’: Psalm Translation and Elizabethan Women’s Spirituality,” Religion & Literature 23, no. 3 (1991): pp. 65–82.

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[T]here are ioined in this Psalme also two principal pointes of true religion: the one, of original sinne: the other, of the abuse of sacrifices, as though the purgation of sinne consisted in that outwarde ceremony, whereas on the contrary part the sacrifices that proceeded from unpure men did not please God, and therefore forgivenesse of sinnes must goe before, which afterwards should be sealed in the hearts of the beleevers by the sacrifices which are made and offered by faith.10

In her five prefatory sonnets at the start of the sequence, Lock draws on the tradition of the grieving ghosts of Boccaccio and Lydgate, where the ‘forsakeng host’ of David confesses his ‘hainous gylt’ and ‘lothesome filthe’ and is unable to find the joy available to others. These prefatory sonnets explore the emotional and psychological state of the speaker who cries out for grace in Psalm 51. The personal voice takes precedence here with graphic descriptions of Lock’s sinner begging for mercy: With foltring knee I fallyng to the ground Bendyng my yelding handes to heauens throne Poure forth my piteous plaint w[ith] woefull sound, With smoking sighes, & oft repeted grone, Before the Lord, the Lord, whom synner I I cursed wretch, I haue offended so…11

The emphatic use of the first person in the Psalms offers Lock the opportunity to voice her own thoughts through the ventriloquized voice of David. The sonnets that follow develop this drama and articulate the tribulations of the speaker’s ‘trobled sprite’ in a cycle of complaint, repentance and hope. The tone of the sonnets becomes progressively intensified as in Sonnet 3 where there is an almost obsessive compulsion to be washed and cleansed of sin, the word ‘washe’ being used eight times. At this juncture, it may be instructive to briefly glance at the German Protestant writer Katharina Schütz Zell’s last publication Den Psalmen Miserere. Zell’s work, probably written in the late 1540s, though published in 1558, is a personal series of meditations on Psalms 51 and 130 with an extended digression explaining and defending the Christological interpretation of the Psalms. Zell writes: [51:2] Wash me well from my misdeeds, O Lord, that my behavior may not be so shameful, bad, foolish, and worthless as up till now. Because of that behavior I have come under Your wrath, rebuke, and such affliction. Cleanse me from my sin of unbelief

10 Théodore De Bèze, The Psalmes of David Truely Opened and Explaned by Paraphrasis, According to the Right Sense of Every Psalme, trans. Anthony Gilby, London 1590, sig. H8r– H8v. 11 Lock, A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, Prefatory Sonnet 5, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. Aa2v.

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which I have committed till now: I have cast off Your working (control), I would not suffer Your hand, I would not wait for Your help. I wanted to carry out my own desire according to my will […] 12

The difference in emphasis between Zell’s exposition on Psalm 51:2 and Lock’s sonnet on the same theme is immediately discernible. Lock expresses the impassioned mind of the penitent sinner in an intense, passionate tone that constitutes a drama of its own: Ofte hath thy mercie washed me before, Thou madest me cleane: but I am foule againe. Yet washe me Lord againe, and washe me more. Washe me, O Lord, and do away the staine Of vggly sinnes that in my soule appere. Let flow thy ple[n]tuous streames of clensing grace. Washe me againe, yea washe me euery where, Bothe leprous bodie and defiled face. Yea washe me all, for I am all vncleane, And from my sin, Lord, cleanse me ones againe.13

By contrast, Zell’s version lacks the sheer violence of Lock’s imagery or her intricate word play. While Zell acknowledges that she has been foolish and shameful, the tone is much more subdued as she asks for God to cleanse her of the ‘desire according to my will’, which she sees as the source of her sins. Lock, on the other hand, associates the speaker with ‘vggly sinnes’ manifested through a ‘leprous bodie and defiled face’ which he obsessively wishes to be washed and cleansed of. Similarly, in Sonnet 8 the penitent sinner can almost palpably and physically feel his sins flowing through him: ‘This hidden knowledge haue I learnd of thee, / To fele my sinnes, and howe my sinnes do flowe.’ In Sonnet 13 the anguished sinner takes comfort in God’s face: ‘Thy face of mercie and of swete relefe, / The face that fedes angels with onely sight, / The face of comfort in extremest grefe’.14

12 Elsie Anne Mckee, Katharina Schütz Zell, Church Mother: The Writings of a Protestant Reformer in Sixteenth-Century Germany, Chicago 2006. http://books.google.nl/books/about/ChurchMother.html?id=JWSum3Y9IAoC&redir_esc=y. Accessed on 21. 09. 2013. Original text in Elsie Anne Mckee, Katharina Schütz Zell, Volume Two, The Writings, A Critical Edition, Leiden 1999, p. 318. ‘Wa͑sch mich wol O Herr / von meiner missethat / das doch mein thuͦ n / nict so schandtlich / tholl / unsynnig und eitel misshandlung seie / wie biß heer / deßhalb ich inn dein zorn / straff und solch anfechtung kommen bin / Und rainig mich von meiner sünd des unglaubens / die ich bißheer begangen habe / dein thuͦ n zuͦ ruck geworffen / dein handt nit wo͑llen dulden / deiner hülff nit gewo͑lt erwarten. / Meinen lust gewo͑llt hinauß fu͑ren / nach meinem willen […]’. 13 Lock, Sonnet 3, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. Aa4. 14 Lock, Sonnet 8, Collected Works, sig. Aa5; Sonnet 13, Collected Works, sig. Aa6.

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These sonnets capture Lock’s own experience of sin, fear of reprobation, and assurance of salvation. This is often achieved through an inventive exploitation of Petrarchan motifs. She frequently uses the motif of the captive soul found in Petrarchan poetry and the courtly love tradition as in Sonnet 4 where the ‘thralled brest’ houses ‘secret remorse’ which is accompanied by the ‘gnawing’ of the heart. The plea for mercy reaches a pitch in the subsequent sonnet with its images of self-flagellation: My cruell conscience with sharpned knife Doth splat my ripped hert, and layes abrode The lothesome secretes of my filthy life, And spredes them forth before the face of God.15

Similarly, in Sonnet 12, the sinner is depicted like a typical Petrarchan lover in the throes of a conflict that seems irresolvable: Sinne and despeir haue so possest my hart, And hold my captiue soule in such restraint, As of thy mercies I can fele no part, But still in languor do I lye and faint.16

In sonnet after sonnet, Lock asserts an authoritative voice, both through her awareness and deliberate use of Petrarchan motifs that carves out a space for her in the tradition of English sonnet writers, and through the use of the deeply personal first person, i. e. the Psalmist ‘I’ that reiterates the importance of speech: the speaker tells God that ‘my ioying tong shall talke thy praise, / Thy name my mouth shall vtter in delight, / My voice shall sounde thy iustice, and thy waies.’ Similarly, in a state of ‘cold despeir and with a pinyng hart’, the speaker implores God to Refreshe my yeldyng hert, with warming grace, And loose my speche, and make me call to thee. Lord open thou my lippes to shewe my case, My Lord, for mercy Loe to thee I flee.17

By using the male persona of David, the psalmist king, Lock found a way to offer the sacrifice of praise ‘with open mouth’ (Sonnet 17) despite gender restrictions. Lock uses mouth imagery to demonstrate that the speaker, who prays to be delivered ‘From gaping throte of depe deuouring hell,’ will be qualified by ‘the profe of myne example’ to ‘preache / The bitter frute of lust and foule delight’ (Sonnet 15). Once God has opened the lips of the psalmist, that redeemed sinner 15 Lock, Sonnet 5, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. Aa4v. 16 Lock, Sonnet 12, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. Aa6 17 Lock, Sonnet 16, 17, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. Aa7; Sonnet 15, Collected Works, sig. Aa6v.

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may preach, teach, or sing God’s praises. By attributing the song to God rather than the psalmist, Lock justifies her own speech. Singing is not presented as a privilege but as a duty, and therefore becomes an act of devotion although it is simultaneously one of self-assertion. Lock’s speaker, who cannot even pray without God’s help, begs that God will ‘loose my speche’. Once God has heeded this prayer, the psalmist will be empowered to preach and thus as pious writers teaching the faithful, women could respond simultaneously to the enemies of their religion and their sex. When the idea of a woman preaching seemed heretical, Lock could use the ventriloquism of psalm translation to preach the justice of God’s law. While working within the masculine vocal parameters set down by David, the deliberate and manipulative use of the language of lament and despair (traditionally gendered female) becomes a means by which Lock expresses herself as author. Although the psalm becomes a model for personal and political instruction, Lock also concentrates upon the repetition and elaboration of keywords in Psalm 51, announcing her allegiance to Calvin’s theology and enlivening his exegesis with a poetic performance of praise, uniting godly readers in spiritual preparation for communion. In part the Protestant fascination with Psalm 51 arises from the abjection of David, who begs for gifts from God while painting in the starkest terms his own moral degradation. Lock translated the text as ‘For loe, I was shapen in wickednes, and in sinne hath my mother conceived me’.18 Lock’s approach to Psalm 51 demonstrates her concern with just the problem that the ‘sacrifice of praise’ raised for other Protestants: the suggestion in many psalms, that praise appeases the wrath of God. Calvin believed that God did not seek any advantage by us, and for Lock to suggest otherwise would be to fall into the error of the sacrificial Mass. Sonnet 9 offers an interesting example of how Lock approaches this problem. This sonnet is based on the seventh line of Psalm 51 alluding to Leviticus 14:6–9, which describes a ritual for the cleansing of a leper. In Sonnet 9, the speaker asks God to ‘Sprinkle me, Lorde, with hisope, and I shalbe cleane: wash me, and I shalbe whiter then snowe’. Many of these manoeuvres must have evoked Catholic sacramental gestures to a Protestant reader and Lock is well aware of such dangers. Although she prefers to use the word ‘Sprinkle’ from the Vulgate rather than the commonly used ‘Purge’, she makes a deliberate distinction between the literal rites as in the Old Testament and the sprinkling of hyssop as she describes it. Lock clearly establishes a typological connection here between the psalmist’s penitential narrative and the plight of an unworthy communicant. The spiritual interpretation of ‘sweet hyssop’ is emphasized here: it is the one salvific substance – Christ’s blood: 18 John Ottenhoff, Anne Lock and Psalm 51: An Experiment in Intertextuality [homepage URL: http://newmedia.alma.edu/ottenhoff/psalm51/index.html]. Accessed 20. 04. 2013.

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With swete Hysope besprinkle thou my sprite: Not such hysope, nor so besprinkle me, As law vnperfect shade of perfect light Did vse as an apointed signe to be Foreshewing figure of thy grace behight. With death and bloodshed of thine only sonne, The swete hysope, cleanse me defyled wyght, Sprinkle my soule.19

In his Commentaries, Calvin stresses that ceremonies and sacraments in particular are only effectual and ratified when they are understood spiritually: […] Although there be no clensing to be sought for elsewhere than in the bloud of Christ […] wee cannot (but by the helpe of outward signes) with quyet mindes believe that God is at one with us.20

In Sonnet 18 the blood of Christ is seen as a ‘swete’ sacrifice that is distinguished from the ‘burnt offeringes’ of the old law: But thy swete sonne alone, ith one sufficing sacrifice for all Appeaseth thee, and maketh the at one With sinfull man, and hath repaird our fall. That sacred hoste is euer in thine eyes. The praise of that I yeld for sacrifice.21

The propitiary sacrifices of the Old Testament – the ‘cattell slayne and burnt with sacred flame’, the death of ‘gyltlesse beastes, to purge my gilt and blame’ and the ‘savour’ of burnt offerings is rendered obsolete by the ‘swete sonne alone.’ The symbolic nature of sacrifice is again alluded to in Sonnet 21, the last in the sequence, where ‘Many a yelden host of humbled hart’ will lie on God’s altar as sacrifice. The original Psalmist reference to the offering of ‘yonge bullockes’ is completely absent in the sonnet although the source text is quoted in the shoulder note. Lock thus connects her sequence to Calvinist sacramental theology while retaining an intensely private and personal voice. She also subtly draws attention to her original work by presenting her sonnet sequence as the true sacrifice of praise sought by God and enacts what Calvin argues is the appropriate devotional response of a worthy communicant. Lock’s 1590 translation of the Belgian Calvinist Jean Taffin’s work, Of the marks of the children of God, and of their comforts in afflictions begins, like her 19 Lock, Sonnet 9, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. Aa5-Aa5v. 20 John Calvin, “Commentaries”, The Psalmes of David and others. With M. John Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. Arthur Golding, London 1571, fol 204r. 21 Lock, Sonnet 18, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. Aa7-Aa7v.

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former work, with a politically astute dedication to Anne Russell Dudley, Countess of Warwick whose nephew was married to one of the Cooke sisters. Locke’s work is signed here, not with ambiguous initials like A. L. but with authority: it is a work by Anne (Lock) Prowse, her new name after her marriage to Richard Prowse, a draper from Devon who had radical sympathies. Micheline White has contended that Locke’s translation applied Taffin’s consolatory remarks to contemporary attacks on English radical Protestants stirred up by the Martin Marprelate controversy.22 On the one hand, the translation adopts a deeply personal tone, ostensibly written to provide comfort in these trying times; on the other hand, it is also a public intervention by indirectly petitioning Elizabeth to stop persecuting radical Protestants. By translating the work of an approved male author she eliminates the perception of a public voice, but by signing her name on this text she asserts her public reputation as an active member of the godly community. In her translation, Locke elaborates upon the taste and nourishment of the Word that is sealed and set forth by the ‘visible word’ (parole visible) of the sacraments. Lock’s translation juxtaposes the ‘sweetness’ of the word of God and the ‘sweetness’ of the sacraments and introduces the idea of the taste and nourishment of the Word that was reinforced by Calvinist exegesis. Moreover, in an unequivocal determination for agency, Lock writes an original 124 lined concluding poem ‘The necessitie and benefite of afflictions’ in ballad meter. This poem replaces the New Testament and Augustine’s City of God quotations in the original French text. Lock’s poem brings together Taffin’s main arguments, using the figures of Job and David. The poem begins with the popular idea that the righteous are decreed by God to suffer ‘great trouble and vexation’ in earthly life.23 Unlike friends who stand aside in times of trouble, God’s love and assistance always abide ‘to cheare the troubled minde’.24 Next comes the exemplar of Job who lost everything barring his life, but God remained with him to show the fickleness of earthly pleasures. Reformed Protestantism teaches one to realize one’s wrongdoing, to loath worldly pleasures and to appreciate the comfort of the word of God: Because the soule by godlinesse more comfort doth receave In one day, than by worldlinesse, Forever it can have.25

22 Micheline White, “Renaissance Englishwomen and Religious Translations: The Case of Anne Lock’s ‘Of the Markes of the Children of God’ (1590),” English Literary Renaissance 29, no. 3 (1999): pp. 375–400. 23 Lock, The necessitie and benefite of afflictions, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. S1. 24 Lock, The necessitie and benefite of afflictions, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. S1v. 25 Lock, The necessitie and benefite of afflictions, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig. S3.

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The exemplar of David is immediately drawn, reminding us of Lock’s sonnet sequence and emphasizing that God expresses his love and mercy by humbling us. The epistle to this work asserts that Lock’s intention was threefold: to warn inexperienced Protestants who have never seen religious strife not to be complacent lest persecution steal upon them ‘as a thefe in the night’26; to generate awareness among experienced individuals who may be influenced by Satan; to comfort afflicted individuals who have given up hope. Lock’s poem not only provided consolation to her readers but emphasized the assurance of election that is offered to the godly by the seals and pledges of the sacraments. Lock’s poetic choices respond polemically to the intense religious controversies raised by Queen Elizabeth’s 1558 accession. Through her use of sacred words, Anne Vaughan Lock proved that eloquence, not silence, is the sign of her spirituality. Despite the efforts of Thomas Bentley and others to restrict female speech, she found a way to speak through the ventriloquism of translation, vowing, like Mary Sidney did in her translation of Psalm 49, that ‘wisdome the wordes shall from my mouth proceed.’27

26 Lock, The necessitie and benefite of afflictions, Collected Works (see n. 4), sig A3r. 27 Hannibal Hamlin, Michael G. Brennan, Margaret P. Hannay, Noel J. Kinnamon, eds., The Sidney Psalter: The Psalms of Sir Philip and Mary Sidney, Oxford 2009, pp.92–94.

Hicham Merzouki

Islam in Renaissance English Literature: Between Intolerance and Exoticism

Throughout the Middle Ages, scholars from the British Isles came into contact with the world of Islam and Arab studies, literature and culture. Once back in England, these scholars brought with them remarkable information about the Islamic faith, religion and rites.1 The Neo-Platonist poet and philosopher John Scotus (Lat. Johannes Scotus Eriugena, 810?–877?), who translated Pseudo-Dionysius, was one of the most distinguished scholars and mystics, and the first Arabist from England. He studied Arabic in Spain. In this era, common people and the clergy would take classes in Arabic at the Arab schools in Spain.2 Crusaders who came back to England from the Holy Land brought stories and legends about Islam and its prophet, but they were often negative and deprecatory. They were used as tools to justify the Holy War against Muslims who were depicted as dangerous enemies, and their prophet as a dangerous impostor. The thirteenth-century Benedictine monk Matthew Paris (c. 1200–1259) contributed to the circulation of Flores Historiarum in his Chronica Majora, and added accounts of events from other countries to it. Although Paris had no knowledge of the Islamic culture and religion, his work presented the current ideas and opinions of this era on Islam and its prophet. He demonstrated that Muhammed’s real name was Lothar Schmalfuss, and that he was a cardinal who became a heretic as he failed to become pope. In the fourteenth century, the Polychronicon by Ranulf Higden (c. 1280–1364) was very popular in Europe. It was translated into English by John of Trevisa in 1387. Higden expresses his belief that Muhammed and his followers came to know monotheism and that their Friday worship is linked to their earlier idolatry

1 Byron Porter Smith, Islam in English Literature, New York 1977, III, xviii. 2 Thomas Warton, “Dissertation on the Introduction of Learning into England,” The History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the close of the Sixteenth Century, London 1728–1790, I: cix.

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and paganism. This ritual implies that they had previously worshipped Venus and continued to honour the day of Friday.3 The English traveller Sir John Mandeville (1300?–1372?) includes in his book The Travels of Sir John Mandeville a remarkable account of the prophet’s life, which reflects on how Europeans perceived the Islamic faith in the fourteenth century. The Arabs invaded Spain in 711. In 732, Charles Martel gave a decisive check to their advance in the Battle of Poitiers called by the Arab historians ‘the floor of martyrs’. This event was adorned and embellished with romantic accounts in the same way the European romance writers described the French triumph at Poitiers. In these stories and accounts, the muslims or the Saracens were described as villains. Romance writers considered Muslims as pagans or idol worshippers. In this respect, the English poet Chaucer used the term ‘mawmettrie’, which is derived from ‘mawmet’ (referring to Muhammed or Mahomet, the prophet of muslims) and means idol-worship. In both Mediaeval times and the Renaissance era, stories about Muhammed’s life were presented in English literature. The image of the prophet was very negative because of the intolerant views of Christians towards Islam and the Crusades. The prophet of Islam was considered as a false prophet, or the god of Muslims. Therefore, Muslims were represented as pagans in the contemporary literature. At the time of the Renaissance, the word ‘idol’ substituted the word ‘mammet’ which signified puppet. In Henry IV, Shakespeare uses it: I came not for thee, Kate. This is no world To play with mammets and to tilt with lips4

The concept of Muhammed as god or idol had a direct impact on the English language. John of Trevisa spoke about the prophet in his translation of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon saying: ‘he forbeed the paynyms mammetrie’5 without knowing that he was saying that the prophet of Islam abolished the worship of Mohammed.6 Throughout the age of the Restoration, Jean de Thevenot wrote about the pleasurable delights of paradise as they were described in the Koran in addition to other rituals including prayer, fast and pilgrimage. He had a positive view of the Turks or Muslims in general without taking into consideration the negative aspects that concern their religion: ‘The Turkish religion is so full of Fopperies 3 Katharine Scarfe Beckett, Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, New York 2003, p. 215. 4 William Shakespeare, Henry IV (Part 1), II.iii.94–95. 5 John of Trevisa, Polychronicon Ranulphi Monachi Cestrensi, vol. VI, p. 25. 6 In the ‘Harrowing of Hell’, the prophet is found among the infernal powers and in William Dunbar’s Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins, he is master of ceremonies in hell.

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and Absurdities, that certainly it is to be wondered at that it hath so many Followers.’7 In The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, Containing the Maxims of the Turkish Polities, the Most Material Points of the Mahometan Religion, Sir Rycaut remarks that Muslim women are ‘the most lascivious and immodest of all women’.8 Other writers of the period had an aggressive attitude towards Islam because of the political situation of the period including the Civil war and the conflict between Catholics and Protestants.9 Norman Daniel studied the ways Europeans shaped their knowledge of Islam, and pointed out that Europeans had enough information about the religion. However, the negative attitudes originated in the Christian East, and especially in Byzantium, which Muslims took over when they subdued Syria in A.D. 634. There were different examples which illustrate religious intolerance including Isaac Barrow’s sermon from c. 1670 entitled Of the Impiety and Imposture of Paganism and Mahometanism. The writer of the sermon studied the Islamic religion and wrote a Latin treatise on Islam, Epitome Fidei et Religionis Turcicae. He describes the holy book of muslims, the Koran, as a book which is patched up out of old stories corrupted, mingled and transplaced, interlarded with fabulous legends, contrary to all probable records of history […] so that in a manner every tale he tells is an evident argument of an ignorant and impudent impostor.10

Renaissance literature is full of allusions to Islam and its prophet. Samuel Butler’s Hudibras describes the features of Bruin, the bear and shows that Bruin looks like the descendants of the prophet: 7 Jean de Thevenot, The Travels of Monsieur Thevenot into the Levant, tr. by A. Lovell, 2nd ed., London 1687, pt. 1, p. 39ff. 8 Richard Knolles/Sir Paul Rycaut, The Turkish History, whereunto is added The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, London 1687, II, p.49. 9 John Bunyan asks questions in order to solve the problem of intolerance: ‘“How can you tell [whispered the temper] but that the Turks have as good scriptures to prove their Mahomet the Saviour, as we have to prove our Jesus? And could I think that so many ten thousands, in so many countries and kingdoms should be without the knowledge of the right way to heaven […] and that we only who live in a corner of the earth, should alone be blessed therewith?’ (The Practical Works of John Bunyan, ed. Alexander Philips. Aberdeen, 1841, I, pp.60–61). 10 Isaac Barrow, The Works of Isaac Barrow, ed. James Hamilton. 7 vols. New York, 1845, p. 321. The first translation of the Koran into English was by Alexander Ross in 1649. He stated that there is nothing attractive to a Christian in the Koran. He also compares the state of the Christians and the state of the Muslims: ‘Whilst a great part of the World doth follow the Antichristian beast, we follow the Lamb upon mount Sion; while they hear the voice of Satyres, Ostriches and Scrich-Owls, we hear the voice of the Turtle, and the Songs of Sion in our land: whilst they feed on husks with Swine and drink the corrupted puddles of Mahomet’s inventions, we are fed with Angels food, and eat celestial Manna, and drink of the pure river of life clear as crystal’.

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With visage formidably grim, And rugged as a Saracen, Or Turk of Mahomet’s own kin,11

Butler describes the alarm of astrologer Sidrophel when he sees a lantern attached to a kite’s tail, and imagines it to be a portent of the end of the world: Unless it be that cannon-ball That, shot i’ the air, point-blank upright, Was borne to that prodigious height, That learn’d philosophers maintain, It ne’er came backward down again, But in the airy regions yet Hangs like the body o’ Mahomet.12

After the king of Poland, Jan Sobieski, had defeated the Turks in 1683, the Crusader Edmund Waller wrote Of the Invasion and Defeat of the Turks in the Year 1683 where he considers Charles II appointed by God to realize the victory of the united Christian nations against the Turks. When Charles II died, Waller announced in his A Presage of the Ruin of the Turkish Empire: presented to his Majesty on his Birth Day (1685) that it was the destiny of King James to continue the fight: Peace to embrace, ruin the common foe Exalt the Cross, and lay the Crescent low.13

It was uncommon to find references which qualified Arabs as scientists or people of knowledge, whose culture enabled them to transmit the science of Greece to the Christian west. However, in the Pindaric Ode to Mr. Hobs (1656), Abraham Cowley treasures the golden role of Muslims in benefiting Europe with their knowledge of philosophy: Long did the mighty Stagirite retain The universal Intellectual reign, Saw his own Countreys short-liv’d Leopard slain; The stronger Roman-Eagle did out-fly, Oftner renewed his Age, and saw that Dy. Mecha it self, in spite of Mahumet possest, And chas’ed by a wild Deluge from the East, His Monarchy new planted in the West14

11 12 13 14

Samuel Butler, Hudibras, ed. T.R. Nash. New York, 1847, pt. 1, Canto II, II, pp. 250–52. Butler, Hudibras (see n. 11), pt. 2, Canto III, II, 436–42. The Poems of Edmund Waller, ed. G. Thorn Drury, London 1893, pp. 231–33. Abraham Cowley, Poems, a reprint of the 1668 Edition, ed. A.R. Waller, Cambridge 1905, p. 188.

Islam in Renaissance English Literature: Between Intolerance and Exoticism

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During the period of the Restoration, readers of travel literature had complete information about Islamic religion and culture. The biographies of Muhammed by Addison and Prideaux always stressed negative aspects which concern the evil life of the prophet. With the age of Pope, indications of a more balanced attitude towards Islam started to take shape in addition to an interest in Arabic literature. Works by the Dutch philosopher Adriaan Reland (1676–1718) paved the way to a more objective understanding of the Islamic faith, in addition to the works of Ockley and Sale which explained the history of Muslim conquests and explored the Islamic faith. The Arabian Nights became so popular that it convinced the reading public that something great could come from the Muslim East. James Thomson’s Edward and Eleanora and John Hughes’s Siege of Damascus represented the Saracens in a favourable way. However, the popularity of Voltaire’s Mahomet continued to propagate negative features of the Islamic religion: Lust and ambition […] are the springs Of all his actions, whilst without one virtue Dissimulation, like a flatt’ring painter, Bedecks him with the colouring of them all.15

During the age of Johnson (1730–1810), there was a tendency toward a more tolerant understanding of the Islamic religion.16 Works of Sir William Jones and his translations of Arabic and Persian literature were essential to the scholarly study of the literature of the Orient. The records and accounts of travellers created a great interest in Islam and inspired new Romantic writers who were encouraged by the demands of a large reading public towards subjects taken from the life and literature of the Muslim East. Consideration of the Islamic faith as a Christian heresy was an eternal pattern among Christian theologians in addition to the consideration of Islam as a heresy that God had destined in order to realize the victory of Christians. Other stories about the prophet started to vanish after the public got stirred to select objective information. Some of these stories had considered that the prophet had epilepsy, was possessed by demons and that he died because of drunkenness. In conclusion, during the Renaissance, two views were stressed by English writers: Islam is a wrong religion and heresy that Muhammed used to satisfy his passions and conquer lands. The second view was the exoticism, beauty and mystery of the Arab culture that they got to know thanks to the stories from The Arab Nights. 15 Voltaire, Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète, translated by James Miller as Mahomet, the Imposter, I. i, in Bell’s British Theatre, Vol. II. 16 Byron Porter Smith, Islam in English Literature, New York 1977, pp.140–141.

IX. Ethnology in the Light of Reformation

Erin Lambert

New Worlds, New Images: Picturing the Resurrection of the Body in Sixteenth-Century Germany

In 1564, Michael Fabri wrote of newfound lands in which people killed and ate one another as Europeans ate animals. The cannibals sailed the sea, hunting like hungry wolves, devouring the entrails of freshly slaughtered adult men, capturing young boys to fatten like capons, and imprisoning young girls to breed like hens.1 By the time of Fabri’s writing, such reports were well known among European readers. Just a few years earlier, in 1557, the first editions of Hans Staden’s account of his captivity among the Tupi in Brazil had appeared to great acclaim, replete with woodcuts that depicted cannibalism in unprecedented detail.2 Fabri himself cited older accounts, including the letters of Christopher Columbus, who related rumors of dog-headed, man-eating tribes, and the reports of Amerigo Vespucci, who described cannibalism as an aspect of intertribal warfare.3 Unlike these others, Fabri was no explorer or conqueror. He was, instead, a Lutheran preacher who wrote a treatise on the resurrection of the dead. In a text that ran to more than three hundred folios, he considered resurrection from every possible angle. Fabri examined the biblical basis of the doctrine, surveyed evidence found in history, literature, and the natural world, and finally addressed frequently asked questions about how resurrection was to take place – for example, whether the bodies of the dead were to rise nude, and whether the body’s reassembly would hurt. At first, bloody reports from the New World might seem far removed from such questions. But for Fabri, the prospect of a land filled with cannibals had far-reaching implications for the fate of Christian bodies at the end of the world. This essay seeks to tease out these commonalities between exploration and resurrection, and more broadly, between the Reformation and the 1 Michael Fabri, Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung der Todten/ Auß Göttlicher warer Schrifft/ an Zeugnissen/ Exemplen und lebendigen vorbilden/ Nach widerlegung mancherley gegenmeinung/ Auch auß alten und Neuwen Scribenten, Frankfurt am Main 1564, fol. 25v. 2 Neil L. Whitehead, “The Ethnographic Lens in the New World: Staden, De Bry, and the Representation of the Tupi in Brazil,” in Early Modern Eyes, ed. Walter Melion/Lee Palmer Wandel, Leiden 2010, pp. 81–104, here p. 81. 3 Fabri, Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung (see n. 1), sigs. A4v–C2r.

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encounter with the New World.4 As the writings of Fabri and others reveal, these seemingly divergent themes were in fact deeply connected by a shared set of problems and questions. And ultimately, the answers that sixteenth-century Europeans found reveal the ways in which Christians oriented themselves in a rapidly changing world. Although Fabri focused in particular detail on the New World’s implications for the understanding of resurrection, he was far from alone in considering the theme of the body’s rebirth, and mentions of new discoveries appear in multiple sixteenth-century texts. Two other Lutheran preachers, Johannes Mathesius and Christoph Irenaeus, published sermons and treatises on resurrection in 1559 and 1565 respectively.5 Irenaeus’ text, in particular, rivals Fabri’s in length and detail. Dozens of other German writers in the middle decades of the sixteenth century also considered questions about resurrection, often in funeral sermons or in tracts intended to comfort dying Christians. All of these sixteenth-century writers were indebted to centuries of theological debate about the nature of bodily resurrection, and those older discourses shaped their approach to the challenges of discovery and difference. Patristic and medieval writers had long elaborated questions about personhood and Christianity in the context of theologies of bodily resurrection, as Caroline Walker Bynum has demonstrated.6 Sung and heard in every medieval Mass, the Apostles’ Creed had made resurrection one of the central tenets of Christianity as it asserted belief in ‘the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.’7 To believe in resurrection was to be a Christian, affirming faith in the raising of both Christ’s body and one’s own. Considering the resurrection of the dead thus inherently invoked questions about the meanings of personhood, community, and Christianity – questions, in other words, of what we might call identity. As Bynum has noted, resurrection demonstrated that flesh was to be constant, circumscribing the individual across time and space, and making body crucial to personhood.8 Throughout the Middle Ages, resurrection had promised 4 Lee Palmer Wandel has argued for the interconnection of religious reform and global exploration: The Reformation: Towards a New History, Cambridge 2011, chap. 2. 5 Johannes Mathesius, Leychpredigten Auß dem fünfftzehenden Capitel der 1. Epistel S. Pauli zun Corinthiern. Von der aufferstehung der Todten und ewigem leben, Nuremberg 1561 and Christoph Irenaeus, Der Artickel/ vnsers Christlichen Glaubens. Jch Gleube Ein Aufferstehung des Fleisches: Ausgelegt Mit vermeldung und widerlegung allerley jrthumb/ so dawider endstanden, Eisleben 1565. 6 Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336, New York 1995. 7 Jaroslav Pelikan/Valerie Hotchkiss, eds., Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, 4 vols. New Haven 2003, vol. I: p. 669. 8 Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body (see n. 6), pp. 9–10.

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that the same body that was buried was to rise again; despite the transformations of decay and resurrection, that body’s discrete identity was to persist unaltered. So too, to believe in one’s own potential for resurrection was to assert membership in the Christian community. All of the faithful from the time of Christ until the apocalypse, on earth and in heaven, formed a single community. In the sixteenth century, these bonds were broken, and with them fractured conceptions of a universally shared humanity. No European Christian confession denied the resurrection of the dead. Yet in a world in which Christians were divided by so much, resurrection, too, was contested. Those same confessional statements that affirmed the universal resurrection of the dead also described it as a moment of division, at which differences constructed on earth would be carried into eternity. Holding false beliefs about resurrection meant that one could not be Christian at all; to misunderstand or deny the raising of one’s own flesh was to reject the resurrection of Christ. For some, it was even to deny the incarnation itself. In Europe, resurrection raised questions about whether Christians divided by faith also differed in their humanity.9 At the same time, as Fabri’s fascination with cannibals suggests, newly discovered worlds increased the intensity of those questions as Europeans grappled with the boundaries between the civilized and the savage. A flood of texts brought to European readers news of the peoples of the Americas, variously depicted with the naked innocence of Eden or the shocking barbarity of the cannibal.10 Still other debates quickly followed: debates that resonated with the questions Europeans asked about the resurrection of their own bodies. Could such people become Christian? And if they could not be Christian, could they be people at all? By the time of Fabri’s writing, a Europe long unified by the ties of Christendom had thus become a wider world in which one’s neighbor might be a cannibal, and a faraway cannibal might become a Christian.11 A world once bound by the universality of resurrection had fractured into a storm of questions about the meanings of personhood and Christianity. Against this background, Fabri and others sought to educate German Lutheran readers about the nature of resurrection. In the process, they tell us much about the ways in which Europeans interpreted the new world, and in turn, re-interpreted themselves. The metaphors that sixteenth-century writers used to describe resurrection provide one avenue into these practices of interpretation. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, in which the apostle used the image of the seed in order to explicate resurrection, provided a model for medieval and sixteenth-century writers alike. 9 On these divergences, see Erin Lambert, “Resurrection and Devotional Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison 2012. 10 Wandel, The Reformation (see n. 4), chap. 2. 11 Wandel, The Reformation (see n. 4), p. 263.

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For centuries, patristic and medieval writers had thus drawn upon the imagery of the natural world, and by the time of the Reformation, a corpus of metaphors was well established. Echoing Paul, for example, many medieval writers used images of growth. Because plants grew in a cyclical pattern of dormancy and fertility, the seed further invoked seasonal change as an image of resurrection. Through such imagery, medieval writers sought to make sensible a transformation that defied logic; the notion that the body could return from the slime of the grave challenged everyday experience.12 In order to explain this transformation, still other writers turned to the realms of the exotic or the mythological. For many early writers, the phoenix’s rebirth from the ashes demonstrated the potential for triumph over fragmentation and decay.13 Still others explored resurrection at the level of metaphysics: both Augustine and Athenagoras considered the question of whether human flesh might be digested, and if so, whether it remained human flesh at all.14 As Fabri’s focus on cannibalized fragments suggests, he and other sixteenthcentury writers were much indebted to this heritage of medieval imagery. Again and again, they too referred to seeds and phoenixes in their sermons and treatises, demonstrating their extensive familiarity with writers such as Tertullian, Augustine, Athenagoras, and a host of others. So too, they drew upon works of literature and natural philosophy well known among sixteenth-century readers: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Aristotle’s De animalibus, and Pliny’s Naturalis historia.15 Most often, sixteenth-century writers built upon patristic and medieval references to the natural world. Fabri, for example, includes more than seventy such references, and Irenaeus cites nearly as many.16 Usually, they cite canonical texts, such as the works of Aristotle or Pliny, and then add the example of a familiar plant or animal to further illustrate the nature of the transformation. In Fabri’s text, the generation of flies in a pile of manure, documented by Aristotle, thus demonstrated God’s power to create life out of muck.17 His contemporary, Irenaeus, similarly referred to Ovid’s descriptions of the generation of bees in dead oxen and hornets in horses.18 Mathesius instructed readers to look to the stars for an indication of the glimmering permanence promised to resurrected Christians.19 So too, the migration of swallows not only recalled the work of Pliny, 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Bynum, Resurrection of the Body (see n. 6), p. 6. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body (see n. 6), p. 24. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body (see n. 6), pp. 33 and 103. Fabri includes a representative list: Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung (see n. 1), sigs. A4v– C2r. Fabri, Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung (see n. 1), fols. 266v–291r and Irenaeus, Der Artickel/ unsers Christlichen Glaubens (see n. 5), sigs. F1r–G1r. Fabri, Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung (see n. 1), fol. 272r. Irenaeus, Der Artickel/ unsers Christlichen Glaubens (see n. 5), sig. F4v. Mathesius, Leychpredigten (see n. 5), sig. Z2r.

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but demonstrated that the cycles of life, death, and rebirth were part of everyday experience.20 In their writings, these authors thus placed resurrection, a seemingly inexplicable transformation, in the context of the familiar. Strikingly, this mode of explaining resurrection runs parallel to contemporary descriptions of the New World. As Christine Johnson has noted, European writers also approached newly encountered plants, animals, and people by placing them within familiar categories.21 Explorers attempted to chart newly discovered territories in the established framework of Ptolemaic geography, while people and animals were described in terms of their similarity or difference from European norms. Resurrection and discovery, it seems, were linked by their inherent incomprehensibility. As Fabri explicitly connected resurrection with the New World, these modes of interpretation were clearly at play. He placed Columbus’ and Vespucci’s discovery of cannibals, for example, within the context of Athenagoras’ much older discussion of the identity of digested human flesh.22 If one’s arm was eaten by a cannibal, both writers asked, was that flesh still one’s own, or did it become part of the body of the cannibal who chewed and digested it? Both, incidentally, affirmed that one’s flesh was eternally one’s own. That question, however, bore far different significance in a world in which cannibalism was no longer simply a matter of theoretical debate, and that reality reshaped Fabri’s approach. By placing ethnographic references within this pre-existing frame, Fabri at first seems to continue the cosmographers’ and natural historians’ project of domesticating the New World by fitting it to European categories. Indeed, he explicitly referenced the new bodies of literature born of the discovery of the New World and drew them together with classic texts, much like many of his contemporaries. He explored the natural world not only through Aristotle and Pliny, but in contemporary bestsellers such as Sebastian Franck’s Weltbuch, Münster’s Cosmographia, and Conrad Gesner’s Historiae animalium. Yet even as Fabri drew upon these writers’ methods, his purpose was strikingly different. He not only sought to explain newly discovered lands to European readers, as these other authors did. Instead, as his discussion of cannibalism suggests, Fabri also did the opposite, using the new to engage with age-old questions about the nature of resurrection, and employing newly discovered wonders as metaphors for longstanding ones. In considering cannibals, he used contemporary practices and ancient texts to make sense of one another. 20 Irenaeus, Der Artickel/ unsers Christlichen Glaubens (see n. 5), sig. F2v and Mathesius, Leychpredigten (see n. 5), sig. k4r. 21 Christine R. Johnson, The German Discovery of the World: Renaissance Encounters with the Strange and Marvelous, Charlottesville 2008. 22 Fabri, Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung (see n. 1), fol. 25v.

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Consideration of two of Fabri’s examples reveals that the mutual incomprehensibility of resurrection and the New World was central to European writers’ engagement with the questions of personhood that both themes invoked. Although most of their examples were drawn from European flora and fauna, such as bears, mice, and cuckoo birds, sixteenth-century writers also followed in the footsteps of Franck and Gesner as they sought to place newfound plants and animals in Aristotelian categories. Within a series of examples drawn from the Historia animalium, for example, Fabri discusses hibernating mammals as an image of the resurrection of the dead. Aristotle himself described the habits of mother bears, which slept in caves until they gave birth and brought forth cubs in the spring, as well as dormice, which fattened themselves before hibernating in trees. As budding plants had done for centuries, such seasonal cycles illustrated the rhythms of life, death, and resurrection. Fabri, however, added to these examples: he cited the guinea pig.23 Although Aristotle had already provided ample examples, the guinea pig’s novelty seems to have had a particular purpose in Fabri’s text. Unknown to Europeans before the sixteenth century, the animal was first described by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner, whose widely read natural history was Fabri’s most likely source. Like Fabri and so many others, Gesner sought to incorporate the new creature into a European frame of reference.24 He referred to it as the ‘Indian rabbit,’ compared its size to the rabbits familiar to Europeans, and related the noises it made to those of piglets. Reportedly, Gesner raised guinea pigs himself, and he noted that they should be good to eat, although their meat was fatty like bacon. Perhaps based on his own observation, he also noted the guinea pig’s prolific reproduction, with litters of young born in burrows in the spring.25 This attribute presumably provided Fabri with the link to bears, dormice, and Aristotle – a bridge between the familiar and the strange. Fabri, though, offers no explanation for this addition, and merely mentions the animal by name as an addendum to his paraphrase of Aristotle. He apparently assumed that European readers would be familiar enough with the guinea pig to be able to understand the implicit connection to Aristotle’s classification of mammals and its function as a metaphor for the resurrection of the dead. Evidence beyond the popularity of Gesner’s text suggests that Fabri was justified in this view. As Gesner’s own specimens, a gift from the Habsburgs, confirm, the guinea pig had been introduced to Europe by the 1550s. Recent archaeological finds suggest that the animal served as a house pet in northern Europe by the end of the sixteenth 23 Fabri, Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung (see n. 1), fol. 277v. 24 William B. Ashworth, “Emblematic Natural History of the Renaissance,” in Cultures of Natural History, ed. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord, and E.C. Spary. Cambridge 1996, p. 27. 25 Conrad Gesner, Appendix historiae quadrupedum viviparorum et oviparorum, Zurich 1554, p. 19.

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century, and a French writer in the 1560s described a method for preparing their meat.26 Still, its novelty meant that out of all of the examples Fabri might have chosen, the guinea pig merited specific attention. Fabri’s passing reference, it seems, thus masks a complex series of exchanges between the old world and the new. Not only did he use the familiar to frame the novel; he also placed an ancient marvel in the context of a newly discovered and increasingly familiar one. In their new metaphors for resurrection, European writers begin to reveal how they repositioned themselves in a widening world: they not only found frames of reference for the novel, but also reframed themselves. The guinea pig became a metaphor through which to view the Christian body. Ultimately, as Fabri addressed questions about resurrection in the concluding section of his text, he fully revealed the ways in which discovery shed new light on resurrection and the debates about personhood it entailed. Again, he was much indebted to medieval models as he debated whether marriages were to be binding after the resurrection, and whether a lifetime of hair and nail clippings were to be restored to the resurrected body. As with his natural metaphors, though, Fabri also added new questions that reshaped long-standing conclusions. Within a series of questions about the appearance of the resurrected body, he introduced the issue of race. Specifically, Fabri asked whether African converts to Christianity would retain their skin color after the resurrection. Skin color, he observed, was not constant even in earthly life; chameleons, as Pliny explained, provided evidence that appearances might change. So too, travelers such as Marco Polo had located tribesmen who darkened their skin with sesame oil, and others who grew ever darker under the tropical sun. These peoples, Fabri noted, widely practiced idolatry, making statues of dark-skinned gods and white devils. Was idolatry, he wondered, thus a function of skin color? And since nature demonstrated that skin color was changeable, could religious conversion alter one’s very skin? 27 Ultimately, he concluded that it did, and resurrection was crucial to this argument. The resurrected body, as Paul had explained to the Corinthians, was to shine like the sun; so too, it was to have a quality that the eyes of the living had never seen. The bodies of all resurrected Christians, no matter what their earthly appearance had been, were to possess this heavenly quality. In resurrection, then, the conversion of the peoples of the New World was to be made manifest in their bodies. At the same time, the distinctions between the bodies of European Christians and indigenous converts were to dissolve. While they looked different on earth, they were to be indistinguishable in resurrection. 26 Fabienne Pigière et. al., “New Archaeological Evidence for the Introduction of the Guinea Pig to Europe,” Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012): pp. 1020–1024. 27 Fabri, Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung (see n. 1), fols. 320v–321r.

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At first glance, Fabri’s extended debate about skin color might merely reflect European puzzlement at distant peoples and differences that could not be explained. The question’s implications for Europeans living in the sixteenth century, however, were far-reaching. In his description of sesame oil and idolatry, Fabri reveals an understanding of personhood in which belief and practice might alter the body. What one did – whether worshipping as a Lutheran or eating the body of another – defined what one truly was. Implicit in this argument is the possibility that Europeans’ religious practices, too, altered their flesh, on earth and for eternity. Just as Europeans and the peoples of the New World might appear different in life but be alike in resurrection, Europeans themselves might look alike yet be fundamentally different. Within Fabri’s question, in other words, lies a struggle with the prospect of redrawing the boundaries of the Christian community in a world in which difference was being redefined on multiple fronts. If one’s true nature was revealed in the resurrected body, what of Europeans who no longer shared a conception of Christianity? Were those others more like the dark-skinned inhabitants of distant lands than they were like their ancestors and their neighbors? 28 Ultimately, such questions required European writers to reckon with the boundaries between the strange and the familiar – boundaries that were ever shifting, and that required Christians to forge new frames of reference not just for the animals and peoples they encountered abroad, but for their own flesh and bone. In the ritual of cannibalism and the import of the guinea pig, they found differences they could not readily explain, but more pressingly, similarities they had not expected. And as they looked across the Atlantic, sixteenth-century German writers found themselves in an expanding world in which all of the wonder and strangeness of a distant land might also be as close as the body that would one day rise from the grave.

28 Wandel, The Reformation (see n. 4), p. 263.

Michael Harrigan

The Navigations of Nicolas de Nicolay and the Economics of Ethnology in the Early Modern Mediterranean Basin1

In this paper, I will discuss some of the issues surrounding the representation of human populations during the century of the Reformation. I will place the emphasis on French texts here, although my focus is not intended to be delimited by national or linguistic boundaries, given a context in which allegiances crossed national boundaries on confessional lines, or indeed, in which texts might be translated and circulated with expediency. A growing body of work has been published on the subject of ‘early anthropology’ since the now classic texts of Margaret Hodgen and Giuliano Gliozzi, and the study of the New World continues to afford opportunities for analysis of the textual residue of EuropeanAmerindian interactions.2 My concern here, however, will be on the committal to text of human interactions within the Mediterranean Basin and, to a lesser extent, with some of the populations of the Middle East. These regions, having been written (about), as such, since antiquity, may not seem to inspire the same type of ‘ethnographic’ potential as the texts generated by the voyages to locations previously unknown to Europeans. In such a discussion, we may consider Renaissance anthropology as described by Joan-Pau Rubiés in his work on the representation of South India at this period. Noting the importance of ‘cosmographical literature’ to ‘Renaissance anthropology’, Rubiés notes that ‘writers increasingly appealed to the experience of the traveller as a source of authority for the truthfulness of particular observations concerning human diversity.’3 If we are to talk of anthropology during 1 My participation in this initiative has been generously funded by a research grant from the Humanities Research Fund of the University of Warwick. 2 Margaret T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Philadelphia 1964; 1971. Giuliano Gliozzi, Adamo e il Nuovo Mondo: la Nascita dell’Antropologia come Ideologia Coloniale: dalle Genealogie Bibliche alle Teorie Razziali, 1500– 1700, Florence 1977; trans. by Arlette Estève and Pascal Gabellone as Adam et le Nouveau Monde: la Naissance de l’Anthropologie comme Idéologie Coloniale: des Généalogies Bibliques aux Théories Raciales (1500–1700), Lecques 2000. 3 Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes 1250–1625, Cambridge 2000, p. xiii.

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the sixteenth century, we are, as modern readers, nonetheless constantly confronted by considerable levels of intertextuality. We might think of the many levels of such intertextuality in a well-known and frequently republished text such as Jean de Léry’s Histoire d’un Voyage Faict en la Terre de Brésil (1578); while qualified by Claude Lévi-Strauss as the ‘breviary of the ethnologist’, its Calvinist intertextuality, as Frank Lestringant has shown, inscribes the sea voyage amongst the psalms, or depicts Amerindian cannibalism in relation to French Catholics’ belief in transubstantiation.4 Such intertextuality is not something that we can apprehend as a separable accompaniment to the text, or as elements of the narrative that can simply be put to the side. Nonetheless, the entity of the narrator, while certainly a composite of the detritus of texts, also invites consideration as an observer relating, to various extents, ‘new’ encounters (or, we might say, encounters declared to be unmediated through text). My concern here with the Mediterranean is to investigate a geographical and cultural zone that generates texts which, although consistently supported by assurances that they result from empirical testimony, constantly complicate any notion of the novelty of encounter by the recurrence of the past.5 Nonetheless, the construction of the ‘Mediterranean’ anthropological text still has much to teach us about levels of interaction between narrative and ‘new’ encounters. I will focus here on one text, Nicolas de Nicolay’s 1568 Les Quatre Premiers Livres des Navigations et Pérégrinations Orientales (which I will call the Navigations here). An interesting particularity of Nicolay’s text is its accompaniment by a significant graphic apparatus; the full title could translate as The First Four Books of Oriental Navigations and Peregrinations […] with the Natural Illustrations of Men and of Women according to the Diversity of Nations, and their Bearing, Expressions and Clothing.6 My aim is twofold; I intend to engage, firstly, with the question of the narrative and investigative strategies in this Renaissance-era text, given its embedding in biblical, classical and ‘historical’ narratives. Secondly, given Nicolay’s declarations about the function of his text, the socio-political 4 On Léry as the ‘bréviaire de l’ethnologue’ according to Lévi-Strauss, see Jean de Léry, Histoire d’un Voyage Faict en la Terre du Brésil, Geneva 1578, 2nd ed. Geneva 1580, ed. Frank Lestringant, Paris 1994, pp. 5–14. On Léry’s intertextuality see p. 177n1; Lestringant, Jean de Léry ou l’Invention du Sauvage, 2nd ed., Paris 2005, pp. 221–232; on the processes of classification in Léry, see pp. 82–88. 5 On the ‘epistemological necessity’ [‘nécessité épistémologique’] of the ‘rewriting’ [réécriture] of the past in sixteenth-century voyages to the Levant, see Frédéric Tinguely, L’Écriture du Levant à La Renaissance: Enquête sur les Voyageurs Français dans l’Empire de Soliman le Magnifique, Geneva, 2000, pp. 13–16. 6 Nicolas de Nicolay [1517–1583], Les Quatre Premiers Livres des Navigations et Pérégrinations Orientales, de N. de Nicolay Dauphinoys, Seigneur d’Arfeuille, Varlet de Chambre, & Geographe Ordinaire du Roy. Avec les Figures au Naturel tant d’Hommes que de Femmes selon la Diversité des Nations, & de leur Port, Maintien, & Habitz, Lyon 1568. All references are to this edition unless otherwise stated.

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contexts of the voyage, and the nature of the human interactions he claims to have had, I then wish to move beyond the question of intertextuality to engage with an exploration of the representation of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern societies in the Navigations in terms of the notion of transaction, or the product of various levels of exchange. Nicolay’s text stems from his participation in an expedition which, headed by the Sieur d’Aramon, the ambassador to the Porte, was intended to counter imperial power through a Franco-Ottoman alliance.7 The fleet leaves France in July 1551 and arrives the same month in Algiers, where Aramon is initially received by Hasan Pasha. Here, the French presence is rendered extremely difficult by the attempt of many Christian slaves to board the French galleys so as to escape from captivity. After sailing along the coast of what is now Algeria, and to the island of Pantelleria and to Malta, the French witness the Ottoman assault on the fortress in Tripoli and the capture of its Christian occupants. The fleet lands at Malta once more, and at Cythera and Chios, before arriving at Constantinople in September 1551. Nicolay’s trajectory was therefore essentially limited to the Mediterranean Basin (although, as will be seen, his descriptions stretch beyond this to certain Middle Eastern peoples). Nicolay (who, the title page tells us, is writing in his capacity as the ‘King’s Geographer’ [Géographe ordinaire du roy]) is instructive about his declared investigative strategy.8 His dedicatory epistle to the King, Charles IX, inscribes the text that will follow in the tradition of antiquity, noting Aristippus and Plato’s assertion that the true heritage to be bequeathed to children must be indestructible, that is to say (for the latter philosopher) ‘the liberal sciences, the meat [viande] of noble understanding’.9 Others, Nicolay continues, who have ‘written of men’s virtue and merit’, maintain that the principal such merit is to have ‘peregrinated extensively, curiously seen and observed, kept [in memory] and since then told others (through their writings) of the most noble and singular things seen and observed by them in their long peregrinations’.10 This will banish 7 On the detail of this alliance, see the edition of the Navigations published by Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud and Stéphane Yérasimos as Dans l’Empire de Soliman le Magnifique, Paris 1989, pp. 12–27. 8 For an account of the opposition between the geographer Nicolay and the cosmographer André Thevet, see Lestringant, André Thevet: Cosmographe des Derniers Valois, Geneva 1991, pp. 259–274. 9 ‘les sciences liberales, viande du noble entendement.’ Nicolay, epistle, non-paginated [2]. Spelling and use of accents has not be modernised in all sixteenth-century quotations. 10 ‘Ceux donc qui ont escrit de la vertu & merite des hommes, ne leur ont sceu attribuer plus grande louange, que d’avoir longuement peregriné, & curieusement veu & observé, retenu, & depuis faict participans les autres (moyennant leurs escritz) des choses plus dignes & singulieres, par eux veües & observées en leurs loingtaines peregrinations.’ Nicolay, epistle, non-paginated [2].

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slothfulness [oisiveté] and furnish profit.11 Nicolay lauds the procedure of the Ancient Romans; he states that their ambassadors accompanied their visits to ‘faraway nations’ by a diligent procedure of observation, followed by ‘consideration’ and then by ‘writing’ of the foreign ‘customs and decrees, religion and justice’.12 Nicolay enthusiastically aligns his own observations, undertaken under the reign of Henri II, with such an illustrious heritage.13 The preface that follows the dedicatory epistle asserts the possibilities that man’s mobility would afford; such peregrinations would enable the peoples of the world to benefit from the teaching of virtue and ‘the true religion’ [‘la vraye religion’], as well as from commerce and the exchange of numerous forms of commodities.14 Nicolay claims that ‘every good and noble spirit’ is ‘naturally inclined’ to such movement, mirroring those ‘excellent’ predecessors who despite the risks of ‘death, sickness, prisons, captivities, slavery, servitudes …’ aimed to ‘see and know through sight rather than hearsay’ the ‘marvels that the sovereign Architect placed in his excellent work, the world.’15 Nicolay follows this with a series of illustrious voyagers from the biblical and classical traditions (Noah, Hercules, Jason, Socrates) to modern times (Marco Polo, Vasco de Gama and the French explorers like Villegagnon).16 Nicolay himself states that he had engaged in fifteen to sixteen years of peregrinations from the age of twenty-five onwards, making ‘diligent observations’ of ‘present sight and certain knowledge’ or, failing this, gathering the ‘certain testimony of people […] worthy of faith.’17 He explicitly declares that his labour [labeur] and skill [industrie] has been employed in representing the diversity of the foreign peoples he has encountered 11 ‘outre le proffit qui en provient […]’ Nicolay, epistle, non-paginated [2]. 12 ‘leurs Ambassadeurs aux nations loingtaines [avaient] commission expresse […] [qu’ils] fussent diligens observateurs de voir, considerer & escrire leurs ordres, coustumes & decretz, Religion & Justice.’ Nicolay, epistle, non-paginated [2]. 13 Nicolay, epistle, non-paginated [4]. 14 Nicolay, p. 3. On the potential of Nicolay’s notion of the peregrinations to ‘[mask] the power struggles’ of conflict in the Mediterranean, see Marcus Keller, “Nicolas de Nicolay’s Navigations and the Domestic Politics of Travel Writing”, Esprit Créateur 48, no. 1 (Spring 2008): pp. 18–31, here p. 22. Keller reads Nicolay’s depiction of radical alterity in the Navigations as a call to political and religious unity in the context of the French Wars of Religion, pp. 18–19. 15 ‘A laquelle [la pérégrination] me semble estre né, & naturellement enclin tout bon & noble esprit […]. Ce que bien ayans entendu & resenti en eux mesmes aucuns excellens hommes de tresprestante sapience & vertu […] ont mieux aymé se hazarder à tous dangers de morts, maladies, prisons, captivités, esclaves, servitudes […] pour voir & cognoistre à l’oeil plus certain que l’oreille les merveilles que le souverain Architecte a mis dans son excellent œuvre du monde […]’ Nicolay, p. 4. 16 Nicolay, pp. 4–6. 17 ‘[…] tousjours diligemment observant, toutes les personnes les choses, & les faictz memorables dond je pouvoye avoir, ou la presente veüe & certaine congnoissance, ou bien […] ce que j’ay sceu entendre par bien asseuré tesmognage des veritables & authorisez personnages & bien dignes de foy […].’ Nicolay, p. 7.

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through his series of illustrations, given that this would furnish a ‘clearer understanding’ [‘plus claire intelligence’] of their ‘bodily form’ [‘formes corporelles’] and other attributes such as their clothing, religions and so on.18 Aided by recourse to classical geographers, the author hopes to furnish ‘utility and pleasure’ and both ‘grace and delectation to the eye […] and spirit’ thanks to the ‘pleasant spectacle and recreative variety of the images’, as well as utility and profit to France.19 However, what is actually apprehended by this laborious narrator is regularly determined by intertextuality. Although the first two books most reflect the chronological order and physical trajectory of the voyage of Aramon’s fleet, the text is prolonged in regions which have what might be called a greater hypotextual charge: that lead the author to digress, or qualify, through the introduction of other narratives, especially of classical, biblical, or modern historical provenance. The arrival in Constantinople is initially apprehended through chapters detailing its foundation, its development by Constantine, the great fires and the earthquakes of the past, and its ‘antiquities’.20 These chapters are in large part constituted of narratives gleaned from diverse authorities, such as the Ancients who attribute the foundation of the city to the Lacedemonians and situate it at a precise date.21 The constructions within the city also enable the insertion of diverse narratives.22 The chapter on Antiquities relates the site of one such antiquity, the Hippodrome, to the practices of the Roman emperors; as Frédéric Tinguely writes, in the eyes of Nicolay and his contemporaries it becomes a ‘site of memory’, an ‘open air museum’ or even a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ (a metaphor that will be returned to later).23 While, given the large scale nature of the expedition, Nicolay’s own possibilities of determining a trajectory are somewhat limited, it appears on occasion 18 Nicolay, pp. 7–8. 19 ‘[ Je] me suis essayé de donner contentement d’utilité & plaisir non seulement à l’apprehension, & à l’oreille, par la lecture ou audience: Mais aussi grace & delectation à l’œil & à la veue, & consequemment à l’esprit, pour le plaisant spectacle & recreative varieté es images […].’ Nicolay, p. 8. 20 De la Fondation de Byzance, des modernes appelée Constantinople; Reedification de Bizance par le grand Empereur Constantin; Feux merveilleux advenus fortuitement par deux diverses fois à Constantinople; Deux tremblemens de terre advenus en Constantinople; Antiquités de Constantinople, Nicolay, Book 2, ch. 12–16, pp. 60–65. 21 Nicolay, p. 61. 22 On ‘the writing of the topos’ [‘l’écriture du topos’], see Tinguely, pp. 113–143. 23 ‘[…] l’Hippodrome constitue par-dessus tout un lieu de mémoire […] fait un peu figure de musée à ciel ouvert ou de cabinet de curiosités géant […].’ Tinguely, p. 130. The same author has noted Nicolay’s erroneous description of the Hippodrome, ‘as if he based himself simultaneously on personal observations and on a prexisting description’[‘comme s’il se fondait simultanément sur ses observations personnelles et sur une description préexistante.’] Tinguely, pp. 131–133.

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that his own displacement is itself guided by the narratives which circulated in a shared European heritage. In Cythera, for example, he claims to have embarked on an active search (he states he was motivated by curiosity and the desire to ‘avoid slothfulness’) for its antiquities, such as ‘the castle of Menelaus and the old temple of Venus’.24 The sense of trajectory is largely absent from the third and fourth books, which deal respectively, with (3) Turkish society and Constantinople, and (4) diverse peoples such as the Persians, Arabs and Armenians, many of whom Nicolay has not seen in situ. The fourth book is particularly reliant on intertextuality, given that Nicolay never travelled to so many of the locations he describes. The Persians, for example, could be apprehended in ancient form textually through Xenophon and Herodotus, whereas the character of modern Persians was gauged, Nicolay claims, through the sight of and (translated) interviews with ‘many Persian gentlemen’.25 For the ‘situation’ of the country, however, he has recourse to ‘the most famous ancient and modern geographers’.26 It is then, as Michel Bideaux tells us in a review of Nicolay’s text, ‘unsurprising that these Navigations lead us to wander about, at least in equal part (especially in the fourth book, relating to Persia), in the author’s library’.27 We might compare Nicolay’s strategy in such chapters with, for example, André Thevet’s Cosmographie de Levant (1554) in which the trajectory serves, for Lestringant, as a ‘frame [cadre] in which to organise, in relation with successively traversed geographical places, the rhetorical, philosophical and moral loci borrowed from the compilations of the time.’28 We might certainly conclude that the level of empirical apprehension is at best problematic.

24 ‘[…] pour rassasier mon esprit, & eviter oisiveté, je mis peine de rechercher les reliques des antiquités tant de la ville Cytherée, que du chasteau de Menelaus & ancien temple de Venus.’ Nicolay, p. 45. 25 Nicolay, p. 127; p. 129; ‘J’ay veu & pratiqué plusieurs gentilshommes Persiens, qui s’estoyent retirés au service du grand Seigneur, & parlé avec eux par interpretes & Dragomans […].’ pp. 131–132. 26 ‘Reste à present de descrire la situation de leur païs: pour à laquelle parvenir me suis deliberé d’ensuyvre […] les plus fameux anciens & modernes Geographes & historiens […].’ Nicolay, p. 132. 27 ‘Mais ce n’est pas la moindre surprise de constater que ces Navigations nous font pérégriner au moins à part égale (surtout au quatrième livre, relatif à la Perse), dans la bibliothèque de leur auteur […]’ Michel Bideaux, “Nicolas de Nicolay, Dans l’Empire de Soliman le Magnifique”, Bulletin de l’Association d’Étude sur l’Humanisme, la Réforme et la Renaissance, 1991, vol. 32, pp. 117–119, here p. 118. 28 André Thevet, Cosmographie de Levant (Lyon 1554). ‘La trame itinéraire […] sert de cadre où ranger, en relation avec les lieux géographiques successivement parcourus, les lieux rhétoriques, philosophiques et moraux empruntés aux compilations du temps.’ Lestringant, L’Atelier du Cosmographe ou l’Image du Monde à la Renaissance, Paris 1991, p. 59.

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Despite this evident weaving of authoritative texts into the Navigations, Nicolay does attempt to furnish – and even to accentuate the value of – empirical evidence. In the chapter entitled Of the Baths, and the Turks’ Manner of Bathing, a detailed description of the effects of a massage is presented through the use of a second person pronoun which emphasises the vigorous empirical input (the servants apparently ‘invite you to lie down […] after having pulled about and agitated your arms in front and behind until your bones crack […] get up on your back, […] turn you over on your back […]’).29 The steps to take when entering such an establishment are detailed, in a manner that is both descriptive and potentially, prescriptive, preparing the reader for such an experience. Nicolay’s description of the baths also hints at situating the facility within Islamic society. While people of any creed could use them, Nicolay notes that Muslims go there most often, ‘for their pleasure, and bodily health, and principally for the observation of their law’.30 Of course, the empirical potential of the text is, in turn, limited by a considerable number of social and religious factors. I have noted in other work the potential links between such exclusions and the creation of fantasy, precisely in the representations of the female baths by Nicolay (and seventeenth-century authors): a place to which he, and other males, clearly could have not have had access.31 While this might appear an extreme example of exclusion, it demonstrates how the preoccupations of a male narrator, on the margins of a foreign society, condition what appears in the text. Much material might be said to become text precisely because of the narrator’s position as an entity to whom customs are significant, or notable, or even strange. Nonetheless (even bearing in mind Nicolay’s considerable unfamiliarity with Ottoman society), I do not necessarily wish to imply that the transmission of visually-apprehended phenomena – where it exists – is to be dismissed in its entirety. Nicolay variously considers the cosmopolitan populations of the Ottoman Empire according to early modern conceptions of the nation, or through religion. It could be argued that the manifestations of such categories in his Navigations could constitute instances in which he apprehends, to varying levels, existing percep29 Des Bains, et manieres de laver des Turcs, Book 2, chap. 21, Nicolay, pp. 70–72. ‘[…] les serviteurs qui y sont en bon nombre, vous invitent à vous coucher, & estendre tout à plat sur le ventre: & adonc l’un de ces gros vallets apres vous avoir bien tiré, & remué les bras c’en devant c’en derriere jusques à faire craquer les os, & bien frotté les muscles: vous monte sur le dos, & se soustenant des mains sur voz espaules, va glissant avec les deux pieds joints tout le long de voz reins, comme s’il les vouloit briser: puys derechef vous fait renverser sur les reins […].’ Nicolay, p. 71. 30 ‘Mais sur tous autres les Turcs, Maures, & universellement les Mahumetizés y vont le plus souvent, tant pour leur volupté, & santé corporelle, que principalement pour l’observance de leur loy […].’ Nicolay, p. 71. 31 On the potential fascination of the Turkish baths, see my Veiled Encounters, NY; Amsterdam 2008, pp. 260–2. On the baths in Nicolay see Tinguely, pp. 198–201.

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tions of human difference. That the seraglio’s population was mainly composed of Christian captives demonstrates the potential role of religion in distinguishing peoples; however, that we read of these divisions in a chapter entitled Of the Old Seraglio, or the Women’s Seraglio (a place that, of course, was off limits to our narrator) should indicate the limits of Nicolay’s authority.32 The crossovers between the image and the text in Nicolay and the respective roles of ‘utility’ and ‘delectation’ furnish further ironies. His description of the Sultan’s seraglio is followed by a textual indication that the ‘Portrait of Great Turkish Ladies’ will follow.33 He furnishes a Portrait of the Great Turkish Lady; another, the Turkish Noblewoman in their House or Seraglio is one of three illustrations that follow the chapter entitled Of the Old Seraglio…34 However, the text of the latter chapter actually serves to disrupt the representative function of the image, for it relates that it is ‘impossible for anyone except the Sultan and his eunuchs to see these concubines.’35 Despite this somewhat rueful avowal, Nicolay tells us that once his informant on the seraglio – a Ragusian eunuch named Zaferaga – notices that the author would have liked to see the apparel of the women of the seraglio, he has two local prostitutes [‘femmes Turques publiques’] dressed in rich clothing.36 These were to be the models for his portraits. In his fourth book, a chapter entitled Des Femmes Persiennes praises the great beauty of Persian women, an opinion that both Alexander and Mohammed shared, but which Nicolay cannot verify in Persia itself.37 His portrait is obtained du naturel in Constantinople, thanks, he tells us, to ‘the favour of a Persian whom I had befriended. But this was not without cost, and great difficulty and danger; because [the Persians] are the people [nation] who least willingly allow their women to be seen.’38 This is emblematic of the procedures of textual and graphic creation on the social and geographical limits of Nicolay’s trajectory. Tinguely, referring to the dressing of the two Turkish prostitutes, has drawn attention to the place of women in this

32 Du vieil Sarail, ou Sarail des femmes, Nicolay, Book 2, ch. 19, p. 67. Nicolay’s reference to ‘nations Chrestiennes’ here hints at some distinction between nation and religion. 33 ‘Icy après est le pourtraict des grandes dames Turques.’ Nicolay, p. 66. 34 Grand’ Dame Turque, between pp. 66–67; Gentille-femme Turque estant dans leur maison ou Sarail, following chapter entitled Du vieil Sarail, ou Sarail des femmes; Nicolay, p. 67; this and two further illustrations are paginated respectively 68 A, 68B and 68C between pp. 67–69. 35 ‘Il n’est permis à aucun de veoir ces concubines qu’au Turc & ses Eunuques.’ Nicolay, p. 67, marginal note. 36 Nicolay, p. 67. 37 Nicolay, p. 135. 38 ‘j’ay extrait [‘le suyvant pourtrait’] du naturel en Constantinople avec la faveur d’un Persien que je m’avois rendu amy. Mais ce ne fut sans coust, & grande difficulté & danger: par ce que c’est la nation du monde, qui moins volontiers laissent veoir leurs femmes […].’ Nicolay, p. 135.

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‘ingenious artifice’, in which Nicolay furnishes a ‘reflection’, or a ‘substitute’.39 It is true that Nicolay again transmits, in the incapacity of viewing in situ, what are essentially representations. However, my focus, in the following section, will be drawn instead towards the question of the price that Nicolay claims to have paid, in labour, danger and currency, to prostitutes and to Persians: to the mechanisms of exchange which underscore the Navigations.

The Question of Exchange The assertions which this article has touched on that situate the trajectory of the narrator within diverse economic relationships, merit a particular examination in the web of domestic and Mediterranean politico-economic contexts which make up the Navigations. Some such assertions, like the inflation of the author’s status as an economic and political actor, are more apparent than others. More discreetly, the Navigations also testify to the economic processes underlying human interactions in the Mediterranean, or invite interrogations on the status of the text as a potentially economic, even spectacular object. Nicolay’s peregrinations, as was hinted at in his preface, are depicted as an act of investment of labour [labeur]. This is an act that, in relation to the classical material, might be said to expose the sites of narrative and render them visible in the body of the text. In Nicolay’s quest to uncover the antiquities of Cythera, for example, he finds baths overgrown with ‘thick bushes and shrubs’; he manages, through ‘great hatchet and sword blows’, to find a way through and to enable their ‘pleasurable’ visual apprehension.40 The epistle dresses the profit that might be gained from such voyages in a vocabulary that highlights the transactional nature of the gathering of Nicolay’s knowledge. Avoiding ‘slothfulness’ [oisiveté], Nicolay claims he had ‘extracted’ the 60 images of his text in situ, thanks to ‘incredible fees and labour’, and that he had ‘curiously had them engraved in copper and printed’ under the King’s name; it is to this same monarch that all his ‘works, labours and toils’ [‘œuvres, labeurs et travaux’] were dedicated.41 Of course, this epistle is a paratext which might be 39 ‘S’il est une leçon à tirer de cet ingénieux artifice, c’est bien que la femme sur laquelle se pose le regard dévié ne compte jamais pour elle-même, mais toujours en tant que reflet, en tant que substitut.’ Tinguely, p. 175. The dressing of the Turkish prostitutes is also briefly discussed by Lestringant, “Guillaume Postel et l’ ‘Obsession Turque’” Écrire le Monde à la Renaissance, Caen 1993, pp. 189–224, here pp. 219–220. 40 ‘[…] la principale entrée estoit couverte & bouchée de gros buissons & arbrisseaux silvestres […]. Puys me secondant mon nepveu nous nous mismes si vivement par grands coups de hache & d’espée à tailler & decoupper les arbres & buissons, qui empeschoyent l’entrée, que y feismes telle ouverture, qu’un chacun y pouvoit entrer & veoir à son plaisir.’ Nicolay, p. 46. 41 ‘[ Je] me suis en fin resolu de poursuyvre [le livre] […] accompagné de soixante figures, tant

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considered as distinct from the text of the Navigations per se, and in which the mention of the financial input of the author must be considered in relation to the granting of royal favour (when referring to François I, he notes that it is a great honour for a prince, in having recourse to ‘knowledgeable men’ to ‘remunerate them according to their merits and services’).42 In turn, this potential enrichment is linked to the profit of France itself. Nicolay speculates that ‘were his fortune to be [by the King’s ‘liberality’] so improved that he might draw some fruit from the continual services and hazardous enterprises that he had made over twenty-five years […] it would encourage him to finish his long voyages’; Nicolay could hope to furnish the description of the ‘order, state, offices, stipends and dignities’ of the Sultan’s house as well as his armies.43 The potential military value of such data is not indifferent. The descriptive element of the text means that it regularly enumerates; the size of Pera is estimated (Nicolay notes that the port is ‘more than four or five miles around’) as is the width of its passage, while the precise naval importance of the Sultan’s Arsenal is evaluated in terms of the number of ships it could shelter.44 The textual representations of the Sultan’s janissaries and archers estimate their total number, their wages, and describe, respectively, their division into administrative orders [ordre] or the position they keep in the order of combat.45 Illustrations follow the rich descriptions of their physical appearance and costume.46 Beyond requests for favour or a possible military function, the text may also be situated as an artefact produced in a determined diplomatic context. This context (despite occasional excursions, such as the attempt to identify the remains of antiquity) governs the trajectory of the narrator, and determines the nature of the conflictual or ceremonial interactions with the populations of the Mediterranean

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d’hommes que de femmes de diverses nations; port, maintien & habitz, que j’ay extraictes du naturel sur les lieux mesmes, & avec fraiz & labeur incroyable, faict curieusement graver en cuyvre & imprimer le tout soubz le nom, faveur & support de V. R. M. à laquelle toutes mes œuvres, labeurs & travaux (voire ma propre vie) sont avec toute humilité dédiées & consacrées.’ Nicolay, epistle, non-paginated [5]. ‘Car quel honneur plus grand peuvent esperer les Roys & les Princes, que d’honnorer & favoriser les choses honnorables & vertueuses, & se servant des hommes de scavoir les remunerer selon leurs merites & services?’ Nicolay, epistle, non-paginated [3]. ‘Et si tant de bien m’advient, que par vostre liberalité ma fortune soit tant augmentée, que de pouvoir tirer quelque fruict des continuelz services, & hazardeuses entreprinses, que j’ay faictz puis vingt & cinq ans à vostre coronne: ce me sera augmenter le desir, que j’ay, de parachever soubz V. R. nom, le surplus de mes longs voyages […]: ensemble, l’ordre, estat, offices, gages & dignitez de la maison [du Sultan], l’ordre qu’il tient en ses armées […].’ Nicolay, epistle, non-paginated [5]. ‘plus de quatre à cinq grands mille de circuit’; ‘pres de cent arcs, ou voultes, pour fabriquer, & retirer les galleres au couvert’ Nicolay, p. 77. Nicolay, pp. 83–84; p. 93. Nicolay, p. 86; p. 94.

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Basin. The diplomatic expedition tends to ensure that interactions are often collective.47 The Navigations, as an ambassadorial account, details the ceremonies and honours extended – or not, as the case might be – to the King’s representative. These include the salutations and ‘magnificent banquet’ [‘disner fort magnifique’] initially received in Malta, but which would be neglected, after the fall of Tripoli, when the French returned to a hostile reception on the island.48 The text also enumerates gifts presented or exchanged, such as the rich fabrics and timepiece presented to the Ottoman Sinan Pasha in Tripoli.49 Yet the potential of the text as an ‘economic’ artefact might be extended beyond this diplomatic context. The Navigations also present the human being, the subject of the proto-anthropological text, within numerous economic networks governing levels of existence down from mobility, or social hierarchy, to the type of clothing worn by diverse religious or social groups. The azamoglan who is depicted playing a musical instrument in one of Nicolay’s illustrations, is, the author states, the product of a ‘tyrannical’ [‘par tirannye’] levy of vast numbers of young boys imposed every four years on Christians in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire.50 We have seen how the arrival of the French galleys in Algiers inspired numerous slaves to flee; in Tripoli, Nicolay furnishes a textual description of the ‘poor Christians taken in Sicily, Malta and Gozo’, describing how they are ‘stripped naked and made to walk, to see if they have any imperfections’ and ‘have their teeth and eyes examined, as if they were horses.’51 Nicolay also laments the market [bezestan] in Constantinople in which Christian slaves were sold. He claims to have seen a young Hungarian girl be ‘stripped and examined three times in one hour’ before being sold to an old Turkish merchant for thirty four ducats.52 While Nicolay unequivocally condemns Ottoman slavery, the text of the Navigations also, rarely, allows us to view the unnamed, this time unspectacular, sources of labour who were enabling the trajectory in the first place. While we do not dispose of information about the composition of the crew in Nicolay’s case, Michel Fontenay has emphasised the importance of convicts or (Muslim) slaves in propelling the galleys; Fontenay also stresses the consideration of the galley 47 48 49 50 51

See Chios, Nicolay, pp. 47–48. Nicolay, p. 25; pp. 41–42. Nicolay, p. 29. Nicolay, p. 79. ‘[…] pauvres Chrestiens prins en Sicile, Malte & le Goze […]: estant permis à ceux qui les marchandoyent […] de les faire despouiller tous nudz & les faire cheminer, à fin de veoir s’ils ont aucun defaut de nature sur leur personne, apres leur avoir revisité les dents & les yeux: tout ainsi que si c’estoyent chevaux.’ Nicolay, p. 32. 52 ‘Je y ay veu despouiller & visiter trois fois, en moins d’une heure, à l’un des coings du Bezestan une fille de Hongrie aagée de treize à quatorze ans, mediocrement belle, laquelle en fin fut vendue, & delivrée à un vieil Turc marchand, pour le pris de trente quatre ducats.’ Nicolay, p. 75. On the ‘ambivalence’ of this scene see Tinguely, p. 172.

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itself as a ship associated with ‘noble glory’, in which the slave was to become an ‘emblematic figure of servitude’.53 We can glimpse the conditions of such an existence in Nicolay’s offhand assertion of their fate; when six such convicts die in one day, he tells us that they were thrown into the sea ‘to feed the fish’ [‘pour faire pasture aux poissons’].54 A focus on economic networks which govern certain traits of the narrative leads us to re-examine aspects of its spectacularity in text and image, to return to Nicolay’s promise in his preface. Marie-Madeleine Gomez-Géraud and Stéphane Yérasimos, in their 1989 reedition of the Navigations, note how the procedure of ‘théâtralisation’ in the images decontextualise the subjects; Nicolay’s illustrations of ‘the richness of the variety of peoples’ and the ‘luxurious display of vestimentary alterity’ represent a ‘serene cortege’ at odds with his often uncomplimentary depictions in the text.55 However, the text itself often conveys the subject by surrounding him/her with value, and/or displays the subject within networks of economic relationships. If we return to the Sultan’s archers and janissaries, for example, we can see how such representations dress the subjects in displays that manifest types of excess. The archers wear ‘a costume of damask, or white satin, […] a rich Turkishstyle belt, of gold and of silk, and on their heads a tall hat of white felt’ which is topped off with an elaborate – and quite expensive – feather display.56 The janissaries accentuate the ‘fury’ of their appearance, making themselves appear ‘hideous’ and ‘fearsome’ through the cultivation of thick moustaches and a lock of hair which would ‘allow their enemies to take their severed heads, were they to be captured’.57 Certain aspects of the janissaries’ vestimentary display – such as 53 ‘le navire de la gloire noble […].’; ‘[…] l’esclave a une place de choix comme figure emblématique de la servitude […].’ Michel Fontenay, “L’Esclave Galérien dans la Méditerranée des Temps Modernes” in Figures de l’Esclave au Moyen-Age et dans le Monde Moderne, ed. Henri Bresc, Paris 1996, pp. 115–143, here pp. 141–142. On this ‘human capital’ [‘capital humain’] see also Maurice Aymard, “Chiourmes et Galères dans la Méditerranée du XVIe siècle”, in Histoire Économique du Monde Méditerranéen 1450–1650, Toulouse 1973, pp. 49–64, here p. 60. 54 Nicolay, p. 41. 55 ‘Il a à cœur d’épuiser, par la description iconique, la richesse de la variété des nations vivant sous la férule du grand seigneur. L’image semble dès lors tenir un nouveau discours. […] Le regard du dessinateur semble avoir effacé du portrait les sillons de sang, de larmes et de rancœurs qu’y avait creusés la plume: […] apparaissent, saisis dans le fastueux appareil de [l’] altérité vestimentaire […] [un] cortège serein qui veut traduire une maîtrise de l’observateur sur l’objet qu’il dessine.’ Gomez-Géraud and Yérasimos, pp. 33–34. 56 ‘[…] iceux sont vestus tous d’une pareure de damas, ou satin blanc […] avec une large, & riche ceinture à la Turquesque, d’or, & de soye, & en teste un haut chapeau de feutre blanc: au derriere duquel ils appliquent un grand pennache de plumes d’Aigrettes d’assez grand pris.’ Nicolay, p. 93. 57 ‘Et à fin de se monstrer, & apparoistre plus cruels, & furieux […] laissent croistre leurs moustaches fort longues, grosses, & herissées: font raser tout le reste du poil de leurs barbes,

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the elaborate headdress that might also include a feather display – are only permitted to those who proved themselves in war (we might say, reflecting two senses of valeur).58 In the vivid descriptions of the costumes of archers and janissaries, the text, like the image, furnishes the ‘spectacle’ of material richness or the ostentatious display of warrior prowess in the Sultan’s army. The female subjects of the Navigations are represented in economic circuits and spectacular manifestations that distinguish them from male subjects. The stopover on Chios is a case in point. Here, Nicolay describes the ‘courtesy’ [courtoisie] shown by the nobles [seigneurs] to the ambassador, and furnishes an exhaustive enumeration of the many ‘honest presents’ [‘presens honestes’] which they sent.59 This might be considered as another instance of the recognition of the ‘diplomatic’ side of the expedition. The female counterpart is the ‘gracious civility of the women and girls’.60 This consisted in the ‘great pleasure and contentment’ of the island’s ‘beautiful women and girls’ at the presence of the expedition, and in their ‘courtesy, and honest liberality’; Nicolay claims to have never met a more welcoming (he uses the term amoureuse) and ‘civil’ people, who actively set out to ‘acquire the graces of foreigners’.61 In his chapter describing the town of Chios, Nicolay returns to praise of the female population who are unsurpassed in the ‘Orient’ in their ‘beauty, grace and amorous courtesy’.62 These affirmations of the particular role played by women in relation to the embassy are followed by the precise vestimentary description of their ‘dresses and tunics of velvet, satin, damask or some other rich white silk, or another very vivid colour that they enrich with great bands of velvet all around.’63 This is completed by ‘many chains, collars and trinkets [afficquets] of gold, of pearls and of fine stones

58 59 60

61

62 63

comme aussy celui de la teste, excepté un touffet de cheveux, au dessus du sommet, pour laisser prinse à eslever leurs testes tranchées par l’ennemy, s’il advenoit qu’ils feussent vaincuz. De manière que par telle defiguration se rendent horriblement hideux, & espouventables […]’ Nicolay, p. 83. Nicolay, pp. 83–84. Nicolay, pp. 47–48. Gratieuse civilité des femmes & filles Chioises vers les estrangers, marginal note, Nicolay, p. 48. ‘[…] nous feusmes contraints de prolonger nostre sejour […] au grand plaisir & contentement tant de nous que des habitans: specialement des belles femmes, & filles Chioises, qui userent en noz endroits de toute courtoisie, & honeste liberalité: de maniere que j’ose bien dire […] que je ne sçache avoir veu […] nation plus amoureuse, & civile: ne qui s’estudie plus avec toute honesteté, d’acquerir la grace des estrangers.’ Nicolay, p. 48. ‘Quant aux femmes & filles, je ne pense point […] qu’en toutes les parties d’Orient s’en puissent trouver de plus accomplies en beauté, bonne grace & amoureuse courtoisie.’ Nicolay, p. 51. ‘Les femmes d’estat portent leurs robbes & cottes de velours, satin, damas, ou autre riche soye blanche, ou d’autre couleur bien voyante qu’ils enrichissent de grandes bandes de velours à l’entour […].’ Nicolay, p. 51.

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of great worth, each according to her quality and rank […]’.64 This display is clearly another enumeration of value. It is also one that stratifies the relative wealth of the women of Chios in relation to one another; in the recognisability of the strata, we might say that Nicolay can approach a reading of the encountered economy. Further on his trajectory, Nicolay’s description of the women of Pera accompanies vestimentary richness with clear sensual reflections. A set of three engravings is preceded by a text which describes the richness of these women’s costumes, ‘so rich and magnificent, that it is barely credible to those who have not seen them.’65 They wear ‘robes of velvet, cramoisy satin or damask, enriched with passement and gold or silver buttons […] with many chains, manillas, or large bracelets’.66 This display of wealth, in turn, gives rise to one of the questionable assertions that Nicolay regularly makes about the morality of the subjects of his text: […] most of [the women], even those who are married, instead of being virtuous and chaste, are given to all sorts of voluptuousness and impudicity. Because if the husband cannot or does not want to keep them made up according to their wishes and desire, they will take one or more lovers to look after them […] 67

Here, the presentation of richness is accompanied by an assertion that one suspects may have been experienced by male readers as rather more titillating than that concerning the women of Chios. The ekphrasis of the unchaste subject is, again, the result of an investment – the author/engraver’s labour – in a context in which investment supposedly directs the desires of precisely that subject. The text and image charge the subject both with material luxury [Latin luxus], and corporal indulgence or licentiousness [Latin luxuria].68 These are among the reasons that we may then extend the notion of transaction referred to in Nicolay’s paratexts to encompass much wider contexts, 64 ‘[Elles] portent force chaines, jaserans & afficquets d’or, de perles, ou autres pierres fines de grand pris, chacune selon sa qualité & degré.’ Nicolay, p. 51. This display is discussed by Tinguely as a contrast to Turkish women, pp. 173–174. 65 ‘[…] si riches & magnifiques, qu’à peine à qui ne les auroit veus, seroit il croyable.’ Nicolay, p. 78. 66 ‘[…] les robbes de velours, satin cramoisy ou Damas, enrichies de passemens & boutons d’or ou d’argent […] avec force chaines, manilles ou larges bracelets […].’ Nicolay, p. 78. 67 ‘[…] la plus part d’elles mesmement les mariées au lieu d’estre vertueuses & chastes, s’addonnent à toute volupté & impudicité. Car si le mary ne peut ou ne les veut entretenir parées selon leur volonté & desir, elles feront un ou plusieurs amys pour fournir à l’appointement […].’ Nicolay, p. 78. Tinguely explores this display, as with the women of Chios, in contrast to Muslim women, pp. 173–175. 68 On luxuria, luxus and their etymological association, see Félix Gaffiot, Le Grand Gaffiot: Dictionnaire Latin-Français, ed. Pierre Flobert, Paris 2000, p. 939; also Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford 1997, p. 1054.

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Image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France.

and indeed, the notion of the spectacular itself. Numerous transactions determine the production of the text, the trajectory of the narrative, the nature of encounter with an array of characters and, apparently, the relationships between characters within the text. Between the lines of this text we may be able to make out the consequences of the constant exchanges within its economies and which complicate the notion of it as a simple ‘frame’ for either intertextuality or undifferentiated empirical apprehension. To conclude, we might ask what the ultimate anthropological ‘value’ (if I may again employ this term) of this text might be. It is, after all, a text that enumerates divisions between faiths and between peoples, in categories, enabling a narrative procedure that at times approaches some level of synchronic apprehension of the observed society. While this is not, of course, to call Nicolay a disinterested or

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privileged observer, we can, to various extents, make out the trace of the observations of a fascinated witness – or his informants – within his text. If we can speak of an ethnographical, or empirical charge in the accounts of the loci where Nicolay actually set foot, then the Navigations do appear to convey some such potential. We might also situate the ‘value’ of such human representations alongside the notion of ‘curiosity’ which Nicolay had evoked in his dedicatory epistle, and with which he qualifies, for example, his representation of Constantinople.69 This may then allow us to think about the question of the reception and function of this text. His depictions of richly-garbed prostitutes might be compared to other forms of early modern display, themselves clearly manifesting links between the economic and the spectacular. One possible analogy might be made with the cabinets of curiosities previously evoked. As Hodgen demonstrates, early modern collectors assembled diverse artefacts in intricately worked, or expensive settings; the same author notes how such collectors might also participate in the ethnological impulse.70 The physical space, like Nicolay’s text, manifests both investment and a clear recontextualisation of the objects displayed. Indeed, as we have seen, notions of economic excess and display intertwine to surround the textual – as much as the graphic – representation with value. In turn, we can see how Nicolay’s text delineates and represents for the delight, as well as the ‘information’ of the reader. The Navigations is thus an artefact to be situated within a web of social and economic relations governing levels of potential human interactions, from those with the myriad populations of Ottoman and European forced labour, to the half-glimpsed women of Constantinople, to those surrounding the production of the book, as an object declared to be destined for the sixteenth-century French court.

69 ‘le plain relevé, que j’ay fort curieusement de la cité de Constantinople […]. Ce que je m’asseure n’avoir encores esté […] si curieusement escrit, ny plus vivement representé.’ Nicolay, epistle, non-paginated [5]. 70 Hodgen, Early Anthropology (see n. 2), pp. 119–122. Hodgen, tellingly, uses the term ‘treasures’ to refer to the contents of the collections, here p. 121.

Images in Colour

Elke Anna Werner

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Law and the Gospel, 1529, oil on panel, Prague, National Gallery.

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Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Law and the Gospel, 1529, oil on panel, Gotha.

Images in Colour

Images in Colour

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Lucas Cranach the Younger, Weimar Altarpiece (central panel), 1555, oil on panel, Weimar, Stadtkirche.

Photographic credits: archive of the author

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Svein Aage Christoffersen

Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus, 1606. © Scala Archives

Images in Colour

Images in Colour

Caravaggio, The Martyrdom of St Matthew, 1599–1600. © Scala Archives

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Images in Colour

Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, 1602. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland and the Jesuit Community of Leeson Street, Dublin, who acknowledge the generosity of the late Dr Marie LeaWilson. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland.

Images in Colour

Caravaggio, The Raising of Lazarus, 1609. © Scala Archives

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Index

afflictio 427 Agricola, Rudolf 288, 478 akrasia 17–31, 303 Albertus Magnus 58, 115 Altdorfer, Albrecht 365 Alting, Heinrich 459–478 Alting, Menso 461–62, 464, 467, 470, 472–73, 476, 478 Ames, William 403–11, 416–17, 427 Anabaptists 98, 163, 395–96, 399–400 anatomy 131–33, 135–37, 209 Anfechtung 64–65, 71 anger 30, 41, 44, 47, 49, 52–3, 169 Anglo-Saxon 371–73, 526 anthropology 11–12, 17–31, 63, 65, 69– 70, 73, 75, 84–85, 87–111, 114, 127, 132, 143–153, 157–158, 165, 168, 173, 175– 185, 197–205, 209–10, 212, 214, 216–17, 220, 230, 234–35, 242, 246, 306, 310, 311– 16, 324, 326–27, 333, 383–89, 401, 404, 412–13, 415–28, 457, 460, 541, 556 antinomy 221, 291–93 Aquinas, Thomas 18, 25, 57–59, 95, 98, 105, 170, 209, 323 Aristotle 17–31, 60, 69, 132–33, 135–36, 169–70, 213, 231, 240, 286, 289, 404–5, 411–14, 536–38 ars moriendi 88, 109, 384 Athenagoras 536–37 Augustine 18–20, 27, 31, 69, 89, 96, 104– 05, 108, 135, 144, 146, 173, 191, 197, 200, 240, 307, 311, 322, 421, 436, 536 autonomy 53, 103, 133, 456

Bach, Johann Sebastian 341–43, 347–48 Beza, Theodore 403, 405–7, 411, 413, 473, 475 body 11, 30, 33–36, 39–41, 43–44, 47–48, 50–53, 74–75, 77, 113–128, 132, 134–36, 145, 148, 150, 155, 157–164, 169–71, 176– 84, 193, 203–4, 209–28, 277, 280–82, 298– 303, 358, 372–73, 386, 394, 396, 492, 492, 495, 502, 533–40 Bossemius, Mathias 187–195 Brazil 45, 47, 52, 533 Bullinger, Heinich 337, 396, 404, 406, 413, 418, 501–05, 506, 508–12 Calvin, Jean 21, 24–26, 31, 66, 94, 101– 07, 157–164, 165–173, 178, 218, 223, 228, 296, 319–340, 393–401, 404, 406, 413–15, 415–428, 443, 446, 514–16, 520–21 Calvinian anthropology 415–428 Calvinist sacramental theology 521 Camerarius, Joachim 22–24, 31, 469 cannibalism 52, 533, 537, 540, 542 cantata 341–48 Caravaggio 275–83, 560–63 Carthusian 108, 199–200, 205, 306, 309 Catholic Reform movement 187–95, 197–205 Catholic Reformation 34, 197–205 Caussin, Nicholas 36, 53 celibacy 187–195 chancel 350–51, 354 charnel 371, 374, 377–80 charnel chapel 374–75, 377–81

566 church discipline 328, 394–96, 400, 403– 4, 406–7, 410 church polity 336, 349, 403, 405, 407, 411, 414 Cicero 168–69, 171, 173, 289, 296, 400, 413, 496 Cleansing of the temple (motif in visual arts) 361, 363–67 clemency 166, 172 coercion (in religion) 331, 334, 336 Columbus, Christopher 533, 537 concupiscence 19–20, 29–30, 171, 215, 299–303 confession 192, 226, 241–42, 306, 311, 314–16, 319–21, 331–34, 336–39, 375, 384 confessionalization 12, 447–448 confortatorio 383 conforteria 383–385 consolatio 417 Constantinople 124, 127, 543, 545–46, 548, 551, 556 continentia 28, 302 Coornhert, Dirck Volckertszoon 295– 303 Cotton, John 404, 407–10 Council of Trent 187–88, 197, 199, 365 Counter-Reformation 198–90, 197–98, 305–16 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder 118, 143–44, 146–48, 150–53, 226–27, 246, 250, 254, 364–65, 557–58 Cranach, Lucas, the Younger 146, 151– 53, 358, 360, 559 Cuius regio, eius religio 456 culpable illness 301, 303 curiosity 120, 126, 280, 546, 556 D’Aramon, Gabriel de 543 Daneau, Lambert 24, 26–29, 31 Dante Alighieri 257–59 De Clementia 165–73 Dedekind, Constantin Christian 342, 344 Desprez, Josquin 90–92, 106–7, 109–10

Index

detachment 307, 310, 312 diaconate 397–98 dialectics 98, 101, 133, 285–293 dogmatics /Dogmatik 55, 59, 62–63, 66, 68, 444–45, 459–60, 472, 474, 478 Du Fay, Guillaume 89–90, 109–110 Dualism 105, 159, 161–62, 217, 394 Dürer, Albrecht 136, 219, 363, 482 Ego-Dokument 494–95 Emmius, Ubbo 461, 465–70, 478 emotions 11, 17–18, 29, 31, 33–53, 83, 165, 169, 172–73, 212, 223–24, 279, 478, 508, 512, 517 Enzinas, Francisco de 33–4, 38–40 episteme / epistemic 75, 114, 145 epitaph (pictorial) 143, 250, 357–369, 143 Erasmus 39, 62, 136, 167–68, 213–14, 216, 261, 264, 288, 290, 292–93, 320, 330, 482 eschatology / Eschatologie 77–78, 211, 258–59, 264, 266–67, 269–71, 277, 359, 368, 394, 401, 429–32, 436, 439 ethics 11–12, 17, 22–23, 26–29, 31, 58, 101, 105, 134, 141, 165, 168, 231, 240, 289–90, 295, 298, 300, 443, 457 Euripides 289 exegesis 167, 218, 287–88, 400, 520, 522 exile 39, 46–47, 190, 194, 296, 343, 418, 420, 424, 427–28, 513, 515–16 Fabri, Michael 533–40 fibula 259–62, 264 faith 11, 21, 47, 57, 61, 66–69, 71–78, 80– 85, 110, 145–46, 151–53, 183, 198–99, 205, 210–12, 214–15, 217, 220, 222–28, 229, 233, 236, 238–39, 241–42, 277, 285, 292–93, 296–97, 320, 322, 324, 326–33, 337, 340, 358–60, 371, 395, 403–4, 413, 443–57, 516–17, 534–35, 555 Faustus 113–128 fear 41–43, 47, 71–72, 78, 88, 90, 97, 144, 233, 326, 329, 331–35, 337, 340, 378, 385, 426, 511, 519

567

Index

fictionality / Fiktionalität 128, 259, 262, 265 Förtsch, Johann Philipp 343, 345, 348 Franck, Sebastian 296, 538 Francke, August Hermann 429–39 French Reformation 403, 405 Further Reformation, the (de Nadere Reformatie) 443, 445–46, 448 gender construction 40, 12, 175–85, 490, 520 gender hierarchy 40, 175–85, 519 Gewissen 268, 270–71, 344 Gloria 229–243, 413 glorification 79, 181, 230, 232, 234–35, 238–42, 417 glory 51, 79, 99, 105, 162, 229–43, 277, 413, 426, 444, 448 Good Shepherd (motif in visual arts) 359 government 12, 325, 333,387, 393–97, 400, 405–8, 410, 450, 453–57, 504, 507, 515 grace 11, 21, 61, 64, 68, 74–76, 79–80, 143–153, 189, 204, 210, 215, 217, 239, 247, 250, 277–78, 312, 321, 326–27, 330, 336, 339, 405, 451, 509, 512, 514, 517–19, 521 Große Aufsatz, Der 429–439 grotesque 118–22, 128, 190 guinea pig 538–40 halo 246–48, 250, 252 health 43, 134–37, 295–303, 547 Heintz, Joseph, the Elder 335 heresy 225, 404, 450, 456, 529 heretic 33, 108, 194, 222, 224, 248, 297, 365, 398, 410, 449, 451, 453–54, 520, 525 heterologes Schreiben 481–99 Hippocratic Oath 140–41 Holbein, Hans, the Elder 363 honour 229–43 Hooker, John 407, 410–11 hope 61, 80, 82–83, 88, 90, 238, 366, 385, 401, 444, 517, 523

Hopfer, Daniel 245–47 Horace 173, 292, 469 Huguenots 405, 415, 417, Humanism 69, 129–41, 246, 304, 406, 467, 475, 477 humiliation 230, 232, 234–40, 242 humility 62, 180, 236–37, 283, 306–7, 310–11, 313, 315–16, 323–24, Hutten, Ulrich von 138, 267, 481–499 ictus 50–52 identity 41, 45, 130, 145, 227–28, 278, 330, 369, 427, 457, 534–35, 537 illness 134, 136, 181, 295–303 Imago Dei 178, 221, 477 Imitatio Christi 201, 226 incontinentia 17, 302–3 inculpable illness 300–3 indulgences 313, 386–87, 389 intellect 25, 72–73, 160, 171, 203–4, 289, 299, 301–3, 311 Irenaeus, Christoph 534, 536–37 Islam 445, 525–529, 547 Iustitia 231, 238–39 jurisprudence 385, 388 Justification 11, 76–78, 81, 98, 146–48, 152–53, 214–17, 219, 231, 239–41, 296, 322, 326, 337, 358, 401, 417, 450 Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von 148, 183, 217–18, 220–22 Knox, John 513, 515 Koran 526–27 Krankheit 481–95

144,

Lateinschulen 462–63, 465–71, 475 laude 383, 386 laughter 38–41, 48 Lemnius, Levinus 43–44, 51–52 Lipsius, Justus 50–51, 53, 297–98 liturgy 35, 88–89, 106, 109, 190, 201–3, 334, 352, 355, 515–16 loci 21, 59–61, 63–66, 158, 285–86, 445, 460, 546

568 Lock, Anne Vaughan 513–25 Lombard, Peter 56, 58–59, 61, 70 Low Countries 33–34, 42–43, 188–89, 194 Lukian (von Samosata) 263–67 Luther, Martin 55–68, 69–85, 87–92, 94– 95, 101, 106, 110, 115, 118–119, 138, 144– 46, 148, 150, 152–53, 175–185, 209–228, 229–243, 245–255, 261–62, 264, 269–270, 275–83, 288–290, 292, 296, 309, 313, 319– 340, 349–50, 358–60, 393–396, 502 Lutheran anthropology 210, 230, 235, 246 Malta 543, 551 martyrdom 42, 45–47, 50–51, 181, 279– 81, 384–87, 403, 415–28, 526, 561 martyrologia 34, 45–46, Mathesius, Johannes 91, 534, 536–37 Medea 18–19, 21–22, 24–28, 30–31 medicine 11, 40, 43, 116, 129–141, 300 medieval 20, 22, 24, 55, 59, 88–91, 99– 100, 106, 109, 116–17, 120–21, 125, 130– 131, 133, 135–40, 144, 167, 175, 178, 180– 81, 194, 199–200, 202, 224–25, 227, 253, 267, 303, 305–6, 309, 316, 319, 321–23, 325, 328, 330, 333, 334, 338, 340, 349–50, 352, 354, 357,359, 367–68, 371–74, 377– 81, 383–84, 388, 412, 418, 467, 516, 534– 36, 539 Meister Eckhart 201, 306–8, 311–12, 506, 508, 511–12 melancholy 35–36, 48–49, 91, 108, 110, 120, 295 Melanchthon, Philipp 20–22, 24–27, 31, 59–66, 210, 213–216, 261, 285–293, 360, 460, 469, 473–474, 478 memento mori 268 Mohammed 526, 529, 548 Monheit, Michael 166–70 motherhood 179–80, 182 mystical anthropology 197–205 mystical relationship 311–12, 315–16 mysticism / mystical 62, 68, 197–205, 241, 305–12, 315–16, 325

Index

mythology / Mythologie (antike) 257–71

192,

Neumeister, Erdmann 343–47 Nicolay, Nicolas de 541–556 Niuron, Bernard 353 noise 37, 40, 42–43, 52, 97, 99 Oomius, Simon 443–457 Österreich, Georg 346 otherness / the other 175–185 Ott, Hans 91–93 Ottoman Empire 527, 543, 547, 551, 556 Ovid 28, 469 Paganism 526–27 pain 29, 38, 119, 135, 179, 227, 301–3, 314, 384–85 Papist 219, 225, 350, 411, 417, 447–457 Paracelsus 138–39 passions 11, 27–28, 33–36, 39–41, 43– 45, 47–51, 53, 103, 111, 168–71, 193, 295, 302–3, 385, 529 patientia 417, 420, 424, 427 patriotism 419, 427 penance 307, 310, 313–15, 319–23, 326, 328, 331, 338, 340, 375 perfectibility 297–98, 303 perfection 29, 162, 297, 306, 310–11, 313, 315–16, 326 Piast dynasty 353 Pietism 106, 406, 429–439, 443, 446 Piscator, Johannes 406, 472–73, 476 pity 47, 166, 171–73, 225, 385 plenary absolution 386 Pliny 173, 290, 536–37, 539 Politan 290 Pope, the 105, 124, 127, 193–94, 327, 331, 365, 387, 388, 407, 451–53, 457, 503, 525 portrait 246–49, 251–54, 278–81, 548 post-depositional 371–74, 378, 380–81, 567 Potschel, Laurentius 360–63, 366–68

Index

predestination 61, 165, 285–86, 291–93, 406, 416–417, 435 Presbyterian 403, 405, 409–11, 414 proto-nationalism 419, 427 Psalm translations 516, 520 Purgatory 314–15, 357, 377, 384 Puritan 36, 404–5, 407, 410–11, 414, 416, 427, 439, 445, 513 race 539 Ramus, Peter 403–14, 469, 473–75 Reislaufen (mercenary service) 503, 507, 512 religious persecution 34, 416, 419 resurrection 11, 13, 82, 157–64, 234–35, 242, 359, 375–76, 533–40 righteousness 70, 76–79, 147, 229, 231– 41, 325–27, 395, 509 Ruf, Jakob 501–12 Rupsch, Conrad 88, 90–92, 109–110 Ruusbroec, John of 201, 204, 307–9, 311–12 Sachs, Hans 257–71 sadness 41, 48, 323 salvation 11, 35–36, 61, 65–67, 79–80, 83, 110, 144, 146, 150, 152, 178, 213–216, 219, 226–27, 254, 285, 321, 328, 340, 357, 359, 366, 368–69, 401, 412, 415, 422, 444, 519 Schäufelein, Hans 363 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 55, 67–68 Schön, Erhard 143 Schütz Zell, Katharina 182–83, 515, 517–18 selah 82–84 Seneca 50–51, 165–73, 296 Servetus 398 sex res non naturales 300, 303 silence 35–7, 98–101, 513, 523 sin / Sünde 11, 21, 24–27, 31, 37, 48, 61, 64–65, 67–68, 70, 73, 76–78, 80, 84–85, 150, 152, 160–61, 164, 191, 202, 215, 220, 231–33, 237–38, 241–42, 271 277, 293, 296, 299, 301, 303, 307, 315, 319–23, 325–

569 27, 331–32, 336, 340, 344, 400–1, 432, 436, 486, 516–17, 519 slavery 544, 551 soul 11, 18–19, 30, 36, 44, 46, 64–65, 72– 77, 96, 103, 109, 115, 137, 144, 157–64, 168–70, 173, 201–9, 212–15, 216, 224, 236, 246, 277, 298–302, 306, 311–12, 314– 16, 347, 351, 357–58, 369, 377, 383–84, 386–87, 394, 412–13, 425, 452, 516, 519 Sovereignty of God, the 393, 457 spirit 26–28, 60, 67, 73–84, 94, 96–100, 169, 171, 184, 193, 195, 201, 203–4, 210, 212–15, 217, 221–22, 228, 234–35, 246, 292, 310, 320, 332, 334–40, 383, 394–95, 399–400, 425, 457 spiritual / spirituality 19, 35–36, 42, 46, 53, 64, 70, 75, 77, 79, 95, 97–99, 101, 103, 105–6, 118, 134, 199–201, 209, 214, 222, 227–28, 305–16, 320–21, 324–27, 329, 334, 337–38, 340, 350, 358, 368, 371, 377, 378, 380–81, 383–84, 387–88, 394, 396– 401, 405, 420, 424, 436–37, 451, 513, 515– 16, 520–23 spiritual ascension 312, 314–315 Spitta, Philipp 341–42 stoicism 18–20, 22–27, 29–31, 33, 49–51, 165–66, 172–73, 297–98 subjectivity 67–68, 110–11, 211, 273, 275–83, 483, 496–99 subordination 176–77, 179 Swiss Protestant drama 501–12 Swiss Reformation 333, 501–12 syphilis 481–88, 491–93, 495–96 Taffin, Jean 514 tavolette (devotional images) 385–86 tears 33, 37, 44, 47–48, 295 Tertullian 134, 421, 424–25, 536 Theologia crucis 62, 224, 230, 242, 322 Theologia gloria 242 theological anthropology 306, 310–16 theology of the cross 70–71, 230, 322–23 theonomy 449, 456–457 Timocratia 405–6 tolerance 48, 297, 448

570 Tory, Geofroy 149 trinity 61, 63, 66, 202–4, 412, 445 two kingdoms 393–401 Tyroff, Martin 251–54 Vadian, Joachim 260 ventriloquized voices 517, 520, 523 Vesalius 43, 131–33 virtue 11, 21, 26–31, 38, 41, 50–51, 53, 82, 168, 172–73, 190, 204, 229, 237–38, 240, 277, 300, 302, 306–7, 310, 313, 315, 323, 417, 422, 424, 439, 544 virtuousness 307, 310, 312, 315–16 Vives, Juan Luis 39–43, 50–51 voice 33–53, 83, 87–111, 222, 345–47, 514, 517, 519, 521–22

Index

von Bora, Katharina

175, 184–85

weakness of will 17–31, 302–03, Wright, Thomas 48–51 Wujek, Jakub 365 Xenophon

289, 546

zauberey 115–16 Zwick, Johannes 92, 94–98, 101 Zwinger, Theodor 29–30 Zwingli, Huldrych 66, 94, 98–101, 107, 218, 321, 396–97, 404–6, 411, 413, 501– 10, 512

About the Authors

Klaus Bergdolt is Professor for the History and Ethics of Medicine at the University of Cologne. Tom Bervoets is Archivist at the Belgian State Archives (Anderlecht) and PhD candidate at the History Department of the KU Leuven. Svein Aage Christoffersen is Professor for Ethics, Philosophy of Religion and Fundamental Theology at the University of Oslo. His main interests are Lutheran theology and phenomenology, especially with regard to ethics and aesthetics of religion. Jennifer Crangle is Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, studying the post-depositional treatments and behaviours which occurred during the English medieval period, c. 1066–1550. Sukanya Dasgupta is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Loreto College, University of Calcutta. Her research interests include early modern English literature, art and politics. Marion Deschamp is a PhD candidate at the University of Lumière Lyon 2 and affiliated to Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin. She is currently writing a dissertation on the Protestant cultures of memory in the 16th century Europe. Kyle Dieleman is a PhD candidate at the University of Iowa where he studies the Reformed Protestant tradition in the 16th and 17th centuries. Jutta Eming is Professor for Medieval German Literature and Language at the Institute of German and Dutch Languages and Literatures, Freie Universität, Berlin. Her research and teaching focuses on German medieval and early modern

572

About the Authors

literature, especially courtly novels, love and adventure novels, short stories, and religious drama. Gioia Filocamo received her Ph.D. in the Philology of Music at the University of Pavia-Cremona in 2001 and her Ph.D. in History at the University of Bologna in 2015. Her interest focuses mainly on how music interacted with social life in the 15th and 16th centuries. Wolfgang Fuhrmann holds a PhD in Musicology from the University of Vienna. He is an “Assistent” (roughly equivalent to Assistant Professor) at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Vienna. Fuhrmann’s research interests include music of the 15th century, Haydn and Haydn reception, Richard Wagner and film music. Niranjan Goswami, whose area of specialization is Renaissance Humanism, Logic and Rhetoric, formerly taught at Presidency College and is currently an Associate Professor of English literature at Chandernagore College, Hooghly. Gregory B. Graybill holds a D.Phil in Theology from the University of Oxford, and is currently pastor of the First United Presbyterian Church of Moline, Illinois. Michael Harrigan teaches at the Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies at the University of Bath (UK). His research focuses on the literature of intercultural encounter, especially in Renaissance and early modern France. Joanna Kaz´mierczak is currently writing her MA thesis under supervision of Professor Jan Harasimowicz (University of Wrocław). She is also a co-worker in the German-Polish research program: “Das Tafelbild im Kirchenraum. Die Werke der Malerfamilie Cranach und ihrer Werkstatt in den evangelischen Kirchen in Mitteldeutschland.” Ine Kiekens is a PhD student in Literature at the Ghent University (Belgium). Thomas Klöckner is a PhD student at the Theologische Universiteit Apeldoorn and a Pastor in Kaiserslautern (Union of Evangelical Free Churches). Daniela Kohler’s topics of research include Sebastian Castellio and the tolerance debate in the 16th century as well as David Friedrich Strauss and writing literary history in the 19th century. She holds a PhD from the University of Bern.

About the Authors

573

BonSeung Koo graduated from Korea Theological Seminary (M.Div., Cheon-An, South Korea), Theological University in Kampen (Th.M., Kampen, Netherlands) and is writing a dissertation on Simon Oomius. Konrad Küster is Professor for Musicology/Music History at Albert-LudwigsUniversity, Freiburg im Breisgau. His current main research area is Protestant church music until c. 1850. Erin Lambert is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Kristian Mejrup is a PhD Fellow on the project SOLITUDES: Withdrawal and Engagement in the long Seventeenth Century located at the Department of Church History, University of Copenhagen. He investigates the Institutions in Halle as a merger between church and university and thus as an invention of a new pastoral space. Hicham Merzouki is specialised in early modern English literature, philosophy and theology. He is a Phd student at the University of Ghent, Belgium. Anna Michalska (University of Wrocław) works for the research project “Protestant Church Architecture of the 16th – 18th centuries in Europe”. Sini Mikkola is a PhD student in the Department of Church History at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Bettina Noak currently works on her DFG Project “Between Exemplum and Disease: Medical Case Studies in Early Modern Texts from the Netherlands” at the Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a PhD in Dutch Literature. Frank Jasper Noll, M. A., studied German literature and philosophy in Berlin. He is a lecturer on Medieval and Early Modern German literature at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. His doctoral dissertation focuses on the transformation of classical mythology in 16th century German literature. Barbara Pitkin holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Stanford University. Risto Saarinen is Professor of Ecumenics and Head of the Centre of Excellence “Reason and Religious Recognition” at the University of Helsinki. He was the Convener of the 12th International Congress for Luther Research in Helsinki 2012.

574

About the Authors

Notger Slenczka is Professor of Systematic Theology and Dogmatics at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Herman Speelman is an independent researcher in the field of early modern reformed theology, associated with the Theological University of Kampen, the Netherlands. Sasja Emilie Mathiasen Stopa is a PhD Student within Systematic Theology at the Department of Culture and Society at Aarhus University. Zsombor Tóth is a literary historian, who works as a senior fellow at the Institute for Literary Studies, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in Budapest. Matthew Tuininga is a PhD Candidate in Religion at Emory University. Renske van Nie is a PhD-student at Universiteit Antwerpen. Her research focuses on the authorship, style and textual connectedness of three 16th-century mystical Dutch texts: Die Evangelische Peerle, Vanden Tempel onser Sielen and the Arnhem Mystical Sermons. Johan Verberckmoes is Professor for Early Modern History at KU Leuven. His main research interests are the history of emotions and of humour and laughter. Anna Vind is a Professor for Church History at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include Luther’s theology, scholastic theology, Reformation history and early modern and contemporary Luther Reception. Maria Lucia Weigel is an art-historian working on a project on reformers’ portraits at the European Melanchthon-Academy in Bretten (Germany). Elke Anna Werner is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies “BildEvidenz. Geschichte und Ästhetik” (Freie Universität Berlin). She holds a PhD in Art History from the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include European art in the early modern era, particularly German Renaissance art, art and knowledge transfer, the praxis and theory of the exhibition/the museum and images of war. Antje Wittstock works as a Lecturer in German literature of the Middle Ages and the early modern period at the University of Siegen. Her main research interests

About the Authors

575

are themes related to historical anthropology, the relation between knowledge and literature, and concepts of authorship.