Prince, People, and Confession: The Second Reformation in Brandenburg [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512805055

Table of contents :
Content
Acknowledgments
Illustrations
Introduction
1. A Via Media Reformation
2. The Triumph of Concordian Lutheranism
3. The Threat of Catholic Counter-Reformation
4. The Hohenzollern Conversion
5. Enforcing the Second Reformation
6. Reforming Popular Piety
7. The Lutheran Counteroffensive
8. The Popular Response
9. The Limits of Reformation
10. Concessions and Compromise
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Prince, People, and Confession

Prince, People, and Confession The Second Reformation in Brandenburg Bodo Nischan

University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia

Copyright © 1994 by the University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Permission is acknowledged to reprint material from previously published articles by the author: "Calvinism, the Thirty Years War, and the Beginning of Absolutism in Brandenburg," Central European History i s (1982): 207-22; "Reformed Irenicism and the Leipzig Colloquy of 1631," Central European History 9 (1976): 17-25. Copyright© 1982, 1976 by Emory University. "Brandenburg's Reformed Räte and the Leipzig Manifesto of 1631 "Journal of Religious History 10 (1979): 365-80.

"The 'Fractio Panis': A Reformed Communion Practice in Late Reformation Germany," Church History si (1984): 17-29; "John Bergius: Irenicism and the Beginning of Official Religious Toleration in Brandenburg-Prussia," Church History 51 (1982): 389-404. "The Exorcism Controversy and Baptism in the Late Reformation," Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 31-51; "The Second Reformation in Brandenburg: Aims and Goals," Sixteenth Century Journal 14 (1983): 173-187; "Reformation or Deformation? Lutheran and Reformed Views of Martin Luther in Brandenburg's 'Second Reformation,'" in Pietas and Sodetas: New Trends in Reformation Social History, ed. K. C. Sessions and P. N. Bebb, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, vol. IV (Kirksville, MO: SCJ Publishers, 1985); "The Schools of Brandenburg and the 'Second Reformation': Examples of Calvinist Learning and Propaganda," in Calviniana: Ideas and Influence of Jean Calvin, ed. Robert V Schnucker, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, vol. X (Kirksville, MO; SCJ Publishers, 1988), 215-233. Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc. "Kontinuität und Wandel im Zeitalter des Konfessionalismus. Die Zweite Reformation in Brandenburg,: Jahrbuch für Berlin-Brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte 58 (1991): 87-133. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nischan, Bodo. Prince, people, and confession : the Second Reformation in Brandenburg / Bodo Nischan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8122-3242-9 1. Reformation —Brandenburg (Germany and Poland) 2. Brandenburg (Germany and Poland) — Church history — 16th century. 3. Lutheran Church — Brandenburg (Germany and Poland)—History—16th century. 4. Hohenzollern, House of. 5. Reformed Church—Brandenburg (Germany and Poland) —History— 17th century. 6. CalvinismBrandenburg (Germany and Poland) —History — 17th century. 7. Lutheran C h u r c h Brandenburg (Germany and Poland) — History — 17th century. 8. Brandenburg (Germany and Poland) — Church history — 17th century. I. Tide. BR857.B8N57

1994

274.31 '506 — dc20

93-49639

CIP

For Gerda

Contents

Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Maps Introduction

Chapter 1. A Via Media Reformation

xi xiii xv i

5

I) Joachim I: Pro-Imperial and Roman II) The Joachimian Reform III) The 1540 Ordinance IV) The Schmalkaldic War and the Interim V) Dynastic Ambitions

5 11 17 25 29

Chapter 2. The Triumph of Concordian Lutheranism

34

I) Toward a More Rigid Lutheranism II) Confessional Consolidation III) The Survival of Joachimian Ritual IV) New Fears of Calvinism

34 40 46 49

Chapter 3. The Threat of Catholic Counter-Reformation

56

I) The Magdeburg Administrator II) Confessional Realignment III) Political Considerations

56 63 73

Chapter 4. The Hohenzollern Conversion

81

I) Education and Upbringing II) The Christmas Communion III) The Question of Motives

81 91 94

viii

Contents

IV) "Highly Important Persons" V) The Political Side

98 103

Chapter 5. Enforcing the Second Reformation

111

I) The Plan II) Confessional Clarification III) Coordination IV) Education

111 116 121 126

Chapter 6. Reforming Popular Piety

132

I) Eliminating the "Leftover Papal Dung" II) Reform of Worship III) Art and Music IV) The Church Calendar V) Indifferent Matters

132 137 145 153 158

Chapter 7. The Lutheran Counteroffensive

161

I) The Clerical Reaction II) Appeals to the People

161 176

Chapter 8. The Popular Response

185

I) The Berlin "Parliament" II) The Spread of Popular Opposition III) Continued Apathy and Hostility

185 193 196

Chapter 9. The Limits of Reformation

204

I) The Estates' Reaction II) The Prussian Response III) The Failure of Reformation IV) Crisis and War

204 211 217 223

Chapter 10. Concession and Compromise

235

I) In the Confessional Arena II) In the Political Arena

235 246

Contents List of Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index

ix 261 263 327 359

Acknowledgments

The following pages owe much to the kindness of friends and colleagues. Special thanks are due to my associates at East Carolina University, to Robert Gowen and Anthony Papalas, for their encouragement and friendship; and to Fred Ragan, Hugh Wease, and Charles Calhoun for arranging my schedule to allow greater freedom for writing and research. This book has profited from conversation with a great many historians, in this country and abroad. For guidance and inspiration at various times, I would like to thank especially David Daniel, Gottfried Krodel, James Kittelson, Oliver Olson, Geoffrey Parker, Ernst Koch, Rudolf von Thadden, and Kurt-Victor Selge. I am also grateful to Bernd Moeller and Heinz Schilling for inviting me to be a part of the 1985 Rheinhausen Symposium on the Second Reformation which inspired me to finally sit down and write this book. And I am particularly indebted to John Headley and Robert Kolb who did me the great favor of reading my entire manuscript and commenting on it. If I did not always follow their advice or heed their warnings, the fault is mine. Of the many librarians and archivists to whom I owe thanks, deserving of special mention are Patricia Guyette, head of Interlibrary Loan at East Carolina University; Jiirgen Schmadeke of the Historische Kommission zu Berlin; Gerhard Menk of the Hessische Staatsarchiv Marburg; and, above all, Sabine Solf, director of the research department of the magnificent Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbiittel. The research itself was made possible by grants from the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Herzog August Bibliothek, the Historische Kommission zu Berlin, and the Research Committee of East Carolina University. A Brewster Fellowship, awarded by the ECU Department of History, gave me a reduced teaching load and freedom from committee work, to complete the final draft of this manuscript. Special thanks also are due to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of East Carolina University for providing a generous publication subsidy. Sections of the fifth, sixth, ninth, and tenth chapters of this book have

xii

Acknowledgments

previously appeared, in much different form, as essays in Church History, Central European History, Jahrbuch für Berlin-Brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte, Journal of Religious History, and Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies and are used here by permission of the editors of those journals. Finally, I must thank my wife Gerda, to whom I dedicate this book, and my son Michael for their patience and endurance. Their love and encouragement made it all worth it. B.N.

Illustrations

Maps 1. Hohenzollern Territories ( 1618 ) 2. Brandenburg in the Age of Confessionalism

Figures i.i Elector Joachim II 2.1 Die Augsburgische Confession { 1572) 2.2 Andreas Angelus's Calvinischer Betlersmantel (1598) 3.1 Germany (1589) 4. i Elector Johann Sigismund 4.2 Christoph Pelargus 4.3 The Lutherans' Trewhertzige Warnung (1615) 5.1 Simon Gedicke 5.2 Johann Sigmunds . . . Bekändtniß (1614) 6.1 Spiritual Brawl (around 1600) 6.2 Ambrosius Lobwasser 6.3 "Corpus Christi" from Gedicke's Postilla (1598) 7.1 Matthias Hoe von Hoenegg 7.2 Johann Behm 8.1 Berlin-Cölln (1650) 9.1 Friedrich Pruckmann 9.2 Hohenzollern Family Tree (1626) 10.1 Johann Bergius 10.2 The Leipzig Protocol (1631) 10.3 Bergius, Brüderliche Eynträchtigkeit (1631) 10.4 The Leipzig Convention (1631)

19 42 53 60 82 89 99 113 118 136 152 156 165 174 189 208 227 238 242 254 256

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Introduction

Two features gave the Reformation in the Mark Brandenburg a special character. First, it came late and was one of the most moderate, if not reactionary, Lutheran reforms in all of Germany. Second, because of this conservatism a "second," Calvinist reformation was attempted nearly three generations later. Political considerations weighed heavily in both reforms. Each was initiated from above, by the Mark's ruler: Elector Joachim II introduced the Lutheran reformation in 1539; Johann Sigismund, his greatgrandson, the Calvinist reform in 1613. Popular responses played a decisive role in determining the fate of each: the Joachimian Reformation succeeded, largely because it had the backing of the people; the Second Reformation failed—at least in its original objectives—mosdy because it could not generate sufficient support beyond the ruling elite at the Hohenzollern court. Chronologically this study encompasses the century, more or less, that began with the first stirrings of evangelical reform in Brandenburg in the 1520s, and ended at the height of the Thirty Years War in the 1630s, when something akin to a pan-Protestant awareness was beginning to emerge in Germany—roughly the early Reformation to the end of the age of confessionalism. Center stage in our investigation are the events of the Mark's Second Reformation in the last third of this period (1600-1630). The label "Second Reformation" is used not to suggest any abrupt break between the earlier Lutheran and later Calvinist reforms but rather to denote a series of events, both religious and political, associated with the conversion of Brandenburg's ruling family, the Hohenzollerns, to Calvinism. My assumption is that religion—how people worshiped and how they lived their faith, the history of the church — played a central role in these events and hence provides a key to our understanding of this period. The Second Reformation is treated here as part of a wider process of confession and state building that followed on the heels of the religious and social upheaval of the early sixteenth century. "Confessionalization" is a relatively new term difficult to define. For

2

Introduction

my understanding of this concept I have benefited especially from the works of two historians—Ernst Walter Zeeden and Heinz Schilling. Zeeden in a seminal article, first published in 1958, defined Konfessionsbildung as the "mental and organizational consolidation of the diverging Christian confessions after the breakdown of religious unity into more or less stable denominations with their own doctrines, constitutions, and lifestyles."1 The term, Schilling elaborates, "thus designates the fragmentation of the unitary Christendom {Christianitas latino) of the Middle Ages into at least three confessional churches — Lutheran, Calvinistic or 'Reformed', and post-Tridentine Roman Catholic."2 Contemporaries, of course, spoke neither of "confessionalization" nor of a "Second Reformation"; sixteenth-century German Calvinists, however, did urge the "continuation" or "emendation" and "completion" of Martin Luther's work through what they called "another" reformation. In modern scholarship the term "Second Reformation" has been popular since the publication of Jiirgen Moltmann's study of Christoph Pezel some thirty years ago.3 The label has elicited much debate and controversy, notably in the last decade as scholars have focused more on developments in the late Reformation and, concurrently, have sought a more satisfactory label for the period as a whole. 'The problem of the Second Reformation" was discussed in October 1985 at a scholarly symposium sponsored by the German Verein fur Reformationsgeschichte.4 Six years later the debate continues, but its focus has shifted somewhat. With "confessionalization" now established as the appropriate generic label for the period, and "Second Reformation" accepted as a proper synonym specifically for "Reformed confessionalization," scholarly inquiry has shifted more toward identifying the particular means and assessing the long-term results of Konfessionsbildung.5 Confessional consolidation, of course, entailed polarization, which led to conflict. And nowhere did this become more evident than in early seventeenth-century Brandenburg where Lutheranism had become firmly entrenched by the time that its Calvinist prince sought to reshape the principality's confessional identity. Why and how did he try to do it? What was the reaction and what the outcome? A good part of this study concerns itself with the resulting confessional struggle between Lutherans and Calvinists. Taking my clues from cultural anthropology,6 I have tried to show how church ritual and ceremony —especially the communion liturgy — provide a handy litmus test for the mentality of both princes and people involved in these confessional confrontations. Early in the Reformation, with Elector Joachim II eager to demonstrate the continuity of his reform

Introduction

3

with the Roman church, much of the old pomp and ceremony associated with the papal mass was retained. As tensions mounted between Lutherans and Reformed later in the century, this very same liturgical traditionalism was metamorphosed into a mark of genuine Lutheranism against the perceived onslaught of crypto- and outright Calvinism. Then, during the Second Reformation, with the Calvinist court trying to give the Mark a clearer, more Protestant identity to steel it in its struggle against the resurgent Catholic church, the old ritual and ceremonial were repudiated as leftover "papal dung," but—and here more controversy ensued—defended by the country's Lutherans as a sign of true evangelical orthodoxy. Religion and politics were closely intertwined throughout the century of the Reformation. Confessional consolidation converged with early modern state building, the process in which the medieval respublica Christiana was being transformed into a system of independent principalities and states.7 The conceptual lens of the Second Reformation thus enables us to take a fresh look at an old problem that has haunted students of early modern German history for over a century: just what was the significance of the introduction of Calvinism in early seventeenth-century Brandenburg? The problem, Wolfgang Reinhard reminds us, is to explain "how a 'pious prince' could pursue his [political] interests by following his conscience."8 Scholars have been far from unanimous in their assessment of this question. Some have emphasized the ephemeral significance of Johann Sigismund's conversion;9 others—most notably Johann Gustav Droysen and Otto Hintze—have argued that it entailed profound religious and political changes.10 The current, decade-old "Prussia-Renaissance" in scholarship, while generating much interest in the history of the early modern Hohenzollern state, generally has ignored the problem altogether.11 Meanwhile, most conclusions about religion and politics in seventeenth-century Brandenburg continue to be based on stylized generalizations derived from the reigns of the Great Elector or Frederick III at the end of the century.12 The late Reformation, specifically the history of Brandenburg-Prussia in the period between the Peace of Augsburg and the end of the Thirty Years War, has been and continues to be neglected. "Historians have left virtually untouched the problem of the Reformation's enduring consequences in terms of its continuing political significance, its institutions, or even its day-to-day beliefs and practices," James Kittelson lamented over a decade ago.13 While the situation has been remedied somewhat for the southern and western parts of the old Empire, northern Germany, especially East Elbia, persists as a lacuna in late Refor-

4

Introduction

mation scholarship. The situation is even more dismal as one moves into the seventeenth century which remains, in William Bouwsma's words, "for American historiography, a relatively underdeveloped borderland . . . , a century without clear identity, intelligible if at all as a period of desperate but indecisive 'struggle'. " 1 4 My findings suggest that by 1613, when Johann Sigismund converted, Lutheranism (or at least, what contemporaries perceived as such) had become firmly established in Brandenburg (and ducal Prussia), not only among the intellectual and governing elites, but equally among the less educated and less powerful—the common people. They responded with outrage to Elector Johann Sigismund's efforts at a Second Reformation that, if successful, would have transmogrified in their eyes the church to which they had become accustomed. In the end, the Hohenzollerns had to settle for a compromise that allowed their court Calvinism to coexist with the principality's popular Lutheranism; instead of calvinizing Brandenburg, toleration resulted. A similar trade-off occurred in the political arena. Rather than strengthening the prince's position at home, as has traditionally been assumed, the Second Reformation actually weakened it, strengthening, for the time being at least, the electorate's Lutheran Junker aristocracy. But it had the reverse effect on their foreign policy. Not only were the Hohenzollerns able to consolidate their dynastic interests abroad, but more important, at the height of the crisis precipitated by the Thirty Years War— Germany's ultimate confessional confrontation—Brandenburg's Calvinist government played a decisive role in leading the Empire's Lutheran and Reformed princes into taking a strong pan-Protestant stand against Emperor Ferdinand IPs Catholic confessional absolutism. In short, at home the constitutionalism of the Lutheran estates prevailed, while abroad the militancy of Brandenburg's Reformed helped block the emperor's political and confessional ambitions. Even though the Second Reformation failed in its initial objective — the country's complete calvinization —it was significant for the course of German history. It contributed directly to the development of the early modern Hohenzollern state, characterized more by toleration and diplomatic initiative and less by governmental absolutism than has traditionally been assumed. Not a bad legacy for the modern democratic Germany whose people are still struggling with the heritage of a BrandenburgPrussia remembered today mostly for its authoritarianism and militarism, not for its toleration and constitutionalism.

I. A Via Media Reformation

I. Joachim I: Pro-Imperial and Roman The Reformation was slow in coming to Brandenburg.1 While electoral Saxony to the south gained fame and notoriety in the 1520s as the center of Lutheran reform, Brandenburg under Elector Joachim I (1499-1535) remained, officially at least, a citadel of Catholic orthodoxy. Reasons both personal and dynastic, especially the Hohenzollerns' rivalry with the Wettiners for preeminence in northern Germany, influenced the elector's stance. The recent foundation of new territorial universities — Frankfurt on Oder in 1506 and Wittenberg in 1502 —added more fuel to this rivalry as Luther's university, Wittenberg, quickly eclipsed Frankfurt during the Reformation. Saxony and Brandenburg also competed for control of the important north-German archbishopric of Magdeburg. Here the Hohenzollerns had scored a major victory in 1513 when Albrecht, Joachim's younger brother, was elected archbishop and also administrator of Halberstadt. Ironically it was a deal struck between the curia and Albrecht that led to the indulgence controversy which triggered the Reformation. 2 Under the terms of this agreement, Pope Leo X granted the Hohenzollern, who already controlled two bishoprics, dispensation from pluralism so that he could also acquire the archbishopric of Mainz in 1514; Albrecht, in return, agreed to pay the papacy the enormous sum of 29,000 gulden. The money was to be raised through the sale of indulgences in the Magdeburg archdiocese to which Brandenburg belonged, with half of the receipts going to the papacy and half to Albrecht to enable him to repay the money he had borrowed from the Fugger banking house for his ecclesiastical fees. The deal was financially lucrative for all and politically favorable for the Hohenzollerns since it gave them control of two of the Empire's seven electoral votes—Brandenburg's and Mainz's. Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, when learning about this deal, was furious; no one, he reportedly fumed, had "ever cheated him more than this cleric."3 He prohibited the sale of indulgences in electoral Saxony, not because of any particular religious

6

Chapter i

scruples but rather because he had his own relic collection and profited from the pilgrims who came to see it. All this was brought home to Martin Luther when Johann Tetzel, whom Albrecht had appointed as subcommissioner, approached the borders of electoral Saxony in the spring of 1 5 1 7 and many Wittenbergers went to buy indulgences from him. The fat Dominican was a particularly adroit salesman who knew how to make his merchandise enticing by promising far-reaching and immediate results, his favorite jingle — according to Luther—being, "As your money in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs." Luther felt that the whole indulgence traffic, particularly the way it was conducted in Albrecht's archdiocese, constituted a gross perversion of Christian repentance and forgiveness. Determined to correct this abuse, and out of pastoral concern for his own parishioners, he prepared a rebuttal in the form of "Ninety-Five Theses" in which he called for an academic debate of this practice; he sent copies of the theses to his immediate ecclesiastical superiors in Magdeburg and Brandenburg. In the ensuing war of words Albrecht quickly became one of Luther's favorite targets. His attacks on the cardinal —the "Idol of Halle," as he called him — however, did have an important side-effect: it solidified the ties between Brandenburg's ruling family and the papal church. " I will not be offended by this monk," Elector Joachim I reportedly shouted when he first heard about Luther; to him the attacks on Albrecht constituted a direct affront to the entire Hohenzollern family. Small wonder, then, that it took so long before the Wittenberger's ideas gained much support at the electoral court.4 Brandenburg's geographical location just to the north of Saxony meant that travelers from the south on their way to Mecklenburg, Pomerania, or Prussia regularly had to pass through the principality. Copies of Luther's theses therefore found their way early into the Mark. The number of Brandenburg students who attended Wittenberg University increased dramatically: while in the fifteen years prior to 1518 an average of only eleven or twelve Markers had studied there, the enrollment doubled in the next three years; it has been estimated that some 130 attended between 1518 and 1535. 5 Preachers and teachers who carried the reformer's message to the people were active in several localities: from i 5 i 8 t o 1521 Bartholomäus Rieseberg taught at Berlin's Nicolai School; he later served as pastor in Seyda and Gardelegen.6 Johann Briessmann from Kottbus, a former Franciscan who had studied at Wittenberg, spent most of 1522 in his home town, where he preached regularly at the Klosterkirche. During this period

A Via Media Reformation

7

he remained in close contact with Martin Luther.7 His message, neatly summarized in what was evidently the first reformatory tract to originate in the Mark, clearly was evangelical: "First and foremost I preached . . . that man is not justified by good works but by faith in Christ alone."8 Briessmann left Kottbus around Christmas 1522 to return briefly to Wittenberg before moving on to Königsberg in East Prussia. This group of early propagators of Luther's message also included Reutter Michell in Sommerfeld, Bernhard Bürger in Altenhausen, and Nikolaus Kümmel and Leonhard Reiff at Guben. Itinerant Lutheran preachers were found as well at Wittbrietzen, Krossen, Brandenburg, and Frankfurt on Oder. At Templin Heinrich Seckermann, a Premonstratensian, was imprisoned in 1525 because he had preached openly against the Catholic church.9 Slowly but surely the old church was losing ground among the people. Attendance at processions and masses declined dramatically. In Berlin, the city council, guilds, and schools, which in the past had participated with great pomp and splendor in the annual Corpus Christi celebrations, refused to join the festivities in 1521. Joachim I was furious and ordered people to show up for the 1522 procession.10 Not surprisingly, at the Diet of Worms in 1521 the elector was one of the more forceful anti-Lutheran spokesmen. "There is no one among the secular princes on whom we can rely more than on the Brandenburger," Aleander, papal nuncio, reported back to Rome. 11 This rigorous proRoman stand was of course not without tangible financial and political gain. The elector had long wanted greater control of his country's ecclesiastical benefices. Pope Leo X, viewing him as a strong pillar of the old faith in the north, was quite willing to oblige.12 Joachim saw to it that the diet's anti-Lutheran mandate, the Edict of Worms, was published immediately in Brandenburg; he then used it to justify a number of additional anti-evangelical measures. He ordered his theologians on the Frankfurt faculty to examine Luther's translation of the New Testament and outlawed it (29 February 1524) when they concluded that it contained "hundreds of errors and . . . could provoke great unrest."13 When the Nürnberg Diet renewed the Edict of Worms in 1524, Joachim again was one of the first to confirm it (25 August). Lutheran and other heretical teachings, he noted, had spread rapidly and had created much division and uncertainty in recent years. Unless this menace was stopped immediately, "evil would replace good" and the "common man" would be further confused and lose all Christian discipline and obedience.14 Joachim blamed the Wittenberg reformer personally for the outbreak

8

Chapter i

of the Peasants' War in 1524. After the rebellion had been quashed, he and Albrecht joined with the dukes of Saxony and Brunswick in the League of Dessau (19 July 1525) "to eradicate the damned Lutheran sect, the root of this uprising."15 He ordered craftsmen and merchants in the Mark to stop singing Lutheran hymns, and urged them to observe "noble and traditional ceremonies" instead; he also admonished his subjects "to honor and respect their pastors and priests."16 And to assure that his heir, the future Joachim II, remained loyal to Rome, he found him a good Catholic wife, Magdalena, daughter of the staunchly anti-Lutheran duke Georg of Saxony.17 But in spite of such precautionary efforts, the reformer's message continued to make more inroads in the Mark, even at the Berlin palace. A court secretary, one Joachim Zerer, who had succumbed to the new faith while studying at Wittenberg, was forced to quit his job and emigrate to Lusatia.18 More spectacular and disturbing to Joachim was the conversion of his own wife Elisabeth, a sister of King Christian II of Denmark.19 At Easter 1527, while the elector was away, she received communion sub utraque from the hands of a Lutheran minister. When Joachim returned and learned what she had done, he was furious. Ironically, his own philandering was at least partially to blame for the electress's conversion. The two had been happily married until 1525 when he began an affair with Katharina Blankenfelde, daughter of a prominent Berlin patrician, who was married to Wolf Hornung. At about this time, the distraught and dejected Elisabeth began to read Luther's tracts and evidently found comfort in the reformer's words. Joachim, outraged by his wife's apostasy, summoned his councillors, both secular and ecclesiastical, to inquire whether her offense merited the death penalty, or at least constituted sufficient grounds for a divorce; the thought that his own indiscretions possibly had contributed to her spiritual mutation evidently never entered his mind. Divorce, his advisors conceded, was allowable but not very practical; it would be better to have Elisabeth incarcerated for the rest of her life. Only the intervention of relatives and friends could mollify the elector's wrath and persuade him to grant Elisabeth at least a temporary reprieve, until Easter 1528, to recant her errors. As the deadline approached, she became more desperate and finally turned for advice to her uncle, Johann of Saxony. Johann urged her to leave immediately and offered asylum. A few days later, shortly before Easter while her husband was away at Brunswick, Elisabeth, disguised as a peasant and with the aid of two court attendants, fled to Saxony.20 An enraged Joachim hotly demanded that she be returned at once. But

A Via Media Reformation

9

"John the Steadfast" persevered; he had a committee of Wittenberg theologians draft a reply, telling Joachim that he had no right to constrain his wife's conscience. Luther, with whom the electress had corresponded for some time, entered thefraycondemning with characteristicflair"the whore keeper in the old castle on the Spree"—an appellation that did little to endear him to the Hohenzollern court. He initially attempted to promote a reconciliation between the elector's mistress and her husband, Wolf Hornung. When Joachim banished Hornung, allegedly because he had earlier tried to assassinate his estranged wife and thereby end the romance, Luther reminded him publicly of his princely obligation to be a fair judge and protector of all.21 Joachim countered that Luther was a troublemaker meddling in private matters. The reformer, undaunted, now threatened to grant Hornung the divorce he was seeking unless the elector became more accommodating. He also appealed publicly to the Mark's bishops and knights to use their influence to end the scandal.22 But these appeals accomplished little and only magnified Joachim's disdain for the Wittenberg reformer and his doctrine. Hornung, meanwhile, had brought his case before the Imperial Diet at Speyer (1529), where he publicly demanded from Joachim I the restitution of both wife and property. The affair clearly was beginning to take its toll and was hurting the elector's reputation. If Luther only could find the proper justification in the Word of God, some quipped at Speyer, the margrave surely would change his mind; he might even marry his mistress—"and make a whore into an electress," sneered John the Steadfast.23 The controversy had so poisoned relations between the two north German rulers that the Saxon actually feared a military attack from Brandenburg. Elector Johann therefore hesitated to leave the country and attend the Augsburg Reichstag (1530), where yet another attempt would be made to resolve the religious crisis. At the diet the hostility between the two rivals quickly surfaced again, with Joachim at one point telling the Saxon that he would surely lose both life and property unless he repudiated the Lutheran heresy and returned to the Catholic fold. Johann, not easily intimidated, retaliated in kind, wondering aloud whether it was proper for a good Catholic to keep concubines while his legitimate wife had to be fed in neighboring Saxony.24 Joachim had come to Augsburg accompanied by the finest Catholic theologians his country had to offer. Two Brandenburgers—Wimpina from Frankfurt and Wolfgang Redorfer from Stendal—helped draft the Catholic confutation of the Augustana that the Lutheran estates presented as a con-

io

Chapter i

fession of their faith. As usual, the Hohenzollern was one of the staunchest and most energetic defenders of the old faith—a stance that again did not go unrewarded.25 Pope Clement VII, who received glowing reports about his performance from Cardinal Campeggio, later expressed his gratitude by sending a personal note of thanks in which he praised Joachim as a man "touched by the breath of God."26 The elector received similar praise from Emperor Charles V who promised additional preferences and awards — promises he unfortunately could not keep because of the rapidly deteriorating political situation in the Empire. The Diet of Augsburg, convened to resolve the religious controversy, in the end failed as well. The final ordinance passed by the Catholic estates after the Protestants had left, reaffirmed the Edict of Worms and threatened to suppress all heretical innovations. Fearful that a Catholic attack was imminent, the Protestants, prompted by Philip of Hesse and Johann of Saxony, now formed a defensive alliance, the Schmalkaldic League (27 February 1531). 2 7 For Joachim of Brandenburg, as vigilant a guardian of the old faith as ever, this Protestant coalition became the reason for promoting yet another Catholic union, the League of Halle, into which he joined with his brother, Cardinal Albrecht, and Dukes Georg of Saxony and Erich and Heinrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg (November 1533). Fear of a popular uprising by the "common man," the allies noted, had compelled them to join forces; they vowed to defend "the old Christian faith as taught by the Holy Catholic Church, her ordinances, ceremonies, and customs." And to make certain that Brandenburg would adhere to these terms even after he was gone, the aging elector forced his sons—Joachim and Hans —to subscribe to the League as well.28 The references to the "common man" in the League's treaty reflected the growing fear of another uprising like the earlier Peasants' War. While Joachim was at Augsburg, riots had erupted in the Mark at Tangermiinde and Stendal. The disturbances began when a group of Stendal craftsmen disrupted Ascension Day services by singing Lutheran hymns. Pandemonium developed when the authorities responded by arresting several people, among them a Franciscan friar, one Lorenz Kokenbecker, who had been preaching in the Lutheran manner. In the ensuing turmoil the doors and windows of Stendal's city hall were smashed and the homes of several parish priests ravaged. The elector responded with brutal force. After savagely suppressing the uprising, he arrested and interrogated hundreds of people; six of the ringleaders were executed; many more were incarcerated; and the city of Stendal lost its duty free status and in addition had to pay a stiff indemnity.29

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But even as Joachim was trying to assure the safety and survival of the old faith in his domains, the hated Wittenberg doctrine was claiming new converts among his neighbors. Count Johann II of Anhalt, husband of Joachim's youngest daughter, introduced the Reformation in his lands in spite of earlier promises to remain loyal to Rome. Another son-in-law, Erich of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who belonged to the Halle League, also had strong Protestant sympathies, and to the north, Pomerania became Lutheran in 1534. In spite of the elector's strict proscriptions, the Wittenberg Reformation continued to make more inroads in the Mark as well.30 The elector was concerned even about the confessional commitments of his own sons, and with his testament (22 October 1534) sought to bind them, as far as humanly possible, to the old church. Noting the many current evils created by heretical errors, Joachim declared that it was his will and desire "that our sons and their heirs, together with all their lands and subjects, remain always faithful to the old Christian faith, religion, ceremonies, and obedience."31 When Magdalena of Saxony, his eldest son's spouse, died suddenly in 1534, the elector immediately found him another good Catholic wife, Hedwig, daughter of King Sigismund of Poland.32 And, to make doubly sure that at least one of his heirs remained loyal to the old faith, the elector, possibly worried about his sons' Protestant proclivities, ignored family tradition and divided his inheritance between them in 153s, leaving the New Mark (together with Sternberg, Krossen, Kottbus, and Peitz) to the younger Johann (later known as Hans of Küstrin) and the Kurmark, the core of his territories, to the older Joachim. Not until 1571 would these lands be reunited by Johann Georg, Joachim I's grandson. By then, however, the futility of the elector's confessional policies were manifest: in the intervening years the Reformation also had reached Brandenburg.

II. The Joachimian Reform In his letter of condolence Philip of Hesse, leader of the Schmalkaldic League, expressed the hope that the Mark's new ruler, Joachim II (153571), soon would see the light and join the evangelical movement. His hopes were not totally unjustified: before he succeeded to the elector's chair, the margrave had had intermittent contact with Martin Luther. As a young boy he probably first heard about the Wittenberg reformer while staying at Halle with his uncle, Archbishop Albrecht, the very man against whom so much of Luther's ire was directed during the indulgence contro-

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versy. In 1519 thefifteen-year-oldeven had met the reformer personally at Wittenberg. Many years later, in 1563 — the aging elector undoubtedly was romanticizing —Joachim claimed that Luther had already then persuaded him of the truth of his evangelical doctrine.33 The young prince saw Luther again as he was returning from the Diet of Worms, on Maundy Thursday (28 March 1521), when he heard him preach "On the Worthy Reception of the Sacrament."34 Luther later had this sermon published and in the preface noted specifically the presence of the Brandenburg margrave.35 This fascination with the Wittenberg reformer no doubt was encouraged by Joachim IPs Lutheran mother Elisabeth and his uncle, King Christian of Denmark. As he matured the young prince acquired considerable theological erudition and occasionally sought the reformer's advice. In 1532, for instance, he inquired through a middleman—the court astronomer Johann Carion—"how he should receive the Lord's Supper: could he, with a good Christian conscience, take it in only one kind, that is, in the Catholic manner?"36 Luther's reply probably did not please the traditionminded Joachim, for he told him quite blundy that the sacrament could be properly administered only sub utraque and that any other form violated God's commandments. The correspondence between Joachim and Luther continued for about a year, but ended abruptly as Luther became more deeply embroiled in his quarrel with Cardinal Albrecht, Joachim's uncle.37 Since the spring of 1531, when Albrecht returned to his residence at Halle, the plight of that city's Protestants had worsened considerably. In an open letter to the Halle Christians and in his tract "Against the Dresden Assassin," Luther vigorously condemned these persecutions.38 But the event that finally brought the confrontation to a head was a rather mundane incident that had little to do with indulgences —the so-called Schonitz affair.39 Hans Schonitz, a leading merchant in Halle, had for years handled the cardinal's finances. In September 1534 he suddenly was arrested and charged with embezzlement. A confession extracted under torture was presented to a court, which condemned Schonitz to death. The execution was carried out immediately, even though the condemned man's family had appealed to the Imperial Cameral Tribunal and in addition had offered to make restitution for any losses suffered by the cardinal. Schonitz also had retracted his confession shortly before he was hanged. The haste with which the trial and sentence had been carried out sufficed to raise serious doubts about the legality and fairness of the proceedings. Luther became involved in the affair in the summer of 1535 when

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Anton Schonitz, brother of the executed Hans, and Ludwig Rabe, a Halle city councillor, sought asylum in electoral Saxony. They requested the reformer's assistance and related the details of Hans's trial and execution. Luther, by now prepared to believe the worst about Albrecht anyhow, readily accepted their story. Convinced that he was guilty of gross and deliberate miscarriage of justice, he sent a blistering letter to the "hellish cardinal."40 Luther's anger grew progressively and his language became harsher as he learned more details about the case. In early February 1536 he wrote the cardinal a furious letter full of specific accusations and announced his intention to publish an even longer and more detailed treatise on the whole affair.41 The controversy was further complicated by the fact that Elector Johann Friedrich of Saxony, as burgrave of Magdeburg, claimed jurisdictional rights in Halle. Schonitz's trial and execution thus could be interpreted as an affront to the Wettiner and threatened to become a part of the much older contest between Brandenburg and Saxony.42 Cardinal Albrecht responded to Luther's writings by mobilizing his family. In October 1536 the leading members of the Hohenzollern clan — Joachim II, Hans of Kustrin, Georg von Ansbach, and Duke Albrecht of Prussia—gathered at Frankfurt on Oder to devise a counter-strategy: they agreed on a joint appeal to Elector Johann Friedrich requesting that he stop Luther from publishing any more attacks on Albrecht.43 They also let it be known that they would view any further insults of the cardinal as a direct attack on the house of Brandenburg. Any continuation of this feud, Duke Albrecht warned, would greatly hinder the progress of the reformation in Prussia.44 These efforts did bring some results: the threatened treatise against Cardinal Albrecht did not appear —at least not yet. Joachim IPs strained relations with Luther helped shape his policies just as they had earlier influenced his father's. Unlike the first Joachim, however, the second was attracted to the reformer's message, but like his father he was determined to avoid any drastic action that might hurt his dynastic interests. While sympathetic to the Protestant cause, Joachim II remodeled the Berlin Dom in 1536 and used his uncle's Halle cathedral as a model.45 He was deeply disturbed by Luther's continued attacks on the cardinal; not surprisingly, therefore, he had convinced himself that he could best serve his own interests by remaining loyal to the emperor while pursuing a policy of moderate church reform. Relatively inexperienced, and perhaps somewhat naively, Joachim initially hoped to bridge the widening chasm between the old and new faiths by encouraging a general church council.46 The papal nuncio Pietro Paolo

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Vergerio, who visited Berlin in November 1535 to promote just such a meeting, was pleasantly surprised when he discovered that the elector, whose loyalty to the Roman church he himself had questioned earlier, showed much enthusiasm for a council. The nuncio reported back to Pope Paul III that Joachim's expectations from such a synod thus far had kept him from breaking away from Rome.47 Indeed, among the German princes the Brandenburger stood virtually alone in calling for a council. When it did not materialize—largely because neither Catholics nor Protestants really wanted it—Joachim's focus shifted from an international to a more national solution. In a meeting with King Ferdinand at Bautzen, on 26 May 1538, he outlined the details of his new strategy. Since a general council under papal aegis seemed unlikely in the foreseeable future, he suggested that Joachim and Ferdinand negotiate a religious settlement on their own. His proposal reflected the views of Georg Witzel, an Erasmian humanist at the Berlin court, who held that it was the ruler's responsibility to restore peace and harmony within the church, if necessary by forming a "German national church."48 The elector thought that some concessions such as the cup for the laity and a married priesthood were necessary. He offered to serve as a mediator with the princes of the Schmalkaldic League and urged Ferdinand to use his influence in Rome to gain the pope's backing for this plan.49 The proposal sounded attractive enough; a compromise with the Protestants would assure the emperor their military backing against the Turks who just then were threatening again. Ferdinand therefore agreed; the pope, however, showed little if any enthusiasm. Nevertheless, it did not stop Joachim from promoting his compromise formula among the Protestants: his envoys attended the Schmalkaldic meetings at Eisenach (July 1538) and Frankfurt on Main (Spring 1539), and the elector personally contacted Johann Friedrich of Saxony and Philip of Hesse to offer his services as a go-between. Events both at home and abroad, however, had begun to overtake Joachim's peace initiatives and quickly were making his latest efforts obsolete. While he had hoped to resolve the religious controversy first through a general church council and then through a compromise formula, Luther's message had continued to spread relendessly even within his own territories. Joachim's younger brother Hans of Kiistrin, the ruler of the New Mark, publicly embraced the reformation by receiving the Lord's Supper in both kinds on Easter Sunday (1537) and joining the Schmalkaldic League the next year.50

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While neither outrightly endorsing the Wittenberg movement nor suppressing it as his father had done, Elector Joachim II, on the advice of his Councillor Eustachius von Schlieben, from the beginning of his rule had followed a policy of moderation and toleration at home.51 Not surprisingly, therefore, by the late 1530s Lutheran preachers were found in many more Markish towns such as Wriezen, Treuenbrietzen, O'sterburg, Gardelegen, and Drossen. Since 1537 a Lutheran pastor, Johann Baderesch, regularly preached at St. Peter's in Colin on Spree. Another Berlin suburb, Spandau, also was well-known for its strong Lutheran contingent. Support for the Reformation also was growing among the Markish aristocracy; evangelical preachers were found in many noble households. The new faith even was beginning to make inroads among the strongly anti-Wittenberg professoriate of the University of Frankfurt. Magister Jodokus Willich, a humanist and long-time Luther supporter, visited the elector late in 1538 to urge university and church reform.52 Such pressure came not only from individuals but from organized groups as well. The Markish estates, meeting at Berlin in the fall of 1538, told the elector that they were unsure how to handle religious ceremonies in the future. Joachim's reply was evasive but left the door wide open for change: "he would continue to act towards God Almighty, the Roman King and his Imperial Majesty, his most gracious Lord, in accordance with a good conscience, honor, and the law," he told them, and he admonished them to do likewise.53 A group of Markish nobles—the so-called "Teltow Coalition"—advised the pro-Lutheran Bishop Matthias Jagow of Brandenburg in April 1539 that they were ready to accept and confess the gospel. Similarly, in Berlin a burgher initiative petitioned the city council for permission to receive the Lord's Supper in both kinds at Easter 1539. The magistrates forwarded this request with their endorsement to Joachim. While the elector's official response remained noncommittal, the popular pressure for reform from all levels of society clearly was pushing him further into the evangelical camp.54 Indeed, since his recent efforts at mediation had gotten nowhere, Joachim was ready for yet another change of tactics. Without either an international or a national settlement of the religious controversy in sight, the elector now was considering his own territorial solution. In a letter to Ferdinand's personal confessor in Vienna, Peter von Ansbach, the Brandenburg court chaplain, warned in October 1538 that Joachim had asked his theologians to prepare a church order that would allow communion in both kinds and a married clergy. In December he sent an even more frantic

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letter urging at least some concessions lest Joachim surrender completely to the mounting Protestant pressure and break away from Rome. 55 Ansbach's fears were justified: Joachim, indeed, had begun to make plans that soon would bring significant changes to the Mark. However, the reformation he was contemplating was not clearly Lutheran but rather would steer a middle course between Rome and Wittenberg. For both personal and diplomatic reasons, Joachim was not willing to give up his role as a mediator: while favoring church reform, he was determined to maintain close links with both the pope and the emperor. In the spring of 1538 he had asked Rupert Elgersma, dean of the Berlin cathedral, to draw up a proposal for a new church order.56 Then he invited Philip Melanchthon to give his reaction. The Wittenberger came to Berlin and spent several days at the electoral court, but did not respond very favorably to Elgersma's draft. 57 It lacked the very heart of reformation doctrine, justification by faith, Melanchthon thought; he urged Joachim therefore not to publicize it. For the time being, he advised, Brandenburg could make do without a church order; the elector should allow the free proclamation of the gospel and tolerate communion in both kinds and a married clergy. In a letter to Philip of Hesse, Melanchthon explained that he had tried very hard —in vain, he felt —to persuade Joachim of the need of more farreaching changes. 'That is where matters were left, for he hesitates to eliminate the mass. Even though we talked much about it, nothing really has changed."58 But the elector had paid closer attention than Melanchthon realized, for he actually did follow his advice. Indeed, in the events that now began to unfold in the Mark, Melanchthon would play a far more influential role than Martin Luther, who was still feuding with Cardinal Albrecht and hence remained unpopular at the Hohenzollern court.59 Relations between Joachim and the reformer, already seriously strained by the Schonitz affair, suffered a further setback in the spring of 1538 when Simon Lemnius, a Swiss humanist and neo-Latin poet, published in Wittenberg a collection of Latin epigrams that ridiculed several prominent civic and university figures while extolling Albrecht of Brandenburg.60 At Pentecost the poems even were offered for sale in front of the Wittenberg city church. Convinced that the cardinal was behind this, Luther took to the pulpit. He denounced Albrecht as a "shit-bishop," contemptuously referring to him as that "miserable city scribe of Halle," and let it be known that he would publish an even more elaborate attack on the cardinal in the very near future. 61 Joachim was furious and deeply offended. Once more he tried to rally

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the Hohenzollern clan behind the cardinal. He also complained bitterly to the leaders of the Schmalkaldic League and demanded that Johann Friedrich stop Luther immediately. But the Saxon elector, whose negotiations with the cardinal over disputed property rights in Halle had just taken a turn for the worse, was in no mood to comply. Luther's long-heralded treatise, Against the Bishop of Magdeburg, Cardinal Albrecht, finally did appear in early 1539.62 The tract, essentially a discussion of the specifics of the Schdnitz affair as Luther saw them, was bound to add more fuel to the fire, even though its author insisted that this critique of the cardinal was not intended as a summary indictment of the house of Brandenburg.63 This disclaimer did little to mollify Joachim. He never really forgave Luther for these personal attacks; not surprisingly, the reformer would play only a marginal role in the events that now began to unfold in Brandenburg.

III. The 1540 Ordinance The signs that major changes were in the offing continued to multiply rapidly.64 On 14 September 1539 Georg Buchholzer, provost of the Berlin cathedral, presented the first evangelical sermon in the Dom. Peter von Ansbach, Joachim's staunchly Catholic court chaplain, was replaced by Jacob Stratner, the very individual who just had helped Johann, Joachim's brother, introduce the reformation at Kiistrin. Buchholzer and Stratner together with Georg Witzel, the humanist, served on a commission that Joachim appointed to draw up yet another church order. The chief architect of this ordinance, however, was Prince Georg III of Anhalt, himself a recent convert, a man universally respected by Catholics and Protestants alike for his piety and moderation. He more than any other individual would help shape the course of the Brandenburg reformation in its early years. While stressing the centrality of the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith alone, Georg, a ceremonial traditionalist, sought to maintain as far as possible continuity with the old church by preserving both its liturgical heritage and the episcopal form of church government. "Like Prince Georg . . . our beloved elector . . . was especially fond of old Christian ceremonies," Nikolaus Selnecker noted later.65 With his "unique type of Reformation," Franz Lau has argued, Joachim II aimed at "genuine recatholization" not Lutheran innovation66 —the result being, according to Gerd Heinrich, a "carefully orchestrated Teil-Reformation" (partial reformation) . 67 His personal piety, even after he had initiated his reforms, therefore

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often seemed quite unevangelical, most notably in his continued devotion to relics. Andreas Take has shown recently that Joachim acquired by far the largest part of his relic collection, which he had started in the Berlin Dom in 1536, after 1540, much during the 1540/41 visitation which ironically was designed to enforce conformity to his new, more Protestant church order.68 When Cardinal Albrecht left Halle in 1540—the city had become Lutheran—Joachim acquired two dozen reliquaries from his cathedral treasury, among them a huge gilded statue of the Savior with "a complete thorn of Christ's crown . . . and five pieces of the holy cross."69 The elector continued to expand and display his collection (on the high altar until 1598!) not solely because he admired the artistry of these reliquaries but, Tacke insists, because in his piety he "remained devoted to the old church which saw saints as mediators."70 The Joachimian reformation, indeed, was unique. Georg of Anhält's influence on the elector, which had grown steadily since 1537, was evident in a letter that Joachim wrote in September 1539 to King Sigismund of Poland, his Catholic father-in-law, to explain why he had decided to act and reform his church. For a long time, the elector disclosed, he had hoped for religious renewal through either a general or a national council. Since this had not happened, he had decided to take matters in his own hands. But, Joachim insisted, he "was not submitting to the Lutheran doctrine"; his intention rather was "to put an end to the many unnecessary disputations and questions, especially among the common people."71 He reiterated these very same points in the introduction to the church ordinance that finally did appear in 1540. 72 His primary goal, Joachim stressed again, was "to eliminate and abolish the most dreadful and irritating abuses which he simply could no longer tolerate with a good conscience; but to preserve unchanged, as far as possible, all other ceremonies and traditions — not because they are necessary for salvation . . . but rather because they are conducive to good discipline and piety." He was still hoping, Joachim insisted, that "a holy, general, free, and impartial Christian council in Germany" eventually would settle the religious controversy and reconcile both sides.73 Significandy, a decade later, during the Interim, he would still define his goals in similar terms: "Just as I do not wish to be tied to the Roman church, I do not want to be bound to Wittenberg. For I do not say: 'credo sanctam romanam' or 'wittenbergensem' but 'catholicam ecclesiam; and my church here at Berlin and Cölln is as truly Christian as that of the Wittenbergers."74 In short, Joachim very much like Georg von

I O A C H T M V S TT. D E I G R A T I A P R J N C E P S ELECTOR. B R A N D E B V R G I C V S . ET D V X P R V S S I A E .

Cernis vi Elertor 7 0 ./f CHIM VS March/o Pedore.fub tempus morii!,&T ore fera? Vidi! in hunc rebus fpretis morralibus vnum, Huiu» Si erexit te bonitate fides. Multacp de làcris,animato recresntibus, egli: Tetjfuapinxitdecrute, CHI^ISTE, mani» Dum grauibus diftis folaminibutcj refetfu» Languida fubthalamo penereioiTa liio. Qui merito CHt^lSTl moriturus hdere nouii Credimi is larafieroortuuseffe D E 0, M, H, B. F.

CHUUTyM

Figure i. i. Elector Joachim II. Illustration from DieAugsburßische Confession/ aus dem Rechten Original. . . (Frankfurt/O, 1572), 2. Courtesy Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Alv.:Ba 3 2°.

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Anhalt wanted a reformation but sought to maintain his ties to the old church. Philip Melanchthon, whom Joachim, at Georg's urging, again had invited to Berlin in October 1539, found this church order much more acceptable than Elgersma's earlier draft. This clearly was an evangelical ordinance that abolished past abuses, Melanchthon thought. There would be no more private masses and no more intercession by saints; priests would be permitted to marry; the pure gospel at long last would be proclaimed, and the full sacrament of the altar would be administered.75 At Joachim's behest, Melanchthon also wrote to King Sigismund, who had not responded very enthusiastically to the elector's earlier note. In his letter—a "diplomatic masterpiece," according to Paul Steinmuller—the Wittenberg professor explained once more just what Joachim was up to and why. The elector was gready dismayed that no church council had materialized to settle the religious controversy, Melanchthon told the king. Since he saw it as his princely responsibility to eliminate existing abuses, he had decided to take the initiative now that it was clear that neither pope nor emperor would act. His goal, however, was not a Lutheran but an evangelical reformation, Melanchthon assured Sigismund. Since he did not want to break with the old church, he had allowed the bishops to remain in power and — most important for the Polish king — his daughter Hedwig, the electress, was free to keep practicing the Catholic faith to which she was accustomed.76 Evidendy the letter satisfied the apprehensive Sigismund; Joachim's reforms, it seems, did no lasting damage to the relationship between the two men. The elector at long last was ready to take the final step and officially introduce his church order in Brandenburg. He did so by communing publicly in both kinds on All Saints Day, 1 November 1539, at Spandau's St. Nicolai Church, together with the Protestant nobility from the neighboring Teltow, Havelland, and Barnim regions. The celebrant of this first authorized evangelical mass in the Mark was none other than Bishop Matthias von Jagow who had long been sympathetic to the new faith. A day later, on All Souls Day, an evangelical communion also was offered in Colin on Spree to the city's magistrates and burghers.77 The new "Order of the Mass" as prescribed by Joachim's ordinance, however, was quite conservative. Much of the Catholic pomp and ceremony including the elevation of the elements was retained. The guidelines for the sacrament's administration to the homebound—those too feeble or too ill to come to church —were strikingly reminiscent of those of the old

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church: in cities, the ordinance provided, the communion elements first were to be consecrated in church before they were taken to the homes of shut-ins. This was to be done "with due reverence by a priest wearing a cope and preceded by a bell-ringing sacristan carrying a burning candle."78 For the countryside, where "the streets often are so impassable, muddy, and dirty that one has to climb over fences and hedges," the rules were slightly modified. Since "it would be inappropriate for priests to travel with the consecrated sacrament from village to village," the bread and wine here were to be consecrated in the home where the sacrament actually was consumed.79 Joachim's ordinance, then, suggests a strong residual sentiment of the old view of Christ's presence in the sacrament. Baptism, where exorcism and annointing with chrism were retained, betrayed a similar traditional emphasis.80 The ordinance likewise kept private confession and absolution, but specifically condemned public confession as an intolerable "abuse."81 It retained the practice of carrying crosses, which had been eliminated elsewhere, and continued the regular colorful processions on Sundays and feast days, the liturgical dramas customarily performed at Easter and Pentecost, and fasting on Fridays, Saturdays, and during Lent. Of the 51 holy days customarily observed in Brandenburg on the eve of the Reformation, Joachim's ordinance kept 35 as "memorial feasts," among them Corpus Christi, St. Catherine's Day, several Marian festivals including the Feast of the Assumption, and many saints' days.82 Brandenburg's church ordinance, in tune with the elector's personal piety, thus was quite conservative; indeed, it has been described as the most Catholic of all the German Protestant orders.83 Leonard Fendt has called it "the best example of the Lutheran-Catholic type."84 Yet in spite of many traditional liturgical embellishments its central teaching was justification by faith, the very heart of Reformation doctrine. "First and foremost," Joachim insisted, "it is our desire that Christ Jesus, our Redeemer, Beatifier, and Savior be preached—that through faith in Him alone we are saved, without any merit of our own." This is "the main article and summary of the entire gospel which must be purely taught. . . anything opposing it or detracting from it must be eliminated in our lands."85 But, eager to maintain the continuity with the old church, Joachim added that "old Christian usages and ceremonies, insofar as they are untainted and not abused, and do not contradict the article of justification, can be retained."86 These ceremonies, he explained, are of secondary importance; "they are pleasant and useful, but kept solely for embellishment and discipline."87

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Luther, Melanchthon, and Justus Jonas all endorsed the elector's ordinance and quickly responded with congratulatory messages. Luther lauded especially the evangelical thrust of Joachim's preamble but like the others, expressed strong reservations about the provisions governing holy communion for shut-ins. "Your Electoral Highness Himself is fully aware that it is blasphemous to carry the consecrated host in processions. H o w much more offensive then is it to carry both elements around. The entire world would gape with amazement at such an innovation; the papists especially would have reason to rejoice." Consecrating the elements first in church and then taking them, ceremoniously, to the homes of invalids, Luther thought, smacked of papalism and should be eliminated as quickly as possible. 'The sacrament of the altar," he reminded the elector, "is to be consumed during mass and may not be preserved in a ciborium." All other ceremonies, he added, could be kept as long as their adiaphoral nature was not forgotten. 88 Obviously, some felt that Joachim had not gone far enough and that too many papal vestiges remained. Georg Buchholzer complained bitterly that as the evangelical dean of Berlin he was expected to wear a cope, participate in processions, and perform ceremonies that he personally regarded as blasphemous. Luther, trying to put him at ease, responded with a somewhat ironic note: Provided the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached purely with no human additions and the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper are observed, with no invocation of the saints, no carrying of the sacrament in procession, no daily masses and vigils for the dead, no holy water and salt, and provided that pure hymns are sung in Latin and German, then it does not matter if there be a cross of gold or silver, whether the cope be of saffron, silk, or linen; and if the Elector is not content to put on one gown, let him have three the way Aaron wore them, one on top of another; and if he doesn't find one procession enough, let him go around seven times like Joshua with trumpets blowing; and if he wants to leap with the harp, psaltry, and cymbals, let him dance like David before the ark. Conscience is not to be bound, and if we have given up these practices in Wittenberg, we may have reasons which are not valid in Berlin. Except where God has commanded let there be freedom.89 Before the ordinance was published, Joachim submitted it in March 1540 to the Mark's estates for their consideration. The prelates objected, with the notable exception of the bishop of Brandenburg; the cities and knights overwhelmingly supported it. However, to gain their backing in this and other matters—Joachim especially needed their financial assistance to help defray his rising debts — the elector had to make concessions. He

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had to agree to major procedural reforms that affected the manner in which the cameral tribunal in Berlin conducted business:90 the elector reduced the total number of court lawyers and promised to use the Kammergericht henceforth only as a court of last resort, after all eiforts at peaceful mediation had been exhausted.91 Roman law, already widely used in civil litigation, was to be applied in criminal cases as well "so that no one will be oppressed by dubious sentences or other controversial punishment."92 Finally, Joachim concurred that cities and Junkers had the right to select their own pastors and teachers in places where they enjoyed the right of patronage. These were important admissions not only because they guaranteed the estates' continued good will but also because they confirmed and even expanded their traditional rights and privileges. Joachim initially had hoped to rely on the country's three prelates to enforce his new church order, but strong opposition from the bishops of Lebus and Havelberg forced him to create new agencies to supervise the reformation. Chief among these was the visitation commission set up in 1540. It included both ecclesiastical and secular officials, generally Chancellor Johann Weinleben, Bishop Matthias von Jagow, Superintendent Jacob Strainer, and representatives of the estates. The commission inspected most of the principality's churches over the next two years. The Junkers, of course, remained watchful that their prerogatives were not violated. A group of fifty nobles at one point issued a stern warning when they discovered that none of them had been invited to participate in the visitation of their region.93 The elector placed the responsibility of ordaining and supervising clergy into the hands of government-appointed superintendents and named Jacob Strainer as the Mark's first superintendent-general in 1539. He served until 1543, when he returned to Ansbach and was succeeded by Johann Agricola. In the same year the elector established a consistory on the Wittenberg model "to maintain pure doctrine and good discipline in the electorate." Together with the superintendent-general, it now performed the supervisory functions previously vested in the country's three bishops.94 Joachim's efforts on behalf of a settlement of the religious controversy in the Empire meanwhile continued unabated —indeed, gained new momentum. Shortly after he had introduced his church order in Berlin, the elector had written to King Ferdinand to explain what he had done. His reformation, he told the king, was necessary because "horrible abuses were corrupting and dividing the holy Christian church" and neither the pope nor a church council had carried out the urgently needed reforms. While he

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was still hoping for a general council to bring reconciliation, he simply had to act to eliminate the worst abuses in his territory. Joachim assured the king, however, that he "had not joined any alliance against His Imperial Majesty" and did not plan to do so in the future.95 The religious colloquies of 1540/41 provided the Hohenzollern with more opportunities to demonstrate his desire for a reformation that was neither Roman nor Saxon. At the Hagenau meeting in the summer of 1540, his delegation sat with the Catholics; later at Worms it sided with the Protestants in defending justification by faith alone.96 Joachim's commitment to moderation was also very visible at the Diet of Regensburg in the spring of 1541, whence he had traveled with his Catholic wife Hedwig and her chaplain. He enthusiastically endorsed a proposed compromise formula, the "Regensburg Book," which Martin Bucer had sent him prior to the conference. Joachim showed a copy of the draft to Luther who recognized the good will of the formula's authors, but thought that their "impossible suggestions" could lead nowhere. Melanchthon, the Protestants' chief spokesman at the colloquy, dismissed it as hopelessly Utopian—"Plato's Republic," he called it. Still, Joachim was not discouraged. Through personal gestures he tried to demonstrate just where he stood confessionally: on Good Friday he dined with Philip of Hesse, leader of the Schmalkaldic League, and ate meat, thereby ignoring, in good evangelical fashion, the Roman Catholic dietary proscriptions for Lent; four days later, on Easter Monday, he attended mass with the emperor. Joachim had introduced the reformation in his lands, but publicly at least tried to appear as a man who had joined neither camp.97 In spite of the elector's valiant efforts on behalf of compromise and much good will on the part of the negotiators—Melanchthon and Cardinal Contarini at times seemed close to an agreement—the Regensburg Colloquy in the end failed as well. The schism dividing Catholics and Protestants simply had grown too wide and was no longer bridgeable, even under the most favorable of circumstances.98 The colloquy's final recess again postponed the settlement of the religious controversy indefinitely —until a general council could be convened. In the meantime, Emperor Charles V agreed (on 24 July 1541) that Joachim's church order could remain in effect.99 It was a major personal and diplomatic triumph for the elector. In fact, among Germany's many Protestant ordinances Brandenburg's alone gained the seal of approval from both Vienna and Wittenberg—a striking testimonial not only to the political success of Joachim's via media efforts but also to the very opaqueness of his reformation which soon would demand further clarification.

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IV. The Schmalkaldic War and the Interim Even as relations between the emperor and the princes of the Schmalkaldic League deteriorated markedly in the 1540s, Joachim continued his peacemaking efforts. He did not support the decision of the Protestant estates at the Diet of Worms (March 1545) against sending delegates to the Council of Trent. As late as July 1546 at Regensburg, he was still trying —in vain — to come up with a compromise formula to prevent war between the emperor and the Protestants. Meanwhile, Hans of Küstrin, his brother, had first joined and then quit the Schmalkaldic League to ally himself with the emperor, after the Leaguers had imprisoned his father-in-law, Duke Heinrich of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, and forcibly introduced Protestantism into his lands.100 In the Schmalkaldic War (1546-47) Joachim initially tried to remain neutral but, after meeting with King Ferdinand in February 1547, decided that his interests would be better served in the imperial camp. This shift in no way jeopardized his religious interests, but clearly benefited him politically, for shortly afterward his son was named coadjutor in Magdeburg and Halberstadt.101 When the imperial forces decisively smashed the Schmalkaldic army and captured Elector Johann Friedrich of Saxony at Miihlberg on 24 April 1547, Johann Agrícola, Joachim's vituperative court preacher, celebrated the victory with a thanksgiving sermon on Jubilate Sunday — an event that caused much consternation throughout Protestant Germany.102 But even now the elector remained hopeful for arbitration. "I, Joachim, Margrave of Brandenburg, . . . promise and swear that I will abide by the decisions of the ecumenical council which has been announced in accordance with the imperial will,"103 he declared while encamped before the gates of Wittenberg. The Council of Trent, he hoped, at long last would bring peace.104 His desire for a religious settlement and dynastic gain had led him to cooperate almost blindly with the emperor. It now lured him into a minefield that shortly would explode in his face, ruining not only his reputation but permanently discrediting his via media efforts —the Augsburg Interim.105 Fresh from his victory over the Schmalkaldic League, Emperor Charles determined to use his superior military position in Germany to restore the Catholic church and to consolidate, as far as possible, his own imperial position. He pressed the princes assembled at Augsburg in May 1548 to accept a religious compromise formula, the interreligio imperialis, whereby the Catholics conceded, temporarily until a council could meet, the cup to the laity and marriage to priests, but retained all other doctrines and usages.

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Joachim II, who had personally come to Augsburg, thought that this was exactly what he had been looking for—"a fine conciliation whereby the Gospel would be spread throughout Europe." 106 Agricola was equally jubilant. Luther, he was convinced, would have lived ten years longer, if only he could have experienced this happy occasion. 107 To a friend he wrote: A union has been created so that they [the Catholics] together with us will henceforth proclaim the Gospel in their churches. The abominable opus operatum of the mass has been eliminated. . . . The Lord's Supper will be administered in both kinds. . . . A window has been opened through which Christ's Gospel can spread through all of Europe—and that with the pope's blessings. . . . You would not be able to contain your joy, if I told you all that has happened here. 108

On their way back to Berlin, Joachim and Agricola stopped in several localities to share their joy and to promote the Interim. They saw Andreas Oslander and Veit Dietrich in Nürnberg and talked to Kaspar Aquila at Saalfeld. The response of these men, however, was mixed at best. 109 An incredulous Aquila reported to Melanchthon the "optima bona nova'" Agricola had brought. "He said that the Interim was ideally suited to bring unity to the entire Empire and religious peace to all of Europe. He alleged that the pope now is reformed and the emperor a Lutheran!" 110 But what neither Charles V nor Joachim II had anticipated was the reaction the Interim would provoke. It was instantaneously disliked by practically everybody everywhere. The pope, seeing in the compromise formula a violation of his prerogatives, refused to recognize it for over a year, certainly not a very auspicious beginning for the Catholic reform both Charles and Joachim had envisioned. But even more negative was the reaction of most Protestants. Lutherans in the main rejected the interreligio imperialis vehemendy because they viewed it correctly as a veiled attempt to restore the old papal church. While the Interim was enforced in some localities in the South, where the presence of large contingents of Habsburg troops compelled the Protestants to lie low, it could make little headway in the North. Margrave Hans of Küstrin, who had fought earlier with the emperor, became one of its staunchest opponents. The princes of Mecklenburg and Anhalt also rejected it. But the real center of resistance became the city of Magdeburg, "the chancellary of God and Christ," as it was called in these years. Here orthodox Lutherans — among them Nikolaus von Amsdorf (1483-1565) and Matthias Flacius Illyricus (1520-75)—had come together to fight against the Interim. A torrent of theological pamphlets,

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songs, and political satires poured from their pens and aroused opposition against those who seemed all too willing to emasculate the Lutheran faith in deference to the political powers of the day. Just how strong this opposition was in Brandenburg became clear from the moment that Joachim and Agricola returned. When Agricola tried to defend the Interim, the city's pastors told him bluntly that they could never support a doctrine that would lead to their eternal damnation. The emperor is mighty but God is mightier, and they simply had to follow him. Similar sentiments were voiced throughout the Mark. Stupefied by such widespread opposition, and fearful that any attempt to enforce the formula might provoke a rebellion, the elector turned to Saxony for help.111 Without the backing of Moritz, that country's new elector, both Joachim and Charles realized, it would be virtually impossible to enforce the Interim in northern Germany where the example of Lutheran Saxony still weighed heavily in religious matters. In a lengthy letter addressed to the Dresden court, Joachim tried to persuade Moritz to join him in supporting the formula. The current controversy, Joachim argued, was reminiscent of what had happened in the early 1520s after Luther's appearance at the Diet of Worms. Then iconoclastic riots had erupted in Wittenberg; Anabaptists and other fanatics —he included Luther among them—had incited people to ever greater acts of violence that ultimately had culminated in the peasants' revolt. The "wild spirits" currently raging against the Interim were similarly threatening the religious peace and political order of Germany. Moritz should ask himself whether it would not be better "in these highly important matters to trust the pious emperor rather than those impetuous, raving people." Certainly Charles would not stand by idly much longer and allow these wild spirits to destroy the very peace he had worked so hard for. 112 Moritz was noncommittal at first, but after discussing the matter further with his theologians and Joachim at Jüterbog (Georg III of Anhalt, Melanchthon, Agricola, and Julius von Pflug, bishop of Naumburg, also attended this meeting) he agreed to back the imperial interrelißio. He had Philip Melanchthon prepare a compromise formula, the Leipzig Interim (December 1548) into which a more Lutheran interpretation could be read with some effort, but which retained a large group of Catholic ceremonies under the rubric of "adiaphora," or indifferent matters. This Philippistic version of the Augsburg Interim was introduced in Saxony and Brandenburg.113 Joachim's success in these negotiations with the Saxons, which in

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the scholarly literature generally has not been widely recognized, truly amounted to a "diplomatic masterpiece."114 Agricola was jubilant. He told his listeners in the Berlin cathedral that the Brandenburgers should now stop criticizing the formula. Since the elector himself helped draft it, people should not accuse the emperor any longer of trying to suppress the gospel. He noted the important role Melanchthon had played in getting the Interim accepted in Saxony. All Europe lay open to the gospel, Agricola rejoiced; the Markers therefore should stand behind their ruler and back the compromise formula.115 Neither Agricola's rhetoric nor Joachim's decision to move slowly and introduce the interreligio first in the residential cities could temper the continuing opposition or make the Interim any more palatable. While some pastors did cooperate, many did not, and some refused outright to have anything to do with it. The ministers of Berlin-Colin who were the first summoned to subscribe to the formula (January 1549), expressed grave reservations about many of its liturgical provisions, especially the use of consecrated oil and salt, whose adiaphoral nature even Melanchthon had denied.116 Pastor Christoph Lasius from Spandau criticized not only the Interim's theology but how it was being introduced in Brandenburg. Even if all the pastors could be persuaded to accept it, he warned, this formula would never be binding without formal approval from the country's estates.117 Still more outspoken was Andreas Hiigel, pastor in the city of Brandenburg, who accused Joachim of "outright trickery." He charged that "the entire Interim aimed at restoring the blasphemous popery so that we would deny Christ and adore once again our own works and the devil." Hiigel even refused to keep the copy of the Interim which had been handed to him, convinced that "anyone who accepts it willingly submits to the papacy."118 Representatives of the principality's cities handed Joachim a list of grievances on 17 August 1549 in which they complained bitterly about the Interim, demanding "that it not be pursued so thoroughly. Instead your Electoral Grace should . . . decree that the papal mass and other annoying abominations and abuses be eliminated," they griped.119 The estates also complained repeatedly that the monasteries closed in the 1540s had not been converted into schools and hospitals but were now being returned to their former owners. The general hostility to the Interim was so great that Joachim at one point feared that an attempt might be made on his or the electoral prince's life. 120 Still, he kept promoting it and even ordered another general visita-

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tion in 1551 to enforce it. Not surprisingly, the interreligio imperialis was most popular with the bishops of Lebus and Havelberg, who had never supported the Joachimian reformation anyhow. The new faith had made significant inroads in both dioceses by the 1540s; the imperial victories in the Schmalkaldic War, however, signaled the beginning of a Catholic reaction. Bishop Georg von Blumenthal (1523-50) of Lebus vigorously enforced the Interim in Fiirstenwalde, his residential city. Johann Horneburg, who succeeded him in 1550, urged Margrave Hans of Kiistrin to allow Catholic services also in the New Mark again. Johann, an outspoken opponent of the Interim, of course refused, yet could not stop the bishop from sponsoring processions to the famous St. Mary's Shrine in nearby Gorlitz.121 The Augsburg Interim likewise was enforced in the bishopric of Havelberg where Peter Conradi, the lascivious cathedral canon and Luther hater, led the reaction. Until his death in 1561, regular Catholic masses continued to be celebrated at the cathedral, even though Friedrich, Joachim's second oldest son, had been elected bishop in 1548 and Havelberg's population was rapidly turning away from the old faith.122 Conradi also continued to promote the "Bleeding Host" shrine at the town of Wilsnack, northwest of Berlin, a much frequented center of pilgrimage since the late fourteenth century that still attracted throngs of visitors from places as far away as Hungary.123 Local Protestants, who had come to view the shrine as a symbol of Catholic reaction, finally smashed it on 28 May 1552. Interpreting this incident as yet another challenge to the old church, Conradi immediately ordered the arrest of the Protestant ringleader — one Joachim Ellefeld, a local preacher — and charged him with blasphemy. Only direct intervention by the estates and the elector himself could spare Ellefeld's life and eventually bring his release.124 This episode illustrated once more, and quite dramatically, the general lack of support for the Interim —here strikingly evinced in one of the Mark's Catholic strongholds — and the considerable gains the Lutheran movement continued to make.

V Dynastic Ambitions Official efforts to enforce the Augsburg Interim only subsided in the fall of 1552 with the treaty of Passau, which ended the princes' rebellion against the emperor. Neither Hans of Kiistrin nor Joachim II, still eager for the Habsburgs' good will, was involved in this uprising. The Passau agree-

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ments (2 August 1552) once more suspended the religious question until the next imperial diet; it ultimately became the basis for the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. Sixteenth-century scholars generally have given Brandenburg rather poor marks for its role in the Interim. A notable exception is Franz Lau, who claimed that its leading supporters, Georg of Anhalt and Joachim of Brandenburg, have been "completely misunderstood." Their approval of the interreligio imperialis, he insisted, stemmed direcdy from their commitment to a via media reformation which stressed "genuine recatholization," rather than Protestant innovation.125 Only by remaining loyal to the emperor, Lau maintained, did the reformation, centered on Luther's justification by faith, ever have any chance of succeeding in Brandenburg. Other scholars agree that politics played a pivotal role but tend to be far more critical of the elector and his court preacher. Ludwig Lehmann has spoken of "the unfortunate years of the Interim, that constitute the nadir of the Markish Reformation."126 And Nikolaus Miiller in his somewhat dated but still definitive history of the interreligio in Brandenburg has suggested "that after the pope and the Habsburgers nobody did more damage to the cause of the gospel" than these "Interim-mongers" Joachim and Agricola.127 Such assessments, while harsh —and certainly more confessional than historical—are partly justified. In the years after the Schmalkaldic War Joachim, indeed, continued to subordinate religious to dynastic interests, at times in a blatandy cynical manner. A typical Renaissance prince, he sought to further his family's interests by consolidating his authority over the Mark's bishoprics and in neighboring Magdeburg and Halberstadt. As he pursued these dynastic interests he knew that he could ill afford to offend either pope or emperor. While confessing the evangelical creed, he was convinced that his political salvation lay with Charles V; accordingly he instructed his ambassadors to take a strong pro-imperial and pro-Catholic stand. But this behavior did not sit well with the other Protestant princes and certainly did little to enhance Brandenburg's international reputation. Anybody could buy the elector's vote in return for delivering Magdeburg, Halberstadt, and an additional 100,000 gulden, it was rumored at the diet of Augsburg in 1550. 128 Christoph von der Strassen, Brandenburg's chief envoy at Augsburg and Trent, seemed prepared to make extraordinary concessions to satisfy Joachim's dynastic thirst. "He is very much opposed to the pure doctrine; I really don't know why he was sent, but assume that it has something to do with Meideburg [Magdeburg]," Melanchthon noted.129 Johann Sleidan thought that the ambassador's speeches gave every indica-

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tion that Brandenburg "had submitted completely" to the old church, for Strassen "is speaking in most derogatory terms about our cause."130 Joachim's diplomatic efforts, odious as these may have been to many Lutherans, did pay off. Both pope and emperor continued to view him as an important ally in northern Germany, and for the time being seemed quite prepared to back his dynastic schemes. Thus Friedrich, Joachim's second oldest son, was elected bishop of Magdeburg and Halberstadt and confirmed by Pope Julius III after he had declared his continued fidelity to the old faith. When Friedrich died shortly afterward on 24 August 1552, his younger brother Sigismund succeeded him, again with papal and imperial blessings. 131 However, when and if his dynastic interests were at stake, Joachim could take a strong stand against both Rome and Vienna. This became quite evident at the Diet of Augsburg in 1555, where Brandenburg's chief negotiator, Lampert Distelmeyer, not only sided squarely with the Protestants, insisting "that the peace treaty be based on the Augsburg Confession," but vociferously opposed the "ecclesiastical reservation" that guaranteed the Catholics continued control over non-secularized church properties. Distelmeyer, fearing that this would create a major constitutional barrier to Joachim's dynastic ambitions, condemned the reserpatum ecclesiasticum as an "insult to the supporters of the Augsburg Confession" and continued to oppose it even when most other Protestants, for peace's sake, seemed ready to accept it. Only after repeated entreaties did Elector Joachim finally instruct a very reluctant Distelmeyer to go along with the majority at the diet and accept the reservation.132 The Peace of Augsburg had created a hurdle but certainly did not prevent the Hohenzollerns from seizing control of the three Markish bishoprics. While the diet was still in session, in June 1555 the fanatically antiProtestant bishop Johann Horneburg of Lebus finally passed away. Five weeks later the elector's grandson and future elector Joachim Friedrich — since 1552 bishop of Havelberg —was chosen as his successor. Since he was still a minor, his father, the electoral prince Johann Georg, already then a strong backer of orthodox Lutheranism, became the bishopric's actual administrator. The old church, however, continued to have powerful advocates in both dioceses — at Havelberg, the notorious cathedral canon Peter Conradi, and in Lebus, Wolfgang Redorfer, the cathedral provost and last "untiring champion of Roman interests on Markish soil." 133 Only the deaths of these two men — Redorfer's in 1559 and Conradi's in 1561 — finally cleared the way for the full secularization of both bishoprics. The elector's task was easiest in the Brandenburg diocese, where Mat-

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thias von Jagow had supported the reformation from its inception. On Jagow's death in 1544, Joachim von Miinsterberg was chosen to succeed him. He held the office as a sinecure, with actual ecclesiastical authority being exercised by the consistory, and resigned in 1560, clearing the way for Joachim Friedrich's election also in that diocese.134 Thus, at the beginning of the 1560s, the last decade of Joachim's reign, the Hohenzollerns were consolidating their family interests while the Reformation, not coincidentally, was solidifying its position in the Mark. But even now both pope and emperor continued to view the Hohenzollern as their staunchest ally in northern Germany. The elector, who needed the good will of both, of course did everything to encourage such feelings.135 Indeed, at times Joachim's religious sentiments and dynastic interests could produce strange bedfellows, as became very evident in 1561 during a visit by the papal nuncio Commendone. The legate had come to Berlin with Lampert Auer, a Jesuit, to persuade the Brandenburgers to send a delegation to Trent. Joachim received them cordially. He even showed Commendone his collection of relics, now stored in a separate chamber at the palace chapel, and asked him to use his influence with the pope to obtain a piece of the true cross — all this to create a favorable impression in Rome. 136 Joachim's conversation with Auer, whom the nuncio had brought along to explain the specifics of the Tridentine decrees, however, revealed a very different individual. With Abdias Pratorius, a professor from Frankfurt who joined in the discussions, he took a strong stand in favor of the evangelical view of justification condemning both "works of the law and monkish activities" as "useless." When Auer noted that he would "rather err with the Council of Trent than be wise with the Augsburg Confession," Joachim became very irritated and shot back: "Then go to hell with your council, I'll trust my Christ."137 While the elector continued to curry favor, at times cynically, to gain the curia's support for his dynastic schemes, his own religious sentiments, like those of his compatriots had moved further into the Protestant camp. Politically this trend manifested itself in Joachim's growing tendency to abandon his former neutrality by siding more openly with the supporters of the Augustana; confessionally it was evinced by his shift away from his earlier Erasmian position towards a more clearly identifiable Lutheran stance. Yet, as we will see in the next chapter, this confessional realignment, important as it may have been for the future of Lutheranism in northern Germany, did little to resolve the remaining contradictions inherent in the

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Joachimian reformation. In fact, it accentuated them even further. The discrepancy between the Reformation doctrine of "justification by faith," which the Brandenburgers insisted lay at the very core of their reforms, and the actual application of this credo in piety and worship as institutionalized in the 1540s and 50s, would become not only more apparent but, with the political and confessional tensions mounting at the end of the century, more problematic as well.

2. The Triumph of Concordian Lutheranism

I. Toward a More Rigid Lutheranism Theologically, Joachim's shift away from his earlier via media position was signaled by a growing tendency to support the Gnesio-Lutheran against the more latitudinarian views of Philip Melanchthon and his disciples. This hardening attitude surfaced first during the so-called Majoristic controversy, which erupted in neighboring Saxony in the early 1550s and by the end of the decade had metastasized into Brandenburg. The dispute began when Georg Major (1502-74), a Wittenberg theologian and Melanchthon pupil, was bitterly attacked by Nikolaus von Amsdorf (1483-1565) from Magdeburg for teaching that good deeds are necessary for salvation. Works were not required as meritorious but as a token of obedience, he insisted; their absence was a sure sign that faith was dead, for as none were saved by evil works, none were saved without good works. Amsdorf countered that this smacked of Pelagianism and amounted to a return to papal works righteousness. The debate gained further momentum when Melanchthon, who at first had stayed aloof, entered the fray and defended Major declaring that a "new obedience is necessary for salvation."1 In his introduction to the 1540 ordinance Joachim had defined the relationship between faith and works in very similar language: "Christian deeds are necessary to prove our faith; for where faith is justifying and active, good works also have to follow."2 But under the influence of his new antinomian superintendent-general, Johann Agricola (1499-1566), the elector's views had shifted markedly.3 Christ, he now insisted, "has freed us from the law, so that we are justified in him through grace without the need of any works required by the law."4 Joachim's own lifelong losing battle with his physical appetites undoubtedly made Agricola's antinomianism especially attractive, since it enabled him to subscribe to justification by faith, while simultaneously making allowances for a sinful life.

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The Majoristic Controversy erupted in Brandenburg at the University of Frankfurt in 1558 with an acrimonious debate between Abdias Pratorius (1524-79), a professor of Hebrew and Melanchthon disciple, and Andreas Musculus (1514-81),a professor of theology and pugnacious champion of genuine Lutheranism. From Frankfurt the controversy spread to Berlin, where Johann Agricola, Musculus's brother-in-law, became involved in a bitter quarrel with the city's provost Georg Buchholzer, another Majorist and Melanchthon backer.5 The issue became so divisive that it resulted in violence with Pratorius's friends at one point pelting Musculus with rocks and attacking his supporters. Pratorius tried in vain to explain to the elector the very dangerous political implications of Musculus's views. "If the nova obedientia is not needed, then obedience to the sovereign himself becomes superfluous. If good words are dispensible, then taxes also need not be paid," he argued.6 But Musculus was hardly the antinomian radical Pratorius made him out to be; his Teufelsbiicber and apocalyptic writings show that he had a most healthy respect for the law.7 Joachim therefore was not swayed: "I would rather see the university go down in flames before I would turn against Musculus," was his reply.8 To put an end to the feud Joachim finally called a meeting of Berlin's leading clergy on 19 April 1563 at the cathedral.9 It immediately became clear whom he was backing. It was bad enough, Joachim thought, that people had dared to tamper with some of the old ceremonies that had been retained in the Mark. Then, turning to Buchholzer, he bristled: "Out of pharisaical envy and hatred you have misled my poor subjects and conspired against my superintendent Isleben [Agricola] and Dr. Meusel [Musculus] , whom you have despised all your life."10 All this talk about the need of good works "sounds very pious, yet what else is it but the papacy? I say: Christ has freed us from the law so that we are justified solely through his mercies."11 And that, the elector added, was precisely what his church ordinance commanded to be proclaimed. Buchholzer weakly protested that he was doing just that, but that Agricola had persisted in persecuting and slandering him. "Eisleben despises everybody," and in his sermons used the vilest language, "calling me a Hanswurst, a snot-nose (Rotzlejfel), and a lying devil (Liicjenteuffd)," he complained.12 Joachim was not impressed. "You are acting more and more like a silly old fool; Eisleben therefore is not entirely wrong in calling you an old Rotzleffel," was his reply. "You have shamefully fallen away from Luther's teaching. If the reformer were to return today, he would be aghast and say to you: 'You foolish ass, you crude bacchant, this is not what I taught

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you . . . To hell with you."' Buchholzer, trembling and with a breaking voice, again tried to defend himself, but was cut off by Joachim: "I commend myself to God and you, Georg, to the devil. . . . I'd better go and have lunch now, lest out of boredom I start doing good works!" 13 The meeting had lasted for four hours, and if there still had been any doubt before, by the time that it ended it had made very clear just where Joachim stood. Not only had the Majoristic position been repudiated but more significantly, so also had been the views of Philip Melanchthon and his disciples Georg Buchholzer and Abdias Pratorius. Not long afterward, in November, Pratorius left Frankfurt for neighboring Wittenberg. Provost Buchholzer was dismissed in 1565 and died a year later, disgraced and broken-hearted. With their departure, Philippism, at least for the time being, had suffered a major setback in the Mark. The victors who emerged from this struggle were Johann Agricola and especially Andreas Musculus,14 champion of a more ardent and rigid type of Lutheranism which for the remainder of the century would set the tone in Brandenburg. This development is all the more significant if it is remembered that for nearly a generation Melanchthonians had played a key role in the Brandenburg reformation. Ironically the individual who spearheaded the offensive against them at the electoral court was Johann Agricola, the very man who in 1540 himself had had to flee Saxony because he had gotten into difficulties there when he tried to outdo Luther with his antinomian views.15 Most ironically of all, Joachim II, who doggedly had tried to straddle the fence between Rome and Wittenberg with his via media reformation, now clearly had cast his lot with the Gnesio-Lutherans. This shift toward a more rigorous Lutheran position in the early 1560s, however, meant that the tensions inherent in the Joachimian reformation since its inception now became more problematical. The ceremonial pomp and pontifical vestments which the 1540 ordinance had retained made sense only as long as Joachim sought to pursue a middle-of-the-road "TeilReformation"; they served little purpose in a church that openly identified with the Saxon reformation and in addition, had taken a strong stand against the compromising ideas espoused by the author of the Leipzig Interim. These tensions were exacerbated by the elector's continued determination to preserve the liturgical garb of his church exactly as prescribed by the 1540 ordinance, even though significant changes were being introduced locally in many parishes. "He had acquired his religion in the [old] church, but had learned its proper practice [usus] from Luther," Joachim insisted.16

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He harshly condemned iconoclasts who were removing pictures and crucifixes from churches. The very people who wanted "to discard everything now often have naked pictures in their homes, that usually are only found in whore houses," the elector complained. He denounced especially those who tampered with the sacramental rites: "Give the devil only a little breathing space and he will blow so heavily that you cannot stop him." Thus "removing exorcism in holy baptism, actually endangers both word and sacrament," he thought. 17 Joachim was particularly upset by the views of Paul Eber, a theology professor from Wittenberg, who in a recent book had condemned the adoration of Christ in the eucharist.18 "Since he is present in the Lord's Supper according to his Word, why should I not adore him?" the elector wondered. "When I approach the emperor or any other mighty person, I remove my hat and bow down low because I recognize each as my lord." How much more appropriate, then, is it "to adore and genuflect with a bare head" when meeting one's heavenly Lord in the eucharist?19 ' T o counter spiritualists and other sacramental desecrators" who denied Christ's Real Presence he favored not only the retention of the elevation but urged the addition of the ostensio, or presentation of the consecrated elements as was customary in the Greek orthodox mass. On Joachim's orders, Musculus introduced the rite in the Berlin cathedral on 10 March 1562 and then in other Markish churches. During the "ostension," which was found only in Brandenburg, the officiating celebrant, after reciting the words of institution, would turn to the congregation and, holding the consecrated elements aloft, proclaim: "See, dear Christians, this is the true body of Christ given for us, and this the true blood of Christ shed for us."20 In spite of his insistence on the centrality of justification by faith and the adiaphoral nature of all ceremonies, Joachim's understanding of the Lord's Supper thus remained problematic, at best. Just how "Catholic" his views were was perhaps best illustrated by an incident that occurred in 1568 and involved the son of Andreas Musculus, Joachim's GnesioLutheran superintendent—"the renowned case of the spilled blood of Christ Jesus."21 After his son Johannes had completed his theological studies, the elder Musculus had found him a ministerial position in the small town of Clistow, on the outskirts of Lebus. The town's magistrates, irked that they had not been consulted, soon started to complain about young Musculus, charging among other things that he was selling beer which he had imported, tax-free for his own consumption, and that he was neglecting his ministerial responsibilities. Joachim, who initially had ignored these

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complaints, was horrified when he learned that one Sunday, during the distribution of the eucharist, the pastor had accidentally spilled some communion wine and then had tried to hide the spill by stepping on it and covering it with his foot. 22 This, the elector felt, was blasphemy and made Musculus a "sacramental desecrator." He dispatched a stern letter to the Clistow magistrates and to the University of Frankfurt demanding a thorough investigation of "this unchristian, highly troublesome incident, so that our Lord will not punish the entire country."23 A commission was appointed in the spring of 1568 to probe the alleged incident; its findings, however, were inconclusive. Andreas Thiele, a parish leader, remembered that "the pastor had spilled the true blood of our Lord Jesus Christ on a cloth, so that it was drenched, but none on the floor; he could not remember whether or not the pastor had been drunk." Another witness, Andreas Kloster, recalled that "some wine had been poured on the cloth and that some had fallen on the floor," but insisted that the pastor had not stepped on it.24 Most of the people who had communed on that fateful Sunday could not remember anything unusual. Not totally satisfied, Joachim next ordered a more general investigation of Musculus's conduct. This expanded inquiry, during which some 134 people were interrogated, brought new revelations. The younger Musculus, it quickly became evident, indeed was a most careless and rather reckless individual who frequendy neglected his pastoral responsibilities, drank and gambled too much, and often kept company with highly disreputable characters. The "sacramental desecrator" Joachim concluded, surely deserved to be punished and should be removed from office. To that end he scheduled a week-long synod in late July 1568 to which all the Mark's pastors were invited. Joachim himself presided over the proceedings. The defendant Johannes Musculus, however, was not present; shortly before the meeting he had fled the country, thereby incriminating himself further. Each of the attending ministers was asked to render his opinion on the incident. But most clearly did not feel as strongly as the elector did, prompting Joachim to declare: N o crow evidently wants to prick out the eyes of a fellow-crow, but I cannot accept this in silence. The desecrated blood of my Lord and Savior must not bring a curse and misery over our land. Since he did not spare the blood of Christ, I also will not spare his blood.25

Andreas Musculus, Johannes's father, tried to intercede but failed. Instead Joachim reminded him that he too was partly to blame for the

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incident, for he should never have given a parish to such an incompetent individual, even if that person was his son. The elector then sentenced young Musculus to permanent exile, warning that he would be incarcerated if ever he should dare to set foot into the Mark again.26 Ironically, Joachim's charge against the elder Musculus was not completely off the mark. The superintendent's strong emphasis on Christ's Real Presence to counter "sacramentarían" views undoubtedly had reinforced Joachim's own very conservative understanding of the Lord's Supper.27 Unwittingly he had thus contributed more to the controversy than he realized; as Spieker put it, "with his catholicizing doctrine of the eucharist the elder Musculus himself had broken the staff of damnation over his son."28 The Clisrow incident was significant because it demonstrated anew the internal contradictions that continued to plague the Markish church. It also was important because it illustrated the dramatic confessional shift that had occurred in Brandenburg, especially at the electoral court. With Musculus's assistance, Joachim's via media church had indeed become more rigidly Lutheran by the late 1560s. The fact that it still retained all the old trappings and ceremony provided by the 1540 ordinance, however, continued to provide a poignant reminder of the incompleteness of this reform. Significantly, after 1563, as Brandenburg shifted more overtly into the Lutheran camp, the Reformation regularly was commemorated with a festum ßratiarum actionis.29 Joachim II celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his reforms on 28 August 1569. His co-infeudation with the duchy of Prussia in the same year, secured by Chancellor Distelmeyer after lengthy negotiations with the Polish crown, no doubt provided additional cause for jubilation. The 1569 festival was observed with the accustomed pomp and circumstance: with church bells ringing and gun salvos detonating, a colorful procession of dignitaries from church and state, among them representatives of the government and the estates, made its way from the electoral palace to the cathedral; there a thanksgiving mass was celebrated with all the traditional glitter and ceremony; then followed an hour-long oration by Distelmeyer in Latin on the importance of the festival.30 This reformation gala, however, would be Elector Joachim II's last hurrah. Barely one-and-a-half years later, on 3 January 1571, he died, aged 66, in his hunting lodge at Köpenick, near Berlin. Appropriately his remains were interred in his beloved cathedral. In his funeral sermon Andreas Musculus praised Joachim as a most peace-loving ruler who had "kept God's Word pure and had not tolerated any corruption or confusion that might have polluted . . .the holy gospel in his lands."31 Nikolaus Seinecker,

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court chaplain and superintendent-general at Wolfenbiittel, echoed these feelings and reiterated what had been unique about Joachim's reformation: Our beloved elector held dear and valued highly the Word of G o d but also delighted in song and ritual. Like Prince Georg of Anhalt he was especially fond of old Christian ceremonies and would not allow fanatics . . . to eliminate them. 32

During the last decade of his reign Joachim indeed had pushed his country further into the camp of orthodox Lutheranism. The process, however, was far from complete and now would be taken up with even greater zeal by Johann Georg ( 1 5 7 1 - 9 8 ) , his son and heir.

II. Confessional Consolidation Only ten days after the death of Joachim II, his brother, Hans of Küstrin, also passed away, heirless, thereby paving the way for Johann Georg to inherit his lands as well. The Electoral and New Marks, separated since 1535, once again were united under one ruler. Johann Georg, who previously had served as administrator of the bishoprics Havelberg, Lebus, and Brandenburg, commenced his reign by addressing the severe fiscal crisis that had taken on monumental dimensions. In his last six years alone Joachim II had incurred a debt of 2.5 million thalers. The new elector dealt quickly with those whom he held accountable for this staggering deficit, dismissing all his father's councillors who, he charged, had been wasteful and had provided poor financial advice. The sole survivor of this purge was Lampert Distelmeyer, the chancellor, whose political talents were needed to provide some continuity. Even in the New Mark, which Margrave Hans had left in much sounder fiscal shape, officials had their past records closely scrutinized.33 Most of the elector's ire, however, was directed against his father's personal physician and mint-master Dr. Lippold, a Jew. Johann Georg thought that he had exploited Joachim's impecuniosity and aggravated his indebtedness by providing easy loans at exhorbitant interest rates. Lippold was arrested and charged with the most absurd and hideous crimes — even that he himself had poisoned Joachim II — tried, found guilty, and condemned to death. His body was quartered and his remains burned on Berlin's New Market. Lippold's alleged crimes then were used as a pretext to justify the expulsion of most Jews from the Mark; they were not officially

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readmitted until the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm, the Great Elector, almost a century later.34 But such persecution and suppression did little to solve the fiscal problems Johann Georg had inherited. For this he needed help from those who controlled most of the country's wealth —the townsmen and the landed Junker aristocracy. In an effort to solicit their support and persuade them to take on his debts, Johann Georg met first in June 1572 with the estates of the Kurmark at Berlin, and later that year at Kustrin with representatives of the New Mark. After some debate, they did agree to a 2.5 million thaler grant, with the aristocracy promising to raise more than half of the money. But in return the elector had to sign a waiver (on 16 June 1572) that not only confirmed but extended the knights' privileges.35 The Revers bound him to favor fnembers of the native nobility over foreigners and commoners for all administrative appointments; it solidified the Junkers' economic position by granting them the right to collect special tolls and exercise more control over the purchase and sale of peasant properties; and it expanded the nobility's judicial and police powers within their own domains. Concurrently, Johann Georg vowed to respect the aristocracy's rights of patronage; he promised to allow only the proclamation of the "Word of God, as found in the prophetic and apostolic writings and in the unaltered Augsburg Confession and the Apology, and taught by blessed Dr. Luther."36 Johann Georg thus had gained thefinancialassistance he so desperately needed, but at a price: in return for theirfiscalsupport he had to make concessions that strengthened the Junkers politically and assured them a continued voice in the principality's religious affairs. As Johann Georg allied himself more closely with the nobility, he continued to steel his bonds with orthodox Lutheranism. This confessional trend, whose beginnings in the last decade of Joachim's reign we have noted, continued to gain momentum; Andreas Muscuius, whom Johann Georg retained as superintendent-general, again was willing to lend a helping hand. Under his guidance, and with the government's blessings, the Mark's church in the 1570s would be cast into the rigid mold of GnesioLutheran confessionalism. In 1572, only a few months after Johann Georg had come to power, a new church ordinance appeared prepared by Musculus and Georg Colestin, Berlin's cathedral provost and court chaplain.37 It revised Joachim's 1540 order. In words reminiscent of his pledge to the estates, Johann Georg reiterated his fervent desire that "God's Word alone, as found in the prophetic and apostolic books of Holy Scripture, the Augsburg Confession, . . . and

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Calvinists could do was to get together at conferences and discuss their differences. They should use scripture as their sole guide and authority and begin by emphasizing what they had in common. In evaluating each other's views they should focus on the issue, never on the person holding a particular view. Such colloquies, he was convinced, would help the two sides to gain a better understanding of each other and eliminate past misunderstandings. Bergius thought that Lutheran-Reformed cooperation and mutual toleration was not only necessary but, to judge by past experience, very possible. Before the confessional lines had hardened in the Empire in the late sixteenth century, Lutheran and Reformed princes had frequently supported each other, most notably at the princes' meeting at Naumburg in 1561 and at the Diet of 1566. For a long time the two churches had existed together in relative peace and harmony in Bohemia and in Poland. Only recently, in 1631, French Huguenots had agreed unanimously at their synod in Charenton not to exclude Lutherans from their Holy Communion and thereby had made it clear that they regarded all differences about the Lord's Supper as adiaphora and the Lutherans as brothers and sisters in Christ.15 Since the electors had granted Lutherans and Reformed equal rights and protection, their subjects now were free to practice the toleration already found elsewhere in Brandenburg as well. Lutheran opponents of irenicism countered that the Reformed were merely arguing for greater unity if and when it was politically expedient for them. Of course, there was some truth in this charge. Bergius himself recognized and condemned the armed violence and iconoclastic riots that had often accompanied the introduction of Calvinism in other areas.16 By his own actions, however, he demonstrated that irenicism was not simply a matter of passing political convenience for him. In 1619 he and Pelargus both refused to attend the Synod of Dort, largely because they feared that the condemnation of Arminianism by orthodox Calvinists there would hurt relations with Lutherans at home.17 Since the Colloquy of Montbeliard in 1586, the doctrine of predestination had become a major issue dividing the two confessions.18 Many Reformed, including Bergius, now sought to deemphasize this difference by espousing a milder "universalist" view of predestination which resembled the Lutheran and Arminian positions. According to this view, Christ died not only for the elect but died for all, though none received the benefits of his death and resurrection except believers.19 From his friend Adam Agricola, who already had arrived at Dort as the representative of Jagerndorf, Bergius had

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learned that the orthodox who dominated the synod were determined to suppress all liberal views. He therefore decided not to attend, even though Johann Sigismund asked him repeatedly to go as Brandenburg's representative. Bergius explained later to Fiissel, his father-in-law, that the synod would have done little for Protestant harmony and only could have hurt Calvinism in Brandenburg.20 Judged by the Lutheran reaction to the Dort decrees, his decision was a wise one. Bergius encouraged greater cooperation between Lutherans and Reformed not only at home but abroad as well. His irenic ideas were tested and applied most successfully on the international level at the religious colloquies at Leipzig (1631) and Thorn (1645). He encouraged the electors to send delegations to both meetings and himself played a pivotal role at these gatherings by promoting greater Protestant cooperation. Significantly, the Leipzig Protocol of 1631 and the Thorn Declaration of 1645, which he helped formulate, came to constitute, together with theMarchica, the official confessional position of Brandenburg's Reformed church.21 The Leipzig meeting in particular was noteworthy.22 This conference of Lutheran and Reformed theologians was held at the height of the Thirty Years War, while Germany's Protestant princes were attempting to coordinate their defensive efforts against the advancing League and Habsburg armies. While the princes and their secular advisors met, Bergius proposed to the Lutheran theologians at Leipzig that representatives of the two churches meet in private to discuss their differences and to determine just where they agreed and disagreed. The result was the Leipzig Colloquy of March 1631 at which Matthias Hoe von Hoenegg, the influential Saxon court preacher, and two of his Lutheran colleagues from Leipzig (Polycarp Leyser the Younger and Heinrich Hopfner) met with Bergius and two other Calvinists from HesseKassel (Johann Crocius and Theophil Neuberger). The man whose spirit and genius dominated these proceedings from beginning to end, however, was Bergius. The three Calvinists agreed on the first day of the conference to use the original Augsburg Confession of 1530 as the basis for their deliberations. This in itself was a major concession, for in the past Germany's Reformed generally had preferred Melanchthon's revised edition of 1540. The six theologians spent the next three weeks going through the confession chapter by chapter. They easily concurred on 26 of the 28 articles. As in the past, they did not see eye-to-eye on the third and tenth, dealing respectively with Christ and the Lord's Supper. The two sides accepted the articles as stated but interpreted them differently. However,

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they did agree to consider these points further at a later meeting. Toward the end of the colloquy, predestination, which was not specifically mentioned in xhcAu0ustana, was also briefly discussed. Again they were unable to resolve their differences. However, Bergius later expressed the opinion that their disagreements were essentially semantic and probably could have been overcome. Since his "universalist" view of predestination resembled the Lutheran position, this optimism was not completely unjustified. In spite of these differences, the two sides promised "to show each other Christian love in the future." The meeting thus concluded in an atmosphere of friendliness and good will. The Leipzig Protocol, the record of the proceedings, is noteworthy for here the term "toleration" for the first time was used explicidy to describe Lutheran-Reformed relations.23 The protocol shows again how under Bergius's influence and the impact of the ravages of war the original goals of Brandenburg's Reformed had been drastically modified. Since a full reformation of the country's church had proved impossible, they now were seeking greater harmony and parity with the Lutherans. As we will see below, the religious colloquy was important because it created an ideological basis for the political and military cooperation to which the Protestants eventually agreed in their Leipzig Manifesto. Significandy, the people behind this agreement, Sigismund von Gotz and Levin von dem Knesebeck, both Calvinists, came from the Brandenburg privy council; both were close friends of Bergius and strong supporters of his irenicism.24 The crisis precipitated by the war, specifically Ferdinand II's confessional absolutism, thus had driven Germany's Lutherans and Reformed to seek closer ties at Leipzig, just as it had forced Georg Wilhelm to modify his religious goals at home. In spite of the elector's political oscillations, which led him to rely alternately on the Catholic Count Schwarzenberg and the Reformed councillors, or attempts at a foreign policy which was variously neutral, pro-, or even anti-imperial, Georg Wilhelm remained steadfast in his commitment to the Genevan creed. Yet after nearly two decades of fruidess efforts he was becoming increasingly concerned about Calvinism's future in Brandenburg. What if he died prematurely and his sole surviving son and heir, the twelve-year-old Friedrich Wilhelm, were to repudiate the Reformed creed? The Berlin Dom, the one major church Johann Sigismund actually had reformed in 1615, would revert to Lutheranism and Brandenburg's struggling Reformed surely be quashed. To forestall such an eventuality, Georg Wilhelm decreed on 9 June 1632 that the cathedral "henceforth and in perpetuity was to remain the Reformed parish church." His decree further-

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more provided that if any of his successors ever abjured Calvinism their administrative prerogatives in the Dom would cease and fall to the local "presbytery and leading members of the congregation."25 The decree confirmed Georg Wilhelm's own confessional commitments, yet hinted at the tremendous sense of insecurity that had gripped the Berlin court and was propelling it towards greater accommodation with the realm's Lutheran majority. "Compromise" also was the underlying theme of a memorandum, the so-called consilium theokgicum, which the University of Frankfurt's theological facility prepared a year later, at a time when a general visitation of the Mark's churches was being contemplated.26 The visitation never occurred, but the twenty-five-point note (dated 6 June 1633) showed from yet another angle how the Reformed were being pushed toward compromise. Franck and Pelargus, coauthors of the document, admitted that little could be done to overcome the power of the nobility and city governments that controlled ministerial appointments in Brandenburg. "As long as they retain their position, His Electoral Highnes will not succeed in promoting his religion and reformation," they told the elector.27 Many useless papist ceremonies therefore still existed and, unfortunately, would continue to persist: the exorcism rite in baptism; the Latin language; organ, pipe, and fiddle music in the liturgy; altar images carved out of stone and wood; and communion wafers. Franck and Pelargus also noted approvingly that in some parishes communion hosts were now being baked so thick that they had to be broken before they could be taken in communion. Inadvertently and quite unintentionally the Lutherans thus had reintroduced the Reformed fractio panis, but the two theologians counseled continued "discretion in this matter" noting that "eventually everything will work itself out."28 In not a few of the Mark's churches, they complained, the hated elevation and ostension of the consecrated elements, prohibited long ago by Joachim Friedrich, still remained. Where these persisted, Franck and Pelargus were unequivocal, they had to be eliminated at once. They were more compromising, however, with other practices that Johann Sigismund originally had wanted to discard: "Not all the weeds can be torn out immediately and, besides, we are dealing here only with adiaphora that can be either kept or deleted," they thought.29 "As long as necessary, these ceremonies can be tolerated, even if they contribute little, if anything, to our edification."30 Too many additional reforms, the theologians feared, would only cause "many absurd and injurious things." Their overall recommendation to the elector, therefore, was that

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The tone of the consilium theologicum certainly was far more conciliatory than the one found in the memoranda Abraham Scultetus and the privy councillors had issued in the heady days of Johann Sigismund's early reforms. To be sure, the Calvinists were still deploring the many papal remnants in the Mark, yet as this memorandum makes clear, under siege at home and abroad, they had noticeably changed their tune. The reorganization of the almost defunct Lutheran consistory in 1637 provided additional evidence as to how the original goals of the Second Reformation had been abandoned and demonstrated once more the pivotal role Johann Bergius played in this process. In 1632, when Pelargus, Brandenburg's superintendent-general, passed away, Elector Georg Wilhelm offered the post to Bergius. The elector felt that he, well known for his moderation and fair-mindedness, would be ideal for the job; he even insisted that his nomination had been cleared with the estates. But Bergius knew better: he realized that this appointment, which would have given him substantial administrative authority over the principality's Lutheran church, would be unpopular and surely would lead to new disputes that in the end would do more harm than good for Lutheran-Reformed relations. He therefore declined Georg Wilhelm's offer. The superintendency remained vacant for the next four years. In 1637 the elector once more offered it to Bergius, who again refused it. This time Bergius also sent a memorandum to the elector that he had coauthored with Professor Gregor Franck of Frankfurt University.32 The two men argued that the general superintendency was too important an office to be held by either a Lutheran or a Calvinist. They therefore recommended that it be abolished entirely and that two ecclesiastical councillors be named to the consistory to administer the two evangelical churches on a separate but equal basis. Georg Wilhelm liked this suggestion. Shortly afterward, he appointed Bergius as the Reformed councillor and Johann Koch, the dean of St. Peter's in Berlin-Colin whom Bergius had recommended, as the Lutheran one. The office of superintendent was abolished.33 The net effect of this reorganization, as Gerd Heinrich has noted, was that "the idea of parity and evangelical unity" of the two Protestant confessions now had become firmly embedded in Brandenburg's ecclesiastical constitution. 34

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By the 1630s the original plan to staff Frankfurt's theological faculty exclusively with Calvinists likewise had been abandoned. Pelargus's death and the permanent transfers of Bergius and Crell to Berlin had created new vacancies on the faculty. Significantly, Simon Ursinus, a Lutheran, was chosen to fill one of these slots (in 1639) , 35 He and Franck agreed privately in 1641 to follow a strict rule of parity in filling future vacancies, so that an equal number of Lutherans and Calvinists from then on would always serve on the theological faculty.36 The Great Elector, a committed Calvinist, did have some reservations about this provision, but confirmed it.37 These developments were important because they helped establish Frankfurt's reputation as an "avant-garde university."38 The arrival of large numbers of French Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, together with the growing influence of pietistic and enlightenment ideas in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, assured that this polyconfessionalism of the early seventeenth century would eventually blossom into full-fledged toleration.39 The religious outcome of the Second Reformation in Brandenburg, then, was rather different from what Elector Johann Sigismund and his advisors had originally anticipated. The widespread resistance to their reformation in the Mark and also in Prussia on all levels of society shows how by the beginning of the seventeenth century Lutheranism had become firmly established in the popular mind and piety in the north German lands. The appeals for another reformation, in which the work of Martin Luther would be continued and completed, fell on deaf ears and simply failed to spark any enthusiasm among the people. Instead it engendered opposition and conflict, which ultimately resulted in the further consolidation of Lutheranism. Since they failed to win popular support and the Hohenzollern rulers were too weak to impose their court religion, the original goals of the Second Reformation—the Mark's complete calvinization—had to be adjusted to the given confessional and political realities. As a result Brandenburg became the first principality in the Empire where a limited religious toleration —or, perhaps better, poly-confessionalism —not only was proclaimed but actually practiced. Johann Peter Bergius, who served the Brandenburg court for nearly half a century, played a decisive role in this process. Because of his theological irenicism—to him clearly more than simply a matter of passing political convenience—he was especially qualified for this task. His position at the Brandenburg court put him in a unique position to promote his views. Political conditions^ specifically the crisis precipitated

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by the Thirty Years War, assured a fairly favorable reception for his ideas. The outcome of the Second Reformation in Brandenburg, while quite different from what had been originally envisaged, was thus profound in the long run: not calvinization but toleration was the result.

II. In the Political Arena Johann Sigismund's conversion had equally important political ramifications. Much has been written on this topic, most of it unfortunately based on generalizations derived from the reigns of the Great Elector or Friedrich III at the end of the century or, worse, Wilhelm I and II at the end of the nineteenth century. More than a century ago Johann Gustav Droysen described Johann Sigismund's conversion as an epoch-making event that infused a new, more ambitious spirit into Brandenburg-Prussian politics. According to Droysen, Johann Sigismund turned Reformed to further his dynastic interests in the Rhineland where he needed the support of the Dutch; by converting to Calvinism he aligned himself with the politically progressive forces against his own conservative Lutheran estates at home and the reactionary Catholic Habsburgs abroad.40 Otto Hintze, at the turn of the century, generally agreed with Droysen's thesis of an affinity between Calvinism and modern reason of state, but argued that Droysen had not paid sufficient attention to the spiritual and intellectual values of Calvinism. Following the lead of his great contemporary Max Weber, Hintze emphasized the interaction of religion and politics instead. He concluded that "Calvinism formed the bridge by which western European raison d'état made its entry into Brandenburg."41 What had been a tradition-bound, conservative Lutheran principality with a weak ruler who enjoyed little political clout on the imperial or international levels became in the seventeenth century a progressive European state, comparable to France or Holland, in which regional political and confessional interests were subordinated to the general welfare of the state. More recently, Gerhard Oestreich has added yet another dimension to the debate by stressing the close association of Dutch Calvinist and late humanist, specifically neo-Stoic, ideas. "Neo-Stoicism," he maintained, "became the basic foundation for the political system of late humanism" and therefore was important for the development of modern BrandenburgPrussia.42 The problem with these and other similar interpretations is that they

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tend to project later views back into the seventeenth century, endowing Hohenzollern court politics with teleological propensities that on closer inspection they simply did not possess. Since the Second Reformation is seen through the lens of seventeenth- or eighteenth-century absolutism rather than that of post-Reformation confessionalism, its initial goals and actual achievements — resulting here too, as we will see, in both concession and compromise—are not sufficiendy differentiated. Also, the varying ways in which the elector's new creed affected domestic and international affairs—producing confrontation with the Lutheran estates at home and with Emperor Ferdinand's Catholic confessional absolutism abroad—tend to become blurred. In early seventeenth-century Brandenburg, as in other German principalities, religious and political issues converged in what Heinz Schilling has called "a framework of confessionalization and state building."43 As noted earlier, the confessional question was ultimately resolved through a compromise that allowed the Lutheran popular and the Reformed court churches to coexist in a kind of poly-confessionalism that eventually developed into full-fledged toleration. The accompanying political or state building motif was no less complex: on the domestic side, the Hohenzollerns were seeking greater autonomy from the realm's powerful Lutheran estates by relying increasingly on their Reformed advisors; on the international level they tried to buttress their dynastic claims, but most immediately—and this is a point generally underestimated in the older literature—they sought to counter Ferdinand's confessional absolutism and survive the carnage of the Thirty Years War. What was true for religion applied equally to politics: some of the original goals had to be sacrificed and compromises became necessary. The most immediate effect of the Second Reformation in Brandenburg as well as in Prussia was that it weakened rather than strengthened the ruler's hand: instead of encouraging absolutism, it actually promoted constitutionalism—not the ruler but the estates benefited from these reforms. Egged on by their pastors and the local population, who in turn were emboldened by the estates' opposition, the Junker aristocracy and urban leaders simply refused to submit to the elector's will and accept either his new court religion or his centralizing policies, which they perceived, correctly, not merely as a threat to their confessional interests, but also as a direct challenge to their social and political standing. The Lutheran estates thus came to provide what Wilhelm Bofinger has described as a "protective wall" against the absolutist tendencies inherent in the court-sponsored

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Second Reformation.44 Significantly, in this confrontation the defenders of traditional communal and constitutional privileges invoked the religion of the Wittenberg and not that of the Helvetic reformers, as the ruler and his advisors did. Instead of encouraging political submissiveness and governmental authoritarianism, as has so often and somnolently been alleged in the older literature, Lutheranism in Brandenburg-Prussia actually promoted the very opposite: constitutionalism and political engagement. The conclusion Heinz Schilling arrived at in his study of the Second Reformation in Lippe therefore is equally applicable to the early modern Hohenzollern state that the identification of Lutheranism with the inculcation of passivity, withdrawal from politics, and the strengthening of the authoritarian state, and conversely of Calvinism with democratic constitutional principles and commitment to freedom and human rights, cannot be maintained, at least not in so general a form.45

The estates worked not only to obstruct the elector's creed and absolutism at home, but also to prevent the Hohenzollerns from playing a more active role abroad, principally by refusing to subsidize their dynastic policies and, with the coming of the war, by not allocating sufficient funds for a more engaged foreign policy. Largely because of a greater sensitivity to the dangers posed by the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the elector's Reformed advisors, on the other hand, generally favored a more interventionist policy abroad. Their European-wide involvement in hostilities with the Roman church encouraged Calvinists to interpret contemporary religious conflicts in broad international terms.46 They viewed the many confessional confrontations, especially those that issued in armed conflict, as manifestations of a general contest between rival confessions whose centers at the turn of the century were Catholic Habsburg Spain and Calvinist republican Holland.47 'This was a confrontation not only between Catholics and Protestants, at the national and international level, but also between monarchical power and aristocratic and constitutionalist opposition," J. H. Elliott has argued.48 It was to the Low Countries that the Reformed, in Brandenburg and elsewhere, looked for inspiration and guidance. From the experience of their Dutch brethren they had learned that the Catholic Habsburgs would not stop until they had either imposed their hegemony or been halted militarily by the united efforts of all Protestants.49 "Let us," Bergius pleaded, "take as our example the brave Dutch, who after pushing back the Romans [i.e. the Spanish Habsburgs] have been

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called promoters of liberty."50 To him, the Catholics were "Roman-Spanish birds of prey" whose goal it was to reduce Protestant Germany to "Egyptian slavery."51 They "want to introduce the papal mass everywhere by force and abolish the religious peace of 1555," he warned.52 'Their sole aim is to ruin all evangelical lands and to exterminate our churches."53 Like the late sixteenth-century Dutch humanist Justus Lipsius, whose ideas he had studied at Leiden, Bergius turned to the past, specifically to the history of ancient Rome, to seek answers for the problems of the present. Among the Roman rulers he was particularly fond of Constantine and Theodosius: "These early Christian emperors . . . when faced with divisions and sects in their time, made it their first duty to restore unity."54 But that was easier said than done: being in the minority in Brandenburg as well as in the Empire generally, the Reformed knew that they had to have the support of the Lutherans if this fight for Protestant survival was to succeed. In recent decades the disciples of the Wittenberg reformer not only had hardened their stand vis-à-vis anything remotely resembling Calvinism, but at times seemed to be almost irresponsibly complacent in the face of the rising Catholic danger abroad. For its foreign policy the Berlin court therefore had no choice but to accept what amounted to a series of political compromises: unarmed neutrality in the early war years and when this failed, in the mid-1620s, an imperial alliance, conveniently negotiated by the Catholic Count Schwarzenberg who played upon the Lutheran estates' desire for economy and security. The coalition was not a very happy one and therefore did not last long. Albert von Wallenstein's overwhelming victories in the late 1620s, which brought Catholic forces to the very shores of the Baltic Sea, soon confirmed that the fears earlier expressed by the Reformed had been quite justified. The Protestants in northern Germany, indeed, were in serious trouble now. Ferdinand II, interpreting these recent victories as a divine mandate for his confessional policies, decided to move forcefully and turn the Empire into a centralized Catholic Habsburg monarchy: on 6 March 1629 he issued the Edict of Restitution ordering the immediate restoration to the Roman church of all properties illegally secularized since 1552. The politico-confessional confrontation between the old and new faiths had reached its crisis in Germany. Schwarzenberg's total inability at this juncture to gain any special concessions for Brandenburg from the imperial court prepared the stage for the count's Reformed rivais to reassert themselves. But what new options could they offer? The disastrous defeat of Friedrich V early in the war and

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the overwhelming recent imperial victories in Lower Saxony made it abundantly clear that a militant Calvinist policy on the model of the earlier Protestant Union was out of the question; Brandenburg simply did not have the financial or military resources to carry it out. This did not stop the more militant princes, like Christian von Anhalt who earlier had organized Friedrich V s Protestant Union, from urging Georg Wilhelm to assume a more aggressive stance toward the Emperor.55 Anhalt reminded the Hohenzollern of his special responsibilities now that the Palatinate elector had gone. But Georg Wilhelm was no Friedrich V He concurred that he did indeed have a responsibility for the welfare of the Reformed religion, but told Anhalt that Brandenburg was not prepared to lead another Protestant alliance.56 The Calvinist militancy that had characterized Palatine politics thus was categorically rejected.57 Another approach, briefly considered in the 1620s but soon discarded, was one most closely identified with the Reformed Chancellor Friedrich Pruckmann.58 Two overriding concerns determined Pruckmann's thinking: fear of Ferdinand II and distrust of Johann Georg of Saxony. Because of the powerful imperial military presence in northern Germany, Pruckmann felt that it was poindess to offer any resistance to the emperor; since he did not trust the Lutherans either, the chancellor thought it equally futile to seek Saxony's support. Instead he proposed to counter the emperor's Edict of Restitution by producing the necessary documentary evidence which, he was convinced, would prove conclusively that neither Georg Wilhelm nor any other Brandenburger possessed illegally secularized properties.59 The chancellor seemed to be quite certain that Ferdinand's edict posed no direct threat to the electorate since its three bishoprics — Lebus, Brandenburg, and Havelberg—already had been in Protestant hands at the time of the treaty of Passau which formed the basis for the Peace of 1555. Pruckmann's assessment, however, was overly sanguine. Of the three bishoprics only Brandenburg clearly had been protestantized before 1552, and very little documentary evidence was available for other church properties in the Mark.60 The position of the majority of the Reformed councillors — eventually endorsed by the elector and also by the estates—was the view that has become most closely identified with Levin von dem Knesebeck, scion of an old Brandenburg family that had served the Hohenzollerns for generations.61 Levin's older brother Thomas, captain of the Old Mark, claimed to have been "the first, and for a long time the only one among the Markish nobility, to support the [elector's] confession."62 In 1614 Thomas had

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published several tracts that defended Johann Sigismunde reforms. "Your ruler," he told the Markers, "has forced no one to accept his religion, but instead has granted you freedom of conscience. . . . Indeed, he allows you more liberties than you are willing to permit him."63 Levin, like Thomas a strong backer of the Second Reformation, had been a provincial administrator at Kiistrin in the New Mark before Georg Wilhelm named him, at the age of 23, to the privy council in 1620. His studies at Frankfurt, Wittenberg, Marburg, and Heidelberg and his travels through France, Italy, Holland, and England had early exposed Levin to the confessional issues that were dividing Europe at the time. A political realist and compromiser, he rejected both Pruckmann's quietism and the radicalism of the Palatinate activists, favoring instead a policy of cooperation with Saxony.64 Knesebeck realized that the Saxons, who in the past had frequently sided with the Catholics against the Calvinists, might hesitate to join Brandenburg against the emperor. Nevertheless, he was convinced that the time was most propitious for a Lutheran-Reformed defensive alliance; the Catholic forces, after all, threatened Saxony as much as Brandenburg. Any Protestant defensive effort, Knesebeck knew, could only succeed with Johann Georg's support, for he alone among the Evangelicals possessed the financial and military wherewithal for such an enterprise. Georg Wilhelm spent most of 1628/29 at Königsberg. Significandy, Knesebeck accompanied him on this trip and thus was in a position to exert considerable influence on the elector. His program enjoyed the strong support of Sigismund von Götz (he would succeed Pruckmann as chancellor in February 1630),65 and ideologically was buttressed by Reformed irenicism. Its leading spokesman, Johann Bergius, had close ties with Knesebeck and also accompanied the electoral entourage to the East.66 Later in Leipzig, as we saw earlier, Bergius would play a prominent role at the theological colloquy which laid the ideological groundworks for the princes' political deliberations. On a broader, more international level, pamphleteers reinforced Knesebecks program. In the late 1620s a number of Flugschriften appeared that called for greater Protestant cooperation against the Catholic Habsburgs, who, their authors claimed, were threatening all Germany with domination.67 Most of these tracts originated in the Low Countries, Denmark, and northern Germany—some even in Brandenburg. During the years of Schwarzenberg^ ascendancy Berlin's postmaster, Veit Frischmann, continued to print a newspaper that circulated widely and reflected the sentiments of the Knesebeck party.68 Ferdinand II complained bitterly to

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Schwarzenberg in 1628 "that there is no place in the entire Empire where people write as freely and boldly against His Imperial Majesty . . . as at Berlin."69 The pamphleteers were especially critical of Saxony's aloofness and continued cooperation with the emperor.70 The Saxons were fooling themselves, observed the Hanseatic Alarm Clock in 1628, if they thought that loyalty to Ferdinand would serve their interests.71 The Great Clock Bell, published a few months later, warned that Ferdinand was sowing dissension to keep Lutherans and Calvinists apart. His ultimate goal, it asserted, remained unchanged: the total domination of the German lands and restoration of the old faith. The only recourse left to the Protestants, therefore, was to form a defensive alliance. They had to move fast, the tract warned, for "if we miss this occasion, it will be too late."72 The Great Clock Bell enjoyed such wide popularity that several editions were produced within a very short time. Another very similar pamphlet entitled The Emperor Exposed, written by Levin Marschall, chancellor of King Christian IV of Denmark, made the same points; it too sought to scare Lutherans and Calvinists into greater cooperation against their common foe.73 By demanding more Protestant unity these writers undoubtedly helped strengthen and popularize the position favored by Knesebeck and his associates in Berlin. Sweden's intervention in the war in the summer of 1630, when King Gustavus Adolphus landed an army of 15,000 troops on the Pomeranian coast, helped to make Knesebeck's views even more palatable. Officially the Swede had come to help his beleaguered coreligionists in northern Germany. "His safety much depended vpon theirs: Had the Emperor beene Master of those [Baltic] Port and Sea-coasts, he would neither have been so faire a Merchant to him, and might withall have proved a more dangerous, and over-masterly neighbor," The Swedish Intelligencer observed.74 Ferdinand II responded by calling upon the German princes for military support.75 While the Catholics were willing to provide some aid, the Protestants flatly refused. "Götz admitted candidly that "the Swede is a foreign king who has no business in the Empire," but declined to promise Ferdinand any assistance since Swedish troops could easily overrun the Mark and do great damage to the land.76 Brandenburg's Reformed Räte, already favoring a more resolute stand vis-à-vis the Emperor, now were calling for opposition to the Swedish King as well. Indeed, their Swedish strategy must be seen as a direct corollary of the imperial policy. Both sought to preserve the integrity and the constitution of the Empire generally while guaranteeing the rights and liberties of

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the Protestant estates more specifically. Both aimed at the creation of a neutral third party between king and emperor to keep the war from spreading further.77 Significantly, this policy also had the backing of the Brandenburg estates, which, meeting at Berlin early in August, urged Georg Wilhelm "not to get involved in any alliance with either the emperor or Sweden," but to seek the advice and cooperation of Saxony instead.78 The two north German electors met repeatedly in 1630 — at Annaburg and Zabeltitz (Saxony) — to discuss the current crisis in the Empire. Johann Georg too was deeply disturbed by the Swedish invasion and the Catholics' uncompromising stand on the Edict of Restitution. His growing disillusionment and the spreading fear at the Dresden court provided the Brandenburgers with the opportunity to present their proposals.79 Johann Georg was receptive and, in spite of strong objections from some of his more conservative advisors, agreed to call a meeting of the Protestant rulers at Leipzig in the spring of 1631 specifically to consider what countermeasures could be taken to meet the imperial challenge.80 The response to this announcement was overwhelming. Of the 160 states invited to Leipzig, most sent representatives; except for Georg of Hesse-Darmstadt, every major Protestant prince attended; several Imperial cities also sent delegates.81 Indeed, if attendance alone were taken as a measure of the Protestants' temper at this time, one would have to conclude that they were in a very cooperative and most belligerent mood.82 Even Hoe von Hoenegg, the influential Saxon court preacher who in years past had distinguished himself by his vociferous anti-Calvinist polemics — he had been a leading critic of Johann Sigismund's reformation—had changed his tune. A few weeks before the Leipzig conference, Hoe told Johann Georg that if the edict were not repealed it would be the elector's duty as a Lutheran to fight the emperor. Similarly, in a sermon that he delivered on the first day of the Leipzig convention, Hoe urged the assembled rulers to unite and to defend themselves against the arbitrary rule of Ferdinand and his allies.83 Bergius, with whom Hoe had feuded in years past, fully concurred. He rejoiced that Lutherans and Calvinists "at long last had come peacefully together as brothers."84 "Is there anyone with German blood in his veins," he wondered, "whose heart does not ache when he sees and hears how our fatherland is plundered and ravaged by foreign marauders worse than the Turks and Tartars?" In words reminiscent of the patriotic humanist Conrad Celtis, Bergius urged "our dear Germany" to awake and become once more a terror and a dread to all peoples who threatened its freedoms.85 More than

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